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TV SportsFeb. 17, 2014Interviews with athletes after a victory or loss are usually nonevents. The questions are banal, the answers rote. Truly sharp questions and genuinely spontaneous responses are endangered species. Then there was Christin Coopers interview of Bode Miller on Sunday after he won the bronze medal in the Super-G, which has ignited a debate about whether she poked too deeply at the scar tissue of his brothers recent death.She asked three questions of Miller about his emotions all of which carried the subtext of the recent death of his brother, Chelone, and a high-profile custody battle between Miller and the mother of his 1-year-old son.The issue is not the appropriateness of tying Millers palpable emotions to his personal travails. Any journalist would and should do that. The question is how far she was willing to pursue her line of questioning at a moment of triumph for Miller.It had to be as clear to Cooper as it was to viewers that Miller was tearing up as she was speaking to him. Rather than pull back, she surged forward. Rather than shifting to another topic, she asked whether his performance was or wasnt for Chilly, as his brother was called, and whom he was talking to as he looked into the sky before his race.By now, Millers helmet was bowed, and he was crying, unable to answer.I doubt it was her intent to make him weep, but that was the effect of question overkill. Taken one at a time, each question is reasonable, and if she had asked only one of them, Miller might not have wept and fallen to his knees. But the takeaway of asking all three was that she had badgered Miller, not asked him well-chosen questions gauged with a real-time understanding of his emotions. NBC milked the situation further by keeping its cameras on the scene for more than a minute, as Miller walked away, as he was comforted by various people and as he was embraced by his wife, Morgan.This all occurred in Sochi daylight many hours before the sequence aired in prime time, which suggests that the network believed it had covered the story tastefully.On Monday, Jim Bell, the executive producer of NBC Olympics, defended the coverage as part of the networks storytelling obligation during the Games.We have to make a lot of decisions every day on our coverage, and we made that one and were fine with it, he said on a conference call with reporters that was primarily intended to reintroduce the prime-time host Bob Costas after a six-day absence because of a viral infection in both eyes. Bell said he understood some of the criticism of Cooper, which he attributed to shoot-from-the-hip reactions by columnists and people on Twitter.Bell deployed a defense against the mostly negative barrage of criticism: Millers kindhearted defense of Cooper on Twitter and in two appearances on NBC.Miller proved himself a stand-up guy. He could have stomped away from Cooper. He did not. He taped a segment with Matt Lauer for NBCs late-night studio program Sunday and then appeared with Lauer again Monday morning on Today. His gentle defense of Cooper came hours later, after he had time to think, and showed a maturation he probably would not have displayed at previous Olympics.On Today, Miller called Cooper a sweetheart of a person who didnt mean to push.I dont think she really anticipated what my reaction was going to be, and I think by the time she sort of realized it, I think it was too late and I dont really, dont blame her at all, Miller said. I feel terrible that she is taking the heat for that because it really is just a heat-of-the moment kind of circumstance, and I dont think there was any harm intended.Millers spirit here is generous. But a reporter asking questions should not be in the heat of the moment; she should be the calm, disinterested observer who asks the right questions of happy, stunned and disconsolate athletes.For Bell, Millers words should help close the book on Coopers handling of the interview. If Miller had no problem with the questioning, Bell said: I guess it ought to take some of the temperature down on it, or should anyway.For the past decade, NBC has tried to scale back its over-reliance on personal back stories (some tragic, some ordinary) as the fuel for its Olympic athletic narratives. The Miller interview raised that reputation again. NBC had mentioned Chilly Millers death even before Tom Brokaws interview with Bode and Morgan Miller in advance of the medal-winning run. With that story arc established in advance, there was no reason to dig deeply into it after the race. It reminded me of Jim Grays prosecutorial interview of Pete Rose before Game 2 of the 1999 World Series in Atlanta, where baseballs all-century team was presented. Gray unleashed a cannonade of questions that were calculated to push Rose to admit that he had bet on baseball. Rose, a hard nut, did not budge.Like Gray, Cooper lost sight of the context. Gray believed a celebration was a propitious time for a grim interrogation and seemed unwilling or unable to stop.Cooper believed that minutes after Miller won a bronze medal, in what might be his final Olympics, was the appropriate moment to fixate on still-raw emotions. And NBC, to its detriment, elected to milk the Miller story without the judicious editing the network could have employed.

Sports

Politics|With Little Evidence, Trump Claims Iran Has Curbed Activities in Middle East https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/fact-check-trump-iran-curbed-activities.htmlFact Check of the DayPresident Trump claimed that Iran is no longer looking to Syria or Yemen since he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Administration officials have said otherwise. June 7, 2018what was saidAnd if you look at whats happened since I signed that deal, Iran and in all fairness, I say it with great respect for the people of Iran but Iran is acting a lot differently. Theyre no longer looking so much to the Mediterranean. Theyre no longer looking so much to whats going on in Syria, whats going on in Yemen and lots of other places. Theyre a much different country over the last three months. President Trump, in a joint news conference on Thursday. the factsThis lacks evidence. Its unclear to what Mr. Trump is referring with his three-month timeline since he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal just last month. Since then, Iran has experienced some setbacks in the Middle East. But there is little indication that it has changed its outlook in the region. Even top Trump administration foreign policy officials have criticized Iran for not changing. Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, criticized Irans destabilizing presence in Syria (where Iran supports President Bashar al-Assad of Syria) and its promotion of violence in Yemen (where it backs Houthi rebels) in remarks last month at the United Nations Security Council. In a speech later that month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned Irans continuing involvement in regional conflicts and urged its clerical leaders to cease wasting Irans wealth abroad. Iran perpetuates a conflict that has displaced more than six million Syrians, Mr. Pompeo said. In Yemen, Irans support for the Houthi militia fuels a conflict that continues to starve the Yemeni people and hold them under the threat of terror.Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanons parliament, said this week that Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Iranian forces intended to stay in Syria until the Sunni-dominated Islamic State was defeated there. Additionally, Iran announced this week that it would begin a process to increase uranium enrichment capacity. Mr. Pompeo called the plan another example of Iran foolishly squandering its resources. In Yemen, Iran is negotiating a cease-fire with European countries, according to Reuters, stemming from talks that began in February before Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement. Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a critic of the nuclear deal that world powers struck with Tehran in 2015, said Irans leaders havent changed their ambitions or pulled back their activities in the region. But it is true that they have suffered some notable losses from U.S.-backed allies since Trump withdrew America from the deal, Mr. Dubowitz added. He pointed to Israeli strikes that destroyed Iranian infrastructure in Syria and progress in taking back a Houthi-held port city in Yemen. Asked for clarification about Mr. Trumps comments, the State Department referred queries to the White House. The White House did not respond. Source: C-Span, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Reuters, June 7 interview with Mark Dubowitz.

Politics

The nations medical centers were forced to stop offering many surgeries, and sustained severe financial losses. Reopening is a daunting task amid the threat of more infection.Credit...Shannon Stapleton/ReutersPublished May 9, 2020Updated May 21, 2020The shutdown of elective surgeries and other nonessential medical care by federal and state officials during the pandemic has left the nations 5,200 hospitals, particularly in places where there have been relatively few infections, with idle clinics, vacant operating rooms and a dearth of patients.Our hospitals, like every other hospital in the country, are half empty, said Marvin OQuinn, the president and chief operating officer for CommonSpirit Health, a Catholic system that operates 137 hospitals across 21 states.As restrictions ease around the country, some states have begun allowing procedures unrelated to the coronavirus, like knee replacements, colonoscopies and mammogram screenings.As anyone waiting for an elective surgery knows, non-urgent does not mean minor, said Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon in allowing the states hospitals to resume business on May 1. This is incredibly important medical care that we would not have told providers to delay if the threat of Covid-19 had not made it necessary.Once considered a bulwark during economic downturns, health care is proving vulnerable during the coronavirus-induced recession, with spending down and significant job losses. More than 1.4 million jobs in the sector were lost last month, part of a historic economic decline that included 20.5 million fewer jobs and an unemployment rate reaching nearly 15 percent.Hospitals, often the biggest employer in cities and states, are furloughing workers amid industry losses that total as much as $50 billion a month, largely the result of forgone surgeries and procedures, according to some estimates. For many institutions, back surgeries and heart procedures provided a financial stream of revenue that was critical to staying open. The majority of the nations hospitals are nonprofit, but they still need a steady roster of patients to survive.All hospitals rely on these elective surgeries for much of their revenue because both Medicare and private insurers tend to pay more for such procedures than they do for other kinds of hospital care. Hospitals say they are losing money when they treat Covid-19 patients because of the lengthy and intensive medical care these patients need. Health insurers like UnitedHealth Group, one of the nations largest, have said that the amount of money they are saving from the decline in elective care is now more than the amount they are reimbursing hospitals for treating the coronavirus.And while Congress is funneling $175 billion in relief to hospitals, much of the money has flowed to the biggest hospital systems serving the highest number of Medicare patients. HCA Healthcare, the for-profit hospital chain, said it received $700 million. Rural hospitals, already ill-equipped to deal with the virus, and hospitals serving low-income patients have received much less. Some hospitals filing for bankruptcy are challenging federal rules that would prevent them from being eligible for small-business loans.ImageCredit...Andrew Selsky/Associated PressBut even at hospitals with small numbers of coronavirus patients, reopening is likely to be a painstaking process as states and local governments take different approaches and hospitals grapple with how to keep patients and workers safe. Oregon Health & Science University Hospital, the states academic medical center with 562 beds, admitted fewer than 50 Covid-19 patients, and its occupancy rate fell to about 60 percent.Under guidelines established by a state advisory panel, the hospital is beginning to reschedule patients while staying prepared if there is a sudden surge in new infections, said Dr. Renee Edwards, the chief medical officer. The hospital is also reaching out to patients who do not have the virus but whose conditions may significantly deteriorate if they do not get care.We are ramping up our surgical volume in phases, because we have to demonstrate that as we increase our surgical volumes, were able to maintain the available capacity in our hospital, she said.And hospitals are also trying to reconfigure spaces, isolating infected patients and those suspected of being infected in distinct units, and ensuring patients have enough physical distance from others. Hospitals tend to be crowded places, Dr. Edwards said.While hospitals are eager to resume moneymaking elective services, which can account for roughly half of their revenues, by one estimate, hospital executives and consultants say they may be constrained by shortages of supplies and testing equipment as well as the need to make sure they have enough isolation gowns and intensive care beds.It is a big question mark: How quickly you can ramp up and how you manage it, said Suzie Desai, who follows nonprofit hospitals for S&P Global Ratings.Some hospitals are already reaching out to patients. Now were on the other side of this and we have begun to re-engage people, said Dr. Donald Yealy, the chair of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, whose surgeries dropped as much as 70 percent because of the pandemic. Since restarting, the center says the number of surgeries they are doing for procedures like removing a tumor has already started to rebound.But the specter of second waves of the virus and a fear of contagion may deter patients from returning, especially to those hospitals that have treated large numbers of coronavirus patients. Even if we reopen, will they come? said Matthew Murer, the chair of the health care practice of Polsinelli, a law firm.That question is hardly rhetorical for small and large medical centers, which have reported staggering declines in revenue. Hospitals say they are losing an estimated $50 billion a month, according to a recent analysis by the American Hospital Association, which predicts a four-month loss of $200 billion by the end of June.Canceled surgeries, decreases in doctors visits and a decline in emergency room care account for the bulk of the losses, some $160 billion.Hospitals could find themselves in a Catch-22, where they do not have enough money for the supplies and staff necessary to restart the elective procedures they need to generate cash, said Christopher Kerns, an executive with Advisory Board, a consulting unit owned UnitedHealth Group, the giant insurer. If hospitals cant start earning revenue, they will close, he said.At Stamford Health, a 305-bed hospital in Connecticut that is not part of a larger system, much of the focus over the last few weeks has been on caring for more than 500 Covid-19 patients as the hospital more than tripled the number of intensive care beds it was operating. About 350 of the Covid-19 patients have since been discharged.With cases stabilizing, and the hospital losing roughly $25 million a month, Kathleen Silard, the chief executive of Stamford Health, is eager to resume offering the procedures she describes as our lifeblood. Stamford has so far received $40 million in federal funds, including money aimed at hospitals in coronavirus hot spots, and has furloughed 375 of its workers.ImageCredit...Rosem Morton/ReutersBut Ms. Silard says she, too, will be cautious, making sure the hospital has enough personal protective equipment and personnel before she fully resumes operations. Its not going to be a switch-on, switch-off situation, she said.While the hospital will continue to perform emergency surgeries, it may hold off on complicated cases like open-heart surgeries, which require a lot of protective equipment and supplies, if patients can wait, she said.The logical step is to do the least invasive procedures, agreed Mr. OQuinn of CommonSpirit.Some executives and consultants warn there could be shortages like the ones that created the mad scramble for masks and gowns back in March. Supply disruptions are going to contaminate the ability to stand up elective procedures, said Kenneth Kaufman, one of the founding partners of Kaufman Hall, which advises hospitals.And hospitals also have to ramp up coronavirus testing of patients scheduled for surgeries to reduce the risk of spreading the virus to hospital staff and other patients. A recent survey by Premier, which buys medical supplies on behalf of many U.S. hospitals, suggests hospitals would have to more than triple their current testing capacity to begin resuming their services.Given the high demand, hospitals could have trouble getting swabs and testing reagents. While officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have said they will be providing supplies to state governments, it is not clear how the products will be distributed, said Meg Wyatt, an executive with Premier. Our health systems are flying blind to develop a ramp up plan, she said.The agency says state governments determine the distribution of the supplies within their state.In former hot spots, hospitals that have treated large numbers of coronavirus patients may have the hardest time convincing people to come in for something routine.Hospitals are safe, Rush is safe, said Dr. Omar Lateef, the chief executive of Rush University Medical Center, which says it treated Covid-19 patients at the same time it was caring for patients without the virus who had urgent medical needs.We have not had an infection travel from a Covid patient to a non-Covid patient in our hospital, Dr. Lateef said.But he acknowledges some people will be frightened by images of overrun hospitals and very sick patients with the coronavirus. Its human, he said. People are scared to go out right now. People are scared to give each other a hug.Many hospital executives say they are also fearful of what will happen if there are future waves of infection in their community that result in a repeat of March with high numbers of seriously ill patients that require another shutdown.Everyone is talking about a second wave, said Mr. OQuinn. I dont think the country can shut down in a second wave. Hospitals cant afford to shut down in a second wave.

Health

The China Factor | Part 5Dec. 5, 2015Emeka Ezelugha was excited to open a computer training center. He could teach his countrymen some skills and earn a living.But soon after the center opened in a rough, two-story concrete building in Lagos, a blaze broke out in the main classroom. The flames incinerated 30 desktop computers, as well as televisions and air-conditioners.The culprit was unmistakable: one of two dozen power strips in the classroom. The faulty equipment was made in China, even though the salesman said it was British.The guy tried to convince me it was from the U.K. I was surprised when it happened, Mr. Ezelugha said.Across this populous African nation, low-cost Chinese goods are everywhere, evidence of Beijings growing dominance in global trade. The trade flow has helped keep life affordable for millions of Nigerian families, at a time when the country is struggling with economic stagnation and plunging prices, as well as the deadly costs of the Boko Haram insurgency.But shoddy or counterfeit products are a national problem in Nigeria, Africas largest economy, where impoverished consumers have few alternatives. Some shoddy goods are benign, like the Chinese-made shirts, trousers and dresses with uneven stitching and stray threads that fill street markets. But electrical wiring, outlets and power strips from China, ubiquitous in new homes and offices, are connected to dozens of fires a year in Lagos alone.The relationship between China and Nigeria is a complex web of dependency, one replicated in dozens of developing countries around the world, like Chile, Ethiopia and Indonesia. Such ties are integral to Chinas global ambitions. President Xi Jinping of China, who was in Africa this week emphasizing economic diplomacy, just committed $60 billion in development assistance to the Continent.But such efforts also pose new and unpredictable challenges for Beijing. China has lent heavily to commodity-exporting countries, which are now struggling with low commodity prices. At the same time, Chinas highly competitive manufacturing sector has devastated many smaller-scale rivals across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mr. Xis pledge in Africa, in part, seemed aimed at quelling criticism over what some see as a lopsided relationship that largely benefits China.To support its swelling trade in Nigeria, China is funneling billions of dollars to build roads, rail lines, airport terminals, power plants and other desperately needed infrastructure. China is the top lender to Nigeria, where political instability and violence have made Western interests skittish.Nigeria, in turn, has become the biggest overseas customer of Chinese construction companies. It is an important market for Beijing, at a time when Chinas own growth is slowing.But Chinas extensive reach is now meeting resistance in Nigeria, part of the broader risks for Beijings global strategy.In Abuja, the capital, the new government is conducting anticorruption investigations into large Chinese construction contracts signed by the previous leadership. Nigerian state governments are struggling to pay for many of those projects, exposing China to potentially heavy losses.In Kano, angry protesters in the streets blame widespread joblessness on China, which is manufacturing African fabric designs in shimmering hues more cheaply than Nigeria. Employment in Nigerias textile and apparel sector has plummeted to 20,000 people, from 600,000 two decades ago.In Lagos, authorities are trying to stamp out subpar Chinese electric goods. Imported power strips and wiring have inadequate copper to handle Nigerias 240-volt system, said Wanza Kussiy, the chief safety officer of the Nigerian governments Standards Organization.Zhang Sen, the vice secretary general of Chinas government-controlled Electronic Product Association, said that the group was reviewing Nigerias fires. We still need to do some research before we can say the quality of the Chinese products is to blame, he said.Nigerian authorities are stymied. Corruption is endemic, making it more difficult to enforce safety standards. And Chinese goods are so dominant that consumer have few other choices.In Lagos, Mr. Ezelugha borrowed heavily to reopen his computer training center after the fire. But the power strips are still made in China. He couldnt find anything else.Idle Factories, Idle HandsKanos cloth industry started in the walled ancient city, a labyrinth of mud brick houses and dirt roads.The citys blue dye has long been made from the leaves of local indigo plants, which are crushed and mixed with cooking ashes and potassium. Swaths of white cotton fabric are dunked in the dye, which fills six-foot-deep pits lined with animal skins.But employment at the centuries-old dye pits has dropped to 250 people, from nearly 1,500 a decade ago. Chinese companies produce virtually identical patterns of fabrics using synthetic dyes, and their sales now dominate in Kanos open-air market.They are learning our arts and taking them to their country and doing them similarly to us, and bringing the goods back to Nigeria and selling them to our people, said Bala Ibrahim, 45, who has labored in the pits since his early teens. Now he spends whole days idle.Such stories are common across Nigerias garment industry. The citys tanneries, which made Moroccan leather from goatskins for centuries, have laid off most of their staffs. Dozens of modern fabric factories on the outskirts of Kano have closed.In theory, Nigeria should have a manufacturing edge, at least in labor-intensive industries like sewing.With high unemployment in Nigeria, factory owners can easily find workers willing to accept the minimum wage, just $80 a month. By comparison, garment factories in coastal China now pay around $550 a month and still cant find enough workers.Despite the high cost of labor, it remains cheaper and easier to mass-produce garments in China.One obstacle to setting up a large-scale sewing industry like Bangladeshs is that Nigeria imposes significant tariffs on imported fabric, a legacy of its past as a big producer of hand-woven fabric and as a large grower of cotton. Another challenge is that electricity from Nigerias national grid is unreliable. So operations must rely on diesel generators, buying fuel at a cost per kilowatt-hour generated that is six times what garment makers in China pay.The Nigerian government wants to revive manufacturing, particularly given low prices now for its oil exports. Abdulkadir Musa, the recently retired permanent secretary of Nigerias ministry of industry, trade and investment, said the government was mulling reductions in tariffs on garment materials that are not produced in Nigeria, possibly including buttons. We want to start that all over now that oil is no longer at a high price, Mr. Musa said, adding that overreliance on oil exports has been more of a problem for us than a solution.For now, Nigerians just cant compete.Chimezie Cyril Okwuosa scrimped for years to set up his own small garment factory near Lagos in 2005. He had 25 sewing machines, 30 workers and a noisy diesel generator. The factory failed within five years.I was spending so much on diesel that at the end of the day, I had no profit and some days, there was no diesel at all, and I could not operate, Mr. Okwuosa said.Mr. Okwuosa now runs Greentomato Apparels, a small-scale importer of childrens trousers. He pays $2.50 a pair to a factory in Guangzhou, China, and then only 10 or 12 cents a pair for shipping. He sells the pants for about $3.25 a pair, leaving him a small profit margin.The collapse of manufacturing is more than just a financial issue.It has also fanned worries about the possible spread of Boko Haram, an insurgency condemned for its large-scale abductions and sexual enslavement of women and girls. Boko Haram has drawn young men to its ranks in destitute northeastern Nigeria, the countrys poorest region.Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, the traditional ruler of Kano in northern Nigeria, has seen the devastation up close. Outside his palace, a low maroon building with battlements, is a large burn mark. Late last year, a group linked by the government to Boko Haram set off three bombs in a large crowd and then used automatic weapons to spray bullets at the survivors. As many as 500 people were killed.The Chinese basically copy every textile product in Nigeria, Emir Sanusi said. I worry about what could happen to Kano when we have a large number of youths and large numbers of industries are down.A Flood of Chinese SteelAt a Lagos steelyard of Dorman-Long Engineering, the only activity on a recent afternoon was the welding of an oil storage tank. With the steep drop in world oil prices, longtime customers like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are no longer commissioning as many helipads and footbridges for their offshore drilling platforms.The locally owned engineering firm had expected Chinese construction companies operating in Nigeria to help offset the slump. But Chinese construction companies, mostly state-owned, have largely imported their steel girders, reinforcing beams and other materials from home.I just dont see a lot of local content in what they do, said Timi Austen-Peters, the companys chairman.Infrastructure financed and built by China was supposed to be the great hope for Nigeria.Nigeria endured coups and a civil war in the 1960s, then effectively nationalized many foreign-owned companies in the 1970s. Nigeria developed a reputation for breaking or renegotiating contracts, antagonizing many foreign partners.The risks have prompted Western companies to demand very fat profits before putting money into the country returns on the order of 25 to 40 percent a year. Their Chinese counterparts have been willing to accept 10 percent or less.Unless the West changes its risk assessment, the Chinese will beat them to the African market, said Osadebe Osakwe, a former Nigerian banker who is now the managing director of North China Construction Nigeria. The company is a subsidiary of a state-owned enterprise in Beijing. The Chinese are trying to prove that they can do what the Western companies can do and they can do it better.Chinese companies have piled into the country. Mostly state-owned Chinese construction companies have started $24.6 billion worth of projects since 2005, the highest of anywhere in the world, according to the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group.Africa has a real demand for infrastructure and industrial developments in those areas, China has strong ability and surplus capacity to invest and build, Chinas prime minister, Li Keqiang, said during a visit to Nigeria last year.But as demand at home falters, Chinese companies have been shipping huge quantities of steel girders, piping and other industrial materials at extremely low prices to emerging markets like Nigeria. So there is little benefit for local players like Dorman-Long Engineering that used to fabricate much of this equipment.Executives at Chinese construction companies say they do buy some local materials. But they add that Chinas exports are often more readily available and better made, so they can be quickly and reliably included in complex projects.The new Nigerian government is starting to question whether all the construction projects are in the countrys best interest. Many projects, like new international or refurbished airport terminals in Lagos, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, help the countrys elite but may do less for the poor.The new government is now searching for signs of fraud, corruption or other misconduct in existing contracts. President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria announced on Aug. 10 that his government had already found that hundreds of millions of dollars were mysteriously diverted from one Chinese-backed rail project to other government projects, although it was not immediately clear if corruption was involved.Bullet Train BoondoggleThe pride of the previous Nigerian administration, which left office in May, was supposed to be a new passenger train line that links Abuja to Kaduna. With trains traveling at nearly 120 miles per hour, the $874 million line is supposed to cut the three-hour highway trip in half.But the line may not draw many passengers.A graceful new train station is a 40-minute drive from downtown, surrounded by cornfields and cow pastures. The extension of the line into downtown Abuja has been severely delayed, and money is running short for its completion. And even though Nigeria desperately needs more freight trains, the rail line with its fragile-looking bridges is too lightly built to support heavily laden cargo cars.The fate of the line like dozens of Chinese projects around Nigeria is a potential problem for Beijing.Infrastructure projects in Nigeria have been fueled by the same manic lending that has also created mountains of debt for Chinas economy at home. State-controlled Chinese banks have lent money at rock-bottom interest rates in deeply indebted Nigeria.They have done so based on the assumption that the Chinese government will repay them if Nigeria cannot.A little-known Chinese government agency, Sinosure, has guaranteed the loans. Sinosure insured $427 billion worth of Chinese exports and overseas construction projects around the world in 2013, the most recent year available. The Export-Import Bank of the United States, by comparison, issued just $5 billion worth of credit in each of the last two years.Nigeria is a particularly shaky bet for China. The corruption investigations could prompt the government to cancel contracts outright. Government revenue has dropped by more than half since the fall in world oil prices, so the country may not have the money to make good on the Chinese deals.The riskiest projects of all may be those like the high-speed rail line that are widely viewed as the previous administrations vanity projects.A Chinese construction manager at the new station on Abujas outskirts, who identified himself only as Mr. Zhang, said the project would be finished by next March. It was only behind schedule, he added, because of shipping delays.Were waiting for materials from China, Mr. Zhang said, like toilets.

Business

Feb. 9, 2014Every week, The New York Times chooses one essential game to watch, highlighting hot teams, winning and losing streaks, and statistical intrigue in the N.B.A.Portland at Los Angeles Clippers, Wednesday, 10:30 p.m. EasternIn a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, Derek Fisher of the Oklahoma City Thunder reflected on the conditions that can motivate an injured star.Ive seen this before, Fisher said. Star player misses a short period, sees something while theyre out that completely changes the way that they see the game. And when they come back, its easier for them and they make it easier for everyone else.Fisher was referring to the injured point guard Russell Westbrooks being motivated by the sustained quality of his Thunder teammates play. But the quotation could just as easily refer to the Los Angeles Clippers Chris Paul, who returned Sunday night after missing more than a month with a shoulder injury. In Pauls absence, his teammate Blake Griffin was terrific. In the 18 games that Paul missed, Griffin averaged 27.5 points, 8.2 rebounds and 4.4 assists a game, leading the Clippers to a 12-6 record. Griffin has attracted the attention of fans and sponsors since he entered the league, one of the perks of being a dunk-happy highlight reel. But his game of late has reflected growth: He is now able to shoot from midrange at a higher percentage, and his increased ability to make free throws has made him a more complete offensive asset for a Clippers team that, without Paul, desperately needed a player who could create his own shots.Pauls return could not come at a better time for the Clippers, who are in a fierce battle to maintain their place in the standings. Going into Sunday nights game against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Clippers were neck and neck with the Houston Rockets, both teams six games behind the Western Conference-leading Thunder, who defeated the Knicks earlier in the day. The Rockets, who did not play Sunday, have a five-game winning streak. But if Fishers analysis is universally applicable and Griffins elevated play inspires Paul to improve his game in turn, the Clippers should get a much-needed boost.Entering Sunday night, both the Clippers and the Rockets were only two games behind the Portland Trail Blazers, who at one point led in the conference standings but have dropped to third. The Blazers are 5-5 in their last 10 games despite having two players in next Sundays All-Star Game in New Orleans. Portland point guard Damian Lillard will be the first player to compete in all five events of All-Star weekend, playing in the Rising Stars Challenge, which matches some of the leagues top rookies against some top second-year players; the slam dunk and 3-point shooting contests; the skills competition; and the main event, the All-Star Game. But as dynamic as Lillard can be at his best, his play has been spotty recently. In his last 10 games, he has shot 24.6 percent from 3-point range, a considerable drop from his season average of 40.6 percent. For a player who averages seven 3-point attempts a game, this is a major concern. His point, rebound and assist totals have also declined slightly.Lillards shooting woes echo his teams: The Blazers are shooting 38.1 percent from 3-point range this season, but in their last 10 games they have dropped to 30.7 percent. Those 7.4 percentage points are the difference between being one of the best long-range teams in the league and one of the worst. In the last 10 games, only Indiana and Cleveland have a worse 3-point shooting percentage than Portland. When the Trail Blazers beat the Clippers in overtime Dec. 26, Portland shot 36.1 percent from deep, making 13 3-pointers, including a game-tying shot from Nicolas Batum that forced overtime. Portland is a team that lives and dies by the success of its offense, and with Los Angeles back near full strength, the Blazers will have to revert to their early-season form in an effort to outpace the Clippers rejuvenated stars.

Sports

Mighty Ducks' Star Wants in on Ducks TV Reboot!!! 1/27/2018 TMZ.com Aaron Schwartz -- whose first acting role was playing Dave Karp in "The Mighty Ducks" way back in 1992 -- is stoked the Quack Attack is coming back, and says he wants a piece of the action. Aaron tells TMZ he's been in contact with some people involved with bringing the 'Ducks' back, and now that it's reportedly green-lit for a TV series reboot ... he's holding out hope he can play a part. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. As for who should play the new group of young, misfit hockey players ... Schwartz has a suggestion that shouldn't seem too strange. Oh and by the way, Aaron is ripped now ... so he could definitely hold his own on the ice. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.

Entertainment

F.D.A. Bans Faulty Masks, 3 Weeks After Failed TestsThe Food and Drug Administration prohibited 65 manufacturers from selling masks for medical use. But the move came after tests last month showed the masks didnt meet standards.Published May 7, 2020Updated May 9, 2020For three weeks the Food and Drug Administration allowed the sale of several types of N95-style face masks for American health care workers despite evidence from other parts of the federal government that the masks were not effective for blocking the coronavirus.Millions of these masks, produced in China, have been bought by or donated to American hospitals and distributed to others on the front line of the Covid-19 outbreak. Starting in mid-April, tests conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that some of the products did not meet medical standards for protection against the coronavirus.But it wasnt until Thursday that the F.D.A. barred more than 65 of the 80 authorized manufacturers in China from exporting N95-style face masks to the United States for medical use, citing poor quality.While the F.D.A. continues to take action to balance the urgent need of supplies of respirators for health care personnel, we are also doing everything in our authority to ensure health care personnel receive adequate protection, an F.D.A. spokeswoman said in a statement. She added that the agency would collaborate with the C.D.C. to increase the supply of masks and ensure their integrity.She did not comment on the delay between the failed tests and the F.D.A.s action.N95 masks, many of which are also produced in China, provide better protection against coronavirus particles than cloth or surgical masks, and are coveted by health care providers and emergency medical workers. On April 3, drastic shortages of the N95 masks led the F.D.A. to allow imports of similar masks, also from China. Millions of them have been imported.These masks, known as KN95, were never tested by American regulators, but were required to be vetted by an accredited test laboratory, which can be outside the United States, showing that they met the standards of the C.D.C. Those standards call for filtering 95 percent of particles that are 0.3 microns or larger, including the new coronavirus.As an additional safeguard, the C.D.C. and the F.D.A. initiated their own review to make sure the masks met these performance standards. On Thursday, the F.D.A. said that too many of them failed to filter out a sufficient percentage of particles.In tests of about 11 masks that the F.D.A. had authorized to be sold to American hospitals, seven flunked. One mask removed as little as 24 to 35 percent of particles, according to a C.D.C. test on April 15. Others just barely missed the cut, such as masks from DaddyBaby, a company in Fuzhou, China, that typically makes diapers. Those masks removed between 91 percent and 93.5 percent of particles.The health agencies also tested some KN95 masks that did not have agency approval. One of these, the F.D.A. said, blocked roughly 1 percent of the particles. While the C.D.C. tested only about 10 masks that had been allowed, the F.D.A. removed all other masks from its list that hadnt yet been tested and gave their manufacturers 45 days to get tests in order to be reinstated.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Many of the tests were conducted weeks ago, according to C.D.C. documents, yet the F.D.A. didnt remove the masks until Thursday. It was unclear why there was such a delay. It was also unclear how many of the faulty masks were sold to American health care workers, where they ended up and whether the U.S. government was tracking that number. An F.D.A. spokeswoman didnt immediately respond to questions on the issue.Hospitals and health care workers have been wary of KN95 masks, but because of the shortage of official N95 masks, many have ended up with them anyhow.Last month, the New England Patriots football team used its plane to transport roughly one million masks from China to Massachusetts, drawing positive headlines even from the New York newspapers. A week later, medical workers began expressing concerns that the masks that Massachusetts officials purchased were not the top-of-the-line N95 respirators, but rather lower-grade KN95 masks that were potentially not safe to use while caring for coronavirus patients.We are not using these on Covid 19 patient areas or in any areas, Michael Augustine, the supply chain director at Harrington Memorial Hospital in Southbridge, Mass., said in an email at the time. The packaging on the masks state they are not to be used in medical and surgical environments. These are essentially parked in storage and will not be utilized.Jay Park, an emergency-medicine doctor in New York who has been vetting mask suppliers for nonprofits, said that the F.D.A.s reaction to the test results showed the agency hadnt properly screened the masks before approving them for medical use. They relied on the self-reported test results from China, he said. Are you kidding me?

Health

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/science/hot-dinosaur-summer.htmlScience TimesPublished July 3, 2021Updated Oct. 21, 2021Dinosaurs, which ruled the planet for roughly 170 million years and were one of the most successful animals ever, may have been in a 10-million-year decline at the time of their apocalypse, according to research published this week.ImageA study in the journal Nature Communications contends that rates of extinction increased and the evolution of new species began to decrease 76 million years ago, before the coup de grce of the Chicxulub impact some 66 million years ago. The reason, scientists suspect, was a changing climate cold temperatures caused a cascade of collapse and calamity. The paper is the latest entry in a long-running debate over why the dinosaurs died off, and not all paleontologists agree that a steady decline was underway when the space rock struck.The research serves as a backdrop to consider this weeks heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, and the precariousness of any animals time on Earth. Including how quickly a more adaptive critter might take over.In the dinosaurs case, it turned out to be the mammals. The dinosaurs were mostly so huge they probably hardly knew that the furry little mammals were there in the undergrowth. But the mammals began to increase in numbers of species before the dinosaurs had gone, and then after the impact they had their chance to build new kinds of ecosystems which we see today, said Fabien Condamine, the papers lead author and a research scientist at the Institut des Sciences de lEvolution de Montpellier in France.Which makes me wonder: What animals might take over if we humans cant adapt? Are they currently underfoot, unnoticed?Other scientists this week discovered a previously unknown beetle species in the coprolites, or fossilized feces, of dinosaur ancestors that lived more than 200 million years ago. Perhaps, 200 million years from now, super-evolved bugs will have their day, studying our coprolites for clues to our existence as the circle of life continues.What were metabolizing latelyPlease do not try to recycle your bowling ball.Please do try to understand what the Delta variant of the coronavirus means for masking, vaccination and living your life.How about a little political science? A great chart that shows how ranked-choice voting shook out in New York Citys complicated Democratic mayoral primary election.Are you being pursued through the forest by a hungry bear? Maybe math can save you.50 years ago this month, American automobile culture landed on the moon. A book by Earl Swift looks at NASAs Lunar Roving Vehicles, and how they really opened up the moon for the later group of Apollo astronauts.

