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https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/sports/ncaabasketball/arizona-scrapes-past-oregon.htmlSports BriefingFeb. 7, 2014Nick Johnson scored 18 points as No. 2 Arizona (22-1, 9-1 Pacific 12), coming off its first loss of the season, ground out a 67-65 victory at home over Oregon (15-7, 3-7). Sean Kilpatrick scored 26 points, and No. 7 Cincinnati (22-2, 11-0 American Athletic Conference) rallied to its 15th straight win, a 63-58 home victory over No. 22 Connecticut (17-5, 5-4). Adreian Payne scored 12 points in his return from a foot injury, and No. 9 Michigan State (20-3, 9-1) kept pace atop the Big Ten with an 82-67 victory at home over Penn State (12-11, 3-7).

Sports

Science|Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers are back on the ground after completing their short flight to space.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/science/blue-origin-bezos-space.htmlJeff Bezos and his fellow passengers are back on the ground after completing their short flight to space.VideotranscripttranscriptHighlights From Blue Origins SpaceflightBlue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.Theres Oliver on the left, Jeff Bezos on the right. We are about to go to space, everybody. Command engine start two, one, ignition. We have liftoff. The Shepard has cleared the tower. And New Shepard has cleared the tower, on her way to space with our first human crew. And booster touchdown, welcome back New Shepard. First up, your booster has landed. Booster landed. Our rocket went over Mach 3. And now theyre coming, floating back down at just about 15 or 16 miles an hour. What a flight. Welcome back to Earth. Congratulations to all of you. All of you. [cheering] Welcome back, astronauts.Blue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.CreditCredit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressPublished July 20, 2021Updated Oct. 13, 2021Jeff Bezos, the richest human in the world, went to space on Tuesday. It was a brief jaunt rising 60-some miles into the sky above West Texas in a spacecraft that was built by Mr. Bezos rocket company, Blue Origin.The flight, even though it did not enter orbit, was a milestone for the company that Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started more than 20 years ago, the first time a Blue Origin vehicle carried people to space.Best day ever, Mr. Bezos exclaimed once the capsule had settled in the dust near the launch site.That Mr. Bezos himself was seated in the capsule reflects his enthusiasm for the endeavor and perhaps signals his intent to give Blue Origin the focus and creative entrepreneurship that made Amazon one of the most powerful economic forces on the planet.Outside of short delays in the countdown, the launch proceeded smoothly.Just after 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, the four passengers arrived at a bridge atop the launch platform, with each ringing a bell hung at one end before crossing to the capsule. They then began boarding the capsule one at a time and strapped into their seats.The stubby rocket and capsule, named New Shepard after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, rose from the companys launch site in Van Horn at 9:11 a.m., a thin jet of fire and exhaust streaming from the rockets engine.Once the booster had used up its propellant, the capsule detached from the rocket at an altitude of about 47 miles. Both pieces continued to coast upward, passing the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space.ImageCredit...Thom Baur/ReutersMr. Bezos and the passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, cheering in the capsule as they experienced about four minutes of free fall.You have a very happy crew up here, I want you to know, Mr. Bezos said as the capsule descended.The booster landed vertically, similar to the reusable Falcon 9 booster of the rival spaceflight company SpaceX. The capsule then descended until it gently set down in a puff of dust.At 9:21 a.m., 10 minutes and 10 seconds after launch, it was over.The four passengers exited the capsule just after 9:30 a.m., and embraced loved ones, friends and ground crew as they celebrated.

science

Stormy Daniels I'm Blue in the Face ... Trump Affair Never Happened! 1/30/2018 Stormy Daniels says she can't say it enough -- she never banged Donald Trump, but still ... she's saying it one more time with feeling. Stormy issued a statement Tuesday, saying she and Trump denied the affair multiple times since it allegedly went down in 2006 ... and nothing's changed. She says, "I am not denying this affair because I was paid 'hush money' as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened." The "overseas owned tabloid" the ex-porn star's referring to is The Wall Street Journal, which reported the alleged $130,000 payment. We checked and it's still American-owned. There's some buzz about Stormy's signature on the statement. It looks way different from a previous denial she issued. Despite the obvious difference ... her rep, Gina Rodriguez, tells us Stormy signed both letters. Stormy claims she won't have any further comment about Trump. Why do we doubt that?

Entertainment

Frank Thomas Has Famous 'Big Hurt' Nickname on Lockdown 1/29/2018 MLB legend Frank Thomas -- also known by his intimidating nickname from his playing days -- is making damn sure nobody else tries to take it from him ... at least for merchandise. The Hall of Fame first baseman -- known as "The Big Hurt" for crushing baseballs throughout his career -- has the term 'Big Hurt' trademarked for t-shirts, sport shirts and baseball caps ... according to legal docs obtained by TMZ. Thomas filed the paperwork a few years after hanging up his cleats, and has had 'Big Hurt' for his own since May 2015. Frank's been a busy businessman since retirement, too -- he founded a record label, opened a Chicago brewpub, put out a cookbook, joined "MLB on FOX" as an analyst and became a spokesman for Nugenix. Don't be surprised if a "Big Hurt" brand launch comes next.

Entertainment

Credit...Nathan Weber for The New York TimesJune 12, 2018WASHINGTON While surveying Chicago hotel and casino workers about their experiences with sexual harassment on the job, Kasey Nalls had a conversation she said she would never forget.A guest had returned to his room as a housekeeper was cleaning. When the housekeeper went to the bathroom to collect used towels, she found the guest naked.He was blocking her path to the door, so she had to barrel and run into him and jump over the bed just to get out of the room, said Ms. Nalls, a casino cocktail server and a member of Unite Here Local 1, a hospitality workers union in Chicago and northwest Indiana.Ms. Nalls was one of several legal experts, entrepreneurs, nonprofit workers and labor advocates who spoke Monday at a meeting held in Washington by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In light of the #MeToo movement, which has shaken Hollywood, politics and other industries, the commission reconvened a task force it had created two years ago as part of a broad investigation into workplace harassment.Members of the task force discussed how to stop harassment for some of the countrys most vulnerable, and less visible, employees including those who might face harassment not just from their co-workers, but also from customers and guests.Even as thousands of women continue to speak out about their experiences with harassment, Victoria A. Lipnic, the commissions acting chairwoman, said it had not received an increase in sexual harassment reports so far this fiscal year, which began last fall just as harassment accusations against Harvey Weinstein were brought to light. In the 2017 fiscal year, the commission received more than 12,400 reports of sexual harassment.What I have heard a lot of is internally, employers have seen an uptick within their own internal processes, of people coming to H.R. complaining, that human resources has an uptick in investigations that they are conducting, Ms. Lipnic said.Though reports to the commission have not increased, there have been signs of increased awareness of the agencys work. According to a commissioner, Chai Feldblum, the rate of online traffic on the agencys website has tripled in the past few months. For Ms. Lipnic and Ms. Feldblum, who both led the original task force, the past nine months have provided the cultural awakening necessary for the commission to insert itself as a crucial player in the conversation happening in the news media and on social media.In 2016, the commission, which is charged with enforcing federal laws prohibiting workplace discrimination, released a report that found that much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool its been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability.Since the reports release, the commission has been busy providing employers new training programs that focus on respect and inclusivity rather than legal definitions.But many employers have turned to more creative solutions for mitigating sexual harassment faced by their workers.The union audit that Ms. Nalls helped conduct concluded in 2016 that among nearly 500 female hotel and casino workers surveyed, 58 percent of hotel employees reported being sexually harassed by a guest, as did 77 percent of casino workers results that would serve as the basis for a Hands Off Pants On ordinance in Chicago that involved, among other things, issuing panic buttons to housekeepers.Erin Wade, a former labor lawyer who runs the restaurant Homeroom in Oakland, Calif., shared with the task force a solution that her business had created to deal with harassment. Three years ago, after a flurry of emails from employees reporting a customers poor behavior, the staff devised a color-coded system: Servers can label guests yellow, orange or red depending on the level of harassment, then discreetly notify a manager, who will take over the table.Its empowering, Ms. Wade told the panel. Theres no justification needed to report a color. You also dont have to relive what could have been a scarring experience for you, and youre not feeling like you havent been taken seriously.And when there is a red on the floor and the customer is kicked out, Ms. Wade said, the customer usually responds sheepishly.We have not had aggressive situations where people are angry, she continued. Theyre just not used to being called out.

Politics

Science|When Bats Look for Meals Near Wind Power, Bats Diehttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/science/bats-wind-power-turbines.htmlTrilobitesCredit...Russell Cheyne/ReutersNov. 7, 2016Wind power can help the world fight climate change, but its not so great for bats.A new study of wind turbines in Britain found that each turbine killed one to two bats each month on average, with some killing more than 60. The researchers said that the efforts that are required in many countries to assess the environmental effect of planned wind farms have proved faulty and inadequate in measuring the risk to bats. There are more than 300,000 wind turbines around the world.The risks to birds of the blades of wind turbines are becoming well understood, but the risk to bats, while known, has been poorly defined until now, said Fiona Mathews, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of mammalian biology at the University of Exeter in England. Bats, she said, might be attracted to turbines, whether because of the noise the machines make or the bugs that are trapped in the air movement: Its a ready food supply.Her team found bat casualties in unexpected places like high-altitude spots, she said.Finding the bats, which are small and not colorful, presented special challenges. Using specially trained bat-sniffing dogs, the researchers found the hard-to-spot bat corpses at the bases of turbines at 46 wind farms around England. Dr. Mathews said she contacted an expert who trains dogs to sniff out bodies, bombs and the like for bat duty. He just killed himself laughing, she said, and then he told her, This is the funniest thing anybodys ever asked me to do.ImageCredit...Victoria StentDr. Mathews, who is also the chairwoman of the Mammal Society, a conservation group in England, said that the research in no way suggested that renewable power was a bad thing, but argued that wind power companies should take action to minimize the damage to bats, which pollinate plants and consume pests like mosquitoes. The risk is higher at times of low wind, in part because bats are less likely to take to the air during a hard blow; because turbines are not generating much power anyway during those times of relative calm, stilling the blades or shifting their pitch to limit motion could save many bats, as could curtailing operation during peak bat periods of the year. You can make a huge difference in the number of bats youre killing, she said.

science

Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York TimesDec. 24, 2015Most companies listed on American stock exchanges are conventional, familiar businesses like Apple or Exxon Mobil, but the stock market also contains many obscure, even mysterious, specialized sectors that operate with much less public awareness.In recent months, one of those groups of specialty firms has been drawing attention as controversy has increased over some of its tactics and results.Known as business development companies, or B.D.C.s, the firms were created by Congress in 1980 to encourage investment in small businesses whose growth may generate jobs. They sell stock to the public and then use some of the proceeds to make loans to emerging businesses for a variety of needs.The category has grown tenfold over the last decade, to $64 billion in assets. That is partly because business development companies offer higher yields in exchange for the high-risk nature of their assets, and partly because they cater to a market that big banks have retreated from since the financial crisis.In the last four months, several business development companies have become targets of activist or dissident investors who are dissatisfied over management and performance issues and are waging proxy contests or seeking sales. In September, one company, TICC Capital faced multiple challenges to its plan to sell its asset manager to another concern. In October, an investor demanded that another, KCAP Financial, be sold. In November, the activist investor Elliott Management challenged a spinoff plan by a third, American Capital. And a shareholder of a fourth company, FifthStreet Finance, started a proxy challenge seeking three board seats.One of the most criticized business development companies, however, is Prospect Capital.With $6.6 billion in assets, Prospect is a large player in the category. But in the last year and a half, its stock price and net-asset value per share have been steadily sinking. Even before the recent junk-bond market upheaval, Prospect and three of the other business development companies being challenged have traded at discounts to net-asset-value of more than 30 percent this year, well below the average of less than 20 percent for such firms.Some analysts have accused Prospect of charging what they say are conspicuously high fees, even as investor returns have faltered. And others have taken issue with the compensation paid its chief executive, John F. Barry III more than $100 million annually in recent years, according to estimates by former employees and an outside analyst.By comparison, Malon Wilkus, chief executive of the largest internally managed business development company, American Capital, earned $16.9 million in 2014. Prospects president, M. Grier Eliasek, and the firms head of investor relations, Michael Cimini, who talked enthusiastically about Prospects stock and its 12 to 13 percent dividend in interviews they initiated in January, did not respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment on questions about Prospects performance.Not all such companies have disappointed investors. Main Street Capital, for one, trades at a 40 percent premium, based on the steady growth of a more sustainable dividend in the 6 percent range, lower fees and returns which topped the Standard & Poors 500-stock index in three of the five years that ended in 2014.The reversal of fortune at Prospect is striking, given its promising start.The firm went public as Prospect Energy in 2004 after a $121 million offering at $15 a share. It specialized in investments in energy firms and rode a surge in energy prices that peaked in 2008. It also made a shrewd $201 million acquisition in 2009 of Patriot Capital Funding, a specialty finance company, at a 54 percent discount to book value.The stock price rose to $18.79 in late 2006, and in total returns, it beat the S.&P. 500 in three of its first four calendar years as a public company, according to the research firm Morningstar.But since then, the stock price has fallen by 61 percent. Prospect has twice cut its dividend, which is now $1 a share, from its peak of $1.62 in 2009. And despite reducing its exposure to energy investments, its returns have trailed the S.& P. 500 in all but one year since 2008.Some investors who specialize in business development companies avoid Prospect stock partly because, they said, the firm inflates the fees it pays its management firm, Prospect Capital Management, a separate company owned largely by Mr. Barry.They have earned incentive fees even though they have lost shareholder value on a per-share basis, said David Miyazaki, who focuses on specialty finance companies at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis.Prospect operates like a mutual fund, investing in high-yield, high-risk assets like stocks, loans and bonds of companies through private equity buyouts, finance companies, debt pools like collateralized loan obligations, real estate investment trusts, aircraft leasing and even online loans. Its latest report lists 131 different holdings.Prospects fees, like those of many business development companies, are similar to those of private equity funds. Its external manager charges a 2 percent annual management fee on all assets plus an incentive fee of 20 percent of certain income gains and administrative expenses at the high end of the sector. For its fiscal year that ended in June, the Barry-owned manager received fees and expenses totaling $240 million, or about 3.5 percent of its total assets, according to the companys annual report.Some analysts say Prospect has often paid out dividends above its earnings, and sold stock below its book value, both of which can hurt investors. Both moves have helped Prospect raise its assets tenfold since 2008, also increasing fees.Dividends in excess of earnings arent really dividends, they are returns of investors capital, and they lead directly to falling net asset value per share, David B. Golub, chief executive of Golub Capital BDC, a low-fee competitor, said about business development companies in general.Since 2007, Prospects net asset value per share, or book value, has fallen 33 percent to $10.17, partly because of the high dividends.Some analysts have also objected to various tactics they say allow Prospect to inflate income, increasing incentive fees due its manager. For example, Prospect charges above-market interest rates to some companies it controls and receives some of the interest in noncash debt securities that count toward current incentive fees leaving shareholders at risk of nonpayment.Four Prospect companies pay interest of 20 percent or more on debt they owe Prospect typically 10 percent in cash and 10 percent in noncash pay-in-kind debt, according to its reports.In an August call with a Prospect staff banker who questioned imposing such high rates on the companies, Mr. Barry described the interest payments as a brand new road freshly paved to have net investment income come in to Prospect, according to a record of the call. By contrast, he said, with an equity interest in the same company, you get to walk across a minefield before earning profits.The son of a partner at the law firm of Lord Day & Lord, Mr. Barry, who is in his mid-60s, had what he sometimes alludes to as a silver spoon upbringing, graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton and Harvard Law School. He joined Prospect Capital Management in 1990 after stints at a law firm and two investment banks.Mr. Barry works mainly from his home in Riverside, Conn., often coming into Prospect headquarters near Bryant Park in Manhattan on Fridays. He generally conducts business remotely, via email and lengthy phone calls with groups of employees.Starting last summer, Prospect and other business development companies experienced a series of adverse events.In early 2014, Prospect suspended its stock and bond sales for a few months pending a review of its accounting by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which required Prospect to clarify the accounting for its owned subsidiaries.Business development company stocks were also hit last year when several big index providers dropped them, based on regulatory guidance requiring index mutual funds to reflect their hefty fees in the index funds own fees. This year, they fell further as concerns grew about energy exposure and rising future defaults.Some investors say the wide discounts to book value represent a good buying opportunity, especially with activist investors popping up. The whole business development sector is on sale, said Gregg T. Abella, an adviser at Investment Partners Asset Management in Metuchen, N.J. Prospect, he added, looks cheap to me based on its earnings, income and low energy exposure.In December 2014, Prospect said it would cut its dividend a second time. With its shares down 34 percent in the last 17 months, Prospect has curtailed new stock sales. As a result, growth of its assets slowed to 5 percent in its latest fiscal year from an annual rate of 58 percent over the previous five years.One reason for Prospects big discount to net-asset value, now 28 percent, is that some investors are skeptical of the value Prospect reports for some assets.Robert Dodd, a Raymond James analyst, said he had not had a buy rating on the stock since 2008. Given all the questions and unknowns, he said, there is no price at which I would be a buyer of Prospect.

Business

Nov. 7, 2018Credit...Remo Casilli/ReutersROME At a police convention in October, Matteo Salvini, the most powerful figure in Italys populist government, ran his hands over an enormous military-grade sniper rifle and posed with a submachine gun. Before elections this year, he campaigned at a gun show and signed a cooperation pledge with a group advocating looser gun laws in Italy.Its tradition, Mr. Salvini said of hunting and responsible gun ownership when he signed the pledge. Its culture.Italian culture, linked in the popular imagination with fine art, fashion and good food, does not typically conjure up the image of assault weapons. But in September, the government loosened gun laws, making it possible to own more guns like the AR-15, an assault rifle that has been used in numerous mass shootings in the United States, most recently a Pennsylvania synagogue where 11 were killed.Opponents of Mr. Salvini wonder why he would want to import the freewheeling gun culture so associated with the United States, which is far and away the developed worlds leader in mass shootings and other gun-related violence. The easy answer seems to be politics.As interior minister and deputy prime minister, Mr. Salvini is changing many things, working from a populist playbook. He has cracked down on immigration, declared a war on drugs and spread the sense of a public safety emergency, even though crime in Italy has been dropping for years.Depending on whom you ask, Mr. Salvini is either making Italy safer or purposefully stoking fears at a time when voters across Europe are looking to strongmen.Italy does not have a gun lobby anywhere near as powerful as the National Rifle Association in the United States. But Mr. Salvini is in the process of creating his own following as he promotes himself as a law and order tough guy.The looser gun laws are only part of the picture as Mr. Salvini tethers immigration to security issues, even loading his Security Decree, passed Wednesday in the Italian Senate, with tough measures against migrants.Among other things, the decree, he says, would make Italians safer by making it easier to deport migrants, severely restricting their pathways to legal status and closing centers focused on integration. The measure, which the lower house of Parliament will vote on later in the month, would also give Taser guns to more police.Critics argue that the new decree will only increase crime by pushing migrants out of the system and into the shadows. But Mr. Salvini has rejected that notion, as he has rejected that he is arming Italy up, saying he just wants to give good guys a chance to defend themselves.ImageCredit...Marco Bertorello/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesAnd he is apparently persuading more civilians that is a good idea. In a recent survey, 39 percent of Italians said they were in favor of making it easier to get a gun for self-defense up from 26 percent in 2015.Although there are no reliable statistics on gun ownership, a recent study estimated that 4.5 million Italians (out of a population of approximately 60 million) live in a home with a firearm.And the number of sport shooting licenses the license of choice for ordinary citizens who want to keep a gun at home for self-defense has skyrocketed from approximately 400,000 in 2014 to nearly 600,000 this year. (Italys assorted criminal mobs, who are heavily armed and run guns, do not bother with licenses.)In a victory for Mr. Salvini, lawmakers in the Senate recently took an important step to make it easier for people who injure or kill intruders to claim their actions were legitimate.Defense is always legitimate! From words to actions, Mr. Salvini wrote on Twitter recently.The sentiment worries some. Our opponents have taken possession of certain words, and they use them to exploit the fears of many citizens, said Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence and a member of Italys Democratic Party, at a recent convention for liberals. Security, he said, was the most abused of them.Weve simplified the way to buy yourself a gun, he added. This is an idea of do-it-yourself security.Mr. Salvini said in a television appearance last year that he did not have a gun license and did not want one. But he and his party have been willing to publicly associate themselves with gun groups, an anomaly in a country where assault weapons carry a certain stigma.Giulio Magnani is the president of Italys most active gun lobby, the Directive 477 Committee, named for a rule that serves as the basis of European Union gun regulation.In a recent interview at his family home in an upscale neighborhood of Rome, Mr. Magnani showed off the original cooperation pledge signed by Mr. Salvini, which he keeps safe in a blue binder.In the pledge, Mr. Salvini promised that he would work to loosen gun laws and that he would consult Mr. Magnanis gun lobby on any future legislation.It has been hard to get Mr. Salvinis attention since he became a minister, Mr. Magnani said with disappointment. Mr. Magnani said that he had instead turned to cultivating contacts with other representatives of Mr. Salvinis League party in Parliament.Italian newspapers have compared Mr. Magnanis group to the N.R.A. and called it a super lobby. But it didnt look like it, as he stuffed envelopes with newsletters for his members. He has to work from home, where he lives with his parents, because, he said, the group could not afford a proper office.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesI will have to evaluate how I am spending my time, Mr. Magnani, 32, said. He graduated from college shortly before he helped found the organization in 2015, and he said he was unpaid.Nevertheless, he has seen some notable results.In 2015, Italys previous government, led by the Democratic Party, put strict limits on how many military-style weapons licensed citizens could own. To get a gun license in Italy, citizens must submit to a background check and provide doctors notes certifying that they are in good mental health. Critics say those requirements, which have generally remained in place, are not enough.The new law doubled the number of sport weapons that licensed citizens could own, a category that includes some semiautomatic weapons such as several models of the AR-15. It also loosened limits on magazine capacity. It was a lot of what Italys gun associations had hoped for.The populist governments move to increase the cap on semiautomatic weapons was a necessary concession to gun owners who legally purchased such weapons before 2015, when the previous governments antiterrorism law came into effect, Mr. Magnani said.Gun control advocates disputed that interpretation and said that the government was needlessly endangering public safety.Im convinced there was already an agreement between these associations and the government, and particularly the Northern League, said Giorgio Beretta, a researcher who tracks gun violence in Italy, referring to Mr. Salvinis party by a previous name.It is already too easy to get a weapon in Italy, said Mr. Beretta, who only coincidentally shares the name of a major Italian gun manufacturer.There is no official data available on how many crimes in Italy are committed with registered, as opposed to illegal, firearms, but some high-profile attacks have made the news.In February, a right-wing extremist named Luca Traini went on a shooting rampage in the town of Macerata, targeting migrants with a Glock handgun. It was later reported that Mr. Traini had a gun license for sport shooting.The easing of gun control laws, and the efforts to expand the definition of self-defense, are alarming to Italians who see Mr. Salvinis emphasis on security issues not as a step toward a safer country, but as a slippery slope toward a more dangerous place.Francesco Minisci, the president of Italys national association of magistrates, said in an interview that the self-defense change was unnecessary and dangerous, and could lead indirectly to an increase in gun use.Were taking great risks, Mr. Minisci said.

World

on techPractical advice for a new home speaker and not the creepy kind.VideoCreditCredit...By Maria ChimishkyanJune 5, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.I called in professional help to upgrade my home audio.Ive been listening to podcasts and audiobooks on my phone, but this feels pathetic now that Im indoors most of the time. I chatted with Lauren Dragan, a senior staff writer at the Wirecutter, The New York Timess product recommendation site, for help buying a home speaker.I hope our conversation helps you, too.Shira: I want your advice. I think I want to carry a speaker from room to room, and I dont want a creepy smart speaker. Sorry, Alexa! Suggestions?Lauren: First, companies are still listening even if you dont have a smart speaker. Youll still be tracked by apps on your phone and any voice-activated service.My Wirecutter colleague Thorin Klosowski has fantastic tips for Android and iPhone users on how to limit the creepiness from your phone.For speakers, the non-smart ones connect to your phone by Bluetooth. Some are best for using around the house. Some are made for carrying around, and others are best for outdoor gatherings. Remember those?Shira: Ive been cooped up in a New York City apartment. What is this outside?But, yes, Ill use the speaker mostly at home.Lauren: OK! Think about the size of the room in which youre listening. In a small bedroom or dorm room, you wont need a super powerful speaker. But for larger open spaces or if you have noisy kids or pets a small speaker wont cut it. Thats also worth considering if you plan to take the speaker outdoors.Shira: I live alone in a one-bedroom. Theres no ballroom.Lauren: Sounds like you need a medium-sized speaker that emphasizes sound quality and ease of use, rather than water and impact resistance.I think youd do well with the JBL model in Brent Butterworths write-up of portable Bluetooth speakers. It sounds fantastic, the controls are simple, and you can use it for phone calls. The JBL works on battery power or plugged in. Its a bummer when something doesnt work while its charging.Its also waterproof enough if you spill something or want to listen in the bathroom. (Dont shower with it, please. Youd be shocked how many people break their headphones by showering with them.)The other path is Bluetooth bookshelf speakers. But theyre hard to move from room to room and dont work unless theyre plugged in.Shira: Should I look at a second option for portable speakers, so I can feel empowered in this decision? (Although Im happy for you to tell me what to do.) Why not the Wonderboom one mentioned in Brents write-up?Lauren: The JBLs battery life is much longer, and the Wonderboom requires a USB outlet to charge, which makes the JBL more useful at home.One thing I should mention: Some of these speakers have apps for updating their software or accessing special features. They can be harmless, but you hand over data to the company if you play music through those apps or give them access to your phones location settings. Consider how much you trust the company with your information.Shira: Thank you! My stuck-at-home life is going to be a little more tolerable.(Read more: My colleague Brian X. Chen offers tips for those who want to use smart assistants but have privacy concerns.)Using tech as a tool at protestsAntigovernment demonstrations that have engulfed Hong Kong for much of the past year have featured a constant tug of war between protesters and the authorities who are using technology to surveil or stop them.At least as far as the public can tell, the use of law enforcement technology hasnt been as front-and-center in the U.S. protests against police brutality although there are signs that might be changing.In Hong Kong, protesters used umbrellas and wore face masks to try to shield themselves from cameras they feared the authorities were using to identify them in video footage. Hong Kong authorities have also tracked protesters in the digital spaces where they organized, and demonstrators had used an app that identified the movements of police.In the United States, smartphone cameras are everywhere, and they have caught both peaceful actions by police and demonstrators, and moments of violence. It was a video of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that was the catalyst for these protests.The technology cat-and-mouse tactics seen in Hong Kong have been less apparent in the United States, but digital tactics might be growing more overt.Signal, a secure messaging app, and apps that transmit the chatter over police scanners are seeing a dramatic increase in downloads in the United States. Not everyone is using these apps for protest activity, of course, but Signal said that many of the groups organizing protests are using its app.The company also added a feature tailored to protesters that lets people blur the faces of people before they share photos, as a way to protect peoples identity. Privacy advocates have warned that police could use video footage to surveil protesters, or deploy devices that capture digital data from all smartphones in a given area.U.S. federal law enforcement and some states also have asked people to send videos or photos that might identify people who were provoking violence or otherwise breaking the law at protests.The Womens Forum for the Economy & Society, in collaboration with The Times, is hosting live conversations to explore how women are leading through crisis and laying the groundwork for a stronger world.Im leading a virtual discussion on Monday, June 8, at 1 p.m. Eastern with Timnit Gebru, the colead of Googles ethical artificial intelligence team. Well talk about facial recognition technology used by law enforcement, and how artificial intelligence can be used for good. Join us! Ask questions! Its free, but you need to register here.Before we go Online attacks dont stop: Security researchers at Google said they believed that Chinese hackers were targeting the personal email accounts of staffers working for Joe Bidens presidential campaign but there was no evidence yet that they were successful, my colleagues David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth reported. Google also confirmed previous reports that Iranian hackers targeted the Trump campaign. The disclosures are a reminder that the Russian-government hackers from the 2016 election cycle now have company.A glimpse at how the U.S. government might change Google: European authorities forced Google to give people an option to choose a search engine other than Google on its new phones and tablets, and The Times reported that U.S. Justice Department lawyers are looking at whether this should be required in the United States, too. This could be a path for government lawyers, who are considering suing Google for breaking antitrust laws, to force more competition in web search, my colleagues Dai Wakabayashi and David McCabe report.The home shopping channel with a twist: Bloomberg News writes about Huang Wei, known as Viya, who hosts one of Chinas live shopping webcasts that is part online QVC and part variety entertainment show. In an evening, she sells millions of dollars of merchandise, including cosmetics, clothing and even houses and cars. U.S. companies are trying to adapt elements of livestream shopping, just as theyre trying to copy from other popular online trends in China.Hugs to thisIf you dont follow the Bodega Cats account on Twitter, you are seriously missing out. Here is a sleepy feline hanging out on a convenience store shelf.We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at [email protected] this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here.

Tech

The changes, for later this year, raised concerns that the company is installing surveillance technology that governments could exploit.Published Aug. 5, 2021Updated Oct. 14, 2021Apple on Thursday unveiled changes to iPhones designed to catch cases of child sexual abuse, a move that is likely to please parents and the police but that was already worrying privacy watchdogs.Later this year, iPhones will begin using complex technology to spot images of child sexual abuse, commonly known as child pornography, that users upload to Apples iCloud storage service, the company said. Apple also said it would soon let parents turn on a feature that can flag when their children send or receive any nude photos in a text message.Apple said it had designed the new features in a way that protected the privacy of users, including by ensuring that Apple will never see or find out about any nude images exchanged in a childs text messages. The scanning is done on the childs device, and the notifications are sent only to parents devices. Apple provided quotes from some cybersecurity experts and child-safety groups that praised the companys approach.Other cybersecurity experts were still concerned. Matthew D. Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, said Apples new features set a dangerous precedent by creating surveillance technology that law enforcement or governments could exploit.Theyve been selling privacy to the world and making people trust their devices, Mr. Green said. But now theyre basically capitulating to the worst possible demands of every government. I dont see how theyre going to say no from here on out.Apples moves follow a 2019 investigation by The New York Times that revealed a global criminal underworld that exploited flawed and insufficient efforts to rein in the explosion of images of child sexual abuse. The investigation found that many tech companies failed to adequately police their platforms and that the amount of such content was increasing drastically.While the material predates the internet, technologies such as smartphone cameras and cloud storage have allowed the imagery to be more widely shared. Some imagery circulates for years, continuing to traumatize and haunt the people depicted.But the mixed reviews of Apples new features show the thin line that technology companies must walk between aiding public safety and ensuring customer privacy. Law enforcement officials for years have complained that technologies like smartphone encryption have hamstrung criminal investigations, while tech executives and cybersecurity experts have argued that such encryption is crucial to protect peoples data and privacy.In Thursdays announcement, Apple tried to thread that needle. It said it had developed a way to help root out child predators that did not compromise iPhone security.To spot the child sexual abuse material, or C.S.A.M., uploaded to iCloud, iPhones will use technology called image hashes, Apple said. The software boils a photo down to a unique set of numbers a sort of image fingerprint.The iPhone operating system will soon store a database of hashes of known child sexual abuse material provided by organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and it will run those hashes against the hashes of each photo in a users iCloud to see if there is a match.Once there are a certain number of matches, the photos will be shown to an Apple employee to ensure they are indeed images of child sexual abuse. If so, they will be forwarded to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and the users iCloud account will be locked.Apple said this approach meant that people without child sexual abuse material on their phones would not have their photos seen by Apple or the authorities.If youre storing a collection of C.S.A.M. material, yes, this is bad for you, said Erik Neuenschwander, Apples privacy chief. But for the rest of you, this is no different.Apples system does not scan videos uploaded to iCloud even though offenders have used the format for years. In 2019, for the first time, the number of videos reported to the national center surpassed that of photos. The center often receives multiple reports for the same piece of content.U.S. law requires tech companies to flag cases of child sexual abuse to the authorities. Apple has historically flagged fewer cases than other companies. Last year, for instance, Apple reported 265 cases to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, while Facebook reported 20.3 million, according to the centers statistics. That enormous gap is due in part to Apples decision not to scan for such material, citing the privacy of its users.Apples other feature, which scans photos in text messages, will be available only to families with joint Apple iCloud accounts. If parents turn it on, their childs iPhone will analyze every photo received or sent in a text message to determine if it includes nudity. Nude photos sent to a child will be blurred, and the child will have to choose whether to view it. If children under 13 choose to view or send a nude photo, their parents will be notified.Mr. Green said he worried that such a system could be abused because it showed law enforcement and governments that Apple now had a way to flag certain content on a phone while maintaining its encryption. Apple has previously argued to the authorities that encryption prevents it from retrieving certain data.What happens when other governments ask Apple to use this for other purposes? Mr. Green asked. Whats Apple going to say?Mr. Neuenschwander dismissed those concerns, saying that safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of the system and that Apple would reject any such demands from a government.We will inform them that we did not build the thing theyre thinking of, he said.The Times reported this year that Apple had compromised its Chinese users private data in China and proactively censored apps in the country in response to pressure from the Chinese government.Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped develop early image-hashing technology, said any possible risks in Apples approach were worth the safety of children.If reasonable safeguards are put into place, I think the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks, he said.Michael H. Keller and Gabriel J.X. Dance contributed reporting.

Tech

The Saturday ProfileCredit...AGF, via ShutterstockNov. 9, 2018ROME Before her brother Stefano died in the prison wing of a Rome hospital on Oct. 22, 2009, Ilaria Cucchi lived what she described as a normalissima life, as a model wife and working mother of two.That all changed after she saw her brothers body stretched out on a morgue slab, his face emaciated, his eyes ringed by dark purple bruises. It was immediately clear to her that he had been beaten after his arrest a week earlier with a stash of hashish and cocaine that he said were for personal use and that he might have died as a result.In that moment, she has said countless times in countless interviews and public encounters over the past nine years, looking at the tortured corpse of her brother, Ms. Cucchi vowed to establish how he had been allowed to die in solitude and indifference.That quest undertaken with unshakable determination has transformed Ms. Cucchi into one of Italys best-known and admired human rights crusaders. In her search for truth, she has coolly faced down antagonistic prosecutors, law enforcement officials, politicians and news media outlets.But still, after nine years, 13 separate trials and the attendant publicity there is even a film about her brothers final days such is the challenge of navigating Italys multilayered judicial system that the truth of what happened has not yet fully emerged.People constantly stop and thank me on the street, she said in an interview in her comfortable Rome apartment this week. Before, Id think, Why are you thanking me? Now, I realize that they recognize what I am doing, what my family has endured. Its the frustration we all feel when we come up against hostile institutions.ImageCredit...Francesco Fotia/AGF, via ShutterstockMs. Cucchis public appearances draw hundreds, even thousands, of supporters at events, and she has been feted with commendations and awards. She has become a fixture on television talk shows, her appearances often coinciding with a spike in ratings. A Neapolitan street artist recently immortalized her along with Che Guevara and the soccer legend Diego Maradona.You are the modern Antigone of our times, a popular talk show host, Fabio Fazio, told Ms. Cucchi in a recent interview, referring to the figure in Greek mythology who seeks a proper burial for her brother, Polynices.Italians have also responded to her indignation at her brothers death in the custody of institutions law enforcement, legal and medical that exist to protect citizens.He died amid the indifference of others, Ms. Cucchi said during a break on Wednesday at yet another court hearing. Stefano was seen by 150 people in the week between his arrest and his death we counted and all of them pretended not to see him, she said. Not only did they not act out of human compassion, but none did their duty as public officials.Some of those 150 people medical staff members, social workers, prison guards, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, as well as the Carabinieri officers who first arrested and detained him have already been tried in relation to his death. But in nearly all of those cases a final judgment has not been reached. In part, that is because prosecutors and Ms. Cucchi have challenged almost every acquittal, and new investigations have opened more leads.Ms. Cucchi, who is 44, sat attentively throughout Wednesdays daylong hearing, as she and her parents have done untold times during all those trials. Weve never missed a hearing. Not even with a fever, she said.The courtroom was packed with television cameras and print reporters, as well as ordinary Romans attracted to the high-visibility case. Ms. Cucchi did not flinch when one witness, a male nurse, described finding her brother dead in his hospital bed during a routine morning call. She did, however, seek out her parents, sitting in the back row of the courtroom, whose suffering through the years has been discernible, she said. Its their son being talked about, she said.ImageCredit...Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesIlaria Cucchi never expected to end up as one of Italys most famous human-rights activists. After high school she worked for her father, a surveyor, before taking a course to become a condominium administrator. She married her high school sweetheart and had two children, Valerio, now 16, and Giulia, 10. I was happy, she said.But Stefanos death and the years of legal battles have turned her life upside down. She separated from her husband, and is now romantically involved with Fabio Anselmo, her familys lawyer, whom she hired to take her brothers case. His first piece of advice to her had been to have photographs taken during the autopsy.Those graphic images, which show evident bruising on Stefanos face and back, did much to sway public opinion. She has brandished the photos on several occasions to draw attention to the case when it risked slipping into general indifference or when the narrative became distorted because of her brothers past drug use.In her transformation from mother and wife to public figure, Ms. Cucchi has taken to writing: a book about her brother, a blog in the Italian edition of HuffPost and a Facebook account with more than 387,000 likes that chronicles the ins and outs of the complicated case.Thats a lot. It shows that people are tired of a justice system that does not look out for the powerless, she said. The state has to stop protecting itself and start protecting citizens.She is often suggested as a political hopeful, but after one unsuccessful run for office she claims to have no further aspirations. Ive been doing politics, fighting for the rights of the least powerful for the past nine years, she said.The trial of the five carabinieri involved in Stefanos arrest now playing out in a Rome courtroom is colloquially known as the Cucchi-bis trial. Three of them have been charged with involuntary manslaughter, the other two with slander and making false statements. The trial took an unexpected turn last month when it emerged in court that one of the five had given testimony last summer admitting to having witnessed two fellow officers brutally beating Stefano. It was the public admission that Ms. Cucchi had been waiting and hoping for.ImageCredit...Roberta Basile/REX, via ShutterstockA parallel investigation is underway on a possible cover-up of the crime within the Carabinieri, and prosecutors are looking into accusations of false testimony and falsified documents that are making their way up the chain of command.If Stefano Cucchis case was already well known here, thanks to his sisters perseverance, it became an even greater cause clbre after the presentation in August at the Venice Film Festival of Sulla Mia Pelle, (On My Skin) a dramatization of his final days, directed by Alessio Cremonini.The film, subsequently distributed by Netflix, unflinchingly chronicles Mr. Cucchis ordeal from the day of his arrest to his death, and throughout Italy public showings of the film have become social events at times, with political overtones. The web was abuzz this week after reports emerged that Carabinieri officers had attended one showing of the film in Calabria and demanded a list of names of those present.Ms. Cucchi and her family have also been subject to harassment, mostly through social media. She said she had become a habitu of the local police station, where she regularly files charges against people who have threatened her.Before, people used to insult Stefano, she said. Now that the truth is emerging, they have begun insulting us.Ms. Cucchi is optimistic that the current trial, which began last year, will lead to the conviction of the Carabinieri officers. A sentence is expected next year, but appeals are, again, likely to follow.She says she has great confidence in the prosecutor trying the case, Giovanni Musar, who previously brought mob bosses to trial in southern Italy. He wont stop in front of anything, she said.As it turns out, neither has she.

