Text
stringlengths 91
48.9k
| Category
stringclasses 8
values |
|---|---|
Agency inspectors found a leaking roof, standing water and cracked production equipment before a facility shutdown that led to major shortages.Credit...Sarah Rice for The New York TimesMay 25, 2022The Abbott Nutrition plant in Michigan that was shut down in February, sparking a widespread baby formula shortage crisis, had a leaking roof, water pooled on the floor and cracks in key production equipment that allowed bacteria to get in and persist, Dr. Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, told a House panel on Wednesday.He detailed egregiously unsanitary conditions in the Sturgis, Mich., plant to lawmakers during a hearing, but he also acknowledged that his agencys response was too slow in addressing problems at the plant.Frankly, the inspection results were shocking, Dr. Califf told members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. We had no confidence in integrity of the quality program at the facility, noting the agency worked with Justice Department officials to dictate steps the company needed to take to turn the facility around.That effort is expected to result in the plant reopening on June 4, Jonathon Hamilton, an Abbott spokesman, said, with some formula expected to begin rolling out June 20. Officials hope new shipments will reach store shelves within six to eight weeks, although resumption of full production at the plant will take longer.Abbott has replaced the leaking roof at the plant as well as the floor, Dr. Califf said.House panel members sharply questioned the commissioner and other agency officials at the hearing. They also demanded answers from an Abbott executive about the plants troubled history as well as to how the company would correct glaring deficiencies and ease shortages that have agonized families across the country.Christopher Calamari, an Abbott Nutrition senior vice president, offered little explanation for conditions at the Michigan factory but said he was deeply, deeply sorry about the shortages. He said the company was coordinating 50 flights a week from its formula plant in Ireland to a dozen U.S. airports to increase supplies.We are committed to ensuring that this never happens again, Mr. Calamari said.Representative Gary Palmer, a Republican of Alabama, pressed Mr. Calamari for specifics about why the company did not fix problems at the plant before the F.D.A. forced its hand.We prioritize safety and compliance in our plants, Mr. Calamari said. And were committed to doing so and getting better coming out of this event.Mr. Palmer replied that he was not satisfied with that response.Committee members pushed back against F.D.A. and Biden administration assertions that it was difficult to recognize in real time the extent of the contamination and the resulting nationwide breakdown in the supply chain. The Abbott plant had produced one-fourth of the nations infant formula, including tailored formulas for people with specialized nutritional needs.There was a life-and-death crisis in front of the F.D.A., but they failed to see the severity of the situations, said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican of Washington. We must solve the immediate issue and also ensure that we are taking action so this situation never happens again.The agency had discovered a battery of problems at the plant last fall. At the same time, reports began emerging of babies who had been hospitalized with a rare bacteria. Cronobacter sakazakii, which can be deadly to infants, was found in four babies who had consumed formula from the plant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Testimony during the hearing made it clear that the F.D.A. took months to try to match the bacteria that sickened the first baby to bacteria that was later found throughout the plant.ImageCredit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesCronobacter strains related to two of the babies did not match samples of the bacteria later found at the plant, although Dr. Califf said the agency considered those results inconclusive given shortcomings with genome sequencing.The illnesses set the recall in motion this year. The plant shutdown began Feb. 17 and exacerbated shortages that had been intermittent during the height of the pandemic. Empty shelves have left parents struggling, driving hundreds of miles to find baby formula and, at times, improvising to feed hungry infants.Dr. Califf also acknowledged several ways that the F.D.A. had erred in addressing this problem: Its follow-up inspection in January should have started sooner, he said, adding that the agency took too long to circulate a whistleblower report that arrived in October but did not reach top officials until February.It was too slow, and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way, Dr. Califf said.He told lawmakers that the agency did not receive an immediate notice when a formula plant found the deadly Cronobacter bacteria. Nor does the agency have access to the supply chain information that each of the three main U.S. baby formula manufacturers have in-house.The report of an anonymous whistleblower who said he worked in the Sturgis plant came up repeatedly during the hearing. The whistleblower alleged that safety staff there celebrated the F.D.A. overlooking problems after a 2019 inspection and did not destroy enough product when it found Cronobacter in finished products. That top agency officials did not see those claims until February is stunning to me, Mr. Palmer said.Details in the report suggested there was corruption at the plant, Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, charged. Dr. Califf said he could neither confirm nor deny whether there might be criminal proceedings in the future.Mr. Calamari emphasized that the whistleblowers claims had not been proven. Thats an open investigation, he said. And its ongoing.The reports allegations resonated with panel members of both parties, including Representative Larry Bucshon, Republican of Indiana, who described himself as a private-sector guy.It seems like that facilitys culture is a problem, Mr. Bucshon said. It seems to me that the company needs to do better with oversight.Mr. Calamari contended that Abbott had invested tens of millions of dollars toward quality and maintenance, and he praised the dedication of employees at the 700,000-square-foot facility, which he visited last week.I saw the team members there, he said. They are empowered to speak up and they are passionate about what they make and they make those products as it was for their own family.Several panel members called for stricter agency oversight of food safety and more frequent inspections of troubled plants.Last week, the Justice Department announced a consent decree with Abbott on the conditions required to reopen the Sturgis plant, and the company could face heavy fines if it does not comply. In a complaint supporting the decree, officials described contamination with Cronobacter bacteria in finished baby powdered formula lots as long ago as 2019 and 2020.Abbott officials have been unwilling or unable to implement sustainable corrective actions to ensure the safety and quality of food manufactured for infants, the complaint concluded.Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria thrive in dry conditions, like powdered foodmaking. Only one state, Minnesota, requires doctors or labs to report cases of food-borne illness from the bacteria to public health authorities, who, in turn, are supposed to alert the C.D.C., The New York Times has reported.Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, urged the C.D.C. to change the protocols. Our nations inadequate reporting system results in critical data gaps that undermine our ability to understand the true scope of Cronobacter infections in infants, according to the letter she sent on Wednesday.At the subcommittee hearing, Dr. Califf agreed that reporting should be required of cases involving the bacteria.Last week, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to increase formula production and authorized the use of aircraft to speed shipment of infant formula to the United States from overseas. The first military plane carrying 500,000 bottles of formula arrived in Indianapolis from Europe on Sunday.During the hearing, Xavier Becerra, the secretary of Health and Human Services, tweeted that 60 tons of baby formula had just arrived on U.S. soil. He posted a photo of the first lady, Jill Biden, in front of the FedEx plane delivering an overseas shipment on Wednesday.The F.D.A. said last week that it set up a streamlined process for foreign baby formula manufacturers to send their products to the United States. On Tuesday, it announced that it approved one companys application to send two million cans.Mr. Biden has also signed legislation into law broadening the types of formula that can be purchased using benefits from the federal food aid program for women and babies, which cleared both chambers of Congress with few objections. A House-passed emergency $28 million measure to boost staffing for the agency, however, has stalled as some senators question whether the money will adequately address the shortage.We dont want anybody to be short of baby formula or anything, said Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Lets see if we need it the answer is not always money. The answer is good government and market forces.It is unclear what other legislative steps Congress will take. But as pleas from desperate parents searching for formula flooded Capitol Hill, lawmakers hastily scheduled hearings to interrogate both Dr. Califf and top industry executives over the failures that led to the shortage.Two more hearings are scheduled for this week, with House Appropriations subcommittees summoning a panel of experts on Wednesday and Dr. Califf set to appear before the Senates Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday.Emily Cochrane contributed to this report. | Health |
Credit...Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressDec. 16, 2015HOUSTON Ever since the 1970s, when international oil boycotts threatened the American economy and produced around-the-block waiting lines at gasoline stations, a ban on oil exports has been at the heart of national energy policy.Now, if a congressional deal holds up and President Obama agrees as is expected, that policy is about to be reversed.With the world overflowing with oil, it is unlikely the repeal of the ban will have a big immediate impact on crude prices or suddenly lift the American oil industry out of its tailspin of bankruptcies and job losses.Oil prices have sunk by nearly two-thirds since summer 2014, and the price of the American benchmark crude fell an additional $1.76, to $36.75, on Wednesday. Global storage is full to the brim, Iranian exports are about to hit the market and global trade is slowing, so few experts see a big expansion of markets anytime over the next year at least. But for oil executives, the deal was the culmination of a long-sought goal, even if it will take time to help them much.It will mean more jobs, more drilling, said Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, which is based in Texas. Mr. Sheffield, a leading advocate for lifting the ban, added: That helps the entire economy, energy security, it helps with our allies, it will help our trade balance. To me, its very, very big.Oil executives and other experts also said that the repeal would open new markets for American oil in Mexico, South Korea, Japan and China over the next several years, easing those countries dependence on unstable supplies from the Middle East, North Africa and Russia.And most immediately, lifting the ban should give some American oil companies a few modest new markets and a bit of extra flexibility that might be the difference between shutting off some production in places like Texas and North Dakota and eking out a bit of cash to keep the taps on.Connecting U.S. oil production to global markets will have immediate national security impacts, said David Goldwyn, who was the top energy diplomat in the State Department during the first Obama administration, and as the market recovers it will enable struggling American companies to meet rising demand.Environmentalists have long opposed the change in policy, contending it will encourage more drilling and production when they say the world should be shifting to renewable energy. They say more oil production means more hydraulic fracturing, air pollution and threats to local water supplies. That is why Democratic lawmakers insisted that the repeal be accompanied by an extension of tax credits for wind and solar energy.The promise of those extensions along with those aimed at promoting the development of biofuels, especially those derived from nonfood sources prompted a collective sigh of relief among clean energy executives and investors.Stock prices, which had tumbled in recent months in the face of volatility in the sector, rallied. SolarCity, for example, was up about 30 percent to around $52 in the afternoon, practically double where it was a month ago, while SunEdison, whose stock has languished below $10 since September, had climbed roughly 30 percent to above $6.The production tax credit for wind, which had expired at the end of 2014 and helped bring the cost of wind power near or below that of conventional fuels in many parts of the country, is to be extended retroactively until the end of next year and then decline in value each year until it is phased out in 2020. The investment tax credit for solar, which was to decrease to 10 percent, from 30 percent, at the end of next year, is to stay at 30 percent until 2019 and then gradually step down until 2022.Energy policy experts said that the agreement allowed Republicans and Democrats to claim victory, but was also a sign that the transition to a lower-carbon economy promised in the Paris climate talks was already an industry reality.Extending the wind and solar tax credits for the rest of the decade allows the White House to say they have provided businesses certainty to expand renewable investment, said Paul Bledsoe, a former Senate Finance Committee staff member and Clinton administration climate official. Republicans can now say they phased down the renewable energy tax credits to zero in five years, ending subsidies many of them opposed. But energy experts said it was the repeal of the oil export ban that carried the most symbolic weight. They noted that conditions in the global oil markets could change suddenly at any time, given the instability of North Africa, the Middle East and in other major producing countries like Venezuela and Nigeria. American oil on world markets could serve as a buffer for future shocks.Lifting the ban, they said, sends a telling message to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that the United States can push for stronger sanctions against Russian oil without jeopardizing the economies of countries that buy its oil, especially in Europe. It also means that if Iran does not comply with its nuclear agreement and sanctions are snapped back, Iranian customers like India and Japan can look to the United States as an important new oil source.The U.S. crude oil export ban is the symbolic manifestation of the historical trauma of Americas experience of the 1973 oil embargo, said Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at the University of California, Davis. Taking this law off the books reflects the new reality of Americas energy power.The repeal would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, when domestic production fell year after year until the shale revolution took hold in 2007 and 2008. Using hydraulic fracturing to blast through hard rocks with water, sand and chemicals, the industry began to produce in fields that had been largely worthless. Oil production nearly doubled by early this year to more than nine million barrels a day, replacing most imports from the Middle East and North Africa.The export ban has covered crude produced in the lower 48 states and exports other than those to Canada, while exports of processed fuels like gasoline and diesel have been allowed. The Obama administration has tinkered with the ban, allowing in 2014 the export of a limited amount of extra light oil, mostly coming out of the shale fields of Texas and North Dakota. This year it gave permission to export some more to Mexico in a swap for heavier Mexican crude desired by refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.With the price collapse over the last year, companies are decommissioning rigs and production is beginning to drop. Few executives think 2016 will be much better, and companies are cutting their exploration budgets.The United States already exports 4.5 million barrels a day of refined petroleum products like gasoline and diesel, and industry executives say an additional half million barrels to a million barrels a day of crude exports could come over the next several years. That is not a large number considering that the global market is roughly 94 million barrels a day.U.S. crude exports are unlikely to impact the big picture in global oil markets given that the U.S. is still a major importer of crude to the tune of seven million barrels a day or close to 7 percent of current global production, said Badr H. Jafar, president of Crescent Petroleum, an oil company based in the United Arab Emirates. Any U.S. exports will have to be matched by increased imports, leaving the global crude supply-demand balance unchanged. | Business |
Regulatory hurdles and supply chain issues could slow efforts to produce generic versions of Mercks antiviral molnupiravir for developing nations, despite licensing agreements.Credit...EPA, via ShutterstockOct. 20, 2021The first easy-to-use Covid-19 treatment could be available in the United States by the end of this year, but it is unlikely to reach developing countries, where hundreds of millions of people remain without access to vaccines, until at least the middle of 2022, according to public health officials.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced on Wednesday that it would attempt to expedite the timetable for getting the drug, the antiviral molnupiravir, to low-income countries. It pledged an initial investment of up to $120 million to prompt eight generic drugmakers that have signed licensing agreements with the drugs developer Merck to start producing the medicine now, a sort of insurance policy gambling that it will be approved by regulatory bodies.Molnupiravir was developed in record speed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, who have submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. Merck is already manufacturing the drug in anticipation of that approval, which could come in December.The U.S. government has a pre-purchase contract for 1.7 billion courses of the medication, a simple pill that in a large clinical trial halved the risk of hospitalizations and death from the coronavirus among high-risk people who took it in the first days of infection. Other well-off countries are rushing to negotiate their own deals on Wednesday the United Kingdom announced an agreement to buy 480,000 courses, pending approval.In addition to licensing the eight Indian manufacturing companies to produce generic versions of molnupiravir, Merck is in discussions with the Medicines Patent Pool, a nonprofit backed by the United Nations, raising hopes the simple treatment could be widely accessible in nations where large numbers of unvaccinated people will continue to die of Covid infections.But drug production experts say there are critical challenges, such as the supply of raw materials, regulatory approval and financial investment, that will mean the drug will be available in Omaha long before it is in Zimbabwe.The drug approval and authorization process often takes about a year; the foundation and Unitaid, the global health agency based in Geneva, have been working for months since conversations with Merck indicated early data on the drugs effectiveness were strong on steps to make this process as fast as possible.Mark Suzman, the Gates Foundations chief executive officer, said in an interview that it would be an outrageous outcome if the inequities in vaccine access were to carry over into access to therapeutics.We can use resources that multilateral agencies would not be able to put forward at this stage, because theyre constrained waiting for regulatory approval, to incentivize those producers to start manufacturing now, so that we would have a stockpile ready to distribute if and when we get approval, he said.The generic versions of molnupiravir will be evaluated by the World Health Organization and receive prequalification, the global bodys stamp of approval, which would allow countries to fast track purchases.Still, that process will take months, said Prashant Yadav, a supply chain expert with the Center for Global Development. There are only a few suppliers of the drugs components (called the active pharmaceutical ingredient, or A.P.I.), and its manufacturers will have to be persuaded to ramp up their at-risk production, as well.The Gates Foundations efforts could make a meaningful difference, he said. The foundation investing in a volume guarantee creates a more guaranteed supply of high quality A.P.I. for whosoever wants to make the finished formulation for the drug, he said.The foundation has also been funding research into how the drug production process can be done more cheaply, and more quickly, Mr. Suzman said.Dr. Yadav said that individual companies would be unlikely to make such expenditures on their own, and that it would help to drive down the price of the medication.If a country such as Zimbabwe were to approve the drug and order it, the timeline to get it to patients would depend on how much was being made globally. It could be months before the product is even shipped out, he said. To be pragmatic I think we are talking about six months before, Im not even talking about somebody taking it, but even lets say, before its in warehouses in a country.Multilateral donors and national governments should consider a molnupiravir stockpile as a way to ensure continued flow of the drugs ingredients, he said. Markets for therapeutics can be uncertain: If case counts fall, manufacturers may cut back their production, and the drug would not be available if there were a surge in infections.In addition to the deals Merck has negotiated with the Indian companies, the foundation hopes to spur drug manufacturers in other parts of the world to seek licenses, knowing the Gates pledge will underwrite their risk, Mr. Suzman said. Ideally you wouldnt want to have a single producer in a single country doing it because weve seen some of those risks, he said.The Gates Foundation played a similar role trying to expedite Covid vaccine access, making a $300 million deal with the Serum Institute of India that facilitated accelerated production of the AstraZeneca and Novavax vaccines. However India banned vaccine exports for months during its second Covid waves.Financial and vaccine donations to Covax, the global body meant to ensure supply delivery to low-income nations, have been slow and erratic.The world learned the hard way with Covid vaccines that unless we are willing to invest at-risk and at-scale as soon as promising technologies emerge and ideally before then there will be limited equitable access for far too long even when need and demand are extraordinarily clear, said Herve Verhoosel, spokesman for Unitaid. | Health |
County health officials are asking the medical community to be on the lookout for additional cases of myonecrosis, a bacterial infection associated with black-tar heroin use.Credit...Shawn Gust/Coeur D'Alene Press, via Associated PressDec. 5, 2019Seven people in San Diego have died in the last two months from a flesh-eating bacteria associated with black-tar heroin use, prompting public health officials to warn the medical community to be on the lookout for additional cases.The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency reported Wednesday that the seven people died from myonecrosis, a severe infection that destroys muscle tissue. The dead ranged in age from 19 to 57; five were male.They were among nine people admitted between Oct. 2 and Nov. 24 to county hospitals with the condition after injecting black-tar heroin, a dark, sticky drug that often contains impurities resulting from crude processing methods. Two remain hospitalized. One is expected to survive; the other is quite ill, said Dr. Eric McDonald, medical director for the epidemiology program at the county health agency.Dr. McDonald said the outbreak of myonecrosis was the most serious the county has seen in 10 years, although there have been similar outbreaks in California in the late 1990s and early 2000s.You just have to recognize it really early and have early surgery, and give antibiotics really quickly, and hope that not enough toxin has been produced to cause death, Dr. McDonald said in an interview. The source of the heroin is unknown and an investigation is continuing, the county said. Most black-tar heroin is produced in Mexico and sold in the United States west of the Mississippi River, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.Dr. Wilma Wooten, a county public health official, said people who use black-tar heroin are not only at higher risk of dying from an overdose, but also more prone to developing myonecrosis and wound botulism, a rare but serious illness that attacks the bodys nerves.The county asked the medical community to be on alert for additional cases of both conditions. Symptoms of myonecrosis include severe pain and swelling around a wound or injection site; pale skin that quickly turns gray, dark red, purple or black; blisters with a foul-smelling discharge; air under the skin; and fever.Signs of wound botulism include drooping eyelids, blurred vision, slurred speech, trouble swallowing and difficulty breathing. The condition can cause paralysis that begins at the face and head and travels down the body.The county warned that cooking black-tar heroin does not kill the bacteria that causes wound botulism.In October, the county confirmed its first case of wound botulism from black-tar heroin use this year. Seven cases were reported last year and three in 2017.Across Southern California, 13 probable and confirmed wound botulism cases, mostly among black-tar heroin users, have been reported since Sept. 1, the county said.Dr. Paul Little, medical director at the Laguna Treatment Hospital, an addiction treatment center in Aliso Viejo, Calif., said he hoped the seven deaths would prompt black-tar heroin users to seek treatment.If you ever see a wound like this, its pretty devastating, he said. Its just another situation where it shows the dangerous epidemic of the opioids were facing now. | Health |
Credit...BBCMarch 10, 2017There are well-known drawbacks to working from home: the isolation, the need for self-discipline.But here is a new one: the invasion of the toddlers.Robert E. Kelly, a political-science professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, learned this the hard way on Friday when he appeared as an expert on the BBC via Skype to discuss the South Korea impeachment scandal.He appeared to be in a home office, with a door closed behind him. Shortly before the interview, he innocently let his Twitter followers know he would be on TV.Then, as the questioning began, the door opened. A child toddled in.Then another strolled in, this time in a squeaky walker. And then their mother, Jung-a Kim, burst into the scene, skidding around a corner and frantically trying to herd the wayward young people out the door.She knocked books off a table before falling to her knees and grabbing the handle to close the door, finally, behind them all.The interruption, almost slapstick if it had not been real, was over within 40 seconds, during which Professor Kelly veered from apparent mild annoyance to repeated apologies to stifling smiles, while ultimately keeping his composure as he discussed the latest political drama underway in South Korea, where a court had removed President Park Geun-hye from office.The toddler intrusion starts just as the BBC World presenter, James Menendez, starts to ask him a question.And what will it mean for the wider region I think one of your children has just walked in, he said to Professor Kelly.He continues, gamely: Do you think relations with the North may change?Umm I would be surprised if they do the um pardon me. My apologies, Professor Kelly said, closing his eyes and smiling or grimacing as the sound of the objects toppling off the table and squeals of protest came from behind him.While the professor appeared to do his best to keep the live broadcast on an even professional keel, the clip was inevitably destined to do what these things do: spread widely across the internet.Yes, it did get weird. News organizations and television channels, including Buzzfeed, The Guardian and CNN, picked up the story. Online, many of the comments were sympathetic (This is TV Gold! said one), while others said that Professor Kelly had strong armed one of the children when reached behind him to repel her advance, all while keeping his eye contact with the camera and continuing to speak.Professor Kelly, who is an expert on politics on the Korean Peninsula, has been a contributing guest on the BBC for many years, as well as on ITN News and Sky. Many of his media appearances, chronicled on his YouTube page, appear to take place from the same room, which features a map on the wall and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.He could not immediately be reached on Friday, but his online biography and website, Asian Security Blog, notes his academic credentials and many contributions to scholarly publications and news organizations about North and South Korea. His wife, according to his personal profile, is a yoga teacher.Working from home with kids can be a challenge, especially when cameras or phones are involved. Tell us your stories in the comments. | World |
Tribes Reach $590 Million Opioid Settlement With J. & J. and DistributorsMoney from the tentative deal would go toward addiction and treatment and would be overseen by Native American tribal leaders.Credit...Eric Baradat/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFeb. 1, 2022Hundreds of Native American tribes that have suffered disproportionately high addiction and death rates during the opioid epidemic agreed on Tuesday to a tentative settlement of $590 million with Johnson & Johnson and the countrys three largest drug distributors.Together with a deal struck last fall between the distributors and the Cherokee Nation for $75 million, the tribes will be paid a total of $665 million. Purdue Pharma has already committed at least tens of millions more to the tribes in a settlement that is in mediation.We are not solving the opioid crisis with this settlement, but we are getting critical resources to tribal communities to help address the crisis, said Steven Skikos, a top lawyer for the tribes.Native Americans have endured disproportionately high opioid-related overdose deaths, by many metrics. In 2016, for example, Oglala Lakota County in South Dakota, home to the Oglala Lakota tribe, had an opioid-related death rate of 21 people per 100,000, more than twice the state average. According to one study, pregnant American Indian women were as much as 8.7 times more likely than pregnant women from other demographic groups to be diagnosed with opioid dependency or abuse.The contours of the new settlement, announced in the U.S. District Court in Cleveland, the seat of the national opioid litigation, are similar to an agreement that the companies struck with state and local governments last summer.If, as expected, most tribes sign on, the deal would be notable for its size as well as its acknowledgment of the 574 federally recognized tribes as a distinct litigating entity. Their voices have traditionally been excluded or downplayed in earlier national settlements involving the states, such as the landmark settlement with the big tobacco companies in the 1990s.Roughly 15 percent of the total will go toward legal fees and other litigation costs, but the bulk will be directed to addiction treatment and prevention programs, to be overseen by tribal health care experts.My tribe has already committed to use any proceeds to confront the opioid crisis, said Chairman Aaron Payment of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa in Michigan, which has 45,000 members. The impact of the opioid epidemic is pervasive, such that tribes need all the resources we can secure to make our tribal communities whole once again.A signature development in this deal is the timetable, which is far faster than the one tentatively agreed to last summer with states and local governments. Johnson & Johnson will pay the tribes its $150 million portion over two years, starting as soon as the deal is finalized; the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson will pay $440 million over six and a half years.By contrast, the drug manufacturer will pay thousands of local governments and states $5 billion over nine years, with the distributors paying $21 billion over 18 years.The distributors did not respond to requests for comment or declined to speak about the settlement. Johnson & Johnson said that the settlement did not represent an admission of wrongdoing. The company said that it would continue to defend itself in other cases.Although about 175 tribes filed cases against these and other pharmaceutical industry companies, the rest of the 574 tribes will benefit as well. Tribes range in population size from roughly 400,000 to a mere handful of people. According to 2018 census data, 6.8 million people identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, or 2.1 percent of the American population, of which slightly less than half live on or near tribal lands and are probably eligible to receive tribal services such as health care.The agreement will go forward after an overwhelming majority of the tribes that sued have signed on. Then money will be allocated to all tribes, regardless of whether they filed a case.Lloyd B. Miller, a lead lawyer for the tribes, said that the settlement provides outsized funding as compared to the states on a per-capita basis because the opioid disaster caused outsized and disproportionate devastation across tribal communities.Geoffrey Strommer, a lawyer for the tribes, said the tribes were determined that the bitter outcome of the Big Tobacco litigation more than two decades earlier not be repeated in the opioid litigation.In the Big Tobacco litigation, a court blocked the tribes from suing. And though states used tribal population and the impact of cigarettes on tribal health during negotiations with tobacco companies, Mr. Strommer said that the states never set aside money from the Big Tobacco funds for the tribes themselves.So the question of whether tribes would get their own seat at the negotiating table against the pharmaceutical companies or would be excluded altogether was vigorously debated, according to several lawyers familiar with the talks.Judge Dan Aaron Polster, who is presiding over thousands of opioid cases merged in Federal District Court in Cleveland, insisted the tribes had an equal right to bring their own cases, independent of the states. | Health |
The C.D.C. will undergo a comprehensive re-evaluation, the agencys director said.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesApril 4, 2022The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will undergo a monthlong comprehensive review and evaluation, a first step in modernizing its systems and processes and transforming it for the future, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agencys director, announced on Monday.The move follows an unrelenting barrage of criticism regarding the agencys handling of the pandemic over the past few months. The review will be conducted by Jim Macrae, who served as acting administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration for two years and has held other senior positions at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, of which the C.D.C. is a part. Mr. Macrae will start his assignment on April 11.The lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the feedback I have received inside and outside the agency over the past year, indicate that it is time to take a step back and strategically position C.D.C. to support the future of public health, Dr. Walensky said in an email to agency employees.Three senior C.D.C. officials the acting principal deputy director, Dr. Deb Houry; the chief operating officer, Robin Bailey; and the chief of staff, Sherri Berger will gather feedback on the structure of the agency and solicit suggestions for strategic change, Dr. Walensky said.At the end of what she described as a collective effort, the agency will develop new systems and have a plan for how the agency should be structured. The email was first reported by the Washington Post. A C.D.C. spokesperson said that the agency had worked to speed up data reporting and scientific processes over the past year, but that more needed to be done, including finding new ways to adapt the agencys structure to the changing environment.Dr. Walensky said the review would focus on the agencys core capabilities: the public health work force, data modernization, laboratory capacity, health equity, rapid responses to disease outbreaks and preparedness, both in the United States and worldwide.Over the past year, I have heard from many of you that you would like to see CDC build on its rich history and modernize for the world around us, Dr. Walensky said in her email. Thanking her employees, she said, I am grateful for your efforts to lean into the hard work of transforming CDC for the better.The C.D.C. has long been revered for its methodical, scientific approach to improving public health around the world. Scientists outside the United States were trained by agency experts, and its standards have been embraced and emulated globally.But the agencys infrastructure was neglected for decades, like the nations public health system generally, and the pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges. Early on, the C.D.C. made key mistakes in testing and surveillance for example, famously fumbling design of a diagnostic kit sent to state laboratories.Officials were late to recommend masking, partly because agency scientists didnt recognize quickly that the virus was airborne. In May of last year, Dr. Walensky announced that vaccinated people could take masks off indoors and outdoors; just weeks later, it became clear that vaccinated people could not only get breakthrough infections but also could transmit the virus.In August, Dr. Walensky joined President Biden in supporting booster shots for all Americans, before scientists at the Food and Drug Administration or her own agency had reviewed the data on whether they were needed.More recently, the highly contagious Omicron variant has led the C.D.C. to issue recommendations based on what once would have been considered insufficient evidence, amid growing public concern about how these guidelines affect the economy and education.In December, the C.D.C. shortened the isolation period for infected Americans to five days, although it appears that many infected people can transmit the virus for longer. Over the past few weeks, some experts have criticized the agency for changing the metrics used to assess risk and determine appropriate local measures, in order to appease business and political interests.Supporters of Dr. Walensky say that the agency has been handed an extraordinary task, and that the C.D.C. is doing its best under extremely difficult circumstances not least that most employees have been working remotely.In a separate statement issued to the public on Monday, Dr. Walensky said that never in its 75 year history has C.D.C. had to make decisions so quickly, based on often limited, real-time, and evolving science.When asked at a news conference on Tuesday whether the call for the review came from the White House, the press secretary Jen Psaki said it had not and was driven by the C.D.C., calling it certainly one we support. | Health |
Europe|Bela Biszku, Hungarian Official Tried in 1956 Uprising, Dies at 94https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/europe/bela-biszku-communist-hungary-1956-uprising.htmlCredit...Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesApril 1, 2016Bela Biszku, the only high-ranking Communist-era official to be tried for his role in the repression that came after the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule, died on Thursday in Budapest. He was 94.His death was confirmed by the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities.Mr. Biszku was part of the Communist Partys ruling interim executive committee after Soviet forces crushed the October 1956 uprising. The committee created militias to carry out the repression.Mr. Biszku, who also served as Hungarys interior minister from March 1957 to September 1961, denied any involvement. But in 2014, he was sentenced to five years and six months in prison after being convicted of war crimes and other charges, including his role in nearly 50 deaths.A higher court voided the verdict and ordered a retrial, which concluded in December with a suspended sentence on lesser charges, including the denial of crimes committed by the Communist government. The conviction was under appeal at Mr. Biszkus death.Historians have long considered Mr. Biszku one of the main architects of the repression that came after the uprising, in which at least 225 people were executed and more than 10,000 imprisoned. In voiding his initial conviction, however, the Budapest Appeals Court said there were essential and substantive differences between establishing historical responsibility and criminal responsibility.Mr. Biszku was born on Sept. 13, 1921, in the eastern Hungarian village of Marok, now called Marokpapi. | World |
Customs officials said they had warded off a threat to the nations agriculture and natural habitats by intercepting the moth before it could take hold in the wild.Credit...U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionMay 23, 2022Customs agents at Detroit Metropolitan Airport who were checking the baggage of a passenger traveling from the Philippines found something just around half an inch in size that piqued their interest.The objects in question the larvae and pupae of an unidentifiable insect were inside seed pods that the passenger said were intended for medicinal tea. Later, scientific tests showed that the agents had homed in on a potentially grave threat to the nations agriculture and natural habitats.U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced last week that the pupae had hatched a species of moth whose last recorded sighting by scientists occurred in 1912 in Sri Lanka. Experts confirmed that such nonnative insects had the potential to defoliate forests and feast on or contaminate crops.The moths, whose black-and-gold-dotted wings resemble a cloudy predawn sky, were discovered in September and looked to be a member of the moth family Pyralidae, the customs officials said. To determine their exact species, the authorities sent the specimens to M. Alma Solis, a moth specialist at the Agriculture Department.Dr. Solis said in a telephone interview that she received a FedEx package on April 19 containing a box with one adult moth and vials with caterpillars and pupae.I did my Ph.D. on this subfamily; Im a world expert, she said. I can identify something to subfamily almost immediately. Then its a matter of knowing the literature.Dr. Solis said she is one of four moth research specialists working full time for the U.S. government who are capable of identifying rare or little-known species that arrive at the nations borders.In addition to these specialists, there are also agricultural inspectors at ports who are able to recognize potential threats. In this case, Dr. Solis said she worked with Tyler Fox, a Detroit-based agriculture specialist with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who knew that she was an expert in this particular type of moth.Hes a pretty incredible entomologist, Dr. Solis said. Mr. Fox, who did not respond to a request for comment, and his colleagues must have wide-ranging knowledge of just about every organism you can think of, she said.Theyre looking at species coming in from all over the world, of many different organisms, and theyre called upon to send it to the right specialist, Dr. Solis said. Its just amazing what they find, in my opinion.ImageCredit...U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionIt was unlikely that the moths were smuggled into the country, according to two experts: Jason Dombroskie, a lepidopterist at the Insect Diagnostic Lab at Cornell, who specializes in identifying moth species; and David Moskowitz, an entomologist, environmental consultant and co-founder of National Moth Week, an annual event that encourages people to observe moths in backyards and parks. Mr. Dombroskie and Mr. Moskowitz said that the species was too obscure to possess the medicinal or aesthetic value that motivates smugglers.But both experts emphasized the danger that the species might have posed, given the destructiveness of other nonnative insects.For example, the spongy moth (until recently known as the gypsy moth) has become a tree-devouring pest responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and mitigation efforts annually, according to the Entomological Society of America.And scientists have feared that the emerald ash borer, an Asian beetle, has the potential to kill 99 percent of the nations ash trees.The emerald ash borer originated in Detroit, Mr. Dombroskie said. If wed had an agricultural inspector that identified that early on, we could have prevented all that.Would this moth have become the next multibillion-dollar pest? he asked, referring to the species found by the customs agents. Probably not but its possible.The identification of such tiny but potentially devastating larvae was improbable, Mr. Dombroskie said.Theres only so much you can know, he added. A botanist might not have made this discovery, or a mycologist, someone who works with fungi like molds and mushrooms.Mr. Moskowitz said the episode illustrated the importance of training in animal taxonomy for customs agents.Identifying a moth that hadnt been found in more than a century took great expertise, he wrote in an email. Without that, we lose the ability to know what is around us, how we might be able to protect and conserve species at risk and against invaders.With the global supply chain connecting countries and travelers shifting between world capitals, Mr. Moskowitz continued, protecting the country from invasive pests is truly a herculean task. | science |
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/business/international/samsung-insider-trading-investigation-korea.htmlCredit...SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg NewsDec. 4, 2015SEOUL, South Korea South Korean financial regulators on Friday said they were investigating whether nine executives from Samsung, the countrys largest conglomerate, used insider trading to profit illegally from a merger of two subsidiaries.The countrys stock exchange reported the suspected insider trading, prompting the Financial Services Commission to investigate the Samsung executives, Kim Hong-sik, director of the commissions capital markets investigation unit, told reporters on Friday.Mr. Kim did not elaborate. But South Korean news media reported that nine executives from several Samsung companies bought 40 billion to 50 billion won, or $34.5 million to $43.1 million, worth of shares of a subsidiary, Cheil Industries, shortly before the plan to merge it with Samsung C&T was announced in May.Cheil Industries shares rose sharply until the merger plan was announced on May 26.We understand the investigation involving certain individuals is still in its early stage, Samsung said in a news release. We will wait until the authorities conclude their investigation.The merger between Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T drew attention because of its role in a father-to-son transfer of power in the family that controls the conglomerate, or chaebol. The activist hedge fund Elliott Associates, which had accumulated 7.12 percent of Samsung C&T before the merger, campaigned to scuttle the deal. The fund said the merger wronged minority shareholders by grossly undervaluing Samsung C&T shares in an unlawful attempt to help Lee Jae-yong, the son of Samsungs chairman, Lee Kun-hee, inherit leadership of the conglomerate.The Lee family held a controlling stake in Cheil and wanted to use it as a de facto holding company for the entire group. The merger enabled Cheil to absorb Samsung C&Ts shares in other Samsung units, including the flagship Samsung Electronics, further consolidating the familys grip on the entire group.The merger was completed after Samsung C&T shareholders voted in favor of it in July. | Business |
DealBook|Carl Icahn Raises Offer for Pep Boyshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/dealbook/carl-icahn-raises-offer-for-pep-boys.htmlDec. 21, 2015Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York TimesManny, Moe and Jack and now Carl.Carl C. Icahn has made a new, higher offer for Pep Boys, causing the car-parts and servicing chain to terminate its agreement to be acquired by Bridgestone, the tire company.Mr. Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, offered to acquire Pep Boys formally known as Pep Boys Manny, Moe & Jack for $16.50 a share in cash, or $919 million on a fully diluted basis, on Friday, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The bid surpassed Bridgestones previous proposal to acquire Pep Boys for $15.50 a share in cash. Mr. Icahns offer added $56 million in value to the transaction and was seen as superior by Pep Boys board.Mr. Icahn, who holds about an 11 percent stake in Pep Boys, was unhappy with Bridgestones original October offer to acquire Pep Boys in an all-cash transaction for $15.00 a share. So the billionaire investor made a competing bid earlier this month at $15.50 a share in cash, which was then matched by Bridgestone on Dec. 11.Mr. Icahns Friday offer, which amounted to $1.2 billion including debt, topped Bridgestones. Unless Bridgestone agrees to a higher transaction by 8 p.m. New York time on Dec. 23, Mr. Icahn will prevail in its acquisition of Pep Boys.Bridgestone was seeking to add Pep Boys 7,500 service bays in 800 locations to its 2,200 tire and automotive centers.Shares of Pep Boys jumped 5.5 percent to $16.63 on Monday, surpassing Mr. Icahns offer price. | Business |
Credit...Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2015Edward Hugh, a freethinking and wide-ranging British economist who gave early warnings about the European debt crisis from his adopted home in Barcelona, died on Tuesday, his birthday, in Girona, Spain. He was 67.The cause was cancer of the gallbladder and liver, his son, Morgan Jones, said.Mr. Hugh drew attention in 2009 and 2010 for his blog posts pointing out flaws at the root of Europes ambition to bind together disparate cultures and economies with a single currency, the euro.In clear, concise essays, adorned with philosophical musings and colorful graphics, Mr. Hugh insisted time and again that economists and policy makers were glossing over the extent to which swift austerity measures in countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal would result in devastating recessions.Mr. Hughs insights soon attracted a wide and influential following, including hedge funds, economists, finance ministers and analysts at the International Monetary Fund.For those of us pessimists who believed that the eurozone structure was leading to an unsustainable bubble in the periphery countries, Edward Hugh was a must-read, said Albert Edwards, a strategist based in London for the French bank Socit Gnrale. His prescience in explaining the mechanics of the crisis went almost unnoticed until it actually hit.As the eurozones economic problems grew, so did Mr. Hughs popularity, and by 2011 he had moved the base of his operations to Facebook. There he attracted many thousands of additional followers from all over the world.If Santa Claus and John Maynard Keynes could combine as one, he might well be Edward Hugh. He was roly-poly and merry, and he always had a twinkle in his eye, not least when he came across a data point or the hint of an economic or social trend that would support one of his many theories.His intellect was too restless to be pigeonholed, but when pressed he would say that he saw himself as a Keynesian in spirit, but not letter. And in tune with his view that economists in general had become too wedded to static economic models and failed their obligation to predict and explain, he frequently cited this quotation from Keynes:Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.Edward Hugh Bengree-Jones was born in Liverpool, England, on Dec. 29, 1948. He moved to London and received an undergraduate degree from the London School of Economics. He pursued his doctoral studies at Victoria University in Manchester, although he never completed them.In an interview with The New York Times in 2010, Mr. Hugh said that his interests were too many for him to buckle down and actually earn a doctorate in a single topic. He read widely and relentlessly, becoming an expert on a variety of matters like demography, migration, independent cinema and the social tendencies of the bonobo ape.Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he bounced from job to job, mostly in education, taking on projects such as teaching English to Chilean refugees.In 1990 he moved to Barcelona, having fallen in love with the citys multicultural flair during a holiday visit. He quickly became fluent in both Spanish and Catalan and decided that Barcelona would become his home.He would became a champion of Catalonias push for independence and was an informal adviser to senior Catalan politicians, including Artur Mas, the leader of the movements main party.While Mr. Hughs pointed pen often ruffled feathers, especially in Spain, he did become a local celebrity of sorts. He was a regular presence in the papers and appeared frequently on television, where he would expound for hours in Spanish and Catalan.On occasion his prognostications were overly pessimistic, and Spains surprisingly quick economic recovery was an event that he, along with many others, did not foresee.Until this summer, when his cancer worsened, he spent his days posting daily economic snippets on Facebook, digging deep into independent films from around the world, and having long, lazy lunches with local notables and friends.That he never finished his doctorate or wrote his great work never truly bothered him, he said in his interview with The Times.The last time I was asked what it was I did, I replied rather cantankerously, that I dont do, I think, he recalled.Besides his son, Morgan, his survivors include his wife, Barbara; a brother, David, and a half sister, Anne. | Business |
Credit...UMD Archaeology in AnnapolisNov. 7, 2016African-Americans have long been among the countrys most fervent Christians, from the choir to the pulpit to the affirming voices from every amen corner.Their deep faith saw them through the trials of slavery and then a century of Jim Crow repression. Finally, it emboldened them to leave the sanctuary of their churches and join the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a quest, his dream, for their full freedom and equality.Just when and how their ancestors broke with traditional African spirit practices and adopted Christianity has never been fully resolved. Now archaeologists in Maryland have announced the discovery of an intact set of objects that they interpret as religious symbols traditional ones from Africa, mixed with what they believe to be a biblical image: a representation of Ezekiels Wheel.ImageCredit...Talbot Historical Society; Used with permission from The Estate of Ruth Starr RoseNo one had found this combination of religious artifacts before, said Mark P. Leone, a University of Maryland archaeologist who led the discovery team. Christianity had not erased traditional African spirit practices, he concluded. It had merged with them to form a potent blend that still thrives today.Two of Dr. Leones graduate students, Benjamin A. Skolnik and Elizabeth Pruitt, made the discovery and excavated the artifacts, which were just below the surface where a tenant farmers house once stood on land of a former plantation near Easton, Md. That was four years ago. Dr. Leone and others familiar with the religious history of African-Americans then sought to interpret what they had found.In the late 18th century, Methodist Episcopal and later African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) preachers carried the Christian message to the plantations on Marylands Eastern Shore. They seemed to have been successful converting slaves, in part by giving new meaning to traditional symbols. For example, a powerful symbol from the BaKongo belief system in West Central Africa, where many of the slaves came from, was the cosmogram, a circle with an X inside.African-Americans repurposed these materials because they had symbolic value as well in the form of Ezekiels blazing chariot wheel, Dr. Pruitt said.The wheel imagery is described in the Book of Ezekiel 10:9-10:And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub and the appearance of the wheels was as the color of aberyl stone. And as for their appearances, the four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.The wheel-like image in the Book of Ezekiel and the cosmogram, Dr. Pruitt suggested, represented the universe, and the path we travel through this world and the afterlife and it stands for the enduring connections between this world and the next, the power from above and below.For the first time, the two circle images had been found together virtually side by side. It seems that the Christian preachers had discovered the powerful resonance the wheel image held for African-Americans. One of the most popular spirituals among people in A.M.E. churches and camp meetings on the Eastern Shore is Zekiel Saw the Wheel.Zekiel saw de wheel, way up in the middle of the airZekiel saw de wheel, way up in the middle of the airDe big wheel run by faith, little wheel by the grace of GodWheel in a wheel, way in de middle of de air.An A.M.E. bishop in the 19th century, Daniel Payne, wrote that the circle and wheel imagery extended the Ring Shout, in which participants move counterclockwise singing and dancing at camp meetings. This motion is in the same direction as the cycle of life in the cosmogram. It was said that sinners wont get converted unless there is a ring here, a ring there, a ring over yonder, or sinners will not get converted.The artifacts gathered by Dr. Leones team are on display at a new exhibition at the University of Marylands Hornbake Library. The display, Frederick Douglass & Wye House: Archaeology and African American Culture in Maryland runs through July 2017, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. | science |
Credit...Joshua Lott for The New York TimesDec. 4, 2015Consider it a done deal.American employers expanded their payrolls at a robust pace in November, the government reported on Friday, all but guaranteeing that policy makers at the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade when they meet in less than two weeks.In addition to announcing 211,000 new hires last month a bit more than Wall Street had expected the Labor Department also revised upward its earlier estimate of job creation in September and October by a total of 26,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5 percent.The labor market strength evident in the November data removes the last major uncertainty before the Fed decision.This is a green light from our perspective, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors. Wall Street, which in the past has sold off after strong jobs data and the prospect of higher interest rates, greeted the report with enthusiasm, perhaps because it removes any remaining uncertainty about the Feds plans. Stocks reversed Thursdays losses and rose more than 2 percent; bond yields fell slightly. The report on Friday echoes other recent positive data on job openings, new weekly claims for unemployment benefits and private payroll surveys, Mr. Orlando added. This is a good number for liftoff, he said, referring to the expected move by the central bank, which has held rates near zero since December 2008.Over all, the Labor Department data painted a picture of an economy that is growing steadily and creating jobs at a healthy pace, even as wage gains remain subdued and many Americans are still stuck on the sidelines of the recovery.If hiring continues at a healthy pace next year, as most economists now predict, it could also blunt Republican criticism in the presidential campaign of Democratic economic policies, which have been a prominent target for the current crop of G.O.P. candidates.With an average monthly payroll increase of 210,000 so far this year, the 211,000 gain in November though still subject to revision has a metronome-like element of consistency. It is also near the average monthly increase of 199,000 in 2013 and 260,000 in 2014.For a long time, Ive thought the labor market was in pretty good shape, and this just confirms that, said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York. After the release of the jobs report, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Patrick T. Harker, added his voice to the chorus of Fed officials who said it was time for the central bank to raise interest rates.ImageCredit...Joshua Lott for The New York TimesRaising rates this year will, in my view, serve to reduce monetary policy uncertainty and to keep the economy on track for sustained growth with price stability, Mr. Harker said at a Fed conference in Philadelphia.Still, even after more than six years of economic recovery from the devastating financial crisis, the labor market is well below its pre-recession levels and pockets of economic weakness remain.At 62.5 percent, the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains near multidecade lows. The jobless rate for African-Americans rose by 0.2 percentage point in November to 9.4 percent, which is more than twice the 4.3 percent level for white Americans.Moreover, the economy is still 2.8 million jobs short of where it would have to be to match pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing new entrants into the work force, according to the Hamilton Project, a research group associated with the Brookings Institution in Washington. Even if the current trend continues, that so-called jobs gap will not be closed until mid-2017.In addition to the tempo of hiring and the unemployment rate, Fed policy makers have been paying close attention to the pace of wage increases. In November, the government said wages rose by 0.2 percent, leaving the 12-month change in average hourly earnings 2.3 percent higher.Despite steady hiring gains and a falling unemployment rate, wage growth in recent years has barely advanced faster than inflation. In October, that trend seemed to improve, with an unexpectedly strong 0.4 percentage point increase in average hourly earnings that pushed the 12-month gain to 2.5 percent even as the pace of inflation fell, mostly because of lower energy prices.But with Novembers figures reverting to the earlier trend, Mr. Clemons said, I dont think theres a lot of wage pressure yet.He foresees two more interest rate increases next year, bringing short-term rates to about 0.75 percent at this point next year. Other analysts, like Mr. Orlando, expect the Fed to raise rates roughly every other meeting next year, which would bring the Feds benchmark rate to about 1 percent in the fall of 2016.This week, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet L. Yellen, and other top Fed officials made clear that a rate increase was imminent unless the economic data went wildly awry. Raising rates, Ms. Yellen said in a speech Wednesday, would be a testament, also, to how far our economy has come in recovering from the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession.It is a day that I expect we all are looking forward to, she added.In the November data, the mix of sectors doing the hiring was encouraging, with big gains in construction, education and health services, and the white-collar professional and business services sector.On the other hand, the mining and logging sector lost 11,000 jobs, hit by continuing job cuts in the oil patch and other commodity-dependent industries.One wild card in the November report was the retail sector. But the data showed that stores added 31,000 retail jobs.The transportation and warehousing sector added 6,400 jobs in November, reversing losses in September and October.In Chicago, Redwood Logistics has been on a steady growth track all year, adding about 100 employees in the last 12 months, said the companys chief executive, Todd Berger. With a nationwide work force of about 425, Mr. Berger said he anticipated hiring another 100 workers in the next year. Although many people might consider strong shoulders to be the main qualification for a job at a shipping and transportation company, the reality is very different.Most of Redwoods jobs require a college degree, Mr. Berger said. In November, Redwood filled three managerial positions, all of which paid more than $100,000 a year and required specialized training and experience.Salaries for less-skilled positions, like truck drivers, have also been creeping up. In Texas, Redwood has been hiring drivers from among those laid off from the energy industry.Our drivers will go to work in the oil fields when thats hot, he said. Now theyre coming back. | Business |