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Science|Cats Can Transmit the Coronavirus to Each Other, but They Probably Wont Get Sick From Ithttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/science/cats-coronavirus.htmlThe six cats in a laboratory experiment cleared the virus from their bodies on their own. And there are no reports of humans contracting the virus from cats.Credit...Pascal Rossignol/ReutersMay 13, 2020Cats can infect each other with the novel coronavirus, but they may not have any symptoms, researchers reported on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.The report follows earlier laboratory research and cases of domestic cats, as well as tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo, that tested positive for the coronavirus. In several cases, those cats showed mild symptoms, but the six cats in the new experiment didnt get sick at all and cleared the virus from their bodies on their own.Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and Peter Halfmann of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with other researchers from both the United States and Japan, conducted the study, in which three domestic cats were inoculated with the virus and three additional uninfected cats were put in cages, one with each of the inoculated cats.First the cats that had been given the virus tested positive. Then their cage mates also caught the virus. None were sick, and all were virus free after, at most, six days.Cats have also contracted the virus from humans, but there are no reports of a person becoming infected with the virus from a cat, although the authors suggest that the possibility deserves more research.The cats, once infected, shed virus particles in the same way that humans do. And it is the same coronavirus that infects people. That makes it theoretically possible for cats to give the virus to humans, said Dr. Karen Terio, chief of the Zoological Pathology Program at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. Still, Dr. Terio, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email that given the limited social circle of most domestic cats, cats are most likely to become infected after contact with a human member of their household.The researchers urged people not to forgo the comforts of feline companionship; humans are the clear dangers in terms of disease transmission, not pets.If someone with a cat has the virus, Dr. Halfmann, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said to use common sense. No cat kisses, he said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as other organizations suggest keeping pets away from humans who have tested positive.If you are healthy, Dr. Halfmann said, life can go on as usual, My cat sleeps on a pillow right next to me. Asked if the results of the experiment had changed that habit, he said, he was there last night.

science

Bezos Launches to Space, Aiming to Reignite His Rocket Companys AmbitionsThe Amazon founder and three others lifted off in Blue Origins New Shepard spacecraft, fulfilling a goal more than 20 years in the making.VideotranscripttranscriptHighlights From Blue Origins SpaceflightBlue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.Theres Oliver on the left, Jeff Bezos on the right. We are about to go to space, everybody. Command engine start two, one, ignition. We have liftoff. The Shepard has cleared the tower. And New Shepard has cleared the tower, on her way to space with our first human crew. And booster touchdown, welcome back New Shepard. First up, your booster has landed. Booster landed. Our rocket went over Mach 3. And now theyre coming, floating back down at just about 15 or 16 miles an hour. What a flight. Welcome back to Earth. Congratulations to all of you. All of you. [cheering] Welcome back, astronauts.Blue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.CreditCredit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressPublished July 20, 2021Updated Oct. 25, 2021VAN HORN, Texas Jeff Bezos, the richest human in the world, went to space on Tuesday. It was a brief jaunt rising more than 65 miles into the sky above West Texas in a spacecraft that was built by Mr. Bezos rocket company, Blue Origin.While Mr. Bezos was beaten to space last week by Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur who flew in a rocket plane from his company Virgin Galactic, some analysts consider Blue Origin, founded by Mr. Bezos more than 20 years ago, to be a more significant contender in the future space economy. The company has ambitions of a scale far beyond short flights for space tourists, and it is backed by the entrepreneur who made Amazon into an economic powerhouse.Lori Garver, who served as deputy administrator of NASA during the Obama administration, said that Mr. Bezos has a huge, long-term vision that is multigenerational. She added that his intent for Blue Origin was to compete for even higher stakes in the growing business of space.In 2017, Mr. Bezos announced that he would sell $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund the space venture, and Blue Origin has already pursued a range of business opportunities, such as trying to win contracts for a moon lander for NASA astronauts as well as launching satellites for the Department of Defense on large reusable rockets.In recent years before he stepped down as chief executive of Amazon, Mr. Bezos would typically spend a day a week usually Wednesdays focused on Blue Origin. That Mr. Bezos himself was seated in the capsule for Tuesdays space trip makes plain that he is putting spaceflight at the top of his spending list.The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel, he said a few years ago, couching his investment as a form of philanthropy.Mr. Bezos has described a vision of humanitys future that is influenced by the proposals of Gerard K. ONeill, a Princeton physicist. In the 1970s, Dr. ONeill proposed giant cylinder-shape space colonies that in great enough numbers would support far more people and industry than are possible on Earth.The solar system can easily support a trillion humans, Mr. Bezos said. If we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power.ImageCredit...Blue OriginImageCredit...Blue Origin, via Associated PressBy contrast, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has focused on the idea of settling Mars. Getting to Mars is an easier task than building one of ONeills colonies, but making cold and airless Mars hospitable to human civilization would be an enormous undertaking.And despite Tuesdays successful flight, Blue Origin has much progress to make. To have the impact on humanitys future that Mr. Bezos describes, Blue Origin will need much more than the small New Shepard vehicle that Mr. Bezos and three other passengers flew to the edge of space on Tuesday.Although private enterprise has always worked with governments on space travel, it is only in recent decades that private companies have started seeking to make business opportunities from tourist spaceflight.Blue Origins accomplishments pale next to the rocket company led by another of the worlds richest people: SpaceX, which Mr. Musk founded a couple of years after Blue Origin started.SpaceX is already a behemoth in the space business. It regularly takes NASA astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, it has already deployed more than 1,500 satellites in its Starlink constellation to provide internet service everywhere, and it is developing a gargantuan rocket called Starship for missions for Mars and elsewhere.By contrast, Blue Origins forthcoming projects, at least in the near future, do not seem poised to upend the space industry the way SpaceX has.The larger reusable rocket for launching satellites that Mr. Bezos company is working on, New Glenn, is still more than a year away, and efforts to win major government contracts like launching Department of Defense satellites have so far come up empty. A lunar lander that Blue Origin hopes NASA will someday use to carry astronauts was not selected, at least for the moment, because NASA said it had money for only one design SpaceXs.Blue Origins mascot is the tortoise. As in the fable The Tortoise and the Hare, perhaps with steady, constant effort, Blue Origin can catch up.ImageCredit...Blue Origin, via ReutersMs. Garver recalled Mr. Bezos going to Washington to meet with her and Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator. At the time, Blue Origin was an enigma.We were thrilled to hear of his plan, she said. It was: Im here because Im investing in a space company. I am prepared to invest a lot over the long term. And my goals are very aligned with NASA. So if I can be of help in any way, lets work together.Blue Origin was working on a capsule that could carry astronauts to the International Space Station, and it won a modest $25.6 million development contract from NASA. But work on that vehicle stalled, and Blue Origin dropped out of the competition for the contracts that ultimately went to Boeing and SpaceX.Slow and steady was slower than anybody hoped, Ms. Garver said.But the comparisons to SpaceXs extraordinary successes are somewhat unfair, she said.We are really spoiled by SpaceX right now, Ms. Garver said.Even if Blue Origin has not yet lived up to its lofty vision, more companies will mean more competition. Im not really as disappointed as some people at their pace, Ms. Garver said. I feel theyll get there. We need competition.ImageCredit...Virgin Galactic, via ReutersImageCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesLaura Seward Forczyk, founder of the aerospace consulting firm Astralytical, was also positive. Although their progress has been slow, they havent had any large failures that indicate to me that theyre at risk, she said. Blue Origin is still finding its way forward.While Blue Origin awaits the path that Mr. Bezos will lead it down, Tuesdays flight was a milestone, the first flight from the company to carry people to space, even though it did not enter orbit.At 8:11 a.m. Central time, the stubby rocket and capsule, named New Shepard after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, rose from the companys launch site in Van Horn, a thin jet of fire and exhaust streaming from the rockets engine.Over the past six years, Blue Origin has conducted 15 successful test flights without people aboard, and engineers deemed that New Shepard, which flies with no pilot, was finally ready for passengers their boss included.The other three passengers were Mr. Bezos brother, Mark; Oliver Daemen, a Dutch student who was Blue Origins first paying passenger; and Mary Wallace Funk, a pilot who in the 1960s was among a group of women who passed the same rigorous astronaut selection criteria employed by NASA but who, until Tuesday, never had the chance to board a rocket.At 18, Mr. Daemen was the youngest person ever to go to space. At 82, Ms. Funk, who goes by Wally, was the oldest.I want to thank you, sweetheart, Ms. Funk said to Jeff Bezos during a news conference. Ive been waiting a long time.VideotranscripttranscriptVideo Shows Inside the Blue Origin Flight to SpaceThe Blue Origin crew included four passengers who had fun during the short flight, playing with Skittles and experimenting with gravity.You just have to wait for it. Who wants a Skittle? Oh yeah, throw me one. See if you can catch this in your mouth. Group: Yeah! Well done. Here, toss me one. Here, catch. Oh, yeah. Whoo hoo! Has it been everything you thought it would be? Fantastic! Here, look Oliver.The Blue Origin crew included four passengers who had fun during the short flight, playing with Skittles and experimenting with gravity.CreditCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesOnce the booster had used up its propellant, the capsule detached from the rocket at an altitude of about 47 miles. Both pieces continued to coast upward to 66.5 miles, passing the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space.The passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, somersaulting and tossing Ping-Pong balls and Skittles candy as they experienced about four minutes of free fall.The booster landed vertically near the launch site, similar to SpaceXs rival reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule then descended under parachutes until it gently set down in a puff of dust.Ten minutes and 10 seconds after launch, it was over. A few minutes later, the four emerged euphorically from the capsule, greeted with hugs from friends and family.Two more passenger-carrying flights are scheduled for this year with the company hoping to speed the pace of operations next year. Blue Origin has declined to say how much the early customers are paying or how many have signed up. However, Mr. Bezos said: Were approaching $100 million in private sales already. And the demand is very, very high.ImageCredit...Blue Origin/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesIn addition to the high cost of tickets to ride on New Shepard, Mr. Bezos also called attention to the vast wealth at his disposal when he remarked on how it was possible for him to finance Blue Origin in the first place.I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, Mr. Bezos said in a news conference after the flight, because you guys paid for all of this.That remark prompted a number of scornful responses from critics. Perhaps to blunt attacks from those who say he is just using his wealth create diversions for the wealthy, Mr. Bezos announced that he had created a prize for individual he said exemplified acts of both civility and courage.The award offered $100 million each to two people Van Jones, the CNN political commentator, and Jos Andrs, the chef and restaurateur to be donated to charitable causes of each recipients choosing.Whatever Blue Origins future will be, Mr. Bezos remained pleased on Tuesday. Would he make another trip?Hell yes, he said. How fast can you refuel that thing? Lets go.Karen Weise and Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

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Credit...Robert Parigger/European Pressphoto AgencyFeb. 13, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia It is not every day in the Olympics that the field of play of a sport has been strategically devised by the father of one of the events best athletes.In Fridays mens super combined, half the racecourse will have been created by Ante Kostelic, father and coach of Ivica Kostelic of Croatia, a three-time Olympic medalist and one of the prerace favorites .Ante Kostelic must position the slalom course gates within certain distance guidelines and other specifications, but on a ski slope that is about 600 yards long, there is plenty of room for a father to set the gates up in a way that he knows will suit his son.There is nothing new about this practice; it is also employed at World Cup events. But it is one of the quirks of a sometimes whimsical winter sport often devoid of the regimentation of American sports.The Olympic super combined is one run of downhill in the morning followed by one run of slalom in the afternoon, with the times combined to determine the medal winners. The downhill course, which is far more dangerous, is set by officials from the international ski federation.But the slalom course is set by coaches selected in a lottery. To get a coach into the course-setting draw, a nation must have a skier ranked in the top 15 of the event.Ante Kostelic, known for setting challenging and sometimes peculiar courses, was chosen for Fridays slalom course. By Thursday morning, the course was in place here, and it features some potentially dicey elements at the beginning of the final pitch of the slalom hill. The course also concludes with a series of almost dead straight gates, which is unusual for a high-level slalom and will almost certainly ensure a breakneck dash by the racers.The course-setting policy may not be as much of an advantage as it might seem, and just as easily, an American ski team coach could have been chosen to set the slalom. The American Ted Ligety is another favorite in the race. Federation officials do review the course setup and can amend it if they deem it unskiable, unsafe or unfair. But generally, if the course design is merely idiosyncratic, it remains as arranged.And Ivica Kostelic, 34, does not need a lot of help. He has been one of the best slalom skiers in the world for a dozen years. He seems poised to make a run at his fourth Olympic medal. He won the silver medal in the combined in 2006, when the event was one run of downhill and two runs of slalom, and was second in the current super combined format in 2010. He also won a silver medal in the 2010 slalom.Kostelic appeared confident after Wednesdays super combined training.I have good feelings, he said with a smile.Ligety, the defending world champion in the combined, did not appear worried when asked about Kostelics course set.Historically, Ive done well on his course sets, Ligety said. He definitely keeps it interesting.Bode Miller, another favorite in the event along with Alexis Pinturault of France, put the focus not on the particulars of the slalom course but on the condition of the downhill course.Consistent daytime temperatures in the 40s have softened the once icy downhill track, making it more susceptible to ruts and choppy snow not something racers look forward to at 80 miles an hour.Concern about the bright midday sun here caused race officials on Thursday to move the start of Fridays event to 10 a.m. from 11 a.m. The earlier starting time could ensure better, harder snow race conditions for the downhill.That will help keep the hill in shape, Miller said of the earlier race start. You want the most fair conditions.Still, as Miller noted, nearly 40 racers are entered and it will take more than an hour to complete the downhill portion.Depending on where you are in the bib draw, the course and snow will change a lot, Miller said, aware that changing snow conditions translate to variable finish times.Miller cares about the condition of the downhill course as much as the Kostelics care about the makeup of the slalom course. For Miller to have a chance at an Olympic medal he is the defending Olympic champion he has to dominate the downhill and hold on during the slalom run.Its going to be tough because of all the good slalom skiers who will be out there, said the 36-year-old Miller, who has seldom practiced or competed in slalom in the last few years.And one of those slalom specialists will have a particular interest in his run since he will be plying his trade on the handiwork of his father.

Sports

Credit...Rich Pedroncelli/Associated PressFeb. 15, 2014ELVERTA, Calif. Jerry Manuels spring training these days consists of collecting stray baseballs sent back over the fence by a neighboring farmer, checking on new trees beyond the outfield and coaching teenagers against background noise from crowing roosters.As pitchers and catchers reported to spring training the past few days, Manuel, 60, a former manager of the Chicago White Sox and the Mets, has been busy working alongside his son Anthony, 31, to keep young men many, like the Manuels, minorities on the right path academically by providing baseball opportunities. The students come from throughout the Sacramento area to a school recently reopened with the necessary enrollment boost from the Jerry Manuel Foundation program. No matter that facilities are modest at best.It was a gut thing, like, We need a school for these kids, Manuel said of a vision that began with getting the players going in travel ball. I told my son, I need these kids all year round because the education is bigger than travel ball. If theyre not getting that, were not doing them a service. Here we are.The Jerry Manuel Foundation draws middle-school students and a small group of ninth graders to this rural town for baseball that is not geared strictly toward winning. They play on a rundown field down the street from a cow pasture.Manuel, the American League manager of the year in 2000 with the White Sox, said he would love to get back into a big-league dugout as a manager, or even as a bench coach.I get withdrawals, Manuel said. Spring training, for a manager, is probably his most relaxed time.But Manuel, who last managed the Mets in 2010, was unwilling to wait around. He considers it his duty to help keep young black men headed to baseball, not just football or basketball.I see the lack of participation at the major league level, Manuel said. It saddens me. The game will survive. Baseball is a beautiful game even if they just played it at the Little League level, shes going to survive. Shes that way. But the level of play is missing out on that dynamic player because hes going to other sports.Playing a role in developing players is paramount for Manuel, who regularly reminds his son that winning is not paramount at this level. These two cherish their time together.Given that Manuels demanding major league job kept him on the road for nearly half the year, they have discovered how passionate both are about making a difference.Its awesome, Manuel said. He was the one in the family that everything was baseball. This is an awesome opportunity for both of us to grow together and for me to pass on what I know without the pressures of winning and losing.Anthony Manuel is the foundations head coach and director of baseball operations. He also has aspirations of managing.I dont take anything for granted, Anthony Manuel said. I get as much from him as I can. Were not like a normal baseball program. School comes first. My dad makes sure we dont stray away from that. Theyll have a place to go when they leave.Each morning, most of the 50 young men are dropped off at Alpha Middle School to take part in Manuels program, which received financial support from Derrek Lee, a former slugger and a Sacramento native. The kids and parents do not pay for anything but transportation.Anthony Manuel, a former minor leaguer who is married with two young children, monitors home room before students go on to their classes. There are regular reminders about Jackie Robinsons core nine values: courage, determination, teamwork, persistence, integrity, citizenship, justice, excellence and commitment. For Black History Month in February, Anthony discusses a black baseball player each day.Tutoring is available, and some students in the first freshman class work independently on computers.If youre not doing well in school, its difficult to get on the field, Manuel said.Eventually, Manuel hopes to receive funding from Major League Baseball for transportation and facilities improvements. A second field is in the works.

Sports

Credit...Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated PressFeb. 16, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia A senior adviser to the Sochi Olympics convened an emergency meeting late last week with top winter sports officials at the Park Inn hotel in the Alpine village here.A situation had grown dire. It was not security, attendance or doping that was the problem. It was salt. Four months earlier, Hans Pieren, one of the worlds leading experts on salt and snow, had told Sochi officials that the Alpine skiing events required more than 19 tons of salt, a crucial ingredient for melting soft snow so it can refreeze into a hard surface.But the organizers did not listen, to their great regret. Now, with 10 days of competition remaining, many of the Games signature events were in jeopardy of being compromised, and even canceled.Tim Gayda, a Canadian consultant who is a senior adviser to the Sochi organizers, called the meeting Thursday night, according to some people who were there. He told the group that the strongest kind of salt, the large-grain variety, was simply not available in Russia. Mr. Gayda asked the group an urgent question: Does anyone know how we can get 25 tons of salt tonight?From there, a confidential international mission unspooled a mountaintop Oceans Eleven that just may have prevented a major Olympic embarrassment. This Sochi salt accord involved a Swiss salt salesman working late into the night; a rerouted airplane that may or may not have come from Bulgaria; an Olympian turned salt savant; and Russians powerful enough to clear months of customs bureaucracy overnight.It began with Mr. Pieren, 52, a ruddy Swiss skier who works as a senior race director for F.I.S., the international ski federation. He discusses the merits of different salt grains with the precision of a jeweler and often carries plastic sandwich bags with grains of salt fine, medium and large.Last September, Mr. Pieren made a final inspection of the Alpine skiing courses and told Sochi organizers that he needed 19 tons of salt for the Games: two tons of fine-grain salt, seven tons of medium and, most important, 10 tons of large-grain Himalayan-style salt. This was the heavy-duty salt that sinks deep into the snow, lasts longer and is most effective in warm weather.In emphatic but imperfect English, Mr. Pieren placed his order in a Sept. 29 email to Yves Dimier, the head of Alpine sports for Sochis organizing committee. If the conditions are incredible bad or wears than expected, we need maybe more salt and have to get more, Mr. Pieren wrote.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Pieren, who competed in Alpine skiing events at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics and now works with international competitions, was used to getting his way on matters of salt. Guided by intuition and experience, he combines different grains to find the right solution for every kind of snow. When we order something, it is not a wish, he said. It is a must.But Sochi organizers did not listen. After spending more than $50 billion on the Games, they did not order the full amount of salt recommended, which would have cost perhaps a few thousand dollars.Mr. Dimier and a spokesman declined to comment on his role in the decision, and the Sochi press office did not directly say why organizers did not heed Mr. Pierens advice. But they acknowledged the importance of the large-grained salt, and its scarcity in Russia. Sochi had hardly any large salt crystals, less than a ton nowhere near enough to harden expanses of soft snow, according to Mr. Pieren. And temperatures on the mountain were rising.Homeowners use salt to melt ice on the sidewalk, but Alpine experts cleverly use it to overcome soft snow conditions when a hard, icy surface is preferable. The salt melts the soft snow, and when the temperature drops usually overnight a layer of ice forms. Large-grain salt, about five millimeters in size, is best for soft, deep snow, because it drops farther into the snow and lasts for days, not hours.By the time of the emergency meeting, the world was watching Olympic athletes who had spent their lives training for these competitions. But their efforts could all be undone because of five-millimeter grains of salt or, rather, the lack of them.They didnt recognize the importance of the salt, Mr. Pieren said. They dont know anything about salt.It was not just the Alpine skiing races that were in trouble. Mr. Pieren fielded frantic calls from colleagues across the mountain at cross-country, the halfpipe, Nordic combined. All were worried about the conditions. All were in need of salt. Prominent athletes began to complain about the conditions. The halfpipe is pretty hard to ride, said Shaun White, an American snowboarder and one of the Games biggest stars.Once everyone gets in there, it just turns to mush, Mr. White said.Sochi officials had to act swiftly. When Mr. Gayda asked about arranging an emergency infusion of salt, Mr. Pieren knew where to turn. He called Schweizer Rheinsalinen, a 160-year-old company near Basel, Switzerland, that sits on the banks of the river (the Rhine) for which it is named. On its website, the company declares salt a world unto itself.Mr. Pieren reached Marcel Plattner, a sales accountant who works mostly in food-grade salt. Mr. Pieren told him he was in trouble. Not him personally in trouble, but he told me Sochi didnt have enough salt, Mr. Plattner said.Mr. Pieren was relieved to hear that the Swiss company had plenty of big-grain salt in a nearby warehouse; he said Olympic officials would buy 24 tons if it could be shipped immediately. At roughly $150 a ton, the bill would be more than $3,500. ImageCredit...Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesMr. Plattner was on a sales call with a supermarket chain when Mr. Pieren called. He was thrilled to help he had been watching the Sochi Games and was a fan of winter sports, hockey and skiing especially. I felt bad for the athletes, he said. It wasnt their mistake.Once Schweizer Rheinsalinen agreed to the sale, the international ski federation helped reroute a plane to Zurich, according to Jenny Wiedeke, a spokeswoman for the organization. The plane would leave Zurich at 11 a.m., with or without the salt. If youre too late, the show is gone, Mr. Plattner said. It was the time which was working against us.The ski federation and Sochi officials declined to describe how they secured a plane on such short notice. Mr. Plattner said he was told it had come from Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Mr. Plattner worked until 11 that night to make the arrangements. He said he did not even have time to tell his boss. It was very exciting, he said.After sleeping for a few hours, he went to work early Friday. Because of a miscommunication, he missed the 11 a.m. plane but managed to get the salt on another plane that left the main Zurich airport about 3 p.m., he said.It was one of the more unusual, and exhilarating, sales of his career. I was surprised to work for the Olympics, Mr. Plattner said. Thats the reason I got a bit emotional. Our whole company and our logistics department was lucky to do something for a good reason, for the Olympic Games.When the plane landed in Sochi, Russian officials expedited the customs process, according to the Sochi organizing committee. The importation of the salt was done with full cooperation of all of the relevant authorities who treated this as a priority, the organization said in a statement.After the salt passed a security check Friday, Olympic vehicles took the load straight to the mountain, and about 24 hours after the emergency salt meeting, workers stood on the mountain, sprinkling the soft snow with big-grained salt, fresh from Switzerland.Even though problems with the course persisted Saturday, as several skiers in the womens super-G struggled, Mr. Pieren said he believed that the worst was behind them. Course managers were now armed if the temperature remained well above freezing, as expected. It could have ended in disaster, he said. But it was good teamwork.

Sports

DealBook|How to Value Yahoos Core Businesshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/business/dealbook/how-to-value-yahoos-core-business.htmlDec. 9, 2015With Yahoo exploring a separation of its core business, the world may soon know what the company minus its lucrative stake in Alibaba is worth.As of Wednesday, that figure is a negative (yes, negative) $13 billion.How can a company that has $4.5 billion in revenue and one billion users be worth less than zero?Lets walk through the numbers.The value of Yahoos stake in Alibaba is $32.5 billion and its stake in Yahoo Japan is $8.6 billion. The companys net cash or cash minus debt is $4.2 billion. All told, that is $45.3 billion.But stock market investors are assigning a valuation of $32.5 billion, based on Wednesdays trading. The news that Yahoo was halting a spinoff of its stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, choosing instead to explore a spinoff of Yahoos core Internet operations plus its stake in Yahoo Japan, sent shares lower, widening that gap.Investors are being punitive in part because of uncertainty. Spinning off the Yahoo core business and Yahoo Japan is projected to be even more complicated than the original plan to divest Alibaba. It could take another year or more and may still carry a tax liability, albeit a smaller one because the asset is smaller.Mark May, an analyst with Citigroup, downgraded his rating on Yahoo in anticipation of the execution risk.Investors were also disappointed that the core business will still be run by the current management team, led by Marissa Mayer, according to Brett Harriss, an analyst with Gabelli & Company. Before Ms. Mayer took over as chief executive of Yahoo in 2012, the company had earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, of $1.4 billion, a figure projected to be $929 million this year.It may have declined, but with that much Ebitda, Yahoos core business cannot be worthless.On average, analysts value Yahoos core based on five times projected Ebitda some a little higher, some a little lower. That yields a market capitalization of $4.6 billion if Yahoo were an independent company. Tack on the 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, worth about $8.6 billion, and youve got a $13.2 billion business that could be spun out.If the transaction ultimately is taxed, the bill would be a lot smaller for the Yahoo core plus Yahoo Japan entity than the original plan to spin off its Alibaba stake. Assuming a 41 percent tax rate, as CRT did in Wednesdays note, Yahoo would pay $5.4 billion in taxes, versus $13.3 billion in taxes if it spun out Alibaba potential savings that amount to $8 billion. Thats an extra dollar back for each share outstanding. Yet, interestingly, the stock lost 45 cents a share Wednesday.It is clear that the turmoil surrounding Yahoo is not over. Only when it has a spinoff or a sale will the market truly be able to put a price tag above zero on its core business.

Business

DealBookCredit...Mark Lennihan/Associated PressNov. 30, 2015Long before Pfizer conceived of merging with Allergan in a $150 billion deal to rid itself of what its chief executive called an an uncompetitive tax rate in the United States, the company was deploying various tax avoidance strategies dating back to at least 1976.Thats when Pfizer, with the help of lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, sought to take advantage of an unusual tax credit program that legislators in Washington had passed to help spur investment in Puerto Rico. In that year, hoping to stimulate employment on the Caribbean island, Congress passed Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, a law that gave mainland companies a full tax exemption on profits earned in Puerto Rico. In addition, the local corporate tax code gave companies incentives to establish subsidiaries there. As you can imagine, Pfizer quickly set up shop in Puerto Rico. It then spent the next two decades lobbying to keep the much-criticized law from being repealed. According to a United States General Accounting Office report from 1992, Pfizer saved at least $759 million over 10 years.Pfizer wasnt alone. The pharmaceutical industry descended on Puerto Rico to take advantage of the savings. The tax break ultimately cost American taxpayers $24.7 billion in unpaid tax receipts, according to the General Accounting Office. After the tax law was scrapped in legislation signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that phased out the tax break over a 10-year period, Pfizer and its rivals pulled up their stakes in Puerto Rico, leading, in part, to the islands current economic crisis.All of this is said not to moralize about whether Pfizer owes a patriotic duty to pay a hefty tax bill. It is meant simply to highlight the lengths companies like Pfizer and others will go to reduce their taxes, even when they receive substantial benefits as American businesses. Pfizer has received at least $50 million in federal subsidies over nearly the last 15 years, according to the Corporate Research Project, a nonprofit that tracks corporate subsidies. And, still, it wants to leave the United States and move its headquarters to Ireland.So long as United States companies feel as if they have to compete on an international stage against companies in countries with lower tax rates in Pfizers case, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca in Britain, and Novartis in Switzerland they will seek ways to leave the country to reduce their bill.ImageCredit...Sam Falk/The New York TimesIn 1934, Judge Learned Hand wrote what has become something of a mantra for those who believe theres no obligation to pay high taxes. Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the Treasury, he wrote. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes. Over and over again the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible.Ive argued in previous columns that the government should consider temporary measures to prevent some of these deals from happening. Last year and again last month, the Treasury Department issued new rules intended to curb these so-called inversion deals. Still, there are ways for companies to bypass these rules, as the structure of the Pfizer-Allergan merger demonstrated. (The combination is not technically structured as an inversion, though it achieves the same goal of securing a lower tax rate overseas.)Our actions can only slow the pace of these transactions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said last month after introducing new rules to curb inversions. Only legislation can decisively stop them.There are all sorts of ideas percolating around Washington about how it could make it less attractive for drug companies like Pfizer to leave the United States, some more outlandish than others, but virtually all require being more protectionist and less open. For example, one idea making the rounds would be for Medicare or Medicaid to favor buying domestic drugs over foreign ones. Another would give domestic drug companies priority in the Food and Drug Administration approval process. All those punitive steps might work in the short term, but they would create their own complications and unintended consequences.The only way to end the inversion craze, or whatever tax avoidance plan comes next, is to comprehensively reform the corporate tax code. Does that mean companies tax rates will most likely fall? Yes. President Obama has long pushed for a simplified tax code that lowers corporate tax rates with fewer brackets, while cutting unfair tax breaks and loopholes. The White House, on its website, says, Our system has one of the highest statutory tax rates among developed countries to generate about the same amount of corporate tax revenue as our developed country partners as a share of our economy; this, in turn, hurts our competitiveness in the world economy. Tax rates will most likely always be marginally higher in the United States than elsewhere, as they should be given the benefits accorded companies based here. But the gap between rates here and other developed countries cannot be so large that it drives American companies overseas.

Business

Several common educational strategies lean into the idea that, in the classroom, challenge is something to embrace.Credit...Eleanor DavisApril 5, 2022When Hunter, 6, started first grade last autumn, he struggled to match letter sounds with the shape of letters on paper. He found writing letters hard and writing words even harder. It felt bad, he said recently.But Hunter also knows how to articulate what is happening when things get frustrating. Your brain grows at the bottom, he said. Its a phrase that refers to the bottom of the learning pit, an imaginary place where students in Hunters class in Illinois have been taught to go when something they are learning gets difficult. Hunter also knows what he needs to get out of the pit hard work, his friends, his teacher and what it feels like when he climbs up and out on the other side (excited).The learning pit as a metaphor is one of several common educational strategies that lean into the idea that struggle is something to be embraced. It was conceived in the early 2000s by James Nottingham when he was a teacher in a former mining town in Northern England. He saw that his students, many of whom were low income and lived in communities with high unemployment, avoided leaving their comfort zones. He wanted to encourage his students to get comfortable with being a little uncomfortable.At a moment when students are reeling from two years of pandemic learning and isolation from their peers, the idea of intentionally making young people uncomfortable may seem misguided. But many educators and learning scientists say that now, as students look to rebuild academic confidence, is a crucial moment for teachers and parents to step back when learning gets hard and to be explicit that the challenge offers rewards.The answer isnt taking away challenge, its giving more tools to deal with challenge, said Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and an expert on constructive learning mind-sets. Instead of saying kids are too fragile and refraining from offering difficult tasks, Dr. Dweck said, using frameworks like the learning pit can help children visualize ways to push through by asking for help and stepping up the effort.It becomes a way of articulating what might in the past have been humiliating and uncomfortable and discouraging, Dr. Dweck said.The idea that struggle is vital to learning is well-established, she added. John Hattie, the director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, in Australia, spent 15 years studying the educational factors that most influence learning. In 2017, he published 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning, which identified the factors that work best to accelerate learning. One is striving for challenge and not just doing your best.Teachers in the United States and Britain have found that the learning-pit metaphor comes with conceptual handles that are easy to grasp. A student struggling with a math problem can say to the teacher, I am in the pit with this an easier thing for a child to admit than I dont understand. And a teacher can prepare students to go into the pit, as if on a spelunking adventure.Its such a nice visual for them to see what journey they were about to take with their learning and make it less scary, said Catherine Jennings, Hunters first-grade teacher at Olympia West Elementary School in central Illinois.Mr. Nottingham, the founder and executive director of The Challenging Learning Group, an education company, said: My purpose is, instead of giving them clarity, its creating confusion, or cognitive wobble. Like when you are learning to ride a bike and it wobbles I am trying to create that mental wobble so they have to think about it more.Mr. Nottingham identified three mental states that students occupy when learning something new: relatively comfortable, relatively uncomfortable and panicked. Too many parents and educators intervene when learning gets uncomfortable, denying students a chance to stretch enough to deepen their learning, he said. Its counterproductive, he said, like trying to help a child learn to ride a bike by holding onto the back of the seat to navigate every bump, hole or obstacle.In 2018, TNTP, a nonprofit based in New York focused on improving K-12 education, surveyed 1,000 lessons in five diverse schools to see why so many students were graduating with decent grades but were unprepared for college. It found that in class, students successfully completed most (71 percent) of the work sheets, class activities and other work they were given to do. But those assignments were too easy; they reflected grade-level standards only 17 percent of the time. That gap exists because so few assignments actually gave students a chance to demonstrate grade-level mastery, the authors of the survey concluded.Not stretching students because there isnt time for the kinds of conversations that make learning interesting and, at times, tricky can be consequential, especially for marginalized students. Lacey Robinson, president and chief executive of UnboundED, an organization that designs learning to be rigorous and meaningful, said educators sometimes did not have the content knowledge and training to help fill in gaps, and too often had low expectations for Black and brown students. This can cause those students to lose interest in learning; they get relegated to lower-level material and fall further behind.We often find that educators use what I call this really illogical model of putting students in a grade level below, Ms. Robinson said, in the hope that they catch up to the grade level theyre supposed to be in.Your academic identity gets solidified the more you work that muscle, she added. And you work that muscle due to the rigor and the productive struggle.Some researchers have gone beyond encouraging struggle to actually design for failure. Manu Kapur, an educational psychologist at ETH Zurich, has spent 17 years showing that students learn new concepts more fully, and retain the knowledge longer, when they engage in what he calls productive failure grappling with a problem before getting instruction on exactly how to do it.Dr. Kapur recently co-wrote a meta-analysis analyzing 53 studies from the past 15 years that examined which teaching strategy was more effective: providing direct instruction on how to complete a problem before practicing it, or providing well-designed questions to provoke thinking on a concept before introducing knowledge about how to tackle it.The first strategy is widely accepted; teachers have little time to spare, and it is easier to tell students what to do and then have them practice. The latter method seems wildly inefficient: Why let students waste time and develop wrong ideas when a teacher is there to show the right way? But Dr. Kapur found that students in middle school, high school and college, from North America, Europe and Asia performed better when they had to struggle first. Problem-solving practice before learning a concept was significantly more effective than the converse learning the concept first and then practicing. We are taking the science of human cognition and learning, Dr. Kapur said, and designing failure-based experiences to help kids learn better.Dr. Kapur emphasized that productive failure works best when certain principles are followed: The problems must be devised to be intuitive, challenging but not impossible, and have multiple solutions; students should work in pairs or small groups; and the class should understand that getting a right answer isnt the goal, and that deeper learning is.But using language like the learning pit or even productive failure can help as students work to rebuild their academic confidence.Productive failure is especially important now because we need to re-norm failure as an opportunity to learn, Dr. Kapur said.

science

DealBook|Portugal to Rescue Banco Internacional do Funchalhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/dealbook/banco-internacional-do-funchal-banif-santander.htmlDec. 21, 2015LONDON The Portuguese lender Banco Internacional do Funchal will be split into a good and bad bank, with its healthy assets sold to Banco Santander of Spain as part of a state-backed rescue, Portugals central bank said on Sunday.The need for the rescue came after Banco Internacional do Funchal, known as Banif, had trouble repaying an injection of 1.1 billion euros, or $1.2 billion at current exchange rates, from the Portuguese government in 2013. That deal involved the government taking a majority stake in the lender.It is the second bailout of a bank in Portugal in a year and a half. The government rescued the troubled lender Banco Esprito Santo in August 2014.Banco Internacional do Funchal will receive an injection of 2.26 billion for future contingencies as part of the new bailout, which was approved by European authorities on Monday. The Banco Esprito Santo rescue included 4.9 billion in capital.The Bank of Portugal, the central bank, said the rescue and sale of the healthy assets would protect Banco Internacional do Funchals depositors and senior creditors and would allow normal operation of service.The solution is the one that best protects the stability of the Portuguese financial system, the central bank said in a news release.The Portuguese government will contribute about 1.77 billion, and the remaining 489 million will come from a resolution fund, which is bankrolled by financial institutions.The aid could reach as much as 3 billion, including the transfer of certain impaired assets to an asset-management vehicle and state guarantees related to units that are part of the Santander sale, the European Commission said on Monday.Banks cannot be artificially kept in the market using taxpayer money, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissions competition chief, said in a news release on Monday about the Banco Internacional do Funchal announcement.The Portuguese lender had already received significant state aid but could not become viable again on its own, she added. The measures approved today now enable Banifs orderly exit from the market, and for a robust bank to take over a large part of its activities to the benefit of its customers.Santander will pay 150 million for Banco Internacional do Funchal assets and certain liabilities, and it will transfer them to its Santander Totta unit.We are fully committed to the economic development of Portugal and make available all our capacity to help people and businesses prosper in the communities where we operate, Ana Botn, the Santander chairwoman, said in a news release.Banco Internacional do Funchal is Portugals seventh-largest banking group. It had about 12.8 billion in assets at the end of June, according to Portugals central bank.

