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Archaeologists unearthed the remains of a 4,000-year-old Book of Two Ways a guide to the Egyptian underworld, and the earliest copy of the first illustrated book.Credit...Werner Forman/Universal Images Group, via Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2019When it comes to difficult travel, no journey outside New York Citys subway system rivals the ones described in The Book of Two Ways, a mystical road map to the ancient Egyptian afterlife. This users guide, a precursor to the corpus of Egyptian funerary texts known as The Book of the Dead, depicted two zigzagging paths by which, scholars long ago concluded, the soul, having left the body of the departed, could navigate the spiritual obstacle course of the Underworld and reach Rostau the realm of Osiris, the god of death, who was himself dead. If you were lucky enough to get the go-ahead from Osiris divine tribunal, you would become an immortal god. The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with life in all its forms, Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptology curator at the University of California, Berkeley, said. Death for them was a new life.The two journeys were a kind of purgatorial odyssey reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons: extraordinarily arduous, and so fraught with peril that they necessitated mortuary guidebooks like The Book of Two Ways to accompany a persons spirit and ensure its safe passage. (The two ways refer to the options a soul had for navigating the Underworld: one by land, the other by water.) Among other annoyances, the deceased had to contend with demons, scorching fire and armed doorkeepers, who protected the dead body of Osiris against gods bent on preventing his rebirth, according to Harco Willems, an Egyptologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. Success in the afterlife required an aptitude for arcane theology, a command of potent resurrection spells and incantations and a knowledge of the names not just of Underworld doorkeepers but also of door bolts and floorboards.In a new study published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Dr. Willems detailed how a team of researchers under his direction unearthed the remains of a 4,000-year-old Book of Two Ways the earliest known copy of the first illustrated book. In 2012 they reopened a long-abandoned burial shaft in the cliff-side necropolis of Deir el-Bersha, a Coptic village midway between Cairo and Luxor on the eastern side of the Nile. The site was the main cemetery for the regions governors, or nomarchs, during Egypts Middle Kingdom, roughly 2055 to 1650 B.C.E., and boasts many elaborately decorated tombs.ImageCredit...Harco WillemsThe shaft that Dr. Willems investigated was one of five in the tomb complex of the nomarch Ahanakht. Twenty feet down, the researchers found the remains of a sarcophagus neglected by previous generations of archaeologists. Most of its contents had been looted or destroyed by fungi, but two rotting cedar panels turned out to be etched with images and hieroglyphs. To Dr. Willemss amazement, the fragments of text were from a Book of Two Ways. Inscriptions found nearby referred to the reign of Pharaoh Mentuhotep II, who ruled until 2010 B.C.E. These suggest that the manual is some four decades older than any of the two dozen extant copies.The 63-year-old Dr. Willems grew up in the Netherlands. His entry into the ancient Egyptian netherworld began at age 12, when he read Hans Baumanns The World of The Pharoahs, an exploration of Egyptian antiquity from the point of view of a modern child. After majoring in Egyptology at Leiden University, Dr. Willems earned a Ph.D. at the University of Groningen, studying Middle Kingdom coffins. He has directed the dig at Deir el-Bersha since 2001; before that, the last time the tomb had been excavated was 86 years earlier, when it was explored by George Reisner, an American Egyptologist supported by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.The Reisner expedition is mostly remembered for the discovery of the tomb of the provincial governor Djehutynakht, the predecessor of Ahanakht. Among the treasures unearthed: a mummified head; a headless, limbless torso; and a chapel whose portico harbored two palm-columns, a rectangular inner hall and a deep chamber. Alas, in a secondary shaft, labeled Tomb 17K85/1B, Dr. Reisner came up empty. Scanning the scattered debris yellowing newspapers, cigarette butts he concluded that the chamber had been thoroughly ransacked by looters. He abandoned his search after only a few feet.Aided by Dr. Reisners excavation diary, Dr. Willems set out to document Tomb 17K85/1B in greater detail. Suitably gloomy, dank and eerie, the shaft was like the remains of a dark forest, with hundreds of bits of cedar coffin planks spread about as if deposited by a flash flood. Given the brittleness of the 4,000-year-old wood, the excavators carefully packed up the shards for conservation back at the university in Belgium.Wooden sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdoms grandees were primarily painted on the inside. These Coffin Texts tend to situate the deceased in the world of the gods, Dr. Willems said. Sometimes they are combined with drawings. At Deir el-Bersha, one frequently encounters Books of Two Ways.ImageCredit...Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe images were only applied in paint, but the hieratic texts were written in black or red ink and later traced, coarsely, with a knife. Although almost all color on the planks had disappeared and only the scratches remained, Dr. Willems managed to decipher many of the faint engravings using high-resolution images and DStretch, a software tool for digital enhancement of rock art.Since some of the planks were etched with the name Djehutynakht, Dr. Willems at first assumed the coffin had contained that governors body. But closer inspection revealed that its occupant was actually a woman named Ankh, who appeared to have been related to an elite provincial official. Indeed, the jumble of bones found in the shaft may be hers, even though the Book refers to Ankh as he.To me, whats funny is the idea that how you survive in the netherworld is expressed in male terms, Dr. Willems said. To the ancient Egyptians, creation and regeneration were solely the province of male gods. Goddesses were believed to be protective vessels, Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, said. In the engraving, the pronoun he was essential even for female deceased people because they needed to be like Osiris.Generally, each individuals Book differed in length and lavishness depending on its owners wealth or status. This one begins with a text encircled by a red line designated as ring of fire, Dr. Willems said. The text is about the sun god passing this protective fiery ring to reach Osiris. Gates feature prominently, as do two looping lines indicating the separate roads to the afterlife, surrounded by malignant spirits and other supernatural beings. The final image shows a barque dragged on a sledge Spell 1128, Dr. Willems said and follows the final text (Spell 1130), which yokes the dead persons identity forever to the sun god, Ra, the creator. Assuming Ankh casts her spells properly, she has become a god. | science |
Health|The C.D.C. isnt publishing large portions of the Covid data it collects.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/health/the-cdc-isnt-publishing-large-portions-of-the-covid-data-it-collects.htmlCredit...Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated PressPublished Feb. 20, 2022Updated Feb. 21, 2022For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group the data showed was least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.The agency recently debuted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that will be updated daily and might provide early signals of an oncoming surge of Covid cases. Some states and localities had been sharing wastewater information with the agency since the start of the pandemic, but it had never before released those findings.Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the countrys response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early.Without the booster data for 18- to 49-year-olds, the outside experts whom federal health agencies look to for advice had to rely on numbers from Israel to make their recommendations on the shots.Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data because basically, at the end of the day, its not yet ready for prime time. She said the agencys priority when gathering any data is to ensure that its accurate and actionable.Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the agencys deputy director for public health science and surveillance said the pandemic exposed the fact that data systems at the C.D.C., and at the state levels, are outmoded and not up to handling large volumes of data. C.D.C. scientists are trying to modernize the systems, he said. | Health |
Harvey Weinstein Too Low to Spoof Even For Porn Execs 1/21/2018 Harvey Weinstein won't be parodied by the porn industry because the allegations made against him are just too nasty. We talked to a bunch of porn execs who tell us straight-up ... they feel Harvey's alleged conduct was disgusting ... so he won't get the Tiger Woods' spoof treatment . WoodRocket is the premiere porn spoof company. They've done a ton, including "Ten Inch Mutant Ninja Turtles." WoodRocket producer Lee Roy Myers tells us, "WoodRocket.com" would never do a parody of somebody or something that hurt people." As we've reported ... scores of women have accused Harvey of sexual misconduct, harassment or rape. That's all the reason porn execs needed to nix a Weinstein parody. Joanna Angel -- founder of BurningAngel.com -- tells TMZ, "There are certain aesthetic standards for today's male performers, and there is no one who remotely comes close to looking like Harvey Weinstein, nor should there be." | Entertainment |
Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated PressApril 7, 2016In what could be an important moment for his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis is scheduled to issue a major document on Friday regarding family issues. It is titled Amoris Laetitia, Latin for The Joy of Love.In the document, known as an apostolic exhortation, the pope could change church practice on thorny subjects like whether divorced Catholics who remarry without having obtained annulments can receive holy communion. He might address debates over same-sex relationships, cohabitation and polygamy, an issue in Africa. Or, he could sidestep such divisive topics and stick to broader philosophical statements.How Long Did This Take?For the past two years, Francis has guided the church through a sweeping exercise of self-examination that some scholars have compared to the Second Vatican Council. Catholics around the world filled out detailed questionnaires about whether the church meets their families needs. Bishops and other church officials spent two tumultuous meetings at the Vatican, known as synods, debating and arguing.The broad topic was whether the Catholic Church should reposition itself, and how. Francis listened, prodded and sometimes steered the process, but he mostly kept his own counsel. Until now.Whats at Stake?Having led Catholics into such delicate terrain, Francis has stirred hope and fear. Some religious conservatives warn he could destabilize the church and undermine Catholic doctrine. Some liberals, though, are hoping Francis will directly address same-sex marriage and contraception in a way that would make the church more responsive to todays realities.Im sure he knew he would touch some nerves, said John Thavis, a longtime Vatican analyst and the author of The Vatican Diaries. He may not have appreciated how much opposition there could be.But both sides might be disappointed.Some who study Francis predict the apostolic exhortation will be a broad statement on universal problems affecting families, like poverty, migration, domestic violence, health care, youth unemployment and the neglect of children and the elderly. Francis encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, released in June, was an enormous study in connecting the dots, and experts are expecting a similar sweep in Amoris Laetitia.This document is meant for Catholics all over the world, some of whom are in desperate straits because of poverty and war and other crises that make having a family life almost impossible, said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior analyst for the American newspaper The National Catholic Reporter. This pope, his heart aches for these people who are so marginalized. Im sure this document will address that.ImageCredit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressSo Whats All the Fuss About?Francis signaled early on that he wanted the church to re-examine its ministry to those who feel excluded, calling bishops to two synod meetings on the family, in 2014 and 2015. One of the major issues debated was the church policy that bars divorced Catholics who have remarried without seeking a church annulment of their first union from receiving the sacrament of holy communion, a centerpiece of Mass.(How strictly this ban is observed varies widely, depending on local priests and bishops; plenty of remarried Catholics receive holy communion regularly.)Getting an annulment requires appearances before a church tribunal and a fee, and it can take years. Francis streamlined the annulment process last year, but for many, it is still an insurmountable obstacle to full participation in the church. Some dioceses, especially in developing countries, do not have such tribunals, which require judges trained in the churchs canon law.At the synods, many bishops insisted that giving communion to divorced Catholics would undermine a core church doctrine that marriage is indissoluble. But other bishops were intent on finding a way to welcome back the divorced.The second synod ended by essentially allowing both sides to declare victory. However, the dispute reverberated among Catholic intellectuals in the United States, with conservatives warning of an intrachurch civil war.Now, everyone is looking to Francis to settle the matter. But he may sidestep it, some experts said, by reaffirming church teaching that marriage is permanent, while encouraging flexibility in pastoral practice toward the remarried.A guide that the Vatican sent to Catholic bishops before the release of Amoris Laetitia offered only hints like this: The popes concern is therefore to re-contextualize doctrine at the service of the pastoral mission of the church.M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor at Boston College who focuses on the relationship between law, religion and morality, said she was expecting some sort of movement.If there is no shift at all, it would have been better had the whole discussion not been opened, she said. I think that people are looking to Francis to provide some way forward in these intractable personal situations.The Last Word?This type of document is a post-synodal apostolic exhortation. The first one to be issued in response to a synod of bishops was in 1967, by Pope Paul VI.Apostolic exhortations are not as authoritative as papal encyclicals, and they do not normally change church doctrine. But there is doctrine, and there is practice, and the popes instruction can influence how priests and bishops apply doctrine.This is Francis second apostolic exhortation. The first, Evangelii Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel, was released in 2013, Francis first year as pope, and it is considered his manifesto. In it, he proclaims that the church must be open and humble to peoples real needs, and not too rigidly fixed on doctrine. Many expect to see those themes echoed in the new document.The Francis Effect?Francis is one of the worlds most popular and influential figures, with a public persona that blends humility with boldness. From the first moments of his papacy, Francis challenged the Vatican hierarchy and took strong stances on issues such as capitalism, poverty, migration and climate change.But Francis is also deeply pragmatic, particularly regarding internal church politics. Francis may want to be a bold reformer, but he knows the church can be pushed only so far, so quickly, especially given differing opinions among church leaders. He needs the worlds bishops to be unified behind him if he wants changes to filter to the parish level.Yet taking a middle-of-the-road approach is not without risks. Many Catholics eager for the church to change and in a tangible way look to him as their change agent. Doing too little may leave some supporters alienated, just as doing too much may anger conservative opponents. It is quite a balancing act.When Can We Read It?The document will be published at noon on Friday in Rome, or 6 a.m. in New York. The New York Times will highlight excerpts. | World |
Trump Repeats Debunked Election Claims in Call With Georgia OfficialJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETJan. 3, 2021, 8:34 p.m. ETCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Trump, in an hourlong telephone call with Georgias Republican secretary of state, repeated a number of false and misleading claims about election results in the state that have been circulating on social media. Heres a fact check.What Mr. Trump SaidThen it was stuffed with votes. They werent in an official voter box, they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they werent in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but it had slow motion and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.False. Mr. Trump was most likely referring to debunked claims that a water leak at a vote counting location in Fulton County forced an evacuation and made it possible for trunks full of ballots to be rolled in. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgias chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.Throughout the phone call, Mr. Trump also repeatedly suggested that an election worker seen in the surveillance videos stuffed the boxes and they thought shed be in jail referring to a baseless conspiracy theory promoted on social media.[Read more about the voting in Georgia so far.]What Mr. Trump SaidThere were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.This is misleading. Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, leave.What Mr. Trump SaidSo dead people voted. And I think the number is close to 5,000 people.False. The actual number was two, Brad Raffensperger, Georgias secretary of state, told the president in the call.What Mr. Trump SaidYou had out-of-state voters they voted in Georgia but they were from out of state of 4,925.This is misleading. Ryan Germany, the chief counsel for Mr. Raffenspergers office, refuted this description in the call.Everyone weve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately, he said. They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So theres something about that data that, its just not accurate.What Mr. Trump SaidIn Fulton County and other areas and this may or may not be true, because this just came up this morning that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding ballots, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They are changing the equipment on the Dominion machines, and you know thats not legal.False. Mr. Trump was likely referring to images of Fulton County ballots that circulated on social media and posted by a supporter, Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.The photos showed piles of ballots that were visibly not filled out and wrapped in plastic. Mr. Byrne characterized the ballots as counterfeit and said they were later shredded.But those images were simply of emergency backup ballots, said Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official who is the voting system implementation manager in Georgia. State law requires counties to prepare additional paper ballots in case voting machines cannot be used.Dominion Voting Systems, which has been the subject of countless conspiracy theories and false rumors, did not remove any machinery from Fulton County, Mr. Germany told the president.What Mr. Trump SaidIn Detroit, we had 139 percent of the people voted. Thats not too good. In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting.False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania's Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties including Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, the two largest in the state had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis obvious misinformation.What Mr. Trump SaidShe got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You cant check signatures. I cant imagine youre allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement.False. This was an inaccurate reference to a settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the March settlement, officials must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It does not bar officials from verifying signatures and does not allow harvesting, or collecting and dropping off ballots in bulk.Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota, Mr. Raffensperger said in the call.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email [email protected]. | Politics |
Feb. 9, 2014Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe central character in the new Broadway play Bronx Bombers is Yogi Berra. And why not? Yogi has been a Yankee, even when he was a Met, for nearly 70 years.Creating a character like Yogi would be unlikely: a Hall of Fame catcher without an all-star physique, a beloved sage, a pitchman and the winning protagonist in a 14-year struggle for his dignity against George Steinbrenner. As a player, coach, manager or yogi-in-residence, he has been the human bridge to virtually every meaningful Yankee from Joe DiMaggio to Derek Jeter.I knew he was going to be an automatically empathetic character, said Eric Simonson, the playwright and director. Hes rich and dimensional, and he says all these great things, some of which he actually said, and hes the face of the Yankees. It seemed like the right place to go. Hes lived through all that Yankee history, and hes really a great place to get into it.The play opened Thursday at Circle in the Square, where the lobby is filled with oversize photographs of Yankees and steeply priced signed memorabilia. The theater in the round is ringed by a fiber-wood copy of the Yankee Stadium facade. And some fans came dressed as if to a game, in Yankees jerseys and jackets, sat in old Yankee Stadium chairs and posed in front of replica lockers.The YES Network announcer Michael Kay cautions the audience to turn off cellphones before the lights go down.The real Berra, now 88, has not seen the new production, but he and his wife, Carmen, attended its Off Broadway version last year.He laughed his butt off watching it, said Lindsay Berra, the oldest of his 11 grandchildren. Grandpa likes to laugh, and he can laugh at himself. And my grandmother loved the choice of clothing for her and her glasses.The play centers on Berras distress over the feud that erupted when Yankees Manager Billy Martin yanked Reggie Jackson out of right field for apparently loafing for a fly ball in a game against the Red Sox in Fenway Park in June 1977. Before a full brawl between them could begin in the dugout, Berra and Elston Howard, two of Martins coaches, held the combatants apart.A lot of people remembered it, and it was a moment in baseball history when things were changing in the game, Simonson said, explaining why he chose that incident. I didnt consider many other possibilities.Simonson portrays Berras anxiety over the nationally televised incident as so profound that he believes the Yankees may be damaged forever. As played by Peter Scolari, Berra tries to broker a cease-fire between the two in his hotel room, where Martin is agitated and weepy, and Jackson is full of swagger and the immensity of himself. Still unsettled, Berra hallucinates that Babe Ruth is speaking to him.There is, of course, considerable dramatic license in all this, especially in Berras dream that he and Carmen are the hosts of a dinner party of pinstriped royalty with Ruth, Howard, DiMaggio, Jeter, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle. It is an opportunity to look back at Yankees history with a big dose of Ruths rowdiness and to hear some of the bitterness between Mantle and DiMaggio and Gehrig and Ruth.It is a Field of Dreams-like encounter in the Berras home in Montclair, N.J., without the cornfield, with gestures of mortality by Gehrig (John Wernke) that are directly out of Pride of the Yankees.VideoA scene from the new Broadway play about the New York Yankees.Among the missing Yankees stars are Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford. The budget allowed only a certain number of immortals, Simonson said.And no Steinbrenner, either.I could have had Steinbrenner, but then the play would have been about him, not the Yankees, Simonson said. Hes a fascinating character, but if youre going to honor the history of the Yankees, you have to honor the players. Perhaps Larry David, who gave voice to the wacko version of Steinbrenner on Seinfeld, was unavailable.Bronx Bombers is the third Broadway play in a sports cycle written by Simonson and produced by Fran Kirmser and Tony Ponturo.Lombardi, the first one, had a run of 244 performances that began in 2010. The second, Magic/Bird, closed in 2012 after only 37 performances.Bronx Bombers is the first of the plays that is about a New York team and players. Opening just before spring training and produced in partnership with the Yankees and Major League Baseball, the play is designed to rope in people who want to bathe in Yankees nostalgia, whether or not they are Broadway habitus.The way Yogi tried to keep the team together, I got teary-eyed, Maurice Rothenberg, a Bronx-born Yankees fan who lives in Bayside, Queens, said after Wednesday nights performance.The Yankees are not nafs on the New York stage, but there are not many sports plays. The Yankees served as the unseen evil empire in the musical Damn Yankees in two long runs in the 1950s and 90s. Paul Dooley played Casey Stengel looking back at his life, including his seasons as Yankees manager at the American Place Theater in 1981.And in 2003, Ben Gazzara played Berra in a one-man Off Broadway show, Nobody Dont Like Yogi, that used Steinbrenners firing of Berra as the Yankees manager in 1985 as its pivot point. Gazzara was a Yankees fan who admired DiMaggio and recalled thinking that no one with a stocky body like Berras could be a great player.He was ungainly, but he got things done gracefully, he said then to The New York Times. I had to root for him.That ungainliness is reprised in Bronx Bombers. Scolari moves in a hunched stance, reminiscent of how he portrayed Red Auerbach in Magic/Bird.Lindsay Berra said that her grandfather was only 52 in 1977, with stronger, straighter posture. I think most people know Grandpa as an older man, and Peters probably playing the man he met, whos 88, she said. But if youre acting, do you do the spitting image or what works for you? She added that her grandfather wore nightshirts, not the pajamas and bathrobe of the stage Yogi.But she said that the play captured the spirit of the characters, the sweetness of her grandparents love story and the look of Carmen Berra.When Tracy comes out in the little tweed suit with the straight blond bob, I burst out in tears, she looked so much like Grammy, she said, referring to Tracy Shayne. At one point, she put her hands on her chest, and with her nude-colored manicure, it was so Grammy the hairs on my back stood up. | Sports |
Once Were Gone, Were Not Coming BackIn Nebraska, a 151-year-old family farm struggles to survive.Jeff Uhlir harvests corn on his farm in Knox County, Neb.Credit...Nov. 23, 2021In his earliest memories of his familys farm, Ethan Uhlir rides in an old truck with his grandfather Arden, feeding cattle and mending fences.Before Ardens death five years ago, he reminded me that I was a good cattleman, Ethan said, and I have to keep it like that.Ethan, now 17, still notices his grandfathers wiring technique in fence posts scattered across the farm in the rolling plains of northeast Nebraska, along the South Dakota border. He walks along the same paths as six generations of Uhlirs, but Ethan may be the last to work the land.ImageTheres enough labor for four people but not enough income for one, his father, Jeff, said.Like most farmers, Jeff sells his cattle, corn and soybeans at prices set by a global commodities market, but only large farms can absorb the narrow profit margins.Though the familys small farm is valuable its 880 acres are assessed at $1.3 million property taxes eat up most of the money it does make.Even in a good year when the farm grosses $60,000, Jeff feels lucky if he has money left over for savings.Ill have to work an hour before my funeral, Jeff, 51, said. I have no retirement.For families like the Uhlirs, farming is increasingly unsustainable, as drought and extreme weather, fluctuating commodity prices and rising costs alter the economics of running a small- to midsize operation. Hundreds of family farms file for bankruptcy each year in the United States, with the largest share routinely coming from the Midwest.Nebraskas high property taxes, which it collects from its 93 counties and reapportions, are compounded by Knox Countys shrinking population.About 8,400 people live in the county, down 26.8 percent over the last 40 years. With fewer taxpayers, farmers who own hundreds of acres must shoulder the cost of schools, roads and other public services. After paying for necessities like fertilizer, seed and pesticides, Jeff must cover a $15,965.68 property tax bill.Nebraskas agricultural land property taxes are 46 percent higher than the national average, according to a 2019 report by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and most farmers pay 50 to 60 percent of their net income in taxes.Sixty percent of Nebraska property taxes pay for schools.Next fall, Ethan hopes to pursue an associate degree in nursing. I dont think that I would be able to financially support myself just living off the farm, he said.On a crisp, bright afternoon in early October, Ethan watched his father weld their broken 1980s combine harvester head, which cuts and threshes corn.Most of the equipment we have, my grandfather bought, Ethan said.Ethan had once hoped to be named the Future Farmers of Americas Star Farmer, just like his grandfather Arden in 1960.During the 1980s farm crisis, Arden nearly lost the farm. He took on debt and worked to pay it off up until the last few years of his life. His wife, Karen, worked for 16 years in an Alzheimers unit at an assisted-living facility in Verdigre.They never went to the dentist. They couldnt afford to, Jeff said. They never went on vacation. They never spent any money on each other.Seeing his parents struggle, Jeff has avoided debt.Id love to be able to buy land close to me and expand what I do, but there aint no way at 51 years old, he said. Id have to live to 160 to be able to pay it off.Jeffs financial situation is worse than previous generations, he said. Every year, the property valuations get higher and everything else dont keep up.The family has farmed the land for 151 years, he said. How do I sell it?Payday comes once a year on the farm: in the fall, when Jeff sells cattle and crops.Knox County classifies four soil types when taxing agricultural use of land, and much of Jeffs soil received the highest rating and a higher tax rate, despite lower yields than farms in other counties with less sandy soil.Farming becomes more challenging as he ages, Jeff says, and he wonders what it will be like without Ethan next year, when hes at college. As my helper goes away, things get tougher.At some point, the people raising your food are going to be dead, Jeff said. Once were gone, were not coming back.The family has survived plenty of physical and personal hardships. Just months after taking over the farm in 2016, Jeff broke his neck in a car accident. And on Mothers Day 2020, most of their home was destroyed by an electrical fire that started in the attic.The expense of unexpected health issues worries Jeff, who told his wife not to call the ambulance if he has a heart attack or stroke.It would break my heart if this place got lost because of me, and Im not going to be whole again if that happens, he said.Every year, Jeff travels to Lincoln, the state capital, to testify on property tax bills. He is also appealing how the county taxes his land.When Ethan takes over from Jeff, he will probably continue to work in a health care facility an hour or two away.To cover the property taxes, he might rent the land to another farmer or take part in the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which rents farmland for environmental restoration.Its been in the name this long, Ethan said. I dont want to be the weak link and lose it.Alyssa Schukar is a photographer and writer based in Washington, D.C. | Business |
Credit...Andre Penner/Associated PressMarch 4, 2016The Zika virus damages many fetuses carried by infected and symptomatic mothers, regardless of when in pregnancy the infection occurs, according to a small but frightening study released on Friday by Brazilian and American researchers.In a separate report published on Friday, other scientists suggested a mechanism for the damage, showing in laboratory experiments that the virus targets and destroys fetal cells that eventually form the brains cortex.The reports are far from conclusive, but the studies help shed light on a mysterious epidemic that has swept across more than two dozen countries in the Western Hemisphere, alarming citizens and unnerving public health officials.In the first study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that 29 percent of women who had ultrasound examinations after testing positive for infection with the Zika virus had fetuses that suffered grave outcomes.They included fetal death, tiny heads, shrunken placentas and nerve damage that suggested blindness.This is going to have a chilling effect, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Now theres almost no doubt that Zika is the cause.The small size of the study, which looked at 88 women at one clinic in Rio de Janeiro, was a limitation, Dr. Fauci added. From such a small sample, it is impossible to be certain how often fetal damage may occur in a much larger population.ImageCredit...Sarah C. Ogden/Johns Hopkins MedicineStill, the high percentage of fetuses damaged is very concerning, he said. There will be other studies that I believe will corroborate this.Two fetuses died even though the mothers were infected relatively late in pregnancy, at 25 and 32 weeks and even after earlier ultrasounds had shown the fetuses to be normal.We were just blown away by that, said Dr. Karin Nielsen-Saines of the David Geffen Medical School at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the lead authors. We werent expecting to find problems in all trimesters.Other fetuses whose mothers were infected late in pregnancy suffered brain calcifications or abnormally slow growth.Doctors in Brazil had previously said that the worst damage appeared in fetuses whose mothers were infected in the first trimester.Zika has been likened to rubella because both cause mild symptoms in adults but maim or kill fetuses, and the new reports authors compared their findings to the devastating American rubella outbreak of 1964.Back then, almost 80 percent of American women had survived childhood infections with rubella and were immune. Nonetheless, that outbreak, the last before a vaccine was invented, killed at least 2,100 children and caused 20,000 others to be born with disabilities, including severe intellectual disabilities, blindness and deafness.Virtually no women in the Western Hemisphere are now immune to Zika, so many more children could be affected, the authors said.The disease is not expected to have the same consequences in the United States because it is spread primarily by mosquitoes that thrive in tropical regions, but there is mounting evidence that it is also spread by sex.Other scientists echoed Dr. Faucis assessment that the new research strongly indicated that the Zika virus, and nothing else, is behind Brazils wave of fetal brain damage.It does not close the deal, but its a huge step forward, said Dr. Ernesto T. A. Marques, who studies Zika in Brazil and at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health but was not involved in the new research.The World Health Organization is awaiting results from a similar but much larger study involving 5,000 women, mostly from Colombia. They are not expected until May or June, when large numbers of the babies will come to term.The Brazilian study, which is still in progress, followed 88 pregnant women who visited a fever clinic at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation hospital in Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazils leading research hospitals, between September and February.Every woman with a rash, the most characteristic symptom of infection, was tested for the Zika virus, and 72 were positive. The tests looked for the virus itself; they work only if done early in an infection, but are considered more accurate than later tests for antibodies.ImageCredit...Johns Hopkins MedicineForty-two of the infected women agreed to have a series of ultrasound scans, as did all 16 uninfected women.Of the remaining 30 infected women, two miscarried and 28 declined the scans, the studys authors said.Some women who said no said the campus where the ultrasounds were done was too far away, Dr. Nielsen-Saines said. But we think it was also not wanting to know. Theres a tendency to be fatalistic, to say, God willing, everything will be fine, or Ill deal with it when the baby is born. The bleakness of the results was startling. Of the 42 infected women receiving regular ultrasounds, a dozen had babies who died in utero or suffered serious birth defects. Only eight of the babies carried by the 42 women have been born so far, but the ultrasound scans for them turned out to be accurate. None of 16 uninfected women had problems in their scans.The new study does not answer an important question: whether Zika infections so mild that they produce no symptoms in the mother can damage a fetus.Doctors say four out of five Zika victims have no symptoms. When they do, the most common are rash, joint pain, red eyes and headaches.Still, although it was small, this kind of study is the gold standard, Dr. Fauci said.In the second study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere cultured several types of cells present in early fetal development, including so-called cortical neural progenitor cells, which form the cortex, the outer brain layer responsible for many higher functions.Three days after they infected all the cells with the Zika virus, 90 percent of the progenitor cells were damaged: They were unable to divide normally and often died.By comparison, the other two types of fetal cells were much less affected.The cell types responsible for forming the cortex are the target of the Zika virus, said Hongjun Song, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a senior author of the study.Some experts cautioned that, because the experiment was conducted with laboratory-grown cells, the results might not apply to humans.It might be that the results wouldnt be the same in a living system of actual cortical stem cells, said Dr. Catherine Y. Spong, acting director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.Cultured cells may be more susceptible to infections, she added.Sara Cherry, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, called the study really important but noted that the cells were infected with a Zika strain quite distinct from the one now infecting people in Latin America.Dr. William B. Dobyns, a pediatric neurologist at Seattle Childrens Research Institute, called the work highly significant.If the cells that should form the brain cortex grow too slowly, he said, you get a small brain, but on top of that theres cell death, which means whatever the size the brain is, it will shrink. That reduction may lead to a conspicuous space between the skull and brain.This paper fits like a glove what Im seeing, said Dr. Dobyns, who has reviewed brain scans from Brazil. Those scans have shown gaps between severely shrunken brains and the inner skull, unusually smooth brain surfaces and other anomalies.Dr. Guo-li Ming, a Johns Hopkins neurologist and a senior author of the study, said the scientists experimental model could be used to test drugs that could prevent brain damage in fetuses. | Health |
Credit...Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto AgencyFeb. 14, 2014NEW ORLEANS Far removed from the prying eyes of his employers at Madison Square Garden, Carmelo Anthony sat on a dais inside a large ballroom at the Hyatt Regency on Friday afternoon and, with the news media gently nudging him along, decided to make some announcements.One was that he was fully convinced that Mike Woodson would coach the Knicks when they reconvened next week, after the N.B.A. All-Star Game on Sunday night. We have our practice in Memphis on Monday, and Woody will be there, plain and simple, Anthony said.Another was that his first priority was to re-sign with the Knicks this summer, though he still intends to explore free agency and offered the familiar caveat that it was up to the Knicks to assure him that the right pieces were in place for them to become a legitimate contender.Ill evaluate that when that time comes, he said.And then there was Anthonys boldest declaration to date: He would be willing to take less money from the Knicks if it gave the team greater flexibility under the salary cap to surround him with better talent.I tell people all the time: If it takes me taking a pay cut, Ill be the first one on Mr. Dolans steps saying, Take my money, lets build something stronger, said Anthony, who was referring to James L. Dolan, the teams owner, who surfaced here earlier in the day at an off-the-record summit about N.B.A. technology.Anthony added: As far as the money, it dont really matter to me. If I go somewhere else, Ill get paid. If I stay in New York, Ill get paid. So as far as the money goes, thats not my concern. My concern is being able to compete on a high level, at a championship level, coming at this last stretch of my career.The Knicks, of course, are not competing at that level at least, not this season. They lurched into the All-Star break with a 20-32 record, and the Los Angeles Clippers Chris Paul said he could tell that Anthony was still fuming over the Knicks loss Wednesday to the Sacramento Kings when they met Thursday night in New Orleans.I could see it on his face, said Paul, who added that he would give Anthony his advice about free agency if he asked for it.Melos a big boy, Paul said. Hell be all right.Anthonys tenuous future with the Knicks has been a story line since training camp, when he divulged that he would opt out of his current contract in July. The Knicks can offer him the most lucrative new deal under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement five years, $129 million but Anthony has not been a happy camper.In recent weeks, he has reiterated how desperately he wants to win, and win now, with the expiration date on his career coming into clearer focus.Anthonys next contract could be his last, and various confidants, including Jim Boeheim, his former coach at Syracuse, have advised him to choose wisely.Hes got to do whats best for him and his family, the Clippers Blake Griffin said.In addition to fielding questions about what he hoped to eat this weekend (po boys) and whether he was looking forward to any musical acts (Kendrick Lamar), Anthony came prepared for the usual probing of his plans. Although he celebrated the Gardens electricity and said he hoped to retire with the Knicks, he left the door ajar.For the most part, Ive had a fantastic time, he said. I mean, up until now.Anthony said he had never spoken with management about personnel decisions and indicated that he did not feel it was his place to do so. But if members of the front office were to seek his input after the season, he said he would be more than willing to sit down with them.Anthony was not the only All-Star overwhelmed by questions about free agency. The Minnesota Timberwolves Kevin Love, who cannot opt out of his current deal until 2015, sounded exasperated.Whats there to say? Love asked. Its just something that you guys ask about and thats kind of brought up by you guys. I dont know what else to say.As for Anthony, there were times when he even seemed optimistic about the Knicks. He cited Paul Pierce, who stuck with the Boston Celtics through a series of dismal seasons before they were able to rebuild and win a championship in 2008.Anthony made at least one thing clear: He expects to be with the Knicks after next Thursdays trade deadline.I know for a fact Im not getting traded, he said. | Sports |
The space rocks may have come from beyond Neptune, and potentially offer hints at the chaos of the early solar system.Credit...Science Photo Library/Alamy Published July 28, 2021Updated Oct. 18, 2021Two red things are hiding in a part of the solar system where they shouldnt be.Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Monday that two objects spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system.If true it would be a huge deal, says Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, who was not involved in the research.Earths stellar neighborhood is fairly stable today. But 4 billion years ago, chaos reigned as the orbits of Jupiter and other giant planets beyond it may have shifted. The gravitational havoc caused by this planetary dance likely threw pieces of rock and ice all over the place.It was very dynamic, said Karin berg, an expert in solar system evolution from Harvard University who was not involved in the new study.Some of those rocks settled into the gap between Mars and Jupiter and became the asteroid belt. Most of the material is believed to be fairly similar hunks of inactive rock that failed to form planets.But then there are two objects called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia.They orbit at about 2.7 and 2.6 times the Earth-sun distance, well within the asteroid belt. 203 Pompeja, at about 70 miles across, appears to be structurally intact, whereas 269 Justitia, only 35 miles or so, is likely a fragment of a previous collision. Both have stable circular orbits, meaning they must have settled into this space long ago.Both also have an unusual color. Objects in the inner solar system tend to reflect more blue light because they are devoid of organic material things like carbon and methane whereas objects in the outer solar system are redder because they have a lot of organics, perhaps the building blocks of life on Earth.In order to have these organics, you need to initially have a lot of ice at the surface, said Michal Marsset from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a co-author on the paper. So they must have formed in a very cold environment. Then the solar irradiation of the ice creates those complex organics.These two rocks, as it turns out, are extremely red more red than anything else seen in the asteroid belt. While tentative hints of other red asteroids have been found, these two appear to be special.The finding, if correct, would offer evidence for planetary migration in the early solar system, particularly in support of an idea called the Nice Model, with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all moving outward, and Jupiter inward slightly, over a few hundred million years. This would have perturbed organic-laden asteroids leftover from the formation of the planets, sending them pinging around the solar system.Its an exciting discovery with implications for the origins of life, Dr. berg said.Most of these leftover objects in the present day are known as trans-Neptunian objects and orbit in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune. Many are red in color, like Arrokoth, the rock that NASAs New Horizons mission got a close-up of in 2019. 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia both appear to match them.People have been talking about some fraction of asteroids coming from the Kuiper belt for quite a while now, said Josh Emery, a planetary scientist from Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the paper. He said the research definitely takes a step toward finding evidence to support that hypothesis.Not everyone is convinced just yet. Dr. Levison, who was also not involved in the paper, says objects should become less red as they approach the sun. Even captured asteroids in Jupiters orbit known as Trojans, thought to possibly be trans-Neptunian objects, arent this red. It seems to be inconsistent with our models, said Dr. Levison, who is the head of NASAs Lucy mission, which is scheduled to launch in October to study Jupiters Trojans.Dr. Marsset agrees that its not clear why they would be so red, but it is possibly related to how long it took them to become implanted into the asteroid belt. Some Trojans may also be as red, but havent been found yet.To truly confirm the origin of 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, a spacecraft would likely need to visit them. Such a mission could potentially offer a glimpse at the outer solar system, but without spending a decade or more to fly there.You could flyby one of these strange asteroids, and a more typical asteroid for comparison, Dr. Emery said. That would be a really compelling spacecraft mission. | science |
Tsunamis of Misinformation Overwhelm Local Election OfficialsFrom Philadelphia to Sonoma County, Calif., election officials said they were working marathon hours to fight a flood of falsehoods.Credit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesOct. 29, 2020The morning after last months presidential debate, the phones inside the Philadelphia election offices that Al Schmidt helps oversee rang off the hook.One caller asked whether President Trumps comments hinting at rampant voter fraud in Philadelphia were true. Another yelled about the inaccurate rumor that poll watchers were being barred from polling places. Still another demanded to know what the city was trying to hide.It was just another day at the office for Mr. Schmidt, one of Philadelphias three city commissioners, a job that includes supervising voter registration and elections. Hundreds of people have called in every day for months, many parroting conspiracy theories about the election and lies about how partisan megadonors own the voting machines. Staff members spend hours shooting down the rumors, he said.Its not like we have tens of millions of dollars to spend on communications to battle tsunamis of misinformation that come our way, said Mr. Schmidt, 49, whose team has been working up to 17-hour days ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. It wears on all of us.Election officials across the country are already stretched thin this year, dealing with a record number of mail-in ballots and other effects of the coronavirus pandemic. On top of that, many are battling another scourge: misinformation.VideotranscripttranscriptHow Homegrown Disinformation Could Disrupt This U.S. ElectionIn 2016, Russia developed a simple, effective playbook to undermine U.S. elections with disinformation on social media. Four years later, Americans are using the same playbook on each other.Quick, think about disinformation. What comes to mind? Vladimir Putin, president of Russia. But in 2020, many experts are more concerned with disinformation coming from our very own backyard. Like this guy, who, with a single tweet, disrupted a governors race in Kentucky. Oh Im just a broke college student, basically. He had 19 followers. Its slightly absurd. But its also slightly terrifying. What makes misinformation truly dangerous is that it doesnt need to hack into the actual infrastructure of an election. It only needs to hack the brains of voters. A seed of doubt is sowed into the democratic process of elections. People just dont trust the process anymore. The purpose is to confuse people, to cause chaos and to cause division. The hope with disinformation is that a country will kind of fall in on itself. And the coronavirus pandemic has made things even worse. To understand how we got here, we have to go to a key battleground in this election, one that has no state boundary. The internet. Remember the internet in 2016? The year that gave us these? Damn, Daniel. What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs? Well, it also gave us a flood of election disinformation created by a Russian troll factory, a.k.a. a Kremlin-linked company called the Internet Research Agency. It was essentially a gray office building in St. Petersburg in Russia. This is Claire Wardle. Shes a disinformation expert and educator. People were paid to sit all day, pretending to be Americans, creating social posts and memes and videos, and pushing that out. They could just throw spaghetti at the wall. Many of the posts didnt succeed, but other things really did. Russians developed a simple, but effective playbook. They basically inflamed existing American divisions. A lot of these accounts actually got in the hundreds of thousands of followers. By the end of the 2016 election, Russian trolls could reach millions of Americans through their social media accounts. Crucially, what they managed to do was use online disinformation to organize dozens of real-life political rallies. Attendees had no idea theyd been set up by Russians. This was one of them, filmed by a Houston TV station. Im in downtown Houston right by the Islamic Dahwa Center. Theres protests going on, on both sides of the street. Russian trolls did all of this, not with particularly sophisticated spycraft, but with tools available to everyone. Pretty soon, their disinformation, spread with the intent to deceive, became misinformation, as real people unwittingly started engaging with the material. All the while, social media companies denied there was a problem. Speaking days after the 2016 election, Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerburg struggled to articulate a defense. I think the idea that fake news on Facebook of which, you know, its a very small amount of the content influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea. In the years since, there has been a slow recognition. We didnt take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. And it was my mistake. And Im sorry. We found ourselves unprepared and ill-equipped for the immensity of the problems that weve acknowledged. And we take the full responsibility to fix it. Some lessons were learned. The companies have been a lot tougher on election misinformation, especially when they can tie it to foreign interference. But those policies arent applied in the same way when the source of the misinformation is within U.S. borders. In certain cases, like with an unsubstantiated New York Post report, some platforms have taken drastic measures to restrict access, and face charges of censorship. But generally, the platforms try to avoid being seen as arbiters of truth. When it comes to domestic and homegrown misinformation, social media companies still do err on the side of free speech. So in the last four years, Americas election disinformation problem didnt go away. It evolved. Unfortunately, the landscape looks and feels very different now, because youve got all sorts of actors using the platforms in the ways that we learned the Russians did in 2016. And we see that playbook being used by political operatives in the U.S. And we see that same playbook being used by individuals in their basements who are angry and frustrated with life. Sometimes its just one guy, sending one tweet from hundreds of miles away. That actually happened in 2019 in Kentucky. To tell this story, lets first meet three people. The New York Times reporter who covered the Kentucky election. My name is Nick Corasaniti. The election administrator. My name is Jared Dearing. And the internet troll. I am @Overlordkraken1. Were not showing his face, and only using his first name, because he says hes afraid for his safety. On Nov. 5, 2019, Kentucky voters went to the polls to pick their next governor. The race for governor in Kentucky in 2019 featured a very unpopular governor, Matt Bevin, who is a Republican. Were just getting started. Facing off against Andy Beshear, the Democratic attorney general. We cant take four more years. Every Democrat in the country was viewing the opportunity to deliver a blow to Mitch McConnell, and give him a Democratic governor as a real win. National money flooded this election. The day started well. I drove in around 4 a.m. Election Day is more like game day for me. I woke up, got ready for school, went to school. When the polls close at 6, the days not even halfway through at that point. I got on Twitter, and I saw the Kentucky election, whats going on. And then I saw that the race was very close. It was neck and neck. They were maybe 1,000 votes here, 100 votes there, separating them. When an election is close, theres a lot of pressure and stress thats put onto the system. As soon as Republicans in the state started to see the possibility that they might lose the Statehouse, social media kind of erupted a little bit. People were looking for reasons as to how this could possibly be happening. How could a Democrat be winning in deeply red Kentucky? Emotions were high. It was kind of the perfect environment for any kind of disinformation or misinformation about the results to take hold. I decided that it would be a funny idea that if I made a fake tweet, spread it out to bigger accounts. I thought it was the perfect situation for it to go viral. I dont remember how many followers I had, but I know it was less than 20. He had 19 followers. I set my geolocation to Louisville, Ky. He claimed he was from Louisville, but it was misspelled. It was just a typo. Ive never been to Kentucky. And he sent out a simple tweet that said, Just shredded a box of Republican mail-in ballots. Bye bye Bevin. Theres so many checks and balances that weve built into the system over the past decades that we kind of know where all the ballots are at all times. So this is obviously a false claim. Ive never seen a mail-in ballot. I probably never will know what their intentions were. All I really wanted to do was just get a few reactions out of some Boomers. Irresponsible. Frustrating. Damaging. Not helpful. I just thought it was funny. So Kentucky election officials found this tweet about an hour after polls closed, and they immediately notified Twitter. And like that, the tweet was gone. But the story didnt end there. It had actually just begun. A few conservative accounts began screenshotting the tweet. And and when they screenshot that tweet and sent it around to their tens of thousands of followers, hundreds of thousands of followers, it was like a spark in a brushfire. And the tweet was everywhere. When we called Twitter to then take those screengrabs down, Twitter then said that it was commentary on the original tweet itself, and were unwilling to take the screengrabs down. So its a pretty big loophole, as far as Im concerned. Election security officials kind of refer to these networks of accounts as a Trump core. And what they do is they wait until there is a debate, or a discussion, or a controversy, and they will immediately go to the conservative side and amplify it. Throughout the evening, a single atom of disinformation opened the door for more stories that muddied the waters in an already close election. While this was happening, it was now reaching a pretty broad narrative. It wasnt only restricted to the conservative internet. There were normal voters who were seeing this, there was news outlets who were seeing this. At the end of the night, Matt Bevin, who was trailing behind his opponent by just 5,000 votes, contested the results. There have been more than a few irregularities. He didnt offer any evidence. He didnt say what those irregularities were. But it was because of those irregularities that he requested a re-canvass of all of the vote. Bevin never specifically mentioned the tweet, but it was one of the most viral pieces of disinformation raising doubts about the election. Bevin basically refused to concede, and left the election in question. My intention was never for it to get as big as it did. But I guess it was a lot easier than I thought. For the next few days, talks of election fraud hurting Bevin kept going. There was a time in the middle there, where there was a lot of squoosh. Both sides had the opportunity to create their own narrative. And unfortunately, part of that narrative was being driven by misinformation. Bevins supporters staged a press conference, alleging fraud. But again, offered no evidence. Are you really under the belief that hackers couldnt hack our votes that are uploaded to a cloud? There is no cloud involved in the election tabulations in Kentucky. Eventually, after re-canvassing of the results concluded nine days later, Bevin conceded the race. Were going to have a change in the governorship, based on the vote of the people. Andy Beshear is now the governor of Kentucky. But its hard to remove the various claims casting doubt on the election, once theyre out there. Videos alleging fraud in Kentuckys governors race are still gaining more views and comments. Fast forward to 2020. I dont think the question of misinformation is whether its going to happen. It will happen. Election officials across the country are gearing up for a difficult fight against disinformation ahead of the election. Like in Michigan. We anticipate challenges coming from multiple different angles. Whether they come from the White House, whether they come from foreign entities, whether they come from social media voices. And Colorado. We really need federal leadership. Theres bills just sitting in the House and in the Senate that are never going to get heard, never going to get their chance. And meanwhile, our democracy is under attack. After countless investigations, hearings and public grillings of social media executives over the past four years, the U.S. is still ill-equipped to deal with the problem. I feel like the analogy here is someone taking a bucket of water and throwing it in the ocean. Election officials are competing on social media against people with larger followings, like President Donald Trump himself. President Trump has used his Twitter account and his Facebook account to spread falsehoods about voting. In 2020, President Trump has tweeted election misinformation or claims about rigged elections about 120 times. Twitter has put warnings on some of President Trumps tweets and Facebook has added labels that direct people to accurate election information. There really isnt a uniform policy that they apply evenly across the different social media companies. Its pretty depressing to sit where we sit right now, heading into this election. We have failed to do enough to secure the election in a way that we needed to. On top of that, the Covid-19 pandemic is making the misinformation problem even worse. For example, the pandemic has forced many states to expand vote-by-mail on a large scale for the first time. And thats resulted in a surge in false or misleading claims about mail-in voting, according to media insights company Zignal Labs. Of the 13.4 million mentions of vote-by-mail between January and September, nearly one-quarter were likely misinformation. The pandemic has led to another important shift, as different conspiracy communities are emerging and working together. Heres a look at how domestic misinformation gained more reach on Facebook during a single month this summer. These are groups that are prone to share misinformation about the election. These are anti-mask groups that tend to share content like this. Then there are the QAnon groups, a pro-Trump conspiracy group that promotes, among other things, the false idea that America is controlled by a cabal of globalist pedophiles. Facebook says all QAnon on accounts would be banned on its platforms. But what we found is these seemingly disparate conspiracy groups are increasingly connected by crossposting the same content, forming A huge tent conspiracy. For example, this piece of disinformation, claiming that Barack Obama created antifa, was shared in all three types of communities. A lot of people who will believe that the coronavirus is a hoax will also believe that the elections process is not to be trusted. The theme here is that more and more Americans feel like they cannot trust institutions. And that could have serious consequences around Election Day. What that does is that will create a big uncertainty, and allow any bad actors to spread more disinformation in an already charged electorate. It will also give people the opportunity to say theyve rigged an election, when its so much harder to actually rig an election. Social media companies are preparing for the scenario that President Trump, or other candidates, will falsely declare victory. Or worse, where the losing candidate refuses to concede, and claims election fraud. The 2019 Kentucky election avoided that, but the 2020 presidential election may not. If we were to insert President Trump and months of undermining the electoral process into the Kentucky election, there probably would have been even more users who believed @Overlordkraken1s tweet that he shredded ballots. It could have gone from thousands to millions. Will you pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified? I hope its going to be a fair election. If its a fair election, I am 100 percent on board. But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I cant go along with that. Its something weve never seen before, and it sets a runway for the kind of disinformation that has disrupted other elections to really take off at a level weve never seen. Im Isabelle Niu, one of the producers of this episode. Theres a lot going on in this election, and we want to make sure we take a deep dive into the major issues. Check out the other episodes of Stressed Election. We cover voting rights, voting technology and vote-by-mail.In 2016, Russia developed a simple, effective playbook to undermine U.S. elections with disinformation on social media. Four years later, Americans are using the same playbook on each other.CreditCredit...Nicole FinemanFueled by inaccurate comments from Mr. Trump and others, election lies have spread across social media. They include claims that Black Lives Matter protesters incited violence at polling places, that mail-in ballots were dumped, that ballot boxes and voting machines were compromised, and that ballots were harvested, or collected and dropped off in bulk by unauthorized people.Election officials in places such as Philadelphia, El Paso and Santa Rosa, Calif., are bearing the brunt of the fallout, according to interviews with a dozen of them in seven states. Some have had to contain misinformation-induced voter panic. Others are fighting back by posting accurate information on social media or giving newspaper and television interviews to spread their messages. Many are working longer shifts to debunk the distortions.ImageCredit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesBut their efforts have largely been fruitless, they said. When one rumor is smacked down, another pops up. And the reach of the rumors online is often so vast that the officials said they could not hope to compete.Theyre definitely overwhelmed, said Isabella Garcia-Camargo, an organizer of the Election Integrity Partnership, a new coalition of misinformation researchers.Since Sept. 8, she said, her group has investigated 182 cases of election-related misinformation, most of which started locally. When mail was found in a ditch in Greenville, Wis., for example, some conservative media outlets inaccurately claimed that Democrats were dumping absentee ballots. In Germantown, Md., a video of an election official darkening an oval on a ballot was erroneously used as evidence that voters preferences were being altered, Ms. Garcia-Camargo said.Last week, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an information-sharing partnership, warned election officials about a spate of suspicious emails that impersonated state officials or included links to websites that asked them to verify their password information.The emails, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, did not appear to be part of a coordinated campaign, said Jason Forget, a spokesman for the group. But it was a sign that local officials should remain vigilant in identifying and reporting suspicious activity to protect the vote, he said.Top state officials who oversee elections said they were also constantly communicating with local authorities about the surge of falsehoods. In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the secretary of state, said her office had held a call with local officials and county clerks this month after the disclosure that Iran was behind threatening emails meant to influence American voters.Ms. Griswold said she wanted to ensure that the officials were equipped in case they encountered similar messages and reminded them of the best practices for online security.This is just a tough year for everybody in our office, she said.The experience of Deva Marie Proto, the registrar of voters in Sonoma County, Calif., has been typical of local election officials. Some mornings, she rises at 5 to answer voter questions on Facebook. She then heads to the county offices in Santa Rosa to lift the morale of the 15 full-time staff members, plus a handful of temporary election workers, who are dealing with peoples calls about rumors and conspiracies.One day this month, Ms. Protos office received 1,200 calls, many related to distortions about whether certain ballot drop boxes were real or fake, said Chanel Ruiz-Bricco, a county elections manager.Sonoma County was also a specific target of misinformation last month when the conservative media personality Elijah Schaffer posted photos on Twitter of local ballot envelopes that had been discarded at a recycling center. SHOCKING, he wrote. That prompted people to claim that votes for Republicans were being tossed.In fact, the envelopes were empty and from the 2018 election, Ms. Proto said. After voters called in asking about the photos and the local newspaper approached her for comment, the county tweeted about how outdated the envelopes were. Ms. Proto said voters had thanked her for the fact check.Mr. Schaffer, whose tweet is no longer available, said he hadnt stated that the debris was from this year and had simply wanted people on Twitter to investigate. I didnt make any claims, just inquired to get to the bottom of the story, he said.But the damage had been done. Mr. Schaffers tweet was shared more than 5,400 times across Facebook and Twitter, according to a New York Times analysis. (Twitter eventually locked accounts that shared the post until they deleted it; Facebook added a label saying the post contained false information.) In contrast, Ms. Protos clarification was shared just 1,400 times on Facebook and Twitter.Facebook and Twitter said they had strengthened their policies before Election Day and were referring people to authoritative sources. The companies also said they were talking with state officials, political parties and academics to respond to false rumors about the election.In El Paso County this month, a viral rumor that started on Facebook falsely claimed that ballots cast by voters at the polls could be thrown out if election officials had written on them first. The El Paso County Elections Facebook page debunked the inaccuracy by posting: Texas election code requires the election judge to initial the back of each ballot before giving it to the voter.But by then, the original post had spread 1,017 times on Facebook. Copies of the post also gathered nearly 27,000 likes and shares on the social network and reached up to 7.6 million people, according to a Times analysis. The post has spread further in text screenshots, in private Facebook groups and in hundreds of Twitter posts.The countys elections administrator, Lisa Wise, said countering falsehoods was difficult because even if you backtrack to that first person who spread the misinformation, that person was probably not going to call the 20 or 30 people he or she had misled.Asked for comment, Facebook said it had put policies in place to fight voter suppression and removed claims that errant marks invalidate ballots if the state has provided guidance saying otherwise.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps public officials and private clients fight misinformation, said she and her team had tried a proactive approach, sometimes alerting social media companies to copyrighted elements in election misinformation, like background music, so they will remove it.We dont wait for engagement levels of those narratives to get high, Ms. Kaplan said. We definitely take the Whac-a-Mole approach.Philadelphia reassigned at least 40 employees in August and September to help with the election workload, but still has only about 20 people answering calls. The false information has hindered workers from replying to other questions about ballots and polling places, said Michelle Montalvo, a deputy commissioner.ImageCredit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesShe has not had time to see friends, and her colleagues have missed time with their children and loved ones, Ms. Montalvo said. To unwind, she scrolls through TikTok. At night, she said, she was kept up by the thought of voters, fooled by conspiracy theories into thinking that voting by mail was not secure, showing up en masse on Election Day and overwhelming polling places.Ms. Montalvo said she and her colleagues were not looking for sympathy just the ability to help people without having to contend with so many lies.Theres no end in sight to the conspiracies and misinformation, she said. Were being attacked for things that we have absolutely no control over.Sheera Frenkel contributed reporting. Jacob Silver contributed research. | Tech |