Credit...Phil Noble/ReutersJan. 31, 2014MANCHESTER, England After enduring years of industrial decline, the people of this northern city are not new to building, or to rebuilding, and they have experienced things far worse than the loss of a few more soccer matches than usual.Still, the 26 trophy-filled years overseen by the former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson raised expectations in the red half of this city. Their memory also soured the mood of the 72,000 fans who braved another murky Manchester night this week to watch United fight to correct the course of one of its worst seasons in decades.The occasion was a league match against Cardiff City, currently in last place in its first season in the 20-team Premier League, Englands top division. It was a game United, at its best, would have expected to win handily. But Uniteds best has been fleeting this season, and though the Red Devils won, 2-0, the display was only occasionally graced by the teams old flair. In the context of the clubs horrendous season, however, the victory might have come just in time. After six months of mediocrity in which United has sunk to seventh in the league, almost out of reach of usual top-of-the-standings rivals like Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, support for the clubs new manager, David Moyes, has been ebbing. In his first year as successor to Ferguson, who picked Moyes, a fellow Scot, for the job, Moyes has begun to look like a transitional figure. His record through 23 league games includes seven defeats and four draws, the worst start by United in 30 years. The defeats have consigned United to a 24-point swing from an 11-point margin in its runaway victory in the league last season to its current 13-point deficit behind the current leader, Uniteds crosstown rival Manchester City. Small wonder, then, that the Cardiff game became a make-or-break challenge for United and, perhaps, for Moyes. He and his supporters including Ferguson have pleaded for the time Moyes says he needs to put together the jigsaw of a new team that he says will restore Uniteds dominance. The plan, which involves shedding as many as a dozen of the players from the Ferguson era, hinges on a $250 million fund for player acquisitions that Moyes is said to have been promised by Uniteds American owners, the Glazer family.The plan, if carried through, would represent a major change in strategy. Until now, the Glazers strategy since buying the club in a heavily leveraged buyout in 2005has rested largely on servicing the debt of more than $800 million that the club assumed as part of the takeover, and avoiding the headline-grabbing, balance-sheet-straining signings that have characterized the stewardship of Englands other top clubs.An analysis in last weekends Observer newspaper said the debt carried by United since the Glazer takeover had cost the club more than $1.1 billion in interest, bank fees and other charges. That has swallowed much of the increased annual revenue that the club has drawn with booming television revenue, aggressive marketing in Asia and the riches as much as $80 million a year that come with Uniteds annual participation in the UEFA Champions League, a tournament for the top European clubs. With that income now threatened by Uniteds erratic results only the top four Premier League finishers qualify for the Champions League the experts say the Glazers have accepted that buying a raft of new marquee players may be necessary to keep the enterprise afloat. The transfer window closed Friday, but the first step in the plan was completed last week with the $62 million signing, a United record, of the Spanish midfielder Juan Mata. Mata completed his move from Chelsea days before the Cardiff game, his arrival dramatized when Moyes not generally given to ostentatious gestures chartered a helicopter to deliver him from central London to Carrington Road, Uniteds training ground.The signing, Moyes acknowledged, was as much inspirational as tactical because Uniteds shaky defense was a more pressing need. In effect, Moyes needed Mata to prove to skeptics that United, even in its winter of discontent, could attract top-flight players.ImageCredit...Phil Noble/ReutersManchester United are not only the biggest club in this country, but the biggest in the world, and I dont think that aura is fading, Moyes told reporters as Mata arrived.Mata delivered on cue. Barely six minutes into the Cardiff game,the slightly built, lightly bearded Mata used one of his first touches to strike a floating pass 70 yards upfield onto the feet of an unmarked teammate. The pass opened up the Cardiff City defense and led, moments later, to a headed goal by Robin van Persie that brought the crowd to its feet. Before halftime, Mata was involved again in the moves that led to a second goal, an Ashley Young rocket from outside the penalty area. Six days earlier, United had lost a game that was a grim example of how far the rot a term used in more than one British tabloid had gone. A League Cup semifinal at Old Trafford, Uniteds home stadium, against another struggling club, Sunderland, was lost after United goalkeeper David de Gea failed to stop an easy shot with minutes to play. The United players followed up by missing four of their five shots in a penalty shootout. After Uniteds defeat by Swansea in the F.A. Cup earlier in January, the League Cup had been cast as Uniteds best chance of a trophy this year, barring a walk-on-water performance in the Champions League, where United is one of 16 teams that have qualified for the knockout round that begins Feb. 18. But the farce of the penalty shootout turned frustration and sympathy among the teams critics to ridicule. The Sunderland loss sent Moyes trudging from the field, hunched over and seemingly haunted. It is a posture that has become his trademark as the seasons problems have deepened, along with another: hands raised in supplication to the heavens after each miscue on the field. At the worst of times, he has met reporters with a deeply etched face and moist eyes, as if enduring a personal purgatory.The narrative in the British sports pages, and in the pregame banter among fans lining up for beers and burgers before the Cardiff City match, has been that Moyes, 50, without trophies in 11 respectable if unspectacular years at Everton, has fallen short of what is needed at United. Decent, modest, competent, the fans said, but not the titan required for the relentless, big-stage demands of running United.Fergusons role has been elusive. He has been a spectral presence at many of Uniteds games, sitting stony-faced and purse-lipped in the stands. Moyes has said that he takes Fergusons over-the-shoulder scrutiny as a measure of support, though he can hardly have missed the fact that websites that offer odds on such things have listed the return of Ferguson, 72, as at least an interim successor to Moyes as one of the available plays.After weeks of silence, Ferguson, whose feisty tenure as manager yielded 13 Premier League championships, 2 Champions League titles and 5 F.A. Cups, spoke up on the eve of the Cardiff City game to counter demands that Moyes be fired. His comments could have been taken as a riposte to rumblings on the United board in effect, to the Glazers,who showed a ruthless streak last month when they fired the coach and general manager of their N.F.L. team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, after a 4-12 season.Ferguson decried the game of managerial musical chairs in which 6 of the Premier Leagues 20 managers have resigned or been fired already this season, and he reminded the BBC that it was the United board that had ultimately approved Moyess appointment, with a six-year contract, after taking a hard look at the character, the philosophy of the man. Ferguson added: If that is the way they have gone about giving the man the job, why dont they persist with it? It seems so stupid to me.A banner posted by the club high above the Stretford End,favored by the most raucous United fans, has displayed all season a not-so-subtle reminder from the club of how Moyes got the job. The Chosen One, it reads, in what can be read as a reference to his anointment by Ferguson, but just as much to the man who lostthe job in what was ultimately a two-man race Jos Mourinho, the once-and-again manager of Chelsea.Having pronounced himself the special one when he arrived at Chelsea for the first time in 2004, Mourinho returned there this season after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying for the United job. He has since pronounced himself the happy one and insisted, improbably, that he never had eyes for anything but the Chelsea job. Hardly surprising, then, that the betting websites have named Mourinho ahead of Ferguson as the odds-on favorite to succeed Moyes if United should decide to go for another spin of the managerial wheel. | Sports |
Credit...Sanjeev Gupta/European Pressphoto AgencyApril 5, 2016NEW DELHI Expressing concern about foreign influence on its policies, India is turning away from a decades-old practice of filling gaps within its health system with consultants hired by foreign aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations.Under the new rules, consultants who have worked within Indias health system for foreign aid agencies for more than three years, a total of around 100 people, will be terminated, said Manoj Jhalani, joint secretary in the Ministry of Health. The roughly 100 who remain will need to be approved by a new screening committee.Fifty employees of the National AIDS Control Organization were given notice this month, though supervisors said they hoped to retain them as government employees.Experts warned that if vacancies went unfilled, major health initiatives, like those aimed at fighting the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis, could suffer serious setbacks.Every one of these jobs is a necessary one, said Dr. Bobby John, a specialist in infectious disease and maternal health who previously worked for Global Health Advocates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These people are doing something the country needs. He said, If this is a transition to hiring them on government of India rolls, brilliant.Beginning in the early 1990s, when its health system was chronically short of funds, India began to employ specialists provided by the World Health Organization, the United States Agency for International Development, Britains Department for International Development and the Gates Foundation.Prime Minister Narendra Modis government, however, has been wary of nongovernmental organizations, in some cases charging them with acting against the national interest. Last year, the government suspended the registration for Greenpeace and placed the Ford Foundation on a national security watch list for nearly a year, barring it from making grants in India without specific permission.Similar concerns have arisen around the work of foreign-funded consultants in the health system. An article last year in The Times of India said the practice raised serious issues of conflict of interest, security and sovereignty. Dr. Sita Naik, a former official of the Medical Council of India, said the government has been drawing criticism for some time now that they have been supporting foreign NGOs.Dr. C.V. Dharma Rao, a top official at the National AIDS Control Organization, whose headquarters is almost entirely staffed by consultants, said that for some workers the practice had led to split loyalties.When yesterday all these consultants met, they were saying Sir, we have lost loyalties with our donor partners, because we kept on arguing for the government of India, he said.But others said the consultants rarely waded into delicate policy matters.Keshav Desiraju, who served as health secretary under the previous, Congress-led government, said they were doing a lot of detailed work that nobody else had the time to do, assisting senior bureaucrats who simply had no time to handle the volume of paperwork.To say policy decisions are being influenced is completely far-fetched, he said. Decisions are made at a more senior level.The policy change was first reported by Reuters.A government notice released in December outlined stringent new regulations for foreign-hired consultants. They will be required to sign a confidentiality clause with the Indian government, will report only to the ministry and will be barred from sharing any data or information with the foreign agency without specific approval from top Indian bureaucrats. Any foreign-hired consultant must wait for one year before taking another, similar job. And foreign citizens must undergo a security clearance.Mr. Jhalani, of the Ministry of Health, said the aim of the order was to ensure that no consultant should be permanently replacing a government employee. Officials from Unicef and the World Health Organization said it was too early to comment on the decision.A statement from the Gates Foundation offered Indias polio eradication as an example of successful collaboration between the Indian government, NGOs and the private sector.We believe that our role is to provide catalytic support in areas that are aligned with the priorities of the Government of India, the statement said. | World |
Inside the RingsCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Competitors do all manner of spectacular things above the snow at this postmodern stage of winter sports development: backside rodeos, double corks, tail grabs, switch mistys. The gravity-taunting soars on, and as the quadrenniums roll by, the Winter Olympics keep adding fresh diversions in an attempt to catch up with the curve.Compared with the top-this, translator-required tricks at slopestyle, the mens downhill on Sunday felt rather like a trip to the vintage store. But the downhill, one of the original extreme winter events, has a simplicity, a rich history and a certain gravitas that the new arrivals lack.I think before there were Olympics, there were guys trying to be fastest from top to bottom on the mountain, Marco Sullivan, the veteran American, said after making it down the nasty, telegenic course here. I feel the downhill still embodies that spirit. There are no judges. Its you against the clock, and you cant hide behind anything. Youre representing your country and trying to be the fastest guy down this huge mountain, and its just in my mind, for lack of a better word, kind of a manly sport. And I do take a lot of pride in it.The Austrians do, too, and now they have another Olympic champion, even though eyes at the bottom of the course were fixed more intently on Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway and Bode Miller of the United States.Matthias Mayer, just 23 in a discipline where experience has its advantages, will presumably never have to pay for another bottle of Jagermeister again.Exactly, and hell probably own his own hotel in his hometown, and it will be great, Sullivan said.The spiky-haired Mayer trembled with the magnitude of it all before and after he climbed to the top step of the podium Sunday. He has never won a World Cup downhill race, but he peaked on just the right weekend on a technical and highly selective course that was not set up like a classic downhill.Mayer joins Toni Sailer, Egon Zimmerman, Franz Klammer, Fritz Strobl, Leonhard Stock and Patrick Ortlieb as Olympic mens downhill champions from Austria.Strobl won in 2002, and in most countries, 12 years between downhill gold medals would not be considered a drought. Austria is not one of those countries. Still, the Austrians are on an unmistakable roll now. Hannes Reichelt got the best of Miller and Svindal last month to become the first Austrian man in eight years to win the countrys classic Hahnenkamm downhill.The crowd of 50,000 in Kitzbhel was quite a contrast to Sundays modest turnout in Krasnaya Polyana. But the Austrians seemed not to notice.Theres always something, a record to break, a bad record to stop, and we did it today, said Mathias Berthold, the head Austrian mens coach. And I think its good for us in the next races here. I think it will give us positive vibes for the whole team, and especially for next weeks super-G it means a lot, because well have almost the same team as who competed today. And Matthias has all the confidence he got from today.He was so good in training here, and I thought, Its difficult for him because he knows if he does a good run, a perfect run, hes going to win or win a medal. For a young kid like him, this is probably not an easy situation. But hes cool. Hes a quiet, nice guy, and the moment he puts on the bib hes just crazy.With that, Berthold interrupted the interview to share a bear hug with Mayer, who lifted Berthold off the snow and then got a lift himself from his coaches and teammates.Mayer is living, winning proof of the power of Austrias Alpine legacy. He comes from Carinthia, the same southern Austrian state that was home to Klammer. Mayer also had inspiration in his family. His father, Helmut, won a silver medal in the super-G at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.Of course he was very important, Matthias Mayer said of his father. He was the one who introduced me to skiing. In recent years, however, I took care of myself, and Ive always said its important to me that people realize that Im doing this for myself.Matthias, who was born two years after his fathers Olympic medal, said he also took his early inspiration from another Austrian: Hermann Maier. In the 1998 Olympic downhill, Maier had the crash to trump all Olympic crashes and then slowly rose from the snow cyborg-style and won the super-G three days later.It was in the night, so I was with my grandpa, and we set the alarm in the middle of the night, Mayer said of the 1998 downhill. And then Hermann Maier crashed, and oh my god!Maier was the lantern-jawed leader of Austrias Wunderteam and would later come back from a horrific motorcycle accident as well.Mayer and his 24-year-old roommate Max Franz, who finished ninth Sunday, are the next generation: excellent athletes who might have chosen to do tricks high above the snow if they had come from a different culture.But make no mistake: Their event, however traditional and snowbound, remains extreme. The racers Sunday hit speeds of more than 135 kilometers per hour, or 83 miles an hour, and caught plenty of air, often windmilling their arms and poles to avert disaster.Those signals of desperation were all the more powerful because downhill skiers are all about reducing extraneous movement; about eliminating the drag and the complications; about reading the mountain and understanding the most direct line it offers to gold.Its a pure sport, Jan Hudec of Canada said. Theres no one judging your style. The only judge is the clock, and when you go into the start, its you and the course, and theres no one else that can take anything away from you and your performance. You are responsible.The roars and the music may be louder up the road for slopestyle, but a true downhill racer would not choose to get his thrills any other way.I love skiing powder and love messing around in the park and stuff, Sullivan said. But at the core of it, I think if you really want to test your skills against the mountain, the downhill is where its at. | Sports |
Nov. 3, 2016WASHINGTON It is now just as likely for middle school students to die from suicide as from traffic accidents.That grim fact was published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They found that in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, the suicide rate for children ages 10 to 14 had caught up to their death rate for traffic accidents.The number is an extreme data point in an accumulating body of evidence that young adolescents are suffering from a range of health problems associated with the countrys rapidly changing culture. The pervasiveness of social networking means that entire schools can witness someones shame, instead of a gaggle of girls on a school bus. And with continual access to such networks, those pressures do not end when a child comes home in the afternoon.Its clear to me that the question of suicidal thoughts and behavior in this age group has certainly come up far more frequently in the last decade than it had in the previous decade, said Dr. Marsha Levy-Warren, a clinical psychologist in New York who works with adolescents. Cultural norms have changed tremendously from 20 years ago.Death is a rare event for adolescents. But the unprecedented rise in suicide among children at such young ages, however small the number, was troubling and federal researchers decided to track it. In all, 425 children ages 10 to 14 killed themselves in 2014. In contrast, 384 children of that age died in car accidents.This graph is really surprising, said Sally Curtin, an expert at the National Center for Health Statistics who analyzed the data. We think of traffic accidents as so commonplace.The crossing-over point was reached in part because suicide had spiked, but also because fatal traffic accidents had declined.In 1999, the death rate for children ages 10 to 14 from traffic accidents about 4.5 deaths per 100,000 was quadruple the rate for suicide. But by 2014, the death rate from car crashes had been cut in half, part of a broader trend across the entire population. The suicide rate, however, had nearly doubled, with most of the increase happening since 2007. In 2014, the suicide death rate was 2.1 per 100,000.Far more boys than girls killed themselves in 2014 275 boys to 150 girls in line with adults in the general population. American men kill themselves at far higher rates than women. But the increase for girls was much sharper a tripling, compared with a rise of about a third for boys.The reasons for suicide are complex. No single factor causes it. But social media tends to exacerbate the challenges and insecurities girls are already wrestling with at that age, possibly heightening risks, adolescent health experts said. (The data published Thursday did not include methods, but an earlier report gave those details.)Social media is girl town, said Rachel Simmons, the author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. They are all over it in ways that boys are not.Statistically, girls dominate visual platforms like Facebook and Instagram where they receive instant validation from their peers, she said. It also is a way to quantify popularity, and take things that used to be private and intangible and make them public and tangible, Ms. Simmons added.It used to be that you didnt know how many friends someone had, or what they were doing after school, she said. Social media assigns numbers to those things. For the most vulnerable girls, that can be very destabilizing.The public aspect can be particularly painful, Dr. Levy-Warren said. Social media exponentially amplifies humiliation, and an unformed, vulnerable child who is humiliated is at much higher risk of suicide than she would otherwise have been.If something gets said thats hurtful or humiliating, its not just the kid who said it who knows, its the entire school or class, she said. In the past, if you made a misstep, it was a limited number of people who would know about it.Another profound change has been that girls are going through puberty at earlier ages. Today girls get their first period at age 12 and a half on average, compared with about 16 at the turn of the 20th century, according to The New Puberty, a 2014 book that describes the phenomenon. That means girls are becoming young women at an age when they are less equipped to deal with the issues that raises sex and gender identity, peer relationships, more independence from family. Girls experience depression at twice the rate of boys in adolescence, Ms. Simmons said, a pattern that continues into adulthood.What is more, they live in a culture of fast answers and immediate change. That compounds the pressure.For a young girl who starts to develop breasts, hips, body hair its a long haul before you land, Dr. Levy-Warren said. You dont really know how youre going to look for a number of years, and a lot of kids dont know how to wait anymore. Its just so painful.She added, Theres this collision of emotional need, social circumstances and a sense of needing an immediate answer.Depression is being diagnosed more often these days, and adolescents are taking more medication than ever before, but Dr. Levy-Warren cautioned that it was not clear whether that is because more people are actually depressed, or because it is simply being identified more than before.Suicide is just the tip of a broader iceberg of emotional trouble, experts warn. One recent study of millions of injuries in American emergency departments found that rates of self-harm, including cutting, had more than tripled among 10- to 14-year-olds. This is particularly concerning as this type of injury often heralds suicidal behavior, the researchers wrote. | Health |
Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California threatened on Friday that the House could move to impeach President Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol if he did not resign immediately, appealing to Republicans to join the push to force him from office.After a 3.5-hour call with fellow Democrats, Ms. Pelosi said she had instructed the Rules Committee to be prepared to move forward with either a motion for impeachment or legislation sponsored by Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, to establish a body under the 25th Amendment that can declare a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.It is the hope of members that the president will immediately resign, Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. But if he does not, I have instructed the Rules Committee to be prepared. The announcement came after a call that Ms. Pelosi called sad, moving and patriotic in which members recounted the terror of the violent mob attack on the Capitol from Mr. Trumps supporters. The violent insurrection was an attack on the caucus, the Congress, the country and the Constitution that was incited and facilitated by Donald Trump, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the caucus chairman, said on the call. He must be held accountable for his actions.In a letter to House Democrats on Friday, Ms. Pelosi invoked the resignation of Richard M. Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, when Republicans prevailed upon the president to resign and avoid the ignominy of an impeachment, calling Mr. Trumps actions a horrific assault on our democracy.Ms. Pelosi also said she had spoken with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.A spokesman for General Milley, Col. Dave Butler, confirmed that the two had spoken and said the general had answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.The letter from Ms. Pelosi came as momentum for impeachment was rapidly growing on Friday among rank-and-file Democrats across the partys ideological spectrum, and a handful of Republicans offered potential support.Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 4 Democrat, said that if Vice President Mike Pence would not invoke the 25th Amendment to forcibly relieve Mr. Trump of his duties, House Democrats were prepared to act on impeachment by the middle of next week. But in a noon phone call, some others cautioned that Democrats needed to pause to consider the implications, and Ms. Pelosi told her colleagues she planned to speak to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. about the matter later on Friday afternoon.During an appearance in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Mr. Biden did not weigh in on plans to impeach Mr. Trump, saying, What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.But Mr. Biden had harsh words for Mr. Trump. He has exceeded even my worst notions about him, he said. Hes been an embarrassment for the country. And he added, Hes not worthy to hold the office.An aide to Ms. Pelosi said that she still had not heard from Mr. Pence, despite putting intense public pressure on him to act. But Mr. Pence was said to be opposed to doing so, and she was making plans to move ahead.Democrats were rushing to begin the expedited proceeding two days after the president rallied his supporters near the White House, urging them to go to the Capitol to protest his election defeat, then continuing to stoke their grievances as they stormed the edifice with Mr. Pence and the entire Congress meeting inside to formalize Mr. Bidens victory in a rampage that left an officer and a member of the mob dead. (Three others died, including one woman who was crushed in the crowd, and two men who had medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds.)The prospect of forcing Mr. Trump from office in less than two weeks appeared remote given the logistical and political challenges involved, given that a two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required.Just a day after he voted twice to overturn Mr. Bidens legitimate victory in key swing states, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, urged both parties to lower the temperature and said he would reach out to Mr. Biden about uniting the country. Though he did not defend Mr. Trump, he argued that seeking to remove him would not help.Impeaching the president with just 12 days left in his term will only divide our country more, he said.At least some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future.Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, said he would definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office.He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution he acted against that, Mr. Sasse said on CBS. What he did was wicked.The House is next scheduled to be in session on Monday, meaning that articles of impeachment could not be introduced until then. On Friday, Ms. Clark said on Twitter that Democrats were working to find the quickest path to hold Trump accountable, but added that they faced obstruction and attempts to delay us by the G.O.P. defenders. | Politics |
Ben Gordon Hit With Weapons Charges ... In Robbery Case 1/31/2018 Ex-NBA star Ben Gordon has officially been hit with multiple criminal charges stemming from his robbery arrest in L.A. back in November, TMZ Sports has learned. We broke the story ... the former Chicago Bulls star was arrested at a downtown L.A. apartment building after allegedly pulling a knife on the building manager, punching him in the face and demanding his security deposit back. He allegedly made off with a couple thousand dollars. The case was kicked over to the L.A. City Attorney's Office which decided to move forward with 4 misdemeanor charges against Gordon -- battery, brandishing a weapon, criminal threats and carrying a knife in plain view. We're told if he's convicted on all counts, he faces up to 3 years behind bars. Gordon's set to be arraigned next month. | Entertainment |
Credit...Remko De Waal/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 10, 2017AMSTERDAM In the final days before next weeks parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, the far-right leaders support appeared to be softening and a previously minor party, the Greens, led by a charismatic young politician, was poised to become one of the two top parties on the left.But there is little consensus among Dutch voters about what sort of government they want, and multiple polls show that at least five parties could be within a few seats of each other once the results are in.Currently, we have a not-so-normal situation, said Maurice de Hond, a pollster who has been tracking Dutch politics for 40 years and who, like everyone interviewed, described the electorate as fragmented.Sarah de Lange, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam, described the picture as extremely fragmented, to an extent that we have not seen before in the Netherlands.That suggests a level of discomfort with the current government and little unity on which way to go, said another pollster, Frank van Dalen.In Wednesdays elections, about 12 parties are likely to win at least one seat in the 150-seat Parliament. The Dutch Parliament has two chambers; this election is for seats in the House of Representatives, which has the lead role in writing legislation.It takes a simple majority, or 76 seats, to form a government.For at least the last century, no single party has won a majority, and the government has been formed by coalitions of two or three parties.This time, it is likely to take a coalition of four or five parties to reach the 76 seats needed to form a government.A decline in support for the far-right leader, Geert Wilders, whose populist, anti-Muslim and anti-European Union message had won him much notoriety, means that he is unlikely to be part of the next government. Short of winning the most votes, he does not have the clout to call the shots, and other parties refuse to work with him.ImageCredit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThis is a pattern with Mr. Wilders, Mr. van Dalen said: He scores well in the polls before an election, but he does not perform as well once voters cast their ballots. A vote for him and for a handful of other small parties is effectively a protest vote.But Mr. van Dalen, who studies long-term voting trends, cautioned against treating polls as if they were results. In the Netherlands, many voters do not decide until just before an election. As of two weeks ago, 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters were undecided, Ms. de Lange said.A striking change this time is the disintegration of the mainstream, left-leaning Labor Party, which for years has been in the government. Because the Labor Party has been willing to work with the conservatives, it appeared to its supporters to have deserted its principles.The lesson of Labors decline is not lost on either the Greens or D66, the leading party on the left.Those parties will be reluctant to work with the mainstream right-wing party that is likely to win the most votes because they saw what happened to Labor and they dont want it to happen to them, Mr. van Dalen said.Two charismatic politicians bear watching in this election. On the right, Sybrand Buma is a straight-talking leader of the Christian Democrats. Mr. Bumas party was in power for many years, fell out of favor, but now is experiencing a revival with a message that plays to members of the ethnic Dutch majority who are keen to preserve Dutch traditions and limit immigration.On the left, Jesse Klaver, 30, appears ready to transform the Green Left party, or the Greens, from a minor player into a party that can potentially play a powerful role. He has been reaching out to young people who have had little interest in politics.His constituency appears to be young, mostly urban and white, judging by his final campaign rally on Thursday. Mr. Klaver comes across as earnest but confident as he tries to bridge the traditional divide between left and right.What we want to do is fight populism, Mr. Klaver said. Every conversation I have with voters starts with Islam and Muslims, and then it goes to housing, their income and health care.The traditional parties are not winning elections anymore, he added. A lot of people are disappointed in politics. What we want to do with Greens is be an alternative for the center parties. But this is not an alternative built with fear and hate, but an alternative built on ideals and hope and optimism. | World |
LPGA's Suzann Pettersen Trump Cheats Like Hell at Golf 1/30/2018 -- Pettersen is now claiming the Norwegian news outlet twisted her words from the interview ... and claims she NEVER called Trump a cheater. "Sometimes you do interviews and media will twist whatever word/ saying to make a headline! Its shocking to see... this is what I would call #fakenews." She added, "Why would I call someone a cheat ... never!" So far, the Norwegian outlet has NOT changed their article. Donald Trump is being called out (kinda) by one of the best golfers on the planet -- who says POTUS "cheats like hell" every time they golf ... but insists she's got nothing but love for the guy. Suzann Pettersen is a 15-time LPGA Tour champ -- she's a legend -- and she's been golfing with Trump for years. So, when she sat down with the Norwegian newspaper, Verdens Gang, they wanted to know what Trump was like in real life. "Ive got to know Trump so well that I dont take everything he says literally," Pettersen says ... "Yeah, youll never meet another person who loves himself as much as he does, but I have also met him on another level altogether, before he was president. I know how much he cares." "He called me once a month and asked how things were going. It was always about golf. He is totally golf-crazed. Golf is the only thing the man thinks about." So, how's Trump on the golf course? "He cheats like hell," Pettersen said laughing ... "So I dont quite know how he is in business." "They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business. Im pretty sure he pays his caddie well, since no matter how far into the woods he hits the ball, its in the middle of the fairway when we get there." "He always says he is the worlds best putter. But in all the times Ive played him, hes never come close to breaking 80." "But whats strange is that every time I talk to him he says he just golfed a 69, or that he set a new course record or won a club championship some place,." "I just laugh. Im someone who likes being teased and I like teasing others, and Trump takes it well, and that must be why he likes me." | Entertainment |
DeAndre Jordan Looks Sad After Blake Griffin Trade 1/30/2018 1/29/17 TMZSports.com DeAndre Jordan didn't just sit at home and sulk after his Clippers teammate (and good friend), Blake Griffin, was traded to Detroit ... he hit the town -- but wasn't his usual happy self. DJ rolled into Nice Guy in West Hollywood -- one of the hottest nightspots in town -- but didn't want to talk about the blockbuster deal that went down just hours before. He was equally quiet on the way out ... as he got in to a waiting, decked-out sprinter van and drove off into the night. Though he did stop to dap up some waiting fans. There are strong rumors DeAndre's the next Clippers star to go ... so, guess it makes sense to enjoy the town while he's still here. | Entertainment |
Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesJan. 5, 2021Georgians head to the polls today for a critical election that will determine whether Republicans retain control of the Senate, just a day after President Trump and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. converged on the state to campaign for their partys candidates.Mr. Trump on Monday appeared alongside the Republican candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, in Dalton, Ga., but remained fixated on his own loss in Georgia in November and continued his pattern of prioritizing his personal grievances over the partys drive to win the states two seats.Theres no way we lost Georgia, Mr. Trump said just after taking the stage. Ive had two elections. Ive won both of them. Its amazing.Mondays rallies were also shaken by the stunning revelation the day before that Mr. Trump had, in an hourlong phone call with Georgias secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, repeated a litany of conspiracy theories and asked Mr. Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes to overturn the will of Georgia voters, who chose Mr. Biden.The presidents statement fueled anger among Democrats and helped feed the drive to defeat the two Republican candidates. Jon Ossoff, the Democrat challenging Mr. Perdue, drew parallels between Mr. Trumps effort and the bitter history of disenfranchisement in the state, citing poll closures and cumbersome voting rules.The president of the United States on the phone trying to intimidate Georgias election officials to throw out your votes, Mr. Ossoff told supporters at a canvassing event in Conyers, a suburb east of Atlanta. Lets send a message: Dont come down to Georgia and try to mess with our voting rights.Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler have closely aligned themselves with Mr. Trump. On Monday, Ms. Loeffler promised to vote against the Electoral College certification process in the Senate on Wednesday, joining a dozen Republican senators in voting to overturn electors for Mr. Biden.Mr. Trump muscled his way to power by bullying the Republican establishment and the partys leaders now worry that he might drag them down with him. Republican turnout has been low in Georgias early voting, prompted by skepticism among Mr. Trumps own die-hards about the validity of the November results.During a midday appearance at a church in Milner, Ga., Vice President Mike Pence implored Georgia voters to help maintain a Republican majority in the Senate as a last line of defense.In his appearance in Atlanta on Monday, Mr. Biden made no direct mention of Mr. Trumps telephone call but did obliquely criticize the presidents strongman tactics.As our opposition friends are finding out, all power flows from the people, said the president-elect, adding that politicians cannot seize power.Mostly, though, Mr. Biden, clad in a black mask emblazoned with VOTE, encouraged his audience to do just that.Some of the attendees at the Biden rally waved signs in support of the two Democratic candidates, Mr. Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, but many indicated that they got involved in the runoffs because they had been galvanized by Mr. Trump.Were supporting democracy because weve seen it dwindle these last four years, said Deshunn Wilkerson, a 36-year-old social worker, who wore a sweatshirt with the pink-and-green letters of the sorority she shares with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Alpha Kappa Alpha.Emily Cochrane Maggie Astor and Rick Rojas contributed reporting. | Politics |
A flurry of new studies suggests that several parts of the immune system can mount a sustained, potent response to any coronavirus variant.Credit...Dr. Klaus Boller/Science SourcePublished Feb. 21, 2022Updated Feb. 24, 2022As people across the world grapple with the prospect of living with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future, one question looms large: How soon before they need yet another shot?Not for many months, and perhaps not for years, according to a flurry of new studies.Three doses of a Covid vaccine or even just two are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, the studies suggest.Were starting to see now diminishing returns on the number of additional doses, said John Wherry, director of the Institute for immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. Although people over 65 or at high risk of illness may benefit from a fourth vaccine dose, it may be unnecessary for most people, he added.Federal health officials have said they are not planning to recommend fourth doses anytime soon.The Omicron variant can dodge antibodies immune molecules that prevent the virus from infecting cells produced after two doses of a Covid vaccine. But a third shot of the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or by Moderna prompts the body to make a much wider variety of antibodies, which would be difficult for any variant of the virus to evade, according to the most recent study, posted online on Tuesday.The diverse repertoire of antibodies produced should be able to protect people from new variants, even those that differ significantly from the original version of the virus, the study suggests.If people are exposed to another variant like Omicron, they now got some extra ammunition to fight it, said Dr. Julie McElrath, an infectious disease physician and immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.Whats more, other parts of the immune system can remember and destroy the virus over many months if not years, according to at least four studies published in top-tier journals over the past month.Specialized immune cells called T cells produced after immunization by four brands of Covid vaccine Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax are about 80 percent as powerful against Omicron as other variants, the research found. Given how different Omicrons mutations are from previous variants, its very likely that T cells would mount a similarly robust attack on any future variant as well, researchers said.This matches what scientists have found for the SARS coronavirus, which killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 epidemic in Asia. In people exposed to that virus, T cells have lasted more than 17 years. Evidence so far indicates that the immune cells for the new coronavirus sometimes called memory cells may also decline very slowly, experts said.Memory responses can last for ages, said Wendy Burgers, an immunologist at the University of Cape Town who led one of the studies, published in the journal Nature. Potentially, the T-cell response is extremely long lived.Throughout the pandemic, a disproportionate amount of research attention has gone to antibodies, the bodys first line of defense against a virus. Thats partly because these molecules are relatively easy to study: They can be measured from a drop of blood.Analyzing immune cells, by contrast, requires milliliters of blood, skill, specialized equipment and a lot of time. Its orders of magnitude slower and more laborious, Dr. Burgers said.Few labs have the wherewithal to study these cells, and their findings lag weeks behind those on antibodies. Perhaps as a result, scientists have frequently overlooked the importance of other parts of the immune system, experts said.Most people dont even know what they are a lot of doctors and scientists are not completely clear what a T cell is, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who led one of the T-cell studies.ImageCredit...Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFundamentally, I would argue that T cells are probably more important than what many people have given them credit for, Dr. Barouch said.Antibodies spike after every shot of vaccine or after each exposure to the virus and inevitably decline within a few weeks to months.Waning antibody levels after two vaccine doses prompted federal officials to recommend boosters for everyone older than 12. The extra shots fortified antibody levels and helped to contain Omicrons spread, but they too appear to lose some of their ability to prevent infections within four months, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Antibodies recognize two or three key parts of the spike protein, a protrusion on the outside of the coronavirus that allows it to latch on to human cells. But T cells detect many more parts of the spike, and so are less likely to fail when the virus gains mutations in some of them.Vaccines also encode a memory of the virus in B cells, which can churn out fresh batches of antibodies within four or five days after a new exposure to the virus.This dual punch of T and B cells help explain why many people who received two or even three doses of vaccine could still be infected with the Omicron variant, but only a small percentage became seriously ill.You will see a decrease of the antibody levels over time, but if memory B cells are still there, and memory T cells are still there, they can kick back into action relatively quickly, said Alessandro Sette, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who led a new study of T cells published in Cell.Memory B cells become increasingly sophisticated over time, and they learn to recognize a diverse set of viral genetic sequences. The longer they have to practice, the broader the range of virus variants they can thwart.Researchers showed last year that the elite school inside of lymph nodes where the B cells train, called the germinal center, remains active for at least 15 weeks after the second dose of a Covid vaccine. In an updated study published in the journal Nature, the same team showed that six months after vaccination, memory B cells continue to mature, and the antibodies they produce keep gaining the ability to recognize new variants.Those antibodies at six months are better binders and more potent neutralizers than the ones that are produced one month after immunization, said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study.In the newest study, another team showed that a third shot creates an even richer pool of B cells than the second shot did, and the antibodies they produce recognize a broader range of variants. In laboratory experiments, these antibodies were able to fend off the Beta, Delta and Omicron variants. In fact, more than half of the antibodies seen one month after a third dose were able to neutralize Omicron, even though the vaccine was not designed for that variant, the study found.If youve had a third dose, youre going to have a rapid response thats going to have quite a bit of specificity for Omicron, which explains why people that have had a third dose do so much better, said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who led the study.Memory cells produced after infection with the coronavirus, rather than by the vaccines, seem less potent against the Omicron variant, according to a study published last month in Nature Medicine. Immunity generated by infection varies quite a lot, while the vaccine response is much more consistently good, said Marcus Buggert, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who led the study.Although most people, vaccinated or not, show only a small drop in their T cell response against Omicron, about one in five had significant reductions of their responses of about 60 percent, Dr. Buggert said. The differences are most likely because of their underlying genetic makeup, he said.Still, the recent studies suggest that in most people, the immunity gained from infection or vaccination will hold up for a long while. Even if mutations in new variants change some of the viral regions that T cells recognize, there would still be enough others to maintain a reasonably strong immune response, experts said.One big unknown is how slowly the T cells may decline, and whether two doses of vaccine can create a long-lasting response, or if instead people would need three as some experts have suggested to cement immune memory.Thats a question that we dont know the answer to yet, Dr. Burgers said. Those are the kind of studies that were going to need to do. Join us for a virtual event where The New York Times newsletter anchored by David Leonhardt is brought to life. | Health |
Credit...Mason Trinca for The New York TimesTen years ago, psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone.Alina Black, a mother of two in Portland, Ore., sought a therapist who specialized in climate anxiety to address her mounting panics. I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life, she said.Credit...Mason Trinca for The New York TimesPublished Feb. 6, 2022Updated Feb. 10, 2022Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.PORTLAND, Ore. It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joes, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl.Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.In the early-morning hours, after nursing the baby, she would slip down a rabbit hole, scrolling through news reports of droughts, fires, mass extinction. Then she would stare into the dark.It was for this reason that, around six months ago, she searched climate anxiety and pulled up the name of Thomas J. Doherty, a Portland psychologist who specializes in climate.A decade ago, Dr. Doherty and a colleague, Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, published a paper proposing a new idea. They argued that climate change would have a powerful psychological impact not just on the people bearing the brunt of it, but on people following it through news and research. At the time, the notion was seen as speculative.That skepticism is fading. Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational.Though there is little empirical data on effective treatments, the field is expanding swiftly. The Climate Psychology Alliance provides an online directory of climate-aware therapists; the Good Grief Network, a peer support network modeled on 12-step addiction programs, has spawned more than 50 groups; professional certification programs in climate psychology have begun to appear.As for Dr. Doherty, so many people now come to him for this problem that he has built an entire practice around them: an 18-year-old student who sometimes experiences panic attacks so severe that she cant get out of bed; a 69-year-old glacial geologist who is sometimes overwhelmed with sadness when he looks at his grandchildren; a man in his 50s who erupts in frustration over his friends consumption choices, unable to tolerate their chatter about vacations in Tuscany.The fields emergence has met resistance, for various reasons. Therapists have long been trained to keep their own views out of their practices. And many leaders in mental health maintain that anxiety over climate change is no different, clinically, from anxiety caused by other societal threats, like terrorism or school shootings. Some climate activists, meanwhile, are leery of viewing anxiety over climate as dysfunctional thinking to be soothed or, worse, cured.But Ms. Black was not interested in theoretical arguments; she needed help right away.She was no Greta Thunberg type, but a busy, sleep-deprived working mom. Two years of wildfires and heat waves in Portland had stirred up something sleeping inside her, a compulsion to prepare for disaster. She found herself up at night, pricing out water purification systems. For her birthday, she asked for a generator.She understands how privileged she is; she describes her anxiety as a luxury problem. But still: The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires?I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life, she said.An Idea on the Edge Spreads OutImageCredit...Mason Trinca for The New York TimesLast fall, Ms. Black logged on for her first meeting with Dr. Doherty, who sat, on video, in front of a large, glossy photograph of evergreens.At 56, he is one of the most visible authorities on climate in psychotherapy, and he hosts a podcast, Climate Change and Happiness. In his clinical practice, he reaches beyond standard treatments for anxiety, like cognitive behavioral therapy, to more obscure ones, like existential therapy, conceived to help people fight off despair, and ecotherapy, which explores the clients relationship to the natural world.He did not take the usual route to psychology; after graduating from Columbia University, he hitchhiked across the country to work on fishing boats in Alaska, then as a whitewater rafting guide the whole Jack London thing and as a Greenpeace fund-raiser. Entering graduate school in his 30s, he fell in naturally with the discipline of ecopsychology.At the time, ecopsychology was, as he put it, a woo-woo area, with colleagues delving into shamanic rituals and Jungian deep ecology. Dr. Doherty had a more conventional focus, on the physiological effects of anxiety. But he had picked up on an idea that was, at that time, novel: that people could be affected by environmental decay even if they were not physically caught in a disaster.Recent research has left little doubt that this is happening. A 10-country survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 published last month in The Lancet found startling rates of pessimism. Forty-five percent of respondents said worry about climate negatively affected their daily life. Three-quarters said they believed the future is frightening, and 56 percent said humanity is doomed.The blow to young peoples confidence appears to be more profound than with previous threats, such as nuclear war, Dr. Clayton said. Weve definitely faced big problems before, but climate change is described as an existential threat, she said. It undermines peoples sense of security in a basic way.Caitlin Ecklund, 37, a Portland therapist who finished graduate school in 2016, said that nothing in her training in subjects like buried trauma, family systems, cultural competence and attachment theory had prepared her to help the young women who began coming to her describing hopelessness and grief over climate. She looks back on those first interactions as misses.Climate stuff is really scary, so I went more toward soothing or normalizing, said Ms. Ecklund, who is part of a group of therapists convened by Dr. Doherty to discuss approaches to climate. It has meant, she said, deconstructing some of that formal old-school counseling that has implicitly made things peoples individual problems.Obviously, it would be nice to be happyImageCredit...Calla Kessler for The New York TimesMany of Dr. Dohertys clients sought him out after finding it difficult to discuss climate with a previous therapist.Caroline Wiese, 18, described her previous therapist as a typical New Yorker who likes to follow politics and would read The New York Times, but also really didnt know what a Keeling Curve was, referring to the daily record of carbon dioxide concentration.Ms. Wiese had little interest in Freudian B.S. She sought out Dr. Doherty for help with a concrete problem: The data she was reading was sending her into multiday panic episodes that interfered with her schoolwork.In their sessions, she has worked to carefully manage what she reads, something she says she needs to sustain herself for a lifetime of work on climate. Obviously, it would be nice to be happy, she said, but my goal is more to just be able to function.Frank Granshaw, 69, a retired professor of geology, wanted help hanging on to what he calls realistic hope.He recalls a morning, years ago, when his granddaughter crawled into his lap and fell asleep, and he found himself overwhelmed with emotion, considering the changes that would occur in her lifetime. These feelings, he said, are simply easier to unpack with a psychologist who is well versed on climate. I appreciate the fact that he is dealing with emotions that are tied into physical events, he said.As for Ms. Black, she had never quite accepted her previous therapists vague reassurances. Once she made an appointment with Dr. Doherty, she counted the days. She had a wild hope that he would say something that would simply cause the weight to lift.That didnt happen. Much of their first session was devoted to her doomscrolling, especially during the nighttime hours. It felt like a baby step.Do I need to read this 10th article about the climate summit? she practiced asking herself. Probably not.ImageCredit...Mason Trinca for The New York TimesA Knot Loosens: There Will Be Good DaysSeveral sessions came and went before something really happened.Ms. Black remembers going into an appointment feeling distraught. She had been listening to radio coverage of the international climate summit in Glasgow last fall and heard a scientist interviewed. What she perceived in his voice was flat resignation.That summer, Portland had been trapped under a high-pressure system known as a heat dome, sending temperatures to 116 degrees. Looking at her own children, terrible images flashed through her head, like a field of fire. She wondered aloud: Were they doomed?Dr. Doherty listened quietly. Then he told her, choosing his words carefully, that the rate of climate change suggested by the data was not as swift as what she was envisioning.In the future, even with worst-case scenarios, there will be good days, he told her, according to his notes. Disasters will happen in certain places. But, around the world, there will be good days. Your children will also have good days.At this, Ms. Black began to cry.She is a contained person she tends to deflect frightening thoughts with dark humor so this was unusual. She recalled the exchange later as a threshold moment, the point when the knot in her chest began to loosen.I really trust that when I hear information from him, its coming from a deep well of knowledge, she said. And that gives me a lot of peace.Dr. Doherty recalled the conversation as cathartic in a basic way. It was not unusual, in his practice; many clients harbor dark fears about the future and have no way to express them. It is a terrible place to be, he said.A big part of his practice is helping people manage guilt over consumption: He takes a critical view of the notion of a climate footprint, a construct he says was created by corporations in order to shift the burden to individuals.ImageCredit...Mason Trinca for The New York TimesHe uses elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, like training clients to manage their news intake and look critically at their assumptions.He also draws on logotherapy, or existential therapy, a field founded by Viktor E. Frankl, who survived German concentration camps and then wrote Mans Search for Meaning, which described how prisoners in Auschwitz were able to live fulfilling lives.I joke, you know its bad when youve got to bring out the Viktor Frankl, he said. But its true. It is exactly right. It is of that scale. It is that consolation: that ultimately I make meaning, even in a meaningless world.At times, over the last few months, Ms. Black could feel some of the stress easing.On weekends, she practices walking in the woods with her family without allowing her mind to flicker to the future. Her conversations with Dr. Doherty, she said, had opened up my aperture to the idea that its not really on us as individuals to solve.Sometimes, though, shes not sure that relief is what she wants. Following the news about the climate feels like an obligation, a burden she is meant to carry, at least until she is confident that elected officials are taking action.Her goal is not to be released from her fears about the warming planet, or paralyzed by them, but something in between: She compares it to someone with a fear of flying, who learns to manage their fear well enough to fly.On a very personal level, she said, the small victory is not thinking about this all the time.Audio produced by Jack DIsidoro. | Health |
Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressJune 12, 2018WASHINGTON Democratic senators blistered President Trumps health secretary on Tuesday, telling him that the Trump administrations efforts to undo health insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions made a mockery of the presidents campaign to rein in prescription drug prices.The secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, told Congress that he would be glad to work with lawmakers on legislation alternatives to the Affordable Care Act, modifications of the Affordable Care Act to provide access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.The decision regarding pre-existing conditions is a constitutional and legal position, not a policy position, Mr. Azar told the committee.Mr. Azar also conceded that Mr. Trumps promise late last month that drug companies would come forward with voluntary massive drops in prices within two weeks might not be fulfilled by that deadline. He told Congress on Tuesday that several drugmakers wanted to reduce prices but were reluctant to do so for competitive reasons.The heated exchanges came just days after the Justice Department told a Federal District Court in Texas that it would no longer defend crucial provisions of the Affordable Care Act that protect consumers with pre-existing medical conditions.The senators told Mr. Azar that the effort to lower drug prices and the push to end protections for people with pre-existing conditions contradicted each other. If a federal court accepts the administrations argument on pre-existing conditions, they said, tens of millions of people with such conditions could lose access to affordable insurance that includes coverage for prescription medicines.This is like some kind of sick joke, said Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire.Mr. Azar, testifying at a hearing of the Senate health committee, said that bringing down drug prices was a top priority for Mr. Trump. He suggested that the Justice Departments position on pre-existing conditions was separate.In a Rose Garden speech on May 11, Mr. Trump unveiled a strategy to bring soaring drug prices back down to earth by promoting competition among pharmaceutical companies and by requiring drugmakers to disclose prices in their ubiquitous television advertising.Then last week, the Justice Department made its novel argument against protections for pre-existing conditions. The 2010 health law required most Americans to have insurance or pay a penalty with their taxes. In December, as part of a huge tax-cutting bill, Congress eliminated the penalty. The Supreme Court upheld the mandate in 2012 as an exercise of Congresss taxing power. Without any tax penalty, the Justice Department said, the mandate is unconstitutional. And the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, being inseparable from the mandate, must also fall, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the health committee, said on Tuesday that she was appalled that the administration refused to defend protections for people with pre-existing conditions, one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act.Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said, I dont know of any American who wants to go back to those days when you could be denied coverage or treatment because of pre-existing conditions.Republicans repeatedly tried and failed to repeal or roll back the health law last year.The term pre-existing conditions refers not just to serious illnesses like cancer. Before the Affordable Care Act, some insurers denied coverage or charged higher premiums to people with high blood pressure, seasonal allergies, diabetes, arthritis and migraine headaches, among other conditions. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that at least one-fourth of Americans below the age of 65 have conditions that could have made them uninsurable under medical underwriting practices used before the Affordable Care Act.At a bill-signing ceremony on May 30, Mr. Trump said that major drug companies would, within two weeks, announce voluntary massive drops in prices.Mr. Azar told Congress on Tuesday that might not happen on that schedule.We had several drug companies come in who want to execute substantial material reductions in their drug prices, Mr. Azar said. They are finding hurdles from pharmacy benefit managers and distributors.The benefit managers, he said, make money when drug companies set high list prices because the managers receive rebate payments from drugmakers a percentage of the list price in return for promoting the use of those companies products.Everybody wins when list prices rise except for the patient, whose out-of-pocket cost is typically calculated based on that price, Mr. Azar said. For this reason, he said, we may need to move toward a system without rebates, where pharmacy benefit managers and drug companies just negotiate fixed-price contracts.The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said on Tuesday that the protections for people with medical problems had broad support in that chamber.Everybody I know in the Senate everybody is in favor of maintaining coverage for pre-existing conditions, Mr. McConnell said.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said that if Republicans were serious about that, they should join Democrats in urging the Justice Department to reverse its position on pre-existing conditions.The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association said in a joint statement with other patient advocacy groups that the Justice Departments position could be catastrophic for their members, and they urged the Trump administration to reconsider.Mr. Azar tried to bring the conversation back to the presidents drug pricing proposals. He said he believed he had the authority, as secretary, to require drug companies to disclose prices in their advertisements and to restrict the payment of drug rebates in Medicare. But he said he would welcome action by Congress to clarify that authority.And he asserted that the presidents proposals were bolder than Democrats acknowledged.Were talking about the wholesale restructuring of the drug pricing and drug distribution system in this country, he said. | Politics |
Gloria Allred James Franco's Not Innocent 'Til Proven Guilty ... For Oscars 1/23/2018 TMZ.com James Franco getting shut out at the Oscars may have a simple explanation -- Academy voters are buying his accuser's story that he's been a sexual predator ... this according to Gloria Allred. Gloria -- who btw never mentions James by name -- tells TMZ ...this is not a criminal case where people get a presumption of innocence. She says Academy voters can conclude whatever they want based on whatever evidence they believe. Does James have any recourse? Gloria almost gleefully says ...NOPE. See also James Franco Gloria Allred Movies Sex Exclusive Controversial S#!T The Oscars | Entertainment |
Politics|The White House slips deeper into crisis in the final days of the Trump presidency.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/the-white-house-slips-deeper-into-crisis-in-the-final-days-of-the-trump-presidency.htmlCredit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021What was already shaping up as a volatile final stretch to the Trump presidency took on an air of national emergency as the White House emptied out and some Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a cascade of Democrats calling for Mr. Trump to be removed from office without waiting the 13 days until the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.The prospect of actually short-circuiting Mr. Trumps tenure in its last days appeared remote. Vice President Mike Pence privately ruled out invoking the disability clause of the 25th Amendment to sideline the president, as many had urged that he and the cabinet do, according to officials.Democrats suggested they could move quickly to impeachment, a step that would have its own logistical and political challenges. Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the assistant speaker of the House, said Friday on CNN that the Democrats could get an impeachment vote to the House floor as early as the middle of next week.(The Democrat-led House already impeached Mr. Trump once in December 2019, and he was acquitted in the Senate. The process took months.)But the highly charged debate about Mr. Trumps capacity to govern even for less than two weeks underscored the depth of anger and anxiety after the invasion of the Capitol that forced lawmakers to evacuate, halted the counting of the Electoral College votes for several hours and left people dead, including a Capitol Hill police officer who died Thursday night.After Mr. Trumps Twitter account was restored, he posted a 2-minute video on Thursday evening denouncing the mob attack in a way that he had refused to do a day earlier. Reading dutifully from a script prepared by his staff, he declared himself outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem and told those who broke the law that you will pay.While he did not give up his false claims of election fraud, he finally conceded defeat. A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump acknowledged. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, did not rule out investigating Mr. Trump himself when he pledged to investigate all actors in Wednesdays siege. The president is said to have discussed pardoning himself.Despite the talk of healing, however, Mr. Trump quietly made plans to take a trip next week to the southwestern border to highlight his hard-line immigration policies, which have inflamed Washington over the years, according to a person briefed on the planning. He also told advisers he wanted to give a media exit interview, which they presumed might undercut any conciliatory notes. But the first family has discussed leaving the White House for good on Jan. 19, the day before the inauguration. | Politics |
Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 13, 2014SOCHI, Russia Among the things that a curling team would not seem to need, an official athletic trainer might rank with a beach umbrella and a maid to sweep up after the athletes. But here is Brian McWilliams, a certified athletic trainer, on hand to treat any injury that might befall an American curler.He knows what you are thinking.I get that all the time: What injuries do they have? McWilliams said. You know, it looks so simple. But its really a unique and difficult sport.There are certainly events at these Winter Games that require sophisticated medical assistance. Athletes have sustained severe injuries in violent crashes in slopestyle skiing and moguls, and danger looms over the sliding sports like luge because of the speeds attained. Curling? Less so.The United States and Britain are the only delegations here with trainers devoted solely to their curling teams. The Canadian team, a longtime powerhouse in the sport, relies on staff shared with other athletes, and the Russian team enjoys home-court access to a variety of medical and training professionals.Maggie Bush, the physiotherapist for Britains curlers, described it as a dream job. A Scot who hails from generations of curlers, Bush moved from working with dancers and performers in Londons West End to curlers after moving back to Scotland in 2007.Theres a lot of similarities, Bush said of curling and dancing. A lot of the stuff we try to work with dancers was obviously trying to make them technically good at what they are doing, and thats the same of the work we were doing with the curlers.Among her duties is monitoring the athletes and their muscles to examine patterns in soreness, which has proved effective in reducing injuries, she said.Bush said that if specific muscles get tight, it is harder to slide well and may increase the chance of injury. McWilliams, who is based in Green Bay, Wis., accompanies the United States team on most of its international competitions. Among his responsibilities: making sure any medication used by one of the curlers does not violate the antidoping code.ImageCredit...Isaac Brekken for The New York TimesMcWilliams became the teams physical therapist through his training with the United States Olympic Committee. He had worked with a variety of athletes at the training facility in Chula Vista, Calif., including race walkers, sprinters, soccer players, rowers and some combat athletes in wrestling and martial arts. In late 2005, he was asked by the committee if he would like to join the team as it headed for the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy.McWilliams, a triathlete, agreed. Then he was told that he was assigned to curling it was the first time the team would have its own athletic trainer.I said, What the heck is curling? McWilliams recalled.He immersed himself in the sport and now considers himself an expert in all things brooms and bonspiels. He is paid through a small daily stipend, but he began as a volunteer with USA Curling.Sweeping, he says, can be difficult on the upper arms, back and shoulders. Backs ache from being bent over so much. Athletes are in better shape, he said, than when he started, creating a greater demand for massages after a workout. A massage therapist will assist McWilliams.The sliding itself is a unique position they have to be in, he said. You have a lot of effects from sliding. I tell people sometimes its like golf. If you swing the same way in repetition, youre going to have the same issues.Jessica Schultz, a member of the American womens team, said pain in the hips, shoulders and neck was common. When she is not curling, Schultz works as a physical therapist assistant. They put me to work sometimes on the team, she said.Knees, too, are a common source of pain, mostly from the kneeling that the skip does when throwing the stone, McWilliams said. But this is not football, or slopestyle skiing. In his eight years of curling work, McWilliams said, he has never had to step on the field of play to assist an injured athlete.I typically dont have to worry about concussions, he said.Nor does he have to deal with the other common plague of many Olympic sports: doping. But its such a finesse and touch sport, McWilliams said. In a sport like cycling, you worry about EPO use. We typically dont have those issues in curling, he said, referring to erythropoietin.The bigger concern for McWilliams is hangovers. Curling tradition dictates that the winning team buy the losers a round of drinks once the competitors put down their brooms and leave the ice. Though postgame revelry at the Olympics may be muted, McWilliams said he was ready.The teams like to have a good time, he said. | Sports |
Dec. 3, 2015LONDON Anheuser-Busch InBev said on Thursday that it planned to seek the sale of several of SABMillers premium brands in Europe, including Peroni and Grolsch, in the hope of easing regulatory concerns about the brewers proposed $105 billion merger.The move is the second major asset sale that the companies have announced as they look to create an industry giant with annual revenue of about $64 billion that would account for nearly 30 percent of beer sales globally.The combination would give Anheuser-Busch InBev, already the worlds largest brewer, a substantial operation in Africa, where it has little presence, and greater dominance in Latin America.In November, SABMiller said that it would sell its 59 percent stake in MillerCoors in the United States to Molson Coors Brewing, a joint venture partner, for about $12 billion.That transaction includes the global rights to the Miller brand, as well as the rights to sell Peroni and other brands in the United States. It would make Molson Coors the second-largest brewer in the United States, behind Anheuser-Busch InBev.On Thursday, Anheuser-Busch InBev said that it would seek to sell the Peroni and Grolsch brands and their associated businesses in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands. It also said it would seek to sell Meantime Brewing Company, a British craft brewer that SABMiller bought in May.Any sale may include one or more of these brands or businesses and would be conditional upon closing of the acquisition of SABMiller, Anheuser-Busch InBev said in a news release.The announcement came after news reports this weekend indicated that Anheuser-Busch InBev was considering the sale of the Peroni and Grolsch brands to appease regulators.SABMiller said that Anheuser-Busch InBev would lead the sales process with SABMiller providing assistance, including the preparation of the relevant information for potential buyers.These beers are loved by consumers, and we are very proud of them, Alan Clark, the chief executive of SABMiller, said in a news release. Until the change of control, we will continue to invest in growing these great beers and supporting our talented people who brew, sell and manage them.Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller reached an agreement in principle to merge on Oct. 13 and completed their negotiations last month, with SABMillers board recommending that shareholders accept the deal.Anheuser-Busch InBev is offering to pay 44 pounds, or about $66, a share in cash for SABMiller.As part of the transaction, SABMillers two largest shareholders the American tobacco giant Altria and the Santo Domingo family of Colombia agreed to receive restricted shares and a smaller amount of cash at a discount to the cash offer, allowing them to avoid a huge tax bill from the sale of their holdings.As a result, Anheuser-Busch InBev would probably pay a total of 69.8 billion.Analysts have indicated that the companies may have to sell assets to win regulatory approval, including SABMillers 49 percent stake in a joint venture that owns Snow, Chinas best-selling beer brand.Anheuser-Busch InBev is the third-largest brewer in China, behind CR Snow, SABMillers joint venture, and Tsingtao Brewery, but it would become the countrys largest brewer by market share if it is allowed to keep the stake.China Resources Enterprise, SABMillers joint venture partner, would be a likely buyer in the event of a sale, analysts said.As part of the SABMiller merger, Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to pay a $3 billion fee if regulators did not approve the merger.Euromonitor, a research firm, has estimated that a combined Anheuser-Busch InBev-SABMiller could account for 29 percent of global beer sales even after selling some assets. It would also be more than three times as large in terms of sales as its next closest competitor, the Dutch brewer Heineken, according to Euromonitor.Anheuser-Busch InBev has tackled similar regulatory issues before.It was forced to restructure its $20.1 billion takeover of Grupo Modelo of Mexico in 2013 after the Justice Department sued to block the deal.Among the concessions in that deal, Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to sell the rights to Corona beer and other Grupo Modelo brands in the United States to Constellation Brands, one of the worlds largest wine companies, for $2.9 billion. | Business |
Some private companies are keeping tabs on employees with systems that may rely on questionable behavioral science foundations.Credit...Daniel ZenderMay 17, 2022Are you an insider threat?The company you work for may want to know. Some corporate employers fear that employees could leak information, allow access to confidential files, contact clients inappropriately or, in the extreme, bring a gun to the office.To address these fears, some companies subject employees to semi-automated, near-constant assessments of perceived trustworthiness, at times using behavioral science tools like psychology. Many employers are now concerned about retaining workers in the face of what has been called the Great Resignation. But in spite of worries that workers might be, reasonably, put off by a feeling that technology and surveillance are invading yet another sphere of their lives, employers want to know which clock-punchers may harm their organizations.The language around this sort of worker-watching often mirrors that which is used within the government, where public agencies assess workers who receive security clearances to handle sensitive information related to intelligence collection or national security. Organizations that produce monitoring software and behavioral analysis for the feds also may offer conceptually similar tools to private companies, either independently or packaged with broader cybersecurity tools.When you think about insider risk in general, it probably emerges out of the government, and then makes its way into the private sector and commercial industry, said Tom Miller, chief executive of Clearforce, which sells insider threat services to private clients.Some private enterprises may be attracted to scrutinizing employees like an intelligence agency might keep tabs on analysts and spies, although employers dont have access to the same data sources. Spokespersons from some of the companies that provide these services say their clients do not wish to be named, but they include Fortune 500 companies, and employers in sectors such as critical infrastructure, financial services, transportation, health care and entertainment. Its possible you might be working for one now.Software can watch for suspicious computer behavior or it can dig into an employees credit reports, arrest records and marital-status updates. It can check to see if Cheryl is downloading bulk cloud data or run a sentiment analysis on Toms emails to see if hes getting testier over time. Analysis of this data, say the companies that monitor insider risk, can point to potential problems in the workplace.There is so much technology out there that employers are experimenting with or investing in, said Edgar Ndjatou, the executive director of Workplace Fairness, a nonprofit organization. He anticipates that, at some point, there will be a reckoning regarding that technologys unintended consequences. Certainly what were hoping for, in terms of the workers rights community, are more checks in terms of what employers can and cant do not only in the workplace but at home.But the interest in anticipating insider threats in the private sector raises ethical questions about what level of monitoring nongovernmental employees should be subject to. And theres another, related issue with insider vetting: Its not always based on settled science.For decades, much of the federal governments security-clearance-granting process has relied on techniques that emerged in the mid-twentieth century.Its very manual, said Evan Lesser, president of ClearanceJobs, a website posting, jobs, news and advice for positions that involve security clearances. Driving around in cars to meet people. Its very antiquated and takes up a lot of time.A federal initiative that started in 2018 called Trusted Workforce 2.0 formally introduced semi-automated analysis of federal employees that occurs in close to real time. This program will let the government use artificial intelligence to subject employees who are seeking or already have security clearances to continuous vetting and evaluation basically, rolling evaluation that takes in information constantly, throws up red flags and includes self-reporting and human analysis.Can we build a system that checks on somebody and keeps checking on them and is aware of that persons disposition as they exist in the legal systems and the public record systems on a continuous basis? said Chris Grijalva, senior technical director at Peraton, a company that focuses on the government side of insider analysis. And out of that idea was born the notion of continuous evaluations.Such efforts had been used in government in more ad hoc ways since the 1980s. But the 2018 announcement aimed to modernize government policies, which typically re-evaluated employees every five or 10 years. The motivation for the adjustment in policy and practice was, in part, the backlog of required investigations and the idea that circumstances, and people, change.Thats why its so compelling to keep people under some kind of a constant, ever-evolving surveillance process, said Martha Louise Deutscher, author of the book Screening the System: Exposing Security Clearance Dangers. She added that, Every day youll run the credit check, and every day youll run the criminal check and the banking accounts, the marital status and make sure that people dont run into those circumstances where they will become a risk if they werent yesterday.The programs first phase, a transition period before full implementation, finished in fall 2021. In December, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that the automations effectiveness be evaluated (though not, you know, continuously).But corporations are moving forward with their own software-enhanced surveillance. While private-sector workers may not be subjected to the rigors of a 136-page clearance form, private companies help build these continuous vetting technologies for the federal government, said Lindy Kyzer of ClearanceJobs. Then, she adds, Any solution would have private-sector applications.A 2019 RAND Corporation study on governmental continuous evaluation highlighted three large corporations that provided information that assisted with identifying potential government-insider threats: Thomson Reuters Special Services, LexisNexis and TransUnion. But companies that are not as well-known, like Forcepoint, Clearforce, Peraton and Endera, also offer semi-automated insider threat analysis services, and some seek private companies as customers.ImageCredit...Daniel ZenderPeople are starting to understand that the insider threat is a business problem and should be handled accordingly, said Mr. Grijalva.And there may be few limits on a companys ability to monitor its employees.The law gives employers a level of freedom a pretty high level of freedom to do surveillance, not just in the workplace but outside of the workplace, said Mr. Ndjatou. The forthrightness with which employees are informed of such monitoring varies.There are a number of behavioral frameworks for assessing insider threats, but one of the most well-known among experts is called the critical pathway. It lays out how personal predispositions, stressors, concerning behaviors and problematic organizational responses, can cumulatively lead to a hostile act, according to a paper published in the journal Studies in Intelligence in 2015 that widely publicized the concept.Eric Shaw, a clinical psychologist and co-author of the 2015 study, acknowledged there are weaknesses with the model, including that there is no ideal, full control group for it overall. It also described risk factors but does not perfectly predict who goes on to present a threat.What about cases where they have all these risk indicators, but they never go on to become an insider risk? Dr. Shaw said.Dr. Shaws colleague Edward Stroz, a former FBI special agent, has helped apply critical-path principles to the analysis of text communications like emails and messages between employees. Mr. Stroz founded the cyber forensics firm Stroz Friedberg, where Dr. Shaw was once a consulting psychologist. Both are now part of the Insider Risk Group, of which Dr. Shaw is chief executive. The linguistic software package they developed, called SCOUT, uses psycholinguistic analysis to seek flags that, among other things, indicate feelings of disgruntlement, like victimization, anger and blame.The language changes in subtle ways that youre not aware of, Mr. Stroz said.In the latest published test of the software run on 50 million messages from around 69,000 senders 383 messages from 137 senders were sent to a trained clinician for review, after filtering. Mr. Stroz said the small number indicates that this system could protect individual privacy because only the concerning messages would ever be seen by a human being.The fractional amount of email identified for this should give people a lot of comfort, he said.In the experiment, the software showed about a one-third false-positive rate: tagging someone as a threat when they didnt seem to be one.Mr. Stroz said there are ways to implement such monitoring ethically like being transparent, introducing the idea in stages and keeping the analysis locked away unless a problem pops up.We need to ask better questions about what we do to protect our society, our institutions, he said, not just say, Its Big Brother; get out of here.David Luckey, one of the authors of the RAND report on continuous evaluation from 2019, supports the idea of insider-threat programs in government or private sector use and taking behavioral psychology into account, even if such indicators are not foolproof.Just because its difficult doesnt mean we shouldnt consider it, Mr. Luckey said. We just need to figure out how to consider it while still protecting individuals privacy and those sorts of things.Thats a work very much in progress. Mr. Luckeys report found that there are limited behavioral or technical data available to develop and deploy an effective and predictive continuous evaluation tool.Theres not enough information, in other words, to construct algorithms about trustworthiness from the ground up. And that would hold in either the private or the public sector. Part of the reason is a good one: privacy protection. Were not living not yet at least and hopefully not ever in a Minority Report movie, Mr. Luckey said. Contrary to that films plot, the aim of many monitoring and behavioral analytics programs is to offer interventions before something bad happens not punish people in advance.In an ideal world, any flag would be followed up with tools and resources to help an employee, whether its alcohol counseling or an employee-resource group for family issues, said Ms. Kyzer of ClearanceJobs.Even if all that dystopian data did exist, it would still be tricky to draw individual rather than simply aggregate conclusions about which behavioral indicators potentially presaged ill actions. The behavioral sciences arent nearly as clear-cut as the physical sciences, Mr. Luckey said.On top of that squishiness, even if one could collect all data on so-called bad actors, it wouldnt amount to much. The numbers of insider threats are really, really small, Mr. Luckey said. And to try and model and understand these very small occurrences or incidents is very challenging. Once you begin tagging behavioral traits to small-number statistics, you wade into scientific hot water.Youre starting to get into some very, very iffy math, he said.Then theres the iffiness of personal factors, something that concerns Margaret Cunningham, a behavioral scientist who, until recently, worked at Forcepoint, one of the firms that provides insider threat analysis to private companies.Incorporating factors such as chronic or mental health issues and family history into insider threat behavioral analytics can, if used improperly, lead to models that call up that old phrase: garbage in, garbage out.Depending too heavily on personal factors identified using software solutions is a mistake, as we are unable to determine how much they influence future likelihood of engaging in malicious behaviors, Dr. Cunningham said.Implementing such systems the wrong way can, too, degrade the employee-employer relationship. Part of skirting such Big-Brother territory is avoiding injudicious surveillance: not simply ingesting all data thats available and legal, regardless of its proven utility.As an example of this, Raj Ananthanpillai, chief executive at Endera, imagines running a trucking company. I could care less about some of these financial stress indicators, because thats part of the blue-collar work force sometimes, he said.But I would want to know if they had a DUI, he said. Absolutely.If workers know or find out surveillance beyond whats necessary or useful is happening, it can turn an employer into an antagonist.Frankly, it builds a lot of resentment, Dr. Cunningham said. By doing that, youre not actually helping your insider-threat case. Youre making it worse.Private companies could take a tip from the federal government about transparency, according to Ms. Kyzer. All cleared employees sign several authorizations for release of information when they apply for a security clearance, she said. Standard employee onboarding today should also include some kind of similar acknowledgment of how their devices, communication or financial and criminal records are tracked.Dr. Cunningham said that Forcepoint attempted to use a minimal and focused approach with private companies. While the approach considers factors like employee financial distress or disgruntlement in work for clients that have the need and justification for that level of analysis, it prefers to focus on deviations from normal work behavior in many cases.That could include rule-breaking behavior that appears unusual in context: for instance, an uptick in screenshotting confidential documents during internal Zoom meetings or setting up a work email to auto-forward everything to a private Yahoo account.The emphasis, she says, is on what the employee is doing on the job with work-owned equipment, not on building up an understanding of an employees personal life or using behavioral indicators that are difficult to measure.I have focused very heavily on identifying indicators that you can actually measure, versus those that require a lot of interpretation, Dr. Cunningham said. Especially those indicators that require interpretation by expert psychologists or expert so-and-sos. Because I find that its a little bit too dangerous, and I dont know that its always ethical. | science |
DealBook|Dow and DuPont Test the Limits of Deal-Makinghttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/business/dealbook/dow-and-dupont-test-the-limits-of-deal-making.htmlBreakingviewsVideoAndrew Liveris, left, of Dow Chemical, and Edward Breen of DuPont, said that the combined company, which would be known as DowDuPont, would result from an all-stock merger of equals.CreditCredit...CNBCDec. 11, 2015Dow Chemical and DuPont are testing the limits of ambitious deal-making.The merger of the two American chemical titans unveiled on Friday is really four deals in one, given a planned three-way breakup to follow. The estimated value creation being promoted sounds optimistic and the structure is hazardous. At least the rationale makes sense.For nearly a decade, Dows chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris, has been chasing the 213-year-old DuPont. Activist investors who jumped into both companies more recently proved to be the necessary catalyst. The departure of DuPonts chief executive, Ellen J. Kullman, in October probably helped open the window of opportunity wider.The two companies will combine their operations before carving themselves up. It will take at least three years before it all gets done, assuming the initial merger secures all the necessary blessings from shareholders and authorities. Dow and DuPont are highlighting $3 billion of annual cost savings, which they say equate to some $30 billion of market value.The headline figure is too high. It uses a fairly generous multiple of 10 times enterprise-value-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Investors need to discount the time it will take to achieve the savings. That alone knocks the value down by 20 percent. Then there are the one-off costs of the deal, estimated at about $4 billion. Take those off, and the potential benefit in present-value terms is closer to $20 billion. Another $1 billion of generally elusive growth synergies also can be ignored for the time being.Any integration or later separation pains could reduce the sum even further. Dow and DuPont shareholders each are due to hold about half the newly christened DowDuPont, with Mr. Liveris as executive chairman and DuPonts boss, Edward D. Breen, as chief executive. The board also will be evenly split with eight directors from each company. Such mergers of equals are prone to culture clashes and power struggles that can destroy value.Once costs are stripped out, however, there will be little reason to keep products as diverse as genetically modified seeds, plastic packaging and Kevlar body armor under one roof. New chemicals, agricultural and materials companies eventually will be easier for investors to value. They should also benefit from greater focus and the opportunity to pursue consolidation in their respective sectors. Thats a long way off, though. The broad hypothesis looks sound, but DowDuPont is still a potentially risky experiment. | Business |
Tennis|Halep and Kerber Reach Qatar Open Finalhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/sports/tennis/halep-and-kerber-reach-qatar-open-final.htmlSports Briefing | TennisFeb. 15, 2014Seventh-seeded Simona Halep will face sixth-seeded Angelique Kerber in the Qatar Open final in Doha. Halep beat No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska, 7-5, 6-2. Kerbers 6-1, 7-6 (6) win over No. 5 Jelena Jankovic kept up her streak of not losing a set in this years event. Marin Cilic of Croatia will play in the ABN Amro final against Tomas Berdych in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Cilic beat Igor Sijsling, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2. Berdych, the No. 3 seed, beat Ernests Gulbis, 6-3, 6-2. | Sports |
SinosphereCredit...Imaginechina, via Associated PressApril 6, 2016BEIJING When Cao Yanfang left her nursing job to become a full-time human organ donation coordinator, someone who asks families to donate their just-deceased relatives organs, she set herself the goal of persuading one in 100 families to give. That was in 2010, when China set up a nationwide voluntary donation system.I didnt realize how big a challenge that figure would pose, said Ms. Cao of the Zhejiang Province Human Organ Donation Management Center. She spoke at an event last Thursday in Beijing ahead of the Qingming festival, when Chinese remember their dead.Clear and Bright is how the name of the festival that fell on Monday translates, and there was hope as well as sorrow at the event in an auditorium of Beijing Hospital. On hand were about 300 medical workers, Red Cross Society of China and government officials, donor families and organ recipients.The gathering, organized by the Red Cross Society of China and Chinese Organ Donation, one of several groups promoting the switch to voluntary organ donation, was billed as an organ donation memorial and popularization event. On a wall outside the auditorium were photographs of stone memorials inscribed with the names of donors that are being set up around China to honor their contributions.Before 2010, the state extracted organs from death-row prisoners thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, since organ transplants began in the 1970s. And the voluntary donation system has been slow to take off, hampered by cultural beliefs that a persons body must be buried intact. The first year, only 34 people donated, said Hao Linna, deputy chairwoman of the Red Cross Society of China.Among the reasons people gave Ms. Cao as they declined: If we donate, he wont find his way home. Were already so pitiable, why are you making us donate, too?About 300,000 Chinese people need transplants each year. In the face of this enormous need, a system long riven with controversy for how it transgressed international medical ethical norms is changing, though doubts persist in some quarters.Relying on organs from prisoners was never going to meet demand, said Dr. Jeremy Chapman, a former president of the Transplantation Society, in an interview. A modern system based on humanitarian principles was necessary as well as desirable, he said.And voluntary donation figures are rising, officials say. In 2015, Ms. Hao said, 2,766 people donated 7,785 organs.Still, that is about 290,000 fewer than the number needed, indicating the scale of the challenge. At the end of March there were 66,000 living donors on the state registry, she said.So in speech after speech, health officials, coordinators, the families of recipients and businesspeople issued appeals in an atmosphere that was a cross between a funeral and a charity fund-raiser: Support us! Donate more! Spread the word on WeChat!A new fund to support organ donations and research, the Universal Love Fund, was announced, with 8 million renminbi, about $1.2 million, in seed money from the Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company, a medical devices manufacturer. The fund is to be overseen by the Red Cross Society of China.Chen Jingyu, a lung transplant surgeon at the Wuxi Peoples Hospital and a member of the National Peoples Congress, appealed for more government support to ensure the speedy transport of organs to avoid waste.Another challenge is the expense, as organ transplants are not covered by state health insurance, doctors said after the event.Also, people are not used to the idea of donation, often offering to donate an organ a week after a relatives death, which can be too late, they said.China will continue to build its voluntary organ donation system in its own way, said Wang Peian, a deputy minister at the National Health and Family Planning Commission.For a long time we lacked an organ donation system, Mr. Wang said, leading to a very serious shortage that we will use Chinese methods to solve. This is a resolute struggle. | World |
Jan. 31, 2014Donald S. Engel, a lawyer who helped pop stars like Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer and the Dixie Chicks wrest greater control of their careers from their record companies, died on Jan. 15 in Redwood City, Calif. He was 84. The cause was complications of leukemia, his son Gregory said.A litigator specializing in contract disputes, Mr. Engel had an especially starry client list that also included nonmusicians, like the actors Robert Wagner and Farrah Fawcett, the potboiler author and sitcom creator Sidney Sheldon, the comic book creator Stan Lee and the estate of W. C. Fields. But his biggest footprint was in music.At various times he represented a whole record stores worth of musical performers, among them Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, Cher, Rod Stewart, Meat Loaf, Luther Vandross, Sammy Hagar, the Beach Boys and Don Henley. For more than 30 years he was so fearsomely litigious that he became known in the music business as a contract buster or, as one music magazine referred to him, Busta Kontract. His view was that record companies habitually and unethically underpaid their artists and that for the most part, through the 1970s, the lawyers who represented artists were too timid to challenge the status quo. When we came out here we found the caliber of attorney in the entertainment business to be far below what we were used to, Mr. Engel, who moved to Los Angeles from New York in the 1970s, said in a 1985 interview with The Los Angeles Daily Journal. Mr. Engel handled cases that helped shift the balance of power away from companies and toward the artists. In the early 1980s he engineered moves by Mr. Hagar, who had been recording for Capitol, and Ms. Summer, who was at Casablanca, to a new company, Geffen Records. In 1982, he helped Teena Marie disengage from Motown and sign with CBS. And in 1983, when the rock band Boston found itself in a breach-of-contract suit-countersuit imbroglio with CBS, Mr. Engel negotiated a new contract for the band with MCA. In 2001, in a suit against Sony, he represented the Dixie Chicks, who claimed the record company had cheated them on royalty payments; Sony settled the suit the following year.His most celebrated case involved Ms. Newton-John, who sued and was sued by MCA Records in the middle of a five-year contract she signed in 1975. The case reached a California Court of Appeal, where Ms. Newton-John and Mr. Engel won a partial but important victory. She was restrained from recording for any company but MCA for the five-year duration of the contract, but not beyond. The ruling undermined the previously assumed power given to record companies by a state statute, allowing them to control artists under contract for up to seven years. We were, all of us, working together Olivia, Don and myself able to do something not just for Olivia, but advantageous to all artists, John Mason, a lawyer who brought the case to Mr. Engel for litigation, said in an interview on Thursday.Donald Seymour Engel was born in the Bronx on Dec. 11, 1929. His mother, the former Peggy Sperling, was a milliner; his father, Irving, was a Broadway ticket broker. Donald graduated from City College and served in the Army in Germany during the Korean War. After graduating from New York University Law School, he worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department. During the 1960s he was special counsel to Gov. Richard J. Hughes of New Jersey and taught at Rutgers and New York University. Mr. Engels first marriage ended in divorce. In 1970 he married Judy Edelman, who survives him. Also a lawyer, she had been his student at N.Y.U., and together they went into private practice in 1972, establishing the firm Engel & Engel, which they later moved to Los Angeles. In addition to his son Gregory and his wife, he is survived by another son, Stephen; two daughters, Jacqueline Leibsohn and Laura Engel; and seven grandchildren. Mr. Engel was not one to pull his punches, even on the record.This is not a gentlemans business; this is a cutthroat business where nobody gives you anything, he said in 1985, though he would go on to win the grudging respect of many of his adversaries in the music industry. He even jumped the fence to represent recording companies from time to time. And his attitude did soften a bit, sort of.If I couldnt sue my friends in this business, Mr. Engel told Los Angeles magazine in 2000, I wouldnt have a business. | Business |
Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 9, 2017CAIRO Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has governed the Gaza Strip for a decade, is drafting a new platform to present a more pragmatic and cooperative face to the world, Hamas officials confirmed on Thursday.The document would represent a departure from the groups contentious 1988 charter, in which it promised to obliterate Israel and characterized its struggle as specifically against Jews. The new document defines Hamass enemies as occupiers.It means that we dont fight Jews because they are Jews, said Taher el-Nounou, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. Our struggle is only against those who occupied our lands.The new document would accept borders of the territory captured by Israel in the 1967 war as the basis for a Palestinian state. It would not recognize Israel, however, nor would it give up future claims to all of what Hamas considers Palestinian lands.Mr. Nounou said the document, the result of four years of work, is not yet final and has not yet been approved by Hamass governing bodies. Nor are its contents wholly new, even though they seem now to carry both practical and symbolic weight, particularly in Hamass relations with Egypt.Egypt controls the southern border of Gaza, limiting the movement of people and goods in and out of the increasingly impoverished territory.Israel controls access from all other sides, including the Mediterranean, in what critics call a siege against the enclave of more than two million people.To improve Hamass ties with Egypt, the document would declare that the group is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is under increasing government pressure in Egypt. Hamass 1988 charter specified that the group was a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.Hamas officials and other analysts said the document seemed intended to alleviate the groups international isolation.Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the United States, by many other nations and by the European Union, and it has found itself marginalized while its main Palestinian rival, the Fatah faction that rules the West Bank, engages in international diplomacy to advance the Palestinian cause.The new document, however moderated, is not likely to change that situation by itself.But Ahmad Yousif, an expert on Islamic movements who once served as an adviser to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, said the new platform might help soften outside perceptions of the group.The covenant was criticized because its language was against Jews and international law, he said, referring to the 1988 charter. Now we have a document that says Jews are not our enemy.The enemy is clear: the Zionist occupation, he said.Kobi Michael of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said he was skeptical of the new document. Mr. Michael, who formerly led the Palestinian desk at the Israeli Ministry for Strategic Affairs, said there was no assurance that Hamas would adopt the new platform.Even if it did, he said, the document would not change Hamass policy of violent resistance against Israel, nor weaken the grip of its new hard-line leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar. They are trying to use the sort of language that will be more accepted by the international community, Mr. Michael said of Hamas. They will not change their methods the use of terror and the use of violence against Israeli citizens. | World |
Meek Mill Court Clerk Slipped Him Note Asking for Cash During Probation Violation Hearing 1/26/2018 The clerk of the court where Meek Mill was sentenced to prison for violating his probation slipped a note to Meek during the hearing, asking for money for her son's college tuition. TMZ has obtained a note written by Wanda Chavarria and addressed to Mr. Williams (Meek's real names is Robert Rihmeek Williams) during his probation violation hearing. Chavarria says she has bad credit and can't scrape together money for her son's tuition for his last semester at Virginia Commonwealth University. She says, "This will probably be my son's last semester at VCU if the tuition isn't paid for this year and unfortunately with my bad credit, I am unable to secure a loan or cosign a loan for my son. Anything you can do is very much appreciated." The court clerk adds, "Every little helps -- please donate what you can to keep him attending VCU." Chavarria tells TMZ she did indeed slip Meek the note during the hearing, adding the judge didn't know about it. She says since Meek's from Philly and so is she, she thought he might do her a solid. Chavarria says Meek didn't give her any money, but her son stayed in school and will graduate in May. The judge in the case -- Genece Brinkley -- is under fire, in part for allegedly asking Meek to rerecord a Boyz II Men song and include a shout-out to her. Meek's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, also says the judge tried to strong-arm Meek to fire Roc Nation as his manager and hire Charlie Mack, whom Tacopina says is a friend of the judge. Mack denies knowing Judge Brinkley. | Entertainment |
Africa|Hundreds of Thousands Flee Ivory Coast Crisis, U.N. Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/world/africa/26ivory-coast.htmlHundreds of Thousands Flee Ivory Coast Crisis, U.N. SaysCredit...Marco Chown Oved/Associated PressMarch 25, 2011DAKAR, Senegal At least 700,000 people have fled their homes in Ivory Coasts main city, Abidjan, to escape the increasing violence and collapsing economy stemming from the nations political crisis, the United Nations said Friday.Daily gunfire spurred by Laurent Gbagbos efforts to stay in power after losing a presidential election in November has pushed thousands of residents out of neighborhoods surrounding the citys central districts, while the closing of banks and businesses have led to widespread unemployment. The massive displacement in Abidjan and elsewhere is being fueled by fears of all-out war, a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told reporters Friday in Geneva, estimating that 700,000 to one million people had already left their homes. Bus terminals are overcrowded with passengers desperate to get seats on vehicles heading to northern, central and eastern parts of the country where there has been no fighting so far, an agency spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, said.In Abidjan, Mr. Gbagbos security forces have waged an armed campaign against neighborhoods loyal to the man recognized by international bodies as the winner of the presidential election, Alassane Ouattara, killing at least 25 people with mortar shells at a market last week, the United Nations said.ImageCredit...Issouf Sanogo/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThis month, unarmed demonstrators against his rule were mowed down with machine-gun fire. Guerilla fighters have waged attacks against Mr. Gbagbos forces in Abidjan, while civilians, caught in the cross-fire, are now deserting neighborhoods wholesale. The United Nations and African political bodies have been unable to stop the attacks on civilians, despite the presence of a large United Nations peacekeeping force in Abidjan and repeated visits to the city by political leaders from across the continent seeking to mediate a settlement.At the United Nations, France and Nigeria are calling for additional sanctions on Mr. Gbagbo and his inner circle to add to those imposed late last year by the European Union and the United States as well as a ban on heavy weapons use in Abidjan.The United Nations estimates that nearly 500 people have been killed since the election; Mr. Ouattara puts the figure at nearly double that. The mortar attack last week may amount to crimes against humanity, the United Nations said, but a spokesman for Mr. Gbagbo later riposted with a blast against Western media for spreading false information, warning that international journalists there would be considered a media extension of prevailing terrorism. Fighting in the western part of Ivory Coast has also displaced tens of thousands of residents, according to the United Nations and aid agencies, as fighters loyal to Mr. Ouattara skirmish with militias and troops tied to Mr. Gbagbo. Towns near the Liberian border have been deserted by people fleeing to the neighboring country, the United Nations said, and there has been looting, rape and killing of civilians in the region.On Tuesday alone, Ms. Fleming said, 6,000 from Ivory Coast entered Liberia. | World |
Oprah No Prez DNA Remark Doesn't Mean She Won't Run 1/25/2018 There's a lot of buzz Oprah Winfrey will definitely NOT run for President in 2020, based on a recent interview she did ... but there's one crucial fact everyone's leaving out. Oprah told InStyle she doesn't "have the DNA" to run for the White House -- which seemed to shut the door on the speculation that started after her Golden Globes speech. Problem is ... that "DNA" comment was made 3 weeks BEFORE the Globes. That's spelled out in the "In Style" article, but almost no one's talking about that part of the story. You see the difference -- Oprah clearly could have changed her mind after the response to her Globes speech. There's also the fact Stedman Graham said she'd "absolutely do it" if the people wanted her to run. We're guessing Stedman wouldn't have said that without some direct knowledge. TMZ.com Sen. Marco Rubio told us Oprah might not be cut out for politics, but again ... he didn't know it was an old remark. So, yeah ... we're saying there's still a chance. | Entertainment |
TrilobitesThis is what happens when atmospheric chemists hang towels on drying racks around their chemistry building.Credit...Josef Polleross for The New York TimesMay 29, 2020People have written poems about it. It has been imitated by candles and air fresheners. At least one person has even fought in court for the right to produce it naturally.Its the smell of line-dried laundry.Some atmospheric chemists like that scent, too. In a paper published this year in Environmental Chemistry, researchers examined line-dried towels at the molecular level, to try to pinpoint the source of their specific fragrance.Silvia Pugliese led the research while she was a masters student at the University of Copenhagen. When Ms. Pugliese was a child, her mother line-dried laundry, and she still does it whenever she can.The fresh smell reminds me of home, she said. So she was excited to rigorously pursue such an everyday research subject.In between their more official thesis work, Ms. Pugliese and two labmates, with their adviser Matthew Stanley Johnson, commandeered two little-used areas of the universitys chemistry building a dark, empty office and a small, fifth-floor balcony and obtained materials, including ultrapurified water and a set of cotton towels from Ikea.Each towel got washed three times in the water, and then hung out: inside the office, on the balcony under a plastic shade or on the balcony in the sun.When they came across the drying racks, a lot of colleagues laughed, Ms. Pugliese said. But we had a lot of support.When a towel finished drying, the researchers sealed it in a bag for 15 hours. As the towel sat in the bag, they sampled the chemical compounds it released into the air around it. The researchers performed similar sampling on an empty bag, an unwashed towel and the air around the drying sites.By comparing the experimental towels chemical profiles to those controls and to each other, the researchers were able to tease out which compounds popped up only when they hung wet towels in the sun, Ms. Pugliese said.ImageCredit...Silvia PuglieseLine-drying uniquely produced a number of aldehydes and ketones: organic molecules our noses might recognize from plants and perfumes. For example, after sunbathing, the towels emitted pentanal, found in cardamom, octanal, which produces citrusy aromas, and nonanal, which smells roselike.Why is that? It may have to do with exposure to ozone, an atmospheric chemical that can transform some common chemicals into those aldehydes and ketones.A more fundamental contribution, she thinks, may come from the sun itself. When exposed to ultraviolet light, certain molecules get excited and form highly reactive compounds called radicals, Ms. Pugliese said. Those radicals then recombine with other nearby molecules, processes that often lead to the creation of aldehydes as well as ketones.Its possible that the water on a wet towel gathers a lot of these excitable molecules together, and then works like a magnifying glass, concentrating the sunlight and speeding up these reactions, Ms. Pugliese said.Similar processes are likely occurring on any number of natural outdoor surfaces, including bare soil and individual blades of grass perhaps part of the reason that sun after a rainstorm makes the world smell fresh. (Although the scent seems to last longer on clothes, potentially because aldehydes bond with cotton, said Ms. Pugliese.)Ricardo Lpez, a chemist at the Lab for Flavor Analysis and Enology at the University of Zaragoza in Spain who was not involved in the research, thinks the aldehydes and ketones may not tell the whole story.When testing for key flavor compounds, sometimes compounds in low concentrations are as important as those in high concentrations, he said. Additional forms of testing might be helpful to get the full bouquet.Ms. Pugliese has, for now, moved onto headier things her doctoral research involves artificial photosynthesis but she hopes to dig into similar topics in the future.I thought it was a really nice way to do science, she said. | science |
In a historic reversal, fewer patients are dying in hospitals. But experts warn that many families are unprepared to care for seriously ill relatives at home. Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 11, 2019Updated Dec. 26, 2019For the first time over a half century, more people in the United States are dying at home than in hospitals, a remarkable turnabout in Americans view of a so-called good death.In 2017, 29.8 percent of deaths by natural causes occurred in hospitals, and 30.7 percent at home, researchers reported on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.The gap may be small, but it had been narrowing for years, and the researchers believe dying at home will continue to become more common.The last time Americans died at home at the current rate was the middle of the last century, according Dr. Haider J. Warraich, a cardiologist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and a co-author of the new research. In Boston in 1912, about two-thirds of residents died at home, he said. By the 1950s, the majority of Americans died in hospitals, and by the 1970s, at least two-thirds did. Americans have long said that they prefer to die at home, not in an institutional setting. Many are horrified by the prospect of expiring under fluorescent lights, hooked to ventilators, feeding tubes and other devices that only prolong the inevitable.And hospice care, usually delivered at home, is more available than ever before. Some 1.49 million Medicare beneficiaries received hospice care in 2017, a 4.5 percent increase from 2016, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.There has been a kind of cultural shift that has romanticized dying at home and made it the only way to die, said Carol Levine, an ethicist at the United Hospital Fund in New York. At the same time, hospitals have long had financial incentives not to keep Medicare patients for long periods, noted Dr. Diane Meier, a professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.Typically, Medicare pays hospitals per diagnosis per patient, not for the number of days a patient is in the hospital. Administrators dont want it to go on for a long time, Dr. Meier said.We send very very sick, complicated patients home under the care of family members who are not trained professionals, she added.Many terminally ill patients wind up in the care of family members who may be wholly unprepared for the task. We are, perhaps appropriately, shifting the site of care to where patients and families say they want to be, said Dr. Sean Morrison, chair of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. But, he added, We have put a tremendous burden on families in the type of care they have to provide and the type they have to pay for.ImageCredit...Travis ReedMargaret Peterson, 58, a fellow at the Chicago Center for Family Health, cared for her terminally ill husband, Dwight, at home for four long years. A paraplegic adamant that he wanted to die at home, he was discharged from a hospital in 2012 and enrolled in hospice care, because he was not expected to survive long. But he confounded expectations, living for four years. Ms. Peterson was his caregiver, along with a home health aide once a week and nurses from a hospice. The burden was crushing, she recalled, and her husbands suffering in the last few days seemed needless.It just went on and on and on, she said. The model of care wasnt designed to give me any respite. It was absolutely exhausting.When he had a terrible bedsore on his foot that needed care, Ms. Peterson knew she did not have the training to help him. A friend, a vascular surgeon, offered to come several times a week to treat the wound. It was wonderful, but its like these GoFundMe things, she said. We should not have to resort to a doctor to do us an enormous favor.For the last four days of his life, Mr. Peterson was in excruciating pain. Still, he did not want to return to a hospital, because he did not want to die there.He had way, way more pain than he needed to have, Ms. Peterson said. Her husband died on March 6, 2016, from deterioration and infection of his hips and pelvis, a consequence of his paraplegia. There is a kind of fantasy where if you make all the right choices, you get this beautiful and peaceful death, she added. But you can do everything right and still have an unpredictable and tragic experience.Part of the problem is that often hospice care remains relatively limited. Many patients now dying at home need substantial care, said Dr. Warraich. Hospice is asked to do a big lift, he said. They get a fixed payment, a daily rate for patients, so they cannot offer many services. They are asked to be very effective but on a razor-thin budget.Families often are trapped by gaps in the system, said Dr. Meier. I dont think families or caregivers understand what its like to die at home, she said. They will need to understand how to manage symptoms, like pain or shortness of breath or confusion. They are on-call 24/7 and have to be alert to changes at all times. They dont get to go home after an eight-hour shift.Even with hospice care, families are the front-line caregivers, she added. Ninety-nine minutes out of 100 the family is on its own. | Health |