Business

Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesJune 2, 2018Sign up for California Today for the latest news on the June 5 primary and more here.LOS ANGELES Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democratic candidate for governor of California, was working the hallways of Grand Central Market the other day, stopping people at every turn and food counter to ask for votes in this Tuesdays primary. That included Bruce Binkow, 61, a boxing promoter, over his lunch at Prawn Coastal.Mr. Binkow smiled at the pitch from Mr. Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles. But as he moved on, Mr. Binkow said his thoughts were less on the race and more on what he described as Californias prosperity under the man who has served 16 years as governor over the past 40 years Jerry Brown, the Democrat stepping off the stage because of term limits.He was an excellent governor, Mr. Binkow said as Mr. Villaraigosa posed for selfies a few feet away. California seems to be healthier, more welcoming, more prosperous. Im very, very happy with him. Those are big shoes to fill.A head-spinning field of 27 candidates is competing to fill those shoes. They are facing a stature gap as they are measured, inevitably, against the man they would like to replace. And the leading contenders to win on Tuesday are particularly burdened by political and personal baggage that offer another contrast with Mr. Brown as he prepares to retire to his ranch.Two of the Democrats Mr. Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor were involved in high-profile affairs while they were in public office in the mid-2000s, episodes that have been raised against them during a candidate debate and in a handful of advertisements at a time of heightened awareness of sexual misconduct.ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesPeople dont bring it up in the context of the #MeToo movement they bring it up as something they remember as part of my record, Mr. Villaraigosa said in an interview. Just like I think they bring it up for Gavin for the same reason.The top Republican candidate, John Cox, has been lifted by an endorsement from President Trump, as the states diminishing population of Republicans appears to be rallying around him. Mr. Cox is now in a strong position to end up as a leader in the primary; the top two finishers will advance to the November general election, regardless of party, under Californias nonpartisan election system.ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesBut Mr. Trumps support could ultimately be toxic in a state where the president is unpopular. Mr. Newsom has already run advertisements tying Mr. Cox to Mr. Trump most likely helping Mr. Cox with conservative voters in the primary while signaling how he would go after him in the fall.And Mr. Cox, a Chicago business executive, is a recent arrival to California who has not been elected to major political office. That lack of government service could be a burden at a time when voters tell pollsters that experience is a key factor in choosing Mr. Browns successor.ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesThe reality is that Browns approval rating has been over 50 percent for quite a while, said Mark Baldassare, the president of the Public Policy Institute of California. Things are going very well in the state. Its been a long time since people worried about the state budget, and he has managed his relationships with the Legislature quite well.The next governor of California will almost certainly be elevated overnight into a national figure. And the election is taking place as California enters potentially difficult waters: This transition of power, with an old guard stepping aside, is playing out as the state is engaged in an escalating battle with Mr. Trump and Washington, and as Mr. Brown and other leading state officials warn that California is overdue for a recession.But so far, no candidate seems to have excited an electorate that does not appear to be particularly hungry for change. No one is paying attention, Mr. Newsom said. Ive seen two cameras at six events today.There is a sense of satisfaction, he said in an interview. People arent looking for anything radically different.But Joe Sanberg, an investor and liberal activist based in Los Angeles, said the Democrats had failed to inspire voters or present a compelling economic agenda.The proof that no ones presented a transformational economic message is the fact that a third of voters are still undecided about who to vote for, for governor, Mr. Sanberg said.Here are the pieces you need to read to understand the state, and what may happen there on Tuesday. What is a jungle primary and how does it work? Republicans are struggling to field candidates on the ballot in November. Meanwhile, Democrats, too, are wary of a possible disaster. Everything you need to know about the top races in the state.Mr. Newsom, who has led the field in almost every poll this year, served two terms as mayor of San Francisco before becoming lieutenant governor in 2011; he grew wealthy with the creation of a small wine and hospitality business empire financed by Gordon P. Getty, the investor. As mayor, he defied the federal government in backing the legalization of same-sex marriage.Mr. Villaraigosa served as speaker of the State Assembly and as mayor of Los Angeles. Another Democrat who polls suggest has an outside chance of advancing to the November election, John Chiang, is the state treasurer.By contrast, Mr. Brown, 80, served as governor in two different eras, attorney general, mayor of Oakland and secretary of state. He grew up in the home of his legendary father, Pat Brown, who served two terms as governor before losing to Ronald Reagan in 1966.Jerry Brown will be a hard act to follow, because of his gravitas, his expertise, his clear priorities and his negotiating skill, said Miriam Pawel, an author who has just written a history of California told through Mr. Browns family. One may agree or disagree with his priorities, but he has proved to be an astute politician who effectively corralled competing factions to close deals.Indeed, to a considerable extent, Mr. Villaraigosa and Mr. Newsom have tried to attach themselves to parts of the legacy of Mr. Brown, who has not endorsed anyone in this contest. But they have been critical as well, particularly on the rise of poverty and the homelessness crisis that unfolded under Mr. Brown.For Mr. Newsom and Mr. Villaraigosa, the challenge of inspiring voters goes beyond being judged against Mr. Brown and trying to turn out an electorate that seems, over all, happy with the direction California is going. They also have the hurdle of troubled impressions and memories that linger from earlier chapters in their careers particularly when many relationships between women and powerful men, even consensual ones, are being revisited.As mayor, Mr. Newsom cut a glamorous figure across San Francisco. In 2004, Harpers Bazaar called him and his wife at the time, the Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, the new Kennedys, photographing the couple in expensive designer clothes at the home of Mr. Getty and his wife, Ann. Mr. Newsoms marriage to Ms. Guilfoyle ended in 2006; the mayor remained politically popular.He rocketed up, Phil Matier, a political columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle who covered Mr. Newsom. Im not sure he had his helmet on when he did it.Mr. Newsom was frequently seen at events with celebrities and gained a reputation as a partyer. Around the same time in 2006, city gossip and political columns said he was dating Brittanie Mountz, who was around 19 at the time; he was roughly 20 years her senior. (Mr. Newsom, in an interview this week, denied they were dating. She was a friend, he said. I wont go into details. Dating is not a term I would use. But friendship, yes. Ms. Mountz declined to comment.)ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesMr. Newsoms personal life drew attention again in February 2007, after he acknowledged he had had an affair with his campaign managers wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk.The affair had occurred in 2005, when Mr. Newsom was in the middle of divorcing Ms. Guilfoyle and when Ms. Rippey-Tourk was working as his appointments secretary. Alex Tourk, Mr. Newsoms campaign manager and friend, resigned. Mr. Newsom, 39 at the time, apologized swiftly and said he would seek treatment for alcohol abuse.Mr. Newsom was re-elected easily in the fall of 2007. The voters either overlooked it or, while it was important, not important enough, said Tom Ammiano, a former member of the San Francisco board of supervisors.In an email to The New York Times, Ms. Rippey-Tourk, now Ms. Rippey Gibney, called the affair a very unpleasant mistake but said she did not feel Mr. Newsom did anything untoward. I take responsibility for my decision I made a bad choice not a coerced one, she wrote.Mr. Newsom said that he heard about the issue only from the news media and from political opponents, but that it was fair game for voters to consider.Its par for the course, he said. Its exactly what I expected. Voters have a right to consider everything. The people of San Francisco considered that and they probably know me better than anybody.Mr. Villaraigosa, as mayor in 2007, acknowledged an affair with a television anchor, Mirthala Salinas, that took place as he was separating from his wife, Corina.The affair was covered relentlessly in the news media and cast a shadow over Mr. Villaraigosas time as mayor. He became a prominent spokesman for President Barack Obamas 2012 campaign and briefly emerged as a serious contender for transportation secretary, along with Anthony Foxx, then the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., according to several people familiar with White House deliberations at the time.But Mr. Villaraigosa was photographed around this time at a party in Mexico with the actor Charlie Sheen, stirring concerns in the White House that his lack of personal discipline could embarrass the administration. He remained in Los Angeles.Mr. Villaraigosa said in an interview this week that he expected voters to take his marital difficulties into account, but argued they were outweighed by the rest of his record: a drop in crime, his program to expand mass transit. He said he did not think the affair hurt him politically. I dont think people see the connection, he said. Because in my case, it wasnt somebody working for me and it wasnt a 19-year-old. It was a woman who I had a consensual relationship with.ImageCredit...Max Whittaker for The New York TimesVoters seem divided as to whether personal behavior should matter. It makes me queasy, said Jane Davis, 59, a community volunteer from Redlands, in San Bernardino County. I dont think thats honorable behavior.But Ronald Hattis, 75, a physician from Redlands, described Mr. Newsoms behavior as human.I know there are people who that sort of thing bothers them, he said. But if youre only looking for people who have abstained from doing anything, who are not alpha leaders, youre going to miss a lot of talent.At the end of the day, the biggest obstacle for these candidates when it comes to exciting voters may not be their past but the sitting governor in Sacramento.Hanging over this election is What happens after Jerry? said Rick Jacobs, a senior political adviser to Eric M. Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles. Im not sure most voters have focused very far beyond that, which presents challenges for all of the candidates.

Politics

Credit...Al Drago/The New York TimesJune 27, 2018 Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced that he would retire, setting the stage for a furious fight over the direction of the Supreme Court. President Trump said he would move quickly to name a replacement. He also said his nominee would be drawn from a list of 25 names that the White House issued in November. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said the Senate would vote on a replacement this fall. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, called on Mr. McConnell to delay a vote until after the midterm elections. But the Democrats have few options to actually block consideration of a nominee.McConnell said the Senate will move quickly on a replacement.Any Democratic hopes that Mr. McConnell might hold up the Senates consideration of Justice Kennedys successor until after the midterm elections were quickly put to rest. Mr. McConnell took to the Senate floor not long after Justice Kennedys announcement to make clear that he expected to begin consideration of a replacement as soon as possible.The Senate stands ready to fulfill its constitutional role by offering advice and consent on President Trumps nominee to fill this vacancy, Mr. McConnell said. We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedys successor this fall.Mr. McConnell had refused to consider President Barack Obamas nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland in the run-up to the 2016 election, saying that the Senate would not fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalias death in an election year. That maneuver infuriated Democrats, but Republicans say it was crucial to turning out their voters that fall.Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he stood ready to begin considering a nominee to the court as soon as Mr. Trump nominated one. Nicholas Fandos on Capitol Hill Trump said the search for a nominee will begin immediately.President Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office as he met with President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa of Portugal. He told the reporters that Justice Kennedy had been a great justice of the Supreme Court and that hopefully we are going to pick somebody who will be just as outstanding.VideoWith Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announcing he will retire this summer, President Trump said he would begin the search for a replacement on the Supreme Court immediately.CreditCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesSchumer threatened to play hard ball, but may have little leverage.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and liberal senators in his caucus quickly called on Mr. McConnell to reverse himself and hold off on considering a nominee until after Novembers election. It would simply be consistent with precedent, he said, to let voters choose the senators who will vote on the most important Supreme Court vacancy for this country in at least a generation.Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016: Not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year, Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor. Anything but that would be the absolute height of hypocrisy.But in truth, as long as they are stuck in the minority, the Democrats have few tools at their disposal to actually block consideration, as Mr. McConnell did as majority leader in 2016. Even if every Democrat voted against the presidents nominee an unlikely scenario in an election year when a handful of moderates are up for re-election in states Mr. Trump won they would need a Republican to defect and vote with them. Mr. Schumer called on his colleagues to reject any nominee that would encroach on certain rights Democrats view as sacrosanct.[Read more on the political battle brewing in the Senate from The Timess Carl Hulse.]The Senate should reject on a bipartisan basis any justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade or undermine key health care protections, Mr. Schumer said. Nicholas Fandos on Capitol HillWith Kennedys retirement, social conservatives see a payoff in their backing of Trump.Social conservatives responded with pure elation to the news that Justice Kennedy was retiring, finally affording them the possibility of a solid, anti-abortion majority on the court.Weve been waiting for this moment for 40 years, more, since 1973, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group with an active ground game in battleground states, referencing the year the court legalized abortion.The results of the midterms are of paramount importance, and that means that the voter in each of these battleground state has a direct say in who confirms the next Supreme Court nominee, she said. It really is everything that we have been planning for.The court was perhaps the largest motivator that social conservative political leaders used to push their religiously conservative base to the polls in 2016. Mr. Trump promised to appoint a pro-life justice to the bench, a pledge that prompted many wary evangelicals and Catholics to vote for him, despite widespread misgivings. They took a risk, and now the reward, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Youll have a solid five votes for life. Elizabeth Dias Trump praised Kennedy for his service.Shortly after Justice Kennedys announcement, the White House released a statement on his retirement:Today, we thank Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for his thirty years of distinguished service on the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1987, President Reagan nominated him to the court, and he was swiftly confirmed without opposition. A Californian like the president who appointed him Justice Kennedy is a true man of letters. During his tenure on the court, he authored landmark opinions in every significant area of constitutional law, most notably on equal protection under the law, the separation of powers and the First Amendments guarantees of freedom of speech and religion.Justice Kennedy has been a tireless voice for individual rights and the founders enduring vision of limited government. His words have left an indelible mark not only on this generation, but on the fabric of American history.The solicitor general also praised Kennedy.Noel J. Francisco, the Justice Departments solicitor general, said in a statement that he and the department were grateful and appreciative for Justice Kennedys tireless years of public service in our federal judiciary and on our Nations highest Court.His jurisprudence has left an indelible mark and his commitment to our cherished First Amendment freedom of speech will be a legacy for generations to come, Mr. Francisco said. The solicitor general argues cases on behalf of the federal government before the Supreme Court. Katie Benner in Washington

Politics

Photo Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's president, has vowed to "appeal with every legal method available the impeachment effort against her. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times Dilma Rousseff, the beleaguered president of Brazil, has been confronting an effort to remove her from office, accused of violating fiscal laws by using funds from state banks to cover budget shortfalls.Her opponents claim this strategy eroded confidence among investors, raising the governments borrowing costs and disregarding measures designed to prevent a return of high inflation.The presidents supporters contend that Ms. Rousseff was seeking to maintain popular antipoverty projects, and that impeachment over the issue is politically motivated because Ms. Rousseffs predecessors carried out similar policies. Here is a guide to the complicated process for impeaching and removing a president from office: Photo Eduardo Cunha, who was president of the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil's lower house, at the time of its impeachment vote. Credit Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters Step 1 Congressional Panel Debates Charges The process prescribed in Brazils Constitution, adopted in 1988, shares similarities with impeachment proceedings in the United States.First, the speaker of the lower chamber of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, a political opponent of Ms. Rousseff, had to accept a petition for impeachment.Mr. Cunha then formed a 65-member congressional committee to investigate the accusations and decide if removal was warranted. The political composition of the committee was largely stacked against the president.The committee was created in December, but its work was soon stopped by a court order. Work resumed in March. Jovair Arantes, the legislator in charge of preparing the committee report on the fate of Ms. Rousseff and an ally of Mr. Cunha, recommended on April 6 that proceedings move forward to remove her from office. The full committee, in a 38-27 vote on April 11, agreed, clearing the way for a vote on her impeachment in Brazils Chamber of Deputies. Step 2 Chamber of Deputies Votes On April 17, the lower chamber voted for impeachment. At least two-thirds of the 513 deputies had to vote for impeachment for the motion to pass. The decisive 342nd vote was cast about five-and-a-half hours after the floor vote started.In early May, Brazils top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, removed Mr. Cunha from his speaker role on charges of obstructing a corruption investigation. Photo Michel Temer, Brazil's vice president, who has assumed power during Ms. Rousseff's impeachment trial. Credit Evaristo Sa/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Step 3 The Role of the Senate and Vice President After the lower chamber vote, the process then moved to the Senate, which had to decide, with a simple majority vote, whether to accept the charges.On May 12, the Senate voted 55 to 22 to begin the trial, resulting in Ms. Rousseffs suspension. The vice president then took over, with the authority to appoint ministers and enact policy. Michel Temer, the vice president who assumed the presidents office, is a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. His party had been a crucial part of Ms. Rousseffs governing coalition, but it recently voted to split with her Workers Party, which significantly increased the odds of Ms. Rousseffs impeachment.Mr. Temer, 75, was himself under scrutiny over claims that he was involved in an illegal ethanol purchasing scheme. Step 4 Removal or Reinstatement The Senate trial will be overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal, Ricardo Lewandowski. Two-thirds of the 81 senators must vote in favor of removing the president from office. If that happens, Mr. Temer would serve as president for the remainder of Ms. Rousseffs term through the end of 2018.If no decision is reached within 180 days, the suspension of the president ends. Asked in a recent interview with The New York Times whether she would accept a vote to impeach her, Ms. Rousseff, 68, said, We will appeal with every legal method available.She has that option: She can appeal at any moment she finds something legally questionable occurring in the process, said Braslio Sallum Jr., a professor of sociology at the University of So Paulo and an expert in Brazils political processes. More on NYTimes.com

World

Credit...Romeo Gacad/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 16, 2015Rolls-Royce, the British engineering group, announced a major management restructuring on Wednesday that the company said was aimed at simplifying a byzantine hierarchy and lowering operating costs after a string of profit warnings.The group presented the changes as part of a broader plan to eliminate as much as 200 million pounds, or over $300 million, in annual operating costs. However, the restructuring also comes amid recent news media speculation in Britain about a possible government intervention to avoid a potential foreign takeover of Rolls-Royce, one of the few British world-leading technology companies.Rolls-Royce, which last year announced cuts of close to 5 percent of its work force of 55,000, has been struggling against intensifying competition in the aircraft-engine market, along with cuts in British military spending and weaker demand for ships and turbines from the oil and gas industry. The engineering group is separate from the Rolls-Royce automaker, which is owned by BMW.In a statement, Warren East, who became chief executive in April, said Rolls-Royce had decided to do away with a divisional structure that had combined the groups sprawling operations under the responsibility of two senior executives who, in turn, reported to Mr. East. Instead, beginning next month, the heads of the groups five main business areas which include engines for civilian and military aircraft, as well as turbines for power companies and nuclear submarines will report directly to the chief executive, Mr. East said. A new chief operating officer would also be recruited from outside the group next year.The changes we are announcing today are the first important steps in driving operational excellence and returning Rolls-Royce to its long-term trend of profitable growth, Mr. East said.As a result of the shake-up, the group said that the chief of its aerospace engine business, Tony Wood, would be leaving Rolls-Royce in 2016 after 15 years at the group. Lawrie Haynes, who has led its land and sea division since 2013, would also step down, Mr. East said.Rolls-Royce has lowered its earnings forecasts five times over the past two years, citing high operating costs, particularly in its marine division, where demand has been weak, and declining profit margins in its aircraft-engine maintenance business. Its share price has fallen by more than 40 percent this year.Rolls-Royces financial troubles have raised the hackles of some of its larger shareholders, including a California-based investor fund, ValueAct Capital, which recently raised its stake to 10 percent and has expressed interest in a seat on the Rolls-Royce board.While the British government owns a so-called golden share in Rolls-Royce that allows it to block any sale to a foreign company and limits foreign ownership to 15 percent, the depth of the companys financial troubles has reportedly prompted London to consider contingency plans.British news media reports suggested this week that the government was considering a number of options, including nationalizing Rolls-Royces nuclear submarine and reactor business, or helping to orchestrate a merger of parts of Rolls-Royce with Britains other major military contractor, BAE Systems.Rolls-Royce produces reactors for Britains fleet of nuclear submarines and currently holds a 31 billion contract to develop a new generation of Trident submarines to be equipped with nuclear missiles. But government officials have sought to play down speculation that they are considering a government rescue of Rolls-Royce to safeguard the submarine program.Asked in Parliament on Tuesday about the reports of a government rescue plan for Rolls-Royce, Anna Soubry, Britains minister for business, said only that the government recognized the groups importance to the British economy and was monitoring the situation carefully. But she appeared to dismiss the notion of an outright nationalization, saying: This is 2015. Were not back in the 60s.

Business

on techHackers are freezing information and demanding ransom. Who is behind this, and what can be done?Credit...Jeron BraxtonOct. 5, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.A woman died from treatment delays after a hospital in Germany hit by a cyberattack was forced to turn away emergency patients. Hackers released private information, including Social Security numbers, from a Las Vegas school district. A coronavirus vaccine trial was bogged down in recent weeks when researchers were locked out of their data.This is a small sample of the toll from ransomware attacks, in which hackers break into computer networks and freeze the digital information until the targeted organization or city pays for its release. Victims have two bad choices: Give in to extortion and hope the criminals didnt do too much damage, or refuse and risk the hackers releasing or deleting essential information. It might also cost more than the ransom to rebuild computer systems. I spoke to Charles Carmakal, an executive with the cybersecurity response company FireEye Mandiant, about the root causes and fixes for ransomware attacks.What are the root causes of ransomware?According to Carmakal, criminal organizations that typically stole bank account or credit card information found a quicker payday from extorting organizations by locking up their essential data. When victims paid, it encouraged the criminals.More organizations have bought insurance against cyberattacks, though that has been a double-edged sword. Insurance can help organizations, but it also guarantees a payout to criminals. And recently during the coronavirus pandemic, organizations are more vulnerable to ransomware because they are more dependent on digital systems, and computer security personnel working remotely may be less speedy or effective than usual.How big is this problem?Carmakal said his company was aware of more than 100 organizations that were dealing with ransomware attacks in September. Thats more than double the number from the same month in 2019. Were at a point that I feel is really unbearable, Carmakal said.Some U.S. officials worry that ransomware groups will try to freeze voter registration data or otherwise disrupt U.S. elections or sow uncertainty among voters.Who is behind these attacks?A vast majority of ransomware incidents today are committed by organized criminals who are motivated by financial gain and are often based in Russia or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Carmakal said. A small fraction of ransomware attacks, notably ones called WannaCry and NotPetya that hit a number of global companies several years ago, are traced to foreign governments with political motivations.What can law enforcement and the targets of attacks do?Law enforcement agencies in the United States have stepped up efforts to identify, arrest and try the perpetrators of ransomware attacks. Its not always easy, Carmakal said, because a good number of them operate in countries that dont extradite people to the United States.Its helpful for organizations that were victimized by ransomware attacks to share what they have learned about what happened, he said, because criminals tend to follow a similar blueprint. Nobody wants to talk about the details of their breach, Carmakal said, but I can tell you it helps.Should organizations pay or refuse?Carmakal said organizations should weigh the benefits and risks of paying. For some organizations, including hospitals, getting computer systems working again quickly is life or death, and they may have little alternative. But victims of ransomware attacks should also assess whether criminals will restore data and keep information private even if the ransoms are paid, and whether paying will encourage more attacks. There are, Carmakal said, no great choices.Is ransomware a fad?Ransomware will go away, Carmakal said, only if organizations that have been hacked stopped paying the ransoms, or if law enforcement caught enough of the criminals. I dont know how realistic that is, he added.Illustration by Jeron Braxton.Dont pay too much attention to lawyers(Sorry to all of the lawyers out there for that headline.) Im talking specifically about a document prepared by Facebooks lawyers arguing against any potential government attempt to split the company apart.The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebooks document said that any government attempt to force the company to ditch its Instagram and WhatsApp apps would be nearly impossible to achieve and exorbitantly expensive, and that it would discourage legitimate business deals.Some of Facebooks critics have said the company bought those apps in the past decade in an attempt to reduce competition. That type of activity breaks antitrust laws in the United States. I am not a lawyer, so I wont assess the strength of Facebooks arguments against undoing its acquisitions.Documents like this are useful as a potential preview of Facebooks defense if the government tries to break it up, but they cant tell the whole story. Thats because real life is different from court life.In court life, Uber can say that its not in the business of providing transportation, nor are drivers essential to what it does. This defies common sense, but theres a semantic legal reasoning behind those arguments. Any antitrust case against Facebook will hinge on a lot of semantics, too.But the courtroom is not the only place where decisions are made. Right now, members of Congress are thinking through whether laws need to be revised because they dont fit our world of tech superpowers. Regulators around the globe are asking how Facebook and other digital gathering spots moderate what people say, and how they contribute to or detract from peoples relationships to one another and to their governments.These are questions of law, yes, but they are also broad questions about what kind of world people want to live in. Thats why I tell myself not to get too fixated on legal fights. Thats not the only place where the action is.Before we go WeChat keeps them together and divides them: My colleague Nicole Hong wrote about the role of WeChat, a Chinese messaging app that the White House is trying to ban, in helping Chinese immigrants in the United States connect with friends and relatives and collaborate on shared causes. But WeChat has also been a place where people can be swayed by Chinese government propaganda or misinformed about everything from the coronavirus to a popular bakery going out of business.The conspiracies have come for LinkedIn: The Wall Street Journal found that believers in the false QAnon conspiracy are finding business opportunities on LinkedIn and using the professional networking site to spread misleading information. LinkedIn has responded in recent months by disabling searches for popular QAnon hashtags and kicking people off the site for breaking rules on sharing bogus information.Hes not the person they are trying to hate: I love articles about how people handle getting mistaken online for famous people. Mel Magazine writes about a cybersecurity worker who gets angry Facebook messages but also perks like reservations at popular restaurants because he shares a name with Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City who is not exactly universally loved. (A warning that the article has some salty language.)Hugs to thisLook at these fat bears! A park in Alaska holds an annual online competition to crown the brown bear who has most successfully gained weight for winter hibernation. I am partial to bear No. 812 for his all-body chunkiness.We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at [email protected]. If you dont already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.

Tech

Credit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesNov. 7, 2018JAKARTA, Indonesia Investigators on Wednesday broadened the possibilities of what may have contributed to the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 last week, suggesting there were aircraft problems that may have played a role in the new planes nose-dive into the sea.Boeing and aviation regulators in the United States, clearly worried that an unforeseen situation may have confronted the cockpit crew, also took steps on Wednesday to strengthen emergency procedures in the operations manual of the new plane, one of the most popular in commercial aviation.The developments suggested that multiple causes may have combined to create a fatal cascade of problems for Lion Air Flight 610, which plunged into the Java Sea less than 15 minutes after takeoff on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people aboard.Haryo Satmiko, the deputy chief of Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee, said in an interview that he had held several discussions with Boeing officials after the crash about the possibility that inaccurate readings fed into the Max 8s computerized system could make the plane enter a sudden, automatic descent.This case is something for Boeing to reflect upon, Mr. Haryo said.Boeing did not comment on Mr. Haryos assertion. But the company said in a statement on Wednesday that the aircrafts manual explains how to respond to errant data, and that Boeing had issued a worldwide bulletin about following correct procedures to all operators of the plane on Tuesday.The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States reinforced the Boeing bulletin on Wednesday by issuing an Emergency Airworthiness Directive addressing the possibility of erroneous data from instruments on the plane that could cause it to pitch downward, making the aircraft difficult to control.The directive ordered operators of the Max 8 to ensure that the onboard flight manuals include the procedures on how pilots should handle such a situation.The possibility of errant data pitching the plane into an abrupt descent added a new element to what investigators have been scrutinizing, including faulty airspeed indicators and possibly flawed maintenance.The 737 model entered commercial operations only last year. More than 4,500 orders have been placed globally.ImageCredit...Ed Wray/Getty ImagesBoeings statement said that it had been told by the Indonesian transportation committee that Flight 610 had experienced erroneous input from one of its angle of attack sensors. Those instruments, on the nose of the plane, gauge the degree of an aircrafts ascent or descent and help determine whether the plane might be stalling meaning it is pointed too high for its current speed.The Boeing statement said that its bulletin had alerted operators to existing flight crew procedures for handling false readings from the Max 8s angle of attack sensors.John Cox, the former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States and now the chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm, said that unlike previous versions of the Boeing 737, the Max 8 has an automated system that can take control of the aircraft and cause it to point its nose down sharply without pilot instruction.Mr. Cox, who flew earlier generations of the Boeing 737 for 15 years, said that the system was designed as an automatic response if the planes sensors detect a stalling danger.His understanding of Boeings advice to air carriers, he said, was that it was reminding them of the operating manuals instructions on what flight crews should do to manually disengage the automatic system if it malfunctioned. There is a defined procedure for pilots if the plane incorrectly pitches its nose downward in response to a flawed stall warning, Mr. Cox said.Angle of attack information is also used on the latest 737 models to help calculate airspeed, said Ony Soerjo Wibowo, an air safety investigator for the Indonesian government.Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of the National Transportation Safety Committee, said on Wednesday that it was not fair to fault Boeing for a possible systemic problem with the Max 8.We cannot yet say that there is a design flaw with the plane, he said, adding that the plane developed a problem with the angle of attack sensor only after technicians on the Indonesian island of Bali changed it for the jets penultimate flight.The potential issue with inaccurate angle of attack data adds to problems previously reported with the Lion Air plane.ImageCredit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, Indonesian transport officials confirmed that the flight data recovered from the downed jet last week showed that the plane had experienced problems with its airspeed indicator on its final four flights.In principle, if the airspeed indicator malfunctions, it can cause different anomalies for a pilot, said Mr. Haryo of the National Transportation Safety Committee. The malfunction of this airspeed indicator could confuse the pilot on how to respond and could even cause disorientation or loss of control.Mr. Ony, the air safety investigator, said that on the planes third-to-last flight, from the eastern Indonesian city of Manado to Bali, the plane, which was delivered to Lion Air in August, had recorded no airspeed data.Following Boeings troubleshooting manual, technicians in Bali changed the planes angle of attack sensors, Mr. Ony said, and the plane was declared fit to fly on to Jakarta.The planes stopover in Bali was relatively brief. Once airborne, the pilots again experienced problems with the airspeed indicator and recorded an issue with its angle of attack sensor, according to Indonesian investigators, who were relying on information retrieved from the planes flight data recorder.Data from flight-trafficking services show that the flight experienced a roller-coaster takeoff indicating early airspeed problems. However, the plane did not return to the Bali airport, as some pilots said would be normal procedure.On the flights touchdown in the Indonesian capital late on Oct. 28, maintenance crews tackled a problem with the planes pitot tubes, external probes that record relative airspeed, according to maintenance logs viewed by Indonesian aviation experts. This problem was declared solved and the plane was again judged fit to fly, according to the maintenance log.Mr. Ony said that part of his investigation centered on why the plane had not been grounded by Lion Air, given that it had experienced multiple airspeed problems.This is strange, he said in an interview on Wednesday. We found several events that we should investigate, but they didnt report them.ImageCredit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesLion Air is Indonesias largest carrier and one of the worlds fastest-growing low-cost airlines.Mr. Haryo said that the investigation was focusing on three components: possible problems with the plane, possible human error by those who operated and maintained the plane, and the overall management of the airline.Lion Air has had a spotty safety record since it began commercial operations in 2000, with at least 15 major lapses, including a fatal air crash in 2004.Incorrect readings from either or both the airspeed probes and the angle of attack sensors could cause autopilot systems to disengage and leave pilots confused about what exactly is happening.Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea, northeast of Jakarta, after less than 15 minutes, following an erratic takeoff that mirrored the problem on its flight from Bali. The flight crew requested permission to return to the Jakarta airport but never turned around.The plane slammed into the sea at such high speed that the jet fractured upon impact, in some cases disintegrating into a fine powder, Indonesian investigators said.On Tuesday, Indonesian investigators spent hours interviewing technicians who had tried to repair the airspeed indicator problems by installing multiple spare parts and who had cleared the plane for its final flight from Jakarta to the small city of Pangkal Pinang, Mr. Haryo said.Those interviews, along with conversations with other aviation technicians, have led Indonesian investigators to conclude that the manual Boeing has published on how to deal with a faulty airspeed indicator contains insufficient information, Mr. Haryo said.If there is a problem with the Max 8 that causes the plane to record inaccurate data or to nose dive after processing that faulty information, it would not be the first time that a new aircraft model has faced such problems.Airbus, for instance, experienced a problem with the computerized filtering of air data that is believed to have caused a relatively new model of the A330 to dive suddenly. In 2008, Qantas Flight 72, en route from Singapore to Perth, began processing incorrect speed and angle of attack readings. The planes autopilot disengaged, but the aircraft abruptly and violently pitched downward, causing serious injuries among the passengers and crew.Australian transport investigators eventually focused on a software limitation of the A330s computer system, which they said had caused the accident. Procedures were quickly put in place to avoid a similar outcome.Its really hard to find some faults in testing, so it has happened that problems are only discovered after the plane is put into service, said Gerry Soejatman, an Indonesian aviation expert. Sometimes weird things happen, and you just cant anticipate it.

World

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/business/international/china-plans-a-market-for-carbon-permits.htmlAug. 31, 2014BEIJING China plans to introduce its national market for carbon permit trading in 2016, a government official said on Sunday, adding that Beijing is close to completing rules for what will be the worlds biggest emissions trading program.The nation accounts for nearly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it plans to use the carbon market to slow its rapid growth in climate-changing emissions.China has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon it emits per unit of its gross domestic product to 40 to 45 percent below its 2005 levels by 2020.It has already introduced seven regional pilot markets in a bid to gain experience ahead of a nationwide program.We will send over the national market regulations to the State Council for approval by the end of the year, Sun Cuihua, a senior climate official with the National Development and Reform Commission, told a conference in Beijing on Sunday.The national market will start in 2016, although some provinces would be allowed to start later if they lacked the technical infrastructure to participate from the outset, she said.The Chinese market, when fully functional, would dwarf the European emissions trading system, which is now the worlds biggest.It would be the main carbon trading hub in Asia and the Pacific, where Kazakhstan and New Zealand already operate similar markets. South Korea will start a national market on Jan. 1, 2015, while Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are drawing up plans for markets of their own.The Chinese market will cap carbon dioxide emissions from sources like electricity generators and manufacturers. Those that emit above their cap must buy permits in the market.Five pilot markets that opened in China last year saw a high degree of compliance by included emitters in their first year, although data secrecy and a tendency to hand out too many permits made them inefficient in cutting emissions.The pilot programs are keen to attract professional trading companies to increase liquidity, and Shenzhen the smallest of the pilot markets recently allowed trades to be settled in foreign currencies in a bid to make trading easier for foreign traders.