TrilobitesNeanderthals and Modern Humans Agreed About One Thing: This CaveA new paper suggests Neanderthals and Homo sapiens alternately settled the same shelter more than 50,000 years ago.Credit...Laure Metz and Ludovic SlimakFeb. 9, 2022Tens of thousands of years ago, the hottest real estate in Europe was a rock shelter in southern France. Grotte Mandrin had everything a hominin could want. A rocky overhang that offered shelter from the rain. Sweeping views of a valley and the bison and deer roaming below. A prime location in the Rhne Valley, an important natural corridor linking the Mediterranean Basin with northern lands.The prehistoric pad was so desirable that about a year after the shelter was occupied by Neanderthals, a group of Homo sapiens moved in. They were followed by several Neanderthal tenants, then yet another settlement of modern humans. Scientists presented these findings in a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.More than showing how Neanderthals and modern humans were co-tenants of the European landmass over time, this new discovery pushes back the timeline for the earliest modern human settlements in Europe. The scientists say that the first modern human occupants at Mandrin were there about 54,000 years ago a time when Europe was thought to be primarily Neanderthal stomping grounds.Thats 10,000 years earlier than previously thought (with the notable exception of an even earlier site in Greece that dates to 210,000 years ago). The paper describes the human settlement based on a modern human baby tooth, as well as stone tools that appear to have been made by Homo sapiens.This is really interesting and exciting, Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany who was not involved in the research, wrote in an email. It shows the complexity of the modern human dispersal in the European continent and eventual replacement of Neanderthals, which occurred about 40,000 years ago.Naomi Martisius, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Tulsa who was not involved with the research, called the discovery of the alternating occupations extremely intriguing. But she cautions more evidence is needed to confirm modern humans, or even a hybrid species, made those tools.Ludovic Slimak, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France and an author on the paper, has spent decades excavating Grotte Mandrin. The cavern opens to the north, where a cold and powerful wind known as the mistral breathes dust under the rock shelter.This wind over millennia brings the sand from the Rhne River and deposits it in the cave, Dr. Slimak said. It is kind of like Pompeii, with no catastrophic events. These conditions have preserved the cave exceptionally, giving Dr. Slimak the feeling that artifacts from 55,000 years ago were just left five minutes ago, he said.The sands of Grotte Mandrin were littered with stone tools, many of which were clearly made by Neanderthals, the researchers argue. I read a flint like you can read a book, Dr. Slimak said. Whereas Neanderthal flints are largely unique, with differing textures and morphology, Homo sapiens crafted more standardized flints, Dr. Slimak said.ImageCredit...Ludovic SlimakImageCredit...Ludovic SlimakBy this logic, the flints excavated from certain layers of Grotte Mandrin seemed to have come from humans, not Neanderthals, Dr. Slimak concluded.The few human remains in the shelter revealed themselves slowly. We find one tooth every 10 months, Dr. Slimak said. Once the researchers had excavated nine teeth, Dr. Slimak sent the fossils to Clment Zanolli, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France and an author on the paper.Some of the teeth were a bit strange, Dr. Zanolli said. Some were typically Neanderthal, but there was one tooth that was probably not Neanderthal. When Dr. Zanolli scanned the teeth with micro tomography to examine the internal structure, he found eight teeth belonged to Neanderthals and one tooth was unequivocally from a modern human.Together, the teeth and the tools make a convincing argument, Dr. Harvati said.The researchers decided not to extract DNA from the human tooth after an unsuccessful attempt to extract DNA from fossil horse teeth also found at the shelter.Sahra Talamo, a researcher at the University of Bologna in Italy who was not involved with the research, said she expected the new paper to spur debates until that tooths genetic material is sampled. Dr. Talamo said she understands why the authors could be worried about partially destroying a unique human remain. But, she emphasized, the only way to avoid speculations and create false scenarios is to directly date the specimen.Although the researchers found only one modern human tooth, they said the presence of alternating layers of modern human tools suggested multiple settlements of Homo sapiens in the shelter. Sgolne Vandevelde, an archaeologist at the University of Paris-Saclay and author on the paper, analyzed the soot deposits from the cave roof to determine when fires were set in the cave. The amount of soot led to their finding that only one year passed between the time a group of Neanderthals moved out and the first modern humans moved in.Those humans lasted at Grotte Mandrin for about 40 years before leaving the shelter for reasons unknown. Neanderthals then eventually swooped in once more for the next 12,000 years, before again being succeeded by Homo sapiens who spent a few hundred years there.The new paper adds to scientists growing understanding that modern humans migration into Europe was a staggered, complex process that often ended in local extinction, Dr. Harvati said. Modern humans were not always the winners in this process, she wrote.Dr. Martisius hopes future publications can illuminate the lives of the early toolmakers in Grotte Mandrin. Who were they? How long were they in Western Europe? she asked. Where did they go?The researchers plan to publish more papers on their excavations in Grotte Mandrin, taking their place as the latest in a long line of hominins who found refuge in the cave. | science |
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded for Study of Humanitys Role in Changing ClimateThe work of Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, the committee said.Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesPublished Oct. 5, 2021Updated Oct. 7, 2021Three scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for work that is essential to understanding how the Earths climate is changing, pinpointing the effect of human behavior on those changes and ultimately predicting the impact of global warming.The winners were 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.Others have received Nobel Prizes for their work on climate change, most notably former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said this is the first time the Physics prize has been awarded specifically to a climate scientist.The discoveries being recognized this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations, said Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.Complex physical systems, such as the climate, are often defined by their disorder. This years winners helped bring understanding to what seemed like chaos by describing those systems and predicting their long-term behavior.In 1967, Dr. Manabe developed a computer model that confirmed the critical connection between the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and warming in the atmosphere.That model paved the way for others of increasing sophistication. Dr. Manabes later models, which explored connections between conditions in the ocean and atmosphere, were crucial to recognizing how increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet could affect ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University.He has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of human-caused climate change and dynamical mechanisms, Dr. Mann said.ImageCredit...Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency Via, Afp-Getty ImagesAbout a decade after Dr. Manabes foundational work, Dr. Hasselmann created a model that connected short-term climate phenomena in other words, rain and other kinds of weather to longer-term climate like ocean and atmospheric currents. Dr. Mann said that work laid the basis for attribution studies, a field of scientific inquiry that seeks to establish the influence of climate change on specific events like droughts, heat waves and intense rainstorms.It underpins our efforts as a community to detect and attribute climate change impacts, Dr. Mann said.ImageCredit...J J Guillen/EPA, via ShutterstockDr. Parisi is credited with the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems, including everything from a tiny collection of atoms to the atmosphere of an entire planet.The main thing about his work is that it is incredibly eclectic, said David Yllanes, a researcher with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a nonprofit research center. Many important physical phenomena involve collective behavior that arises out of fundamentally disordered, chaotic, even frustrated systems. A system that looks hopelessly random, if analyzed the right way, can yield a robust prediction for a collective behavior.These ideas can help understand climate change, which involves fluctuations that come from the interaction of many, many moving parts, Dr. Yllanes said.But Dr. Parisis effect on climate science is small compared to his impact across many other fields, including mathematics, biology and computing. This involves everything from lasers to machine learning.ImageCredit...Alessandra Tarantino/Associated PressDr. Manabe and Dr. Hasselmann will split half of the approximately $1.1 million prize. The other half will go to Dr. Parisi, whose work was largely separate from that of the other two. After the prize was awarded, many climate scientists said they were only marginally aware of Dr. Parisis work or had not heard of him at all.Dr. Manabe said in a phone interview that five days ago a group of Japanese journalists contacted him saying they had heard a rumor that he would soon win the Nobel Prize. But he did not believe them.Then, early this morning, he received a phone call from the Nobel committee.Thats when I believed I had won, he said.Three hours after the prize was announced, Dr. Manabe said he was not aware he was sharing the prize with two others. He praised Dr. Hasselmanns work and how it built on his own, but said he was not familiar with Dr. Parisi.After taking the call from the committee, Dr. Manabe parsed through the list of past winners of the Physics prize, before realizing this was the first time the prize has been awarded for climate science.I think they have made a point of choosing something that is critical to society, he said.Work that helps forecast our warming future.All three scientists have been working to understand the complex natural systems that have been driving climate change for decades, and their discoveries have provided the scaffolding on which predictions about climate are built.The importance of their work has only gained urgency as the forecast models reveal an increasingly dire outlook if the rise in global temperature is not arrested.In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations, released a report showing that the nations of the world can no longer stop global warming from intensifying. The global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by centurys end even if all countries meet their promised emissions cuts under the Paris Agreement. That temperature rise is likely to bring more extreme wildfires, droughts and floods, according to a United Nations report released in September.The IPCC report says that nations have a short window in which to curb fossil-fuel emissions and prevent the worst future outcomes. And that work builds directly on Dr. Manabes models.The climate scientists of today stand on the shoulders of these giants, who laid the foundations for our understanding of the climate system, said Ko Barrett, senior adviser for climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is also vice-chair of the IPCC.Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who also worked on the IPCC report, called Dr. Manabe a critical figure in the rise of climate science in the mid-1960s.He took the weather models that were beginning to emerge in the period after World World II and turned them into the first climate models, he said.Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds in England, called Dr. Manabes 1967 paper detailing these models arguably the greatest climate-science paper of all time.Dr. Barrett also hailed Dr. Hasselmann and Dr. Parisi for expanding on this work and praised the Nobel Committee for showing the world that todays climate studies are grounded in decades of scientific work. It is important to understand that climate science is built on basic foundations of physics, she said.Who are the winners?Dr. Manabe is a senior meteorologist and climatologist at Princeton University. Born in 1931 in Shingu, Japan, he earned his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Tokyo before joining the U.S. Weather Bureau. In the 1960s, he led groundbreaking research into how increased levels of carbon dioxide lead to higher temperatures on the surface of the Earth. That work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models, according to the Nobel judges.Dr. Hasselmann is a German physicist and oceanographer who greatly advanced public understanding of climate change through the creation of a model that links climate and chaotic weather systems. He is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Gttingen in Germany before founding the meteorology institute, which he was head of until 1999. He is also the founder of what is now known as the Global Climate Forum. In 2009, Dr. Hasselmann received the 2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change.Dr. Parisi is an Italian theoretical physicist who was born in 1948 in Rome and whose research has focused on quantum field theory and complex systems. He received his Ph.D. from the Sapienza University of Rome in 1970. In 1980, he was responsible for discovering hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. He is a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome.Referring to forecasts for the changing climate at a news conference after the prize was announced, Dr. Parisi said, Its clear that for the future generation, we have to act now in a very fast way.Who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics?The physics prize went to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their discoveries that have improved the understanding of the universe, including work on black holes.Who else won a Nobel Prize in the sciences in 2021?On Monday, the 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 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.Who else won Nobel Prizes in science in 2020?Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice received the prize for their discovery of the hepatitis C virus.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.When will the other Nobel Prizes be announced?On Wednesday, the Chemistry prize will be announced in Stockholm.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 World Food Program.On Monday, the prize in Economic Sciences will be announced in Stockholm. Last years prize was shared by Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson.Henry Fountain contributed reporting. | science |
Africa|New Ebola Case Confirmed in Liberia; Guinea Tries a Vaccinehttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/africa/ebola-liberia-guinea.htmlCredit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesApril 1, 2016A new case of Ebola was confirmed Friday in Liberia, less than three months after that country was declared free of the deadly virus and only three days after the World Health Organization announced the end of an international emergency to contain and eliminate it.The W.H.O. said in a statement that the Liberian health authorities had convened an emergency meeting to coordinate a rapid response after the confirmation of the new case, a 30-year-old woman who died on Thursday outside Monrovia, the capital. Health officials immediately began to identify people who may have come into contact with her.Liberias neighbor Guinea, which had been declared free of Ebola in December, also has been confronting a new cluster of cases that first emerged in February. The W.H.O. said in a separate statement on Friday that the Guinean health authorities had been using an experimental vaccine in an effort to contain that flare-up, injecting nearly 800 people who have come into contact with the eight known patients, all in two southern prefectures.Ebola sickened more than 28,000 people and killed more than 11,300 after an outbreak in Guinea in December of 2013 that spread rapidly to Liberia and Sierra Leone, creating global alarm about the virus and its ease of transmission through physical contact. An outpouring of international resources was mobilized to help fight it.The W.H.O. declared on Tuesday that the three West African countries now have the ability to contain smaller resurgences of Ebola and the likelihood of international spread is low. The organization also formally downgraded the response so it is no longer classified as a public health emergency of international concern. Dr. Margaret Chan, the organizations director general, used the occasion to call on other countries to rescind any bans on travel and trade to the three countries.At the same time, the organization warned that small flare-ups of Ebola were likely in the coming months because of its persistence in some survivors, and said that the three countries must must maintain strong capacity to prevent, detect and respond to further outbreaks. The organization has maintained a staff of nearly 1,000 in the region to help if needed.The new case in Liberia represents the third flare-up there since the initial outbreak there was declared over last May. The second Liberian outbreak happened in November and ended in mid-January.Sierra Leone currently has no known Ebola cases. An Ebola death was last confirmed there in January. | World |
Credit...Joshua Bright for The New York TimesNov. 13, 2018WASHINGTON Facing mounting government pressure and a public backlash over an epidemic of teenage vaping, Juul Labs announced on Tuesday that it would suspend sales of most of its flavored e-cigarette pods in retail stores and would discontinue its social media promotions.The decision by the San Francisco-based company, which has more than 70 percent of the e-cigarette market share in the United States, is the most significant sign of retrenchment by an industry that set out to offer devices to help smokers quit but now shoulders blame for a new public health problem: nicotine addiction among nonsmoking teens.Juuls announcement effectively undercut the Food and Drug Administrations plan to unveil a series of measures aimed at curbing teenage vaping. The agency is expected later this week to announce a ban on sales of flavored e-cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations and strengthen the requirements for age verification of online sales of e-cigarettes.To prevent some users from reverting to menthol cigarettes, Juul said it would keep mint, tobacco and menthol flavors for its devices in retail stores.In recent months, the F.D.A. has mounted an increasingly aggressive campaign against the major manufacturers of vaping products that appeal to young people, focusing particularly on Juul. The companys sleek device (nicknamed the iPhone of e-cigarettes) resembles a flash drive and comes with flavor pods like crme and mango, leading public health officials to criticize the company and others for appearing to market directly to teenagers, who are especially vulnerable to nicotine addiction.E-cigarettes were originally developed to help smokers quit by giving them a way to satisfy their nicotine cravings without the tar and deadly carcinogens that come with burning tobacco.Our intent was never to have youth use Juul, said Kevin Burns, chief executive of Juul Labs in a statement emailed to reporters. But intent is not enough. The numbers are what matter and the numbers tell us underage use of e-cigarettes is a problem.But critics and public health advocates said the company had no choice, especially after the F.D.A. seized documents related to marketing strategies from the companys headquarters last month, and while some states were investigating whether its tactics were directly aimed at minors.Caroline Renzulli, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called Juuls announcement too little too late. Juuls social media marketing fueled its popularity with kids, she said. Now that it has captured 75 percent of the e-cigarette market, Juul no longer needs to do social media marketing because its young customers are doing it for them.Maura Healey, the attorney general for Massachusetts, echoed that sentiment. Unfortunately, much of the damage has already been done, she said. Our investigation into Juuls practices, including if it was knowingly selling and marketing its products to young people, will continue.In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the F.D.A. said: Voluntary action is no substitute for regulatory steps #FDA will soon take. But we want to recognize actions by Juul today and urge all manufacturers to immediately implement steps to start reversing these trends.The F.D.A. acknowledged earlier this year that it had been caught off-guard by the soaring popularity of vaping among minors, and also began targeting retail outlets that were selling them the products. In September, it gave Juul and manufacturers of a few other flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products 60 days to submit plans to prove they could keep them away from minors. That deadline passed this past weekend.More than three million middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes, according to preliminary, unpublished government data, with about one-third of them saying the flavors were a big factor in their choice.Mr. Burns, the Juul executive, said that as of Tuesday, the company would stop accepting retail orders for mango, fruit, crme and cucumber Juul pods. Those account for about 45 percent of retail sales for the $16 billion company, according to some estimates.Lower in the announcement, the company said it would renew sales of those products at retail outlets that invested in age-verification technology. A timetable for resuming those sales was not announced.Juul also said it would improve its online age-verification system to ensure buyers are 21 or older. By the end of the year, Mr. Burns said, Juul will add a real-time photo requirement to match a buyers face against an uploaded government-issued ID. The company will also try to prevent bulk shipments to people who are distributing to minors, by restricting customers to two devices and 15 pod packages per month, and no more than 10 devices per year.In addition, Juul said it would shut down its Facebook and Instagram accounts in the United States that promoted use of the flavored pods. According to its release, the company said it would ask the major social media companies, including Twitter and Snapchat, to help them police posts that promote the use of e-cigarettes or cigarettes by underage users.Dr. Gottlieb said earlier that officials had met with several e-cigarette and tobacco companies to discuss ways to reduce youth vaping after threatening to take e-cigarettes off the market if the companies could not curb teenage sales.Some companies have indicated they would heed the F.D.A.s warnings. In October, Altria said it would discontinue most of its flavored e-cigarettes and stop selling some brands entirely. For the first time, the tobacco giant also said it would support a law raising the age to 21 for the purchase of all tobacco and vaping products, a proposal it had previously resisted.R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, also submitted plans to the F.D.A. on Friday that backed the higher age limit.Michael Shannon, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, said it also agreed not to market products through social media influencers and would also require age-verification for access to the website where it sells the e-cigarette Vuse.The tobacco company stopped short of promising to take Vuse, which comes in berry and other flavors, out of retail stores, but Mr. Shannon said the company would enforce contractual penalties for retailers that sell tobacco products to youths. In addition, it plans to start a mystery shopping program to check compliance.On Tuesday, CNBC reported that Fontem Ventures, a unit of Imperial Tobacco Group, would raise the minimum age to buy pods on its website to 21. The company sells blu e-cigarettes, which come in various fruity flavors.Since it came on the market in 2015, Juul has become all but irresistible to teenagers, who had been drilled since preschool days on the perils of cigarette smoking. The name itself sounded like a mash-up of jewel and cool.Unlike the clunky older vapes, the compact device could readily evade detection from parents and teachers. It not only looked like a flash drive, it could be recharged in a computers USB port. The flavors were both alluring and sophisticated. And it offered a way for teenagers to rebel and appear hip, seemingly without causing cancer.And so Juul became a fast, furious hit among high school and even middle school students. A comprehensive report on e-cigarettes in January by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine noted that 11 percent of all high school students, or nearly 1.7 million, had vaped within the last month. Preliminary unpublished federal data estimates that number is now at least three million. By now, students have their own vocabulary built around Juul juuling has become a verb.Schools around the country were caught unaware. The aerosol mist from Juul is nearly odorless and dissipates within seconds. Students began juuling as teachers backs were turned. They filled school bathrooms for juuling breaks. And for all that school officials knew, students were just diligently recharging flash drives on laptops.Within 18 months of Juuls release, school officials began confiscating them and providing information sessions to parents. They had two paramount concerns: the increasing use of Juul and other vapes for marijuana and the amount of nicotine in Juuls pods. Nicotine, the naturally occurring chemical in tobacco, is the addictive element that binds smokers to cigarettes and vapers to Juul and other e-cigarettes. Teenagers, whose brains are still developing, need less exposure to nicotine than adults in order to become addicted.But perhaps most worrisome was a conclusion reached by the National Academies: that teenagers who use the devices may be at higher risk for cigarette smoking.In its announcement on Tuesday, Juul emphasized its products use among adults as an alternative to cigarette smoking and said it would continue to post testimonials on YouTube of adults who had switched to Juul from traditional cigarettes.Later this week, the F.D.A. is expected to propose a ban on sales of flavored e-cigarettes, with a few exceptions; a pursuit of a ban on menthol cigarettes, which could take years to go into effect; and stricter controls of online sales to prohibit minors from accessing the products. | Health |
Omarosa Back to Reality (TV) ... Stars in 'Celebrity Big Brother' 1/28/2018 CBS Omarosa's got herself a new gig even before her speaking gig starts -- and it's back on reality TV ... as in "Celebrity Big Brother" on CBS. Omarosa was announced as one of many stars that'll be in the 'Big Brother' house next week in a quick promo that played right before the 2018 Grammy Awards began Sunday. She'll be in there with the likes of Shannon Elizabeth, Brandi Glanville, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Chuck Liddell, Metta World Peace, and lots more. The first episode's set to air next Wednesday ... so we'll find out who else is there soon enough. As we reported ... Omarosa recently signed on as a speaker with the American Program Bureau after leaving her job at the White House. She'll be asking for up to $50k for gig, depending on the venue. Looks like she's getting her feet wet first, though, with some familiar territory in front of the cameras. | Entertainment |
Credit...Laszlo Balogh/ReutersFeb. 4, 2014When, as a teenager, Maxim Trankov moved in 1999 from the Ural Mountains to St. Petersburg, he had great ambition as a Russian pairs skater but little money for food or an apartment.So he lived in a rink sponsored by the army, first in a room set aside for coaches, then with the soldiers in their quarters. One free meal a day was provided. Sometimes, his partner gave him homemade pickles. Or the cafeteria staff sneaked him leftovers.It was a chaotic time for the continued development of Russian figure skating. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the flow of government funding slowed to a trickle. Rinks were converted to markets, shopping malls or automobile dealerships.A number of coaches moved to the United States and elsewhere. Many families, including Trankovs, struggled financially, unable to afford skating costs that can run into tens of thousands of dollars per year.This drain of talent and resources eventually created a void that became soberly evident at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. For the first time since 1960, not a single gold medal was won by a skater from Russia or any former Soviet republic.Most acutely disappointing was a fourth-place finish by Russia in the pairs competition. Soviet or Russian pairs had won every previous Olympic gold medal since 1964.It was a hard time, but something must be broken before you make it new, Trankov, 30, said in an interview in October at Skate America in Detroit. It was time for changes. It is very important. The old system, the Soviet system, is finished. Its a new generation for coaches, for athletes, for some people in the government of sport.For the first time, the Winter Olympics are in Russia, with more than $50 billion invested in the Sochi Games. Figure skating, as usual, will be the spotlight sport. Trankov and his partner, Tatiana Volosozhar, the 2013 world pairs champions, represent Russias best chance for a skating gold medal and confirmation that one of the sports most vital countries has begun to regain its accustomed prominence.The Olympic Games in Sochi is not only big pressure for Russian athletes, its a big dream and a big happiness, Trankov said.Led by Trankov and Volosozhar, Russia swept all three pairs medals in mid-January at the European championships. Julia Lipnitskaia and Adelina Sotnikova, Russian teenagers, finished first and second in the womens competition and are expected to challenge for a medal in Sochi, but not gold. Russian men also finished second and third at the European competition.As the standard of living has risen in Russia, participation levels in skating have also risen, officials and coaches said. Where there were once 11 rinks in Moscow, there are now more than 40, said Valery Artyukhov, head coach of the Russian national team.The number of rinks in St. Petersburg has quadrupled from two to eight and the number of competitions, ice shows and television shows related to skating has increased, said Tamara Moskvina, who has coached four pairs to Olympic gold medals.After the collective failure at the Vancouver Olympics, Yevgeny Plushenko, who won a gold medal in 2006 and silver in 2010, complained that Valentin Piseev, then the president of the Russian figure skating association, had treated athletes like floor rags, according to news accounts.To pay for training for the Vancouver Games, Plushenko reportedly sold a car given to him for winning his gold medal in 2006 by Vladimir V. Putin, Russias past and current president.Months after the Vancouver Games, Aleksandr Gorshkov, a gold medalist in ice dancing at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, replaced Piseev as president of the Russian skating association (though Piseev still holds a powerful position). Gorshkovs career achievement became an example for other skaters to emulate.If the president is a champion, you want to be a champion, too, Trankov said. The Russian sports ministry has reopened the financial spigot, its leaders are more accessible to skating concerns and the spending is being targeted wisely, said Alexei Mishin, Plushenkos coach.In the time of the Soviet Union, there was a river of money in the sport, Mishin said. But sometimes, the spending of this money was not in the optimal way. Now it is much better.It was not without struggle, though, that Russias new generation came to the forefront after the tumultuous breakup of the Eastern bloc.When Trankov moved to St. Petersburg in 1999 from his hometown, Perm, Russia, he was the expectant son of a father who had been a show-jumping champion and a mother who had been a 400-meter hurdler. But his initiation into elite sport was far from comfortable.For three years, Trankov lived at the army-sponsored SKA rink, hiding the spartan conditions from his parents, fearful that they would demand that he return home, according to Skating to Sochi, a book by Beverley Smith.Trankov told the website GoldenSkate.com in 2008: I moved in with the soldiers who worked at the ice rink. I stayed with them in their rooms underneath the tribune and lived like a soldier. There was a cafeteria at the rink, and I got one free meal there per day. I had to take care of the other meals myself. Sometimes, the coaches or my partner brought me some food.Once Trankov became a skater in Russias upper tier, he began training in 2006 with Moskvina, considered the worlds most esteemed pairs coach. But, by his own admission, Trankov was not the most diligent of students. And he clashed with Moskvina over his artistic vision. After less than six months, the skater and coach parted ways. He was a very ambitious skater who thought he knew everything, Moskvina said. It was smarter to give him the freedom to skate with another coach rather than to fight with him to prove that I know better.After two more coaching changes, Trankov and his partner, Maria Mukhortova, won the Russian national pairs championship in 2007.They finished a distant seventh at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, though, and Trankov found a new partner in Volosozhar, who had competed previously for Ukraine.The pair won a silver medal at the 2011 and 2012 world championships and gold in 2013. In many ways, they represent a continuation of the classical, balletic Russian style with clean lines, effortless speed and vaulting lifts and throws. Even their crashes have been spectacular. Everything they do is big, said Kirsten Moore-Towers, an Olympic pairs skater from Canada.To move completely away from the classical style would be to play soccer without the ball, Volosozhar said. But Trankov called traditional Russian skating too academic and has sought to bring more creativity to footwork and spins. For the 2010-11 season, Trankov and Volosozhar skated to rock music.Before, in Russia, it was impossible to skate to rock, Trankov said.His coach, Nina Mozer, will be making her first trip to the Olympics and has generally worked with skaters from the junior level. While praising more established coaches such as Mishin and Moskvina, Trankov said, We need new blood, new style.Perhaps nothing has symbolized Trankovs desire to break from convention more than the yellow pants he has worn this season, instead of white or a more somber blue or black, for his free-skate performance to music from Jesus Christ Superstar.I dont just want to be classic Jesus on the cross, Trankov said to reporters at Skate America. I cannot go naked with only a white loincloth.His choice of costume has brought a flood of online comments. The pants even have their own Twitter account. Some observers have been critical, but even some traditionalists have come around to Trankovs way of thinking.That is the way to differ from the others, said Moskvina, his former coach. People started to talk. When you are the same as everyone else, there is nothing to speak about. | Sports |
Credit...Christophe Ena/Associated PressFeb. 8, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Rok Perko of Slovenia, the first racer in the final mens downhill training run on Saturday, crashed. The second racer, the American Marco Sullivan, lost control of his skis, and in the words of his teammate Bode Miller, almost killed himself.Four of the next 10 racers did not finish, and another four pulled up to survive safely. With an impenetrable sheen of ice coating the treacherous steeps and jumps of the downhill course at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort, it was an especially perilous day to be an Olympic ski racer.And then out of the start house came Miller, who admitted later that given the conditions, his primary goal for the day was self-preservation. But as Miller roared through the beginning of the course, reaching speeds of 90 miles per hour, he decided he was enjoying himself too much to scale back his ambition.Miller charged from turn to turn, tucked through the flats and soared over the jumps. Where others fell or turned their skis sideways to scrub speed in self-defense, Miller threw his hands forward to quicken the pace.When he crossed the finish line, he was 0.66 of a second faster than the field. Aksel Lund Svindal, who came to Russia as the race favorite, was second and humbly conceded that Miller was the one to beat in the downhill competition early Sunday.Is Bode the favorite? Svindal said. I think so. Hes been the best skier on the mountain. Me and maybe three other guys can beat him tomorrow. But well see.If he were to claim the gold medal in the downhill, the 36-year-old Miller would be the oldest man to win an Olympic Alpine event. Kjetil Andre Aamodt was 34 when he won the super-G at the 2006 Turin Olympics.On Saturday, Miller was not discussing his chances on Sunday, but the persistent smile on his face spoke volumes about his confidence.Id be mad at myself if I wasted an opportunity to have fun on this hill, he said.And he had a theory about the demanding 2.2-mile course.Cheerleaders waited to enter the stands for a womens hockey game between the United States and Finland. The United States won, 3-1.Credit...James Hill for The New York TimesSlide 1 of 15 Cheerleaders waited to enter the stands for a womens hockey game between the United States and Finland. The United States won, 3-1.Credit...James Hill for The New York TimesI dont think youre safer going slower, he said. Youre more likely to get hurt. Its so fast and the snow is so hard, you have to be aggressive with it.Miller added a chilling comment: If youre not paying attention, this course will kill you.Miller was not kidding when he talked about how Sullivan barely saved himself from disaster.If that crash doesnt go just the way it went, he goes flying through the B-nets going 75 miles an hour straight into the trees, he said. It looks innocuous there, but that is one of the worst spill zones on the course. This course has teeth everywhere.There are two kinds of netting used at the edges of racecourses to guard racers from obstacles alongside the trail. B-netting is generally used in sections that do not appear obviously dangerous. It is not usually reinforced, and although it would provide some protection, it might not impede a racer at top speed. A second kind of barrier is called A-netting, used near the riskiest sections of the course. It is fortified to block racers from colliding with ski towers, rocks or other dangerous mountain elements.As Sullivan said: I was heading straight toward the B-nets, and you can blow through those pretty quickly. Luckily, I made the save.With his skis splitting and his body tilting backward, Sullivan skillfully and athletically righted himself and brought his skis together in time to avoid the nets and remain on course, though he slowed considerably and coasted the rest of the way to the finish.The point is that youve got to watch yourself at all times, he said with a snicker.Svindal, the defending world champion in the downhill, who came in second in the 2010 Olympic downhill, said the course was relentlessly challenging.But were supposed to be the best skiers in the world, so were supposed to be able to handle it, Svindal said. It will identify the best. Its difficult not just for its mix of speeds and jumps but because of how rattly it is into the jumps. You cant get comfortable.Its a constant pull and tug be aggressive, be smart, be aggressive, be smart. Youre like that for two minutes.Svindal smiled.It should be a great race to watch tomorrow, he said. | Sports |
Credit...John Horton ConwayThe Princeton mathemagician, who died in April, left an engaging legacy of numerical gamesmanship.Credit...John Horton ConwayPublished May 16, 2020Updated May 18, 2020When John Horton Conway, the Princeton mathemagician who died in April at age 82, first found fame in the late 1960s and early 70s, he joined the academic equivalent of the jet set. Then at the University of Cambridge, he would fly to Montreal or New York, deliver a lecture on his Conway group an entity in the realm of mathematical symmetry that inhabits 24 dimensions and return home all within the space of a day.Occasionally, he made a detour to visit Martin Gardner, the mathematical games columnist for Scientific American, at his house in Hastings-on-Hudson, just north of New York. Mr. Gardner taught him magic tricks: Try tying a knot while holding onto both ends of the string, without ever letting go. Dr. Conway, in turn, regaled Mr. Gardner with puzzles and games Sprouts, for instance, a pencil-and-paper game he had invented with Michael Paterson, a grad student, and which quickly charmed the entire math department, administrative staff included.ImageCredit...viaJames Gardner, Martin Gardner Papers, Special Collections, Stanford University LibrariesLater, Mr. Gardner marveled at the fireworks that Dr. Conway displayed in such bewildering profusion, he said in a letter. I still have my head spinning.Writing Dr. Conways biography, I spent many mind-bending hours trying to keep up. His office at Princeton University was a perpetual mess, so he had relocated to a hallway adjacent to the math department common room. The corridor was lined with window alcoves, each furnished with two armchairs and a chalkboard. In Dr. Conways alcove, loose-leaf works in progress were filed beneath a seat cushion.From there, he delivered a master class, to a parade of visitors, on how to spend all of ones time as he would boast doing nothing, being lazy and playing games. His syllabus might include a riff on the science of rainbows (primary, secondary, tertiary), or chemical (memorizing pi using a mnemonic based on the periodic table of elements), or his Doomsday rule for speedily calculating the day of the week for any given date.Sometimes we ventured out. Once, we took the train to Poughkeepsie to meet George Odom, an accomplished amateur geometer and an inpatient at the Hudson River Psychiatric Center. Mr. Odom had made a few discoveries pertaining to the golden ratio a ratio describing aesthetically pleasing proportions of certain shapes, usually rectangular. Mr. Odoms discoveries intrigued Dr. Conway because they related the golden ratio specifically to the cube. Ive always felt the primacy of the cube, Mr. Odom told him.Dr. Conway was partial to the triangle, for which he discovered the Conway circle theorem: If you extend the sides of any triangle beyond each vertex, at a distance equal to the length of the opposite side, the resulting six points lie on a circle. (A proof without words was recently featured in The Big Lock-Down Math-Off.)ImageCredit...Dith Pran/The New York TimesWe went to Kashiwa, near Tokyo, to the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe. Dr. Conway was the keynote speaker at a workshop about the Monster group, a collection of symmetries of an object that lives most accessibly in 196,883 dimensions thats the smallest nontrivial place that the Monster lives, Dr. Conway clarified. There is another representation in 21,296,876 dimensions, and a larger one still in 27-digit-number-dimensional space: 258,823,477,531,055,064,045,234,375.And Dr. Conway correctly predicted that this behemoth possesses symmetries numbering roughly 808 sexdecillion, or exactly:808,017,424,794,512,875,886,459,904,961,710,757,005,754,368,000,000,000These things are so beautiful, he told me. I mean, its a kind of beauty that exists in the abstract, but we poor mortals will never see it. We can just get vague glimmerings. (For example, see the 248-dimensional group E8.)Dr. Conway believed that the Monster couldnt exist without a reason. But I dont have any idea what that reason is, he told the audience in Kashiwa. Before I die, I really want to understand why the Monster exists. But Im almost certain I wont.From Phutball to the Game of LifeImageCredit...John Horton ConwayImageCredit...Peter EvennettIn September 2009, with his son Gareth, then 8, we traveled to Liverpool, England, Dr. Conways hometown, and Cambridge, his alma mater, to clear up some counterfactuals. (He was a notoriously unreliable narrator of his own life.)During our visit with his daughters from his first marriage Annie, Ellie, Rosie and Susie we played his One Bit Word Game: Try conversing using words containing only one syllable or bit. (When an opponent slips up, shout Bang!) Dr. Conway once challenged himself to deliver a number theory class in one-bit words, no small feat given the word number itself: Those things you count with you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or more.Cambridge was peak Conway, especially with regard to games. With his collaborators, Elwyn Berlekamp and Richard Guy (who died in March at 103), he purportedly invented or reinvented 10 games a day, assisted by a regular rotation of students: Simon Norton devised the game Tribulations; Mike Guy countered with Fibulations. (Both are Nim-like games based on triangle numbers and Fibonacci numbers.) The group amassed folders of games without names and names without games. In 1981, after 15 years, they published the multivolume, best-selling book Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays.Chapter 22 contained Phutball, short for Philosophers Football, a two-player board game with stones, driven by negative feedback. Every move is bad, Dr. Conway warned. Chapter 25 covered Dr. Conways Game of Life, prefaced by Oscar Wildes advice that Life is too important to be taken seriously.First published in Mr. Gardners October 1970 column, the Game of Life is a no-player, never-ending game, as Dr. Conway liked to say, and it is considered one of the earliest, most remarkable and most popular examples of a cellular automaton according to only a few simple rules, cells on the screen evolve from iteration to iteration to produce an astoundingly complex bestiary of Life-forms.LIFE IS UNIVERSAL, Dr. Conway wrote to Mr. Gardner in December 1970, in all caps. That is, the Game of Life could be programmed to do any calculation; it was a metaphor for, and contained, all of mathematics. The Game of Life has contributed to the public perception of mathematics in a way that few mathematical discoveries in modern history have, said Manjul Bhargava, a mathematician and a colleague of Dr. Conways at Princeton.All of this gaming could be classified as serious research, of course; as both player and spectator, Dr. Conway was analyzing games, observing strategy and classifying the moves available to each player. He noticed that games behaved like numbers, and numbers like games. This led to his theory of surreal numbers a huge new number system containing not only all the real numbers, but also a boggling collection of infinites and infinitesimals, like minus 1 divided by the cube root of infinity.ImageCredit...Pelham WilsonTo explain his theory, Dr. Conway wrote a book, On Numbers and Games, and two papers, All Games Bright and Beautiful and All Numbers Great and Small. He told me, You know the hymn: All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. But in the case of this theory, its all games bright and beautiful that come first. The games are logically prior to the numbers.He viewed this discovery as so fundamental that he named it simply No, in bold, meaning all numbers, capital N. Donald Knuth, the Stanford computer scientist and author of The Art of Computer Programming, came up with the more enduring name while writing the novelette Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned On to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness.On hearing of his friends death, Dr. Knuth said that Dr. Conway was his second favorite mathematician, outshone only by the 18th-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. John gave pleasure to connoisseurs who appreciate deep thinking. Thats real beauty, for me, and touches off deep emotions. He noted that Dr. Conway has been mentioned more than 25 times so far in The Art of Computer Programming, for different contributions: I expect the citings to continue long after his death (as happened to Elvis).How to beat children at their own gamesIn March of 2010, we set out for G4G9, the ninth biennial gathering honoring Mr. Gardner, in Atlanta. Over five days, 10-minute presentations followed one after another. Dr. Conway offered an Untitled Talk, in which he lectured (during a special 25-minute session) on The Lexicode Theorem Or Is It?Ill cast some doubt on this theorem, to say the very least, but all turns out well in the end, he told the audience, and proceeded to convert his work with sphere-packing into game theory (drawing from a paper written with Neil Sloane, Lexicographic Codes: Error-Correcting Codes from Game Theory). Conway is the rare sort of mathematician whose ability to connect his pet mathematical interests makes one wonder if he isnt, at some level, shaping mathematical reality and not just exploring it, James Propp, a mathematician at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said afterward. Sphere-packing and games are two separate realms that Dr. Conway had investigated on different paths, with no obvious intersection, said Dr. Propp. But somehow, through the force of his personality and the intensity of his passion, he bent the mathematical universe to his will.Our mathematical journey continued that August at Canada/USA Mathcamp, an international summer program for high-school students keen on math, which was being held that year at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. Dr. Conway was a perennial star attraction; I first met him at Mathcamp in 2003 he was doing his signature trick, spinning a wire hanger above his head with a penny balanced on the hook and every summer he bestowed and inflicted his usual bewildering repertoire.He displayed a special fanaticism for Dots and Boxes, a 19th-century pencil-and-paper game.ImageCredit...Erik DemaineImageCredit...John Horton ConwayHe gave a camp lecture on How To Beat Children At Their Own Games, and accepted a challenge to play a dozen or so campers in parallel; if they won a single game, he would declare the campers victorious. At one point, the campers were horrified to discover that he had borrowed a copy of his Winning Ways from the camp office to brush up on strategy. But, circling the table of opponents, he made math camp history, losing three times. Wait a minute, he said. Whats happened here? You seem to have won!For Jamin Liu, a former Mathcamper and counselor and now a bioengineering grad student at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Conways perpetual dragooning with games was more than just fun. They were well disguised as cool tricks that I could share without necessarily getting into underlying mathematical ideas, which were interesting to me but not to my friends, Ms. Liu said. She added that she never managed to beat Dr. Conway at Dots and Boxes: I always got too greedy in the early game!By contrast, Dr. Bhargava, a 2014 Fields Medalist, was victorious against Conway. Once, by accident, he said. Dr. Bhargava worked and played a great deal with Dr. Conway, who served as his first-year graduate studies adviser. His attitude affirmed my own thoughts about math as play, though he took this attitude far beyond what I ever expected from a Princeton math professor, and I loved it, he said.A final trickImageCredit...Siobhan RobertsOur last trip together was in January of 2019. We headed out from Dr. Conways Princeton care residence he lived there after suffering a number of strokes to a favorite restaurant, Tomo Sushi, with mathematicians Joseph Kohn and Simon Kochen and the New York magician Mark Mitton. (Dick Esterle, the inventor of geometric toys like the Icosa fidget ball, joined by text.)While waiting for lunch, Dr. Conway recalled a visit with Mr. Gardner. During dinner at a restaurant, the waitress had dealt plates onto the table with a clatter. Mr. Gardner responded with a sleight-of-hand gag: He dropped his cutlery straight through his plate. The waitress screamed, and then Mr. Gardner repeated the trick around the table.Sitting there at the sushi joint, Mr. Mitton grabbed a plate and knife and improvised an encore on the spot. Dr. Conway was appreciatively agog; 50 years earlier, he had asked Mr. Gardner to teach him that trick. Later, Mr. Gardner promised. But later proved elusive.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] | science |
Credit...Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesDec. 11, 2015WASHINGTON United States consumers showed some muscle in November at the start of the holiday shopping season, suggesting enough momentum in the economy for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next week for the first time in nearly a decade.The outlook for consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, received a lift from other data on Friday showing consumer sentiment nudged up in early December.It dismisses any concerns of a potential slump in household spending after some weakness in the last few months. Not that there is much doubt any more, but this supports the case for a rate hike by the Fed next week, said Steve Murphy, United States economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.Retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services increased 0.6 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in October, the Commerce Department said. These so-called core retail sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product.Overall retail sales, however, gained only 0.2 percent as automobile sales fell and cheaper gasoline weighed on receipts at service stations. Retail sales rose 0.1 percent in October.Consumer spending slowed in September and October, despite a tightening labor market, which is lifting household income.Better income prospects are helping to prop up consumer sentiment. In a separate report, the University of Michigans consumer sentiment index rose to 91.8 early this month from a reading of 91.3 in November.Consumers attitudes toward purchases of major household items were the strongest since 2005, though they were less enthusiastic about buying automobiles than in November.That speaks well of the current consumer mind-set and bodes well for stronger consumer spending in the coming quarters, said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Kalamazoo, Mich.The increase last month in discretionary spending suggested a fairly busy start to the holiday shopping season. It supports expectations that the Fed will raise its benchmark overnight interest rate from near zero when policy makers conclude a two-day meeting next Wednesday, despite weak inflation. The central bank has not raised rates since June 2006.Financial markets were little moved by the data as investors kept a wary eye on crude oil prices, which hit a seven-year low. Stocks were trading lower, while prices for government debt rose. The dollar was lower against a basket of currencies.In another report, the Commerce Department said retail inventories excluding autos increased 0.4 percent in October, suggesting inventories could be less of a drag on fourth-quarter growth than previously thought. That, however, implies inventories could weigh on output in early 2016.The strong gain in core retail sales last month and Octobers rise in retail inventories excluding autos prompted economists to raise their fourth-quarter growth estimates by as much as three-tenths of a percentage point to as high as a 2.1 percent annual rate.The economy grew at a 2.1 percent pace in the third quarter. However, a report on Thursday showed less spending on services and software than had been assumed, suggesting the third-quarter G.D.P. growth estimate could be lowered when the government publishes its second revision later this month.In a fourth report, the Labor Department said its producer price index advanced 0.3 percent last month after falling 0.4 percent in October. But the index declined 1.1 percent in the 12 months through November after sliding 1.6 percent in October.November marked the 10th consecutive 12-month decrease in the index. Dollar strength and continued declines in oil prices amid a glut and slowing global growth have eased price pressures, leaving inflation running persistently below the Feds 2 percent target.We maintain our conviction that dollar appreciation will weigh on the prices of core goods through the middle of next year, said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays in New York. | Business |
Politics|Democrats Cite McConnells Precedent to Delay Supreme Court Hearings. But Does It Apply? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/fact-check-supreme-court-senate-confirm.htmlFact Check of the DayDemocrats are demanding that the Senate majority leader delay confirmation proceedings during an election year, citing his refusal to consider an Obama nominee in 2016.June 27, 2018Millions of ppl are just months away from determining the senators who should vote to confirm or reject POTUSs nominee, & their voices deserve to be heard now, as @SenateMajLdr thought they deserved to be heard then. Anything but that would be the absolute height of hypocrisy. Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 27, 2018 the factsThis requires context. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a frequent swing vote on the Supreme Court, announced on Wednesday that he would retire this summer. Within hours, Democrats declared that the Senate should not consider his replacement until after the November midterm elections, citing what they called a precedent that Mr. McConnell set two years ago.In February 2016, the sudden death of the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia created a vacancy on the nations highest court. President Barack Obama nominated Merrick B. Garland, a centrist judge, to fill it. But Mr. McConnell insisted that the Senate should not consider the nomination during a presidential election and that the next president, not Mr. Obama, should pick Justice Scalias replacement. That spring, Mr. McConnell repeatedly cited a nonexistent Senate tradition of not considering Supreme Court nominees during a presidents last year in office.The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president, Mr. McConnell said in a statement released the night Justice Scalia died. All we are doing is following the longstanding tradition of not fulfilling a nomination in the middle of a presidential year, he said in a March 2016 interview with Fox News Sunday. Mr. McConnells claim then of keeping to tradition was incorrect, given that the Senate has rejected a Supreme Court nominee one other time in an outgoing presidents final months in modern history. And Democrats have a point in noting now that the crux of Mr. McConnells argument to give voters a say in the process could also apply to the midterm elections since senators must confirm Supreme Court nominations. Still, it is clear from statements, news conferences, interviews and in speeches on the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell consistently and specifically said that the presidential election process and not a lame-duck president should decide the next Supreme Court justice.He did not explicitly set a precedent for refusing to consider court nominees in all election years, as Democrats say now. Source: Senator Mitch McConnells website, C-Span, The New York Times, Fox News, CNN, NBC, NPR | Politics |