James Franco No Oscar Nom, No Prob!!! 1/23/2018 James Franco's still getting by with a little help from his friends after Hollywood snubbed him for an Oscar nomination. Franco did lunch with Jeff Garlin Tuesday at Joan's on Third. Based on their bro hug as they left, we'd say the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and 'Goldbergs' star was supporting James ... hours after he, shockingly, did NOT get an Oscar nomination. We're guessing the sexual assault allegations against Franco also came up over the meal, since it's pretty clear that's what swayed Motion Picture Academy voters. A friend in need ... | Entertainment |
Credit...David Scharf/Science SourceAn enormous new analysis of the wiring of the fruit fly brain is a milestone for the young field of modern connectomics, researchers say.Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. For years, scientists have been mapping the flys neurons and synapses in an effort to create a comprehensive wiring diagram, or connectome, of its brain.Credit...David Scharf/Science SourcePublished Oct. 26, 2021Updated Oct. 27, 2021The brain of a fruit fly is the size of a poppy seed and about as easy to overlook.Most people, I think, dont even think of the fly as having a brain, said Vivek Jayaraman, a neuroscientist at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Virginia. But, of course, flies lead quite rich lives.Flies are capable of sophisticated behaviors, including navigating diverse landscapes, tussling with rivals and serenading potential mates. And their speck-size brains are tremendously complex, containing some 100,000 neurons and tens of millions of connections, or synapses, between them.Since 2014, a team of scientists at Janelia, in collaboration with researchers at Google, have been mapping these neurons and synapses in an effort to create a comprehensive wiring diagram, also known as a connectome, of the fruit fly brain.The work, which is continuing, is time-consuming and expensive, even with the help of state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms. But the data they have released so far is stunning in its detail, composing an atlas of tens of thousands of gnarled neurons in many crucial areas of the fly brain.And now, in an enormous new paper, being published on Tuesday in the journal eLife, neuroscientists are beginning to show what they can do with it.By analyzing the connectome of just a small part of the fly brain the central complex, which plays an important role in navigation Dr. Jayaraman and his colleagues identified dozens of new neuron types and pinpointed neural circuits that appear to help flies make their way through the world. The work could ultimately help provide insight into how all kinds of animal brains, including our own, process a flood of sensory information and translate it into appropriate action.It is also a proof of principle for the young field of modern connectomics, which was built on the promise that constructing detailed diagrams of the brains wiring would pay scientific dividends.Its really extraordinary, Dr. Clay Reid, a senior investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, said of the new paper. I think anyone who looks at it will say connectomics is a tool that we need in neuroscience full stop.ImageCredit...Matt Staley, Janelia Research CampusYour fly brain is cookedThe only complete connectome in the animal kingdom belongs to the humble roundworm, C. elegans. The pioneering biologist Sydney Brenner, who would later go on to win a Nobel Prize, started the project in the 1960s. His small team spent years on it, using colored pens to trace all 302 neurons by hand.Brenner realized that to understand the nervous system you had to know its structure, said Scott Emmons, a neuroscientist and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who later used digital techniques to create new C. elegans connectomes. And thats true across biology. Structure is so important.Brenner and his colleagues published their landmark paper, which clocked in at 340 pages, in 1986.But the field of modern connectomics did not take off until the 2000s, when advances in imaging and computing finally made it feasible to map the connections in larger brains. In recent years, research teams around the world have started assembling connectomes of zebrafish, songbirds, mice, humans and more.When the Janelia Research Campus opened in 2006, Gerald Rubin, its founding director, set his sights on the fruit fly. I dont want to offend any of my worm colleagues, but I think flies are the simplest brain that actually does interesting, complex behavior, Dr. Rubin said.Several different teams at Janelia have embarked on fly connectome projects in the years since, but the work that led to the new paper began in 2014, with the brain of a single, five-day-old female fruit fly.Researchers cut the fly brain into slabs and then used a technique known as focused-ion beam scanning electron microscopy to image them, layer by painstaking layer. The microscope essentially functioned like a very tiny, very precise nail file, filing away an exceedingly thin layer of the brain, snapping a picture of the exposed tissue and then repeating the process until nothing remained.VideoResearchers cut a fly brain into exceptionally thin slabs, imaged each with an electron microscope, then stitched the images together to allow scientists to trace each neurons path through the brain.CreditCredit...FlyEM/Janelia Research CampusYoure simultaneously imaging and cutting off little slices of the fly brain, so they dont exist after youre done, Dr. Jayaraman said. So if you screw something up, youre done. Your goose is cooked or your fly brain is cooked.The team then used computer vision software to stitch the millions of resulting images back together into a single, three-dimensional volume and sent it off to Google. There, researchers used advanced machine-learning algorithms to identify each individual neuron and trace its twisting branches.Finally, the Janelia team used additional computational tools to pinpoint the synapses, and human researchers proofread the computers work, correcting errors and refining the wiring diagrams.Last year, the researchers published the connectome for what they called the hemibrain, a large portion of the central fly brain, which includes regions and structures that are crucial for sleep, learning and navigation.The connectome, which is accessible free online, includes about 25,000 neurons and 20 million synapses, far more than the C. elegans connectome.Its a dramatic scaling up, said Cori Bargmann, a neuroscientist at the Rockefeller University in New York. This is a tremendous step toward the goal of working out the connectivity of the brain.Welcome to orientationImageCredit...FlyEM/Janelia Research CampusOnce the hemibrain connectome was ready, Dr. Jayaraman, an expert on the neuroscience of fly navigation, was eager to dive into the data on the central complex.The brain region, which contains nearly 3,000 neurons and is present in all insects, helps flies build an internal model of their spatial relationship to the world and then select and execute behaviors appropriate for their circumstances, such as searching for food when they are hungry.Youre telling me you can give me the wiring diagram for something like this? Dr. Jayaraman said. This is better industrial espionage than you could get by getting insights into the Apple iPhone.He and his colleagues pored over the connectome data, studying how the regions neural circuits were put together.For instance, Hannah Haberkern, a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Jayaramans lab, analyzed the neurons that send sensory information to the ellipsoid body, a doughnut-shape structure that acts as the flys internal compass.Dr. Haberkern found that neurons that are known to transmit information about the polarization of light a global environmental cue that many animals use for navigation made more connections to the compass neurons than did neurons that transmit information about other visual features and landmarks.The neurons dedicated to polarization of light also connect to and are capable of strongly inhibiting brain cells that provide information about other navigational cues.The researchers hypothesize that fly brains may be wired to prioritize information about the global environment when they are navigating but also that these circuits are flexible, so that when such information is inadequate, they can pay more attention to local features of the landscape. They have all these fallback strategies, Dr. Haberkern said.Fruit fly phone homeOther members of the research team identified specific neural pathways that seem well suited to helping the fly keep track of its head and body orientation, anticipate its future orientation and traveling direction, calculate its current orientation relative to another desired location and then move in that direction.Imagine, for instance, that a hungry fly temporarily abandons a rotting banana to see whether it can rustle up something better. But after a (literally) fruitless few minutes of exploration, it wants to return to its previous meal.The connectome data suggests that certain brain cells, technically known as PFL3 neurons, help the fly pull off this maneuver. These neurons receive two critical inputs: They get signals from neurons that track the direction the fly is facing as well as from neurons that may be keeping tabs on the direction of the banana.After receiving those signals, the PFL3 neurons then send out their own message to a set of turning neurons that prompt the fly to veer off in the correct direction. Dinner is served, again.VideoCompass neurons, which help flies stay oriented, are part of a neural pathway that may help modulate the insects turning actions.CreditCredit...FlyEM/Janelia Research CampusBeing able to trace that activity through that circuit from sensory back to motor through this complex intermediate circuit is really amazing, said Brad Hulse, a research scientist in Dr. Jayaramans lab who led this part of the analysis. The connectome, he added, showed us a lot more than we thought it was going to.And the groups paper a draft of which includes 75 figures and stretches to 360 pages is just the beginning.It just really provides this ground truth for exploring this brain region further, said Stanley Heinze, an expert on insect neuroscience at Lund University in Sweden. Its just enormously impressive.And just plain enormous. I wouldnt really treat it as a paper but more as a book, Dr. Heinze said.In fact, the paper is so large that the preprint server bioRxiv initially declined to publish it, perhaps because the administrators understandably thought it actually was a book, Dr. Jayaraman said. (The server ultimately did post the study, after a few extra days of processing, he noted.)The papers publication in the journal eLife required some special permissions and back-and-forth with editorial staff, Dr. Jayaraman added.Fly-ing lessonsThere are limitations to what a snapshot of a single brain at a single moment in time can reveal, and connectomes do not capture everything of interest in an animal brain. (Janelias hemibrain connectome omits glial cells, for instance, which perform all sorts of important tasks in the brain.)Dr. Jayaraman and his colleagues stressed that they would not have been able to infer so much from the connectome if not for decades of prior research, by many other scientists, into fruit fly behavior and basic neuron physiology and function, as well as theoretical neuroscience work.But the wiring diagrams can help researchers investigate existing theories and generate better hypotheses, figuring out what questions to ask and which experiments to conduct.ImageCredit...Peter Yeeles/Alamy Now what were really excited about is taking those ideas that the connectome inspired and going back to the microscope, going back to our electrodes and actually recording the brain and seeing if those ideas are true, Dr. Hulse said.Of course, one could and some have asked why a fruit flys brain circuitry matters.I get asked this at the holidays a lot, Dr. Hulse said.Flies are not mice or chimps or humans, but their brains perform some of the same basic tasks. Understanding the basic neural circuitry in an insect could provide important clues to how other animal brains approach similar problems, said David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis.Gaining a deep understanding of the flys brain also gives us insights that are very relevant to the understanding of mammalian, and even human, brains and behavior, he said.Creating connectomes of larger, more complex brains will be enormously challenging. The mouse brain contains roughly 70 million neurons, the human brain a whopping 86 billion.But the central complex paper is decidedly not a one-off; detailed studies of regional mouse and human connectomes are currently in the pipeline, Dr. Reid said: Theres a lot more to come.Journal editors, consider yourselves warned. | science |
Richard Branson Will Try to Beat Jeff Bezos to Space With July 11 FlightThe Virgin Galactic founder hopes to edge out, by nine days, Blue Origins first flight with a crew aboard.Credit...Eric Johnson/ReutersPublished July 1, 2021Updated July 20, 2021Seeking to upstage Jeff Bezos as the first rocket company owner to go to space, Richard Branson, the British billionaire who founded a galaxy of Virgin companies, announced on Thursday night that he would be a member of the crew on the next test flight of the Virgin Galactic space plane.That flight is scheduled to take off on July 11 from Spaceport America in New Mexico.The team was ready, so they asked Richard if he was ready to go, said Aleanna Crane, vice president of communications for Virgin Galactic. Its a big day. Its a very exciting day.Mr. Branson will be in a position to claim bragging rights in a growing business of spaceflight for private citizens. Companies including Virgin Galactic and Mr. Bezoss Blue Origin are competing to launch paying passengers on suborbital and orbital trips in the coming years. Although the first trips will be expensive, the expectation is that ticket prices will come down over time as the market grows.Mr. Branson founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 to provide short space tourist flights to the edge of space, and he has long said he will be a passenger on the first commercial flight. But development of the SpaceShipTwo a winged rocket that flies to an altitude of more than 50 miles has taken years longer than Mr. Branson expected. The setbacks included the crash of the first SpaceShipTwo plane, V.S.S. Enterprise, in October 2014 during a test flight, which killed one of the two pilots.In 2019, Virgin Galactic became a publicly traded company, although Mr. Bransons Virgin Group remains the largest shareholder, with a 24 percent share.The most recent powered test flight, in May, was the first that the company conducted from New Mexico. Previously, development and testing of the spacecraft had occurred in Mojave, Calif.ImageCredit...Virgin Galactic, via Associated PressMs. Crane said that the last flight had been so flawless that the team had decided to test the cabin experience. Who better to test the full cabin experience than Richard Branson? she said. He is flying as a mission specialist, and he has a role like the rest of the crew.The craft will carry three other Virgin Galactic employees in the cabin seats in addition to the two pilots up front.Its one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all, Mr. Branson said in a statement. Its another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality.The company plans to broadcast the flight beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern time on July 11. The SpaceShipTwo rocket, named Unity, will be carried under an airplane named White Knight Two to an altitude of 50,000 feet before being dropped. Unitys engine will then ignite, taking it up to higher than 50 miles.At the top of the arc, passengers will float for about four minutes before the space plane re-enters the atmosphere and glides to a runway landing.If all goes as planned, Mr. Branson will make his flight nine days before Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, straps into the New Shepard capsule built by his rocket company, Blue Origin. New Shepard has flown to the edge of space 15 times but has yet to carry any people. It is fully automated, without pilots.Billionaires like Mr. Branson, Mr. Bezos and Elon Musk are the vanguard in a new age of commercial spaceflight, accompanied by verbal jousting sometimes playful, sometimes belittling about whose company is better.On Wednesday, during an appearance on CNBC, Mr. Branson was asked if he was trying to beat Mr. Bezos to space. Jeff who? Mr. Branson replied with a straight face before laughing.The remark echoed one Mr. Musk had once made in a BBC interview.Even if Mr. Branson launches first, Mr. Bezos could still argue that he went to space and Mr. Branson did not. SpaceShipTwo does not quite reach the 62-mile altitude most often considered the edge of outer space, while New Shepard passes above that height, also known as the Karman line.We wish him a great and safe flight, but theyre not flying above the Karman line and its a very different experience, Bob Smith, Blue Origins chief executive, said in an emailed statement.However, the United States Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration put the boundary lower, at 50 miles. The F.A.A. granted astronaut wings to Virgin Galactic crew members who had flown on earlier test flights.Mr. Musks SpaceX builds rockets that are much larger than those currently flown by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. While SpaceX is gearing up to fly private citizens on trips to orbit, including a flight scheduled for September, Mr. Musk has not yet announced when he might make a trip himself. But Blue Origin and SpaceX are in competition for federal contracts for projects including the launching of Department of Defense satellites and building a lander to take NASA astronauts back to the surface of the moon.So far, Mr. Musk and SpaceX have triumphed over Blue Origin. After NASA chose only SpaceX to build a lunar lander, Blue Origin protested the award with the federal Government Accountability Office. In a tweet after the protest was announced, Mr. Musk made a remark that played off the fact that Blue Origin had not yet achieved orbit with any of its rockets.In the last couple of days, Mr. Musk has gotten into a back-and-forth Twitter skirmish with Tory Bruno, the chief executive of United Launch Alliance, one of his more traditional aerospace competitors. Mr. Musk said rockets made by U.L.A., a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, were too expensive and would be a failure without government contracts.He also joked to Mr. Bruno that SpaceX could provide some engines to U.L.A. for its new Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin engines are to propel the first stage of Vulcan, whose maiden launch is scheduled for next year.Earlier on Thursday, Blue Origin announced that Wally Funk, a pioneering test pilot, would fly on the inaugural crewed New Shepard flight. Ms Funk, 82, was among the Mercury 13 women who in the 1960s successfully passed a privately financed demonstration showing that women could also meet NASAs criteria for astronauts. She will join Mr. Bezos; his younger brother, Mark; and an as yet unidentified person who paid more than $28 million in an auction to win a seat on the flight. | science |
An atomic blast is not the preferred solution for planetary defense, but 3-D models are helping scientists prepare for a worst-case scenario.VideoA simulation suggesting the effects of a 1 megaton nuclear blast on an asteroid approximately 300 feet in size. Animation by King et al.Oct. 18, 2021One day, astronomers may spot an asteroid months away from a cataclysmic rendezvous with Earth. Our only chance of survival at such a late stage would be to try to use a nuclear explosive to obliterate it.But would it work?Unlike some melodramatic Hollywood blockbusters of the 1990s, real-life scientists are largely unconcerned by any planet-sterilizing behemoths. The orbits of almost every asteroid two-thirds of a mile across or larger have been precisely mapped out. We know theyre not going to be a threat anytime soon, said Megan Bruck Syal, a planetary defense researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.Instead, their focus is on relatively small asteroids, those about the size of football stadiums, notable for their abundance as well as their ability to evade asteroid-hunting observatories. Those are the ones that we tend to worry more about because they could come out of nowhere, Dr. Bruck Syal said.Such a diminutive asteroid may not sound like much of a danger compared to the 6.2-mile colossus that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago with apocalyptic results. But a meteor that exploded over Siberia back in 1908 was only about 200 feet across and the blasts shock wave leveled 800 square miles of forest. Thats the size of the whole Washington D.C. metro area, said Dr. Bruck Syal.Using high-fidelity simulations, scientists reported in a study published earlier this month that a stealthy asteroid as long as 330 feet could be annihilated by a one-megaton nuclear device, with 99.9 percent of its mass being blasted out of Earths way, if the asteroid is attacked at least two months before impact.Ideally, asteroids targeting our blue marble would be identified decades ahead of time. If so, the hope is that an uncrewed spacecraft could slam into them with sufficient momentum to nudge them out of Earths way. This strategy, known as deflection, is getting its first test next year with NASAs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) space mission.But an asteroid even several years away from Earth may not be suitable for deflection. At that stage, it may be too late to sufficiently alter its trajectory with a nudge. And if any deflection attempt proves overzealous, the asteroid may break up into smaller but still portly pieces that could hit Earth in multiple spots.Using a nuclear blast to obliterate an interplanetary interloper will always be the last resort, said Patrick Michel, an asteroid expert at the Observatoire de la Cte dAzur who was not involved in the study. But if we are short on time, it may be our only hope.A team led by Patrick King, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, ran 3-D simulations to see whether a nuke could provide planetary salvation. Like a wannabe Marco Inaros, a villain from the science fiction series The Expanse who schemed to bombard Earth from space, he hurled virtual 330-foot asteroids at our planet along five different orbital paths.Powerful one-megaton nuclear devices were sent to greet them.The simulations showed that when the detonation took place two months or more ahead of the projected impact date, it was sufficient to ensure that almost every asteroid fragment that survived the blast missed Earth. Any fragments that did reach Earth would probably be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, said Dr. Bruck Syal, a study co-author.This strategy isnt foolproof. If you miscalculate the energy you need to destroy it, you may make a lot of fragments, Dr. Michel said and some may be sizable enough to impact Earth with considerable violence.Nobody wants to wait until the last moment to see if a nuclear Hail Mary saves the world. But one day humanity may have no choice: NASA estimates that there are 17,000 near-Earth asteroids 460 feet or larger that are yet to be found.To reduce the odds of an asteroid ambush, scientists are being proactive. A future NASA space telescope aims to spot two-thirds of those miniature menaces. Its hopeful success will come as a relief to planetary defense officers who, perhaps more than anyone else, dont wanna miss a thing. | science |
Credit...Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesDec. 24, 2015Santas reindeer had a relatively easy time of it, compared with their earthbound counterparts. While Dasher, Dancer and company put in some frantic hours of work Thursday night, the holiday season started in early November for Yukon, Blizzard, Tundra and their 17 herdmates at California Reindeer Rentals.For Diana Frieling, the companys owner, the weeks before Christmas are a two-month sprint, packed with more than 50 holiday festivals, photo shoots, parades and other events. Nationwide, a few dozen businesses, mostly mom-and-pop operations, offer reindeer for hire, cramming nearly all of their annual income into the holiday season.Reindeer are cash cows at this time of year. Prices vary widely around the country, but a two-hour event booking with a pair of reindeer typically starts at around $1,000. Ms. Frielings deer have made appearances this season at holiday parties for Zynga and YouTube and are on view daily at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.Like many reindeer ranchers, Ms. Frieling, 68, got into the business as a way to subsidize other projects. Her main vocation is Windswept Ranch, a farm in Tehachapi, Calif., where she shelters some 40 rescued animals, including donkeys, deer, zebras, goats, bison, pigs and a yak.We started off with dogs and kittens, and it just kind of progressed, she said of her eclectic menagerie. About 20 years ago, seeking a way to earn enough money to keep the ranch operating, she hit on the idea of raising and renting out reindeer. The revenue they bring in during the holidays covers most of the farms annual costs.Reindeer loom large in the cultural imagination, but people are often slightly shocked to encounter a live one, owners say.I have a lot of adults pull me aside and whisper, What are they really? said Mark Sopko, 46, the owner of Reindeer Magic and Miracles in Branchburg, N.J.They are really reindeer. Native to chilly places like the Arctic and parts of northern Europe, reindeer, close relatives of caribou, were imported to Alaska in the 1890s, and are now raised in domesticated herds in dozens of states. An industry trade group, the Reindeer Owners and Breeders Association, has about 140 members, nearly all of them small and independent.Its not a business; its a love thing, said Mike Jablonski, the groups president, who has 50 reindeer on his farm in Hamburg, N.Y. No one is going to become a millionaire off reindeer. Theyre very hard to raise.Heartbreak is an inevitable part of the business. After a lifelong fascination with reindeer, Mr. Sopko, a veterinary dental technician, bought his first pair in 2012. Mr. Sopko calls the night they arrived right before Christmas, naturally the most magical day of his life. Rocket earned his name by tearing around his home field, while Fetch loved to carry around sticks to chase and chew.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMr. Sopko booked holiday events to offset the cost of keeping them, but this fall, both reindeer succumbed to a tick-borne disease. Devastated by their deaths, Mr. Sopko considered giving up on his tiny reindeer farm, but the allure of the creatures won out. He is starting over with two new reindeer, including a 6-month-old calf who likes to kick soccer balls.Hes like a puppy with antlers, Mr. Sopko said.Getting into the reindeer business generally requires a five- to six-figure financial outlay. The handful of breeders that sell animals typically charge $1,000 to $6,000 each, and owners say that food and veterinarian bills run about $3,000 annually per deer. Fencing, a barn or shelter, and fans to keep the reindeer cool in the summer, plus the electricity to run them, cost thousands more.Obtaining licenses and permits adds to the price. Most states regulate the possession and importation of reindeer, and some places ban them entirely. In South Carolina, even temporary exhibitions of reindeer are prohibited because of concerns about chronic wasting disease. Brett Witt, a spokesman for the states Department of Natural Resources, said Santas reindeer get a pass, We welcome Father Christmas to the Palmetto State.Many of those who run reindeer-based businesses say they were inspired to do so by their love of the holiday season. Vince Zarate, 64, an owner of Z Arch Barn Farm in Easton, Pa., had his curiosity about owning reindeer piqued by the 2003 television movie Stealing Christmas, which features a Christmas shop with a live reindeer.I saw those deer and wondered how you go about doing that, he said. I started doing research, and the harder it got, the more determined I got. In 2012, after retiring from a career as a carpentry teacher, Mr. Zarate opened a Christmas tree farm and bought five reindeer to populate it. He now has a herd of 10, with three calves due in the spring.Reindeer raised around people tend to be docile and social, owners say, though the males can become aggressive during the fall mating season. They are the only deer species in which males and females grow antlers a handy advantage for owners seeking the classic holiday look but males often shed their horns in December.Ms. Frieling gets a feminist kick out of that tidbit. Women do all the work, and we now have scientific evidence that its the girls pulling Santas sleigh, she said.Because the reindeer business is heavily seasonal, most owners book two or three events a day to maximize earnings and accommodate as many clients as possible. Thanksgiving to Christmas is crunchtime, though winter festivals and other events keep some businesses busy through March.Aside from a few Christmas in July events, the spring and summer months tend to be slow. For a discount reindeer, try renting one in April. Although the industry got an unexpected stimulus from Disney. Thanks to the huge hit Frozen, which prominently features a playful reindeer named Sven, demand for rental reindeer at Frozen-themed parties has created a year-round moneymaker.One irony of the reindeer business, Mr. Zarate said, is that he is now so busy with bookings that he is working straight through his favorite time of the year. Ms. Frieling said she is often on the road for at least 14 hours a day, covering thousands of miles at events throughout California.My family doesnt celebrate Christmas until the middle of January, when our reindeer come home, but its great, she said. We get to celebrate with hundreds of thousands of people all over California. When a child is on the edge of not believing in Santa, the realization that reindeer are real translates into one more year of innocence and belief. I cant think of anything a parent would want more for Christmas.And Ms. Frieling has a tip for children who plan to leave snacks for Santa and his crew next year: graham crackers. Her reindeer go nuts for them. | Business |
Chinese researchers have uploaded genetic sequences of coronaviruses to a scientific database more than a year after they took them offline.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via ShutterstockJuly 30, 2021A batch of early coronavirus data that went missing for a year has emerged from hiding.In June, an American scientist discovered that more than 200 genetic sequences from Covid-19 patient samples isolated in China early in the pandemic had puzzlingly been removed from an online database. With some digital sleuthing, Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, managed to track down 13 of the sequences on Google Cloud.When Dr. Bloom shared his experience in a report posted online, he wrote that it seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence.But now an odd explanation has emerged, stemming from an editorial oversight by a scientific journal. And the sequences have been uploaded into a different database, overseen by the Chinese government.The story began in early 2020, when researchers at Wuhan University investigated a new way to test for the deadly coronavirus sweeping the country. They sequenced a short stretch of genetic material from virus samples taken from 34 patients at a Wuhan hospital.The researchers posted their findings online in March 2020. That month, they also uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and submitted a paper describing their results to a scientific journal called Small. The paper was published in June 2020.Dr. Bloom became aware of the Wuhan sequences this spring while researching the origin of Covid-19. Reading a May 2020 review about early genetic sequences of coronaviruses, he came across a spreadsheet that noted their presence in the Sequence Read Archive.But Dr. Bloom could not find them in the database. He emailed the Chinese scientists on June 6 to ask where the data went but did not get a response. On June 22, he posted his report, which was covered by The New York Times and other media outlets.At the time, a spokeswoman for the N.I.H. said that the authors of the study had requested in June 2020 that the sequences be withdrawn from the database. The authors informed the agency that the sequences were being updated and would be added to a different database. (The authors did not respond to inquiries from The Times.)But a year later, Dr. Bloom could not find the sequences on any database.On July 5, more than a year after the researchers withdrew the sequences from the Sequence Read Archive and two weeks after Dr. Blooms report was published online, the sequences were quietly uploaded to a database maintained by China National Center for Bioinformation by Ben Hu, a researcher at Wuhan University and a co-author of the Small paper.On July 21, the disappearance of the sequences was brought up during a news conference in Beijing, where Chinese officials rejected claims that the pandemic started as a lab leak.According to a translation of the news conference by a journalist at the state-controlled Xinhua News Agency, the vice minister of Chinas National Health Commission, Dr. Zeng Yixin, said that the trouble arose when editors at Small deleted a paragraph in which the scientists described the sequences in the Sequence Read Archive.Therefore, the researchers thought it was no longer necessary to store the data in the N.C.B.I. database, Dr. Zeng said, referring to the Sequence Read Archive, which is run by the N.I.H.An editor at Small, which specializes in science at the micro and nano scale and is based in Germany, confirmed his account. The data availability statement was mistakenly deleted, the editor, Plamena Dogandzhiyski, wrote in an email. We will issue a correction very shortly, which will clarify the error and include a link to the depository where the data is now hosted.The journal posted a formal correction to that effect on Thursday.It is not clear why the authors did not mention the journals error when they requested that the sequences be removed from the Sequence Read Archive, or why they told the N.I.H. that the sequences were being updated. Nor is it clear why they waited a year to upload them to another database. Dr. Hu did not respond to an email asking for comment.Dr. Bloom could not offer an explanation for the conflicting accounts, either. Im not in a position to adjudicate among them, he said in an interview.On their own, these sequences cant resolve the open questions about how the pandemic originated, whether through a contact with a wild animal, a leak from a lab or some other route.In their initial reports, the Wuhan researchers wrote that they extracted genetic material from samples from outpatients with suspected Covid-19 early in the epidemic. But the entries in the Chinese database now indicate that they were taken from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University on January 30 almost two months after the earliest reports of Covid-19 in China.While the disappearance of the sequences appears to be the result of an editorial error, Dr. Bloom felt that it was still worthwhile looking for other sequences of coronaviruses that might be lurking online. It definitely means we should keep looking, he said. | science |
Soccer|Arsenal Regains Top Spothttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/sports/soccer/arsenal-regains-top-spot.htmlSports Briefing | SoccerFeb. 3, 2014In the Premier Leagues top-four shuffle, Arsenal is leading the way again for now. After slipping from the summit during the week, the Gunners overcame struggling Crystal Palace, 2-0, on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlains two second-half goals.Now the focus turns to Monday night, when Manchester City, which is 2 points behind Arsenal, hosts Chelsea, which is 3 points further back in third. Liverpool remained in fourth place, but its 1-1 draw at West Bromwich Albion was a missed opportunity to strengthen its pursuit of Champions League qualification. For once neither Lionel Messis Barcelona nor Cristiano Ronaldos Real Madrid is leading the way in Spain. Atltico Madrid took sole possession of first place for the first time this season by routing Real Sociedad, 4-0. Juventus eased to a comfortable 3-1 win over its bitter rival Inter Milan to extend its lead at the top of the Italian league standings to 9 points. | Sports |
MatterCredit...Dant Fenolio/Science SourceMarch 24, 2016Its one of the most famous chapters in evolution, so familiar that it regularly inspires New Yorker cartoons: Some 375 million years ago, our ancestors emerged from the sea, evolving from swimming fish to vertebrates that walked on land.Scientists still puzzle over exactly how the transition from sea to land took place. For the most part, theyve had to rely on information gleaned from fossils of some of the intermediate species.But now a team of researchers has found a remarkable parallel to one of evolutions signature events. In a cave in Thailand, theyve discovered that a blind fish walks the way land vertebrates do.The waterfall-climbing cave fish, Cryptotora thamicola, has even evolved many of the skeletal features that our ancestors did for walking, including a full-blown pelvis.Its really weird, said John R. Hutchinson, a biologist at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London who was not involved in the new study. Its a good example of how much fish diversity theres left to be discovered.Drop an ordinary fish on the ground, and it will flop around helplessly: Its fins are adapted for pushing against water, not fighting gravity.The early land vertebrates, known as tetrapods, evolved adaptations that enabled them to move efficiently over solid ground. A pelvis joined their hind limbs to their spines, for example. Their vertebrae grew flanges so that they interlocked, helping the spine hold itself stiff and straight even when being pulled down by gravity.These adaptations led tetrapods to walk in a distinctive fashion, moving their forelegs and hind legs together in a cycle. Early tetrapods probably walked much the way salamanders do today, bending their trunk from side to side as they traveled.All tetrapods descend from a single ancestor a single lineage of fish that managed to spread on land. Some other fishes evolved vaguely similar ways of moving around.ImageCredit...Apinun SuvarnarakshaOn coral reefs, for example, frogfish can push off surfaces with their fins. They have a gait that looks something like a slow-motion walk. But they can manage this movement only underwater.Other fish can move on land, although none of them use a tetrapod gait to do so. Some simply squirm, while others, like mudskippers, rely on their front fins as crutches. In Hawaii, the Nopili rock-climbing goby climbs up rock faces by using its mouth as a suction cup.The waterfall-climbing cave fish is leaps ahead of them, it turns out. Pale and blind, the two-inch-long fish feeds on microbes and organic matter growing on the cave walls. It was discovered in 1985, deep inside a system of caves in northern Thailand, and has been found nowhere else.While other fish in the caves enjoy a life in quiet pools, the waterfall-climbing cave fish clambers up slick rocks as water crashes over it.On a recent expedition to the caves, Apinun Suvarnaraksha, a biologist at Maejo University in Thailand, and Daphne Soares, of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, came across the climber and took some grainy videos of it.Back in New Jersey, Dr. Soares showed the videos to her colleague, Brooke E. Flammang, an expert on biomechanics.I was completely blown away, Dr. Flammang said. Instead of flopping or crutching, the cave fish were using what looked like a full-blown tetrapod gait.These guys seemed to be very leisurely walking up the rock face, Dr. Flammang said.She wanted to study the fish more closely, but the species is rare and protected, and she could not bring any of them into her lab.Dr. Suvarnaraksha did the next best thing. In a Thai museum collection, he found one of the few preserved specimens of the fish. He took it to a dental school and used a high-resolution CT scanner to make images of the fish.After Dr. Suvarnaraksha emailed the images to Dr. Flammang, she was able to line up the images together to reconstruct the fishs three-dimensional anatomy.In many ways, the skeleton of the fish looked like what youd see on a walking tetrapod. I literally thought someone was playing a trick on me, she said.In typical fish, the pelvis is just a pair of small bones floating in the body wall. Fish use the bones only to stabilize their pelvic fins, so that they can stop themselves from rolling over.In the waterfall-climbing cave fish, on the other hand, the pelvis is a complex of bones that is fused to the spine by elongated ribs. Its the same arrangement that tetrapods evolved, allowing them to hold themselves up with their hind legs.Typical fish also have small vertebrae that dont overlap, allowing them to bend their bodies as they swim. But the waterfall-climbing cave fish has the same overlapping growths on their vertebrae that stiffen the spine in tetrapods.Functionally, it makes perfect sense, but to see it in a fish is incredibly wild, Dr. Flammang said.In Thailand, Dr. Suvarnaraksha then went back to the caves with a video camera. He scooped two of the fish into an aquarium and made videos of them walking at different angles.When Dr. Flammang and her colleagues analyzed the images, they confirmed their initial hunch: The fish were using their tetrapod-like bodies to walk with a tetrapod-like gait. It most closely resembles that of a salamander.The researchers published their study on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.Dr. Flammang said that the waterfall-climbing cave fish eventually might give scientists hints about how fish originally arrived on land. The physics are the same, she said.Scientists have found trackways in Poland dating back almost 400 million years that look as if they were made by a walking tetrapod. But the oldest tetrapod fossils found so far date only to 375 million years.Its possible that a fish, rather than a primitive tetrapod, made those tracks by moving as the waterfall-climbing cave fish does today.We see these footprints in a fish today, doing something very unfishlike, Dr. Flammang said. | science |
Justin Bieber Worried for Alessia Cara After Grammy Win 1/29/2018 TMZ.com Justin Bieber never won a Grammy for best new artist ... and it sounds like he's glad he didn't. We got the Biebs leaving Mr Chow Sunday night and asked him if he thought winning in that category is a curse. Alessia Cara beat out Khalid, Lil Uzi Vert, Julia Michaels and SZA for the statue. From the sound of it, Justin might be crossing his fingers for Alessia. TMZ broke the story ... Justin didn't fly to NYC for the Grammys because he's working on a new album and doesn't want to make any big appearances until it's completed. That said, he's been a no-show in the past because he didn't think much of the awards. It seems like that's still the case because he didn't even watch Sunday night. | Entertainment |
Credit...M.I.T.Nov. 6, 2016John D. Roberts, an organic chemist who pioneered the use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and other techniques to reveal the structures of molecules and the dance of atoms as they rearrange in chemical reactions, died on Oct. 29 at his home in Pasadena, Calif. He was 98.The cause was a stroke, his daughter, Anne, said.In the 1950s, Dr. Roberts played a crucial role in the explosive growth of physical organic chemistry, a field that studies the reactivity of biological compounds. One notable contribution was in popularizing nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which was developed by physicists, to understand chemical structures and reaction mechanisms.This was a real revolution for organic chemists at the time, said Peter B. Dervan, a professor of chemistry at Caltech, where Dr. Roberts worked for more than 60 years. Jack saw the potential use of this spectroscopy and mastered it, and then, by publishing papers in this area, convinced other organic chemists that this was a powerful tool.Dr. Roberts was a leader in understanding how organic reactions occurred, and he shared his techniques with the scientific community.He helped enable the development of everything that involves organic compounds, said George M. Whitesides, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University who received his Ph.D. under Dr. Roberts in 1964. So, if you eat it, take it as a drug, use it in your clothes all that stuff uses techniques that he didnt necessarily develop, but that he taught to the chemical community.In addition to spectroscopy, Dr. Roberts helped popularize the use of isotopes as tracers to monitor where atoms move during chemical reactions.Isotopes are forms of an element that have different atomic masses but retain similar chemical properties. Dr. Roberts saw their usefulness as labels to help organic chemists decipher the short-lived intermediaries between starting material and product.He worked out this quite mysterious and marvelous way of looking at things that are so ephemeral that you cant see them, Dr. Whitesides said. Its envisioning the invisible.Dr. Roberts also wrote about molecular orbital theory, which is one of the fundamental concepts within organic chemistry used for predicting where electrons in a molecule go.Jack is an absolute supreme educator, said Jacqueline K. Barton, who leads the chemistry department at Caltech. He didnt come up with molecular orbital theory, but he could beautifully apply it, and explain it and teach us all about it.John Dombrowski Roberts was born on June 8, 1918, in Los Angeles. As a teenager he frequented science open houses at Caltech, and was fascinated by the chemistry experiments and electrical machines that shot sparks and blew up blocks of wood.He took his love for chemistry to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1941 and received a doctorate in 1944.In 1945, he went to Harvard to begin a postdoctoral program, and then in 1946, he became a professor at M.I.T. Around this time, Dr. Roberts performed perhaps his most famous experiment, which produced the short-lived molecule benzyne, a form of the molecule benzene that contained a triple bond, which people at one time did not think could exist.He left that position in 1953 to return to California for a job at Caltech, where Linus Pauling, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize twice, was the chemistry division chairman.At Caltech, Dr. Roberts persuaded Dr. Pauling and the universitys board to buy a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy machine, which was the first sold to a university.Dr. Roberts won a number of awards for his contributions to chemistry, including the Priestley Medal in 1987 and the National Medal of Science in 1990. He wrote his autobiography, The Right Place at the Right Time, in 1990. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2008 and a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2009.Besides his daughter, Anne, he is survived by three sons, Donald, John and Allen; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. His wife of 68 years, Edith, died in 2010.Dr. Roberts was well regarded as a mentor to budding chemists, especially to women.When he was offered a position at Caltech in 1953, one of his graduate students, Dorothy Semenow, presented a problem. At that time, Caltech did not admit women, and there was fierce controversy over whether to let her in. But Dr. Roberts would not take the position without her.He spearheaded the campaign to get Caltech to admit women, Dr. Semenow said. He and Linus Pauling were very courageous in doing that.In recent years, Dr. Roberts said that bringing Dr. Semenow with him to Caltech was clearly the best thing I have done at Caltech in the 60 years I have been here. | science |
Drinking, cigarette smoking and the use of hard drugs all declined, according to a new federal survey of high school and middle school students.Credit...Paul Sancya/Associated PressDec. 18, 2019Teenagers are drinking less alcohol, smoking fewer cigarettes and trying fewer hard drugs, new federal survey data shows. But these public health gains have been offset by a sharp increase in vaping of marijuana and nicotine.These diverging trend lines, published Wednesday, are among the findings in the Monitoring the Future survey a closely watched annual study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA, of eighth, 10th and 12th graders. The survey shows that youth drug use and experimentation continue to undergo significant evolution.Most troubling to public health experts in this years report were sharp increases in marijuana vaping. Of 12th graders surveyed, 14 percent said they had vaped marijuana in the last month, nearly double the 7.5 percent reported a year ago.The percentage of teenagers who said they had vaped marijuana once or more over the last year essentially doubled during the past two years as well, rising to 7 percent for eighth graders, 19.4 percent for 10th graders and 20.8 percent for 12th graders.The survey found that 3.5 percent of 12th graders and 3 percent of 10th graders report daily use, the first year the researchers had asked that question.The data also echoed statistics that the government released in September about e-cigarettes, with a quarter of high school seniors reporting that they had vaped nicotine within the last month, along with one in four 10th graders.This is a very, very worrisome trend, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIDA, said of the rise in both types of vaping among young people.Vaping of marijuana was at the root of a public health crisis that unfolded this summer when more than 2,000 people across the country, many in their teens and 20s, became gravely ill with a lung illness that left many of them unable to breathe on their own. Most of the patients said they had vaped THC, the high-inducing ingredient in marijuana.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 2,409 cases of hospitalization associated with vaping lung illness nationwide and 52 deaths. (Many of those who died were middle-aged or older, though one was 17.)Public health experts have said the cause is not entirely clear but appears to stem from the way the lungs struggle to process certain oils used in black-market marijuana vaping devices; they have identified vitamin E acetate, an ingredient in some products, as a possible cause.Though vaping of marijuana is on the rise, the overall rates of using the drug in all forms smoking, vaping, edibles were mixed. The rate of overall marijuana use held steady for high school students who reported using it once or more over the past year, but there was an uptick in daily use.The Monitoring the Future survey this year did give public health experts a number of reasons to feel encouraged, as high school students reported declining use of many substances, including alcohol and tobacco, continuing a long-term trend. Roughly 52 percent of high school seniors said they had used alcohol in the last year, along with 37.7 percent of 10th graders. Those figures have been dropping for years; in 2000, 73.2 percent of 12th graders said they had used alcohol in the last year as did 65.3 percent of 10th graders. Cigarette use continued to drop, too. The portion of seniors who reported smoking in the last month fell to 5.7 percent, down from 13.6 percent five years ago.Public health experts said that those declines along with drops in the use of prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin are the result of a multifaceted effort in the United States to discourage drug use, including stricter school penalties, smoking bans and general public awareness campaigns. There has been a whole lot of effort at the community level, said Dr. Sion Kim Harris, a pediatrician and director for the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Boston Childrens Hospital. There are some encouraging trends.On the flip side, she said, when it comes to vaping, young people may have gotten the wrong message: that it is not harmful. Silvia Martins, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, noted that marijuana is increasingly marketed in states where it is legal to suggest the drug may have widespread health benefits, claims that are not backed up by science. The rise of marijuana vaping among young people, she said, could be related to the fact it is seen as less harmful and less risky.More broadly, Dr. Martins and other experts said that the changes in teenage drug use may have a curious influence: technology.The rise in vaping, they said, stems partly from the allure of the sleek electronic devices that deliver nicotine and marijuana, glamorized on social media and streaming videos; the gadgets are also relatively easy to conceal because they are designed to reduce smell and smoke. The popular Juul device, for instance, is often referred to as the iPhone of e-cigarettes.One of the reasons they are embracing these devices is because they are new technology. It resonates, said Dr. Volkow of NIDA, the federal drug abuse institute.But technology may also be partly responsible for the decline in the use of some other drugs, Dr. Martins and Dr. Volkow, among others, have hypothesized. The theory is that some teenagers are partying less because they are spending time stimulated by their devices, and communicating with one another over social media, rather than in gatherings where they might have encountered alcohol or drugs. Dr. Martins is in the middle of research to test that hypothesis.Now Dr. Volkow said she hopes that teenagers will awaken to the fact that using marijuana regularly can be dangerous. Less and less do kids feel it is harmful to smoke marijuana regularly, she said, adding that she regrets that these teens are being misled by what she called the freedom of misinformation.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] | Health |
Oct. 20, 2020, 5:38 p.m. ETOct. 20, 2020, 5:38 p.m. ETFor years, it was the subject of countless Fox News segments, talk radio rants, and viral right-wing tweets and Facebook posts. It spawned congressional hearings, Justice Department investigations, and investigations of those investigations. President Trump called it the biggest political crime in the history of our country, and suggested that its perpetrators deserved 50-year prison sentences.Now, weeks before the election, Spygate a labyrinthine conspiracy theory involving unproven allegations about a clandestine Democratic plot to spy on Mr. Trumps 2016 campaign appears to be losing steam.The theory still commands plenty of attention inside the right-wing media sphere. But Mr. Trumps quest to turn Spygate into a major mainstream issue in this years campaign may be coming up short. Data from NewsWhip, a firm that tracks social media performance, shows that stories about Spygate and two related keywords Obamagate and unmask/unmasked/unmasking received 1.5 million interactions on Facebook and from influential Twitter accounts last month, down from about 20 million interactions in May.VideoPart of Spygates fizzle may be related to the fact that three years on, none of Mr. Trumps political enemies have been charged with crimes. Last year, a highly anticipated Justice Department inspector generals report found no evidence of a politicized plot to spy on the Trump campaign angering believers who thought the report would vindicate their belief in a criminal deep state plot against the president.And this fall, the Spygate faithful got insult added to injury when a Justice Department investigation into one of their core concerns whether Obama-era officials had acted improperly by unmasking the identities of certain people named in intelligence documents came up empty-handed.Few right-wing narratives have been as durable as Spygate, which has morphed over time into a kind of catchall theory encompassing various allegations of Democratic malfeasance. Fox News hosts including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson went all in on it, as did Republicans in Congress, including Representative Devin Nunes of California and former Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. But nobody embraced the theory like Mr. Trump, who has returned to it frequently to deflect attention from his own troubles, whether it was the Mueller investigation or his administrations response to the Covid-19 pandemic.As the election approaches, its worth looking back on Spygates evolution, both because it illustrates the way that partisan misinformation bubbles up through the right-wing media ecosystem, and, ultimately, because it shows how Mr. Trumps obsession with a confusing, hard-to-follow narrative may have backfired as a campaign strategy.Here is a (very) abridged version of the main waypoints in Spygate.March 2017: Right-wing blogs and media outlets began discussing theories they called DeepStateGate or Obamagate, a reference to false claims that President Obama had tapped Mr. Trumps phone.May 2018: Mr. Trump seized on the news that an F.B.I. informant was sent to meet with members of his campaign staff, dubbing it Spygate, and said that it could be one of the biggest political scandals in history. Pro-Trump media outlets ran with the unsubstantiated claims. Top-ranking Republicans initially tried to distance themselves from the theory, although many would later embrace it.April 2019: Spygate gained momentum when William P. Barr, the attorney general, testified to Congress that he believed spying did occur on Mr. Trumps 2016 campaign, appearing to contradict previous Justice Department statements.December 2019: Michael Horowitz, the Justice Departments inspector general, released a long-awaited report detailing his findings about the origins and conduct of the F.B.I.s Russia investigation. Mr. Trumps media allies spent weeks hyping the report. (Sean Hannity predicted it would shock the conscience.) Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory also latched onto the Horowitz report, predicting that it would set in motion indictments and mass arrests of the presidents enemies.But the Horowitz report did not deliver a knockout punch. It revealed errors and lapses in some F.B.I. actions, but found no evidence of political bias in the F.B.I.s Russia investigation, and rejected Mr. Trumps suggestion that there was an organized Democratic conspiracy against him.May 2020: As the country reeled from the Covid-19 pandemic, two developments brought Spygate (which had since been rebranded as Obamagate) back onto the national stage. First, the Justice Department dropped its criminal case against the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, a central figure in Spygate, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat.Then, days later, a list of Obama administration officials who might have tried to unmask Mr. Flynn was declassified and released by Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence. (Unmasking, in intelligence parlance, refers to a process by which officials can seek to reveal the identity of individuals who are referred to anonymously in intelligence documents. Unmasking is common, and such requests are made thousands of times a year.) Those named on the list included former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., giving new fuel to Mr. Trumps attempt to paint himself as the victim of a partisan conspiracy.This was, in many ways, the closest that Spygate came to escaping the right-wing media ecosystem. Fox News devoted hours to the theory, which received more airtime than the coronavirus on some days. Mainstream news organizations tried to make sense of the theory, and Mr. Trump himself seemed obsessed with it, even though he often struggled to describe what the conspiracy actually was. In a flurry of more than 100 tweets sent on May 10, Mothers Day, Mr. Trump raged about Obamagate, and repeated many of the debunked allegations about Obama-era misconduct, Mr. Flynn, and the Russia investigation.By this point, many Trump supporters had pinned their hopes on two government reports, which they hoped would soon blow the entire scandal wide open.The first was a sweeping investigation led by John Durham, the U.S. attorney from Connecticut who was tapped by Mr. Barr to look into the origins of the F.B.I.s Russia probe.The second was a smaller piece of the Durham investigation led by John Bash, a U.S. attorney Mr. Barr appointed to look into whether Obama-era officials had improperly unmasked Mr. Flynn and others.October 2020: With less than a month to go before the election, Spygate/Obamagate continued to unravel. Mr. Barr has told Republican lawmakers that Mr. Durhams report would likely not arrive before the election. And the unmasking investigation led by Mr. Bash, which many Spygate aficionados believed would lead to indictments and arrests of top Democrats, instead ended with no findings of irregularities or substantive wrongdoing.Still, for Mr. Trump, hope springs eternal. He has continued his crusade, comparing Spygate to a treasonous act that should disqualify Mr. Biden from the presidency. | Tech |