Business

Marcus Stroman breathed a sigh of relief when the trade deadline passed and the Mets still had Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler. Is it enough?Credit...David Banks/Associated PressJuly 31, 2019CHICAGO In the days and weeks leading up to the weekend acquisition that virtually no one saw coming, Brodie Van Wagenens phone had been ringing constantly as the Mets entertained proposals that would meet their general managers vision to win now and win in the future.Two of their hard-throwing starting pitchers, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler, were constantly mentioned in trade rumors, and at least one seemed destined to be on his way out.Then the All-Star right-hander Marcus Stroman landed with the Mets, who will move forward with a rotation that ranks among baseballs best. That Syndergaard, Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz and Stroman remained a collective unit after Wednesdays trade deadline may come as a surprise to those outside the confines of the Mets front office, but not to the decision makers who believe the Mets can still contend in 2019.To that end, deGrom followed up Syndergaards 11-strikeout performance on Tuesday with 11 of his own on Wednesday night when the Mets won their sixth straight with a 4-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Todd Frazier, who played in Chicago in 2016 and 2017, singled in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning before Michael Conforto followed with a two-run single. The Mets, who have won five of their six series since the All-Star break, will attempt to finish off the series sweep on Thursday.Even with the current winning streak, though, pulling themselves out of the hole they dug earlier this season will most likely take more than a well-constructed starting rotation.Were the underdogs, Van Wagenen said in a conference call on Wednesday after the Mets remained silent through the 4 p.m. trade deadline. Pulling off the Stroman deal could be viewed as a bit of a coup for Van Wagenen, the rookie general manager whose initial moves to bolster the Mets roster have been underwhelming. In December, he traded prospects to bring Robinson Cano and closer Edwin Diaz to Flushing from the Seattle Mariners. Both Diaz and Cano have struggled as the Mets have flounder under the .500 mark.ImageCredit...David Banks/Getty ImagesRumors swirled about just how much selling the Mets would do in the days leading up to Wednesdays trade deadline, but luring Stroman seemingly changed everything. Van Wagenen said Wednesday that the Mets had remained in regular contact with the Blue Jays for the better part of the past eight months, culminating in the weekend move that brought Stroman, a native of Long Island, home to New York.Im excited I was praying we didnt trade any of those guys that were being rumored about Wheeler and Syndergaard because I truly think we can have the best staff in all of baseball, Stroman said Wednesday. Its already one of the best staffs in all of baseball and I hope to just come in and add to that. He added: Its getting down to that point where its going to be fun, its going to be wild and were going to be right in the thick of things.Suddenly, Syndergaard who suggested on social media that he believed his time with the Mets would be ending soon was meeting with Van Wagenen and Mets chief operations officer Jeff Wilpon and receiving the message that the team intended to keep him.Wheeler said Wednesday that he was prepared to be dealt, especially since he will be a free agent in the off-season. But after the trade deadline passed, Wheeler was the latest player to receive word from Van Wagenen that he was safe and part of a rotation that manager Mickey Callaway and his bosses believe could help propel the Mets to a playoff berth.I think its one of the best rotations in baseball, Wheeler said, including Stroman in his assessment. It has been for the past few years but with the addition of him, it only gets better. Hopefully, we keep reeling off these wins and maybe make a push for it.Stroman is slated to make his Mets debut on Saturday in Pittsburgh against the Pirates. But with him now in the rotation and the bullpen improving, Callaway said more good things are in store for the suddenly surging Mets.Callaway said the confidence inside the clubhouse never wavered, though he acknowledged the odds were against the team. Now that the Mets have started to string victories together, Van Wagenens vision has picked up steam, at least inside the organization.Were going to make a run at this thing, Callaway said. With this rotation, anything is possible.

Sports

Didi pushed the limits and thrived in legal gray areas. Until China cracked down.Credit...Florence Lo/ReutersAug. 27, 2021Chinas leading ride-hailing company, Didi, was an operation of dubious legality when it raised its first big bucket of money nearly a decade ago. And in one way or another, it has been testing the authorities ever since.When a venture capital firm invested $3 million in the company in 2012, Didi lacked several of the state-issued licenses it needed to do business, two people familiar with the matter said. When Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities began requiring that drivers for ride-hailing platforms be local residents, Didi protested. Today, the company acknowledges that many rides are still being provided by drivers and vehicles that dont meet local requirements.And when Chinas government demanded that ride-hailing services share real-time trip data for safety purposes, Didi dragged its feet, citing privacy concerns until the rapes and murders of two female passengers finally pushed the company to relent.Didi and other Chinese internet giants grew big and powerful by learning to thrive in regulatory gray zones. And by and large, Beijing was fine with that. The companies were making China richer, more productive and better entertained. They moved fast, and they might have broken a few rules. But so long as online conversations were filtered, search results were sanitized and videos were censored, internet companies success was the nations.Didi, after all, was the homegrown hero that stopped Ubers global expansion in its tracks. Didi showed that Chinese entrepreneurs could go head to head with Silicon Valleys brashest and most cunning upstarts, and come out on top.Those days are over. Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Partys most powerful leader since Mao, China has taken a hard ideological turn against unfettered private enterprise. It has set out a series of strictures against disorderly corporate expansion. No longer will titans of industry be permitted to march out of step with the partys priorities and dictates.Silicon Valley may not have managed to halt the Chinese tech industrys rise. But Mr. Xi might.ImageCredit...Ju Peng/EPA, via ShutterstockOn issues like data security, privacy and worker protections, Beijings scrutiny is long overdue. Yet Chinese officials have moved against tech companies with a speed and ferocity that might unsettle even the most ardent Western trustbusters.The United States and Europe also want to tame the excesses and extremes of capitalism in the smartphone age. China is smoothing out the rough edges with a chain saw.In early July, two days after Didi went public in New York, Chinas internet regulator ordered it to stop signing up new users while officials examined its cybersecurity practices. Then Didis apps were forced off mobile stores. Then the company was fined for antitrust violations. Then passels of government officials stationed themselves in Didis offices.There is almost certainly more to come.Didis ascent, which more than a dozen former employees described to The New York Times, did not merely end Ubers business in China. It made Didi the biggest online ride platform on the planet. On average, 156 million people a month used Didi in China in the first quarter of this year, compared with 98 million for Uber worldwide. Didi handled 25 million rides a day in China during that period; Uber, globally, 16 million. Those numbers do not include Didis services in Latin America, Japan, Russia and beyond.China wants to make sure Didis next chapter and the whole tech industrys is less unruly than the first. In this age of distrust between China and the United States, one of Beijings concerns appears to be whether companies like Didi, with all their data and influence on ordinary lives in China, should really be going public on American stock exchanges.After Didis initial public offering, the company was valued at $79 billion at its July 1 peak. Its 38-year-old founder and chief executive, Cheng Wei, and its president, Jean Liu, 43, who is almost certainly the most prominent woman in Chinas internet industry, own shares worth billions.It is taking much less time to destroy that wealth than it did to create it.This Place Was Never ConqueredImageCredit...Sun Yilei/ReutersIn late January 2015, Zhou Hang, the founder of one of Chinas earliest ride-hailing companies, Yongche, got a call from Mr. Cheng. The two met at a luxury hotel near Beijings Summer Palace, and over dinner they discussed the possibility of a merger. Yongche had been a pioneer in ride hailing, while Didi was a leader in taxis. A union would make sense.Soon after, rumors about a tie-up started circulating in the Chinese tech media. Mr. Zhou asked Mr. Cheng whether he had leaked the news. Only the two of them had been at the dinner. Mr. Cheng denied doing so.But on Valentines Day, Didi announced that it would join forces with its biggest rival, Kuaidi. Mr. Zhou now believes that Mr. Cheng used their meeting to push Kuaidi to agree to the merger.The boyish, bespectacled Mr. Cheng had brought a bagful of cutthroat corporate tricks to Chinas booming online rides industry.He was 22 when he talked his way into a job at the e-commerce giant Alibaba. The sales team he joined was nicknamed the iron army for its relentless drive. After climbing Alibabas ranks for six years, Mr. Cheng started Didi because of how hard it was to get a cab in Beijing. Populations in Chinas megacities had swelled, but the supply of taxis wasnt keeping up. The companys name is meant to mimic the sound of a car horn.In Didis early years, Mr. Cheng copied Alibabas tradition of ice-breaking rituals for new hires, including intimate questions such as how they lost their virginity, former employees said. Once, as punishment after Didi users reported bad experiences, he forced his chief technology officer to streak, Mr. Cheng told the Chinese magazine Caijing. He ordered other executives to clean bathrooms.Mr. Cheng also adopted Alibabas zest for waging war against rivals.According to Mr. Zhou, Yongches system was inundated with fake orders after Didi started its ride-hailing service in 2014. Cars were dispatched, but no customers showed up, tying up Yongches drivers. When Yongche investigated, it found that many of the orders had come from internet addresses near Didis offices, Mr. Zhou said.ImageCredit...Yang Guanyu/Xinhua, via AlamyThe Times sent Didi a list of detailed questions for this article, but the company declined to comment. In the past, Didi has denied other allegations about faking orders.Didis tactics against Uber in China could be equally underhanded. According to Super Pumped, a chronicle of Ubers rise by the Times reporter Mike Isaac, Didi managers sent fake text messages to Uber drivers, saying that Uber had shut down in China and that they should work for Didi instead. Didi also sent new recruits to be hired by Uber as engineers. There, they acted as moles, feeding information back to Didi.The trickery paid off. In August 2016, after the two companies had spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting each other, Uber announced that it would sell its China operations to Didi. Bloomberg Businessweek splashed Mr. Cheng on its cover and called him the Uber slayer.Like many Chinese business executives, Mr. Cheng is fond of military metaphors. In interviews, he has compared Didis years of conflict and competition to the Battle of Verdun. He said he saw his own spirit fighting Uber reflected in Russian propaganda films.Napoleon came to Moscow, he told one interviewer. Hitler came to Moscow. None of them prevailed. This place was never conquered.In the Gray ZoneImageCredit...Brendan McDermid/ReutersIt was only four-odd decades ago that private ownership was forbidden in China, and the Communist Party has been hot and cold on the concept ever since. Private businesses have long had to figure out how to make a buck under threat of being squashed by the authorities.If Didi was very worried about the government in its early years, it didnt show it.In 2014, when the city of Beijing banned the use of private cars for ride-hailing businesses, Mr. Zhou of Yongche obeyed and took such vehicles off his companys platform, he said. Didi did not, as officials soon discovered. When Shanghai accused Didi of running an illegal taxi business, the company said it worked only with lawful car-leasing companies, not with individual car owners.Mr. Zhou now says he made a big strategic blunder. But he had reason to be cautious. Yongche had been under constant pressure from regulators. Mr. Zhou and other executives were regularly summoned to government meetings for criticism and lecturing.We knew fear because we had seen the tiger, Mr. Zhou said. Cheng Wei didnt seem to be as afraid.Didi had acquired some political capital. In September 2015, Mr. Cheng was the youngest member of the Chinese delegation that accompanied Mr. Xi on a visit to Seattle. Mr. Xi later stopped at Didis booth at a Chinese conference and listened and smiled as Mr. Cheng talked about his companys global ambitions.But at the time, Chinese officials were also unwilling or unable to challenge tech companies on antitrust grounds. After Didi merged with Kuaidi in 2015, Mr. Zhou filed an antimonopoly complaint to the authorities, but he never heard back, he said.The next year, Chinas Commerce Ministry said it would investigate Didis tie-up with Uber. The combined Didi was obviously a behemoth, with something like 90 percent of the Chinese market. But Chinese law did not contain clear rules governing mergers between companies, like Didi and Uber, whose owners were mostly foreign investors. Beijing never unwound their union.Chinas transportation regulators, too, were watching Didi. Many Chinese cities require drivers and vehicles to meet standards and obtain licenses to provide ride-hailing services. The police have regularly pulled over and penalized Didi drivers whose papers arent in order.Yet several former Didi employees said that for many years, most local authorities seemed to know it would be impractical to demand total compliance. In big cities like Beijing, taxi licenses are often held by the rich and politically connected, who use their clout to prevent regulators from increasing the supply of licenses. Officials also understand that ordering Didi to bar unlicensed drivers would put the drivers out of work.Didi has gotten so used to operating in this legal purgatory that it reimburses drivers for their fines. For Didi, the value of keeping drivers on the road is worth the potential penalties. But for the drivers, this arrangement is no guarantee they wont be on the hook for fines or hassled on the job.Many Didi drivers have taken to social media to complain about the companys capricious reimbursement policies. One driver, Li Pei, had just dropped someone off in February when a police officer stopped him and fined him around $2,300 for not having a ride-hailing license. When Mr. Li, 29, asked Didi for reimbursement, the company said it wasnt responsible because he hadnt been carrying a passenger when pulled over.Mr. Li said Didi had never told him anything about needing a special license.Do you think they would tell you that? If they did, who would still drive for them? he said. If Didi doesnt fail, heaven wouldnt tolerate the injustice.Killings Threaten GrowthImageCredit...Eugene Hoshiko/Associated PressBy 2018, Didi was busy taking over the world. It was expanding into Australia and other overseas markets. It had opened a lab in Silicon Valley to develop intelligent driving technologies and had begun contemplating going public.Then came the murders.The first victim was a 21-year-old flight attendant in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou. It was May 2018. Didi apologized and suspended Hitch, the car-pooling service the woman had been using when she was killed. But it was not until that August, when another woman was raped and stabbed while riding with Hitch, in the city of Wenzhou, that the company went into crisis mode.After the second murder, some Didi employees were shocked that the company had brought Hitch back online just a week after suspending it, even if some new safety features had been added in the interim. But Hitch had been lucrative for Didi. It was cheaper to let customers drive one another around than to pay professional drivers. The company had celebrated Hitchs manager, Huang Jieli, in an internal video that compared her to Hua Mulan, the female warrior of ancient Chinese legend.It was hardly a secret that Didi had been making breakneck growth a priority. The company had to prove it was worth the eye-popping prices that investors like SoftBank had tagged it with.At an employee conference that February, Didis president, Ms. Liu, had acknowledged some growing pains: Like a soul that has not kept pace with a body, the maturing of our organization has not kept up with the growth in our business.In a contrite letter to employees after the murders, Mr. Cheng went further: The run like crazy model of development long ago planted hidden dangers.Not long before the first murder, on a chilly evening in Beijing, Yang Tingting had been in a Didi when she noticed her driver was smirking at her. She tried to ignore him. But then he began asking, How much do you charge for one?Terrified, Ms. Yang, who was 30, thought about trying to jump out of the car.Back at her hotel, she submitted complaints in the Didi app, but customer service didnt call her until the next afternoon. When she explained what the driver had done, the male service agent asked: Did you give him any hints? Could he have misunderstood you?When Ms. Yang said she had been dressed professionally and worked in media, the agent said that perhaps the driver had been asking how much it would cost to place an advertisement. She said she had felt that the driver meant to harm her. The agent just laughed.A Troubled RecoveryImageCredit...Jade Gao/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesBy that point, Chinese officials had been dissatisfied with one element of Didis safety controls for years. Since 2016, the Transportation Ministry had been asking ride-hailing companies to upload real-time data about drivers, cars and trips to a central platform. But Didi was slow to share information, despite sharp warnings from national and local authorities.Is there really any need to give real-time data to regulators? the companys chief development officer at the time, Li Jianhua, told a reporter in 2017. If our user information is leaked by a government department, who is responsible then?Only after the murders did Didi agree to upload all its data. It made other safety improvements and fired Hitchs manager, Ms. Huang, who couldnt be reached for comment for this article.The company tried to win Brownie points with Beijing by hiring 1,000 Communist Party members to work as customer service agents. But its image had suffered.It didnt help when, a year later, Didi restarted Hitch in a few cities with a new feature that was supposed to protect women: After 8 p.m., the service would be available only to men. Web users denounced the policy as lazy and sexist. Ms. Liu apologized, and Didi made Hitch unavailable to everyone after 8.Some employees were taken aback at how badly Didi had botched its big comeback. Even after Hitch functionality was restored, Hitch as a business never recovered.After the murders, Chinas government dialed up the pressure on Didi to get drivers and cars licensed. To defray the costs of upgrading their vehicles to meet standards, drivers demanded higher earnings. That meant higher fares, and higher fares meant slower growth. Slower growth made it difficult to recruit and retain talent. Didi cut bonuses and laid off workers.In time, though, the convenience of Didis services proved irresistible even for customers like Ms. Yang, the writer who had been harassed by her driver in Beijing.At first, the encounter cast a psychological shadow, she said, and she couldnt bear to ride with Didi.But then I realized that the other ride-hailing platforms werent necessarily better than Didi when it came to safety, particularly after Didi made its improvements, Ms. Yang said. She went back to being what she calls a heavy Didi user.Data Is the LifelineImageCredit...Florence Lo/ReutersSafety concerns of a different kind led Beijing to bring down the hammer after Didi went public in June.Data is the lifeline of any business, Mr. Cheng had told the BBC in 2018. If you cant guarantee data security, thats going to be totally destructive for the business.China has enacted a series of laws to ensure that tech companies protect their data and store it locally. Regulators have also ordered the creators of hundreds of apps to stop collecting user information to excess. In regulatory filings ahead of its I.P.O., Didi noted that its business could suffer if the Chinese authorities were not satisfied with its data security and privacy practices.But those specific risks barely came up in Didi executives discussions with investors and bankers before the listing, two people involved in the process said.One of them said that because Didi had already talked with investors and lined up cornerstone shareholders in the months before, top company brass felt it didnt need to spend as much time making formal sales pitches as would be standard for an I.P.O. Didis underwriting banks agreed, this person said.Didi filed its preliminary paperwork on June 10. By June 29, it had priced its shares at $14 apiece. They began trading on the New York Stock Exchange the next day.Chinas internet regulator pounced first.Didi may have hoisted itself into Beijings cross-hairs by choosing to go public in this year of crackdowns on Big Tech. Even so, the company is now a stand-in for something much larger than itself. What China does with Didi could tell us how Mr. Xi intends to treat all entrepreneurs and would-be disrupters.Something needs to be done; theres just no question about it, said Minxin Pei, a political scientist who studies China at Claremont McKenna College. But the way they are doing it is very counterproductive.The government tends to act in a way that errs not on the side of caution, Professor Pei said, but on the side of excess.Michael J. de la Merced contributed reporting, and Albee Zhang contributed research.

Tech

April 7, 2016SANTIAGO, Chile Prosecutors and investigative reporters in Chile have for more than a year been exposing an intricate web of illegal campaign contributions, bribery and corruption, embarrassing top business executives and politicians, including members of Congress and the presidents family.The revelations, reported by an emboldened news media and fueled by the leaking of names and documents, prompted the Senate this week to approve a bill that would, among other things, punish anyone who makes public information about current judicial investigations, with up to 541 days in prison.Journalists are calling it a gag law that would restrict the publics freedom of information at a time when the countrys ruling elite are being shamed.Why was this never discussed before, when reporters got hold of legal files related to other types of criminals? said Javiera Olivares, the president of the Journalists Association in Chile. These peoples rights are also affected, but this law is approved when it is the powerful who are under scrutiny.The string of scandals came to light in late 2014, when investigators began unraveling a system of fake invoices used by one of Chiles largest financial holding companies, the Penta Group, to direct funds to the right-wing U.D.I. Partys campaign coffers, evading taxes along the way.This led to related inquiries into the mining giant SQM, which controls most of Chiles lithium production. SQM was privatized during the rule of Augusto Pinochet, whose dictatorship of Chile lasted from 1973 to 1990, and sold to the dictators former son-in-law, Julio Ponce Lerou, who has run the company ever since. Investigators found that for years SQM has financed the campaigns of presidential candidates from parties across the political spectrum, including most in the center-left New Majority coalition now in power.Prosecutors are investigating more than 190 business executives, politicians and a vast array of intermediaries charged with tax evasion, fraud, issuing false invoices, money laundering and bribery.ImageCredit...Felipe Trueba/European Pressphoto AgencyMore accusations are expected in the coming weeks, including charges against Laurence Golborne, a U.D.I. presidential candidate in 2013 who gained fame when he was minister of mining during the rescue of 33 Chilean miners in 2010. Prosecutors have said he would be charged soon with tax fraud in connection with campaign funds from Penta.Prosecutors have also said they are looking at leaders of President Michelle Bachelets New Majority coalition and the two sons of the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Senator Jorge Pizarro, who stepped down as party chief last weekend. His sons were found to have issued 11 invoices to SQM totaling 45 million pesos, or about $66,000.So far, Mr. Ponce, the SQM chief, has avoided prosecution. But leaked emails from 2010 between a former SQM general manager, Patricio Contesse, and Pablo Longueira, then a senator for the U.D.I. Party, show them discussing changes to a mining royalty bill, and how Mr. Contesse drafted modifications that benefited the company that were later introduced by Mr. Longueira. The law was passed when Mr. Longueira was minister of economy.Mr. Longueira resigned from his party last month, denying wrongdoing and complaining that the news media had already condemned him without a trial. He and Mr. Contesse are expected to be charged with bribery on June 1, prosecutors said.There are also inquiries into the misuse of public funds by the military, collusion by major paper producers and tax fraud and money laundering involving the former leader of Chiles soccer federation, Sergio Jadue, who is now cooperating with American officials in the FIFA corruption scandal.Also under investigation is a former congresswoman, Marta Isasi, who is accused of receiving more than 27 million pesos in 2009 from one of Chiles largest fishing companies, Corpesca, as Congress debated new fishing legislation.The depth of corruption is enormous, said Carlos Huneeus, a law professor at the University of Chile and the author of the book The Semi-Sovereign Democracy: Chile After Pinochet. Public interest has been subordinated to private interests, and when there is no clear distinction between them, it opens the door to endless opportunities for corruption.Previous investigations have focused on the presidents daughter-in-law, Natalia Compagnon, who was accused in January of issuing false invoices and evading taxes in relation to a speculative land deal that earned millions of dollars in profit for her company, Caval.ImageCredit...Ivan Alvarado/ReutersSeveral high-profile Chileans were among the clients of Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm whose leaked documents were published on Sunday by a consortium of newspapers. Chiles Internal Revenue Service announced it would carry out an exhaustive inquiry.The owner of Chiles largest newspaper, El Mercurio, Agustn Edwards, was among those listed in the documents, known as the Panama Papers, as was Hernn Bchi, a former finance minister under Pinochet; Alfredo Ovalle, former president of the business confederation C.P.C.; and the former soccer star Ivn Zamorano. The president of the Chilean chapter of Transparency International, Gonzalo Delaveau, resigned on Monday after his name appeared as the agent of five offshore companies in the Bahamas owned by the mining company Andes Copper, for which he is a board member.The details of these far-reaching scandals, and their ramifications, which emerge almost daily, have become a trending topic in Chile, increasing doubts about the political system and the countrys leaders.Its fair to say that those of us in decision-making positions are being severely questioned and have lost legitimacy, starting with the executive, the president of the Senate, Ricardo Lagos Weber, said last week. But we are not indolent. We have taken action.Last year, Ms. Bachelet appointed an advisory council to propose limits to campaign spending, controls on political parties and banning corporate donations, measures that would first apply to municipal elections in October.These new regulations will make the coming elections radically different, but they wont change public perception that politicians are corrupt, said Claudio Fuentes, the director of the school of political science at Diego Portales University, and a former member of the advisory council.With few untarnished party leaders, many of the traditional political parties are looking to former presidents to stand in next years presidential and legislative campaigns. The right is promoting the businessman Sebastin Piera, who served from 2010 to 2014, and some members of the governing coalition are pushing for Ricardo Lagos, the president from 2000 to 2006, who will be 80 by the time the next president is sworn in.What well see in the next elections is a repetition of the same political cycle of the past 25 years, with very few new actors, Mr. Fuentes said.

World

TrilobitesHumans and other species have a gene mutation that lets them digest alcohol. In other species, its missing.Credit...Oleksandr Rupeta/AlamyMay 20, 2020Humans are not the only animals that get drunk. Birds that gorge on fermented berries and sap are known to fall out of trees and crash into windows. Elk that overdo it with rotting apples get stuck in trees. Moose wasted on overripe crab apples get tangled in swing sets, hammocks and even Christmas lights.Elephants, though, are the animal kingdoms most well-known boozers. One scientific paper describes elephant trainers rewarding animals with beer and other alcoholic beverages, with one elephant in the 18th century said to have drunk 30 bottles of port a day. In 1974, a herd of 150 elephants in West Bengal, India, became intoxicated after breaking into a brewery, then went on a rampage that destroyed buildings and killed five people.Despite these widespread reports, scientists have questioned whether animals especially large ones such as elephants and elk actually become inebriated. In 2006, researchers calculated that based on the amount of alcohol it takes to get a human drunk, a 6,600-pound elephant on a bender would have to quickly consume up to 27 liters of seven percent ethanol, the key ingredient in alcohol. Such a quantity of booze is unlikely to be obtained in the wild. Intoxicated wild elephants, the researchers concluded, must be a myth. As the lead author said at the time, People just want to believe in drunken elephants.If you are one who wanted to believe, a study published in April in Biology Letters might serve as your vindication. A team of scientists say that the earlier myth-busting researchers made a common mistake: They assumed that elephants would have to consume as much alcohol to get drunk as humans do. In fact, elephants are likely exceptional lightweights because they and many other mammals lack a key enzyme that quickly metabolizes ethanol. The findings highlight the need to consider species on an individual basis.You cant just assume that humans are just like every other mammal and the physiological abilities of all these mammals are comparable, said Mareike Janiak, a postdoctoral scholar in evolutionary anthropology at the University of Calgary and the lead author of the study. Simply scaling up to body size doesnt account for differences that exist between different mammal species.ImageCredit...Sasanka Sen/Associated PressHumans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas have an unusually high tolerance for alcohol because of a shared genetic mutation that allows them to metabolize ethanol 40 times faster than other primates. The mutation occurred around 10 million years ago, coinciding with an ancestral shift from arboreal to terrestrial living and, most likely, a diet richer in fallen, fermenting fruit on the forest floor.To test whether other species independently evolved the same adaptation, Dr. Janiak and her colleagues searched the genomes of 85 mammals that eat a variety of foods and located the ethanol-metabolizing gene in 79 species. But they identified the same or similar mutation as humans in just six species mostly those with a diet high in fruit and nectar, including flying foxes and aye-aye lemurs.But most other mammals did not possess the mutation, and in some species, including elephants, dogs and cows, the ethanol-metabolizing gene had lost all function.It was far more likely for animals that eat the leafy part of plants or for carnivores to lose the gene, said Amanda Melin, a molecular ecologist at the University of Calgary and a co-author of the study. The takeaway is that diet is important in what we see happening in molecular evolution.Some results were unexpected. Tree shrews, for example, drink copious amounts of fermented nectar with ethanol content equivalent to weak beer, Dr. Melin said, but they never show signs of inebriation. Yet tree shews do not share the same enzyme-producing mutation as humans. This implies that theres multiple, different ways to solve this problem, she said.Nathaniel Dominy, a biological anthropologist at Dartmouth College who was not involved in the research, said the new paper highlights the novel adaptations of humans by putting our metabolic proficiency in broader evolutionary context. He said it also exemplifies the power of comparative biology for teasing out the underlying function of specific genetic traits.The elephant findings, in particular, are interesting but confusing, said Chris Thouless, the head of research at Save the Elephants, a nonprofit in Kenya. Forest elephants today regularly seek and eat fruit, but their ancestors became grass eaters around eight million years ago. Evidence indicates they then switched to a mixed diet around one million years ago.Maybe they lost the ability to efficiently metabolize alcohol, but either continued to have, or regained, a taste for and the ability to locate fruit, Dr. Thouless said. He compared it with people who have very low tolerance for alcohol but still desire and drink it.While the new study reveals the means by which elephants and other mammals may become inebriated, it does not explicitly confirm the phenomena in nature.The persistent myth of drunken elephants remains an open and tantalizing question, and a priority for future research, Dr. Dominy said.

science

Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 22, 2018WASHINGTON The gulf between President Trumps rhetoric and a thorny geopolitical reality widened a bit further on Friday, when the White House said it would extend a decade-old executive order declaring a national emergency over the nuclear threat from North Korea.The announcement came days after Mr. Trump declared to the world that everybody can now feel much safer after his meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un: There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea, Mr. Trump said on Twitter.Apparently, there still is.The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States, read the notice, delivered through the press secretary on Friday.The national emergency regarding North Korea has been in place since 2008, spanning three presidencies. Now it is a measure that will effectively help keep in place what Mr. Trump has referred to as maximum pressure on North Korea and Mr. Kim, who has said he will take steps to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula but has not begun to dismantle his arsenal of nuclear weapons. Analysts who study the country say it would be premature to declare that progress on denuclearization until that happens.Pointing this out can incur the wrath of the president. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said that the summit meeting with Mr. Kim had been flimsy.The summit was more show than substance, what the Texans call all cattle, no hat, Schumer said, confusing the expression.The crack earned Mr. Schumer a public rebuke from the presidential Twitter account.Thank you Chuck, but are you sure you got that right? Mr. Trump wrote. No more nuclear testing or rockets flying all over the place, blew up launch sites. Hostages already back, hero remains coming home & much more!The White Houses notice of the national emergency undercut the president, Mr. Schumer said on Friday.We have to treat these negotiations far more seriously than just as a photo op, he said in a statement. Saying the North Korea problem is solved doesnt make it so.The reality might not matter to the president or his supporters, who have been inundated with messaging from Mr. Trump and his campaign about his diplomatic achievements. At a rally in Duluth, Minn., on Wednesday, a broadcast featuring the presidents daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, and labeled real news was beamed down from the arenas jumbotrons.They said that by talking with Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump was going to start World War III, Ms. Trump said. And yet here we are on the cusp of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, she said, adding, They wont try and stop a loser, but they will try and stop a winner.In a rambling speech, the president also ran down a list of victories: The North Koreans had stopped all nuclear research. The bodies of the Korean Wars fallen soldiers would be returned to American soil. And, Mr. Trump said, they stopped all nuclear testing.It is premature to declare any of those victories as complete, experts said.To supporters like Lori Larson, a 36-year-old who traveled from Los Angeles to attend the rally, the particulars of the developments were irrelevant.She blamed the Democrats and the news media for deflecting from the presidents accomplishments. He stopped the war with North Korea, Ms. Larson said, referring imprecisely to Mr. Trumps efforts. And the Democrats came back saying there are children missing their families at the border.

Politics

TV SportsCredit...Todd Heisler/The New York TimesFeb. 3, 2014EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. Richard Farago was just moments into calling his 10th Super Bowl when Denver Broncos center Manny Ramirezs snap flew over Peyton Manning.Ohhhh! Farago shouted, before describing the rest of the play in Hungarian and tossing in the word safety. His surprised reaction to the errant snap, which was translated later, was, Oh, my God, what a misunderstanding by Peyton Manning and his center.Soon after, Oliver Hollai, the analyst sitting beside Farago, added free kick during a broader comment. And as they watched a replay of the errant snap, they talked about the Broncos good fortune that they had surrendered 2 points, not 6.The two Hungarians Farago, 46, with short, spiky hair, and Hollai, 35, tall and blond are longtime broadcast partners who maintained a consistent banter during the game.Hes the Pat Summerall of Hungary, Hollai said. From the regular season through the Super Bowl, English is only one patois of N.F.L. broadcasting. The leagues games are seen in more than 100 countries, and the Super Bowl is watched in nearly 200. At MetLife Stadium, Sundays game was called (or reported) in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Danish, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Portuguese and the English spoken in Britain over a feed distributed by NFL Films.Farago fell in love with American football, and Joe Montana, at a Chiefs-Steelers game in 1993. He did not have anyone to call N.F.L. games for when he worked for the state broadcaster, but in 2004, he joined Sport1 in Budapest, which had acquired league rights.Hollai spent five years living in Fort Lee, N.J., when his fathers banking work brought him to work at Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan. Hollai became a Giants and a Mets fan infatuations that continue to this day. Back in Hungary, Hollai had suggested only that Sport1 use his expertise in the language of the N.F.L. to help its broadcasts. But the network hired him as an analyst.They told me on a Friday that I would be working a game the next Tuesday, he said.On Sunday, those countries where the local language is not superimposed on the broadcast heard the Super Bowl call of Bob Papa, the play-by-play radio voice of the Giants, and Charles Davis, a veteran N.F.L. and college football analyst for Fox. Their mission was to offer a simpler version of the game very little Jon Gruden and a lot of storytelling and explanations of plays to appeal to a broad international audience with a knowledge of football that ranges from novices to American expatriates.Its about the big picture, Davis said before the game.They were light on statistics but slipped in definitions of touchbacks, coaches challenges and intentional grounding that Foxs Joe Buck and Troy Aikman did not need to use. About the most complicated term that Davis used was a route combination.Papa, who has called the world feed since 2008, said he was pleased when Americans around the world let him know they were watching his call of the Super Bowl. Last year, he got a text message from John Morgan, with whom Papa has called Olympic bobsledding for NBC, that he was watching the feed in Munich.And during the two-minute warning before halftime, Papa turned to say he had just received a Twitter post from the Middle East. Joe LaCava, Tiger Woodss caddie, said they are watching in Dubai, he said. Woods was competing at the Dubai Desert Classic.Unlike the world-feed booth with its stage manager, statistician and spotter the Hungarian booth, above the south end zone, was austere. Farago and Hollai were on their own in a little structure they shared with French sportscasters.Their notes were in Hungarian (the national anthem was himnusz) and English. Their game-calling was peppered with a football glossary, with some words that have no equivalent in Hungarian, like punt, blitz, touchdown, A.F.C., N.F.C. and cover-2.But in Hungary, with the growth of club football and rising ratings for the Super Bowl, Farago and Hollai use Hungarian for first down (elso kiserlet), catch (elkapas), field goal (mezonygol) and quarterback (iranyito).Yet their approach is as familiar to fans as any sports broadcasting teams. Faragos voice rose and fell at the right moments. Hollai stepped in when he was needed and did not lack for extensive explanations. Farago grew especially excited when Seattles Malcolm Smith intercepted a pass (passz in Hungarian) by Manning and returned it for a touchdown.And even if the average American football fan is attuned to games being called in English, there is something refreshing about hearing names like Kam Chancellor, Knowshon Moreno and Percy Harvin pronounced in Hungarian accents.