Credit...Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo ArkBasicsOut of the cage, they speak their own language, make tools, and wreak havoc on plants and researchers efforts alike.A Cuban Amazon parrot.Credit...Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo ArkMarch 21, 2016Juan F. Masello never intended to study wild parrots. Twenty years ago, as a graduate student visiting the northernmost province of Patagonia in Argentina, he planned to write his dissertation on colony formation among seabirds.But when he asked around for flocks of, say, cormorants or storm petrels, a park warden told him he was out of luck.He said, This is the only part of Patagonia with no seabird colonies, recalled Dr. Masello, a principal investigator in animal ecology and systematics at Justus Liebig University in Germany. Might the young scientist be interested in seeing a large colony of parrots instead?The sight that greeted Dr. Masello was amazing and incredible, he said. It was almost beyond words.On a 160-foot-high sandstone cliff that stretched some seven miles along the Atlantic coast, tens of thousands of pairs of burrowing parrots had used their powerful bills to dig holes their nests deep into the rock face.And when breeding season began not long afterward, the sky around the cliffs erupted into a raucous carnival of parrot: 150,000 crow-size, polychromed aeronauts with olive backsides, turquoise wings, white epaulets and bright red belly patches ringed in gold. Dr. Masello was hooked.[WATCH: Parrots, the Highlight Reel]Today, Dr. Masellos hands are covered with bite scars. He has had four operations to repair a broken knee, a broken nose the little accidents you get from working with parrots, he said. Still, he has no regrets.Their astonishing beauty and intelligence, Dr. Masello said, are inspirational.Dr. Masello is one of a small but unabashedly enthusiastic circle of researchers who study Psittaciformes, the avian order that includes parrots, parakeets, macaws and cockatoos. For all their visual splash and cartoon familiarity, parrots have long been given scientific short shrift in favor of more amenable subjects like, say, zebra finches or blue tits.But through a mix of rugged and sometimes risky field work, laboratory studies and a willingness to shrug off the frequent loss of expensive tracking equipment, researchers are gaining insights into the lives, minds and startling appetites of parrots.No, Polly doesnt want your Triscuits. Got any fig trees to savage?ImageCredit...Jeff Mauritzen/National Geographic CreativeFeathered PrimatesParrot partisans say the birds easily rival the great apes and dolphins in all-around braininess and resourcefulness, and may be the only animals apart from humans capable of dancing to the beat.We call them feathered primates, said Irene Pepperberg, who studies animal cognition at Harvard and is renowned for her research with Alex and other African grey parrots.Theyre very good colleagues, said Alice Auersperg of the University of Vienna, who studies the Goffins cockatoo of Indonesia.Many of the recent discoveries are described in a new book, Parrots of the Wild: A Natural History of the Worlds Most Captivating Birds, by Catherine A. Toft and Timothy F. Wright. Others have been reported in journals or demonstrated through online videos, which have gone viral or deserve to.Dr. Auersperg and her colleagues have found that Goffins cockatoos are among the most spontaneously inventive toolmakers ever described, and that the birds can learn how to fashion the latest food-fetching device after just a single viewing of a master cockatoo at work.Studying the yellow-naped Amazon of Costa Rica, Dr. Wright and his colleagues have discovered that different populations of the parrot communicate with one another in distinct dialects that remain stable over decades, like human languages. Just as with people, young parrots can easily master multiple dialects while their elders cant or wont bother to do likewise.A recent DNA analysis showed that parrots were closely related to falcons, a finding that dovetails with field studies of parrots often merciless dietary habits.While falcons are predators in the conventional sense, hunting and devouring other animals, parrots turn out to be no less bloodthirsty in their approach to feasting on plants. Forget about symbiosis or some happy tit-for-tat between flora and this particular fauna.Parrots pooh-pooh the fruit pulp and home in on the seeds, crushing the casings to extract the plant embryos and the cache of fats and proteins intended to help those embryos germinate. A parrot is a plant carnivore, Dr. Wright said. It destroys the seed. It goes right in through the fruit and eats the plant baby.Or the entire herbaceous brood. Researchers have found that when a flock of parrots alights on a fruiting tree, a veritable seed massacre can ensue.In one study of canary-winged parakeets foraging on the seeds of shaving-brush trees in the Cerrado tropical savanna of central Brazil, scientists determined that the birds destroyed 66 percent to 100 percent of each trees fruit in a matter of days. Not a single whole seed could be found on the ground.Flexible and ImperviousThe psittacines are a midsize club of about 360 species, ranging in size from the pygmy parrots of New Guinea, which are smaller than house sparrows, to the bulky, flightless kakapos of New Zealand, which can weigh up to nine pounds.Most parrots live in the tropics or subtropics, where a mix of habitat loss and the depredations of the international pet trade now threaten a third of all species with extinction, Dr. Masello said.At the same time, some parrot species are proving flexible to the point of invasiveness.ImageCredit...Frans Lanting/National Geographic CreativeMonk parakeets from South America are doing nicely in New York City, said Leo Joseph, a parrot expert and director of the Australian National Wildlife Collection in Canberra. Peach-faced lovebirds from Africa are well-established in Arizona.Residents of Los Angeles County may spot enclaves of more than a dozen different feral parrots, including lilac-crowned Amazons, rose-ringed parakeets, macaws and cockatiels. Why some parrots thrive in anthropocentric landscapes while others are on the cusp of oblivion has yet to be determined.Researchers propose that many of the parrots signature traits evolved to meet the challenge of seed predation and exploiting a resource that plants do everything in their power to defend.The parrots muscular jaw and huge bill specially hinged to allow top and bottom to move independently, up and down and from side to side can crack open even the toughest and woodiest shells. The curved points of the bill act rather like lobster picks, ideal for scooping out seed meat.Parrots can similarly clip apart leg bands, satellite holsters and other animal-tracking devices, which is one reason most researchers have avoided them.Another demand of granivory, or seed predation, is the power to withstand the many defensive chemicals that plants pack into their genetic hope chests. Researchers have lately gathered evidence that a drive to detoxify could explain why parrots often converge on clay flats and start nibbling at the ground.In laboratory experiments at the University of California, Davis, scientists fed orange-winged parrots small doses of quinidine, a potentially toxic alkaloid, and followed with what they called a chaser of Peruvian clay. The researchers found that the clay served a doubly salubrious purpose, first by directly binding to the poison and helping to flush it from the body, and then by stimulating the production of a mucus shield in the gut.Paradoxically, scientists said, the pursuit of toxic prey may be linked to the parrots exceptional longevity. The difficult diet probably selected for a tough constitution, with top-flight immune and DNA repair systems, and tough things tend to last.In addition, the ingested toxins may well have an antimicrobial, anti-parasitic effect, helping parrots to fend off disease.However they manage, parrots can live a half century or longer: the record-holder among Moluccan cockatoos, for example, is 92, and a very lucky kakapo might make it to 120.A Gift of GabYet seed huntings greatest evolutionary effect on parrothood may well have been psychosocial, transforming the birds into brainy schmoozers.Fruiting trees are a patchy and unpredictable resource, and parrots often fly many miles a day in quest of food. Under such circumstances, searching in groups turns out to be more efficient than solitary hunting, especially when group members can trade tips on promising leads.That can mean the development of a social system, as well as the neurological capacity to share information, Dr. Joseph said. The vocal capacity, too: parrots call to one another continually, squawkishly, over long distances and short.They are communicating to each other all the time, Dr. Masello said. Every day, after working in the colony and climbing up the cliffs, Im much more tired from the noise than from the climbing.ImageCredit...Ingo Arndt/Minden PicturesThe calls may be as much about asserting group identity as exchanging hunting tips. Seeking to understand why the yellow-naped Amazons in northern Costa Rica had a different call from those living 18 miles to the south, Dr. Wrights team tried moving several parrots from one site to the other.The youngest parrot quickly mastered the dialect of its new home and began flocking with the locals. The older transplants, however, failed to become adept bilingualists and never quite fit in. Instead, they associated with each other.They formed a little immigrant enclave, Dr. Wright said, adding, Vocal similarity is very important for maintaining social relationships, in parrots as in humans.Dr. Wright said that captive parrots renowned talent for promiscuous vocal mimicry of human speech, a multipart car alarm, a cats meow is probably a byproduct of an innate desire to parrot its own kind.Its extremely rare to find mimicry of other species in wild parrots, he said. He also suggested that the ability of some parrots in captivity to move to a musical beat may be an offshoot of vocal mimicry, a generalized motor pattern geared toward synchrony playing out in body or voice.The most celebrated dancing parrot is Snowball, a sulfur-crested cockatoo with a trademarked name whose YouTube dance performances to Queen, Michael Jackson and the Backstreet Boys have been viewed some 15 million times.Always Trying Something NewResearchers are still getting a bead on parrot intelligence, and they are repeatedly surprised by each new display of it.Dr. Pepperberg and her collaborators have shown that African grey parrots have exceptional number skills: Alex could deduce the proper order of numbers up to 8, add three small numbers together and even had a zerolike concept skills equivalent to those of a four-and-a-half-year-old child, Dr. Pepperberg said.Dr. Auersperg and her co-workers have found that Goffins cockatoos are more geared toward solving technical tasks. Alternately using their bills and feet, the birds can systematically make their way through a lock with five different complex mechanisms on it. Should they discover that one of the steps can be skipped en route to opening a chamber with a nut inside, they skip it the next time around.And in an act of ingenuity that Dr. Auersperg called sensational for an animal not known to use tools in the wild, a cockatoo named Figaro one day started carefully chipping at the edge of a larch wood frame until he had formed a long, slender pole, which he then wielded in his bill like a hockey stick to knock out pebbles and nuts hidden under boxes.It took him 20 minutes to make his first tool, Dr. Auersperg said. After that, he could do it in less than five minutes.Other cockatoos that watched Figaro build his tool and then retrieve his nut reward were soon chipping at scraps of wood and batting out nuts.Figaro didnt stop there. Soon he was using sticks to draw patterns in the sand, Dr. Auersperg said.Yes, a cockatoo can doodle, too. | science |
NotebookCredit...Todd Heisler/The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2014EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. The ball found Seattle Seahawks linebacker Malcolm Smith in a big way during the postseason.Two weeks ago, he caught a ball tipped by cornerback Richard Sherman to seal a victory over the San Francisco 49ers and send Seattle to the Super Bowl.On Sunday, with the Denver Broncos behind by 15 points in the second quarter, quarterback Peyton Manning was hit as he threw a pass to Knowshon Moreno. Smith picked it off and ran 69 yards for a touchdown.It was up there for a while, and I was kind of thinking, Again? No way, said Smith, who was voted the games most valuable player.He added, It didnt feel real until I got to the sideline and realized, wow, that was a big play.Smith was not done. In the third quarter, Manning threw a pass to Demaryius Thomas, who ran for 23 yards to the Seattle 21-yard line. But cornerback Byron Maxwell poked the ball free, and Smith, a third-year player out of Southern California, picked it up. The Seahawks then marched 58 yards for another backbreaking score.It was the eighth time a defensive player was voted most valuable player of the Super Bowl. (In Super Bowl XII, two Cowboys defenders shared the award).The Seahawks defensive coordinator, Dan Quinn, complimented Smiths versatility and speed, noting that he had started the year at outside linebacker and had then moved to inside linebacker.That, it appeared, put him in the right place at the right time not once or twice, but three times.I always imagined myself making great plays, Smith said. You never think about being the M.V.P.Smith was also involved in perhaps the most bizarre security breach at the game.Early in his news conference, a man who appeared to be in his 30s leapt onto the platform and grabbed the microphone from behind the lectern.Investigate 9/11, he said. Nine-eleven was perpetrated by people in our own government.Smith looked to the side for help, and Harvey Greene, the spokesman for the Miami Dolphins, who was running the news conference, jumped forward. But the man, dressed in a red and black flannel shirt, had already run off.The incident lasted about four seconds.Smith remained calm. Is everyone all right? he asked to the handful of reporters nearby. Lets check his press pass, he added with a smile.As of 11:45 p.m., the N.F.L. was still looking into the matter.TAILGATING BETWEEN THE LINES The tailgate must go on, even at the Super Bowl. So Karin Kerr flew from Seattle to Philadelphia with a friend, Phillip Leonard. They rented a car, put a cooler in the trunk and piled soda and two kinds of beer on a bed of ice. Then they drove to MetLife Stadium, pulled into Lot P and wondered where everyone was.I expected this lot to be full, Kerr said Sunday afternoon.Tailgaters talk about the spectacle of what they do before a game before a regular game, anyway. They talk about the rows of cars. They talk about the sophisticated grills. They talk about the sense of community. There was not much of that in Lot P because there was not much of a crowd as fans had been encouraged to use mass transit to get to the game. By midafternoon, only a dozen hard-core tailgaters had pulled in and set up as best they could. Some were cramped: Under the rules for the Super Bowl, each vehicle had to stay within one parking space, no spilling over into a second spot with tents or tables; grills were prohibited. Farrah Rubani and her fianc, Richard Tricario of Staten Island, were in the parking space diagonally in front of Kerr and Leonards, and Rubani said it was expensive ground. She said they had paid $170 for the parking space. (She said they had spent $8,000 for two game tickets face value $1,500 apiece.) On Sunday, Rubani and Tricario, who is a Dallas Cowboys fan, had set up two folding chairs behind their car, careful not to go out of bounds. They were not sitting in the chairs. They turned one chair into a makeshift serving table for shrimp and olives. Tricario said there were sandwiches in a cooler. He shrugged.You cant grill, he said. Were following the rules.JAMES BARRONOPERATIC ANTHEM Rene Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl, but the word opera went unmentioned in her introduction.The announcer called Fleming a Grammy winner and superstar soprano. Her rendition was eminently operatic: confident, sensible and performed with ease, and without the strain sometimes exciting, sometimes not that pop-diva belting entails. Though the anthem ended up lasting just a few seconds more than two minutes, she began at a daringly slow pace, with creamy, light strings underneath. The choral backup was drawn from the armed forces.When it was announced that the anthem would be delivered by an opera star, one of the main questions was just how high her high notes would be. Video evidence, a pitch pipe and an online keyboard suggest that Fleming reached A-natural two of them. ZACHARY WOOLFE | Sports |
She documented her last months with ovarian cancer on Twitter while raising funds to support students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the sciences.Credit...Moni OrifeOct. 20, 2021Nadia Chaudhri, a neuroscientist with terminal ovarian cancer who used her final months to raise money for graduate students of diverse backgrounds and to educate the public about her disease through a widely followed social media chronicle, died on Oct. 5 at a hospital in Montreal. She was 43.Her husband, Moni Orife, confirmed her death.Dr. Chaudhri, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, was in palliative care at Royal Victoria Hospital when she wrote on Twitter in August that she would be embarking on a walk-a-thon: pacing her hospital floor each day in a fund-raising appeal for minority, female, L.G.B.T.Q. and other students from underrepresented backgrounds who are pursuing scientific research at the university. Her own research centered on the neural basis of drug and alcohol addiction.Her campaign raised funds for the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award, which was established in her honor and announced by Concordia in May. She had previously raised money with a GoFundMe campaign to sponsor students from diverse backgrounds to attend the annual conference of the nonprofit Research Society on Alcoholism.In the announcement of the award, Dr. Chaudhri recalled the discrimination she had experienced as a Pakistani woman in graduate school. When I gave talks or presentations, people often commented on my accent instead of my science, she said.Through her walk-a-thon and her large and active Twitter following, the fund surpassed $635,000 in mid-October. Paul Chesser, the universitys vice president for fund-raising, said small donors had led the way: nearly 9,000 from 60 countries, forming a rare grass roots effort in institutional fund-raising.Nadias legacy is forever entrenched in many, many ways here on campus, Mr. Chesser said.Her Twitter feed drew more than 150,000 followers and was the backbone of her money-raising efforts. Many of her followers said they were inspired by her frankness about her illness and cited her bravery.Ive been so moved by your story, Nadia, and your kindness and spirit are just something I dont think Ive ever seen in such abundance before, one Twitter user wrote. I will carry you in my heart for as long as I live.Dr. Chaudhri, in turn, connected closely with her Twitter following. Addressing donors, she wrote, You are making my final days incredibly special & meaningful.In May she wrote of how she was preparing to tell her 6-year-old son about her terminal diagnosis. Today is the day I tell my son that Im dying from cancer, she said. Let me howl with grief now so that I can comfort him.Dr. Chaudhri produced creative work while in the hospital. She sent some donors copies of a short story she wrote about growing up in Karachi, Pakistan. She painted, posting vibrant artwork depicting flowers and nature scenes, some inspired by pictures her followers had sent her and some featuring her husband and son.She also used her Twitter platform to call for more research into ovarian cancer. The bottom line is that ovarian cancer research is underfunded, she wrote in September. We also need more awareness of symptoms because early detection improves prognosis dramatically.Dr. Chaudhri urged women to pay attention to their health. Do not dismiss your pain or malaise, she wrote in one thread recounting her diagnosis. Find the expert doctors.She was found to have ovarian cancer in May 2020. The cancer resisted treatment, she said, and she was admitted to palliative care in August this year.Nadia Chaudhri was born in Karachi on Jan. 25, 1978. Her mother, Susan (Metcalf) Chaudhri, was an occupational therapist. Her father, Abdul Shakoor Chaudhri, was an orthopedic surgeon.Nadia attended Karachi Grammar School in Pakistan. She went to the United States for college, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in the biological foundations of behavior from Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania in 1999. She was the first woman to win the colleges Williamson Medal for academic and extracurricular achievement.She attended the University of Pittsburgh and received a Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2005, writing her thesis on the science of cigarette addiction. She had a postdoctoral fellowship from 2005 to 2009 at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.She married Mr. Orife in 2009. Their son, Reza Orife, was born in 2015. In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by her mother and her sister, Amina.Dr. Chaudhri joined the Concordia University faculty in 2010 as an assistant professor in the department of psychology and was placed at the head of her own lab. She earned tenure as an associate professor in 2014. Less than a month before she died, Concordia promoted her to full professor. | Health |
Gregg Sulkin Dead at 25 ... If He Hurts Sly's Daughter!!! 1/25/2018 There are 2 ways to see Gregg Sulkin's latest date -- totally awesome or risky business -- 'cause he's getting cozy with Sylvester Stallone's 19-year-old daughter. Gregg and model Sistine Stallone had a lunch date Wednesday in Bev Hills. Gregg, of course, used to bang Bella Thorne ... before jumping to this girl and that girl. That's all fine and dandy, everyone's got a past, but dude ... this is Sly's little girl. We know he has some experience with boxing gloves, but he ain't Rocky. We're sure it won't be an issue though. Good luck, Gregg! | Entertainment |
Credit...Denis Balibouse/ReutersDec. 21, 2015LONDON A few months after taking over engine development at Volkswagen in 2007, Wolfgang Hatz faced a potential challenge that he considered insurmountable. It was the State of California.Regulators there were seeking to limit global warming gases released by automobiles, a step never directly taken before in the United States.We can do quite a bit and we will do a bit, but impossible we cannot do, Mr. Hatz said during a trip to San Francisco that year, where he took part in a technology demonstration hosted by Volkswagen. From my point of view, the C.A.R.B. is not realistic, he said of the California Air Resources Board, in remarks filmed by an auto website during the event.Of the proposed regulation, he said, I see it as nearly impossible for us.In September of this year, Volkswagen, then the worlds largest automaker, admitted to installing software designed to cheat on emissions tests, setting off one of the largest corporate scandals in the industrys history. The role of Mr. Hatz, one of the first employees suspended by the company when the crisis broke, is considered a pivotal one in myriad investigations into Volkswagens decision-making by prosecutors in the United States, Germany and elsewhere.Mr. Hatz, 56, was one of a coterie of executives from VWs Audi brand brought over to run the parent company in 2007 by Martin Winterkorn, who was Audis chief until he took over as VWs chief executive that year. One of Mr. Winterkorns first moves was to name Mr. Hatz, the head of engines and transmission development at Audi, to do the same job for the entire company.Mr. Hatzs elevation came during a bitter internal clash about what kind of emissions technology Volkswagen should use to ensure that the companys diesels would comply with tougher American emissions standards a clash that ultimately led the company to cheat on emissions tests. While Mr. Hatz was an advocate for diesels, he has also spoken out in the past about the struggle to meet regulations in the American market, according to a review of his statements and public records.Mr. Hatz declined to comment through a spokesman at Porsche, where he has served on the management board as chief of research and development.A blunt-spoken engineer with a love of motor sports, Mr. Hatz was born in Baden-Baden and has had an itinerant career, working at BMW, Fiat and General Motors, as well as at Porsche in a stint in the early 1990s. Asked in one interview what his favorite car was, he cited a 1990s Porsche 911 Carrera, because I developed it.As Volkswagens engine chief, he pushed to expand use of diesels. It is very clear to me that diesel is the only way we will meet future emissions requirements, he once told a trade publication. But he also struggled with a common challenge for automakers: how to make cars alluring and peppy while meeting ever-tougher regulations.ImageCredit...John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesHe mused about dropping muscular diesel engines into sporty cars like the Audi R8 coupe My dream is an R8 with a diesel engine, he said at the Los Angeles auto show in 2007. At the same time, he had to bring engines to market that could meet a complex suite of toughening regulations in the United States, particularly in California and other states like New York that opt to follow Californias more stringent air quality rules.We will do what is possible, but we should keep the pleasure and keep cars fun to drive, he said in remarks in October 2007 at the California technology demonstration. His remarks were filmed by DrivingtheNation.com, an auto website.Its not just about transport; our business, its also about pleasure, he said.While Mr. Hatz was referring to carbon dioxide regulations, and Volkswagens cheating scandal is centered on smog-forming pollutants, managing both kinds of emissions presents an interlocking puzzle for automakers.At times, Mr. Hatz could sound defeatist. Perhaps we have just small Korean and Japanese cars in this country, he said. We have to be realistic.And he was dismissive of the prospects for the big Detroit automakers. I cannot see a way with their program that they can fulfill these regulations, he said. Theres no way.At the time, California regulators, along with regulators in Washington, already had rules in place for emissions of nitrogen oxides and other smog-forming pollutants that were the toughest in the world, and California was also proposing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars.While diesels have better fuel economy and, by extension, lower emissions of global warming gases, they have higher emissions of nitrogen oxides and other smog-forming pollutants that require special treatment systems. The company was plunged into an internal struggle about how to proceed.Wolfgang Bernhard, a former Daimler executive who ran the Volkswagen brand, had championed a technology-sharing agreement with Mercedes-Benz and BMW to jointly develop a system using urea, which neutralizes nitrogen oxides. Publicly, Mr. Hatz supported the technology, which Mercedes markets as Bluetec.Bluetec technology allows us to demonstrate Audis commitment to always being at the very forefront of diesel technology, he said in remarks at the Detroit auto show at the beginning of 2007. But internal friction within the company was already building. Mr. Bernhard unexpectedly did not attend that auto show, and soon resigned.Behind the scenes, Mr. Hatz was part of a faction at the company that supported using a less expensive system that did not require urea, according to two Volkswagen managers who were in a position to witness the clashes. The managers requested anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their relationships with Volkswagen. Mr. Hatzs viewpoint won out and the technology-sharing arrangement was soon scrapped.Though he was the executive ultimately responsible for engine development, it remains unclear if Mr. Hatz or executives above him were aware of or directed the cheating that took place. The central role of Mr. Hatz in the scandal raises questions about what Volkswagens former chief executive, Mr. Winterkorn, and its current chief, Matthias Mller, themselves knew or should have known. But both are detail-oriented engineers who worked closely with Mr. Hatz for years, first at Audi and then at its parent company, Volkswagen. Mr. Winterkorn was deeply involved in engine development, leading a steering committee aimed at charting how the company would meet future limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Mr. Hatz was a member of the committee.Mr. Mller was another top lieutenant of Mr. Winterkorns who was brought in from Audi; he became product planning chief of Volkswagen. After Mr. Mller was named to lead the Porsche division in 2010, he brought over Mr. Hatz to lead research and development.Both Mr. Winterkorn and Mr. Mller have denied knowing about the cheating that took place.Volkswagen said last week in explaining the emissions cheating that the less expensive diesel emissions technology it chose could not meet United States clean air requirements, but rather than scale back the companys ambitions in the United States, some executives decided to cheat. Volkswagen did not name the executives, saying the evidence against them was not yet firm enough.There was a tolerance for breaking the rules, Hans-Dieter Ptsch, Volkswagens chairman, said at a news conference. It proves not to have been a one-time error, he said, but rather a chain of errors that were allowed to happen. | Business |
The Great ReadA population of strange canids in Texas could hold the key to reviving the highly endangered red wolf.Credit...Jan. 3, 2022From a distance, the canids of Galveston Island, Texas, look almost like coyotes, prowling around the beach at night, eyes gleaming in the dark.But look closer and oddities appear. The animals bodies seem slightly out of proportion, with overly long legs, unusually broad heads and sharply pointed snouts. And then there is their fur, distinctly reddish in hue, with white patches on their muzzles.The Galveston Island canids are not conventional coyotes at least, not entirely. They carry a ghostly genetic legacy: DNA from red wolves, which were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.For years, these genes have been hiding in plain sight, tucked away in the seemingly unremarkable animals that scavenged for food behind housing developments and roamed the grounds of the local airport.Their discovery, which came after a determined local resident persuaded scientists to take a closer look at the canids, could help revive a captive breeding program for red wolves and restore the rich genetic variation that once existed in the wild population.It doesnt seem to be lost any longer, said Bridgett vonHoldt, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, referring to the genetic diversity that once characterized red wolves. We might have a chance to bring it back.ImageThey just didnt look rightRon Wooten, a Galveston resident, never paid close attention to the local coyotes until they ran off with his dog one night in 2008. A pack took him and carried him off, recalled Mr. Wooten, an outreach specialist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.He found the pack, and what remained of his dog, in a nearby field. He was horrified, and he blamed himself for his dogs death. But as his flashlight swept over the coyotes red muzzles, he found himself fascinated.Determined to learn more, he posted a message on Facebook asking his neighbors to alert him if they spotted the animals. Eventually, a friend came through: There was a pack near her apartment building.Mr. Wooten raced over with his camera, snapping photographs as he watched a group of pups chasing each other. They were just beautiful, he said.But when he looked more carefully at the photos, he began to wonder whether the so-called coyotes were really coyotes at all. They just didnt look right, he said. I thought at first that they must have bred with Marmaduke or something because they had super-long legs, super-long noses.Mr. Wooten, a former fisheries biologist, started reading up on the local wildlife and stumbled across the history of red wolves. Once abundant in the southeastern United States, the wolves had dwindled in number during the 20th century a result of habitat loss, hunting and other threats.In the 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a last-ditch effort to save the species, traveling along the Gulf Coast and trapping all the red wolves it could find. Scientists selected some of the animals for a breeding program, in hopes of maintaining the red wolf in captivity.Mr. Wooten became convinced that the creatures that had taken his dog were actually red wolf-coyote hybrids, if not actual red wolves.Eager to prove his hypothesis, he began looking for dead canids by the side of the road. I was thinking that if these are red wolves then the only way theyre going to be able to tell is with genetics, he recalled.He soon found two dead animals, collected a small patch of skin from each and tucked them away in his freezer while he tried, for years, to pique scientists interest.Sometimes they wouldnt respond, he said. Sometimes theyd say, Yeah, thats a neat animal. Nothing we can do about it. And, Theyre extinct. Its not a red wolf.Genetic secretsEventually, in 2016, Mr. Wootens photos made their way to Dr. vonHoldt, an expert on canid genetics.The animals in Mr. Wootens photos immediately struck her. They just had a special look, she said. And I bit. The whole thing hook, line and sinker.She asked him to send his specimens, but there was a glitch: By then, he had lost one. So he packed up the skin tissue he could find and threw in the scalpel he had used to prepare the other sample, hoping that the scientists could extract DNA from it.It was just a really kind of lovely chaos, Dr. vonHoldt said. (The scientists did manage to pull DNA from the scalpel, but Mr. Wooten later found the second sample and mailed that, too.)Dr. vonHoldt and her colleagues extracted DNA from the skin samples and compared it to DNA from coyotes, red wolves, gray wolves and eastern wolves. Although the two Galveston Island canids were mostly coyote, they had significant red wolf ancestry; roughly 30 percent of their genetic material was from the wolves, they found.It was a real validation, I think, to the people on the ground the naturalists and the photographers on the ground saying, We have something special here, said Kristin Brzeski, a conservation geneticist who was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. vonHoldts lab at the time. And they do.Mr. Wooten was thrilled. It blew me away, he said.Even more remarkable, some of the genetic variants, or alleles, the Galveston animals carried were not present in any of the other North American canids the researchers analyzed, including the contemporary red wolves. The scientists theorize that these alleles were passed down from the wild red wolves that used to roam the region.They harbor ancestral genetic variation, this ghost variation, which we thought was extinct from the landscape, Dr. vonHoldt said. So theres a sense of reviving what we thought was gone.The researchers suspect that some red wolves evaded the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service dragnet back in the 1970s. There was surely a little slippery one that got away, or a couple, Dr. vonHoldt said.At some point, the red wolves or their descendants bred with local coyotes and not just in Texas. In 2018, the same year Dr. vonHoldts team published its findings, another group documented high levels of red wolf ancestry in wild canids in Louisiana.The findings could help scientists understand the genetic variation that once existed in wild red wolves and even resurrect it. We can start actually understanding what was the historical red wolf and think about reconstructing that animal, said Dr. Brzeski, who is now at Michigan Technological University.In the late 1980s, some of the red wolves from the captive breeding program were released in North Carolina. But that experimental population has plummeted in recent years; officials estimate that fewer than 20 of the animals now patrol the Carolina coast. And all the red wolves alive today are descended from about a dozen animals, an extremely low level of genetic diversity that could further imperil the species.Hybrid helpThe hybrids raise new conservation possibilities. For instance, scientists might be able to restore genetic diversity by carefully breeding red wolves to hybrids with high levels of red wolf ancestry. Or they could use artificial reproductive technologies or gene-editing techniques to insert the ghost alleles back into red wolves, Dr. vonHoldt said.The findings also come as some scientists have begun rethinking the value of interspecies hybrids. Oftentimes, hybridization is viewed as a real threat to the integrity of a species, which it can be, Dr. Brzeski said.One reason that the red wolf populations declined in the wild is because the animals frequently interbred with coyotes. But, she added, here we have these hybrids that are now potentially going to be the lifeline for the highly endangered red wolves.The discovery of hybrids in both Texas and Louisiana also suggests that scientists and officials may want to refocus their red wolf conservation efforts on those areas, said Lisette Waits, a conservation geneticist at the University of Idaho and co-author of the 2018 paper on the Louisiana hybrids.In addition to studying the hybrids, it might make sense to reintroduce captive-bred red wolves to those regions, where animals with red wolf genes still roam the landscape. It could completely change the direction of the red wolf recovery program, Dr. Waits said.Dr. Brzeski, Dr. vonHoldt and their collaborators are now studying the hybrids in both Texas and Louisiana as part of the new Gulf Coast Canine Project.They are using GPS collars and wildlife cameras to learn more about the canids movements and behaviors, collecting fecal samples to analyze their diets, using genetic analysis to trace pack relatedness and collecting tissue samples from animals with the most red wolf ancestry. One goal, Dr. vonHoldt said, is to create a biobank set of specimens that could be used to help increase the genetic health of the captive red wolf population.They are also hoping to learn more about how these red wolf alleles have persisted, especially in animals that live close to humans in a popular tourist destination. The island setting, which keeps the canids relatively reproductively isolated, is probably part of the explanation, but so is the lack of persecution, Dr. Brzeski said, noting that the animals were not commonly hunted.Indeed, Mr. Wooten is not the only local resident who has taken an interest in the animals. The research team works closely with Josh Henderson, the animal services supervisor at the Galveston Police Department, and there is considerable community support for the canids.Steve Parker, a lawyer who grew up in the area, remembers hearing childhood stories about his relatives trapping red wolves. The Galveston canids have helped him connect with the older generations, many of whom have passed away. Id like to see something and maybe be able to touch something that was special to them, he said.Mr. Wooten, for his part, dreams of setting up an educational center devoted to teaching the public about the unique animals. The possibilities of what these animals hold down here is pretty valuable, he said. And thats the reason I pursued it, I think. I think God was thumping me on the head and saying, Hey, I got animals here. Take care of em. | science |
NFL's Marcedes Lewis XFL's Anthem Rule Is Gonna Cost 'Em ... Criminal Rule Sucks, Too 1/26/2018 TMZSports.com The XFL is making a big mistake when it comes to requiring its players to stand for "The Star Spangled Banner" -- so says Jaguars star Marcedes Lewis. We got Marcedes right after Vince McMahon announced he was resurrecting the league ... and the stud TE told us certain players (see: Colin Kaepernick) won't have anything to do with the XFL if that's their stance on free speech. JANUARY 2018 Alpha Entertainment "They may not play ball ... that might affect who you're able to get in that league," Lewis told TMZ Sports. Marcedes also had a good laugh at the rule barring anyone with a criminal record from competing ... arguing that NFL players get 2nd chances, and rap sheets are "open to interpretation" anyway. | Entertainment |
Credit...Austin Anthony/Daily News, via Associated PressJune 15, 2018A neighbor of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was sentenced Friday to 30 days in prison after pleading guilty to felony assault for tackling the lawmaker last year, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said. The attack was fueled by irritation over a pile of debris.The neighbor, Rene A. Boucher, 60, of Bowling Green, Ky., was also sentenced to one year of probation and a $10,000 fine, said Tim Horty, a spokesman for the United States attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, in a phone interview.In a statement, Mr. Paul said that he believed a conviction with prison time was appropriate, and he hoped it would deter Mr. Boucher from any future violence.No one deserves to be violently assaulted, Mr. Paul said. I commend the F.B.I. and Department of Justice for treating this violent, premeditated assault with the seriousness it deserves.He is very relieved to have this last phase of the court proceedings over with, said Matthew J. Baker, a lawyer for Mr. Boucher. Hes very much looking forward to getting this over with once and for all.Mr. Baker said the defense had no plans to appeal the sentence.The attack in November left Mr. Paul with several broken ribs and precipitated a case of pneumonia. It kept him out of Washington for nearly two weeks while lawmakers debated the Republican tax bill, his spokesman said.Mr. Boucher, a retired anesthesiologist, pleaded guilty to a felony count of assaulting a member of Congress resulting in a personal injury, a charge that carries a maximum term of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors had been seeking 21 months of jail time for Mr. Boucher.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAssaulting a member of Congress is an offense we take very seriously, Josh J. Minkler, the United States attorney who handled the case, said in a news release. Those who choose to violate the law will be aggressively prosecuted in federal court.On Nov. 3, the day of the altercation, Mr. Paul was mowing his lawn in Bowling Green while wearing headphones when Mr. Boucher ran over and tackled the lawmaker, according to a news release from federal prosecutors. The neighbor said he had had enough after watching Mr. Paul stack a pile of brush near the property line between their two yards, the release said.Mr. Baker said in an interview earlier this week that Mr. Pauls tendency to pile brush near his neighbors property had been a consistent irritant to his client. The day before the attack, Mr. Baker said, Mr. Boucher had decided to burn a pile of brush placed near his land suffering second-degree burns in the process. The Bowling Green Daily News first reported these details regarding the lead-up to the attack.This issue had been festering for several months, Mr. Baker said in an interview. Unfortunately it ended the way it did.Mr. Baker said his client, a registered Democrat, had no political motives for attacking Mr. Paul, a Republican. The defense had pushed for a sentence without jail time, citing a lack of prior criminal charges. Mr. Baker said that Mr. Boucher was deeply remorseful over the incident.Mr. Pauls aides have disputed the defenses characterization that the lawmaker and his neighbor had a longstanding conflict over their yards, calling the attack a premeditated assault.Any description of this attack that implies a yard dispute justifies such violence and misses the point, Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Mr. Paul, said in a statement earlier this week. He said Mr. Paul had no contact with his neighbor in the decade before the assault.Mr. Bouchers case was transferred to a United States attorneys office in the Southern District of Indiana after federal prosecutors originally assigned to prosecute the case in Kentucky were recused.A misdemeanor assault charge filed against Mr. Boucher in a state court in Kentucky was dismissed after he pleaded guilty to the federal charge, said Mr. Horty, the Indiana district spokesman. | Politics |
Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2014TAMPA, Fla. Piece by piece, player by player, the 2014 Yankees are assembling here. Two days ahead of the official reporting date, Carlos Beltran, Brian Roberts and Kelly Johnson were the latest players to arrive at spring training Monday, working out together at the teams minor league complex in anticipation of what some of them say could be a special season, perhaps even ending in ultimate glory.I feel personally that our club has a good chance, Beltran said. I know its going to be hard because the American League East division is a strong division. But we feel we have a good team.Beltran was one of several players the Yankees signed to help erase the failure of last season, when they did not make the playoffs. The idea was to add a starting pitcher and make the lineup deeper. Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson left via free agency, but Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, Masahiro Tanaka, Roberts and Johnson were brought in for what the Yankees believe will be a net improvement. The Yankees committed more than $460 million to those players, with a mandate to more than just return to the playoffs.Of course we have to win, Beltran said in the minor league parking lot after his workout. I dont know how far we will go, but at least we have to do something positive better than what they did last year. They went out and they spent a lot of money and brought in players to improve the ball club. For me as a player, you want to be around an organization like that where every year they are trying to improve and get better.It has long been a dream of Beltrans to play for the Yankees, dating to when he was a youngster in Puerto Rico idolizing their center fielder, Bernie Williams. There were two other occasions when Beltran wanted to join the Yankees as a free agent. Instead, he went to the Mets in 2005 when Williams was still the Yankees center fielder, and then the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012 when the Yankees had Granderson, Nick Swisher and Brett Gardner in the outfield.Finally, this year the Yankees found room for Beltran, 36. On Dec. 6 he agreed to a three-year, $45 million contract to play right field, the same day Cano agreed to a 10-year, $240 million contract with the Seattle Mariners. Monday was Beltrans first day on the field as a Yankee, but he played down the idea that his dream was finally fulfilled. That feeling may not come until he puts on pinstripes for the home opener April 7.On Monday, he worked out with Roberts at second base a position he has never played as a professional even turning some double plays.But Beltran said he was spending time there only as a way to get to know Roberts, a fellow switch hitter. Roberts, 36, has played 1,213 games at second base, all for the Baltimore Orioles, his only team before joining the Yankees. If Beltran was signed to help recoup the loss of Canos offensive numbers, Roberts was given the unenviable task of replacing Cano at second base, where he often dazzled as a two-time Gold Glove fielder.Im not going to be Robbie and Im not going to try to be, Roberts said. Im going to be Brian Roberts and hopefully that is good enough.Roberts will be a bridge that connects two of the games greatest shortstops. His first season with the Orioles was Cal Ripkens final season; this year, he will play alongside Derek Jeter in his final year. Roberts said that it was Jeter who once instilled in him the confidence that he could become a good major league player.It was the 2004 season, Roberts recalled, and he had reached second base in a game against the Yankees.Between pitches, Roberts said, Jeter told him, You can be a .300 hitter in this league.I think he does it to everybody, Roberts said of Jeters encouragement. But for some reason, when he tells it to you, you think youre the most important person in the world. Beltran also noted the honor of playing alongside Jeter, who broke into the major leagues in 1995, the year Beltran was drafted by the Kansas City Royals. With five championships on Jeters rsum, Beltran is hoping some of that World Series magic will rub off on him.Im just looking forward to working with him and helping this team win a championship, he said. I know he has a lot of championships. But I dont have none, so hopefully I can win one.INSIDE PITCHMichael Pineda, who was acquired from Seattle two years ago in a trade for Jesus Montero, threw a bullpen session Monday and seemed to impress Manager Joe Girardi. Pineda, who is competing to become the No. 5 starter, is coming off 2012 shoulder surgery and said he thought he was throwing the way he did before the surgery. | Sports |
Credit...China Daily/ReutersDec. 18, 2015HONG KONG At the end of last month, the Chinese renminbi was anointed as one of the worlds elite currencies, a first for an emerging market and a widely hailed acknowledgment of Chinas rising financial influence and economic might.But soon after reaching that milestone, the renminbi started slowly and steadily falling as Chinese companies and individuals moved huge sums of money out of the countrys weakening economy.The falling currency sets a fresh challenge for Beijings leaders as the Chinese renminbi is increasingly woven into the global marketplace. While a weaker currency helps the countrys exporters, the government must also control the slide, or risk fanning market worries and trade tensions.So far, the Chinese government has stepped into currency markets repeatedly to control the tempo of the drop, but not enough to stop it.Over the last two weeks, the renminbi has dropped 1.3 percent against the dollar. The move follows a 4 percent devaluation in August. And while Chinas central bank has stayed studiously silent, most banking industry economists now expect the renminbi to continue slipping in the weeks and months to come.We are looking for larger depreciation in the first half of next year, and then a stabilization, said Ryan Lam, the head of research at Shanghai Commercial Bank, a Hong Kong institution.The currency is partly a barometer of global forces, a sign of the Chinese economys weakness and the dollars strength. It also reflects the markets bet that the currency will continue to fall as the Chinese government looks to help the countrys economy by making exporters more competitive.Every morning this last week, the central bank has weakened by an additional 0.1 or 0.2 percent its daily fixing of the value of the renminbi, which sets the midpoint for the currencys daily trading range.The Peoples Bank of China, the countrys central bank, faces a tricky balancing act.If the renminbi falls too steeply, the volatility could prompt traders to place large bets on further depreciation, making the decline harder to control. The International Monetary Fund added the renminbi on Nov. 30 to its group of global reserve currencies, alongside the dollar, euro, yen and pound. In an effort to meet the I.M.F. requirements, China had to loosen some of its currency controls, making it somewhat more susceptible to market forces.While a weaker currency helps Chinese exporters, it also adds to the countrys already widening trade surplus with the United States.A continued drop in the currency could start trade issues in the midst of the American presidential elections. Candidates mentioned China nearly two dozen times in Tuesdays Republican presidential debate, none of them favorably. Carly Fiorina described China as a rising adversary and asserted that like North Korea, they, too, recognize one thing: strength and their own economic interest.Some longtime American critics of Chinas currency policies had tried to persuade the Obama administration to try to block the I.M.F. decision, contending that the renminbi continues to be heavily controlled by the Chinese government. Those critics of Chinas currency policies point to the recent weakness as evidence.Its not at all surprising to me that once they got what they wanted, the renminbi is sliding further downhill, said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. We have to take much tougher action against the Chinese government if were going to have success combating currency manipulation.The I.M.F. has a policy of not commenting on short-term currency fluctuations, while the Peoples Bank of China and the United States Treasury very seldom do so. All three declined to issue statements on the renminbis drop since the I.M.F. decision three weeks ago.The I.M.F. had said that China has adopted substantial reforms aimed at making the renminbi more freely usable. The Treasury accepted this in lending American support to the decision by the I.M.F.s board to accept the renminbi. The I.M.F. and the Treasury have both urged China to let markets play a greater role in setting the value of the renminbi, which makes it harder for them to object now when market forces push down the currency.Those market forces are tougher to manage, although China still has formidable resources to do so.It has the worlds largest trade surplus. And until the last couple of years, that kept the renminbi on a path of gradual appreciation. But money is sluicing out of the country now, and it is more than offsetting the money that comes in from Chinas selling of more goods overseas.The Chinese government has responded to faltering investment spending in the country by cutting interest rates. While lower lending rates have helped housing prices and construction by making mortgages cheaper, lower rates on bank deposits have also given an extra incentive for Chinese investors to look overseas for opportunities. At the same time, the Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates, making it more attractive to keep money in dollars.The Peoples Bank also has far less autonomy than central banks in the West. Major currency policy decisions, including the decision to let the renminbi sink steadily lower against the dollar, are made by Communist Party leaders, leaving the central bank to manage day-to-day interventions in the markets.Still, China has more ability than most countries to prevent a plunge. The nation has the worlds largest foreign exchange reserves, $3.5 trillion worth of dollars, euros and other currencies.ImageCredit...Tim Chong/ReutersChina also retains some regulatory restrictions on large outflows of money. China is enforcing its remaining regulations much more stringently this autumn, in an attempt to choke off more speculative outflows into overseas real estate and other investments.An official news outlet, Peoples Daily, reported last month that the authorities had closed an underground bank that had handled illegal foreign exchange transactions totaling $64 billion, mainly money leaving the country, since the start of 2013. The authorities needed 35,000 sheets of paper to print records from the underground bank, Peoples Daily reported.Chinese exporters and importers in the United States and Europe are celebrating the renminbis weakness.Betty Chong, a director of the J.C. & Winsons Company, which manufactures gloves, hats and scarfs in Wuxi for export, said that she no longer added a premium to her prices as a buffer against appreciation of the renminbi. The devaluation of the renminbi against the U.S. dollar of course helps my exports my goods are comparatively more competitive than those from nearby manufacturers in Bangladesh, Vietnam and India, she said.Chinas exporters to Europe are benefiting, as well as those selling to the United States. Chinas central bank made headlines a week ago by saying that it would publish an index of the renminbis value in terms of a basket of currencies, not just the dollar. Such an index would highlight that the renminbi actually strengthened against some currencies in the first 11 months of this year, like the euro, even as it weakened against the strong dollar.But because the dollar has faltered in the past two weeks, the drop in the renminbi lately has been even sharper against other currencies. The renminbi has fallen 3.7 percent against the euro in the past two weeks, for example.A weaker renminbi is not a complete boon to Chinese companies.Zhang Zepeng, the sales manager at the Qingdao Reliance Refrigeration Equipment Company, which makes cold-storage rooms and refrigerator compressors in Qingdao, has profited from a weaker renminbi on its exports. But he is concerned about rising costs for supplies bought overseas, since his company also sells within China.Since we need to import some of our raw materials, I do not want to see the RMB further devalue to, say, 6.7 or 6.8 against the U.S. dollar, since that will mean we will have to pay more for our raw material imports as well, he said. It is now around 6.5 to the dollar.If China does allow the renminbi to decline further in the coming months, it would not be the first emerging market to achieve a breakthrough in international economic relations only to see its currency soon tumble.A little more than two decades ago, Mexico concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada, cementing its position as an emerging market closely tied to the global economy. But less than a year later, as Fed rate increases prompted investors to move money to the United States, Mexico found itself struggling to protect the peso. It ended up letting the peso drop nearly 30 percent in less than a week. | Business |
Asia Pacific|Trump to Raise North Korea Sanctions With Chinese Leader, Pence Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/world/asia/pence-north-korea-sanctions-china.htmlCredit...Wallace Woon/EPA, via ShutterstockNov. 15, 2018President Trump is likely to bring up the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea when he meets with President Xi Jinping of China this month, Vice President Mike Pence said on Thursday.Mr. Pence, who is in Singapore for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit meeting, was responding to reports that China might be easing sanctions against North Korea, which would be a blow to the American-led effort to economically isolate the North over its weapons programs.We believe China is doing more than theyve ever done before, Mr. Pence said. The president is grateful for that.But he added that he expected Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi to discuss the issue of enforcement of those sanctions and really the unique role that China can play in ensuring the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.The two leaders will meet at the end of the month at the Group of 20 gathering in Buenos Aires.Mr. Pences remarks came after the release of a congressional report that said China appeared to have eased up on the enforcement of sanctions against North Korea. The annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission asked the United States Treasury Department to list Chinese businesses, entities and individuals doing business with North Korea that might be subject to United States sanctions.Also on Thursday, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce confirmed that trade talks with the United States had resumed following a phone call this month between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi. Those talks had been on hiatus since August, with Mr. Trumps top economic advisers feuding over how the United States should proceed.Mr. Pence also said that he had a cordial encounter with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday at the gala dinner hosted by the regional bloc, known as Asean.We exchanged greetings, but nothing more than that, he said of Mr. Putin, whose July meeting with Mr. Trump drew fierce criticism in the United States over what many viewed as Mr. Trumps fawning behavior. Mr. Pence and Mr. Putin also had a brief conversation on Thursday.Mr. Pence is essentially standing in for Mr. Trump at the Asean meeting, and the presidents absence was conspicuous; not only is Mr. Putin in Singapore, but Mr. Xi will attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders forum this weekend in Papua New Guinea.Mr. Trump wont be there either, raising questions about the United States commitment to its allies as China seeks to expand its influence in the region.In something of a diplomatic whirlwind, Mr. Pence also met with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and tried to dispel any suggestion that South Korea was veering away from Washingtons tough line against the North by holding recent talks with North Korean officials.Mr. Pence said he had discussed the United Nations sanctions with Mr. Moon and that he assured me that as those inter-Korean talks take place, there will continue to be very close coordination with the United States, and also that South Korea remains committed to fully implementing all of the U.N. resolutions and sanctions.He said he had told Mr. Moon that the United States sought to avoid the mistakes of the past, referring to North Koreas broken promises after previous talks with the United States.He added that South Korea again today renewed their commitment to work very closely with the U.S. ahead of a planned second summit meeting between Mr. Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, which is expected in the new year. | World |
Credit...Tess Mayer for The New York TimesTech Were UsingJennifer Valentino-DeVries, an investigative reporter who has delved into issues of online privacy, is under no illusions that protecting our digital selves is fully possible.Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, an investigative reporter, at The Timess offices in New York.Credit...Tess Mayer for The New York TimesMay 22, 2019How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, an investigative reporter, discussed the tech shes using.What are your most important tech tools for doing investigations, and how do they fit into your reporting process?People seem to think that investigative reporting involves secret techniques. But it is actually not that mysterious. The big secret is that I get time to do these stories so I can sift through thousands of records, or contact dozens of people before finding one who will talk with me.One of my favorite tools for investigations is an updated version of an old-school newsroom feature: the New York Times tip line. (Please take this as a hint to send me your tips.)People who want to share evidence of wrongdoing can always mail us an actual letter, but now they also have the option of contacting us through SecureDrop, which is an encrypted submission system that uses anonymity software. After almost every article I have written, I have received useful tips about ways to extend that reporting.I write a lot about technology companies. To investigate them, I rely not only on help from sources but also on tests of the technology itself.Tech executives tend to stay on message and provide canned responses about how their company is committed to protecting user privacy. But if I can see, for example, that their websites code directs user location data to dozens of advertising firms servers, I can raise deeper questions about what is really happening. I often use products like Google Chromes Developer Tools to learn more about what is going on under the hood.I am fortunate to work with journalists who are adept with more complex code as well. For example, we recently analyzed data sent by mobile apps. Those apps sometimes make it hard to see the information theyre sending, so my colleagues Michael Keller and Aaron Krolik used tools more commonly employed by computer security researchers to help reveal it.Youve specifically written a great deal about privacy. How has your reporting on privacy issues changed the way you use technology for work and for play?I dont think it is realistic to expect people to abandon technology over privacy concerns. Im on Facebook and Twitter. I use Google and Slack. Technology is an inextricable part of our society and the business world.That said, there are two products I would use if not for the nagging questions I have about data collection: DNA testing and in-home voice assistants. I would love to get pretty charts about my ancestry. I would love to ask Alexa or Google to tell me the weather forecast so I dont have to look at a screen in the morning. But I just cant bring myself to do it, because the data involved my genetic information and recordings of what I say at home is just too sensitive.I take more steps to protect my privacy than the average person probably does. I regularly check my phones location settings, and I use services that help stop online trackers. I have removed myself from a variety of data broker lists, which make your personal information widely available. But after covering this field for a while, I am under no illusions that I am able to fully protect my privacy, even with these procedures.ImageCredit...Tess Mayer for The New York TimesImageCredit...Tess Mayer for The New York TimesYou have written about how dozens of smartphone apps have recorded peoples location data. How have you seen that data being used?Advertising is the biggest business for such data by far. Companies can use your location data to profile you and show you the ads most likely to influence you. For example, if you go to an elementary school and back home every morning, you might be a stay-at-home parent. But the most interesting use I have seen has been by hedge funds. They look at this data to get ahead of the stock market, for example, by seeing which stores are having an uptick in customers before those stores report earnings.What steps do you take to protect confidential sources?When I began covering technology in 2010, my computer-security sources introduced me to encrypted communications. We would use special chat programs and send our messages over the Tor anonymity network. It was a complicated setup, and not something I would be able to persuade most sources to undertake.Now, so many people know of encryption apps like Signal, which is as easy to use as any other texting app. Its so much simpler to get a source to take at least some steps to protect themselves.That said, its important to keep in mind that these apps arent foolproof. Many journalists have made mistakes in attempting to use secure communications. If you back up all your encrypted messages to your iCloud account, your use of encryption is pointless. The possible mistakes terrify me, and sometimes its better to simply meet someone face to face and leave your phone at home.ImageCredit...Tess Mayer for The New York TimesOutside of work, what tech product are you currently obsessed with?I have young children, and I think they are pretty much the cutest people ever. Im a huge fan of limited photo-sharing apps that allow a small set of people to see what theyre doing in preschool and other daily activities. I literally just watched a video of my 2-year-old dancing awkwardly.If people could do one thing today to protect their digital privacy, what would you tell them to do?It depends what you mean by digital privacy. If your top worry is hackers, the best thing you can do is get a password manager instead of reusing the same passwords everywhere.If you are concerned about companies controlling your data, you face more challenges. It seems likely that a large part of the remedy in this area will involve changes to consumer protection laws, which have passed or are being considered in multiple states. | Tech |
The vote, largely along party lines, punctuated an opening day marked more by precaution than pomp, as the 117th Congress convened under the threat of a deadly pandemic.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 3, 2021WASHINGTON Democrats returned Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to the House speakership on Sunday for what may be her final term, handing a tested leader control of the slimmest majority in almost two decades as Washington prepares for a new Democratic president.The nearly party-line vote punctuated an opening day marked more by precaution than pomp, as the 117th Congress convened under the threat of a deadly pandemic and awaited a pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia that will determine control of that chamber. Several House members sick with Covid-19 missed the session altogether and others cast their votes from behind a plexiglass enclosure specially constructed in a gallery overlooking the chamber.Her victory means that after two years as President Trumps most outspoken antagonist, Ms. Pelosi will now be responsible for trying to shepherd through Congress as much of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s agenda as possible.Scripture tells us that to everything, there is a season: a time for every purpose under the heavens; a time to build, a time to sow, a time to heal, she said in a speech after winning the speakership. Now is certainly a time for our nation to heal. Our most urgent priority will continue to be defeating the coronavirus. And defeat it, we will.It will be no easy task. With her party in control of just 222 of 435 seats, Ms. Pelosi can afford to lose only a handful of Democrats on any given vote. Emboldened Republicans are gunning to retake the majority in next years midterm elections and are in no mood to extend an olive branch.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, used his own remarks before presenting Ms. Pelosi the gavel to torch Democrats record in the majority and effectively declare the beginning of the campaign to wrest power from them.ImageCredit...Pool photo by Erin ScottIt has been said that a house divided cannot stand, he said. Well, if there is any lesson Americans have learned in the last two years, its this: A House distracted cannot govern.Many of his members were preparing to use a normally perfunctory joint session of Congress on Wednesday to make one final, futile attempt to overturn Mr. Bidens victory in key swing states and hand Mr. Trump a second term based on specious claims of election fraud. The effort was destined to fail, but was certain to set a bitter tone for the year ahead.Ms. Pelosi secured 216 votes for speaker on Sunday afternoon, keeping defections within her party to just a handful despite grumbling from some moderates and progressives eager for new leadership.Only five lawmakers ultimately broke ranks: Representatives Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Jared Golden of Maine and Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania. Crucially, Ms. Pelosi won over several Democrats who had defected two years ago, including Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Kathleen Rice of New York. Many said they took her at her word that this term would most likely be her last.Its not personal. Its not malicious. It just represents a feeling in my district that we need more Midwestern leaders and we need a different crop that represents a broader swath of the country, Ms. Slotkin said in an interview.With both chambers narrowly divided, Ms. Slotkin urged Democratic leaders to set aside messaging bills that have no chance of becoming law in the coming term and try to make bipartisan compromises.Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska and the longest-serving House member, made a similar appeal when he rose to administer the oath of office to Ms. Pelosi.Ill be honest: I do not like what I see, Mr. Young said. Its time we hold hands and talk to one another.He suggested the two sides ought to sit down and have a drink. Ms. Pelosi said she did not drink but would be happy to share ice cream, her favorite indulgence.On the other side of the Capitol, six new senators were sworn in, but both parties were more concerned with the runoff elections scheduled for Tuesday. The outcome could determine the fate of Mr. Bidens legislative goals on climate change, taxes and health care; his response to the coronavirus pandemic; and his ability to fill his cabinet and influential federal judgeships.ImageCredit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesRepublicans currently have an edge, with 51 seats to Democrats 48. Democrats would have to sweep both races to draw the chamber to a tie and effectively take control when Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who would cast tiebreaking votes when needed, is sworn in with Mr. Biden on Jan. 20.To say the 117th Congress convenes at a challenging time would indeed be an understatement, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and the majority leader, said in brief congratulatory remarks. From political division to a deadly pandemic to adversaries around the world, the hurdles before us are many and they are serious.At least one, the pandemic, made itself felt immediately inside the Capitol on Sunday. Dr. Brian P. Monahan, Congresss attending physician, strongly encouraged lawmakers in a memo beforehand to refrain from gatherings of any kind in their office spaces, and warned that any family members accompanying them could be asked to produce negative test results.Inside the House chamber, lawmakers took their oaths of office and voted for speaker in small groups, rather than all together in the normally boisterous hall of the House. At one point, aides had to press a newly elected Republican, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to put on a mask as required under House rules, causing a minor stir. The architect of the Capitol even constructed a small plexiglass enclosure with its own ventilation system in one of the galleries overlooking the chamber so that three lawmakers in a protective quarantine could vote in person without mingling on the House floor.Two newly elected Republicans, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida and David Valadao of California, missed Sundays swearing-in altogether because they were home sick with the virus. A third, Luke Letlow of Louisiana, died last week of Covid-19 complications before he could be seated to the position he won in a December runoff.Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, arrived to cast her vote for Ms. Pelosi fresh off her own isolation, less than a week after she announced she had tested positive.Its somber for sure, said Representative John Katko, a New York Republican who just won re-election in a Democratic-leaning district. Mr. Katko said he drove to Washington alone on Sunday morning, without the company of his family who would normally come for a large celebration.Still, there were moments to celebrate. Republicans swore in 17 new women in the House, more than doubling their numbers from the 116th Congress and setting a new high-water mark for the party and for the number of women in the House, 122, two years after Democrats swept into power with their own historically diverse cohort.Republican women are here to work, they are here to get things done, said Representative Liz Cheney, the highest-ranking Republican woman, marking the achievement on the chamber floor. As we like to say in Wyoming, it is time to cowgirl up.Emily Cochrane contributed reporting. | Politics |