World

NASA Releases First Detailed Map of the Insides of MarsNASAs InSight mission revealed Marss inner workings down to its core, highlighting great differences of the red planet from our blue world.Credit...David Ducros/IPGPJuly 22, 2021The fate of almost everything on Earths surface is determined by infernal engines deep below. Mars is no different. Now, thanks to an intrepid robot parked on the Martian surface by NASA in November 2018, scientists have a map of our neighboring worlds geologic abysses, the first ever made of another planet.NASAs InSight lander has been listening to marsquakes and tracking their seismic waves as they journey through the planet. A trio of papers published Thursday in the journal Science, using data InSight has collected, reveals the red planet to be something like a colossal candy treat imagined by a ravenous deity. Its crust is split into two or three layers of volcanic chocolate. The mantle below has a surprisingly sizable and rigid toffee-like filling. And the planets core is surprisingly light less nougaty center, more syrupy heart.Paired with recent activities at the surface by new NASA and Chinese robotic rovers, these missions highlight stark differences between our blue world and the red one next door.This survey of the Martian insides has been a long time coming. Earths solid-but-squishy mantle was first glimpsed in 1889, when seismic waves from a quake in Japan dove in and out of the layer before emerging in Germany. Earths liquid outer core was discovered in 1914, and the solid inner core was revealed in 1936. Similar measurements of the moon were made when the Apollo astronauts left seismometers on its surface.Now the same basic and foundational measurements have been made on Mars. This work, conducted with one of the most technologically advanced seismometers ever built, represents a major leap in planetary seismology, said Paula Koelemeijer, a seismologist at Royal Holloway, University of London who was not involved in the research but co-wrote a perspective article in Science.Earlier missions to Mars have provided rough estimates of the dimensions and properties of its innards. But InSights seismological surveys provide precision. Models used to simulate the evolution of Mars can now be built on the foundations of these ground truths.Revelations from the InSight mission will also be useful for studying other worlds by providing scientists with an example that differs from Earth.If youre a doctor, and you only practice on one patient, youre not going to be a very good doctor, said Mark Panning, a planetary seismologist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a co-author on all three papers.Mars is more like a cousin of our planet than a sibling. Six times less voluminous, it is strangely small and geochemical evidence suggests that its this really ancient relic of the early solar system, said Christine Houser, a seismologist at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo who was not involved with the research.Why is diminutive Mars so physically different from Earth and Venus, a planet thought of as Earths geologic twin? InSights forensic examination improves scientists chances at finding an answer and, in the process, better understanding our planets place in the solar system.ImageCredit...NASA/JPL-CaltechImageCredit...China National Space Administration, via Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesOver the past two years, the InSight lander has studied the red planets magnetism, its wobble as it orbits the Sun and the seismic waves created by its marsquakes.Most marsquakes occur at shallow depths. But a handful emanate from deeper locales, ricocheting through the planet before reaching InSight. Seismic waves change speed and direction as they traverse different materials, so scientists could use these deep-seated quakes to see whats going on inside Mars.It hasnt been easy going. Working with a solitary seismometer means scientists get a decent look at just one region on Mars rather than the entire planet. And, to construct a detailed picture of the subsurface, plentiful powerful quakes that pass through much of the planets depths would be ideal. Unfortunately, Marss seemingly infrequent quakes are never more potent than a magnitude 4.0.We just had to push forward and see what we could do with this data, said Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun, a planetary seismologist at the University of Cologne and lead author of the paper on the Martian crust. Despite the challenges, the team managed to make a detailed X-ray of Marss guts.Scientists confirmed that the crust is thicker in the southern highlands and thinner in the northern lowlands, where ephemeral oceans may have pooled long ago. On average, the planetary crust is between 15 and 45 miles thick. It is also split into a top layer mostly made of volcanic rock shattered by meteorites, a middle layer of more coherent volcanic rock and, perhaps, a lower layer whose properties cannot be made out for the time being.Like Earths, Marss mantle is far thicker than its crust. But the rigid part of the upper mantle, which on Earth forms the base of ever-shifting tectonic plates, is perhaps twice as thick on Mars, maybe more.This might be the simple explanation why we dont see plate tectonics on Mars, said Amir Khan, a geophysicist at ETH Zrich in Switzerland and co-author on all three studies. Such rigidity may have prevented the fragmentation of Marss upper layers into individual tectonic plates, robbing it of the sculptor that gave Earth such diverse mountains, ocean basins, volcanoes and continents.Marss mantle also clues us in to why a planet that once built volcanoes as wide as Arizona and frequently erupted lava flows that could have covered Great Britain now is so geologically lethargic.ImageCredit...NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Associated PressA planets major volcanic and tectonic activity is essentially powered by the movement of heat from a planets inner sanctum to its outermost shell. The seismic waves reaching InSight indicate Marss mantle is relatively cold, preventing significant geologic activity up top.InSight also found that its mantle as a whole is about half as thick as Earths a lack of insulation that would have exacerbated Marss heat loss as it erupted heavily in its youth. (Marss small size also allowed plenty of its primordial heat to radiate into space.)This thin mantle may also partly explain why Mars lost its protective magnetic field in the first 700 million years of its history. Earths magnetic field is powered by the circulation of iron-nickel currents within its liquid outer core. Presumably, Mars had a similar circulation, but the speedy cooling of its innards caused those currents to seize up, shutting off its magnetic dynamo.Without a magnetic bubble to shield Mars from the suns radiation, its atmosphere was blown away like confetti. Water that once frequented its surface if it was not soaked up by the rocks below escaped into space, turning it into a frigid, irradiated desert.InSight also saw Marss core. With a radius of 1,140 miles, it is bigger than expected. It is also not very dense, which is one of the most intriguing results weve found so far, Dr. Khan said.Earths core is rather dense because the planet is much larger than Mars, so all that weight squashes the core together. Mars, being tiny, was expected to have a slightly less compressed core. But InSight found that it is half the density of Earths, something planetary compaction cannot explain.This means that Marss core must be made of different stuff. Like Earth, it still contains a preponderance of iron and nickel, but it also features a sizable fraction of lighter elements, like oxygen, carbon, sulfur and hydrogen. The Martian nucleuss unusual chemistry is another hint of the red planets distinctive formation history.Despite the successes of humanitys first interplanetary seismic survey, many questions remain to be answered. No detected marsquake has been powerful enough to reach the very center of the planet, so scientists dont know if, like Earth, Mars has a solid inner core. All that can be said for now is that it has a liquid outer core albeit a more slurry-like, sluggishly moving one compared to Earths own.ImageCredit...NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaImageCredit...NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSMarsquakes themselves remain confounding. They may be the key to seeing inside the planet, but their origins are heavily debated. Many shallow quakes, for example, are more intense and more frequent during Martian winters. That is strange, because on Earth you dont have clear seasonal quakes, said Simon Sthler, a seismologist at ETH Zrich in Switzerland and co-author on all three papers.InSights scientific expedition has been extended to December 2022, so as more marsquakes come in, these puzzles may be solved. But buildup of dust on the landers solar arrays may kill off the robot within the year.Whether it perishes sooner or later, InSight is already a veteran of Mars. More recent robotic visitors are just getting going. Chinas Zhurong rover, which landed in May, is exploring another region, Utopia Planitia, and taking photographs of the parachute that helped it safely land.NASAs Perseverance rover, which landed in Jezero a 30-mile crater once home to a lake filled by a river delta in February, has been warming up for its main act: the search for signs of ancient microbial life.On Wednesday, Jennifer Trosper, the Perseverance project manager, announced that the mission had tested out one of the rovers most important functions: the ability to open up one of its finger-size sample tubes, seal it and store it inside the rover.Perseverances primary objective is to drill into Jezero and obtain at least 20 different rock cores. These pristine Martian samples are to be delivered to Earth in 2031, where they will be subjected to intense scientific scrutiny. The team is now preparing to snatch up and store the missions very first rock sample sometime in August.Perseverance is poised to revolutionize scientific understanding of the Martian surface. InSight has delivered revelatory access to the Martian underworld. The paradigm-shifting endeavors of these missions mean that, one day, we may claim to know not one, but two planets, inside and out.

science

May 9, 2019SAN FRANCISCO The Justice Department unsealed an indictment of two Chinese nationals on Thursday, charging them with the 2014 hack of the insurance company Anthem and attacks on three other, unnamed American businesses the next year.The charges were the latest in a string of aggressive moves by American officials who say they are trying to crack down on theft of trade secrets and personal data by China.A federal grand jury in Indianapolis, where Anthem is based, charged Fujie Wang, 32, of Shenzhen, China, and an individual indicted as John Doe with conspiring to commit fraud, wire fraud and intentional damage to a protected computer.The indictment says the two targeted employees of an Anthem subsidiary and at least three other companies with so-called spear-phishing emails beginning on Feb. 18, 2014. Less than a month later, the indictment says, the hackers got inside Anthems network and searched through troves of personal data.By January 2015, the indictment says, the hackers had obtained nearly 80 million records, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, email, and employment and income information for Anthem customers and employees, including Anthems chief executive.The attack, which the company disclosed in February 2015, and a hack of the federal Office of Personnel Management, which disclosed a significant breach four months later, marked a turning point in Chinese cyberespionage.Previously, Chinese hackers had been largely focused on stealing American trade secrets everything from Benjamin Moores formula for paint to blueprints of stealth bombers. But with the attacks on Anthem and the Office of Personnel Management, Chinese hackers demonstrated new interest in the personal data of Americans, particularly government employees.After those two breaches, other American businesses that hold large collections of personal data began reporting that they had been targeted. The list included other major insurers; Equifax, the giant credit reporting bureau; hospitality companies like Marriott; and airlines.The stolen data never appeared on the so-called dark web, where criminals trade it for identity theft and other schemes suggesting that the attackers had a motive other than profit.Security researchers and government officials said they believed that the stolen data was being stockpiled. It could be used for a number of purposes, including rooting out spies and their collaborators.The Chinese authorities could, for example, look at hotel reservations to see if people they suspected of espionage stayed in the same city at the same time. They could also use sensitive health and financial data for blackmail.The hacks, security researchers said, were an extension of Chinas evolving algorithmic surveillance system, which has greatly expanded over the past few years.The Justice Departments indictment said Mr. Wang and the John Doe who goes by the online handles Deniel Jack, Kim Young and Zhou Zhihong were members of a brazen China-based computer hacking group that committed one of the worst data breaches in history.The indictment did not directly link the hackers to a Chinese state sponsor. Security firms hired to investigate the breach at Anthem also were unable to connect the hackers directly to a state agency or a military unit inside China.The cyberattack of Anthem not only caused harm to Anthem but also impacted tens of millions of Americans, said Josh Minkler, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, in a statement.

Tech

Credit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesDec. 14, 2015When customers began to line up at 5 a.m. outside Scott Metzgers microbrewery in San Antonio, Mr. Metzger knew he had to start making more beer.Mr. Metzger, who founded Freetail Brewing Company as a brew pub about seven years ago, spent thousands on new equipment so that he could start canning Soul Doubt, his signature India pale ale; Bat Outta Helles, his Bavarian-style lager; and a number of seasonal flavors and other brews. Now, theres just one unexpected problem: Where will he get the cans?While the craft beer boom has benefited small breweries around the country, it has also left some scrambling for cans. The 16-ounce size is in exceptionally high demand; its slightly larger and has become a popular way for niche brewers to distinguish themselves from behemoths like Budweiser and Coors, which use 12-ounce cans.Certainly weve seen some of our brewery members struggle in recent months, said Bart Watson, the chief economist at the Brewers Association, a national trade group for craft beer businesses. This has proven to be a real challenge for members that have built their business model around getting these cans.For a few years now, more affordable ways of canning have helped spawn new craft beers and made the process easier for small brewers. Mobile canners began bringing their own canning machinery right to a brewers door around the same time as aluminum cans were losing their stigma. And even though glass bottles still hold more cachet among craft brewers, funky, unique can designs became a popular way to court the young hip beer enthusiasts that have helped to lift sales of niche local brews.Cans are much more accepted on the market now, said Paul Halayko, the co-owner and president of the Newburgh Brewing Company in New York. I think for a very long time, people thought that beer should be in a bottle.As defined by the Brewers Association, craft brewers produce no more than six million barrels annually. Some, like Newburgh, which Mr. Halayko said has sold about 400 barrels worth of canned beer in the last year, produce far fewer.In the past, some smaller breweries and their distributors that needed only a few thousand cans at a time worked with Crown, a major manufacturer. It required a much smaller minimum order than two of its main competitors, Ball and Rexam. But the enormous surge in demand for cans squeezed the company, which raised its minimum order to the industry-standard truckload, which can range from roughly 155,000 to 200,000, depending on the size of the can.ImageCredit...Newburgh Brewing CompanyThats a lot of cans to store, its a lot of cash to lay out, and the little guys just dont have that, said Tim Dorward, a mobile canner whose clients often refer to him as Tim the Can Man. Crown was working with people, and theyre very interested in the craft industry, but it just caught them by surprise.In a statement, Thomas T. Fischer, a spokesman for Crown, said the company recognized that the new order minimum could present a challenge for some brewers, and that Crown had recommended alternatives.We remain excited about the future of craft beer and supporting brewers of all sizes in the short and long term, Mr. Fischer said.Craft brewers are often compared to chefs: They tinker with recipes, experiment with flavors and appeal to a niche market that likes the authenticity associated with beers that seem only a few steps removed from being brewed in someones basement.The industry has been growing at a double-digit clip over the last six years, and makes up more than 10 percent of all beer sold in the United States, according to Vivien Azer, a managing director at Cowen & Company, an investment banking business. That is significant when beer sales over all have been relatively flat.Some microbreweries have also benefited in states that have relaxed certain restrictions on sales, in some instances raising the cap on how much beer can be sold on-site.Some brewers and can distributors say they started seeing a can shortage over the summer. Orders that normally took two to four weeks to fill suddenly were taking eight weeks, then 12 weeks or even longer.We were able to make an order pre-emptively before there was a panic, said Chris M. Thompson, a co-founder of Whitewater Brewing Company in Ontario, which gets cans from a third-party distributor.Others were not so lucky. Mr. Thompson said that Whitewater lent cans to nearby breweries so that they could meet order deadlines.ImageCredit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesRunning out of cans is pretty serious, he said. Youve got clients that are depending on that, and you let them down, theres plenty of people that are willing to fill that gap.Most canned beer comes in six-packs of 12-ounce cans, so producing four-packs of 16-ounce cans is one way for craft brewers to set themselves apart from deep-pocketed beverage companies that have increasingly pushed into craft territory.In recent years, the Duvel Moortgat Brewery of Belgium and Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois, have scooped up smaller competitors.I think that for craft brewers, things are going to get tougher because the bigger guys are encroaching either with their own craft brands or by buying craft brands, said Pablo Zuanic, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group.Craft brewers may also feel the squeeze in other ways: A new program from A-B InBev offers distributors an incentive if they agree to sell the companys brands almost exclusively.We do think its a bit concerning, said Mr. Watson, from the craft trade group. The incentive program is another example of how they have influence over distributors that may reduce options and market access for small brewers.In a statement, A-B InBev said that nothing in the program prevents distribution of other brands.Craft brewers are thriving with unfettered access to market, and our incentive programs dont interfere with that, the company said.Crown, Ball and Rexam all say they are looking at ways to address the growing demand for cans. But Balls agreement to buy Rexam for nearly $7 billion in February has some small brewers worried that the supply problem will only worsen.Thats kind of a cloud hanging over this whole thing, said Mr. Metzger, who said that Freetail considered trying 16-ounce cans until he heard about the shipping delays.ImageCredit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesMr. Metzger said he paid Crown about $28,000 for the printing plates that stamp Freetails artwork and logo on its 12-ounce cans. But that money will be wasted, he says, if he is forced to switch to a supplier with a smaller minimum order.Were ordering what we can from Crown before the minimum goes up, he said. In or around March, it might start getting slightly scary.In a follow-up email, Crown said that it does not charge customers for development of printing plates, but charges a small fee for the development and separation of artwork prior to printing on the can.Ethan Long and Marcus Burnett started brewing beer at their bungalows in the Rockaways, about an hours subway ride from Manhattan. They eventually opened a 700-square-foot brewery and tasting room in Queens, the Rockaway Brewing Company, and sold glass jugs of beer known as growlers from a small counter space near the door.The two men raised $30,000 to buy a canning machine to package more transportable 16-ounce servings of their seasonal and staple beers, and they expanded their facility, adding two rooms.We havent been able to do a big variety of one-offs because there havent been available cans, said Mr. Long, who estimates that he uses about 6,000 cans every month. By comparison, Anheuser-Busch InBev says it uses an average of 1.5 billion cans a month.Simply switching to another size can, or bottle, is not always easy. Labels are often specifically designed for 16-ounce cans, and they require approval from federal and local alcohol authorities.Some breweries have also built their identities around the distinct look of a 16-ounce size, Mr. Watson of the Brewers Association said. Additionally, glass bottles typically cost more, which can make a difference given the relatively modest budgets of many local and regional brewers.For a small start-up business, its not an insignificant amount of money, said Mr. Halayko of Newburgh. Were just buying blank cans, wherever we can find them, and then were actually applying the labels ourselves.Newburgh has had internal discussions about whether to switch to a 12-ounce can, he said. But the company put a lot of effort into making its packaging distinctive, and in April the purple cow on its cream ale even won the Most Loved Label Competition sponsored by CNBC.

Business

Credit...Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 8, 2017SEOUL, South Korea The son of Kim Jong-nam the slain half brother of North Koreas leader appears to have emerged in a YouTube clip indicating that his family has gone into hiding after his fathers killing last month.My father has been killed a few days ago, the young man, who called himself Kim Han-sol, said in the video posted on Tuesday. Im currently with my mother and my sister.In the 39-second video, the man shows what appears to be his North Korean passport as proof of his identity, but the particulars are blacked out.We hope this gets better soon, he says before signing off.The man was indeed Kim Han-sol, said Do Hee-youn, head of the Citizens Coalition for the Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, based in Seoul, who added that he had been monitoring Mr. Kims whereabouts for years.Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman of the Souths Unification Ministry, said the government was trying to identify the man but noted, its clear to everyone that the person closely resembles Kim Han-sol. He declined to comment on Mr. Kims location.The emergence of the video added an intriguing twist to the killing of Kim Jong-nam on Feb. 13. The Malaysian police have arrested two women who are accused of smearing Mr. Kims face with the nerve agent VX. Malaysia said the women were most likely recruited by several North Korean suspects.North Korea has repeatedly denied involvement. On Tuesday, it said it was barring all Malaysians from leaving the country until there was a fair settlement of the dispute. Malaysia responded in kind, preventing all North Koreans from leaving Malaysia until the safety of Malaysians in North Korea could be assured.Shortly after Mr. Kim was killed, South Korean intelligence officials said they believed that his family, which has lived in Macau in recent years, was under Chinese government protection. But Kim Han-sol did not show up in Kuala Lumpur after the Malaysian authorities looked for the next of kin to formally identify his fathers body.The video was posted by a group called Cheollima Civil Defense, which said it focused on rescuing North Korean defectors and refugees.On its website, the group said it had responded last month to an emergency request by survivors of the family of Kim Jong-nam for extraction and protection.The three family members were met quickly and relocated to safety, the group said. This will be the first and last statement on this particular matter, and the present whereabouts of this family will not be addressed.Mr. Jeong and Mr. Do said they had not previously heard of the group.This video means that Kim Han-sols family is in safety and working together with this group, whoever they are, to attack the North Korean government, said Mr. Do, an activist who has helped North Korean refugees for years.The group thanked the countries that it said had provided emergency humanitarian assistance in its efforts to protect the Kim family: China, the Netherlands, the United States and another nation it did not identify. In particular, it thanked A.J.A. Embrechts, the Dutch ambassador to South Korea, for his timely and strong response to our sudden request for assistance.The Dutch Embassy did not immediately comment. The United States Embassy also did not comment.Kim Han-sol was born in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in 1995 but has spent most of his life abroad, living with his father in Macau, the Chinese gambling enclave, and attending schools in Bosnia and France.Speaking to a European broadcaster in 2012, Kim Han-sol said he had never met his uncle Kim Jong-un, the current leader of North Korea, or his grandfather Kim Jong-il, who ruled the North until his death in 2011. In the same interview, Kim Han-sol said he did not know how his uncle had become a dictator.His father, Kim Jong-nam, had been sidelined from the center of power in North Korea for years as his influential stepmother, Ko Young-hee, the mother of Kim Jong-un, saw him as a potential threat.Analysts say that Kim Jong-un may have ordered the assassination of his half brother for fear that China might try to install Kim Jong-nam as a figurehead in Pyongyang should his own regime implode.North Korea remains in a standoff with Malaysia over the handling of the killing and the tit-for-tat bans on Tuesday that prohibit the departure of Malaysians from North Korea and North Koreans from Malaysia.In Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia said on Wednesday that he did not intend to break off diplomatic relations with North Korea despite its decision on Tuesday to bar Malaysians from leaving.ImageCredit...Vincent Thian/Associated PressMr. Najib said that it was important to maintain communication with the North and that he was trying to determine what the reclusive country wanted in exchange for the release of Malaysians in North Korea.You need to have a channel to talk to them, to negotiate with them, he said, according to the Malaysian news site The Star Online. In the meantime, we need to examine what is the need of the North Korean government. That is what we have to be sure of.Officials in Malaysia have said 11 of its citizens, including embassy staff, family members and United Nations workers, are in North Korea.About 1,000 North Koreans are now in Malaysia.Mr. Najib said in remarks to Parliament that the Malaysians who were stuck in North Korea did not face any threat and were allowed to go about their daily lives.North Korea has denied that Mr. Kim was killed by VX and demanded that his body be turned over to its representatives. It has also accused Malaysia of colluding with the Norths enemies to blame Pyongyang for the killing.We didnt pick a quarrel with them, but when a crime has been committed, especially when chemical weapons have been used in Malaysia, we are duty bound to protect the interest of Malaysians, Mr. Najib told Parliament, according to Reuters.He noted that Malaysia had in the past been on good terms with North Korea, which has been shunned by many other nations for its development of nuclear weapons and the brutal mistreatment of its people. Until Monday, North Koreans could enter Malaysia without a visa.We are a country thats friendly to them, Mr. Najib said.A top official at the State Department in Washington praised Malaysias handling of the investigation into the Kim killing on Tuesday. The official, Daniel R. Russel, the departing assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said that the police had conducted an impressive investigation and worked from the facts in a quick and professional and sophisticated manner.Speaking to reporters during a conference call, Mr. Russel said that he understood the need for Malaysia to expel North Koreas ambassador, Kang Chol, after the diplomat questioned the finding that Mr. Kim had been poisoned with VX.The hijacking of the territory of a country by a foreign power for the purpose of murder, for the purpose of political assassination, is reprehensible, Mr. Russel said, and my sympathies go to Malaysia on that account.

World

Media|Martin Shkreli Bought Sole Wu-Tang Clan Album, Report Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/media/martin-shkreli-wu-tang-clan-album.htmlCredit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesDec. 9, 2015A pharmaceutical executive who came under fire for increasing the price of an antiparasitic drug by more than 5,000 percent is the mystery buyer of the only known copy of the new Wu-Tang Clan album that was auctioned off for millions of dollars, a report said on Wednesday.Bloomberg Business quoted the executive, Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, as saying that the deal for the album, The Wu Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, was closed before the drug-pricing controversy erupted. Mr. Shkreli drew public outrage for increasing the price of the drug Daraprim to $750 from $13.50 per pill.I was a little worried that they were going to walk out of the deal, Mr. Shkreli was quoted by Bloomberg Business about the album purchase. But by then wed closed. The whole kind of thing since then has been just kind of Well, do we want to announce its him? Do we not want to announce its him? The article reported that someone familiar with the deal said the Wu-Tang Clan sold him the album for $2 million.Furor erupted in September after Mr. Shkrelis company acquired the rights to Daraprim and raised its price overnight.He drew the wrath of consumers, became a talking point in the presidential campaign, and spurred federal and state inquiries along with a dialogue about controlling rising drug prices. The pills increase is likely to take a pummeling at a Senate committee hearing into skyrocketing drug prices on Wednesday.Wu-Tang Clan announced in 2014 that it would press just one copy of the 31-track double album the band had worked on quietly for six years and make it available for purchase to only one person. Last month, the online auction house, Paddle8, announced that it had sold the album for millions. It did not name the buyer.The ultimate buyer is a private American collector, Paddle8 said then. The buyer and seller agreed to the sale in May, and spent months finalizing contracts and devising new legal protections for a distinctive work whose value depends on its singularity.The Bloomberg Business article quoted an emailed statement by the albums producer as saying: The sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May, well before Martin Skhrelis [sic] business practices came to light. We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.On Wednesday, Mr. Shkreli retweeted the Bloomberg Business article and posted a live-stream of himself at his desk while listening to music and talking about work, with a suggestion that he might play the album.

Business

Politics|Democrats ready impeachment charge against Trump for inciting the mob. Some Republicans appear open to the idea.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/democrats-ready-impeachment-charge-against-trump-for-inciting-the-mob-some-republicans-appear-open-to-the-idea.htmlCredit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesJan. 9, 2021Democrats laid the groundwork on Friday for impeaching President Trump a second time, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California threatened to bring him up on formal charges if he did not resign immediately over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol this week.The threat was part of an all-out effort by furious Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, to pressure Mr. Trump to leave office in disgrace after the hourslong siege by his supporters on Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Although he has only 11 days left in the White House, they argued he was a direct danger to the nation.Ms. Pelosi and other top Democratic leaders continued to press Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to wrest power from Mr. Trump, even though Mr. Pence was said to be against it. The speaker urged Republican lawmakers to pressure the president to resign immediately. And she took the unusual step of calling Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss how to limit Mr. Trumps access to the nations nuclear codes and then publicized it.If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action, Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues.At least one Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, followed Ms. Pelosis lead and told The Anchorage Daily News that she was considering leaving the Republican Party altogether because of Mr. Trump.I want him out, she said. He has caused enough damage.At the White House, Mr. Trump struck a defiant tone, insisting that he would remain a potent force in American politics even as aides and allies abandoned him and his post-presidential prospects turned increasingly bleak. Behind closed doors, he made clear that he would not resign and expressed regret about releasing a video on Thursday committing to a peaceful transition of power and condemning the violence at the Capitol that he had egged on a day before.Among enraged Democrats, an expedited impeachment appeared to be the most attractive option to remove Mr. Trump and register their outrage at his role in encouraging what became an insurrection. Roughly 170 of them in the House had signed onto a single article that Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and others intended to introduce on Monday, charging the president with willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.Democratic senators weighed in with support, and some Republicans appeared newly open to the idea. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska indicated he would be open to considering articles of impeachment at a trial. A spokesman for Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was outraged by Mr. Trumps role in the violence, but could not comment on an impeachment case given the possibility she could soon be sitting in the jury.Even Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and one of Mr. Trumps most influential allies for the past four years, told confidants he was done with Mr. Trump, although there was no sign that Mr. McConnell was joining the calls to remove him.

Politics

Credit...Domaine de Thoiry Zoo, via Associated PressMarch 7, 2017PARIS One or more poachers shot and killed a 4-year-old white rhinoceros in a wildlife park near Paris, sawed off one of its horns and then escaped, officials at the park said on Tuesday.Thierry Duguet, the head of the Parc Zoologique de Thoiry, told a local radio station that he and his staff were extremely shocked.There has never been a case like this in a zoo in Europe, an assault of such violence, evidently for this stupid trafficking of rhinoceros horns, Mr. Duguet said.The wildlife park, which is about 30 miles west of Paris, said in a statement on Facebook that the rhinoceros, a male named Vince, was found dead by one of his caretakers Tuesday morning with gunshot wounds to the head.No one has been arrested in the incident. The zoo said that a fence and several doors, including one made of metal, had been broken, and that a chain saw had probably been used to remove the horn.His second horn was only partially sawed, which suggests the criminals were interrupted or that their tools were faulty, the park said. This odious act was perpetrated despite the presence of five members of the zoological staff who live on site, and of surveillance cameras.Two other white rhinoceroses at the park, Gracie, 37, and Bruno, 5, were unharmed. Vince was born at a zoo in Arnhem in the Netherlands, and he was brought to the park in Thoiry in 2015.VideoTwo-thirds of the worlds remaining one-horned rhinoceros population is sheltered in Kaziranga National Park in India. Poachers continue to kill the animals to remove their horns to sell in Asian countries like China and Vietnam.CreditCredit...Anupam Nath/Associated Press. Technology by Samsung. A representative of the French gendarmerie, the national police force that patrols small towns and rural areas, told Agence France-Presse that the estimated value of the stolen horn on the black market was between 30,000 and 40,000 euros, or about $31,700 to $42,300.In many Asian countries, especially Vietnam and China, rhinoceros horns are valued highly on the black market and are believed to cure ailments like headaches and hangovers.The French environment minister, Sgolne Royal, said on Twitter the killing of the rhinoceros was a criminal slaughter, and she called upon countries to ban the ivory trade.The rhinoceross death was announced the day after a 4-month-old polar bear cub died of liver inflammation in the Berlin Zoo.ImageCredit...Tierpark Zoo, via European Pressphoto AgencyThe bear, Fritz, was born on Nov. 3, the first polar bear to be born at the Tierpark Berlin, one of the citys two zoos, in 22 years. The animals keepers found him lying listlessly in the den he shared with his mother, Tonja, the Berlin Zoo said in a statement. Veterinarians and other staff separated the cub from his mother, taking him to the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, where ultrasounds, CT scans and X-ray examinations were administered, along with a stool test.Although Fritz was treated with antibiotics and painkillers, his condition worsened. His breathing became irregular and he died, Berlin zoo officials said. An autopsy was underway on Tuesday.We can hardly believe it, Andreas Knieriem, the Berlin zoos director, said in a statement. We are devastated.

World

Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesApril 2, 2016LOTE OCHO, Guatemala Her husband was away in the fields, she said, when the truckloads of soldiers, police officers and mining security officials arrived. A half-dozen armed men swarmed into her one-room house, blocking her exit and helping themselves to the meal she had made for her children.For a long time, the woman, Margarita Caal Caal, did not talk about what happened next that afternoon. None of the women in this tiny village high in the hills of eastern Guatemala did, not even to each other. But that day, Mrs. Caal said, the men who had come to evict her from land they said belonged to a Canadian mining company also took turns raping her. After that, they dragged her from her home and set it ablaze.The fear is not over, she said recently, staring down at her hands while her daughter served coffee to visitors. I still fear, all the time.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMrs. Caal has taken her case to the courts, but not in Guatemala, where Mayan villagers like her, illiterate and living in isolated areas, have had little legal success. She has filed in Canada, where her negligence suit, Caal v. Hudbay Mineral Inc., has sent shivers through the vast Canadian mining, oil and gas industry. More than 50 percent of the worlds publicly listed exploration and mining companies had headquarters in Canada in 2013, according to government statistics. Those 1,500 companies had an interest in some 8,000 properties in more than 100 countries around the world.For decades, overseas subsidiaries have acted as a shield for extractive companies even while human rights advocates say they have chronicled a long history of misbehavior, including environmental damage, the violent submission of protesters and the forced evictions of indigenous people.But Mrs. Caals negligence claim and those of 10 other women from this village who say they were gang-raped that day in 2007, as well as two other negligence claims against Hudbay, have already passed several significant legal hurdles suggesting that companies based in Canada could face new scrutiny about their overseas operations in the future. In June, a ruling ordered Hudbay to turn over what Mrs. Caals lawyers expect will be thousands of pages of internal documents. Hudbay, which was not the owner of the mine at the time of the evictions, denies any wrongdoing.Canadian law does not provide for huge American-style payoffs, even if the court rules in the plaintiffs favor. But the Hudbay case is being watched carefully because it appears to offer a new legal pathway for those who say they have suffered at the hands of Canadian subsidiaries. A ruling in this case, experts say, could also help establish powerful guidelines for what constitutes acceptable corporate behavior.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesUp until now, we just have not had judicial decisions that help us consider these sorts of relationships, said Sara Seck, an expert on corporate social responsibility at the Faculty of Law, Western University, in London, Ontario. For once, the court is going to look at what really happened here, and that is important.The behavior of multinational companies working in poor countries has come under increasing fire in recent years. Social expectations have changed, experts say, with many citizens of rich countries demanding that corporations be more responsible in the countries where they operate.In Canada, efforts to define a code of good behavior for extractive corporations are longstanding, if so far unsuccessful. Many mining companies are based there because Canada offers a concentration of expertise in mining finance and law, and the government offers incentives including tax breaks.A bill that would have created an ombudsman to investigate complaints and deny access to government loans and even consular services to companies accused of behaving poorly failed by a narrow margin in 2010 after facing fierce opposition from the extractive industry. John McKay, a member of Parliament from the Liberal Party who sponsored that bill, said he expected Canadas new government to try again soon.There are companies out there doing things that they would never do in their own countries, he said.In a 2014 report, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a policy group in Washington, concluded that Canadian companies, accounting for 50 percent to 70 percent of the mining in Latin America, were often associated with extensive damage to the environment, from erosion and sedimentation to groundwater and river contamination. Of particular note, it said, was that the industry demonstrated a disregard for registered nature reserves and protected zones.At the same time, the report said, local people were being injured, arrested or, in some cases, killed for protesting.Victims, however, have had little success gaining access to Canadian courts. Their lawyers have often tried to get cases heard on the basis of violations of human rights or international criminal law. But most were told that Canada had no jurisdiction, and that their claims would be more appropriately heard in the country where the events took place, even if that countrys courts were notoriously corrupt or otherwise dysfunctional.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesThe lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Hudbay case, Murray Klippenstein and Cory Wanless, took a novel approach, however, making a simpler claim. They said the Canadian parent company was negligent for failing to put an effective monitoring system in place to understand what its Guatemalan subsidiary was doing. Framing the claim in this way allowed the plaintiffs to draw a clear connection between the negligence and Canada.In addition to the claims brought by Mrs. Caal and the other women who say they were raped in Lote Ocho, Hudbay, based in Toronto, is facing claims over the death of a prominent local leader, Adolfo Ich Chamn, 50, and the shooting and paralysis of a bystander, German Chub, 28, during demonstrations against mining in the nearby town of El Estor in 2009.Hudbay lawyers moved to have the case dismissed both because of jurisdictional grounds and because it was plain and obvious that the claims would fail. Before the ruling on jurisdiction, they dropped that claim and went forward with the other one. In July 2013, however, the judge ruled it was not obvious that the claims were without merit.Turning to the courts has not been easy for the plaintiffs, most of whom speak only Qeqchi, a Mayan language, have had little or no schooling, and find the prospect of going to Canada terrifying. In addition, they face animosity from a sizable portion of the local population, particularly in El Estor, where there is a giant nickel processing plant. ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesHudbay officials dispute most of the plaintiffs claims. They say that no mining security officials were present during the Lote Ocho evictions and that no rapes took place. The companys website also points out that at the time, Hudbay had nothing to do with the mine. It was owned by Compaa Guatemalteca de Nquel, a subsidiary of another Canadian company, Skye Resources Inc., which Hudbay bought in 2008, assuming its liabilities. Hudbay has since sold the mine.Hudbay officials also maintain that there was no negligence in 2009 when it did own the mine. Officials say the killing of Mr. Ich, a teacher, and the shooting of Mr. Chub, a farmer, took place as the mines security guards were defending themselves from armed protesters.But some recent events appear to lend credence to the plaintiffs claims. The head of the mines security during the 2007 evictions and the 2009 shootings, a former army colonel named Mynor Padilla, is now on trial in Guatemala over the shooting of Mr. Ich and Mr. Chub.Moreover, an army officer and a paramilitary officer were convicted in February of raping and enslaving indigenous women in the 1980s, during Guatemalas long civil war, suggesting, some advocates say, that such behavior has long been entrenched in this country. During the war between the United States-backed government and leftist rebels, the indigenous population in this region was repeatedly attacked for trying to make land claims.ImageCredit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesEven now, the local Qeqchi population believes much of the land in the area belongs to it, and not to the mining company.At the time of Mrs. Caals eviction, there was no mining anywhere near Lote Ocho, but mining officials moved to evict the villagers anyway. The community is made up of about a dozen scattered, flimsy wooden houses, home to about 100 people, most of them children.There is no electricity here or a school for the children. The village is a bumpy 45-minute ride in a pickup truck uphill from the nearest town. But that costs money, so most of the villagers walk there using a footpath, which takes about two hours.Mrs. Caal said the armed men who attacked her during the eviction were so brutal with her that she could not get up from the spot where they had left her. But when her husband asked what had happened to her, she told him only that she had fallen, afraid of how he might react.It is still a subject she turns to reluctantly.Remembering is reliving, Mrs. Caal said. It hurts. It hurts as a woman.

World

Credit...Mike Belleme for The New York TimesJune 20, 2017ASHEVILLE, N.C. Jane and Abe Goren retired here five years ago to escape the higher cost of living they had abided for decades in the suburbs of New York City. They did not anticipate having to write monthly checks for health insurance that would exceed their mortgage and property taxes combined.Ms. Goren, 62, is paying nearly $1,200 a month for coverage through the individual insurance market (her husband, 69, is on Medicare) and accumulating enough debt that her sons recently held a fund-raiser to help. For next year, her insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, has proposed raising premiums by an average of 22.9 percent, a spike it is blaming squarely on President Trump.For months, the Trump administration has threatened to stop billions of dollars in payments that lower out-of-pocket medical costs for nearly six million low-income patients. Mr. Trumps hedging has created deep uncertainty in the Affordable Care Act markets, the impact of which may become clearer on Wednesday, the deadline for insurers to say whether they plan to sell next year on the federal marketplace created under the health law and to file rate requests.North Carolina has more than 300,000 people benefiting from these cost-sharing subsidies, which reimburse insurers for absorbing the deductibles and co-payments of low-income customers. The Affordable Care Act requires that these customers out-of-pocket costs be lowered one way or another. If the federal government stops reimbursing insurers, many insurers have said they will make up for it by raising premiums.Paradoxically, that will primarily hurt not poor customers but millions of middle-class people like the Gorens, who earn too much to qualify for premium assistance under the law and will bear the full brunt of any rate increase.Across the nation, individual market customers like them are seeing signs of big premium increases, which insurers are largely attributing to the possibility of losing the federal cost-sharing subsidies and of Mr. Trumps not enforcing the health laws mandate that most people have coverage or pay a penalty. Mr. Trump has repeatedly pointed to such increases as signs that the markets are in a death spiral and to bolster support as the Republican Senate leadership rushes to vote on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act next week.Marylands largest insurer, CareFirst, has asked to raise rates by an average of 52 percent, for example, while Virginias largest insurer, Anthem, has proposed an average rate increase of 34 percent.Pennsylvanias insurance commissioner said rates would rise by 8.8 percent next year if the cost payments continue; if Mr. Trump ends them, rates will soar by 36.3 percent. While some insurers and state regulators have discussed limiting the sharpest increases to plans for people who receive premium subsidies allowing unsubsidized customers to get lower rates outside the marketplaces it remains to be seen how widespread such actions would be.Some insurers are pulling out of the marketplaces completely: Several dozen counties in Ohio, Missouri and Washington State have no insurers signed up for next year.In North Carolina, Blue Cross and Blue Shield said it would have sought an 8.8 percent average increase, instead of 22.9 percent, if not for the uncertainty.In Ms. Gorens case, her coverage has been a lifesaver. Infected with hepatitis C through a blood transfusion 30 years ago, she was found to have liver cancer in 2014 and received a new liver last September. Though transplants are among the most expensive surgeries, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, under the health law her out-of-pocket costs are capped at about $7,000 a year.ImageCredit...Mike Belleme for The New York TimesBut combined with her monthly premiums which have nearly tripled since 2014, the first year people could buy Affordable Care Act plans the financial burden is enough that Ms. Goren started taking her Social Security retirement benefits early, which lowers the amount.We will use every available resource we have financially until weve ground it down to nothing, Ms. Goren said during an interview in her home in a rural subdivision outside Asheville. But Im scared of whats coming.With the distinct possibility that the Affordable Care Act could soon be repealed altogether, she is afraid to touch the $15,000 that her two sons raised this spring through a 5K race to help with her medical expenses.Were sitting on it like Horton with the egg, Ms. Goren said, referring to the Dr. Seuss book.When President Barack Obama was still in office, the Republican-controlled House sued to stop the cost-sharing subsidies on grounds that Congress had not appropriated the money. A judge sided with the House last year, but the Obama administration appealed. Mr. Trump, who has talked about using the payments as a bargaining chip to help pass a Republican health bill, has twice asked the court to delay a ruling.Although the 5.9 million low-income Americans who do benefit from cost-sharing payments will continue to have deductibles and co-payments waived as long as the Affordable Care Act survives, they, too, are facing uncertainty about the future of their health care. If Republicans in Congress succeed at repealing and replacing the law still a big if, but the House has already passed a bill that would do so and the Senate is hurrying to finish its own version insurance costs for low-income Americans could leap. The House bill provides flat premium subsidies based on age, not income a formula that penalizes older and poorer people.Lonnie Carpenter, 55, a self-employed roofer in Winston-Salem, N.C., is in that category. His back was badly injured in a car accident in 2013, and he has not been able to work full time since. Last year, his spinal surgery was paid for by his Affordable Care Act plan from UnitedHealthcare. He owed only about $2,000 thanks to cost-sharing reductions, compared with $11,000 for an operation in 2014, before he got subsidized insurance under the law.Im in a position where Im maxed out with bills because Ive missed so much work in the last four years, Mr. Carpenter said. But it would have been a whole lot tougher to survive without that insurance. If I hadnt had that, Im being honest, I dont know where Id be right now.Cost-sharing reductions apply to people with annual incomes up to 250 percent of the poverty level; that comes to $29,700 for a single person and $60,750 for a family of four. Deductibles for those with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level were reduced to $243 on average this year, from $3,703, according to Avalere Health, a consulting firm.Even as Mr. Trump has remained coy about whether to continue the cost-sharing reductions next year or even, for that matter, after this month some powerful Republicans in Congress have begun lobbying for him to do so. They include Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who urged in a hearing last week that the payments be extended through 2019.The payments will help to avoid the real possibility that millions of Americans will literally have zero options for insurance in the individual market in 2018, Mr. Alexander said, adding that Republicans should do some things temporarily that we dont want to do in the long term.In North Carolina, Blue Cross and Blue Shield increased rates even more this year and last than it is proposing for 2018, blaming unexpectedly high claims costs among its marketplace customers. But the insurer said last month that it now had a better handle on expected medical costs, and thus would seek a far more modest rate increase if the cost-sharing payments were guaranteed.You dont mean to wish your life away, but my prayers are that I wake up and my wife is 65, said Mr. Goren, a former radio advertising salesman, referring to the age at which people become eligible for Medicare. We saved, but that money, it goes fast.