Sports

Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesMarch 19, 2017When the leader of the United Nations apologized to Haitians for the cholera epidemic that has ravaged their country for more than six years caused by infected peacekeepers sent to protect them he proclaimed a moral responsibility to make things right.The apology, announced in December along with a $400 million strategy to combat the epidemic and provide material assistance and support for victims, amounted to a rare public act of contrition by the United Nations. Under its secretary general at the time, Ban Ki-moon, the organization had resisted any acceptance of blame for the epidemic, one of the worst cholera outbreaks in modern times.Since then, however, the United Nations strategy to fight the epidemic, which it calls the New Approach, has failed to gain traction. A trust fund created to help finance the strategy has only about $2 million, according to the latest data on its website. Just six of the 193 member states Britain, Chile, France, India, Liechtenstein and South Korea have donated.Other countries have provided additional sources of anti-cholera funding for Haiti outside the trust fund, most notably Canada, at about $4.6 million, and Japan, at $2.6 million, according to the United Nations. Nonetheless, the totals received are a fraction of what Mr. Ban envisioned.In a letter sent to member states last month, Mr. Bans successor, Antnio Guterres, asked for financial commitments to the trust fund by March 6. He also appeared to raise the possibility of a mandatory dues assessment if there were no significant pledges.The deadline came and went without much response.Mr. Guterres has not stated publicly whether he intends to push for a mandatory assessment in the budget negotiations now underway at the United Nations. Privately, however, diplomats and United Nations officials said he had shelved the idea, partly because of strong resistance by some powerful members, including the United States.ImageCredit...Khaled Kazziha/Associated PressDiplomats said part of the problem could be traced to simple donor fatigue, as well as to many countries reluctance to make financial commitments without certainty that the money will be used effectively.The donor challenge was acknowledged by Dr. David Nabarro, a United Nations special adviser who rose to prominence running its mobilization to fight the Ebola crisis in West Africa, and who has been leading its fund-raising efforts for Haiti as he seeks to become the next director general of the World Health Organization.Donors will respond, but they need to be convinced that theyre going to be given a good proposition for whats done with their money, he said in January at the World Economic Forum. The Haiti cholera story is not actually a very good one, in that its taken us a rather long time to get on top of it, and still the problem is persisting.The fund-raising effort has been further complicated by the Trump administrations intention to cut spending on foreign aid. The United States, historically a leading source of Haitis foreign aid, is also the biggest single financing source for the United Nations, which may now confront painful choices over how to allocate reduced revenue.Ross Mountain, a veteran United Nations aid official who is its senior adviser on cholera in Haiti, said that a number of ideas concerning the financing were under discussion. And, he said, while $400 million is not a very large sum, considering the circumstances, we are all very aware about the competing demands.Mr. Mountain also conceded that on the financial side, we have not moved further ahead.Mr. Trumps new United Nations ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, who has called the cholera crisis nothing short of devastating, did not respond to requests for comment about the funding problem. But in her Senate confirmation testimony in January, Ms. Haley said, Were going to have to make this right with Haiti, without question, and the U.N. is going to have to take responsibility.Cholera, a waterborne bacterial scourge that can cause acute diarrhea and fatal dehydration if not treated quickly, has killed nearly 10,000 people and sickened nearly 800,000 in Haiti, the Western Hemispheres poorest country, since it was introduced there in 2010 by infected Nepalese members of a United Nations peacekeeping force. This year, as of late February, nearly 2,000 new cases had been reported, amounting to hundreds a week.Studies have traced the highly contagious disease to sloppy sanitation that had leached fecal waste laced with cholera germs from latrines used by the Nepalese peacekeepers into the water supply.ImageCredit...Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesWe still have the biggest outbreak of cholera of any country anywhere, said Dr. Louise Ivers, a senior policy adviser at Partners in Health, an international medical aid organization that has long worked in Haiti. Here we are, nearly seven years later, and its still a big problem.Compared with other disasters confronting the United Nations, like the Syria refugee crisis and famines threatening 20 million people in Yemen and parts of Africa, the Haiti crisis may not loom as large. But unlike the others, the direct cause in Haiti was traced to the United Nations.This fact weighed on Mr. Ban until near the end of his tenure. He finally acted after the organizations independent investigator on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said in a scathing report that the United Nations failure to take responsibility for the cholera crisis was morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating.But Mr. Bans apology for Haitis cholera epidemic also clearly reflected an assumption that all members were responsible for the success of the new strategy to defeat it. For the sake of the Haitian people, but also for the sake of the United Nations itself, we have a moral responsibility to act, he told the General Assembly on Dec. 1. And we have a collective responsibility to deliver.Advocacy groups that had been somewhat heartened by Mr. Bans words have grown increasingly anxious not only about the lack of money, but also about the lack of clarity in how the material assistance and support part of the plan, which represents half of the $400 million goal, will be used.Two leading advocacy groups for Haitian cholera victims, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, sent a letter on Thursday to Mr. Guterres, requesting a meeting and expressing concern that the current trajectory of fund-raising and elaboration of the New Approach is betraying the U.N.s promises of a meaningful and accountable response in Haiti.Lawmakers in the United States critical of the United Nations response in Haiti have also put pressure on the organization.While the U.N. has admitted to wrongdoing and promised to create a fund to provide restitution to the people of Haiti victimized by cholera, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, said in a statement last week, they have failed to make good on these promises.

World

Credit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesA countrys stunning progress against tuberculosis may be threatened by reduced support for a health care system stretched thin.Nguyen Quang Thieu, 53, waiting to have his lung X-Ray scan examined by Dr. Hoang Thi Phuong, head of the Respiratory Tuberculosis Department at the National Lung Hospital in Hanoi.Credit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesMarch 28, 2016HANOI, VIETNAM Dr. Bui Xuan Hiep, the head of tuberculosis control in this citys Hoang Mai district, paged proudly through a large handwritten patient log.This districts cure rate averages 90 percent, he said. Still, Dr. Bui could see problems.Seven patients had turned up with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; four had been cured, two had died and one had simply disappeared.Its a story repeated throughout Vietnam. The nation was once racked by a tuberculosis epidemic, one of the worst in which H.I.V. was not the driving force. But officials fought back fiercely.Twenty-five years ago, battered by the aftermath of a long war, chronic poverty and a heavy-handed government isolated from much of the world, Vietnam had nearly 600 cases of tuberculosis for every 100,000 residents. Today, it has less than 200.The country boasts a 90 percent cure rate for uncomplicated tuberculosis and cures 75 percent of its drug-resistant cases, easily beating the global average, 50 percent.Indeed, public health officials worldwide have made remarkable progress against tuberculosis. Deaths from the disease have fallen drastically since 2000, according to the World Health Organization. Tuberculosis has been halted or reversed in 16 of the 22 countries that account for the vast majority of cases.ImageCredit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesBut Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, last week warned that the fight was only half won and estimated that 1.5 million worldwide would die of the disease this year.There is no better example of how fragile this success may be than Vietnam. Hospital wards here are packed dangerously full, raising the risk that drug-resistant strains will spread.The easy-to-reach patients have been treated, and many of the rest are the hardest to help: heroin-addicted couriers and laborers from the poppy fields of the nearby Golden Triangle, and mountain villagers who do not speak Vietnamese and are barely connected to the health care system.But the biggest threat is that the money is close to running out.Our TB program is cost-effective and has great impact, said Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhung, its national director. But I always emphasize that this is a preliminary success. We need to sustain it.To reach Vietnams ambitious goal of pushing prevalence rates down to 20 cases per 100,000 residents essentially eliminating tuberculosis as a public health problem its tuberculosis-control program needs to spend at least $66 million a year. It now spends about $26 million a year.About $19 million of that comes from foreign donors, with more than a third from the United States, Dr. Nguyen said. Evidence of donor help is everywhere.The expensive diagnostic machines in hospital laboratories bear stickers from the United States Agency for International Development or from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, 30 percent of whose budget is paid by the United States. But The Global Fund, the chief support of the tuberculosis program here, has long struggled to meet its fundraising goals, and Vietnamese officials worry about what happens when its current commitment ends in 2017. The White House tried to reduce the American contribution to the fund in fiscal year 2016 (Congress restored it), and proposed cuts to Usaids tuberculosis programs in both 2016 and 2017.ImageCredit...Linh Pham for The New York TimesOfficials here and at the W.H.O. fear that hard-won progress may soon be reversed and a remarkable success story may come apart, with deadly consequences.An Ancient ScourgeAfter years in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic, tuberculosis is regaining its notoriety as one of the worlds great killers: an airborne bacterium that spreads easily among people living crowded together in jails, ships, mines, trenches or slums and insinuates itself deep in the lungs and grows, slowly tearing apart the tissue until victims are coughing up blood.Tuberculosis now kills more people around the world than AIDS, according to the W.H.O.: 4,100 a day, compared with 3,300 dying of AIDS, making tuberculosis the leading infectious cause of death in the world.Mortality from both diseases is dropping, but tuberculosis deaths have fallen more slowly, especially in Asia.Vietnams success where so many other nations have failed is not just because of donor money, said Dr. Mario C. Raviglione, the director of the W.H.O.s global tuberculosis program.It succeeds because its a Communist country, he said. Socialist countries put a lot of resources into primary care: lots of doctors, lots of clinics. And once central government adopts a thing, they really do it. They give orders.Tuberculosis is an ideal disease for a regimented treatment approach.Almost all patients with uncomplicated tuberculosis bacteria that are not drug-resistant can be cured if they take a standard menu of four antibiotics every day for six months without fail.ImageCredit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesIn Vietnam, treatment standards set at the national level are followed by the entire public health network. The National Lung Disease Hospital in Hanoi oversees 64 provincial hospitals, which oversee 845 district hospitals, which oversee 11,065 neighborhood health clinics.The pharmaceutical-supply chain, the Achilles heel in many tuberculosis-ridden countries, is impressive. On a weeklong tour of urban and rural clinics, not one nurse or patient reported ever running out of drugs.Those neighborhood clinics usually just a few examining rooms, a small pharmacy and a parking lot are as ubiquitous here as police stations and firehouses in the United States.They treat many illnesses, but their role in tuberculosis is simple: Every tuberculosis patient in the district reports once a day to take his or her pills in front of a nurse. Each dose taken is checked off on a yellow card.Most patients comply without complaint, doctors say. Many poor countries are chaotic; Vietnam, while poor, is not. Parks are neatly trimmed, public bathrooms are clean, and police in gold-buttoned uniforms and high-brimmed hats are omnipresent.Nonetheless, there are a few stubborn patients Dr. Buis missing patient was a heroin addict who infected his mother with drug-resistant tuberculosis before disappearing. And the country has one surprising gap: It has no quarantine laws.In New York Citys outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the 1990s, officials legally locked up patients who refused to take their pills. The rare noncompliant patient here faces no such threat.We cant do that, said Dr. Le Minh Hoa, the head of treatment at Hanois provincial lung hospital. And besides, we dont have enough spaces for the people who want treatment.Patients with drug-resistant disease are especially hard to help. Their medicines, some of which are intravenous, must be taken for two years, and can cause deafness, psychosis and kidney failure. Patients must be hospitalized, their movements restricted to one or two corridors, sometimes for months until they are no longer coughing up live bacteria.Hospital wards are full of stooped, forlorn-looking men and women in masks and pajamas waiting to be declared well enough to go home and become a district outpatient.If they become worse instead of better, the prognosis is usually grim. Extensively drug-resistant disease (XDR TB) requires even more toxic drugs costing 25 times as much. Most XDR TB patients here die.Pham Thi Tuy, 25, was an unlucky woman she caught a drug-resistant strain, perhaps at her job as a medical technician. Facing two years of treatment, she lay hooked up to an IV in Dr. Les hospital, nauseated and exhausted by the drugs, watching videos on her cellphone all day.I only went to the doctor for an earache, she said. It didnt go away and didnt go away and they finally did a test and said it was TB.She hoped her fianc would wait two years for her to recover, she said and then suddenly looked up at Dr. Le.ImageCredit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesWhen I finish this, will I still be able to have children?Yes, Dr. Le said, patting her hand.Ms. Phams eyes crinkled behind her mask, suggesting a sweet smile, and she gave a big thumbs-up.Limited ResourcesThere are many signs that the national tuberculosis program here survives on a shoestring budget.While its top laboratories have some modern equipment, the 64 provincial hospitals share only 60 rapid diagnostic machines, less than half the number they need, even though Vietnam pays only $17,000 for each, about a tenth of the American retail price.More ominously, hospital wards are dangerously crowded. Seven patients a room, with beds only a foot apart, is not an uncommon sight. (That effectively means 14 inhabitants a room, as many patients have a relative sleeping on the floor or in a corridor to do nursing chores and bring food.)Windows and doors are kept open to blow away the bacteria that patients cough up. In chilly Hanoi, patients like Ms. Pham wear parkas in bed; in tropical Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, they perspire in the muggy heat.Dr. Thuy Nguyen Thu, the head of the inpatient unit at the National Lung Disease Hospital, which treats the toughest cases, said four of her staff had caught tuberculosis in the last five years. New nurses were nervous, she said.Dr. Thuy had asked for ozone air filters, better fans and safer face masks, but there are budget limitations.Geography presents the tuberculosis-control program with another kind of obstacle. In the Shangri La-like valleys of Son La province, a six-hour drive west of Hanoi, some inhabitants live in villages with thatched roofs and speak only Hmong, Meo or Thai.ImageCredit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesFinding and keeping them in treatment is hard, said Dr. Tong Van Hieu, the director of the Quyet Thang neighborhood clinic in Son La. Some believe tuberculosis is caused by fog or dust or gold mine fumes, and turn first to folk remedies.In the cities, a new problem is on the rise.Vietnams growing prosperity lets some patients afford private doctors who often ignore the official four-drug regimen and fail to insist their patients take every pill.Pharmacists sell antibiotics without prescriptions, so some wealthy patients swallow only what they feel like taking. As a result, Dr. Phat Nguyen Ngoc, the head of a district hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, said about a third of his patients with drug-resistant disease had gotten it because they had seen private doctors first and had taken too few pills, or the wrong ones.And sometimes, even when compliant patients play by the rules, treatment fails, anyway.In the Hanoi Lung Disease Hospital, Hoang Van Toan, a weathered farmer looking much older than his 49 years, sat wrapped in a blanket. He had taken all his pills, he said, but tuberculosis had somehow outwitted them.The room was bare, with no television or any other diversion. I talk to my wife, he said, nodding at the woman sitting on the temporarily empty bed opposite him.And I walk for three hours every day at dawn, he added, pointing out the window to a nearby park. He wears a surgical mask as required, he said, but that makes no one nervous in Hanoi; thousands of passing motorcyclists wear them, too.What made him saddest, he said, is that it is still too dangerous for his grandchildren to visit.Asked if he would make it through the next two years, he said Yes, emphatically.I was a soldier, he added. I fought the enemy. I can fight this.

Health

Asia Pacific|Duterte May Be Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, Rights Group Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-human-rights-watch-philippines.htmlCredit...Ace Morandante/Presidential Office, via Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFelipe Villamor and Mike IvesMarch 2, 2017MANILA Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines may have committed crimes against humanity by inciting killings during his bloody antidrug campaign.Thousands of people have been killed by the police or by vigilantes since Mr. Duterte became president in June, and rights groups say the police may have ordered the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users, a charge that officials have denied.In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch examined 32 deaths from October to January, all involving the Philippine National Police. Police reports asserted that officers had committed the killings in self-defense, but witnesses characterized them as coldblooded murders of unarmed drug suspects in custody, the rights groups study said.We think theres a very strong case to be made in front of the I.C.C. that crimes against humanity have been committed, Elaine Pearson, the Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said by telephone, referring to the International Criminal Court. She said the first step should be parallel investigations into Mr. Dutertes antidrug campaign by the United Nations and by the Philippine Justice Department.In a statement on Thursday, Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for Mr. Duterte, said the reports allegations were baseless.A war on criminality is not a war on humanity, he said. On the contrary, it is a war precisely to protect humanity from a modern-day evil. To say otherwise is to undermine societys legitimate desire to be free from fear and to pander to the interests of the criminals.The Philippines is a member of the International Criminal Court. In October, the courts chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a statement that she was deeply concerned about reports of extrajudicial killings in the country.Ms. Bensouda said the killings could fall under the international courts jurisdiction if they are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population pursuant to a state policy to commit such an attack.But Romel Bagares, a rights lawyer at the Center for International Law in Manila, said in an interview on Thursday that Philippine law appears to grant the president immunity from prosecution while in office.Even though the International Criminal Court encourages domestic courts to prosecute crimes against humanity, it may not be helpful at this point to immediately raise the I.C.C.s jurisdiction as a trump card, Mr. Bagares added. The threshold has to be established by documenting the relevant cases, and filing the cases in Philippine courts, if only to show that there is a failure or an unwillingness to prosecute on the part of the state.It is unlikely that Mr. Duterte would face domestic prosecution while president. His allies control both houses of Congress, and his justice secretary, Vitaliano Aguirre II, is one of his old fraternity brothers.Last week, Mr. Aguirre oversaw the arrest of Senator Leila de Lima, the chief critic of Mr. Dutertes bloody antidrug campaign, on charges that she took bribes from imprisoned drug traffickers.Ms. de Lima chaired a Senate panel last year that heard testimony from a professed hit man who said he belonged to a death squad that Mr. Duterte had overseen while serving as mayor of Davao City. Ms. de Lima has denied the charges against her, describing them as political persecution.

World

Credit...Yuri Gripas/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJune 24, 2018President Trump unleashed an aggressive attack Sunday on unauthorized immigrants and the judicial system that handles them, saying that those who cross into the United States illegally should be sent back immediately without due process or an appearance before a judge.We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country, Mr. Trump tweeted while on the way to his golf course in Virginia. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.It was another twist in a head-spinning series of developments on immigration since the administration announced a zero tolerance policy two months ago, leading to the separation of children from parents who cross the border illegally and an outcry from Democrats and many Republicans.Mr. Trump signed an executive order to end the separations last week, but the sudden shifts have led to confusion along the border about how children and parents will be reunited and to turmoil in Congress as the House prepares to vote on a sweeping immigration bill this week.Still, the president, who has always dug his heels in when criticized, has not backed back down from his hard-line talk, even amid a national outcry over a detainment policy that has resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their families.He has instead gone on the offensive, complaining to aides about why he could not just create an overarching executive order to solve the problem, according to two people familiar with the deliberations. Aides have had to explain to the president why a comprehensive immigration overhaul is beyond the reach of his executive powers.And privately, the president has groused that he should not have signed the order undoing separations.Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order, Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday, adding, Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit.But Mr. Trumps call to ignore due process faced both constitutional questions and dissension from Republicans in Congress, some of whom have insisted that the number of judges be increased so migrant families can have their cases heard more quickly. Federal immigration courts faced a backlog of more than 700,000 cases in May, and cases can take months or years to be heard.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has proposed doubling the number of judges to roughly 750, while Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday on CNNs State of the Union that he believes an additional 225 judges are needed. He noted that only 74 of the current immigration judges are serving at the border.We need to increase that, Mr. Johnson said. The Trump administration is going to try and come up with another 15,000 beds for family units. But none of this is easy.The House bill up for a vote this week would beef up border security and provide a path to citizenship for the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, while also effectively codifying Mr. Trumps executive order by allowing migrant families to be detained together indefinitely.Many on Capitol Hill believe legislation is necessary to deal with the order, since it allows indefinite detentions. Under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement, migrant children can be detained for no more than 20 days, leaving the orders status in court in doubt.But the presidents conflicting statements are complicating legislative efforts, said Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona.It makes it very difficult, Mr. Flake said on ABCs This Week, continuing, Its difficult in any event, right, in an election year where the president has decided to have this at the forefront of the Republican election strategy to paint the Democrats as soft on immigration.He added: I dont know how in the world were going to fix this in the short term, given the Flores decision and given the lack of infrastructure, judges to process these claims. Its really a big mess.Mr. Trumps tweets on Sunday threw new legal questions into the puzzle. Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said in an email that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the due process requirements of the Fifth and 14th Amendments apply to all persons, including those in the U.S. unlawfully.Trump is making the tyrannical claim that he has the right to serve as prosecutor, judge and jury with respect to all those who enter our country, Mr. Tribe said. That is a breathtaking assertion of unbounded power power without any plausible limit.The Fifth Amendment mandates the due process of law, and the 14th Amendment, in part, expanded due process rights for immigrants, with case law asserting those rights dating back to 1886. But Justice Department lawyers under both Democratic and Republican administrations have argued that noncitizens apprehended at the border lack due process protections, said Adam Cox, a law professor at New York University, and the Supreme Court has never clearly resolved the dispute.Since Mr. Trump was elected, his administration has been working to expand the terms of a 1996 statute that allows immigration officials to quickly deport undocumented immigrants as well as those whose papers are believed to be fraudulent. The Trump administration has the ability to expand the statute to encompass the entire country and apply it to any noncitizen who has not been in the country for more than two years, Mr. Cox said.One of the things that is being considered is an expanded expedited removal to the full statutory limit, he said, adding that it is already true that a lot of people show up at the border get removed with no access to immigration courts or the judicial process.Mr. Cox said the president could be reacting to seeing a high number of people held in detention centers claiming they face harm back home. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president knew the legal ins and outs of his demand.Many members of the administration seem to think that the high rate necessarily means a lot of fraud, Mr. Cox said of asylum claims, so what they could like to do is remove that process.Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has made illegal immigration a focus of his career, has moved to back up the presidents words with action in recent months. In April, Mr. Sessions announced a zero tolerance immigration policy, which set off the mass separation of families that the president sought to end with his executive order last week.Criminal prosecutions for illegally crossing the southwestern border jumped to 8,298 in April, the month Mr. Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, an increase of 30 percent from March, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research institute at Syracuse University. Last week, the Defense Department lent 21 lawyers to the Justice Department to focus on prosecuting a backlog in border crossing cases. And on Sunday, the defense secretary, Jim Mattis, said the Pentagon was looking at using two bases to hold an unknown number of migrants, though he would not comment on their location or whether they would house children.Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the presidents demand to dispense with due process illegal. Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally, he said.Mr. Trumps call to end due process is not a total surprise he has alluded to taking similar measures for weeks. While in Las Vegas on Saturday, Mr. Trump told supporters that he thought the immigration system needed fewer judges. Mr. Trump also suggested last week that he opposed adding judges because many of them could be corrupt.He has long been a critic of immigration judges, saying they were not effective in stopping the flow of people coming into the country, sometimes using incorrect numbers to make his point.We have thousands of judges. Do you think other countries have judges? Mr. Trump said during a round-table discussion in May. We give them, like, trials. Thats the good news. The bad news is, they never show up for the trial. O.K.?There are actually fewer than 400 judges dedicated to such work, according to the website PolitiFact.Mr. Trump also tweeted on Friday that Republicans should stop wasting their time on the broad House immigration bill, but Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on Fox News Sunday that he had spoken to the White House, which had assured him that Mr. Trump was still 100 percent behind us.Mr. Trumps careening from one extreme to another has been a staple of his campaign and presidency, allowing people to hear what they want in what he says and leaving his White House to sort through a messy pile of conflicting directives and Congress to grasp for clues about which bills he might support.The prospects for the House bill are iffy at best; some conservatives are balking at the citizenship provisions, which critics regard as amnesty. If it fails, Mr. McCaul said the House may be forced to consider a narrower measure a so-called skinny bill that would address only the issues surrounding detention of migrant families.I think we at a minimum have to deal with the family separation, Mr. McCaul said. Im a father of five. I think this is inhumane and I think the pictures that we have seen thats not the face of America.

Politics

DealBook|BTG Pactual Partners Take Control From Former Leaderhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/dealbook/btg-pactual-partners-take-control-from-former-leader.htmlDec. 2, 2015Credit...Paulo Fridman for The New York TimesRIO DE JANEIRO Andr Esteves, long the force behind BTG Pactual, ceded financial control in the firm he founded to a group of seven partners, the Brazilian investment bank said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.Rather than selling his shares in an operation that would have required a major cash outlay, the move appears to have been made through an exchange of shares between those Mr. Esteves had in the holding company BTG Pactual Participations and those his partners hold in BTG Pactual itself.In the filing, the bank said that a group of seven participated in the exchange and will now hold control. They are the co-chief executives, Marcelo Kalim and Roberto Sallouti; the executive chairman, Persio Arida; and Antonio Carlos Canto Porto Filho, James Marcos de Oliveira, Renato Monteiro dos Santos, and Guilherme da Costa Paes, all partners at the bank. It did not provide any other details.Mr. Esteves was arrested on Nov. 25 on accusations of obstruction of justice in a broad investigation into corruption involving the state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Initially, Mr. Esteves was thought be the focus of the investigation rather than the bank. But over the weekend, federal prosecutors were said to have found evidence suggesting that BTG Pactual paid 45 million reais, or nearly $12 million, to Eduardo Cunha, the speaker of the lower house in the Brazilian legislature, with the hope of watering down financial legislation.Those accusations led Brazils high court on Sunday to extend Mr. Estevess stay in jail in Rio de Janeiro for an indefinite period. That same day, he resigned as the firms chief executive and chairman.BTG Pactual has denied the most recent accusations, but it still faces enormous pressure.Late Tuesday, Moodys stripped the bank of its investment grade rating, cutting it to junk. The ratings agency cited the challenges the bank faces to conserve liquidity and preserve its franchise.Moodys noted that the bank was making efforts to conserve cash, sell some assets and temporarily suspend originating new loans.Standard & Poors followed suit on Wednesday, saying that the bank has a material liquidity gap in meeting its financial obligations in the next 60 days, unless BTG is able to sell assets or access credit facilities with Brazilian financial regulators.BTG Pactual has also sold its stake in the Brazilian hospital chain Rede DOr So Luiz to GIC, a Singapore sovereign wealth fund, for 2.38 billion reais, or $617 million. That transaction is subject to regulatory approval.Shares of BTG Pactual have fallen 35 percent since the arrest. On Wednesday morning, the shares closed down 1.5 percent after being suspended on the So Paulo bourse as the exchange sought more information on the changes in ownership. The changes will also require approval from Brazils central bank.

Business

Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesJune 12, 2018TYSONS, Va. As the nations immigration judges gathered here for training this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a message: They needed to help end the lawlessness that now exists in our immigration system.But to many of the judges, Mr. Sessionss hard-line immigration agenda is increasingly standing in the way of their ability to mete out justice.In interviews, some objected to quotas he imposed on them this spring of 700 cases per year, as well as his ban on a bureaucratic tool they used to reduce their caseloads. Others expressed concern about the impact his zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration could have on their dockets, and his push for faster rulings. They viewed those together as leaving them at risk of creating a system that sacrifices due process for efficiency.Sessions is treating them like immigration officers, not judges, said Paul Schmidt, a former judge in the immigration courts, which count more than 300 judges in their ranks and another two dozen or so on an immigration appeals board.Mr. Sessionss carrying out of his immigration agenda has reignited a long-running debate about the independence of immigration judges, who are part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch. Some of the judges fear that they could be used to help fulfill the administrations priorities, endangering their independence.The Justice Department is the premier law enforcement agency, but the role of law enforcement is different from that of a neutral court, said Dana Leigh Marks, the president emeritus of the immigration judges union. She said the organization believes the time has come to separate immigration courts from the department.A Justice Department official said Tuesday that part of the mission of the immigration courts was to complete cases in a timely manner.The courts have a goal to increase productivity and timeliness of case processing by setting appropriate standards, streamlining procedures, and implementing staff-generated recommendation, according to the departments website.Opposition to Mr. Sessions among their ranks, judges said, is more about the pressures he has put upon the office than about his stance on immigration.Immigration courts stand apart from the judicial system. Cases are often complicated by an absence of documentation and supporting evidence, defendants failure to understand American laws and lack of a lawyer. Proceedings can be time-consuming. Many families and individuals have their cases denied, making courts emotionally charged places where crying and screaming are familiar sounds. Judges often burn out, Mr. Schmidt said.The immigration judges report to a Sessions appointee, James McHenry, the chairman of the office that oversees them. His office controls which cases they will hear and can force judges to prioritize certain cases and send them around the country to work. Mr. Sessions has assigned 18 immigration judges to work at detention centers near the border, about a 50 percent increase in the ranks of judges handling immigration cases in those areas.In a speech on Monday at the judges conference outside Washington, hosted by the Justice Department, Mr. Sessions asked them to look for inefficiencies to finish cases more quickly.We have to be very productive, he said. Volume is critical.Three judges said they were struck by his emphasis on speed, prosecutions and policy matters without acknowledgment of the need to balance those demands with ensuring due process for immigrants. They said they feared the focus on metrics and closing cases would make it harder to sort through complicated cases and easier to simply deny applications for entry into the United States.Scores of attendees wore American flag pins in support of judicial independence and integrity in our courts, according to a note accompanying the pins.Dozens of judges who gathered early Monday evening expressed anxiety over their treatment, according to one person present who was not authorized to share the details of the private meeting.They said they lacked specifics on which cases would count toward their quotas. They pointed to Mr. Sessionss ban on their use of administrative closure, the tool that effectively allowed them to close cases. And they worried that his zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration would flood the system with new cases and make it hard for them to decrease the system backlog of about 700,000 cases.The potential impact of Mr. Sessionss zero-tolerance policy toward immigration has been of particular concern to judges who are already grappling with a large caseload. Its as if local police and prosecutors decided to prosecute every traffic ticket of anyone going 2 miles per hour over the speed limit and filled the court system with those cases, Mr. Schmidt said.Judges are also resigning in large numbers, Ms. Marks said, a pattern she expected to continue. As of last year, 39 percent of immigration judges were eligible for retirement, according to a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office. Many immigration judges were sworn in during a wave of hiring in the 1990s.The Justice Department has said it is on pace to hire 100 more judges this year, and its data shows that the department has never filled every slot. Currently there are 336 judges out of the 484 authorized slots.In a conference session on Tuesday afternoon with Mr. McHenry, one judge asked if they could delay disciplining judges on the attorney generals directives about metrics and streamlining the system. The room erupted in applause, but the question went unanswered.

Politics

Politics|After refusing to do so, Trump orders flags to be flown at half-staff.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/after-refusing-to-do-so-trump-orders-flags-to-be-flown-at-half-staff.htmlCredit...Erin Scott for The New York TimesJan. 10, 2021President Trump on Sunday issued a proclamation ordering that the American flag at the White House and at all federal buildings and grounds be lowered in honor of two U.S. Capitol police officers who died after the violent riot by the presidents supporters at the Capitol on Wednesday.The move came after the flags at the Capitol complex had been lowered in honor of Officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries he sustained engaging with the mob of Trump supporters who broke in and overtook the building. Another officer, Howard Liebengood, died by suicide over the weekend.Despite widespread criticism, Mr. Trump had refused to lower the flags, but relented on Sunday. I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, January 13, 2021, Mr. Trump wrote in the proclamation. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

Politics

Credit...Dan Koeck/ReutersJune 1, 2018WASHINGTON Senator Heidi Heitkamp, the centrist Democrat from North Dakota who is fighting a pitched battle to save her seat, has gotten a lift from an unlikely source: the conservative billionaire Koch brothers.Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group backed by Charles G. and David H. Koch, unveiled a digital ad campaign on Friday thanking Ms. Heitkamp for her support of recently passed legislation that loosened regulations on small and medium-size banks that were swept up in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.[David Koch Died on Aug. 23 at the Age of 79]The ad is the latest evidence that the brothers, often at odds with President Trump, may be moving away from strictly partisan work on behalf of Republicans in favor of initiatives that will advance their libertarian-leaning legislative priorities, including free trade, immigration legislation and access to medicines, regardless of party affiliation.Ms. Heitkamp is one of 10 Democratic senators up for re-election in states won by Mr. Trump in 2016, but unlike other Democrats, she has drawn a top-flight challenger in Kevin Cramer, North Dakotas lone House member and a close ally of the presidents. Her seat is one of the keys to Republican efforts to hold on to or expand the partys one-seat Senate majority.But the Kochs may be putting their personal priorities over the Republican Partys. This week, two other groups backed by the brothers Freedom Partners and the Libre Initiative joined with Americans for Prosperity to lash out at Mr. Trump over the tariffs that he imposed on goods imported from China.Ms. Heitkamp was among more than a dozen Senate Democrats several in states that Mr. Trump won who voted with Republicans to roll back the banking rules. She was the lone Democrat invited to the White House to join Mr. Trump as he signed the measure into law.Thank you, Senator Heitkamp, for giving Main Street relief, the ad, which will be distributed on social media, reads. It connects users to a page allowing them to thank Ms. Heitkamp and other lawmakers for backing the Dodd-Frank overhaul bill.The Libre Initiative, which bills itself as an effort to empower the U.S. Hispanic community, recently sent mailers to the constituents of five Democrats and nine Republicans, praising the lawmakers for their efforts to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.And all three groups singled out another centrist Democrat in a tough re-election fight, Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, for praise after he backed legislation giving terminally ill patients greater access to unproven medications. (The groups praised Mr. Trump for supporting the legislation as well.)Ms. Heitkamp often crosses the aisle to work with Republicans and votes with Mr. Trump 56 percent of the time, according to the FiveThirtyEight website. Her unusually close alliance with the president she was briefly considered for a cabinet appointment has been worrisome to Republicans.The Americans for Prosperity ad campaign is not an indication that the group is supporting her re-election bid. It comes just two months after the group spent $450,000 on a television and digital ad campaign attacking Ms. Heitkamp for her vote against the Republicans tax overhaul.While we dont agree with Senator Heitkamp on everything, particularly her vote against tax relief, we commend her for taking a stand against the leaders of her party to do the right thing, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, said in a statement on Friday, referring to the banking bill.A spokeswoman for the Heitkamp campaign did not address the new Americans for Prosperity campaign directly.Heidi got results for rural North Dakota families and businesses who depend on relationship lending because she is and has always been focused on putting partisan politics aside to deliver for North Dakotans and thats where her focus will remain, the spokeswoman, Julia Krieger, said.

Politics

Feb. 27, 2014SAN FRANCISCO A British intelligence agency collected video webcam images many of them sexually explicit from millions of Yahoo users, regardless of whether they were suspected of illegal activity, according to accounts of documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden.The surveillance effort operated by Britains Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was code-named Optic Nerve. Images from Yahoo webcam chats were captured in bulk through the agencys fiber-optic cable taps and saved to a GCHQ database.It is unclear how much of the data was shared with American officials at the National Security Agency, though the British ran queries of the data using a search tool provided by the N.S.A. called XKeyscore, according to a report on Thursday by The Guardian.The report did not indicate whether the agency also collected webcam images from similar services, such as Google Hangouts or Microsofts Skype. The Guardian did say the British intelligence agency was studying the possibilities of using the cameras in Microsofts Kinect devices, which are used with its Xbox game consoles, to spy on users.Because the British agency lacked the technical means to filter out the content of British or American citizens, and because it faces fewer legal restrictions than the N.S.A. in the United States, documents show that the GCHQ was collecting vast amounts of webcam images. In one six-month period in 2008, the agency collected webcam images from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally, including those of Americans, according to the Guardian report.The British agency restricted its collection by saving one image every five minutes from users feeds, partly to avoid overwhelming its servers. It also restricted its image searches to so-called metadata, information that tells analysts what content the files contain, such as the sender and receivers usernames, file types, time, date and duration of their webcam chat.But analysts were still able to view the contents of webcam chats between users whose usernames matched those of surveillance targets. One document instructs analysts that they are allowed to view webcam images associated with similar Yahoo identifiers to your known target.The agency also apparently experimented with facial-recognition technology, which searched webcam images for faces resembling those of GCHQ targets. One undated document shows that the agency shuttered this capability. It was unclear if or when it was resurrected. It is also unclear if the N.S.A. also had access to the metadata and images.Yahoo said in a statement on Thursday that it was not aware of the program and expressed outrage at published reports.This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users privacy that is completely unacceptable and we strongly call on the worlds governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December, the company said in a statement. We are committed to preserving our users trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services.Microsoft also said it had never heard of the surveillance program or the British governments interest in using the Kinect camera for spying. However, were concerned about any reports of governments surreptitiously collecting private customer data, the company said in a statement. Thats why in December we initiated a broad effort to expand encryption across our services and are advocating for legal reforms.Companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft that operate Internet services send vast amounts of data including video and webcam chats through the fiber-optic lines between their data centers around the world. After recent disclosures about government tapping of some such lines, all three companies have said they are working to encrypt those links between their data centers to thwart spying.Yahoo has said that encryption will be in place for all of its services by March 31. Google has encrypted its video chat services, including Hangouts, since at least 2010.ImageCredit...Kieran Doherty/ReutersIn response to earlier concerns about potential government surveillance of the Kinect camera, Microsoft said last year that it would allow users to turn it off. It also said it did not give any government broad access to Skype data or security technologies.Documents dated between 2008 and 2010 show the GCHQ was collecting still images from Yahoo webcam chats and storing them in an agency database. The GCHQs Optic Nerve program, which began as a prototype, was still active in 2012, according to an internal GCHQ document.The program posed unique challenges. According to one GCHQ document, between 3 and 11 percent of collected Yahoo webcam images contained sexually explicit content. Unfortunately, there are issues with undesirable images within the data, one GCHQ document reads. It would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person.An internal agency survey of 323 Yahoo usernames found that 7.1 percent of those images contained undesirable nudity.The same document also notes that because Yahoo users can broadcast webcam streams to more than one user, without a reciprocal stream, the service appears sometimes to be used for broadcasting pornography.Collecting and storing content from video sources has long posed a dilemma for the N.S.A. and its intelligence counterparts because files are often larger and more difficult to store. Also, the video files often contain pornography, family videos, commercials and content of questionable intelligence value.In its article, The Guardian described one presentation in which GCHQ analysts discuss the possibility in spying on webcam traffic from Microsofts Xbox 360s Kinect camera, claiming it generated fairly normal webcam traffic and was being considered for part of a wider surveillance program.Previous disclosures from documents released by Mr. Snowden show that the N.S.A. was actively exploring the video capabilities of game consoles for surveillance, and that N.S.A. analysts infiltrated virtual games like World of Warcraft and Second Life to snoop on targets.A GCHQ spokesman cited a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters.Furthermore, the spokesman, who declined to be identified, said, all of GCHQs work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state, the Interception and Intelligence Services commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position.Vane Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, said in a statement: The National Security Agency does not ask its foreign partners to undertake any intelligence activity that the U.S. government would be legally prohibited from undertaking itself. N.S.A. works with a number of partners in meeting its foreign intelligence mission goals, and those operations comply with U.S. law and with the applicable laws under which those partners operate.A key part of the protections that apply to both U.S. persons and citizens of other countries is the mandate that information be in support of a valid foreign intelligence requirement, and comply with U.S. attorney general-approved procedures to protect privacy rights. Those procedures govern the acquisition, use and retention of information about U.S. persons.The Guardian article referred to an internal GCHQ document that considered the legalities of the Optic Nerve program as new capabilities, like automated facial matching, were developed. But the article said that the agency would wait to consider legalities until experimental capabilities were fully developed.As The Guardian ran its story, global security experts and intelligence officials were in San Francisco this week at the RSA Conference on cybersecurity.We have to have some understanding about what we are going to collect and what we are not going to collect, Richard Clarke, former United States counterterrorism czar, said. If there are things that we think are so embarrassing that they wouldnt pass the front page test, then dont do it.