Credit...Edgar Su/ReutersMay 14, 2019SAN FRANCISCO When 51 people were killed in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March, the suspect, an Australian man, broadcast the attack live on Facebook. The video spread across the internet.On Tuesday night, in its strongest response yet to the violent scenes that were live-streamed over its social network, Facebook announced that it would place more restrictions on the use of its live video service.The company said that starting Tuesday, anyone who breaks certain rules in broadcasting content on Facebook Live will be temporarily barred from using the service, with the possibility of a 30-day ban on a first offense. Previously, it did not typically bar users until they had broken these rules multiple times.Multiple offenders, or people who post particularly egregious content, could be barred from Facebook.Following the horrific terrorist attacks in New Zealand, weve been reviewing what more we can do to limit our services from being used to cause harm or spread hate, Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity at Facebook, wrote in a blog post. We will now apply a one strike policy to Live in connection with a broader range of offenses.The new restrictions may not go far enough for critics who have called on the company to simply shut down Facebook Live. And it may not do much to satisfy some governments. Australian lawmakers, for example, have considered fines and even jail time for social media executives who fail to quickly remove violent content.The announcement is timed to coincide with a meeting in Paris between Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and President Emmanuel Macron of France.On Wednesday, the two government leaders are expected to sign the Christchurch Call, a push for new limits against the spread of violent and extremist content online. They are expected to urge Facebook and other internet companies to make commitments that include re-examining their algorithms that steer people to content across the web.The agreement is nonbinding, but adds more political pressure to Facebook to safeguard its platform against being an online broadcast network for violent behavior.The attack in Christchurch inspired Ms. Ardern to push for international cooperation against online extremism. She has argued that a country-by-country approach will not work in an interconnected digital world. In addition to France, Britain, Canada, Jordan, Senegal, Indonesia, Australia, Norway, Ireland and the European Commission are also expected to sign the agreement.Facebook, Google and Microsoft have also said they will sign. Twitter declined to comment.In announcing the new restrictions on its live video service, Facebook said it was partnering with three universities the University of Maryland, Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley in an effort to develop new technologies for detecting and removing troublesome images and videos from the internet.Facebook and other companies were slow to identify and remove the Christchurch video in part because the original had been edited in small ways as it passed across various services.Through its new university partnerships backed by $7.5 million in funding Facebook said it would work on building technology that can detect images and videos that have been manipulated in subtle ways.Over the past three years, Facebook and other social media giants have come under increasing pressure to identify and remove a wide range of problematic content, including hate speech, false news and violence.The company has said that it is now using artificial intelligence to pinpoint many types of problematic content and that this technology is rapidly improving.But A.I. doesnt always detect some material, most notably hate speech and false news. And the attack in Christchurch showed the technology still has a long way to go when it comes to detecting violent images. Facebook also pays thousands of contract employees to scrutinize and remove problematic content.The Christchurch video spread despite those safeguards.One solution to rid Facebook Live of violent material would be to simply shut it down. But that is not yet a step the company wants to take. In an echo of previous statements from company executives, Mr. Rosen said the company was trying to find a balance between opposing views.We recognize the tension between people who would prefer unfettered access to our services and the restrictions needed to keep people safe on Facebook, he wrote. Our goal is to minimize risk of abuse on Live while enabling people to use Live in a positive way every day.Brendan OConnor, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who once interned at Facebook and now specializes in technologies that can catch troublesome content on social media, said analyzing video as it is being broadcast was a particularly difficult problem.This is sensible I guess, he said of Facebooks new rules. It seems like one step among hopefully many others. | Tech |
VideotranscripttranscriptHow Kirstjen Nielsen Became the Face of Trumps Zero Tolerance PolicyThe secretary of homeland security is under increased scrutiny for the Trump administrations crackdown on illegal border crossings and the decision to separate children from their parents. Heres how she arrived at this moment.The image that I want of this country is an immigration system that secures our borders and upholds our humanitarian ideals. Congress needs to fix it. Thats Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Shes trying to deflect criticism aimed at the Trump administration for separating families who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Critics say its a heartless tactic. Nielsen has tried to argue that theyre simply following the law. Its not the first time that shes been in the crosshairs. She was close to resigning in May after Trump berated her at a cabinet meeting because he thought she wasnt adequately securing the nations borders. Good afternoon. In a press briefing soon after, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Nielsens rumored desire to resign. Does the president have confidence in Secretary Nielsen? As weve said many times before, if the president no longer has confidence in a cabinet member, hell let you know. So how did Nielsen get here? She joined the newly formed Transportation Security Administration after 9/11 and devised national response plans for things like terrorist incidents and extreme weather events. Fast forward to the Trump administration. She worked under John Kelly when he headed homeland security. And then again, when he moved to the White House to be chief of staff. Nielsen was known as the as the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper, a no-nonsense policy wonk who helped instill discipline in the chaotic West Wing. Nielsens November confirmation hearing to take over D.H.S. was mostly deferential, but there were some bumps. I believe in reuniting children with their families. If their families are not here Then are you saying you would deport those children to reunite them with their families who have actually put those children in a process of fleeing violence, and they want those children to be safe and in the United States? Well, in that case, I would certainly want to work with you to understand more about the implications. Thank you. Thats an issue shes back to dealing with today, though now shes less conciliatory. Here is the bottom line. D.H.S. is no longer ignoring the law. We are enforcing the laws as they exist on the books. As long as illegal entry remains a criminal offense, D.H.S. will not look the other way.The secretary of homeland security is under increased scrutiny for the Trump administrations crackdown on illegal border crossings and the decision to separate children from their parents. Heres how she arrived at this moment.CreditCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 19, 2018WASHINGTON Just last month, Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, drafted a resignation letter after being berated by President Trump over what he saw as her tepid support for his tough immigration policies, according to two people familiar with the episode. She never sent it.This week, confronted by images of children in cages after they had been separated from their families at the Southwest border, Ms. Nielsen served as a shield for the Trump administration against global criticism for its hard-line attempts to discourage illegal immigration.Smiling as she took the White House lectern on Monday, Ms. Nielsen read from a script defending Mr. Trumps zero tolerance policy, which has separated 2,300 children from their parents yet failed to reduce the number of families trying to cross the border. She falsely said that Mr. Trumps family separation strategy was not administration policy, wrongly insisting it was the result of legal loopholes that only Congress can fix.Asked whether images of young children packed into detention centers and an audiotape of them keening for their parents were intended or unintended consequences of the administrations decision making, Ms. Nielsen replied: They reflect the focus of those who post such pictures and narratives. The narratives we dont see are the narratives of the crime.Asked how is this not child abuse, she responded coolly, Be more specific, please.The fallout has been swift. A growing number of congressional Democrats are calling for Ms. Nielsens resignation, and Republicans moved to stanch the political bleeding. The governors of Maryland and Virginia withdrew National Guard troops from the southern border. The powerful Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce slammed the practice of tearing migrant families apart.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesSurely a nation as big, generous and compassionate as the United States can find a way to prevent separating children from their parents at the border, Thomas J. Donohue, the chambers chief executive, said in a statement on Tuesday.On Tuesday night, the controversy followed Ms. Nielsen to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, where an organized group of protesters confronted her about the family separations, shouting, Shame, shame, shame.During his first year in office, the president delighted in boasting that illegal crossings at the border with Mexico had declined drastically on his watch. But so far in 2018, illegal crossings have surged, with more than 50,000 migrants entering the United States each month in March, April and May.The reasons for the increase in border traffic are many, including the cyclical nature of migration and a booming American economy. But Mr. Trump has become increasingly enraged and focused on a crackdown, heaping new pressure upon Ms. Nielsen.Ms. Nielsens comments to reporters at the White House on Monday appeared to appease Mr. Trump, who on Tuesday night said she did a fabulous job.We want heart and security in America! the president wrote in a Twitter post.The Department of Homeland Security, which has a budget of more than $40 billion and a staff of more than 240,000, is a sprawling amalgam created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that cobbled together 22 government agencies. The department is responsible for everything from protecting the nation from cyberattacks to responding to natural disasters.But as the president rails about illegal immigration, Ms. Nielsens attention has been increasingly drawn to the departments border security role.Your priority, once you accept the job, is to echo the presidents priorities. She has done that, said Tom Ridge, the first homeland security secretary, who said Ms. Nielsen has often sought out his advice. But this president, with some of the things he sometimes does and says, has made her job harder.At 46, Ms. Nielsen is the youngest person to lead the sprawling agency, and an unlikely choice for the job. She was a staff member at the agency before leading it, helping to set up the Transportation Security Administration, now an agency within homeland security, after the Sept. 11 attacks. She was later tapped to be a special assistant to President George W. Bush, working on the White House Homeland Security Council.After Mr. Trumps surprise election victory, Ms. Nielsen volunteered for his transition team and helped prepare John F. Kelly, then the president-elects nominee for homeland security secretary, for his confirmation hearings. Mr. Kelly named Ms. Nielsen his chief of staff, and the two have moved in tandem through the Trump administration, becoming personal friends in the process.When Mr. Trump named Mr. Kelly his White House chief of staff last July, Ms. Nielsen became his deputy, helping to enforce new rules on access to the president. Mr. Kelly then backed Ms. Nielsen to succeed him at the Homeland Security Department, though both Democrats and anti-immigration groups criticized her lack of experience.During her confirmation hearings, Ms. Nielsen sidestepped questions about Mr. Trumps immigration policy, but acknowledged that his pledge to build a wall along the entire Southwest border was unrealistic. There is no need for a wall from sea to shining sea, she told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. She was confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support.During her first cabinet meeting as homeland security secretary in December, Mr. Trump told the group, I sure hope Kirstjens tough enough, according to a report in Politico.In a recent interview, Ms. Nielsen said she was quietly trying to put her own stamp on the agency, focusing on beefing up the cybersecurity division and doing a critical assessment of other programs at the department.Its time we took a look at what works and what might work better, she said.Ms. Nielsen has also been raising her visibility as an advocate for Mr. Trumps immigration policies. During whirlwind trips to the border, and in speeches and testimony on Capitol Hill, she forcefully lobbied Congress for Mr. Trumps border wall. In April, touring Arizonas border with Mexico, she called illegal crossings a crisis and criticized a Supreme Court ruling curtailing her departments ability to deport legal immigrants convicted of certain crimes.She defended the departments withdrawal of Temporary Protected Status for nearly 300,000 Hondurans, Salvadorans and Haitians, many with American-born children, who were granted haven in the United States after natural disasters and civil unrest. The decisions prompted a diplomatic outcry.The statute is very clear, she said in an interview with NPR in May. If the conditions that originated from the designating event no longer exist, the statute says the secretary shall terminate. To pretend that conditions continue to exist from a hurricane 20 years ago is a fiction.In February, after the administration began pulling back the temporary protections, the departments assistant secretary for international engagement in the office of strategy, policy and plans decided to resign. The official, James D. Nealon, a former United States ambassador to Honduras, had reportedly also clashed with the White House over immigration policy.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesIn the interview, Ms. Nielsen insisted she was simply doing her job. Its not partisan, she said. We should all care about securing our borders and our country. Were talking about stopping criminals, criminal gangs and terrorist suspects. We need to know who is trying to come into the country.Over her six months in office, Ms. Nielsen has tried to straddle the line on immigration policy, between critics on the left who wanted her to be a voice of conscience and those on the right who accused her of being soft on illegal immigrants.Under the best circumstances, D.H.S. is a hard place to run, said Jay Ahren, a former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection during the administration of President George W. Bush. No single person can run an organization of that size without a strong team.Even before her Monday briefing, Ms. Nielsen had become a political lightning rod. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, accused Ms. Nielsen of politicizing the department. I think she has been distracted by overthinking how well something is going to be received at the White House, he said.In the White House, Ms. Nielsens political fortunes have hewed closely to those of Mr. Kelly. A department spokesman disputed that she drafted a resignation letter last month and described as false reports that she had been close to resigning.On Monday, Mr. Kelly reportedly urged Ms. Nielsen not to participate in the White House briefing. She went anyway. | Politics |
UFC's Liz Carmouche The UFC Is Ready for a Gay Man ... 'This Is a Safe Place' 1/29/2018 TMZSports.com Liz Carmouche -- the UFC's first openly lesbian fighter -- says public perception has come a long way since she came out ... and the UFC is finally ready to accept a gay male athlete. "I do actually believe that a man could come out as openly gay and he could rise to the top," Liz told TMZ Sports. You might remember ... Liz broke the glass ceiling back in 2013, when she fought Ronda Rousey in the UFC's inaugural women's title fight. Back then, Carmouche had serious doubts about a man following in her footsteps ... but says she feels differently now after experiencing how LGBTQ fighters are treated in MMA gyms like her own (San Diego Combat Academy). Liz -- who recently partnered with HempMeds -- also told us why she thinks the UFC's at a place where it can let its fighters smoke weed ... even though she's way more of an advocate for CBD oil. TMZSports.com | Entertainment |
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Scientists for Tool That Builds Better CatalystsBenjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan were honored for work that spurred research into new drugs and reduced the effect of chemistry on the environment.VideotranscripttranscriptThe scientists Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan developed a new and environmentally friendly tool to build molecules, and lessen the impact of chemistry on the environment.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has today decided to award the 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry jointly to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organic catalysis. Compared to metal catalysis, organic catalysis is a more sustainable alternative. It has been estimated that catalysis is responsible for about 35 percent of the worlds G.D.P., which is a pretty impressive figure. And then if we have a more environmentally friendly alternative, its expected that that will make a difference.The scientists Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan developed a new and environmentally friendly tool to build molecules, and lessen the impact of chemistry on the environment.CreditCredit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished Oct. 6, 2021Updated Oct. 7, 2021The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for their development of a new tool to build molecules, work that has spurred advances in pharmaceutical research and allowed scientists to construct catalysts with considerably less impact on the environment.The process developed by Dr. List and Dr. MacMillan, while unseen by consumers, has led to a gold rush in the field, the Nobel Committee wrote. Known as organocatalysis, it has helped those who apply chemistry to real world problems to build more precise catalysts that reduce waste and streamline the production of existing pharmaceuticals.Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee, compared the tool to a new player on a chessboard. You can think about the game in a different way, and you can execute the game in a different way, he said after the Nobel conference on Wednesday.H. N. Cheng, the president of the American Chemical Society, said Dr. List and Dr. MacMillans tool goes beyond a new player. Its more than just a chess piece. They have opened up the board, Dr. Cheng said. Now it is up to you to play the game.Dr. MacMillans phone started buzzing early on Wednesday morning, but he ignored it. When it buzzed again later, he saw Dr. List had texted, saying the Royal Swedish Academy had tried to reach him.He looked back at the earlier message, but it misspelled his name, so he dismissed the text as a prank. Dr. MacMillan wrote back to Dr. List and bet him $1,000 that the text was not real and went back to sleep.Later, he woke up and saw his name on the website of The New York Times.Now I am $1,000 down but a very happy person, Dr. MacMillan said.ImageCredit...Denise Applewhite/Princeton University, Via ReutersIn 1835, the Swedish chemist Jacob Berzelius described a phenomenon in which certain substances could galvanize a chemical reaction. These substances were named catalysts, and the process was called catalysis. Since then, scientists have discovered many catalysts that can build up and break down molecules, enabling inventions such as plastics, perfumes and pharmaceuticals.Before 2000, scientists assumed all catalysts were either a metal or an enzyme. Metal catalysts, which can temporarily accommodate electrons or offer them to other molecules during chemical processes, can be toxic and environmentally taxing. Precious metals used as catalysts, such as platinum, must be mined.Enzymes, which are proteins found in nature, are the catalysts that form complicated and vital molecules, like cholesterol and chlorophyll. Because enzymes are so efficient, researchers in the 1990s tried to develop enzyme variants as catalysts to drive the chemical reactions needed by industry and in manufacturing. But enzymes are cumbersome, Dr. Cheng said, and the process led to vast amounts of waste.ImageCredit...Soeren Stache/DPA, via Associated PressIn 2000, Dr. List and Dr. MacMillan working independently of each other developed a new type of catalysis that used organic molecules called asymmetric organocatalysis.Organic molecules, such as carbohydrates, are called that because they build all living things. The researchers discovered cheaper, smaller and safer catalysts that used organic molecules had the same rich chemistry as metal compounds, according to Tehshik Yoon, a chemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their technique was also simpler and more environmentally friendly.Dr. List was working on enzymes at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, in a research group run by Carlos F. Barbas III. He knew of research from the 1970s that used a simple amino acid called proline as a catalyst. The studies had garnered little attention at the time.He tested whether proline could catalyze an aldol reaction, in which carbon atoms from two different molecules bond together. The reaction worked, proving that proline was an excellent catalyst and that an amino acid can drive what is known as asymmetric catalysis.Many organic molecules exist in two, mirrored variants like human hands what is known as chirality. For example, one version of the molecule limonene the right-handed one smells like lemon, and its mirror image, which is left-handed, smells like orange.Organic molecules that play a role in life have this important feature of being handed a right-handed and left-handed version that can have very different chemistry and very different biological consequences, said Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, which has funded both Dr. List and Dr. MacMillans work, the latter continuously since 2000.Chemists and pharmaceutical researchers often only want one version of a molecule, and typical catalysis produced both versions. Having both can lead to disastrous effects; in the 1950s and 1960s, one mirror image of the molecule thalidomide caused severe birth defects in thousands of babies.But asymmetric catalysis can produce just one of these asymmetric molecules, the left or the right, a boon for safety and for reducing chemical waste.Two years earlier, Dr. MacMillan had left a position at Harvard University where he was researching asymmetric catalysis in metals. He noticed these metal catalysts were rarely used in the real world, as they were expensive and difficult to maintain. Some metal catalysts need to be in an environment free of oxygen and moisture, which is hard to achieve at a larger scale.So Dr. MacMillan, working at the time at the University of California, Berkeley, developed a more durable catalyst from organic molecules that, like metals, could temporarily accommodate or provide electrons. He tested the organic molecules ability to drive a Diels-Alder reaction, which can build rings of carbon atoms.Like Dr. Lists experiment, Dr. MacMillans reaction worked perfectly. He said he remembers jumping up and down and telling himself, I think Im going to get tenure.His results showed that some of these organic molecules were excellent at asymmetric catalysis, producing more than 90 percent of the desired mirror image.In 2000, Dr. List and Dr. MacMillan each published their papers. Dr. MacMillans coined the term for this new catalysis organocatalysis so that other researchers might seek out new organic catalysts.It was a watershed moment, Dr. Yoon said. This idea was so obvious and so elegant that it was very easy for other people to apply that central concept to other kinds of reactions.Echoing that point on Wednesday when delivering the prize, Johan Aqvist, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said that many people have wondered why we didnt think of it earlier.Jon Lorsch, the director of the National Health Institutes National Institute of General Medical Sciences, called the process molecular carpentry.You can imagine if youre trying to build houses of different shapes and sizes, if all you had were boards and a hammer and a nail, it would be difficult and slow, Dr. Lorsch said. They developed a whole different suite of tools that allow you to join different kinds of materials together in all sorts of different ways in rapid fashion to build different kinds of structures.Since Dr. Lists and Dr. MacMillans concurrent discoveries, the two scientists and other researchers have designed a plethora of molecules used in drugs, agrochemicals and efficient, durable materials. Their research has also sped up the production of existing pharmaceuticals, such as the antidepressant paroxetine and the antiviral oseltamivir, which treats respiratory infections, the Committee wrote.Dr. List, calling in to the Nobel Conference from a vacation in Amsterdam, said he originally worried his idea was stupid.I literally felt like I was the only one working on this, he said. When I saw it worked, I did feel that this could be something big.Who are the winners?Dr. MacMillan is a Scottish chemist and a professor at Princeton University, where he also headed the department of chemistry from 2010 to 2015. He earned his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, in 1996 before accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. His research has focused on innovative concepts in synthetic organic chemistry.Dr. List is a German chemist, born in Frankfurt, and director at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mlheim an der Ruhr, Germany. His research team, List Laboratory, focuses on the invention of new strategies for the development of perfect chemical reactions, according to the Institutes website. His team posted a video on Twitter celebrating his Nobel Prize after the announcement.He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from Goethe University Frankfurt, before he was appointed to work as an assistant professor at the Scripps Research Institute in California. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Cologne, in Germany.Who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?The chemistry prize was jointly awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their work on the development of Crispr-Cas9, a method for genome editing.Who else won a Nobel Prize in the sciences in 2021?On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for work that has led to the development of nonopioid painkillers.The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded Tuesday to Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University, Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and Giorgio Parisi of the Sapienza University of Rome. The committee said their work has been essential to understanding how Earths climate is changing and how human behavior is influencing those changes.Who else won Nobel Prizes in the sciences in 2020?Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Dr. Michael Houghton and Dr. Charles M. Rice received the prize for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.The physics prize went to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their discoveries that have improved understanding of the universe, including work on black holes.When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?The prize in Literature will be announced in Stockholm on Thursday. Read about last years winner, Louise Glck.The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday in Oslo. Read about last years winner, the U.N. World Food Program.On Monday next week in Stockholm, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science will be announced. Last years prize was shared by Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson. | science |
Dec. 1, 2015Less than three years ago, BlueCrest Capital Management was one of the biggest hedge funds in Europe, managing $37 billion of investor money.Now, with just $8 billion under management, Michael Platt, its billionaire founder has decided to shut its doors to outside money, quietly ending a bumpy few years for the firm and its investors.BlueCrest, a 15-year-old hedge fund based on the Isle of Jersey, announced the decision to return outside capital on Tuesday. It is the latest in a rapid succession of announcements by hedge funds closing their doors, returning capital to investors or liquidating.The move is also a somber illustration of how the hedge fund industry has evolved as managers of some longstanding funds appear to have tired of having to meet clients, negotiate reductions in fees with institutional investors and deal with the negative publicity that comes with lackluster returns.Hedge fund titans like Stanley F. Druckenmiller, George Soros and Julian Robertson have in recent years decided to manage their own wealth without the concern of investors.BlueCrest said it planned to transition into a private investment partnership that would manage money for its partners and employees. The move means BlueCrest will morph into a private trading platform.We like this new structure for us a lot more than the one we are leaving behind, Mr. Platt, who will turn 47 next week, said in an interview. The investor base has become increasingly institutional and they want lower levels of risk and lower levels of fees.Many large, big-name hedge funds have recently underperformed and or closed down altogether. Firms that specialize in wagering on macroeconomic trends or trading commodities have been particularly hard hit.Just a year ago, BlueCrest sought to expand its office in New York by hiring away traders from other hedge funds.In a statement on Tuesday, BlueCrest said changes in the hedge fund industry have weighed on hedge fund profitability, and it specifically noted the cost of hiring top outside talent.The firm has been on a slow decline over the last two years as investors steadily withdrew their money. The amount of money the firm invested on behalf of outside investors peaked at $37 billion in late 2013. It lost a chunk of its assets and a big driver of performance when BlueCrest spun out its $9 billion quantitative trading fund run by Leda Braga, which at its peak had as much as $16 billion in assets under management.In December 2014, BlueCrest sued Meredith Whitney, the founder of Kenbelle Capital, asserting that she had refused to return its investment worth $46 million. The lawsuit was later settled, and the terms were not publicly disclosed.This year, the New Jersey State Investment Council said it would redeem about $284 million from BlueCrest because of disappointing results.One of the biggest concerns for investors in hedge funds is the large fees they charge, a worry that has grown in recent years as the industry at large has performed poorly. Hedge funds typically follow a 2 and 20 model: Investors pay an annual management fee of 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of returns. The model has helped managers like Mr. Platt become very wealthy. In 2014, Mr. Platt made an estimated $800 million, according to Institutional Investors Alpha magazine.In recent years, however, institutional investors have pushed for lower fees, creating a challenge for BlueCrest as it continued to bring in fresh talent and offer lucrative pay packages, Mr. Platt said.Its much more profitable to have 0 and 100 rather than 2 and 20, he said, referring to the firm no longer having to share its profits with outside investors.BlueCrest has also come under scrutiny from consulting firms in recent years. A year ago, the hedge fund consulting firm Aksia recommended that its clients withdraw money from BlueCrest largely because of poor returns from its flagship BlueCrest International, which is said to be flat this year, according to a person briefed on BlueCrests performance. Early in the year, the fund suffered steep losses because of volatility in the Swiss franc after the Swiss central bank unexpectedly delinked the currency from the euro.Assets in BlueCrests flagship fund have shrunk from $10 billion to just over $2 billion. The firms AllBlue fund, which is its largest and invests in other hedge funds, is up 3.6 percent through Nov. 20, according to another person briefed on the firms performance.This year, BlueCrest announced the start of a new equity-focused trading fund and took new office space in Manhattan to house those traders and analysts. It is not clear what will become of that office space. | Business |
Tim Tebow Me In the XFL? I Don't Wanna Talk About It 1/29/2018 TMZSports.com Vince McMahon called him out by name ... so, when we saw Tim Tebow in L.A. over the weekend, we had to ask if he'd ever consider joining the brand new XFL. Tim signed autographs and was his usual friendly self on the way out of Craig's in L.A. -- but when the topic came to the XFL, Tim shut down like the Vikings' offense in the NFC championship. JANUARY 2018 Alpha Entertainment Seems Tim doesn't want to breathe life into the possibility he would leave his baseball career and go back to football. In fact, he talked to us about the Mets when we saw him last week in Bev Hills. Sorry Vince ... TMZSports.com | Entertainment |
Technology|The facial-recognition app Clearview sees a spike in use after Capitol attack.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/facial-recognition-clearview-capitol.htmlCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPublished Jan. 9, 2021Updated Jan. 31, 2021After the Capitol riot, Clearview AI, a facial-recognition app used by law enforcement, has seen a spike in use, said the companys chief executive, Hoan Ton-That.There was a 26 percent increase of searches over our usual weekday search volume, Mr. Ton-That said. There are ample online photos and videos of rioters, many unmasked, breaching the Capitol. The F.B.I. has posted the faces of dozens of them and has requested assistance identifying them. Local police departments around the country are answering their call.We are poring over whatever images or videos are available from whatever sites we can get our hands on, said Armando Aguilar, assistant chief at the Miami Police Department, who oversees investigations. Two detectives in the departments Real Time Crime Center are using Clearview to try to identify rioters and are sending the potential matches to the F.B.I.s Joint Terrorism Task Force office in Miami. They made one potential match within their first hour of searching.This is the greatest threat weve faced in my lifetime, Mr. Aguilar said. The peaceful transition of power is foundational to our republic.Traditional facial recognition tools used by law enforcement depend on databases containing government-provided photos, such as drivers license photos and mug shots. But Clearview, which is used by over 2,400 law enforcement agencies, according to the company, relies instead on a database of more than 3 billion photos collected from social media networks and other public websites. When an officer runs a search, the app provides links to sites on the web where the persons face has appeared.In part because of its effectiveness, Clearview has become controversial. After The New York Times revealed its existence and widespread use last year, lawmakers and social media companies tried to curtail its operations, fearing that its facial-recognition capabilities could pave the way for a dystopian future.The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the Oxford Police Department in Alabama is also using Clearview to identify Capitol riot suspects and is sending information to the F.B.I. Neither the Oxford Police Department nor the F.B.I. has responded to requests for comment.Facial recognition is not a perfect tool. Law enforcement says that it uses facial recognition only as a clue in an investigation and would not charge someone based on that alone, though that has happened in the past.When asked if Clearview had performed any searches itself, Mr. Ton-That demurred.Some people think we should be, but thats really not our job. Were a technology company and provider, he said. Were not vigilantes. | Tech |
Credit...Evan Sung for The New York TimesTrilobitesScientists take a crack at recreating the hypnotic fractal spirals of the Romanesco cauliflower.Credit...Evan Sung for The New York TimesPublished July 8, 2021Updated July 13, 2021Monks once hoped to turn lead into gold through alchemy. But consider the cauliflower instead. It takes just two genes to transform the ordinary stems, stalks and flowers of the weedy, tasteless species Brassica oleracea into a formation as marvelous as this fractal, cloudlike vegetable.This is the true alchemy, says Christophe Godin, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology in Lyon, France.Dr. Godin studies plant architecture by virtually modeling the development of the forms of different species in three dimensions. He wondered what genetic modification lurked behind cauliflowers nested spirals and the logarithmic chartreuse fractals of Romanesco, a cauliflower cultivar that could almost be mistaken for a crystal.How is nature able to build such unexpected objects? he asked. What can be the rules behind this?Fifteen years ago, Dr. Godin met Franois Parcy, a plant biologist with the National Center for Scientific Research in Grenoble, France. In Dr. Parcy, Dr. Godin recognized a fellow fiend for fractal florets.There is no way you cannot notice it is such a gorgeous vegetable, Dr. Parcy said, in reference to Romanesco.Buoyed by a passion for Brassica, Dr. Godin and Dr. Parcy investigated the genetic mystery of the fractal geometry in both Romanesco and standard cauliflower, conjuring the plants in mathematical models and also growing them in real life. Their results, which suggest the fractals form in response to shifts in the networks of genes that govern floral development, are published Thursday in Science.Its such a nice integration of genetics on one hand and rigorous modeling on the other, said Michael Purugganan, a biologist at New York University who was not involved with the research. Theyre trying to show that by tweaking the rules of how genes interact you can get dramatic changes of a plant.ImageCredit...Nigel Cattlin/Science SourceImageCredit...Nigel Cattlin/Science SourceIn the early 2000s, Dr. Parcy believed he understood the cauliflower. He even taught classes on its flower development. What is a cauliflower? How can it grow? Why does it look like this? he said.Cauliflowers, like brussels sprouts, stem from centuries of selective breeding of Brassica oleracea. Humans bred brussels sprouts for lateral buds and cauliflower for flower clusters. Cauliflowers, however, do not produce flower buds; their inflorescences, or flower-bearing shoots, never mature to produce flowers. Instead, cauliflower inflorescences generate replicas of themselves in a spiral, creating clusters of curds like plant-based cottage cheese.As the two researchers discussed cauliflower, Dr. Godin suggested that if Dr. Parcy truly understood the plant, it should be easy to model the vegetables morphological development. As it turned out, it was not.The two first confronted the curdled quagmire on the blackboard, sketching out various diagrams of genetic networks that could explain how the vegetable mutated into its current shape. Their muse was Arabidopsis thaliana, a well-studied weed in the same family as cauliflower and its many cousins.If a cauliflower has a single cauliflower at the base of the plant, Arabidopsis has many cauliflower-like structures along its elongated stem. But what genes could refine these lesser cauliflowers into one grand, compact cauliflower? And if they identified those genes, could they warp these cauliflowers into the peaks that Romanescos form?ImageCredit...Evan Sung for The New York TimesTo answer these questions, the researchers would tweak the gene network and run it through mathematical models, generate it in 3-D and mutate it in real life. You imagine something, but until you program it you dont know what its going to look like, Dr. Parcy said.(Over the course of the research, Dr. Parcy also collected several specimens of Romanesco from his local farmers market, sequenced and dissected them. He and his colleagues then dined on the leftovers, most often raw with different dips, along with glasses of beer.)Many initial models flopped, bearing little resemblance to cauliflowers. At first, the researchers believed the key to cauliflowers lay in the length of the stem. But when they programmed Arabidopsis with and without a short stem, they realized they did not need to reduce the stem size of the cauliflowers, either in the 3-D models or in real life.And the cauliflowers they simulated and grew were simply not fractal enough. The patterns were visible only at two fractal scales, such as one spiral nested in another spiral. By contrast, a regular cauliflower often displays self-similarity in at least seven fractal scales, meaning a spiral nested in a spiral nested in a spiral nested in a spiral nested in a spiral nested in a spiral nested in, ultimately, another spiral.So instead of focusing on the stem, they concentrated on the meristem, a region of plant tissue at the tip of each stem where actively dividing cells produce new growth. They hypothesized that making the meristem bigger would increase the number of shoots produced.The only problem was that the researchers did not know what gene might control the meristems pace of shoot production.ImageCredit...Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science SourceImageCredit...Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science SourceOne day, Eugenio Azpeitia, then a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Godins lab, remembered a gene that was known to change the size of the central zone of the meristem. The three researchers enjoyed a brief moment of euphoria, and then waited patiently for months for their newly modified Arabidopsis to grow. When the shoots sprouted, they had cauliflowers with distinct conical tips.Very reminiscent of what occurs in the Romanesco, Dr. Godin said proudly.Normally, when a plant sprouts a flower, the flowering tip of the plant prevents more growth from the stem. A cauliflower curd is a bud that was designed to become a flower but never makes it all the way there, and instead makes a shoot. But the researchers experiments in the meristem found that because this shoot has passed through a transient floral stage, it is exposed to a gene that triggers its growth. Because you have been a flower, you are free to grow and you can make a shoot, Dr. Parcy said.This process creates a chain reaction where the meristem is creating many shoots that, in turn, creates many more shoots, enacting the fractal geometry of a cauliflower.Its not a normal stem, Dr. Godin said. Its a stem without a leaf. A stem with no inhibition.Thats the only way to make a cauliflower, Dr. Parcy said.The researchers say there are likely other mutations responsible for the spectacular shape of Romanesco. Ning Guo, a researcher at the Beijing Vegetable Research Center who is also studying the potential genetic mechanism behind the architecture of the cauliflower curd, says the paper has offered a lot of inspiration.The story is not yet finished, Dr. Godin said, adding that he and Dr. Parcy will continue refining their cauliflower models. But we know we are on the right track.But they are open, they say, to studying anything that flowers. | science |
Politics|High turnout among Black voters has lifted the Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/politics/high-turnout-among-black-voters-has-lifted-the-democratic-senate-candidates-in-georgia.htmlJan. 5, 2021, 11:00 p.m. ETJan. 5, 2021, 11:00 p.m. ETCredit...Audra Melton for The New York TimesA surge in turnout from Georgias Black voters has powered the fortunes of the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, putting the Democrats within reach of flipping two Senate seats and winning control of the chamber.Predominantly Black counties across rural Georgia have had turnout for Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff that nearly matched the Nov. 3 general election and margins that exceeded what President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. received when he defeated President Trump in the state.In Calhoun County, which is 61 percent Black and where most ballots had been counted late Tuesday, Mr. Warnock was ahead by 19 percentage points out of 2,031 votes cast and Mr. Ossoff had an edge of 18 points, compared with Mr. Bidens 15 percent margin out of 2,198 votes in November.In Clay, Macon, Randolph and Washington Counties, all small, rural, predominantly Black counties, Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock won larger margins than Mr. Biden did with turnout that nearly reached the November figures an extraordinary feat given the nature of the runoffs.Some of Georgias largest counties in metropolitan Atlanta, which is home to the states largest concentration of Black voters, have yet to report a majority of their votes, though they are expected to soon.Data from TargetSmart, a Democratic political data firm, found that nearly 50,000 Black Georgians had cast early ballots in the Senate runoffs after not voting in the Nov. 3 general election.Scores of grass-roots organizations worked to turn out Black voters in the lead-up to the runoffs, and on a campaign swing last weekend, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris targeted Black neighborhoods where early-voting turnout had been soft. The Black vote delivered the U.S. Senate for Democrats, said Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart. | Politics |
Sports|Gay-Rights Advocates Target Sponsors Over Lawhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/sports/olympics/gay-rights-advocates-target-sponsors-over-law.htmlFeb. 5, 2014Protesters around the world pressured major Olympic sponsors Wednesday, just ahead of the Winter Games in Sochi, urging them to speak out against Russias law restricting gay-rights activities. Two more sponsors of the United States Olympic team condemned the law, but leading global sponsors did not join them.No, no to Russias antigay law, chanted several dozen protesters in Paris who gathered in front of a McDonalds, which is one of the International Olympic Committees top 10 sponsors for the Sochi Games. The opening ceremony for the Games is Friday.In all, 20 demonstrations were planned by the advocacy group All Out and its allies.McDonalds, like other top I.O.C. sponsors, reiterated that it supported human rights and opposed discrimination, but its statement did not mention the Russian law.Coca-Cola did not mention the law in its latest statement, although it described itself as a strong supporter of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Visa, another I.O.C. top sponsor, issued a similar statement, as did Dow Chemical.In contrast, three sponsors of the United States Olympic Committee spoke out explicitly against the Russian law. The first was AT&T. Following suit Wednesday were DeVry University, an education company, and the yogurt maker Chobani. | Sports |
The Saturday ProfileCredit...Cornell Tukiri for The New York TimesNov. 16, 2018AUCKLAND, New Zealand In the grand library of the Auckland War Memorial Museum on a Saturday morning in August, a small group of new and slightly nervous Wikipedia editors gathered for a day of training that would arm them to tackle New Zealands lackluster representation on the crowdsourced online encyclopedia.Leading the so-called Wikiblitz was New Zealands official Wikipedian-at-Large, Mike Dickison, 49, who has in some senses been preparing his entire life for this post. As a collector of things and knowledge, he has pursued a string of enthusiasms, beginning with insects, shells and feathers (he put together his own museum as a boy), then giant flightless birds (a Ph.D. on those), that ended, appropriately enough, with a job as the natural history curator at a museum. He once taught a class in knitting as therapy for stressed-out men after a major earthquake.For the moment, he was involved in something a little less fascinating, guiding the group through the process of adding photos from the museums collection to pages on Wikipedia. The new editors curious members of the public, many of whom had created their accounts the evening before were mostly women, a fact Mr. Dickison was pleased to note; Wikipedia records its editors as 90 percent male.Be bold! Dont be stymied by worry, Mr. Dickison told the group, assuring them that early in his Wikipedia career, he had accidentally blanked more than one entire page by mistake.As the countrys roving Wikipedian-at-Large, he is spending a year coaxing New Zealanders to take up volunteer editing on what is the worlds fifth-most-visited website. His salary and travel are funded by a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, as part of its investment in emerging communities on the site, including New Zealand.The South Pacific country is underrepresented on Wikipedia, and Mr. Dickison described the state of many of the countrys pages as dire.His skills are self-taught, but Mr. Dickisons affinity with Wikipedias gathering of community knowledge is the culmination of his lifelong obsession with collecting. Growing up in Christchurch, on the South Island of New Zealand, the son of an apprentice boilermaker father who later ran a sporting goods store and a homemaker mother, Mr. Dickison felt he was destined for a museum curators job.What started as a typical childhood infatuation with dinosaurs developed into a fascination with the moa, a giant flightless bird native to New Zealand, which is now extinct. Mr. Dickisons father, who had left school at 15, encouraged his sons enthusiasm for curating. He built the glass display cases where his son could display his treasures in his museum.Even then, Mr. Dickison was irked by the lack of available information about New Zealands native fauna.I was mad on insects, and in 1983 you had one book on New Zealand insects, which was written in the 70s, with just a few color plates, he said, adding that he is now writing his own childrens book on New Zealands natural history.His preoccupation with the moa led Mr. Dickison to complete a Ph.D. on the subject of giant flightless birds at Duke University decades later.I had no idea where North Carolina was or any fact about it whatsoever, Mr. Dickison said. The only Duke I knew was The Dukes of Hazzard.The appeal of giant flightless birds, to Mr. Dickison at least, seemed simple: Theyre just enormous. Theyre really big. I mean, why do kids like dinosaurs? Because theyre huge.He dreams of traveling back 1,000 years to see the moa in its natural New Zealand habitat before it was wiped out by Polynesian settlers 500 years ago. He has even investigated the taxonomic origins of the Sesame Street character Big Bird (his conclusion: a giant flightless crane).ImageCredit...Cornell Tukiri for The New York TimesHis enthusiasm for the smallest pieces of knowledge Mr. Dickisons website includes a map recording everywhere in the world he has received a haircut led to a day job as natural history curator at Whanganui Regional Museum, on the North Island. But by night, he was beginning to rack up hours as a volunteer editor on Wikipedia, and ran workshops training other new editors at a local library.His edit history, which began in 2009, is not quite as lettered as his museum pedigree: Mr. Dickison made some of his first contributions to pages about Jaffas, a type of New Zealand candy, mandolins and the film This Is Spinal Tap.He realized toward the end of his tenure as a natural history curator, he said, that the work he did on Wikipedia in his free time had much more impact than what he did at his day job.After his application for a Wikimedia Foundation grant for the national Wikipedian-in-residence role was successful, Mr. Dickison said, he left his job, filled my four-wheel-drive with plastic bins of worldly possessions and launched off around the country on an adventure.Mr. Dickison is no stranger to connecting unlikely groups of people. Upon his return to New Zealand from Duke, the sometime ukulele player was frustrated by the lack of sheet music for New Zealand standards. So he wrote a book of local songs for ukulele and traveled the North Island, teaching and performing them.After a deadly earthquake struck his home city of Christchurch in 2011, killing 185 people and flattening much of the central city, Mr. Dickison ran the knitting-as-therapy class, having taught himself first as a way of dealing with the aftermath of the quakes.In the 1990s, he had hosted sessions in internet cafes to help newcomers explore the World Wide Web.I dont understand why I do these things, he said. Im supposed to be an introvert.But if I find something Im passionate about, I need to share it and get other people involved too, he added.The fate of Christchurch was a cautionary tale about the need for societies to preserve their information, Mr. Dickison said. When the 2011 earthquake struck, every formative place from his childhood was destroyed, including his family home and former schools.Google Street View was still running images of pre-quake Christchurch for a while after the earthquake, and there was a huge worry that they would take those down and replace them with up-to-date views, he said, adding that images of the city before the disaster had now been archived and preserved.I feel like weve been a bit cavalier about looking after knowledge in New Zealand, Mr. Dickison said. Too often, it just slips away.As part of his Wikipedian-at-Large role, he is charged with recruiting others to help preserve that knowledge online, with a particular emphasis on women and minorities, who are underrepresented in New Zealands small editing community. He plans more meet-ups and training sessions like the one at Auckland Museum, and will be resident around the country at locations including a government department and a bird sanctuary.Mr. Dickison also hopes to entice reticent public and private institutions to crack open their vaults of knowledge and expertise, making them more accessible for editors to use while editing Wikipedia.I often have experts tell me they read a Wikipedia article that they know something about and it was full of inaccuracies, he said.I always say, Well, did you fix them? And if you didnt fix them, why are you complaining to me? Its like walking outside and complaining that its raining and not putting up an umbrella. Of course youre wet! | World |
Tech FixThe benefits of owning a battery-powered two-wheeler far outweigh the downsides, especially in a pandemic.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesPublished June 3, 2020Updated Nov. 8, 2021Many of us are entering a new stage of pandemic grief: adaptation. We are asking ourselves: How do we live with this new reality? For many Americans, part of the solution has been to buy an electric bike. The battery-powered two-wheelers have become a compelling alternative for commuters who are being discouraged from taking public transportation and Ubers. For others, the bikes provide much-needed fresh air after months of confinement.So its no surprise that e-bikes are now as difficult to buy as a bottle of hand sanitizer was a few weeks ago. In March, sales of e-bikes jumped 85 percent from a year earlier, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. Amazon, Walmart and Specialized are sold out of most models. Even smaller brands like Ride1Up and VanMoof have waiting lists.Thats a remarkable shift. For many years, e-bikes carried the stigma of being vehicles for lazy pedalers and seniors. The bikes draw power from a battery and motor to make pedaling significantly easier. You can also accelerate with the press of a button, transforming cycling from a strenuous exercise into a joy ride.I was convinced that e-bikes would completely change cities all over the world in the next 10 years, but it seems like because of this crisis, suddenly its all happening in the next three or four months, said Taco Carlier, the chief executive of VanMoof, which is based in Amsterdam.If you are contemplating an e-bike purchase, there are trade-offs to consider. For one, the battery packs and motors add bulk. For another, these ostentatious bikes may lure thieves.To find out what you get for your money, I tested two different e-bikes on the streets and steep hills of San Francisco over the last two weeks. Both can be ordered online: VanMoofs $1,998 S3, an internet-connected smart bike, and Ride1Ups $1,495 700 Series, which is more like a normal bicycle with a battery and motor.After the tests, Im totally sold. E-bikes, I concluded, are for people who want to get around quickly with minimal effort and thats a large portion of the population. Heres what you need to know.Comparing the e-bikes.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesE-bikes come in many forms and with various features. They also range widely in price: Some cost a few hundred dollars, while others cost tens of thousands of dollars. In general, though, e-bikes fall into two camps:E-bikes with pedal assistance. These use a motor system and sensors to detect how fast or hard you are pedaling and determine how much power to provide. So if you are pedaling hard or slow up a hill, the motor will use more power to assist you. Well-known brands include Trek, Specialized and Fuji.E-bikes with a throttle. These work like the twist throttle on motorcycles and mo-peds. To accelerate, you press a trigger or twist a handlebar. Many modern e-bikes with a throttle also have pedal assist. Brands include Rad Power, Luna Cycle and Aventon.VanMoofs S3, which was released in late April, is a pedal-assist e-bike. Instead of a throttle, it has a Turbo Boost button on the right handlebar, which immediately gives a jolt of power. It has a top speed of about 20 miles per hour and can travel about 90 miles on a full charge.VanMoof e-bikes are known for their antitheft security. Kicking a button on the rear brake activates an electronic lock, which makes the rear wheel unmovable. Trying to pick up the locked bike triggers a loud alarm. In addition, the bike includes a cellular connection to help you find it if its stolen, using VanMoofs smartphone app.Ride1Ups 700 series has both a throttle and pedal assistance. On the left handlebar is a small screen with buttons to let you select the pedal-assist level; on the right handle bar is a gear shifter. With a larger, faster motor than the VanMoof, the Ride1Up has a top speed of 28 m.p.h. and can travel about 50 miles on a full charge.Testing, testing.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesFor two weeks, I alternated between riding the VanMoof and the Ride1Up. I found you get what you pay for: While $1,500 buys you a nice e-bike that takes time to get used to, like the Ride1Up, an additional $500 secures you a VanMoof, a smarter bike that is extremely simple to use.The VanMoofs motor system made pedaling feel more natural and smooth, like riding a normal bicycle but with a bit of oomph. The motor was also very quiet, and at points I forgot I was riding an e-bike. In areas where pedaling was more challenging, like hills, a press of the Turbo Boost button provided an extra push.The Ride1Up bike was less intuitive. The control panel on the handlebar lets you choose from nine pedal-assist levels. Level 3 felt sufficient for getting me around the streets, but Level 5 felt better for getting up hills. Sometimes, when trying to pedal from a stop, I forgot to lower the pedal assist from Level 5, which caused the bike to jerk forward. That was a bit scary.Ride1Up offers a YouTube tutorial on advanced settings for people to adjust the power of each pedal-assist level. Eventually, I reduced the power output for Levels 4 and 5, which made pedaling smoother.As for the Ride1Ups throttle, which is a trigger on the left handlebar, it was nice to have the option to accelerate without pedaling when I was getting exhausted. It did feel like cheating, though.The downsides.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTesting the two e-bikes underlined some of their trade-offs.E-bikes are heavy. The VanMoof weighs about 41 pounds and the Ride1Up about 55 pounds more than double the average road bike, which weighs about 20 pounds. You probably wont want an e-bike if youd have to regularly carry it up many flights of stairs.Maintenance may be tricky. VanMoof and Ride1Up said their bikes were designed to be user-serviceable, and any local bike mechanic should also be able to service minor parts, like brake pads.But with e-bikes in general, you may need to seek help from the maker if something major goes wrong with proprietary electronic components. Its a safer bet to buy your e-bike from a local store that can service it.They may attract burglars. Parking the VanMoof made me anxious. Whenever I was locking it up, it got lots of attention from passers-by it looks like an elegantly designed tech product.A VanMoof spokesman said that up to 20 of its bikes are reported stolen each month worldwide, and that 70 percent are found within two weeks. So make sure to have renters or home insurance that covers the theft of e-bikes. (VanMoof offers its own three-year insurance for $340.)Batteries are expensive. Like smartphones, e-bikes use consumable batteries that eventually need to be replaced. With regular riding, the batteries for the VanMoof and the Ride1Up may deplete in three to five years. Replacements cost roughly $350.But the pros outweigh the cons.Despite some misgivings, my experience with e-bikes made me realize the benefits are far greater than the downsides.Most important, e-bikes kept me out of my car. Whenever I had a reason to go outside like making a trip to the grocery store or dropping off baked goods at a friends I preferred riding an e-bike.This will become increasingly important in the coming months. As businesses reopen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised commuters to drive in cars alone. An e-bike may become crucial for squeezing through nightmare traffic.Theres another benefit, which is important in hard times: E-bikes bring joy. Im no fan of cycling in San Francisco, but on an e-bike, I saw more of the outdoors than I normally would, while keeping a safe distance from people. That beat bingeing on Netflix.So Ill probably buy an e-bike soon, even if it means getting on a waiting list. I figure we could all use a little more joy. | Tech |