Health

TrilobitesA new study reveals how some mammals evolved natures most impressive chompers (which are not always used for chomping).Credit...Ryan Kingsbery/U.S. Geological Survey, via Associated PressOct. 28, 2021Elephants have them. Pigs have them. Narwhals and water deer have them. Tusks are among the most dramatic examples of mammal dentition: ever-growing, projecting teeth used for fighting, foraging, even flirting.So why, across the broad sweep of geologic history, do such useful teeth only appear among mammals and no other surviving groups of animals? According to a study published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, it takes two key adaptations to teeth to make a tusk and the evolutionary pathway first appeared millions of years before the first true mammals.Around 255 million years ago, a family of mammal relatives called dicynodonts tusked, turtle-beaked herbivores ranging in stature from gopher-size burrowers to six-ton behemoths wandered the forests of the supercontinent Pangea. A few lineages survived the devastating Permian extinction period, during which more than 90 percent of Earths species died out, before being replaced by herbivorous dinosaurs.They were really successful animals, said Megan Whitney, a paleontologist at Harvard University and the lead author of the study. Theyre so abundant in South Africa that in some of these sites, you just get really sick of seeing them. Youll look out over a field and therell just be skulls of these animals everywhere.To work out how these animals evolved their tusks, Dr. Whitney and her colleagues collected bone samples from 10 dicynodont species, among them the tiny, big-eyed Diictodon and the tank-like Lystrosaurus. They looked at how their canines attached to the jaw, whether they regularly regenerated lost teeth, like many reptiles do, and for indicators that their teeth grew continuously.Many mammal families have evolved long, saber-toothed fangs or ever-growing incisors for gnawing. Several early dicynodonts also had a pair of long canine teeth poking from their beaks. But these teeth, like most animal teeth, are composed of a substance called dentine, capped by a hard, thin covering of enamel. Tusks have no enamel, Dr. Whitney said, and grow continuously even as the comparatively softer dentine gets worn away.ImageCredit...Kacper Pempel/ReutersExamining the dicynodont skulls, the team found that a shift occurred midway through the groups evolution: the appearance of soft tissue attachments supporting the teeth, akin to the ligaments present in modern mammals. And like modern mammals, dicynodonts didnt continuously replace their teeth.Both of these shifts laid the groundwork for the development of an ever-growing, well-supported tooth a tusk. Afterward, Dr. Whitney said, late dicynodonts developed tusks in at least two different lineages, and possibly more.This evolutionary pathway is reminiscent of another group of tusked animals: elephants. Early elephant relatives had enlarged canines that were covered with enamel, Dr. Whitney said. Later members of the family reduced the enamel to a thin band on one side of the tooth, like a rodent incisor, allowing the tooth to grow continuously. Finally, they ditched the enamel entirely.Youre providing the means for a tusk to evolve if you unlock the evolution of reduced tooth replacement and soft tissue attachments, Dr. Whitney said. Once you have a group that has both conditions, you can go a long time of animals playing with different tooth combinations, and you start to see these independent developments of tusks.The reason that tusks are currently limited to modern mammals, then, lies in a specific arrangement of teeth that mammals inherited from the broader family of synapsids, the group that includes mammal forerunners like dicynodonts.Even with those prerequisites, Dr. Whitney said, an adaptation like tusks isnt inevitable. But it is available, and multiple mammal groups elephants, whales, deer, pigs and walruses have found uses for them.Mammals are kind of stuck with our teeth, unlike something like a shark, which has a conveyor belt of terror, Dr. Whitney said. So an ever-growing tooth is pretty brilliant if youre only replacing your tooth once.

science

Credit...Zhao Chuang/Peking Natural Science Organization, via American Museum of Natural HistoryMarch 28, 2016At a preview of the new American Museum of Natural History exhibition Dinosaurs Among Us, scientists gave a tip of the hat to Thomas Henry Huxley, the man who proposed in the 1860s that dinosaurs never really vanished from Earth. Most did go extinct, but their evolutionary legacy lives all around us. They are birds, all 18,000 species of them.While Charles Darwins book of books, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was still in print in 1859, Huxley, a lecturer in paleontology and natural history in London, wrote a favorable review and became a convert to Darwins theory. In a debate the next year, Huxley got the better of the bishop of Oxford, and became known thereafter as Darwins bulldog. He was also the first in a long line of Huxleys who distinguished themselves in science and the arts.A few years later, Huxley enlisted Archaeopteryx, a fossil specimen found in a Bavarian limestone quarry, in his defense of Darwin. He was struck by the specimens many reptilian features; but for a feather in the fossil, it would probably have been misidentified as a reptile. In a report in 1867, Huxley established the evolutionary relationship of birds and reptiles, citing 14 anatomical features that occur in birds and reptiles alike, but not in mammals.Archaeopteryx was one of those missing links in the fossil record that Darwin worried was a weakness in this theory of evolution. Huxley called attention to the feathers and wishbone of this early bird and the long bony tail of a reptile. This was a species in transition.Why has it taken so long to recognize that Huxley had almost certainly been right about the origin of birds from some meat-eating theropod dinosaurs?ImageCredit...M. Ellison/American Museum of Natural HistoryMark A. Norell, the chairman of the division of paleontology at A.M.N.H. and curator of the exhibition, had long been a staunch proponent of a dinosaur-bird link. A lot of evidence amassed over the last two decades, especially the numbers of feathered dinosaurs found in China, moved paleontologists to organize the exhibition as a kind of victory lap.I think this is really going to shake up the way people think of dinosaurs, Dr. Norell said.Most ornithologists, though not completely won over, had already ceased raising blanket objections to the dinosaur-bird link. They seemed at a loss to conceive of alternative explanations for the gathering evidence, paleontologists say.The slow evolution of the practice of paleontology itself was another reason for the delay in recognizing Huxleys insight. For the rest of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the big game of fossil hunting was the bigger and more bizarre dinosaurs that drew people to museums. Expeditions to remote lands widened the search to nearly all continents, piling up skeletons faster than could be analyzed in depth.Roy Chapman Andrews became the real-life Indiana Jones in the 1920s, bringing back from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia a variety of new dinosaur species and the first dinosaur eggs. If only he had found feathered dinosaurs then and there, paleontologists say, the dinosaur-bird link might have been recognized much sooner. That was not to happen until the end of the century.By that time, the field work of fossil hunters remained important, but only as the first step in discovery. For example, in 1964, John H. Ostrom of Yale University saw a birdlike claw sticking out of the ground in Montana. He named the dinosaur Deinonychus, or terrible claw. But it reminded him of Huxleys evolutionary insight, leading Dr. Ostrom to link birds to new generations of dinosaur research.In the last two or three decades, biological disciplines have joined dinosaur studies, applying tools capable of transcending the terrible claw limitations of fossilized skulls and bones. Geologists once dominated the field, Dr. Norell said, but now so many of us could be called paleobiologists.Also, thousands of fossils with feather imprints have been discovered in Liaoning Province in northeastern China in the last 15 years, Dr. Norell said. Birds are the only feathered creatures alive today, but 150 million years ago, early birds and dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes came with feathers, not necessarily for flight. Feathers, museum researchers said, are one of the most useful skin coverings that ever evolved for insulation or mating display as well as gliding or powered flight.Paul C. Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist, has analyzed many recent Chinese fossils of animals that had lived more than 100 million years ago that were found in lake bed sediments.Huxley was a brilliant anatomist, Dr. Sereno said. Some of the first birds from the Chinese site look just like Archaeopteryx. This time, the dinosaur-bird transition has become ascendant.So what is there not to like about evolution if it indeed accounts for the few surviving dinosaurs transformed into flocks of birds? Monstrous dinosaurs may captivate first graders, who thrill at being scared at a safe distance in time.They may also draw comfort from knowing the eating habits (carnivore or herbivore) of dinosaurs their know-it-all grown-ups cant even pronounce their names. Need there be more reason for a fascination with strange and mighty dinosaurs when you are little in a big world?From my back porch in the country, I hear crows squawking high in the trees. Crows are smart, clever enough to pry open garbage cans down the road, if raccoons had not gotten there first which might account for their squawking. Some birds, like blue jays at the feeder, seem to enjoy chasing off chickadees and sparrows.Better to be hearing the bullying jays or cardinals singing their vespers, however, than to have a fearsome T-rex peering in at you through your upstairs windows at daybreak, ready for breakfast.

science

Credit...Edward Linsmier for The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2014MOORESVILLE, N.C. Jackie King held back tears as she sat outside the old Dale Earnhardt Inc. race shop, which serves as a shrine to Earnhardt, the revered Nascar driver. Tuesday was the 13th anniversary of the crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 that killed Earnhardt, and King had come to attend the annual candlelight tribute there.This had already been an emotional week for the still considerable Earnhardt fan base. Last Sunday, fans watched as the No. 3 the car number Earnhardt made famous in winning six of his seven championships returned to the Cup series for the first time since the accident. It was not only back, but also in victory lane after the rookie Austin Dillon put the No. 3 on the pole in qualifying for the season-opening Daytona 500.Still, it was bittersweet for some.It was hard to see it, King said, her voice catching. When I saw the car, thats where it really hurt. I mean, it brought it all back. It brought Dales death and that crash and everything back, and it made me realize hes really not coming back.The No. 3 was so closely associated with Earnhardt that the team owner Richard Childress held back using the number in the Cup series. Fans continued to wear it to races in tribute.But it was perhaps inevitable that No. 3 would return to the Cup series. After all, Childress had Earnhardts approval.That decision was actually made 14 years ago when Dale and I were talking about his retirement, Childress said last month. What he was going to do when he retired, how he wanted to help me with the 3 and the team to go out and put a driver in it that could win championships and win races, and it was not in the plans at all to put anybody in the car until the right person was there.Dillon, Childresss 23-year-old grandson, was an obvious choice. He drove No. 3 to championships in the Camping World Truck Series and the Nationwide Series. In fact, he had worn or raced No. 3 since he started competing in sports. Dillon was 12 in 2002 when he played for Clemmons, N.C., in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. His jersey number was 3.For Dillon, it has never been too daunting a number to drive.I feel like it didnt matter what number I got in; with my family background, there was going to be pressure, Dillon said last month. It doesnt matter what number I step into.I realize what it is to people. I feel like all the fans care about it, and thats the good thing.Fans are not the only ones who care. Dale Earnhardt Jr. also gave his blessing, although he acknowledged that it felt strange to see the number on the track for Cup races again. The last time the No. 3 circled Daytona International Speedway in a Cup event, his father died.I think itll be weird, Earnhardt Jr. said recently. I dont know what my emotions will be when we first pull out there. I did see the car in testing, and it was really, its kind of neat in a way. Theres some sadness there, too. Not everyone wanted to see the No. 3 return, and some fans have criticized the move.They wanted to retire the number, a lot of people I know, said Randy Hampton of Mount Bethel, Pa., who wore an old Earnhardt No. 3 hat as he walked in the Daytona International Speedway infield on Thursday. That was never going to happen; Nascar does not retire numbers. But for all those who are upset, there are many who embrace the return of No. 3.At first, I had mixed emotions about it, Hampton said. But as long as its a Richard Childress driver and more so his grandson, I dont feel that bad about it. Because now that I see the 3, I think its good.If the return of the No. 3 car drives some fans away, it will certainly bring others back to Nascar. That includes Rita Rasmussen, 62, of Denver, N.C., who stopped following the sport after Earnhardt died.When Dale was alive, I had to be home; we watched every race, Rasmussen said as she stood outside the Earnhardt race shop Tuesday, wearing one of her many Dale Earnhardt jackets. I have not watched a whole race since he died.Rasmussen said she would never be an all-out Nascar fan again; losing Earnhardt was just too hard. But she said she would watch some of the Daytona 500 on Sunday. It seems Rasmussen has a new driver to watch.I just may follow Austin now, she said.

Sports

Enzo Amore Accuser Speaks Out 'I Said 'No' Countless Times' 1/23/2018 TMZSports.com The woman who claims she was raped by WWE superstar Enzo Amore tells TMZ Sports ... she repeatedly told the wrestler to back off and leave her alone -- but he refused to stop. We spoke with Philomena Sheahan -- who gave us permission to publish her name and her face -- and she laid out her allegations she made to police against Amore, real name Eric Arndt. Sheahan claims Amore was hitting on her hard in a Phoenix hotel room on Oct. 19 -- and tried to slow him down ... telling him, "I want to get to know you first." But Amore allegedly blew right past consent and got very aggressive -- ripping off Sheahan's tights and raping her in various parts of the hotel room. "I said 'no' countless times," Sheahan said ... "I just kept saying 'No.'" Sheahan said she was crying as she begged him to stop, but he threw her on a bed instead -- and she hit her head so hard, she passed out. Amore, according to Sheahan, continued to restrain her and pushed forward with the sexual assault. A few days later, Sheahan says she spoke with Phoenix PD and cops opened an investigation into Amore. The WWE has since released Amore from the organization. Multiple attempts to reach Amore for comment have been unsuccessful.

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Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Four years ago at the Vancouver Games, Steven Holcomb helped end a 62-year medal drought in bobsled by piloting the United States to a gold medal in the four-man event. On Monday at Sanki Sliding Center here, Holcomb did it again, this time teaming with Steve Langton to drive an American sled to its first medal in 62 years in the two-man.If anybody else has a 62-year drought you need to break, let me know, Holcomb said after he and Langton claimed the bronze medal with a four-run time of 3 minutes 46.27 seconds. He laughed. Ill try to help you, he added.Holcombs latest medal did not come without concerns, though. On Sunday, during the second heat, Holcomb felt a twinge in his calf muscle while pushing the sled away from the starting line. He and Langton recorded their worst time of the event on that run, and Holcomb immediately began receiving treatment on his leg.After leaving the track, Holcomb stayed up until 2 a.m., he said, as trainers did what they could to keep his muscle loose. By Monday night, when the final two runs were held, Holcomb felt well enough to participate but dialed back his effort during the push start, letting my horse here take over, he said, gesturing to Langton. That worked out well enough for Holcomb and Langton to hold on to their medal (they finished behind Russia and Switzerland), but questions remained about whether Holcomb would heal quickly enough for the four-man competition, scheduled to begin Saturday.Itll be a challenge, Holcomb said. But I have two more dudes that are ready to jump in and help me on the push.Despite Holcombs injury, Langton said he was never that concerned that his pilot would be unable to finish the two-man event. This was Langtons first Olympic medal, and he praised Holcombs experience and savvy repeatedly, saying, I knew when his name was called, hed be ready.Brian Shimer, the coach of the United States team, said he was not overly worried about Holcombs status for the four-man event. Shimer noted that Holcomb, the defending champion, provides only a quarter of the pushing power in the four-man and can perhaps afford to be slightly less than 100 percent healthy.Shimer admitted to being anxious about what the Americans top sled would do, and he seemed relieved afterward. I think Im more excited for this bronze than I am for mine, he said, referring to the medal he won in the four-man event at the 2002 Games.If Holcomb is able to continue the success in this weekends four-man event, he will earn his third Olympic medal, tying him with Pat Martin for the most by an American in bobsled. Many in the sliding sports give Holcomb credit for helping begin a resurgence of the United States programs, as the Americans have already won four medals in bobsled, luge and skeleton at the Sochi Games one more than they won in 2006 and 2010 combined.What Holcomb has done is unbelievable for the sport, said Nick Cunningham, who piloted a United States sled to a 13th-place finish. Hes put USA Bobsled on the international map.

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Soaring rates were driven largely by gun-related homicides, which rose 35 percent from 2019 to 2020.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMay 10, 2022Gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as gun-related homicides surged by 35 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday.This is a historic increase, with the rate having reached the highest level in over 25 years, Dr. Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the C.D.C. and the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said at a news briefing.More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. The gun homicide rate was the highest reported since 1994.That represents the largest one-year increase in gun homicides in modern history, according to Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which recently released its own analysis of C.D.C. data.Cities from coast to coast have seen bloody episodes of gun violence since the pandemic began, but the new report is official confirmation of something that many Americans had already sensed: Amid the stress and upheaval, citizens turned to guns in numbers rarely seen.The new numbers reveal not only startling increases in the rates of gun homicide, but also document widened disparities that existed even before the pandemic began, the C.D.C. said.Homicides involving firearms were generally highest, and showed the largest increases, in poor communities, and exacted a disproportionate toll on younger Black men in particular. Deaths of Black women, though smaller in number, also increased significantly.More than half of gun deaths were suicides, however, and that number did not substantially increase from 2019 to 2020. The overall rise in gun deaths therefore was 15 percent in 2020, the C.D.C. said.The rise in gun violence has afflicted cities large and small, in both blue and red states, leaving law enforcement scrambling for answers. In many places, like Los Angeles and Denver, the increases have persisted in 2021, and trends this year so far show no sign of a reversal.We have two things together: the trauma of the past two years, and the mental health crisis that came out of this pandemic, Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles said earlier this year at an event to discuss crime. Those things have caused us to see more violence.Christopher Herrmann, an assistant professor in the department of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said he was not surprised by the C.D.C.s analysis but was worried by what it might augur in the coming summer, when there are typically more gun homicides.June, July, August are always the biggest shooting months, he said, adding that most large American cities see about a 30 percent uptick in shootings and homicides in the summer.Federal officials and outside experts were not certain what caused the surge in gun deaths.One possible explanation is stressors associated with the Covid pandemic that could have played a role, including changes and disruption to services and education, social isolation, housing instability and difficulty covering daily expenses, said Thomas R. Simon, associate director for science at the C.D.C.s division of violence prevention.The rise also corresponded to accelerated sales of firearms as the pandemic spread and lockdowns became the norm, the C.D.C. analysis noted. Americans went on a gun-buying spree in 2020 that continued into 2021, when in a single week the F.B.I. reported a record 1.2 million background checks.The primary reason people give for purchasing a handgun is self-protection. But research published in the 1990s established that simply having a gun in the home increases the risk of a gun homicide by a factor of three, and increases the risk of a suicide by a factor of five.Today, gun buying has largely returned to prepandemic levels, but there remain roughly 15 million more guns in circulation than there would be without the pandemic, according to Garen J. Wintemute, a gun violence researcher at the University of California, Davis.But gun homicide has many roots. Federal researchers also cited disruptions in routine health care; protests over police use of lethal force; a rise in domestic violence; inequitable access to health care; and longstanding systemic racism that has contributed to poor housing conditions, limited educational opportunities and high poverty rates.Law enforcement officials and criminologists pointed not just to the pandemic, but also to the divisive presidential election in 2020, as gun buying tends to increase at times of deep political polarization.And there is a sense, harder to quantify, that psyches are frayed that citizens may be quicker to turn to violence when provoked.Something has happened to the American people during this two years that has taken violence to a new level, said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit that studies law enforcement policy.We dont know what it is, but if you talk to police chiefs they will tell you that what used to be some small altercation now becomes a shooting and a homicide.Black Americans remained disproportionately affected by gun violence in 2020. Firearm homicide rates increased by 39.5 percent among Black people from 2019 to 2020, to 11,904. The victims were overwhelmingly young men.The Johns Hopkins analysis found that Black men ages 15 to 34 accounted for 38 percent of all gun homicide victims in 2020, though this group represented just 2 percent of the U.S. population.Black men ages 15 to 34 were more than 20 times more likely to be killed with a gun than white men of the same age. The number of Black women killed by guns also increased by almost 50 percent in 2020 compared with 2019, Mr. Davis said.Rising rates of gun-related homicides were seen in all racial and ethnic groups, except among Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent, who saw a small decrease.Gun-related suicides have long been more common among older white men. But in 2020, rates rose mostly sharply among Native Americans and Alaska Native groups, although the numbers were still small compared with those among white men.Were going to need to develop different types of solutions to deal with different types of gun violence, Mr. Davis said.The last time homicide rates involving firearms peaked was during the crack epidemic of 1993-94, said Andrew Morral, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation and the director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research. Rates declined until 2015, but have been inching up ever since.Its pretty alarming, Mr. Morral said. Its a bigger jump than I would have expected.But there is no solid explanation for the decline or the rise, he added: In a sense its a mystery. Its the big question everyone wants the answer to. Everyone has a theory, but its very hard to test the theories.Even if the pandemic is part of the answer, that doesnt explain why rates have been rising since 2016, he said.The C.D.C. is currently funding 18 research projects aimed at identifying causes of gun violence and developing solutions. The research spans a broad range of interventions: One experiment relies on outreach workers to mediate potentially lethal conflicts in a community, while another provides services to teens and young adults who have been hospitalized with gun injuries.Others involve distribution of free lockboxes for storing firearms safely in the home.Projects like these were frozen under the 1996 Dickey Amendment, named after Representative Jay Dickey, Republican of Arkansas, which barred the C.D.C. from spending money to advocate or promote gun control.Congress has restored $25 million in funding for firearm injury prevention research, which is split between the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health.Chelsia Rose Marcius contributed reporting from New York.

Health

Deontay Wilder Me vs. Mike Tyson In '86 ... I'd Kick His Ass 1/27/2018 JANUARY 2018 TMZSports.com Remember the unstoppable, unbeatable force that was Mike Tyson in 1986? If you don't, first check out the video below ... we'll wait. Terrifying right? Well, current heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder tells TMZ Sports he'd kick the hell outta that guy, and he totally means it. Wilder is currently the scariest heavyweight alive, so when we got him at the Showtime boxing Upfronts earlier this week we thought we'd ask him how he'd fare against the scariest ever ... Tyson. His answer? He obviously thinks he could take him, telling our guy no man in the history of boxing could ever beat him. This is normally the point where we offer our unsolicited opinion, but we're gonna sit this one out.

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Jersey Shore' Reunites in Miami 1/19/2018 The cast of "Jersey Shore" has finally reunited in Miami ... and the drinks are already flowin'. We got pics of Ronnie, Pauly D, Snooki, JWoww and Deena toasting to what's sure to be a fun next few days. Missing are Vinny, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino -- who was in court in New Jersey Friday -- and Sammi Sweetheart who took a pass on the reunion to avoid a run-in with ex Ronnie. While it's still unclear just how crazy the upcoming reunion special will get, one thing's for sure ... there's gonna be plenty of GTL. Share on Facebook TWEET This See also Sammi Giancola Deena Nicole Cortese Ronnie Ortiz-Magro The Situation Snooki Jwoww BFFs Reality TV Reunions Jersey Shore

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Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York TimesFeb. 15, 2014TAMPA, Fla. Soon after Masahiro Tanaka signed with the Yankees last month, one of the first things he did was to call Hiroki Kuroda, his new teammate and Japanese compatriot. It was part of Tanakas duty in accordance with the senpai-kohai relationship.The senpai is the more experienced person, the mentor; in this case, Kuroda. The kohai is Tanaka, and it is customary to call any other Japanese players on his team to pay his respects.It was a very nice introductory call, Kuroda said. It is typical in Japanese culture. We just spoke for a little bit because we did not have the chance to meet and talk before this.Tanaka, who is 25 and went through his first official workout with the Yankees on Saturday, has much to learn from the 39-year-old Kuroda, who has pitched for six seasons in the major leagues, four of them with the Los Angeles Dodgers; he is entering his third with the Yankees.For instance, Kuroda is one of the most physically fit pitchers in all of baseball and has logged thousands of miles running from foul pole to foul pole since he was a high school player in Japan. There is no running assignment Kuroda cannot handle.But whatever the content of their introductory call, it appears that Tanaka did not ask Kuroda if he should be prepared to run, even a little bit, on the first day of practice. After throwing a light 32-pitch bullpen session in front of about 75 members of the Japanese news media, and then taking an easy fielding session, Tanaka and the other pitchers were asked to do some modest running.But in his four laps around the warning track of a practice field, about a mile, Tanaka gasped for breath as if he were an amateur runner nearing the end of his first marathon.Tanaka said that years from now, when he looked back on his first day in pinstripes, the one thing he would remember will not be the huge news media contingent, or the mound session alongside Kuroda and C. C. Sabathia. It will be those torturous four laps, acknowledging that they had been difficult.I didnt know that I was going to run this much, he said through his interpreter. Im a little bit of a slow runner. But that part I really cant help.It is not what Tanaka does on the jogging track in February that matters, but what he does on the mound in the regular season. The Yankees hope there is no correlation between Tanakas conditioning work on Day 1 and his performance in games that count. But it is safe to say that had the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner been alive to witness the display, he would not have been pleased. After all, the Yankees paid $20 million to Tanakas Japanese team for the right to sign him and committed $155 million more to him in contract obligations.Tanaka acknowledged that he had not been prepared and mentioned it twice without prompting during a news conference.The running part, he said, that was really hard for me today.Before they even took the field Saturday morning, the senpai, Kuroda, asked Tanaka if he wanted to play catch with him during warm-ups, and Tanaka happily agreed, much to the delight of the Japanese photographers, who took hundreds of frames of them tossing a ball back and forth.I feel very fortunate and very thankful that he is here, Tanaka said of Kuroda. Hes a veteran here in the majors, and obviously he is one of the key guys in the rotation for the Yankees.Kuroda came to the United States in 2008 and made $7.4 million that year. Tanaka will make $22 million this year. Kuroda, who has the lowest career earned run average for any Japanese pitcher with at least 150 starts (3.40), will make $16 million in 2014. He also came to camp in excellent shape, as usual. Kuroda, who had been working out in Los Angeles alongside the former Yankee Phil Hughes since Jan. 2, threw hard during his bullpen session Saturday.Obviously, I was prepared, Kuroda said through his interpreter. I did my usual work, nothing different. Plus I got younger.As for Tanakas inaugural bullpen session, he threw a bit harder than he did Thursday during a throwing session at the minor league complex. Francisco Cervelli, who caught him both times, said Tanaka had thrown with more conviction Saturday, hitting the corners of the plate and firing some convincing fastballs.All the while, Tanaka was followed closely by dozens of reporters who recorded his every move, his every gasp for air. Tanaka said he was flattered by the attention. As with the running, he did not expect it.Hes going to get used to that, Cervelli said. When the whole team comes, its going to be the same for everybody. Hes not the only guy whos making $100 million.

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Politics|The Constitution or his boss? Pence faces a choice.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/politics/the-constitution-or-his-boss-pence-faces-a-choice.htmlCredit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021On Wednesday, when Congress conducts what is typically a ceremonial duty of opening and counting certificates of electoral votes, Vice President Mike Pence will play a delicate role.As president of the Senate, Mr. Pence is expected to preside over the pro forma certification of the Electoral College vote count in front of a joint session of Congress. It is a constitutionally prescribed, televised moment in which Mr. Pence will name the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Joseph R. Biden Jr.It is also a moment some of Mr. Pences advisers have been bracing themselves for ever since the president lost the election and stepped up his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.One person close to Mr. Pence described Wednesdays duties as gut-wrenching, saying that he would need to balance the presidents misguided beliefs about government with his own years of preaching deference to the Constitution.After nearly a dozen Republican senators said they plan to object to the certification of the vote on Wednesday, the vice presidents chief of staff, Marc Short, issued a carefully worded statement intended not to anger anyone.The vice president welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6, he said.The fact that Mr. Pences role is almost entirely scripted by those parliamentarians is not expected to ease a rare moment of tension between himself and the president, who has come to believe Mr. Pences role will be akin to that of chief justice, an arbiter who plays a role in the outcome. In reality, it will be more akin to the presenter opening the Academy Award envelope and reading the name of the movie that won Best Picture, with no say in determining the winner.And with just over two weeks left in the administration, Mr. Pence is at risk of meeting the fate that he has successfully avoided for four years: being publicly attacked by the president.

Politics

Technology|Apple Shuns the Tech Industrys Apology Tourhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/technology/apple-shuns-apology-tour.htmlState of the ArtCredit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesJune 4, 2018SAN JOSE, Calif. Sorry, Apples not sorry.There has been a theme at the tech industrys big conferences this year: Facebook and other tech giants keep telling us that theyve learned from their mistakes and are going to be a lot more thoughtful about the far-out stuff they plan on doing in the future.Apple has been cool to this narrative, and it was striking how the companys executives danced around the tech backlash story line from the stage on Monday at its annual conference for developers.Though Apple acknowledged the darker side of societys obsession with the digital world, it didnt go anywhere near the idea that its own technology might bear any of the blame.Apple did announce several new ways of letting adults and children limit how much time they spend on their phones. A tool called Screen Time, for example, is meant to help iPhone customers manage the time they spend on their devices. You can also add limits to how much you use certain apps. And parents will be able to use Screen Time to place limits on how their children use their iPhones.ImageCredit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesApples software chief, Craig Federighi, said the company felt it was time to address smartphones oversize impact on everyday life. For some of us, its become such a habit we might not even recognize how distracted weve become, he said.These features looked quite handy we will know for sure once theyre released to users this year. If they do push users to quit wasting so much time on Facebook and YouTube (where getting people to waste time is a big part of the business plan), they are sure to roil Apples relationship with others in tech.But that is not Apples problem; it is more concerned about selling you a new phone.Apple is also putting considerable resources into making its Watch stand apart from its phone, a direction that in the long run will create more opportunities to go without a phone. Are you wearing an Apple Watch instead of carrying an iPhone? In time, Apple may not care.But at its event here, Apples support for whats being called digital well-being often awkwardly butted up against Apples larger goal: to make the digital world so awesome, you cant resist it.The next iPhone will let you turn your face into an emoji, and now it can even do tongue detection an animated version of your face can stick out its tongue when you do. With Apples new augmented reality system, the iPhone can turn Legos into a video game. But if you cant even play with some Legos without reaching for your phone, isnt that kind of a problem?Apple wants to stand apart from the techlash with its emphasis on privacy and its oft-stated distaste for the excesses of the internet ad industry. On Monday, the company said its Safari web browser would disable tracking software, or cookies, that advertising companies like Facebook and Google embed in websites to track users activity across the internet.The new Safari feature is a direct swipe at the data-collection practices of big internet companies that Apple has tried hard to separate itself from.Apple argues that it has always been one of the more high-minded of the big tech companies, so it shouldnt be lumped in with outfits like Facebook.But that argument has always been a little complicated. Apple benefits from our obsession with social software; people buy its powerful phones to use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year for the privilege of being the iPhones default search engine.We aim to put the customer at the center of everything we do, Timothy D. Cook, Apples chief executive, said several times Monday.That seemed like a promise as well as a backhanded defense. Apple will give you the world. What you do with it is your own problem.

Tech

Credit...Numan Alquzaa/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 12, 2017JERUSALEM The fragile treaty between the two former enemies was not even three years old when a Jordanian soldier went on a shooting rampage and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls visiting a park in a border area known as the Island of Peace.On Sunday, almost 20 years after that March 13, 1997, attack, the Jordanian authorities released the soldier, Ahmed Daqamseh, a former corporal, after he effectively completed his term.Amid the grief and outrage over what became known as the Island of Peace massacre, King Hussein, then the ruler of Jordan, managed to salvage the spirit of reconciliation and provide some balm.The king paid a rare visit to Israel and made condolence calls to each of the bereaved families. Kneeling to speak with them as they sat on the floor in their homes as part of the Jewish mourning custom of shiva, he apologized and said: Your daughter is like my daughter. Your loss is my loss.While the visit angered many in Jordan, it was seen as a gesture of friendship and humility by many in Israel and the West.Two decades later, Mr. Daqamsehs release rekindled some of those emotions. The Israeli-Jordanian peace has proved firm and lasting, but it still exists mainly at the government level and has not been popularly embraced.The Island of Peace, about 12 miles south of the Sea of Galilee, was formally returned to Jordan when it made peace with Israel in fall 1994, but was then leased back to an Israeli kibbutz. Mr. Daqamseh fired on the girls, who were on a class outing, from a border post in Jordanian territory.After the attack, a Jordanian medical team gave Mr. Daqamseh a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder; a military court sentenced him to life in prison. Life sentences are not open-ended in Jordan, and can essentially be commuted after 20 years.Mr. Daqamseh, who also injured five other girls and a teacher in the rampage, said at the time that the seventh and eighth graders had mocked him as he was performing his prayers.Early on Sunday, Mr. Daqamseh returned to his familys home in Ibdir, a village in the governorate of Irbid in northern Jordan. Roya News, an independent Jordanian station, broadcast video of his homecoming, and photographs spread widely in the local news media.Israeli radio and news sites described the reception Mr. Daqamseh received from his family and other well-wishers as a heros welcome, also posting photographs and video of the local celebrations.ImageCredit...Jamal Nasrallah/European Pressphoto AgencyA Jordanian military spokesman confirmed the release, but the government appeared to be trying to keep it low key. The police prevented reporters from reaching Ibdir later on Sunday, citing orders from the local governor, who demanded that journalists obtain permission from the Ministry of Interior.Mr. Daqamseh, now in his 40s, emerged from prison with patches of gray hair and sunken eyes. He was defiant and showed no remorse.In his first statement to the news media from his home, he said, There is no country named Israel, adding that any normalization of ties with Israel and the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be resolved by means of a two-state solution were both lies.Some Jordanians continued to see Mr. Daqamseh as a symbol of an anti-normalization movement against the Israeli-Jordanian treaty.The Israeli government and the bereaved families had protested earlier calls in Jordan for Mr. Daqamsehs prison term to be cut short. There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials on Sunday, and relatives who spoke to the news media appeared mostly resigned to his release.I always say that our peace with Jordan is with the royal family, not the people or their parliament, Yisrael Fatihi, whose daughter, Sivan, 13, was killed in the attack, told Ynet, a Hebrew news site.Hezi Cohen, the father of Nirit, 13, another victim, described his familys daily pain. On one hand, he said, Mr. Daqamseh had served his full sentence. On the other, he said, If he had received 20 years for each girl he murdered, he would have rotted in prison for the rest of his life.

World

Dana White Strongly Hints at Stipe vs. Cormier ... for Heavyweight Belt 1/26/2018 TMZSports.com It's pretty obvious Dana White is "working on" Stipe Miocic vs. Daniel Cormier ... even though he won't come out and say it. The UFC honcho did everything short of confirm negotiations on the "TMZ Sports" TV show (airs weeknights on FS1) ... telling the guys he LOVES the idea of a champ vs. champ superfight for the heavyweight title. "Were working on something fun right now ... could be Cormier," Dana said with a smile when we asked him about Stipe's future. Of course, Brock Lesnar and Jon Jones are potential wild cards ... but both are still suspended for doping. So, with no other crazy options on the table ... all signs point to Cormier (the light heavyweight champ) being offered the next shot.

Entertainment

The world is worried about the Delta virus variant. Studies show vaccines are effective against it.Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished July 6, 2021Updated Aug. 25, 2021As the Delta variant sweeps the world, researchers are tracking how well vaccines protect against it and getting different answers.In Britain, researchers reported in May that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had an effectiveness of 88 percent protecting against symptomatic disease from Delta. A June study from Scotland concluded that the vaccine was 79 percent effective against the variant. On Saturday, a team of researchers in Canada pegged its effectiveness at 87 percent.And on Monday, Israels Ministry of Health announced that the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 64 percent against all coronavirus infections, down from about 95 percent in May, before the Delta variant began its climb to near-total dominance in Israel.Although the range of these numbers may seem confusing, vaccine experts say it should be expected, because its hard for a single study to accurately pinpoint the effectiveness of a vaccine.We just have to take everything together as little pieces of a puzzle, and not put too much weight on any one number, said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University.In clinical trials, its (relatively) easy to measure how well vaccines work. Researchers randomly assign thousands of volunteers to get either a vaccine or a placebo. If the vaccinated group has a lower risk of getting sick, scientists can be confident that its the vaccine that protected them.But once vaccines hit the real world, it becomes much harder to measure their effectiveness. Scientists can no longer control who receives a vaccine and who does not. If they compare a group of vaccinated people with a group of unvaccinated people, other differences between the groups could influence their risks of getting sick.Its possible, for example, that people who choose not to get vaccinated may be more likely to put themselves in situations where they could get exposed to the virus. On the other hand, older people may be more likely to be vaccinated but also have a harder time fending off an aggressive variant. Or an outbreak may hit part of a country where most people are vaccinated, leaving under-vaccinated regions unharmed.One way to rule out these alternative explanations is to compare each vaccinated person in a study with a counterpart who did not get the vaccine. Researchers often go to great lengths to find an unvaccinated match, looking for people who are of a similar age and health. They can even match people within the same neighborhood.It takes a huge effort, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Health.For its new study, Israels Ministry of Health did not go to such great lengths to rule out other factors. I am afraid that the current Israeli MoH analysis cannot be used to safely assess it, one way or another, Uri Shalit, a senior lecturer at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, wrote on Twitter.Israels numbers could also be different because of who is getting tested. Much of the country is vaccinated. During local bursts of new infections, the government requires testing for anyone symptoms or not who came into contact with a person diagnosed with Covid-19. In other countries, its more common for people to get tested because theyre already feeling sick. This could mean that Israel is spotting more asymptomatic cases in vaccinated people than other places are, bringing their reported effectiveness rate down.Fortunately, all the studies so far agree that most Covid-19 vaccines are very effective at keeping people out of the hospital and have generally protected against the Delta variant. Israels Ministry of Health estimated that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is about 93 percent effective in preventing serious illness and hospitalization.Their overall implications are consistent: that protection against severe disease remains very high, said Naor Bar-Zeev, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.Because effectiveness studies are so tricky, it will take more work to determine how big a threat Delta poses to vaccines. Dr. Lipsitch said that studies from more countries would be required.If there are five studies with one outcome and one study with another, I think one can conclude that the five are probably more likely to be correct than the one, Dr. Lipsitch said.

science

Sen. Booker, Rep. McGovern Trump's Speech Unified Us In Wanting to Leave the Room!!! 1/31/2018 TMZ.com President Trump was totally successful in bringing both sides of the table together in a burning desire ... to get the hell out of the room Tuesday night ... at least according to 2 members of Congress. We got Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Jim McGovern on Capitol Hill -- shortly after the State of the Union -- and they addressed Trump's plan to deliver a non-divisive speech. Of course, they're both Democrats, so we weren't expecting glowing reviews, but they both found silver linings. Booker's involved NJ state pride, and McGovern actually LOVED one part of Trump's speech -- the end.

Entertainment

The Unappreciated Importance of Cats (to Medical Science)Researchers who work on the genomes of domestic and wild cats say their DNA holds clues to human as well as feline health.Credit...Juarawee Kittisilpa/ReutersPublished July 28, 2021Updated Aug. 23, 2021Leslie Lyons is a specialist in cat genetics. She is also a cat owner and general cat partisan who has been known to tease her colleagues who study dog genetics with the well-worn adage that Cats rule. Dogs drool.That has not been the case with research money and attention to the genetics of disease in cats and dogs, partly because the number of dog breeds offers variety in terms of genetic ailments and perhaps because of a general bias in favor of dogs. But Dr. Lyons, a professor at the University of Missouri, says there are many reasons cats and their diseases are invaluable models for human diseases. She took up the cause of cat science this week in an article in Trends in Genetics.People tend to either love them or hate them, and cats are often underappreciated by the scientific community, she writes. But, she says, in some ways the organization of the cat genome is much like the human genome, and cat genomics could help in the understanding of the vast amount of mammalian DNA that does not constitute genes, and is poorly understood.Among the advances in veterinary medicine that have benefited humans, she pointed out that remdesivir, an important drug in combating Covid, was first successfully used against a cat disease caused by another coronavirus.She is the director of the 99 Lives Cat Genome Sequencing Initiative and as part of that project, she and a group of colleagues, including Wes Warren at the University of Missouri and William Murphy at Texas A&M University, recently produced the most detailed genome of the cat to date, which surpasses the dog genome.For the moment, Dr. Lyons said.I spoke last week with Dr. Lyons, Dr. Warren and Dr. Murphy, who refer to themselves as Team Feline. Dr. Lyons was visiting Texas, and with two of her colleagues she talked about why the genomes of cats are important to medical knowledge.I report on animal science, and over the years, I admitted to the members of Team Feline, I seem to have written more about dogs than cats. The dog-cat rivalry in genomic science is mostly a good-natured rivalry, but just to assess what I was getting myself into I first asked about the scientists nonscientific approach to cats and dogs.The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.First, their personal preferences:Dr. William Murphy: I do have cats and dogs as pets, but I prefer cats.Dr. Wes Warren: Im a dog owner. Unfortunately Im allergic to cats.Dr. Leslie Lyons: He has a very expensive dog that keeps having problems.Why were you moved to write the article promoting the cause of cat science?Dr. Lyons: Throughout my career, Ive been trying to get people to recognize that our everyday pets have the same diseases as us and can really provide important information if we can understand what makes them tick a little bit better, how their genomes are constructed.ImageCredit... Wildscotphotos/AlamyYou have high quality genomes of several species of cats beyond the domestic cat?Dr. Lyons: We already have the lions and tigers, the Asian leopard cat, Geoffroys cat, a half-dozen species with really, really good genomes that are even better than the dog genomes at this point in time.Dr. Murphy: By far. It was actually better quality than the human reference genome until very recently. The goal is to have the complete encyclopedia of the cats DNA, so we can actually fully understand the genetic basis for all traits in the cat.Dr. Lyons: For example the allergy gene that Wes is allergic to. We completely understand that gene now. We can maybe even knock it out of the cat to produce cats that are more hypoallergenic or at least understand what elicits the immune response better.How are cat diseases a good model for human diseases?Dr. Lyons: What were discovering is different species have different health problems. We should really be picking the right species.Dr. Warren: We know that dogs get cancer more frequently, similar to ourselves. Cats dont get cancer very often. And thats a fascinating story of evolution. So are there signals or clues in the genome of the cat that allows us to zero in better on why cats get certain types of cancers and understand the differences among dogs, cats and humans.How about the cats that are subjects of the research?Dr. Lyons: Genomic research is fantastic because all we need is maybe a blood sample. And so once we have the blood sample, we dont have to do experimentation on an animal. Were actually observing what animals already have. Were working with the diseases that are already there.What about wild species?Dr. Murphy: High quality genomes for wild cats can aid in their species survival plans and their recovery in the wild.Dr. Lyons: We see half a dozen health problems in wild felids. We have a study of transitional cell carcinoma in fishing cats, inherited blindness in black-footed cats, polycystic kidney disease in Pallass cats. Snow leopards have terrible eye problems, probably because of inbreeding in zoos. So understanding their genomes can help us to stop those problems in the zoo populations, and that will help humans with the same conditions as well.How about ancient DNA and cats? Theres been a lot of work on that in dogs. How is that progressing in cats?Dr. Lyons: A couple of groups are moving forward with ancient DNA. I worked on some mummy cats and we showed that the mitochondrial DNA types that we found in the mummified cats are present more commonly in Egyptian cats today than they are anywhere else. So the cats of the pharaohs are the cats of present day Egyptians.To switch gears: Ive always been a dog person but Ive been thinking about getting a cat. Any tips?Dr. Lyons: Get two. Theyll be buddies. And give them something to scratch. Otherwise it is going to be your couch.

science

Many beachside hotels along the states Space Coast were already at capacity before Wednesdays scheduled launch, a local tourism executive said.Credit...Charlie Riedel/Associated PressMay 27, 2020NASA has urged spectators to stay away from the Kennedy Space Center for Wednesdays SpaceX launch to limit the spread of the coronavirus. But officials from cities and counties around the launch site, an area known as Floridas Space Coast, are expecting large crowds to gather to watch the countrys first astronaut launch in nine years.The size of the crowds could still be affected by the weather, local officials said. People would be less likely to make the trip if it looked like the forecast might delay the launch. But local news outlets reported launch viewers were already gathering along the beaches and roadways in prime viewing areas on Wednesday morning.Last month, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, asked people to watch the launch from their homes.When we launch to space from the Kennedy Space Center, it draws huge, huge crowds and that is not right now what were trying to do, he said at a news conference.The visitor center at Kennedy, usually a prime spot for spectators, will remain closed to the public. The launch of SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule, carrying two NASA astronauts, Douglas G. Hurley and Robert L. Behnken, is scheduled for 4:33 p.m.But outside Kennedy Space Center, NASA has little control over crowds.Peter Cranis, executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, said he expected a couple hundred thousand people to flock to the beaches and parks, noting that launches in NASAs glory days had drawn as many as half a million spectators. Mr. Cranis said he anticipated that the coronavirus might deter some, but that many would still come to witness the historic launch. More than a dozen beachside hotels each with several thousand rooms reported that they were fully booked before the launch, he said.Judging from the crowds on Memorial Day weekend, I would say that people are ready to get out, Mr. Cranis said. They seem to be very happy to be able to be out.Law enforcement officials did not provide their own projections of expected crowd sizes.Don Walker, the communications director of Brevard County Emergency Management, said that he was also anticipating big crowds on beaches and roadways, and that departmental staff would ask spectators to keep at least six feet of distance. Kennedy Space Center is in Brevard County.Obviously, we cannot be everywhere at once, Mr. Walker said. But where we can and where we see groups in proximity and in violation of C.D.C. recommendations, the plan is to simply remind people to take heed.At a May 1 news conference, Brevard Countys sheriff, Wayne Ivey, encouraged people to come watch the launch in person.We are not going to keep the great Americans that want to come watch that from coming here, Sheriff Ivey said. If NASA is telling people to not come here and watch the launch, thats on them. Im telling people what I believe as an American. And so NASA has got their guidelines, and I got mine.Officer Tod Goodyear, a spokesman for the Brevard County Sheriffs Office, said that concerns about the coronavirus prompted the department to seek law enforcement officers from several jurisdictions to be on the ground to help monitor crowds.Officer Goodyear said he expected some people would wear masks and most would be mindful of keeping distance. The sheriffs office will also be distributing up to 20,000 masks to those who request them.With around 400 recorded cases, Brevard County hasnt been hit hard by the virus. And since Gov. Ron DeSantis began reopening the state on May 4, Officer Goodyear said he had noticed more people out and about.Ben Malik, the mayor of Cocoa Beach, about a 40-minute drive south from the space center, said he was expecting several thousand people to visit its beach, which is about six miles long.Its physically impossible to manage, Mr. Malik said. We dont have the police resources to go out there and keep everyone apart. The best we can do is try to manage the traffic and crowd control.Lt. Kim Montes, a spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol in Orlando, said the agency was focused on monitoring traffic and making sure people wouldnt stop their cars on bridges. In addition to the couple dozen officers normally on duty, an additional 30 troopers from other parts of the state will assist during the day, she said.With the pandemic, we really dont know what kinds of crowds we are going to have, Lieutenant Montes said. The weather is going to play a lot into it. Are people going to stay home? Is it going to rain?