Tech

He demonstrated that differences in DNA between groups of people were far smaller than originally believed. He was also a noted opponent of aspects of sociobiology.Credit...Museum of Comparative Zoology, HarvardPublished July 7, 2021Updated July 8, 2021Richard C. Lewontin, widely considered one of the most brilliant geneticists of the modern era and a prolific, elegant and often caustic writer who condemned the facile use of genetics and evolutionary biology to explain human nature, died on Sunday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 92.His son, Timothy, said that the cause was unknown, but that Dr. Lewontin had not been eating for some time.Dr. Lewontin was a pioneer in the study of genetic variation among humans and other animals. Applying insights from mathematics and molecular biology, he radically advanced scientists understanding of the mechanisms of evolutionary change and overturned longstanding assumptions about differences among individuals, races and species.A gleeful gadfly, he tirelessly attacked shibboleths about the primacy of DNA over nurture, culture and history in shaping complex behaviors.Dr. Lewontin spent the bulk of his career at Harvard University. Many of his students and colleagues regarded him with an awe that tipped toward reverence, describing him as equally gifted at abstruse quantitative research, popular writing and public speaking; a Renaissance scholar who spoke fluent French, wrote treatises in Italian, worked with Buckminster Fuller on his geodesic domes and played chamber music on the clarinet with his pianist wife, Mary Jane. He was also a volunteer firefighter and a self-described Marxist who chopped his own wood.Not everyone was enamored of Dr. Lewontin. He famously clashed with another eminence and literary light at Harvard: Edward O. Wilson, a founder of sociobiology, the field that seeks to trace the roots of behavior in evolution. Dr. Lewontin considered Dr. Wilson a nave genetic determinist and once derided him as a corpse in the elevator.Because the two men worked in the same building, elevators were in fact a problem. If you happened to be in an elevator with Wilson and Lewontin together, it was a most uncomfortable ride, said Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist now at the University of Chicago who studied under Dr. Lewontin. Here were these two Harvard professors who wouldnt even look at each other.In fact, Dr. Lewontin seemed to relish a good intellectual skirmish from all comers. Describing his experience studying under the great evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, Dr. Lewontin once said: He and I spent three years of my Ph.D. fighting with each other. He liked it, and I liked it.Dr. Lewontins barbs, however, struck some as excessively harsh, especially from his highly visible perch as a regular and stylistically irresistible contributor to The New York Review of Books and other elite publications.Dick was a complicated man, the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy wrote in an email, generous to his students, grossly unfair in his criticisms of Ed Wilson and the then-fledgling field of sociobiology. Could this have had less to do with scientific specifics, Dr. Hrdy wondered, than with plain old male-male competition? To which Dr. Lewontin might well have pulled out his volunteer firemans hat: When it comes to the persistence of biological determinism, he wrote in 1994, no sooner has one fire been extinguished by the cool stream of critical reason than another springs up down the street.ImageCredit...Genetics Society of AmericaDr. Lewontin first won scientific fame in the mid-1960s for research he conducted with John Hubby at the University of Chicago that revealed far greater genetic diversity among members of the same species than anybody had suspected.That work upended existing notions that most genetic mutations are rare, harmful and soon swept from the breeding pool. The two mens findings showed that, to the contrary, many different forms, or alleles, of the same genes can coexist indefinitely in wild populations of organisms, be they fruit flies, zebra finches, earthworms or zebras. The quest to understand the reasons for all this allelic variety, and to understand precisely how it is maintained over time, remain lively and often contentious fields of research today.Dr. Lewontins scientific renown expanded further in 1972, when he published a groundbreaking analysis of genetic variability in humans. His report showed that while individual people might differ genetically from one another, the same was less true for human groups or human races.Using what would now count as relatively crude genetic markers like blood groups, but pulling from a significant global database, Dr. Lewontin and his co-workers determined that the great bulk of human genetic variability, roughly 85 percent, could be found within a population of, say, Asians or Africans, while just 7 percent of the diversity might distinguish Asians from Africans from Caucasians.People had expected to find lots of genetic differences between groups, Andrew Berry, a lecturer at Harvard who studied under Dr. Lewontin, said. They thought that Asians and Africans had been isolated from each other for such a long time they must have acquired all sorts of bespoke mutations.Dr. Lewontin found something very different: a distinct lack of differences. On a basic genetic level, Asians and Africans, as well as other racial and ethnic groups, are remarkably alike.The message is, despite the superficial differences we see among groups the shape of the nose, the color of hair or skin, humans are stunningly similar, Dr. Berry said. This meshes beautifully with subsequent work that showed humans are a young species that only recently radiated out of Africa.Subsequent in-depth studies of DNA sequences have generally confirmed the remarkable large-scale genetic homogeneity of humanity that the Lewontin study revealed half a century ago.Dr. Lewontins political activism grew in parallel with his scientific renown. He protested vigorously against the war in Vietnam, and in 1971 he quit the esteemed National Academy of Sciences, charging the organization with sponsoring secret military research.He clashed with Edward Teller, considered the father of the hydrogen bomb, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He called Dr. Teller a flunky of power and derided his notion that science is somehow purer and nobler than other pursuits and should remain above the fray. Science is a social activity just like being a policeman, a factory worker or a politician, Dr. Lewontin said.He was no fan of the massive federal Human Genome Project, which set out to map the entire sequence of human DNA, and he strongly objected to the notion that DNA is the blueprint for a human being. He considered the perpetual debate over race, I.Q. and heritability to be an irritating scam, a recrudescence of Nazi-inflected notions of eugenics and master races.Even to begin to figure out how big a role genes played in intellectual life, he said, would require a large number of newborn infants to be raised in tightly controlled circumstances by caretakers who had no idea where the babies came from. We should not be surprised that such a study has not been done, he added.Dr. Lewontin marveled at the perniciousness of sexism, including among his supposedly high-minded peers. When speaking to academic audiences about the biological determination of social status, I have repeatedly tried the experiment of asking the crowd how many believe that blacks are genetically mentally inferior to whites, he wrote in 1994.No one ever raises a hand, he continued. When I then ask how many believe that men are biologically superior to women in analytic and mathematical ability, there will always be a few volunteers. To admit publicly to outright biological racism is a strict taboo, but the avowal of biological sexism is tolerated as a minor foolishness.Dr. Lewontin also criticized the adaptationist view of evolution the idea that everything we see in nature has evolved for a reason, which it behooves biologists to divine. He collaborated with a Harvard colleague, Stephen Jay Gould, on a famous essay called The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Program.They argued that many seemingly important traits might have arisen incidentally, the tag-along result of other features they accompany just as the spandrels, or spaces above arches, on the dome of San Marco were not put there to be richly decorated, but because you cant make a dome without spandrels. Dr. Lewontin eventually grew disenchanted with Dr. Gould, however, for what he saw as Dr. Goulds thirst for celebrity.It was Dr. Lewontins break with another old friend, Dr. Wilson, that proved the more harrowing and long-lasting. Dr. Lewontin in 1975 attacked Dr. Wilsons 700-page blockbuster, Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, as the work of a modern, industrial Western ideologue. Inspired by this and similar critiques, a group of demonstrators at a 1978 scientific meeting dumped a bucket of water over Dr. Wilsons head.The ill will persisted for many years, but friends said the two men had recently reconciled with a handshake, calling each other worthy adversaries.More recently, Dr. Lewontin took on the field of evolutionary psychology. Its a waste of time, he said. It doesnt count as science to me. One of the chestnuts of the discipline is the notion that men are innately prone to straying, and will spread their seed with as many nubile young partners as will have them. While recognizing that anecdote isnt evidence, Dr. Lewontin said, he certainly didnt follow the E.P. male script. He married his high school sweetheart, Mary Jane Christianson, at age 18, ate lunch with her every day, read poetry with her at night, held hands with her in movie theaters and died just three days after she did.In addition to his son Timothy, Dr. Lewontin is survived by three other sons, David, Stephen and James; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.I want to make clear my own attitude, Dr. Lewontin said in 2009. I think most of the interesting questions about human individual and social behavior will never be answered. The human species will be extinct before they are.ImageCredit...Andrew BerryRichard Lewontin was born in New York City on March 29, 1929, the only child of Max and Lilian Lewontin. His father was a cloth broker who connected clothing mills with manufacturers; his mother was a homemaker. He earned a bachelors in biology at Harvard in 1951, a masters degree in mathematical statistics at Columbia and a Ph.D. at Columbia in 1954.Dr. Lewontin held faculty positions at North Carolina State University, the University of Rochester and the University of Chicago before moving to Harvard in 1973.He had habits of dress: Khaki pants, work boots, work shirt in solidarity with workers, Dr. Coyne said. He had habits of principle, notably of authorship: Many senior scientists are listed as authors on research reports done entirely by their students, but Dr. Lewontin would have none of it. If you didnt do any of the work, he insisted, you dont get to take any of the credit.Scientists from around the world were drawn to him. They would gather in his laboratory around an old conference table beneath a mounted moose head and argue about population genetics, legitimate evolutionary theory versus dime-store Darwinism, economics, politics, history, and the debt that university scientists owe to the society that nurtured them.He was the author of It Aint Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions (2000) and The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (2000), among other books, and he loved writing his column for The New York Review of Books. He wrote easily and said he never did a second draft.Yet Dr. Lewontin insisted that his legitimacy as a writer rested on his scientific contributions, and that the day he stopped doing science he would stop writing, too. In 2014, he kept his word.

science

Credit...Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto AgencyApril 7, 2016CAIRO A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition used bombs supplied by the United States in an attack on a market in Yemen last month that killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.The group said it had found fragments of two American-made bombs at the market, in the northern district of Mastaba, linking the United States for the first time to the March 15 airstrikes, which were believed to be the deadliest coalition bombings during Yemens yearlong civil war. The high death toll, along with images of children killed in the blasts, ignited international outrage and prompted calls for an investigation.The Saudi-led coalition has been criticized for carrying out indiscriminate airstrikes that have hit markets, hospitals and homes as it has waged war against the Houthis, a rebel group from Yemens north that seized power from the government last year.Coalition airstrikes have caused most of the civilian deaths in the conflict, according to the United Nations, and have led to mounting calls in Europe for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. An airstrike on another market, in February near Sana, the capital, led the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to call for an inquiry.The debate in the United States over the airstrikes has been much more muted, in part because the Obama administration has provided few details about its precise role in the air campaign. American officials have said they provide assistance to the coalition, including intelligence from reconnaissance drones, airborne fuel tankers and advanced munitions.The assistance is coordinated by a 45-person American military planning group with personnel in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, according to American officials.In Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, where the airstrikes have been concentrated, the Obama administrations participation in the war has fueled growing anger at the United States, residents said. In its report, Human Rights Watch said the United States might be jointly responsible for war crimes violations if it had participated in specific military operations, such as providing advice on targeting decisions and aerial refueling during bombing raids.The U.S. is obligated to investigate allegedly unlawful attacks in which it took part, the group said.In response to questions about the Human Rights Watch report, Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the United States Central Command, or Centcom, wrote in an email that the decisions on the conduct of operations to include selection and final vetting of targets in the campaign are made by the members of the Saudi-led coalition, not the United States.The U.S. is confident that the information that we relay and noncombat support we provide to Saudi Arabia and other coalition members is sound and provides them the best options for military success consistent with international norms and specifically mitigating the potential for civilian casualties, he added.We have consistently reinforced to coalition members the imperative of target analysis and precise application of weapons in order to identify and avoid structures and areas that, if struck, could result in civilian casualties.Human Rights Watch said its researchers had found fragments of what it said was a 2,000-pound American bomb called the MK-84 during a visit to the market on March 28.The group reviewed photographs and footage showing fragments from a second bomb, found by journalists from ITV, the British television network, and determined that it was also an MK-84. The size of the ordnance was determined in part by reviewing photographs of bomb craters, the group said.Establishing the precise size of an air-delivered bomb is hard to do by crater analysis, and it was impossible to independently verify the organizations claims. But if confirmed, the use of 2,000-pound bombs would reflect a decision by the Saudi-led coalition that carried substantial risks for civilians.The 2,000-pound general-purpose bomb, of the American standard Mark 80 series, is the largest of its class. American warplanes typically carry smaller bombs, often in the 500-pound class, in part to reduce property damage and dangers to noncombatants.A spokesman for the Saudi coalition did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the report. The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, previously told Reuters that the coalition struck the market after acting on information provided by anti-Houthi forces loyal to Yemens exiled government.Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the bombs fell about noon, five minutes apart. One landed near a tomato seller and the other near the entrance to the market.A witness told the group that he saw the bodies of 10 Houthi fighters among the dead and that some Houthis frequented a restaurant about 200 feet from the spot where one of the bombs fell.Mohamed Bikili, who had gone to the market that day to buy food, was among the victims, according to his father, Mansoor Ali Bikili. The father said he headed toward the market after hearing the first airstrike, and when he arrived, after the second bombing, the dust in the market had turned black.Mohamed Bikili, 18, was nowhere to be found. Over the next few days, Mr. Bikili recovered parts of what he believed to be his sons body, strewed across the market, he said.

World

Standard DeductionDec. 8, 2015Credit...Elijah Nouvelage/ReutersYahoo has reportedly abandoned its plan to spin off its stake in Alibaba.Yahoos proposed spinoff had been driven by tax concerns. In a world without taxes, Yahoo could have simply sold its Alibaba shares and distributed the proceeds to shareholders. Yahoo will now concentrate on other strategic options, including possibly selling off the core business.Tax considerations have been responsible for a lot of deal flow of late, including real estate investment trust spinoffs (Darden, Sears, Windstream), new energy master limited partnerships, and, of course, corporate inversions (Coca-Cola Enterprises, CF Industries, Burger King/Tim Hortons). But deal flow tends to be cyclical, and the tax phase is waning.What these deals all have in common is a reshuffling of ownership structure in order to shield a portion of business profits from the United States corporate tax. In the case of Yahoo, the company wanted to avoid paying tax on the appreciation in the value of its stake in Alibaba. In the case of corporate inversions, United States-based multinationals give up American citizenship in order to avoid tax on offshore profits and make it easier to shift United States income offshore. In the case of R.E.I.T.s and energy M.L.P.s, businesses that have traditionally operated as taxable corporations split into parts, shifting as much income as possible into real estate or oil and gas entities that are not subject to corporate tax.In tax policy terms, the problem is known as the erosion of the corporate tax base.The government has responded slowly and incrementally, but the sandbags are starting to pile up. Over the last two years, the Treasury Department and I.R.S. have released new guidance on corporate inversions, spinoffs and energy M.L.P.s.Even Congress is showing signs of life. Representative Kevin Brady, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has introduced a bill that would take away the tax benefit of spinning off real estate holdings into a newly formed R.E.I.T.The legislation, part of the year-end package of renewing expired tax breaks known as tax extenders, is likely to pass. Activist shareholders have been pushing for R.E.I.T. spinoffs, also known as OpCo/PropCo structures, at dozens of public companies, including McDonalds and Macys.We should not be too surprised that the R.E.I.T. legislation comes from the Republican side of the aisle. Executives at McDonalds and Macys might prefer not to find themselves in a situation like that of Yahoos chief executive, Marissa Mayer, who has been distracted from her efforts to turn around the business by Byzantine tax rules. While the proposed legislation would not completely halt the expansion of R.E.I.Ts, it would reduce the pressure from activist investors to engage in tax-driven restructurings.The governments response to inversions, R.E.I.T.s and energy M.L.P.s is more Band-Aid than cure. Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren are right to call for legislation that would make these deals less attractive. But Republicans are also right that the deals are symptoms of a diseased tax code.At some point, Congress will have to address the structural distortions of the corporate tax. Similar economic activity is taxed differently depending on changes in legal form. An American corporation pays tax at a 35 percent rate, and shareholders pay additional tax on dividends or capital gains. A United States partnership pays no tax, but instead passes through income to partners. A United States corporation must pay tax at a 35 percent rate on its worldwide income, but foreign corporations pay tax only on United States source income. Corporations pay tax at 35 percent, but corporations with extensive real estate holdings may qualify as R.E.I.T.s and pay no tax on qualifying real estate income. Corporations pay tax at 35 percent, but publicly traded partnerships with qualifying oil and gas income may qualify to pay no tax.These arbitrary legal distinctions provide a great playground for tax lawyers, investment bankers and hedge funds. No tax system can eliminate all distortions, but there is room for bipartisan consensus around a corporate tax system with a lower rate, broader base and fewer distortions.We are all better off when deals are driven by business considerations, not tax considerations. Financial capital should be allocated to its highest and best use, not to companies that have a comparative advantage in avoiding taxes.Stopgap measures have slowed the pace of tax-driven deals. But unless Congress acts to rationalize the corporate and international tax system, water will eventually find its own level, and tax-driven deals will return to the stage before long.

Business

Global HealthCredit...Louise Murray/Barcroft Media, via Getty ImagesNov. 10, 2016Some British red squirrels cute and pointy-eared, like Beatrix Potters Squirrel Nutkin carry a medieval form of human leprosy, scientists have learned.Red squirrels are disappearing from the British Isles, and researchers performed DNA tests on more than 100 animals as part of study to try to find out why. All 25 roadkill specimens collected on Brownsea Island, off Englands south coast, were infected with Mycobacterium leprae.Leprosy has not been found in humans in Britain since the 1500s. But the M. leprae strain carried by the squirrels is a close genetic relative to one found in a skeleton buried in nearby Winchester 730 years ago, said the researchers, whose work appeared Wednesday in the journal Science.Because red squirrels are shy and rarely let people touch them, the transmission risk is low, said Stewart T. Cole, the director of the Global Health Institute at the Federal Polytechnical School of Lausanne, Switzerland, and an author of the study.Americans who hunt armadillos or keep them as pets have caught leprosy from them, however, so there is a theoretical risk, Dr. Cole said, and park rangers who handle squirrels should wear gloves.Europeans used to trap red squirrels for meat and fur, and transmission may have once been more common, he added.Nine other squirrels gathered in Ireland and Scotland were found to harbor Mycobacterium lepromatosis, a more dangerous form of leprosy discovered in 2008 and previously known to infect only humans in Mexico and the Caribbean.Not all infected squirrels had leprosy symptoms, but some had large lumps and hair loss on their ears, heads and feet.About 220,000 humans, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America, become infected with leprosy each year. Although it can be cured by lengthy antibiotic treatment, the disease is often not detected until it has damaged nerves in the hands, feet and face, which leaves victims unable to feel burns, cuts and ulcers that can cause serious deformities.Red squirrels inhabit Europe and Asia from Ireland to Russias eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, although some have fur so dark it appears black. Only about 140,000 remain in Britain, but leprosy is not to blame.Their numbers have been reduced by habitat loss, competition with millions of American grey squirrels, and a pox virus introduced by American squirrels. Leprosy symptoms were not seen in any grey squirrels, Dr. Cole said, and the few the team tested had no bacteria.We only looked at four, Dr. Cole admitted. To be honest, the red squirrels are very popular, whereas the grey are regarded as vermin.

Health

Credit...Hunter McRae for The New York TimesJune 12, 2018MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. Mark Sanford smiled. He shook hands, posed for photographs and drove himself around his district on Election Day. He ordered a chocolate milkshake.But all day, after all these years as a governor and a congressman, he seemed to know what might be coming: his first concession speech. So it came to be in a crowded restaurant here on Tuesday night, hours after he had been openly mocked by President Trump, then knocked aside by a rival who vowed a close alliance with the White House. Mr. Sanford, a politician first sent to Washington as an insurgent of one era, was toppled in a different moment by a different kind of renegade.We are to cower before the people who elected us, and I get their verdict tonight, Mr. Sanford said, reading from scribbled notes on a legal pad, as it became clear he would lose his House race against Katie Arrington in South Carolinas Republican primary.Even for a politician accustomed to humiliations his marital infidelity and ill-fated, infamous trip to the Appalachian Trail, which was actually Argentina, still proved ripe for jabs this campaign Mr. Sanfords political unraveling in South Carolina was a striking comedown that somehow seemed both impossible and inescapable.Theres a different feel to this race, based on something that Ive never experienced before, which is at times being hit not on ideas that Ive espoused or held, but based on allegiance, Mr. Sanford said earlier in the day as he campaigned. Ive never experienced that before.With some people, he added, the allegiance to ideas is secondary to their belief in the importance of their allegiance to a person.When a reporter asked him whether he was optimistic about his chances, he replied, I think confident is too strong a word.And that was before Mr. Trumps late-afternoon tweet, posted from Air Force One less than three hours before the polls were to close here. Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sanford was nothing but trouble and very unhelpful in advancing his administrations agenda. He endorsed Ms. Arrington, but also included a pointed dig at Mr. Sanfords personal life. He is better off in Argentina, the president wrote.It is not clear how many voters saw the presidents 11th-hour endorsement and how many of them it swayed. But Mr. Trumps tweet in support of Ms. Arringtons bid in the First Congressional District was perhaps the final death knell in a two-act political career that toggled between spectacles and subtle moments.Mr. Sanford, after all, was a governor who once brought squealing pigs into the South Carolina State House to make a point about pork-barrel spending. His penchant for sleeping in his congressional office still resonated with voters who met him Tuesday over plates of pork and, surprisingly enough, an entree salad at a barbecue restaurant. Lawmakers thought about impeaching him when he was governor, and when he staged a political comeback in 2013, he ran for the House against the comedian Stephen Colberts sister.But he was also known, if not equally so, for private conversations with constituents, his cellphone number essentially an open secret in South Carolina. People called him Mark.Then on Tuesday, Mr. Sanford confronted a race largely defined by his resistance, extravagant by the standards of congressional Republicans, to Mr. Trump: critiques of the presidents behavior, skepticism of the administrations push for tariffs and previous calls for the president to release his tax returns.The approach plainly irritated both Mr. Trump and many voters in the district, which runs along much of South Carolinas coast.Although the district includes Charleston, the states largest city, it also takes in more rural areas that strongly favor Mr. Trump, who carried it by 14 points in 2016 and has sometimes become a singular litmus test in Republican primaries since then.This is certainly, for lack of a better term, a schizophrenic district, Mr. Sanford said on Tuesday as he drove his well-worn Chevrolet Suburban to a deli in Summerville.The biggest county is Charleston County its a blue county! so when I do a town-hall meeting, you do 1,000 or 500 people screaming at you saying Trump needs to be impeached, he continued. Meanwhile, you find yourself in a Republican primary where youre not Trump enough. Its like you cant win these days, in terms of trying to talk about ideas.Mr. Sanford stuck with an old-school strategy, content with what he noted proudly had worked before and the time before that and the time before that, but Ms. Arrington summoned a political strength that by turns mesmerized and infuriated his voters and supporters.She swung at Mr. Sanford with little apparent reservation or restraint, filling her advertisements and debates with barbs about the congressmans personal and political integrity.You cant have a seat at the table in the Oval Office, because you have offended the president numerous times, Ms. Arrington told Mr. Sanford during a debate on a talk-radio station on Monday. You should have the wherewithal not to go on CNN to bash our president. Instead, work with the president, work with leadership to get done what we want done here.Before the primary, Ms. Arrington, who has worked in defense contracting, not-so-subtly invoked the marital infidelity that nearly drove Mr. Sanford from the governors wing of offices in Columbia, the state capital, and cost him his marriage to the woman who helped forge his rise in politics.Mark Sanford and the career politicians cheated on us, she said in one commercial. Referring to the snicker-inducing false alibi of an Appalachian Trail outing that he once offered for an absence from the capital, she said, Bless his heart, but its time for Mark Sanford to take a hike for real this time.Mr. Trump ultimately opted for a similar line of attack. His endorsement of Ms. Arrington, though, was late arriving. Mr. Trump had already backed, and raised money for, Gov. Henry McMaster, who was forced into a runoff on Tuesday.Its an example of the president not wanting to put any of his own personal political capital on the line because the race is close but wanting to be able to take credit for it should it go Katie Arringtons way, said Rob Godfrey, who was a top aide to Nikki R. Haley, now Mr. Trumps envoy to the United Nations, when she was governor of South Carolina. Its another profile in Trump courage.By the time Mr. Trump had set Mr. Sanfords supporters seething anew, the congressman had sensed that he was in political jeopardy.He partly shed his reputation as a campaign skinflint, pouring close to $400,000 into advertisements for the primary race, including one in which he said, Overwhelmingly, Ive voted with the president. And then on Tuesday, he fell back on what he thought he needed to do: drive, without aides in tow, from one restaurant to another to chat up customers and workers.Jim N Nicks. Grouchos. Ye Old Fashioned Ice Cream & Sandwich Cafe.Most everyone recognized him. On Tuesday night, it became clear that was not enough.

Politics

Politics|The man who stormed Pelosis office and a West Virginia lawmaker are among those arrested.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/richard-barnett-derrick-evans.htmlThe man who stormed Pelosis office and a West Virginia lawmaker are among those arrested.Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockPublished Jan. 8, 2021Updated Jan. 9, 2021A lawmaker from West Virginia and a man who broke into Speaker Nancy Pelosis office and posed at a desk there were among those arrested on charges related to the siege at the Capitol, federal law enforcement officials announced on Friday as they promised an exhaustive investigation into the violence.The authorities also found 11 Molotov cocktails and a semiautomatic rifle in the truck of a 70-year-old man from Alabama who was also arrested, according to prosecutors. He also had two handguns.Hundreds of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have been assigned to work the investigation and were pursuing dozens of cases, Ken Kohl, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorneys office in Washington, said in a briefing with reporters.We are far from done, added Steven M. DAntuono, who runs the F.B.I.s Washington field office.Federal law enforcement officials have charged at least 13 people, the Justice Department said in a news release later Friday, several on charges of unlawful entry. Washington police have also arrested dozens, mostly on charges of unlawful entry and curfew violations. The United States Capitol Police announced the arrests of 14 other people on Thursday.Among those charged was Derrick Evans, a newly elected lawmaker from West Virginia, Mr. Kohl said. Mr. Evans posted video to his Facebook page of him filming as he stood among the crowd outside a Capitol door and then rushing inside with them.Another man, Richard Barnett, 60, from Gravette, Ark., was taken into custody and faces three counts. He had posted a picture on social media that showed him sitting at a desk in Ms. Pelosis office with his feet up and said he had expected to be arrested.Ill probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail, Mr. Barnett told a New York Times reporter later that day.A day earlier, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint accusing a man named Mark J. Leffingwell of punching a Capitol Police officer repeatedly in the head and chest, before apologizing. Prosecutors also unsealed charges against a Maryland resident, Christopher Alberts, accusing him of illegally carrying a 9-millimeter pistol at the riot. Mr. Alberts told the police that he had the weapon for personal protection and did not intend to harm anyone.

Politics

J.J. Watt Moves Hurricane Victims Back Home ... Emotional Video 1/26/2018 Remember when J.J. Watt raised $37 MILLION for Hurricane Harvey relief?? Grab your tissues, 'cause families impacted by the disaster are moving back home ... and the video will hit you right in the feels. The Texans superstar shared the update on Friday ... revealing after a 6-month renovation, one Houston family is finally able to move back into the home where they had lived for 45 years. FYI -- the Leonards were the first family Watt visited following his season-ending leg injury. They had to be rescued TWICE during the disaster, and their house was destroyed. But the Leonards are finally able to move back in today ... and Mr. Leonard joked that the home is in even better shape now than when they bought the house 46 years ago!! "I just want to say thank you to everybody that helping me and my wife get back in our sanctuary," Leonard says. "Because after 6 months, I've learned a lot. By not being in the house ... I've lived here, I've lived there, and it's nothing like home."

Entertainment

News AnalysisThe two Democratic victories in the Senate runoffs confirmed that Georgias metamorphosis from conservative bastion to battleground state was complete.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021ATLANTA Now we know for sure: Georgia going Democratic wasnt just a fluke for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November. There are forces at work that are rapidly turning the state blue, redrawing the American electoral map.The victories on Wednesday by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who became the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the South, and Jon Ossoff, also in his first elective office, confirmed that Georgias metamorphosis from conservative bastion to battleground state was complete. The changing demographics are likely to reshape the political dynamics of this Deep South state for a generation.Until this week, Republicans held every statewide elective office and majorities in both houses of the legislature. But the victories by Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff in the runoff races, coming on the heels of a narrow win by President-elect Biden, showed that Democrats could forge a coalition to win Georgia even when the focus shifted away from removing President Trump from office.Perhaps even more significant, Tuesdays results showed that Democrats could mobilize their diverse and largely metropolitan voting base to boost two overtly liberal candidates a Jewish man and Black man to the Senate from Georgia for the first time in history.Theres no going back, said Jacquelyn Bettadapur, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Cobb County, a once conservative suburban county where Mr. Biden won in November by double digits. A Democrat would be a fool not to play in Georgia going forward.From the earliest moments of the Trump era, Georgia emerged as a hotbed of Democratic opposition, attracting national attention and a flood of political spending after Mr. Ossoff announced his run for a House seat two weeks before Mr. Trumps inauguration. Since then, the state has been caught up in the political upheaval brought by a polarizing president.In 2018, Gov. Brian Kemp, with the backing of Mr. Trump, won a narrow victory against Stacey Abrams. This week, Mr. Kemps name prompted jeers from a Republican audience at a Trump rally after he refused the presidents efforts to overturn millions of votes in the state. Democrats, meanwhile, are celebrating Ms. Abrams as a liberal hero for turning out voters and swinging the state.The two Democratic Senate candidates were a striking shift from previous recruits, who tended to be white moderates, and stepped gingerly, and sometimes awkwardly, around the God and guns issues crucial to white voters who had become disenchanted with Democrats.Mr. Ossoff, with his degrees from Georgetown and the London School of Economics, speaks without a hint of Southern twang; he could hail from Santa Monica, or Portland. He would also be the first Jewish person to be elected to the Senate from Georgia.Mr. Warnock is the kind of preacher who sees activism as central to the mission of the Black church. As pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, he has embraced Dr. Kings philosophy of economic justice as a corollary to racial justice.In effect, the two men ran as themselves. As unabashed liberals. In Georgia.ImageCredit...Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesThe embrace of a more progressive strategy is a result of years of organizing by Black activists, particularly Ms. Abrams, whose 2018 campaign established a blueprint for turning out young, minority and previously neglected Georgians who leaned Democratic. Her defeat supercharged efforts to register voters, bringing an influx of money, national attention and local volunteers.Yet the biggest assist for Democrats may have come from Mr. Trump himself, who alienated moderate Georgia suburbanites, energized a new generation of voters and alarmed many residents of color, all of which helped Democrats piece together a coalition. Without Mr. Trump as the primary antagonist in future elections, it remains unclear whether Democrats will be able to maintain their political energy in the state.Mr. Trump is responsible for Tuesdays outcome in another way as well. He repeatedly made baseless claims that his own loss in Georgia was the result of a rigged election system, prompting public battles with Mr. Kemp and other state Republican officials. A leaked recording made the weekend before the election showed that Mr. Trump had pressured Georgias secretary of state, a Republican, to find votes that would help him overturn his defeat.A top Georgia elections official, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, said that Mr. Trumps false insistence of a corrupt election and the conflict those claims caused within the party might have depressed Republican turnout. A poor showing by Republicans would fall squarely on the shoulders of President Trump and his actions since Nov. 3, Mr. Sterling said on CNN.But Democrats played down Mr. Trumps impact, instead crediting their push to expand and refocus the partys infrastructure, which allowed them to capitalize on the states demographic shifts.Representative Nikema Williams, the state Democratic Party chairwoman who was sworn into Congress this week, said Mr. Bidens victory gave Democrats, particularly Black voters, confidence that they could win competitive races. Early voting showed that turnout among Black voters increased from November, a notable shift from the drop-off that is typical in runoff races.This election was not about Donald Trump, Ms. Williams said. This was about people on the ground realizing that if they show up en masse, they can overcome the voter suppression and we can win Georgia.Regardless of how much influence Mr. Trump continues to command after he leaves office, its clear that politics in Georgia have fundamentally changed in ways that will force both parties to shift their strategies.Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science in Atlanta, said that the Democrats success this week portended a future of close outcomes and split victories, where Republicans win some statewide contests and Democrats win some statewide contests.Republicans, she said, will have to adjust to the reality of running in a competitive environment. From now on, she said, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Republicans to expect double-digit wins in statewide races, the way that Saxby Chambliss, the U.S. senator, did in his 2008 runoff against the Democrat Jim Martin.Demographic change goes a long way in explaining the transformation of Georgia politics. White residents, by some estimates, could cease to be the majority in the state by around 2028. Ms. Gillespie said the Democratic Party had built a strategy to take advantage of that change and expand its electorate.The Democratic Party has turned latent voters into registered voters, and then into actual voters, she said.The Democratic victories are likely to give the party even more swagger as its members relish the chance of a potential rematch in the Georgia governors race in 2022. Mr. Kemp may once again face Ms. Abrams, who lost to him in 2018 by about 55,000 votes. Thats assuming he survives a likely primary challenge being stoked by Mr. Trump.Mr. Kemp is a formidable fund-raiser with deep cultural ties to rural Georgia voters, who remain a potent force. But on Tuesday night, the Democrats trash talking had already begun.Kemp might need to go ahead and look for a second home because 2022 is a wrap for him both in the primary and general, Ms. Williams said, laughing.Ms. Abramss national star, already ascending, is likely to soar. Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock are close allies with whom she campaigned and strategized, after she disappointed national Democrats by declining to run for the seat herself. The two men ran on a playbook Ms. Abrams helped write, jettisoning efforts to run hard to the center, while focusing on minority voters and registering new ones.If Ms. Abrams does run against Mr. Kemp again, she will almost certainly put that strategy to work in an effort to become Georgias first Black governor.