He first wanted to run for office years ago. Now Stacey Abrams, the Democratic Party and the Rev. Raphael Warnock all believe that the time is ripe for Georgia voters to send a Black Baptist preacher to Washington.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPublished Jan. 2, 2021Updated Jan. 8, 2021[Read more on the history Raphael Warnock is chasing.]ATLANTA For months in 2007, the Rev. Raphael Warnock used his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to call for the release of a young Black man, sentenced to 10 years in prison for a consensual sexual encounter between teenagers. Some of his powerful parishioners, like the congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, had joined the cause, even visiting the young man in prison.The public pressure campaign was on the brink of success a lower court ordered the young mans release, and his family prepared to celebrate. But then the state attorney general, Thurbert Baker, announced that he would appeal the decision.Mr. Baker also happened to be a member of Mr. Warnocks congregation. And so it was that on the following Sunday, Mr. Warnock singled him out for special mention. He has said that its his job to be the states attorney, and thats true, Mr. Warnock said. But its my job to be the states conscience.At the time, in 2007, Mr. Warnock was still a relative newcomer. Two years earlier, he had become the youngest person ever to assume the role of senior pastor at Ebenezer, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Mr. Baker, on the other hand, was Georgias highest-ranking Black elected official. A tough-on-crime, somewhat conservative Democrat who had been in office since 1997, he would become the last African-American elected in a statewide race.Mr. Warnock wants to become the next one.He is running for Senate against Kelly Loeffler, one of the richest members of Congress. Senator Loeffler was appointed last year by Gov. Brian Kemp and has become a strident Trump loyalist.The stakes are high: The results on Election Day a three-way split between Mr. Warnock, Ms. Loeffler and another Republican, Representative Doug Collins caused a runoff that, along with the runoff for Georgias other Senate seat, will determine the balance of power in the Senate. The race has attracted record sums. Mr. Warnock has raised more than $100 million to help make the case that his life trajectory has better prepared him for this moment than anyone else.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThis moment, he frequently reminds his audiences on the campaign trail, includes a pandemic with glaring racial disparities, global calls for justice spurred by police killings of Black people, and the stunning fact that Georgia voters, who have never elected a Black senator, just gave the nod to a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since 1992.Mr. Warnock is betting that the time is ripe for a Black Baptist preacher in robes trimmed with kente cloth, who speaks of police brutality and voter suppression from one of the worlds most famous pulpits. While he has built a rsum that piles credential on top of credential, he has not hesitated to share personal experiences like being suspected of shoplifting and having an incarcerated brother.Republicans have tried to paint him as a dangerous radical, noting his denunciation of white privilege, his defense of Black pastors who have criticized the United States and his support of abortion rights. Incidents from his past have come under greater scrutiny, including an arrest for which the charges were later dropped and an incident last year where his now ex-wife called the police after a conflict outside her home.In response, Mr. Warnock, 51, has largely sought to neutralize the criticism, as with two campaign ads in which he anticipates the attacks on him and professes his love of puppies. To his opponent, he offers a preacherly rhyme: People who have no vision traffic in division.I have spent my career and my time as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church trying to bring people together, he said in an interview, when asked about his defense of religious leaders who have criticized the United States. He called bringing people together difficult work. It requires that we actually talk to one another, rather than about one another, he said. It requires deep engagement because, I think, bigotry feeds on fear.In the pulpit, Mr. Warnock has positioned himself as a moral compass for government. Now he wants to continue that job in Washington.My Fathers BusinessRaphael Gamaliel Warnock, named for an archangel and a revered Jewish scholar, gave his first sermon when he was 11.He chose the one Bible story about Jesus as a child, when Joseph and Mary lost him for three days only to find him philosophizing in the temple. Jesus shrugs off their concern, saying they should have known where he would be.Mr. Warnock titled the sermon, Its Time I Be About My Fathers Business.He grew up in a Savannah, Ga., housing project, the 11th of 12 siblings in a blended family. His father, Jonathan Warnock, was from the rural Lowcountry along the Savannah River. The elder Warnock served in the Army in World War II, and family lore includes a time when he was asked to give up a bus seat while in uniform. In Savannah, he salvaged cars and preached on Sundays in a Pentecostal Holiness church, hanging an American flag behind his pulpit and beginning services with the Pledge of Allegiance.ImageCredit...via Warnock for GeorgiaThough many Pentecostal churches do not ordain women, Raphaels mother, Verlene, also became a pastor, signaling the familys openness to less traditional interpretations of the Bible.Still, said Joyce Hall, one of Mr. Warnocks sisters, My parents were very, very conservative Evangelicals. Raphael was shaped in an environment where our parents taught us biblical values. And then they let us choose.The young Raphael quoted, read and discussed Scripture so earnestly that he was nicknamed the Rev. In his campaign stump speech, he tells of how his father used to wake him early each morning to get dressed, put his shoes on, and get ready regardless of whether they had plans. Friends say that, to this day, Mr. Warnock is dressed and shod at the crack of dawn.He wanted to attend Morehouse College, the elite, historically Black alma mater of Dr. King, and was able to do so with financial aid, including a Pell Grant, low-interest loans and scholarships.He came to college a Pentecostal like his parents, and graduated a Baptist in the King tradition.Mr. Warnock joined a campus group for aspiring pastors, and got a standing ovation the first time he delivered a sermon, according to what students from the time have told Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., the dean of the campus chapel.He recommended Mr. Warnock for a summer internship at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., serving under John Thomas Porter, who had been mentored by Dr. King and helped lead the 1960s anti-segregation campaign in which protesters were met with fire hoses and police dogs.It was there that Mr. Warnock moved from a tradition that emphasized prayer and personal salvation to one that took a more activist approach, he explained in an interview. It was the Baptists who preached a kind of Social Gospel that captured my attention and imagination, he said.ImageCredit...Ruby Washington/The New York TimesPreaching the uncomfortable truthIn the history of Black pastors-turned-politicians, among the most famous was Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the Harlem congressman and civil rights leader who in 1938 succeeded his father as the leader of Abyssinian Baptist Church.That is where Mr. Warnock landed a job as youth minister at the church when he was 22. He had moved to New York to attend the prestigious Union Theological Seminary, where he would go on to earn two masters degrees and later a doctorate. By that time, Abyssinian was under the leadership of Calvin O. Butts III, a fellow Morehouse alumnus.While there, Mr. Warnock protested negative stereotypes in rap lyrics and criticized the heavy-handed police response to a Million Youth March. He also spoke out against the welfare work requirement put in place by Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the mayor, calling it a hoax in which poor people are being put into competition with other poor people.In his scholarship, he dove into what would become a lifelong theme: the role of the church in public life.He wrote a thesis exploring the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffers resistance against Nazi Germany and Dr. Kings struggles in the United States, which he called two rare moments in which one can feel with unusual intensity the birthpangs of history seeking to give birth to true church.In the same paper, he articulated a complaint that he would later lodge against the prosperity gospel promoted by some of the suburban megachurches that competed with Ebenezer for members. The Gospel preached in too many of our churches today is a feel good Christianity, co-opted and commodified for a culture addicted to stimulation, he wrote.In his 2006 dissertation and a 2013 book, Mr. Warnock laid out a vision to unite the sometimes competing forces in Black Christianity to confront the ills of a nation plagued by mass imprisonment, drug addiction and a yawning wealth gap. As a candidate, he has adopted a similar platform, calling for criminal justice reform, a living wage and expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.The Black church has been the conscience of America, he said during a 2011 event.That function has been embraced by many Black pastors around the nation, some using more confrontational language than others. As Mr. Warnock noted in his book, one of his mentors, the Rev. James H. Cone, had described the white church as the Antichrist.ImageCredit...via Warnock for GeorgiaMr. Warnock was a defender of Jeremiah Wright, the onetime pastor of former President Barack Obama who was thrust into scrutiny in 2008 after video clips of a sermon he gave showed him saying God damn America.While Mr. Obama distanced himself from Mr. Wright, Mr. Warnock expressed concern that the clips werent being shared in the proper context. In an appearance on Fox News in 2008, Mr. Warnock noted that before Dr. King was assassinated, he was preparing a sermon titled Why America May Go to Hell.We celebrate Reverend Wright in the same way we celebrate the truth-telling tradition of the Black church which, when preachers tell the truth, very often it makes people uncomfortable, Mr. Warnock said in the Fox News interview. He later wrote that the sermon viewed in its entirety was a very thoughtful and compelling discussion on how a Christian should view government.Some of Mr. Warnocks own preachings are intended to make people uncomfortable. He has pressed Black churches to be more inclusive of gay people, and said they have been shamefully slow to focus on gender inequality, saying that churches need to fight both sexism and patriarchal structures inside and outside their walls.He has also criticized white churches, writing in his book that they had been active and complicit participants in slavery, segregation and other manifestations of white supremacy.ImageCredit...Ric Feld/Associated PressIn an interview, Mr. Warnock said it was the white churchs barring of Black worshipers that gave rise to the Black church to begin with.When we say the Black church, we have never meant anything racially exclusive by that, Mr. Warnock said. The Black church is the antislavery church. It is an independent Christian witness that literally emerged fighting for freedom and insisting that the gospel is about equality, justice and inclusive humanity.In a state where three-quarters of the population identifies as Christian, and many white evangelicals embrace conservative political views, Republicans and Ms. Loefflers campaign have used his messages and sermons to try and paint him as a radical and their claims have often been labeled by fact checkers as misleading.One ad by a conservative SuperPAC falsely suggested that Mr. Warnock himself had said God damn America, but the video snippet actually shows Mr. Warnock describing Mr. Wrights rhetoric.In a 2011 sermon highlighted by Republicans, Mr. Warnock said that nobody can serve God and the military, but Mr. Warnocks campaign noted that it was a reference to the Gospel message that no one can serve two masters. In another sermon, Mr. Warnock criticized Israel, describing how people saw the government shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. In response, leaders in Georgias Jewish community spoke publicly in support of Mr. Warnock.Christian pastors have also come to Mr. Warnocks defense, much as he defended Mr. Wright. Dozens joined a letter calling on Ms. Loeffler to cease her attacks.We see your attacks against Warnock as a broader attack against the Black Church and faith traditions for which we stand, the pastors wrote.ImageCredit...Kevin D. Liles for The New York TimesDelivering the right message for the timeIn his early 30s, Mr. Warnock was tapped to lead a church of his own, Douglas Memorial Community Church in Baltimore. He began his tenure by urging members to fight urban blight and drug addiction and encouraging clergy to be tested for H.I.V., at a time when AIDS was ravaging Black communities. He ended one service in 2001 by getting tested himself.While in Maryland, Mr. Warnock was arrested during an investigation of allegations of abusive bullying involving counselors at Camp Farthest Out, a church-run facility about 30 miles west of Baltimore.As investigators began interviewing a counselor who was apparently 17 years old, Mr. Warnock and another pastor asked if they could be present during the interview, but the investigators rejected the idea and rebuked the pastors for disrupting the process, according to a police report. The disagreements continued until the investigators arrested the pastors for hindering the investigation.A later portion of the report describes the pastors as cordial, with one of them saying that we didnt mean to get in the way. Prosecutors later dropped the obstruction charges, with one saying that the case involved a miscommunication and that the pastors were very helpful with the continued investigation, according to a Baltimore Sun article from 2002.In 2004, a job came open that seemed almost tailor-made for Mr. Warnock: senior pastor at Ebenezer, the church in the heart of Atlanta, with a storied role in the civil rights movement.Mr. Warnock was in his mid-30s, and his selection stood in sharp contrast to the retiring pastor, Joseph Roberts, who had served for three decades.The job came with instant entree to Atlantas upper echelons, and Mr. Warnock, sharply dressed and considered one of the citys most eligible bachelors, walked red carpets and greeted visiting celebrities.Yet more often, he made the news on serious subjects. A few months after his arrival at Ebenezer in 2005, he led a Freedom Caravan to bus people displaced by Hurricane Katrina back to New Orleans so they could vote.He took up the cause of death row inmates, and Genarlow Wilson, the star athlete and prom king who was sentenced to 10 years for a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old when he was 17. (Mr. Baker, the attorney general and Ebenezer member, ultimately lost his appeal and Mr. Wilson was freed.)After Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager in a hooded sweatshirt, was shot and killed during his walk home in a Florida subdivision, Mr. Warnock appeared in the pulpit wearing a hoodie (a maroon one, from Morehouse).ImageCredit...Vino Wong/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe states political class quickly came to know Mr. Warnock, in part because attendance at Ebenezers annual King Day service was practically required for elected officials. At the annual Democratic Party dinners, he was invited to give the blessing but did not stop at amen.I would always say, You know, Reverend, we want you to say the invocation, but you always have something else to say, recalled DuBose Porter, then the state party chairman. He wouldnt do a long turn, but it would just be that right message for the time. Every time.Mr. Warnock had the blessing of the civil rights old guard, but his interests and style aligned him with an emerging strain of activists focused on social justice. With the rapper T.I., he held a three-day conference on ending mass incarceration. At the Statehouse in 2014, he was arrested while protesting the governors refusal to expand Medicaid.Right after the memorial service at Ebenezer for Rayshard Brooks, who was killed in June by the Atlanta police in a Wendys parking lot, Mr. Warnock headed to pick up one of his own brothers from a federal prison on a pandemic-related release. He had been given a life sentence for a nonviolent drug crime in 1998.Over the years, progressives found that Mr. Warnock could lend credibility to their efforts, helping ward off criticism not just from conservatives, but skeptical Democrats. Stacey Abrams got to know Mr. Warnock first in her role as a lawyer for the city of Atlanta, then as the Democratic minority leader in the Georgia Assembly. In 2014, she went to him for help with an ambitious voter registration plan.He became a spokesman for Ms. Abramss New Georgia Project, working with the group to expand its voting drive to congregations, and later replaced Ms. Abrams as chair of the board of directors.What I see in Raphael Warnock, every time we talk, every time we engage, is this belief that is core to him: that morality demands that he do good, Ms. Abrams said in an interview.As Mr. Warnocks reputation was growing, Georgia Democrats were struggling, despite predictions that increasing racial diversity would work in the partys favor. In 2014, candidates bearing two of the states biggest Democratic names Michelle Nunn, the daughter of Senator Sam Nunn, and Jason Carter, grandson of the former President Jimmy Carter ran for statewide office and lost.The next year, Mr. Warnock floated a trial balloon: a run for Senate against Johnny Isakson, a Republican incumbent who had recently disclosed that he had Parkinsons disease. Encouraged by Democratic leaders, Mr. Warnock consulted his flock.It was definitely a family talk, I mean, there were no PowerPoint presentations and hes big for presentations, said Robin Hindsman Stacia, an Ebenezer member. He was clear at that point that if the congregation didnt really feel like it was the right time, that he wouldnt do it.He didnt do it.ImageCredit...Mike Belleme for The New York TimesA private life, in publicThe New Years Eve service at Ebenezer is always a lively affair, but as 2015 gave way to 2016, it grew electric. The congregation surged to the front to get a better view as their pastor went to stand in front of his girlfriend, Ouleye Ndoye, and pulled a small box from his pocket. He quoted poetry (Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer) and Scripture (the Bible says that one who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord), then knelt.Ms. Ndoye, who is 16 years younger than Mr. Warnock and a graduate of Spelman, Morehouses sister college, was seated in a front pew in a glittery black dress, hands clasped to her mouth.So will you do me a favor and be my good thing? Mr. Warnock asked. Will you marry me?The engagement was short after a private ceremony, the couple wed publicly at Ebenezer on Valentines Day.The Warnocks had two children, a girl and a boy. But in May 2019, Mr. Warnock filed for divorce.At the same time as his marriage collapsed, his political future began to take shape. In August, Senator Isakson announced that he would retire, setting off a round of jockeying among potential Democratic candidates for the special election to fill the seat.The contest in November would include multiple candidates from each party, and would proceed to a runoff if no one won more than 50 percent of the votes outright. To ensure that one of the top two candidates was a Democrat, the party needed to unite behind a single contender early.ImageCredit...Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesAgain, Mr. Warnock called a meeting at his church, parishioners said. This time, though, things were different. Ebenezers members had lived through three years of divisive politics, a surge in overt racism, and Georgias senators were still fighting expanded access to health care. The political equation had changed, too: The challenger would be running against an appointed newcomer, not a longtime legislator like Mr. Isakson.By that time, Mr. Warnock had been at Ebenezer for 15 years and believed he had built a strong team of pastors. He did not ask, members said he told them he was going to run. He has indicated that he does not intend to step down from Ebenezer if elected, they said. (Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, a longtime Baptist youth pastor, is the only member of the clergy currently serving in the Senate.)In explaining his decision to enter the race, Mr. Warnock has consistently invoked Dr. Kings vision of the church as actively involved in indeed, essential to political life. Politics is a tool to effect the kind of change that I want to see in the world, he told Ernie Suggs, a veteran reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In early December 2019, Governor Kemp chose as Mr. Isaksons successor Ms. Loeffler, a financial services executive with $20 million at the ready to pour into her own campaign. Mr. Warnock had not yet announced that he would run when, six weeks later, she appeared at the King Day service at Ebenezer, calling it a sacred place and vowing to live in a way that honored Dr. King and his family.When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Warnock said wryly, If today you would stand in this holy place where Dr. King stood, make sure that come tomorrow well find you standing where Dr. King stood.Mr. Warnock officially entered the race at the end of January. In a contest with 20 candidates, he was the anointed Democrat, with the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the hope that he would appeal to moderate white voters who were turned off by President Trump, and motivate people who leaned left but did not often find candidates to whom they could relate.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesA really good showTwo weeks before the runoff elections, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired video of a tearful Ms. Warnock captured by a police body camera video that was quickly recycled into an attack ad against Mr. Warnock that included the number for a domestic violence hotline.Ive tried to keep the way that he acts under wraps for a long time, and today he crossed the line, Ms. Warnock tells the officer in the clip. So that is what is going on here, and hes a great actor. He is phenomenal at putting on a really good show.The Warnock campaign has called the attack desperate and shameful. The video was from an episode nine months earlier, when the couple were already separated and in the process of divorce. Mr. Warnock pulled up to her townhouse to pick up their son for nursery school.Ms. Warnocks grandfather in West Africa had died the night before, and she wanted Mr. Warnock to sign paperwork that would allow her to take the children, then 1 and 3, to the funeral.They argued in the driveway. Mr. Warnock later said he had wanted her to sign the divorce papers before he allowed the children to travel overseas. Soon, Ms. Warnock was calling the police to report that he had run over her foot.Ms. Warnock, shaken but calm, tells the police that she had been leaning into the back seat on the passenger side, with the door open, fastening one of the childrens seatbelts.Both parties agree, the video shows, that Mr. Warnock got in the drivers seat and started to move the car with the passenger door still open. Mr. Warnock says he had first asked his wife to move away from the car, but she refused. He also says that when he began to drive, he believed she had moved.Mr. Warnock says repeatedly that he did not think he had hit her foot. Later, he gave a more categorical denial, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, It didnt happen.The first officer on the scene tells his sergeant that Mr. Warnock seems like a very presentable guy in a Tesla and that his wife is hysterical. The police did not arrest Mr. Warnock, saying several times that they did not believe he had injured his wife, or that he had any intent to do so.According to the video, when the officer asks Ms. Warnock if Mr. Warnock had run over her foot intentionally, she responds, I just dont think he cares, adding, This man is running for U.S. Senate and all he cares about right now is his reputation.Ms. Warnock can twice be heard asking for medical attention. Medical personnel did not identify any swelling, redness, or bruising or broken bones on Ms. Warnocks foot, the police report said.Ms. Warnock has not participated in her ex-husbands run for office, nor are their children pictured in his campaign materials. Through her lawyer, she said, My children and I have no place in the politics of this election.The divorce was finalized last May.ImageCredit...Audra Melton for The New York TimesCall and responseOn the Friday before early voting began in December, Mr. Warnock went from parking lot to parking lot stopping at a union building in Atlanta, near a college campus in Athens and behind a church in Augusta, where amid honking horns the audience sang and answered in a call-and-response, much like they might have on a Sunday morning.Mr. Warnock finessed them with the confidence of a man who gave his first sermon at 11. Back then, he said it was time he was about his Fathers business. Four decades later, for him that has come to mean politics.Who are we? he bellowed.We the people! the crowd shouted back.Mr. Warnock went on to define we the people in this moment: workers who dont have health care, people who dont make a living wage, seniors who struggle to pay for prescription drugs.Get up, he called, his speech building to a get-out-the-vote crescendo.The crowd repeated, Get up!Get dressed, he said. They said, Get dressed.Then he said, Put your shoes on.Shaila Dewan reported from Atlanta and Savannah, and Mike Baker from Seattle. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. Nicole McNulty contributed to this report from New York. | Politics |
Many caveats apply, and the results involve radio frequencies long out of routine use.Credit...Michael Nagle/BloombergNov. 1, 2018For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the worlds largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost $30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents.The experiment, by the National Toxicology Program, found positive but relatively modest evidence that radio waves from some types of cellphones could raise the risk that male rats develop brain cancer.We believe that the link between radio-frequency radiation and tumors in male rats is real, John Bucher, a senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program, said in a statement.But he cautioned that the exposure levels and durations were far greater than what people typically encounter, and thus cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience. Moreover, the rat study examined the effects of a radio frequency associated with an early generation of cellphone technology, one that fell out of routine use years ago. Any concerns arising from the study thus would seem to apply mainly to early adopters who used those bygone devices, not to users of current models.Still, experts argue, even a small demonstrated rise in cancer risk could have wide implications, given that billions of people now use cellphones.The lowest level of radiation in the federal study was equal to the maximum exposure that federal regulations allow for cellphone users. That level of exposure rarely occurs in typical cellphone use, the toxicology agency said. The highest level was four times higher than the permitted maximum.The toxicology program released a preliminary draft of the study findings in May 2016, saying the radiation had likely caused the brain tumors. This February, in a draft report, it backed away from that relatively firm conclusion.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]In March, however, a peer-review panel of 11 experts from industry and academia voted to advise the agency that it should raise the confidence level from equivocal evidence to some evidence of a link between cellphone radiation and brain tumors in male rats. (The female rats did not show evidence of a link between the radiation and such tumors.) Two panel members, Lydia Andrews-Jones of Allergan and Susan Felter of Procter & Gamble, proposed the risk upgrade.Experts say it is not unusual for cancer patterns to vary between sexes in both people and animals, including the studys mice and rats.The rodents in the studies were exposed to radiation nine hours a day for two years far longer even than heavy users of cellphones. For the rats, the exposures started before birth and continued until they were about 2 years old.Some 2 to 3 percent of the male rats exposed to the radiation developed malignant gliomas, a deadly brain cancer, compared to none in a control group that received no radiation. Many epidemiologists see no overall rise in the incidence of gliomas in the human population.The study also found that about 5 to 7 percent of the male rats exposed to the highest level of radiation developed certain heart tumors, called malignant schwannomas, compared to none in the control group. Malignant schwannomas are similar to acoustic neuromas, benign tumors that can develop in people, in the nerve that connects the ear to the brain.The rats were exposed to radiation at a frequency of 900 megahertz typical of the second generation of cellphones that prevailed in the 1990s, when the study was first conceived.Current cellphones represent a fourth generation, known as 4G, and 5G phones are expected to debut around 2020. They employ much higher frequencies, and these radio waves are far less successful at penetrating the bodies of humans and rats, scientists say.In June, at a meeting of scientific counselors to the toxicology agency, Donald Stump, one of the members, worried that the study will be vulnerable to criticism that it was conducted using outdated technology. The challenge, he added, is how to move forward with experiments that are large enough to be significant yet nimble enough to keep pace with the rapidly evolving devices.The toxicology agency is building smaller exposure chambers that will let it evaluate newer technologies in weeks or months, instead of years. These future studies are to focus on measurable physical signs, or biomarkers, of potential effects from radio-frequency radiation, including DNA damage, which can be detected much sooner than cancer.During a telephone news briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Bucher, the senior scientist at the toxicology agency, said evidence of DNA damage from the current study needed further examination.He said the overall findings of the study 384 pages devoted to rats, 260 to mice had been conveyed to the Federal Communications Commission and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulate cellphones and gauge any risks to human health. Dr. Bucher declined repeatedly to assess the hazard.In a statement, the director of the F.D.A.s Center for Devices and Radiological Health said it disagreed with agencys finding of clear evidence for heart schwannomas, but raised no questions about its citing some evidence for the brain tumors.Asked about his own cellphone use, Dr. Bucher said he had never been a heavy user but, in light of the study, was now a little more aware of his usage. On long calls, he said, he tried to use earbuds or find other ways of increasing the distance between the cellphone and his body, in keeping with advice issued to consumers about how to lower their exposure. | Health |
Super Bowl LII P!nk, J Lo, Cardi B's Venue Evacuated After Gas Leak 1/31/2018 One of Minneapolis' main Super Bowl LII party venues -- hosting P!nk, Jennifer Lopez, Imagine Dragons, Diddy, DJ Khaled and Cardi B -- was just evacuated for a gas leak. Law enforcement sources tell us they responded to The Armory around 1 PM. We're told crews discovered the gas was coming from an above ground pressure relief valve. A rep for the MFD says the valve was completely drained by crews. Good thing. The venue's gonna be busy this week. Thursday: Imagine Dragons, Machine Gun Kelly, Mura MasaFriday: P!nkSaturday: Jennifer LopezSunday: Diddy, DJ Khaled, French Montana, Cardi B, G-Eazy We're told the evacuation's been lifted and operations at The Armory have resumed. | Entertainment |
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/technology/personaltech/gmail-vacation-responder.htmlTECH TIPIf youre determined to enjoy time off without electronic interruption, set up an automatic reply message so your friends know youre away.June 25, 2018Q. Can I set up a vacation bounce message in Gmail? If so, do those replies go to everyone, including spammers looking for live addresses?A. Gmail, along with other free mail services like Outlook.com, allows you to set up an automatic reply to new messages that hit your inbox when youd like to unplug for an extended period. And if you dont want the message to bounce back to everyone who sends you mail, you can limit who can receive your automated reply.To set up a vacation response message in the desktop version of Gmail, click the gear-shaped icon in the upper-right corner of the browser window and choose Settings from the menu. On the General tab of the Settings page, scroll down the page to the Vacation Responder section.ImageCredit...The New York TimesClick the button next to Vacation responder on and fill in the dates youd like the automatic reply to be active. Fill in the Subject line and the body of the message explaining that you are away and will not be answering your mail. Below the message body, click the box next to Only send a response to people in my Contacts to prevent the message from going out to anybody who is not in your Google address book.If you do not use the web version, you can set up the automatic reply in the Gmail mobile app for Android and iOS. Tap the Menu button in the upper-left corner and scroll down to Settings. Tap the name of your account, and, on the next screen, tap Vacation Responder. On the Vacation Responder screen, tap the button to the On position. Fill in the dates for the automatic-reply period and the message you want to use, and then tap the button next to Send only to my Contacts.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
Credit...Alan Goffinski, via Associated PressJune 27, 2018WASHINGTON James Alex Fields Jr., the suspect in the death of a woman who was mowed down along with others by a car last summer at a counterprotest to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was indicted on Wednesday on federal hate crime charges.The charges stood in contrast to President Trumps refusal to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis after the woman, Heather Heyer, was fatally struck. He declared that many sides shared blame as the violence touched off a firestorm over race relations in the United States.Last summers violence in Charlottesville cut short a promising young life and shocked the nation, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Wednesday. Todays indictment should send a clear message to every would-be criminal in America that we aggressively prosecute violent crimes of hate that threaten the core principles of our nation.Viewed with skepticism by civil rights advocates for his ambivalence over expanding protections for minorities, Mr. Sessions has nonetheless made enforcement of hate crime laws a key part of his civil rights agenda and his broader tough-on-crime platform. Hate crimes are violent crimes, Mr. Sessions, one of the first administration officials to forcefully denounce Ms. Heyers death, said last year.Mr. Fields, 21, was charged in the Western District of Virginia with one count of a hate crime resulting in the death of Ms. Heyer, as well as dozens of other counts of hate crime acts, which each carry a possible sentence of life in prison. He also faces first-degree murder charges in state court; the authorities say he drove the car that killed Ms. Heyer and injured dozens.Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Fields under two hate crime statutes that require proof that he was motivated to cause harm to other people because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion or national origin.Thomas Cullen, the United States attorney for western Virginia, called the 30-count indictment the culmination of a 10-month investigation that involved searching the social media accounts where Mr. Fields showed an interest in harming minorities.We have to get into somebodys head, and that takes time, Mr. Cullen told reporters in Charlottesville on Wednesday. Few people noticed Ms. Heyers mother and father slip into the back of the room as the news conference began.Her mother, Susan Bro, declined to say what punishment Mr. Fields should receive and said she would leave that to the process to decide. Mr. Sessions has not determined whether to seek the death penalty.The August rally in Charlottesville, organized by Unite the Right, which brought together several far-right groups, came amid a string of protests by white supremacist groups of removals of Confederate monuments across the South. Hundreds demonstrated against the citys decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. The rally, following a torch-lit march a night earlier, devolved quickly into racial taunts, shoves and brawls. The governor declared a state of emergency, and the police and the National Guard cleared the area.Mr. Fields was among the crowd of demonstrators engaged in chants promoting or expressing white supremacist and other racist and anti-Semitic views, according to the Justice Department. After they were dispersed, prosecutors said, Mr. Fields drove away and encountered a racially and ethnically diverse crowd of individuals at the bottom of a hill who were protesting discrimination.Fields slowly reversed his vehicle to the top of the hill, prosecutors wrote in the indictment in trying to underscore his intent, then rapidly accelerated, ran through a stop sign and across a raised pedestrian mall, and drove directly into the crowd. Mr. Fieldss car stopped only when it hit another vehicle, and then he fled, court papers said. Ms. Heyer was killed and dozens injured.In the hours and days afterward, Mr. Trump alternated his responses, condemning the violence but refusing at first to criticize white nationalists or the neo-Nazi slogans on display at the protest. He blamed hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides and said the demonstrators included some very fine people.Civil rights advocates rebuked Mr. Trump, his fellow Republicans rushed to condemn the resurgence of white supremacist rallies and others aligned with the White House withdrew their support, including several corporate executives, prompting the president to disband a pair of advisory councils they served on.But as conservatives and progressives castigated Mr. Trump, David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, sent the president an ominous warning. I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists, Mr. Duke wrote on Twitter.Mr. Sessions was in some ways an unusual voice to emerge from the Trump administration on the violence, first in denouncing it last summer and now in the Justice Department bringing hate crime charges. He has long been skeptical of expanding hate crime laws that create federal jurisdiction over certain assaults and murders.But on individual cases, Mr. Sessions has vowed to enforce the law, no matter his personal views. The Justice Department has brought several hate crime cases during his tenure. A Texas man was charged in an arson attack on a mosque, and Mr. Sessions personally initiated the move to send a veteran hate crimes lawyer to Iowa last year to prosecute the murder of a transgender high school student.The hate crime charges against Mr. Fields underscored Mr. Trumps refusal to condemn white supremacist views, said Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the former head of the Justice Departments civil rights division under President Barack Obama.This very important and robust indictment by career prosecutors in the civil rights division of the Justice Department stands in stark and painful contrast with a president who has refused to this day to unequivocally denounce the white supremacists, some of whom marched in his name, she said.The organizer of Unite the Right is planning another gathering on the anniversary of Ms. Heyers death in Charlottesville. Mr. Cullen said he hoped the indictment would send a message that racially motivated hate crimes and violent acts will not be tolerated in this district.Added Mike Signer, the former mayor of Charlottesville: Its important to keep in mind that this violence was much bigger than Mr. Fields, and theres much more that needs to be done to answer and stop todays extremism. | Politics |
Politics|New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/charges-cia-breach-vault-7.htmlJune 18, 2018WASHINGTON Federal prosecutors have charged a former software engineer at the center of a huge C.I.A. breach with stealing classified information, theft of government property and lying to the F.B.I.The engineer, Joshua A. Schulte, 29, of New York, had been the main suspect in one of the worst losses of classified documents in the spy agencys history.Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.s hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime.The breach, known as the Vault 7 leak, was a major embarrassment to the C.I.A. and set off a furious hunt to identify who was behind the 2017 disclosure.Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography. But in the new indictment, prosecutors accused him of repeatedly violating the Espionage Act.According to federal court documents, prosecutors said Mr. Schulte illegally obtained classified information in 2016 and then provided it to an organization, WikiLeaks, that posted it online.Prosecutors also charged him with transmitting malicious computer code and improperly gaining access to a delicate government computer system. The authorities said he granted himself access to the system and tried to conceal his activities. Prosecutors also accused him of copyright infringement.Prosecutors said the crimes occurred in Virginia, where the C.I.A. is based.The new charges are not entirely unexpected; prosecutors said in May that they had planned to file a new indictment in the next 45 days. Mr. Schultes lawyers had urged the government to make a decision regarding the Vault 7 leak charges.As the evidence is flushed out, it will become clear that Mr. Schulte is hardly the villain the government makes him out to be, Sabrina P. Shroff, his public defender in New York, said in a statement on Monday.His family claims he did not do anything wrong.Mr. Schulte worked in the C.I.A.s Engineering Development Group, which designed the hacking tools used by its Center for Cyber Intelligence. In late 2016, he left the spy agency and moved to New York to work for Bloomberg.In a previous statement, WikiLeaks said the source of the damaging disclosure had hoped to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.Prosecutors have also weighed charges against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that arresting Mr. Assange was a priority for the Justice Department. Mr. Assange believes he is a journalist, a claim that could complicate a prosecution.Mr. Assange continues to live in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had fled to in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on accusations of rape. Last year, Swedens prosecutors announced that they had abandoned their attempt to extradite him. | Politics |
VideoEvery so often, the Super Bowl turns into a rout, which is exactly what happened on Sunday night at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.CreditCredit...Carlo Allegri/ReutersFeb. 3, 2014EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. After the Super Bowl, in the concrete corridor connecting the locker rooms of the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos, players and coaches came and went.Peyton Manning and John Elway went one way, separately, a pair of aging quarterbacks left searching for their dose of validation.Pete Carroll came the other. The coach of the Seahawks, he stepped into the locker room to a raucous celebration: Players and team employees posed with the Lombardi Trophy, and the introverted running back Marshawn Lynch danced to celebrate Seattles 43-8 victory.Carroll called his players to the middle of the room.We have done everything the way weve wanted to get it done, Carroll, his voice hoarse, shouted through the din. Im so proud, fellas, Im so proud, that we are standing here, right now, in this moment.The moment felt like a change in direction for the N.F.L. The league had brought the Super Bowl to its New York metropolitan area headquarters and staged a game in the outdoor elements, a throwback to the pre-Super Bowl age. It provided the perfect backdrop for a pair of icons representing the leagues past 30 years Manning, the 37-year-old Denver quarterback, and Elway, the Hall of Fame quarterback now running the Broncos to stamp their storied careers.On this night, they were headed one way.Then Carroll and the Seahawks came the other all youthful enthusiasm, rah-rah coaching philosophies, a roster of overlooked players representing a ravenous fan base looking for its first championship to celebrate.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWhat about this defense? Carroll shouted, hoisting the trophy and eliciting cheers from the circle around him. He moved on to the offense, then the special teams. He listed players by name, he cited the power of the teams fans in Seattle and he implored the players to do something rarely suggested by a coach. He told them to stay up all night long.Carroll, 62, is coaching his third N.F.L. team, but his first since lifting Southern California to dominance in the last decade. When he joined the Seahawks in 2010, he brought that collegial enthusiasm and a belief in positive thinking to the N.F.L., where fun long has been considered a weakness to be eradicated by discipline.General Manager John Schneider overhauled Seattles roster, dotting it with heavy doses of undrafted players, the kind hungry to prove their worth. He drafted quarterback Russell Wilson two years ago in the third round, after all of the other teams overlooked him because his height 5 feet 11 inches was deemed too short for an N.F.L. quarterback, nothing at all like Manning. Or Elway. Even Mannings backup in Denver, Brock Osweiler, was drafted ahead of Wilson.So many people told me I couldnt do it, said Wilson, who completed 18 of 25 passes for 206 yards, 2 touchdowns and no interceptions, a performance that far outshone that of Manning, named the N.F.Ls most valuable player on Saturday for the fifth time.Seattle has one of the youngest teams in the N.F.L. Only three Super Bowl champions had a lower average age: the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers, the 1981 San Francisco 49ers and the 1985 Chicago Bears. The Steelers won four Super Bowls over six years, the 49ers won three in the 1980s, and the Bears were a powerhouse for several seasons.The Broncos may well return to the Super Bowl next year, particularly if Manning returns, which seems likely, though perhaps dictated by off-season tests of his surgically repaired neck.But Denver feels like a team trying to squeeze something from the present. The Seahawks feel like a team at the start of something big.ImageCredit...Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesIf we stay together were young, were talented we feel like we can keep doing this and doing this and doing this, linebacker Bobby Wagner said.Against the Broncos, five Seahawks scored a touchdown. One was Doug Baldwin, an undrafted receiver. Another was Jermaine Kearse, also undrafted.Linebacker Malcolm Smith, who returned an interception for a touchdown, recovered a fumble and was named the games M.V.P., was a seventh-round draft pick in 2011. He had started three games before this season. Asked after the game about his 40-yard dash time at the postcollege scouting combine, he said he had not been invited.Seattles top-ranked defense dismantled Manning and Denvers record-setting offense, shutting out the leagues highest-scoring team ever until the final play of the third quarter.The performance elicited comparisons to defensive champions of the past, like the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s, the Bears of the 1980s and the Baltimore Ravens of a more-recent vintage.It is a defense rooted in fundamentals and built on speed. During the season, the Seahawks practice tackling on Tuesdays. During the Super Bowl, they made Denver look old and slow.Were fast, were physical and we played this game on our terms, the defensive coordinator, Dan Quinn, said.ImageCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesMany players credited Schneider and, especially, Carroll for taking a chance on them and believing in their abilities when so many others did not. A recent poll asked N.F.L. players which coach they would most like to have. It was Carroll, seemingly wired for the current generation amid a fraternity of old-school coaches.Hes the most positive, forward-thinking coach for the players of today that Ive seen, the Seahawks owner, Paul Allen, said in the locker room. Its just amazing.Shortly after Allen gushed about his coach, Carroll, fresh from a news conference and other interviews, bounded into Seattles locker room actually, the locker room of the Giants, their logos all covered by Super Bowl banners.Sometime before the team arrived after the game, a banner had been hung that pronounced the Seahawks the champions. Carroll stood below it as he addressed the team.One more thing, he shouted. As close as we are right now, we will never be separated from this moment.The Seahawks finished with their usual routine.We all we got! a player shouted.We all we need! the chorus, including Carroll, sang. The refrain was repeated three times.Then, in unison, a full-throated final question: Whats next?The answer: a victory parade scheduled for Wednesday in Seattle, and a league left trying to figure out how to be more like the newest Super Bowl champions. | Sports |
A limited C.D.C. study finds no significant change in hospitalization outcomes during the U.S. Delta wave.Other larger, more specific studies, however, have found greater risks when people are infected with the highly infectious variant. Credit...Grant Hindsley for The New York TimesOct. 22, 2021Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday took aim at the question of whether the Delta variant of the coronavirus causes more severe disease, finding no significant differences in the course of hospitalized patients illnesses during the Delta wave compared to earlier in the pandemic.But larger and more detailed studies from a number of other countries have found that people with Delta infections were considerably more likely to be hospitalized in the first place a trend that the C.D.C. study was unable to address because of limitations in its data. The C.D.C. study also said that the proportion of older hospitalized patients needing intensive care or dying had shown some signs of increasing during the Delta wave.Deltas higher level of infectiousness has made it a far greater challenge than earlier versions of the virus, but the question of whether it also causes more serious disease has loomed as it swept around the world. The Alpha variant, an earlier version first detected in Britain, appeared to be linked to a higher risk of death, though scientists have also tried to understand whether factors besides the variant were playing a role.Studies in England, Scotland, Canada and Singapore suggested that the Delta variant was associated with more severe illness, a finding that scientists have said raises the risk that outbreaks of the variant in unvaccinated areas may put a bigger burden on health systems. Unlike the C.D.C. study, those studies drew on genomic sequencing, allowing researchers to distinguish infections with the Delta variant and to track patients from before they enter a hospital.Without access to sequencing data, the C.D.C. researchers could not determine which variants the patients may have been infected with. It also examined patients already admitted to hospitals, making it impossible to determine whether they were at higher risk of needing hospital care in the first place.The study, released on Friday, examined roughly 7,600 Covid hospitalizations, comparing July and August when Delta dominated to earlier months this year, and found no significant change in hospitalized patients outcomes.The study said that the proportion of hospitalized patients aged 50 and older who died or were admitted to intensive care generally trended upward in the Delta period, though the differences were not statistically significant and further work was needed. At the hospitals included in the study, roughly 70 percent of Covid patients were unvaccinated.The researchers said the findings matched those of other C.D.C. studies using similar methods that showed no significant differences in the outcomes of younger people hospitalized before and during the Delta surge.Outside scientists questioned the reliability of the study. Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, ran a larger study that found that people infected with the Delta variant had roughly twice the risk of hospitalization as people infected with variants that had not been labeled a concern. He said that such analyses needed to control for the range of factors that affect the course of Covid patients illnesses, and that the availability of vaccines, testing and treatments had all been changing during the pandemic.As this is the U.S. C.D.C., Im really surprised at the small sample sizes for individuals with more detailed clinical information, as well as the use of such rudimentary statistical methods to deal with these data, he said.Dr. Fismans study, drawing on 200,000 cases and published this month, also showed significantly increased risks of intensive care admission and death among those infected with the Delta variant, after accounting for their age, sex, vaccination status and other factors. Roughly 70 percent of people with Delta infections in the study were unvaccinated, and 28 percent were partially vaccinated. Fully vaccinated people are heavily protected from Covid.Similarly, a study in Scotland from June based on 20,000 Covid cases showed that Delta infections were associated with an 85 percent higher risk of hospitalization, though it allowed for a wide degree of uncertainty about the precise figure.And data from England, drawn from 43,000 cases and published in August, found that people infected with the Delta variant were just over twice as likely to be hospitalized as people with the Alpha variant, though the researchers in that study, too, were unsure of the precise figure.Roughly three-quarters of the patients in that study were unvaccinated, and most of the rest were only partially vaccinated. | Health |
Twenty years ago today, three astronauts stepped aboard the International Space Station. Since then, the I.S.S. has hosted hundreds of residents from many countries. This is a history of our first 20 years of living aboard. The Early Years The first two years aboard the I.S.S. were a flurry of activity and record-breaking events. Astronauts from all over the world visited the station for the first time, including people from Canada and Italy. Some records made in these earliest years remain unbroken today. Susan Helms and James Voss still hold the record for the longest spacewalk almost nine hours, completed in March 2001. Building a Home Between 2001 and 2002, nine structural components were attached onto the station. With the newly expanded space, astronauts began scientific experiments on topics like gene expression and the nervous system in microgravity. The early I.S.S. was also the birthplace of privately funded space travel. In April 2001, Dennis Tito paid millions of dollars for a seat on a Soyuz rocket to visit the I.S.S. The Columbia Disaster But soon the activity aboard the I.S.S. dwindled to a trickle. In February 2003, seven astronauts died aboard the space shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the Earths atmosphere. Following the disaster, the American space shuttle program halted and the I.S.S. was supplied entirely by Russian spacecraft for two and a half years. The number of crew living aboard the I.S.S. was also reduced from three to two. The Soyuz and the Shuttle The hiatus of the shuttle program also meant that construction aboard the I.S.S. came to a halt. The 60-foot space shuttles could carry thousands of pounds of cargo, while the Soyuz was only about a third of the shuttles size. Although other Russian resupply vehicles like the Progress could deliver some smaller components, new construction was also hindered by the reduced size of the crew aboard the I.S.S. Return to Flight The July 2005 launch was the first space shuttle mission since the Columbia disaster. In the two and a half years since the accident, the fleet was upgraded with many new features to increase safety. As part of these new procedures, this Discovery shuttle performed a backflip as it approached the I.S.S., so that astronauts aboard the space station could photograph the underside of the shuttle to check for damage. Language in Space In July 2006, Thomas Reiter became the first European astronaut to join an I.S.S. expedition. Throughout the history of the I.S.S., more than 240 individuals from 19 countries have visited the station. I.S.S. expedition members must speak at least some English and some Russian, to communicate with each other and with the mission control centers in both countries. First Marathon in Space In April 2007, Sunita Williams was one of the many runners participating in the Boston Marathon. But she was the only one running the race from space. Sunitas official time was just under 4.5 hours, and she ran while harnessed to a special treadmill with bungee cords. 2007 was also the first year that the I.S.S. had a woman commander: Peggy Whitson, who arrived with the Soyuz TMA-11 crew in October later that same year. Kimchi and Ice Cream When Yi So-yeon became the first Korean astronaut on the I.S.S. in 2008, she brought along specially formulated space kimchi for the journey. Alongside their standard menu, I.S.S. astronauts often receive small treats with the arrival of each supply ship, like fresh produce and even ice cream. The I.S.S. does not have a freezer or refrigerator for food on board, so the daily fare is a mix of freeze-dried, canned and dehydrated foods. The Japanese Experiment Modules In 2009, the three-part Japanese Experiment Module was finally completed. The Exposed Facility, the last piece to be installed, is a unique platform that continuously exposes science experiments to the space environment. The same year, Japan also sent their first cargo spacecraft to the I.S.S.: The Kounotori 1, named after a white stork. And Koichi Wakata became the first Japanese astronaut to live aboard as an expedition member. A Window in the Sky In March 2010, the space shuttle Endeavor arrived with a special cargo: The hexagonal Cupola with huge windows to the sky. The Cupola was designed to help astronauts inside the I.S.S. observe approaching ships and assist spacewalks. It also gave the I.S.S. residents a spectacular view of Earth. Throughout the next decade, astronauts beamed back dazzling photos of the Sahara, Northern and Southern lights and panoramas of their hometown seen from above. The Final Shuttle Mission On July 8 2011, the Atlantis shuttle launched from the Kennedy Space Center for the last time. After 30 years of flight, the American space shuttle program had ended. For the next nine years, Russian Soyuz rockets once again took up the mantle of ferrying astronauts to and from the I.S.S. The retired ships Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavor quietly live on as museum pieces at the Kennedy Space Center, Smithsonian Annex and California Science Center. The Dawn of Commercial Spaceflight Although American shuttles were no longer transporting astronauts, U.S. companies were just getting started ferrying cargo to space. In May an uncrewed SpaceX Dragon capsule became the first private spacecraft to dock to the I.S.S. It was swiftly followed by a second mission in October. And in September 2013, Orbital Sciences Corporation (an American company that has since been acquired by Northrop Grumman) sent its own first uncrewed ship. Accidents Aboard the Station In July 2013, a routine spacewalk was interrupted by a water leak in astronaut Luca Parmitanos helmet. In the unusually risky close call, Luca had to navigate back to the airlock by feel, because his vision and communication system were both affected by the leaking water. Despite this close call, accidents aboard the I.S.S. have been rare, and in the two decades of habitation there have been no fatalities in space. The Last European Cargo Flight Five Automated Transfer Vehicles, or A.T.V.s, supplied the I.S.S. with food and equipment during the early 21st century. The last A.T.V., Georges Lematre, launched in July 2014. The uncrewed cargo ship, like most others servicing the I.S.S., was designed for one-time use. After delivering its cargo, these capsules are filled with the stations garbage. They burn up harmlessly in the Earths atmosphere during re-entry. Planting Space Lettuce In April 2014, a SpaceX flight delivered an unusual cargo: Red romaine lettuce seeds, each nestled inside a special plant pillow full of fertilizer and a type of clay. This was the first fresh food production system aboard the I.S.S. This first crop was returned to Earth for analysis, where laboratory tests showed the lettuce was safe to eat. I.S.S. astronauts were able to enjoy the lettuce for themselves after their second crop was harvested in August 2015. The One-Year Crew In March 2015, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko arrived at the I.S.S. on a special mission. They were tasked with spending almost a full year aboard the ship, to study how long-duration space missions affect the human body. Scotts identical twin Mark, who remained on Earth, was also part of the experiment. Marks health could help estimate how Scotts body might have changed if he had not been in space. Science Aboard the I.S.S. The I.S.S. has hosted hundreds scientific experiments throughout the years, by students as well as professional researchers. The ship has plant habitats, aquariums and several rodent facilities that research how long-term spaceflight affects living creatures. One of the earliest I.S.S. outreach programs, called EarthKAM, allowed students to request photos of specific places on Earth, taken from a camera installed in the station. Emergency Planning In addition to delivering new astronauts to the station, Soyuz spacecraft serve as an escape pod in the event of an emergency evacuation. At least one Soyuz is always docked to the station for this purpose. 2018 was an eventful year for the Soyuz. In August, a small leak was discovered (and repaired) on the Soyuz MS-9, which was docked to the I.S.S. And in October, another Soyuz had an emergency abort in flight. First All-Woman Spacewalk In October 2019, NASA Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Jessica Meir concluded the first all-woman spacewalk. Both crew members are part of the 2013 astronaut class, which was the first to have an equal number of men and women. The spacewalk had originally been scheduled for earlier in March, but was postponed because the station did not have two medium-sized spacesuits that could be used without extensive configuration. The Dragon Arrives In May 2020, SpaceX made history by becoming the first commercial company to send astronauts to the I.S.S. Spacecraft Commander Doug Hurley and Joint Operations Commander Bob Behnken both veteran NASA astronauts remained aboard the I.S.S. for two months, conducting scientific experiments and spacewalks. They guided the Crew Dragon capsule to a safe landing off the coast of Florida in early August. Note: For arrivals, dates of installation are shown for I.S.S. components and launch dates for all others. Departures can show the date of landing on Earth or date of release from the I.S.S., due to discrepancies in reported data. Due to the time zone difference between the I.S.S. and landing sites, some dates may differ by one day from those reported elsewhere. Some smaller I.S.S. pieces delivered alongside major ship components are not shown as separate segments, and retired I.S.S. components are not shown. Events in which ships or I.S.S. components temporarily undocked and re-docked are not shown. Sources | Spacecraft illustrations and photographs were created by NASA. Spaceflight mission emblems were created by their respective mission organizations. Data was compiled from various publications and web pages by NASA, ESA, Encyclopedia Britannica, Northrop Grumman Cygnus, SpaceX and the F.A.A. Annual Compedium of Commercial Space Transportation. | science |
Extras small maneuvers before, during or after a major move could give the United States champion Gracie Gold the boost she needs to reach the Olympic podium. A Quick Turn Before a Jump Height and distance matter in jumps. But a quick turn, called a bracket, before the takeoff of Golds double axel, can add almost 10 percent to the jumps value. On the ice, the turn creates the pattern of a curly bracket. A Challenging Spin Position Gold enters a high-scoring combination spin with a challenging entry, known as a back entrance, and then holds her position for two revolutions. In her upright position, she adds points by lifting her left leg with one hand, creating a martini glass shape. Difficult Turns in Footwork Sequence Gold earns additional points by skimming across the ice while doing a series of rapid turns, called a twizzle, which helps increase the difficulty level of her footwork sequence. She also does a sequence of increasingly difficult turns on one foot while shifting direction. More on NYTimes.com | Sports |