Health

Politics|Republicans Misplace Blame for Splitting Families at the Borderhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/us/politics/fact-check-republicans-family-separations-border.htmlFact Check of the DayThe White House and prominent Republicans in Congress cited a 1997 court settlement to justify separating migrant children from parents who illegally enter the United States. But the settlement did not require the government to break up families, and the practice has spurred protests against the Trump administration, a rebuke from the United Nations and a court challenge.June 14, 2018what was said The separation of illegal alien families is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close. And these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade. The president is simply enforcing them. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, to reporters on Thursday.Whats happening at the border in the separation of parents and their children is because of a court ruling. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, at a news conference on Thursday.I want 2 stop the separation of families at the border by repealing the Flores 1997 court decision requiring separation of families + give DOJ the tools it needs 2 quickly resolve cases ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) June 14, 2018 the factsThis is misleading.Hundreds of migrant children have been separated from their parents at the border since October, but there is no decades-old law or court decision that requires this. Ms. Sanders, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Grassley are referring to a class-action lawsuit that was initially brought against the Reagan administration, as Flores v. Meese, and settled under the Clinton administration in 1997, as Flores v. Reno.The Flores settlement required immigration officials to place each detained minor in the least restrictive setting appropriate for example, providing food, water and toilets. The government also agreed to release immigrant children without unnecessary delay under an established preference ranking for custody. After a surge of families from Central America began arriving at the United States southwestern border in 2014, the Obama administration opened family detention centers. That prompted more lawsuits, which argued that doing so had breached the Flores settlement by not releasing children swiftly. In 2016, the Ninth Circuit of Appeals ruled that the Flores settlement unambiguously applies both to minors who are accompanied and unaccompanied by their parents. It also overturned a Federal District Courts decision that the government must also release the parents. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy in April, stating that our goal is to prosecute every case that is brought to us thus leading to the detention of migrant parents. In other words, without the Trump administrations new enforcement policy, the Flores settlement and subsequent rulings clarifying its scope alone would not have caused family separation at the border. As The New York Times reported last month:Spurred on by the president, Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month announced a zero tolerance policy in which people who cross the border illegally are to be subject to criminal prosecution. On Tuesday, the administration officials argued that the two directives, taken together, essentially left them with no option other than to take children from their parents at the border.Under Flores, the government has three options: releasing families together, passing a law that would allow for family detention or breaking up the families. The Trump administration has so far chosen the third option. Source: Flores settlement text, Ninth Circuit of Appeals, The New York Times, Congressional Research Service, office of Representative Paul D. Ryan

Politics

Fact check of the dayOn Monday, President Trump again took to Twitter to promote what he called his accomplishments in office so far on immigration, the economy and North Korea.June 4, 2018The White House also released a fact sheet touting the arrest of 110,568 undocumented immigrants from Jan. 20, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2017 a 42 percent increase from the same period in 2016. It said 92 percent of the immigrants had either already been convicted of a crime, faced pending charges, were considered a fugitive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or were about to be deported from the United States. The facts TrueData on the ICE website show that there was a total 143,470 overall immigration arrests in the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2017. ICE called it the highest number of administrative arrests over the past three fiscal years, and confirmed the White House number for arrests under Mr. Trump.The ICE data also confirmed the 92 percent figure cited by the White House and reported 77,806 arrests between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30 in 2016 indeed, 42 percent fewer than during the same period in 2017. ICE also removed 61,094 undocumented immigrants from the United States between Jan. 20, 2017, and Sept. 30, 2017. During that same period in 2016, the agency reported removing 44,512 immigrants.What was saidNearly 3 million jobs have been created since President Trump took office. President Donald J. Trumps 500 days of American Greatness, issued by the White House, June 4.Under President Trump, the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8, the lowest rate since April 2000. President Donald J. Trumps 500 days of American Greatness, issued by the White House, June 4.African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates have hit record lows. President Donald J. Trumps 500 days of Strengthening the American Economy, issued by the White House, June 4. The factsThis needs context.Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8 percent, its lowest level since the dot-com boom in early 2000, and about three million jobs have been added since he took office. But those trends had been underway long before the Trump administration.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.1 million jobs were added to the economy in 2017. It was the seventh consecutive year that two million or more jobs were added meaning that the turnaround began on President Barack Obamas watch.Mays increase of 223,000 jobs, which reflected healthy gains across industries, was the 92nd consecutive month of job creation.In May, unemployment among African-Americans did hit a record low falling to 5.9 percent from 6.6 percent in April but the Labor Department has been breaking out unemployment by race only since 1972. And the unemployment rate for black citizens has been on a steady decline since about 2011.What was saidUnder President Trump, the United States has led an unprecedented global campaign to achieve the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. President Donald J. Trumps 500 days of American Greatness, issued by the White House, June 4.The factsThis needs context.Since Mr. Trump took office, his relationship with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has been fraught. Last year was marked by chilling threats of nuclear war, giving way to a diplomatic opening that is expected to include a historic summit meeting between the two leaders next week. Mr. Trump has already called off the meeting once, only to turn it back on days later. As of Monday, the June 12 meeting set for Singapore was still on. In March, it seemed that Mr. Kim was open to ending his nuclear weapons program, and in May, North Korea released three American prisoners, a promising gesture. But with the pendulum swiftly swinging, the White Houses statement could be seen as premature. Experts have said that nuclear disarmament could take 15 years.

Politics

Morgan Freeman at SAG Awards Calls Out Front Row Chatterbox In Lifetime Achievement Speech 1/21/2018 TNT Morgan Freeman awkwardly called someone out during his Lifetime Achievement award speech at the SAG Awards Sunday ... but the person's identity remains a mystery. Freeman was just about to launch into his acceptance speech when he stopped and zeroed in on someone in the front row, who appeared to be talking and distracting him. The legendary actor didn't let it go -- if anything, he dragged it out by saying ... "Hey ... I'm talking to you. Yeah, hey." He finally finished with ... "Okay, well you just stand out to me. That's all" before continuing with the rest of his speech. We're digging to identify the culprit, but lesson learned to whomever that was ... don't interrupt Morgan Freeman!!

Entertainment

DealBook|Aveva and Schneider Electric Terminate Plans for Complex Dealhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/aveva-schneider-deal-merger.htmlDec. 15, 2015LONDON The British engineering company Aveva Group said on Tuesday that it had walked away from a complex deal with Schneider Electric that would have seen the French industrial group take a majority stake in the company.Aveva said that the discussions were terminated by mutual consent and that neither party would pay a breakup fee.During the due diligence process, significant integration challenges were identified that could not be overcome without considerable additional risk and cost, Aveva said in a news release. This was exacerbated by the highly complex structure of the proposed transaction. As a result, the board has determined that the anticipated uplift in shareholder value was unlikely to have been realized to the extent previously considered.Avevas share price declined nearly 36 percent in early trading in London on Tuesday after the announcement.In July, the companies said that they had reached a nonbinding agreement in which Aveva would receive Schneiders industrial software business and 550 million pounds, or about $834 million at current exchange rates, in cash.Schneider Electric would then have received a 53.5 percent stake in Aveva. The transaction would have been classified as a so-called reverse merger under British takeover rules.Aveva, based in Cambridge, England, provides engineering software to the manufacturing, power and marine sectors.The company posted revenue of 208.7 million for the 2014-15 financial year that ended in March.

Business

Feb. 5, 2014SEATTLE The last time Bill Gates played an active role at Microsoft, as chief software architect, he witnessed the company muffing its earliest efforts to become a major player in search, smartphones and tablet computers. In the six years since then, he has watched as the technology industry changed without him. The personal computer era that Microsoft so ably dominated during and after Mr. Gatess heyday as Microsofts chief executive has started to fade away. Now, the focus is on social media and mobile devices that run in large part on cloud computing. And what technologies has Mr. Gates, who turned to philanthropy, been most vocal about during all that change? Things like self-contained toilets and vaccines. I am a little obsessed with fertilizer, reads the first sentence of a column he wrote for a recent issue of Wired, the technology magazine. Still, on Tuesday, Microsoft said that Mr. Gates was returning to the company as a product and technology adviser to Satya Nadella, the companys new chief executive. And that raised obvious questions about how helpful Mr. Gates, 58, can be to Microsoft in a new generation of technology.ImageCredit...Gary Stewart/Associated PressAt least one thing is clear: Although Mr. Gates has spent most of his time for the last several years working on his charitable foundation, trying to eradicate polio and reduce hunger, he has not lost his passion for technology. Four to six times a year, said a person close to him, Mr. Gates has received briefings on technology from Microsoft managers at his private offices in Kirkland, Wash., not far from Microsofts headquarters. These demo days, as they are called, typically last from four hours to half a day and feature products from Microsoft and its competitors, said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his relationship with Mr. Gates. The demos are in addition to the regular briefings Mr. Gates has received about Microsoft technology since he began devoting full-time energy toward his philanthropy. These shorter sessions include Microsoft product teams and researchers, whom he quizzes about their technology choices. He has also remained close to venture capitalists and is up to speed on early-stage investment trends in technology. Still, it is difficult to tell whether Mr. Gatess thinking about the mission of Microsoft has changed with a little distance. During his time as chief executive, much of the companys actions were motivated by an overarching impulse to protect Windows, its PC operating system and the root of its biggest profits. The company spent years in court battling antitrust suits over its efforts to squelch competitive products using Windows. Inside the company, the strong protection of Windows sometimes hurt the development of new technologies, and it also weakened the companys influence among outside developers who have shifted their energies to other devices and forms of programming. After 2000, when Steven A. Ballmer took over as chief executive and Mr. Gates became chief software architect he remained chairman, too, until Tuesday Microsoft missed more opportunities. It didnt appreciate early enough the big investments required to make a search engine competitive with Google, and it discounted a big shift in smartphones heralded by the first iPhone. One of the last big products Mr. Gates worked on closely, Windows Vista, was scorned by critics for early technical problems. It is unclear whether Mr. Gates and Mr. Nadella are prepared to unshackle Microsoft from its Windows past. One possibility, suggested in a research report on Tuesday, would be to more aggressively develop mobile versions of the companys Office software, without favoring Windows. Microsoft has already said it is developing a version of Office for the iPad, though it hasnt announced a release date. We think it is a positive from a product perspective to have Mr. Gates help think through the repositioning of the business, recognizing the PC is no longer the driver of growth and there is a need to rethink the strategic direction of the business with an open mind for change, Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Securities, wrote in the research report.As Microsoft describes it, Mr. Gates will be involved in any rethinking of strategy while under Mr. Nadella. And that, some former Microsoft employees say, is where he is at his best.Unlike almost anyone Ive ever met, Bill has the ability to quickly wrap his head around an extremely complex landscape that will include much more than just product features, Gary Flake, a former Microsoft researcher, wrote in an email. And Mr. Flake said that Mr. Gatess extensive world travels over the last six years and a little distance from the company could help him bring a new perspective.I expect that any tunnel vision that he may have had prior to leaving full-time status is now completely replaced with a new appreciation for how others view the world and what is really important to them, Mr. Flake wrote.

Tech

A proposal to give scientists access to huge data sets and powerful computers.Credit...Peter DaSilva/The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesJune 30, 2020Leading universities and major technology companies agreed on Tuesday to back a new project intended to give academics and other scientists access to the computing resources now available mainly to a few tech giants.The initiative, the National Research Cloud, has received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Lawmakers in both houses have proposed bills that would create a task force of government science leaders, academics and industry representatives to outline a plan to create and fund a national research cloud.This program would give academic scientists access to the cloud data centers of the tech giants, and to public data sets for research.Several universities, including Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ohio State, and tech companies including Google, Amazon and IBM backed the idea as well on Tuesday. The organizations declared their support for the creation of a research cloud and their willingness to participate in the project.The research cloud, though a conceptual blueprint at this stage, is another sign of the largely effective campaign by universities and tech companies to persuade the American government to increase government backing for research into artificial intelligence. The Trump administration, while cutting research elsewhere, has proposed doubling federal spending on A.I. research by 2022.Fueling the increased government backing is the recognition that A.I. technology is essential to national security and economic competitiveness. The national cloud legislation will be proposed as an amendment to this years defense budget authorization.We have a real challenge in our country from China in terms of what they are doing with A.I., said Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, a sponsor of the bill.Funding for the project, the terms for paying the cloud providers and what data might be available would be up to the task force and Congress.This is a logical first step, said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, another sponsor of the proposed law. The task force is going to have to grapple with how you pay for it and how you govern it. But you shouldnt have to work at Google to have access to this technology.The national research cloud would address a problem that is a byproduct of impressive progress in recent years. The striking gains made in tasks like language understanding, computer vision, game playing and common-sense reasoning have been attained thanks to a branch of A.I. called deep learning.That technology increasingly requires immense computing firepower. A report last year from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, working with data from OpenAI, another artificial intelligence lab, observed that the volume of calculations needed to be a leader in advanced A.I. had soared an estimated 300,000 times in the previous six years. The cost of training deep learning models, cycling endlessly through troves of data, can be millions of dollars.The cost and need for vast computing resources are putting some cutting-edge A.I. research beyond the reach of academics. Only the tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft can spend billions a year on data centers that are often the size of a football field, housing rack upon rack with hundreds of thousands of computers.So there has been a brain drain of computer scientists from universities to the big tech companies, lured by access to their cloud data centers as well as lucrative pay packages. The worry is that academic research the seed corn of future breakthroughs is being shortchanged.Academic work can be crucial particularly in areas where profits are not on the immediate horizon. That was the story with deep learning, which dates to the 1980s. A small band of academics nurtured the field for years. Only since 2012, with enough computing power and data, did deep learning really take off.There have been smaller efforts for university research to tap into the big tech clouds. But the current concept of an ambitious public-private partnership for a National Research Cloud came in March from John Etchemendy and Fei-Fei Li, co-directors of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.They posted their idea online and sought support from other universities. The academics then promoted the idea to their political representatives and industry contacts.The federal government has long backed major research projects like particle accelerators for high-energy physics in the 1960s and supercomputing centers in the 1980s.But in the past, the government built the labs and facilities. The research cloud would use the cloud factories of the tech companies. Academic scientists would be government-subsidized customers of the tech giants, perhaps at rates below those charged to their business customers.Many university researchers say that buying rather than building is the only sensible path, given the daunting cost of hyper-scale data centers.We need to get scientific research on the public cloud, said Ed Lazowska, a professor at the University of Washington. We have to hitch ourselves to that wagon. Its the only way to keep up.

Tech

A Judge Declared Californias Gig Worker Law Unconstitutional. Now What?The law, the result of a $200 million proposition fight last year, ensures that workers like Uber and Lyft drivers are considered independent contractors.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAug. 23, 2021Emboldened by a California election victory that maintained the independence of their drivers last year, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft have in recent months accelerated a push for what they call a third way of working, a classification of independent gig workers who receive limited benefits without gaining employee status.But that plan was upended on Friday evening by a California judge who ruled that the ballot initiative backed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other so-called gig economy companies violated the states Constitution. It was a potential setback for the companies and a victory for labor organizers and drivers who argue they are being treated unfairly.Here is an explanation of this long-simmering fight and what happens next:Wasnt this issue settled in California?Uber and Lyft have long said their drivers are independent contractors, which allows the companies to avoid the expense of health insurance, unemployment insurance, sick leave and other employment benefits.Some state legislatures, federal officials and legal experts, however, have maintained that drivers are employees under the law, and that Uber and other gig companies owe them the full protections that come with employment.In 2019, California legislators passed a law requiring companies like Uber to employ their drivers. The state attorney general sued Uber and Lyft to enforce the law, and the companies responded by threatening to leave the state.Uber, Lyft and DoorDash poured more than $200 million into a ballot measure, known as Proposition 22, that would allow drivers to remain independent contractors, while companies offered them limited benefits. Prop. 22 was approved in November with about 59 percent of the vote.A coalition of ride-hail drivers and labor groups sued in January, arguing that Prop. 22 is unconstitutional. A month later, the California Supreme Court declined to hear the case, seemingly putting an end to the challenge. But the group refiled its petition in a lower court, leading to last weeks ruling.Why did the judge find Prop. 22 unconstitutional?The decision by Judge Frank Roesch of California Superior Court in Alameda County had three main findings.The first was that Prop. 22 carved gig workers out of the pool of employees eligible for workers compensation in the event of an injury or other workplace incident. But the State Legislature has a right under Californias Constitution to set and control workers compensation.Judge Roesch wrote in his decision that Prop. 22 limits the power of a future legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers compensation law and is therefore unconstitutional.Second, Prop. 22 included several unusual provisions designed to prevent the Legislature from making significant changes to the law.The measure requires the Legislature to reach a seven-eighths majority to make any changes to the law, a supermajority that is considered unattainable. It also requires that any changes be consistent with Prop. 22, blocking the Legislature from drastically altering or reversing the law.If the independent status of drivers was changed, the rest of Prop. 22 would be invalid as well. So if the drivers were declared employees, Uber and Lyft could back away from the higher wages, private accident insurance and other benefits offered under Prop. 22.Because the workers compensation issue could not be separated from the rest of Prop. 22, Judge Roesch wrote that the entirety of Proposition 22 could not be enforced.Finally, the judge also took issue with a clause in Prop. 22 that prevents gig workers from unionizing. Prop. 22 said any future law that gave an organization the right to collectively bargain for drivers benefits, compensation or working conditions would be considered an amendment and would be subject to the seven-eighths majority rule. Judge Roesch found that provision to be unconstitutional because a collective bargaining law ought to be considered unrelated legislation.Who intervened to block Prop. 22?Three ride-hail drivers and one rider are involved in the lawsuit, along with the Service Employees International Union.Were going to keep putting a spotlight on how gig corporations are putting their profits before their workers, Michael Robinson, a Lyft driver from Loma Linda, Calif., said in a news conference on Monday.Who is on the other side of the courtroom?Although the lawsuit focuses on how app-based companies treat their workers, the coalition of drivers and labor groups is suing the State of California and the Department of Industrial Relations, which administers workers compensation.The California attorney generals office is now defending Prop. 22 an awkward turn of events, since the attorney general sued Uber and Lyft before Prop. 22 was approved in an attempt to force the companies to employ their drivers.The gig economy companies can still weigh in. Their coalition, Protect App-Based Drivers and Services, is a respondent in the lawsuit and has said it plans to file an appeal.This outrageous decision is an affront to the overwhelming majority of California voters who passed Prop. 22, said Geoff Vetter, a spokesman for the coalition. We will file an immediate appeal and are confident the Appellate Court will uphold Prop. 22.Whats next?Californias attorney general or Protect App-Based Drivers and Services can file an appeal to overturn Judge Roeschs decision. Even an expedited appeal could take several months.For now, gig economy companies might be required to begin paying into workers compensation funds but the companies argue that nothing will change until the appeal is resolved. They also said they had no immediate plans to change how drivers were classified. All of the provisions of Prop. 22 will stay in place until the appeals process is completed, Mr. Vetter said.Stacey Leyton, the lawyer for the drivers, disagreed. The Superior Court declared Prop. 22 invalid, and drivers ought to be considered employees immediately, she said.The California fight is starting to be repeated in other states. In August, the companies filed for a similar ballot push in Massachusetts, where gig worker treatment is already facing close scrutiny.The S.E.I.U. and other labor activists vowed to keep up their fight and plan to help drivers organizing and activist efforts.Well continue to support their actions for their demand for basic rights that are afforded to them under current law, reaffirmed to them on Friday, said Alma Hernndez, the executive director for S.E.I.U. California.

Tech

Out ThereCredit...NASA/JPL-CaltechJune 19, 2017MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Are we still alone?Setting the stage for the next chapter in the quest to end cosmic loneliness, astronomers released a list on Monday of 4,034 objects they are 90 percent sure are planets orbiting other stars.The new list is the final and most reliable result of a four-year cosmic census of a tiny region of the Milky Way by NASAs Kepler spacecraft.The search for planets is the search for life, said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler mission scientist from NASAs Ames Research Center. These results will form the basis for future searches for life.Extrapolated from one small patch to the entire sky, the data will help NASA design a space telescope for the 2030s or thereabouts, big and powerful enough to discern the images of planets around other stars.The catalog the eighth in the endeavor was released at a meeting of exoplanet astronomers here at the Ames Research Center that represents a last hurrah for the survey mission, which will end on Sept. 30. The space telescope itself is doing fine, and it has embarked on a new program of short-term searches called K2.Among other things, Dr. Batalha said, for the first time there is at least one planet, known as KOI 7711 (for Kepler Object of Interest), that almost matches the Earth, at only 30 percent wider and with an orbit of almost exactly one year.In all, there are 219 new planet candidates in the catalog. Ten of them, moreover, are in the habitable zones of their stars, the so-called Goldilocks realm, where the heat from their stars is neither too cold nor too hot for liquid water.ImageCredit...NASA/Ames, via Caltech, via University of Hawaii (B. J. FultonThey are fascinating, but Keplers mission is not to pinpoint the next tourist destination it is to find out on average how far away such places are. Or, as Dr. Batalha said, Were not stamp collecting, were doing statistics.Another result reported on Monday deepened a mystery about how nature goes about making planets. Over the years, Kepler has discovered that nature likes to make small planets, but it makes them in two ways: rocky, like Earth, and gaseous, like Neptune.A new study, led by Benjamin Fulton of the California Institute of Technology, of 1,305 stars and 2,025 planets that orbit them has found a curious gap in the planet population that seems to mark the boundary between rocky planets, which can be up to one and a half times the size of the Earth, (sometimes called super-Earths) and gaseous planets, so-called mini-Neptunes, which are more than about twice the size of Earth. (Neptune itself is four times the diameter and 17 times the mass of Earth.)Andrew Howard, a Caltech professor who worked with Mr. Fulton, compared this splitting of small planets into two populations to discovering a major branch point in the tree of life.All planets seem to start out with about the same amount of rock in their cores, he said. How much gas mostly hydrogen and helium from the primordial cloud that birthed us adheres to them makes all the difference. While the Earth, which has hardly any atmosphere at all by weight, is a pleasant place, the pressure on a world with just a little more gas would be toxic.It doesnt take much gas to puff up a planet, Mr. Fulton said. This has significance in the search for life.Presumably, Mr. Fulton said, the planets that are rocky now, like Earth, had their gassy envelopes stripped away or evaporated by radiation from their stars. But nobody really knows how it works. Adding to the mystery is that our own solar system has no example of a mini-Neptune, and yet they are prevalent in alien planet systems.ImageCredit...Ball AerospaceIn 1984, William Borucki, a NASA physicist and expert on photometry, or measuring light intensity, and a colleague, the late David Koch, had a pretty simple idea: If a distant star blinked or dimmed periodically, it might mean there was a planet going around it. All you had to do was watch, very precisely and steadily.At the time, nobody knew if any other stars besides the sun harbored planets. NASA turned down Mr. Borucki and Dr. Koch five times before the experiment was finally approved in 2001.Kepler was launched into an orbit around the sun on March 6, 2009, with a simple mission: to stare at some 160,000 stars in a patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus. If any of those stars dimmed periodically, the size of the dip in light could tell you how big the planet passing in front of it was. The length of time between blinks would tell you how many days long its year was.In the case of the Earth as seen from space, the amount of dimmed light would be about 0.008 percent of the suns light about as much as a few fleas crossing a car headlight once a year. Kepler can detect the equivalent of one flea in the headlight. Since the rules of engagement required three transits to verify a planet, that meant it would take that many years on average to discover an exact analog of our own home: Earth 2.0, it was sometimes called.At the time Kepler was launched, more than 300 exoplanets, planets outside our solar system, had been found, mostly by examining stars one by one to see if they showed signs of being perturbed wobbled by the gravitational pull of a planet or planets.Those on the Kepler team did not know what they were going to find. Dr. Batalha recalled that they had argued about how to construct their catalog of interesting objects whether it would only be able to go to 1,000 or 10,000. In the end, they almost ran out of room on the list, Dr. Batalha recalled, which wound up running to 9,000.In its first few months of observations, Kepler almost immediately doubled the number of known or suspected exoplanets. The tally kept climbing, to 1,200 by February 2011 and to more than 4,700 a year ago.Unfortunately, Kepler also discovered that stars are more jittery than astronomers had expected, complicating the problem of discerning planet transits from random fluctuations in the stars. This volatility, or noise, made it especially hard for Keplers crew members to see what they most wanted to see small rocky planets with years as long as the Earths.Citing this interference, Dr. Batalha and her team a received an extension of Keplers original mission in 2013, but shortly thereafter one of the reaction wheels that kept the spacecraft pointed failed, ending its ability to keep staring at the same 160,000 stars.We had to live with what we got, Dr. Batalha said.The final catalog, compiled by Susan Thompson of the SETI Institute, is slightly smaller than the list from a year ago, thanks to a new algorithm known as Robovetter that automatically corrects the Kepler data for the effects of the extra noise. The result is guaranteed to be 90 percent accurate.With this catalog, we are turning from individual planets to trying to understand the demographics of these worlds, which are similar to Earth, Dr. Thompson said.About four years ago, Erik Petigura, now at Caltech, extrapolated boldly from the Kepler data and estimated that about a fifth of the sunlike stars in the galaxy had habitable planets. About one in four of the smaller stars, known as red dwarfs, also harbor rocky habitable-zone planets, said Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at Caltech.The data suggested that there could be billions of Earth-size planets in the Milky Way basking in lukewarm conditions suitable for liquid water, and so perhaps life as we think we know it.The Kepler team will refine those estimates with their new data.In the meantime the baton is being passed to a new satellite, TESS, for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, led by George Ricker of M.I.T., to be launched next year. It will use the same technique as Kepler to look at broad areas of the sky, searching for planets around the brightest and nearest stars.The James Webb Space Telescope, which can be used to investigate the atmospheres of some of these planets, will also be launched next year.These missions will help us answer questions mankind has asked since the dawn of civilization, Mr. Borucki said. Where did we come from? Are we alone?

science

Eddie Van Halen Sues Videographer Over Old Footage You Really Got Me ... Mad!!! 1/26/2018 Eddie Van Halen ain't talkin' 'bout love, but he is talkin' 'bout a videographer who's allegedly trying to make a quick buck by selling old band footage ... according to a new suit. The Van Halen guitarist claims he invited videographer, Andrew Bennett, to film music rehearsals with his son, Wolfgang, and his bro, Alex Van Halen, back around 2006 with the purpose of using the footage for a DVD or video project. Eddie claims he didn't like the footage and scrapped it ... but Bennett threatened to release it years later and claimed he never got paid. According to the docs ... Eddie says they settled the matter in 2015, and Eddie got the rights to the footage after the settlement. However, Eddie claims Andrew's back at it and is now trying to sell the old footage ... and even released a trailer for it on his website, 5150vault.com. According to the docs ... Van Halen got the site suspended for copyright infringement, but Bennett launched another one with a similar name and is currently linking to a preview video of the music rehearsals. Eddie's now asking a judge to step in and order the removal of the video, keeping Bennett from releasing or selling footage, and damages.

Entertainment

Credit...Henry Romero/ReutersJune 12, 2017The remains of a major Aztec temple are coming to light in downtown Mexico City, on a nondescript side street just behind a colonial-era Roman Catholic cathedral and on the grounds of a 1950s-era hotel.The site is near the Templo Mayor, another massive Aztec ruin. The excavations, begun in 2009, reveal a section of what was the foundation of a huge circular temple dedicated to the Aztec wind god Ehecatl and a part of a ritual ball court.Archaeologists have also found 32 severed male neck vertebrae in a pile just off the court probably sacrifices linked to the Aztec ballgame.Some of the original white stucco remains visible on parts of the temple, built during the 1486-1502 reign of the Aztec emperor Ahuizotl.

science

Health|Starting next year, some immunocompromised people may receive a fourth Covid vaccine dose, the C.D.C. says.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/health/cdc-vaccine-fourth-dose-immunocompromised.htmlStarting next year, some immunocompromised people may receive a fourth Covid vaccine dose, the C.D.C. says.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesOct. 27, 2021Some American adults with weakened immune systems who received a third dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna coronavirus vaccine authorized just for them will become eligible for a fourth shot as a booster next year, according to updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In such situations, people who are moderately and severely immunocompromised may receive a total of four vaccine doses, with the fourth coming at least six months after the third, the C.D.C.s guidelines said.In August, federal regulators cleared a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for some immunocompromised recipients of those vaccines, instructing them to get it at least 28 days after their second shot. Federal agencies said that studies have shown that those people may not be adequately protected by just two shots.The earliest that immunocompromised people who received that third mRNA vaccine shot can get a fourth shot as a booster would be February. The agency said that people could select that booster from any of the three coronavirus vaccines available in the United States.The C.D.C. also recommends that moderately and severely immunocompromised adults who received Johnson & Johnsons one-dose vaccine get another dose of any one of the three vaccine brands, at least two months after their initial shot.The agency updated its guidelines on Monday, adding the possibility of a booster dose for many immunocompromised people, including those undergoing chemotherapy, recovering from a solid organ transplant or facing certain other medical issues, like infection with H.I.V.The new recommendations also specified that a fourth dose of Modernas vaccine should be half the size of a normal dose.Many health officials and experts in the United States and other countries have made a distinction between additional shots for immunocompromised people, who may not have mounted a strong immune response after their initial doses, and broader booster programs intended to shore up other peoples immunity, which can wane against infection naturally over time.The World Health Organization has supported additional doses for people with weakened immune systems while calling for a global moratorium until the end of the year on booster programs for otherwise healthy people, so that more doses can be allocated to lower-income countries with low rates of vaccination.The call for a moratorium has not stopped countries like Israel, the United States and Germany from moving ahead with booster programs.

Health

Credit...Gabriella Demczuk/The New York TimesMarch 1, 2017The nations largest patient advocacy groups are on the front lines of some of the biggest health care debates, from the soaring costs of prescription drugs to whether new medicines are being approved quickly enough.But while their voices carry weight because they represent the interests of sick patients, a new study has found that more than 80 percent of them accept funding from drug and medical-device companies. For some groups, the donations from industry accounted for more than half of their annual income, and in nearly 40 percent of cases, industry executives sit on governing boards, according to the study, which is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.Nearly nine out of every 10 are taking money, said Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the authors of the study, which looked at the top 104 nonprofit patient advocacy groups that reported more than $7.5 million in annual revenues for 2014. I think that is not well known I think that is a shock.Dr. Emanuel, who previously advised President Obama on health care, said patient groups were far less transparent about conflicts of interest than medical researchers, who are now pushed to disclose ties to the drug and device industries when they write articles and make public appearances.Compared to what researchers are doing, this is pathetic, he said. And yet they wrap themselves in white as if theyre pure.Patient groups said they have taken steps in recent years to improve their financial disclosures and conflict-of-interest policies, and rejected the suggestion that they were influenced by their corporate donors.Patient advocacy organizations are driven by their missions putting patients first, said Marc M. Boutin, the chief executive of the National Health Council, an umbrella group for patient-advocacy groups. To say otherwise negates the extraordinary work achieved by these organizations on behalf of their patients. The health council had previously said that pharmaceutical companies accounted for 62 percent of the councils $3.5 million budget in 2015.The study also found a wide disparity in how the groups disclose the donations, making it difficult for members of the public to know how significant the industry funding is. The study authors gathered their data by examining the websites of the nonprofit groups, as well as their tax filings and annual reports from 2014.The researchers pointed to the National Hemophilia Foundation as one group that is vague about its funding because, although it lists corporate donors, it only discloses donation ranges. Drug makers contributed a range from $8.5 million to $14 million of the groups $16.8 million annual budget in 2014, the year researchers studied. Its top donors, Baxter, Biogen and Novo Nordisk, make products used by people with hemophilia; each donated between $2 million and $3 million, the researchers said.The American Diabetes Association, by contrast, reported receiving more than $28 million in industry funding in 2014, or about 15 percent of its budget, but provided detailed disclosures of which companies donated, and how much, the study authors said.In a statement, the hemophilia foundation said it never allows its corporate sponsors to influence its decision-making, and that it also does not endorse specific products or favor certain companies. It declined to provide precise dollar amounts of contributions from companies, saying that the foundation complied with accepted financial reporting standards.The studys authors said transparency could be improved by requiring the drug and device industries to report how much they donate to patient groups, much like they are already required to do with doctors.That was applauded by other critics of the drug industry. I think sunshine is an excellent disinfectant, said David Mitchell, the founder of a new group, Patients for Affordable Drugs, that seeks to lower drug prices, and does not take funding from industry groups. He was not involved in the study.Mr. Mitchell said patient groups often do not disclose that they take industry funds when they testify before Congress or government agencies, or when they disseminate educational information to patients.Many have also been silent on the issue of rising drug prices, even as the issue has enraged patients, who have been increasingly exposed to the prices that pharmaceutical companies set as insurers have asked them to pay a greater share of their drug costs. Last summer, patients and their families loudly protested the skyrocketing price of EpiPens, though the movement gathered steam on social media rather than through traditional patient-advocacy groups.And a year ago, for example, a representative for the National Psoriasis Foundation did not disclose that her group receives at least 40 percent of its annual revenues from drug companies when she testified before the North Carolina state legislature on an unsuccessful measure supported by the pharmaceutical industry that would have limited insurers ability to block coverage of certain drugs. Similarly, the hemophilia foundation did not disclose its pharmaceutical ties when it took the industrys side in 2015 in a letter to the Food and Drug Administration over the issue of biosimilars, which are cheaper alternatives to complex biological drugs.In the absence of disclosure, Mr. Mitchell said, those policy makers or patients are unable to make informed judgments about the motives of the information being given, and the credibility of the information.Randy Beranek, president and chief executive of the psoriasis foundation, said he did not see a conflict of interest because both the foundation and pharmaceutical companies are seeking to help serve patients.Our interests all intersect at some point, and thats at the patient, he said.In the case of the North Carolina proposal, Mr. Beranek acknowledged that his group sides with the drug industry on some issues but said, its a coincidence that its an important policy issue to them, but to us, its in the patient interest.Holly Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade organization, said its members did not expect patient groups to agree with them on every issue. We work with many organizations with which we have disagreements on public policy issues, including on prescription medicine costs, but believe engagement and dialogue are critical, she said.

Health

Business BriefingDec. 11, 2015Greg Creed, the chief executive of Yum Brands, told investors that he thought the conglomerates struggling Pizza Hut unit should worry less about making better food and worry more about making its food easier to buy. He said inspiration came not from Pizza Huts rivals but from the ride-hailing service Uber. Its easy to use, its easy to pay, its very easy to track, Mr. Creed said on Thursday. He added that there was a time when the way to beat the competition was to have a better product, but now he believes that convenience trumps quality, and that nothing beats making better easy. Mr. Creed said that insight easy beats better will also help Yum energize its other fast-food chains, KFC and Taco Bell. That means shaving time off drive-through waits, and moving into areas like delivery and mobile ordering. With Pizza Hut in particular, Yum notes the chains sales have flagged even as it is cited as a favorite among consumers. One problem, company officials said, is that Pizza Hut generally takes longer to deliver. Sales at established locations last year fell 3 percent, after a 2 percent drop in 2013.

Business

The Justice Departments antitrust case points to restrictive contracts, a focus that a professor said is as old as the Sherman Act.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesOct. 20, 2020Two weeks ago, House lawmakers concluded a 16-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook and called for sweeping changes to curb their market power. The lawmakers verdict: Traditional antitrust laws arent up to the challenge, and the laws need their biggest overhaul in more than 40 years.But the Justice Department, after its own 16-month investigation, filed a major suit against Google on Tuesday relying on those very same antitrust laws. And according to the agency, the laws are more than enough to successfully challenge Googles monopoly behavior.Thats because under existing antitrust laws, a company is a violator if it has used restrictive contracts to protect its dominant position, undermining competition and thus harming consumers. The Justice Department, in constructing its case against Google, followed those requirements to the letter.Its suit, which was joined by 11 states, accuses Alphabets Google of cutting a series of exclusive deals with Apple and other partners that thwarted competition in the markets for search and search advertising. That stifling of competition, the suit says, ultimately leads to consumer harm by giving people fewer choices.The case looks narrow but fairly strong, said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The focus on restrictive contracts by a dominant company is as old as the Sherman Act, which is the bedrock antitrust law of 1890.Google, in a statement, called the government action a deeply flawed lawsuit that will do nothing to help consumers.Whether antitrust laws need modernizing and whether the Justice Department can win its case against Google with existing laws are not mutually exclusive matters. Both are expected to proceed along parallel tracks. The House lawmakers recommended changes to antitrust law are simply a legislative framework and may take years to come to fruition. And the Justice Departments action against Google is also likely to be protracted, with the company saying on Tuesday that it expected the case to take at least a year to go to trial.The specifics of the Justice Department action, legal experts said, strongly echo the last major antitrust case against a big technology company, Microsoft. That suit, filed in 1998, claimed Microsoft was using its gatekeeper power as the owner of a dominant personal computer operating system, Windows, to block the potential threat from internet browsing software.The Justice Department accused Microsoft of using restrictive contracts with PC makers and others to inhibit the distribution of the software of Netscape Communications, the commercial pioneer in the browser market.And it worked. After a lengthy trial, Microsoft was found to have repeatedly violated the nations antitrust laws.That was the last big win for the government, so it makes sense to map a similar path, said Sam Weinstein, a former official in the Justice Departments antitrust division and a professor at the Cardozo School of Law.The Microsoft case also helps the government make an argument for consumer harm in the Google case. In antitrust, consumer welfare is often associated with a monopolist demonstrating its power by raising product prices to maximize profit.Googles search service is free to consumers, which means the government cannot point to rising prices. But prices didnt really figure into the Microsoft case, either. The software giant bundled its web browser for free into its dominant Windows operating system.Consumer harm, the government argued, can result in several ways. Less competition in a market means less innovation and less consumer choice in the long run. That, in theory, could close the market to rivals that collect less data for targeted advertising than Google does. Enhanced privacy, for example, would be a consumer benefit.The harm is to competition, and the consumer loses as a result, said Tim Wu, a professor at the Columbia Law School (and a contributing New York Times opinion writer).Yet the Microsoft case is also a cautionary example. It took years, with a settlement eventually approved in 2002. Its impact is debated to this day. Without the suit and years of scrutiny, some observers said, Microsoft could have throttled the rise of Google.Others insisted that the technological shift toward the internet and away from the personal computer meant that Microsoft lost the gatekeeper power it once held. Technology, not antitrust, opened the door to competition, they said.The Justice Department, in its suit and in a briefing with reporters, was vague about what remedies the government would propose if it won the case. But at this stage, Google is so dominant in search that giving consumers the choice to select another search engine may not make much of a difference.Google is regarded not only as a search service that provides relevant results, but as a verb what people think of as internet search. Given a choice, they might well choose Google, and the company would argue that was because it was a superior product that people preferred.Its hard to argue that this case, whatever the outcome, will really change the competitive landscape in search, said A. Douglas Melamed, a former senior official in the Justice Departments antitrust division, who is a professor at the Stanford Law School.The standard critique of antitrust law, with its lengthy court battles, is that it is late and slow, unsuited to addressing anticompetitive concerns in fast-moving high-tech markets. That is a genuine concern, legal experts said.Still, filing the suit this week could make a difference, they agreed.A suit like this one does send signals to the market and to the firm itself about what kind of competitive behavior is acceptable, said Scott Hemphill, a professor at New York University Law School.Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed reporting.