Politics

Media|Disney Invests $200 Million More in Vice Media to Support New Programminghttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/media/disney-invests-200-million-more-in-vice-media-to-support-new-programming.htmlDec. 8, 2015Credit...Jemal Countess/Getty ImagesDisney has invested another $200 million in Vice Media, doubling its stake just weeks after its first investment, people familiar with the deal said on Tuesday.The cash infusion brings Disneys stake in Vice to about 10 percent, according to one of the people. The investment does not change Vices valuation, the person said, which last month was put in the range of $4.2 billion to $4.5 billion.The money will help finance original programming, including TV shows, the people said. Vice is expected to unveil its new cable channel, Viceland, as early as the end of February, and intends to fill it with lifestyle and entertainment programming. Viceland will replace H2, the History channel spinoff owned by A&E Networks.The investment which brings Disneys total to $400 million is the latest show of support for Vice, whose brash voice and ability to attract young male viewers has attracted piles of cash from traditional media companies seeking to reach its core audience. A&E Networks, the television group owned by Hearst and Disney, invested $250 million last year, and 21st Century Fox has invested $70 million.Vice also has a weekly newsmagazine show on HBO and is expected to introduce a daily newscast on the premium cable network next year.Family-friendly Disney and insurgent Vice might seem like strange bedfellows, but one reason for the relationship could involve the challenges facing the cable television business. As subscriber losses and ratings declines hold back growth at some of Disneys older channels, including ESPN, Viceland could pick up some of the slack. Disney declined to comment on Tuesday.A&E Networks and Vice said last month when they announced the long-awaited deal that the channel would initially be distributed to about 70 million homes in the United States.Despite Vices raciness, Disney believes in the fledgling companys multiscreen approach to delivering news and entertainment and its understanding of young adult audiences, said people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships. Although the odd-couple nature of Disney and Vice carries risks, Disney has come to believe that the Vice brand can be kept entirely separate from its own.Brooks Barnes contributed reporting

Business

The ShiftIt is less clear that tech executives strategy of evasive answers will continue to work now that lawmakers have begun doing their homework.Credit...Pablo RochatJuly 30, 2020When Mark Zuckerberg appeared in front of Congress two years ago, the Facebook chief executives memorable retort to a clueless questioner was Senator, we run ads. After Wednesdays marathon appearance by Mr. Zuckerberg and three other tech titans at a House hearing on competition in the tech industry, a more fitting quote might be Congresswoman, Im not sure what you would mean by threaten.That was Mr. Zuckerbergs evasive answer to a question asked by Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, about whether Facebook had ever threatened to squash smaller competitors by copying their products if they wouldnt let Facebook acquire them.It was a good question with a clear-cut answer. Facebooks copy-and-crush approach has been well documented for years, and Ms. Jayapal brought even more receipts previously undisclosed messages in which Mr. Zuckerberg issued thinly veiled threats to Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, about what would happen to his company if he refused to sell.An honest Mr. Zuckerberg might have replied, Yes, Congresswoman, like most successful tech companies, we acquire potential competitors all the time, and copy the ones we cant buy. Thats how weve avoided going extinct like MySpace or Friendster, and were about to do it again with Instagram Reels, our new TikTok clone. That would have been an illuminating answer, and one that could have let lawmakers in on the kill-or-be-killed ethos of Silicon Valley. Instead, he dodged and weaved, trying to explain away the emails without admitting the obvious.He did the same thing when Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, pressed him for answers about Facebook Research an app that was used to snoop on users smartphone usage and give Facebook detailed data about its competitors. Mr. Zuckerberg initially said he wasnt familiar with the app, even though Apples decision to bar it from its App Store nearly caused a meltdown at his company last year. (He later said he misspoke, and that he remembered it.)I dont mean to pick on Mr. Zuckerberg. Every other witness at Wednesdays hearing Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple also dodged lawmakers most pointed questions, or professed their ignorance.The result was a hearing that, at times, felt less like a reckoning than an attempted gaslighting a group of savvy executives trying to convince lawmakers that the evidence that their yearslong antitrust investigation had dug up wasnt really evidence of anything.The performance wasnt particularly convincing. You dont become a tech mogul by being sloppy or forgetful, and it strains credulity to imagine that these four hypercompetitive, detail-obsessed men all of whom had many weeks to prepare for Wednesdays hearing simply didnt remember major decisions theyd made.At one point, Mr. Bezos was asked about a recent Wall Street Journal report that Amazon had set up a venture capital fund to invest in start-ups, only to then introduce its own versions of those start-ups products.I dont know the specifics of that situation, Mr. Bezos replied.At another point, Mr. Pichai, asked to explain whether it was anticompetitive for Google to threaten to delist Yelp if it didnt allow the companys search engine to use its listings in its featured snippets, said he was happy to engage and understand the specifics at a later date. Yelp has complained publicly about Googles search engine for years.And confronted with emails acquired by House investigators in which Apple employees promised to fast-track a company through its App Store approval process a seeming contradiction of Mr. Cooks assertion that it treated all developers equally Mr. Cook responded, I dont know about that, sir.Give the executives this: Its hard to have nuanced conversations about complex and often technical topics in front of an audience of hostile politicians, some of whom seemed more interested in generating fiery clips for their Facebook pages than investigating antitrust concerns. And the panels format rapid-fire rounds of questioning conducted over video conference, with each member given only five minutes at a time to question the witnesses nearly guaranteed that the conversation would remain surface-level.In addition, many Republican members of the subcommittee seemed to have no interest in antitrust issues at all, preferring instead to ride partisan hobby horses like claims of anti-conservative bias on social media.But many Democratic members came armed with real, substantive questions that deserved a fuller airing. The executives choice to sidestep these questions or their inability to answer before being cut off may signal that they still believe they can run circles around Congress without engaging in hard, detailed conversations about how they exercise their power.That may have been a reasonable conclusion to draw after the past several years, a period in which Silicon Valley giants added hundreds of billions of dollars in market value while Washington barely gave it a passing glance. Despite plenty of clamoring, lawmakers have failed to pass any meaningful privacy or data protection laws during President Trumps time in office, and Mr. Trump has shown little interest in any tech regulation that does not involve his own Twitter account.But it is less clear that a say-nothing strategy will continue to work, now that lawmakers have begun doing their homework. Sure, some members of Congress may still need their iPhones explained to them, but there is real expertise on Capitol Hill that wasnt there even a year ago, and new allies who are willing to give Congress the ammunition it needs.When Mr. Zuckerberg appeared before Congress in 2018, tech expertise in Washington was a rare commodity. Now, antitrust experts schooled in the intricacies of tech platforms are helping Congress investigate.One such specialist, Lina Khan, whose analysis of Amazons anti-competitive business practices made her a star of the hipster antitrust movement, appeared at Wednesdays hearing sitting behind Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, whom she now advises. Tech industry leaders, who once refrained from criticizing their fellow titans out of courtesy or cowardice, are now speaking up about issues like the 30 percent cut Apple takes from purchases made through its App Store. And if Mr. Trump loses his re-election bid in November, the calls from Democrats to break up or regulate big tech companies will only grow louder.None of this necessarily means that Congress is on the verge of reining in Silicon Valleys excesses. There are still plenty of lawmakers who would rather focus on promoting dubious claims of partisan censorship on Facebook, or complaining about fund-raising emails getting stuck in constituents spam filters. And tech companies generally good reputations with Americans not to mention their deep lobbying pockets may protect them in the end.But at certain moments on Wednesday, each of the four tech executives appeared to be taken off guard by the rigor and depth of the questions they faced. If they were expecting to teach Tech 101 to a group of clueless lawmakers, they instead found themselves in the principals office, being confronted with evidence of the spitballs theyd thrown. And they must have realized, in those moments, that they were seeing the beginnings of accountability.

Tech

Science|After Dinosaur Extinction, Some Insects Recovered More Quicklyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/science/fossilized-leaves-insect-bites-patagonia.htmlTrilobitesCredit...Michael DonovanNov. 7, 2016The asteroid that smashed into the Earth near Chicxulub, Mexico, some 66 million years ago annihilated the dinosaurs and obliterated about 75 percent of all plant and animal species on Earth. The devastation affected insects living thousands of miles north and south of the impact zone as well.In western North America, earlier research found that it took nine million years for ancient insects to recover from the extinction event. But on the other side of the world, in South Americas Patagonia region, new findings suggest that the insects bounced back twice as fast.ImageCredit...Michael DonovanScientists dont know why the two regions rebounded at different rates, but studies of fossilized leaves with nibbles and bite marks from insects showed evidence of Patagonias speedier recovery.After examining more than 3,600 fossilized leaves from Patagonia for insect damage, researchers have concluded that it took about 4 million years for insects in South America to recover after the mass extinction event that ended the Cretaceous period.They reported their findings Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.We found that plant-feeding insects in Patagonia recovered much faster after the asteroid that hit Mexico 66 million years ago compared to insects in the western United States, said Michael Donovan, a graduate student in geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study which included researchers from Argentina. The findings suggest that ecosystems in different parts of the world repaired themselves at different rates following the asteroid impact.Like their modern-day counterparts, ancient beetles, moths, flies, wasps, grasshoppers and other insects all feasted upon plants in unique ways, leaving behind distinct patterns of damage. Some bit holes through leaves while others only munched on the top or bottom layers. Some chewed along the veins of the leaf while others chomped through it. Others used their strawlike mouthparts to pierce the leaves and suck up juices. Larvae burrowed through the leaves and created tunnel marks while eggs leave lumps in the leaves.After millions of years, the damaged leaves fossilized. Scientists can characterize and classify the leaf damage and use the patterns to gain insight into the types of insects that were present during a particular time period. Though they cannot identify what specific species caused each damage mark, by looking at the diversity of damage types occurring over the course of millions of years they can infer more generally about how insects thrived at different time periods.Plants and insects are important parts of the food webs on land, and many other organisms rely on them for food and shelter, said Mr. Donovan. We can use plants and insects and their interactions to get a better idea of whats going on with their ecosystems.In the time before the asteroid impact there were numerous types of leaf damage in the fossil record. But immediately following the event, the numbers and types of damage dropped significantly, meaning that the insects that ate the leaves were suffering. In Patagonia it took about 4 million years for the amount and diversity of leaf damage in the fossil record to resemble what they looked like before the extinction event.The teams next steps are to compare insect damage data from other parts of the world with that from South America to better understand how ecosystems recovered after the asteroid impact.

science

June 14, 2018WASHINGTON New texts released Thursday by the Justice Departments inspector general show that the F.B.I. agent overseeing the investigation into President Trumps campaign pledged to stop Mr. Trump from becoming president.[Trumps] not ever going to become president, right? asked a top F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page, in one text. Right?!Peter Strzok, the agent overseeing the F.B.I.s investigation into links between Mr. Trumps campaign and Russia, answered, No. No he wont. Well stop it.The exchange, in August 2016, came shortly after the investigation into Russian tampering with the election began.The Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, said that the texts raise significant questions about the F.B.I.s credibility during a politically delicate investigation, but he said that he found no evidence that the agents political views affected the inquiry.Nevertheless, Mr. Trumps allies seized on the texts to further their contention that a Deep State embedded in the federal government had started the investigation into links between the presidents campaign and Russia to take him down.The report shows how the F.B.I. became infected with politics and continuously disregarded rules and procedures to the detriment of Donald Trump and benefit of Hillary Clinton, said Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California.Along with overseeing the Trump investigation, Mr. Strzok had been the lead agent on the inquiry into Hillary Clintons email account. The texts were included in the report by the Justice Departments inspector general into how the F.B.I. handled the investigation into Mrs. Clintons email account during the election. The report said that many of the texts that expressed political views were related to the investigation of Mr. Trump, not of Mrs. Clinton.The implication in some of these text messages, Mr. Horowitz wrote, was that Strzok might be willing to take official action to impact a presidential candidates electoral prospects.But, he concluded, the inspector generals office found no evidence in emails, text messages, instant messages, or documents that suggested an improper purpose in the direction that Mr. Strzok took the investigation.Mr. Strzoks lawyer, Aitan Goelman, said that Mr. Horowitzs conclusion about whether Mr. Strzok may have had political bias was critically flawed and bizarre.Mr. Goelman said that while pundits and politicians had used Mr. Strzok as a way to advance their political agenda, the truth about Special Agent Strzoks character and professionalism is found in the fact that every witness asked by the inspector generals office said that Strzoks work was never influenced by political views.But those politicians kept at it. Its a very damning indictment on Peter Strzok, said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and a close ally of the presidents. I dont see any way that he can continue to serve with the confidence of D.O.J. and F.B.I. officials.Part of the report focuses on how Mr. Strzok handled the Clinton email investigation in the weeks before the election. In September 2016, senior F.B.I. officials in Washington including Mr. Strzok learned that the bureau had obtained a laptop from former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clintons longtime aide. The officials were told there may be emails on the laptop from Mrs. Clintons personal account.Mr. Horowitz said the F.B.I. did not move quickly enough to look into what was on the laptop. That ensured that when Mr. Comey informed Congress that he had reopened the investigation Mrs. Clintons email account, it came only 11 days before the election.Mr. Horowitz said that Mr. Strzoks text about stopping Mr. Trump from becoming president showed that he may be willing to take an official action to affect the election. He said that Mr. Strzok had prioritized the Trump investigation over the Clinton one, and that had raised questions about the bureaus delay on looking into the laptop.Under these circumstances, we did not have confidence that Strzoks decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on investigative leads related to the Clinton investigation, Mr. Horowitz said.Mr. Goelman strongly disagreed.In fact, all facts contained in the report led to the conclusion that the delay was caused by a variety of factors and miscommunications that had nothing to do with Special Agent Strzoks political views, he said. The report itself provides indisputable evidence that, when informed that Weiners laptop contained Clinton emails, Strzok immediately had the matter pursued by two of his most qualified and aggressive investigators.He continued: While Special Agent Strzok openly admitted that he believed that the Russia investigation was far more important to American national security than the Clinton email investigation, this conclusion is evidence of Special Agent Strzoks lucidity, not his bias.The texts released Thursday were recently discovered by the inspector generals office. It had been revealed in December that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page had exchanged anti-Trump texts. Shortly after that disclosure, the Department of Justice provided hundreds of them to Congress, which made them public.The texts set off a stream of criticism against the F.B.I. from Mr. Trump, his allies and conservative news media outlets. Since then, the Trump camp has demonized Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page, saying that the texts are evidence the investigation is truly a witch hunt.Mr. Horowitz said that the damage caused by these employees actions extends far beyond the scope of the Clinton investigation and goes to the heart of the F.B.I.s reputation for neutral fact finding and political independence.

Politics

Credit...Gerald Herbert/Associated PressFeb. 17, 2014NEW ORLEANS After 45 minutes worth of pregame festivities that included a music concert, an appearance by Snoop Dogg, streamers that fell from the ceiling and player introductions, LeBron James finally christened the N.B.A. All-Star Game on Sunday night in familiar fashion: with a steal near midcourt, a handful of loping strides and a dunk with just the right amount of ferocity.It was the opening possession, and it proved to be the rare sequence that actually featured defense as James helped lead the East to a 163-155 victory over the West at Smoothie King Center. The 318 combined points set an All-Star Game record.Comparisons between James and Kevin Durant, the leagues two most transcendent forces, dominated the weekend. For both players, the questions were unavoidable, much of the chatter fueled by the news media, though neither went out of his way to play down the sense that their rivalry is a growing one.Durant, who has led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the leagues best record this season, scored 38 points. James, the star of the Miami Heat, finished with 22 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists for the East a muted performance as players from both sides clogged the box score in a dizzying affair.Consider that the Knicks Carmelo Anthony set an All-Star game record by sinking eight 3-pointers on his way to 30 points. His final 3-pointer gave the East a 4-point lead with 1 minute 4 seconds remaining to seal the win. Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers had 31 points and 14 assists to earn Most Valuable Player honors.And then there was the Los Angeles Clippers Blake Griffin, who had seven dunks in the first quarter alone and finished with 38 points.With Durant drawing more attention than ever, James has sounded increasingly concerned with his stature and his legacy. Perhaps it is a coincidence, or perhaps not. In a recent interview with NBA TV, James named Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Oscar Robertson as the four greatest players of all time residents of a basketball Mount Rushmore. But James said he could see himself replacing one of them by the end of his career.For sure, he said. And if they dont want me to have one of those top four spots, they better find another spot. Weve got to bump somebody.He added: Thats not for me to decide. Thats for the architects to chisel somebodys face out and put mine up there.James has won two championships with the Heat and four M.V.P. awards, including the last two, but he clearly craves more respect, more accolades, more of the spotlight. On Saturday, he reiterated that individual awards still mattered to him because it meant his hard work was amounting to something.As for Durant, James said he was impressed with his development, though he also seemed careful not to concede too much. Hes put himself in one of the top spots in the N.B.A., James said.That was one way of putting it. Durant has played at an extraordinary level this season, averaging 31.5 points, 7.8 rebounds and 5.5 assists. His work has been even more impressive given that he has done it for long stretches without the help of Russell Westbrook, whose knee injuries have limited him to 25 games.Durant turned in one of his finest performances on Jan. 29, when he engaged in a late-game duel with James in a 112-95 victory over the Heat. Durant finished with 33 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists totals similar to his season statistics. That he did his damage at Jamess expense only added to the intrigue.On Friday, Durant seemed to send mixed messages about how he felt about the whole Durant versus James narrative. Asked to assess his level of fatigue with the topic on a scale of 1 to 10, Durant gave it about a 25. He added: Its every day. You should really focus on how good LeBron James is. I think people should appreciate that more than always comparing guys.Yet only hours later, during TNTs broadcast of the Rising Stars challenge, which was highlighted by a torrid one-on-one matchup between Tim Hardaway Jr. and Dion Waiters, Durant said he would love to face off against someone that way in the All-Star game. Would that someone be James? Probably, yeah, Durant said.It was the matchup that fans most wanted to see, and they got their wish late in the first half, though not with the results they expected. In the closing seconds, James misfired on a 3-point attempt over the outstretched arms of Durant, whose subsequent buzzer-beating attempt from 28 feet caromed off the front of the rim.Still, the stage belonged to them as another star was left in the shadows. Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, resplendent in a sand-colored suit, was voted to start by the fans but did not play because of a knee injury that could sideline him for the remainder of the season. Its been a slow process, he said before the game.It was only three years ago that Bryant, 35, dominated the All-Star game, collecting 37 points and 14 rebounds while outshining his peers. His life has changed, the creeping toll of age becoming more apparent. Bryant said he was hopeful that he would be able to play at a high level again, but he also reflected on his own mortality as a player: Its not the mind that wears down; its the body.Bryant said he had kept himself occupied by rehabilitating his knee and by watching the Olympics. He said he spent Saturday attempting to figure out the rules to curling.Its tough coming here, he said, because normally when you come, the competitive juices are already flowing. Now, its kind of looking at it from a different perspective.On Sunday, Bryants view was from the bench as the game moved along without him.

Sports

Credit...Burhan Ozbilici/Associated PressNov. 10, 2018WASHINGTON Turkey said on Saturday that it had turned over an audio recording of the killing of a Saudi dissident to the United States and other Western countries, intensifying the pressure on President Trump to take stronger punitive measures against his allies in Saudi Arabia.The disclosure, made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was his first public acknowledgment of the recording of the killing of the dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. Saudi Arabia has admitted that its operatives killed Mr. Khashoggi but denied that the attack was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdoms de facto ruler and a close ally of Mr. Trump.We gave them the tapes, Mr. Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara before flying to Paris to join Mr. Trump and other leaders at an international gathering. Theyve also listened to the conversations, they know it. There is no need to distort this.The White House declined to say whether it had a copy of the recording, which Mr. Erdogan said Turkey had also provided to Britain, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia. But Mr. Erdogans claim puts Mr. Trump in an awkward position, suggesting he possesses vivid evidence of Mr. Khashoggis premeditated killing, even as he has resisted tough sanctions against the Saudis and refused to say exactly who he believes was responsible for the crime.The Trump administration has taken modest steps against the Saudi government, suspending air-refueling flights for its military campaign in Yemen and drafting human rights sanctions against Saudis who have been linked to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia who wrote columns for The Washington Post.But the White House has declined to accuse Prince Mohammed, who has cultivated particularly close ties with Mr. Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, emerging as a linchpin of the administrations Middle East strategy.Intelligence officials and senior diplomats have said that any operation like Mr. Khashoggis assassination almost certainly must be approved by Prince Mohammed, but Turkish officials have said the audio does not itself directly implicate the prince.The administrations limited actions against the Saudis seem calculated in part to head off a tougher response in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have expressed outrage over the killing of a dissident inside a diplomatic compound and Saudi Arabias shifting explanations for it.VideotranscripttranscriptKilling Khashoggi: How a Brutal Saudi Hit Job UnfoldedAn autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.There were 15 of them. Most arrived in the dead of night, laid their trap and waited for the target to arrive. That target was Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic of his countrys government and its young crown prince. Since his killing in Istanbul, Turkish media has released a steady drip feed of evidence implicating Saudi officials. Weeks of investigation by The Times builds on that evidence and reconstructs what unfolded, hour-by-hour. Our timeline shows the ruthless efficiency of a hit team of experts that seemed specially chosen from Saudi government ministries. Some had links to the crown prince himself. After a series of shifting explanations, Saudi Arabia now denies that this brazen hit job was premeditated. But this reconstruction of the killing, and the botched cover-up, calls their story into serious question. Its Friday morning, Sept. 28. Khashoggi and his fiance, Hatice Cengiz, are at the local marriage office in Istanbul. In order to marry, hes told that he needs Saudi paperwork and goes straight to the consulate to arrange it. They tell him to return in a week. It all seems routine, but its not. Inside theres a Saudi spy, Ahmed al-Muzaini, whos working under diplomatic cover. That very day, he flies off to Riyadh and helps concoct a plan to intercept Khashoggi when he returns to the consulate. Fast-forward to Monday night into Tuesday morning. Saudi agents converge in Istanbul aboard separate flights. Muzaini, the spy, flies back from Riyadh. A commercial flight carries a three-man team that we believe flew from Cairo. Two of the men are security officers and theyve previously traveled with the crown prince. A private jet flying from Riyadh lands around 3:30 a.m. That plane is often used by the Saudi government, and its carrying nine Saudi officials, some who played key roles in Khashoggis death. Well get to Team 3 later on, and for now focus on these men from Team 2. This is Salah al-Tubaigy, a high-ranking forensics and autopsy expert in the Saudi interior ministry. Turkish officials will later say his role was to dismember Khashoggis body. Another is Mustafa al-Madani, a 57-year-old engineer. As well see, its no accident that he looks like Khashoggi. And this is Maher Mutreb, the leader of the operation. Our investigation into his past reveals a direct link between Mutreb and the Saudi crown prince. When bin Salman toured a Houston neighborhood earlier this year, we discovered that Mutreb was with him, a glowering figure in the background. We found him again in Boston, at a U.N. meeting in New York, in Madrid and Paris, too. This global tour was all part of a charm offensive by the prince to paint himself as a moderate reformer. Back then, Mutreb was in the royal guard. Now, he would orchestrate Khashoggis killing. And his close ties to the crown prince beg the question, just how high up the Saudi chain of command did the plot to kill go? Early Tuesday morning, Khashoggi flies back from a weekend trip to London. He and the Saudis nearly cross paths at the airport. The Saudi teams check into two hotels, which give quick access to the consulate. Khashoggi heads home with his fiance. Hed just bought an apartment for their new life together. By mid-morning, the Saudis are on the move. Mutreb leaves his hotel three hours before Khashoggi is due at the consulate. The rest of the team isnt far behind. The building is only a few minutes away on foot, and soon, theyre spotted at this entrance. Mutreb arrives first. Next, we see al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert. And now al-Madani, the lookalike. The stage is almost set. A diplomatic car pulls out of the consulate driveway and switches places with a van, which backs in. Turkish officials say this van would eventually carry away Khashoggis remains. From above, we can see the driveway is covered, hiding any activity around the van from public view. Meanwhile, Khashoggi and his fiance set out for the consulate, walking hand-in-hand. In their final hour together, they chat about dinner plans and new furniture for their home. At 1:13 p.m., they arrive at the consulate. Khashoggi gives her his cellphones before he enters. He walks into the consulate. Its the last time we see him. Inside, Khashoggi is brought to the consul generals office on the second floor. The hit team is waiting in a nearby room. Sources briefed on the evidence, told us Khashoggi quickly comes under attack. Hes dragged to another room and is killed within minutes. Then al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert, dismembers his body while listening to music. Maher Mutreb makes a phone call to a superior. He says, Tell your boss, and The deed was done. Outside, the van reportedly carrying Khashoggis body pulls out of the side entrance and drives away. At the same time, the Saudis begin trying to cover their tracks. While Khashoggis fiance waits here where she left him, two figures leave from the opposite side. One of them is wearing his clothes. Later, the Saudis would claim that this was Khashoggi. But its al-Madani, the engineer, now a body double pretending that the missing journalist left the consulate alive. Yet theres one glaring flaw: The clothes are the same, but hes wearing his own sneakers, the ones he walked in with. Meanwhile, the van thats allegedly carrying Khashoggis body makes the two-minute drive from the consulate to the Saudi consuls residence. Theres several minutes of deliberations but the van eventually pulls into the buildings driveway. Again, its hidden from public view. Its now three hours since Khashoggi was last seen. The body double hails this taxi and continues weaving a false trail through the city. He heads to a popular tourist area and then changes back into his own clothes. Later, we see him joking around in surveillance footage. Over at the airport, more Saudi officials arrive on another flight from Riyadh. They spend just five hours in Istanbul, but were not sure where they go. Now we pick up Maher Mutreb again, exiting from the consuls house. Its time for them to go. Mutreb and others check out of their hotel and move through airport security. Al-Muzaini, the spy, heads to the airport too. But as theyre leaving Istanbul, Khashoggis fiance is still outside the consulate, pacing in circles. Shell soon raise the alarm that Khashoggi is missing and shell wait for him until midnight. The alarm spreads around the world. Nine days later, the Saudis send another team to Istanbul. They say its to investigate what happened. But among them are a toxicologist and a chemist, who also has ties to the hit team. He and Tubaigy attended a forensics graduation days before Khashoggi was killed. Turkish officials later say that this teams mission was not to investigate, but to cover up the killing. Now the Saudi story has changed, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for several suspects in Khashoggis killing. But that doesnt include Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who many Western government officials are convinced authorized the killing. Khashoggis remains still havent been found.An autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.While Mr. Trump said he believes that the Saudis tried to cover up the killing, he has steadfastly reserved judgment on who is to blame until the Saudi government provides a definitive public accounting of the episode, based on its own investigation. That is expected this coming week.Ill have a much stronger opinion on that subject over the next week, Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday. Were working with Congress, were working with Turkey, and were working with Saudi Arabia.Mr. Trump was likely to see Mr. Erdogan in Paris, where dozens of world leaders gathered at the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.Turkish and Western officials have previously discussed the existence of the audio recording only on the condition of anonymity. But Turkish officials have said the audio includes clear evidence of a premeditated killing, in which a team of Saudi agents moved quickly and methodically to dismember Mr. Khashoggis body with a bone saw. It does not include evidence of the reported torture of Mr. Khashoggi, these officials said.The director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, met with Turkish intelligence officials in Ankara last month, and Turkish and American officials said she was allowed to listen to the recording, but not take a copy with her. It is unclear when or how the Turks shared the recording with the other governments.Mr. Erdogans wording suggested that he may regard the sharing of the audio with Ms. Haspel as the equivalent of handing it over to the United States.For the C.I.A., possessing a physical copy of the tape would be important to verify its authenticity, determine how it was made and analyze its contents independently.We dont comment on intelligence matters, said the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.ImageCredit...Emrah Gurel/Associated PressWhile the timing and form of the Turkish disclosures are uncertain, Turkeys motivation for doing so is not. In the weeks since the killing, Mr. Erdogan has abandoned his effort to avoid a rupture in Turkeys relations with Riyadh, and has instead entered into an all-out campaign to damage or even topple Prince Mohammed from power.At the same time, Mr. Erdogan has been careful to praise King Salman, the crown princes aging father, in an apparent attempt to appeal to the others in the Saudi royal family who already resent his son.Turkish officials have said Washington is the primary focus of Mr. Erdogans effort, in part because he believes that only the United States has enough influence in Saudi Arabia and the region to punish Prince Mohammed.On Saturday, Mr. Erdogan accused the Saudis of dragging their feet in the investigation. Saudi Arabia must respond to our good will, and be just, and clear themselves of this stain, he said.The hostility between Mr. Erdogan and Prince Mohammed is rooted in their diverging ambitions. Mr. Erdogan has presented himself as a champion of the Arab Spring uprisings and the Islamist political parties that once appeared poised to ride those revolts to power; Prince Mohammed is the anchor of an alliance of Arab authoritarians who have sought to stamp out those uprisings.Mr. Erdogan was also a personal friend of Mr. Khashoggis from the writers years as a commentator on regional affairs in the Saudi-owned news media.Still, for weeks after the killing, Mr. Erdogan was circumspect, mainly limiting himself to provocative questions. Despite their tensions, the two leaders had kept up the appearance of cordial relations for years because of their shared interests in the region.Mr. Erdogan was also reluctant to acknowledge possession of the audio recording because it appeared to have been obtained through intelligence surveillance inside the Saudi diplomatic compound something that is routine but also a violation of international diplomatic covenants.ImageCredit...Andrew Harnik/Associated PressYet as Saudi Arabia has bungled its response to the killing denying it for weeks, then calling it an accident, and later acknowledging evidence of premeditation Mr. Erdogans posture has hardened.With criticism mounting, he has evidently calculated that he can deal a serious enough blow to Prince Mohammed to permanently cripple him. When other news in the West threatened to push Mr. Khashoggi from the headlines, Turkish allies of Mr. Erdogan reached out to Western journalists, pressing for ways to keep it alive.In Washington, where the midterm elections have eclipsed news of the case for the last two weeks, the Trump administration is expected to announce economic sanctions against Saudi officials linked to the killing, according to current and former officials.At the White House, as well as the State Department and the Treasury Department, officials have discussed imposing the sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, which gives the executive branch the power to punish foreign officials involved in human rights abuses. The announcement could come in days.The administration has also shown growing impatience with Saudi Arabias handling of the war in Yemen. Last week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on all sides to end hostilities and take part in United Nations-led negotiations. But Saudi leaders did not immediately move to limit their airstrikes, angering officials the Trump administration, according to former officials.The Saudis have escalated, said Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Brookings Institution. The administration has not said anything about that. But curtailing air refueling would be their response.The American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen has been deeply controversial, especially as civilian casualties have mounted many children are among the victims and a famine resulting from the war has gripped the country.The White House has faced growing bipartisan criticism over the American militarys support for the Saudi campaign.After years of bloodshed and suffering, there is no military solution in sight, Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Saturday. The status quo is not in the interests of the United States or Saudi Arabia.

World

Credit...Rachel NuwerNov. 28, 2016ISIOLO, KENYA Anna Phiri was 15 when her mother, a park ranger in Zambia, was murdered by poachers.On Sept. 2, 2010, Esnart Paundi was standing guard with a colleague over two men they had caught with illegal bushmeat. What happened next is uncertain, but Ms. Phiri has heard that a third poacher, unknown to her mother, was hiding in the bush. He jumped out and slashed her colleagues head with a machete.Ms. Paundi, who was unarmed, ran. But the poachers gave chase, and when they caught her, they killed her.Ms. Paundi, 38, was the breadwinner for her five siblings, and she left behind five children, now orphans. Though she died serving her country and protecting its wildlife, she had no life insurance, and officials offered no assistance to her family. They didnt even say anything to us, Ms. Phiri said.The world depends on individuals like Ms. Paundi to protect increasingly imperiled wildlife. But many rangers do not receive the support they need. A recent World Wildlife Fund study of 570 rangers in 12 African countries found that 59 percent did not have basic supplies like boots, tents and GPS devices, and that 42 percent had not received adequate training.Despite the critical role rangers play in the poaching crisis, conservation organizations tend to overlook the need for everyday resources, said Peter Newland, the director of training at 51 Degrees, a private security company in Kenya.Donors outside of Africa want to see sexy, high-tech solutions like drones and ground sensors, not to hear about the need for warm clothing, boots and better food for rangers, he said. Large nongovernmental groups spend huge amounts, yet there are rangers calling me for socks.The wildlife fund study also found that 82 percent of rangers had faced life-threatening situations, including attacks by poachers and animals. Ms. Paundi was one of more than 1,000 rangers killed on the job over the past 10 years, according to the Thin Green Line Foundation, which supports park rangers and their families. Many receive little or nothing from the government.Another World Wildlife Fund study, in 10 African countries, found that just 60 percent of rangers had health insurance, 50 percent had life insurance and 40 percent had long-term disability insurance.Imagine how demotivating it would be to see a mate killed and then to witness his family removed from their house and his kids taken out of school because they receive no wage as a thank you for his sacrifice after hes gone, said Sean Willmore, who founded the Thin Green Line Foundation. Morale plays a massive role in reducing poaching.Governmental corruption makes a rangers job even more difficult in many parts of Africa. Poachers have been supported by officials in a number of countries. But rangers would be in trouble even if there were no corruption, Mr. Willmore said.In the last two years, the foundation has spent $1.2 million on equipment and training for rangers and has supported more than 150 families of those killed in the line of duty, including Ms. Paundis. The organization is putting her children through school.Similarly, For Rangers, a charity co-founded by Mr. Newland that raises money through extreme racing events, has donated $200,000 worth of gear, vehicles, medical supplies and family aid to rangers at 10 parks throughout Africa since April 2014.Theres a huge amount of recognition for the illegal wildlife trade crisis, but not a huge amount for the people really doing the day-to-day work to stop it, said Sam Taylor, a co-founder of For Rangers and the head of conservation projects at 51 Degrees.But small nonprofit groups can support only a fraction of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 rangers working in Africa.Performance is definitely affected by the lack of insurance, combined with the high risk factor and the lack of training and equipment, said Rohit Singh, the lead author of the World Wildlife Fund studies. How can we expect rangers to deliver if they do not have these basic things?When rangers are well taken care of and receive appropriate training, poaching rates tend to drop, Mr. Singh and Mr. Willmore said.Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya, for example, was losing unprecedented numbers of rhinoceroses when it overhauled its operations in 2014. To turn things around, the conservancy invested in specialized training, brought in a helicopter, installed a new communications system and strengthened relationships with local communities.Since then, Lewa has not lost a single rhino.There was a time when rhinos were poached here so often that we were becoming scared, but weve tried our best and weve stopped it, said Francis Kobia Chokera, 44, a ranger at Lewa. We had security before, but not like it is now. Its very, very tight.Mr. Chokeras job is still demanding: He patrols on foot for 12 hours a day, and like 47 percent of the rangers interviewed by the wildlife fund, he sees his family fewer than five days per month. But he has insurance, earns around $3,600 a year more than two times the average income in Kenya and receives overtime, free housing and a pension.By good luck, I was given the chance to work here, he said. Ive always loved animals.Timothy Tear, executive director for the Wildlife Conservation Societys Africa program, said that success stories like Lewas are where hope is found. He noted that the conservancys considerable investment in security and ranger training $1 million a year has been integral to its success.If you do the simple math of dollars spent to acres protected, you will find Lewa at the top of the investment-per-acre gradient, Dr. Tear said.Other protected areas that have received large investments in ranger training and support like the Sabi Sand Game Reserve in South Africa have seen similar gains against poachers. In 2013, the reserve lost 51 rhinos, but only two have been killed this year.Our rangers were herders, but now theyre effectively soldiers, said David Powrie, Sabi Sands warden. Theyre at the center of all our operations.For now, such cases are the exception, but Mr. Willmore said better and broader training could be a first step toward improving working conditions for rangers across Africa. The Thin Green Line Foundation plans to teach 30 to 50 exceptional rangers the skills needed to be trainers themselves, and then host six events a year at which they would instruct their colleagues.At the moment, most training rangers get, if any, is expensive and done by expats, and theres no follow-up, Mr. Willmore said. By training the trainers, we will potentially reach over 15,000 rangers in the next five years and help change the game on the ground.Though training would not solve problems like a lack of insurance and equipment, it could save the lives of both animals and rangers. Recently, a ranger who had been taught self-defense was attacked by a poacher with a machete and was able to use a stick to knock down the suspect and arrest him, said Craig Millar, the head of security for Kenyas Big Life Foundation, a community conservation group.Ms. Paundi, the ranger in Zambia, had no such training. Protecting wildlife is good, but my mom didnt have enough protection herself, said Ms. Phiri, her daughter. I believe if my mother had the proper training, equipment and security, she would still be alive today.

science

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 23, 2018WASHINGTON Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said she was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant Friday night because of her work in the Trump administration, becoming the latest official to be singled out for her support of the presidents policies.In a Saturday tweet, Ms. Sanders said that the owner of the restaurant, the Red Hen in Lexington, Va., suggested she leave, and she complied.The womans actions say far more about her than about me, Ms. Sanders said. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so. A person identified as a waiter at the restaurant said in a Facebook post that Ms. Sanders had been accompanied by seven other guests.Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) June 23, 2018 The restaurant did not respond to phone calls, and its website appeared to have crashed Saturday morning as reports of the episode began circulating.The encounter is the third time this past week in which a Trump administration official was confronted over his or her political stance.As tensions continued to escalate over the White Houses child-separation policy, Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, was heckled on Tuesday night while dining at a Mexican restaurant. If kids dont eat in peace, you dont eat in peace, demonstrators shouted, according to video of the confrontation shared on social media.And Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the president known for his hard-line stance on immigration, was described as a fascist by a protester on Sunday, also while at a Mexican restaurant, The New York Post reported.While the administration struggles to reunite the families amid outrage over images and audio recordings of sobbing children taken away from their parents, the divisive messaging on both sides of the debate has intensified.Within hours, the Red Hens review pages online painted a stark picture of the divide: Some people left glowing reviews for the farm-to-table restaurant from halfway across the country, and others denounced the political choices of the owner.The best, one reviewer wrote on Yelp, leaving five stars. Ive heard that they serve crow to those deserving of it.Pathetic, the next review read. How dare you use politics to discriminate. Seems you will be the actual loser in this case, once the reviews really sink in. Good luck, pal.On Facebook, the establishment had accumulated more than 10,000 five-star reviews, and more than 18,000 one-star reviews, prompting some criticism over Ms. Sanderss decision to use her White House social media account instead of her personal one to identify the restaurant.Another area restaurant with the same name an unaffiliated Red Hen in a neighborhood of Washington found itself in the crossfire, receiving some of the vitriol intended for the Lexington establishment.@PressSec went to the unaffiliated @RedHenLex last night, not to our DC-based restaurant, it said on Twitter.