Nets 105, Jazz 99Feb. 19, 2014SALT LAKE CITY Before the resumption of a wilting title chase came a minor retooling.As they readiedon Wednesdayto take on the Utah Jazz at Energy Solutions Arena, the Nets acquired guard Marcus Thornton from the Sacramento Kings in exchange for Jason Terry and Reggie Evans. And while the Nets eked out a 105-99 win to kick off a six-game trip, a vague feeling lingered that more changes were possible before the N.B.A.s trade deadlineon Thursday afternoon.Our owner is about trying to get the team going in the right direction with different pieces, and hes probably not done, Coach Jason Kidd said before the game of Mikhail D. Prokhorov, whose lofty aspirations have driven the teams payroll and luxury-tax payments far above those of any competitors.Thornton will make about $8 million this season and $8.5 million next season. His arrival pushed the Nets payroll to about $190 million, including a luxury-tax bill of about $88 million. The Nets were also reportedly trying to use their disabled-player exception to acquire Los Angeles Lakers forward Jordan Hill, which would trigger another $17 million or so in taxes.Well see what happens, Kidd said.Thornton, 26, built a reputation over his first four seasons as a proficient scorer, which has made this season particularly disappointing. Over those four seasons, he averaged 19.4 points per 36 minutes and shot 43.8 percent from the field. This season, he is scoring 12.3 points per 36 minutes and shooting 38.1 percent.The Nets (25-27) overcame a slow start against Utah, outscoring the Jazz by 27-18 in the third quarter to take a 1-point lead into the fourth. Shaun Livingstons behind-the-back assist on a Joe Johnson 3-pointer with just over four minutes left silenced the fans, and many headed to the exits once Deron Williams drilled a 3-pointer two minutes later.I thought defensively they were the aggressive team in the second half, Jazz Coach Tyrone Corbin said of the Nets, who forced 18 turnovers while committing only 7 of their own. They got our hands on us a little bit and got us out of our offense. We lost our rhythm there.Johnson led all scorers with 27 points. Andray Blatche scored 25, matching his career high, to help buoy the Nets, who were left momentarily short-handed after the trade. Williams had 19 points and 7 assists and, in his third try, earned his first win over his former club.It felt good to get one, said Williams, who had a scare in the fourth quarter when he took an elbow to the right side of his face, near his jaw. I thought it was broken, because Ive broken my jaw, and it felt about the same at first.Thornton is expected to join the Nets sometime before they play the Golden State Warriorson Saturdaynight. The trade, then, left the Nets short-handed on Wednesday.Terry, 36, was acquired from Boston in the trade that sent Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn. This season, his 15th in the N.B.A., has been his worst. He was averaging 4.5 points per game and shooting 36.2 percent enteringWednesday.Evans, 33, carved out a role as an inside scrapper with the Nets last season, averaging 11.1 rebounds a game. But this season, with his playing time cut almost in half, his average fell to 5.0.Garnett, who considers Terry a close friend and was a fan of Evans before ever playing with him, said he was saddened to see the two players leave. And he acknowledged that it would be a challenge, at this advanced stage of the season, to lose two players and try to incorporate a new face.Its very hard, especially when youre trying to integrate chemistry, Garnett said. In the second half, this is when you want to make your push. But the organization makes changes for the better. So, its what it is. | Sports |
DealBook|The Tax Acrobatics in the Dow-DuPont Dealhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/the-tax-acrobatics-in-the-dow-dupont-deal.htmlBreakingviewsDec. 15, 2015Credit...Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesInvestors cheering the planned merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont should raise a glass to the lawyers. Last weeks deal might never have come together without rarely exploited fine print in the United States tax code that should allow the companies to avoid any tax on capital gains.Dow and DuPont are planning a merger of equals followed by a breakup into three separate listed companies. Generally, the Internal Revenue Service discourages such multistep deals. When half or more of a units shares change hands in association with a spinoff, the parent company or shareholders can end up with a big tax bill. Dow shareholders taking a 50 percent stake in former DuPont assets as a result of the merger and split plan could generate a tax liability for DuPont or its owners, and vice versa.The relevant section of the tax code also gave the world the reverse Morris Trust, a convoluted structure that companies use to avoid taxes when planning a spinoff followed by a prearranged merger. Dow and DuPont, though, have carved out an even less common way to sidestep the I.R.S.The key is that investors who hold shares of both companies before the merger dont count toward the 50 percent threshold. With the merged business divided equally between the two groups of owners, all thats needed is overlapping shareholder registers and the same five institutions, led by Vanguard and State Street, appear in both companies top 10, according to Thomson Reuters data. This means Dow, DuPont and their owners should avoid paying tax, according to Robert Willens, a tax consultant.American companies engage in all manner of tax-saving contortions. Pfizer is expected to save billions of dollars by moving its tax domicile overseas as part of its $160 billion merger with the maker of Botox, Allergan, for example. Known as inversions, such deals have been criticized by politicians and the public.For Dow and DuPont, though, the strategic rationale of the whole plan is sound. And two United States industrial blue chips with essentially the same market value are bound to have common shareholders. The tax liability is also deferred until shares are sold, not removed altogether.Rather than being cagey, fitting the deal into byzantine tax rules looks like clever opportunism. | Business |
Technology|Apple Says War Zones Dont Ship Its Supplieshttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/technology/apple-says-supplies-dont-come-from-war-zones.htmlFeb. 13, 2014SAN FRANCISCO Apple released on Thursday its supplier responsibility report, and the company said its hardware factories did not use any tantalum, a metal commonly used in electronics, from areas engaged in warfare.Some warlords, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have profited from the sale of ores containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold to component suppliers that make parts for electronics. A grass-roots campaign has been pressing technology giants to keep minerals from those areas often called conflict minerals out of their supply chains.The company said it had verified through third parties that the tantalum smelters used by its suppliers were conflict-free. It said it was pushing suppliers of tin, tungsten and gold to also use sources verified as conflict-free.Nokia spoke up about conflict minerals two years ago and published a list of steps it was taking to avoid transactions involving conflict minerals.ImageCredit...AppleIn its supplier responsibility report, Apple also said that it was trying to put an end to excessively long workweeks. It said that last year it drove suppliers to an average of 95 percent compliance with its standard for a maximum workweek of 60 hours, up from 92 percent compliance the previous year.Workweeks exceeding 60 hours have been a persistent problem for the electronics industry, and reducing excessive overtime remains a priority for Apple, the company said in its report. We limit workweeks to 60 hours, except in unusual circumstances. And all overtime must be absolutely voluntary.Apple said it was investing in helping workers throughout its supply chain better understand their rights. It said that last year, more than 280,000 people at 18 supplier sites took courses offered through its free education program, and suppliers trained about 1.5 million workers on their rights.Apple released a list of its major suppliers as part of its supplier responsibility report for the first time two years ago, following other corporations like Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Nike, which have released similar lists.This is the eighth such report that Apple has released. The company started conducting audits and publishing reports in 2007 after media reports of poor working conditions at Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturer of products for Apple, Sony, Microsoft and others.Apples 2011 report showed that 137 workers had been seriously injured after cleaning iPad screens with n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause nerve damage and paralysis. The year before, there were several suicides among workers at Foxconn. | Tech |
Business BriefingDec. 10, 2015Delta Air Lines says it is banning hoverboards the motorized, two-wheel, skateboard-size scooters because of the fire danger from the lithium-ion batteries that power the devices. Hoverboards have been a hot gift item this year. The ban will take effect Friday. Passengers wont be allowed to pack a hoverboard in either checked luggage or a carry-on bag. Delta says some boards use batteries that exceed the wattage for batteries allowed on planes. JetBlue Airways has also banned the scooters. More than a dozen airlines around the world have stopped accepting bulk shipments of lithium-ion batteries. The Federal Aviation Administration says the batteries pose a safety risk. | Business |
Politics|A judge has blocked Trumps sweeping restrictions on asylum applications.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/a-judge-has-blocked-trumps-sweeping-restrictions-on-asylum-applications.htmlThe policy, set to take effect next week, would have closed the doors of the United States to most asylum seekers.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from implementing a rule, set to take effect next week, that would have closed the doors of the United States to most asylum seekers.The sweeping clampdown on asylum would have prevented a large swath of people from qualifying for protection in the United States by narrowing eligibility. Applicants who had not first sought asylum in a transit country through which they had passed; had lived in the United States for a year without permission or had claimed persecution based on sexual orientation would be disqualified.Though President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. could take action to reverse the policy once in office, it would take several months to undo it because it had already been finalized.Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court for Northern California issued a nationwide injunction on procedural grounds, saying that the acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, lacked authority to impose the rule because he had not been properly confirmed for his position. In his decision, Judge Donato pointed out that it was the fifth time that a court had ruled against the government on the same grounds.In effect, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping that someday it might break through, the judge, an Obama appointee, wrote in his 14-page opinion.Justice Department lawyers had argued that the restrictions were necessary to curb abuse of an asylum system that they said was overwhelmed with frivolous claims. Immigrant advocates and lawyers said that the policy would have spelled the demise of the U.S. asylum system.The rule would have been the death knell for many asylum seekers, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School. The courts decision today leaves the door open for people fleeing persecution.The rule would have gutted the U.S. asylum system and violated both U.S. and international law, he said. | Politics |
VideotranscripttranscriptYellen on Likelihood of Rate IncreaseThe Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, said any decision to raise interest rates would be a testament to the economys progress toward recovery.SHOWS: WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 2, 2015) // 2. (SOUNDBITE) (English) FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN JANET YELLEN SAYING: However, we must also take into account the well-documented lags in the effects of monetary policy. Were the F.O.M.C. to delay the start of policy normalization for too long, we would likely end up having to tighten policy relatively abruptly to keep the economy from significantly overshooting both of our goals. Such an abrupt tightening would risk disrupting financial markets and perhaps even inadvertently push the economy into recession. Moreover, holding the federal funds rate at its current level for too long could also encourage excessive risk-taking and thus undermine financial stability. // 4. (SOUNDBITE) (English) FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN JANET YELLEN SAYING: The economy has come a long way toward the FOMCs objectives of maximum employment and price stability. When the Committee begins to normalize the stance of policy, doing so will be a testament, also, to how far our economy has come in recovering from the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. In that sense, it is a day that I expect we all are looking forward to.The Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, said any decision to raise interest rates would be a testament to the economys progress toward recovery.CreditCredit...Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesDec. 2, 2015WASHINGTON Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said on Wednesday that economic conditions were ripe for the Fed to start raising its benchmark interest rate this month, a move that appears all but inevitable barring a sharp change in the economic weather.I think the economy is on the road to recovery, Ms. Yellen said. Were doing well.While insisting the Feds policy-making committee would not make a final decision until its meeting Dec. 15 and 16, Ms. Yellen said raising rates 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 said.The remarks by Ms. Yellen, before the Economic Club of Washington, and by other Fed officials in separate appearances on Wednesday, suggested that Fed officials had concluded that the economy was strong enough to keep growing with less support from the central bank.The Fed has held short-term rates near zero for seven years, seeking to stimulate the economy by pushing lenders to take larger risks and encouraging businesses and consumers to borrow. When the Fed begins to raise interest rates, it will reduce those incentives.The Fed will get one more big piece of economic data before its December meeting. The government on Friday will release a preliminary estimate of November job growth. Absent an unexpected labor market collapse, investors and analysts expect the Fed to move.Short of saying Were going to hike rates in two weeks time, Ms. Yellens remarks could hardly have been clearer, wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.Ms. Yellen offered an upbeat assessment of economic conditions, although she emphasized that the recovery from the recession remained incomplete. She said labor markets had improved substantially, and she noted a welcome pickup in wage growth.The economy has come a long way toward the F.O.M.C.s objectives of maximum employment and price stability, she said, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee, the Feds policy-making group.She added, I anticipate continued economic growth at a moderate pace that will be sufficient to generate additional increases in employment, further reductions in the remaining margins of labor market slack and a rise in inflation to our 2 percent objective.The Fed painted a similar picture in greater detail in its latest beige book, a compendium of economic reports from the 12 regional reserve banks also released on Wednesday. It reported that economic activity increased at a modest pace across most of the country. It also noted increased wage pressures, particularly for skilled workers in fields like nursing and software development.She noted also that some drags on the economy had subsided. The risks from foreign economic events have diminished, and Ms. Yellen said she expected that government spending would contribute to growth in the coming years. That is a significant change from the postcrisis period, when a combination of spending cuts and battles over fiscal policy weighed on the economic recovery.Other Fed officials have joined Ms. Yellen in beating the drum.Absent information that drastically changes the economic picture and outlook, I feel the case for liftoff is compelling, Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and a policy bellwether, said in a speech Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.Mr. Lockhart said the December meeting could be historic in character.John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and, like Mr. Lockhart, a centrist on monetary policy, offered a similar take in a speech in Portland, Ore.Weve made remarkable progress and the economy is on the cusp of full health, he said. The next appropriate step is to raise rates. My preference is sooner rather than later.A minority of Fed officials continue to express misgivings that the economy is ready for higher rates, but the focus of internal debate has shifted to the pace of subsequent increases.Lael Brainard, a Fed governor who has emerged in recent months as a leading proponent of caution, said in a speech on Tuesday that the Fed should take a cautious and gradual approach. Ms. Brainard said the weakness of the global economy posed significant risks to the domestic economy.She has also emphasized that the domestic economy remains weak by historical standards.The Fed stimulates the economy by holding interest rates below the level that would otherwise prevail, based on the demand for money. But demand remains weak, and that natural interest rate accordingly remains quite low. The gap between the Feds policy rate and the real rate accordingly may be quite small, a reason to move slowly in increasing the benchmark rate.Ms. Yellen acknowledged this point on Wednesday, saying it was a reason for the Fed to move carefully. But she said she expected the natural rate to rise with the economy.The Fed is basically ready to make a bet that the economy will continue to recover. Monetary policy exerts a gradual influence on economic conditions, so the Fed must constantly guess what happens next. And officials are increasingly convinced that the odds are on the side of higher rates.Waiting too long, Ms. Yellen said, might even inadvertently push the economy into recession. | Business |
Alison Brie Defends Bro-in-Law James Franco ... At SAG Awards 2018 1/21/2018 James Franco has his sister-in-law squarely in his corner at the SAG Awards ... 'cause she just defended him amid allegations of sexual misconduct. At the 2018 #SAGAwards, Alison Brie addressed the allegations of sexual misconduct made against her brother-in-law, James Franco: "It remains vital that anyone that feels victimized should and does have the right to speak out and come forward." pic.twitter.com/dG5uJJVko7 @enews Alison Brie -- who's married to James' younger brother, Dave Franco -- was talking to Giuliana Rancic Sunday at the Shrine Auditorium when she was asked about Time's Up and the accusations against her brother-in-law. She had a diplomatic response at first, saying the Francos supported anyone who felt victimized coming forward and speaking -- but then made it clear ... she supports her family, adding that not all of the info being reported about James was accurate. As we reported ... Franco stands accused of sexual misconduct by at least 5 women. He's denied the allegations against him, and has since avoided most public events. | Entertainment |
Credit...Tim Goessman for The New York TimesJune 3, 2018BIG SANDY, Mont. Under a nearly cloudless sky on the sun-speckled northern prairie last Tuesday, Jon Tester, this states senior senator, had his hands deep inside a 25-year-old grain auger.In Washington, the White House was letting it be known that President Trump was planning a summertime blitz against Democrats running for re-election in states that he had won, a tour that would surely bring him to Montana, where the presidents margin was 20 percentage points.Mr. Tester had recently torpedoed the nomination of the presidents personal physician, Ronny L. Jackson, to be his secretary of veterans affairs, incurring Mr. Trumps wrath very dishonest and sick! the commander in chief thundered on Twitter.But Mr. Tester, a third-generation lentil and pea farmer trying to make up for a late spring, was far more concerned with a broken shear pin that had stopped his bright red auger, which he needed to raise and store leftover seed from the 1,800 or so acres his family has been working for a century. Another repair job a few days earlier had taken out a fresh chunk of flesh from his famously mangled left hand. (Mr. Tester lost three fingers to a meat grinder as a child.)See, this job was supposed to take 45 minutes three days ago, he said with amusement, beads of sweat dripping from his close-cropped hair, as Sharla, his wife and farming partner, looked on. Im gonna need a designated cusser, he added, before filling the job himself.ImageCredit...Tim Goessman for The New York TimesIf nothing else, Mr. Tester is incautious, at least compared to most of the other Senate Democrats up for re-election this fall in states that Mr. Trump won big. While Mr. Tester voted against the presidents nominees for secretary of state and C.I.A. director, the Democratic senators from West Virginia, North Dakota and Indiana were quick to register votes in support. They certainly did not publicize blistering charges against Dr. Jackson or any other Trump cabinet nominee.I know things about Tester that I could say, too, the president warned ominously at a campaign rally in late April, after a weekend of tweets calling for the Montanan to resign. And if I said them, hed never be elected again.The attacks sent a bolt of energy through Republicans here and in Washington, who warn that Mr. Tester should not be so sanguine. They say his liberal voting record against Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, against the Republican tax cuts, and against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act belies his claims to be a Montana moderate and makes him out of sync with his state. And with Mr. Trump and his policies largely viewed favorably here, they are betting that an engaged president can help drive a decisive wedge between Mr. Trumps voters and their senator.Jon Tester no longer can say that he supports the principles and values of the people of Montana, said Matt Rosendale, the state auditor, who is the front-runner in Tuesdays Republican primary. He added that the people of Montana know it now.But unlike other red-state Democrats, Mr. Tester did not draw a top-tier Republican challenger. Two top potential recruits stayed out of the race Ryan Zinke, a former congressman and the current interior secretary, and Montanas attorney general, Tim Fox. Mr. Rosendale, who has tied himself closely to Mr. Trump, is seen as slightly less of a threat the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat as likely Democratic.The only way you can knock out Jon Tester is if you shake peoples faith in his strength, said David C.W. Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University who wrote a book about Mr. Testers 2012 campaign. Whether it will work, Im not too sure.On his farm, surrounded by a sparsely populated expanse of quietude, Mr. Tester said he was confident that after 12 years in Washington, voters understood where he was coming from.This is important. This is who I am, Mr. Tester, 61, said as he took a seat in the shade of his tool shop and looked out over a piece of the flat farmland his grandparents first homesteaded a century ago.That, in short, is Mr. Testers pitch for a third term in Washington. In a state that is still largely rural and tinged with a libertarian mistrust of big government, Mr. Tester drives a beat-up pickup truck, shoots guns and has little to say about his partys internecine fights. Voters know where he stands, he reasons. Mr. Rosendale, he is likely to remind voters, is a real estate developer from Maryland.Mr. Tester is betting that his votes against high-profile Republican priorities will matter less than the support he has lent to measures like the repeal of Dodd-Frank banking regulations on community banks that are popular with Montanans. One in 10 Montanans is a veteran, making his role as a Democratic linchpin for a flood of veterans legislation coming out of Washington a particularly valuable asset. And despite the presidents tongue-lashing, Mr. Tester said he would welcome a visit.For now, that message appears to be resonating.In Fort Benton, a sleepy hamlet along the banks of the Missouri River not far from Big Sandy, Ron Young, the president of the town bank, said that he identified with conservative policies, but admired Mr. Tester. Over a midday tea one day last week, Mr. Young sounded pleasantly surprised that the senator whom he has known for years from his work on the state banking association had voted in favor of repealing parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law in an effort to ease regulations on small and medium-size banks like his.I think that overall, Jon is seen as somebody who will listen to you, Mr. Young said. He might vote differently, but hes honest in his approach. Thats rare.ImageCredit...Tim Goessman for The New York TimesMr. Young said he had bristled when Mr. Trump set his sights on Mr. Tester over the failed Jackson nomination.I have a real problem with him being attacked just for raising it, Mr. Young said. And, he added quietly, I dont believe for a minute Jon was making things up.A few hours away, in Butte, a labor stronghold in the copper-rich mountains of southwest Montana that has been slowly shifting away from Democrats, Chris Thomas said Mr. Tester was a rare breed: He follows through.Butte doesnt seem to fall into play with a lot of things were promised, Ms. Thomas said during a break from work at Wilhelm Flower Shoppe. The daughter and wife of veterans, Ms. Thomas was speaking of the recent commitment, secured in part by Mr. Tester after more than a decade of trying, for federal funding to build a 40-bed veterans home there. I like to feel somebody is speaking a voice for me, she said.She doubted that the president she voted for could sway her away from the senator she still supports.Im stronger for Tester, I think, than Trump, she said.Katie Hanning, another Trump supporter who manages a home builders association in Great Falls, was left with an unsavory feeling by the Jackson episode, but she said that on balance, she was pleased with Mr. Testers vote on the banking bill and his role shaping legislation that will make it easier for veterans to see private doctors.ImageCredit...Tim Goessman for The New York TimesWe let a lot of that noise be noise for a while and then make a decision, Ms. Hanning said.Are we 100 percent happy with him? she said. No, but were happy.Still, that is far from a consensus view. Mr. Tester has never won more than 50 percent of the vote here, and large rural swaths of the state remain out of reach for him. Even in Butte, a mining town where he retains strong support, the senator has some detractors.I have absolutely no love for him at all, said Jerry Kennedy, a musician who has shifted from supporting Democrats to mostly Republicans. He painted the treatment of Dr. Jackson as the latest example of Mr. Testers dishonesty.He absolutely trashed him. There was absolutely no reason to do that, Mr. Kennedy said.But Bill Hill, a retired conservationist and guide who was sitting a few yards away, interjected that Mr. Tester was better than most politicians he had voted to send to Washington. And, he added, with a look toward his friend: Hes the only guy in Washington with a flattop haircut.O.K., Ill go with that, Mr. Kennedy nodded. I like the haircut.Mr. Tester is unapologetic about the way he handled the charges against Dr. Jackson. They were serious, including allegations that he loosely administered drugs as the White House doctor and drank on the job, and they came from serious people, he said.Sweep it under the table and act like nothing happened? Thats not my style, Mr. Tester said.He was sitting at the kitchen table inside his modest aluminum-siding-clad home the weekend after Dr. Jackson withdrew his nomination when his chief of staff called to report the presidents tweets.They were brutal, the men agreed. Thatll make some news, Mr. Tester recalled saying. Then he got on his tractor to lay seed that a wet winter had delayed for about a month. | Politics |
Tupac Accuser Ayanna Jackson Gives Disturbing Account of Rape Publicly For First Time 1/30/2018 VLADTV Ayanna Jackson -- the woman Tupac Shakur sexually assaulted -- spoke publicly for the first time since the trial about the incident that sent the rapper to prison. Ayanna describes the disturbing sexual assault ... claiming Tupac told her he wanted to share her with his friends and persisted to force her into a group sex situation despite her repeatedly telling him no. Jackson tells VladTV ... her pantyhose and dress were ripped off by members of Pac's entourage while she was on top of him, and insists she was raped by Tupac that night in his hotel room in 1993. Tupac was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse and was sentenced to 1.5 to 4.5 years behind bars, but was released after 9 months. The rapper repeatedly said he was innocent of the charges. | Entertainment |
Amber Rose I Got A Lot Off My Chest 1/30/2018 Amber Rose's Chick-fil-A craving got her out and about Monday in Bev Hills after she underwent an intense breast reduction surgery a little over week ago. Amber went from a size H to a size D cup. She said she went through with the surgery because she wanted more freedom and to be able to wear spaghetti straps again, something she hasn't done since she was 10. She spent about a week recovering at a wellness center and the difference is already obvious, even with Amber wearing a baggy tee. | Entertainment |
Dec. 22, 2015A list for pasta lovers. An article about sleep deprivation. A web page detailing the history of cocaine traffickers.Advertisers and publishers say these types of ads known as native ads and packaged to look like journalism are less intrusive and more appealing (not to mention more likely to be shared on social media) than other online ads. But consumer advocates say this native advertising can be intentionally misleading, and they have long called for some kind of federal regulation.On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission issued a guide on native advertising intended to prevent customers from being deceived. The long-awaited guidelines function as a warning shot to the online ad industry and lay out for the first time how advertisers and publishers should deploy and label native ads.The agency states, for instance, that advertisers should not use terms such as Promoted or Promoted Stories, which in this context are at best ambiguous and potentially could mislead consumers that advertising content is endorsed by a publisher site. The F.T.C. also provides guidance on where disclosures should appear. If a native ad appears as a user scrolls down a web page, for example, a disclosure should not appear below the ad.People browsing the web, using social media, or watching videos have a right to know if theyre seeing editorial content or an ad, Jessica L. Rich, director of the F.T.C.s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.The F.T.C.s guidance caps a long period of growth in native advertising, which mimics the look and feel of the host site.But proponents of the ads contend that any rules could stymie the development of a tool that has become an increasingly important source of revenue for publishers. The practice has grown ever more popular in recent years as advertisers and publishers including Forbes, Yahoo, BuzzFeed and The New York Times have sought to reach savvy web users who increasingly block or simply ignore traditional online ads. And native ads have only grown more popular as consumers spend more time on their mobile phones, whose small screens have prompted marketers to look beyond intrusive banner ads and pop-ups. The Association of National Advertisers reported in January that nearly two-thirds of marketers surveyed said they planned to increase their spending on native advertising this year.Native is so organic, said Henry Tajer, the global chief executive of IPG Mediabrands. Its like ivy.The tactic now called native advertising is not new many radio ads, magazine inserts and infomercials, for example, have long used a similar strategy. But native ads have grown more sophisticated online, and the line between marketing and journalism has blurred.In their more basic forms, sponsored stories and blog posts, sometimes created by the publishers themselves, appear alongside news articles and other content. (Forbess BrandVoice, for instance, allows advertisers like Fidelity and IBM to produce their own editorial content, which then appears on the Forbes site in the same style as an article done by the magazine.)Other types of native ads include posts on Facebook and Twitter, paid-search results, and recommended links.But the way publishers designate native ads is inconsistent and often vague a shaded box or a small label with some version of the phrase sponsored by. What all native ads have in common is that their appearance blends in with the rest of the page; on first glance, it is often unclear that native ads are ads at all.Native advertising is product placement on digital steroids, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. Theres no way that saying, This is an ad, means anything.The rise of automated ad buying and the ability to show tailored ads to specific groups of people means advertisers can now serve native ads to targeted consumers based on their online behavior. A user who recently searched for doctors in Los Angeles might see a sponsored article for trusted physicians in California.These kinds of targeted native ads have drawn particular concern from consumer-privacy advocates, who say no amount of labeling can make them less nefarious.Mr. Chester, who sent several memos and letters to the F.T.C. about native ads, expressed concern that the F.T.C.s guidance did not address how advertisers are using data to serve consumers specific native ads based on their interests and online behavior.Whats needed is a 21st-century set of safeguards that enable consumers to control the data used to deliver them ads, especially formats like native that are specially designed to be disguised as content, Mr. Chester said in a statement.Some industry executives warned that the guidelines could be seen as toothless: The F.T.C. is an enforcement agency and its recommendations are not laws. Still, publishers and advertisers who do not comply with the guidelines risk being held out as examples of bad actors. There could also be financial sanctions.Marketers and publishers, however, worry that the guidelines could stifle further advancements in an area that they both have come to increasingly rely on.As soon as you start to standardize things and put guidelines around things, you limit the level of creativity and innovation that is able to occur, said Mark Howard, the chief revenue officer of Forbes Media. If you put out stringent guidelines, are you going to put people back in the box? | Business |
matterThe extreme metabolism of some snakes could provide leads on how to regenerate human tissue.Elanor, a Burmese python, feeding on a rat in the converted garage of David Nelson, who has several snakes near Tuscaloosa, Ala.Credit...Published May 12, 2020Updated May 22, 2020TUSCALOOSA, Ala. On a cold, gray winter day, Stephen Secor drove to the outskirts of town to catch up with some old friends. He pulled into the driveway of David and Amber Nelson, who welcomed him into their converted basement, filled with stacks of refrigerator-size, glass-doored cages. Each cage contained a massive snake. Some of the Nelsons pythons and boa constrictors were recent adoptions from Dr. Secors lab, a few miles to the west at the University of Alabama.Dr. Secor and Mr. Nelson, a product manager at a local car parts factory, hoisted the snakes one at a time out of their cages.Hello, Monty, hows my sweetheart? Dr. Secor asked a tan Burmese python as it slithered up his shoulders. Montys a good snake, arent you?Oh yeah, Mr. Nelson said, as if he was referring to his toy Pomeranian upstairs. But Mr. Nelson never let his guard down, even as he let another snake flick its tongue over his eyebrow. Any of these could kill you if you let it, he said, somehow cheerfully.It was feeding day. The snakes had not eaten for two weeks. They were now about to perform one of the most extraordinary acts of metabolism in the animal kingdom a feat that Dr. Secor has been exploring for a quarter of a century.He has been finding adaptations throughout the snakes entire body, such as the ability to rapidly expand organs and then shrink them back down. His findings offer tantalizing clues that might someday be applied to our own bodies as medical treatments.Mr. Nelson opened the cage that held a dark gray Burmese python named Haydee, and heaved in a large rat.The rat stood frozen in the corner, but Haydee ignored her new roommate for several minutes. She slowly raised her metallic-colored head, indifferently flicking her tongue. And suddenly Haydee became a missile.She shot across the cage, snagged the rat with her upper teeth and wrapped her thick midriff around her victim. Between Haydees coils, the upended rat was still visible, its back legs and tail jerking in the air. It heaved for a while with rapid breaths, then stopped.Haydee loosened her grip and raised her head to the door, as if wondering if more rats were in the offing. Then she turned back to her prey, nose to nose, and opened her mouth wide.ImageShe used her side teeth to pull her head over the dead rodent. Her jaws stretched apart to make room, and she worked the rat into her expanding throat. She arched her head up toward the door, as if offering her human audience a chance to say farewell to the rat as its hind legs and tail slid into its esophagus.But Haydees performance was far from over. Pythons and several other kinds of snakes regularly eat a quarter of their body weight at once. Sometimes a meal will outweigh them. Over the next few days, they break their prey down and absorb almost all of it.Dr. Secor started studying how these snakes alternate between fasts and feasts since graduate school, and has been developing new ways to study them. These days, he is collaborating with genome experts to investigate the animals in molecular detail. Together the scientists are finding that snakes perform a genetic symphony, producing a torrent of new proteins that enable their body to quickly turn into an unrivaled digestion machine.I am a huge fan theyre taking state-of-the-art genomics and pushing the boundaries on what we can understand, said Harry Greene, a Cornell University snake expert who is not involved in the project. Its not too preposterous to imagine that could have fantastic human health implications.As a graduate student, Dr. Secor studied how sidewinder rattlesnakes survived as they went from long fasts to gulping down whole animals. He wondered how much energy they needed to digest a meal.When he came to U.C.L.A. as a postdoctoral researcher, he decided to find out. He fed mice to his rattlesnakes and then put them in a sealed box. He could analyze samples of air from the box to track how much oxygen they breathed to burn fuel.In two days, I had these numbers that made no sense, he said.When mammals feed, their metabolic rate goes up between 25 and 50 percent. The rattlesnakes jumped about 700 percent.Dr. Secor switched to pythons and found that they reached even greater extremes. If a python eats a quarter of its body weight, its metabolic rate jumps 1,000 percent. But pythons can eat their whole body weight if Dr. Secor has enough rats on hand. In those cases, their metabolic rate can soar by 4,400 percent, the highest ever recorded for an animal.For comparison, a horse in full gallop increases its metabolic rate by about 3,500 percent. But whereas a horse may gallop for a couple minutes in the Kentucky Derby, a python can keep its metabolic rate at its extreme elevation for two weeks.Dr. Secor has spent years investigating what the snakes are doing with all that extra fuel. For one thing: making stomach acid.We add some acid to our stomach a few times a day to handle our regular meals. But when a python is fasting, its stomach contains no acid at all. Its pH is the same as water.Within a few hours of swallowing an animal, Dr. Secor found, a snake produces a torrent of acid that will remain in its stomach for days, breaking down the snakes prey.Meanwhile, the snakes intestines go through a remarkable growth spurt. Intestinal cells have fingerlike projections that soak up sugar and other nutrients. In a snake, those cells swell, their fingers growing five times longer. A python can triple the mass of its small intestines overnight. Suddenly its digestive tract can handle the huge wave of food coming its way.Once all that food is circulating through the snakes bloodstream, its other organs have to cope with it. Dr. Secor and his colleagues have found that the rest of a snakes body responds in a similarly impressive fashion. Its liver and kidney double in weight, and its heart increases 40 percent.By the time the rat in Haydees esophagus makes it to the end of her large intestines, all that remains is a packet of hair. Everything else will be coursing through her body, much of it destined to end up as long strips of fat. In the meantime, her gut will shrink, her stomach will turn watery again and her other organs will return to their previous size.From an evolutionary point of view, Dr. Secor could see how this drastic reversal made sense. Running all this stuff is a tremendous waste of energy, he said. Why keep things up and running when you dont use them?But how snakes managed this feat was harder for Dr. Secor to explain. Other scientists couldnt help him.When he showed pictures of shrinking snake intestines to pathologists, they were baffled. Theyd say, Your animals are sick. Theyre dying. They have parasites that are ravaging their intestines, Dr. Secor said. Id say, No, theyre healthy. They just shook their heads and sent me on my way.Measuring their oxygen intake and looking at their intestines under microscopes could only take Dr. Secor so far. He asked colleagues who studied DNA what it would take to track how snake genes turned on and off during digestion.And theyd say, You couldnt do it, Dr. Secor recalled. It would take years and years and years, because youd have to pull each one out, and then you have to find out what it was.Then in 2010, Dr. Secor met Todd Castoe, an expert on sequencing reptile DNA, who jumped at the chance to help Dr. Secor make sense of his snakes.The metabolism is crazy so much of this is extreme and unexpected, said Dr. Castoe, who now teaches at the University of Texas at Arlington.Dr. Castoe and Dr. Secor launched a collaboration to understand snakes at the molecular level. In 2013, they and their colleagues published the genome of the Burmese python. Now they had a catalog of every gene that snakes might use during digestion.Since then, the scientists have tracked how the snakes use these genes. Dr. Secor and his students dissect snakes either during a fast or after they have had a meal. The researchers examine every organ and preserve samples for later study.Everything is pickled or frozen, Dr. Secor said.He ships some of the material to Dr. Castoe in Texas, who cracks open the snake cells. Dr. Castoes team then finds molecular clues to which genes are active in different organs.The researchers were shocked to find that, within 12 hours of swallowing prey, a vast number of genes become active in different parts of a snake. You might expect maybe 20 or 30 genes to change, said Dr. Castoe. Not 2,000 or 3,000.A number of the genes are involved in growth, the researchers have found, while others respond to stress and repair damaged DNA.It is a strange combination that scientists have not seen in animals before. Dr. Castoe speculates that snakes use their growth genes far more intensely than, say, a growing human child would.That overdrive allows the snakes to double the size of organs in a matter of hours and days. But it may also come at a cost: The cells are growing and dividing so fast that they dont have time to be careful. Along the way, they produce a lot of malformed proteins that damage the cells.When the swollen organs shrink back to normal, it appears that the snakes may simply shut down their repair genes, so that their cells are no longer shielded from their self-inflicted damage.The whole growth thing collapses, Dr. Castoe speculated.Even among snakes, the fast-and-feast way of life is unusual, having independently evolved only a few times.By looking at other such fasting snakes, the scientists have found some of the same changes in gene activity. They are focusing on this smaller set of genes.Its like were cutting away pieces of the pie, and we just want the juiciest part, said Dr. Castoe.If he and Dr. Secor can figure out what happens in snakes, it might be possible to elicit some of their powers in our own bodies, since we share many genes in common with animals.The scientists suspect that the snakes orchestrate their transformation with a few molecular triggers. Some genes may cause many other genes to switch on in an organ and make it grow. If scientists could find those triggers, they might be able to regenerate damaged tissue in people.Alternatively, doctors might mimic the way that snakes rapidly but safely reverse their growth. There might be clues in their biology for how to stop the uncontrolled growth of cancers.If you knew the answers to all that, youd probably have drugs that could cure dozens of diseases, Dr. Castoe said.But Dr. Castoe sees a lot of work ahead before any such benefits emerge. For now, he and his colleagues have no idea what the triggers are in snakes.To find out, they are now looking at snakes within just a few hours of catching prey. They can see changes in the snake cells. But those changes occur too quickly to be the result of switching on genes. It is possible that the snakes are refolding the proteins that already exist in their cells, so that they do new things.Id love to put together the whole pathway, Dr. Secor said. But were not even close to figuring this all out.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] | science |
The Supreme Court will hear from two convicted pill mill doctors in cases that could have significant implications for physicians latitude to prescribe addictive painkillers.Credit...Stuart Isett for The New York TimesFeb. 28, 2022For years, Dr. Xiulu Ruan was one of the nations top prescribers of quick-release fentanyl drugs. The medicines were approved only for severe breakthrough pain in cancer patients, but Dr. Ruan dispensed them almost exclusively for more common ailments: neck aches, back and joint pain. According to the Department of Justice, he and his partner wrote almost 300,000 prescriptions for controlled substances from 2011 to 2015, filled through the doctors own pharmacy in Mobile, Ala. Dr. Ruan often signed prescriptions without seeing patients, prosecutors said.Dr. Ruan has been serving a 21-year sentence in federal prison, convicted in 2017 for illegally prescribing opioids and related financial crimes. To collect millions of dollars in fines, the government seized houses, beach condos and bank accounts belonging to him and his business partner, as well as 23 luxury cars, such as Bentleys, Lamborghinis and Ferraris.On Tuesday, lawyers both for Dr. Ruan and for Dr. Shakeel Kahn, who is serving 25 years on charges related to pill mill clinics in Arizona and Wyoming will argue before the Supreme Court of the United States that the criminal standard the physicians faced is applied inconsistently among the federal circuits. In asking that the doctors convictions be overturned, they want the court to establish a uniform standard that permits doctors to raise a good faith defense. Juries could then consider whether doctors subjectively believed they were using their best medical judgment.The likelihood of these two doctors being set free is small, legal experts believe, but the courts decision on the broader legal questions could have significant implications for the latitude doctors can take in prescribing potentially addictive painkillers and other restricted medications.The cases confront an uneasy relationship between law and medicine. In an era when overdose deaths are soaring, how should the law balance letting physicians exercise their best judgment with stopping egregious outliers?At issue is the reading of the language of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The act permits doctors and pharmacists to dispense certain drugs such as opioids and amphetamines, categorized by their potential for abuse and medical value, even as it prohibits everyone else from doing so. It says that a prescription for one of these medications must be issued for a legitimate medical purpose by an individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his professional practice.Prosecutors, through the office of the U.S. Solicitor General, argue that the criminal standard in the act is straightforward and well-established, with a baked-in good-faith defense that affords doctors ample leeway. Even if the Supreme Court were to adopt a new framework and order that the doctors be retried, they argue, a jury could not conclude that the doctors were relying on their good-faith medical judgment.The evidence, they wrote, overwhelmingly demonstrated that petitioners acted as drug dealers disguised as medical professionals, dispensing addictive drugs that endangered their patients simply to line their own pockets.Lawyers for the government and the doctors declined to comment or did not respond to requests to do so.For many in medicine, the case is not about whether Drs. Ruan and Kahn were bad doctors.Its about all the other doctors in the country who intend to do the right thing, but are dealing with difficult cases, said Dr. Stefan Kertesz, a professor of medicine at the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an addiction researcher. Are we all at risk of criminal investigation based on making decisions that involve difficult medical trade-offs?Some legal experts say they presume that the court picked two cases from different circuits in order to examine legal distinctions and disjunctions, and that it may well emerge with a clarifying rule. But it is difficult to predict how the justices will rule, they say, because the issues do not fit tidily into liberal and conservative boxes.The cases are being argued during a period when investigations of prescribing habits have increased, in an effort to curb the rise in overdose deaths that began more than 20 years ago, as prescription painkillers became readily available. Authorities saw doctors as a significant source of the problem.State regulators imposed an array of punishments for excessive prescribing, such as fines, license revocation and imprisonment. In recent years, the prescribing of opioids fell sharply. Even so, overdoses and deaths hit a record last year. A majority of those deaths were not from prescribed opioids but from illegal ones.ImageCredit...Tom Morton, K2radio.comImageCredit...Dr. Xiulu RuanSome studies see a connection between the drop in prescriptions and the rise in overdose deaths. An article published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine reported that high-dose chronic pain patients who were abruptly dismissed from doctors practices have experienced surges in emergency room visits, addiction to illegal drugs and even suicide.To what extent has the increased surveillance of doctors led to an overcorrection in prescribing? A 2019 survey in the journal Pain of 452 primary care clinics in nine states found that nearly half would not prescribe opioids to new primary care patients who said they were already being prescribed the painkillers.Dr. Samer Narouze, president of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, said that he knew of doctors who had lost licenses or were jailed, and that it could be hard to understand the basis on which different sanctions were meted out. In the current risk-averse, litigious climate, his hospitals opioid oversight committee has, on occasion, sought legal counsel before making decisions in difficult cases involving the drugs, said Dr. Narouze, chairman of the Center for Pain Medicine at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.The outcome of the Supreme Court cases is also being closely monitored by representatives of chronic pain patients.We definitely want to catch doctors who are behaving like large-scale drug pushers, said Kate Nicholson, executive director of the National Pain Advocacy Center, which filed a brief arguing that fear of criminal prosecution deterred doctors from using good medical judgment to treat pain.Our issue is the chilling effect the current standards have on good doctors, who fear that even when they are exercising their best medical judgment, they will be subjected to oversight and enforcement, said Ms. Nicholson, a former government disability rights lawyer who was bedridden for 18 years and relied on high-dose opioids.Some years ago, she moved to Colorado to start post-surgical rehabilitation and needed to find a doctor to help her safely wean off opioids. But her new doctor, she said, told her that he had stopped prescribing opioids and that you wont find anyone else in this area willing to, either.Yet other patients, whose opioid addictions were initiated by doctors prescriptions, still want to see prescribers more tightly reined in and punished. Dr. Kahn based his rates on the number of pills prescribed; his brother, the office manager, would meet patients in parking lots to exchange the doctors signed prescriptions for cash, prosecutors said. Two days after a young patient paid him $1250, she died of an overdose of oxycodone.The Supreme Courts analysis of the Ruan and Kahn cases will likely involve a close reading of Congresss text and a discussion about canons of criminal law.In the last 15 years, as federal agents raided pill mills and prosecutions increased, the language around legitimate medical purpose and professional practice has been interpreted differently by different federal appellate courts. Those readings direct how a judge instructs a jury on what it must find to convict or acquit the prescriber.In a brief asking for a clear legal standard, health-law and policy professors argue that several appeals courts including the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which upheld Dr. Ruans conviction, and the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which upheld Dr. Kahns permit doctors to be convicted if they deviate from accepted medical practice, without a jury also having to find that the doctor did so without a legitimate medical purpose. That standard, they say, lacks a critical component of criminal law: intent.That element, the professors wrote, distinguishes well-meaning, possibly negligent doctors from criminal ones. Without the requirement of intent, the Controlled Substances Act has been weaponized against practitioners in reaction to the overdose crisis, they said. Prosecutions have increased, they said, while the standards for conviction have steadily eroded.The professors argue that this broad standard can ensnare doctors who determine that an individual patient requires a prescription of opioids that exceeds conventional limits. Doctors who prescribe medications off-label, a common practice, could also fall under that standard.Conversely, other circuits require that prosecutors prove beyond a reasonable doubt that doctors knew not only that they were deviating from accepted medical practice but also, and crucially, that they were prescribing without a legitimate purpose.But how far can a good-faith defense be stretched? Does it suffice for doctors to simply argue that they believed the prescriptions served a legitimate medical purpose?Good faith, then, would seem to be a subjective standard; legitimate medical purpose, an objective one. If so, the two would inherently be in conflict.Prosecutors argue that at the very least, doctors must show they made reasonable efforts to learn the medical norms upon which they based their good-faith judgment. A mistake in understanding those norms, they say, would not rise to the level of criminal conduct.Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took steps to give physicians more leeway in prescribing opioids. In a draft of the new recommendations, the agency bluntly states that prescribers should almost always seek alternative pain therapies rather than opioids. But it also says that doctors can rely on their best medical judgment, especially when treating legacy patients typically, chronic pain patients who are already on high opioid doses.The good-faith argument shouldnt be read as a get out of jail free card, said Kelly Dineen, who teaches health law at Creighton University School of Law in Nebraska and who is a co-author of the health-law professors brief. The jury still has to assess their credibility, she said. But doctors should be allowed to bring that defense.Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. | Health |
Politics|The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/protesters-storm-capitol-hill-building.htmlJan. 6, 2021, 4:41 p.m. ETJan. 6, 2021, 4:41 p.m. ETCredit...Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJust after 1 p.m., when President Trump ended his speech to protesters in Washington by calling for them to march on Congress, hundreds of echoing calls to storm the building were made by his supporters online.On social media sites used by the far-right, such as Gab and Parler, directions on which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors were exchanged in comments. At least a dozen people posted about carrying guns into the halls of Congress.Calls for violence against members of Congress and for pro-Trump movements to retake the Capitol building have been circulating online for months. Bolstered by Mr. Trump, who has courted fringe movements like QAnon and the Proud Boys, groups have openly organized on social media networks and recruited others to their cause.On Wednesday, their online activism became real-world violence, leading to unprecedented scenes of mobs freely strolling through the halls of Congress and uploading celebratory photographs of themselves, encouraging others to join them.On Gab, they documented going into the offices of members of Congress, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Dozens posted about searching for Vice President Mike Pence, who had been the target of Mr. Trumps ire earlier in the day.At 2:24 p.m., after Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Pence didnt have the courage to do what should have been done, dozens of messages on Gab called for those inside the Capitol building to hunt down the vice president. In videos uploaded to the channel, protesters could be heard chanting Where is Pence?As Facebook and Twitter began to crack down groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys over the summer, they slowly migrated to other sites that allowed them to openly call for violence.Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory who studies online movements, said the violence Wednesday was the result of online movements operating in closed social media networks where people believed the claims of voter fraud and of the election being stolen from Mr. Trump.These people are acting because they are convinced an election was stolen, DiResta said. This is a demonstration of the very real-world impact of echo chambers.She added: This has been a striking repudiation of the idea that there is an online and an offline world and that what is said online is in some way kept online. | Politics |
Dec. 7, 2015Television has lost its longtime grip on advertising budgets as digital ad spending continues to surge, according to some of the advertising industrys most closely watched forecasts to be released on Monday.Television ad sales are expected to fall slightly this year, decreasing globally for the first time ever aside from a recession year, according to the Interpublic Groups Magna Global.TV will account for 38.4 percent of the $503 billion global ad market this year and will drop to 38 percent of the market in 2016, according to the forecast.In the meantime, digital media will continue its meteoric rise. Digital ad spending will grow 17.2 percent this year, to nearly $160 billion, and 13.5 percent in 2016, and is expected to overtake TV as the biggest advertising category by the end of 2017, the forecast says.Publicis Groupes ZenithOptimedia expects digital media to pass TV in 2018.TV global growth is diminishing, Vincent Letang, the head of global forecasting at Magna Global, said. In most major developed markets, TV growth is slowing and in some cases stagnating.The annual advertising forecasts are likely to be closely watched by media executives and those on Wall Street after a year marked by volatility in top media stocks. The predictions could intensify brewing anxiety about the fate of traditional media in an increasingly digital world, with the unstable advertising market compounding fears of cord-cutting and declining TV ratings.The companies plan to present their forecasts at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York on Monday.In the United States, Magna Global predicts, digital media will overtake TV as the No. 1 advertising category in 2016, with nearly $68 billion in ad sales compared with $66 billion for TV.The prospect that online and mobile platforms would capture more ad dollars than TV became inevitable in the last several years. Until recently, advertisers were dipping into their print budgets to feed their digital ad purchases. But ad dollars are now flowing from TV to digital, said Jonathan Barnard, the head of forecasting for ZenithOptimedia.Over the last year or so, thats really been the first time weve seen money specifically coming out of TV and going onto digital, he said. Weve been hearing about the loss of revenue from TV to digital for a long time, but the last year has been when its been fairly visible.In particular, ad dollars are now flowing faster into online video, social media and mobile. ZenithOptimedia predicts mobile ads will account for 50.2 percent of Internet advertising in 2018, surpassing desktop ads for the first time.That shift in ad dollars to online and mobile has led to what Mr. Letang of Magna Global calls digital deflation: those ads are typically cheaper, and as ad dollars move to digital, there is pressure on media sellers to cut their ad prices. As a result, growth in the overall ad spending market is slowing.Magna Global estimates that ad sales in the United States will increase 5.2 percent in 2016, to $176 billion. But when ads for nonannual events like the Summer Olympics and presidential elections are stripped out, the pace of growth in ad sales will slow to 3.3 percent in 2016 from 3.8 percent this year.Over all, Magna Global predicts that global ad spending will grow by 4.6 percent, to $526 billion in 2016, and ZenithOptimedia sees an increase of 4.7 percent, to $579 billion. WPPs GroupM cut its growth estimate to 4.5 percent, from 4.8 percent, to $520 billion. | Business |
Science|Boulders Dont Just Roll. They Bounce.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/science/bouncing-boulders-atacama-desert.htmlTrilobitesCraters in a Chilean desert preserve the trajectories of giant rocks, allowing scientists to study the physics of rockslides. Credit...Paul M. MorganDec. 18, 2019Theres a place in Chiles Atacama Desert where trails of depressions punctuate the fine chusca dust. But what might seem like the footsteps left by a giant creature are in fact exquisitely preserved evidence of boulders that tumbled down a nearby cliff face before bouncing to their final resting place.The site, the Chuculay Boulder Field, is home to thousands of granite goliaths, some as big as houses. And because the deserts hyper-arid conditions preserve the boulders steps, its an ideal place to study rockfall theory and physics, said Paul Morgan, a geologist at Cornell University.Mr. Morgan and his collaborators analyzed the trajectories of some of these boulders and presented their research last week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Their findings of how far boulders tumble are useful for designing structures that could protect people and property in rockfall-prone areas.In July 2018, Mr. Morgan and his collaborators from Cornell and Chiles Universidad Catlica del Norte pitched tents amid the granite giants of Chuculay. A 1,000-foot-high scarp, a geological feature created by a tectonic fault, towered nearby. The sites rocks probably tumbled down from that scarp during one of the numerous earthquakes experienced in tectonically active Chile, the researchers hypothesize.While most landscapes on Earth are continually changing, the Atacama Desert is different. Its over 30 times drier than Californias Death Valley. Without regular rainfall to drive erosion, if something happens, the evidence tends to stick around.ImageCredit...Paul M MorganTo map the boulders and the scarp in three dimensions, the research team scanned them with quadcopter drones equipped with cameras. They also scrambled up the scarp one day to get their own view.It was on the edge of safe, Mr. Morgan said.The scientists cataloged the sizes and locations of hundreds of boulders larger than roughly 6 feet in diameter. It made intuitive sense that they found the most boulders beneath the most jagged sections of the scarp.The rougher the scarp, the more likely it is to generate multiple rockfalls, Mr. Morgan said.They also mapped the trails of impact craters that led back toward the scarp, records of the rocks trajectories for 32 boulders. Some of the boulders bounced as many as 25 times before coming to a rest, and certain rocks left behind depressions up to 20 inches deep.When the researchers analyzed the locations of the impact craters, they were surprised. They had expected that the distances between successive depressions would decrease as the bouncing rocks lost energy. But sometimes there was a short bounce followed by a long bounce, said Mr. Morgan.One explanation is that natural variations in the properties of the desert floor its slope and composition, for instance affected how the rocks bounced. Another possibility is that some of the boulders broke apart, and that the craters left behind recorded the bounces of different fragments.The researchers also found that many of the boulders didnt simply tumble in a straight line. About a quarter of the rocks bounced sideways and came to rest more than 30 degrees away from where they left the scarp. This could also be explained by differences in the underlying ground, or irregularities in a boulders shape they arent perfect spheres.These results are valuable for designing structures like fences and berms in places where rockfalls are common, said Jeffrey Moore, a geoscientist at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the research.We want to know where the boulders are going to wind up, he said.Mr. Morgan and his colleagues are continuing to analyze the Atacamas bouncing boulders. Theres no shortage of research questions, said Richard Allmendinger, a structural geologist at Cornell and Mr. Morgans adviser.We started studying them simply because we didnt understand them. | science |
Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York TimesJune 14, 2018Democrats have yearned for a moment of political exoneration ever since Hillary Clintons defeat in 2016. They have looked to Russian interference in the campaign, claims of bias in the media and allegations of Republican lawbreaking to explain an upset that few in the party foresaw.Perhaps most of all, Democrats have vented indignation at the F.B.I. and its former director, James B. Comey, for reviving the issue of Hillary Clintons private email server in the last days of the race.On Thursday, Clinton supporters won a powerful kind of validation from the unlikeliest source: President Trumps Department of Justice.The inspector generals report criticizing Mr. Comey for his flamboyant handling of the Clinton investigation sent an angry thrill through the ranks of Democrats and Mrs. Clintons allies. Michael E. Horowitz, an investigator not appointed by Mr. Trump, concluded that Mr. Comey had twice breached the bureaus traditional discretion: first by holding a July news conference to announce he would not charge Mrs. Clinton with mishandling classified information, and then later sending a letter to Congress disclosing that the agents were scrutinizing new evidence in the matter.[The report is 500 pages. Our experts broke it down.]In many respects, those findings mirrored Democrats own assessments of Mr. Comey save for the omission of certain four-letter words.But if the report appeared to validate their grievances against Mr. Comey, it offered scant relief to Clinton loyalists. For some of them, it intensified the agony of Mr. Trumps surprise win cementing Democratic suspicions about the fairness of his election, but leaving them without recourse to address them.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesReading this report clearly makes me sick, said Donna Brazile, who was chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 general election. It confirms what we all believed at the time.The report, Ms. Brazile said, strengthened her view that 2016 will always be an election where theres an asterisk.Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a longtime Clinton ally, said the report showed there had been a double standard in the election, whereby the F.B.I. revealed information casting Mrs. Clinton in an unflattering light while concealing investigations into Mr. Trump.Its disappointing and infuriating, Ms. Weingarten said. There is a reason for these norms of not commenting, knowing full well that comments can sway public opinion.While Ms. Weingarten called the inspector generals report a service to the country, she said it brought no solace on a personal level. Theres no sense of vindication for one reason: look whos in the White House right now, she said.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesAnd Robby Mook, Mrs. Clintons former campaign manager, said in an email that the report was concerning for reasons beyond Mr. Comeys bad judgment. It also documented the perception, within the bureau, that Mr. Comey sent his October letter in part because he feared word of the investigation would leak something that Mr. Mook said happened in other instances, to Mrs. Clintons detriment.There was a steady stream of leaks about the Clinton investigation for months but not a word about the counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign, Mr. Mook said. This, too, gave voters a false impression. I hope this report is a source of introspection for the professionals at the F.B.I.Mr. Comeys status as a Democratic bte noire is nearly two years old, dating to his news conference on July 5, 2016, that the inspector general described as extraordinary and insubordinate. But it was his letter to Congress nearly two weeks before the 2016 election termed a serious error in judgment by the inspector general that transformed him, for Democrats, into a starring villain of the presidential campaign.Mrs. Clinton offered only a laconic public reaction Thursday to the inspector generals report, highlighting on Twitter a finding that Mr. Comey had at times used a personal email account to conduct official business. But my emails, she tweeted, invoking a phrase often used by her supporters to express exasperation about what they view as the mistreatment of Mrs. Clinton during the election.She has been more expressive about Mr. Comey at other times. Within days of her loss, she named the F.B.I. director as a key culprit: she told donors on a phone call that Mr. Comeys letter had stopped our momentum at the races end. At a public event in May 2017, she identified Mr. Comeys announcement as a turning point: If the election had been on Oct. 27, she said, I would be your president. (Mr. Comey sent his letter on Oct. 28, 2016.)Mrs. Clintons campaign strategists have long been convinced that the Comey letter changed the direction of the race, burying her closing message and helping Mr. Trump reverse the fracturing of his support on the right after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. In the absence of a furor like the one instigated by Mr. Comey, the publication of a recording that showed Mr. Trump boasting about grabbing womens genitalia could well have been the defining event of the campaign.Experts differ on whether public opinion data suggests Mr. Comeys letter tipped the election. An analysis by the American Association of Public Opinion Research found at best mixed evidence to support the claim that Mr. Comeys letter was decisive. The study found that Mr. Comeys letter had an immediate, negative impact for Mrs. Clinton but questioned whether that effect lasted through Election Day.But there is no question that Mr. Comeys choices had an effect on the campaign: His summer news conference and his missive to Congress plainly amplified the issue of Mrs. Clintons email server and her handling of classified information. Mr. Trump feasted on both events, citing the first in countless denunciations of the Obama administration which he accused of going easy on his Democratic opponent and wielding the second as a cudgel in the campaigns final days.In addition to chiding Mr. Comey for sending that letter, the Justice Department report also concluded that there was no evidence of political bias in the F.B.I.s treatment of Mrs. Clinton, puncturing Mr. Trumps claim of favoritism.Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who helped raise money for Mrs. Clintons campaign, said the inspector generals report reinforced Democrats view of how the F.B.I. handled the election. He said Mr. Comeys subsequent clashes with Mr. Trump and firing had complicated Democrats judgments of the former bureau director, but said nothing could forgive the original sin of impacting the election.And the report, Mr. Elmendorf added, was no salve for the wounds of 2016.People are so deep in all the other terrible things Trump has done, he said. There is no psychic relief from what happened, other than winning the next election. | Politics |
Health|Modernas Covid vaccine produces a strong immune response in younger children, the company said.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/health/moderna-covid-vaccine-children.htmlModernas Covid vaccine produces a strong immune response in younger children, the company said.Credit...Velocity Clinical Research/Via ReutersPublished Oct. 25, 2021Updated Nov. 9, 2021The coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna is safe and produces a powerful immune response in children 6 through 11, the company said on Monday.One month after immunization was complete, the children in Modernas trial had antibody levels that were 1.5 times higher than those seen in young adults, the company said.Moderna did not release the full data, nor are the results published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results were announced one day before an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to review data for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children 5 through 11.Moderna tested two shots of the vaccine given 28 days apart in 4,753 children. They received 50 micrograms of vaccine, half the adult dose, in each shot. (Last week, based on data showing that the half dose is still highly effective, the F.D.A. authorized a booster shot of the Moderna vaccine at this dose.)Moderna submitted study results for the vaccines use for adolescents 12 through 17 in June, but the F.D.A. has not yet announced a decision for that age group. Some research indicates that the Moderna vaccine may increase the risk of a rare side effect called myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, in boys and young men. In July, the F.D.A. asked both Pfizer and Moderna to expand the size of their trials in order to detect less common side effects.In children aged 6 through 11, most of the side effects were mild or moderate; the most common were fatigue, headache, fever and pain at the injection site, Moderna said in its statement on Monday. An independent committee will continue to review the vaccines safety in the trial participants for 12 months after the second dose.Moderna is still recruiting children aged 2 through 5 and 6 months to under 2 years for trials of the vaccine in those age groups. The company has enrolled about 5,700 children in the United States and Canada in the trial.Moderna plans to submit the results soon to the F.D.A. and to regulatory agencies in Europe and elsewhere, the company said. | Health |
Men's RoundupFeb. 15, 2014Rakeem Christmass steal set up C. J. Fairs winning layup with 6.7 seconds left, helping No. 1 Syracuse edge North Carolina State, 56-55, on Saturday to remain unbeaten.Christmas had 14 points, 12 rebounds and 7 blocks as Syracuse (25-0, 12-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) earned its 10th single-digit victory despite shooting 35.2 percent. Jerami Grant had 12 points and 14 rebounds, and Fair added 11 points.The start of the game was pushed back four hours because of a snowstorm, and N.C. State did not land in Syracuse until Saturday afternoon. The teams Twitter account announced the Wolfpacks arrival at 3:07 p.m., seven minutes later than the originally scheduled tipoff.The game turned out to be worth the wait, with a frantic finish full of missed opportunities.After a timeout with 18.3 seconds to go, Christmas stole the ball and Fair put the Orange in front when N.C. State was whistled for goaltending on his layup attempt.T. J. Warren, who had 23 points, missed from the top of the key on one last try for N.C. State. Syracuse is clinging to a half-game lead over Virginia in the A.C.C. The Oranges start is the third best in A.C.C. history, behind only North Carolina State (27-0) in 1973 and North Carolina (32-0) in 1957.DUKE 69, MARYLAND 67 Jabari Parker scored 23 points and No. 8 Duke held on to beat visiting Maryland.Rodney Hood and Rasheed Sulaimon added 11 points each for the Blue Devils (20-5, 9-3 A.C.C.). They started a run of four games in eight nights by giving the Terrapins (14-12, 6-7) a hard-to-swallow loss in their last scheduled visit to Cameron Indoor Stadium.Duke, the A.C.C.s top 3-point shooting team, was just 5 of 24 from long range and shot 23 percent in the second half, but found a way to reach the 20-win mark for the 18th straight year.CONNECTICUT 86, MEMPHIS 81 Shabazz Napier scored a career-high 34 points, and No. 24 Connecticut beat No. 20 Memphis in overtime in Hartford to sweep the season series from the Tigers.Ryan Boatright added 21 points for UConn (20-5, 8-4 American Athletic Conference), including 8 in overtime. Joe Jackson had 24 points to lead the Tigers (19-6, 8-4). SAN DIEGO ST. 64, AIR FORCE 56 Winston Shepard scored 14 of his 16 points in the final 7:14, and the No. 5 San Diego State Aztecs bounced back from their first loss since mid-November to beat Air Force.After the Falcons (10-14, 4-9 Mountain West) closed to 54-50 with 2:28 to go, Shepard converted a 3-point play and hit two more free throws to give S.D.S.U. (22-2, 11-1) some breathing room.KANSAS 95, T.C.U. 65 Perry Ellis scored a career-high 32 points, and No. 7 Kansas overcame a sluggish start and a 25-point performance by Texas Christians Kyan Anderson to win at home.Ellis also had eight rebounds and five assists, and Andrew Wiggins added 17 points for the Jayhawks (19-6, 10-2 Big 12), who actually trailed the Horned Frogs (9-15, 0-12) by as many as six in the first half.CINCINNATI 73, HOUSTON 62 Sean Kilpatrick scored 28 points and Justin Jackson overcame foul problems to add 13 points, all in the second half, and No. 10 Cincinnati shook off Houston for a win at home.The Bearcats (23-3 12-1 A.A.C.) were playing their first game since having a 15-game winning streak snapped with a 76-55 loss at Southern Methodist on Feb. 8. Danrad Knowles scored 11 points to lead Houston (12-13, 4-8).IOWA STATE 70, TEXAS TECH 64 DeAndre Kane had 17 points with nine assists, and No. 11 Iowa State beat Texas Tech after blowing an 18-point lead in the second half.Georges Niang also had 17 points for the host Cyclones (19-5, 7-5 Big 12), who survived a rally from the Red Raiders (13-12, 5-7) to win for the fourth time in five games.ST. LOUIS 64, V.C.U. 62 Dwayne Evans had 21 points and 10 rebounds, and No. 12 St. Louis broke a late tie with 7 straight points, beating Virginia Commonwealth for a 17th straight victory.The host Billikens (23-2, 10-0) blew a 12-point second-lead before finally putting away V.C.U. (20-6, 8-3) in a matchup of the Atlantic 10s top two teams. Jordair Jett and Rob Loe had 14 points each for St. Louis.IOWA 82, PENN STATE 70 Melsahn Basabe scored 16 points and No. 16 Iowa pulled away from host Penn State.Roy Devyn Marble added 15, Aaron White 14 and Mike Gesell 13 as the Hawkeyes (19-6, 8-4 Big Ten) won their fourth conference road game of the season. Penn State (13-13, 4-9) was led by D. J. Newbill, who scored 22 points, but Tim Frazier was held to 11.VIRGINIA 63, CLEMSON 58 Joe Harris scored 16 points, including a critical 3-pointer with about three minutes left, and No. 17 Virginia won a ninth straight A.C.C. game for the first time in 32 years with a victory over host Clemson. The Cavaliers (21-5) moved to 12-1 in A.C.C. play, also for the first time since the 1981-82 season. The Tigers (15-9, 6-6) closed to 59-58 with 20.7 seconds left, but Malcolm Brogdon made two foul shots as the Cavaliers held on.TEXAS 88, WEST VIRGINIA 71 Javan Felix scored 18 points and No. 19 Texas used another impressive offensive performance to beat visiting West Virginia (15-11, 7-6) and stay within a game of the lead in the Big 12.Texas (20-5, 9-3) had five players score in double figures and shot better than 60 percent for most of the game.OHIO STATE 48, ILLINOIS 39 Aaron Craft scored 14 points and No. 22 Ohio State held host Illinois to 28.3 percent shooting on the way to a scrappy win.LaQuinton Ross added 9 points for Ohio State (20-6, 7-6 Big Ten), which trailed, 23-20, at halftime. Illinois (14-12, 3-10) scored just nine points over the first 15:35 minutes of the second half.NORTH CAROLINA 75, PITT 71 James Michael McAdoo had 24 points and 12 rebounds to help host North Carolina beat No. 25 Pittsburgh for its sixth straight victory.Marcus Paige added 18 points for the Tar Heels (17-7, 7-4 A.C.C.), who shot 48 percent after halftime and led by 12 with about nine minutes left, but had to fight off a late push from the Panthers (20-6, 8-5).WomenST. JOHNS 69, VILLANOVA 56 Aliyyah Handford scored 25 points and Amber Thompson pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds to lead No. 24 St. Johns to a win at home over Villanova.Danaejah Grant came off the bench to add 14 points and 9 rebounds for the Red Storm (19-5, 12-1 Big East), with Eugeneia McPherson scoring 12.Katherine Coyer had 18 points for the Wildcats (19-6, 9-5). | Sports |
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia When Barbara Ann Cochran of Vermont won the Olympic gold medal in slalom in 1972, she was the first American to win the event in 20 years.I remember thinking that 20 years was a long time for the United States to go without a slalom medal, Cochran said Wednesday.It has now been 42 years since an American has won an Olympic medal in the womens slalom.Now thats a really long time, Cochran said. Thats kind of amazing.It has also been 30 years since an American has won a medal in the mens slalom. Phil Mahre won the gold in 1984.For one or two generations, the highest level of success in the Olympic slalom, one of the classic disciplines of ski racing, has completely bypassed the United States ski team. Mikaela Shiffrin, the reigning world slalom champion, could end the drought Friday in the womens slalom, but none of the top contenders in the mens race are Americans.Since 1972, the United States has become a power in nearly every other ski racing discipline, winning 27 Olympic medals in the mens and womens downhill, the super-G, the giant slalom, the combined and the super combined.But how did the United States become such a nonfactor in slalom?It has something to do with the labor-intensive and isolating nature of the slalom, along with the snowball effect of famed American skiers like Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn.Miller and Vonn, like most young American ski racers, were slalom specialists as adolescents, but they made their name at the Olympics in the speed events, the super-G and the downhill.It is a little easier to get to a higher level in the speed events, said Patrick Riml, the United States ski teams Alpine director. Lindsey, for example, was a tech skier and got into speed, and very quickly she was able to be in the top 30, then top 20 and on the podium.Slalom is a very unique event in terms of the volume and quality of training required to reach the highest level, he added. It also takes a lot of time to get your slalom equipment set up properly. Right now, the top slalom skiers are really only slalom skiers because its pretty hard to add a second or a third event.The tendency now is to see more racers doing giant slalom, super-G and downhill only.As that has happened, and as Miller, Vonn, Ted Ligety and Julia Mancuso have racked up a dozen Olympic medals in the last eight years in events other than slalom, there has been a trickle-down effect on the hundreds of American youth ski racing programs.Look at the pictures of American skiers that young kids put on their walls now, said Cochran, a private coach and the ski school director at Cochrans Ski Area, which is run by her family. Its Lindsey or Bode in a downhill or super-G pose. Its not them in a slalom course. The speed events look more enticing. The downhill is the big event: more spectacular and edgy.Cochran has lived the experience firsthand. Her son, Ryan Cochran-Siegle, is a member of the United States ski team and competes in every discipline. He learned to be a successful slalom skier at his familys Vermont training hill. But in 2012, Cochran-Siegle was the world junior champion in the downhill and combined.Its easier to make the U.S. team as a speed skier, Cochran said. You have to get a tremendous number of reps in a slalom course to be really good at slalom. And you have to be incredibly consistent. You can find someone like Mikaela Shiffrin, but those kinds of skiers are rare.Nonetheless, the United States ski team is starting an initiative to find, or develop, more high-quality slalom skiers. Riml acknowledged that the team would have to revitalize and perhaps rethink its approach to slalom skiing at the development level.Riml said the team would invite about 100 top American racers ages 14 to 18 to Colorado for a slalom-specific camp in April. We want to bring in the kids and their club coaches, too, and really look at slalom, Riml said. If we really focus on slalom, in a few years, it should be possible to bring a strong slalom team, men and women, together.Cochran will be watching Friday as Shiffrin tries to join the exclusive group of American Olympic slalom champions, which is now a club of only four: Cochran, Mahre, Gretchen Fraser in 1948 and Andrea Mead-Lawrence in 1952.I always thought slalom was the best event, Cochran said. I was terrified of downhill. So, to me, I think we should always be good at slalom. | Sports |
Raw DataCredit...Lee Jin-Man/Associated PressApril 4, 2016Nearly 20 years ago, after a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue beat the world grandmaster Garry Kasparov, I wrote an article about why humans would long remain the champions in the game of Go.It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go maybe even longer, Dr. Piet Hut, an astrophysicist and Go enthusiast at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., told me in 1997. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few months he could beat all existing computer programs. You dont have to be a Kasparov.That was the prevailing wisdom. Last month, after a Google computer program called AlphaGo defeated the Go master Lee Se-dol, I asked Dr. Hut for his reaction. I was way off, clearly, with my prediction, he replied in an email. Its really stunning.At the time, his pessimism seemed well founded. While Deep Blue had been trained and programmed by IBM with some knowledge about chess, its advantage lay primarily in what computer scientists call brute-force searching. At each step of the game Deep Blue would rapidly look ahead, exploring a maze of hypothetical moves and countermoves and counter-countermoves. Then it would make the choice that its algorithms ranked as the best. No living brain could possibly move so fast.But in Go, an ancient board game renowned for its complexity, the ever-forking space of possibilities is so much vaster that sheer electronic speed was not nearly enough. Capturing in a computer something closer to human intuition the ability to seek and respond to meaningful patterns seemed crucial and very far away.Other seemingly distant goals included the ability to translate automatically between two languages or to recognize speech with enough accuracy to be useful outside the laboratory. Computer scientists had already spent decades trying to crack these problems.For many, the aim was not just to make an artificial intelligence, but to understand deep principles of syntax, semantics and phonetics, and even what it means to think.Now anyone with a smartphone or laptop (communing by Internet with a supercomputing cloud) can get a rough translation of text in many languages. They can dictate instead of type. Photo software can sort not just by date and location but by the faces of the subjects.The results are imperfect and often clumsy, but they would have been mind-blowing in 1997. What happened between then and now?Of course, computers became ever more powerful. But even todays fastest arent able to anticipate all of the permutations of a situation like playing Go. Success on this and other fronts has come from harnessing speed in other ways.The breakthrough in translation came from setting aside the question of what it means to understand a language and just finding a technology that works. The automated systems start with a text that has already been translated, by human brains. Then both versions are fed to a computer. By rapidly comparing the two, the machine compiles a thicket of statistical correlations, associating words and phrases with their likely foreign counterparts.Similar approaches, more artificial than intelligent, have led to surprisingly rapid improvements in recognizing speech and facial images, as well as with playing championship Go.In AlphaGo, learning algorithms, called deep neural nets, were trained using a database of millions of moves made in the past by human players. Then it refined this knowledge by playing one split-second game after another against itself.Tweak by algorithmic tweak, it became ever more adept at the game. By combining this insensate learning, which amounts to many human lifetimes of experience, with a technique called Monte Carlo tree search, named for the ability to randomly sample a universe of possible moves, AlphaGo prevailed.That was an enormous victory. But the glory goes not to the computer program but to the human brains that pulled it off. At the end of the tournament in Seoul, South Korea, 15 of them took the stage. They represented just a fraction of the number of people it took to invent and execute all of the technologies involved. Lee Se-dol was playing against an army.Back in 1997 I wrote, To play a decent game of Go, a computer must be endowed with the ability to recognize subtle, complex patterns and to draw on the kind of intuitive knowledge that is the hallmark of human intelligence. Defeating a human Go champion, I wrote, will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly beginning to become as good as the real thing.That doesnt seem so true anymore. Ingenious learning algorithms combined with big data have led to impressive accomplishments what has even been called bottled intuition. But artificial intelligence is far from rivaling the fluidity of the human mind.Humans can learn to recognize patterns on a Go board and patterns related to faces and patterns in language and even patterns of patterns, said Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at Portland State University and the Santa Fe Institute. This is what we do every second of every day. But AlphaGo only recognizes patterns related to Go boards and has no ability to generalize beyond that even to games similar to Go but with different rules.Also, it takes millions of training examples for AlphaGo to learn to recognize patterns, she continued, whereas it only seems to take humans a few.Computer scientists are experimenting with programs that can generalize far more efficiently. But the squishy neural nets in our heads shaped by half a billion years of evolution and given a training set as big as the world can still hold their own against ultra-high-speed computers designed by teams of humans, programmed for a single purpose and given an enormous head start.It was a regrettable game, but I enjoyed it, Mr. Lee said during the award ceremony. (Regret, enjoy these words do not compute.) He added that the contest clearly showed my weaknesses, but not the weakness of humanity.Picking up the plaque and bouquet he had been given as consolation prizes, he laughed nervously and stumbled from the stage. Several days later, he said he would like a rematch. | science |
Big Fat Greek Wedding' Mom Cuts Deal in Shoplifting Case 1/27/2018 Lainie Kazan's not going to jail for pulling the ol' five-finger discount at a supermarket, but she will have to attend a support group for petty thieves. The L.A. City Attorney tells TMZ the mom from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has accepted an offer to participate in the Neighborhood Justice Program. Attendees discuss their crimes and take responsibility ... instead of going to court or pleading guilty. We broke the story ... Kazan was busted for petty theft at a Gelson's on Christmas Eve. The store claimed she had stolen before. Her lawyer told us the arrest was a misunderstanding, because Gelson's didn't give her a chance to pay for her items. We're told if Kazan completes the program, criminal charges will not be filed. Pretty sweet bargain. | Entertainment |
Dec. 21, 2015PANGKALAN KERINCI, Indonesia In this company town where acacia and palm oil trees stretch for miles, the Indonesian conglomerate Royal Golden Eagle is bracing for impact.Already, prices of palm oil, one of its main products, have fallen. And the value of the Indonesian rupiah has plummeted, hurting the buying power of the 100,000 people in this dusty town, many of whom rely on the sprawling mill and plantation for jobs, as well as electricity and water. And foreign investors have been broadly rethinking the countrys prospects, creating economic uncertainty.With the United States Federal Reserve now raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, the company, which is private, is preparing for a further shakeout by keeping its debt load low and shifting its product mix. It is cautiously moving forward with new investments, like a $300 million expansion aimed at cutting the groups reliance on lower-value acacia pulp exports.We wanted to be positioned nicely for this downturn, said Anderson Tanoto, the son of the companys founder and chairman, Sukanto Tanoto. It was just a matter of time. We all knew rates couldnt stay low.For years, emerging economies rode high on a flood of easy money, as the Fed cut interest rates to record lows. In Indonesia, miners, shippers, plantation operators and other businesses loaded up on cheap debt to finance investments and expansion. Indonesia overtook Malaysia as the worlds biggest producer of palm oil and emerged as a major regional supplier of other important raw materials.Their efforts were supported by soaring commodity prices, when Chinese demand for coal, palm oil and other natural resources seemed inexhaustible. The boom transformed economies from Southeast Asia to Latin America, fueling the growth of the middle class in many countries.But developing countries are now being squeezed by the interest rate increase and the slump in global commodity prices. The dollar has strengthened in anticipation of the Feds move, but the Indonesian rupiah has been falling, nearly to a level last seen during the Asian financial crisis in 1998.Consumer demand in this relatively youthful country of 250 million people is also starting to look shaky. Car sales are down nearly 20 percent this year from 2014, and smartphone sales recently contracted for the first time on record. An array of local companies from coal mine operators in the jungles of Borneo to the ubiquitous mobile phone retailers in Jakartas flashy new shopping malls are struggling to cover their debts.A Fed hike is not going to knock out emerging markets like Indonesia, said Frederic Neumann, the co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC in Hong Kong. But things are bound to get a little tougher from here.Parallels between the current downturn and the financial crisis in the late 1990s are difficult to escape. Then, turmoil erupted when currencies around the region began to plunge, setting off a chain reaction of defaults among companies that had borrowed heavily from foreign investors.At that time, some two-thirds of the Tanotos sprawling mill and plantation complex on the island of Sumatra was still under construction, with projects totaling roughly $2 billion. The projects three sources of funding local banks, foreign banks and export credit agencies dried up almost overnight.ImageCredit...Kemal Jufri for The New York TimesEverything wrong happened at the same time, the elder Mr. Tanoto said.After that crisis, a bank controlled by Mr. Tanoto collapsed and, later, he lost control of Adaro Energy, a huge coal mining business on Borneo. His palm oil operation had to pay a record fine of about 2.5 trillion rupiah, or about $180 million at todays exchange rates, for tax evasion. The company disputes the allegations of unpaid taxes and continues to challenge the matter in the courts.In the current environment, the operation is focused on keeping down costs by increasing efficiency. At an on-site laboratory, scientists cross different types of palm oil trees, trying to develop a variety that yields more oil and better resists disease. The trees are also bred to be shorter, so it is easier to harvest their fruit.The company is also trying to reduce its reliance on lower-value bulk commodities. The roughly 400,000 tons of freshly cut acacia trees stacked in towering piles surrounding the mill are waiting to be turned into pulp that the company dries into sheets for export. With the mill expansion, it will be able to make more of its own Paper One brand here, which it can sell for a higher price.Prices of pulp and paper have proved to be more resilient than those of palm oil. So far, none of the major paper companies are showing the stress that appeared in the late 1990s, when the conglomerates larger competitor, Asia Pulp & Paper, defaulted on nearly $14 billion in foreign debt.While Indonesia does not appear to be headed for a repeat of the earlier crisis, the problems today are similar, if on a smaller scale. As they did then, some companies have taken advantage of years of easy credit to take on more debt than they can handle.Hotman Paris Hutapea, a Jakarta lawyer who defended Asia Pulp & Paper from its foreign creditors, says he is seeing a sharp pickup in new cases today.Mr. Hutapeas most recent big case involved defending one of Indonesias largest shipping companies, PT Arpeni Pratama Ocean Line with total debt of nearly $500 million from legal actions by creditors. One of the companys insurers filed an action this summer seeking to declare the shipper bankrupt over unpaid bills.The problems started in mining, because they shipped a lot of coal to China, he said. Im not an economist, but if a shipping company runs out of business, it means all its customers are also seeing a drop.Luckily, I won the case in the commercial court and the Supreme Court, mostly on the basis of some technicalities, Mr. Hutapea added.The slump that started in commodities and industrial firms is spreading to other parts of the economy. For years, sales of mobile phones rose fast, a tangible sign of the newfound buying power of Indonesias rapidly growing middle class.Now consumers are pulling back. In November, PT Trikomsel Oke, one of the countrys biggest mobile phone retailers, which is owned in part by the SoftBank Group of Japan, defaulted when it missed a payment on about $150 million in bonds sold in Singapore. The company said it had about $460 million in debt due in the next two years that it would be unable to pay.Consumer staples, goods and services companies that used to be very robust that part of the economy is now taking a slowdown, said Sandiaga S. Uno, a co-founder of the Indonesian private equity group Saratoga Capital.ImageCredit...Kemal Jufri for The New York TimesTrikomsel, the mobile phone retailer, has blamed the shrinking budgets of Indonesian consumers, who are favoring cheaper products. The weakened rupiah is also a factor, since most phones are imported. Smartphone sales volumes fell by 7 percent in the third quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2014, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research.On a recent visit to one of Trikomsels retailing outlets at the upscale Taman Anggrek mall in Jakarta, the store was empty apart from a lone cashier, Ibham, 26, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. The end of the year is usually a busy season, he said, but maybe less so this year because the currency is weaker.The broader telecom sector, a major focus of foreign investors in recent years, has been scrambling to limit its pain.Indosat Ooredoo, Indonesias second-biggest mobile service provider, which is majority owned by the government of Qatar, continues to add new subscribers. But Alexander Rusli, the companys chief executive, says the slumping currency has hurt its ability to expand and upgrade its coverage network because it has made imported equipment more expensive.As it hunkers down, Indosat is reducing its dollar-denominated debt in favor of debt in the local currency. It is also exploring pricing contracts with suppliers like Huawei of China in that countrys currency, to further diversify its currency exposure.While Royal Golden Eagle is similarly preparing for the new reality, Sukanto Tanoto remains optimistic. Rising rates and slower growth in China may complicate his business plans, but they do not spell disaster.Doing the commodity business with China is like drinking coffee, Mr. Tanoto said. We enjoyed three spoons of sugar per cup for a long time. Suddenly, when thats cut to one and a half spoons, we feel bitter because it used to be so sweet. | Business |
Politics|Pompeo Outlines Plans for Global Challenges, Including Venezuela and Palestinian Refugeeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/pompeo-senate-state-department.htmlCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 27, 2018WASHINGTON Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised on Wednesday to impose additional sanctions on Venezuela, predicted that the United States would again fund schools for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and said that President Trump viewed Russias return to the Group of 7 as inevitable.Mr. Pompeos remarks came during a hearing in the Senate that was intended to discuss his departments budget. But there was little said about the Trump administrations plans to slash the State Departments funding, and Mr. Pompeo did not try to defend proposals to cut spending on such things as the battle against H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.It did happen before my time, Mr. Pompeo said of the administrations budget request for next year. The president has lots of things to consider.The hearing, before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, yielded a more muted, and even respectful, discussion than what Mr. Pompeo had with lawmakers in May, a month after he took over the State Department.But Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, displayed a poster on Wednesday showing dozens of comments by Mr. Trump that had insulted global allies and partners. And Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, asked pointed questions about what was achieved at the recent summit meeting in Singapore between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.Instead of talking about money during the hearing, Mr. Pompeo and the senators discussed a host of global challenges, including North Koreas nuclear program, the civil war in Syria and Europes growing disenchantment with Mr. Trump.Mr. Pompeo also promised that new sanctions would be placed on Venezuela, in reaction to President Nicols Maduros disputed re-election in May.But asked whether the United States was going to forbid oil imports from Venezuela, Mr. Pompeo merely said a review was still underway. Citgo, a major oil refiner and gas retailer with American headquarters in the Houston area, is wholly owned by the Venezuelan government and provides it with vital financial support.Banning oil imports would almost certainly result in higher gasoline prices in the United States, where prices are already rising in part because of renewed sanctions on Iran.Mr. Pompeo refused to provide specifics about his continuing conversations with North Korea following Mr. Trumps summit meeting this month with Mr. Kim. But he assured senators that North Korean diplomats understood what was expected of them. He also agreed that Pyongyangs nuclear program remained a threat to the United States even though Mr. Trump has insisted in a Twitter post that there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.Although the United States has vowed to continue sanctions against Pyongyang until North Korea surrenders its nuclear weapons and missile programs, Mr. Pompeo said China was backsliding on those economic penalties by a modest amount.And as schools in Jordan for Palestinian refugees come close to shuttering because of the Trump administrations decision to suspend funding for the United Nations agency that operates them, Mr. Pompeo said that I think were getting closer to a solution that would allow the United States to fund the schools.Mr. Pompeo acknowledged that European allies remained unhappy about the Trump administrations decision to exit the Iran nuclear accord; he described difficult discussions over the issue. But he said that other countries in Asia and the Middle East were also important to pressuring Iran.As for a potential summit meeting next month between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Pompeo insisted that the Trump administration had been tougher on Russia than many previous administrations.Still, he defended Mr. Trumps proposal to allow Moscow back into the G-7 as inevitable, and suggested that an appropriate set of trade-offs could be made even if Russia retains control over Crimea. | Politics |
For Democratic city leaders across the country, the unrest in their streets is testing their campaign promises and principles.Credit...Nick Otto/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJune 1, 2020LOS ANGELES Its a moment that mayors can still describe, months or years later. The first time they get the call: A police officer has killed someone, often that person is black or Latino, and a neighborhood is enraged.What happens next is often one of the most consequential political balancing acts in American governance. The mayors of Americas larger cities, nearly all members of the Democratic Party and some of whom are black or Latino themselves, must reckon with political priorities that appear in conflict living up to their rhetoric as champions of marginalized communities while maintaining a close working relationship with police departments often accused of inflicting harm.Its a challenge, said Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, Calif., a Democrat who is the citys first black mayor and, at 29, its youngest. Youre part of the group that has been historically oppressed by government, and then youre in charge of trying to make the government work.He described the challenge in biblical terms: For some folks, they expect me to be Moses and, with my hands up, say Peace and everyone goes quiet.As dozens of mayors nationwide now confront nightly protests and huge police deployments in their streets, even Democrats who ran on a platform of police reform and community engagement are trying to balance support for law enforcement with their continuing commitment to change. Last week, after destructive protests erupted across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said the police there had showed a lot of restraint. In Los Angeles, where a peaceful protest turned to mayhem on Saturday night, Mayor Eric Garcetti angered some progressives when he called in the National Guard, just hours after he said doing so was unnecessary.ImageCredit...Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesEverybody will second-guess, Mr. Garcetti said on Monday, referring not just to the decision to call in the Guard, but also to the police tactics that included using tear gas and arresting peaceful protesters who refused to move. He said that complaints of police misconduct during the protests would be investigated. Weve all read the history books, he said.In interviews with more than a dozen Democrats who currently or have previously served as local leaders in high-populated areas, they describe a complex web of political incentives that shape the relationship between mayor and law enforcement, and can turn the candidate with the most liberal reform promises into a conservative champion of law and order once in office.For some, police autonomy was a necessary cost of maintaining public safety, and of pleasing rank-and-file officers and more moderate voters. Others described a network of shared political consequences that make it hard for a mayor to upset key groups the police, police unions, local prosecutors and others particularly if City Hall is seen as a step to higher office.Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia who ran on a reform platform, said local leaders are generally afraid to cross police unions, because of the political clout the unions hold.Being close to the leadership of the police union means, Do you have our back? he said. Which really means, Do you have our back more than you have the back of your citizens?Julin Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio who made police misconduct a centerpiece of his presidential campaign last year, said city officials should be doing more on police reform.In his view, many local Democrats are more focused on supporting police unions than considering possible harm done to black and Latino residents.Theres a detachment from this issue that needs to change, he said.ImageCredit...Bryan Denton for The New York TimesSince the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, perhaps no issue has caused more friction between Democratic elected officials and the partys activist base than criminal justice and policing. During her 2016 presidential bid, Hillary Clinton was prodded to embrace systemic reforms to policing, and so has former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the partys presumptive 2020 nominee. Candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, which represented a historically diverse field, were repeatedly pushed on the issue, often by younger black and Latino activists. The fights between progressive insurgents and Democratic incumbents in the House have used criminal justice reform as a wedge.But in the past week, as a wave of unrest has consumed cities across the United States, Democratic mayors are increasingly in the spotlight. President Trump on Monday night threatened to deploy the military if mayors do not establish an overwhelming presence until the violence is quelled. The careful calibration of liberal leaders, between projecting empathy for the protesters and denouncing property destruction and theft, shows their progressive ideals being put to a high-stakes practical test. Some of the mayors navigating this turbulence came of age well after the tumult of the 1960s and are fluent in the language of social activism, seeking a way to stand out from their predecessors.Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta announced on Sunday that two officers were fired and three others were demoted after a video captured by local news media showed them pulling a woman from her car and using a stun gun on another man. Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville fired the citys police chief on Monday, after learning that police officers did not record body camera footage during the fatal shooting of a black business owner, David McAtee, that took place that day.Though mayors have repeatedly condemned vandalism, fewer have spoken critically of the police officers conduct, despite public outcry.The concerns are legitimate and deserve attention, and the majority of people who are protesting are doing so peacefully, said Mayor Kate Gallego of Phoenix. But as a mayor I feel like I have to say we cannot stand for violence, that setting trees on fire and burning cars is not the answer.In Los Angeles, where people have marched downtown and in the Fairfax neighborhood in recent days, the events of 1992 are never far from memory. In the decades since the uprising that followed the acquittal of the four officers who beat Rodney King, the Los Angeles Police Department has instituted many reforms, earning support from activists who were once vocal critics. But the department has faced several protests after officer-involved shootings in recent years. Still, Mr. Garcetti said in an interview that most large cities lag behind in adopting similar changes.We have to figure out a way to humanize both sides of the barricades right now, he said. First and foremost, to humanize black people in this country who have disproportionately been dehumanized. But it cant ever be a one-way street to dehumanize a person who wears a badge. We need them to hear us, but we need to hear them or else were going to isolate them into islands that results in the sort of policing we dont want to see.Jane Castor, the mayor of Tampa, Fla., spent more than two decades in the Police department there, eventually rising to become chief a key part of her appeal as a political leader.I dont know that there is any one person or any one group that despises police brutality more than police officers, Ms. Castor said in an interview. As a community we need to acknowledge that George Floyd was murdered, that those actions constituted homicide and then to also recognize and try to understand the pain that is being felt in the black and brown communities.ImageCredit...Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressOn Monday afternoon, Mr. Biden held a virtual round table with Mr. Garcetti, Ms. Bottoms, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul, Minn. The former vice president said he sympathized with protesters concerns but also denounced violence that endangers lives and guts local businesses is no way forward.Ms. Lightfoot, who faced some criticism during her 2018 mayoral run about her record of police accountability as leader of the Chicago Police Board, said mayors supported peaceful expression of dissent but were focused on rooting out bad officers. Look, weve had our fair share of dark days in Chicago around police violence and shooting, she said. But I do think its important for us to not allow forces of darkness to conflate peoples righteous anger and need to express themselves in their protected First Amendment rights.Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Miss., said it was time for the party to embrace not just police reform, but deconstructing the criminal justice system. Mr. Lumumba, 37, said even if this moment seemed like a flash point, the inequities, racism and despair that create the tension run much deeper.Theres an economic reliance on the system of policing, Mr. Lumumba said. You have more police today than you ever had. You have city police, county police, state police, federal police, secret police, secret police that watch the secret police. You have probation and parole officers, prison guards, companies that contract out with the prison.We rely on the overincarceration of our society, he said.Crime control bills helmed by Mr. Biden in the late 1980s and early 1990s helped transform the relationship between local, state, and federal justice systems. In Mondays round table with mayors, Mr. Biden said public officials needed to reckon with police brutality, citing the incredible pain and legitimate anger that is the root of these protests.This was not always his position. In a 1994 speech on the Senate floor, Mr. Biden was unequivocal more police officers made people safer.Anybody who does not want cops, then do not ask for them; send them my way, he said at the time. Send them to Philadelphia, Wilmington, Trenton, the area I live in. And my daughter will be safer, my wife will be safer, my mother will be safer, and I will be safer. And I will be happy.Jennifer Medina reported from Los Angeles, and Astead W. Herndon from Columbia, S.C. | Politics |
Politics|Trump Calls Georgia Senate Races Illegal and Invalidhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/us/politics/trump-georgia-senate.htmlPresident Trump continued his assault on election integrity, baselessly claiming the presidential results and the Senate runoffs in Georgia were both invalid which could complicate G.O.P. efforts to motivate voters.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesPublished Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 5, 2021ATLANTA President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgias two Senate races are illegal and invalid, an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate.The president is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday, the day before Election Day, and Georgia Republicans are hoping he will focus his comments on how crucial it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the states two incumbent Republican senators.But Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgias election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the presidents argument seriously, and decide that voting in a corrupt system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats.Some strategists and political science experts in the state have said Mr. Trumps assault on Georgias voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively light Republican turnout in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended Thursday.More than 3 million Georgia voters participated in the early voting period, which began Dec. 14. A strong early-voting turnout in heavily Democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans will need a strong election-day performance to retain their Senate seats.Mr. Trump made his assertion about the Senate races in a Twitter thread in which he also made the baseless claim that massive corruption took place in the general election, which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States.The president made a specific reference to a Georgia consent decree that he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he argued further, render the two Senate races and the results of his own electoral loss invalid.Mr. Trump was almost certainly referring to a March consent decree hammered out between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped establish standards for judging the validity of signatures on absentee ballots in the state.Mr. Trumps allies have unsuccessfully argued in failed lawsuits that the consent decree was illegal because the U.S. Constitution confers the power to regulate congressional elections to state legislatures. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that Supreme Court rulings allow legislatures to delegate their authority to other state officials.Since losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, Mr. Trump has directed a sustained assault on Georgias Republican leaders including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger saying they have not taken seriously enough his claims of voter fraud. He has called Mr. Kemp a fool and called for him to resign. At a rally for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent considerable time airing his own electoral grievances, while devoting less time to supporting the two Republican candidates. | Politics |
Credit...Leah Millis/ReutersJune 26, 2018WASHINGTON Ruling for opponents of abortion on free speech grounds, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday that the State of California may not require religiously oriented crisis pregnancy centers to supply women with information about how to end their pregnancies.The case was a clash between state efforts to provide women with facts about their medical options and First Amendment rulings that place limits on the governments ability to compel people to say things at odds with their beliefs.Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the five-justice conservative majority, accepted the free-speech argument, ruling that the First Amendment prohibits California from forcing the centers, which oppose abortion on religious grounds, to post notices about how to obtain the procedure. The centers seek to persuade women to choose parenting or adoption.Licensed clinics must provide a government-drafted script about the availability of state-sponsored services, as well as contact information for how to obtain them, Justice Thomas wrote. One of those services is abortion the very practice that petitioners are devoted to opposing.California, he wrote, can use other means to tell women about the availability of abortion, including advertising. But California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it, he wrote.The case was the first touching on abortion since Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who sided with the majority, joined the court. While the decisions legal analysis turned on the First Amendment, it was lost on no one that the justices most committed to defending abortion rights were all in dissent.The court returned the case to the lower courts for another look, but it seemed unlikely that California would be able to present new evidence or arguments to save the law.In a dissent that he summarized from the bench, Justice Stephen G. Breyer accused the majority of acting inconsistently. In 1992, he noted, the Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law that required doctors who performed abortions to provide some kinds of information to their patients.If a state can lawfully require a doctor to tell a woman seeking an abortion about adoption services, why should it not be able, as here, to require a medical counselor to tell a woman seeking prenatal care or other reproductive health care about childbirth and abortion services? he asked.As the question suggests, Justice Breyer wrote, there is no convincing reason to distinguish between information about adoption and information about abortion in this context. After all, the rule of law embodies evenhandedness, and what is sauce for the goose is normally sauce for the gander.Justice Thomas responded that the 1992 decision was different because it concerned a medical procedure. Justice Breyer was unpersuaded.Really? he asked. No one doubts that choosing an abortion is a medical procedure that involves certain health risks. But the same is true of carrying a child to term and giving birth.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Gorsuch, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.In a concurring opinion, Justice Kennedy said the First Amendment bars compelling people to betray their beliefs.Governments must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions, he wrote. Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief. This law imperils those liberties.Michael P. Farris, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the centers, said he welcomed the ruling.No one should be forced by the government to express a message that violates their convictions, especially on deeply divisive subjects such as abortion, he said. In this case, the government used its power to force pro-life pregnancy centers to provide free advertising for abortion. The Supreme Court said that the government cant do that, and that it must respect pro-life beliefs.Californias attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said the ruling would place needless barriers between women and access to medical care.When it comes to making their health decisions, all California women regardless of their economic background or ZIP code deserve access to critical and nonbiased information to make their own informed decisions, he said.The case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, No. 16-1140, concerned a California law that requires centers operated by opponents of abortion to provide women with information about the availability of the procedure.The state requires the centers to post notices that free or low-cost abortion, contraception and prenatal care are available to low-income women through public programs, and to provide the phone number for more information.The centers argued that the law violated their right to free speech by forcing them to convey messages at odds with their beliefs. The laws defenders said the notices combat incomplete or misleading information provided by the clinics.The California Legislature found that the roughly 200 centers in the state used intentionally deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse, misinform and even intimidate women from making fully informed, time-sensitive decisions about critical health care.A separate part of the law applies to unlicensed clinics. They are not required to post notices about the availability of abortion, but are required to disclose that they are not licensed by the state.Justice Thomas said those requirements, which can require notices in as many as 13 languages, were too burdensome. In dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that the question should have been decided in the context of particular disputes and not as a general matter.Whether the requirement of 13 different languages goes too far and is unnecessarily burdensome in light of the need to secure the statutory objectives is a matter that concerns Los Angeles County alone, and it is a proper subject for a Los Angeles-based as-applied challenge in light of whatever facts a plaintiff finds relevant, Justice Breyer wrote. At most, such facts might show a need for fewer languages, not invalidation of the statute.Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Breyers dissent.Tuesdays ruling reversed a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which had upheld both parts of the law.California has a substantial interest in the health of its citizens, including ensuring that its citizens have access to and adequate information about constitutionally protected medical services like abortion, Judge Dorothy W. Nelson wrote for the panel in upholding the requirement that licensed clinics post a notice about abortion.The notice informs the reader only of the existence of publicly funded family-planning services, Judge Nelson wrote. It does not contain any more speech than necessary, nor does it encourage, suggest or imply that women should use those state-funded services.Other federal appeals courts had struck down similar laws, saying that the government could find other ways to inform women about their options.The Ninth Circuit also upheld the requirement that unlicensed clinics disclose that they are unlicensed.California has a compelling interest in informing pregnant women when they are using the medical services of a facility that has not satisfied licensing standards set by the state, Judge Nelson wrote.And given the Legislatures findings regarding the existence of the centers, which often present misleading information to women about reproductive medical services, Californias interest in presenting accurate information about the licensing status of individual clinics is particularly compelling.Much of Tuesdays decision was a continuation of a debate at the Supreme Court about how courts should analyze First Amendment challenges.Justice Thomas wrote that laws restricting speech must be subject to searching scrutiny, while Justice Breyer expressed concern that free speech arguments were being used to undermine ordinary and sensible regulations.Using the First Amendment to strike down economic and social laws that legislatures long would have thought themselves free to enact will, for the American public, obscure, not clarify, the true value of protecting freedom of speech, Justice Breyer wrote. | Politics |
Credit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJune 26, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump signaled on Tuesday that the White House may soften a plan to impose sweeping new investment restrictions on China, saying he supported giving more power to an existing government body that reviews foreign investments for national security threats.No final decisions have been made and Mr. Trump could ultimately decide to move ahead with the type of tough bans on Chinese investment in American companies that he has been threatening as part of his crackdown on Beijings trade practices. The administration, which has already threatened China with tariffs on as much as $450 billion worth of its products, had promised to outline by Saturday proposed restrictions on Chinese investment to protect American companies it says were pressured to hand over valuable technology and trade secrets to operate in China.The White House is still expected to unveil by Saturday restrictions on exporting sensitive American technologies abroad. That could have a more significant effect on United States companies than restrictions on Chinese investment, since it would limit the ability of American companies to sell a range of products to China. The White House has targeted specific products that it wants to prevent China from dominating, including robotics, artificial intelligence and new energy vehicles.But people familiar with the discussions said that, at least on the issue of Chinese investment, the White House was now leaning toward endorsing a current effort in Congress to expand the authority of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, which reviews investments for security threats.We have the great scientists, we have the great brains, the president said Tuesday. Were going to protect it. And thats what we were doing. And that can be done through Cfius. We have a lot of things we can do it through. And were working that out.In a statement on Wednesday, Chinas commerce ministry said that officials are playing close attention to it and will assess the potential impact on Chinese companies.The congressional overhaul to Cfius would include a list of countries of special concern that allow it to review investments from those nations, but stops short of specifically naming China as the target.Such an outcome would be a victory for Mr. Trumps more moderate economic advisers, including Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, who has tried to use his clout with the president to de-escalate trade tensions with China. Mr. Mnuchin has argued internally that congressional efforts to strengthen current security checks were both sufficient to guard against threats to American technology and targeted enough to avoid disrupting the American economy.Mr. Mnuchin has tried to prevent the administration from employing aggressive measures against China, including an effort by some in the White House to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which would allow the administration to take broad action against China by declaring a national emergency. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, had recently joined Mr. Mnuchin in his arguments, these people said.Mr. Trump, who campaigned on punishing China over its trade practices, has been pushed by his hard-line trade advisers, Peter Navarro and Robert E. Lighthizer, to embrace more aggressive measures.That has frustrated Mr. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, who has counseled Mr. Trump against pursuing restrictions that would target China specifically, warning that could create unnecessary diplomatic and legal complications, according to people familiar with the discussions.In late May, Mr. Mnuchin helped orchestrate a meeting among the president, top White House advisers and Republican lawmakers, in which he appealed to lawmakers to help make the case to Mr. Trump that legislation would be a more targeted way to police Chinese investment. But Mr. Navarro and Mr. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, who were also at the meeting, objected to that approach, and the president ultimately overruled Mr. Mnuchin, saying he supported the congressional legislation but that it alone was not enough.Congress is expected to vote on the legislation as part of a defense-spending bill this year. On Tuesday, the House passed its version of the bill, which would grant Cfius broader authority to block investments over national security concerns.Mr. Mnuchin has privately expressed frustration that other members of the administrations economic team were trying to box him in to taking a more hawkish approach to China, and he has expressed concern to the president that such an approach, combined with the escalating tariffs, could dampen the economy and disturb financial markets.In recent weeks, Mr. Mnuchin had maintained a low profile as the White House proposed tough trade measures on China that he had opposed. But on Monday, amid growing fears that the Trump trade wars could hurt American companies, Mr. Mnuchin re-emerged. After reports in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg detailed the rollout this week of draconian Chinese investment restrictions, the secretary fired off a Twitter post on behalf of Mr. Trump calling the stories fake news and hinting that Treasury would support a broader proposal to protect American intellectual property that would not be specific to China, but to all countries that are trying to steal our technology.The president appeared to endorse Mr. Mnuchins statement on Tuesday, saying that its not just the Chinese.Tensions between the United States and China have threatened to boil over for months as the two countries negotiated over trade relations and brandished threats of rapidly escalating tariffs. The Trump administration plans to impose tariffs on its first $34 billion of Chinese goods on July 6, penalties that Beijing has promised to match in kind.The tariffs, investment restrictions and export controls are all part of the administrations plans to combat what it describes as intellectual property theft from China and slow the countrys efforts at dominating cutting-edge technologies that will be critical to future economic growth, an industrial plan known as Made in China 2025.The White House had previously said that it would release details on investment restrictions and export controls before Saturday, and put the measures into place days after that deadline.Some lawmakers have also been looking for ways to curb Mr. Trumps protectionist tendencies, which go against the Republican Partys embrace of free trade. On Tuesday, some senators tried to restart an effort to force a floor vote on legislation that would require the president to seek congressional approval before imposing tariffs over national security concerns.A bipartisan effort to add such language to a defense policy bill this month was derailed by Senate Republican leaders, who raised procedural concerns. This time around, however, it appeared more likely that the senators, led by Bob Corker of Tennessee, would secure a vote through an amendment to the farm bill under consideration by the Senate this week. | Politics |