Tech

Credit...Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesNov. 20, 2018LONDON In June 2001, as the great and the good of the international art world convened at the Venice Biennale, Maurizio Cattelan, the Italian contemporary artist (and prankster), persuaded a group of about 150 of them to fly to a decidedly less glamorous destination: a garbage dump outside Palermo, Sicily, where he had installed a life-size replica of the giant Hollywood sign parked in the Californian hills.The plane was chartered by another Italian: Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, an art collector and patron who hosted a lunch on the Palermo landfill (which was managed by one of her husbands companies) and then flew everyone back to Venice.Today, Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, 59, counts among Europes best-known collectors and owns works made in the last two or three decades by artists like Mr. Cattelan, Damien Hirst, Doug Aitken, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Alicja Kwade and Matthew Barney.She also runs a foundation in a converted tire factory in her birthplace Turin, Italy that stages exhibitions and funds artists residencies and educational programs.Next year, the foundation is opening a satellite outpost (designed by the architect David Adjaye) in the Matadero Madrid arts complex, a sprawling former slaughterhouse in the Spanish capital.Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo got an enviable head start in life: Her father was an industrialist whose company she worked for as a graduate in economics from Turin University.In the early 1990s, after marrying a Turinese aristocrat with whom she now has two sons, Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo started collecting contemporary art. Her father, initially puzzled by her decision, gave her the cash to do it: He said, If you do it, do it well, she recalled in a recent interview.After a trip to London in the early 1990s and a memorable visit to the studio of the sculptor Anish Kapoor, where she was dazzled by his powder-pigment sculptures she said she started buying works by young British artists, which she then showed in an abandoned loft at her fathers plant.The exhibition traveled to a museum in Modena, where Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo met the curator Francesco Bonami, who was until 2014 the artistic director of the foundation she set up in her name in 1995; it was based originally outside Turin, then expanded into its current premises.During a recent visit to London, Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo spoke about the opening of the Madrid space an ambitious next step and the first time that her foundation will take its mission outside Italy.The following conversation has been translated from the Italian and has been edited and condensed.What was it like when you first started collecting contemporary art and displaying it in your house in Turin?It was difficult in the beginning. I stripped the tapestries and old paintings off the walls, painted everything white, and showed contemporary works. I remember friends saying to me: How horrible! How can you live like this? Your house is lovely, but these paintings are ugly!ImageCredit...Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times[The American collector and patron] Peggy Guggenheim had a similar experience earlier on. People couldnt understand what I was doing to my house. My response to them was always: Just you wait; you too will understand.Today, everybody is busy buying contemporary art and filling their homes with it. Was it difficult for you as a woman to set up a collection and an art foundation? I was always lucky enough to be involved in activities where I didnt have to ask anyone for anything. I never had to go look for work; I worked for my father, even if he never treated me like the owners daughter. When I got into the art world, I cant say that life was very complicated. I started collecting, I was able to set up a foundation, and was lucky enough not to have to find a job. That made a big difference. So my personal trajectory as a woman was not difficult.What I did realize right from the start was how difficult life was for women artists.How so?Women artists werent taken seriously. The other day, a friend of mine told me the story of an artist in her 80s who was in a gallery in Rome that was hosting an exhibition of her work back in the 1980s.A male collector walked in, said he liked the works and asked the gallerist who the artist was. As soon as he found out, he said, Oh, but shes a woman Im not buying. And he didnt.We once put on a show focusing on the presence of female artists in Italian collections. And we realized that male collectors in Italy almost never bought work by female artists, whereas female collectors did.The difference in price between a female artist and a male artist is staggering, even today. If you look at the auctions, the situation may have improved, but its still very very tough.Do you think the #MeToo movement is helping change things?The #MeToo movement is absolutely essential. It has raised a great deal of awareness. But a lot remains to be done for ordinary women, because for them, things arent yet changing, and theres a lot of catching up to do.I live in a country where feminicide is a common occurrence.Women endure physical and psychological violence inside the walls of their own home. Husbands come home drunk and beat up their wives. We women have to solve this problem on a political and social level, but I also believe that culture has a role to play.In our foundation, we show lots of works by women on issues to do with violence, which schoolchildren come and see. Its also important for us mothers to educate our sons.Why have you decided to open a foundation in Madrid?I felt the need to get out of my city. I believe we have experiences to share in other places. I looked around, at some of the big cities in Europe. In London, theres too much already. I looked at Lisbon, but its a little geographically off-center. I looked at Berlin, but the sky wasnt the color I wanted. So I went to Madrid, because I spent time in Spain as a child and speak Spanish.Youre not a museum: youre a private collector with a finite number of works. A lot of private museums have opened and then closed because they werent sustainable. How will you keep yours going?I think you find a balance if you dont just create a home for your collection, or open an exhibition venue, or focus on education, but combine all three elements. Then, in my view, it works.What happens decades from now when youre no longer able to run your foundation?Thankfully, I have two sons who are strong believers in this project. My eldest son, Eugenio, is already active in the art world. My other son, Emilio, is involved in events management and in food. Theyre both interested.

World

Cats and dogs can be infected by the coronavirus but cats are more susceptible to infection, a new study suggests.Credit...Lillian Suwanrumpha/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished July 19, 2021Updated Nov. 2, 2021In the spring of 2020, as the novel coronavirus infiltrated the Twin Cities, Hinh Ly could not stop thinking about cats and dogs.Dr. Ly, a veterinary and biomedical researcher at the University of Minnesota, knew that humans were the primary driver of the pandemic. But he also knew that many people loved to kiss and cuddle their pets, in sickness and in health. He wondered: How transmissible was SARS-CoV-2 to humankinds best friends?In March of 2020, Dr. Ly learned that two dogs in Hong Kong had received positive P.C.R. tests for the virus. But these tests require the virus to be actively replicating and thus only reveal active infections. Swabbing the snouts of many pets struck Dr. Ly as an overly time-consuming way to figure out how easily the animals could be infected.So he pitched an idea to his wife, Yuying Liang, a researcher in the same department who leads the lab with him, to test cats and dogs for antibodies, which would reveal past infection to the virus. I had the idea, but she is the boss, Dr. Ly said.The result of those antibody tests, published recently in the journal Virulence, suggest that household cats are more susceptible than dogs to a SARS-CoV-2 infection.Fortunately, infected cats appear to show mild symptoms at most. I am still a bit surprised that cats are so readily infected and yet rarely exhibit any signs of illness, said Dr. Angela Bosco-Lauth, a biomedical researcher at Colorado State Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences who was not involved with the research.And there is still no evidence to suggest infected cats or dogs are a risk to people, said Dr. Jonathan Runstadler, a virologist at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University who has studied how the coronavirus affects animals but was not involved in the new work.The new study supports recent research that it may be fairly common in households where people test positive for SARS-CoV-2 for cats and dogs to become infected, too, Dr. Runstadler said.To test for pet antibodies, the Minnesota researchers needed the animals serum, the component of blood that contains antibodies. Dr. Ly reached out to Dr. Daniel Heinrich, director of the clinical pathology lab at the universitys veterinary center. (Dr. Henrich is also an author on the new study.) Pets passed through the center daily and had their blood tested for myriad reasons, including annual checkups, unrelated disease, peeing inappropriately on the wall, Dr. Ly said.Those samples are usually discarded. But Dr. Heinrich asked pet owners to allow the serum to be used anonymously in the study, and the researchers got their first handful of samples in April.ImageCredit...via ReutersThe researchers initially screened roughly 100 samples, and found that about 5 percent of the cat serum contained coronavirus antibodies, whereas almost none of the dog serum did. To be safe, Dr. Ly tested hundreds more samples, drawing from blood collected in April, May and June, as Covid cases were rising in the region.In the end, the scientists found that 8 percent of cats carried antibodies to the coronavirus, whereas less than 1 percent of dogs did, suggesting that cats were more susceptible to infection.Because the pet owners granted consent anonymously, the researchers were unable to trace which humans might have transmitted the virus to the various cats and dogs. It was also unclear whether the infected pet cats lived indoors or outdoors, or how transmissible the virus was from cat to cat, Dr. Ly said.The researchers do not know why cats seem to be more susceptible than dogs. One possibility relates to ACE2, a protein on the surface of cells that is a receptor for the coronavirus. The genetic sequence of the human ACE2 protein is much more similar to the equivalent sequence in cats than in dogs.But animal behavior could be a factor as well. A recent study that presented similar findings that cats become infected by the coronavirus more readily than dogs noted that cats are often more welcome to sleep on beds than dogs are. Maybe it is because we cuddle the cats more, Dr. Ly speculated. Maybe we kiss the cats more.Dr. Bosco-Lauth said she believes that pets are unlikely to contribute to the epidemiology of SARS-COV-2 in the long run. But theres still no way to know for sure.For those people who test positive for Covid-19, Dr. Ly recommended distancing from not only humans, but cats and dogs. You cannot cuddle them, he said.Dr. Ly and Dr. Liang do not have cats or dogs in their own home. They do have a tank of guppies, which appear, for the moment, to be quite safe from the coronavirus.

science

Credit...Luca Locatelli/INSTITUTENov. 4, 2018As Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia charmed Goldman Sachs bankers and Silicon Valley executives on an American tour this spring, some of his most trusted lieutenants were taking care of business in Washington.In a low-key ceremony two blocks from the White House, Saudi officials signed an agreement with Booz Allen Hamilton, the American consulting company, to help train the kingdoms growing ranks of cyberfighters.The agreement would open great horizons by improving the skills of the kingdoms cybersecurity experts, Saud al-Qahtani, a top adviser to the crown prince overseeing the deal, said in Saudi Arabia in a statement to the official press. It did not mention his continuing campaign to silence critics both inside the kingdom and online.Mr. Qahtani was fired last month after Saudi officials linked him to the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying he had contributed to an aggressive environment that helped lead to the killing. But while Mr. Khashoggis death prompted investors from around the globe to distance themselves from the Saudi government, Booz Allen and its competitors McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group have stayed close after playing critical roles in Prince Mohammeds drive to consolidate power.In addition to standard consulting work like doling out economic advice and helping burnish Prince Mohammeds image, they have taken on more unconventional assignments. Booz Allen trains the Saudi Navy as it runs a blockade in the war in Yemen, a disaster that has threatened millions with starvation. McKinsey produced a report that may have aided Mr. Qahtanis crackdown on dissidents. BCG advises Prince Mohammeds foundation.The work is lucrative the three firms have earned hundreds of millions of dollars altogether on projects in Saudi Arabia. McKinseys work in the kingdom grew from two Saudi projects in 2010 to almost 50 the following year and kept accelerating, to almost 600 projects from 2011 to 2016.McKinsey consultants spread across the kingdom in recent years to advise government agencies such as the planning ministry, nicknamed the Ministry of McKinsey by some Saudis; the royal court; and a coterie of companies in industries such as banking, media, telecommunications, real estate and energy, internal McKinsey documents viewed by The New York Times showed.Last year, McKinsey bought a politically connected Saudi consultancy, adding that firms 140 employees to more than 300 already in the region.Its report singling out the kingdoms prominent online critics drew widespread condemnation when The Times revealed it last month. The dissidents including Khalid al-Alkami, a writer critical of Saudi policies, and Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi now living in Canada were described in detail, alongside photos of them.Omar has a multitude of negative tweets on topics such as austerity and the royal decrees, the author, who McKinsey says is a researcher based in Saudi Arabia, wrote in bullet points. Mr. Alkami wrote multiple negative tweets regarding austerity.Though McKinsey said the report was prepared for an internal audience, Mr. Alkami was subsequently arrested, and Mr. Abdulaziz said two of his brothers were imprisoned. A third, pseudonymous account was shut down, and it remains unclear what happened to the person behind it.The crackdown was an early sign of the Saudi governments extreme measures to quash criticism, which culminated in Mr. Khashoggis murder.McKinsey said it was horrified at the possibility that its information could have been misused. In a note to former employees, McKinsey said the researcher had published the analysis in January 2017 on an internal system and that it was intended only to showcase techniques to gauge social media usage and reaction.ImageCredit...Saudi Press AgencyEven before Prince Mohammed rose up the royal hierarchy, McKinsey and BCG nurtured ties to him. BCGs top Middle East executive, Joerg Hildebrandt, cultivated a relationship with Prince Mohammed in recent years, according to two consultants who have worked in the region. Mr. Hildebrandt, through a spokesman, declined to comment.After Prince Mohammed was installed as defense minister in 2015, BCG landed a contract to help overhaul the ministrys procurement systems and improve its handling of finances and personnel, two people familiar with the contract said.Press officers for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to emails seeking comment.In February 2016, consultants for McKinsey and BCG escorted five emissaries from the Saudi royal court to make the rounds of think tanks in Washington. They informed Gulf experts about Mohammed bin Salmans grand goals to remake Saudi life while the consultants, who outnumbered the Saudis, quietly took notes.BCG has been deeply enmeshed in laying out the economic blueprint of the country, called Vision 2030, which aims to wean Saudi Arabia from its dependency on oil revenues. A McKinsey report in 2015 laid out the broad strokes of that plan.Asked by The Economist in 2016 about a $4 trillion estimate of needed investment to transform the kingdoms economy, the prince immediately recognized the figure. This is a report from McKinsey, not from the Saudi government, he replied, adding that McKinsey participates with us in many studies.Last months Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, a conclave championed by Prince Mohammed, underscored Saudi Arabias importance to the consulting firms. While executives, companies and journalists pulled out amid the global furor over Mr. Khashoggis murder, they stayed on.McKinsey led panels on money and energy, the event program showed. Boston Consulting Group focused on unspecified intelligence.In a statement, BCG said it focused in Saudi Arabia on work that could positively contribute to economic and societal transformation and that the company has turned down work that goes against that principle. The firm declines projects that involve military or intelligence strategy, a spokesman said.For years, Booz Allen has trained the Saudi Navy, part of an American government program to help allied militaries. The company has worked with the navy on operations, intelligence and electronic warfare, as well as logistics and financial management, it said in 2012. The contract ended last year, a spokesman said.Dozens of American military veterans work for Booz Allen in Saudi Arabia. One retired rear admiral with combat experience in the region advises top Saudi officers on military planning. Others have extensive shipboard experience that could be used to train Saudis on how to carry out blockades and how to operate equipment like electronic warfare gear that can detect and interfere with enemy radars and missiles.A spokesman for Booz Allen said the firms work with the Saudis did not include training on blockades or electronic warfare equipment. The spokesman said such work was out of the parameters of its United States government license covering the companys work with the Saudis.Booz Allen also advises the Saudi Army; it won a contract to help with logistics, including maintaining the Saudis Abrams tanks.In a statement, Booz Allen said that it had provided no support for Saudi Arabias war in Yemen, and that the company coordinates with the American government to ensure that its work is consistent with U.S. foreign policy and trade regulations. The firm did not address whether the troops and sailors it trains participate in the Saudi blockade in Yemen.The United States military has provided limited but significant aid to the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, including refueling aircraft, sharing intelligence and sending Army commandos to the Saudi-Yemeni border to locate and destroy caches of ballistic missiles that Iran-backed Houthi rebels have used to attack Saudi cities.ImageCredit...Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesBooz Allen did advise the Saudi government on a plan to provide humanitarian aid to Yemen. But the project, the Yemen Comprehensive Humanitarian Operations, is seen by aid groups as an ineffective effort that undercuts the United Nations own program.We have had no control over how the plan or portions of it may have been used, the company said. Booz Allens role was first reported by IRIN, a humanitarian news agency.After signing the agreement in March to help shore up Saudi cybersecurity, Booz Allen began working directly to protect the systems of government ministries, citing damaging cyberattacks in companies in the kingdom. It also ran a so-called hack-a-thon the kind of event the company has done in the United States to teach people how to penetrate computer systems to discover their vulnerabilities.Booz Allen denied that its work with the Saudis involved hacks or the use of cyber for offensive purposes. But cyberexperts say that the same defensive maneuvers used to discover vulnerabilities or otherwise protect computer networks can easily be redirected to target other governments or dissidents as well.As for McKinsey, its work with Saudi Arabia is controversial even within the firm. Amid the Arab Spring, its consultants in the region argued that the firm should consider curtailing business in Saudi Arabia, said one former McKinsey consultant who worked in the Middle East.But more senior consultants, including partners, said McKinsey was not in the business of passing judgment on its clients cultures and values. The best way to improve the kingdom, they argued, was to modernize the economy and make government and companies work better.Rather than scaling back in Saudi Arabia, McKinsey doubled down.Many foreign consultants working in Saudi Arabia fail to understand the local culture or how an authoritarian government could exploit their work, said one consultant who has worked with the higher reaches of the Saudi government. He qualified that by saying that his colleagues take care to try not to cause harm.In a statement, a McKinsey spokesman said, We are proud of our record in Saudi Arabia, citing job creation and improved health outcomes.Consultants who aim to help authoritarian governments from the inside often give in to a desire to preserve their lucrative assignments, said Calvert W. Jones, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies the role of consultants in the Middle East.They soft-pedal, she said. Their fear is if they speak truth to power at this state of their interactions, they will be tossed out.The surge in business for BCG, McKinsey and Booz Allen also stems from Prince Mohammeds need for expertise as he pushes his proposals to revamp the country. His dependence on consultants is so great that some of the companies have people embedded at the royal court to respond quickly to requests, according to three consultants who have done work for the kingdom.Some reported being asked to turn around proposals in 24 hours, much faster than they often work. And the crown prince will sometimes ask different companies for proposals, then have their consultants pitch to each other as he looks on, the consultants said.Its like a beauty pageant, said one.Many of the consultants, who spend five days a week in Riyadh before flying elsewhere to see their families on weekends, were annoyed last year when the government kicked them out of their preferred hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, to use it as a temporary lockup for those accused of corruption.But not long after the government released those held, the consultants moved back in.

World

11 Things Wed Really Like to KnowFor better and worse, humans are only improving their ability to deceive themselves with technology.Credit...Franziska BarczykNov. 19, 2018During the summer before the 2016 presidential election, John Seymour and Philip Tully, two researchers with ZeroFOX, a security company in Baltimore, unveiled a new kind of Twitter bot. By analyzing patterns of activity on the social network, the bot learned to fool users into clicking on links in tweets that led to potentially hazardous sites.The bot, called SNAP_R, was an automated phishing system, capable of homing in on the whims of specific individuals and coaxing them toward that moment when they would inadvertently download spyware onto their machines. Archaeologists believe theyve found the tomb of Alexander the Great is in the U.S. for the first time: goo.gl/KjdQYT, the bot tweeted at one unsuspecting user.Even with the odd grammatical misstep, SNAP_R succeeded in eliciting a click as often as 66 percent of the time, on par with human hackers who craft phishing messages by hand.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]The bot was unarmed, merely a proof of concept. But in the wake of the election and the wave of concern over political hacking, fake news and the dark side of social networking, it illustrated why the landscape of fakery will only darken further.The two researchers built what is called a neural network, a complex mathematical system that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data.A neural network can learn to recognize a dog by gleaning patterns from thousands of dog photos. It can learn to identify spoken words by sifting through old tech-support calls.And, as the two researchers showed, a neural network can learn to write phishing messages by inspecting tweets, Reddit posts, and previous online hacks.Today, the same mathematical technique is infusing machines with a wide range of humanlike powers, from speech recognition to language translation. In many cases, this new breed of artificial intelligence is also an ideal means of deceiving large numbers of people over the internet. Mass manipulation is about to get a whole lot easier.It would be very surprising if things dont go this way, said Shahar Avin, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. All the trends point in that direction.Many technology observers have expressed concerns at the rise of A.I. that generates Deepfakes fake images that look like the real thing. What began as a way of putting anyones head onto the shoulders of a porn star has evolved into a tool for seamlessly putting any image or audio into any video.In April, BuzzFeed and comedian Jordan Peele released a video that put words, including we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet, into the mouth of Barack Obama.The threat will only expand as researchers develop systems that can metabolize and learn from increasingly large collections of data. Neural networks can generate believable sounds as well as images. This is what enables digital assistants such as Apple Siri to sound more human than they did in years past.Google has built a system called Duplex that can phone a local restaurant, make reservations, and fool the person on the other end of the line into thinking the caller is a real person. The service is expected to reach smartphones before the end of the year.Experts have long had the power to doctor audio and video. But as these A.I. systems improve, it will become easier and cheaper for anyone to generate items of digital content images, videos, social interactions that look and sound like the real thing.Inspired by the culture of academia, the top A.I. labs and even giant public companies such as Google openly publish their research and, in many cases, their software code.With these techniques, machines are also learning to read and write. For years, experts questioned whether neural networks could crack the code of natural language. But the tide has shifted in recent months.Organizations such as Google and OpenAI, an independent lab in San Francisco, have built systems that learn the vagaries of language at the broadest scales analyzing everything from Wikipedia articles to self-published romance novels before applying the knowledge to specific tasks. The systems can read a paragraph and answer questions about it. They can judge whether a movie review is positive or negative.This technology could improve phishing bots such as SNAP_R. Today, most Twitter bots seem like bots, especially when you start replying to them. In the future, they will respond in kind.The technology also could lead to the creation of voice bots that can carry on a decent conversation and, no doubt one day, will call and persuade you to divulge your credit-card information.These new language systems are driven by a new wave of computing power. Google engineers have designed computer chips specifically for training neural networks. Other companies are building similar chips, and as these arrive, they will accelerate A.I. research even further.Jack Clark, head of policy at OpenAI, can see a not-too-distant future in which governments create machine-learning systems that attempt to radicalize populations in other countries, or force views onto their own people.This is a new kind of societal control or propaganda, he said. Governments can start to create campaigns that target individuals, but at the same time operate across many people in parallel, with a larger objective.Ideally, artificial intelligence could also provide ways of identifying and stopping this kind of mass manipulation. Mark Zuckerberg likes to talk about the possibilities. But for the foreseeable future, we face a machine-learning arms race.Consider generative adversarial networks, or GANs. These are a pair of neural network systems that can automatically generate convincing images or manipulate existing ones.They do this by playing a kind of cat-and-mouse game: the first network makes millions of tiny changes to an image snow gets added to summery street scenes, grizzlies transform into pandas, fake faces look so convincing that viewers mistake them for celebrities in an effort to fool the second network.The second network does its best not to be fooled. As the pair battle, the image only gets more convincing the A.I. trying to detect fakery always loses.Detecting fake news is even harder. Humans can barely agree on what counts as fake news; how can we expect a machine to do so? And if it could, would we want it to?Perhaps the only way to stop misinformation is to somehow teach people to view what they see online with extreme distrust. But that may be the hardest fix of them all.We can deploy technology that patches our computer systems, Mr. Avin said. But we cannot deploy patches to peoples heads.

science

CricketFeb. 6, 2014Kevin Pietersen may not be wanted by England anymore, but that does not mean he wont be a hot commodity elsewhere. On Tuesday, England told Pietersen, its star batsman and its highest run-scorer across all formats of the international game, that he was no longer part of the teams plans and was being dropped. He was the second major casualty from Englands Ashes debacle, following the resignation of Coach Andy Flower after the 5-0 loss in Australia. Pietersens next step will most likely be to join the players who make a lucrative living competing in Twenty20 tournaments. Now that he is available for the whole season in the Indian Premier League, he will probably be a hot property during its auction next week. Englands decision to jettison Pietersen ended one of the most contentious careers in international cricket over the past few decades. Nobody polarized opinions more than Pietersen did in his nine years as an England player. For every admirer of his artistry with the bat, there was a critic of his egotism or how he ended up leaving his native South Africa to play for England. Pietersen, 33, vowed Tuesday that he would not quit the sport. I believe I still have a great deal to give as a cricketer, he said in an official statement issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board. I will continue to play, but sadly it will not be for England. While his desire to play as much I.P.L cricket as possible was a consistent source of tension with Englands management, his sorrow about the end of his international career appears genuine. No longer will he be playing the prestigious five-day test matches and battling the very best in the most demanding form of the game. His numbers 13,797 runs in all formats, including 8,181 runs and 23 scores of more than 100 or more in his 104 five-day test matches place him among Englands best-ever batsmen.Jonathan Agnew, the BBCs cricket correspondent and a former England player, called Pietersen possibly the most entertaining, brilliant and unorthodox batsman I have ever seen. Those gifts were clear in remarkable innings like the 149 he struck against South Africa in 2012 as he toyed with the Proteas fearsome pacemen, and in his strokes, like his audacious reverse sweep for six runs in 2006 off the lethal Sri Lankan spin bowler Muttiah Muralitharan.England are certainly not a better team without him, the former England captain Nasser Hussain told Sky Sports News. Shane Warne, the former Australia spin bowler, said on Twitter that To me its a disgrace and a joke.But Pietersens undoubted brilliance often came at a cost, as he often proved a disruptive force, upsetting team chemistry. While praising him, Agnew backed the decision to drop him.Clearly this was a tough decision because Kevin has been such an outstanding player for England, said Paul Downton, managing director of England cricket. The time is right to look to the future and start to rebuild not only the team, but also team ethics and philosophy. Exactly what provoked the decision to drop Pietersen has not been specified. But he has a long record of alienating former allies and of falling out with his teams and officials. Major figures in the meeting that resulted in his departure were Englands captain, Alastair Cook, who last year went out of his way to reintegrate Pietersen into the team after an earlier dispute, and its one-day coach Ashley Giles, who not long ago called Pietersen a million-pound talent. In the 2009 Ashes series, Michael Clarke of Australia flagellated himself for letting his team down by playing a poor shot. Pietersen, similarly guilty, explained that thats the way I play. A brilliant but disruptive 25-year-old may have a decade of productivity in front of him, along with the hope that the maturity will follow, so he would most likely be given more latitude. But at 33, there is much less productivity to come, and little hope of reform.You can be an individual within the team but you cannot just be an individual. He has said This is how I play, take it or leave it, Geoffrey Boycott, a former England player accused of chemistry-harming egotism in his own time, said on BBC Radio. Well, theyve taken it for long enough, and now theyve said Thank you very much, we will leave it. Pietersens departure means little is left of the once-strong South African presence in Englands top order. The former skipper Andrew Strauss retired in 2012; Nick Compton has not played well enough to be picked for the team lately; Jonathan Trott has been laid low by stress-related ailments; and wicket-keeper Matt Prior was dropped at the end of the Ashes series.When England starts anew, it will be a different team, shorn of its most vivid personality. It will also be a duller one. But it may be a happier one and as Australia has shown in remaking itself from the tense, inhibited team that played so badly in the first half of 2013, that is something that can count for a great deal.

Sports

Aziz Ansari got lots of support this week, while the federal government's lights are about to go dark. So, we gotta ask ... Chicago West Like It Hate it Aziz Ansari's accuser I agree with her It was just a bad date James Franco Go to the Oscars Don't show your face Aaron Rodgers, Danica Patrick Perfect match Will never last Worse Kevin Spacey Harvey Weinstein Gov. Shutdown, Whose fault? Democrats Republicans Stormy Daniels hooked up with Trump Yes No Stock Market rise is Trump's doing Yes No Tom Cruise, too old to do stunts Yes No

Entertainment

Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 12, 2018WASHINGTON After frenzied late-night negotiations, Speaker Paul D. Ryan defused a moderate Republican rebellion on Tuesday with a promise to hold high-stakes votes on immigration next week, thrusting the divisive issue onto center stage during a difficult election season for Republicans.The move by Mr. Ryan, announced late Tuesday by his office, was something of a defeat for the rebellious immigration moderates, who fell two signatures short of the 218 needed to force the House to act this month on bipartisan measures aimed more directly at helping young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.Instead, the House is most likely to vote on one hard-line immigration measure backed by President Trump and conservatives and another more moderate compromise bill that was still being drafted, according to people familiar with the talks.Had the rebels secured just two more signatures for their discharge petition, they would have also gotten votes on the Dream Act, a stand-alone bill backed by Democrats that includes a path to citizenship for the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, and another bipartisan measure that couples a path to citizenship for Dreamers with beefed-up border security.Mr. Ryan desperately wanted to avoid bringing those bipartisan measures to the floor. On Wednesday morning, he is expected to present a detailed plan for next weeks votes to his conference.Members across the Republican conference have negotiated directly and in good faith with each other for several weeks, and as a result, the House will consider two bills next week that will avert the discharge petition and resolve the border security and immigration issues, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, AshLee Strong, said late Tuesday.Tuesday nights developments were a high-wire act for Mr. Ryan and the House moderates. Under House rules, Tuesday was the deadline to force votes in June, and as moderates and conservatives met separately late into the night, the moderates insisted that they had the signatures needed to put their petition over the top.We have people waiting to sign; well see how the rest of the night unfolds, Representative Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida and a leader of the petition drive, said shortly before the speakers announcement.But those signatures failed to materialize, significantly weakening their hand. The chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, said before Mr. Ryans announcement that his group wanted the House to hold votes on two immigration bills: the conservative-backed bill, which is sponsored by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, and the still-unfinished compromise bill. He appears to have gotten just that.Right now, we have a framework of a bill, and theres no legislative text, Mr. Meadows told reporters Tuesday night. There is a whole lot that needs to still be worked out with that.Democrats pounced on the setback for the moderates, many of whom such as Mr. Curbelo and Representatives Jeff Denham of California and Will Hurd of Texas are high on their target list in November.House Republicans latest failure to deliver for Dreamers is made all the more inexcusable by their many empty promises that they would get the signatures and move on the discharge petition, said Javier Gamboa, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. If vulnerable members like Carlos Curbelo, Will Hurd and Jeff Denham cant get the job done with their party controlling all of Washington, they have no business serving in Congress.But Mr. Curbelo called Mr. Ryans announcement a major development.Our goal has always been to force the House to debate and consider meaningful immigration reform, he added, and today were one step closer.In gathering signatures for their petition, the moderates were seeking to protect hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, who have been shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Mr. Trump moved last year to end the program.In order to force the votes, the petition needed a majority of the House 218 signatories which would require 25 Republican signatures if all 193 Democrats signed on. Twenty-three Republicans signed, and by Tuesday night, all Democrats had, as well.Mr. Ryan had feared a debate on immigration would divide the party just as lawmakers who are trying to defend their seats have to face voters. But leaders of the petition drive, many of them with large Hispanic constituencies, had argued that to ignore the immigration issue would put them in political peril.There have been some critics who say that this could cost us our majority, Mr. Denham said in a recent interview. My concern is if we do nothing, it could cost us our majority. So yes, its risky. But its the right thing to do.In effect, Mr. Curbelo, Mr. Denham and the other moderates did force Mr. Ryans hand. For the past several weeks, House conservatives have been in intense talks, conducted in Mr. Ryans office, with Mr. Denham and Mr. Curbelo. But coming up with a compromise on immigration that is acceptable to the vast majority of House Republicans is challenging, given the differing views within their conference.Among the particularly thorny questions were whether to provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, precisely which young immigrants would be eligible for that path and how it would be structured. Any so-called special pathway for DACA recipients could be viewed by conservative members as offering amnesty and could prompt a backlash from the partys right flank.Another critical question was what immigration enforcement measures might be included in the compromise bill a priority for conservatives.The petition effort got underway in May, when more than a dozen House Republicans defied Mr. Ryan by signing on. It is extremely unusual for the party in power to use such petitions; ordinarily they are a tool of protest used by the minority party.The last successful discharge petition drive came in 2015 when Republicans and Democrats forced a vote to revive the Export-Import Bank, which guarantees loans to overseas customers buying American exports.The petition revived an immigration debate in Congress that had been all but dead. The Senate spent a week debating immigration legislation in February, and passed nothing. The conventional wisdom was that immigration would become an issue to be fought over during elections. And some lawmakers said there was no urgency, noting that the DACA program is continuing, at least for now, at the direction of the federal courts.But heart-rending stories featuring young immigrants continue to emerge, such as a recent Des Moines Register article about Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco, who arrived in the United States at age 3, was forced by immigration authorities to leave his home in Iowa in April, just before his high school graduation, and was killed in Mexico.

Politics

Sam Smith & BF Brandon Flynn Safe to Say This Relationship's Lit 1/25/2018 Sam Smith and his boyfriend, Brandon Flynn, put on a smoke show ... literally. The Grammy singer and "13 Reasons Why" star snuck in a quick cigarette break -- and a kiss -- Wednesday night outside of Gemma restaurant in Soho ... where the couple dined with a few friends. PDA was definitely calling -- Sam had just returned from Japan. Their silly sides were also on full display ... walking an imaginary runway with different strides. It might have gone down something like this.

Entertainment

Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York TimesJune 5, 2017Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people with Type 2 diabetes. Surely, then, the way to dodge this bullet is to treat the disease and lower blood sugar.Well, maybe. Growing evidence suggests that the method by which blood sugar is lowered may make a big difference in heart risk. That has raised a medical dilemma affecting tens of millions of people with Type 2 diabetes and for the doctors who treat them.Some diabetes drugs lower blood sugar, yet somehow can increase the chances of heart attacks and strokes. Other medications have no effect on heart risk, while still others lower the odds of heart disease but may have other drawbacks, like high cost or side effects.Its becoming clear, researchers say, that theres far too little evidence on how diabetes drugs affect the heart to make rational evidence-based judgments. If you think the landscape is confusing, it really is, said Dr. Leigh Simmons, an internist in Boston.Daunting is how Dr. JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Womens Hospital, describes the situation for patients and their doctors. She explained the option and uncertainties in a recent commentary in JAMA.There are 12 classes of drugs on the market and two or three different agents in each class. The drugs range in price from about $4 a month for older drugs to $700 a month for newer ones, and they have varying side effects. Many patients take more than one drug.The older, cheaper and more popular diabetes drugs were never tested for their effects on the heart they were approved before any links were noticed.A particular drugs effect on blood sugar does not predict its effects on the heart. Even understanding the chemistry at work the drugs act in very different ways to lower blood sugar does not predict whether a particular medication will increase heart risk in a particular patient, researchers say.We cant predict what happens to people just based on the mechanisms of these drugs, said Dr. Kasia J. Lipska, a diabetes expert at Yale University who wrote a recent paper on the issue. We have to study large groups of patients and examine what drugs reduce complications of diabetes such as heart attacks, and in which patients.But that has rarely been done. These drugs are already approved; there is little incentive to do such expensive studies now.Its a disgrace that so little is known, said Dr. Victor M. Montori, a diabetes expert at the Mayo Clinic.No one disputes the importance of lowering blood sugar when levels are very high. Doing so may help prevent complications like kidney disease, nerve damage and damage to the eyes, and may alleviate symptoms like fatigue and frequent urination.The starting point for lowering blood sugar is diet and exercise. But for many patients, that is not sufficient. Then doctors and patients are faced with two questions: How low should blood sugar go? And what drugs should be used to lower it?Doctors track blood sugar by testing for levels of a protein, hemoglobin A1C, which reveals average levels over the previous three months. The higher a patients A1C, the greater the risk of complications of diabetes.While this measurement is a good predictor of risk, the question is, who benefits from intensive blood sugar lowering and which drugs are best for whom? said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale.The target level varies among patients, though many do not realize it. They and their doctors often aim, at times obsessively, for an A1C level of seven.Yet that level is actually appropriate only for young, newly diagnosed people who have no other medical problems, Dr. Manson and others said.Older patients with other chronic conditions, like atherosclerosis, should not aim for such a low level, the researchers add. Studies find no obvious benefit to them no real reduction in the rate of complications like kidney, nerve or eye disease.Perhaps more distressing, while higher levels of A1C are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, what is not clear is whether a drug that reduces A1C will also improve cardiovascular risk, said Dr. Montori.That was made abundantly clear in recent years when, at the insistence of the Food and Drug Administration, companies making some of the newer diabetes drugs began testing them to be certain they were not actually raising the chances of heart disease even as they lowered A1C in patients.The results were a surprise. At identical A1C levels, some drugs lowered risk, some did not change it and some actually increased the chances of heart disease.Older and much cheaper diabetes medications, like metformin, have not been subjected to such tests, although they do have long and well established safety records. But whether they actually prevent heart problems is unknown, Dr. Montori noted.None of that has stopped doctors from urging patients to lower blood sugar at all costs. But many of their patients, particularly older ones, often take other medications, too.The more drugs they take to get to an A1C level of seven, the greater the risk of ensuing complications (to say nothing of skyrocketing costs). And they run the risk that blood sugar levels will dip too low.Vito Ciaccia, 64, of Old Saybrook, Conn., learned he had diabetes 30 years ago. He spent years chasing an A1C of seven, spurred on by doctors who focused single-mindedly on that number.They were always upping the dosage of drugs, wanting to get to seven he said. One doctor was very adamant and very demanding. He told me if I didnt do what he said, I would not be here much longer.I felt the treatment was just to pound drugs in and hope they work, Mr. Ciaccia added.But he rarely hit that A1C target, and the drugs caused uncomfortable side effects. While he was taking them, his blood sugar dipped up and down, often going so low that he experienced sweating, confusion and dizziness.Had his doctors realized that how tenuous was the connection between lowering A1C and heart disease, the biggest threat to these patients, they might have been less insistent. And he might have been less worried.I have patients who flip out if their A1C level is above seven, said Dr. John Buse, an endocrinologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some are desperate to get it to six. I try to talk them down, but sometimes I fail.I dont think there is evidence for such zealotry, he added.Mr. Ciaccia is now being cared for by Dr. Lipska. She tells him hell do fine with an A1C level higher than seven, and can avoid the low blood sugar episodes that were so distressing.And it was O.K. to take one drug insulin which he preferred over a pile of diabetes drugs.Her approach, Dr. Lipska said, is to be straightforward with patients about the choices of treatment.I tell them, this is what we know and this is what we dont know, she said.

Health

Off the DribbleCredit...Barton Silverman/The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2014When they came to New York to face the Knicks on Jan. 9, the Miami Heat were 27-8. Trailing the Indiana Pacers by one game for the best record in the Eastern Conference, the Heat seemed to be coasting through the season in their pursuit of a third consecutive championship.Then, in LeBron Jamess 800th N.B.A. game, Miami lost to the Knicks, 102-92. The next night, the Heat lost to the Nets in Brooklyn. Five days later, they lost to Washington. It was the first time the Heat had lost three consecutive regular-season games since January 2012. In between, Miami played 171 regular-season games, had a 27-game winning streak and won two championships.The recent losing streak put the Heat in a funk, and they were 5-5 in the 10 games heading into Saturdays meeting with the Knicks, including a demoralizing loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder last Wednesday, when they opened an 18-point lead in the first quarter but lost by 17. Injuries have prevented the Heat from finding a rhythm, and the Pacers have kept their foot on the gas, holding a three-game lead on Miami through Friday. Dwyane Wade is having a subpar season, and speculation is rampant among fans and the news media that James, who can opt out of his contract after this season, will be taking his talents away from South Beach. Another N.B.A. title would do a lot to sway James, but right now, the Heat seem to lack the edge that guided them the past two seasons. Shane Battier, a member of the past two Miami championship teams, said before the January game against the Nets that he could not foresee the current Heat roster competing for a championship unless things are shaken up.Its about beating teams, redefining ourselves and finding our game, a game that can win big, Battier said. We dont have that game right now. Were not close to having that game. We think if we stay healthy, we can get there.In Jamess career, there has been a tendency to attribute all of his teams failures and successes to his play. But this season, he is playing his best, but that has not been enough. The Heats defense has taken a large step back from last season, and relative to the league average, their offense has been worse as well. Inconsistent play from Chris Bosh and Wade has contributed to the decline, as have injuries to Mario Chalmers and Battier. But the team is not exactly reeling. On a pace for 58 wins, the Heat had a .711 winning percentage entering the weekend, and that would be their fourth best in franchise history. They have virtually no competition for the No. 2 seed in the East, so their playoff position is secure. But Wade played poorly in January, and his chronically injured knees put his long-term future in doubt, so the Heat are more vulnerable than they have been since James joined the team in 2010. The Heat would hardly be the first contender to be accused of becoming complacent. The Lakers of the early 2000s were slow to adapt as Shaquille ONeal declined, with many assuming he was simply using the regular season to play his way into shape. But similar to Wade, whom ONeal won a championship with in Miami, it might have been less that he was not trying hard enough and more that his body could not respond as it once did.With nearly half a season remaining, the Heat have time to figure things out. In the noncompetitive East, letting Wade have time off to regain his health will probably not affect Miamis playoff seeding. And if the Heat get into a rhythm, they can easily compete with the best in the N.B.A.Battier said that not being ready to win it all yet is not necessarily a problem, as he felt the same way through much of last season. Asked when he thought last years team was a potential champion, Battier laughed. What convinced him, he said, was Ray Allens tying 3-pointer with five seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Game 6 against the San Antonio Spurs. We used every second of every game, and thats what it took for us at that time, Battier said. Thats just the path we had.

Sports

Europe|Longing for Obama as President of Francehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-obama-president.htmlVideoA poster-driven campaign calling for the former American president to become Frances next leader, started as a joke between friends, has gained tens of thousands of signatures online.CreditCredit...Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFeb. 28, 2017PARIS Many voters in France cannot identify all the candidates running for president, who now number more than a dozen. But they recognize the smiling politician on campaign posters with the slogan Oui on peut.Thats French for Yes we can. While the politician, Barack Obama, is American, that has not stopped a group of Parisians who have started a campaign to persuade him to run for president of France.They say they are deeply uninspired or worried by the actual candidates, most notably Marine Le Pen, the far-right politician who is leading in the polls.The organizers have placed red-white-and-blue posters with Mr. Obamas portrait, and the French translation of his slogan, around Paris to publicize their campaign.There isnt one man or woman that we can project ourselves onto, someone we would want to vote for and fight for without hesitation, someone who unites people and has a strong aura, one of the French organizers said of why they are supporting Mr. Obama.The idea was originally conceived as a joke, concocted recently over drinks with friends, said the organizer, who asked to be identified only by the name Antoine.He described himself as a fan of the Yes Men, the famous political pranksters, and said that he and his friends were surprised by how many people had signed their online petition. By Tuesday evening, it had attracted more than 43,000 signatures.The goal is to gather one million signatures by March 15 to convince Mr. Obama that he should run because he has the best C.V. in the world for the job, according to the petition.Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, declined to comment.Europeans viewed Mr. Obamas departure from office with a mix of admiration and regret, and for those who have struggled to come to grips with President Trumps attitude and policies, that feeling has only intensified.I think the timing of it all means that people are very nostalgic of Obama, Antoine said.But the organizers do not have French law on their side.Presidential candidates must be at least 18 and part of the French electorate. They must gather the signatures of at least 500 elected officials from around the country to be put on the ballot, a requirement introduced by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962. (At that time, the bar was 100.)Most important, they have to be French.

World

Justin Bieber In Cabo for NYE ... Ditto for Selena 12/31/2017 Justin Bieber can't seem to stay away from his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, for the holidays ... 'cause they're in the same town south of the border for New Year's Eve. Bieber was spotted shirtless and soaking up some sun Sunday in Cabo San Lucas. Seems like he's excited, and why shouldn't he be? Selena's in the same hood! Selena was also seen in Cabo with some friends Saturday in a would-be girls only trip for the holiday weekend ... except now, it's clear that Bieber's probably just a beach run away. Our bet is they're smooching when the clock strikes 12. Should old acquaintance be forgot ... meet 'em up in Mexico to jog your memory.