VideotranscripttranscriptWho Is Larry Kudlow, Trumps New Economic Adviser?Larry Kudlow, a CNBC television commentator and supporter of President Trump, has been his top economic adviser since April.The market is very interested in who comes into replace Gary Cohn and what their view is President Trumps new top economic adviser is Larry Kudlow, a regular CNBC commentator and vocal champion of free trade, who has been critical of Trumps push for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. He is so good on taxes. Hes so good on tax cuts. Hes so good on deregulation, infrastructure, I even like him on immigration. Hes never been good on trade. But the president said he would welcome some pushback. Ive known him a long time. We dont agree on everything, but in this case I think thats good. I want to have a divergent opinion. During the presidential race Kudlow backed Trump, but criticized him when the Access Hollywood tape emerged. Ive got to use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. But the scandal wasnt a deal breaker for Kudlow. Hes a native New Yorker and former Wall Street economist who views the Trump presidency as an opportunity to push his economic agenda. The single biggest, most important. number one issue, and that is the economy. Kudlow is a disciple of Arthur Laffer, the godfather of supply side tax cuts, which became part of the Republican Partys DNA. Tax cuts pro-growth tax cuts strong middle-class tax cut tax rate reduction After Republicans pushed a $1.5 trillion cut through Congress in late 2017, Kudlow praised it effusively. If you keep tax rates minimum, you are going to have a terrific economy.Larry Kudlow, a CNBC television commentator and supporter of President Trump, has been his top economic adviser since April.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 12, 2018WASHINGTON Larry Kudlow, the director of President Trumps National Economic Council, spent Tuesday morning calling friends who said they expected him to return to his White House job after recovering from a mild heart attack that landed him in the hospital on Monday.Mr. Kudlow, 70, seemed to be back to his usual self, friends and colleagues said, as he placed and fielded calls from Walter Reed Medical Center. On Tuesday afternoon, White House officials said Mr. Kudlow remained in the hospital and confirmed they expect him to return to his position.Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Kudlows doctors expect Larry will make a full and speedy recovery.Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said on Twitter that he had spoken with Mr. Kudlow and that he was doing well.Other people who spoke with Mr. Kudlow on Tuesday said they expected he would return to his position as Mr. Trumps top economic adviser. The high-profile position includes advising the president on trade and economic policy and, in Mr. Kudlows case, making frequent television appearances to promote what the administration considers its economic successes.Hes O.K. and will be back on the job, said Stephen Moore, an economist at the Heritage Foundation and a longtime friend of Mr. Kudlows.The economist Arthur Laffer, another longtime friend, said that Mr. Kudlow had called him on Monday from his hospital bed.Larry called me from the hospital last night, said Mr. Laffer, a mentor to Mr. Kudlow. I talked for 22 seconds with him. He said, Art, Im fine, Im fine, Im doing fine. I said, O.K., I dont need to hear anything more.Asked whether he expected Mr. Kudlow to return to work, Mr. Laffer said he had never considered the possibility that he would not.I dont think theres a chance hell resign, Mr. Laffer said. This is the culmination of his life. And its that time for Trump, too. He needs Larry.Mr. Laffer noted that Mr. Kudlow had pushed hard to be appointed to succeed the economic councils previous director, Gary Cohn. He really wants that job, he said. He really loves it.Mr. Kudlow had complained to colleagues of exhaustion in recent days. Friends said they had begun to worry about his health after he looked uncharacteristically fatigued at a series of events. He did not respond to messages from colleagues on Sunday and he canceled a key meeting on Monday, before being hospitalized and having doctors insert a stent.Mr. Trump posted a message about Mr. Kudlows hospitalization on Twitter late Monday. A short time later, Ms. Sanders said in a statement that Mr. Kudlow was currently in good condition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and his doctors expect he will make a full and speedy recovery.Mr. Kudlow is a former Wall Street economist and a frequent adviser on economic issues to conservative political candidates, including Mr. Trump, whose campaign tax plan Mr. Kudlow helped write. He was also a longtime radio and television host, including more than a decade on CNBC.Mr. Laffer, whose friendship with Mr. Kudlow has spanned several decades, has spoken at least once a week with Mr. Kudlow since he started working at the White House. He said that Mr. Kudlow had occasionally complained about his health in the past, but had not done so since he began working for Mr. Trump.I do not think the stress levels at the White House are anything like he had at CNBC, Mr. Laffer said. | Politics |
The New Old AgeResearchers have been studying how much care American adults will require as they age, and for how long.Credit...Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesPublished Oct. 2, 2021Updated Oct. 3, 2021Say youre a 65-year-old looking ahead, wondering about your health and your finances, pondering what life might be like in 20 years.You might get lucky, like Susan Green, a retired social worker. At 82, she enjoys hiking, golfing and cross-country skiing (although she has given up downhill) with her husband in Ketchum, Idaho. The only assistance they need: a weekly housekeeper.Or you might be as fortunate as Sally Dorst, also 82, a retired magazine editor who lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. A committed museum visitor and concertgoer (we couldnt talk the first time I called because Ms. Dorst was attending the New York City Ballets reopening performance), she manages personal care and household tasks on her own, including toting heavy bags of litter home for her two cats.Ive always been pretty independent, she said. The only thing I need help with is that my ceilings are so tall that I cant reach them. (Her building superintendent replaces burned-out bulbs for her.)Most older Americans, however, eventually need assistance. Nancy Canus granddaughter, Renee Turner, moved into her home in Rochester Hills, Mich., five years ago to care for her. At 92, Ms. Canu takes multiple medications for heart failure, and joint pain makes it hard for her to walk more than a block, even while using a walker. Ms. Turner, 37, has gradually taken over household tasks, such as shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and paying the bills.She administers her grandmothers medications, drives her to doctors appointments, hovers nearby when she showers and helps her up the stairs. If Ms. Turner, a wedding singer and massage therapist, has to be away for more than an hour or two, she recruits another relative to step in.It wasnt a question, Ms. Turner said. I wanted to be here for her. Still, she added, its become my full-time job.For years, researchers have tried to calculate what proportion of the aging population will need such extensive care. Becoming frail and needing help with basic personal care is probably the greatest financial risk people face at older ages, said Richard Johnson, the economist who directs the Program on Retirement Policy at the Urban Institute.A 2019 study he undertook for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, for example, found that over their lifetimes, about 70 percent of older adults will need help from family caregivers or paid aides or some combination, in their own homes or in long-term care facilities. Other surveys have reported roughly similar results.But such analyses often dont distinguish between short rehab stays, perhaps after a knee replacement, and the years of round-the-clock care that is required for someone with deepening dementia.ImageCredit...Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesEven if you need a lot of care, if its for a short period, its not that big a deal, said Alicia Munnell, an economist and director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.Recent work by Dr. Munnell and her colleagues explored those nuances. Using data from the federal Health and Retirement Study as well as other federal surveys, they looked at both intensity and duration how much help older Americans will need and for how long.Policy types perpetually lament Americans inadequate retirement savings; only about half of the U.S. population will be able to maintain their standard of living after they stop working, according to a Boston College index.But retirees can also overestimate their need for care, lowering their quality of life with unnecessary scrimping. I think thats actually a bigger risk than the more conventional idea of taking an around-the-world cruise and then ending up with nothing, Dr. Munnell said.Her team assessed seniors lifetime care needs as low, medium or high intensity, based on how many so-called activities of daily living they needed assistance with. Then the researchers calculated how many older Americans would need help for short (up to a year) or medium durations (one to three years) or for longer than three years.Their results: Seventeen percent of 65-year-olds will need no long-term care. Almost one-quarter will develop severe needs, requiring many hours of help for more than three years.Most older people will fall between those poles, with 22 percent having only minimal needs. The largest group, 38 percent, can expect moderate needs like support while they recover from a heart attack, after which they can again function independently.Unsurprisingly, the need for more intense or extended care hits some groups harder than others. People who attended college for some period fare far better than those without high school diplomas, the Boston College team found. Black and Hispanic seniors, reflecting entrenched economic and health inequities, are more apt than older white people to develop moderate or severe needs.And married people are less likely to need extensive care than those who are single. They have higher incomes, Dr. Munnell pointed out, and spouses provide regular meals and someone nagging you to go see the doctor all that having another person to care about your welfare entails.Where an individual falls on this spectrum will determine whether such predictions feel reassuring or terrifying. But data from a second Boston College analysis veer toward the latter.ImageCredit...Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesThe researchers calculated how much care retirees would need, how much they could receive from family and how much they could afford to buy (at $22 an hour for a home health aide in 2018). The study determined that 36 percent of people in their late 60s could not cover even a year of minimal care without exhausting their resources; only 22 percent could cover severe needs.Theres only a small chance that youll need care for an extended period, Dr. Johnson said. But a lot of people will need care for a shorter time, and that will take money.Low-income people, who are less able to purchase help but more likely to need it, might qualify for Medicaid, which pays for long-term care. But that could mean a nursing home, because Medicaid waiting lists for home care are years long in some states. A few people, about 10 percent, have bought private long-term care insurance. Others will be left in a bind that financial planning cant really address.Thats something insurance is designed to correct, Dr. Johnson said.When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, it contained a measure called the Class Act, a voluntary long-term care insurance program that never materialized. Critics feared an actuarial death spiral: If only ailing workers enrolled, costs would soon outstrip premiums paid in.To start a sustainable public insurance program for long-term care, wed have to make it mandatory, Dr. Johnson said. Everyone would have to contribute. The payoff: It would give people peace of mind.Washington recently became the first state to establish such a program. Beginning next year, employees must contribute 0.58 percent of their earnings (self-employed workers could opt in, too), or about $290 in annual premiums on a $50,000 salary.Its a modest program starting in 2025, participants can receive up to $36,500 in benefits but its a start on the kind of safety net that the Netherlands, Germany and South Korea already provide. Illinois, Minnesota and Hawaii are also discussing long-term care insurance, Dr. Johnson said.American families still bear the greatest brunt of responsibility for elder care. Ms. Canus family hopes to keep her in the house where she has lived for 44 years. If she had to pay a home health aide or move into assisted living, she or her children would face costs of thousands of dollars a month. That still might happen.But for now, she has her oldest grandchild. I wish all elderly people had someone like Renee to care for them, Ms. Canu said. We have a happy life, in spite of all the things that happen. | Health |
Olympics|Officials Scramble to Modify Slopestyle Course After Accidenthttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/sports/olympics/snowboard-course-will-change-after-athletes-complain-of-danger.htmlCredit...Lucas Jackson/ReutersFeb. 3, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Four years after a luge athlete died on a training run in Vancouver on an Olympic course that had drawn widespread criticism, the Winter Olympics faced another safety issue four days before the opening ceremony.Officials scrambled Monday to make changes to the slopestyle course here after a top snowboarder broke his collarbone in a crash, and several athletes raised concerns about the safety of the course.It looks pretty sketchy, Roope Tonteri, a snowboarder from Finland, told reporters after a training session at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, where slopestyle will make its Olympic debut. I think they wanted to make big kickers, and its not really good for riders and its not really safe anymore. I just dont want to get injured. Its not a really fun course to ride.Torstein Horgmo of Norway, a medal contender in a sport that features a long downhill course of obstacles followed by a series of large jumps, crashed on the rail portion of the course.A team official, Thomas Harstad, said Horgmo landed on his face and shoulder.Horgmo is out of the Games. I am terribly sorry about this, he said in a statement. Injuries and falls are a part of this sport, but the timing is really bad.Snowboarders discussed the courses safety after Mondays three-hour training session and proposed changes to the sports officials.The last jump has a lot of impact on it, and the takeoff is really long, said Charles Guldemond, an American snowboarder. Some of the guys and girls are intimidated. I felt like I was dropping out of the sky.ImageCredit...Hakon Mosvold Larsen/European Pressphoto AgencySebastien Toutant of Canada said the big jump was like leaping from a building. I should put on my Canadian flying squirrel suit.Roberto Moresi, the assistant snowboard race director, said officials would modify the course to make it safer. The course designer, Anders Forsell, said the training session worked out fine.Four years ago, on the eve of the Vancouver Games, Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia died in a luge crash, the first athlete to die in Olympic training or competition since 1964.The accident compelled organizers for this months Olympics to re-evaluate the design of their luge track. | Sports |
Credit...Travis Dove for The New York TimesMarch 21, 2016The H.B. Robinson nuclear power plant, about 70 miles from Columbia, S.C., has been producing electricity with few interruptions since the Nixon administration. But as of now, its fate is clear: The plant will have to shut down by 2030, when it will be six decades old.The Robinson reactor is one of the oldest still operating in the United States, but others are getting on in years. From 2029 to 2035, three dozen of the nations 99 reactors, representing more than a third of the industrys generating capacity, will face closure as their operating licenses expire.Any shutdowns would be another blow to nuclear energy, which provides 19 percent of the nations electricity but has struggled in recent years to compete against subsidized solar and wind power and plants that burn low-priced natural gas. Industry advocates say that by removing sources of clean electricity a nuclear reaction produces no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases the closings could affect the governments ability to fulfill its pledge, made at the Paris climate talks last year, to reduce emissions.And to continue to meet the nations electrical load, new generating capacity will have to be built to replace any that is lost.Some of those plants are going to be retiring, said Stephen E. Kuczynski, the chief executive of Southern Companys nuclear subsidiary. Which means were going to need to meet this load with something.Given the sometimes glacial pace of design, licensing and construction in the nuclear industry, the 2030s are not far-off. Plant operators may be able to buy time by seeking license extensions for another 20 years from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or by building more large reactors like four that are under construction.The industry and the Department of Energy are also pinning their hopes on the development of less conventional reactor designs that are meant to be safer and cheaper to build and operate. Yet it is unclear whether any new designs could reach the market in time to make a dent in the generating capacity lost as plants are closed.Some in the industry are bullish, including Southern, which announced in January that it would receive up to $40 million from the Department of Energy to develop an advanced reactor that uses molten salt as a coolant instead of water, which all current designs use.Our target is can we really move the process forward and have a commercial option by 2030? Mr. Kuczynski said. To do that, he and others say, the pace of the design process, and of the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions review process, needs to be sped up.But some say the shortened timetables are unrealistic, given safety and other concerns and the need to test new designs before seeking approval from the commission.Its a 25-year process, no matter what, said Michael McGough, the chief commercial officer of NuScale Power, which is the furthest along among companies working on less conventional reactors. NuScales design, called a small modular reactor, uses water as a coolant, but the units are far smaller than current reactors and have advanced safety features. They could be built largely in a factory, saving money, and up to 12 of them could be installed at one site.Mr. McGough knows all about long timetables; NuScales design has been under development since 2000. It has lined up a potential first customer, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or Uamps, which operates in the Intermountain West, and hopes to have 12 of the small reactors operating at a site in Idaho by the mid-2020s. Its improbable to me that you will see any new design developed or licensed in a much shorter time frame than the kind were on, Mr. McGough said.NuScale has been testing its design for 13 years, using a nonnuclear prototype. Later this year, it plans to submit an 11,000-page application to the N.R.C. to have its design certified. The commission then has up to 40 months to review the application.The certification process, and a later application by Uamps for a construction and operating license, could be delayed if the N.R.C. asks for more information. But even if all goes smoothly, the plant will produce only about half the electricity of many existing reactors. About 50 of these 12-reactor plants would be needed to replace the generating capacity that could be lost by 2035.Many in the industry hope that extending the licenses of existing reactors will forestall at least some closings. Nuclear plants were originally licensed for 40 years, but almost all have sought and received 20-year extensions.The regulatory commission has begun researching what would be required to extend a plants life to 80 years. Were asking very basic questions, like how long can a reactor vessel remain acceptable since its being bombarded by neutrons, said Scott Burnell, a spokesman. The information we have at this point is that those are issues that are not showstoppers.So far one operator has announced plans to seek such an extension, for two reactors set to close in the early 2030s, but an application and possible approval are still years away. Duke Energy, owner of the Robinson plant in South Carolina, said it was evaluating whether to pursue an extension.Given the relatively poor economics of nuclear power, however, even if a plant could be licensed to operate up to 80 years, the question remains whether it would be financially worthwhile for it to do so, especially if expensive work is required. Skeptics cite two American plants that have been closed for economic reasons since 2012, after their licenses were extended to 60 years.Similar economic uncertainties surround the latest generation of reactors, the Westinghouse AP1000, a design that is similar in many respects to existing units but has safety improvements and cost-saving features. Four of these are being built in the United States, and there have been lengthy construction delays and ballooning costs.But Mr. Kuczynski of Southern, which is building two of the reactors in Georgia, said the industry was learning from experience, which would lower the cost of subsequent plants. Were going to get through the first of a kind, he said, and any future orders are going to be just terrific bargains.Others are not so sure the industry will rush to build more. What eventually happens with the four AP1000s will be very important, said Matthew McKinzie, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. If the economics of extending the lifetime of a plant to 80 years are poor, then what does that say about the economics of a new plant?Critics of nuclear power say that novel designs like molten salt reactors raise new issues, especially regarding safety, that will require much time to evaluate.A regulator cant accept paper studies saying that a reactor is supersafe, said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. They need documentation, experimental data.The industry and Department of Energy have this fantasy that you can have some general design-neutral licensing process, he added.But Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist who has invested in two companies working on advanced designs, said time was running out to improve the process.Weve got probably a five- to 10-year window, he said. If we dont get this fixed in the next presidential administration or so, weve missed it. | science |
Nov. 11, 2018BEIJING At least a dozen young activists who took part in a national campaign for workers rights in China are missing, friends said on Sunday, in what appeared to be an effort by the government to silence one of the most visible student protests in years.Unidentified men in at least five Chinese cities rounded up the activists, who are recent graduates of elite universities, over the past few days, according to friends of the activists. The men beat several activists before pushing them into cars and driving away, the friends said.The activists, describing themselves as ardent communists who fervently believe in the ideals of Marx and Mao, have waged an unusual campaign against inequality and corporate greed that has gained traction at some of Chinas top schools.The campaign has put the ruling Communist Party, which prides itself as a socialist guardian of workers rights, in an awkward position. Now, in line with President Xi Jinpings efforts to curtail dissent and political organizing, the party appears to be redoubling efforts to quash the movement.Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong, said the crackdown would provide another bad image for Chinas leaders, noting that they once seemed more tolerant of labor activism.We call on the authorities to immediately release the students and supporters, and allow an independent investigation of what is happening to them, Mr. Poon said.It was unclear what happened to the activists, who were rounded up in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan. Calls to the police on Sunday were not immediately answered.In Beijing, students at Peking University said that unidentified men arrived on campus around 10 p.m. Friday in pursuit of Zhang Shengye, a recent graduate of the school who was a prominent voice in the activists campaign. Mr. Zhang had been organizing efforts to find activists who were previously detained by the authorities but whose locations are unknown, students said.Mr. Zhang was beaten and dragged into a car, said Yu Tianfu, 22, a history student at Peking University who was studying in a nearby cafe.Mr. Yu said in a social media post on Sunday that he was also hurt in the episode. He said that the men had thrown him to the ground, covered his mouth and kicked his head.Who are you? Why are you doing this? Mr. Yu said he asked the men.Ill beat you more if you dare shout again, one of the men responded, according to Mr. Yu.Reached by phone on Sunday, Mr. Yu said he stood by his account but declined to comment further. In his post, he said he was still in disbelief.What kind of privilege do they have to completely disregard the law and civil rights? Mr. Yu wrote. How dare they unscrupulously and arrogantly beat up students and kidnap one at Peking University.The disappearance of the activists is the latest flash point in a long-running battle between activists and the authorities.The campaign for workers rights began in the summer, when dozens of young people descended on Huizhou, a city in southern China, to organize demonstrations in support of factory workers who said they were being treated like slaves.After several weeks of protests and a vibrant social media campaign, the police detained dozens of workers and activists. More than two months later, several remain in detention.More recently, student activists have tried to organize protests on a variety of issues, including the alleged abuse of workers at a Chinese supplier for Apple, and miners grappling with black lung disease. But the authorities have tried to block them from organizing.At Nanjing University in eastern China, several students were assaulted and taken away this month after holding a protest to denounce university officials for blocking them from registering an official group for student Marxists.In Beijing, students at Renmin University say they were held under house arrest and monitored because of their participation in the protests over the summer in Huizhou.Cornell University announced last month that it was ending a collaboration with Renmin because of the crackdown on students.The protesters had hoped that the party might tolerate their calls for social justice if they embraced leftist ideals and Mr. Xi. The government has encouraged the study of Marx, Mao and Lenin, and the Communist Party has long had a reputation as a defender of the working class.But the party has moved quickly to stop the movement from spreading, seemingly worried that the protests might threaten its hold on civil society.Geoffrey Crothall, the communications director of China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong advocacy group, said that Chinese leaders were digging an even bigger hole for themselves by continuing to harass the activists. He said the outcry could have been avoided if the authorities had listened to the workers in Huizhou.There would have been no protests, no arrests and no acts of nationwide solidarity from students and Maoist groups across the country, Mr. Crothall said.On Sunday, students at Peking University handed out pamphlets in a campus cafeteria to spread word about the missing activists. Let those with strength contribute strength, for their safety, for their freedom and for illuminating the path to justice in society, the pamphlets said.Before long, security officers appeared and tried to stop their campaign. The students persisted, moving from table to table to make their pleas. | World |
Credit...Ugri Touko Tapani Hujanen for The New York TimesNov. 4, 2016HELSINKI, Finland A small electric bus chugged along at a slow but steady seven miles per hour when a white van, entering the street from the side, cut in front of it. The bus slowed, as if its driver had hit the brakes, and got back up to speed after the van moved out of the way.But this bus has no brake or accelerator pedal. It has no steering wheel, either. In fact, it doesnt have a driver it operates using sensors and software, although for now, a person is stationed on board ready to hit a red stop button in an emergency.At a time when self-driving cars are beginning to make progress most notably with a trial program that the ride service Uber began in Pittsburgh this fall the bus represents a different approach to technologically advanced transportation.A driverless car, after all, is still a car, carrying at best a few people. By transporting many passengers on what could be very flexible routes, driverless buses could help reduce the number of cars clogging city streets.Its no surprise that the bus is being tested in Helsinki, which has been at the forefront of efforts to use technology to rethink public transportation.ImageCredit...Ugri Touko Tapani Hujanen for The New York TimesDriverless buses like this one are being used in private, controlled settings, for example to shuttle students around a campus or employees on the grounds of an industrial plant. Helsinki is one of the first cities to run so-called autonomous buses on public roads in traffic; another project, in Sion, Switzerland, has been operating for several months, although the service was suspended in September for two weeks after a minor accident.The Helsinki bus is a project of several universities with cooperation and money from government agencies and the European Union. The two-year, $1.2 million project, called Sohjoa, is just one manifestation of a movement to reduce the use of cars, and the traffic jams and greenhouse gases that come with them.A good possible outcome is that less and less people will own personal vehicles in the cities because they really dont need them anymore, said Harri Santamala, who coordinates the project and directs a smart mobility program at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.In September, a Sohjoa bus, which can accommodate up to 12 passengers sitting and standing, made its debut on a straight, quarter-mile route in the citys Hernesaari district, turning 180 degrees at both ends. The trip connected a popular sauna and restaurant at one end with several restaurants at the other, and attracted a small stream of curious riders.We chose this as a first route because we can study a huge amount of different traffic issues depending on the time of day, Mr. Santamala said.The buses are not as sophisticated as Ubers self-driving cars, or those being developed by Google and other companies. Those are essentially free-range vehicles, able to travel just about anywhere by comparing what their sensors detect about roads and surroundings with a database that has been compiled by the cars over time. (Before Uber began offering rides in Pittsburgh, for example, employees drove its cars around the city for months, collecting data.)ImageCredit...Ugri Touko Tapani Hujanen for The New York TimesThe buses, made by a French company, are taught a route by having operators drive them using steering and acceleration controls on a small box. The route is then fine-tuned with software. In operation, the buses have laser sensors and GPS to keep them on the route, and can deviate only if alternate routes have been learned as well.While the buses are designed to travel at about 15 m.p.h., or 25 kilometers pe hour, they are running at half that for the Helsinki trials. Lateral movement is also restricted; if a car is double-parked along the route, for instance, the bus must wait until the car moves or the bus operator steers around it using the control box.We have to be very keen about safety, Mr. Santamala said.Those restrictions provide an underwhelming experience for now. The most excitement occurs when a vehicle like the white van crosses too closely, or when a motorist approaches from the rear and, impatient with the buss tortoiselike pace, swerves around it.Mr. Santamala said the project aimed to establish a real bus route probably a seasonal one in the next two years. And theres no reason self-driving technology could not be applied to bigger buses eventually.For now, the project is focusing on so-called last mile service taking riders from a stop on a more conventional bus line to a point closer to their homes, shops, offices or schools. An autonomous bus, presumably going faster, could be useful, especially because of a quirk in Finlands motor vehicle laws.It doesnt state anywhere that we need to have a driver holding the steering wheel or even inside the vehicle, Mr. Santamala said. A legal driver can be observing the operation through a computer.That means a number of buses could run autonomously, with one operator in a central office intervening remotely as needed. Reducing the number of operators could make it financially feasible to run routes that serve only a few customers, or to vary routes throughout the day based on ridership.Helsinki has already seen several efforts to use technology to change public transportation. One was an on-demand minibus service, Kutsuplus, that was operated by the regional transport agency for four years. Using a smartphone, customers could choose pickup and drop-off locations. The services software then combined requests from several customers and calculated an optimal route for one of its 15 minibuses.It was a good experiment, said Sami Sahala, who advises the city on intelligent transportation issues. But it was a little bit ahead of its time. Kutsuplus was heavily subsidized by the city, and although the service was popular and gaining riders, it was doomed by budget cuts at the end of last year.A spinoff company, Split, ran an on-demand service in Washington that was discontinued last month, and Uber and its ride-service rival, Lyft, have developed similar ride-share services that use the companies drivers and their private cars.Other efforts to remake transportation continue in Helsinki. The most ambitious is a service introduced this fall by a Finnish company, MaaS Global, that offers all-inclusive transit services for a monthly fee. The concept, called mobility as a service, takes its inspiration from the changes that have occurred in the telecommunications industry over the past several decades, Mr. Sahala said.You used to pay for all the calls you made, he said. But with the advent of mobile phones, the business model started to change. Now you pay a fixed price, and everything is included.ImageCredit...Ugri Touko Tapani Hujanen for The New York TimesThrough an app called Whim, MaaS Global lets customers order transportation from point A to point B and then guarantees it will provide it, using a combination of trams, buses, taxis, rental cars and car-sharing services.Youre covered, said Sampo Hietanen, the chief executive of MaaS Global. You can just concentrate on going. The monthly fees vary depending on how much transportation is needed.Mr. Hietanen said that to be successful, the service should provide the same feeling of independence that owning a car does.Cars are expensive, and studies have shown that most urban car owners rarely use them, so theres a potential market in people who give up their cars and spend some of the savings on a service like Whim.Self-driving cars and buses may eventually help to make services like MaaS Globals widely affordable, Mr. Hietanen said.For now, the bus trials continue. Last month, the project moved to a more complex route in Espoo, on Helsinkis outskirts, and is now operating in Tampere, 111 miles (179 kilometers) to the north.Mr. Santamala and his colleagues analyze each trip to learn how a self-driving bus differs from one operated by a human, and how motorists and pedestrians interact with it. One difference was apparent to everyone aboard the bus after the white van cut in front of it: There was no driver to yell at the driver of the van, which had pulled into a nearby parking space.So Helena Bensky, a Helsinki resident who was giving the bus a try, offered to fill in.Should I go give that guy a telling off? she asked. | science |
Credit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2014EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. John Dalena and his son Mike were prepared for the worst. In the back of their car parked near MetLife Stadium, they had snow pants, extra sweatshirts and other cold-weather gear to keep them warm after kickoff at the Super Bowl still three hours away.But a funny thing happened as they spoke: The sun peaked through the gray clouds.Of course, we were prepared to sit in a snowstorm, but this is great, said John, who lives in Madison, N.J., and wore a Seahawks jersey. I dont think I ever checked the weather reports as much as for this game.After months of predictions of snow, howling wind and a frigid temperature, the weather on Super Bowl Sunday felt like a breath of fresh air. No polar vortex. No ice or sleet. No record-setting, bone-chilling temperatures, just a game-time temperature of 49 degrees and overcast, with a chance of light rain.The temperature at kickoff was actually the same as it was before the first pitch of the sixth and clinching game of the World Series in Boston last October.I took my jacket off because its too warm, said Paul Melkers, a Seahawks fan from Gig Harbor, Wash. His friend Garry Horvitz added, Its a nice Seattle day. From the moment the N.F.L. chose to hold its first outdoor Super Bowl in a cold weather region nearly four years ago, weather has been a topic of continual discussion. It also raised the chance that other cold-weather cities with outdoor stadiums could be added to the rotation of potential hosts.Commissioner Roger Goodell, an artful marketer, reminded fans that some of the N.F.L.s classic contests were played in cold weather. He even poked fun at the worrywarts, with fake snowflakes falling from the ceiling during his annual state of the league address Friday.Of course, we cannot control the weather, he said. I told you we were going to embrace the weather; here we go.Police and traffic officials assured fans that they were ready to keep the trains running and the roads clear, if the weather were to turn wintry. The players shrugged. They came from Denver and Seattle, not Miami and San Diego.Instead of chasing tornadoes and tracking hurricanes, weather forecasters flexed their meteorological muscles when, in fact, a clear picture of the weather on a single day is rarely known more than a few days in advance.About 10 days ago, the temperature was going to be somewhere between the teens and the 50s, said Elliot Abrams, senior vice president at Accuweather.com. Its good for interest value or entertainment value. You have to keep your sense of humor.The fixation on the weather at the Super Bowl managed to crowd out one of the years more prominent weather-related holidays, Groundhog Day. It sort of did steal his thunder, Abrams said. (For the record, Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter after seeing his shadow.)The dire forecasts leading to the game had a silver lining: falling ticket prices. Fans who waited until the weekend to buy their tickets found relative bargains.The bad weather they expected was good for me, said Ruben Menendez, who visited from Dallas. If everyone knew it was going to be 50 degrees, prices would have been higher.The larger question is whether the N.F.L. will commit to another Super Bowl outdoors in a cold-weather climate. The league granted New York and New Jersey a waiver from the requirement that the average temperature during the first week of February be 50 degrees or warmer, said Mark Lamping, who as the chief executive of New Meadowlands Stadium Company oversaw the construction of MetLife Stadium when the bid to host this years Super Bowl was put together. Lamping is now the president of the Jacksonville Jaguars.It was obviously the first thing most people thought of, but the second thing was that some of the most historic games in the N.F.L. were played in less-than-ideal weather conditions, Lamping said.Goodell said Friday that this years game was as much about it being in the New York metropolitan area than about breaking a weather taboo. It was a hint that cities like Denver and Seattle, which have outdoor stadiums and have expressed interest in hosting the game, will need to do more than just get in line if they hope to convince the league.But by dodging a weather bullet this week, owners may now be more receptive to giving another cold-weather city a chance, said Clark Hunt, the chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs.When it comes time to vote, owners will remember how well things went this week, Hunt said Sunday, adding that he envisioned a cold-weather city with an outdoor stadium being chosen about once every 10 years.I think it is really part of football, Shad Khan, the owner of the Jaguars, said about a cold-weather Super Bowl. Its going to be part of the future of this game.Warm-weather cities, fearful of being pushed aside as Super Bowl hosts, have fought back. Steve Ross, the owner of the Dolphins, has tried to win subsidies from Miami-Dade County to help improve his stadium to raise the odds that a Super Bowl returns to South Florida.On Wednesday, the host committee for next years Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., held a cocktail party where the mantra, shouted loud and often, was 75 and sunny, a reference to the weather in the Phoenix area.But the N.F.L. has been dealing with the weather almost since the Super Bowl began. The coldest Super Bowl was played in 1972 in New Orleans, before the Superdome was completed, where it was 39 degrees at kickoff. Atlanta and Dallas, which hosted games in domed stadiums, were hit by ice storms days before the game, snarling traffic and dampening the festival that precedes the game.After a week of brutal cold, Central Park finally had that festival feel on Sunday afternoon, where it was a balmy 55 degrees. Jawn Chasteen and his 10-year-old son Alexander were splattered in mud as they threw a football to each other near the Sheep Meadow.Were getting pumped for the game, Chasteen said between tosses. Its such a random shot to get a nice day in February. We always get blizzards and stuff. And then its going to snow again tonight. Its a perfect little window for the Super Bowl. | Sports |
The move, announced in the live-streamed start to the companys conference for developers, marks the end of a 15-year partnership.Credit...Brooks Kraft/AppleJune 22, 2020Apple confirmed on Monday that it would design the processors inside its new Mac computers, ditching Intel, its partner of 15 years, and completing a yearslong effort to control the core components underpinning its main devices.Apple said that the first Macs with Apple chips would arrive by years end, and that the full transition from Intel to Apple chips would take two years.Apples move, announced at the start of its annual developers conference, is the latest sign of the growing power and independence of the biggest tech companies.Making the silicon chips that power computers has been a multibillion-dollar industry for decades, creating giants like Intel that built their businesses by supplying PC makers with the processors for their devices.While companies like Dell and HP still rely on Intel for the chips inside their laptops, Apple has become large enough to design and produce its own silicon with the help of Asian chip-making partners. Apple already made custom chips for iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch, and now it will do so for its final major product line: the Mac.When we make bold changes, its for one simple yet powerful reason: so we can make much better products, Apples chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said during a recorded video announcing the change on Monday. When we look ahead, we envision some amazing new products, and transitioning to our own custom silicon is what will enable us to bring them to life.Johny Srouji, the head of Apples chip team, said in the video that Apples processors would make Mac computers faster and more powerful, while consuming less power. Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have already transitioned many of their Mac apps to the new chips, Apple said, and developers will be given tools to make their software work on the new computers, too.ImageCredit...Brooks Kraft/AppleThe most noticeable change for Mac users: IPhone and iPad apps will work directly on Mac computers with the Apple chips, with few if any changes needed by their developers.Apples Mac chips are expected to be built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the partner Apple uses to build similar components it designs for iPhones and iPads an arrangement much like Apples use of Foxconn to assemble iPhones.Losing Apple as a customer is a symbolic hit, as well as a financial one. Intel sells to Apple about $3.4 billion in chips for Macs each year, or less than 5 percent of Intels annual sales, according to C.J. Muse, an Evercore analyst.Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing, the company said in a statement. Intel-powered computers give users the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers.With the full transition to take two years, Mr. Cook said Apple still had several Intel-based Macs in its product pipeline.Apples Worldwide Developers Conference is the companys annual get-together with the entrepreneurs and programmers who make the apps and services that run on iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple uses the weeklong event to tell developers about its new software, teach them new tools and further cultivate them as Apple loyalists.With this years conference fully virtual for the first time, Apple already had a challenge. But then last week, the hot topic in tech circles became Apples control over its App Store and the fees and rules it enforces on app developers.The European Union announced an antitrust investigation into how Apple wields its control over the App Store, responding to a complaint from Spotify. The music-streaming service has protested Apples strict rules on Spotifys iPhone app, including that Apple collects 30 percent of the revenue from many Spotify subscribers.One of Apples most outspoken developers also complained that Apple had restricted his new email app because it didnt allow people to subscribe via Apples payment system, preventing Apple from collecting its cut of sales.David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder of Basecamp, a project-management tool, compared Apples moves against his Hey email app to a Mafioso breaking a store owners windows in order to collect his tax. Apple said it was merely enforcing years-old rules that all developers follow.After a weeklong back-and-forth, Apple eventually approved a new version of the Hey app, Mr. Heinemeier Hansson said. Apple said it would temporarily allow the app while it worked to comply with the rules, while Basecamp came up with a workaround so it still wouldnt have to pay Apple a cut of its sales.On Monday, Apple did not mention the spat, nor did it directly address its App Store rules or financial relationship with developers.Yet Apple did announce a new feature that could further upset many developers: App Clips, a way for iPhone owners to basically use an app without having to download it. For the feature to work in many cases, users would sign in and pay for an apps services with Apples proprietary systems, further entrenching Apple between businesses and their customers a central complaint of many app developers.Many iPhone users, however, will probably like the feature; it means they will have to download fewer apps, with privacy policies they havent read or dont understand.On the privacy front, Apple made three significant moves in its new iPhone software, set for this fall. Apps will have to get permission from iPhone owners to track them across other apps and the web. Apps must clearly say what data they collect and share about a user, before they are downloaded. And iPhone owners can choose to share just their approximate location with apps.Those changes could have the biggest long-term impact of any of Apples announcements on Monday. They could sharply reduce the amount of data many apps collect about their users, which would hamper their advertising-based business models. Apple has benefited from the digital economys slow shift away from advertising and toward subscriptions; Apple takes a cut of many of the subscriptions sold in the App Store.Don Clark contributed reporting. | Tech |
Kodak Black IG Live Video Alerted Cops In Drug, Weapons Bust 1/19/2018 Kodak Black got busted after cops saw his infant child surrounded by drugs and a handgun during an Instagram Live broadcast. As we reported, the rapper got arrested Thursday in Florida and was booked for 7 charges ... including drug possession, child neglect and grand theft of a firearm. According to police docs, obtained by TMZ, officers responded to Kodak's home after someone observed the IG vid of multiple men in a bathroom rolling joints and playing with a handgun. Police say the final straw came when Kodak's kid was brought into the bathroom, and was just inches away from a lit joint, and the weapon. Police say Kodak did nothing to get the child away from the danger. The IG Live broadcast was still rolling when police came into the house. According to docs, police found weed out in plain view, and got a search warrant. They ended up finding 94.9 grams of marijuana in his bedroom closet. They say his safe contained cash and a loaded Glock with 9 rounds, and there was a Beretta handgun in his office. The Beretta was reported stolen in December, hence the grand theft charge. | Entertainment |
Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesJune 5, 2018VERONA, N.J. A former Navy pilot, a veteran White House national security adviser and a conservative pro-gun state senator won Democratic nominations on Tuesday to represent battleground congressional districts in New Jersey, officially earning their spot on the front lines in a state that could determine control of the House.The days political focus remained largely on California and its high-profile statewide races and crowded congressional primaries. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic lieutenant governor, won one of two spots in the primary Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, in his bid to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown. John Cox, a Republican businessman backed by President Trump, captured the other spot.Senator Dianne Feinstein easily won a spot on the November ballot in her re-election bid in what by every indication looks like an easy race this fall no matter who ends up running against her.New Jersey could prove as crucial as California in the contest for the House in November. Democratic leaders are hoping to flip as many as four of the five Republican-held districts in the state.In perhaps the most closely watched contest in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, won the Democratic nomination in the 11th District, The A.P. reported, where Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a Republican, is retiring from a seat that a Democrat has not held since the 1980s. Ms. Sherrill became the latest woman to prevail in a nationwide wave of female candidacies and will now continue a nearly 18-month effort to replace Mr. Frelinghuysen with a Democrat in a district where Mr. Trumps victory has spawned intense activism.ImageCredit...Julio Cortez/Associated PressWe made New Jerseys 11th District the center of a national movement for new leadership, she told supporters at a victory rally. Change is led by the people of New Jersey.Ms. Sherrill, who raised nearly $2.4 million even before the primary, will face Jay Webber, a state assemblyman, in the general election.In the contest for the Senate in New Jersey, the Democratic incumbent, Robert Menendez, won his primary and will face Bob Hugin, a pharmaceutical executive who easily won the Republican nomination.New Jersey was one of seven states besides California where voters were choosing candidates on the busiest Primary Day of the year. In Alabama, a Republican congresswoman who opposed Mr. Trumps presidential campaign in 2016, Representative Martha Roby, was forced into a runoff laying bare the price of dissent in the conservative South even for an incumbent who has worked with the White House since Mr. Trumps election.But elsewhere, female candidates had another big night including a Democratic nomination for governor in New Mexico, a Republican nomination for governor in South Dakota and a win in a competitive Democratic primary for a battleground House seat in Iowa.[Get results from key House primaries in several states.]In New Jersey, the House races are so important that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made endorsements in four of the primaries to help clear the field for candidates it believed had broad enough appeal to win over the states many unaffiliated voters in the fall.ImageCredit...Rick Loomis for The New York TimesIn the southern region of the state, where Representative Frank LoBiondo is leaving his seat in the Second Congressional District, Jeff Van Drew, a state senator, won the Democratic primary. Mr. Van Drew, a conservative Democrat with a pro-gun record who voted against same-sex marriage in 2012, nonetheless won the backing of powerful South Jersey Democrats early on and was able to fend off a challenge from some progressive candidates.Andy Kim, a former White House national security official who ran uncontested in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, faces perhaps the steepest climb in the states key races this November: a general election contest in the Third Congressional District against Representative Tom MacArthur, a wealthy incumbent in a firmly red district that Mr. Trump won handily in 2016.As many other New Jersey Republicans have distanced themselves from the administration, voting against the tax law and efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Mr. MacArthur has been a loyal supporter, potentially alienating more centrist voters who have grown wary of the president.Atop the Democratic ticket in New Jersey was Mr. Menendez, who, despite having weathered a lengthy corruption trial and receiving a blistering admonishment from the Senate Ethics committee, faced only a little known challenger, Lisa McCormick, in the primary. But Ms. McCormick, who had no federal finance filings, no ads and no major campaign apparatus, still managed to garner nearly 40 percent of the vote a sign, perhaps, that many Democrats voted in protest for a candidate they did not know rather than support the scandal-singed Mr. Menendez.The general election promises to be hard-fought and potentially ugly. Both candidates have sizable war chests, and both come with vulnerabilities that make them ripe for partisan attack Mr. Menendez for his corruption case, and Mr. Hugin for the $280 million in fines his drug company, Celgene, paid last year for inappropriately marketing its cancer drugs.In Montana, a state Mr. Trump carried by 20 points in 2016, the primary contest for Jon Testers Senate seat is a pivotal race for Republicans hoping to retain or build upon their slim majority in the Senate. Mr. Tester will face Matt Rosendale, the state auditor, who won the Republican nomination Tuesday in a narrow victory over Russ Fagg.ImageCredit...Mickey Welsh/The Montgomery Advertiser, via Associated PressMr. Trump has taken particular interest in the race and in savaging Mr. Tester on Twitter and elsewhere ever since the senator helped to derail the nomination of Mr. Trumps personal physician, Ronny L. Jackson, to be his secretary of veterans affairs. But Mr. Tester remains a modest favorite, according to officials in both parties, in part because Mr. Rosendale is not viewed as a robust challenger.In Alabama on Tuesday, it was a Republican who seemed to pay a price for running afoul of Mr. Trump. Ms. Roby fell short of the 50 percent threshold required to win outright, after withdrawing support for Mr. Trump in 2016 following the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted of sexually assaulting women.Though Ms. Roby has taken care to project loyalty to the White House since Mr. Trumps victory, she had attracted a spirited challenge from several competitors. In the Republican runoff, she will face Bobby Bright, a one-time Democratic congressman and the former mayor of Montgomery. (Elsewhere on the ballot, Gov. Kay Ivey, who replaced Robert Bentley after he resigned in disgrace last year, avoided a runoff in her race by clearing 50 percent of the vote.)Regardless of which Republican is on the ballot for Ms. Robys deep-red district in November, the seat is highly unlikely to fall into Democratic hands.The same cannot be said for competitive races in Iowa which also had its primary on Tuesday where two Republicans in the House, Rod Blum and David Young, are expected to face tough tests in their re-election bids this fall. Mr. Youngs opponent will be Cindy Axne, a business owner and activist. She routed Pete DAlessandro, who led Senator Bernie Sanderss 2016 caucus campaign in Iowa and earned his former bosss endorsement in this race, to little avail.Mr. Blum will be running against Abby Finkenauer, a state legislator.Iowa Democrats are also working to knock off Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican. She will square off against Fred Hubbell, a business executive and longtime Democratic donor.ImageCredit...Juan Labreche/Associated PressIn New Mexico, Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, prevailed in the Democratic primary for governor. If elected, she would be the first Latina Democratic governor in the United States, replacing Gov. Susana Martinez, a term-limited Republican who is also Latina. Steve Pearce, a conservative congressman, won the Republican nomination.In the race to replace Ms. Lujan Grisham in the House, Deb Haaland, who is campaigning to be the first Native American woman in Congress, took the Democratic nomination. Ms. Haaland, a former state Democratic Party chairwoman, has far outpaced her rivals in fund-raising for a seat that is expected to remain blue.Among the other states voting on Tuesday were South Dakota, where Kristi Noem won the Republican primary for governor and the opportunity to face Billie Sutton, and Mississippi, which held its primaries for a Senate seat occupied by Roger Wicker. Mr. Wicker, a Republican, won his primary Tuesday night and is expected to be re-elected without major incident.But Democratic leaders have trained their attention most intensely on to Republican-held House seats in blue states like New Jersey.In the Seventh District along the western part of New Jersey, Representative Leonard Lance easily defeated two challengers Tuesday to win the Republican primary, and is expected to face his first tough general election in a decade for a seat that has been held by Republicans since 1981. His opponent will be Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state, who had raised more than $1.2 million in his effort to capture the Democratic nomination.Part of the intense focus on seats in New Jersey involves the unpopularity of Mr. Trump and his policies. The administrations early signature accomplishments, most notably the overhaul of the tax system, took aim at high-tax states like New Jersey. And the plan to open offshore drilling off the Atlantic Coast drew widespread condemnation up and down the Jersey Shore, a cherished resource and tourism destination. | Politics |
Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesFor Amy McGrath to win the race against Representative Andy Barr, she will have to win the votes of rural residents who feel alienated from the national Democratic Party.Amy McGrath, the Democratic nominee for a House seat in Kentucky, will need to win rural, traditionally Republican parts of her district as well as more Democratic-leaning cities like Frankfort, above.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesJune 16, 2018VERSAILLES, Ky. Ben Chandler knows how it feels to win and lose Kentuckys Sixth Congressional District.The area rambles from the Bluegrass region to the Appalachian Mountains to the east. Overwhelmingly white and culturally conservative, it is an uneasy mix of working-class struggles and old-money prosperity bourbon distilleries and luxuriant horse farms, one very large auto plant and the University of Kentucky. President Trump and the Second Amendment are popular here, but not in that order. Reverence for veterans runs deep.Amy McGrath, a Naval Academy graduate, Marine combat aviator and something of a Chandler protg, is persuaded a Democrat can once again be elected to the House in this district. Mr. Chandler, the last Democrat to do so, had to develop what he called an unorthodox calculus for winning over voters: The politics of confusion.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesI didnt have the luxury of voting the way I felt or taking the positions I wanted to take or even the best positions, he said in an interview on the farm that has been in his family since 1784. I had to balance that with what the people I represented wanted.By 2012, after four terms in office, Mr. Chandler found that formula no longer worked. In an increasingly polarized country, there was no longer a middle of the road in the Sixth District. A Republican, Andy Barr, defeated him and has won re-election two times since.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesNow, Ms. McGraths race against Mr. Barr will test the limits of any Democratic wave in the midterm elections and of the power of female candidates in a year with a record number of women running for Congress. If Ms. McGrath and others like her can win, Democrats would almost certainly retake control of the House.She will have to run up large margins in the few heavily populated areas that lean Democratic, such as Lexington and Frankfort. More challenging, she will have to win the votes of rural residents who feel alienated from the national Democratic Party, stepping squarely into the culture wars over guns, same-sex rights and access to health care.The electoral tripwires are many. In Anderson County to the west, bourbon distillers and Baptists coexist. In Bath County to the east, historical markers lionize the life of the Confederate general John Bell Hood. In Fayette County, in the middle, voters elected Jim Gray, who is gay, as mayor of Lexington. In Woodford County, where the moderate Mr. Chandler lives, one banner promoting a pro-life event and another celebrating gay rights were recently hanging off the courthouse railing.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe economy in most of the district is doing well, with pockets of poverty, mostly in rural areas. In Scott County, where Ms. McGrath lives, the largest Toyota plant in the world churns out Camrys and Lexus sedans, a factory that could be hurt by Mr. Trumps proposed tariffs. The Kentucky Bourbon Trail runs through the district, attracting tourists to another export that has been targeted for retaliatory tariffs by trading partners suffering from the presidents attacks on their steel and aluminum industries.The horse industry is as durable as the bluegrass this years Triple Crown winner, Justify, lives on WinStar Farm, adjacent to Mr. Chandlers homestead. In Clark County, Ale-8-One soda is a local staple made in Winchester and sold throughout the district. Many of the nations chemical weapons are stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, another sizable employer. The eastern part of the district is less well educated and more economically distressed.A Democrats path to victory starts in Lexington, a city of more than 300,000 in a county with the states highest percentage of college graduates that often provides about 40 percent of the overall vote. Lexington is ringed by suburbs where Democrats are hoping Ms. McGrath can pick off the votes of suburban women and men who will be drawn to her military service.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn the other 18 counties outside Fayette, Mr. Trump won with an average of 63 percent of the vote. Mr. Barr, who has deep reserves of trust and affection in rural precincts, won his race that year by 22 percentage points.But Ms. McGrath may have the kind of profile that can bring around some conservatives, win over moderates and appeal to liberals.The word most people would apply to her is tough, said Al Cross, the director at the University of Kentuckys Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. She has a pretty well-defined identity.In her primary victory over Mr. Gray, Ms. McGrath won handily in all of the rural counties, including Anderson, where tobacco farms have either gone to seed or given way to subdivisions as it has evolved into a bedroom community for Frankfort or Lexington. Mr. Trump won nearly 75 percent of the vote here.But Ms. McGrath decided early that she would compete for votes in the county. In November, she came to sit for an interview in the office of Ben Carlson, the editor and publisher of the weekly Anderson News, the principal source of local news, with a subscription price of $30 a year and a market penetration of 32 percent. Congressional candidates dont flock into The Anderson News asking us to interview them, Mr. Carlson said.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesHe delivered a 3,500-word, front-page article, covering a number of issues, including ones that could cause Ms. McGrath trouble in the race against Mr. Barr. What really surprised me was how honest and open she was about things she knew dang well werent going to be popular here, he said.Mr. Carlson attends dozens of community meetings a month and prides himself on being able to gauge sentiment. She was accessible, he said of Ms. McGraths campaign appearances. People love the Marine Corps thing.They do not like her position on guns, he said, because Ms. McGrath calls for background checks and banning bump stocks on weapons. This is very, very, very pro-gun country, Mr. Carlson said. An assault rifle ban will go over like a lead balloon. There are more AR-15s in this county than you can shake a stick at.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn another rural area, Donna Barnes, the chairwoman of the Republican Party in Montgomery County, agrees. The people here are passionate about the Second Amendment, she said. Ms. McGrath has changed her stance on gun control and when she did that, she actually lost some of the interest of Montgomery County.Ms. Barnes also said that voters needed to hear more about Ms. McGrath than her biography. Basically, all we are hearing is I am a veteran, vote for me.For many others, though, Ms. McGraths military service will be appealing and could help to inoculate her on a number of issues. To break through, she has opened a number of field offices in rural counties, including Clark, where her staff has a presence on the historic Main Street in Winchester.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesEd Burtner, the mayor of Winchester and former Marine who served in Vietnam, is no fan of Mr. Trump because of the presidents criticism of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, but he said the presidents support runs deep here. I havent found a single person that said they voted for Trump that has also not said they wouldnt do it again, Mr. Burtner said.Weve got that conservative base and in some cases ultra conservative base, he said. And she has to recognize thats here, and thats going to be in a lot of the communities where she is running.Henry Branham, a local judge and Democrat, said that people did not engage him on the subject of the president, but that hardly meant an embrace of his party. Clark County is so far from Nancy Pelosi, its pathetic, Mr. Branham said.Republicans tried to quickly define Ms. McGrath as too liberal for the district.People accepted gay marriage; they dont like it, Mr. Carlson said of people in Anderson County. Transgender in the military. A lot of the feedback was, I really like her, but boy, she is awfully liberal.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut her military rsum provides a strong counterpoint. Lawrenceburg, the Anderson County seat, has a healing field with flags to honor every Kentuckian who has been killed in the war on terrorism. The American Legion is the largest civic group.Mr. Chandler, whose grandfather, A. B. Chandler, was governor and senator before becoming the commissioner of Major League Baseball, knows the district like few others, and he believes Ms. McGrath has a powerful rejoinder to being labeled far left.How do you caricature someone as a liberal who has bombed terrorists? Mr. Chandler said. Thats ludicrous. I hope they try it. Look at Barr in the face and say how many terrorists have you killed?Young woman wanted to be a fighter pilot at an early age, he went on. Went against all of the societal norms, he said, adding, A mother of three dropping bombs on terrorists you dont run across that profile every day.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times | Politics |
Common SenseCredit...Karsten Moran for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2015After seven years of rock-bottom interest rates, it should come as no surprise to see excessive risk taking on Wall Street. Investors have long been trying to identify the next bubble, and last Friday Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, weighed in.The junk bond market, Mr. Icahn said on CNBC, was a keg of dynamite that sooner or later will blow up.Then, he looked like he might be onto something. The day before, the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, a mutual fund that at its peak had $2.5 billion in junk bonds and distressed securities, said it would halt redemptions and liquidate after suffering large losses. Several junk bond hedge funds also said they were shutting down. Prices of junk bonds risky corporate debt that pays high interest rates plunged last Friday on record trading volume and again on Monday. The spread between their yields and those of ultrasafe United States Treasuries surged to nearly 7 percentage points, all signs of stress, if not out-and-out panic.Some commentators called Third Avenue the canary in the mine shaft of the next financial crisis the next Long-Term Capital Management, the next Bear Stearns, or even the next Reserve Fund all earlier investment vehicles that imploded and contributed to broad market crises.ImageCredit...Yuri Gripas/ReutersBut after a few tremors this week, the market for junk bonds (more politely referred to as high-yield debt) stabilized. In recent years, this market has been red hot as investors desperate for higher returns in their bond portfolios piled in.In the wake of Third Avenues implosion, no other mutual funds collapsed, and junk bond exchange-traded funds a particular target of Mr. Icahns warnings handled record volume without any glitch. As investors breathed sighs of relief, stock markets around the globe staged modest recoveries.On Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve finally made its much-anticipated rate increase, markets rose further. In comments after the announcement, Janet L. Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, reassured investors by suggesting the Third Avenue funds problems were far from pervasive: It had many concentrated positions and especially risky and illiquid bonds, Ms. Yellen said. Junk bond funds rallied.Its too soon to say the worst is over for investors, or even that the junk bond crisis is over. It took over a year for the earliest signs of serious problems in the mortgage bond market to metastasize into the collapse of Lehman Brothers and a full-blown financial crisis.But in conversations this week with a wide range of investors, Wall Street executives, and economists, no one told me they thought that the Third Avenue funds liquidation was likely to set off another crisis. And while bubbles may yet emerge, by their very nature theyre likely to be found somewhere entirely unexpected not a closely watched, highly liquid market like the $1.3 trillion United States junk bond market.ImageCredit...Jennifer S. Altman for The New York TimesThe Third Avenue situation is unique, said Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs, who has been in frequent contact with clients throughout the week. They owned really low-credit-rated products compared to the typical high-yield fund. The long-term impact of rising rates remains a big question mark. But no one thinks that the collapse of Third Avenue is going to contaminate the world.In part thats because todays junk bond market and the institutions that invest in it lack two important ingredients of past crises: high leverage (heavy borrowing to finance the purchase of assets) and concentrated bets. While Third Avenues portfolio was concentrated in thinly traded, obscure bonds, it had no leverage. Its failure didnt put any lender in peril, the way the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to crises at A.I.G. and throughout Wall Street.And most junk bond funds, including the two largest high-yield E.T.F.s, also have no leverage and are highly diversified, with hundreds of securities across all industries. Goldman said this week in a note to clients that outside the battered energy sector, banks are still upbeat about credit quality.Mark Wiedman, global head of the iShares E.T.F. business at BlackRock, said that the characteristics of E.T.F.s made them far safer than owning individual junk bonds. The vast majority of E.T.F.s, including all of ours, are unlevered, passive vehicles, he said. Theyre boring.Unlike mutual funds, which may need to sell underlying fund positions to meet shareholder redemptions, E.T.F. shares trade like stocks. Last Friday, Blackrocks flagship junk bond E.T.F., the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond E.T.F., experienced a surge in trading $4.3 billion, four times the record daily volume before that week. (On an average day the fund trades about $700 million worth of shares.) On Monday trading hit $3 billion.VideoJames B. Stewart, on CNBC, discusses why the problems facing the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, which said it would halt redemptions and liquidate after suffering large losses, haven't spread across Wall Street.Yet there were zero snafus, Mr. Wiedman said. The trading added liquidity. I keep wondering how many stress tests we have to pass.Mr. Wiedman dismissed comparisons of Third Avenue to Long Term Capital Management, which had to be bailed out in 1998, igniting market turmoil. LTCM was too big and too levered, he said. Third Avenue was small and unlevered. They shut the fund, so there was no forced selling. You can make the case they shouldnt have been holding so many illiquid assets while offering daily liquidity, but in that regard they were an extreme outlier. This doesnt reflect any massive problem.Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, the worlds biggest distressed-debt investor, has also long been warning about excess in the markets. But he agreed that the Third Avenue fund was an outlier. When you have a fund promising daily liquidity, which owns things that dont trade and dont price, youve got the ingredients for a meltdown, Mr. Marks said. But that means its a function of one funds management, not a weakness of a whole asset class. Id be very surprised if it leads to any kind of cataclysm.Not all financial crises involve high leverage. The Reserve Fund, the money market mutual fund that broke the buck after Lehman Brothers collapsed, had no leverage. But its shares, designed to trade at a constant $1 and be the equivalent of cash, fell below $1 because its assets included Lehman debt, which plunged in value.Reserve breaking the buck was a huge systemic shock, said Alan Blinder, professor of economics and public policy at Princeton, and author of After the Music Stopped, an analysis of the financial crisis. Events might prove me wrong, but I doubt the analogy holds with Third Avenue.ImageCredit...Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThird Avenue investors knew they were living in a high-return/high-risk world, Mr. Blinder said. Investors in the Reserve Fund thought they were living in a low-return/low- or zero-risk world. So I dont see Third Avenue as a big shock to the system.Some investors saw in last weeks junk bond turmoil not the makings of another crisis, but a buying opportunity. Douglas Kass of Seabreeze Partners, a money manager known for his bearish views, said hes been buying junk bond funds, even ones that use some borrowed money.Third Avenues problem was a liquidity event, not a fundamental event like the other crises, he said. I totally reject Carl Icahns view that this is a systemic problem. When you see a selling panic like the one that happened last Friday, it usually marks the end of a downturn, not the beginning.That doesnt mean, of course, that investors in junk bond and other assets buoyed by years of record-low interest rates wont lose money. Bond prices drop when interest rates rise, as they have in anticipation of this weeks Fed move, which can hardly be called a surprise.Even so, lots of people may have gone into high-risk credit funds not fully anticipating or understanding the risk, Mr. Marks said. Last week was a wake-up call, he said. People went from oblivious to risk to obsessed with risk. Id say its an overreaction, but in many ways its a healthy correction in response to some warning signs that have been ignored for years. | Business |
Credit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesJune 27, 2018ORZYSZ, Poland Soon after a United States Army convoy crossed Polands border into Lithuania during a major military exercise this month, two very strange things happened.First, four Army Stryker armored vehicles collided, sending 15 soldiers to the hospital with minor injuries. But hours later, an anti-American blog claimed a child was killed and posted a photo of the accident. Lithuanian media quickly denounced the blog post as a doctored fake, designed to turn public opinion against the Americans and their Baltic ally.The bloggers had borrowed a page from the playbook of Russias so-called hybrid warfare, which American officials say increasingly combines the ability to manipulate events using a mix of subterfuge, cyberattacks and information warfare with conventional military might.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe military exercise, which involved 18,000 American and allied troops, offers a window into how Army commanders are countering not just Russian troops and tanks, but also twisted truths. The exercise occurred as President Trump is sidling up to Moscow by bad-mouthing NATO, calling for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 industrialized nations, and planning a summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia next month.American commanders say they are tuning out Mr. Trumps comments strengthening ties to allied armies, increasing the number of troops and spies devoted to Russia, and embracing Defense Secretary Jim Mattiss newest defense strategy that focuses more on potential threats from Russia and China and less on terrorism.The Russians are actively seeking to divide our alliance, and we must not allow that to happen, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, warned separately in a speech in France the day after the June 7 accident in Lithuania.Over the past year, the United States and its NATO allies completed positioning about 4,500 soldiers in the three Baltic States and Poland, and have stationed several thousand other armored troops mostly in Eastern Europe as a deterrent to Russian aggression.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesIn Brussels, allied defense ministers met recently in advance of a NATO summit meeting in July and approved a plan to ensure that by 2020, at least 30,000 troops, plus additional attack planes and warships, can respond to aggressions within 30 days.These tensions are part of an expanding rivalry and military buildup, with echoes of the Cold War, between Washington and Moscow.The doctored photo of the Army accident in Lithuania was just the latest reminder of what American officials called Russias increasing reliance on cyberattacks and information warfare to keep its rivals off balance.Last year, for instance, Lithuanian prosecutors investigated a claim of rape against German soldiers who were stationed in Lithuania as part of a NATO mission to deter Russia. Ultimately, the report turned out to be false. Moscow denied being involved in any disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting troops, but the incident was widely viewed as an attempt to sow divisions among the allies.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesMoscow is flexing its conventional might, too, sending military forces for its own exercises along its western border with Europe and also to Syria and eastern Ukraine. Additionally, Russia is building up its nuclear arsenal and cyberwarfare prowess in what American military officials call an attempt to prove its relevance after years of economic decline and retrenchment.In response, the Pentagon has stepped up training rotations and exercises on the territory of newer NATO allies in the east, including along a narrow 60-mile-wide stretch of rolling Polish farmland near the Lithuanian border northeast of here called the Suwalki Gap. The corridor is sandwiched between the heavily militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Moscows ally Belarus, and is considered NATOs weak spot on its eastern flank.In the unlikely event of a land war, American and allied officers say, the region is where Russia or its proxies could cut off the Baltic States from the rest of Europe. Since Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, Eastern Europe has felt increasingly vulnerable.Putin is a bird of prey, said Piotr Lukasiewicz, a retired Polish Army colonel and former Polish ambassador to Afghanistan. He preys on weak states.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe Polish government has offered to pay the United States up to $2 billion to build a permanent military base in the country, an offer the Trump administration is weighing cautiously. American forces are, apparently for the first time, flying unarmed Reaper surveillance drones from a Polish base in the countrys northwest. Nearly 2,000 Special Operations forces from the United States and 10 other NATO nations carried out one of their biggest exercises ever Trojan Footprint 18 in Poland and the Baltics this month.Elsewhere in Europe, Norway agreed two weeks ago to increase the number of American Marines training there regularly, to 700 from 330, drawing an angry protest from Moscow.The Russian military threat has changed markedly since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Mr. Putin has invested heavily in modern infantry forces, tanks and artillery. Moscow has also increased its constellation of surveillance drones that can identify targets and coordinate strikes launched from other weapons.Russias big war game in Belarus last year known as Zapad 2017 involved tens of thousands of troops and raised concerns about accidental conflicts that could be triggered by such exercises, or any incursions into Russian-speaking regions in the Baltics.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesThe Kremlin firmly rejects any such aims and says NATO is the security threat in Eastern Europe. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, in Helsinki, Finland, this month, in part to discuss the current international security situation in Europe, a spokesman for General Dunford said.A mobile American command post here in northeastern Poland reflects the Armys new realities in Eastern Europe.Soldiers accustomed to operating from large, secure bases in Iraq and Afghanistan now practice disguising their positions with camouflage netting. Troops disperse into smaller groups to simulate avoiding sophisticated surveillance drones that could direct rocket or missile attacks against personnel or command posts. Intelligence analysts track Twitter and other social media for information on their adversaries and local sympathizers.We have to be nimble, said Brig. Gen. Richard R. Coffman, a deputy commander of the Armys First Infantry Division who is overseeing much of the American training from a command post in Orzysz.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesAsked about the Russian threat, General Coffman, a third-generation Army officer from Fort Knox, Ky., echoed a sentiment of many officers interviewed over the course of three days: To say I wasnt worried would be foolish, but it doesnt keep me up at night.The largest American component in the $21 million exercise, called Saber Strike, consisted of roughly 3,000 soldiers from the Second Cavalry Regiment, a storied Army unit that tracks its lineage to 1836. To practice its ability to move quickly in a crisis and sustain itself along the way, the regiment drove 950 vehicles about 840 miles from its base in Vilseck, Germany, to a training range in southern Lithuania roughly the distance from New York to Atlanta.The road march was a proving ground for enhanced technology, such as new, small reconnaissance drones and electronic-jamming equipment to thwart Russian probes. For Lithuanian officers, many of whom have served alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, the expanded allied presence is welcome payback for the Baltic contributions to those counterterrorism campaigns of the past decade.When it comes to Russian aggression, the Lithuanians have long memories. Hanging in the spacious office of Maj. Gen. Vitalijus Vaiksnoras, Lithuanias second-ranking officer, is a huge painting of the Battle of Orsha from 1514 when a force of 30,000 Lithuanians and Poles defeated 80,000 Russians.ImageCredit...Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesWe cannot afford to be weak, said General Vaiksnoras, who studied in San Antonio and at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The Russians will take advantage of that.Lithuanias army has grown to 10,000 full-time soldiers, a roughly 25 percent increase in the past two years, the general said. Conscription has been reinstated. And the military has bought new infantry fighting vehicles, air defenses and howitzers.At a training range about 15 miles from the border with Belarus, Col. Mindaugas Steponavicius, commander of the Lithuanian Armys 3,000-soldier Iron Wolf brigade, said he was sharpening his forces by training with NATO partners like the United States and Germany.He is putting aside Mr. Trumps comments and relying on soldier-to-soldier bonds to deter Russia.If you are a small nation, you have to have good, strong allies, said Colonel Steponavicius, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. When we have such a neighbor, allies matter. | Politics |
Labor Unions Decided June 27, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court ruled that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be required to help pay for collective bargaining. Pregnancy Centers and Abortion Decided June 26, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court blocked a California law that required crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion. Digital Privacy Decided June 22, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court ruled that the government generally needs a warrant to collect troves of location data about the customers of cellphone companies. Internet Sales Taxes Decided June 21, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas Partisan Gerrymandering June 18, 2018 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas Voting Rights Decided June 11, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court upheld Ohios aggressive program to purge its voting rolls. Gay Rights and Religion Decided June 4, 2018 7-2 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court said the baker had been mistreated by a state civil rights commission based on remarks of one of its members indicating hostility to religion. Workplace Arbitration Decided May 21, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court ruled that employers can require workers to pursue claims for wage theft and other workplace issues in individual arbitrations. Sports Betting Decided May 14, 2018 7-2 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court struck down a federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states, clearing the way for legal wagering. Human Rights Violations Jesner v. Arab Bank Decided April 24, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court ruled that foreign corporations may not be sued in American courts for complicity in human rights abuses abroad. Immigration Decided Feb. 27, 2018 5-4 Sotomayor Ginsburg Kagan Breyer Kennedy Roberts Gorsuch Alito Thomas The court struck down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. Justice Gorsuch joined the courts four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. More on NYTimes.com | Politics |
An island community in Washington State has developed a testing and tracing strategy it hopes will be a model for rural and tribal communities.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMay 16, 2020In mid-March, Dr. Jim Bristows wife came down with gastrointestinal issues. Then, she couldnt stop coughing.Her symptoms pointed to coronavirus, but she couldnt get tested in part because of the nationwide test shortage, but also because the pair lived in Vashon, an idyllic town on an island in Washington States Puget Sound with scant medical resources. When Dr. Anthony S. Fauci of President Trumps coronavirus task force said that the United States was failing with regards to testing, Dr. Bristow, said that it really struck me.Dr. Bristow felt inspired to collaborate with other members in the Vashon community to develop a model to test, trace and isolate in essence, a coronavirus response plan that they call the Rural Test & Trace Toolkit. Dr. Bristow, a retired cardiologist who was trained at the start of the AIDS epidemic, now believes that their model can be replicated, or serve as a guideline, for other isolated parts of the United States, including rural and tribal communities as they continue to face outbreaks.As the novel coronavirus expands beyond major cities and the coasts and as states start to emerge from shelter-in-place orders locations with fewer medical resources will need strategies that work for them.While rural areas are typically underresourced and disadvantaged as it comes to health and health care, a model like this shows that rural places can be particularly nimble and flexible, said Carrie Henning-Smith, the deputy director of the University of Minnesotas Rural Health Research Center.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesAlthough Vashon Island is geographically part of King County which includes Seattle, the early epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States it is unincorporated, meaning it is governed by the county but mostly manages its own affairs.Were an hour and a half from the nearest emergency room, we dont have acute care facilities on the island, and our ambulance system can be easily overwhelmed, said Dr. John Osborn, who works as an emergency room physician in Seattle and also leads Vashons Medical Reserve Corps. The challenges we face are faced by many other rural communities.After Dr. Bristows initial frustrations, he eventually got in touch with Dr. Osborn and the reserve corps. They came up with a plan for a coronavirus response team on the island. Another 70 volunteers joined the islands corps to help many of them older and at higher risk of dying or contracting severe disease if they are exposed. We have a volunteer work force we simply cant expose, said Dr. Bristow, also the former deputy director of the Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.Dr. Zach Miller, a resident of Vashon who set up the infectious disease department at the nonprofit regional health care system Group Health (now part of Kaiser), quickly realized that nasal swabs could be used in lieu of the clinically standard nasopharyngeal swabs, skirting the need for more extensive personal protective equipment such as face shields and N95 masks. This can allow the model to be replicated in other places with a group of well-trained volunteers, he said.Since April 7, a historic building in the center of Vashon has been transformed into a coronavirus testing site. For a few hours every day, volunteers set up tents and tables outside and don medical masks and gloves to help residents get tested for coronavirus infection. Residents drive up and use their vehicles as personal waiting rooms. But instead of a trained medical practitioner inserting a swab deep into their nose, each patient gets a kit from a volunteer, stops their car and takes the swab themselves.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSo far, this testing setup has swabbed about 60 individuals, but not turned up any positive residents. (Vashon had four other coronavirus cases that were reported to the Washington Department of Health.) Dr. Bristows wife was never tested and has since recovered, and there hasnt been a positive case on the island in over two weeks.If the testing does turn up positive cases, some volunteers have been trained as contact tracers to identify people who have been in contact with the infected person.Its not rocket science and with the right supervision you can train basically anyone to do it, Dr. Bristow said. Moreover, having someone within the community trace call others might be advantageous because there is more inherent trust.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe success of the Vashon method has relied on its medical reserve corps, a regional emergency preparedness team established by the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Until coronavirus made its way to the West Coast, the corps on Vashon was most concerned with preparing for a massive earthquake expected to strike the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Osborn believes that the 829 Medical reserve corps around the country can be a building block for effective testing and tracing in other rural communities.Currently, Dr. Bristow and Dr. Osborn are bringing their model to native nations in the Puget Sound and the Columbia River Basin, where Dr. Osborn had pre-existing relationships from his work on protecting rivers and salmon in the area. Like Vashon, many of these communities are relatively remote.We really welcomed this idea, said Fawn Sharp, president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Wash.The reservation is about a 45-minute drive to the nearest emergency room, and has one ambulance for about 3,500 people.If coronavirus hits here, we are going to be hit hard, so were taking every precaution we can, said MLiss DeWald, the planning chief for Quinaults coronavirus incident command team.Ms. DeWald says that she and others in the community have many of the ingredients to implement the Vashon model with eager volunteers and a physical location to do the testing. But early on they struggled with procuring test kits.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Being able to implement the model would largely depend on the financial means to purchase test kits and certain protective gear, such as surgical masks and gloves, Dr. Henning-Smith said. Dr. Bristow suggests coronavirus response teams partner with clinics that have access to such gear. In the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, medical workers have been able to repurpose many of their existing supplies to do testing for the coronavirus, said Dr. Brenda Powell, the tribes health services director.Transportation might also be an issue in some rural communities. How can you do a drive-through if people dont have cars? said Dr. Jasmeet Bains, describing one of the biggest challenges for the model. As a family medicine doctor in Taft, Calif., she primarily serves uninsured, undocumented immigrants who walk to her clinic.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe Vashon model is very flexible, Dr. Miller said. Home test kits can be delivered to someones doorstep and picked up later, he said. The supply-chain bottlenecks that rural communities run into today might change tomorrow.If communities are going to test, they need to be able to adapt, Dr. Bristow said. He plans on keeping the webpage for the Vashon model up-to-date, and hopes it can be a clearinghouse for information in this rapidly changing landscape. | Health |
on techWhy the middlemen are the internets villains.Credit...Ryan KuoJune 24, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Its practically an inevitability of the digital world: The middleman eventually becomes a villain.You might not think of it this way, but middlemen that connect buyers and sellers are everywhere online. The most obvious ones are shopping sites like eBay that gather a bunch of merchants selling dog beds and the people looking to buy Fido a cozy cushion.Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, Expedia, Care.com, Postmates and the app stores from Apple and Google function the same way, at least in part. For a commission thats typically 15 percent to 30 percent of each sale, these middlemen match buyers like you and me with sellers looking to give us a ride, rent us their home, care for our children or sell us a restaurant meal, hotel room or app.The technology industry loves middlemen companies the industry calls them two-sided marketplaces. But from the earliest days of the internet, many sellers have hated the middlemens guts. Im not exaggerating when I say that this resentment is the root cause of many conflicts in the digital era.Restaurants grievances with food delivery companies, app developers fury at Apple, merchants complaints about Amazon, and couriers gripes about Uber and Instacart share an underlying problem. The sellers believe a marketplace is charging them too much, making unfair rules, getting rich off their work or all of the above.The complaints can sometimes seem whiny. Marketplaces funnel customers to restaurants, dog-bed sellers and Airbnb hosts, and they typically handle hassles like providing insurance, customer service and processing credit cards.And yet its not hard to understand the resentment toward a company that delivers you a bunch of business, but also takes a big chunk of your money, sets rules that can seem arbitrary and grows more powerful because of your work.This conflict feels inevitable. But I recently heard about an alternate marketplace idea that was hard to wrap my brain around but might be a novel way to attack middleman resentment.Braintrust connects freelance software coders and other technical workers with companies that want to hire them for projects. Job marketplaces are common, but whats different at Braintrust is that freelancers and other contributors collect ownership interests in the marketplace for doing things like referring potential freelancers and clients or helping to vet their peers.That means the work they do will give them both a paycheck and a say over important functions of the marketplace like the size of commissions or whether to pursue big corporate clients. The basic idea, Braintrusts founder, Adam Jackson, told me, is to give the sellers power and a share of the spoils if the marketplace does well.I will not bore you with details, but Braintrust works on the concept of a blockchain token, an often incomprehensible technology that can promise self-governance among large numbers of people but hasnt usually worked in practice. Jackson knows this.The idea of Braintrust is kooky, and it might not work. But Im glad that people like Jackson are looking for ways the middleman can avoid being hated. Dont ignore this Facebook legal fightHere is an essential truth about Facebook: Everything it does is intended to suck up as much information about you as possible, so it becomes more capable at selling ads.Because Facebook tracks everything you say about yourself inside its digital walls, and tracks your activity online and in the real world, the company is armed with so much information that it can find Ford exactly the people who might buy a new pickup.Facebook is an incredibly successful business in part because of this creepy data harvesting machine. (See also Google, but Ill leave that for another day.)Thats why I want you to pay attention to what a German antitrust watchdog is doing. It is saying that limiting Facebooks data harvesting could address both the companys data privacy problems and questions about whether the company competes fairly.Facebook said Germanys antimonopoly regulator is misapplying the law. The countrys top court sided with the regulator this week, but the case might continue to wind its way through the legal system. Im certainly not an expert in German laws, and I wont try to predict the outcome.But the philosophical idea was a jolt to me. The regulator is treating two major concerns about Facebook violations of peoples privacy and potential abuses of the companys power not as disparate issues but as two sides of the same coin.Imagine if the Facebook data-sucking machine had more limits? Maybe its ads wouldnt be as effective and politicians and ice cream companies would have to find other places to pitch what they do.Facebook would be less creepy AND internet competitors might have a stronger hand.Before we go Its a nightmare scenario for technology gone wrong. The police in Detroit used facial recognition technology to try to identify a shoplifter, but they incorrectly identified and arrested a black man who went through a harrowing ordeal. Law enforcement agencies arent supposed to rely alone on often flawed facial identification software, but my colleague Kashmir Hill showed thats exactly what happened. (Ill have a conversation with Kash about this in tomorrows newsletter.)The reckoning inside Amazon: Workers and contractors are challenging Amazon to do much more to address racial inequality within its own walls. Confrontations over inequality are happening in many companies, but my colleague Karen Weise writes that this turmoil is unusual at Amazon, which has a large percentage of black employees in its warehouses and a C.E.O. who has publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement.Stress is breeding conspiracy theories about firecrackers? I get that were anxious and on edge, but come on, there are now baseless conspiracy theories that a surge in impromptu fireworks in many U.S. cities is part of a government operation. BuzzFeed News explains boompilling conspiracies and explores the likely causes of unsanctioned fireworks.Hugs to thisThis video of a curious kitty pawing inside what looks like a piece of cardboard is going wild on TikTok.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]. Get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here. | Tech |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 6, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump commuted the sentence on Wednesday of a 63-year-old woman serving life in prison for a nonviolent drug conviction after her case was brought to his attention by the reality television star Kim Kardashian West.Although short of a full pardon, the decision will free Alice Marie Johnson, who has been locked up in federal prison in Alabama since 1996 on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering. Ms. Kardashian West, who learned of the case through a video that went viral on social media, visited Mr. Trump at the White House last week to lobby on Ms. Johnsons behalf.While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance, the White House said in a statement announcing the commutation.Ms. Kardashian West celebrated the decision on Twitter. BEST NEWS EVER!!!! she wrote.In an emailed statement, she thanked Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for showing mercy to Ms. Johnson. Her commutation and forthcoming release is inspirational and gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance, Ms. Kardashian West said.The presidents intervention was contrary to the policies his own Justice Department has enacted since he took office. Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against criminal defendants, reversing President Barack Obamas efforts to ease penalties in nonviolent drug cases.The arguments advanced on Ms. Johnsons behalf were essentially the same that were made for thousands of other nonviolent drug convicts whose petitions for presidential clemency have been languishing at the Justice Department without action. While Mr. Obama pardoned 212 people and commuted the sentences of 1,715 prisoners, including 568 serving life sentences, Mr. Trump has acted mainly on a few high-profile cases brought to him by associates and allies.Im grateful to the president for allowing Alice to go home after 21.5 years in prison and to Kim Kardashian for her advocacy on Alices behalf, said Jennifer Turner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has championed Ms. Johnsons case. I urge the president to do the same for other federal prisoners serving extreme sentences that dont match the offenses, while reforming our draconian sentencing laws that produce these senseless punishments.Mr. Kushner has been advocating changes to harsh criminal justice policies against the resistance of Mr. Sessions and the Justice Department. He invited Ms. Kardashian West to the White House last week to make the case for Ms. Johnson and Mr. Trump then invited his guest to come to the Oval Office to talk to him about her.Not everyone in the White House shared the view that Ms. Johnsons sentence was too harsh. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, and Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, resisted clemency, according to an administration official, confirming a report in The Washington Post. The two advisers were concerned because the drug ring that Ms. Johnson was part of moved substantial amounts of cocaine to the streets of Memphis over a period of years.The Justice Department declined to comment on the presidents decision on Wednesday. According to its website, Ms. Johnson did not have a pending application for clemency registered with the department; a previous application was denied.Mr. Trump last week pardoned Dinesh DSouza, a prominent conservative author and filmmaker convicted of campaign finance violations, and suggested that he might use his clemency power on behalf of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and Martha Stewart, the lifestyle guru.He has also pardoned four others whose cases were championed by conservatives or celebrities, including Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff known for his tough approach to immigration; I. Lewis Libby Jr., the chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney; Jack Johnson, the black boxing legend; and Kristian Saucier, a former Navy sailor.Ms. Johnson had no fame or fortune, but her situation became a symbol for activists pushing for sentencing overhaul, an example of a system that in their view has taken punishment too far and disproportionately affected African-Americans like her. She was singled out by the A.C.L.U. as well as by Mic, a news website that seeks to give voice to the underrepresented and interviewed Ms. Johnson about her plight.Its like an unexecuted sentence of death, she told Mic about her life sentence. Her family, she added, told me that coming to visit me in prison is like visiting a grave site.They said that they could see the place where my body lay but they can never take me home again, she said.A single mother of five in Memphis, she struggled with gambling, unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure before becoming involved in a drug ring. She was arrested in 1993 as part of an operation that transported cocaine from Houston to Memphis, relaying coded messages between conspirators. She also purchased a house with a down payment that she structured with three separate money orders under the $10,000 reporting limit.Ms. Johnson was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and deliver, money laundering, conspiracy to commit money laundering and structuring a monetary transaction, according to the A.C.L.U. Under mandatory sentencing rules, she was given a life term without parole. Several co-defendants who testified against her were sentenced to probation or terms up to 10 years.While in prison, where she became a grandmother and great-grandmother, Ms. Johnson took educational and vocational programs, volunteered to help sick and dying prisoners, and helped coordinate the prisons Special Olympics.Ms. Kardashian West said she broke the news to Ms. Johnson in a telephone call to her prison in Aliceville, Ala. The phone call I just had with Alice will forever be one of my best memories, she wrote on Twitter. Telling her for the first time and hearing her screams while crying together is a moment I will never forget. | Politics |
Science|Watch Beatboxers Break It Down Inside an M.R.I. Scannerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/science/beatboxing-mri-scanner.htmlTrilobitesResearchers got an inside look at beatboxers lips, mouths and throats as they performed. Nov. 7, 2018Its not every day that scientists get a beatboxer to perform inside an M.R.I. machine. But the researchers who did got to see a show, and now so do you (we recommend you watch this short video with the sound on).VideoOne of five beatboxers studied in a MRI scanner.CreditCredit...Shri Narayanan/USC SAILUnder magnetic resonance imaging, they observed the mechanics of how the artists make the distinctive beats that sound like percussion instruments using only their mouths. In gritty black and white, their tongues leap and flip; a sound like a snare drum snaps out.The research, based on scans of five different beatboxers, was presented Wednesday at the Acoustical Society of America. The scientists, with specialties in computer science, engineering and linguistics, are comparing the movements in beatboxing to those used to make speech. They hope to learn more about how the human body produces language and to develop algorithms that can accurately describe the dynamics of the vocal tract.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Beatboxing, in which artists use clicks, rolls and their own breath to create the sounds of a drum machine or other effects, has long been used by performers of jazz, hip-hop and other genres. Virtuosos can effectively accompany themselves, mimicking the sound of an entire bands worth of instruments.Beatboxing has been studied before, but usually with data from only a single performer. Timothy Greer, the computer science graduate student at the University of Southern California who presented the research, and colleagues worked with a diverse array of beatboxers: two experts, two novices and an intermediate-level performer (who is a member of the research team). Importantly, one of the performers speaks two languages in addition to English; the researchers are curious to see whether knowing other languages influences how a beatboxer moves their mouth in creating a given sound.Beatboxers had been thought to draw on sounds from human languages a reasonable supposition, because the same throat and mouth structures are used in both speaking and beatboxing. But instead the team has observed that some of the techniques the performers are using to make their sounds are quite different from speech.Theyre coming up with ways to create these really complex acrobatic sounds by taking approaches drawn from different parts of the mouth that they dont use in any language, and nobody uses for any language, Mr. Greer said.VideoA performer demonstrates a technique compared with throat singing.CreditCredit...Shri Narayanan/USC SAILThe researchers are also comparing what the mouth and throat look like just before a beatboxer lets out a beat and just before he or she speaks. By observing the differences in these actions, they hope to understand what makes beatboxing distinct from speech cognitively how the sounds a person intends to make are reflected in the way they shape their vocal tract.We also want to look at how beatboxers acquire new skills, which we hypothesize may bear resemblance to learning a new language, Mr. Greer said.Mr. Greer does not beatbox seriously himself, though he plays the piano and the saxophone. But he admitted: I found myself doing it more in the shower now that I study it. | science |
Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressJune 8, 2018WASHINGTON A former C.I.A. case officer faces life in prison after he was convicted on Friday of betraying his country to spy on behalf of China.Kevin Mallory, 61, of Leesburg, Va., was found guilty of espionage charges and lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Chinese intelligence.The verdict capped a nearly two-week trial that offered a rare glimpse into the murky world of American espionage cases, which typically do not go to trial because of the difficulties involving highly classified information.There are few crimes in this country more serious than espionage, said G. Zachary Terwilliger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. This office has a long history of holding those accountable who betray their country and try and profit off of classified information.Mr. Mallorys lawyers have steadfastly denied the charges. They claim that Mr. Mallory, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer and a private consultant, is a patriot who planned to use his recruitment to lure Chinese intelligence handlers into the C.I.A.s grasp. Mr. Mallory left the C.I.A. in 2012.This was an intelligence operation against Chinese intelligence, Mr. Mallorys lawyer Geremy Kamens said Thursday during closing arguments. In reality, Kevin Mallory was working against the Chinese.The jury was not convinced, deliberating for a day before deciding to believe the substantial evidence prosecutors presented in the federal courtroom in Northern Virginia.In early 2017, a Chinese headhunter sent Mr. Mallory a message about contracting work using a networking site. But the job Mr. Mallory thought he was exploring turned out to have a far different purpose.He was passed to a Chinese intelligence operative working for a think tank who wanted him to become an informant. And over the next four months, Mr. Mallory, who is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, traveled to Shanghai, had covert communications with the operative on a Chinese-provided phone and passed information including an unclassified white paper on American intelligence policy to his handlers, the authorities said.But Chinese attempts to protect the contents of the phone from prying eyes failed because of an apparent technical problem. The F.B.I. was able to analyze it and found a handwritten index describing eight documents. Four of the documents listed in the index were found on the phone, with three containing classified information.The twist in Mr. Mallorys spy career was that he told the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. parts of the story and provided his phone to agents. This was evidence that Mr. Mallory was not a spy, his lawyers said.The prosecution said that story was totally and completely absurd. Mr. Mallory, prosecutors said, selectively disclosed his contacts in order to have a potential defense in case federal investigators caught on to his true plan: to trade American secrets for cash.His intent was never to help, John Gibbs, a federal prosecutor, said Thursday. His intent was to lie.At the time he was recruited, prosecutors say, Mr. Mallory was thousands of dollars in debt and behind on his mortgage, making him a prime target for intelligence operatives looking to trade money for secrets. In Mr. Mallorys case, the Chinese gave him $25,000, the authorities said.Mr. Mallory is scheduled to be sentenced in September.The high-profile case is among several recent ones involving Chinese attempts to recruit former American intelligence officials. In January, the F.B.I. arrested Jerry Chun Shing Lee, another former C.I.A. officer, who had repeated contacts with Chinese intelligence. He has been charged with illegally possessing classified information and conspiring to spy for the Chinese.Last week, prosecutors charged Ron Rockwell Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency case officer, with attempted espionage. The F.B.I. began investigating Mr. Hansens activities in 2014. | Politics |
Africa|Cameroon School Kidnappings Are Reported Amid Secession Battlehttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/world/africa/cameroon-school-kidnap.htmlCredit...Alexis Huguet/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 5, 2018DAKAR, Senegal Numerous students were kidnapped from a boarding school early Monday in a part of Cameroon where separatists are waging a violent battle to break away and form their own country.The students were kidnapped either late Sunday or early Monday from a Presbyterian boarding school in Nkwen, a small village not far from the northwestern city of Bamenda in one of Cameroons two English-speaking regions.The total number of hostages, and who was behind the kidnappings, were unclear Monday afternoon.Some media outlets reported as many as 80 students had been kidnapped, along with a principal and two other employees. A Cameroon military officer said the hostages numbered 20 students along with one teacher.No one was killed during the kidnapping, officials said.Separatists in Cameroon have been pushing for English-speaking regions to secede for decades, arguing that they lack political clout in the government, which is centered in French-speaking areas. Their movement was largely peaceful until about a year ago when security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters.Violence in English-speaking regions of Cameroon has killed more than 400 civilians and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing across the border into Nigeria or into the forest. An American missionary was recently caught up in the violence and shot to death as he rode in his car.Cameroons security forces have been accused of a heavy-handed response to the rebels, who are disorganized and carry homemade weapons. The military has burned dozens of villages and fired large caliber weapons indiscriminately, killing bystanders, according to human rights groups and numerous citizens.Separatists have been accused of killing soldiers and carrying out violence against regular citizens who dont support their actions.Students have been caught in the middle during the upheaval. Many havent been in school for more than two years.Separatists have long warned families to keep students at home as part of a so-called ghost town protest in which merchants and others were told to keep businesses closed.Beyond the threats, the general violence in the area has kept some parents from sending children to school as they worried their sons would be wrongly accused by security forces of being members of separatist groups.About three weeks ago some schools, including the one in Nkwen, reopened.Military officials suspect someone working at the school in Nkwen acted as an accomplice to the kidnappers.On Monday afternoon, factions of separatist groups laid blame for the kidnapping on each other, and on the government. Security forces blamed separatists. Disinformation has been a common theme throughout the conflict, and it was unclear exactly who was responsible.Leaders of the Ambazonia Governing Council, which oversees one of the largest factions of separatists, issued a statement condemning the kidnappings, calling them atrocious acts, and suggesting they were orchestrated by a plant of the government.The statement demanded the release of the schoolchildren and called on the government to remove troops from Anglophone regions.Residents of English-speaking regions of Cameroon have long complained of government neglect and a lack of public resources.In his 36 years in office, President Paul Biya, who was re-elected last month, and his representatives have sent French-speaking judges and teachers with poor English skills into the courts and schools of Anglophone regions.Cameroons two official languages, French and English, are a remnant of a complicated colonial legacy dating to post-World War I when the League of Nations appointed France and England as joint trustees of what was then German Kamerun. Colonialists enforced their own cultures on each region.During independence, many people in Anglophone regions felt they were treated unfairly and forced to become part of Cameroon. | World |
The transition of official White House social media handles in 2020 was more complicated than four years ago.Published Jan. 19, 2021Updated Jan. 20, 2021As President Biden completed his transition into the White House, several social media companies were completing their own transitions of highly followed official accounts.But the handoff wasnt as seamless as it was four years ago, when President Barack Obama turned over the keys of much of his social empire to President Donald J. Trump.In 2017, Mr. Obama passed on official Twitter accounts to Mr. Trump, along with the millions of followers the accounts had gathered. Since then, Mr. Trumps digital team used the accounts as megaphones for his administrations agenda and built the follower numbers higher: before Mr. Bidens inauguration, @POTUS had 33.3 million followers, @WhiteHouse had 26 million, @FLOTUS had 16.4 million and @VP had 10.3 million. The @POTUS account alone had nearly tripled in followers under Mr. Trump.But this year, instead of simply handing them over as it has before, Twitter did not carry over the followers of each account as Mr. Biden assumed control. Instead, accounts with much smaller followings, mostly created last week, were to be transformed into the official ones.A little after noon on Wednesday, @WhiteHouse shared its first tweet under the Biden administration, to 1.6 million followers. Today, the work begins, it said. Then, just after 12:30 p.m., Mr. Biden issued his first tweet from the @POTUS account. There is no time to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face, he wrote. Thats why today, I am heading to the Oval Office to get right to work delivering bold action and immediate relief for American families.The transitions meant that the Biden digital operation would largely have to build new followings from scratch, instead of getting a head start from its predecessor as Mr. Trump had. Twitter said it would alert users to the new accounts.People on Twitter who previously followed institutional White House Twitter accounts, or who currently follow relevant Biden or Harris Twitter accounts, will receive in-app alerts and other prompts that will notify them about the archival process, as well as give them the option to follow the new administrations Twitter accounts, Twitter said in a blog post.On Inauguration Day, @PresElectBiden, an account that has posted just once and had fewer than one million followers, became @POTUS, taking with it however many followers it had on Wednesday afternoon.Vice President Kamala Harris was to bring her 5.3 million followers from her own account, @SenKamalaHarris, over to @VP.The account for Mr. Bidens transition, @Transition46, had 1.6 million followers and became @WhiteHouse.And @FLOTUSBiden, Jill Bidens new account with about 530,000 followers, became @FLOTUS.Mr. Bidens digital takeover also led to the removal of the webpages for a report from Mr. Trumps 1776 Commission and the press offices list of last-minute pardons and commutations. Those pages now read Not Found, but were catalogued by the National Archives. The 1776 report, which distorted the history of slavery in the United States and called for a patriotic education, was quickly derided by historians as misleading and shoddily produced the 18-member commission included no professional historians, but a number of conservative activists, politicians and intellectuals. The Biden administration added a prominent section about climate change in its section about the administrations priorities. And in a nod to greater gender inclusivity, the contact form has added an optional category to include preferred pronouns. Options include she/her, he/him, they/them, other and prefer not to share. The site also now includes a variety of accessibility components, such as high-contrast and large-text modes.The revamped site also offers a full Spanish translation. In 2017, the Trump administration eliminated the Obama administrations Spanish version then promised to bring it back. But the Spanish-language site was unavailable well into the Trump presidency, The Associated Press reported.The tweets on each account will be archived under different names. The Trump administrations tweets under @POTUS, for example, will be transferred to @POTUS45.Mr. Trump regularly used Twitter to make policy announcements and to fire some of the people who worked for him, drawing new followers by the millions even as he spread misinformation about the voting process and election security,The National Archives will preserve all of Mr. Trumps social media activity, including deleted tweets from @POTUS and his personal account, @realDonaldTrump. The personal account, which the president used as an unfiltered platform for policy announcements, airing grievances and fleeting thoughts that often had significant global ramifications, remains inaccessible after he was suspended for provoking violence.Mr. Biden could also continue to tweet under his personal account, @JoeBiden, which has 24.3 million followers.Rob Flaherty, who will be the director of digital strategy in the Biden administration, told Bloomberg News last week that Twitters failure to pass over the followers of the official accounts was unfair.They are advantaging President Trumps first days of the administration over ours, he said. If we dont end the day with the 12 million followers that Donald Trump inherited from Barack Obama, then they have given us less than they gave Donald Trump, and that is a failure.Over on Twitter, Mr. Flaherty called the account a public good, noting that the followers include plenty of rando bots and trolls, but also, plenty of folks who dont really engage in politics.The transition will be less complicated on other social networks, which said they would use the same processes they used four years ago.On Facebook, the followers of the White House account was to be passed over to Mr. Biden, said Kevin McAlister, a Facebook spokesman. The seven million followers of the Joe Biden account would be duplicated to the POTUS page, which has 6.5 million followers and had not been used since May 2018.The Trump White House account was to be renamed so it can be archived, Mr. McAlister said.The same procedures were to take place on Instagram, where the White House account has 6.8 million followers. The account Joe Biden has 15.4 million followers on Instagram.A YouTube spokeswoman said the 1.87 million subscribers of the White House channel would be passed over to the Biden administration.Snapchat was to transfer the whitehouse account, along with its 803,000 subscribers, to President Biden at 12:01 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, a Snap spokesperson said.That means on those sites, users who had signed up to follow news from the Trump administration would soon be seeing news from Bidens, something Mr. Flaherty said he was looking forward to.There is value in being able to communicate with an audience that doesnt agree with us, he told Bloomberg News.Bryan Pietsch contributed reporting. | Tech |