Credit...Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesNov. 21, 2018LONDON President Trump once offered a simple rationale for his hands-off approach to the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul: Its in Turkey, and its not a citizen.But this week, as Mr. Trump declared that he was sticking by the Saudi crown prince despite accusations that he was behind the killing, an American citizen was languishing in the bowels of the Saudi prison system.The citizen, Walid Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained doctor, hospital owner, television host and motivational speaker, has been detained without trial for more than a year.Dr. Fitaihi, a dual citizen, is one of scores of businessmen, princes, clerics, scholars and activists rounded up at the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a drive to consolidate his power. Many detainees have been subjected to torture and physical abuse, according to friends, family members and rights groups.Mr. Trump has taken pride in fighting for the release of American citizens detained abroad, most recently imposing trade sanctions on Turkey in an effort to win the release of a pastor, Andrew Brunson. He has celebrated his success at securing the release of a dual citizen, Aya Hijazi, who had been held in Egypt, and of three American detainees in North Korea.But in his statements about Saudi Arabia this week, Mr. Trump again made clear that he puts concerns about human rights abroad second to other American interests, including Saudi military contracts and oil prices.Andrew Miller, deputy director for policy at the Project on Middle East Democracy and a former State Department official in the region, argued that the administrations apparent lack of concern for Dr. Fitaihi confirms what we all expected: Trump is willing to sell or forsake any person, regardless of whether they are an American resident or an American citizen, in the furtherance of narrow economic interests.A State Department official who declined to speak for attribution said: We routinely request consular access to all American citizens that have been detained in Saudi Arabia. In cases where the detainee possesses both Saudi and United States citizenship, the host government often does not recognize United States citizenship and denies consular access.An official of the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.Born in Saudi Arabia, Dr. Fitaihi obtained American citizenship while studying and practicing medicine in the United States more than a decade ago.After earning undergraduate and medical degrees at George Washington, Dr. Fitaihi completed a masters in public health at Harvard and a residency in endocrinology at Harvard-affiliated hospitals. Massachusetts state records show that he was registered to vote while living at an address in Cambridge. He moved back to Saudi Arabia around 2006.He was taken from his home in Jeddah in the middle of the night last fall as about 200 wealthy Saudis were swept up and detained inside a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, in what the crown prince billed as a crackdown of corruption.At least 17 other people arrested with Dr. Fitaihi were hospitalized, and at least one died as a result of abuse in detention.Most detainees have now been released, often after signing agreements pledging large payments in exchange for their freedom. Many remain barred from leaving the kingdom and are required to wear ankle bracelets tracking their movements.But Dr. Fitaihi is among dozens who were transferred to prisons for longer-term incarceration, even though they have not formally been charged with any crimes.His family only reluctantly sought the assistance of the United States Embassy, after initially seeking to secure his release quietly for fear of incurring further punishment, his friends said.Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a friend of Dr. Fitaihis since his years in the United States, said mutual friends described the family as terrified. Several family are banned from travel, their accounts were frozen, and they did not want to go public because they knew the backlash would be severe, Mr. Awad said.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesFemale detainees appear to have suffered special abuse, according to two people familiar with several cases and reports this week from two rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Two people familiar with the cases said this week that some womens rights activists had been subjected to electrical shocks, whipping and verbal and sexual harassment.A Saudi official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said the kingdom does not condone, promote or allow the use of torture, whether physical, sexual or psychological.The activists had risen to prominence for calling for the end of Saudi Arabias longstanding ban on women driving. Prince Mohammed lifted the ban this summer, but his government also arrested many of those who had called for the change, evidently to prevent them from taking credit or demanding more.The Saudi government has not identified the detainees, saying only that a number were under investigation for vague charges of conspiring with hostile forces against the kingdom. In interviews with The New York Times, two people familiar with the activists cases said some had arrived at meetings with their families trembling or with red marks on their faces, necks and limbs. Some had been deprived of sleep, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.Dr. Fitaihi had no such record of political activism inside the kingdom.He was the son and grandson of prominent jewelers, a member of one of the wealthiest families in the western region of Saudi Arabia, the Hijaz, home of Islams holiest sites.While living in Cambridge in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was an active member of the Islamic Society of Boston, sometimes leading prayers there and eventually sitting on its board. He and his father became major donors to the society. Others included the wife of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. Fitaihi, then teaching at Harvard, responded as an American. There are Muslims who died, Christians who died, Jews who died its a crime against humanity, he told The Denver Post. Its a test for us as a nation.ImageCredit...via Associated PressA few years later, in 2004, he was the center of controversy over anti-Semitic sentiments in columns he wrote for Arabic newspapers. He is reported to have called Jews perpetrators of the worst of evils and to have said they control the power of the media. The Islamic Society publicly disavowed his statements.When he returned to Saudi Arabia, Dr. Fitaihi founded a private hospital, the International Medical Center. King Abdullah attended the opening and they had their picture taken together.Building on the success of his hospital, Dr. Fitaihi took on other roles as a motivational speaker and television host. He eventually attracted as many as two million followers on social media.In his speeches, he discussed the teachings of Islam but around themes of personal health, self-help and self-development that would be familiar to Christian or secular audiences.God gave you a gift, one typical speech went. First discover the thing that you are good at. There are so many multiple intelligences.Dr. Fitaihis private hospital does not appear to have derived income from the Saudi government, and the kingdom has not disclosed any allegations of corruption that might involve him. The Saudi authorities, in fact, have neither confirmed his detention nor announced any charges against him.Dr. Fataihi was initially arrested in September 2017 but released under a travel ban. Then he was arrested again in November, in the sweep portrayed as a crackdown on corruption. He was transferred from the Ritz-Carlton to the Hair Prison outside the Saudi capital of Riyadh, where the kingdom jails criminals and convicted jihadists, friends said.Mr. Khashoggi, another friend, once spoke out about the arrest.What has happened to us? Mr. Khashoggi said on Twitter, not long after fleeing Saudi Arabia for Washington. How can someone like Dr. Walid Fitaihi be arrested and what are the justifications for it?Everyone is in a state of confusion and helplessness, there is no one you can go to, Mr. Khashoggi said. God help us. | World |
Asia Pacific|Maoist Rebels Ambush and Kill 11 Police Officers in Indiahttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/world/asia/maoist-rebels-ambush-and-kill-11-police-officers-in-india.htmlMarch 12, 2017NEW DELHI Maoist rebels killed 11 Indian police officers and seized their automatic weapons and ammunition after ambushing a foot patrol on Saturday morning in the eastern state of Chattisgarh, according to a police official.The rebels first set off explosives and then unleashed a barrage of gunfire that lasted for more than an hour, Jitendra Shukla, the additional superintendent of the Sukma district police, said by phone.The officers returned fire, he said, but the rebel casualties were unknown.The attack took place in a remote forested area that is a traditional Maoist rebel stronghold. Its road and communication networks are poor, and three wounded officers were evacuated by helicopter, the same method used to remove the bodies of the dead.Extra police officers had been deployed to the area on Saturday, which is a market day and brings out larger crowds and more vehicles. The patrol was attacked when it was deployed to check a road for planted explosives, Mr. Shukla said.The rebels, who have been fighting for independence from India for decades, have accused the government of exploiting poor tribal villagers. They frequently attack police camps and mobile convoys.The fatal ambush was the first such assault this year. In 2016, the Indian police killed 24 Maoist rebels, including seven women, in the state of Orissa in the neighboring Malkangri district. | World |
A gamer in Melbourne has had his assets frozen in connection with a popular video game cheat. Hes one of many being sued by game companies worldwide, raising questions about copyright law and the policing of online civility.Credit...Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 7, 2018MELBOURNE, Australia Imagine you are racing a car through a packed city center. You are in first place, only seconds from victory, when suddenly, a missile explodes and kills you. By the time you have come back to life youre playing a video game you are far behind the fleet. But your attacker, despite being rammed and shot at, stands unharmed.For players of the popular video game Grand Theft Auto Online, scenarios like this are not uncommon when facing off against competitors using an unauthorized plug-in known as Infamous that lets them make themselves invincible, teleport or acquire unlimited weapons, vehicles and currency. But the games publisher, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive Software, are stepping up their response worldwide to what they see as outright cheats. They have filed at least five lawsuits in the United States, Europe and Australia, with the most recent case including a search and seizure order against Christopher Anderson, a Melbourne man connected to Infamous.ImageCredit...Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesWhile the move has been welcomed by some gamers, it has incensed others who argue that video games (like other online realms) should be open and collaborative; creators working outside major corporations often develop modifications that enhance players experiences. The crackdown has also raised broader questions about the reach of copyright law, which some scholars see as a potential threat to free speech, and whether search and seizure orders go a step too far in policing online civility.Cheaters do tend to ruin the game experience for others, but not everything that is antisocial is illegal, nor should it be, said Mitch Stoltz, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit in San Francisco that defends digital privacy and free speech. Mr. Stoltz said the legal arguments being raised by game publishers pushed the boundaries of copyright law, which generally applies to making permanent copies, rather than temporary modifications. Changing a game isnt actually distributing a new version of the game, just as watching a movie through tinted glasses isnt watching a new movie, he said. Theres a lot of money at stake. Since being released in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V has reportedly made $6 billion, which is more than any film in history. Until recently, gamers could easily download Infamous for use with the online version of Grand Theft Auto. Prices ranged from a few dollars to about $40 for a lifetime membership. But earlier this year, Infamous was taken offline following a spate of legal action by game developers against modders, or people who modify games in a way the original designers did not intend.Take-Two Interactive took legal action against cheat developers in New York, Florida, Britain and Germany for copyright infringement. Epic Games the developer of the popular multiplayer game Fortnite also filed multiple lawsuits against YouTube users in North Carolina who promoted the use of cheats online. (One of them was a 14-year-old.)While Take-Two Interactive is based in the United States, the defendants cases are subject to copyright law in their own countries. Free trade agreements and treaties have helped standardize how those laws work, legal experts said, making it easier for companies to police their wares across national boundaries.But for players, the cases and the severity of enforcement often come as a surprise. ImageCredit...Rafal Gerszak for The New York TimesIn September, an Australian federal judge issued orders against Mr. Anderson who is also known online as sfinktah, Koroush Anderson and Koroush Jeddian authorizing a freeze on his assets and a search of his home in Melbourne. (The address of Mr. Andersons neighbor, which he said he had once used for an Amazon delivery, was also searched under the order.)The use of search and seizure orders in copyright cases is not uncommon in Australia, said Nicolas Suzor, a law and digital media researcher at Queensland University of Technology. But having them obtained in a closed courtroom hearing without the defendant being represented is concerning, he said. Mr. Anderson agreed.They cant technically protect the software, so theyre using scare tactics, said Mr. Anderson, 42, standing outside his home in southeast Melbourne, on a porch strewn with broken electronics, a faded shopping basket and a cactus. The raid, Mr. Anderson said, came after weeks of surveillance. Early on the morning of Sept. 25, his computers and hard disks were seized. Mr. Anderson, who does not currently have a job, was also prohibited from using or disposing of any assets excluding for modest living expenses and was restrained from further developing or distributing Infamous and any other cheat software. Failing to do so, the court order noted, could result in his imprisonment. He is acting as his own attorney, he said, and has yet to file a defense. Theyre just beating up on me, Mr. Anderson said of the game publishers, arguing that the search and seizure order was a disproportionate response. Infamous was designed to help players combat cheaters using more sinister modifications, almost like an antivirus software, he said. But Alex Walker, editor of the gaming website Kotaku Australia, said that Infamous was just a straight-up cheat. Cheats, he said, break and exploit parts of the game code to advantage the experience of one player at the disadvantage of other players. It is genuinely harmful to the community, he added. In a statement provided to The Times, Take-Two Interactive said it was committed to protecting our multiplayer community from harassment and other disruptions to their shared entertainment experiences. We can and will continue to take legal action against those who interfere with the multiplayer environment enjoyed by our audiences, the company said.Take-Two Interactives lawsuit coincides with the release of its newest game, Red Dead Redemption II a hotly awaited sequel to the Western adventure game in which players can freely explore a built universe instead of adhering to a structured sequence of events. The companys crackdown on mod developers, experts say, may be both a warning to aspiring cheat developers and an attempt to preserve sales. According to Take-Two Interactives most recent annual report, game spending by fans on virtual currency or costumes, for example accounted for 42 percent of net revenue. This business model, experts say, is increasingly threatened by mods, which can offer those same items for free (or at an amount that goes to the modder and not the game publisher). Video game publishers and developers are forced into a perpetual virtual arms race to update their products and security technology before the sellers can update theirs, the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry trade association based in Washington, wrote in a submission last month to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.Still, copyright policy may not be the best way to tackle the problem, said Meredith Rose, a policy counsel and copyright expert with Public Knowledge, an advocacy group in Washington focused on consumer digital rights. She said banning individual cheaters, for example, would be a fairer and more effective response. ImageCredit...Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe proportionality of the hammer is completely out of scale with the harm being done, Ms. Rose said. Even if copyright litigation were justified when it came to cheaters, she added, the cases could set a dangerous precedent: Copyright and anti-circumvention laws could also be used to deter competition, criticism of corporate policies or reports of security vulnerabilities. The contracts that accompany downloads of video games and other media products often include clauses that allow for a broad range of draconian corporate policing, said Mr. Stoltz, the San Francisco attorney. When courts worldwide become willing to transform violations of the fine print into heavy-handed remedies, he said, it makes everyone vulnerable to the whims of every company that we do business with online.This article was produced in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Science team. An ABC radio report about the international crackdown on cheats by gaming companies was also broadcast on RN Breakfast and can be downloaded here. Want more Australia coverage and discussion? Sign up for the weekly Australia Letter, start your day with your local Morning Briefing and join us in our Facebook group. | World |
TrilobitesThe Mekong River is home to enormous and endangered aquatic life. A 400-pound fishs release shows how some conservation efforts in Cambodia are paying off.Credit...University of Nevada, Reno, via ReutersPublished May 18, 2022Updated May 23, 2022Just after dawn on May 5, scientists working along a stretch of the Mekong River in Cambodia released a giant, endangered freshwater stingray that had been caught on a fishermans line. At 13 feet long and 400 pounds, the gigantic animal pancake was larger than a hibachi table.It was shaking, and I told her, Calm down, we will release you soon, said Chea Seila, a coordinator for the Wonders of the Mekong Project.The giant freshwater stingray, Urogymnus polylepis, is the worlds largest stingray species, known also as a whipray. With dusky-brown tops and creamy white bottoms, the animals slide across riverbeds in search of fish and invertebrates. Though they can grow to epic proportions, over-harvesting for the stingrays meat, accidental deaths in fishing nets and habitat fragmentation and degradation from dams, pollution and other human activities have made the animals endangered.After receiving a call from the fisherman who caught the stingray, Ms. Chea and her team drove eight hours through the night to assist with its release. They arrived at 3 a.m., and waited with the fish until the sun came up. More people were needed to delicately move the animal, which was armed with a venomous barb that could be more than a foot long and is capable of piercing bone.Before freeing the stingray, Ms. Chea and her colleagues took noninvasive samples that would help with future study of the species. Then, they helped guide the colossus back to the Mekongs depths.She swam away calmly, but then appeared again, which made us feel so, so happy, said Ms. Chea.VideoThe stingray had to be released delicately both to keep the animal safe and to protect humans from its venomous barb. Video by University of Nevada, Reno.That a stingray of this size could still be found in these waters was extraordinary, the experts said.It shows you nature is so beautiful, but also resilient, said Sudeep Chandra, a limnologist at the University of Nevada, Reno and co-scientist on the Wonders of the Mekong Project. Even with the major environmental problems in the Lower Mekong, like dams, forest change and overfishing, these large, charismatic species are still there, wanting to persist.Of course, it does not always play out like this, Ms. Chea said. People who live along the Mekong rely on the rivers bounty for food and income. Stories abound in those communities about much larger rays that have been chopped into small pieces for sale in the local market, she said. In fact, Ms. Chea said, another giant stingray was caught in April. However, it was already dead by the time they found it.Giant freshwater stingrays are not the only enormous and endangered creatures that need to be preserved along that stretch of river. It is also home to giant softshell turtles, the Mekong giant catfish and the giant barb, a type of fish. The Wonders of the Mekong partnership is working with scientists to better understand the habitat.Much of what is known about big rivers as ecosystems comes from the Mississippi River and rivers in Europe. But all of these are in temperate regions, Dr. Chandra said. In contrast, the Mekong is tropical and prone to huge, seasonal deluges. This gives the Mekong a dynamic and mostly unstudied ecology, he said.For instance, Dr. Chandra and his team were surprised to discover recently that beneath the Mekongs surface, there were hidden pools more than 250 feet deep. If you could somehow dip the Statue of Liberty and its pedestal into one of these chasms, only the torch would remain above water.It is probable that such pools play an important role in the life cycle of the rivers giants. With underwater submersibles, environmental DNA sampling and sensors that can provide information about the rivers changes in real time, the scientists working with the Wonders of the Mekong Project hope to learn more about these habitats and protect them from environmental threats.Ms. Chea has been working in these communities since 2005, developing trust and building partnerships between the project and the people who share the river with these species. And that work seems to be paying off. Now, when someone accidentally hauls in a giant creature, they may reach for a phone instead of a filet knife.Ms. Chea said a local leader told her that he had never seen a giant freshwater stingray. And during the release, she watched as he spoke with two young boys.She said she heard him identify the animal to them and say, You should protect it so your kids in the future will also know that we have a giant stingray in our village. | science |
White House MemoCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 20, 2018WASHINGTON President Trump has railed against undocumented immigrants in recent days, branding many of them murderers and thieves who want to infest our country. Not long ago, he referred to them as animals, although he insisted he meant only those who join a violent gang.The presidents unpresidential language has become the standard for some on his team. This week his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, made a mocking noise, womp womp, when a liberal strategist raised the case of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome separated from her parents at the border.Mr. Trumps coarse discourse increasingly seems to inspire opponents to respond with vituperative words of their own. Whether it be Robert De Niros four-letter condemnation at the Tony Awards or a congressional intern who shouted the same word at Mr. Trump when he visited the Capitol this week, the president has generated so much anger among his foes that some are crossing boundaries that he himself shattered long ago.The politics of rage that animated Mr. Trumps political rise now dominate the national conversation, as demonstrated repeatedly during the debate over his zero tolerance immigration policy that separated children from parents apprehended at the border.Unfortunately, weve seen a decline in civility and an uptick in incivility, said Christine Porath, a Georgetown University professor and author of Mastering Civility, a book on behavior in the workplace. It seems like people are not only reciprocating, but we tend to stoop lower rather than higher. Its really putting us in an unfortunate place.Ms. Porath said the current harsh climate was affecting people beyond politics, injecting itself into everyday life at home and work. We know that incivility is contagious, she said. Its like a bug or virus. Its not only when people experience incivility, its when they see or read about it.Mr. Trumps descriptions of those trying to enter the country illegally have been so sharp that critics say they dehumanize people and lump together millions of migrants with the small minority that are violent. This approach traces back to the day Mr. Trump first announced his campaign for president in 2015, when he labeled many Mexican immigrants as rapists, a portrayal that drew furious protests.ImageCredit...Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Trump recalled that controversy just this week and doubled down on it. Remember I made that speech and I was badly criticized? Oh, its so terrible, what he said, he said with derision during a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business on Tuesday. Turned out I was 100 percent right. Thats why I got elected.Indeed, the lesson that Mr. Trump took from his nastier-than-thou campaign was that the more outrageous he was, the more incendiary his rhetoric, the more attention he drew and the more votes he received. Any expectation that he would put the harsh language aside to become more of a moral leader as president has proved illusory.He has made insults the core of his presidential messaging. He has called Canadas prime minister weak & dishonest. He has called journalists, lawmakers and political opponents wacky, crazy, goofy, mentally deranged, psycho, sleazy and corrupt. He has called some of his own appointees and Republican allies very bad, VERY weak, failed and lightweight.Returning incivility with incivility has not always worked out well for his opponents. When Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas tried it during the Republican primaries in 2016, it backfired.Only Trump can get away with being Trump, said Jennifer Mercieca, an associate professor at Texas A&M University who has studied his language closely over the last three years.Any time that other people have tried to use ad hominem attacks or swear or whatever, it rings false, she said. And other politicians tend to have more shame, so when theyre criticized they fold. And as you know, Trump doesnt do that. And so because he refuses to be shamed, he can get away with sort of saying anything.The emotional exchanges that feel so raw online play out in person too. Outside an arena in Duluth, Minn., where the president was speaking on Wednesday night, protesters waved signs that said My Grandpa Didnt Fight Nazis for This and Liar. Racist. Fascist. Sociopath. Twitter Troll. Idiot.Supporters of the president responded with their own messaging. Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends, read a mans T-shirt outside the rally, without explanation.Gary Payne, who teaches sociology at Central Lakes College in Brainerd, Minn., said that he opposed the president, his policies and also the trading of crude insults on both sides.People are looking for the simplest signals to go by, Mr. Payne said as he stood outside the arena after trying unsuccessfully to attend the rally. People pay more attention to demeanor than they do to policy.Harsh discourse in American politics did not begin with Mr. Trump, of course. Ugly language goes back to the fractious days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson through the years before the Civil War and eventually to the McCarthy era and Vietnam. But rarely has the president himself set the tone from the top in the way Mr. Trump does. When President George Bush called his challenger Bill Clinton a bozo in 1992, it was seen as unpresidential.Mr. Trumps presidency has driven some of those who oppose him to extremes of their own. Kathy Griffin, the comedian, was fired after posing for a picture in which she seemed to be holding Mr. Trumps decapitated head. Samantha Bee, another comic, apologized for using a crude term to describe Ivanka Trump.WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHERS ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL WILL STAND UP AGAINST Mr. Trump, the actor Peter Fonda wrote on Twitter, also using a vulgar term to describe the president. Mr. Fonda later deleted the tweet and apologized: I went way too far. It was wrong and I should not have done it.Such responses do not always go over well. Donald Trump is a dilemma to his political opponents, said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist. Its very easy for his political opponents to try to meet him on his level, and that usually backfires on his opponents.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesSome liberals bristle at the idea that they should hold back in the face of what they consider an inhumane or authoritarian presidency. Jessica Valenti, a columnist for Guardian U.S. and the author of multiple books on feminism, politics and culture, said restraint played into Mr. Trumps hands.Expecting those of us who are scared and angry over what our country is becoming to speak with civility is absurd civility died the day Trump took office, she wrote. Its like telling a woman to smile as shes being sexually harassed on the street: Were not just supposed to put up with injustice, were meant to be cheerful through it, as well.One of the most sensitive debates generated by Mr. Trumps family separation policy was the question of when Nazi comparisons are appropriate. When Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director under President George W. Bush, posted a picture of a concentration camp and wrote, Other governments have separated mothers and children, it prompted an exchange on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, who noted that his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.They were killed, so when you make the comparison to Auschwitz, thats such a powerful image and you understand the criticism youre getting for that, he told Mr. Hayden. As bad as this policy is, its certainly not Auschwitz.I fully understand, Mr. Hayden replied, and if that offended anyone, they have my deepest and most sincere apology. He added that the blessings of a free society should not be taken for granted. I knew it would be controversial, but I felt a warning flare was necessary.Two Holocaust survivors, however, posted a video testimonial this week talking about the impact of being separated from their parents. Lets be clear: We are not comparing what is happening today to the Holocaust, they said in a statement. But forcibly separating children from their parents is an act of cruelty under all circumstances.Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said on Wednesday that everyone should be extremely careful with Holocaust comparisons but that there are disturbing parallels that have touched a nerve.Lets not spend time drawing comparisons, he added. Instead, we should focus all of our energy fighting for a more moral set of policies today. | Politics |
11 Things Wed Really Like to KnowThe trick is not to increase life span, scientists say, but to lengthen health span.Credit...Jens Mortensen for The New York TimesNov. 19, 2018The most common risk factor for serious disease is old age. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurological conditions, diabetes all increase radically with advancing years. And the older a person is, the more likely he or she is to have multiple chronic illnesses. Some scientists hope one day to treat all of them at once by targeting aging itself.Humans arent built to last forever. The oldest person on record was Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. In 2040, the average life span for people in Spain, projected to pass Japan as the country with the longest-lived citizens, will reach about 86 years. There is considerable dispute, however, over how long humans might live under optimal circumstances. In 2016, a team of scientists declared the upper limit to be 115 years. But in June, researchers reviewing death rates among elderly Italians suggested that there may be no limit at all. In animal studies over the last few decades, scientists have begun to understand the specific cellular and molecular processes that cause the deteriorations of old age.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]In an essay in the journal JAMA last month, Tamara Tchkonia and Dr. James L. Kirkland of the Mayo Clinic categorized these processes into four broad groups: chronic inflammation; cell dysfunction; changes in stem cells that make them fail to regenerate tissue; and cellular senescence, the accumulation in tissue of aging cells that accompanies disease.Old cells, researchers have found, secrete proteins, lipids and other substances that increase inflammation and tissue destruction. In one study in mice, researchers showed that transplanting these cells to the knee joints of healthy animals causes disease that looks very much like human osteoarthritis. Healthy young people have few of these aging cells, but after age 60, they begin to accumulate, and their increasing quantity correlates with disabilities of old age.Could there be any remedy that removes these old cells while leaving young cells? Several are being tested. In one study of mice, old cells have been found susceptible to a combination of two drugs: dasatinib, a cancer drug, and quercetin, a plant flavonoid. They improved cardiac function and exercise capacity in old mice, delayed symptoms of osteoporosis and prolonged healthy old age.Some drugs already approved for other purposes are being tested as senolytics, as the drugs that kill old cells are now called. Dr. Nir Barzilai, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, is planning a study of metformin, a drug that has been used for 60 years to treat diabetes and has been shown to be effective against several age-related diseases. If drugs can treat aging, is aging itself a disease? No, Dr. Barzilai said. Neither I nor the Food and Drug Administration is interested in calling aging a disease. Our study is to show that we can prevent a composite of age-related diseases cardiovascular, cancer, cognitive and ultimately affect mortality.Another drug candidate involves a coenzyme called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or N.A.D. It functions in cell respiration, moving electrons into the mitochondria where energy is produced. As people age, levels of N.A.D. decline to the point where it is undetectable in the blood of the elderly.David A. Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard, is working on methods of replenishing those levels. In studies of yeast, worms, flies and mice, that replenishing rapidly reverses some aspects of aging, he said. And now there are trials underway in humans.(N.A.D. is already peddled in health food stores, but scientists like Dr. Barzilai say its a bad idea to take a nutraceutical to extend life or even an established medication like metformin until the clinical data are in.) One widely published researcher in the field, S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that there is an upper limit to how long we can live about 85 years.Parts of the body, including the brain, are not designed for long-term use, he said. Were seeing the consequences of pushing the limits of survival: the rise of Alzheimers disease, dementias, joint and hip problems, loss of muscle mass.These are not a consequence of failure, but of success, he added. Dr. Olshansky advocates extending health span, not life span.We will all die. No serious scientist believes in immortality. But we also are closer to assuring healthier old age than ever before.There are dozens of companies in clinical trials, or planning them, tackling all the different causes of aging, Dr. Sinclair said. Im optimistic that there will be a few successes in the coming years. | Health |
Credit...Miles ReidMarch 13, 2017MOSCOW Igor Shafarevich, an internationally renowned Russian mathematician who had a central role in the anti-Soviet dissident movement during the height of the Cold War, died on Feb. 19 in Moscow. He was 93.His death was confirmed by Aleksei Parshin, director of the department of algebra at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, where Professor Shafarevich had led a seminar for many years, until 2008.In recent decades his image was tarnished in academic circles by accusations of anti-Semitism and a far-right tilt toward Russian nationalism.Professor Shafarevichs work is known throughout the mathematical world, his name enshrined in the Shafarevich-Weil and Golod-Shafarevich theorems. His textbooks on algebraic geometry, translated into English, are regarded as classics in the field. As a young professor, he had been known to cut a handsome, charismatic figure in the classrooms and lecture halls.He told one Russian interviewer that when he was unexpectedly allowed by the Soviet authorities to attend an international mathematics conference in Edinburgh, it felt like reuniting with long-lost family whose work I know in detail and who know my work in detail.He came to wider international attention in 1973 as one of the few dissident voices in Soviet science to rise to the defense Andrei D. Sakharov, the physicist who took on the Soviet regime and later received the Nobel Peace Prize.When the authorities pressured scientists to sign a letter denouncing Sakharov, Professor Shafarevich wrote an open letter of support that was conveyed to Western journalists in Moscow.One cannot help remembering the nineteen-thirties and forties when we condemned with wrath and held up to shame without having the vaguest idea of what we were condemning, Professor Shafarevich wrote in the letter, referring to those who were denounced as enemies of the state under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.Professor Shafarevich was a member of the Committee on Human Rights, which was co-founded by Sakharov and whose membership included the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.Professor Shafarevich contributed essays to From Under the Rubble, a collection of writings, initiated by Solzhenitsyn, that dissected Soviet rule and called for a Christian alternative. The book was published in the West and circulated in samizdat form in the Soviet Union.Professor Shafarevich had defended scientific honesty earlier in his career when he signed a letter in 1955, along with 300 scientists, denouncing the misleading theories of the Soviet agricultural biologist Trofim Lysenko, who had gained broad power under Stalin.ImageCredit...The New York TimesIn 1975, Professor Shafarevichs open dissidence cost him his teaching job at Moscow State University, where he had taught for more than 30 years. His firing prompted leading mathematicians from around the world to rally to his defense. Some, including Michael Atiyah, Serge Lang and David Mumford, signed a letter of protest that was printed in The New York Times.Igor Rostislavovich Shafarevich was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, on June 3, 1923.He graduated from Moscow State University, having studied with the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics there. His father, also a graduate of the university, taught engineering mechanics.Igor Shafarevichs political writings were at first in sync with the anti-Soviet sentiments of the intelligentsia. His book The Socialist Phenomenon traced the history of socialism to the Sumerian, Egyptian and other ancient empires and described it as deadly in all its forms, not least Bolshevism.His writings, however, became progressively more xenophobic. And to his critics, one essay, Russophobia, from 1982, stamped him as an anti-Semite. In the essay, influenced by the French historian Augustin Cochin and his studies of the French Revolution, Professor Shafarevich elaborated on a theory of the small nation that destroys the large nation that hosts it, singling out Jews.Professor Shafarevich called the anti-Semitism accusations absurd and scandalous. But he emerged as a hero to nationalist groups, and as his ideas were disseminated, there were reports that Jews were being blocked from positions at the Steklov Institute, where he taught.In 1992, in the United States, the National Academy of Sciences asked for his resignation as a foreign associate. Professor Lang, who had signed the letter to The Times in his defense in the 1970s, denounced Professor Shafarevichs ideas but defended his right to remain in the academy.Professor Shafarevich later argued for the return of the Crimean peninsula to Moscow, saying that it had been torn from the body of Russia by Ukraine and that its port city of Sevastopol was a key to the resurgence of Russia. His assertions foreshadowed President Vladimir V. Putins annexation of Crimea in 2014.More recently, Professor Shafarevich has been cited approvingly on far-right websites like Breitbart News.He is survived by his wife, Nina, as well as a son, a daughter, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.How Professor Shafarevich should be remembered has been debated on social media since his death.He should be credited for his work as a dissident in the early 1970s, Mikhail Epstein, a professor of Russian cultural history at Emory University in Atlanta, said in an email. But, he added, Professor Shafarevichs subsequent turn to propaganda of anti-Semitism, of course, undermines his authority as an intellectual, as a freethinker.Professor Shafarevichs former students, some of them Jewish, were divided over his legacy. It is a difficult matter for me, said one, Yuri Manin, a retired scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University.Another former student, Igor Dolgachev, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, said that while he objected to Professor Shafarevichs social and political views, he rejected the accusation of anti-Semitism, citing the help the professor gave Jewish students in getting jobs and getting published.When I was told openly that I cannot get a position at the university because my mother was Jewish, his telephone calls helped me to secure my teaching job at another institution, Professor Dolgachev wrote in an email. But the tragic part for me, he added, is that Professor Shafarevich let himself be involved in political activity during a very dangerous time in Russian history. | World |
Adrien Broner Curses Out Stage Of Boxers 'I Don't Like These Muthaf***ers' 1/25/2018 Here's Adrien Broner being Adrien Broner ... telling basically the entire boxing world how much he hates them ... TO THEIR FACES. It went down at Showtime's boxing Upfronts in NYC Wednesday which were hosted by radio superstar and rabid Boxing fan Charlamagne Tha God. All of Showtime's biggest stars like Errol Spence, Keith Thurman, Deontay Wilder and Mikey Garcia were there, but when AB got the mic, he decided to tell the rest of the guys how he felt about them Check it out, and BTW the language is obviously filthy there. | Entertainment |
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 21, 2014SOCHI, Russia Deep in the back alleyways of the Ice Cube Curling Center in the Olympic Park stands a door marked TER Secondary. It is not clear exactly what goes on in there or why it is so close to doors labeled Language Services and Venue Technology Operations, but it is further evidence, if any was needed, that the Olympics occupy an exotic alternative world that makes sense only on its own terms.Every four years, wildly disparate winter sports come together to form an instant civilization that lasts for a few weeks and then dissolves peacefully back into its constituent parts. Like any world, it has its own secret language, a shorthand that can mystify the uninitiated. Take the V.M. Office door at the curling arena. Venue management, explained a woman who turned out to be behind that very door. It had just opened unexpectedly, revealing the on-duty V.M. Office staff her and a colleague to be eating lunch and watching the biathlon on television. Were ruling all the stuff at the venue.At the curling arena, some doors were easier to fathom than others. The Sport Manager Room was simple: The sport manager manages sport. Timing and Scoring Storage? Also self-explanatory, since timing and scoring devices surely have to be stored somewhere. And there was the Mascot Dressing Room, where perhaps a lucky visitor might happen upon a half-dressed bear.But what was the C & W Dressing Room? Many of the doors said Staff Only in English, yet were rendered at least three ways in Cyrillic. A succession of hand-lettered signs pointed down four corridors and stairwells through storage areas for chocolate power bars, for drywall shelves and for empty refrigerators marked beer to a final destination, far above the ice, known by the mysterious designation Eng Platform C.One door, alarmingly, appeared to scream Danger! in about five ways in Russian, but in English said only, In case of black out or lack of voltage in a socket.ImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesWhat was the difference between the Ice Technicians Room and the Ice Technicians Working Area Room? A worker who came out of the Ice Technicians Room looked to be in a prime position to explain. Alas, no. Probably you can ask Hans hes the main ice maker, he said. But Hans was not there, nor was he in the nearby Ice Technicians Working Area office, which maintained its mystique by virtue of being locked.A lot of the other doors were locked, too. And while it would have been exciting to see what was going on in the Water Purification/Preparation/Treatment Room, it was probably just as well that all was quiet in the Russian Federal Guards Services Unit.Some Olympic signs are odd to outsiders but not to people who have been to an Olympics or two. The Mixed Zone, with its connotations of coed bathrooms, might not be the best name for a place where reporters interview athletes (how about Interview Zone?), but that is what the place is called. Every venue has one.Here in Sochi, every venue also has its Access Control Points, its Interpretation Booths, its Athletes Dressing Rooms and its Doping Control Station, cheerily designated with cartoons of two urine sample containers that resemble baby bottles and are labeled A and B. Every venue has Broadcast Commentary Positions, a Jury Appeal Room and a Logistics Office. And each also seems to have something related to CER and sometimes to TER, either in a primary or a secondary capacity.Im sorry, but this is secret information, said an official who suddenly popped out from behind the CER & TER Primary door at the biathlon station and who quickly popped back inside again, groundhog-style.Some venues have Wax Cabins; others do not. But it is fair to bet that only the figure skating arena has a place called Entertainment Dressing Room or a place called Costume Repair Room. And only the biathlon stadium has a Rifles and Ammunition Storage Room.ImageCredit...Josh Haner/The New York TimesUnfortunately, we cant show you, said an official stationed outside that room, which was protected by a steel gate, like a bank vault.Then there was the Dry Shooting Room, which looked like nothing special, maybe a high school rec room in a school district with a limited rec room budget. They practice here without ammunition, said Evgenia Karbusheva, a volunteer.Some of the oddness can be attributed to language confusion, which is nobodys fault. And while most of the English renditions of Russian signs are admirably clear, others look as if they were written by rogue translators who sneaked into the office when the official translators were at lunch.How else would you explain the blameless regular garbage can in the Olympic Park that reads Food Waste Accumulation Area? Or the sign by the concession stand at the ice hockey arena reading, Please Take Your Drinks Before Paying?Perhaps the best signs are near spectators entrances to the biathlon competition, which you reach after walking some way up a hill. They appear to have sprung from nothing more than the friendly imagination of some Olympic sign producer who has been reading a motivational manual for the armchair athlete.Just Several Meters More and Youll Reach the Goal! one reads.Before you know it, you are more or less being awarded your own gold medal, for the arduous sport of successfully making your way nearly to your seat.We Know the Journey Was Difficult, the sign reads, and We Are So Proud of You! | Sports |
Credit...Toru Hanai/ReutersMarch 9, 2017They descend on towns and villages, plundering crops and rampaging through homes. They occasionally attack humans. But perhaps most dangerous of all, the marauders carry with them highly radioactive material.Hundreds of toxic wild boars have been roaming across northern Japan, where the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant six years ago forced thousands of residents to desert their homes, pets and livestock. Some animals, like cattle, were left to rot in their pens.As Japan prepares to lift some evacuation orders on four towns within the more than 12-mile exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant later this month, officials are struggling to clear out the contaminated boars.Wild boar meat is a delicacy in northern Japan, but animals slaughtered since the disaster are too contaminated to eat. According to tests conducted by the Japanese government, some of the boars have shown levels of radioactive element cesium-137 that are 300 times higher than safety standards.Officials have also expressed concern that returning residents may be attacked by the animals, some of which have settled comfortably in abandoned homes and have reportedly lost their shyness to humans.Photographs and video footage of the crisis-hit Japanese towns and villages are reminiscent of Chernobyl, where wildlife continues to thrive despite high radiation levels in the aftermath of the worlds worst nuclear accident in 1986. With the absence of humans, Chernobyl, in Ukraine, has become a refuge for all kinds of animals, including moose, deer, brown bear, lynx and even wolves.Since the nuclear crisis in Fukushima in 2011, video footage taken by journalists has shown packs of badly unkempt dogs scampering across roads. Rat colonies have overrun abandoned supermarkets. Farmland, transformed into grassland, has become a perfect habitat for wild boars and foxes. Boars have caused about $854,000 in damage to agriculture in Fukushima prefecture, reported the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.The local authorities in towns across Fukushima have hired teams of hunters to cull the boars. It is unclear whether those efforts will pay off, or whether they are enough to persuade former residents to return home.The authorities in the town of Tomioka say they have killed 800 so far, but officials there say that is not enough, according to the Japanese news media. The latest statistics show that in the three years since 2014, the number of boars killed in hunts has grown to 13,000 from 3,000.And in a government survey last year, more than half of Fukushimas former residents said they wouldnt return, citing fears over radiation and the safety of the nuclear plant, which will take 40 years to dismantle.The local Fukushima government recently published a guidebook of suggestions to help officials tackle the wild boar problem, including building special traps and using drones to ward off the animals.Its important to set up an environment that will make it tough for the boars to live in, an official told the Yomiuri daily.Elsewhere, the city of Nihonmatsu prepared three mass graves to dispose of 1,800 boars, but the local government says it is already running out of land.The city of Soma last year set up municipal incinerators specially designed to burn carcasses and filter out radioactive cesium. But the authorities said they lack the staff to stuff the animal parts down the furnace."We need a strong hunting plan, Hidekiyo Tachiya, the mayor of Soma, told the Asahi Shimbun at the opening of an incinerator last year. I wish for the day to come when we can eat wild game again. | World |
Global HealthCredit...Michael Stravato for The New York TimesJune 19, 2017Dotted around Houston, hidden in overgrown backyards and piles of old tires, are what look like 10 tiny models of Hollywoods iconic Capitol Records building.They are full of recording gear, but not to capture the vocals of Frank Sinatra or the Beastie Boys.These high-tech devices catch mosquitoes though not in big batches, like typical traps. They catch them one by one, each in its own compartment, after inspecting each mosquitos wing beats to be sure its a species that researchers want.We were the first to have these, said Mustapha Debboun, director of mosquito control for the Harris County public health department. I saw something on the internet about them, and I said, Whoa can I get some?Theyve been wonderful, he added. Why would I want to collect a thousand nuisance mosquitoes if I can avoid it?The new traps, made by Microsoft, overcome one of the most frustrating aspects of insect surveillance: There are 56 species of mosquitoes in this buggy bayou city, and conventional traps suck in nearly all of them.Entomologists want only a few disease-carrying types, including Aedes aegypti, which carries Zika and dengue, and Culex quinquefasciatus, which spreads West Nile virus.To find them, scientists must freeze whole batches caught in the usual traps and tediously hand-sort them with tweezers under a microscope.Making matters worse, most traps suck the insects through a fan and then whirl them around a mesh basket for hours.The white scales get rubbed off, so you lose the white lyre on the back that tells you its aegypti, said Pamela Stark, a county entomologist. June bugs get pulled in and stomp around like cows.The Microsoft trap, by contrast, has 64 compartments, arrayed like studio apartments in a skyscraper.When an insect flies in, it crosses an infrared beam that reads the pattern of the shadows thrown by its buzzing wings, said Ethan Jackson, a computer scientist who leads Microsofts Project Premonition, which created the trap with advice from mosquito experts at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.If its a species the county wants, a clear plastic door shuts like a Venus fly trap, Dr. Jackson said. The trap can catch the right species almost 90 percent of the time.Each compartment also records and uploads to a website the time, temperature, humidity and ambient light data that records when each species hunts for blood, which is a good time to spray.The first 30 prototypes, of which Houston has 10, cost several thousand dollars each, Dr. Jackson said. But he hopes to get the price down below $300, so even poor countries where malaria and yellow fever kill thousands of victims could afford them.Selling traps is not the point, he explained. He has a far more ambitious goal: to have thousands of them around the world gathering viral DNA the way Google Street View gathers pictures for the value of the data.He was thinking about Ebolas long migration from central Africa to Guinea, he said, when he had an idea.Animals are full of diseases that infect humans, but its tricky to get blood samples from gorillas, migrating birds, cave-dwelling bats, poisonous snakes and so on.Then I realized thats a mosquitos full-time job, Dr. Jackson said. There are over 3,600 species, but if we can catch the right ones and do metagenetic sequencing on all the DNA and RNA we find in them, we can see the diseases on the move.Research efforts like the Global Virome Project are trying to find and sequence every virus that might threaten mankind.Mosquitoes, he suggested, could make that go much faster by being their field biologists. | Health |
Credit...Jawad Jalali/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 15, 2017KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan officials sharply increased the tally of dead in an attack last week on a military hospital, saying Wednesday that at least 50 people, including patients and staff members, were killed.In addition, 24 people have been arrested in connection with the March 8 attack, including Afghan generals, according to Lt. Gen. Helaludin Helal, the countrys deputy minister of defense for strategic and intelligence affairs. The arrests were for a variety of charges including negligence, incompetence and complicity, General Helal said at a contentious news conference.The news conference was called after Afghan news reports and social media accounts suggested that the casualty toll was actually in the hundreds; that three hospitalized Afghan generals were among those killed by the attackers; and that the minister of defense, Abdullah Habibi, had personally signed the V.I.P. vehicle pass that allowed the attackers to enter the heavily guarded hospital complex in a car packed with explosives and weapons.The reports seemed to be fueled partly by contradictory government claims immediately after the attack that only two people had died, a number many officials stuck to even after personnel at the Ministry of Defense confirmed that at least 31 people were dead.In addition, it took the authorities seven hours to quell the attack, leaving the armed insurgents prowling Sardar Daud Khan Hospital for hours, hunting down patients and medical staff members in the 400-bed facility, which is usually full or nearly so.General Helal maintained that the news reports in general were distorted and incorrect, without getting into specifics. As the questioning grew heated, General Helal abruptly left, leaving the Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, to take over.General Waziri confirmed that officials were investigating the possibility that the attack was carried out by insiders, but he did not directly address assertions that doctors working at the hospital were involved. He did not identify the generals who were arrested, and did not say how many generals were arrested or what the charges were.He confirmed that the attackers brought their vehicle, a red Toyota Corolla, into the hospital compound in Kabul using an official pass, which he described as fake.One of the five attackers detonated their explosives-laden car with a remote-controlled device as they entered the hospital grounds dressed in white medical clothing, according to the official accounts. They then carried out the attack using guns, grenades and suicide vests, at least one of which detonated.The authorities said all five attackers were killed, but Afghans have widely questioned that assertion as well, and raised questions about whether wounded Taliban prisoners who had been in the hospital might have escaped.The victims names have not been made public by the government, further fanning speculation about a higher death toll. Some names have emerged. One victim was Gen. Daud Askaryar, who recently retired after six years as head of the National Police Academy, according to his son, Mohammad Maroof Askaryar, who was visiting him at the time of the attack and hid in a bathroom to escape being killed. His father, he said, was stabbed to death through his oxygen tent in the intensive care unit.The number of those killed is way higher than 50, said Jawed Kohistani, a former general who is a military analyst with wide connections among the Afghan security forces.A retired general who is currently a member of Parliament, Nazifa Zaki, also disputed the official figure. I believe 200 people were martyred in the hospital, Ms. Zaki said. This is what I heard from eyewitnesses and those who went to the hospital and funerals of the martyred.Much of the public ire has been directed at the countrys defense minister, General Habibi, a former Communist-era general appointed by President Ashraf Ghani, especially after reports that the general had signed the vehicle pass for the attackers.Members of Parliament have derided General Habibi, who is 64, for apparently sleeping through official meetings in the middle of a war, charges backed up by photos posted on local social media posts showing him apparently dozing off on the job. One shows him sleeping next to Mr. Ghani at an official function.He should just go to a mosque and catch up on his sleep, said Allah Gul Mujahid, another member of Parliament. We need shrewd and active generals to lead the forces. This is not the place for him.Afghans were also critical of the countrys chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, for posing for selfies with soldiers in front of the hospital immediately after the attack.The furor over the military hospital attack has underscored public disenchantment with the coalition government. It has struggled for more than a year to agree on a defense minister, and is two years overdue on holding national elections for Parliament.The military situation has steadily worsened in the meantime, with historically high casualties on the government side; more and more districts that are dominated by insurgents; and growing numbers of Afghans who have been displaced by fighting.The Islamic State claimed on one of its websites that it was responsible for the hospital attack, while the Taliban denied any role. Government officials, however, have blamed the Taliban, and General Helal said we cannot deny that one of the attackers shouted, Long live the Taliban.The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has a relatively small number of fighters in Afghanistan, mostly in the eastern province of Nangarhar. And while their members have carried out attacks in Kabul such as one last July at a protest that killed 80 people the hospital assault was more complex and sophisticated than anything the group has done before in Afghanistan. | World |
Credit...Kim Won-Jin/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 21, 2017North Korea is well known for provocative acts aimed at its most immediate adversaries South Korea, the United States and Japan. But Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old leader who took over in 2012 after his father died, also has sent increasingly blunt messages of defiance and even hostility to China, the Norths ally, protector and provider, vexing the Chinese as well.Based on their timing, the North Korean actions whether they be a missile launch, nuclear test, execution or propaganda campaign often seem like more than coincidence. Here is a sampling from the past decade:A July 4 missile launchAs the United States celebrated Independence Day in 2006, North Korea test-fired seven ballistic missiles including the Taepo Dong 2, its longest-range missile, in what the State Department called a provocative act.ImageCredit...David Guttenfelder/Associated PressShelling after a summit meetingOn Nov. 23, 2010, less than two weeks after South Korea hosted a Group of 20 summit meeting, North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a South Korean island, killing two soldiers and setting more than 60 houses on fire.A nuclear test amid Lunar New Year celebrationsOn Feb. 11, 2013, less than two weeks after the United Nations Security Council expanded sanctions on North Korea for a satellite launch, and in the midst of Chinas Lunar New Year holiday, North Korea confirmed it had conducted its third nuclear test.ImageCredit...Wong Maye-E/Associated PressAn execution follows outreach to ChinaOn Dec. 12, 2013, North Korea announced the execution of Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kims uncle and mentor, who was considered close to China and had actively sought advice from Chinese leaders on economic matters. Mr. Jang was accused of treason and corruption.Midrange missiles are launched after three-way talksOn March 25, 2014, North Korea tested two midrange missiles, the first such launch in five years, hours after the United States, South Korea and Japan held an extraordinary three-way summit meeting to discuss the Norths nuclear buildup.ImageCredit...Damir Sagolj/ReutersTwo months later, concerts in China by an all-girl pop band from North Korea that had been intended to improve relations were abruptly canceled.ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesNuclear tests bookend holidays and talksOn Feb. 6, 2016, as China prepared to celebrate the Lunar New Year, North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile carrying what it described as an observation satellite, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.On Sept. 8 of that year, less than a week after China hosted a Group of 20 summit meeting in Hangzhou, North Korea conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test.ImageCredit...Mohd Rasfan/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesA flurry of provocations after Trump settles inNorth Korea tested an intermediate-range missile on Feb. 11, while President Trump was hosting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at Mr. Trumps Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. The missile used solid fuel, which disarmament experts called a significant advance.A few days later, Mr. Kims estranged older half brother, Kim Jong-nam, who had been living in exile under Chinas protection, was assassinated at an airport in Malaysia. His death came amid rumors that China might have been preparing him to take over in case North Koreas government collapsed. North Korea denied responsibility.On March 20, North Korea tested a revved-up rocket engine, a few days after Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson warned in South Korea that the Trump administration might take pre-emptive military action if the North Koreans elevated the threat of their weapons program to a level deemed unacceptable. | World |
Sean Spicer LOL at Omarosa's 'Big Brother' Gig 1/30/2018 TMZ.com Sean Spicer considers Omarosa's new gig with "Celebrity Big Brother" a laughing matter ... and a huge step down!!! We got Trump's former White House Press Secretary Tuesday in NYC, and asked if he'll be watching his former colleague on the reality show. Spicy laughed and said anything after the White House is a downgrade. Odd for him to say, since he's in post-WH mode, too. We also asked Spicer if he has advice for the Prez ahead of the State of the Union address. It's amazing how quickly he fell back into podium mode. | Entertainment |
Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesNov. 21, 2018TIJUANA, Mexico One job opening was in a garment factory, another was with a cleaning company. Still, Mara Norma Lpez hesitated. When she left Honduras six weeks ago with a migrant caravan, she hoped to pass through Mexico, not to remain there.I want to go to the United States because I want to have a better life, Ms. Lpez, 39, said. And in Mexico I dont know.In a first step toward fashioning a long-term solution for caravan members, officials in this city of humming export plants got down to business: They set up a job fair complete with a mobile migration office.It was a practical response to the challenge of housing and feeding the migrants, an effort that is swamping Tijuanas resources. But even as Ms. Lpez and dozens of other migrants milled around the basement room filling out forms, it was clear much more was needed.The city government has said that it will take six months for all the migrants who decide to seek asylum in the United States to be called for a first interview with an asylum officer at the border. Having relied on collective action to reach the California border, the migrants must now navigate the next steps on their own.Tijuana officials prepared Wednesday for the caravan to double to more than 6,000 people, as migrants who had been waiting in rudimentary shelters two and a half hours to the east gradually found rides to Tijuana aboard buses and trailers.ImageCredit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesThe migrants, who have insisted on remaining together, are being dropped off at a rundown community sports center where officials set up a makeshift shelter last week. If the final population reaches 6,000 or so, as expected, the shelter will be packed with almost twice as many people as its estimated capacity.The head of Tijuanas social development agency, Mario Osuna, watched wearily Tuesday evening as hundreds of migrants, carrying rolled blankets and frayed backpacks, lined up to give their names and receive the orange bracelets that gave them access to the shelter.Were waiting for them because theyre already on their way, Mr. Osuna said of the migrants coming from the east. But we cant have people on top of one another.The new arrivals will raise tensions in Tijuana, where the United States following President Trumps portrayal of the caravan as an invasion has made a show of strengthening the border.Concertina wire spiraled over the American side of the border crossing leading from downtown Tijuana to San Ysidro, Calif. At the Otay Mesa crossing on the citys east side, United States Customs and Border Protection officers emerged in full anti-riot gear during the afternoon earlier this week to stand guard on either side of traffic inching over the border.United States Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called the show of force a response to intelligence suggesting that a large number of migrants were going to rush the border, although Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a binational activist group accompanying the migrants, has said repeatedly that no such plan exists.United States officials also said, without providing evidence, that they had identified 500 criminals in the caravan, but could not explain why the Mexican police had not arrested them.ImageCredit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesFor the migrants, who had willed themselves to believe that Mr. Trump could somehow be softened by their presence at the border, the message was clear.Once we got here, we realized that they werent going to let us cross, Leticia Ramrez, 35, who said she worked on banana plantations in Honduras, complained as she walked out of the shelter one morning this week with two friends. She was on her way to look for any job in Tijuana.The president of the United States treats us like garbage, like some kind of animal, Ms. Ramrez said, her arms wrapped around her sleeping bag.American lawyers have held workshops to explain to the migrants here the intricacies of applying for asylum in the United States almost the only way most of them might qualify to enter legally.Chelsea Strautman, a lawyer from Oregon, stood on an overturned bucket before a crowd clustered on the sports centers baseball diamond on Tuesday night.Approval rates for Central American applicants were grim, she told them; currently, less than 20 percent win their asylum cases. Theyve put thousands of migrants in jails, she said. If you dont qualify for asylum, youre going to be detained for months and then deported.Some migrants refused to give up hope. Were only a few steps away from seeing what God will say, said Emerson Martnez Amador, 19, from Honduras, who arrived in Tijuana on Tuesday with the second half of the caravan.ImageCredit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesIf it takes time to reach my destiny, Ill wait, he declared. Even if it takes one month, or two. Weve got to wait, you understand?The wait has just begun and Tijuana is feeling the strain. With Mexicos new federal government preparing to take office on Dec. 1, the city has received the barest minimum of help and cannot set up a new shelter, said Csar Palencia Chvez, who is in charge of migrants affairs for the city of Tijuana.We would all like for them to have a dignified space for the children, the women, the men, but the reality is that what has been humanely possible up to now is this, he said, referring to the sports center. There are no resources.And since the migrants wont separate, he said, he cannot place some of them with the citys network of largely church-run shelters.Most of those shelters, he said, will take only women and children because publicity about the way the caravan pushed through Mexicos southern border with Guatemala a month ago and the arrests of nearly 60 men in Tijuana during the past week almost all for nonviolent misdemeanors have begun to rattle citizens.On Wednesday Mexican authorities detained a caravan of some 180 Central American migrants north of the Guatemalan border who were traveling without the proper documents, the National Migration Institute said. The migrants were given an opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico or be returned to their countries.At the sports center shelter, supplies were stretched even before the second half of the migrant caravan arrived, despite donations from volunteer and church groups, said Delia vila Surez, who heads Tijuanas family services agency. Toilet paper, diapers, sanitary pads and cough medicine often ran out before a new delivery arrived.ImageCredit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesIn general, Tijuana is a land of immigrants, to which the city has adapted, she said, but weve never seen anything like this.In 2016 and 2017, thousands of Haitians arrived after traveling all the way from Brazil. At one point, the city placed 6,000 Haitians in 32 different shelters, Mr. Palencia said.Since then, some 3,500 Haitians have settled in Tijuana, and migration officials have been quick to cite their integration as a model for the caravan.But some wonder how long it will be before the patience of the caravan migrants runs out and they try to cross the border illegally.Many people have stayed here for half a year, and they adapt to life in the community, but then theyve crossed over, said Jos Mara Garca Lara, the founder of the shelter Juventud 2000. Theyll end up going, because were on the border.Mexico provides a humanitarian visa that allows foreigners to work, as well as an opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico.We are going to be here for a good long time, said Hctor Rodrguez, 40, who fled his job as a bus driver in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula because of extortion threats. Waiting for his turn to speak to a Mexican immigration official at the job fair, he said he planned to earn enough money to send for his wife and two children.This is a good option, he said, rising from his chair. It was time to have his ID photo taken. | World |