Entertainment

Zooey Deschanel New $5.5 Million House ... With Awesome Man Cave!!! 1/26/2018 "New Girl" star Zooey Deschanel just got a big Manhattan Beach upgrade by plunking down $5.575 for a new blue home ... and her husband's gotta be psyched over the baller man cave. Zooey moved to the L.A. area beach town a few years back and seems like she took to it. Her new, 4,900 square foot home's got 5 bedrooms and 6 baths. It's not on the beach but it's only a short walk and still has an ocean view. It looks straight out of a Joanna Gaines design book, until you get to the basement's man cave. There's a pool table, foosball, shuffle board, popcorn machine and a vintage wooden bar complete with register. Zooey was repped by realtor Tad Thormodsgaard and the seller was repped by realtor Ed Kaminsky.

Entertainment

Bengals' Pacman Jones Marvin Lewis 'Saved My Life' ... PUMPED He's Back! 1/22/2018 TMZSports.com Pacman Jones is going to bat for Marvin Lewis on the heels of his head-scratching contract extension ... telling TMZ Sports he couldn't be happier about the Bengals coach getting 2 more years. Pacman wasn't kidding -- saying the team's struggles are the players' fault, 100%, and calling Lewis "one of the best coaches that's EVER been in the game." Jones even claims Marvin "saved my life" ... probably 'cause he gave him a shot when no other NFL teams would touch him. Pacman also heaped a ton of praise on Joe Mixon and A.J. McCarron ... and generally seemed to be in great spirits even though his season ended early. New year, new #squadgoals, right??

Entertainment

Credit...James Lawler Duggan/ReutersJune 14, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Facebook is losing a top executive who was a confidant of its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.Elliot Schrage, a Facebook vice president, said on Thursday that he was leaving the social network, ending a decade in which he played a central role in the companys communications, marketing and public policy. He was most recently an architect of Facebooks responses to a range of scandals, including the rise of misinformation on the site and the misuse of user data by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.Mr. Schrage, 57, had been discussing his exit for months, said one person who had recently spoken to him and who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly. But there was some internal pressure for Mr. Schrage to leave because of criticism of how Facebook has dealt with fallout from Cambridge Analytica and other issues, said three people with knowledge of his conversations with Facebook executives.Vanessa Chan, a Facebook spokeswoman, disputed that Mr. Schrage was under pressure to depart. She said Mr. Schrage had first discussed stepping down before the 2016 election and had stayed on after Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg asked him not to go.Now Elliot wants to start a new chapter in his life, Ms. Chan said, adding that he would help look for his replacement and consult with Facebooks leadership on key projects.Mr. Schrage, who did not respond to requests for comment, said in a statement posted on Facebook that leading policy and communications for hyper growth technology companies is a joy but its also intense and leaves little room for much else.His departure was earlier reported by Recode.Several executives have recently left Facebook, or have said they plan to. In March, The New York Times reported that Alex Stamos, Facebooks chief information security officer, intended to leave after disagreeing over how to handle the threat of Russian agents using the social network to influence American voters. And Jan Koum, who sold the messaging app WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014, said in April that he was leaving the company after becoming increasingly concerned about its position on user data.Facebook faced particular criticism early this year when it waited more than five days to issue a response after The Times and others reported that Cambridge Analytica had improperly harvested the data of millions of Facebook users. The company also was faulted for being too slow to reveal the extent of Russian manipulation of Facebook during the 2016 American presidential election.Mr. Schrage was known for often taking a wait-and-see approach on major issues, according to two people who have worked with him at Facebook. After the Russian manipulation, Mr. Schrage initially resisted the idea of an internal investigation, arguing that it could open Facebook up to further criticism, one of the people said. It was only when the evidence of meddling became overwhelming that Mr. Schrage agreed that the company had to issue a statement, the person said.Mr. Schrage previously worked with Ms. Sandberg at Google. In 2008, she brought him to Facebook. Over the years, Mr. Schrage also worked closely with Mr. Zuckerberg and often traveled with him.In his statement on Facebook, Mr. Schrage said he had more than just a front row seat to one of the most important developments in human history, but the chance to be in the arena.That brings extraordinary opportunity, he continued, and it demands responsibility and accountability.Minutes after Mr. Schrages post was published, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg posted their responses. Both thanked Mr. Schrage for his years at Facebook and said they would continue to call on him for advice.Youve been instrumental in building our policy and communications teams as well as pushing many of our key initiatives, Ms. Sandberg wrote. Mark and I look forward to your ongoing advice over the years ahead.

Tech

Science|Watch the Southern Delta Aquariids Meteor Shower Peak in Night Skieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/science/meteor-shower-july.htmlWatch the Southern Delta Aquariids Meteor Shower Peak in Night SkiesCredit...John Chumack/Science SourcePublished July 28, 2021Updated Sept. 30, 2021All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor showers can light up night skies from dusk to dawn, and if youre lucky you might be able to catch a glimpse.The next shower you might be able to see is the Southern Delta Aquariids, which is sometimes also known as the Southern Delta Aquarids. Active from July 12 to Aug. 23, it is expected to be at its peak from Wednesday night into Thursday morning, or July 28 to 29.They come from Comet 96P Machholz, which passes by the sun every five years. Its meteors, which number between 10 and 20 per hour, are most visible predawn, between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. It tends to be more visible from the Southern Hemisphere.[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]Where meteor showers come fromIf you spot a meteor shower, what youre usually seeing is an icy comets leftovers that crash into Earths atmosphere. Comets are sort of like dirty snowballs: As they travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris which can be as small as grains of sand pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display.A general rule of thumb with meteor showers: You are never watching the Earth cross into remnants from a comets most recent orbit. Instead, the burning bits come from the previous passes. For example, during the Perseid meteor shower you are seeing meteors ejected from when its parent comet, Comet Swift-Tuttle, visited in 1862 or earlier, not from its most recent pass in 1992.Thats because it takes time for debris from a comets orbit to drift into a position where it intersects with Earths orbit, according to Bill Cooke, an astronomer with NASAs Meteoroid Environment Office.How to watchThe best way to see a meteor shower is to get to a location that has a clear view of the entire night sky. Ideally, that would be somewhere with dark skies, away from city lights and traffic. To maximize your chances of catching the show, look for a spot that offers a wide, unobstructed view.Bits and pieces of meteor showers are visible for a certain period of time, but they really peak visibly from dusk to dawn on a given few days. Those days are when Earths orbit crosses through the thickest part of the cosmic stream. Meteor showers can vary in their peak times, with some reaching their maximums for only a few hours and others for several nights.It is best to use your naked eye to spot a meteor shower. Binoculars or telescopes tend to limit your field of view. You might need to spend about half an hour in the dark to let your eyes get used to the reduced light. Stargazers should be warned that moonlight and the weather can obscure the shows. But if that happens, there are usually meteor livestreams like the ones hosted by NASA and by Slooh.

science

Credit...National Archives and Records AdministrationOne hundred years after the end of World War I, the Army Corps of Engineers is still cleaning up the relics of experiments that helped develop chemical weapons to counter the Germans gas attacks. At the American University Experiment Station near the Dalecarlia Reservoir in Maryland, soldiers tested gas masks in a man-test laboratory.Credit...National Archives and Records AdministrationNov. 10, 2018WASHINGTON Under a canopy of poplar and oak trees, a team of geophysicists surveyed the forest floor for century-old wartime relics. They positioned an electromagnetic scanner atop the carpet of leaves while the delicate instrument harvested data about objects in the soil beneath.In 1918, mortars and artillery shells arched toward this spot near the Dalecarlia Reservoir, one of the main water sources for the nations capital. But no armies fought here and no soldiers charged up the embankment. Rather, the shells were launched from the wartime research campus to the east at American University, where scientists developed chemical weapons, explosives, bombs and gas masks to use on the battlefields in World War I.In this centennial of the wars end, the team working in the woods was a reminder that the Great War had another name the Chemists War, a sobriquet reflecting the crucial role of science in the conflict. Alex Zahl, a project manager for the United States Army Corps of Engineers and a self-described World War I buff, mused over the state-of-the-art science detecting remains of experiments dating to 1918.They were using cutting-edge technology 100 years ago developing chemical weapons, Mr. Zahl, 62, said in the air-conditioned trailer that serves as the cleanup headquarters. That was high technology at that time, and here we are 100 years later using high technology again to remediate the material left behind.ImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesWorld War I, which ended with the armistice on Nov. 11, 1918, is infamous for its horrific battlefield conditions, its grinding, bloody clashes the Battles of the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele and others and the resulting human slaughter. Some 8.5 million soldiers were killed and 21 million more were wounded.Less is remembered about the role of science. The war hastened technological progress with optics, radio and primitive sonar. The Germans largest siege cannon, the dreaded Paris Gun, heaved gigantic shells into the stratosphere that returned to earth to pummel the French capital, 75 miles away. Lithe German submarines prowled under the waves. Aviation, in its infancy at the wars start, roared into maturity by the end. The inventor Thomas A. Edison lent his scientific prowess to the United States Navy.Even before the United States entered the war, the National Academy of Sciences anticipated the need for collaboration among scientists, universities, industry and the military. President Wilson established the National Research Council in 1916, and after the president signed the war declaration on April 6, 1917, the National Academys foreign secretary, George E. Hale, fired off a telegram to counterparts in Britain, France, Italy and Russia: The entrance of the United States into the war unites our men of science with yours in a common cause.American scientists threw themselves into the war effort. Though few are household names today, top physicists, chemists and engineers volunteered. Many from prestigious universities were known as dollar-a-year men, paid a symbolic wage for their efforts.The military had problems to solve that it couldnt solve on its own, said Daniel J. Kevles, emeritus professor of history at Yale and author of The Physicists.In many ways, the United States Chemical Warfare Service epitomized such efforts. Germanys chemical warfare program was the brainchild of its most esteemed chemists, and the Americans were ill-prepared. Entering the fray two years after Germany sparked the chemical arms race with a surprise chlorine gas attack in Flanders, Belgium, the United States Army had neither gas masks nor protective gear, and no capacity for producing or deploying chemical weapons. Doctors had no experience with gassed or chemically burned soldiers. And there was little time to catch up.ImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesTo correct those deficiencies, the War Department set up a laboratory, initially under the civilian Bureau of Mines, called the American University Experiment Station. It began modestly with one building and fewer than 100 researchers.By the wars end, almost 2,000 soldiers, scientists and civilians worked at the campus, which soldiers called Mustard Hill for the blister agent sulfur mustard. The army leased nearby farmland for proving grounds, part of which the soldiers named Death Valley. The service had satellite labs and outposts on campuses and factories throughout the country an effort that some historians compare to the Manhattan Project in World War II. When the war ended, the scientists revealed they had developed a new weapon called lewisite, an arsenic-based blister agent manufactured outside Cleveland at a top-secret factory nicknamed the mousetrap because of its elaborate security. Though never used, the so-called super-poison gas was reportedly to be dropped on the Germans in 1919 if the war had not ended.Although they had many imperfect successes, the rise of chemical warfare within the U.S. military during World War I, I would say, is unparalleled, said historian Thomas I. Faith, the author of a 2014 book about chemical warfare, Behind the Gas Mask. The experiment station reverted to American University when the war ended. Over the decades, developers turned surrounding land into an affluent residential neighborhood, transforming Death Valley into Spring Valley, in the northern section of the District of Columbia. The WWI legacy was largely forgotten until 1993, when developers dug up a cache of mortars, triggering a state of emergency, evacuations and a lengthy cleanup. In all, 141 munitions were found at that site.Several years later, the Corps of Engineers reopened its examination of the area, acknowledging that it had prematurely shut down the cleanup. The contamination and debris proved more extensive than originally believed, sparking an uproar from residents and a pledge from the Army for more transparency and community participation. The corps has been a near-constant presence in Spring Valley since then. Hundreds of munitions have been hauled away, most of them from a handful of burial pits. Arsenic has been the most widespread chemical contaminant the army has carted off thousands of tons of tainted soil and replaced it with clean topsoil. Sulfur mustard, lewisite and other chemical warfare compounds as well as traces of the constituent chemicals that remain after the warfare agents break down over time have also been detected and removed. Concerns about the health effects of chemical contamination among Spring Valleys roughly 25,000 residents have long lingered over the cleanup, especially after a lengthy neighborhood newspaper investigation reported unusual illnesses and health problems among residents. A 2007 health study conducted by Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health for the city found the neighborhoods residents to be generally healthier than most Americans, though with slightly more incidence of cancer including some that can be linked to arsenic compared to nearby Chevy Chase. A follow-up study in 2013 similarly found that the communitys health was very good. Finding no conclusive links between the war era and disease, it recommended no further epidemiological study but did recommend continued health monitoring in the neighborhood. The environmental cleanup is also a kind of archaeological undertaking, a historical scavenger hunt for evidence of the scientific enterprise around chemical warfare.ImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationOne hot spot was a contaminated property where the Corps razed a house in 2012. The location has remained a stubborn symbol of the cleanups complexities. In summer 2017, during what was expected to be a low-risk phase, an unidentified chemical agent in the soil sickened three contractors, halting the excavation. Air samples from under the adjacent residence, which had been vacated last year by the previous university president, found traces of chemicals. The excavation work resumed last month. The current president, Sylvia M. Burwell, former secretary of Health and Human Services, does not live there. The university declined a request to interview Ms. Burwell.In the latest cleanup phase, the Army has begun examining the soil of about 91 properties beneath the cone of the artillery range. The scanning near the reservoir was at an early stage, using new technology that pinpoints buried metal objects and compares their digital profiles against a database of military munitions, such as mortar shells or 75-millimeter artillery rounds. If the item is deemed harmless cultural debris, in Army parlance a discarded soda can, for example then it wont be disturbed.Were going to leave items in the ground that all this equipment says is cultural debris and nothing to do with World War I activities, Mr. Zahl said.On one Spring Valley property, some relics will likely never be removed. Last year, Elliot Gerson and his wife, Jessica Herzstein, bought the stately home where Ms. Herzsteins parents had lived for decades. The Corps has extensively investigated and cleaned up the property and says it has no health concerns. But three original structures from the Experiment Station remain.ImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...National Archives and Records AdministrationImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York TimesOn the wooded slope above the driveway, weeds choke a concrete platform with an angled gutter in the middle the launching pad for the experimental mortar range. Behind the house, two ivy-draped bunkers nestle in the woods, ferns poking through cracks.One afternoon, Mr. Gerson, 66, paused to reflect midway down a slate path leading to one of the structures. He called them a secret archaeological site in the forest, evidence of century-old scientific endeavors.Inside, he pointed to holes in the walls where scientists might have pumped gas into the chamber. Though harmless now, he said, the structure is a memento of the ghoulish weapons tested here, and newly revived from obsolescence in Syria and elsewhere 100 years after the wars end. Theyre still fascinating reminders of a remarkably little-known but important chapter in American history. Some of the best chemists in the United States were assembled here in an urgent effort to save the Allies after the German use of chemical weapons, he said.ImageCredit...Andrew Mangum for The New York Times

science

Credit...Jason Lee/ReutersMay 16, 2019BEIJING The Trump administration has filed criminal charges against Huawei for stealing technology. It has all but snuffed out the Chinese tech giants sales in the United States, calling the firm an espionage threat. And it has tried to persuade other governments to do similarly.But Washington had not taken a straight shot at Huaweis ability to do business anywhere in the world until late Wednesday, when the Commerce Department announced restrictions on the companys access to American technology.American companies including Qualcomm, Intel and Broadcom sell Huawei microchips and other specialized parts that go into its smartphones and telecom equipment. Googles Android software powers its phones. Of the $70 billion that Huawei spent on components and other supplies last year, $11 billion went to American companies, a Huawei spokesman, Joe Kelly, said.If Huawei is cut off from these suppliers, the effect could be catastrophic for the millions of people who use Huawei smartphones and for the mobile networks, across a wide swath of the planet, that run on Huawei gear.It would be the trade equivalent of a nuclear bomb, said Kevin J. Wolf, a partner at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and an assistant secretary of commerce under President Barack Obama.Much remains unclear, however, about the scope and potential impact of the Commerce Departments move. The department says it is putting Huawei on its entity list of firms that need special permission to buy American components and technology. How it decides to grant such permissions, and how broad a range of products the policy covers, will determine how badly Huaweis business is disrupted.According to a notice posted to the Federal Register on Thursday, licenses for selling to Huawei and 68 affiliated companies around the world will be reviewed with a presumption of denial, indicating they will likely be hard to obtain. The notice is scheduled to be officially published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.Given the spiraling tensions between China and the United States on tariffs, the move against Huawei may also be short-lived. Talks to resolve the trade fight have stalled, and both sides are digging in their heels. The pressure is on to find common ground ahead of a potential meeting next month between President Trump and Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, in Japan. Washingtons campaign against Huawei could become a bargaining chip.In every other administration, the entity listing was purely a tool of law enforcement and national security, Mr. Wolf said. The thing to watch is whether this will become a tool of trade policy and used as leverage in the negotiations.In a statement on Thursday, Huawei said the Commerce Departments move was in no ones interest.It will do significant economic harm to the American companies with which Huawei does business, the company said, and affect tens of thousands of American jobs.Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce condemned Washingtons decision in regularly scheduled news briefings on Thursday.We urge the United States to stop these wrongful practices and to create favorable conditions for normal cooperation between the two nations companies, said Gao Feng, a spokesman for Chinas Commerce Ministry.[Read more about the executive order on foreign-made equipment.]Tensions between the Trump administration and Huawei escalated after American officials arranged the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the companys chief financial officer and a daughter of its founder, in Canada late last year. The company and Ms. Meng face criminal charges in the United States in connection with alleged theft of industrial secrets and violations of sanctions against Iran. Ms. Meng remains in Canada while officials there decide whether she will be extradited.Washingtons action this week against Huawei puts the company in the same position that ZTE, a much smaller Chinese rival in telecom equipment, found itself in a few years ago.The Commerce Department added ZTE to the entity list in 2016 after determining that it had violated United States sanctions by selling American-made goods to Iran. Eventually, the department relented, and ZTE agreed to a hefty fine. But a year later, the Commerce Department said ZTE had failed to comply with the terms of the agreement, and American technology companies were barred outright from selling to the company.Cut off from American microchips and other parts, ZTE halted production and was near collapse until President Trump intervened and softened the punishment to appease the Chinese leadership.The episode galvanized Chinas government and business community. It revealed the extent to which the countrys growing technological prowess had been built on American know-how, and how important it was for China to innovate on its own if its economy was to thrive.Huawei also got a stark demonstration of the power Washington wielded over it.The company has since stockpiled components for uncertain times, Guo Ping, a Huawei deputy chairman, told reporters in March. The firm has also worked to build up a geographically diverse network of suppliers, Mr. Guo said.Huawei has made sustained and deep investments over the past 30 years, and I believe that has been of great help to Huaweis global supply, he said.In particular, the company has invested for many years in producing its own microchips, a key area in which most Chinese firms are laggards. Sravan Kundojjala, an analyst based in Hyderabad, India, with the technology research firm Strategy Analytics, estimates that three-quarters of the smartphones that Huawei ships today contain chips developed in-house.Mr. Kundojjala acknowledges that he was skeptical when Huaweis semiconductor unit, HiSilicon, began building its own high-end smartphone chips.Initially, I thought this was not going to work out, he said. Its maybe a pet project. Maybe they just want to play games with their suppliers.Instead, HiSilicon has become a formidable asset for Huawei, with chip technology that analysts say rivals that of market leaders such as Qualcomm.Yet Huawei still depends on American suppliers for enough critical components that an all-out export ban from Washington would create a sizable headache, even if it does not lead to near-ruin as it did for ZTE.When youve got something as complicated as a router or a cellphone, even if theres one part youre not able to get, you cant deliver, because you dont have that widget to make the cellphone or router function, Mr. Wolf, the lawyer, said.

Tech

Amazon, which has been under fire on worker safety, invited us into one facility to show its response.Amazon has struggled to balance a surge of orders with the health concerns of the one million workers.Credit...Published June 9, 2020Updated June 10, 2020KENT, Wash. After months of being embattled over its response to the coronavirus, Amazon is working to convince the public that its workplaces specifically, the warehouses where it stores everything from toys to hand sanitizer are safe during the pandemic.The giant internet retailer has started running television ads that show that its warehouse and delivery employees have masks and other protective gear. It has pushed out segments to local news stations touting its safety improvements. It has asked journalists to visit its warehouses to see for themselves.ImageAmazon is spreading its safety message after a period that Jeff Bezos, the companys chief executive, has called the hardest time weve ever faced. As the coronavirus swept through the United States, Amazon struggled to balance a surge of orders with the health concerns of the one million workers and contractors at its warehouses and delivery operations.In hundreds of its facilities, workers became ill with Covid-19, and many blamed the company. At the height of its crisis, one Amazon executive said he had quit over the firings of workers who raised questions about workplace safety during the pandemic.While Amazon has rolled out safety changes, many workers and officials said the measures were unevenly deployed and came too late.But in recent weeks, workers said, some conditions inside the warehouses have improved. And the company, which was in emergency response mode in March and April, has resumed a more regular rhythm of business.Amazon recently invited reporters into a fulfillment center in Kent, Wash., 20 miles south of Seattle, where the company is based. The New York Times agreed to tour the facility to see the changes that Amazon and many workers around the country had described.Plexiglass, Tape and Sanitizer StationsThe facility, which opened in 2016, stretches across more than one million square feet. The squat, largely windowless structure sits in an industrial park surrounded by parking lots. Inside, a vast web of conveyor belts crisscrosses the building, moving between areas where workers stow products into robotic shelves and areas where the workers pick items up from the shelves. There are also workstations where people package the items for shipping.On a typical shift, 600 to 800 employees work there. Much of the building naturally has little human interaction because the work areas are spaced far apart.But some high-traffic areas have changed. The human resources desk has put up walls of plexiglass so people can still talk face to face, with a layer of separation. There is tape throughout the warehouse marking out six-foot increments for social distancing. Sanitizer stations are common; before they were rare.The biggest transformation is at the buildings entryway, a wide lobby area with tall turnstiles. Workers would previously pass through the turnstiles and start their shift. Now when they arrive, they are channeled past thermal cameras, manned by colleagues, to take their temperatures. At a small stand enclosed in plexiglass, a worker stands with a stack of masks, which are handed out using long tongs.The Testing LabAfter workers pass through the temperature checks, they see a glass-walled room that previously was used for training. The room is part of an Amazon pilot program to test warehouse employees for Covid-19, part of the $4 billion that the company has said it plans to spend in the next few months to respond to the virus.When workers enter the makeshift testing center, they scan their company badge. They are handed, via forceps, a test kit for the virus. The small plastic bag, which is marked with a biohazard symbol, contains a swab and test-tube-like container. Workers can go to one of several areas with tables to follow instructions on how to administer the test. Then they seal their test kit and place it in a green bin.An employee of Concentra, a company that provides workplace health care, is on hand to give the medical oversight needed for self-administered tests.Amazon said more than 1,000 of the more than 3,000 workers at the facility had been tested for the coronavirus.A Thrum of ActivityWorkers still come and go. They grab lunch in the break room and have a smoke outside. Those are signs that business is getting back to normal.In the early stages of the pandemic, Amazon focused on shipping critical products, like hand sanitizer and diapers. But the Kent warehouse also packed products to meet shoppers other whims outdoor lights, blenders, car-washing supplies and more.Amazon has hired 175,000 temporary workers including about 1,000 at this warehouse alone to stand in for employees who stayed home during the early phase of the pandemic and to help meet demand that rivaled its peak holiday season. Now the majority of those workers have been given permanent roles.Emilie Deschamps, a worker whom Amazon authorized to talk publicly, joined the warehouse in October. She said the biggest change hadnt been physical but, rather, how Amazon had adjusted break times to stagger them and reduce congestion. The company also gave people extra time to wash their hands, she said.Honestly, its been OK so far, Ms. Deschamps said.Even with work stations spaced far apart, employees pass closely by each other at times, just as you might see at a grocery store or on a sidewalk.

Tech

Olympics|Plushenkos Withdrawal Stirs a Backlashhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/sports/olympics/plushenkos-withdrawal-stirs-a-backlash.htmlFeb. 14, 2014MOSCOW The crowd at the Iceberg Skating Palace in Sochi went silent when Evgeni Plushenko stumbled with the back injury that ended his figure skating career on Thursday. But the stunned silence that followed his withdrawal from the mens short program and the almost immediate announcement of his retirement has quickly been replaced by angry questions about whether Plushenko should have been competing in the first place.The Russian news media struggled on Friday to balance mourning the exit of Plushenko, one of its most beloved athletes and a two-time gold medalist, with the growing confusion, dismay and fury that Plushenko, 31, had been allowed to compete when his physical state was apparently so fragile. Who should answer for the choice of Plushenko? ran a headline on Sovetskii Sport, a leading Russian sports publication. Politicians also joined in, accusing Plushenko and the Russian Skating Federation of betraying the country.The removal of Plushenko from competition its treachery to our team and to those who could have gone to the Olympic Games in his place, Igor Lebedev, a parliamentary deputy, wrote on Twitter. That was an apparent reference to Maksim Kovtun, the 18-year-old national champion, who was left off the team to make room for Plushenko.Plushenko said he felt continuing to skate would have risked permanent injury. He helped Russia win the first gold medal in the team skating event on Sunday.Still, Russian athletes on Friday criticized him and the Russian Skating Federation for allowing Plushenko to compete despite signs that his condition was precarious. It was clear to me even before the Olympic Games, Irina Rodnina, the former Olympic champion skater who lit the torch at the opening ceremony, posted on Twitter.Plushenko has had back problems for several years and has had 12 operations. Many Russian athletes suggested that Plushenko should have known he was not physically up to the competition.The most bitter criticisms were connected to a sense that Plushenko had stolen a spot from Kovtun.At the time of Plushenkos selection, Russian officials said that Kovtun had no chance of a medal, whereas even an ailing Plushenko might take gold. But on Friday speculation grew that Plushenko had taken the singles spot so he could compete in the less strenuous team event without ever intending to compete in the singles. Plushenko denied that there had been any conspiracy behind his selection.

Sports

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 1, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump broke years of presidential protocol on Friday morning with a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department, an hour before the report was released.While the White House brushed off any notion that Mr. Trump had crossed a line, legal experts said the tweet raised possible insider trading concerns and economists said it was a blatant misuse of presidential power.The Bureau of Labor Statistics routinely releases its monthly employment report on the first Friday of the month. The night before, under longstanding tradition, the president and several senior administration officials including the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers are briefed on the numbers, which they are not supposed to disclose until the report is made public at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time the next morning.But Mr. Trump, who was briefed on the numbers Thursday evening, appeared to foreshadow the strength of the latest report on Friday morning on Twitter.Looking forward to seeing the unemployment numbers at 8:30 this morning, Mr. Trump posted at 7:21 a.m.Social media users saw the message as evidence that Mr. Trump had seen the numbers, and that they were good. Sure enough, the report showed that the economy added 223,000 jobs in May, above forecasters expectations. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.8 percent the lowest level in 18 years.White House officials downplayed the presidents tweet. Larry Kudlow, the chairman of the National Economic Council, said that he had shared the jobs report on Thursday evening with the president but expressed no concern with Mr. Trumps tweet on Friday morning.I dont think he gave anything away, incidentally. I think this is all according to routine, law and custom, Mr. Kudlow said on CNBC.But economists criticized Mr. Trump for breaking a longstanding practice, and possibly a federal regulation.Because it is widely known that presidents have early access to jobs numbers, and because Mr. Trump has never before tweeted that he was looking forward to a report release, I would be willing to bet that some people traded off of this, said Thomas O. Gorman, a former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement official who is now a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney.The fact of the matter is, he knew it was good, it was good, and he signaled it, Mr. Gorman said, referring to the number in the jobs report. You dont have to say, by the way, company A is going to buy company B. You can just signal it. The word selection is very clear. He knew exactly what he was doing.A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission would not comment on whether the agency was aware of any unusual market activity before the report was released. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not respond to a similar request for comment.On Wall Street, where the 8:30 a.m. release on Jobs Friday is a major event for the markets each month, traders disagreed on whether the tweet actually moved prices, which fluctuate constantly and make it difficult to determine if any single event pushed them in one direction or another.But observers also said it is clear that watching the presidential Twitter feed is now being incorporated into the ritual of preparing for the Bureau of Labor Statistics update.I think the markets certainly paid attention, said Aaron Kohli, a government bond market strategist at BMO Capital Markets in New York, of the presidents Friday tweet. And will do so next month should there be a tweet, or lack of one.Many trading firms already use computers to keep track of social media traffic in the hope of garnering trading signals.Most sophisticated firms these days are following Twitter, and in the age of Trump, a lot of firms have trading models that are following him, said Larry Tabb, founder of the Tabb Group, a financial markets research and advisory firm.Still, some expressed concern that the president could turn one of the most important signals about the health of the economy into a trading game that could destabilize financial markets by prompting a rapid sell-off in advance of future jobs reports if Mr. Trump did not tout the upcoming release.Before he became president, and began to celebrate strong jobs reports, Mr. Trump actively worked to undermine confidence in economic data. Throughout his run for the White House and even in the months before he took office, he often dismissed the reports as fiction.Washington has long tried to prevent market-moving data like the employment numbers from being prematurely released. In 1985, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a regulation governing the release of embargoed federal data like the jobs report, including a requirement that employees of the executive branch not comment publicly on the data until an hour after its release.All employees of the executive branch who receive prerelease distribution of information and data estimates as authorized above are responsible for assuring that there is no release prior to the official release time, the regulation states. Except for members of the staff of the agency issuing the principal economic indicator who have been designated by the agency head to provide technical explanations of the data, employees of the executive branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time.It is unclear whether the regulation applies to Mr. Trump, some legal experts said. I would be very cautious about assuming this applies to the president, who is generally not considered an employee of the executive branch, said Adam Scales, a law professor at Rutgers University who teaches administrative law.The Republican National Committee responded to the criticism of Mr. Trump on Friday afternoon by flagging an evening speech by President Barack Obama on Feb. 5, 2009, the night before the first jobs report release of Mr. Obamas presidency.The economy was shedding jobs rapidly in the depths of the Great Recession and Mr. Obama, pushing for passage of an economic stimulus bill, told a congressional Democratic retreat that Tomorrow were expecting another dismal jobs report, on top of the half a million jobs that were lost last month, on top of the half a million jobs that were lost the month before that, on top of the 2.6 million jobs that were lost last year.Even before the numbers were released on Friday, economists said they were stunned at the prospect that Mr. Trump was giving hints about the reports content, which fast-acting traders in financial markets could seize on to place bets on an optimism-fueled market surge.Austan Goolsbee, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year during President Obamas first term, called Mr. Trumps tweet totally inappropriate. If he or another official had sent a tweet like the presidents, he said, he would have been investigated.Its more than just a breakdown of a norm, this is really an abuse of the office, Mr. Goolsbee said.Other economists went further, raising the possibility that if Mr. Trump was willing to give Twitter users a premature hint at the strength of report, he could also have shared the numbers with a more select group even earlier.President Trump was sent the jobs numbers in advance, said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government who was Mr. Obamas final chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Sharing them with the public is destabilizing and inappropriate. A bigger concern is if he was bragging about them privately to his friends last night friends who could make millions on the information.Mr. Furman said during his tenure, he briefed the president in person in the early evening if Mr. Obama was in Washington, and usually gave him the numbers over a secure phone line if the president was traveling. Mr. Obama also received a paper summary of the next days major economic releases around 7 p.m.Mr. Furman said he and other officials took the security of the numbers seriously. When he started at the White House, Mr. Furman said, he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Labor Department agreeing only to share the numbers with the handful of people authorized to see them. He said he did not believe the information was formally classified, but the staff treated it that way, discussing it via a secure line.Letting the numbers leak, Mr. Furman said, risked undermining public confidence in the integrity of economic data.

Politics

Credit...Srdjan Zivulovic/ReutersFeb. 15, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Mikaela Shiffrin, the 18-year-old defending world champion in slalom, arrived here Friday night, and less than 24 hours later reporters asked her if she could rescue the struggling American ski team.Shiffrin did not flinch. She smiled.Im not thinking about it that way, Shiffrin answered coolly. Im going to do the best in my events, and if that means I up the medal count, then thats great because Im here to ski for the U.S. But Im not the only one.Shiffrin said she had been watching the Olympic Alpine races to date and reacted to some of the subpar American performances.Its a good lesson that no matter how good you are, you cant take your foot off the gas, she said. Were all here to inspire the rest of the world with our sport, and thats exactly what Im planning to do.Shiffrin added that she did not come to the Sochi Games with only slalom in mind, even if it is her specialty. Shiffrin has already been on two World Cup podiums this season in giant slalom, which will be her first race on Tuesday.ImageCredit...Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesIm going for a medal in two events, she said.Shiffrin spent roughly the last two weeks training in Central Europe Italy, Germany and Austria. The snow there, she said, was mostly wet and soft, similar to what she will most likely encounter at the Rosa Khutor Alpine complex, where the daytime temperatures the past week were in the 50s.In training, Ive had a lot of ruts to ski through, and from what Im hearing, it will be good preparation for what Im going to see, Shiffrin said.But Shiffrin said she would not use the soft snow conditions as an excuse.If I dont win, its because of something I did with my skiing, and if I do win its because of something I did with my skiing, she said with a smile.Shiffrin also has experience on the slalom hill here. Because of a training partnership between the United States and Russia, the Americans skied for about a week on the Rosa Khutor racecourses after last years world championships.I like the hill, Shiffrin said. It has pretty much everything you would want in a racecourse.For someone less than a year removed from high school graduation, Shiffrin was remarkably poised Saturday as she met the international news media. She said that was because she had planned for the moment, and for skiing in the Olympics.I envisioned your questions, she said to reporters. I wrote down the answers in my notebook. Ive envisioned this moment for quite a while. Ive envisioned myself on the top step of the podium and on the third step of the podium. Ive envisioned myself crashing, and I know what mistake Ive made in my head.It takes a lot of courage to see yourself at the Olympics to be able to see that in your head and then brush it away. To everybody else, its my first Olympics, but to me its my 1,000th.

Sports

Abby Lee Miller I'm Feeling Lighter For My Early Prison Release 1/22/2018 What a load off Abby Lee Miller -- she's reportedly getting out of federal prison next month, and she'll be way lighter when she does it. Abby posted a pic of herself and some friends -- looks like they were visiting her at the federal pen in Victorville, CA -- and her weight loss is obvious in the shot. There are reports she's lost about 100 pounds since entering prison in July. You'll recall, she'd had gastric bypass surgery in April. Abby's reportedly getting out on Feb. 20, and will immediately report to halfway house in Los Angeles. She says the dates aren't set yet, but says she's been a model citizen in prison, and she's looking forward to her new life on the outside. Prison officials tell us ... as of now, Abby is still scheduled to be released on June 21.

Entertainment

Credit...Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 9, 2017BEIJING He usually went there for neon-orange jars of citron tea with honey, jumbo packets of dried seaweed, and cartons of eggs that seemed to be perpetually on sale, 15 for eight renminbi, or about a dollar.But this time was different. Li Xin, a retired store owner, showed up at a Beijing branch of Lotte Mart, a South Korean supermarket chain, with a message.Get out of China! Mr. Li, 66, a tall man in a fraying green parka, shouted at the entrance to a Lotte Mart store in central Beijing. We dont want traitors!A wave of anti-South Korean sentiment has broken out across China after the Souths embrace of an American missile defense system Washington began shipping this week that China says can be used to spy on its territory.The government-controlled news media, in brassy editorials, has urged boycotts of South Korean products. Students, retirees and taxi drivers have led protests against South Korean businesses. Tourism officials have ordered several mainland travel agencies to cancel group trips to South Korea.Frustrated nationalists have vowed not to eat kimchi or Korean barbecue. South Korean bands have been denied visas to perform in China, and South Korean shows have disappeared from Chinese television and streaming services.The furor poses a test for President Xi Jinping of China.On the one hand, Beijing is seeking to pressure South Korea to abandon the missile defense system, which officials see as a threat to Chinas security.On the other, Chinese leaders are eager to maintain good relations, especially as South Korea faces political uncertainty over the removal Friday of its president, Park Geun-hye, and the possibility that a candidate willing to reconsider the missile system could replace her.The backlash against South Korean businesses has divided the Chinese. Some say it is necessary to counter American military might in Asia. Others warn against such nationalism, arguing that China should find more amicable ways of engaging South Korea, a close economic ally.Peace is most important, said Liu Yuanyuan, 25, an employee at a German pharmaceutical company in Beijing. Countries should not threaten one another.Much of the ire against South Korea has focused on Lotte, a conglomerate that operates 112 stores with some 13,000 employees in mainland China. The company, which entered China in 2008, has been overwhelmed with protests and scrutiny by the authorities since it agreed to provide land in South Korea for the deployment of the American antimissile system.ImageCredit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesAs of Thursday, the Chinese authorities had closed nearly half of Lottes stores on the mainland, citing safety violations, the company said in a statement.One store was fined about $3,000 for using hand-radios that emitted illegal wireless signals. On Wednesday, the authorities ordered the monthlong closing of a chocolate factory jointly owned by Lotte and the Hershey Company of the United States after the results of a fire inspection.Protests erupted again at Lotte stores this week after American officials announced that they had begun to install the antimissile technology, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, in South Korea.In Zibo, a city in the eastern province of Shandong, protesters held banners demanding that Lotte leave China. The safety of our motherland cannot be violated, a 30-foot banner read.In Xuchang, a city in the central province of Henan, employees at a mall stood in rows holding banners protesting Lotte and singing the Chinese national anthem.And in Beijing, there were scattered voices of discontent, including Mr. Lis.He said he had first heard about Lottes land deal on WeChat, a popular messaging app, where a petition calling the company a traitor and enemy of the Chinese people was circulating.I had a lot of hope for the future of China and South Korea, he said. Now I worry South Korea is changing.In Kunming, a southern city, students at Yunnan Minzu University posted a sign denouncing Lotte on the door of their dormitory.Seoul is tiny and insignificant! the sign read, according to a photograph provided by one of the students, Liu Guomengchen, 21. Empower my big China!Ms. Liu, who studies environmental design, said she would stop buying South Korean cosmetics and other goods.These things are totally dispensable, she said. China is becoming more and more powerful. Countries like South Korea and the U.S. see our rise as a threat, so they want to work together to weaken us.The Chinese news media has played a central role in fueling the protests. An opinion article by Xinhua, the official news agency, last month suggested that Lotte was an accomplice in an effort to undermine China and that it was no longer welcome in the country. An editorial in China Youth Daily last week urged a boycott.For all the bombast in the news media, some have urged restraint, questioning the wisdom of efforts to drum up criticism of South Korea.Zhang Mengjie, 29, who adores South Korean boy bands like BTS, said boycotts of South Korean goods and artists were irrational.These stars are just there for entertainment; they dont want to engage in politics, Ms. Zhang said. They have nothing to do with it.Referring to the people who were protesting against Lotte, she added: I dont think this is real patriotism. They just go with the flow, act impulsively and use extreme rhetoric.For Chinese citizens with relatives and friends from South Korea, the backlash has created anxieties.Dong Mengmeng, 24, a ski coach from the eastern province of Anhui, is planning to get married next month to her South Korean fianc, Jung Jaeyoon, 27, in Gyeongju, South Korea. But she said that because of the tensions she had been unable to secure tourist visas for 11 Chinese relatives to attend the ceremony.Ive been hijacked by patriotism, she said.Ms. Dong said that she was often in tears and that her mother was afraid to inquire about the status of her visa application because she was worried she would be harassed.This year is the 25th anniversary of the establishment of formal ties between China and South Korea. But in a sign of the tensions between the two countries, there is no plan in place yet to celebrate the occasion.Analysts said that the protests might be short-lived and that Chinese leaders probably did not want too much animosity with elections looming in South Korea.These initiatives would typically peter out quite quickly, said Pal Nyiri, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who studies Chinese nationalism. The government has been following the same policies fostering nationalism and then using it, but also being wary of it getting out of hand.Many Chinese people are already finding it difficult to uphold a boycott, given the preponderance of popular Korean goods makeup, face masks, kimchi on the shelves of Chinese stores.Zhang Xin, an electrician, stopped at a Lotte store in Beijing on his way home, and bought a bag of ribs to make lunch for his wife. He said he supported the boycott.South Korea is always blustering at China; they are arrogant, Mr. Zhang, 49, said. In the future, I will shop here less.