Kylie Jenner I'm Learning How to Push Online!!! 1/26/2018 Take a deep breath for this one ... Kylie Jenner is taking Lamaze classes to help with her imminent birth, but she's figured out a way of doing it privately, so no one sees her. Sources tell us Kylie's been learning Lamaze online with her best friend, Jordyn Woods, acting as her partner. For those who are unfamiliar ... Lamaze is a childbirth technique that includes breathing exercises, stretching, hydrotherapy, massages, position changes and walking -- all with the goal of facilitating a delivery and making it as smooth as possible for the mother. We're told Jordyn has been acting as Kylie's birth coach, and she's scooped up a ton of pregnancy and baby books as part of their curriculum. Kylie's doing her pregnancy walks with friends and fam around her house ... never in public. Well, not never. As we reported ... Kylie surfaced in public Wednesday to check out construction on a plot of land she recently purchased, with Jordyn by her side. There's a handful of online programs Kylie could be using -- we're not sure which one -- but it seems the official Lamaze.org website offers e-courses that suit her needs. | Entertainment |
Hawley Faces Blowback for Role in Challenging Election ResultsThe junior senator from Missouri drew widespread condemnation but defended his decision to object to Congresss certification of the election results.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021WASHINGTON The day after Josh Hawley became the first Republican senator to say he would indulge President Trumps demand that lawmakers try to overturn the election, a reporter asked if he thought the gambit would make him unpopular with his colleagues.More than I already am? he retorted.Even before Mr. Hawley lodged what was certain to be a futile objection to Congresss certification of the results, the 41-year-old senator regarded as a rising Republican star who could one day run for president was far from the chambers most popular lawmaker.His insistence on pressing the challenge after a violent mob egged on by Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol to protest President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory, endangering the entire Congress and the vice president in a day of terror that left at least five people dead, has earned him pariah status in Washington.But while Mr. Hawleys role in the riot may have left him shunned at least for now in official circles, it may only have improved his stock with his partys base in his home state, which remains deeply loyal to Mr. Trump.His fellow Republicans in the Senate lined up to blame Mr. Hawley for the riot. The editorial boards of major newspapers in Missouri accused him of having blood on his hands and called on him to resign. His publisher canceled his book deal and his erstwhile mentor called his efforts to get Mr. Hawley elected to the Senate the biggest mistake Ive ever made.But for him, it wouldnt have happened, former Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri, the Republican elder statesman, told The Kansas City Star of his former protgs role in the riot.Mr. Hawley has remained defiant, arguing Wednesday evening that the electoral count in Congress was the proper venue to debate his concerns about fraud in the balloting, though he never made a specific charge of wrongdoing.I will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections, Mr. Hawley said in a statement. Thats my job, and I will keep doing it.But many Republicans dismissed his effort as grandstanding intended to further his own political ambitions. Some Democratic senators demanded his resignation. And on Friday, Mr. Biden said that Mr. Hawley and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, were part of the big lie that had animated Mr. Trumps refusal to concede, invoking Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germanys minister of propaganda.Mr. Hawley lashed out at Mr. Biden, accusing him of undignified, immature, and intemperate behavior and calling on him to retract these sick comments.Hours after the mob was cleared from the Capitol on Wednesday, Mr. Hawley refused to drop his challenge to the election results, objecting to Pennsylvanias slate of electors and forcing both chambers into a two-hour debate on his call to throw out millions of the states votes.An image of Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, sitting behind Mr. Hawley and glaring as the Missourian gazed into television cameras and made his case from the Senate floor became an instant meme. Mr. Hawleys challenge was rejected by broad bipartisan margins, with only six Republican senators joining him in supporting it.By Thursday, the fallout reached beyond the scorn of his colleagues. The publisher Simon & Schuster said it was canceling publication of his book The Tyranny of Big Tech, citing his role in what became a dangerous threat. Mr. Hawley responded with an angry statement that called his former publisher a woke mob and described their decision as a direct assault on the First Amendment.This could not be more Orwellian, Mr. Hawley said. This is the left trying to cancel everyone they dont approve of.Yet some of the harshest criticism came from his own party. His bid was in direct defiance of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who had implored his members not to challenge the election results and force a divisive vote when there was no chance of changing the outcome. Searing blowback came from other Republicans who are also considered 2024 presidential contenders and could find themselves running against Mr. Hawley in a crowded primary.Senator Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, told NPR. This was a stunt. It was a terrible, terrible idea. And you dont lie to the American people. And thats whats been going on.Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, also lashed out at Mr. Hawley in a Fox News interview on Thursday though he did not call him out by name for indulging the effort to overturn the election.You have some senators who, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters, misleading them into thinking that somehow yesterdays actions in Congress could reverse the results of the election, Mr. Cotton said in a clip circulated by his office. That was never going to happen, yet these senators, as insurrectionists literally stormed the Capitol, were sending out fund-raising emails. That shouldnt have happened, and its got to stop now.Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and former aide to Mr. McConnell, said in an interview that he believed Mr. Hawleys decision to raise his objection to Pennsylvanias electors hours after the mob stormed the Capitol was a disqualifying display of judgment.Once the Capitol had been literally occupied, how can you give quarter to the viewpoint that caused the occupation? Mr. Jennings said. What would it have taken for Josh Hawley to withdraw his objection? How do you come back from that?Some Democrats said Mr. Hawley never could. Senators Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democrat, and Chris Coons of Delaware, one of Mr. Bidens closest allies in the chamber, demanded that Mr. Hawley resign. Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, argued that the Senate should censure him.Any senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office, Ms. Murray said in a statement.Still, as Republicans struggled to recover from an episode that has exposed deep rifts in their ranks, there was evidence that Mr. Hawleys actions on Wednesday had boosted his standing with influential elements of his party.The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, defended Mr. Hawley and urged its members to donate to his campaign.The junior senator from Missouris decision to object to the election results showed tremendous courage, the fund-raising pitch, signed by Mary Vought, the funds executive director, said. Conservatives should stand shoulder to shoulder with him in defending our cherished values.Christian Morgan, a St. Louis-based strategist and former top aide to Representative Ann Wagner, Republican of Missouri, also defended Mr. Hawley.Bernie Sanders did not cause the attempted mass assassination of Republican Members of Congress, James Hodgkinson did, Mr. Morgan wrote on Twitter, referring to a liberal activist who opened fire on Republican lawmakers during a softball practice in 2017. Josh Hawley & Ted Cruz did not cause an angry mob to invade the Capitol and murder a Capitol Police.Leaders of the Missouri Republican Party did not respond to interview requests on Friday. But their most recent Facebook post celebrating National Missouri Day and written before the chaos on Wednesday started drawing comments suggesting that party leaders begin searching for a candidate to mount a primary challenge to Roy Blunt, Missouris senior Republican senator, who voted to certify the election results.The former head of Missouris Republican Party, Jean Evans, said that she resigned from the position before the events on Wednesday in response to people demanding that the party bus people to protest in Washington and calling for violent behavior.I was concerned and alarmed by what I was hearing from certain elements within the party calling for a coup, Ms. Evans told a local television station. | Politics |
Oliver Daemen will fly to the edge of space after another passenger who paid $28 million for the seat had a scheduling conflict.Credit...Daemen familyPublished July 15, 2021Updated July 20, 2021Someone paid $28 million to not go to space with Jeff Bezos next week. Instead, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands will join the flight.His name is Oliver Daemen, and the flight would make him the youngest person ever to go to space.Mr. Bezos, who just stepped down as chief executive of Amazon, announced last month that he would be one of the passengers when his rocket company, Blue Origin, conducts its first human spaceflight. The flight is scheduled for Tuesday, to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. It is to follow Richard Bransons flight to the edge of space this past Sunday in a rocket plane built for the company he founded, Virgin Galactic.When Mr. Bezos made the announcement, he said one of the other seats on New Shepard, a reusable suborbital capsule that goes up more than 62 miles before coming back down, would be auctioned to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to Mr. Bezos space-focused charity, Club for the Future.More than 7,600 people from 159 countries participated in the monthlong auction, which concluded on June 12. The winning bid was $28 million, and Blue Origin said it would reveal the bidder at a later date.On Thursday, just five days before the flight, Blue Origin still did not reveal the winning bidder, but said in a news release that this person decided to defer the trip to a future New Shepard launch due to scheduling conflicts.Instead, Mr. Daemen, the son of the chief executive of a private equity investment firm and one of the runners-up in the auction, will take the seat.ImageCredit...Isaiah J. Downing/ReutersHe was a participant in the auction and had secured a seat on the second flight, Sara Blask, a Blue Origin spokeswoman, said in an email. We moved him up when this seat on the first flight became available.Mr. Daemen graduated from high school last year and is taking a year off from school before starting in the fall at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.This is a dream come true! Mr. Daemen said in a news release from the family. I hadnt counted on this at all until last week that surprising phone call from Blue Origin came. This is so unbelievably cool! The flight to and into space only takes 10 minutes, but I already know that these will be the most special 10 minutes of my life.Blue Origins spacecraft, New Shepard, is designed for brief space-tourist flights, similar to Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo. But, unlike Virgin Galactics space plane design, New Shepard is more of a traditional rocket that launches vertically. Near the top of the arc, the capsule, where up to six people sit, separates from the booster. The booster and the capsule coast to an altitude above 62 miles, regarded by many as the boundary of outer space. The capsules landing is slowed by a parachute.On this first flight, there will be four people aboard: Mr. Daemen; Mr. Bezos; Mr. Bezos brother, Mark; and Mary Wallace Funk, a pilot who in the 1960s was among a group of women who passed the same rigorous criteria that NASA used for selecting astronauts. But that was at a time when the space agency had no interest in selecting women as astronauts.At 18, Mr. Daemen will be the youngest person ever to go to space. At 82, Ms. Funk, who goes by Wally, will be the oldest.According to the familys news release, Mr. Daemen and his father, Joes Daemen, founder of Somerset Capital Partners in the Netherlands, were intrigued by the possibility of getting on the flight. But when the bids started to skyrocket during the auction, we dropped out, Joes Daemen said.Blue Origin did not reveal how much the Daemens were paying for the seat; it has not yet publicly announced a price for tickets. According to the Daemens, the price is a lot lower than the $28 million winning bid. The money they paid will be donated by Blue Origin to a charity that has not yet been determined.On Wednesday, Blue Origin announced that $19 million from the $28 million winning bid will go to 19 space-related nonprofit organizations $1 million each. The recipients include AstraFemina, a collective of women in science and engineering who aim to serve as role models to girls; the Brook Owens Fellowship, which offers paid internships and fellowships to undergraduate women; and Higher Orbits, an experimental learning lab for high school students.Kitty Bennett contributed research and Claire Moses contributed translation. | science |
Feb. 16, 2014Credit...Myra KlarmanSOCHI, Russia Each ice dance and pairs figure skating team at the Olympics will have no more than seven minutes of ice time, if they are lucky, to prove to a panel of judges and the world that they are a single unit, a duo that can twizzle, trot and leap harmoniously as one.But year-round and off the ice, several teams have embarked on campaigns to project an image of unity. The result is a bounty of photographs, some shot and posed professionally, and a fire hose of social media images of the pairs palling around in a couple-y manner as extensions of the on-ice personas they hope will lead them to the podium.While some Olympic figure skating and ice dance couples are romantically involved, most are not. Some are friends. Some are siblings. Some are talented athletes who like to skate together.But in a subjective sport, often with suspect judging and with accusations of an ice dancing fix swirling, creating a passionate, united figure skating front has never been more critical.When the pairs competition began at the London Games in 1908 and even when ice dancing became an Olympic medal event at the Innsbruck Games in 1976 the world of publicists, agents and athlete media machines was a fraction of the size it is now. In todays Internet-connected world, an athlete can go viral in seconds.It is unclear what if any role, conscious or otherwise, off-ice portraiture plays in how judges, fans or potential sponsors view skaters. But top competitors do not appear to be taking chances.Visit the website of the Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the defending Olympic champions, and you will find images that seem as if they should be accompanied by a Save the Date notice and a bridal registry. The two look longingly into each others eyes, frolic through a pond with fishing lines in tow and blow bubble gum together.Myra Klarman, a photographer based in Ann Arbor, Mich., who took the photos, says she does not usually accept to-be-wed couples as clients, so she was surprised when the skaters contacted her. She considered it a positive when Virtue and Moir told her they were not actually dating.I dont want to do kissy-kissy pictures, Klarman said.The Russian ice dancers Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov, part of the contingent that captured the first-ever gold medal in the team event on Sunday, opted for embraces against leafy backdrops. Their teammates in the pairs competition, Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov, did a similar eyes-to-the-camera hug.Most of the skaters say the exercise of posing for off-ice photography is not an awkward one, but rather an extension of their performances and a chance to cultivate relationships with fans. The American sister-brother ice dancing pair Maia and Alex Shibutani, known as the Shib sibs, have a photo arsenal that includes classical poses in front of an autumnal courtyard. They said that in an Olympic year, having high-resolution photographs can be critical.ImageCredit...James Hill for The New York TimesWe try to be authentic with how we come across and who we are as people, Maia Shibutani said.Alex Shibutani added: Ice dance is a unique sport in the Olympic Games. Theres the unique blend of sport and art. We want there to be some of that off the ice as well. So when people look for you on the Internet, regardless of what your personality is off the ice, it would be kind of confusing if we were doing a very elegant program to Michael Bubl and our website was chock-full of photos of me wearing sweats and baseball hats.In a series of professionally shot photographs, the American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White, the six-time national champions who won the silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games, posed on opposite sides of trees, in fields and leaning on bridges side by side. They are not dating. Were a team on and off the ice in a lot of respects, Davis said. Weve grown as weve gotten older to understand what an ice dance team means, on and off the ice. I think enjoying those things and showing ourselves as a united front in every way is really important to us.Last summer, the Canadian ice dancers Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje had Broadway-themed photographs taken in New York in preparation for the program they are performing at the Olympics, which is inspired by the musical 42nd Street. The two, who describe themselves as best friends, said it helped them get in the mood for the performance. It helped us live the story because thats what Peggy Sawyer in the musical did, Weaver said, referring to one of the main characters.Poje said: Initially, it was just for us. We werent really thinking of what we would do for the photos. It was more just for our experiences and to take it in. Anything that happened with them was a bonus.Some ice skating pairs, however, have taken outside image-building to another, more quirky level. The German ice dancers Nelli Zhiganshina and Alexander Gazsi have long prided themselves on their unusual costumes, routines and offbeat image, in and out of competition.In the team event at the Games, Gazsi performed as a bespectacled nerd, with Zhiganshina as a high-society lass. They have skated as pirates, clowns and a prince and princess.But perhaps their most memorable on-ice role is that of zombies; they gleefully posted images of the behind-the-scenes preparations for the routine, including a posed snapshot of Gazsi chomping into the neck of Patrick Chan of Canada, the world champion singles skater.Everyone is doing these love numbers, Gazsi, without nerd glasses or green zombie makeup, said after a practice session in Sochi. Especially the ice dance couples. Normally, theyre the love guys with the love stories, and we try and make something completely different.I think a lot of couples are afraid to look funny or stupid, said Zhiganshina, who has not been afraid to compare photographs of her awkward on-ice facial expressions to those of the Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks.On or off the ice, she added, were not afraid anymore. | Sports |
TrilobitesCredit...Junchang LuNov. 10, 2016It had feathers and a beak.It was the size of a donkey, and it did not fly.It was not a bird, but a dinosaur that was a close relative of birds.In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of scientists described a fossil of Tongtianlong limosus, a new species in a strange group of dinosaurs that lived during the final 15 million years before dinosaurs became extinct.They just look weird, said Stephen L. Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and one of the authors of the paper. Dr. Brusatte described it as alien-looking with a pug-nose skull and a crest.ImageCredit...Zhao ChuangThe first fragmentary fossils of this group of dinosaurs known as oviraptorosaurs were found nearly a century ago; newly discovered, well-preserved specimens are revealing more details about them.Tongtianlong limosus the name means muddy dragon on the road to heaven is the sixth from the region of Ganzhou. This particular fossil was unearthed four years ago by fortunate happenstance during the construction of a school. This one was found by workmen who were blasting with dynamite, Dr. Brusatte said. Its a fine line sometimes between discovery and knowing nothing.The fossil made its way to Junchang L, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, who had earlier studied another oviraptorosaur from Ganzhou. (A construction boom there has created a fossil-discovery boom.)The fossil was found in an unusual posture, its limbs splayed and head raised. The scientists think it had become trapped in a quagmire and had died as it tried to pull itself out. It is the first oviraptorid dinosaur preserved as struggling, Dr. L wrote in an email.ImageCredit...Junchang LuDr. Brusatte, who had collaborated with Dr. L on earlier projects, joined the study of Tongtianlong.Oviraptorosaurs are not direct ancestors of birds, but share a common theropod dinosaur ancestor with the lineage that later evolved to birds. Some features like the feathers come from the common ancestor, for display to potential mates or other creatures. They were like advertising billboards, Dr. Brusatte said.The common ancestor had teeth, though, not beaks. For oviraptorosaurs, the beaks were convergent evolution, when similar features evolve independently among different groups of animals.One of the unknowns is what Tongtianlong and other oviraptorosaurs were eating. Unlike better known theropods like velociraptors, this guy was not a traditional meat eater, Dr. Brusatte said. Perhaps it munched plants, nuts, insects, small animals or mollusks, Dr. Brusatte said. Or perhaps it ate a variety of foods. Or, as in birds, the beaks varied in shape among different species to feed in different ecological niches.Beaks are really good multipurpose tools, Dr. Brusatte said.The six Ganzhou oviraptorosaur species discovered so far are also very different from each other, and the scientists argue that this shows rapid evolution of these dinosaurs.Really blossoming he said.That runs counter to the assertion of some paleontologists that dinosaurs were already in decline long before they became extinct 66 million years ago, most likely from the global devastation following a large asteroid impact.This specimen is going to give us a much better idea how oviraptorosaurs are related to each other, said Amy Balanoff, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who was not involved with the research. One of the interesting things about these specimens that are coming out of southern China is that they show this diversity of body forms.She was less certain about whether the rate of evolution is as fast as Dr. Brusatte argues, because the scientists lack precise dating of the layer of rock hundreds of yards thick where the fossils have been found. You dont know if its a million years or 10 million years, she said. | science |
Technology|Chinese video game shares plunge after state media calls the products spiritual opium.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/technology/china-video-game-tencent.htmlChinese video game shares plunge after state media calls the products spiritual opium.Investors reacted after months of increased pressure from Beijing aimed at the broader Chinese internet industry.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated PressAug. 3, 2021Shares of Tencent Holdings and other prominent Chinese video-game companies plunged in Hong Kong trading on Tuesday after a Beijing-affiliated media outlet called their products spiritual opium.The blast from the outlet, Economic Information Daily, followed months of increased pressure from Beijing aimed at the broader Chinese internet industry, which serves one billion users. That pressure has moved global investors to pull billions of dollars out of Chinese technology stocks, on fears that tighter regulation could hurt company prospects.The Economic Information Daily article did not declare that any specific policy changes would be made, and it was unclear whether it reflected the views of Beijing officials or merely those of the publications editors.Adding to the uncertainty, the link to the article went dead later on Tuesday, though a copy could still be found on the site of Xinhua, the official state news agency, which controls Economic Information Daily.Despite the uncertainty, nervous investors were quick to sell shares.Shares of Tencent, a technology conglomerate with a big presence in social media and entertainment in addition to video games, dropped about 10 percent at one point, though the losses later moderated and ended down about 7 percent. Shares of NetEase, another mainland video game company, fell nearly 9 percent.The articles headline A spiritual opium has grown into an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars left little doubt at the thrust of the piece. It cited a litany of threats posed by video games, including diverting attention from school and family and causing nearsightedness.No industry or sport should develop at the price of destroying a generation, it said.The article singled out Tencent, which owns games popular in China like Honor of Kings as well as titles popular around the world, like League of Legends.Tencent released a statement on Tuesday on its WeChat social media network describing some of the limits it recently decided to put into place, like limiting game time for minors and increasing efforts to ferret out those who lie about their age to play.The scrutiny isnt new to Tencent or the industry. More than half of Chinese internet users play online games, according to government statistics. In the past, officials worried that games could hurt childrens academics, damage their eyesight and reduce the countrys military readiness. In 2019, the authorities limited the amount of time young people could spend playing games online. | Tech |
Credit...Lars Baron/Getty ImagesFeb. 9, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Japans top ski jumper, Noriaki Kasai, is already thinking four years ahead to the next Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.For most athletes, presuming that they will qualify for another Olympic team would be considered audacious. But Kasai is no ordinary athlete. At 41, he is taking part in a record-tying seventh Winter Games (along with the Russian luger Albert Demchenko), a remarkable feat in any sport, let alone one fraught with peril like ski jumping.I will try to get to an eighth Olympics, Kasai said matter-of-factly three days before the opening ceremony.It was hard to tell whether Kasai was serious or simply paying lip service to his reputation as the iron man of a sport in which many jumpers retire when they reach their 30s. But given the surprising success of a jumper who is twice the age of some of his rivals here, his ambition cannot be discounted.He said he was motivated to take part in the Sochi Games because he had not yet won a gold medal. Kasais quest for a second Olympic medal began on Sunday on the normal hill. He finished eighth. He will also jump in the large hill event and the four-man team event.Whether or not Kasai wins a medal here or makes it to the Winter Games in 2018, his legacy is largely complete. In fact, his rsum reads like a road map of modern ski jumping in Japan, which rose to prominence in the 1990s as its jumpers took advantage of their small size to fly farther, and was then undone by new equipment and rule changes introduced a decade ago to deter unhealthy weight loss in jumpers.Against all odds, Kasai, the captain of the Japanese team, has also been part of the revival of Japans jumping program, which has received a lift from the emergence of several top-ranked female jumpers.He has done his part, too. In January, Kasai became the oldest jumper to win a World Cup event when he was victorious in Bad Mitterndorf, Austria. Kasai was ranked third in the world before the Olympics, his highest ranking since the 1998-99 season, and a leap from his 24th-place finish last season.Its been two years since my last victory, Kasai said after winning an event last summer. I was in my 30s then, and now Im in my 40s, which makes me even happier and shows that I can still compete with the best in the world.Kasai has been diligent about staying in shape as well as changing his jumping style. Early in his career, he earned the moniker kamikaze for a fearless approach. As with most jumpers, injuries have taken their toll. In 1994, he broke his left shoulder while training, and he broke it again four months later, forcing him to sit out the season. Balky knees have curtailed his workouts. Last week, he did not take practice jumps at the Olympic facility, deciding instead to go shopping, see friends and relax, while still tending to his duties as team captain.Kasais more judicious training schedule may have extended his career, said Satoshi Okazaki, a Japanese journalist who has written a book about Kasai.It is an amazing fact that Kasai got a ticket to the Olympics seven times in a row, he said by email. However, the more surprising thing is that he is 41 years old and his condition for this Olympics seems to be the best compared to the previous six Olympics.Kasai said the reason for his success has less to do with his training and more to do with his desire for continual improvement.There is no secret to my long career, Kasai said on Saturday. My regrets are my motivation.Kasai is far from somber, though. He is well liked among the other jumpers, who openly cheered him when he won the event in Austria this year.Hes been jumping as long as Ive been alive, and hes gone through so many different styles, which is amazing, said Nick Alexander, 25, an American ski jumper. Hes an idol for sure, not that I want to be jumping into my 40s.Kasais road to the Olympics began in the small town of Shimokawa, in a remote part of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japans four largest islands. He took up ski jumping just a few years after Japan swept the mens normal hill event at the Games in Sapporo in 1972, the year he was born.Kasai made his debut in a World Cup event in 1989 and made his Olympic debut in 1992 in Albertville, France, where he finished fourth in the four-man team event. In 1994, Kasai was part of another four-man team that won a silver medal at the Games in Lillehammer, Norway.During those early years, Kasai often used too much power, at times throwing off his form, Okazaki said. It was a high-risk, high-reward strategy in a sport where holding to form is critical to reducing wind resistance and landing properly, but it reflected Kasais ambitions.In the past Olympics, his desire to win a gold medal came first; therefore, he pressured himself when he jumped, Okazaki said. As a result, he frequently failed.After falling as far as 51st in the world rankings and finishing as low as 49th in the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, Kasai, who is 5 feet 10 inches and 137 pounds, has worked to stay in shape. A member of the Tsuchiya Home Ski Team, a corporate ski jump team in Hokkaido, he has also become a role model to younger jumpers who admire his ability to think of the long term.Its not possible in Europe for someone to have the same career as Kasai, over 40 years old, said Janne Vaatainen, the Finnish coach of Tsuchiya Home Ski Team. Hes seen so many things in his career. This is unbelievable that hes willing to change. | Sports |
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks top executives, engaged in spin during a meeting over hate speech, civil rights groups said.Credit...Michael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockPublished July 7, 2020Updated July 8, 2021SAN FRANCISCO Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks two top executives, met with civil rights groups on Tuesday in an attempt to mollify them over how the social network treats hate speech on its site.But Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, and Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer, failed to win its critics over.For more than an hour over Zoom, the duo, along with other Facebook executives, discussed the companys handling of hate speech with representatives from the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Color of Change and other groups. Those organizations have recently helped push hundreds of companies, such as Unilever and Best Buy, to pause their advertising on Facebook to protest its handling of toxic speech and misinformation.The groups said they discussed about 10 demands with Facebooks leaders on Tuesday to help prevent vitriol and hate from spreading on its site. Those included Facebook hiring a top executive with a civil rights background, submitting to regular independent audits and updating its community standards, according to a statement from the Free Press advocacy group, whose co-chief executive, Jessica J. Gonzlez, was on the call.Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg agreed to hire a civil rights position, but they did not come to a resolution on most other requests, representatives of the groups said. Instead, they said, the Facebook executives reverted to spin and firing up its powerful P.R. machine.The companys leaders delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands, Ms. Gonzlez said.Other civil rights leaders called the meeting very disappointing and blasted Facebook for being functionally flawed. In a media call after the meeting, Rashad Robinson, head of Color of Change, said of Facebooks executives: They showed up to the meeting expecting an A for attendance. Attending alone is not enough.Facebook said in a statement that the groups want Facebook to be free of hate speech and so do we. It reiterated it was taking steps to keep hate off of our platform and added, We know we will be judged by our actions not by our words and are grateful to these groups and many others for their continued engagement.The wave of criticism showed how far Facebook is from reassuring its detractors, which is likely to lead to continued problems for the Silicon Valley giant. For weeks, the social network has faced increasing pressure to tackle toxic speech and misinformation on its site, fueled by inflammatory posts from President Trump and a backdrop of racial unrest in the country.Rivals like Twitter and Snap have recently moved to label or play down untruthful or incendiary posts from Mr. Trump on their platforms, but Facebook has resisted labeling his posts as hate speech or taking the messages down. Mr. Zuckerberg has defended the hands-off approach by stressing the importance of free speech and arguing that Facebook is not an arbiter of posts.That position has caused anger. Facebooks own employees have pushed back, staging a virtual walkout last month to protest Mr. Zuckerbergs position. Several weeks ago, the civil rights groups also organized an effort called Stop Hate for Profit, urging hundreds of advertisers to stop spending on Facebook because it had failed to curtail the spread of noxious content.As the ad boycott has grown, Facebook executives have taken an increasingly conciliatory tone with advertisers and others. The company has about eight million advertisers whose spending accounts for more than 98 percent of its annual $70.7 billion in revenue.As part of its response, Facebook said it planned to release the final part of a yearslong audit of its civil rights policies and practices on Wednesday. The auditors have been examining how Facebook handles issues like hate speech, election interference and algorithmic bias.But the audit is only as good as what Facebook ends up doing with the content, Mr. Robinson said. Otherwise, he said, its like going to the doctor, getting a new set of recommendations about your diet and then not doing anything about it and wondering why youre not getting any healthier.ImageCredit...Yana Paskova/ReutersAhead of Tuesdays meeting, the civil rights groups had sent over their list of 10 demands. Ms. Sandberg had appeared to offer an olive branch in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning, saying the company had a big responsibility to catch and remove hate speech. She also wrote that the company was making changes not for financial reasons or advertiser pressure, but because it is the right thing to do.Being a platform where everyone can make their voice heard is core to our mission, but that doesnt mean its acceptable for people to spread hate, she wrote. Its not.But the meeting itself was largely a retread of the same conversation from the past two years, in which Facebook executives have a pleasant dialogue, but then set no actionable steps, Derrick Johnson, chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P., said in an interview.He said he was particularly disappointed that no Facebook executive had any specific answer or reply to their list of demands, aside from platitudes.Over the two years that the N.A.A.C.P. has been in conversation with Facebook, weve watched the dialogue blossom into nothingness, Mr. Johnson said. They lack this cultural sensitivity to understand that their platform is actually being used to cause harm, or they understand the harm that the platform is causing and they have chosen to take the profit as opposed to protecting the people.Later on Tuesday, the Facebook executives met with another group of civil rights experts, including Vanita Gupta from the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights.Ms. Gupta said in an interview after that voter suppression and misinformation on the platform were still not being adequately addressed. She added that Facebook faced multiple pressure points from the boycott and its own employees, meaning that the asks of the civil rights community are unified, but there are different strategies being deployed.There are questions as to how effective the ad boycott will ultimately be in moving Facebook to make changes. In a private meeting last week with employees, Mr. Zuckerberg said he expected advertisers to eventually return to purchasing ads on the platform.Some boycott participants are pulling ads from Facebook for only the month of July, while others have pledged to stay away until the company makes major changes to its content moderation policies. Several advertisers, such as Unilever, decided to exclude multiple social platforms, such as Twitter.Most of the protesting companies are still using Facebook to reach consumers, often by posting unpaid content. But this week, the publisher Stuff, New Zealands largest media company, said it would experiment with stopping all activity on Facebook and Instagram, having already backed away from advertising on Facebook last year.The leaders of the ad boycott said that beyond Facebook, all social media companies needed to do a better job of policing content and defending against hate speech on their platforms. But given that Facebook was the largest social network, they said, it deserved the most scrutiny.Even if Facebook did not feel accountable to the civil rights groups, said Ms. Gonzlez of Free Press, Mr. Zuckerberg will be testifying in front of Congress on July 27 as part of an antitrust hearing with the chief executives of Apple, Google and Amazon.Is he going to come over to the right side of history, or face accountability in other ways? Ms. Gonzlez said.Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco and Tiffany Hsu from Hoboken, N.J. Nicholas Corasaniti contributed reporting from Brooklyn. | Tech |
Credit...Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressJune 27, 2018WASHINGTON Trump administration officials said on Wednesday that it would be difficult to comply with the timetable in a federal court order requiring the reunification of migrant children and parents who were separated at the border.Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that stops the practice of separating children and parents.And he set a strict timetable. Children under the age of 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, he said, and other minor children must be reunited within 30 days unless a parent is found to be unfit or to present a danger to the child.The ruling came as a surprise to Trump administration officials responsible for more than 2,000 children who have been separated from their parents and are being held at more than 100 sites in 17 states.Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services said they were trying to put children and parents in touch with one another, but were not planning to release children while their parents were being detained to face prosecution on charges of trying to enter the United States illegally.Moreover, the officials said, they must confirm that adults claiming children are actually their parents, and that the adults pose no danger to the children.Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that his department had custody of 2,047 migrant children who had been separated from their parents.Before releasing the children to parents or other relatives, he said, the government must vet them. That task can take weeks, officials said.These children are often being captured by traffickers, gangs, cartels, Mr. Azar said. That journey through Mexico is a horrific journey of rape and violence and deprivation. We do see traffickers and very evil people sometimes claiming to be the parents of children.Jonathan White, a Public Health Service officer, said that to confirm the relationship between a child and a potential sponsor, the federal government may request a birth certificate or use DNA testing or other biometrics. Also, he said, the government tries to do a criminal-background check, using F.B.I. fingerprint records, and may search sex offender registries.The Department of Health and Human Services is working with various agencies to facilitate the reunification of each child with their parent or family as soon as that is practical, Mr. White said.The Trump administration asked a federal court in Los Angeles last week to modify a 1997 court settlement that it said prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention centers for more than 20 days.Because of that settlement, Mr. Azar said, it is difficult to reunite families while the parents are in custody.Were not allowed to have a child be with the parent who is in custody of the Department of Homeland Security for more than 20 days, Mr. Azar said. And so, until we can get Congress to change that law to the forcible separation of the family units well hold them or place them with another family relative in the United States.We need Congress to fix that, Mr. Azar said.Mr. White said the Department of Health and Human Services was also holding, in its shelters, about 9,000 children who did not have a legal immigration status and were not accompanied by parents or guardians.In his order on Tuesday, Judge Sabraw said that actions by federal agencies had resulted in the casual, if not deliberate, separation of families that lawfully present at the port of entry, not just those who cross into the country illegally.Moreover, he said, some parents have already been deported without their children, who remain in government facilities in the United States.Officials said they did not know how many children were in that situation.Echoing the judges comments, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said: This is a manufactured crisis, plain and simple. Previous presidents have found ways to enforce our immigration laws without separating children from their parents. | Politics |
Health|Emergency Over Ebola Has Ended, W.H.O. Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/health/emergency-over-ebola-has-ended-who-says.htmlCredit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesMarch 29, 2016The Ebola epidemic that killed thousands of people in West Africa is no longer an international public health emergency, the World Health Organization announced on Tuesday.Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O., said in a news briefing that she was accepting the recommendation of an emergency committee, which concluded that West African countries had the ability to contain the small number of new cases that continued to arise, and that the likelihood of international spread is low.Dr. Chan called on nations that had imposed restrictions on interaction with the three countries to immediately lift any ban on travel and trade.The Ebola outbreak, ignited in Guinea in December 2013, ultimately sickened more than 28,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,300. But the W.H.O. said in a statement that all three countries had made it successfully through a 42-day observation period and a 90-day surveillance period without any cases linked to the original transmission chain for the virus. The last country to achieve that status was Guinea, which completed the 90-day period two days ago.The original Ebola outbreak has come to an end. The original chains of transmission are terminated now, said Dr. Robert Steffen, a communicable disease expert who is vice chairman of the W.H.O. emergency committee.Still, flare-ups of cases continue, an expected consequence that has occurred with other Ebola outbreaks, W.H.O. officials said. The most recent is a cluster in Guinea of five confirmed and three probable cases, which the W.H.O. said it was treating as a moderate-level crisis. In all, there have been 12 new clusters of cases in the three countries since the original transmission chains were extinguished, but they have been occurring less frequently, the W.H.O. said.We know that little clusters will continue to flare up that will be normal life, Dr. Steffen said.He added that most of the flare-ups had probably been transmitted through the semen of Ebola survivors.Dr. Bruce Aylward, the W.H.O.s chief of emergency responses, said that studies following survivors had indicated that in, at most, 2 percent of men, Ebola could persist in semen for more than a year, out until 15 months. He said scientists had not determined why these men continued to hold traces of virus in their semen and others did not.Dr. Aylward said that the current Ebola cluster in Guinea was linked to a single transmission chain from one village, and that more than 900 people who had had contact with the patients were being followed in an effort to bring this to a rapid close.Asked whether downgrading the emergency status of the Ebola outbreak would allow the W.H.O. to redirect resources to the Zika virus crisis, the officials essentially said no.Wed love to say it allows us to step down a little and refocus, said Dr. Aylward, but the agency considers it important to keep hundreds of its employees in the West African countries.A high level of vigilance and response capacity must be maintained to ensure the ability of the countries to prevent Ebola infections and to rapidly detect and respond to flare-ups in the future, Dr. Chan said. | Health |
Out ThereAs part of an effort to sonify the cosmos, researchers have converted the pressure waves from a black hole into an audible something.VideoSound waves of the Perseus galaxy cluster were resynthesized after boosting their frequency quadrillions of times, scaling them 57 to 58 octaves or about seven piano-lengths above their true pitch.CreditCredit...NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand/SYSTEM SoundsMay 7, 2022In space you cant hear a black hole scream, but apparently you can hear it sing.In 2003 astrophysicists working with NASAs orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory detected a pattern of ripples in the X-ray glow of a giant cluster of galaxies in the constellation Perseus. They were pressure waves that is to say, sound waves 30,000 light-years across and radiating outward through the thin, ultrahot gas that suffuses galaxy clusters. They were caused by periodic explosions from a supermassive black hole at the center of the cluster, which is 250 million light-years away and contains thousands of galaxies.With a period of oscillation of 10 million years, the sound waves were acoustically equivalent to a B-flat 57 octaves below middle C, a tone that the black hole has apparently been holding for the last two billion years. Astronomers suspect that these waves act as a brake on star formation, keeping the gas in the cluster too hot to condense into new stars.The Chandra astronomers recently sonified these ripples by speeding up the signals to 57 or 58 octaves above their original pitch, boosting their frequency quadrillions of times to make them audible to the human ear. As a result, the rest of us can now hear the intergalactic sirens singing.Through these new cosmic headphones, the Perseus black hole makes eerie moans and rumbles that reminded this listener of the galumphing tones marking an alien radio signal that Jodie Foster hears through headphones in the science fiction film Contact.As part of an ongoing project to sonify the universe, NASA also released similarly generated sounds of the bright knots in a jet of energy shooting from a giant black hole at the center of the humongous galaxy known as M87. These sounds reach us across 53.5 million light-years as a stately succession of orchestral tones.VideoThe sonification of M87.CreditCredit...NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM SoundsYet another sonification project has been undertaken by a group led by Erin Kara, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of an effort to use light echoes from X-ray bursts to map the environment around black holes, much as bats use sound to catch mosquitoes.All this is an outgrowth of Black Hole Week, an annual NASA social media extravaganza, May 2-6. As it happens this week provides a prelude to big news on May 12, when researchers with the Event Horizon Telescope, which in 2019 produced the first image of a black hole, are to announce their latest results.Black holes, as decreed by Einsteins general theory of relativity, are objects with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, much less sound, can escape. Paradoxically, they can also be the brightest things in the universe. Before any sort of matter disappears forever into a black hole, theorists surmise, it would be accelerated to near-light speeds by the holes gravitational field and heated, swirling, to millions of degrees. This would spark X-ray flashes, generate interstellar shock waves and squeeze high-energy jets and particles across space like so much toothpaste from a tube.In one common scenario, a black hole exists in a binary system with a star and steals material from it, which accretes into a dense, bright disk a visible doughnut of doom that sporadically produces X-ray outbursts.Using data from a NASA instrument called the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer NICER a group led by Jingyi Wang, an M.I.T. graduate student, sought echoes or reflections of these X-ray blasts. The time delay between the original X-ray blasts and their echoes and distortions caused by their nearness to the weird gravity of black holes offered insight into the evolution of these violent bursts.Meanwhile, Dr. Kara has been working with education and music experts to convert the X-ray reflections into audible sound. In some simulations of this process, she said, the flashes go all the way around the black hole, generating a telltale shift in their wavelengths before being reflected.I just love that we can hear the general relativity in these simulations, Dr. Kara said in an email.Eat your hearts out, Pink Floyd. | science |
Post Malone To My 'Culture Vulture' Critics Congrats, You're a Hater 1/28/2018 WorldRedEye.com Post Malone had a message for his critics who've accused of him of being a "culture vulture" in hip-hop ... which turned out to be a perfect segue into music. Post was one of tons of celebs who came out Saturday night for LIV nightclub's Boardwalk at Pegasus World Cup Invitational to celebrate the big horse race near Miami. Others included Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri, Pharrell, Lenny Kravitz, Olivia Culpo, and lots more. Toward the end of his set, Post took a minute to address some controversy surrounding his alleged misappropriation of black culture through his music -- this after saying last year that modern-day hip-hop was superficial and emotionless. Let's just say Post disagrees with his "haters" ... and he's happy to accept their "Congratulations" on all his success. | Entertainment |
On WashingtonCredit...Ron Sachs/picture-alliance, via dpa, via Associated PressJune 16, 2018WASHINGTON It is Jan. 3, 2019, and the House is convening for the first session of the 116th Congress.As a result of internal opposition, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California is just short of the necessary votes to be elected speaker even though Democrats won the majority in November. Or perhaps Republicans, their majority preserved but severely diminished, cannot marshal the needed votes for a speaker because of a revolt by far-right conservatives. Either way, the House is at a historic impasse.To some lawmakers and advocates of overhaul, that tense moment would present not a governing crisis, but a chance to defuse some of the partisanship plaguing Washington. They believe it could provide a rare opening to institute changes that potentially include a new method of electing the speaker. The idea would be to restore the role to its intended purpose of serving as leader of the whole House rather than the highly partisan and polarizing position it has become.Under emerging proposals, the winning speaker candidate would be required to receive some support from the minority, forcing outreach across the aisle that would foster bipartisanship and reduce the influence of more extreme elements of both parties. Supporters believe that the changes, combined with other proposals to empower the rank and file, could breathe some legislative life back into the House.At the end of the day, we have to break the gridlock, said Representative Fred Upton, a senior Michigan Republican who, as a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, is helping draft and sell the plan. We want to break the rules and really bring function back to the House.He and other lawmakers say frustration is mounting because the current House leadership, catering to its most conservative members, refuses to move forward with proposals such as changes in immigration policy that have broad bipartisan support. Measures with hundreds of co-sponsors go nowhere.Many of us, like the country, are very frustrated, said Representative Josh Gottheimer, a freshman Democrat from New Jersey who is co-chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus along with Representative Tom Reed, Republican of New York. We just want to have a debate on the House floor and bring things up for a vote.Such changes would face considerable opposition from party leaders on both sides since the clear intent is to dilute their power in an institution where the speaker wields tremendous authority. The proposal would also mean that some lawmakers would have to make the politically perilous decision to support a speaker from the other party.But backers of an overhaul, which is being promoted by the bipartisan advocacy group No Labels, say the governing climate in Congress has deteriorated so badly that drastic measures are in order. They say the likely circumstances surrounding the election of the next speaker could make possible a daring power play that would have had zero chance in the past.Most forecasts at the moment anticipate that the party that captures the House will have a relatively narrow advantage, so corralling 218 votes for speaker will be no sure thing. That means a small group of lawmakers could form a bloc to control the outcome.The Problem Solvers Caucus contains 48 members equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, probably more than enough to prevent the election of a speaker until demands for rules changes are met. A group of Republican reformers used the tactic in 1923 to loosen the leadership reins on the House.With narrow majorities on either side, there is a maximally favorable opportunity to seize the moment, said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who first aired a similar plan five years ago as a way to resurrect bipartisan coalition-building.The original idea by Mr. Galston and a colleague was to require the speaker to win the support of 60 percent of the membership, a fairly high bar. The group No Labels, through what it is calling the Speaker Project, is proposing that the number of votes needed to become speaker would be equal to the majority partys full membership, in addition to five from the minority party. No speaker could serve without at least some minority support.Members of the Problem Solvers Caucus have been meeting to review their ideas to see if they can reach a consensus on a package of rules changes. Together, the lawmakers and outside supporters hope to build momentum for the changes among colleagues, congressional candidates and voters heading into the midterm elections. They would then try to enact them either through party organizing meetings in November or via a floor fight in January.It seems like there is disruption brewing, said Nancy Jacobson, founder and head of No Labels. I feel like it is ripe.Any change in the election of a speaker is potentially explosive, and lawmakers are treading carefully.It is definitely one of the ideas that we are batting around, Mr. Gottheimer said. Our goal is to have the speaker of the House representing both sides, so we are trying to figure out if there are other changes that might make sense to achieve that same objective.While the speaker proposal might be the most striking, other ideas could make significant differences in how the House operates. One would eliminate the ability of a single lawmaker to force a vote on a call to vacate the speakers chair a threat that helped drive John A. Boehner from office in 2015. Critics believe that ability to challenge the speaker has given hard-right elements of the Republican majority too much clout.Other proposals include preventing the leadership from blocking votes on relevant floor amendments that have strong support, and requiring that bills receive consideration by the relevant committee rather than emerging from leadership office suites. Differences between House and Senate bills would also have to be reconciled by actual conference committees rather than in informal talks at the leadership level.The lawmakers calling for change say now is the perfect time to make the case, since it is unknown which party will control the House next year, making it difficult to argue that the overhaul is directed at one party or the other. They hope to unveil a set of reforms with some fanfare this summer.Proposing an overhaul will certainly be easier than enacting one. But it is a telling commentary on the sorry state of the House when significant numbers of lawmakers are willing to risk the wrath of party leaders by even suggesting such a set of changes. | Politics |