Pfizers coronavirus vaccine may become slightly weaker over time, the company reported. But experts said that most people wont need boosters anytime soon.Credit...James Estrin/The New York TimesPublished July 28, 2021Updated Sept. 13, 2021Pfizer reported on Wednesday that the power of its two-dose Covid vaccine wanes slightly over time, but nonetheless offers lasting and robust protection against serious disease. The company suggested that a third shot could improve immunity, but whether boosters will be widely needed is far from settled, the subject of heated debate among scientists.So far, federal health officials have said boosters for the general population are unnecessary. And experts questioned whether vaccinated people should get more doses when so many people have yet to be immunized at all.Theres not enough evidence right now to support that that is somehow the best use of resources, said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta.Still, the findings raise questions about how well the Pfizer vaccine will prevent infection in the months to come. And with coronavirus cases surging again in many states, the data may influence the Biden administrations deliberations about delivering boosters for older people.If third shots are cleared for the general population, the boosters would likely represent a multi-billion-dollar business for Pfizer.In a study posted online but not yet peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists reported that the vaccine had a sky-high efficacy rate of about 96 percent against symptomatic Covid-19 for the first two months following the second dose. But the figure declined by about 6 percent every two months after that, falling to 83.7 percent after about four to six months.Against severe disease, however, the vaccines efficacy held steady at about 97 percent.This drop is very slight I wouldnt say its waning, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. She did not see in the new study any evidence that boosters should go into use for the general population. These data dont support a need for that right now, she said.The findings fit with what scientists have learned about how the immune system fends off viruses. Antibodies are the only defense to prevent an infection, but their levels typically drop in the months after vaccination or recovery from the disease. If the coronavirus takes hold, immune cells can swoop in to destroy infected cells and make new antibodies.That enduring defense produced by the vaccine may explain how the virus can sometimes breed in the nose producing a cold or sore throat but fail to reach the lung where it can cause serious disease.Everything thats engaged by the vaccine is able to fight off that spread that ultimately leads to severe disease, Dr. Iwasaki said. Thats probably not declining at all.The study period ended before the rise of the Delta variant, the highly contagious version of the virus that now dominates in the United States and makes vaccines somewhat less effective against infection.The findings come from 42,000 volunteers in six countries who participated in a clinical trial that Pfizer and BioNTech began last July. Half of the volunteers got the vaccine, while the other half received a placebo. Both groups received two shots spaced three weeks apart.The researchers compared the number of people in each group who developed symptoms of Covid-19, which was then confirmed by a P.C.R. virus test. When the companies announced their first batch of results, the vaccine showed an efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 of 95 percent.In other words, the risk of getting sick was reduced by 95 percent in the group that got the vaccine, compared with the group that got the placebo. That result the first for any Covid-19 vaccine brought an exhilarating dose of hope to the world in December when it was riding what had been the biggest wave of the pandemic.Since then, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has made up the majority of shots that Americans have received, with more than 191 million doses given so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control.In the new study, the researchers followed the volunteers for six months after vaccination, up to March 13. Over the entire period, the researchers estimated, the vaccines efficacy was 91.5 percent against symptomatic Covid-19. (The study did not measure the rate of asymptomatic virus infections.)But within that period, efficacy did gradually drop. Between one week and two months after the second dose, the figure was 96.2 percent. In the period from two to four months following vaccination, efficacy fell to 90.1 percent. From four months after vaccination to the March cutoff, the figure was 83.7 percent.Those figures still describe a remarkably effective vaccine, however, and may not convince critics that booster shots are widely needed.The study comes on the heels of data from Israel suggesting that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines protection may be waning there. But experts have pushed back against a rush to approving a booster there. The data have too many sources of uncertainty, they say, to make a precise estimate of how much effectiveness has waned. For example, the Delta-driven outbreak hit parts of the country with high vaccination rates first and has been hitting other regions later.Such an analysis is still highly uncertain, said Doron Gazit, a physicist at Hebrew University who analyzes Covid-19 trends for the Israeli government.Earlier on Wednesday, Pfizer reported that a third dose of its vaccine significantly increases blood levels of antibodies against several versions of the virus, including the Delta variant.Results were similar for antibodies produced against the original virus and the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa. Pfizer and BioNTech expect to publish more definitive research in the coming weeks.The announcement was a preliminary snapshot of data contained in an earnings statement. And although antibody levels are an important measure of immunity, they are not the only metric. The body has other defenses that turn back infection.Pfizer also said in its statement that vaccines for children ages 5 through 11 years could be available as early as the end of September. The vaccine is already authorized in the United States for everyone ages 12 and up.Pfizers vaccine brought in $7.8 billion in revenue in the last three months, the company said, and is on track to generate more than $33.5 billion this year.The vaccine is poised to generate more sales in a single year than any previous medical product, and by a wide margin. Pfizer did not disclose its exact profits on the vaccine, but reiterated its previous estimate that its profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. Even if the drugmakers profits fall on the lower end of that range, that would work out to about $3 billion in profit so far this year.Rebecca Robbins contributed reporting. | Health |
DealBook|Goldman Sachs Names a Third M.&.A. Co-Chairmanhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/goldman-names-a-new-ma-co-chairman.htmlDec. 15, 2015At the close of a year filled with merger deals, Goldman Sachs has named John Vaske a third co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions, alongside Tim Ingrassia and Paul G. Parker.Mr. Vaske, who advised DuPont in its recent deal to merge with Dow Chemical, is co-chairman of the investment banks natural resources group. He started in Goldmans M.&A. department as an analyst in 1988, and was named managing director in 1998 and a partner in 2000.The three co-heads of global M.&A. will build the business by driving commercial opportunities, advising on important strategic and policy initiatives, and further strengthening and developing our global team, according to a memo on Tuesday signed by the co-heads of Goldmans investment banking division, Richard J. Gnodde, David M. Solomon and John Waldron.This year has been the busiest on record for corporate acquisitions, including the announced merger of DuPont and Dow, Pfizers deal for Allergan, Anheuser-Busch InBevs acquisition of SABMiller and Charter Communications deal for Time Warner Cable.Goldman sits on top of the rankings of worldwide merger advisers, according to Thomson Reuters, with 393 deals valued at $1.7 trillion, through last Friday.In a separate memo, Goldman said it had made some promotions in the regional leadership of its M.&.A group. It named Stephan J. Feldgoise and Matt McClure as co-heads of mergers in the Americas, while Mark Sorrell will be head of mergers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.Mr. Feldgoise is head of M.&A. in the natural resources group. He joined the firm in 1997, became a managing director in 2005 and a partner in 2008. Mr. McClure is head of M.&A. in the industrials group. He joined Goldman in 1999, became a managing director in 2007 and a partner in 2010. Mr. Sorrell is co-head of investment banking in Britain. He joined Goldman in 1994, became a managing director in 2005 and a partner in 2010.The memo signed by the global co-heads of M.&A., Michael Carr, Gregg R. Lemkau and Gilberto Pozzi, said the three promoted executives will aim to expand the business and strengthen the integration of M.&A. with Goldmans financing products. | Business |
Credit...Olivier Douliery/Getty ImagesJune 18, 2018WASHINGTON The Supreme Court declined on Monday to address the central questions in two closely watched challenges to partisan gerrymandering, putting off for another time a ruling on the constitutionality of voting districts designed by legislatures to amplify one partys political power.In a challenge to a redistricting plan devised by the Republican Legislature in Wisconsin, the court unanimously said that the plaintiffs had not proved that they had suffered the sort of direct injury that would give them standing to sue. The justices sent the case back to a trial court to allow the plaintiffs to try again to prove that their voting power had been directly affected by the way state lawmakers drew voting districts for the State Assembly.In the second case, the court unanimously ruled against the Republican challengers to a Democratic plan to redraw a Maryland congressional district. In a brief unsigned opinion, the court said the challengers had waited too long to seek an injunction blocking the district, which was drawn in 2011.Both cases had the potential to deliver a reckoning on a practice that dates to the early days of the Republic and got its name from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Elbridge Gerry. The court instead kicked the can down the road, leaving the door open to further challenges.But the decisions were a setback for critics of gerrymandering, who had hoped that the Supreme Court would transform American democracy by subjecting to close judicial scrutiny the way districts have been redrawn to accommodate the preferences of the party in power. When the dust settled Monday, the status quo remained in place.The courts decision to duck rather than decide the central issues turned on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, said Richard L. Hasen, who teaches election law at the University of California, Irvine.In 2004, Justice Kennedy wrote in a concurring opinion that he might consider a challenge to partisan gerrymandering if there were a workable standard to decide when such tactics crossed a constitutional line. But he said he had not seen such a standard.Professor Hasen said he is apparently still looking.Justice Hamlet lives, he said. After a decade and a half of ruminating on how to separate permissible from impermissible consideration of party in redistricting, Justice Kennedy has decided he or his successor needs still more time for rumination.The question may return to the court soon enough. A new challenge, from North Carolina, is waiting in the wings and could allow the justices to try again to find a standard that could allow constitutional challenges to voting maps warped by politics.Chief Justice Robertss opinion in the Wisconsin case lacked soaring language or all but the most glancing criticism of gerrymandering. The court was powerless to consider the issue, he wrote, because the plaintiffs had not shown that their own voting power in their own districts had been diluted. For instance, the lead plaintiff, the chief justice wrote, lived in what is under any plausible circumstances, a heavily Democratic district.That meant, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, that the plaintiff could not pursue a claim that his voting power within his district had been diminished by the current voting map. The chief justice acknowledged that other legal theories might allow proof of harm focused on the entire state rather than on a single voting district.This court is not responsible for vindicating generalized partisan preferences, the chief justice wrote. The courts constitutionally prescribed role is to vindicate the individual rights of the people appearing before it.By ruling only on standing, the court sidestepped the central questions in the case of whether the Constitution forbids gerrymandering and, if it does, what standard the courts should use to draw a constitutional line.In a concurring opinion, Justice Elena Kagan set out a detailed road map for how such claims could be framed and presented. She was joined by the other members of the courts liberal wing Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.Justice Kagan added that courts have an important role to play given the harm caused by gerrymandering.More effectively every day, that practice enables politicians to entrench themselves in power against the peoples will, she wrote. And only the courts can do anything to remedy the problem, because gerrymanders benefit those who control the political branches.Indeed, she wrote, the need for judicial review is at its most urgent in these cases. For here, politicians incentives conflict with voters interests, leaving citizens without any political remedy for their constitutional harms.In a second concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, agreed that the challengers lacked standing to sue. But they said they would have dismissed their case outright rather than giving them another chance to present proof.In the Maryland case, the court said the challengers had moved too slowly and that there was not enough time for orderly consideration of the case before the 2018 election season. The case had reached the Supreme Court at an early stage, and it will continue to be litigated before the trial court.It was still the case that the Supreme Court has never struck down a voting district as a partisan gerrymander. But the court did not close the door on that possibility.In the Wisconsin case, Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161, a three-judge Federal District Court had struck down the legislative map for the State Assembly, which had been drawn after Republicans gained control of the states government in 2010. The district courts decision was the first from a federal court in more than 30 years to reject a voting map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.The Wisconsin map helped Republicans convert very close statewide vote totals into lopsided legislative majorities. In 2012, Republicans won 48.6 percent of the statewide vote for Assembly candidates but captured 60 of the Assemblys 99 seats. In 2014, 52 percent of the vote yielded 63 seats.Chief Justice Roberts devoted much of his opinion to explaining why the challengers legal theory allowed only district-by-district, as opposed to statewide, challenges.The challengers had relied in part on a proposed standard that tried to measure the level of partisanship in legislative maps by counting wasted votes that result from the two basic ways of injecting partisan politics into drawing the maps: packing and cracking.Packing many Democrats into a single district, for instance, wastes every Democratic vote beyond the bare majority needed to elect a Democratic candidate. Cracking, or spreading Democratic voters across districts in which Republicans have small majorities, wastes all of the Democratic votes when the Republican candidates win.The difference between the two parties wasted votes, divided by the total number of votes cast, yields an efficiency gap, they wrote. The statewide gap in Wisconsin, they said, was especially high.Chief Justice Roberts responded that cracking and packing must be analyzed at the district level.The plaintiffs partisan gerrymandering claims turn on allegations that their votes have been diluted, the chief justice wrote. That harm arises from the particular composition of the voters own district, which causes his vote having been packed or cracked to carry less weight than it would carry in another, hypothetical district. Remedying the individual voters harm, therefore, does not necessarily require restructuring all of the states legislative districts.In her concurring opinion, Justice Kagan agreed that voting dilution claims generally had to be analyzed at the district level, though she said statewide evidence could be considered and statewide relief granted. She added that a different legal theory, grounded in the First Amendments protection of freedom of association, allowed statewide claims.Nothing in the courts opinion, she wrote, prevents the plaintiffs on remand from pursuing an associational claim, or from satisfying the different standing requirement that theory would entail.In the Maryland case, Benisek v. Lamone, No. 17-333, Republican voters argued that Democratic state lawmakers had redrawn a congressional district to retaliate against citizens who had supported its longtime incumbent, Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican. That retaliation, the plaintiffs said, violated the First Amendment by diluting their voting power.The 2011 gerrymander was devastatingly effective, the plaintiffs wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court, saying that no other congressional district anywhere in the nation saw so large a swing in its partisan complexion following the 2010 census.Mr. Bartlett had won his 2010 race by a margin of 28 percentage points. In 2012, he lost to Representative John Delaney, a Democrat, by a 21-point margin. | Politics |
A well-known conspiracy theorist who entered the Capitol shirtless, wearing a fur headdress with horns, was among those arrested.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesPublished Jan. 9, 2021Updated Jan. 10, 2021A man who was photographed carrying the lectern of Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the rampage in the U.S. Capitol this week and another who roamed through the halls of Congress while wearing a horned fur headdress have been arrested and charged, the Justice Department said on Saturday.Adam Johnson, 36, of Parrish, Fla., was arrested by U.S. marshals on Friday night after a widely circulated photograph showed him sporting a wide smile as he waved to the camera with one hand and hauled off Ms. Pelosis lectern with the other. On his head he wore a Trump knit hat, with the number 45 on the front.Jail booking records from the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office provide few details about the arrest of Mr. Johnson but show that he was arrested on a federal warrant. The records list a few identifying tattoos, including one that reads God, wings, cross. He was charged with one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, one count of theft of government property, and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.My office, along with our law enforcement partners at all levels, have been expeditiously working and leveraging every resource to identify, arrest and begin prosecuting these individuals who took part in the brazen criminal acts at the U.S. Capitol, Michael Sherwin, the top federal prosecutor in Washington, said in a statement.ImageCredit...Agence France-Presse, via Pinellas County Sheriff's OfficeMr. Sherwins office said on Saturday that it had also charged Jake Angeli, a well-known conspiracy theorist who was photographed in the Capitol on Wednesday.Mr. Angeli entered the building shirtless, with his face painted red, white and blue, and wearing a fur headdress with horns. He also carried a spear, about six feet long, with an American flag affixed just below the blade, according to Mr. Sherwins office.Mr. Angelis outfit was one of the most recognizable from the breach, pushing him from obscure fame on the right-wing fringes to dinner-table conversations across the United States. Nicknamed Q Shaman for his propagation of baseless QAnon conspiracy theories, Mr. Angeli was a fixture at pro-Trump rallies in Arizona after the 2016 election. He was arrested on Saturday.The office also charged Derrick Evans, a state lawmaker from West Virginia who stepped down from his post Saturday afternoon, with one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. Mr. Angeli faces the same charges.Early Saturday morning, the F.B.I. arrested Doug Jensen, who was also among the extremist protesters. He was captured on video pushing far into the Capitol, ignoring the warnings of a law enforcement officer. The video, taken by Igor Bobic of HuffPost, shows the officer backing away as Mr. Jensen approaches him, moving up the stairs and through the halls of the building.On his Twitter account, Mr. Jensen posted a photo of himself during the incursion with the captions You like my shirt? and Me .Mr. Jensen is in custody in Polk County, Iowa, and is facing several charges. They include obstructing a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to a spokesman for the Polk County Sheriffs Office.According to The Bradenton Herald, a publication based in Bradenton, Fla., people who know Mr. Johnson, the man photographed carrying the lectern, identified him to the F.B.I. soon after the image emerged. The newspaper reported that Mr. Johnson had posted on social media just before the rampage, disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement and Washington police officers, calling the officers corrupt and saying they were picking the sides of criminals.The authorities also arrested Richard Barnett, 60, on Friday. He is the man pictured with his feet kicked up on a desk in Ms. Pelosis office during the Capitol siege. Mr. Barnett, who was arrested in Bentonville, Ark., will appear in federal court on Tuesday and will ultimately be extradited to Washington, D.C.The photo of Mr. Johnson, taken by a wire services photographer, and the subsequent arrest suggest that the authorities will use the myriad photographs and videos of the melee to pursue additional arrests. The F.B.I. posted images to its Twitter account and website on Friday asking the public for information about the people who were pictured.The Justice Department announced charges for 13 individuals, including Mr. Barnett, after the riot. The charges include entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.The number of arrests is expected to grow quickly as investigators scrutinize social media to identify the protesters, and some participants could face more serious charges, for actions including the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died after Trump loyalists struck him on the head with a fire extinguisher. One rioter, Ashli Babbitt, also died in the melee, shot by a police officer.Mr. Sherwins office said on Saturday that the offices civil rights division had opened a formal federal excessive force case into Ms. Babbitts death.The investigation into Ms. Babbitts shooting is a routine, standard procedure whenever an officer deploys lethal force, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.The U.S. attorneys office has also opened a federal homicide investigation into the death of Mr. Sicknick.Katie Benner contributed reporting. | Politics |
The social network has been under intense pressure for allowing misinformation and hate speech to spread on its site.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesPublished July 10, 2020Updated Sept. 4, 2020SAN FRANCISCO Facebook is considering banning political advertising across its network before the November general election, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, after facing intense pressure for allowing hate speech and misinformation to flourish across its site.The decision has not been finalized, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential, and the company could continue with its current political advertising policy. Discussions on potentially banning political ads have simmered since late last year, they said, as insiders weighed the idea while reaching out to political groups and candidates for feedback.But the issue has come to the forefront in recent weeks, with the November election looming and as Facebook grapples with intensifying scrutiny over content posted to its platform. The core of the debate is whether banning political ads would help or harm giving users a voice, said the people with knowledge of the discussions. Stopping ads could stifle speech for some groups, they said, though allowing political ads to run could also allow more misinformation that could disenfranchise voters.A Facebook spokesman declined to comment. Bloomberg News earlier reported the potential change in policy.If a ban on political ads were to happen, it would be a reversal for Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. The social network has long allowed politicians and political parties to run ads across its network virtually unchecked, even if those ads contained falsehoods or other misinformation.Mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he would not police politicians ads and stated that the company was not an arbiter of truth because he believes in free speech. He has also said that removing political ads from the network could harm smaller, down-ballot candidates who are less well-funded than nationally prominent politicians. Political advertising makes up a negligible amount of Facebooks revenue, he has said, so any decision would not be based on financial considerations.But that hands-off approach has led to an intense backlash against the social network. Lawmakers, civil rights groups and Facebooks own employees have assailed it for letting hate speech and misinformation fester on its site. Last month, the Biden presidential campaign said it would begin urging its supporters to demand that Facebook strengthen its rules against misinformation. More recently, advertisers such as Unilever and Coca-Cola have paused their advertising on the platform in protest.That was punctuated this week by the release of a two-year audit of Facebooks policies. The audit, conducted by civil rights experts and lawyers who were handpicked by the company, concluded that Facebook had not done enough to protect people on the platform from discriminatory posts and ads. In particular, they said, Facebook had been too willing to let politicians run amok on the site.Elevating free expression is a good thing, but it should apply to everyone, they wrote. When it means that powerful politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else does, a hierarchy of speech is created that privileges certain voices over less powerful voices.Mr. Zuckerberg has stuck to his free speech position even as other social media companies have taken more action against hate speech and inaccurate posts by politicians and their supporters. Twitter recently started labeling some of President Trumps tweets as untruthful or glorifying violence, while Snap has said it would stop promoting Mr. Trumps account on Snapchat because his speech could lead to violence. Twitch, the video game streaming site, suspended Mr. Trumps account entirely, and the internet forum Reddit banned a community of Mr. Trumps supporters for harassment.Last year, Twitter said it would ban all political ads because the viral spread of misinformation presented challenges to civic discourse.Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said it was positive that Facebook was thinking through its options but that what they need to have in place is a system that actually catches real-time voter misinformation. She added, Voter suppression is happening every day, and their inaction is going to have profound ramifications on the election.On Friday, some of the top Democratic outside groups that are major spenders on Facebook said they had not discussed with the company any potential banning of political ads closer to the election. A spokesman for the D.N.C. referred questions to a tweet from Nellwyn Thomas, the D.N.C.s chief technology officer, who wrote on Friday: We said it seven months ago to @Google and we will say it again to @Facebook: a blunt ads ban is not a real solution to disinformation on your platform.Democratic officials have argued that blanket bans or restrictions on political ads are not a sufficient way to root out disinformation, particularly as that kind of content can spread in closed Facebook groups. Banning ads also restricts important digital tools that campaigns have come to rely on for activities such as acquiring new donors and raising money to getting out the vote, they said.Some Democrats added that the Trump campaign has a significant structural advantage on Facebook, having built up a community of more than 28.3 million followers. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has only around 2.1 million followers on the social network. Removing the ability to pay for ads would give Mr. Trump a far greater reach online than Mr. Biden, they said.A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Facebook is by far the preferred and most popular platform for campaigns. The Trump campaign has spent more than $55 million on Facebook since 2018, and the Biden campaign has spent more than $25 million.Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Nick Corasaniti from New York. | Tech |
Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 19, 2014SOCHI, Russia For the home-country fans here celebrating the first Winter Games on Russian soil, there could be no bigger debacle than failing to win a medal in hockey, the nations most popular sport. The biggest challenge they faced was in finding the angriest tone after the Russian team was eliminated from the hockey tournament with a 3-1 loss to Finland.A catastrophe! said Aleksandr Sorokin, a resident of the local Krasnodar region who was watching the womens bobsled competition at the Sanki Sliding Center in Krasnaya Polyana. They choked! They crashed! Horrible! What a shame!Kostya Sysoyev, 47, who lives in Krasnaya Polyana and works as a security guard, offered a succinct analysis. This is a disaster, he said, wearing a cowboy hat in the red, blue and white stripes of the Russian flag. A national tragedy. Asked if there would be repercussions for the teams coach, Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, Sysoyev prescribed a harsh penalty. He must be hanged, Sysoyev said.In the Olympic Park, near the Bolshoi Ice Dome where the Russians quarterfinal game unfolded in seeming slow motion, the despondency ran even deeper. I dont even want to talk about it, said Artyom Korteyev, 20, of St. Petersburg. Its a shame!Roman Simonov, 20, said he concurred with the verdict that, for Russia at least, the Sochi Games were kaput. I went through all to come here because of hockey, he said. I am a fan. For me, the Games are over. Vasily Utkin, a well-known sports commentator for NTV Plus, wrote on Twitter that he wanted to erase hockey from existence.I have wiped hockey from the list of sports, he wrote. I dont want to worry over nonsense anymore.Meanwhile, Dmitri Gudkov, an opposition politician, wrote on Twitter, I am afraid for many, the Olympics is over. Fans throughout Russia were glued to their screens for the game Wednesday afternoon, bringing much of the country to a standstill. In Sochi, gas station cafes were filled with fans who pulled off the road to watch, while at the Sochi Airport, attendants in the parking lot watched on mobile phones, the anxiety growing with every ticking second of the third period. Many fans said that there had to be both winners and losers in sports and that this just was not Russias year. The Russians also lost to the United States in a shootout in the preliminary round.We just didnt win this time, said Boris Zhitnkov, 24, of Tula, who was in the Olympic Park. This is not the end of the world.Others were furious, however, and called for a settling of accounts.People in the federation should be kicked out of there, said Boris Chyorny, 60. Our players are not young enough, and there is no motivation. They are all millionaires already. I watched the game with Norway. Ovechkin wasnt running fast enough. Lazy! I thought they were saving themselves for another game, Chyorny added. Actually, I expected such an outcome after I watched our games with the United States and Slovakia. Aleksey Serebryakov, 40, of Odintsovo, in the Moscow region, summed up his emotions with an expletive. We were really agitated, he said. We thought it would be a serious game. Cherished hopes; all in vain. Boris V. Kurkov, 52, of Stavropol, said the days of greatness in Russian hockey were finished. Soviet and Russian teams have won eight gold medals in hockey but none since 1992.We used to have good hockey, when interesting tick-tack-toe combinations were played, Kurkov said. It was fine play. We have no national team anymore. Oleg Mushtakov, who was with his wife, Irina, and 7-year-old daughter, Polina, both of whom had Russian flags painted on their cheeks, said the hockey team had done well. The guys are good, Mushtakov said. We wanted it to be better but it turns out like it usually does. Referring to the victorious Finns, he added, The blue ones were faster. Irina Mushtakova said she held out hope for Russian victory elsewhere.For me there is still the figure skating, she said. Oleg Solovyov, from Moscow, who was riding the sleek new train back toward Sochi with five friends, tried to elicit some patriotic emotion and got no response.Russia forward! he yelled. But nobody responded. Zhenya! Sasha! None of them played their best tonight, he said, referring to the stars Evgeni Malkin and Alex Ovechkin. What can you do? The Finns came ready, and they really were better. But these are our guys. We can be disappointed and angry, but come around tomorrow and youll see everyone will love them again. | Sports |
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/technology/personaltech/icloud-space-remove.htmlTECH TIPApples cloud service is intertwined with its operating systems, but you can move many of your files to a new online home.June 14, 2018Q. How do I find something other than iCloud to save and back up my files?A. The iCloud service used to store files on remote servers and keep data in sync among Macs, Windows computers and iOS devices is integrated into Apples operating systems. However, iCloud includes only five gigabytes of free storage before Apple charges for more space. In the United States, prices for more iCloud storage space start at 99 cents a month for 50 gigabytes. (Music and video purchases you make from the iTunes Store are also stored in your iCloud account so you can download them again, but are not counted against your iCloud space allowance.)As Apple notes on its support page about managing your iCloud space, If you run out of iCloud storage, your device wont back up to iCloud, new photos and videos wont upload to iCloud Photo Library, and iCloud Drive, other iCloud apps and your text messages wont stay up to date across your devices. And you cant send or receive emails with your iCloud email address. Deleting old mail and file attachments, photos and videos you no longer need, and outdated files from your iCloud drive can help reclaim some of that space. For those with a large-capacity iPad or iPhone that is consuming a lot of iCloud space with backups, you can switch your device backup to iTunes on your Mac or PC.When looking for an alternative service, first figure out how you are currently consuming your available iCloud space. If you are using iCloud for everything or just for things like iCloud mail, photos and iWork documents you will need to find services that can replicate those storage functions. ImageCredit...The New York TimesMany online backup services have their own iOS apps you can use to get to your stored files from an iPhone or an iPad as well as a desktop computer. If you need to use your stored files on a mobile device, make sure the service you select has a companion app. (Also, keep in mind that if you need a large amount of storage space, you will likely need pay for it, just as you would for additional iCloud storage.)Several options have their own iOS apps, automatic photo backup and free starter accounts. These include Google Drive, which gives you 15 gigabytes of space to share among Google Photos backup, Gmail and file storage. If you do not care for Google, free Dropbox accounts start with two gigabytes of storage space and free accounts from Box and MediaFire start with 10 gigabytes of storage. Microsofts basic OneDrive service provides five gigabytes of free storage unless you have additional space that came with an Office 365 account. The Amazon Drive service offers five gigabytes free, and Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo storage.Once you decide on a new online storage locker, download your documents, photos and other files you have backed up on iCloud, and then upload them to your new service.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
Politics|No, Harley-Davidsons C.E.O. Did Not Punch Back at Trumphttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/us/politics/no-harley-davidsons-ceo-did-not-punch-back-at-trump.htmlCredit...Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJune 27, 2018President Trump has spent two days pummeling Harley-Davidson over its decision to move some production abroad, threatening to tax the motorcycle company and warning it would lose its American allure.Then it appeared as if Harley-Davidsons chief executive was punching back with a quote disparaging Mr. Trump.Except the quote was fake.Harley-Davidson is suffering the fate of many of those who tangle with the president: Twitter trolls.Since announcing this week that it would relocate some of its production to mitigate the impact of retaliatory European tariffs, Harley-Davidsons chief executive has been the subject of an online smear campaign. On Tuesday night, a fake quote critical of Mr. Trump and attributed to the companys chief executive, Matthew Levatich, began circulating on Twitter.The quote, which disparaged Mr. Trumps understanding of trade and economics, was being spread by some accounts with very few followers, but quickly went viral. The company was inundated with queries about its veracity.Michael Pflughoeft, a spokesman for Harley-Davidson, said that the anti-Trump quote linked to the companys chief executive that was circulating on Twitter in various forms was absolutely, unequivocally fake and false.He said the company has been working with Twitter to see if the tweets could be removed and to figure out where they originated. The company became aware of the fake quote on Tuesday night and was soon fielding questions about it.Mr. Pflughoeft would not speculate as to whether there was a coordinated smear campaign at work against Harleys chief executive.Im just telling you its false, he said.A Twitter spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.The relationship between Mr. Trump and Harley-Davidson has gone from a love affair to a bad breakup in a matter of months. Mr. Trump has frequently championed the Wisconsin company as a success story in domestic manufacturing and hosted Harley-Davidson executives, including Mr. Levatich, at the White House, where the president called the firm a true American icon.But on Monday, the company said the presidents trade approach had put its business at a disadvantage, as the European Union hit Harley-Davidson with tariffs of 31 percent on every motorcycle exported to Europe in retaliation for Mr. Trumps metal tariffs. To avoid raising its prices and risk losing business in the valuable European market, Harley-Davidson said it would shift some bike production overseas.Mr. Trump has not taken the decision lightly and has lashed out in a series of tweets over the last two days. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump again took to Twitter to urge the company not to move any of its operations abroad and warning we wont forget the decision.Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, also expressed his dismay with Harley-Davidson on Wednesday, saying during remarks at the Treasury Department that Mr. Trump has been a big champion of trying to help Harley by reducing tariffs on motorcycles and cutting corporate taxes.I cant possibly understand why Harley would be moving production outside of the United States at this point, Mr. Mnuchin said.Shares of Harley-Davidson were up slightly in midday trading.Tweets from Mr. Trump can be damaging to businesses, quickly mobilizing his supporters in protest. The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., has been flooded by online criticism from backers of Mr. Trump who are angry that its owner refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, last weekend. | Politics |
Sports Briefing | HockeyFeb. 3, 2014Alex Ovechkin scored his N.H.L.-leading 39th goal on a power play 2 minutes 37 seconds into overtime, and the Washington Capitals beat the visiting Detroit Red Wings, 6-5, to earn a split of a home-and-home set and tighten up things in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference. Gustav Nyquist had his first hat trick for the Red Wings. Michael Frolik scored in the third period to give the Winnipeg Jets a 2-1 victory over the Canadiens in Montreal. | Sports |
Credit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesDec. 25, 2015BERTHOUD, Colo. The price of oil keeps dropping. But that didnt stop a work crew from drilling a well recently on what was once a cornfield, carefully guiding the last sections of 13,000 feet of pipe spiraling into the hard Niobrara shale with a diamond-tipped bit.Their well, one of hundreds drilled by Anadarko Petroleum in eastern Colorados Wattenberg field this year, could someday gush as many as 800 barrels of crude oil a day. But Anadarko is not planning to produce a drop of crude from the well for at least another year because the price of oil is now so pitifully low.The well here is just one of more than 4,000 drilled oil and natural gas wells across the country producing nothing, but ready to be tapped quickly.Many constitute a new form of underground storage, a new well inventory strategy for an industry in distress, one that has been forced to lay off tens of thousands of workers, decommission most of its rigs and write down assets.For individual companies like Anadarko, the deferred completions known in the oil business as D.U.C.s (an acronym for drilled but uncomplete) are a bet on higher oil prices than the current level of about $38 a barrel, which is about 60 percent lower than in summer 2014. They are viewed by oil executives as a way to hoard cash as service costs plummet and are a flexible lever to rapidly increase production whenever oil rises again.ImageCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesWe are adapting to market conditions, Moe Felman, the Anadarko Rockies drilling operations manager, said as he watched workers pump drilling fluids and screw pipes together within sight of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. We are focused on what we can do to be ready to accelerate when the market returns.But the incomplete wells are also another reason many analysts say a recovery in the oil price is nowhere in sight. Together the well backlog could produce as many as 500,000 barrels of oil a day, about the same amount of oil that Iran is expected to add to the glutted global market after it complies with the recent nuclear deal by the end of next year.Some analysts say oil companies like Anadarko, EOG Resources and Continental Resources may collectively risk suffocating the very price revival they anticipate by releasing abundant new supplies once prices inch up. Others say the eventual impact would be small and short-lived, but since the industry has never used this strategy before, no one can be sure.If prices start to creep up in the U.S., a lot of production could come on line in a quick manner that could put pressure on the supply-demand balance in the market, said Christopher Kopczynski, a senior oil analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consultant firm.The new strategy is made possible by the shale revolution in Texas, North Dakota and Colorado, which nearly doubled national oil production in six years before the price of oil plunged and production began to wane.Before a shale well can be productive it must first be drilled, then completed with hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, the process of blasting through shale rock with water, sand and chemicals to release oil or gas. With rigs drilling multiple shale wells from a single production pad, operators have multiplied the efficiency of their rig drilling. And since shale wells flow the most during the first year or two of production, waiting for a higher price can maximize profits, executives say.Its dry powder, said Raoul LeBlanc, an oil expert at IHS, a consultant firm. Its a form of spare capacity.Today there are 1,300 horizontal wells typically the most productive drilled in shale fields that will offer the biggest output their first year that were drilled at least six months ago and remain incomplete in the nations major shale oil fields. That is more than three times last years average, according to Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consultant firm that tracks world oil fields.Anadarko, EOG Resources and several other major producers began intentionally warehousing wells and effectively storing oil underground after the price of oil collapsed in late 2014 and early this year in the hope of a quick rebound.The reason we have deferred the completions is to really substantially increase the rate of return, Bill Thomas, EOGs chairman and chief executive, acknowledged in an investment conference call. We want to make sure that we allow prices to firm up.The price did not rebound, but the economics of drilling and completing wells have changed. As the oil price dropped and drilling crews were let go, the cost of drilling wells fell as much as 30 percent. At the same time, those companies that canceled rig contracts were forced to pay high severance costs.On the completion side, fracking crews are easier to come by and their contracts tend to be more fluid. Now those completion costs have also come down meaning that the uncompleted wells will eventually be brought on line at a lower cost, executives say.ImageCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesEven if oil prices do not rise substantially, some companies say they will work through much of their warehoused wells in 2016 because with the drilling costs already paid, it will be at least 40 percent cheaper to complete old wells than drill new ones. That should enable them to keep their production flat or rising even as they further cut their capital expenditures.But Anadarko remains cautious for 2016.Should the commodity price change, we can ramp up, Darrell E. Hollek, Anadarkos executive vice president for onshore exploration and production, said in an interview. We may find that we complete a lot of these intentionally drilled and uncompleted wells but we may find we only want to do half of them. But from a capital standpoint, it truly is a lever for us.Anadarko lost $2.2 billion last quarter and the companys stock price has been cut in half. Its executives have devised a strategy to slow investment into new production in its onshore shale wells, in order to devote more cash to developing high-stakes projects in the deep water Gulf of Mexico and abroad. The strategy should lift its revenue in several years when most experts think the oil price will be higher.Anadarko already has 6,800 wells producing oil and natural gas in the Wattenberg field and has identified 4,000 additional drilling locations. It is drilling 380 wells here this year, 11 more than in 2014, with fewer rigs drilling more efficiently designed wells. But while all the 2014 wells were completed, it plans to defer 130 completions of this years new wells for as much as a year or more.The company is following a similar strategy in its Texas fields, making it the oil company with the most uncompleted wells after EOG Resources. Wall Street analysts have generally agreed with the strategy.Relative to others Anadarko is managing through the cycle effectively, said Mark Hanson, a Morningstar analyst. These guys are looking down the road a bit further. | Business |
The demands of the profession appear to clash with the process of starting a family. Theres a health risk in it.Credit...Elizabeth Frantz for The New York TimesPublished July 28, 2021Updated Aug. 10, 2021Dr. Eveline Shue had always been a standout surgeon, but her most joyful moment at the hospital came when she could finally share some personal good news with her colleagues: After five cycles of in vitro fertilization, she was pregnant with twins. At 24 weeks of pregnancy, she and her husband began to make plans for their future family, purchasing car seats and picking out names. All the while Dr. Shue kept working 60-hour weeks in the hospital.At 34 weeks, she realized that the operating room shifts were wearing on her body and took a brief leave. Two days later, her mother walked into her home and found her unable to speak. Dr. Shue, 39, had suffered pre-eclampsia and a stroke. She was rushed to the hospital, got an emergency cesarean section and then underwent brain surgery.Her babies survived, as did Dr. Shue, but it was a wake-up call to her surgery team. I began to ask myself, What could we as a group have done to prevent this from happening? said her colleague Dr. Eugene Kim, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.Last year, Dr. Kim set out with a group of physicians and researchers to study the factors contributing to pregnancy complications in American female surgeons. The paper he co-authored, published in JAMA Surgery on Wednesday, showed that female surgeons are more likely to delay pregnancy, use assisted reproductive technology, undergo nonelective C-sections and suffer pregnancy loss compared to women who are not surgeons.The study, which surveyed 692 female surgeons, found that 42 percent had suffered a pregnancy loss, more than twice the rate of the general population, and nearly half had experienced major pregnancy complications.As American medical schools approach gender parity, even the stubbornly male specialties like surgery are starting to more closely resemble the broader population. Women now make up 38 percent of surgical residents and 21 percent of practicing surgeons. But the challenges in balancing the professional demands of surgery with the process of starting a family remain deeply entrenched.Between the stigma associated with pregnancy during surgical training and the paltry options for maternity leave, many women delay pregnancy until after their residency, at which point their age makes them more vulnerable to adverse pregnancy outcomes. In medical school, said Brigham and Womens surgeon Dr. Erika Rangel, the running joke among would-be women surgeons was that they would nearly all face geriatric pregnancies. The new JAMA Surgery study found that the median age for female surgeons to give birth was 33, compared to a national median of 30 for women with advanced degrees, and one-quarter of female surgeons surveyed used assisted reproductive technology like I.V.F. Less than 2 percent of infants born in the U.S. each year are conceived from assisted reproductive technology.That increased reliance on I.V.F. among female surgeons, the studys authors noted in interviews, comes at significant financial cost often more than $12,000 per cycle for up to six cycles. It is also associated with risks like placental dysfunction.Female surgeons most at risk for pregnancy complications were those who kept operating for 12 or more hours a week through their final trimester, according to the study. Performing surgeries is more physically intense than other clinical tasks because it means being on your feet with little access to food and water. More than half of female surgeons surveyed worked over 60 hours per week during pregnancy, 37 percent took over 6 overnight calls each month and only 16 percent reduced their working hours.Theres a bravado that goes along with the surgical personality, said Dr. Rangel, 44, one of the papers co-authors. Theres a culture of not asking for help, but this tells us theres a health risk in it.ImageCredit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesSurgical residents often fear that asking for help could breed resentment because colleagues must provide coverage on top of their own demanding schedules. Dr. Rangel and her co-authors recommend a number of hospital policy changes that would allow female surgeons to ask for help without fear of blowback, such as good compensation for those who provide coverage and an increased commitment to bringing on moonlighting physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who can assist when trainees are overburdened.But the culture change necessary to better support female surgeons wont come without broad-scale policy change, the studys authors emphasized. Parental leave now varies across residency programs. Many female residents take six weeks (which includes some allotted for vacation) whereas male residents often take only one week. The paper called for at least six weeks of paid parental leave, not counting vacation time, for both men and women. The authors also noted that when residents use their vacation time as parental leave, they are left with an increased risk of burnout.Fields like surgery that are built on rigid norms and grueling training rites can be resistant to broad-scale change. But the papers authors noted that in the last two decades, the field did what was once considered impossible in capping resident work hours at 80 hours per week; residents had previously sometimes worked more than 100 hours weekly.People said it couldnt be done, but then leadership implemented it from the top down, Dr. Rangel said. And culture change follows that policy change.In some cases, that culture change is already being modeled by the authors themselves. Dr. Sarah Rae Easter, one of the papers authors, became pregnant during her I.C.U. fellowship. Her water broke one day while she was leading rounds. She stepped outside, put on new scrubs and got ready to return to work. But then she bumped into her supervisor Dr. Rangel.Erika Rangel was standing there with her arms crossed and she said, I think labor and delivery is the other way, Dr. Easter recalled. She said, Go take care of yourself, this is important not just for you but for the example you set.That sort of leadership, Dr. Easter continued, could help make the field more accommodating to women: It illustrates the kind of culture change we need in order to optimize outcomes for our specialty and for our patients. | Health |
Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesNov. 1, 2018HELSINKI, Finland Shortly after 6 a.m. on Thursday, people began lining up outside the central office of the Finnish tax administration. It was chilly and dark, but they claimed their places, eager to be the first to tap into a mother lode of data.Pamplona can boast of the running of the bulls, Rio de Janeiro has Carnival, but Helsinki is alone in observing National Jealousy Day, when every Finnish citizens taxable income is made public at 8 a.m. sharp.The annual Nov. 1 data dump is the starting gun for a countrywide game of whos up and whos down. Which tousled tech entrepreneur has sold his company? Which Instagram celebrity is, in fact, broke? Which retired executive is weaseling out of his tax liabilities?Esa Saarinen, a professor of philosophy at Aalto University in Helsinki, described it as a fairly positive form of gossip.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFinland is unusual, even among the Nordic states, in turning its release of personal tax data to comply with government transparency laws into a public ritual of comparison. Though some complain that the tradition is an invasion of privacy, most say it has helped the country resist the trend toward growing inequality that has crept across of the rest of Europe.Were looking at the gap between normal people and those rich, rich people is it getting too wide? said Tuomo Pietilainen, an investigative reporter at Helsingin Sanomat, the countrys largest daily newspaper.When we do publish the figures, the people who have lower salary start to think, Why do my colleagues make more? he said. Our work has the effect that people are paid more.Employers, he said, have to behave better than in conditions where there is no transparency.A large dosage of Thursdays reporting concerned the income of minor celebrities, and one journalist moaned at the thought of profiling another beauty pageant winner, noting that, usually, they are broke as hell. The countrys best-known porn star, Anssi Mr. Lothar Viskari, was reported to have earned 23,826 euros (about $27,000), of which 7,177 was capital gains.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesRoman Schatz, 58, a German-born author, rolled his eyes, a little, at Finlands annual celebration of its own honesty.Its a psychological exercise, he said. It creates an illusion of transparency so we all feel good about ourselves: The Americans could never do it. The Germans could never do it. We are honest guys, good guys. Its sort of a Lutheran purgatory.Mr. Schatz warned against taking all the financial figures released publicly at face value, noting that nontaxable income, like grants or business deductions, may not appear.It makes me smile every time, because its my taxable income, and people say, Roman Schatz makes less than a schoolteacher, he said.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesEconomists in the United States have shown great interest in salary disclosure in recent years, in part as a way of reducing gender or racial disparities in pay.Transparency may or may not reduce inequality, but does tend to make people less satisfied, several concluded. A study of faculty members at the University of California, where pay was made accessible online in 2008, found that lower-earning workers, after learning how their pay stacked up, were less happy in their job and more likely to look for a new one.A study of Norway, which made its tax data easily accessible to anonymous online searches in 2001, reached a similar conclusion: When people could easily learn the incomes of co-workers and neighbors, self-reported happiness began to track more closely with income, with low earners reporting lower happiness. In 2014, Norway banned anonymous searches, and the number of searches dropped dramatically.More information may not be something which improves overall well-being, said Alexandre Mas, one of the authors of the University of California report.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFlamboyant wealth has long been discouraged in Finland; a line of poetry capturing this idea if youre lucky, hide it is so beloved that it has been set to music.The government has made individual tax data accessible to the public since the 19th century, though until recently citizens had to pore through bulky ledgers for what they wanted.Nowadays, Helsinki tabloids often assign up to half their editorial staff to cover the release of the data, and competition for computer terminals in the tax administration building is so intense that there was once a scuffle, which everyone agreed was totally un-Finnish.(The second-biggest news deployment of the year is for Finnish Independence Day, on December 6, when news organizations devote vast resources to reporting which A-listers have been invited to the presidential reception, and what they have decided to wear.)ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMany journalists have little love for the task. I dont see the point of calling up semi-ordinary people and asking they why they made so much money, one grumbled but others, like Mr. Pietilainen, clearly relish it.One hundred and thirty thousand lines of Excel to process how do you feel about that? he said, with obvious appetite, as his colleagues stared at him.One of the great sports of National Jealousy Day is to publicly shame tax dodgers.In 2015, Mr. Pietilainen found that executives from several of Finlands largest firms had relocated to Portugal so that they could receive their pensions tax free. His reporting caused such a stir that the Finnish Parliament terminated its tax agreement with Portugal, negotiating a new one that closed the loophole.What may sting more in Finland, said Mr. Saarinen, the philosophy professor, is disapproval.These particular executives have destroyed their reputation, he said. I would be surprised if they didnt care. Finland is a small society. There is a sense that as long as youre a Finn, youre always a Finn. They will show up at Christmas at Helsinki airport, they will be recognized, and they will feel it in peoples eyes: the disrespect.ImageCredit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesNewspapers also anointed capitalist heroes on Thursday.Especially adored are the young owners of the gaming company Supercell, who declared a total of 181 million euros in taxable income this year, and were five of the 10 top-earning citizens. Supercells 40-year-old chief executive, Ilkka Paananen, went out of his way in 2016 to express his happiness at breaking Finlands record for capital gains taxes, telling Helsingin Sanomat that it is our turn to give something back.This, said Onni Tertsunen, a graduate student at a downtown Helsinki cafe, is the kind of rich person Finns like. Hes really humble, he said. Thats the thing in Finland, to be humble. If you show it around, no one likes you.There are, of course, manifold other uses for income tax data. Tuomas Rimpilainen, a crime reporter, said he sometimes looked up the salaries of his professional competitors before asking his boss for a raise. (It worked.)Ive looked up my relatives, said a colleague, Markku Uhari.And my bosses, Mr. Rimpilainen said.No one likes to admit they do it, said another reporter, Lassi Lapintie. But everyone has done it.For all the attention from the news media, strictly speaking, the release of the tax data is not really big news.No one really conceals their income, Mr. Saarinen said.No one thinks it is conceivable that anyone would have the nerve to live in Finland and, outrageously, to avoid paying taxes, he said. People play by the rules, and they expect that to be the case. Its the default.He interrupted the interview, as several Finns did, to express bafflement over President Trumps refusal to release his tax returns.For Finns, that is unthinkable, he said. I dont know if we have a law saying that a person seeking the office of the president of Finland should explain how they made their money. The society just expects that to happen. If it did not happen, the society would punish that candidate. | World |
Space & Cosmos|Mars Mission Set to Launch to Study Gases and Stormshttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/science/space/mars-mission-set-to-launch-to-study-gases-and-storms.htmlCredit...European Space AgencyMarch 12, 2016The ExoMars 2016 mission a collaboration between the European and Russian space agencies is scheduled to blast off from Kazakhstan on Monday.The spacecraft, which consists of an orbiter that will measure methane and other gases in the Martian atmosphere and a lander to study dust storms, will hitch a ride on top of a Russian Proton rocket that is expected to lift off at 3:31 p.m. local time. The European Space Agency will broadcast coverage of the launch on the Internet beginning about an hour before liftoff.After a journey of seven months, the ExoMars spacecraft will arrive at Mars in October. Three days before arriving, the lander, named Schiaparelli after the 19th-century Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, will separate from the orbiter. It is to enter the atmosphere at 13,000 miles per hour and quickly decelerate on its way to settling down on the surface.The main objective of Schiaparelli is to demonstrate its landing system. (The European Space Agencys last attempt to land on Mars the Beagle 2 spacecraft, which accompanied the Mars Express orbiter in 2003 failed.)ImageCredit...Esa/Getty ImagesSchiaparelli carries instruments to measure Marss atmosphere during the height of the dust storm season. Its batteries are expected to last only two to four days. The Trace Gas Orbiter is to operate much longer, until at least 2022, circling Mars at an altitude of 250 miles. Its instruments will measure gases, like methane, water vapor and nitrogen, that exist in minute quantities but that could hold important clues about the possibility of life on Mars.Methane is the most intriguing trace gas. Sunlight and chemical reactions break up methane molecules in the atmosphere. Any methane there must have been created recently, and the two possibilities for creating methane are microbes and a geological process requiring heat and liquid water.Mars Express made tenuous detections of methane, but its instruments were not sensitive enough for definitive conclusions. NASAs Curiosity rover also detected a transient whiff of methane in 2014.Methane is a hot topic, Jorge Vago, the project scientist, said in a European Space Agency video. So trying to understand the origin of the methane, and where on the surface of Mars, and when its being produced and how it is destroyed is very important.The ExoMars spacecraft was originally to be launched by NASA, but tight budgets led NASA to back out in 2012, and the Russians stepped in. The second half of the European-Russian ExoMars collaboration a rover is scheduled to launch in 2018, but that mission is expected to slip to 2020. | science |