World

Credit...Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesNov. 10, 2016In December 1873, London was blanketed for a week in a yellow fog so thick that people could not see their feet. Ladies & gentlemen, Mark Twain said in a public lecture at the time, I hear you, & so know that you are here & I am here, too, notwithstanding I am not visible.Some 780 people died and 50 prize cattle on display at the Smithfield Club panted, wheezed and eventually died of asphyxia. Still, it took 83 more years of noxious air before the country passed the Clean Air Act in 1956.This history, described in London Fog: The Biography, is a lesson in just how difficult it is for governments to put public health first when it comes into conflict with economic development, the political power of industry and even the polluting habits of their people.The government of India is up against all of those things. The capital, New Delhi, a sprawling city of 20 million, just lived through an extraordinary episode of air pollution that closed schools for three days. India is one of a number of middle-income countries, including China, grappling with pollution problems that have ballooned along with economic growth and rapidly expanding cities.A decade ago, the scope of the problem was poorly understood because the numbers on air pollution levels and deaths were spotty. But that has changed. Satellites have given scientists far more detailed pictures, allowing them to perform ever more precise calculations.Scientists underestimated the scale of outdoor air pollution because we just didnt have the data on what people were breathing globally, said Joshua Apte, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at University of Texas at Austin.They did not like what they saw. Air pollution is the fourth top cause of death globally, after poor diet, high blood pressure and smoking, with more than one in 10 deaths linked to it in 2015, according to the Global Burden of Disease, a vast data trove compiled by more than 2,000 researchers led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.The group estimates that roughly 6.5 million people died from both indoor and outdoor air pollution in 2015. Two million of them died in India. Deaths from outdoor air pollution have risen to 4.2 million in 2015 from 3.5 million in 1990.Without strong policy action, the death toll will only worsen as megacities mushroom, exposing ever greater numbers of people.Its much worse in middle-income countries than ever before, said Dr. Maria Neira, director of the Department of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization. Fifty years ago, only a few cities had populations of more than two million. Today there are many.The highest numbers of deaths from outdoor air pollution are in China, India and Russia, according to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. That is in part because they have the most people. The countries with the highest mortality rates deaths from air pollution per 100,000 total deaths are in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Latvia. The causes vary. Some believe it could be related to a legacy of dirty Soviet industry and fleets of aging diesel cars.The key ingredient in policy change is a strong desire for it on the part of the population, said Christine L. Corton, the author of London Fog. In England, that happened in 1952, when another heavy smog episode this time from coal-burning fireplaces and cooking ranges left as many as 12,000 dead.In the end, it has to come down to the people wanting it, she said.Pollution seems like something that must have always provoked outrage, but in Britain that was not always the case. The famous London smog, etched into history by writers like Dickens and Impressionist painters such as Monet, Turner and Whistler, was once a symbol of prosperity, Dr. Corton said. It signified home fires burning (in Dickens there are grim references to meager fireplaces with just a few lumps of coal) and thrumming factories.The 1952 smog was a real knock to the psyche, she said. People had been through so much the war, the Blitz. People said we didnt go through all those deprivations to die from coal smoke. They were fed up. They wanted a better quality of life.As for India, Professor Apte said he believed public opinion had shifted, and that there was a much broader recognition of air pollution as a problem. He hopes comprehensive health data from hospitals is collected from this recent episode. That could take the issue out of the realm of abstract statistics and make it real.We might be reaching a tipping point with this Delhi smog episode, he said.Professor Apte, who has been working in Delhi for the past eight years and was there this week, said he has done work showing that incremental declines in pollution levels in very polluted places do not bring big health improvements, a phenomenon that might make change hard at first. But there are big benefits to longer-term pollution control.ImageCredit...Ernie Sisto/The New York Times

Health

SinosphereCredit...ReutersApril 4, 2016HONG KONG In an Oscar-like spectacle on Sunday night, the Hong Kong Film Awards announced 21 movie prizes. Or 20 if you consulted only reports in the mainland Chinese news media.That was because the top honor went to Ten Years, a low-budget independent production depicting a dark future for a Hong Kong bullied by the mainland government into assimilation. In the lists of award winners published on the Chinese news portals Sina and Tencent and a report by Xinhua, the state news agency, there was no mention of the best film.With a shoestring budget of about 500,000 Hong Kong dollars, or about $64,000, and a limited theater release, the film has raked in more than 5 million Hong Kong dollars, finding resonance with present-day fears that local culture and liberties are being threatened under Chinese rule. On Saturday, thousands of people flocked to community-organized screenings in more than 30 locations, including public parks and squares.We just hope that our feelings are shared by the Hong Kong people, said Ng Ka-leung, a producer and director of the film, after he won the award. We want to use our work to ponder the future of Hong Kong.Ten Years depicts a Hong Kong in 2025 crumpling under the tightening grasp of the Chinese government, even though it had promised a high degree of autonomy and civil liberties for 50 years under the one country, two systems principle governing the former British colonys 1997 transfer to Chinese rule. In the dystopian future depicted across five short stories, books are censored, houses are bulldozed against their residents will, and the Chinese government uses force and deception to interfere with local politics.In a scene that coincides with growing calls for Hong Kongs independence from China, a person sympathetic to those calls sets herself on fire in front of the British Consulate to protest Chinese rule.In January, after the movie was nominated for the best film award, the Chinese government reportedly ordered the mainland company Tencent and the state broadcaster CCTV to cancel broadcasting agreements of the ceremony. On Sunday night, residents in mainland cities who had tuned in to Hong Kongs main television channel said on Chinese social media that the program was cut off shortly after it started and replaced with a cooking show.I was watching the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony when, all of a sudden, it was cut off, a user named MElemenT said on the Chinese social networking site Weibo.The more you want to censor something, the more we want to get it, another user said.Not everyone disapproved of the apparent censorship of mentions of Ten Years.Its a countrys bottom line to oppose secession, Lu Zhen said on Weibo. Whats wrong with the broadcasting regulators ban on a film supporting independence for Hong Kong?In an editorial in January, Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper that often carries nationalist views, denounced the film as a thought virus and called it absurd, pessimistic and fearmongering.In a report on Sunday night, it described the award ceremony as fairly quiet and said the actors seemed lonely due to the lack of attention.Before presenting the best film award, Derek Yee, a director and chairman of Hong Kong Film Awards, said, without elaborating, that it had been hard to find anyone else to present it. Artists have found themselves unable to perform on the Chinese mainland after they declared support in 2014 for pro-democracy demonstrations that the Chinese government deemed unlawful.A young scriptwriter came up to me before the ceremony and asked if mentioning Ten Years would offend anyone, Mr. Yee said. I said to him, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

World

The suit, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, seeks to give the vice president the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Credit...Lynne Sladky/Associated PressDec. 31, 2020[Heres what you need to know about President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Inauguration Day.]The Justice Department asked a federal judge on Thursday to reject a lawsuit seeking to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, pitting the department against President Trumps allies in Congress who have refused to accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.The department, acting on behalf of Mr. Pence, said that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, could not invalidate the more than century-old law that governs the Electoral College process to expand an otherwise ceremonial role into one that has the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Mr. Biden.In a last-ditch bid to subvert the outcome of the election, Mr. Gohmert, along with other Republicans in Congress and electors in Arizona, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Pence on Sunday in an effort to force him to take on this expanded role. As the presiding officer of the Senate, Mr. Pence has the constitutionally designated responsibility of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results when Congress convenes next week to certify the count. But changing his role would allow Mr. Trump to pressure his vice president to invalidate the results.The Justice Department also made clear in its filing that it welcomed any comments from the federal judge in the case, Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas, that would clarify that Mr. Pences role in the election was purely procedural.The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were aware the Justice Department was filing on Mr. Pences behalf before it happened, according to two people briefed on the discussions.If a judge were to make clear that Mr. Pence does not have the authority to reject votes or decide the results, it could alleviate pressure on him. Since the election in November, Mr. Trump has become singularly focused on the proceedings of the Electoral College. He cut short his vacation at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to return to Washington early, at least in part to push Republican lawmakers to reject the results when they meet on Jan. 6 to count the votes.Should Judge Kernodle confirm that Mr. Pence has no influence over the Electoral College votes, Mr. Gohmerts lawsuit could have the opposite of its intended effect.In its response, the department also said that Mr. Gohmert did not have standing to sue Mr. Pence over performing the duties as defined by the act; rather, he and the other plaintiffs should sue Congress, which passed the original law.The Justice Departments move to squash an 11th-hour attempt to undo Mr. Bidens victory could put it more at odds with Mr. Trump.The president has been furious that former Attorney General William P. Barr refused to bolster Mr. Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud and instead affirmed Mr. Bidens victory.Mr. Trumps relationship with Mr. Barr, whom he had once seen as the greatest ally he had in his cabinet, further soured after the president learned that he kept an investigation into the tax affairs of Mr. Bidens son, Hunter Biden, under wraps during the election. Although it is department policy not to discuss investigations that could affect the outcome of an election, Mr. Trump accused his attorney general of disloyalty for not publicly disclosing the matter during the campaign.And at his final news conference, Mr. Barr said that he did not see any reason to appoint a special counsel to oversee a tax investigation into the younger Mr. Biden or to dig into unfounded allegations that Mr. Trump lost because of widespread voter fraud.Some inside the department believed that Mr. Barrs statements may have helped Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general. Mr. Rosen is likely to face tremendous pressure from the president to appoint additional special counsels and use the departments other powers to help him undo Mr. Bidens victory.But now the department under Mr. Rosen has taken a step that Mr. Trump may see as an overt act intended to thwart one of his allies, opening it up to possible retaliation.A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.

Politics

Politics|Lawmakers may have been exposed to the coronavirus while sheltering during the Capitol riot, a doctor says.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/lawmakers-may-have-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus-while-sheltering-during-the-capitol-riot-a-doctor-says.htmlCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressJan. 10, 2021While sheltering in a secure location as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone who was infected with the coronavirus, Congresss Office of the Attending Physician said on Sunday.In an email sent to lawmakers, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician, said that while the time in this room was several hours for some and briefer for others, during that period, individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection. He told lawmakers to obtain a P.C.R. test as a precaution and continue taking preventive steps against the spread of the virus.Congress has long struggled to stem the spread of the virus within its ranks, with mixed guidance and a delayed testing regimen. Dozens of lawmakers, staff members and reporters took shelter in the secure room on Wednesday, but a handful of Republicans refused to wear masks, one person there said, even as Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, tried to pass out masks.Before the mob breached the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, overseeing the certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory and debate over a Republican effort to subvert those results in certain states, admonished Republicans for having too many people on the floor and for some objectors refusing to wear masks as they spoke.As the 117th Congress reconvened a week ago, multiple lawmakers tested positive for the coronavirus after taking their oath. Late Wednesday, one Republican, Representative Jake LaTurner of Kansas, received positive test results after voting on the House floor to overturn Arizonas results and did not return for a second vote early Thursday. It was unclear where Mr. LaTurner was sheltering in place as the mob tried to break into the House chamber, but in a statement issued shortly before 3 a.m. on Thursday, his office said he was not experiencing symptoms.Because lawmakers qualified for early access to the coronavirus vaccine, many have received at least one shot of a two-dose vaccine, with some receiving both doses. Some congressional aides have been authorized to receive the two-dose vaccine.

Politics

BitsCredit...Suzie Howell for The New York TimesMay 24, 2019Each week, we review the weeks news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here.Hi, Im Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Heres a look at the weeks tech news:President Trumps latest swipe at Huawei could be the start of a deep transformation of the tech sector.Citing national security concerns, the Commerce Department said this month that American companies would need special permission to sell some products to Huawei and other Chinese companies. This past week, things escalated.Companies including Google, Qualcomm and Broadcom froze some of the supply of products to the Chinese technology giant. (Google, for instance, will no longer offer Huawei the full version of its Android operating system.) The crackdown may expand, with a ban on sales to Chinese surveillance companies possible.Third-country suppliers also need a license to sell products to Huawei if content from the United States contributes more than 25 percent to their value, and the British semiconductor designer ARM said it would stop licensing technology to Huaweis chip unit. (Mobile carriers in Britain also stopped offering Huawei phones to some customers, over Android support concerns.)What now? The United States government offered a 90-day grace period for some transactions between American companies and Huawei. That doesnt mean much, Ren Zhengfei, Huaweis founder, said, but it could signal that the overarching ban is little more than short-lived trade posturing.Still, the Trump administration has spoken repeatedly about its desire to blunt Chinas technological development, and China threatened to retaliate. So this could be the start of a long fight the raising of a digital Iron Curtain, as my colleague Li Yuan put it.This is a turning point, said Xiaolan Fu, the director of the Technology and Management Center for Development at Oxford University. It is changing the direction to a more closed, protectionist approach.If the freeze-out persists, the near term looks rough for Huaweis smartphone division. It has stockpiled Western chips, maintained supply from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (the worlds largest contract chip maker) and developed its own phone software. But it could be crippled by an inability to source components and may struggle to find markets outside China for its devices.In the long term, the ban could push the world toward divided technologies.The lesson the Chinese have taken from the Trump administrations trade strategy is that the U.S. is pursuing a technology containment approach, said Adam Segal, the director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The solution is independence something China has pushed for by encouraging domestic tech prowess, including in chip production.I think we are moving toward a bifurcated technology system, Mr. Segal said. China uses Chinese products, and America uses American products.A big question then: Which side do other countries take? The United States probably assumes the West will follow its lead. But nations like Britain and Germany arent yielding to American pressure to block Huawei from building next-generation 5G wireless networks over national security risks.Poorer countries are likely to be won over by price: Huawei is one of the leading, and cheapest, developers of 5G technology. For some countries wanting to jump-start economies with fast wireless networks, siding with China may be the only option.Such fragmentation may affect consumers. Ms. Fu points out that in a globalized economy, manufacturing takes place in the most efficient location.A move to protectionism would prompt China and the United States to relocate production domestically, or at least to ally nations, which could drive up prices of devices. And the development and deployment of 5G in a fragmented environment could lack economies of scale afforded by globalism, Mr. Segal said. That could potentially delay its rollout and increase cost.Welcome to techs Cold War.Qualcomms court lossGeopolitics isnt the only force of change in the smartphone industry: So is the tech industrys new obsession, antitrust.On Tuesday, Judge Lucy Koh of United States District Court in San Jose, Calif., ruled that Qualcomm had suppressed competition in the smartphone chip market and charged onerous fees for the use of its patents.Qualcomms licensing practices have strangled competition, she wrote. It must now strike new licensing agreements and be monitored for seven years to ensure compliance.Phone makers, particularly Apple, had bristled at Qualcomms royalties, which could be as high as 5 percent of a handsets wholesale price. (Apple turned the other cheek and settled its royalty case with Qualcomm last month, sacrificing $27 billion in damages and making a payment of at least $4.5 billion to use Qualcomms 5G chips.) So the ruling could reduce costs for smartphone makers and consumers.It also undercuts Qualcomms business model, which is largely based on profits from patent fees. It could also complicate efforts by the United States to assert itself in the creation of 5G networks.Americas first A.I. rulesThe Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced a set of principles on Wednesday to guide the development of artificial intelligence. Conspicuous by its presence on the list of nations backing the rules: the United States.The Trump administration long shied away from such policies. But as my colleague Steve Lohr reported in April, it was spurred into action by a wave of tech regulation particularly Europes new General Data Protection Regulation. The realization: Regulations that would affect the nations tech industry were coming, and federal officials needed to participate if they were to shape them.So the administration decided to collaborate with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and this is the first time that it has formally endorsed a set of international A.I. guidelines.The guidelines which suggest that A.I. should benefit people and the planet, and be designed to respect the rule of law and human rights, among other things arent legally binding.But Jack Clark, the head of policy at OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco, said it was quite significant that the United States had signed on to them. It is, he said, a sign that the administration is putting its weight behind the development of A.I.Some stories you shouldnt miss Big Tech seized the protectionist narrative. Executives have suggested that strict regulation of their companies could hand advantages to the Chinese. Cleaning up Facebook brings its A.I. whiz to tears. When its chief technology officer discussed the complexity of using artificial intelligence to cure toxic content problems, he welled up. Tech jobs have the potential to propel people into the middle class. But so far, such results have been few and far between. Google Glass still exists. The latest incarnation of the smart spectacles, heavily upgraded and priced at $999, is still firmly aimed at workplace users. Theres bipartisan support for facial recognition regulation. At a House committee hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers agreed that it seems to infringe civil liberties. Hackers have held Baltimore hostage. A ransomware attack took down services including systems used to pay bills, fines and taxes. Voice assistants are fueling gender bias. Their typically female voices and often submissive styles reinforce problematic stereotypes, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization says. Your post could be delivered by robots. Kind of: The United States Postal Service is testing autonomous trucks. The most popular lines in Amazons cashierless stores? Snacks.

Tech

A crime lab studied a patients response to a bone marrow transplant. Readers requested more information about the perplexing findings.Credit...Tiffany Brown Anderson for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 12, 2019Updated Dec. 30, 2019A recent article about a highly unconventional experiment involving a man who had received a bone marrow transplant has raised some questions for readers of The New York Times. Four years after the lifesaving procedure, all the DNA in the patients semen had been replaced by that of his donor. This came as a surprise to forensic scientists at the Washoe County Sheriffs Department in Reno, Nev., studying the case. They presented their findings at an international forensics conference to highlight how a bone marrow transplant could, theoretically, confuse an investigation. Members of law enforcement tend to assume that when a suspect or victim leaves behind DNA, its the DNA they were born with, not the DNA of a bone marrow donor who lives thousands of miles away. The experiments subject, Chris Long, who works in the agencys I.T. department and is not a suspect in any crime, had had a vasectomy. This procedure, which occurred many years before Mr. Long learned he had leukemia and required a bone marrow transplant, has been the focus of many reader questions. If a patient had a vasectomy, how could the forensic scientists analyze his semen?Semen and sperm are different. A man who has a vasectomy still produces semen. That spermless semen, which may also be referred to as seminal fluid, is still of interest to forensic scientists. Thats because it could be used to identify a suspect in a crime or contribute other information to an investigation.So how did his donors DNA end up in his spermless semen?To say definitively what happened in Mr. Longs case would require more research. But several experts in bone marrow transplants said that the forensic scientists findings made sense from a medical standpoint and that the answer involved white blood cells.The two most common types of cells in semen are sperm cells and white blood cells, said Dr. Mehrdad Abedi, a bone marrow transplant specialist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Davis, who treated Mr. Long but was not involved in the experiment. Because he had a vasectomy, he said, all thats left is the white cells. Dr. Elias Zambidis, a stem cell investigator at the Institute for Cell Engineering at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, agreed that the analysts were detecting the donors DNA in white blood cells. Semen contains a number of different types of white blood cells, including macrophages, neutrophils and lymphocytes all of which support the immune system. These can come from the urinary tract or the prostate, and will be present even in a vasectomized man, Dr. Zambidis said. Since all white blood cells come from the bone marrow donor after a bone marrow transplant, it will not be a surprise that ejaculate containing white blood cells will also be of the donor. Could a man pass on the DNA of his bone marrow donor to future children?No. Several experts said that its not possible. In this particular case the man had a vasectomy, so hes not likely to have any more children. But beyond that, white blood cells do not create sperm cells; they create more white blood cells, said Dr. Jonathon Epstein, chief scientific officer at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.Its the DNA in sperm cells that a man passes on to his children. We dont know a cell that can make a sperm cell, Dr. Epstein said. Even embryonic stem cells cant be made into sperm cells at this point, though there are people working on it.That said, there are multiple types of chimerism the technical term for animals that have cells from multiple individuals. Though chimerism by way of bone marrow transplant will not affect a persons offspring, other forms of chimerism can. Graham Coop, a professor of evolution and ecology at U.C. Davis, shared a fascinating fact: Many marmoset monkeys are germline chimeras, meaning the DNA in their sperm or egg cells comes from a different individual than the rest of their DNA. The marmosets exchange cells with their twins in the womb. Its not uncommon, therefore, for a marmoset to pass on its brothers DNA instead of its own.

science

The split-up strategy reflects how decisively computing has shifted to the cloud.Credit... Alexander Koerner/Getty ImagesOct. 8, 2020IBM, throughout its 109-year history, hasnt often led technology trends. But it has adapted and eventually prospered time and again.It is trying to go the adaptation route once again.IBM on Thursday acknowledged the challenge and embraced the opportunity for the company in the accelerating shift to cloud computing. The company said it was spinning off its legacy technology services business to focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence.Arvind Krishna, who became chief executive this year, called the move a landmark day for IBM, redefining the company.The split-up strategy reflects how decisively computing has shifted to the cloud. Today, nearly all new software is being created as a cloud service, delivered over the internet from remote data centers. The computing model affords corporate customers more flexibility and cost savings, sold as a pay-for-use service or annual subscriptions.IBM was late to the cloud market, which Amazon pioneered when it began Amazon Web Services in 2006. But IBM has made a major push into cloud services and software in recent years, punctuated by its $34 billion purchase in 2018 of Red Hat, a distributor of open-source software and tools used by cloud developers.In an interview, Ginni Rometty, IBMs executive chair and former chief executive, said cloud computing, enhanced by artificial intelligence, is now IBMs enduring platform.IBM is tailoring its cloud strategy to help corporate customers make the transition to the new technology and thus carve out a fast-growing and healthy business amid the market leaders: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.The main business, retaining the IBM name, will be its cloud operations, along with its hardware, software and consulting services units. They generate about three-quarters of IBMs revenue.ImageCredit...Brian Ach/Getty ImagesThe business to be spun off, which is not yet named, is IBMs basic technology services business, which maintains, supports and upgrades the computing operations of thousands of corporate customers.That business is sizable, with sales of about $19 billion a year, and will become a separate public company. But that business is not where the growth opportunities lie in the technology business.IBM has been unable to generate overall growth for years, disappointing investors. Last year, the companys revenue declined 3 percent, to $77 billion.IBMs performance has been held back by the erosion of its old-line businesses, even as newer businesses like cloud grew.Over the years, IBM has repeatedly sold off businesses whose profitability was waning to focus on more profitable products and services. Personal computers, disk drives, chip manufacturing and some technology services have been shed.But spinning off the technology support operation as a separate company is a particularly big step. IBMs future is as a smaller company, more of a niche technology company, said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management.The corporate split, Mr. Krishna said, is intended to unlock growth for the more focused IBM. He added that the company should deliver mid-single-digit revenue growth over the next few years.Mr. Krishna said in an interview that the split-up was the culmination of IBMs increasing focus on cloud and A.I. as engines of growth. The strategic question, he said, was: What do I not need?The answer was the services business that supports and maintains technology for corporations. IBM says that business, as a separate company, should have more financial flexibility since it will no longer have to compete for funding from the corporate parent.Mr. Krishna declined to predict how the spinoff would affect employment. But the technology support business has been trimming employment recently.IBM shares rose nearly 6 percent by the end of trading on Thursday.The company has positioned itself as a champion of a hybrid cloud approach. It is trying to take its corporate customers into cloud computing without abandoning their old technology altogether.IBM lags the biggest, richest cloud providers, led by Amazon and Microsoft, which spend tens of billions a year on their vast networks of data centers. IBM, analysts say, cannot compete head to head with the broad cloud services.So IBM has chosen the hybrid path and portrayed itself as the Switzerland of the cloud market, able to plug into the internet clouds of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as well as the IBM cloud.The services arm that is remaining inside IBM does a big business in writing specialized software for its many corporate clients. IBMs cloud strategy has got to dovetail with its custom software development, Mr. Cusumano, the M.I.T. professor, said.

Tech

Louie Anderson I'm Prettier as a Woman On 'Baskets' 1/23/2018 TMZ.com Step aside, Julia Roberts ... Louie Anderson is the new pretty woman and he LOVES it. We got Louie at LAX and asked if he's at all concerned about how he looks playing a woman in "Baskets." The role earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor, and Louie digs it ... telling us, he's absolutely way more attractive as a woman than as a man. Louie's Emmy win was pretty groundbreaking. It was the first time a male actor has ever won for playing a female character. Ya come a long way, Louie!

Entertainment

Credit...Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesJune 11, 2018LAS VEGAS When Chris Giunchigliani told former Senator Harry Reid about her plans to run for governor of Nevada in 2018, he candidly told her that he thought her opponent, Steve Sisolak, would make a stronger candidate, Ms. Giunchigliani recently recalled.Mr. Reid, the former Senate Democratic leader, was even blunter when he warned the president of Emilys List, Stephanie Schriock, that the Democratic womens group would be inviting disaster if they spent heavily for Ms. Giunchigliani, according to two Democrats who described the private conversation on condition of anonymity.Were Ms. Giunchigliani, a veteran officeholder and outspoken liberal, to be nominated, Mr. Reid said, the casino executives who dominate Nevada politics would not only throw their support to Adam Laxalt, the likely Republican candidate for governor they would also work to wrest control of the state Legislature away from Democrats.His plea fell on deaf ears. Emilys List polled the race, found Ms. Giunchigliani could be competitive and has spent about $2 million on her candidacy, lifting her into contention. Ms. Giunchigliani now faces an uphill primary election here on Tuesday against the better-funded Mr. Sisolak and while Mr. Reid was focused on ideology, she attributes some of the resistance to her campaign to her gender.It takes a lot of work to prove to people that you have that credential, Ms. Giunchigliani said, recounting her years in the Legislature, on the Clark County Commission and a stint as head of the Nevada Education Association. Riding in an aides Ford Escape last week, between an hour of evening canvassing in searing heat and a reception with gay and lesbian supporters, Ms. Giunchigliani argued, Sometimes a man can just say, Im a businessman whether they are or arent. And no one questions that, whereas a woman has to still prove it.Ms. Giunchigliani is not the only Democratic woman trumpeting her readiness for high office in a difficult governors race this week. Even as women have emerged as the animating force behind the backlash to President Trump, with many storming to victory in congressional primaries, several are finding governors races to be more challenging as they struggle to build as much political and financial support as their male rivals.From Tuesday through September, female candidates for governor will be on the ballot in Democratic primaries across 17 states, including pivotal battlegrounds such as Florida, Wisconsin and Colorado part of the record number of women running for governor this year. In interviews, several said they are facing entrenched resistance to female power at the executive level, and male opponents with deeper campaign coffers and, in some cases, far less political experience.Far from the Nevada desert, Maines attorney general, Janet Mills, delivered a more bluntly feminist message on Friday. Ms. Mills began her campaign for governor as a front-runner but has faced difficult competition from both male and female opponents ahead of Maines primary on Tuesday. Her strongest challenger appears to be Adam Cote, a military veteran and businessman running as an outsider. So, in the shadow of the state Capitol in Augusta, Ms. Mills sought to rally women to her side.ImageCredit...Sarah Rice for The New York TimesDescribing her background as a district attorney and legislator, Ms. Mills cast gender as central to her campaign and portrayed her opponents attacks as part of an all-too-familiar trap for women.Now, men say: Well, you have a great rsum, but youre kind of an insider, Ms. Mills said, to groans from a predominantly female crowd of about four dozen. Really? For decades, men were telling women: Just a little more experience and youll be qualified.She finished with gusto: Well, goddamn it, I am qualified!A year and half after Hillary Clinton failed to win the highest executive office, there have been a few signal victories for Democratic women in governors races: Stacey Abrams in Georgia became the first black woman ever nominated for governor there, defeating another woman in May. Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico dispatched male opponents in a Democratic primary last week to become her partys first Latina nominee for governor, and women have been nominated in longer-shot races for governor in Texas and Idaho.But in several of the biggest states on the map, women have strained to break through or appear at risk of falling behind. Some may win despite being outspent by male opponents, but the financial disparity points to the lingering institutional barriers confronting female candidates who try to crack the glass ceiling of the statehouse dome.You cant wait to be asked because a lot of guys wont ask you, said Kathleen Sebelius, the former Kansas governor. You have to crash the party and, if theres an opening, go for it because a lot the party organizations are run by the old boys.Ms. Sebelius helped recruit a female protg, Laura Kelly, to run for governor in her home state. But there are relatively few former female governors to clear the path for others. While women have led major states in the past such as Ann Richards in Texas, Janet Napolitano in Arizona and Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey only four serve as governors today, two of whom inherited the job after male governors resigned. Twenty-two states, including Nevada and Maine, have never had a female chief executive, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.State capitols remain dominated by self-perpetuating male political networks that determine who is groomed and promoted and the outsiders who do force their way into the nominating process are often rich men wielding fortunes.The summer primaries will test Democrats enthusiasm for electing female executives: In Colorado, Cary Kennedy, a former state treasurer who would be the states first female governor, is battling Representative Jared Polis, a multimillionaire who has spent $10.5 million. In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a former state legislative leader, is battling Shri Thanedar, a businessman with no political experience who is pouring millions into his own campaign, and Abdul El-Sayed, a liberal insurgent.Ms. Whitmer at first struggled to win support from the unions that control much of the states Democratic infrastructure. And some officials openly questioned the wisdom of putting forward another woman for governor Jennifer Granholm ran the state until 2011 which infuriated female strategists.And in Florida, Gwen Graham, a former member of Congress whose father was a revered governor and senator, is trailing in the polls to Philip Levine, the wealthy mayor of Miami Beach who has personally financed an enormous advertising blitz.Faced with the onslaught, Ms. Graham has started more directly invoking her gender.Everything I do is through the prism of being a mom, she said in an ad she began airing last week.In an interview, Ms. Graham said women bring a different approach to politics and mused excitedly about the prospect of her and Ms. Abrams being neighboring governors together.At the moment, there are just two Democratic women governors: Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island and Kate Brown of Oregon. Ms. Raimondo faces a potentially bruising re-election fight, including a primary challenge from a liberal male opponent, Matt Brown.Ms. Raimondo said she was hopeful that 2018 would see breakthroughs for women in governorships, but that the countrys political culture had been slow to embrace female executives. Ms. Raimondo said she had counseled a number of women around the country on their decisions to run, and had raised the paucity of female Democratic governors with party donors many of whom, she said, were unaware of that reality and have historically been more focused on Congress.We just havent seen a lot of high-profile female executives, Ms. Raimondo said. We just need more of them. It has to become more commonplace for people to feel really, deeply comfortable with it.Ms. Giunchigliani got a stark reminder of the challenges women can face when she was rebuffed by Mr. Reid, who in retirement remains the de facto leader of the Nevada Democratic Party.Mr. Reid has helped clear the way for women in other races, including Nevadas Senate races in 2016 and 2018. But this episode of backstage politics on which he would not comment reflects a deeper challenge for women candidates for governor: They rarely are the anointed ones.ImageCredit...Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThey almost always have primaries because they are almost always in situation where aspects of the establishment just cant get their head around what a governor should be, said Ms. Schriock of Emilys List. We get the old, Yeah, she doesnt feel quite right.In Maine, supporters of Ms. Mills fear what they view as a repeat of the 2016 election, when a thoroughly well-credentialed woman lost to an aggressive male amateur.Nancy Wanderer, a retired law professor who applauded Ms. Mills at her rally on Friday, seethed at what she described as unfair nit-picking by fellow Democrats and the news media. I think its just like Hillary, Ms. Wanderer said.ImageCredit...Sarah Rice for The New York TimesMs. Mills has presented herself as a tough-minded corrective to the unpopular outgoing governor, Paul R. LePage, a Republican aligned with Mr. Trump. But she has faced criticism for being insufficiently liberal on issues like gun control, where Ms. Mills has stopped short of endorsing a ban on assault-style firearms.Ms. Mills said in an interview she was seeking common ground on gun issues, and in a debate last week described having been threatened in her youth by an abusive partner with a firearm.Ms. Giunchigliani, too, has invoked her own harrowing personal story in her bid to become Nevadas first female governor.Responding to an attack from Sisolak supporters that claimed she sought to exempt teachers from a legislative proposal to expand reporting requirements for sex offenders, she unveiled a commercial revealing she had been sexually abused when she was 8.Ms. Giunchigliani who has gone by Chris G since teaching middle school and spells out the pronunciation, June-kill-e-on-e, on business cards has closed a spending gap in her bid to succeed the term-limited Gov. Brian Sandoval. She still trails Mr. Sisolak, her fellow county commissioner, in private polling, but got a boost over the weekend when Hillary Clinton endorsed her and taped an automated call on her behalf.And thanks to outside allies like Emilys List and the state chapter of the National Education Association, she has drawn closer to parity on Nevadas airwaves ahead of Tuesdays primary.As for those casinos Mr. Reid predicted would oppose her in November, she predicted a softer approach.This is Nevada, she said. Theyll cover their bets.

Politics

Politics|Trump urges backers to vote in runoffs after Loeffler backs his bid to overturn the election in the Senate.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/politics/trump-georgia-voters.htmlTrump urges backers to vote in runoffs after Loeffler backs his bid to overturn the election in the Senate.Jan. 5, 2021, 1:05 p.m. ETJan. 5, 2021, 1:05 p.m. ETCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPresident Trump posted a pair of tweets 12 minutes apart on Tuesday morning that neatly encapsulated his presidency and me-first approach to the Georgia Senate runoff elections. In the first, at 9:50 a.m., the president praised Kelly Loeffler, an endangered Republican who had initially declined to support Mr. Trumps baseless challenge to the general election, for agreeing to fight the ridiculous Electoral College Certification of Biden.Then, at 10:02 a.m., he gave Ms. Loeffler and the other Republican on the ballot, David Perdue, his most enthusiastic support to date after a week of suggesting his supporters might not vote in the runoff because the election was invalid.Georgia, get out and VOTE for two great Senators, he wrote. So important to do so! That was the kind of statement the two campaigns wanted two weeks ago. Instead, party officials believed Mr. Trumps relentless claims of voter fraud had suppressed early voting in some Republican areas of the state.Ms. Loeffler initially dodged questions about whether or not she would back a House and Senate challenge to the Electoral Colleges certification of Mr. Bidens win. But on Monday night just before Mr. Trump appeared at a joint rally for both candidates in Georgia she issued a statement saying she would support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.Mr. Perdues objection is procedurally irrelevant his term expired over the weekend but Ms. Loeffler will remain in office until the winner of her race is declared, and she is eligible to vote.

Politics

DealBook|Realty Capital Securities to Shut Down and Pay $3 Million Fine to Massachusettshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/dealbook/realty-capital-securities-to-shut-down-and-pay-3-million-fine-to-massachusetts.htmlDec. 2, 2015A brokerage firm associated with the troubled real estate investment empire AR Capital will shut down its operations nationwide and pay $3 million to Massachusetts securities regulators after being charged with faking proxy votes.Realty Capital Securities, the brokerage based in Boston, is ending its registration in the state by the end of the week and then across the country, laying off about 150 workers in the process.The development casts doubt on Realty Capitals $6 million sale to the private equity giant Apollo Global Management, a transaction that was connected to an even bigger $378 million deal between Apollo and AR Capital that unraveled last month.The brokerages shutdown comes just weeks after Massachusetts securities regulator, William F. Galvin, said workers were faking proxy votes in shareholder elections that were crucial to the success of the bigger deal between AR Capital and Apollo.Realty Capital Securities is a brokerage that distributed real estate investment trust products to advisers. It is associated with AR Capital, a firm that creates real estate investment trusts. The brokerage was under the umbrella of RCS Capital, which is shifting its focus to retail financial advisory services..In a statement on Wednesday, RCS Capitals nonexecutive chairman, Mark Auerbach, said the decision to wind down the wholesale brokerage was essential to our continuing efforts to create a leaner, more efficient organization.On the agreement with Massachusetts, RCS Capitals Andrew Backman, a managing director of investor relations, said the company was pleased that this matter has been resolved in an efficient and timely manner.An Apollo spokesman had no comment on Wednesday.It is the latest twist in the roller coaster ride of AR Capital, one of the biggest sponsors of real estate investment trusts and a firm built by Nicholas S. Schorsch and William M. Kahane. Last month, after the Massachusetts charges were made public, AR Capital said it would stop creating new investment products and close existing ones to new investors to concentrate on managing the $19 billion it has in current investments.The company cited regulatory and market uncertainty that was affecting its ability to raise investor money.AR Capitals troubles began piling up a year ago, after Mr. Schorsch resigned from the management and boards of affiliated companies because of an accounting scandal.

Business

Her focus was on immunology and how to predict and diagnose the outcomes of transplants. She was, a colleague said, a great researcher and a great mentor to many people.Credit...via Mount Sinai Health SystemJuly 3, 2021Dr. Barbara Murphy, a leading nephrologist who specialized in advanced research that focused on predicting and diagnosing the outcomes of kidney transplants, died on Wednesday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where she had worked since 1997. She was 56.The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, her husband, Peter Fogarty, said.Dr. Murphy blended a passion for research into kidney transplant immunology in her role, since 2012, as the chairwoman of the department of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and its broader health system. She was the first woman named to run a department of medicine at an academic medical center in New York City.In baseball, they talk about five-tool players, Dr. Dennis S. Charney, dean of the Icahn School, said by phone. I dont know how many tools she had, but she was a very strong administrator, a great researcher and a great mentor to many people.Dr. Murphy, who was from Ireland, developed her interest in kidney transplantation while attending medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. She was drawn especially to how the surgery transformed patients lives.I love seeing how well patients do afterward, she told Irish America magazine in 2016. For all the years that Ive been in this profession, the interaction between a living donor and a recipient in the recovery room still makes me proud to be a physician and to play a part in such a life-affirming moment.After being recruited to Mount Sinai in 1997, she joined other researchers in examining the role of H.I.V. in kidney disease and helped establish the viability of kidney transplants for patients with H.I.V. In a speech at the Royal College in 2018, she recalled that there had been criticism of such transplants as if there were a moral hierarchy when it came to donor kidneys.She added, Two weeks ago, we received an email from one of our patients, thanking us on his 15th renal transplant birthday.More recently, Dr. Murphys research at her Mount Sinai laboratory focused on the genetics and genomics of predicting the results of transplants, and on why some kidneys are rejected.In findings reported in The Lancet in 2016, she and her collaborators said they had identified a set of 13 genes that predicted which patients would subsequently develop fibrosis, a hallmark of chronic kidney disease, and, ultimately, irreversible damage to the transplanted organ. Being able to predict which patients were at risk, they wrote, would allow for treatment to prevent fibrosis.Her research has been licensed to two companies. One, Verici DX, which is still in validation trials in advance of commercial sales, is developing RNA signature tests to determine how a patient is responding to, and will respond to, a transplant. The other company, Renalytix, uses an algorithm guided by artificial intelligence to identify a kidney disease risk score for patients. Dr. Murphy served on the boards of both companies.Barbara was foundational to Verici, Sara Barrington, the companys chief executive, said by phone. She added, Her lab will continue to file new discoveries out of her base research.ImageCredit...Roger Tully, via Mount Sinai Health SystemBarbara Therese Murphy was born on Oct. 15, 1964, in South Dublin. Her father, John, owned an airfreight company, and her mother, Anne (Duffy) Murphy, worked with him and also designed bridal wear.At age 4 she had to overcome a harsh judgment by a teacher.My elementary school teacher told my mother I was a dunce and I would never be anything, and whats more she shouldnt even try, Dr. Murphy recalled in a speech at a health care awards dinner sponsored by Irish America in 2016. Fortunately, my parents persevered.After earning her medical degree at the Royal College in 1989, she completed her residency and a nephrology fellowship at Beaumont Hospital, also in Dublin. She was also a nephrology fellow in the renal division of Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, where she trained in transplant immunology.Dr. Murphy was recruited to Mount Sinai in 1997 as director of transplant nephrology by Dr. Paul Klotman, then the chief of the division of nephrology. He promoted her to his former position in 2003 after he had become chairman of Icahns department of medicine.She showed a lot of promise in transplant nephrology, which was emerging at the time, Dr. Klotman, now the president of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said by phone. Over the years she developed good leadership skills: She was very organized and task oriented.In the spring of 2020, Dr. Murphy, like other physicians, noticed with alarm that Covid-19 was much more than a respiratory disease. It was causing a surge in kidney failure that led to shortages of machines, supplies and personnel needed for emergency dialysis.The number of patients needing dialysis is orders of magnitude greater than the number of patients we normally dialyze, she told The New York Times.One of Mount Sinais responses to the pandemic that May was to open the Center for Post-Covid Care, for patients recovering from the virus. At the time, Mount Sinai had treated more than 8,000 patients who had been diagnosed with Covid-19.Barbara was instrumental in forming the center, Dr. Charney said, and she was involved in the follow-up as it related to kidney disease caused by Covid.Dr. Murphy was given the Young Investigator Award in Basic Science from the American Society of Transplantation in 2003 and named nephrologist of the year by the American Kidney Fund in 2011. At her death, she was president-elect of the American Society of Nephrology.In addition to her husband, she is survived by their son, Gavin; her sister, Dr. Celine Murphy, a cardiologist who works in occupational health; her brother, Dr. Kieran Murphy, an interventional neuroradiologist; and her parents.Dr. Murphy said she had learned an indelible lesson about the need for a strong patient-doctor relationship while still in medical school.Scholarship alone was not enough, she said at the Irish America award ceremony. An example: If we had a patient with rheumatoid arthritis and we shook their hands and they winced, it didnt matter how much we knew about the disease or how to treat it, wed failed our exam because we hadnt taken the patients overall well-being into consideration.

Health

MatterLooking at ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction in Europe.Credit...AlamyPublished Feb. 10, 2022Updated Feb. 15, 2022In the mid-1300s, a species of bacteria spread by fleas and rats swept across Asia and Europe, causing deadly cases of bubonic plague. The Black Death is one of the most notorious pandemics in historical memory, with many experts estimating that it killed roughly 50 million Europeans, the majority of people across the continent.The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 percent of Europes population, Ole Benedictow, a Norwegian historian and one of the leading experts on the plague, wrote in 2005. When Dr. Benedictow published The Complete History of the Black Death in 2021, he raised that estimate to 65 percent.But those figures, based on historical documents from the time, greatly overestimate the true toll of the plague, according to a study published on Thursday. By analyzing ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers from Germany found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction. Some regions of Europe did indeed suffer devastating losses, but other regions held stable, and some even boomed.We cannot any longer say that it killed half of Europe, said Adam Izdebski, an environmental historian at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and an author of the new study.In the fourteenth century, most Europeans worked on farms, which required intensive labor to yield crops. If half of all Europeans died between 1347 and 1352, agricultural activity would have plummeted.Half of the labor force is disappearing instantly, Dr. Izdebski said. You cannot maintain the same level of land use. In many fields you would not be able to carry on.Losing half the population would have turned many farms fallow. Without enough herders to tend livestock, pastures would have become overgrown. Shrubs and trees would have taken over, eventually replaced by mature forests.If the Black Death did indeed cause such a shift, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues reasoned, they should be able to see it in the species of pollen that survived from the Middle Ages. Every year, plants release vast amounts of pollen into the air, and some of it ends up on the bottom of lakes and wetlands. Buried in the mud, the grains can survive sometimes for centuries.To see what pollen had to say about the Black Death, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues picked out 261 sites across Europe from Ireland and Spain in the west to Greece and Lithuania in the east that held grains preserved from around 1250 to 1450.In some regions, such as Greece and central Italy, the pollen told a story of devastation. Pollen from crops like wheat dwindled. Dandelions and other flowers in pastureland faded. Fast-growing trees like birch appeared, followed by slow-growing ones like oaks.But that was hardly the rule across Europe. In fact, just seven out of 21 regions the researchers studied underwent a catastrophic shift. In other places, the pollen registered little change at all.In fact, in regions such as Ireland, central Spain and Lithuania, the landscape moved in the opposite direction. Pollen from mature forests became rarer, while pasture and farmland pollen became even more common. In some cases, two neighboring regions veered off in different directions, with the pollen suggesting one turned to forest while the other turned to farms.Although these findings suggest that the Black Death was not as catastrophic as many historians have argued, the authors of the new study didnt offer a new figure for the real toll of the pandemic. Were not comfortable sticking our neck out, said Timothy Newfield, a disease historian at Georgetown University and one of Dr. Izdebskis collaborators.Some independent historians said that the new, continentwide study agreed with their own research on particular European locales. For example, Sharon DeWitte, a biological anthropologist at the University of South Carolina, has found that skeletal remains from London during that period showed evidence of a modest toll from the pandemic. That made her wonder if the same was true for other parts of Europe.Its one thing to have a reasonable suspicion, and quite another to produce evidence, as these authors do, Dr. DeWitte said. Thats really exciting.Joris Roosen, the head of research at the Center for the Social History of Limburg in the Netherlands, said that the Black Death did not stand out in his own historical research of Belgium. Dr. Roosen measured the toll of the Black Death by looking at the inheritance tax that was paid in a province called Hainaut. Deaths from bubonic plague indeed caused a spike in inheritance taxes, but Dr. Roosen found that other outbreaks in later years created spikes that were just as big or even bigger.You can follow that for three hundred years, he said. Every generation, in essence, is suffering from a plague outbreak.But other experts were not convinced by the new studys findings. John Aberth, the author of The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality, said the study did not change his view that about half of Europeans across the continent died.Dr. Aberth said he doubted that the plague could spare entire regions of Europe as it ravaged neighboring ones.They were highly interconnected, even during the Middle Ages, by trade, travel, commerce and migration, Dr. Aberth said. Thats why I am skeptical that whole regions could have escaped.Dr. Aberth also questioned whether a regions shift to crop pollen necessarily meant that the population there was booming. He speculated that people might have been wiped out by the Black Death only to be replaced by immigrants taking over the empty land.Immigration of newcomers into an area could have made up for demographic losses, Dr. Aberth said.Dr. Izdebski acknowledged that people were immigrating around Europe at the time of the bubonic plague. But he argued that their documented numbers were too small to replace half the population.And he also noted that huge waves of migrants would have had to come from other parts of Europe that supposedly were also wiped out by the Black Death.If you need hundreds of thousands of people to come in, where would they come from if everywhere, half of the population died? he asked.Monica Green, an independent historian based in Phoenix, speculated that the Black Death might have been caused by two strains of the bacteria Yersinia pestis, which could have caused different levels of devastation. Yersinia DNA collected from medieval skeletons hints at this possibility, she said.In their study, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues did not examine that possibility, but they did consider a number of other factors, including the climate and density of populations in different parts of Europe. But none accounted for the pattern they found.There is no simple explanation behind that, or even a combination of simple explanations, Dr. Izdebski said.Its possible that the ecology of rats and fleas that spread the bacteria was different from country to country. The ships that brought Yersinia to Europe may have come to some ports at a bad time of the year for spreading the plague, and to others at a better time.Working on the study during the spread of a different pandemic playing out across multiple continents, Dr. Izdebski said that there were lessons to draw from the Black Death in the age of the coronavirus.What we show is that there are a number of factors, and its not easy to predict from the beginning which factors will matter, he said, referring to how viruses can spread. You cannot assume one mechanism to work everywhere the same way.

science

March 1, 2017ImageFrom a ridge overlooking a village in western Mosul, the Iraqi troops spotted the family fleeing the Islamic State. Through their binoculars, the soldiers saw that the small group approaching us was waving a white flag, and so they held their fire.The family included three women one of them pregnant two men, several children and a dog.The soldiers, with whom I was embedded this week, walked down the trail to intercept the group on the flank of a hill exposed to the Islamic States mortar rounds. I saw them help up the grandmother in the family, who was lagging behind.She reached the top of the ridge, clutching her heart and saying, Alhamdulillah, meaning Thank you, God.The grandmothers name is Khadija Abbas. At the top of the ridge, she crumpled to the ground and held her open palms up to the sky. She took off her tattered plastic shoes and showed me that they were held together with string.Ms. Abbas explained that at least 10 families related in some way to her were trapped in the village. They had sent her delegation ahead to see if it was safe to leave.Iraqi intelligence agents were there to meet the family and to try to determine if they were civilians or militants. The officers had a list of people suspected of being members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and they immediately checked the familys identification cards against their list.The Iraqi soldiers in our group, which also included a small unit of American advisers, gave one of the family members a cigarette, as the militants took over the area and forbade smoking nearly three years ago.The pregnant woman began to feel faint. The New York Times teams medic ran to the car and came back with an IV drip to help with dehydration. She lay in a ditch as her husband stood above her, holding the bag of fluid.As members of the family were catching their breath, a ripple of panic suddenly spread through the group: The troops spotted several cars speeding toward us and began firing warning shots.The pregnant woman, who was still hooked up to the drip, and the grandmother, Ms. Abbas, began screaming that the people coming up the hill were their relatives. The Iraqi Army has suffered numerous casualties from car bombs detonated by Islamic State militants, and the soldiers were visibly on edge.Ms. Abbas pleaded with the troops, saying their relatives were in three white cars, two silver ones and a blue one. The Iraqi troops, using binoculars for a better view, confirmed her account and stopped firing.No one was injured. Even the familys dog which had scampered away when the gunfire erupted was safe. Everyone is fleeing ISIS, even the animals, one of the villagers joked, when I asked why they had brought the dog with them.The family showed us the square of cloth they had used as a white flag to signal to the troops that they were civilians. In the barren desert surrounding their village, they said, they had been unable to find a stick to put it on.By the end of the afternoon, more than 30 civilians had made it to the hill. When the terrorist group began lobbing mortar rounds in their direction, the Iraqi troops asked the families to move.Hours later, we saw a plume of smoke coming from car bombs in the area that the civilians had fled. By the end of the day, Iraqi forces declared it liberated.We headed back to our base in a secure part of western Mosul. On the way, we passed one of the cars carrying Ms. Abbass family, her relatives flashing V signs for victory.

World

AdvertisingCredit...Emily Berl for The New York TimesDec. 22, 2015As the country geared up for the latest Star Wars extravaganza, Bullseye lounged at a private spa outside Los Angeles, soaking in a bath, sprawling out for a massage and offering up her padded feet for a pedicure.Bullseye, played by a 7-year-old bull terrier, is one of three dogs who take turns as the retailer Targets roly-poly mascot. Her beauty regimen, her trainer explained, was part of preparations for a Star Wars-themed shopping event.At the citys dazzling L.A. Live venue, Bullseye posed with Darth Vader, occasionally yelping and wagging her whip of a tail. A trainer and a makeup artist stood by, ready to calm with a snack or quickly touch up her hallmark red eye makeup, as throngs of smartphone-wielding fans closed in for pictures.Its long training to get Bullseye used to noises and groups of people and to sit on a bench, spin in circles, look exuberant, said David McMillan, who has trained four Bullseyes since 2001 for Target. Two have been rescue dogs.It has been several years since Target featured Bullseye as anything more than a bit part in its promotions. But the dog has re-emerged this season as a signature part of the companys efforts to revive its marketing magic after years of fading cachet.The retailer is transforming its so-called first impressions area at the front of its stores once a space strewn with discount bins and grab-and-go baubles into Bullseyes Playground, featuring blown-up Bullseye dolls and a carefully chosen selection of seasonal merchandise.Since last year, Target has also installed Bullseye benches at more than 1,400 stores, where shoppers can pose with a replica Bullseye for a selfie. (The hashtag #TargetDog on Instagram now returns a stream of Target shoppers happily petting the plastic Bullseye figurine.)And for the first time in over a decade, Bullseye stars in several Target ads, including one featuring Star Wars storm troopers and another that promotes a Christmas digital storybook app for children. And she was a regular at Targets recent winter wonderland pop-up store in New York.We started thinking about how to bring Bullseye to more people, said Jeff Jones, Targets chief marketing officer. Its a fun dog, so scrappy and fearless.Though essentially in the same line of business as Walmart, Target has long managed to escape the scorn and scrutiny directed at its much larger competitor for its sometimes disorderly shelves and worker conditions, thanks to its slick marketing, cheerful store signs and buzzy collaborations, like the recent smash-hit Lilly Pulitzer line of clothes and accessories.But the recession, and the chill it sent over consumer spending, prompted the retailer to tone down its marketing and emphasize value over chic, and its cachet has not quite rebounded. Bullseye largely fell by the wayside, mostly relegated to appearing on the retailers gift cards.Targets Expect More, Pay Less formula is facing competition from even deeper discounters like T. J. Maxx and Ross Stores, while fast-fashion retailers like H&M and Zara are encroaching on Targets turf.ImageCredit...Emily Berl for The New York TimesThe retailers net earnings, which hit more than $3 billion in the early 2000s, have slumped. Last year Target booked a loss of $1.6 billion because of losses from its since-abandoned disastrous foray into Canada.Now, Target is ramping up its marketing spending, part of a turnaround push by its chief executive, Brian Cornell, who joined the retailer from PepsiCo last year.A big focus has been on digital advertising, which the retailer has said makes up about 60 percent of its media spending, compared with just a fraction five years ago. Over all, Target is estimated to have spent almost as much as Walmart on advertising in the first nine months of the year $335 million versus $367 million even though Targets sales are less than a quarter of Walmarts, according to Kantar Media.The longest-serving Bullseye, now 13, is a rescue dog called Nikki who recently retired from the Target circuit after a 10-year career. She now spends her days on Mr. McMillans ranch in Santa Clarita, Calif., where he raises dogs, bears and other animals, mostly for the movie industry.Bullseye is the rare corporate mascot regularly played by a real animal, with the notable exception of the Aflac duck or the Budweiser Clydesdale horses. (Other animal mascots pose logistical challenges, like Geoffrey the Giraffe at Toys R Us or Tony the Tiger for Kelloggs Frosted Flakes.) And Bullseye stands out as a distinct, instantly recognized mascot among retailers, trumping Walmarts rarely seen Sparky mascot or the short-lived Mr. Bluelight at Kmart.The bull terrier is also a brave choice and a rare turn in the spotlight for a breed originally bred in Britain for dogfighting, a dog with the reputation of a canine gladiator that would fight to the death to please a master. Recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1885, the breed gained notoriety in the United States after Pete, a bull terrier owned by President Theodore Roosevelt, nipped so many visitors legs that he was exiled to the Roosevelt home in Long Island.Still, the bull terrier has been featured in several TV shows and movies, including the 1968 musical Oliver! based on the Dickens novel. Another bull terrier mascot, Spuds MacKenzie, became a sensation in the late 1980s for his appearances in Super Bowl ads, but was eventually retired after parents groups alleged that Anheuser-Busch used the dogs image to market beer to children.At Target, the original Bullseye was a bull terrier named Arielle. She debuted in Targets 1999 Sign of the Times TV spots and billboards, which reinterpreted Targets red-and-white bulls-eye logo as a pattern for dresses and plush interiors, and also painted a red bulls-eye around Arielles eye. By not portraying a specific product, the campaign diverged greatly from traditional retailer ads at the time, and helped differentiate Target as a chic, even whimsical retailer.For the next decade, Nikki did the bulk of the work as Bullseye, making appearances at store openings as far away as Hawaii, attending Target fashion shows, strutting the red carpet at Targets Oscar night events and rubbing noses with the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Clint Eastwood. (For most flights, Bullseye gets her own seat in first class, because at 18 inches tall at the shoulder and 45 pounds she is too bulky for a coach seat. Her wardrobe includes bootees, a tux for formal events and a Minnesota Twins baseball jersey.)But with Bullseye playing a bigger role in marketing, Mr. McMillan has brought on two more bull terriers two female dogs, Suki, age 7, and Gigi, age 3 and has two more in training. None of the terriers are related, he said.The Bullseye advertising blitz this year has paid off for Target. According to Socialbakers, the social media analytics company, Target ads made up four of the top 10 most-viewed YouTube ads between Nov. 1 through Dec. 14. What breed is the Target dog? was one of the most popular dog-related searches this year, according to Google.Getting Bullseye used to wearing a storm trooper helmet took some training, Mr. McMillan said. It covered her eyes. She had to get used to looking through the glass, instead of peering out from under it, he said.But most arduous, Mr. McMillan said, was the red bulls-eye makeup, which takes up to four hours with many breaks in between to apply. It goes on in layers in order to get that brilliant Target red on the white fur, he said. (The makeup is of the pet-safe vegetable kind, according to Target.)All Bullseyes are now heading into a post-holiday, well-earned vacation, Mr. McMillan said. We dont want them going crazy. They just need to relax.

Business

Nets 103, Spurs 89Credit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesFeb. 6, 2014The San Antonio Spurs had just 10 players dressed to meet the Nets on Thursday night, and before the evening was done, two of them had blood dripping from their broken noses. They were absurdly depleted, seemingly reduced to a B-list squad. But it hardly mattered.The Spurs over the years have constructed a team of interchangeable parts that propel a tried-and-true system. Despite their dwindled ranks, they gave a spirited effort, and the Nets were not breathing easy until late in the fourth quarter in their 103-89 win at Barclays Center.It seems like whoever they plug in, they just play well, Deron Williams said. It took us a little longer to put them away than we hoped, but a win is a win. The Nets will claw for every win for the remainder of the season as they keep working to make up for a slow start. They improved to 22-25 and have won two straight games. The Spurs had led for most of the first half and had cut the deficit as close as 2 late in the third. But the Spurs, who played a double-overtime game Wednesday, faded toward the end, and the final score made the game look more lopsided than it was. Alan Anderson was the Nets driving force, pacing the offense to finally dash San Antonios efforts. During a run from the third quarter into the fourth, Anderson scored 17 of the teams 21 points. He finished with 22 on 9-for-15 shooting.We started attacking and stopped settling for the 3, Anderson said. Once we start doing that, it opens up the lane for kick-outs, just penetrating and dishing.It all seemed harder than necessary for the Nets, given the illustrious list of Spurs who sat out Thursdays game. Tony Parker never made it out of his hotel room while battling back spasms. Manu Ginobili was inactive because of a tight left hamstring. Kawhi Leonard has been out with a broken bone in his left hand. Boris Diaw was barfing all day, Coach Gregg Popovich said, and Tim Duncan, who played more than 40 minutes in the Spurs come-from-behind win over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday night, was given the night off.The Spurs were fined last season when Popovich held multiple star players out of a nationally televised game. Popovich noted before the game, which was broadcast on national television, that this was a different scenario multiple players were actually injured but he was otherwise unapologetic about his inclination to rest players: I still have to do whats right for my team, Popovich said. The Nets, on the other hand, were happy to welcome back some missing pieces. Andrei Kirilenko (4 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists) returned to the Nets bench after missing the previous three games with a sore right calf, as did Andray Blatche (10 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists), who missed two games with a bruised left hip. Joe Johnson (8 points) was back in the starting lineup after missing Mondays game with tendinitis in his right knee.Even Brook Lopez, who has been ruled out for the season with a broken right foot, was in attendance, hobbling through the arena on crutches. Lopez said he has been limited to lying around in bed and playing video games over the past several weeks. The Spurs went to Brooklyn with a three-game winning streak and were in the middle of a nine-game road trip. They had won 22 of their last 23 games against the Nets. The last time the two teams played, the Spurs won a largely noncompetitive game, 113-92. That loss was believed to be a turning point for the Nets, who won 10 of their next 11 games.The Nets fell behind, 15-6, to open the game, forcing Coach Jason Kidd to call an early timeout. They were behind, 24-17, after one quarter. Paul Pierces driving layup with 1 minute 57 seconds remaining gave the Nets their first lead, 38-37. The Nets closed the second quarter on a 10-2 run and had a 40-39 lead at halftime. It was a scrappy first half. Williams was banged on his right knee while going up for a jump shot in the second quarter. He came up limping badly and needed to retreat to the locker room, but he was able to return just before halftime. Nando De Colo was elbowed in the face with just over four minutes left in the half and left the floor with blood gushing from his nose. He re-emerged in the second half with a clear guard strapped to his face.Matt Bonner was also wearing a protective mask on his face after breaking his nose last month. The two masked players, side by side, created a strange sight. Bonner even managed to get hit in the fourth quarter, and he, too, bled from his nose.We got to look at the other guys and see if their noses are out there too far, Popovich said.

Sports

Science|Chris Hadfields spirited song in space was no oddity.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/science/chris-hadfield-space-oddity.htmlCredit...NASA TVNov. 2, 2020Although Chris Hadfields performance of David Bowies Space Oddity ranks among the International Space Stations most iconic moments, the Canadian astronaut insists he is not a backwards looking guy. He prefers to anticipate the next set of challenges in space.It seems surreal that we could be settling the moon, Mr. Hadfield said. But playing Space Oddity from the space station? For a Canadian kid who was born before the very first astronaut even flew in space, thats pretty surreal. And yet that happened so far just in my lifetime.Released in May 2013, Mr. Hadfields rendition really made the grade. David Bowie himself praised it as possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.The video hinted at the stations potential as a stage and film set. Recent talks between NASA and Tom Cruise suggest that the actor might shoot a movie there, a reflection of the agencys push to open the I.S.S. to more commercial activities. But if Mr. Cruise makes the trip, it wont be easy.You have limited power, extremely limited circumstances, and hes not going to be able to bring any production crew up there, Mr. Hadfield said.The astronaut had to record the vocal and guitar parts in rare pockets of spare time, although he credits an international ensemble of musicians and contributors with the smashing success of the final version with full instrumentation.The wider point of the video, as far as I could see it, was highlighting the multinational contribution of the I.S.S., said Elizabeth Howell, an expert on Canadas space program.Hadfield gives us a subtle tour of the I.S.S., highlighting the contributions of many nations, she added. And the views of Earth you see in the video are of Earth as a globe, not Earth highlighted in a single region.The contributions of international partners have gone beyond sending crew to orbit. Canadas robotic arm was key to assembling the station; Japans Kibo module is an essential orbital science lab, and the European cupola has provided an unparalleled view of Earth.Its fitting that Mr. Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space and the first Canadian commander of the I.S.S., created such a resonant expression of the stations most enduring legacy the awesome power of human collaboration.That song isnt really done justice by just one voice and a guitar, he said. Its a lovely, big, powerful orchestral song.

science

The actor and environmentalist released a statement on Saturday after President Jair Bolsonaro falsely accused him of funding the fires recently set in the Amazon rainforest. Credit...Theo Wargo/Getty Images For Global CitizenNov. 30, 2019The actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio said on Saturday that he was not going to let President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil get in the way of his support of the Amazon rainforest.Mr. DiCaprio released a statement after Mr. Bolsonaro falsely accused him of bankrolling fires recently set in the Amazon. At this time of crisis for the Amazon, I support the people of Brazil working to save their natural and cultural heritage, Mr. DiCaprio posted on Instagram. They are an amazing, moving and humbling example of the commitment and passion needed to save the environment. The statement comes a day after the Brazilian president appeared to allude to disputed social media posts claiming that the World Wildlife Fund, an international environmental organization, paid for images taken by volunteer firefighters during the catastrophic blazes and then used the images to ask for donations, including a $500,000 contribution from Mr. DiCaprio.Mr. Bolsonaro, standing in front of the presidential residence, said of Mr. DiCaprio: Cool guy, right? Giving money to torch the Amazon. The Brazilian presidents remarks about nongovernmental organizations came after four members of the Alter do Cho fire brigade were arrested on Tuesday, the BBC reported. They were accused of setting fires for the purpose of taking photos to solicit donations. The arrests were widely condemned by politicians and other organizations who saw them as another move by the far-right president to persecute these groups. In his statement on Saturday, the Hollywood star wrote, While worthy of support, we did not fund the organizations targeted. He also said he was proud to stand by the groups protecting these irreplaceable ecosystems. Mr. DiCaprio, who has played a leading man in movies such as Titanic and The Revenant, said he remains committed to supporting the Brazilian indigenous communities, local governments, scientists, educators and general public who are working tirelessly to secure the Amazon for the future of all Brazilians. In a statement on Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund denied receiving a contribution from Mr. DiCaprio and obtaining photos from the firefighters. Mr. Bolsonaro has frequently railed against activist and environmentalist groups over their concern for the Amazon fires. In a Facebook Live post in August, he said everything indicates that nongovernmental organizations were setting fires in the Amazon but offered no evidence to back up his assertion, Reuters reported. Mr. DiCaprio, whose foundation is dedicated to protecting the worlds last wild places, has spoken at length, both online and in person, about combating climate change and other environmental issues, including the deforestation of the Amazon as well as the fires. The Amazon, often called the Earths lungs, stands as a bastion against climate change, but the raging fires could reach a tipping point for the rainforest, leading to a process of self-perpetuating deforestation known as dieback.In December 2018, Mr. DiCaprio announced that his foundation would match recurring donations to the Amazon Frontlines group for the entirety of 2019. Defending the Amazon has never been more urgent for our planet, he posted on Twitter at the time. In August, Mr. DiCaprio was one of several high-profile people who shared inaccurate or misleading photos of the blazes. As fires were then consuming the Amazon, celebrities and politicians shared images urging support for the rainforest but many of the photos were old or from places far from the Amazon.

World

Health|Studies Offer Hope for Malnourished Childrenhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/health/studies-offer-hope-for-malnourished-children.htmlGlobal HealthCredit...Kim Hedge/Washington University School of MedicineMarch 7, 2016Starving children have gut bacterial colonies that are immature compared with those of healthy children, and their mothers breast milk may lack sugars that can nourish the right bacteria, researchers have found. Those children may not grow even when they are fed nutritious food.Mouse studies published recently in Science and Cell suggest that the problems can be fixed.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis gave young, germ-free mice the gut bacteria from healthy and malnourished Malawian children. All of the mice were raised on a Malawian diet of cornmeal, vegetables, peanuts and kidney beans.The mice with the microbes from malnourished children failed to grow and were less healthy over all, the scientists found.But mice eat one anothers feces, and when the two types of mice were caged together, the malnourished ones picked up the bacteria of the healthy ones and grew stronger on the same diet.In this battle of good microbes versus bad, good triumphed, said Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon, a genome biologist at Washington University and leader of the research.Dr. Gordon also worked with a team of scientists in California, Finland and Malawi who found that the breast milk of mothers of malnourished children often lacked sugars with sialic acid, which is important in growth.The scientists refined cows milk to concentrate similar sugars and fed it to mice that were undernourished because they had been given the gut biota of a malnourished child. The mice grew more muscle, bone and fat, and had healthier brain and liver functions.The researchers then replicated their results in piglets, whose metabolism more closely resembles that of humans.

Health

Global HealthSierra Leone, one of the worlds poorest countries, is working to build a modern mental health system from scratch.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York TimesApril 11, 2022FREETOWN, Sierra Leone For centuries, they called the foreboding building on a hill above this capital city the Kissy Lunatic Asylum. It was built in the early 1800s by the British colonial administration, and behind the high walls, patients were kept in chains. People here say the stench seeped from the brick walls, and the screams of patients, whose psychosis and trauma were untreated by medication or therapy, echoed out the narrow, barred windows.Today a small wooden sign hangs over the front desk in the outpatient department: Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital: Chain-free since 2018. The sunny corridors of the newly renovated facility flash with the fuchsia uniforms of psychiatric nursing students. The shelves of the pharmacy are lined with the latest antipsychotics and antidepressants. Children bounce on a trampoline at a cheerful clinic just for them. And six residents are on their way to being the first psychiatrists ever trained in this country.The transformation at Kissy is part of an extraordinary effort to build a mental health care system from scratch in one of the poorest countries in the world. The residents work the wards and see patients in the packed outpatient clinic, under the supervision of three consulting psychiatrists. They are the only three in the countrys entire health system a staggering ratio, but a threefold increase from decades when there was just one, who paid the patients at Kissy a weekly visit.Around the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought a surge in mental health problems and has drawn attention to the severe limits on resources to help. There are often long waiting lists for appointments with therapists in high-income countries, but the shortage in the developing world is something else all together.You could have situations with one psychiatrist per million people, and no psychiatric nurses whatsoever, Mark van Ommeren, who heads the World Health Organizations mental health unit, said in an interview from Geneva. The absence of personnel to study and diagnose mental illness makes the actual scope of the burden of disease in developing countries something of a mystery. Dr. George Eze, the head of the new teaching program, surveyed the noisy line that spilled from the clinic into the courtyard on a recent steamy morning and declared it both a tragedy and a wonderful thing. Sierra Leone is a vivid example of human resilience anyone over the age of 30 today has lived through a civil war and displacement, an Ebola epidemic, devastating mudslides and now the lockdowns and disruptions of Covid. Most people, he said, have absorbed the traumas and carried on. But not everyone.There is PTSD, depression, all the psychopathology that goes with disaster, Dr. Eze said. We see 100 outpatients per day. The wards are full. Now I extrapolate to the entire population. If you pass through any market, youll pass many people with depression, phobic states, personality disorders. This is just the tip of the iceberg.Families once dreaded handing over their loved ones at the Kissy gates, Dr. Eze said; they brought them only when they felt they could not care for them at home, when paranoia or psychosis made their behavior violent or strange. People used to bring their family here with their hands tied and say, Take this man a last resort, he said.These days, when he arrives at work, he notices that patients and caregivers park motorbikes or cars out front, unashamed to be seen. Now they come for help, he said.Sierra Leone lacks more than just psychiatrists; there are only three physicians for every 100,000 people, the W.H.O. says (compared to 278 per 100,000 in the United States). But efforts to build the health system in the country are focused on physical health and primary care, as they are in many countries in the global south. Mental health care is often seen as an impossible luxury.The curriculum in medical schools and nursing colleges in developing countries rarely includes even a passing mention of mental health, Mr. van Ommeren said. Graduates primed on infectious disease and obstetrics are never taught to diagnose or treat postpartum depression, schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress.Sierra Leone has been pouring money, including funds from the World Bank and international donors, into rebuilding its health system since the end of a brutal civil war in 2001. The country is making gains against chronic problems such as malaria and maternal mortality.But it took serendipity, and some significant outside help, to take Kissy, named for the neighborhood where it is located, from asylum to teaching hospital.In 2014, the Boston-based humanitarian medical organization Partners in Health teamed up with the Sierra Leone health ministry to rehabilitate the hospital. The walls were lowered, the bars removed. Workers installed plumbing and electrical wiring, and a giant suite of generators, to make up for the failings of the rickety municipal power service. Patients were given bedsteads and fresh bedding, in lieu of torn and filthy mats on the floor.And on the 18th of August, 2018, we unchained the patients, said Anneiruh Braimah, the head of nursing. It was epic.Mr. Braimah, a wiry man who is known at Kissy as the Matron, has worked at the hospital since 1998. Drawn for reasons he cant explain to psychiatric nursing, he studied in Nigeria and then turned down a job offer there to come home and offer his services at the health ministry, which dispatched him to the asylum.At Kissy for decades, he was both nurse and doctor, he said, sometimes prescribing medications, when he could get them, and supervising a shifting roster of people who came briefly to work there. The standard of care involved physically restraining patients with the chains and injecting them with heavy sedatives, when they could be obtained.It was hard to feel good about the work they were doing, Mr. Braimah said, but they didnt have options. We just weathered the storm, he said. Even basic care, you couldnt do it.With the Partners in Health investment, two things changed: The unchained patients no longer raged and hurled the contents of their chamber pots, and students just one or two at first expressed interest in doing proper training rounds at Kissy.Regina Conteh, a nursing student, said her parents had barraged her with warnings before her first day at Kissy. But on her first day in the womens ward, she found that patients were not threatening her with violence. In fact, some sought out her care.On a recent day, a young patient named Aminatta brandished a bottle of orange nail varnish and offered to do Ms. Contehs nails. Aminatta had come to Kissy from a crowded low-income neighborhood in the city, mute and immobile with a depression that had never been treated. After a couple of months at the hospital, on regular antidepressants, she smiled and held her own hands out for Ms. Conteh to do the polishing. You can do things for people, the student nurse said as she painted.In the airy ward behind them, some patients lay unresponsive in their beds, while others did their laundry at a standpipe and tried to engage trainee nurses in boisterous conversation on topics including lunch, visitors and the possible return of the messiah.While Partners in Health offers mental health support at its global sites, this is the first time the organization has worked on reform of a national mental hospital. The organization does not usually work in capital cities; it focuses on delivering services in the most underserved parts of the countries where it works. But in 2016, Dr. Bailor Barrie, now the organizations country director in Sierra Leone, and a few colleagues happened to pay a brief visit to Kissy.From the moment we walked in, it was so miserable, so sorrowful, that it was clear that we had a moral imperative to be involved, Dr. Bailor said.The organization and the health ministry agreed to work together on rehabilitating Kissy. The effort involved not just physical renovations but a significant shift in perception of mental illness as a public health problem like any other.The ministry hired Dr. Eze from Nigeria and another psychiatrist, a Sierra Leonean who had recently returned from years in the United States, to be the faculty for a handful of medical students who were newly willing to consider stints at the transformed clinic.Partners in Health has spent $2.5 million at Kissy over four years on renovations, drugs and a laboratory and on earning accreditation as a teaching hospital. The complex now includes a soccer field, an occupational therapy center where patients play board games and gather for group therapy, and a playground for the childrens clinic.The Kissy hospital project became a favorite of Dr. Paul Farmer, the organizations co-founder, who died recently. In a conversation with a reporter shortly before his death, he called it just the most fantastic story, evidence of what was possible not just in Sierra Leone but across the global south.When Mattia Jusu qualified as a doctor and was given his assignment by the health ministry in 2019, he was horrified to learn that he had been posted to Kissy. I was expecting a very short stay, he said with a laugh. But a few months into coming, I started to change my mind.Some patients were calmer and more engaged with each passing day, and he began to see the power that mental health care could offer people who had been trapped in treatable but untreated illness for years. He is on track to be certified as the first domestically trained psychiatrist in two more years.Across the continent from Sierra Leone, in Ethiopia, there is a clue to both what the residency program may one day produce and a reminder of how long it may take. There, for the past 18 years, Addis Ababa University has run a program to train psychiatrists. The first group graduated in 2006 seven of them, for a country of 115 million people. The program has grown steadily since then, so that there are now psychiatrists in most of Ethiopias major hospitals, a once-unthinkable level of coverage, said Dr. Dawit Wondimagegn, a professor of psychiatry who until recently served as director of the universitys college of health sciences. Still, that is one psychiatrist per million people.Our fundamental challenge is that psychiatric disorders, and the need for access to mental health care in general, really is not a priority for health policy, in Ethiopia or anywhere in Africa, Dr. Wondimagegn said. Stigma is pernicious, and it feeds the idea that there is nothing to be done to help a patient who suffers from psychosis or depression.Ethiopias model includes psychiatric education for nurses and community health workers who will be the main points of interaction with the health system in rural areas. The W.H.O. advocates for building mental health into primary care, rather than training specialists and building dedicated clinics.The newest construction project at Kissy is a rehabilitation center, which will bring addiction treatment to Sierra Leone for the first time.We have such high rates of substance abuse have we ever asked ourselves why its happening? mused Dr. Elizabeth Allieu, the resident who set up the childrens clinic. All the child soldiers from the war, they have children now. These untreated people, traumatized and not healed, having children. What do you think will happen?Kissy once turned children away. Now Dr. Allieus clinic has helped put programming about mental health in children on radio shows, and a team is starting school outreach.We can do a lot here, Dr. Allieu said. A lot.

Health

Health|C.D.C.s Pandemic Team Will Surrender Some Responsibilitieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/health/covid-cdc-reorganization.htmlMay 20, 2022, 6:15 p.m. ETMay 20, 2022, 6:15 p.m. ETCredit...Ron Harris/Associated PressJust weeks after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a comprehensive internal review with an eye toward restructuring, the agencys director announced on Friday that the team that coordinated the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic would return some of its functions to other departments.But the so-called Incident Management Structure, initially brought together to respond to the public health emergency, is not being dissolved and will continue to meet the demands of this evolving pandemic, according to a letter sent to employees on Friday by the agencys director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.The move signals the beginning of efforts to put in place comprehensive changes at the agency, whose public standing and reputation have suffered in recent years. Some 60 percent of Americans, for example, say they are confused by changes in official pandemic recommendations, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.But Dr. Walenskys letter was short on details regarding the changes. A statement in response to questions from The New York Times said only that the reviews initial data collection phase is complete, and now the director will synthesize the information, identify themes, and prioritize next steps to formalize approaches and find new ways to adapt the agency to the changing environment.Dr. Walensky told employees last month that the C.D.C., which has faced an onslaught of criticism over its recent handling of the pandemic, would undergo a review and evaluation by Jim Macrae, a federal official who has held several senior positions within the Department of Health and Human Services. That review started on April 11.The review is also looking at how to modernize ways in which the agency develops scientific research and deploys it, and what other strategic improvements can be made to better serve public health, like better surveillance systems.To those ends, the reviewers have conducted more than 100 interviews and held nearly 50 one-on-one conversations with public health leaders both inside and outside the agency, Dr. Walensky said.The C.D.C. has long been admired for its scientific approach to improving public health. Many scientists from around the world were trained by its experts and have emulated the agencys standards and methods.But the C.D.C.s infrastructure was neglected for decades, along with the public health system generally. Agency scientists stumbled early in the pandemic with the flawed design of a diagnostic test, and went on to make some recommendations about masking, isolation and quarantine that critics charged were based on insufficient evidence.On Friday, Dr. Walensky indicated that health equity would be a priority for the agency in the future. The pandemic laid bare the stark racial and ethnic health disparities in the United States. Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native adults were hospitalized with Covid and died at higher rates than white Americans.The roots of the inequities are myriad, and include difficulties gaining access to care, mistrust in the medical system, higher rates of existing health problems like obesity and diabetes, and socioeconomic circumstances, like crowded housing and consumer-facing jobs, that increased the odds of exposure to the virus.Dr. Walensky said that lessons learned from the pandemic and feedback she has received made clear that it is time to take a step back and strategically position C.D.C. to facilitate and support the future of public health with a keen focus on health equity and the agencys core capabilities.

Health

Global healthA new government program will provide donated drugs through major drugstore chains.Credit...Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesDec. 3, 2019With donated drugs and services provided by major pharmacy chains, 200,000 uninsured Americans will gain access to H.I.V.-preventive medicines at no cost, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday.The announcement, by Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, essentially explained how the government plans to distribute the drugs for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, that were promised in May by the drugmaker Gilead Sciences. PrEP describes a strategy of preventing infection with H.I.V. by taking a single pill a day, either Truvada or Descovy. Both are made by Gilead. The strategy is 99 percent effective at preventing infection, studies have shown, and is a mainstay of the administrations campaign to end the H.I.V. epidemic. Some American cities with high H.I.V. rates, such as San Francisco, already have programs that pay the costs of PrEP for the uninsured. Gilead itself offers the drug at no cost to those who cannot afford it, or picks up insurance co-pays for patients who qualify. But the new program called Ready, Set, PrEP marks the first time the federal government is supplying PrEP to patients not enrolled in Medicaid, the Veterans Health Administration or any other federal health program. Under the new program, any patient who lacks health insurance, has had a recent negative H.I.V. test and has a prescription for PrEP presumably obtained from a doctor can call 855-447-8410 or sign onto a new government website, getyourprep.com, to apply for free H.I.V.-prevention drugs.They can also apply in person, Mr. Azar said, through a participating health care provider, such as a community clinic. Until March 30, the government will pay Gilead $200 per bottle each bottle of Truvada contains 30 pills to cover the cost of moving donated drugs from factories through the supply chain to patients, Mr. Azar said. ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAfter that, he said, the Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS chains will donate dispensing services and offer counseling to patients, and the government will seek cheaper ways to get the drugs from Gilead to those chains.About 1.2 million Americans could benefit from PrEP because they are at high risk of getting H.I.V. from unprotected sex or needle-sharing, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only an estimated 270,000 people are now taking the drugs. Truvada and Descovy are now mired in billion-dollar patent lawsuits pitting H.H.S. against Gilead. The federal government and the company both claim ownership of patents covering the use of the drugs to prevent H.I.V. infection.But Mr. Azar said the new program was not related to the lawsuits. That matter will be resolved in the court system, he said.Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, leader of a team at Massachusetts General Hospital that has analyzed the costs of the H.I.V. plans of the Obama and Trump administrations, said she was having a hard time understanding why the government is paying $200 a month per bottle to dispense these drugs. Truvada does not need refrigeration or special handling, and it is distributed free in France and Norway. The drug costs patients only $96 a year in Australia, $384 in Germany and $720 in Ireland.The company has promised to donate enough of the drugs to cover as many as 200,000 people for 11 years in the United States.Mr. Azar described the $200 per bottle payments as a stopgap measure that will enable rolling out the drugs as soon as possible. The amount is what Gilead claimed it pays the pharmacy supply chain to distribute its drugs, he said. After March 30, Mr. Azar said, with a combination of donated pharmacy costs and competitive bidding for distribution contracts, I think well be able to do better.Gilead makes no money from the distribution arrangement, said Ryan McKeel, a company spokesman. It will reimburse vendors but not charge the government for the time of any Gilead employees involved.Any tax deductions the company takes for its donation, he added, will be based on the cost of making the pills, not on their market value or distribution costs.James Krellenstein, a founder of the advocacy group Prep4All Collaboration, said the governments plan is poised to repeat the errors of Gileads own medication assistance program.While uninsured patients may get free drugs under the program, he said, they get no help paying for the medical exam and laboratory tests needed to get and keep renewing the prescription, which can cost up to $1,000 a year.Instead of focusing on paying Gilead up to $6 million for high pharmaceutical supply chain costs, the government could pay for lab tests for 6,000 patients, Mr. Krellenstein said.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Mr. Azar said that some of those costs are already covered by public clinics, and that his department is seeking $291 million this year from Congress to defray other fees in about 50 high-risk areas, beginning with Baltimore; Baton Rouge, La.; DeKalb County, in Georgia; and Cherokee Nation reservations.To increase awareness of PrEP, Mr. Azar said, Walgreens and Health Mart, a coalition of independent pharmacies, will publicize the program.In some cities, including New York, posters and billboards encouraging gay men and other people at risk to use PrEP are ubiquitous. But in more conservative parts of the country including the rural South, which is now one of the epidemics hottest zones awareness campiagns are uncommon.

Health

DealBook|Bloomberg to Buy Barclays Index Business for $787 Millionhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/business/dealbook/bloomberg-to-buy-barclays-index-business-for-787-million.htmlDec. 16, 2015LONDON Barclays said on Wednesday that it had agreed to sell its risk analytics and index solutions business to Bloomberg L.P. for 520 million pounds, or about $787 million.The deal includes a variety of financial market indexes, including a family of bond indexes, and tools for analyzing and constructing financial portfolios.The deal is the latest by Barclays as it seeks to reshape itself by selling underperforming businesses and focusing on what it considers its core operations. The London-based bank announced the sale this month of another noncore business, its retail banking business in Italy, to CheBanca, a unit of Mediobanca Group of Italy.The overhaul began under Antony P. Jenkins, the lenders former chief executive who was ousted in July, and is continuing under its new top executive, James E. Staley, who officially joined Barclays this month.We are pleased to partner closely with Bloomberg upon completion of the transaction, including maintaining a co-branding arrangement on the benchmark indices for an initial term of five years, Mr. Staley said in a news release.Barclays said it would retain its quantitative investment strategy index business, but would outsource calculation and maintenance of those indexes to Bloomberg.The bank expects to reap a pretax gain of about 480 million related to the transaction on completion. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in mid-2016.As part of its overhaul, Barclays is focused on four core businesses: its corporate and retail bank in Britain, its investment bank, its Barclaycard credit card operations and its African banking businesses.As financial markets continue to evolve, our clients need and expect the index business to evolve, too, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and founder of Bloomberg L.P., said in a news release.Combining the market-leading Barclays indices and their superb team with our data management, analytics and distribution will provide more independence, liquidity and transparency to the marketplace, improve industry innovation and further meet the diverse needs of our global client base, he added.

Business

Tyron Woodley Things Got Real w/ Conor McGregor 'Don't Ever Call Me a Bitch' 1/19/2018 Tyron Woodley says things got thiiiis close to REAL violence with Conor McGregor when the Irish superstar called him a "bitch" behind the scenes ... but Tyron set him straight real quick. The UFC welterweight champ told the whole story on "The Hollywood Beatdown" -- explaining how things went from 0 to 100 real quick at UFC 205 in Nov. 2016 ... with Conor ultimately backing down. There's a lot more ... Tyron calls B.S. on President Trump's physical exam numbers -- saying there's no way in hell POTUS is really 6'4", 239 lbs ... but he's got a plan to help him cut the fat. Tyron's also weighing in on Logan Paul ... telling us if the YouTube star really deserves a 2nd chance after his suicide forest videos stunt. Make sure to subscribe to the TMZ Sports YouTube page to catch "The Hollywood Beatdown" every week.

Entertainment

Technology|Suit Claims Googles Tracking Violates Federal Wiretap Lawhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/technology/google-sued-wiretap-privacy.htmlThe complaint said Google tracked and collected users browsing history even if they took steps to maintain their privacy.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesJune 2, 2020OAKLAND, Calif. Google violated federal wiretap laws when it continued to collect information about what users were doing on the internet without their permission even though they were browsing in so-called private browsing mode, according to a potential class-action lawsuit filed against the internet giant on Tuesday.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said Google tracked and collected consumer browsing history even if users took steps to maintain their privacy. The suit said Google also violated a California law that requires consent of all parties to read or learn the contents of private communication.The complaint focuses largely on what the company does to collect and track online activity when users surf the web in private browsing mode. Even when a user opts for private browsing, Google uses other tracking tools it provides to website publishers and advertisers to keep tabs on what websites the user visits, according to the lawsuit.Google tracks and collects consumer browsing history and other web activity data no matter what safeguards consumers undertake to protect their data privacy, said the complaint, which was filed by Mark C. Mao, a partner at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.Google has faced other lawsuits over its data collection, but this one tries to use the Federal Wiretap Act. The statute provides users with the right to sue if their private communications are intercepted. The lawsuit claims that Google intercepts the contents of communication between users and websites by collecting browsing history, specific website addresses and search queries.We strongly dispute these claims, and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them, a Google spokesman, Jose Castaneda, said. Incognito mode in Chrome gives you the choice to browse the internet without your activity being saved to your browser or device. As we clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity during your session.The lawsuit said users had a reasonable expectation that their communications would not be intercepted or collected when they were in private browsing mode. It also said Googles practices intentionally deceive consumers into believing that they maintain control of the information shared with the company and encouraging them to surf the web in private browsing if they want to maintain their privacy.However, Google fails to mention that other tracking tools used by the company may continue to track users by collecting information such as internet protocol addresses as well as browser and device information, according to the complaint.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three people with Google accounts: Chasom Brown and Maria Nguyen, both of Los Angeles, and William Byatt, a Florida resident. It seeks compensatory damages.

Tech