Politics

Credit...Andrew Harnik/Associated PressJune 19, 2018WASHINGTON President Trumps congressional allies trained their fire on the special counsel investigation on Tuesday, armed anew with a damaging report showing that the lead F.B.I. agent assigned to the case held strong anti-Trump views when the inquiry began.Mr. Trumps loyalists in the House and other Republicans used the report, released last week by the Justice Departments inspector general, to cast the F.B.I. as part of an out-of-touch Washington bureaucracy that disdained both Mr. Trump and the blue-collar voters who swept him into office. And they argued that the 500-page document showed that top officials let the blindfold of justice slip so that personal politics influenced their work.Though the report focused on the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server and found no evidence that political bias influenced the outcome of that case, Republicans could hardly have asked for a better weapon for assailing the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. And for the second day of hearings on Capitol Hill with the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, they showed they intended to use it.The attacks most likely foreshadowed a Republican strategy for the rest of the Mueller investigation, which is studying whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice and whether anyone in his campaign conspired with Russian operatives to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Trump has already claimed the report exonerated him and on Tuesday, his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said the report gave Mr. Trump justification to fire his attorney general and end the Mueller investigation.At the heart of Republicans criticism were two senior F.B.I. officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged text messages about their dislike of Mr. Trump, his supporters and his policies even as they investigated his campaigns ties to Russia.Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart, Mr. Strzok wrote in August 2016, just a few weeks into the Russia investigation. I could SMELL the Trump support.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesRepresentative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said such quotes have undermined public faith in the F.B.I. in ways that stretch beyond the Clinton investigation. The arrogance and condescension and the elitist attitude, thats what ticks people off, he said. As they look at all this and see what Strzok said throughout these investigations, thats why their confidence is so shaken.Democrats appeared frustrated at times as they accused Republicans of using the report to try to discredit Mr. Mueller. The report has nothing to say about the ongoing work of the special counsel, said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, who holds the top Democratic slot on the Judiciary Committee. Their argument is based on innuendo, and not on the facts, and certainly not on this report.Mr. Nadler and others noted that the F.B.I.s actions during the presidential election almost uniformly harmed Mrs. Clintons candidacy. The former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was unusually frank and public in his remarks about Mrs. Clinton, even as he hewed closely to the rules and did not reveal that his agents were also investigating the Trump campaign.Mr. Horowitzs report found no evidence that political bias influenced key investigative decision-making, but he offered Democrats no relief from criticism that the text messages had raised questions about the credibility of the investigation.They werent just speaking about a generic election that they cared about, Mr. Horowitz said. It just so happened that the people they were speaking about had a connection to the investigations they themselves were working on.Mr. Strzok has said he is willing to testify about his text messages and his role in the investigation. No date has been set. Mr. Strzok was removed from the special counsels investigation when the text messages were discovered. He was reassigned to the human resources department, and his lawyer confirmed on Tuesday that he was escorted from F.B.I. headquarters as part of ongoing internal proceedings. He still works for the bureau, according to the lawyer, Aitan Goelman. Ms. Page has left the F.B.I.While Democrats say the inspector generals report closed the book on the question of Mrs. Clintons investigation, Mr. Trump and his allies are looking to the future. They argue that Mr. Muellers inquiry was born out of investigative bias.The F.B.I. is oath-bound to remain neutral and enforce the law impartially and fairly, said Representative Scott DesJarlais, Republican of Tennessee. How can we accomplish this when there are agents that are actively biased against our sitting president?

Politics

Business BriefingDec. 2, 2015Cabelas, the outdoor sporting goods chain known for its elaborate in-store wildlife displays, may be seeking a buyer. The retailer has been under pressure since late October when the investment firm Elliott Management started pushing for money-generating maneuvers from Cabelas, possibly the sale of its credit card unit or the entire company. Tommy Millner, Cabelas chief executive, said in a written statement that the board maintained faith in its current strategy but would consider other options. The company has been trying to cut spending and in September it laid off 70 people, eliminating about 4 percent of its corporate work force.

Business

Asia Pacific|North Korea Says It Will Deport American Who Tried to Enter From Chinahttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/world/asia/north-korea-american-deport.htmlCredit...South Korean Defense MinistryNov. 16, 2018SEOUL, South Korea North Korea will deport an American citizen it detained a month ago for illegally entering the isolated country, state media announced on Friday, in an apparent gesture of good will amid the stalled nuclear talks with the United States.The Norths decision to release the American, whom it identified as Bruce Byron Lowrance, is likely to be welcomed by Washington as a conciliatory gesture. In the past, North Korea has held Americans on similar charges for prolonged periods, in some cases freeing them only after high-profile figures from the United States went to Pyongyang, the Norths capital, to ask for their release.Mr. Lowrance was detained on Oct. 16 while illegally crossing into North Korea from China, the Norths official Korean Central News Agency reported. Mr. Lowrance said he had entered the country under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to the report.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a statement on Friday, thanked North Korea for its cooperation with the Embassy of Sweden in facilitating his release. The Swedes look after American interests in North Korea because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with the country.The safety and well-being of Americans remains one of the highest priorities of the Trump Administration, Mr. Pompeo said.It was not the first time Mr. Lowrance had tried to enter North Korea. Last November, he was detained by South Korean soldiers as he approached the heavily militarized border between the Koreas.South Korean officials later said Mr. Lowrance, who was reported to be in his late 50s, had given confusing and contradictory statements about wanting to help resolve the Norths nuclear dispute with Washington. Mr. Lowrance was deported to the United States.Coincidentally, on the same day last November that Mr. Lowrance tried to cross the inter-Korean border from the south, a North Korean soldier did so successfully from the north, making a dramatic escape from the country in which his fellow soldiers shot him multiple times. The soldier made it to the South and survived.The North Korean news agencys report did not say when Mr. Lowrence would be deported.North Korea released three American detainees in May after Mr. Pompeo visited Pyongyang to pick them up. North Korea treated the releases as a good-will gesture aimed at facilitating its leader Kim Jong-uns summit meeting with President Trump in Singapore in June.But not all American detainees have been so lucky. Otto Warmbier, an American university student who was convicted of trying to steal a propaganda poster, died last year just days after being released from North Korea in a coma, after 17 months in captivity.

World

Health|Experimental Vaccine Shows Promise Against a Form of Denguehttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/health/experimental-dengue-vaccine-zika.htmlGlobal HealthCredit...Ueslei Marcelino/ReutersMarch 21, 2016An experimental dengue vaccine worked almost perfectly in a small trial in which volunteers were deliberately given a mild form of the disease, scientists said last week.The results in 41 volunteers were so encouraging that they justified starting a larger trial, now underway in Brazil. The vaccine was jointly developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Food and Drug Administration.In the study, published in Science Translational Medicine, 41 volunteers were given the vaccine, now named TV003, or a placebo.Six months later, all were challenged deliberately infected with a genetically modified strain of dengue virus from Tonga that can cause only mild disease.No replicating virus was found in the blood of any of the 21 volunteers who received the vaccine. Dengue was found in the blood of all 20 who had the placebo, and many developed signs of infection, such as rashes and low levels of white blood cells.Deliberate challenges are rare in testing vaccines for diseases that have no cure. Scientists must be certain that the infecting microbe is so weak that it cannot make volunteers dangerously ill.There are four dengue viruses, or serotypes, all spread by Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads the Zika virus.Every year, nearly 400 million people around the world get dengue, more than are infected with any other mosquito-borne disease. Most recover and become immune to the first serotype they had.But about two million who later become infected with a different serotype develop dangerous hemorrhagic fevers, and about 25,000 die from them each year.One of several dengue vaccines in development, Dengvaxia, has recently been licensed in Mexico. But it offers relatively little protection against some serotypes and may make some young children who receive it more likely to be hospitalized years later.Dengue is unique, and if you dont do it right, you can do more harm than good, said Dr. Anna P. Durbin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who led the testing of TV003.Because dengue is from the same family as the Zika virus, the techniques used to make TV003 might be applicable to a Zika vaccine, she said.

Health

Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood and seven other lawyers deceived federal courts and debased the judicial process, a federal judge wrote.Credit...Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressAug. 25, 2021A federal judge in Michigan on Wednesday night ordered sanctions to be levied against nine pro-Trump lawyers, including Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood, ruling that a lawsuit laden with conspiracy theories that they filed last year challenging the validity of the presidential election was a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.In her decision, Judge Linda V. Parker of the Federal District Court in Detroit ordered the lawyers to be referred to the local legal authorities in their home states for possible suspension or disbarment.Declaring that the lawsuit should never have been filed, Judge Parker wrote in her 110-page order that it was one thing to take on the charge of vindicating rights associated with an allegedly fraudulent election, but another to deceive a federal court and the American people into believing that rights were infringed.This is what happened here, she wrote.Ms. Powell and Mr. Wood did not respond immediately to comment on the ruling. The other lawyers, including two who served in the Trump administration, could not be reached on Wednesday night for comment.The Michigan lawsuit, filed in late November, was one of four legal actions, collectively known as the Kraken suits, that Ms. Powell filed in courts around the country, claiming that tabulation machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were tampered with by a bizarre set of characters, such as the financier George Soros or Venezuelan intelligence agents. In the suits, she complained without merit that those conspirators began a complicated, covert plot to digitally flip votes from President Donald J. Trump to his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.Judge Parkers order came about a month after a marathon hearing during which she repeatedly pressed Ms. Powell and her colleagues about how or even whether they had verified the statements of witnesses who filed sworn statements making claims of widespread fraud and tampering with voting machines. Several times, Judge Parker expressed astonishment at the lawyers answers, telling them they had a responsibility to perform minimal due diligence and calling some of the lawsuits claims fantastical.In her decision, Judge Parker accused Ms. Powell, who is based in Dallas, and Mr. Wood, who is based in Atlanta, of abusing the well-established rules of litigation by making claims that were backed by neither the law nor evidence, but were instead marked by speculation, conjecture and unwarranted suspicion.This case was never about fraud, Judge Parker wrote. It was about undermining the peoples faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so.David Fink, a lawyer for the City of Detroit, called the ruling a powerful message to attorneys everywhere.Follow the rules, stick to the truth or pay a price, Mr. Fink said. Lawyers will now know that there are consequences for filing frivolous lawsuits.Judge Parkers order, which said Ms. Powell and her colleagues had scorned their oath, flouted the rules and attempted to undermine the integrity of the judiciary, was the latest legal setback for the embattled group of lawyers who emerged from the postelection period as the most die-hard of Mr. Trumps supporters.The former president and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election last year, losing nearly all of them. None were more outrageous or lacking in proof than those filed by Ms. Powell, positing a conspiracy of international intelligence operatives manipulating the election results by hacking into voting machines.Dominion ultimately sued Ms. Powell and others, including Mr. Trumps former lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, for defamation, accusing them of initiating a viral disinformation campaign about the election and seeking damages of more than $1 billion. Those lawsuits were allowed to proceed to trial this month after a federal judge in Washington denied Ms. Powells and Mr. Giulianis motions to dismiss.

Politics

Credit...Jim Young/ReutersFeb. 21, 2014SAN FRANCISCO The Nets continued internal conversations on Friday about potential frontcourt players to add to their roster. After the team practiced at the Olympic Club, a private athletic and social club, Coach Jason Kidd said he had briefly joined discussions with the front office. I dont think theres a rush, Kidd said. I think theres the opportunity for us to get better, so management has to look at the different options and make a decision.The Nets have two open roster spots, and their list of targets has some intriguing names, including Glen Davis. The Orlando Magic said on Friday that they had agreed on a buyout of Daviss contract. The main subject of chatter at the gym on Friday, though, was the free-agent center Jason Collins, who worked out for the Nets during the All-Star break.If signed by the Nets, or any other team, the 35-year-old Collins would become the first openly gay player on an N.B.A. roster.Itd be a historic day, Deron Williams said.Williams emphasized that the signing would be based on basketball needs and that the Nets, who play the Golden State Warriors on Saturday, had glaring ones. They have been struggling to rebound and are looking to find ways to rest their veteran big men, like Kevin Garnett, down the stretch.We need to have another big, just another body out there, and Jason can definitely help us defensively, Williams said. Its not like hes going to come in here and play 30 minutes just spot minutes here and there, give K.G. a break. And then, also, if K.G. cant go on a back to back, we need somebody in there to fill in.Williams said he was a bit surprised that Collins had not been signed by a team.Its just the distraction thing that might be the thing thats deterring teams, Williams said, adding that signing Collins would cause a media circus. With us, I dont see that being a problem. The team we have, the coaching staff we have, will definitely welcome him.Williams was asked if the league as a whole would welcome a gay player. Its 2014, he said. Michael Sam just came out, and his teammates welcomed him, and theyre in college. Its time for the N.B.A., as well.Joe Johnson, who played with Collins when they were with the Atlanta Hawks, called him a great teammate, adding, We would gladly welcome him here with open arms.Kidd and Collins played several seasons together for the Nets when the team was still in New Jersey. Kidd lauded Collinss character and emphasized that he could still help a club.I think at some point Jason will probably be on a roster somewhere with an N.B.A. team, Kidd said. Will it be the Nets?REBOUNDSMarcus Thornton was in Nets practice gear on Thursday morning, but he could only watch from the sideline as his new teammates went through their 40-minute workout. Thornton, 26, whom the Nets acquired in a trade with the Sacramento Kings, was not allowed to participate because Jason Terry and Reggie Evans, who were sent to the Kings, had not completed their physicals. Thornton is expected to give the Nets a scoring option from the bench. Despite being frustrated that he could not practice, he said he was excited to have a fresh start after slumping and feeling unsettled this season in Sacramento. He said he did not feel comfortable in the scheme of things, noting that the Kings had gone through some personnel changes. But thats done with, and Im a Brooklyn Net now, so Im ready.

Sports

DealBook|General Electric to Sell Commercial Lending Business in Japanhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/general-electric-to-sell-commercial-lending-business-in-japan.htmlDec. 15, 2015HONG KONG General Electric agreed on Tuesday to sell its commercial lending business in Japan to Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing, one of Japans largest leasing companies, for 575 billion yen, or about $4.8 billion.G.E. has been retreating from its financial businesses, selling off GE Capitals assets around the world. This month, it signed an agreement to sell its equipment and receivable finance businesses in France and Germany to Banque Fdrative du Crdit Mutuel, a unit of Crdit Mutuel of France.We continue to make quick progress on the sale of our international assets and are pleased to sell this business to a company that is committed to growth for our customers and employees, Keith S. Sherin, the chief executive and chairman of GE Capital, said in a news release. This is our second transaction with the broader Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, and we were happy to work with them again.General Electric agreed in June to sell a division that finances leveraged buyouts in Europe to Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation for about $2.2 billion.The Japanese leasing industry has substantial scale, with the volume of leasing transactions totaling approximately 5 trillion, Sumitomo Mitsui said in a news release. Leasing demand is expected to remain steady, underpinned by a continued increase in corporate capital spending as the Japanese economy recovers under Abenomics.It noted that GE Japan had efficient data marketing and business models that could Sumitomo Mitsui could use, as well as a client base of approximately 483,000 companies that it said did not overlap with its own.The deal includes the capital finance, fleet service and vendor finance businesses, and it is expected to close in April 2016.

Business

Credit...Emrah Gurel/Associated PressMark Scott and Milan SchreuerMarch 15, 2017Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile news outlets, international brands and politicians were hacked on Wednesday, briefly showing posts in support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president who is in a bitter standoff with several European Union countries.The dispute involves several countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, where Turkish politicians wish to hold rallies and campaign for a referendum on Turkeys proposed Constitution. The Twitter breaches on Wednesday, however, came as Dutch voters were casting ballots in their general election. Separately, websites in the Netherlands that help people decide how to vote were hit by online attacks on Tuesday.Mr. Erdogan criticized the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, accusing them of Nazi practices, after Turkish politicians were prevented from attending events in those countries. Over the weekend, the Dutch authorities stopped the Turkish foreign minister from landing in the Netherlands, where he was to attend a rally, and they ordered the Turkish minister for families to be escorted out of the country, citing risks to public order and security.The Twitter hacking on Wednesday appeared to be related to that growing dispute. The defamatory messages, in Turkish, accused Germany and the Netherlands of having Nazi ties, and they linked to a video of a speech by Mr. Erdogan.While the online messages were quickly removed and control of the accounts returned to their owners, many of the targeted organizations and policy makers moved to distance themselves from what had been posted.We temporarily lost control of this account, but normal service has resumed, the British Broadcasting Corporation wrote on Twitter after one of its accounts was breached.It was unclear who had carried out the digital attacks.The problem may have originated with a hack to Twitter Counter, a third-party application employed by some account holders to keep track of their online followers. The start-up, which is based in the Netherlands, said on Wednesday that it was aware of the hacking, and that it had blocked its services ability to post from users Twitter handles.In response, Twitter said that it was aware that the intrusion may have resulted from a third-party app.We quickly located the source, Twitter said in a statement. No additional accounts are impacted.On Tuesday, a separate attack affected two websites set up to help voters choose among Dutch political parties in the general election. Known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which typically involves flooding computer servers with online messages until they collapse, the attack took the Kieskompas and Stemwijzer sites offline on Tuesday afternoon.The voter-aid websites are not part of the official electoral process.Concerned about the role hackers and so-called fake news might have played in the American presidential election, the Dutch government announced on Feb. 1 that all ballots in the general election would be counted by hand. Previously, some votes were electronic.We dont know where it is coming from, but it is an organized attack coming from abroad, said Anita de Jong, a spokeswoman for ProDemos, an independent government-financed organization that runs Stemwijzer. She said the geographic origin of the attack was unclear.Engineers from the National Cyber Security Center in The Hague and from Google offered to help the organizations that run the two websites. Wednesday morning, as voting was underway, the sites were still struggling to function and were not consistently available.

World

Credit...Bill Kostroun/Associated PressFeb. 11, 2014GREENBURGH, N.Y. Coach Mike Woodson called a timeout. His team was trailing by 3 points with 5.7 seconds left, so he broke out his whiteboard and drew up a play for a game-tying shot. On the ensuing inbounds play, his plan vaporized like a plume of talcum powder. A swarm of defenders quickly converged on Beno Udrih, who failed to squeeze off a jumper before the buzzer sounded.The game was over, except practice was not. Late morning stretched into early afternoon Tuesday at the Knicks training center, where Woodson was free to call as many timeouts as he pleased during an intrasquad scrimmage. He could add time to the clock. He could run an extra play or two or three. None of his players complained about minutes because they all had more than enough even Udrih, who has spent recent weeks collecting dust on the bench.Perhaps most important, the Knicks were incapable of falling further behind the Charlotte Bobcats for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.Spirited and competitive is how Woodson described practice. Also, long. After limiting the teams workout Monday to five of his younger players (younger being a relative term for one of the oldest teams in the N.B.A.), Woodson hoped to get a lot of work done ahead of the Knicks game Wednesday against the Sacramento Kings at Madison Square Garden.In the scrimmage, nobody wanted to lose, Woodson said, so thats a good thing.If only practices were a barometer of a teams success, the Knicks would be undefeated. All season, they have used the most glowing adjectives possible to assess their time in Greenburgh: great, productive, energetic. Unfortunately for them, something is lost when they perform in front of paying customers. For the Knicks (20-31), practice makes imperfect.I think the only problem is we play harder against one another than we do the other teams, J. R. Smith said last week, so weve got to figure that out.A big problem for Woodson one he has cited on a loop since December has been the teams many injuries. The players who have been able to practice consistently tend to practice hard, he said, but the Knicks have endured far too many days with only seven or eight healthy players.It can sound like a convenient excuse for the coach of an underperforming team, but Woodson clearly values physical, hard-driving practices, and the Knicks have not been able to partake of them as often as he would like.Last Thursday was the rare occasion when Woodson felt he had a full collection of players. He even used the word everyone, although everyone did not appear to include Andrea Bargnani, who has been sidelined since Jan. 22 with a torn ligament in his left elbow.Regardless, Woodson pointed to that practice as a major factor in the Knicks 27-point win over the Denver Nuggets the next night. So did the players.Everybody really went at one another, Smith said.We went in there and we got after it, Carmelo Anthony said.We just got after it, Tyson Chandler said.How coaches decide to run their practices is a matter of preference. There is no specific formula. Woodson said he had picked up bits and pieces from a number of mentors over the years, listing coaches like Larry Brown, George Karl, Chris Ford and Cotton Fitzsimmons. Unlike some of his peers, Woodson is old-school in the sense that he continues to emphasize in-season conditioning. His practices include their share of sprints, at least for the players healthy enough to run them.I just think conditioning is a big part of being ready to play basketball, Woodson said. Some coaches do it and some coaches dont, but Im a big believer in that.Eric Musselman, a former coach of the Golden State Warriors and the Kings, said in a telephone interview that he often tried to tailor his practices to fit his personnel. During his first season with the Warriors, for example, his roster was brimming with young players who needed a lot of instruction and had ample energy to burn. Musselman felt comfortable enough with their youthful vigor that he had them scrimmage during pregame shoot-arounds.The next season, the Warriors added a number of veterans whose careers were drawing to a close. As a result, Musselman said, he knew he needed to back off a bit. Gone were the up-tempo drills, replaced by a diet of skeleton sets and film review.We hardly did anything, said Musselman, now the associate head coach at Arizona State. As the season progressed, it was just about going over the opposition and how we planned to do things from a schematic standpoint, plus making sure we got up enough shots.Practices are always fraught with risk. That was apparent Tuesday when Tim Hardaway Jr. was kneed in the left thigh by a teammate. He limped off the court and had his leg bandaged by a trainer. Smith had an excused absence. He was being fitted for a face mask after he fractured his left cheekbone Sunday in the loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Woodson said he expected both players to be available against the Kings.Practice continued without them, and Woodson opted to wrap it up by putting four minutes on the clock. The blue team, led by Anthony, squared off against the white team, which featured Amare Stoudemire. In the closing seconds, Anthony missed a free throw that would have tied the scrimmage, and Pablo Prigioni stole a pass to preserve the win for the white team.The Knicks could afford to make mistakes. It was practice. Games are different.We have no room for error, Woodson said.

Sports

By observing mouse hair follicles, scientists discovered an unexpected mechanism of aging. If I didnt see it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it, one said.Credit...AlamyOct. 4, 2021Every person, every mouse, every dog, has one unmistakable sign of aging: hair loss. But why does that happen?Rui Yi, a professor of pathology at Northwestern University, set out to answer the question.A generally accepted hypothesis about stem cells says they replenish tissues and organs, including hair, but they will eventually be exhausted and then die in place. This process is seen as an integral part of aging.Instead Dr. Yi and his colleagues made a surprising discovery that, at least in the hair of aging animals, stem cells escape from the structures that house them.Its a new way of thinking about aging, said Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong, a skin cell researcher and professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in Dr. Yis study, which was published on Monday in the journal Nature Aging.The study also identifies two genes involved in the aging of hair, opening up new possibilities for stopping the process by preventing stem cells from escaping.Charles K.F. Chan, a stem cell researcher at Stanford University, called the paper very important, noting that in science, everything about aging seems so complicated we dont know where to start. By showing a pathway and a mechanism for explaining aging hair, Dr. Yi and colleagues may have provided a toehold.Stem cells play a crucial role in the growth of hair in mice and in humans. Hair follicles, the tunnel-shaped miniature organs from which hairs grow, go through cyclical periods of growth in which a population of stem cells living in a specialized region called the bulge divide and become rapidly growing hair cells.Sarah Millar, director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who was not involved in Dr. Yis paper, explained that those cells give rise to the hair shaft and its sheath. Then, after a period of time, which is short for human body hair and much longer for hair on a persons head, the follicle becomes inactive and its lower part degenerates. The hair shaft stops growing and is shed, only to be replaced by a new strand of hair as the cycle repeats.But while the rest of the follicle dies, a collection of stem cells remains in the bulge, ready to start turning into hair cells to grow a new strand of hair.Dr. Yi, like most scientists, had assumed that with age the stem cells died in a process known as stem cell exhaustion. He expected that the death of a hair follicles stem cells meant that the hair would turn white and, when enough stem cells were lost, the strand of hair would die. But this hypothesis had not been fully tested.Together with a graduate student, Chi Zhang, Dr. Yi decided that to understand the aging process in hair, he needed to watch individual strands of hair as they grew and aged.Ordinarily, researchers who study aging take chunks of tissue from animals of different ages and examine the changes. There are two drawbacks to this approach, Dr. Yi said. First, the tissue is already dead. And it is not clear what led to the changes that are observed or what will come after them.He decided his team would use a different method. They watched the growth of individual hair follicles in the ears of mice using a long wavelength laser that can penetrate deep into tissue. They labeled hair follicles with a green fluorescent protein, anesthetized the animals so they did not move, put their ear under the microscope and went back again and again to watch what was happening to the same hair follicle.VideoColored arrows point to escaping stem cells on a hair follicle.CreditCredit...Rui YiWhat they saw was a surprise: When the animals started to grow old and gray and lose their hair, their stem cells started to escape their little homes in the bulge. The cells changed their shapes from round to amoeba-like and squeezed out of tiny holes in the follicle. Then they recovered their normal shapes and darted away.Sometimes, the escaping stem cells leapt long distances, in cellular terms, from the niche where they lived.If I did not see it for myself I would not have believed it, Dr. Yi said. Its almost crazy in my mind.The stem cells then vanished, perhaps consumed by the immune system.Dr. Chan compared an animal's body to a car. If you run it long enough and dont replace parts, things wear out, he said. In the body, stem cells are like a mechanic, providing replacement parts, and in some organs like hair, blood and bone, the replacement is continual.But with hair, it now looks as if the mechanic the stem cells simply walks off the job one day.ImageCredit...Rui Yi and Chi ZhangBut why? Dr. Yi and his colleagues next step was to ask if genes are controlling the process. They discovered two FOXC1 and NFATC1 that were less active in older hair follicle cells. Their role was to imprison stem cells in the bulge. So the researchers bred mice that lacked those genes to see if they were the master controllers.By the time the mice were 4 to 5 months old, they started losing hair. By age 16 months, when the animals were middle-aged, they looked ancient: They had lost a lot of hair and the sparse strands remaining were gray.Now the researchers want to save the hair stem cells in aging mice.This story of the discovery of a completely unexpected natural process makes Dr. Chuong wonder what remains to be learned about living creatures.Nature has endless surprises waiting for us, he said. You can see fantastic things.

Health

State of the Union Designated Survivor Pick Always Tough ... Says Dubya's Chief of Staff 1/30/2018 TMZ.com President Trump's cabinet members are yelling, "Not it!" That's basically what happens when the Prez is naming a designated survivor before the State of the Union ... according to former Chief of Staff Andy Card. We got George W. Bush's ex right-hand man on Capitol Hill -- a few hours before Trump's big speech -- and asked him about how the designated survivor is selected. If you're unfamiliar, one cabinet member is always selected to watch the SOTU from an undisclosed location. It's a safety measure ... since the Prez, VP, all of Congress, and other cabinet members are all in one place. Card told us -- after a Tom Brokaw cameo -- no one wants the gig, and they tend to put up a fight. That being said, someone's gotta do it, and he has an inkling about who will be the DS Tuesday night. #LowManOnTheTotemPole

Entertainment

DealBook|Newell Rubbermaids Merger Machine Shows Stresshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/dealbook/newell-rubbermaids-merger-machine-shows-stress.htmlBreakingviewsDec. 14, 2015Newell Rubbermaid is overworking its merger machine.The company, a serial acquirer that owns Sharpie markers and Graco baby gear, is buying Jardens motley collection of Coleman camping gear, Rawlings baseball gloves and more for $13 billion. The value of the proposed cost savings more than covers the premium being paid, but the scale and debt strain conglomerate logic.The strategy has worked for a while. Newells shares have more than doubled over the last five years, as the company generated more profit from its many and varied businesses while adding Elmers glue, baby joggers and refillable water bottles to its mix. Jarden has been an even more prolific accumulator under Martin E. Franklin since 2001. He has overseen a fortyfold increase in returns as the company squeezed efficiencies out of more than 120 brands.Combining the two companies is expected to save some $500 million annually in about four years. Taxed and put on a multiple of 10, these are worth about $3 billion today. Thats more than enough value to cover the 24 percent premium, worth about $2.5 billion, to Jardens undisturbed share price earlier in December. Newell is even promising revenue synergies, however hard to come by they typically are. Finally, Mr. Franklin should be a welcome addition to the combined companys board.Despite all this promise, Newells shares have fallen below where they were trading before media reports of a possible deal with Jarden were first reported. Taking over such a large and diverse company will not be easy for Newell. As conglomerates get bigger, it is harder to find enough suitable targets to satisfy growth expectations. And the deal will leave Newell with debt equal to 4.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, heaping extra pressure onto management.Finally, theres the broader backdrop of fear blanketing these sorts of companies. The drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the cable operator Altice and Mr. Franklins own chemical roll-up, Platform Specialty Products, have each lost about two-thirds of their market value this year. Investors increasingly worry about what may be hidden inside these perpetual buyers, especially as rising interest rates potentially threaten the business model. The decision by an aggressive deal maker like Mr. Franklin to sell may be an indicator unto itself.

Business

Dennis Rodman Charged w/ DUI Tests Show He Was Hammered 1/30/2018 Dennis Rodman's blood alcohol level was more than DOUBLE the legal limit when cops arrested him for DUI back in January ... TMZ Sports has learned. Court documents show the NBA Hall of Famer has now been charged with 2 misdemeanor counts of DUI stemming from the January 13 arrest in Newport Beach, CA ... where cops say he had been swerving and blasting loud music in his car. Rodman's B.A.C. tested at .21 -- roughly 2.5 times the legal limit. To make matters worse for Dennis, he was on probation at the time of his arrest from his 2016 wrong way crash case. If the judge revokes Rodman's probation, he could be thrown in jail. Meanwhile, Dennis has been getting treatment through a rehab center in New Jersey and has told friends and family members he's serious about sobriety.

Entertainment

Resuming electoral counting, McConnell condemns the mob assault on the Capitol as a failed insurrection.VideotranscripttranscriptSenate Leaders Condemn Mobs Assault on U.S. CapitolMitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, condemned the storming of the Capitol and vowed that the Senate would finish certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.s election victory,I want to say to the American people: The United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats. They tried to disrupt our democracy they failed. They failed. They failed to attempt to obstruct the Congress. This failed insurrection only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic. We will certify the winner of the 2020 presidential election. It is very, very difficult to put into words what has transpired today. I have never lived through or even imagined an experience like the one we have just witnessed in this Capitol. Make no mistake, my friends: Todays events did not happen spontaneously. The president who promoted conspiracy theories that motivated these thugs, the president who exhorted them to come to our nations Capitol, egged them on he hardly ever discourages violence, and more often encourages it this president bears a great deal of the blame. We will resume our responsibilities now, and we will finish our task tonight.Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, condemned the storming of the Capitol and vowed that the Senate would finish certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.s election victory,CreditCredit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021Lawmakers resumed counting Electoral College votes on Wednesday, hours after a mob of Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol resulting in the death of one woman, with Vice President Mike Pence gaveling in the session and saying that Wednesday was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win, Mr. Pence said. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the peoples house.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, promptly vowed that the Senate would finish its work Wednesday night, undeterred by failed insurrection.They tried to disrupt our democracy, he said. They failed. They failed.Earlier in the evening, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues that they were determined to reconvene saying, We always knew this responsibility would take us into the night.Violence overtook the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, when a mob loyal to President Trump stormed the building, halting Congresss counting of the votes as the police evacuated lawmakers in a scene of violence, chaos and disruption that shook the core of American democracy.The sergeant-at-arms, the top security official at the Capitol, announced that the building had been secured around 5:40 p.m.ImageCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressThe unrest prompted Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington to declare a citywide curfew from 6 p.m. Wednesday night to 6 a.m. Thursday morning, which was later extended to Jan. 21. The Army activated the District of Columbia National Guard in response to a request from the mayor, an Army official said.The chaos began around 2:15 p.m., as the House and Senate debated a move by a faction of Republicans to overturn the election results, security rushed Vice President Mike Pence out of the Senate chamber and the Capitol building was placed on lockdown.In a scene of unrest common in authoritarian countries but seldom witnessed in the history of the United States capital, hundreds of people in the mob barreled past fence barricades outside the Capitol and clashed with officers. Shouting demonstrators mobbed the second floor lobby just outside the Senate chamber, as law enforcement officials placed themselves in front of the chamber doors.For a time, senators and members of the House were locked inside their respective chambers. Images posted on social media showed at least one person took to the rostrum of the House chamber to declare his support for Mr. Trump.VideoCreditCredit...Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesThis is what youve gotten, guys, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, yelled as the mayhem unfolded in the Senate chamber, apparently addressing his colleagues who were leading the charge to press Mr. Trumps false claims of a stolen election.This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection, Mr. Romney said later.Mr. Biden responded to the violence on Wednesday, saying, I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.In a brief video posted to his Twitter account shortly after 4 p.m., Mr. Trump repeated his baseless claim that the election was stolen and spoke in sympathetic and affectionate terms to members of the mob, before advising them to go home. We love you, he added.The posting, which Twitter later removed after locking the presidents account, came hours after Mr. Trump appeared at a rally in which he exhorted his supporters to go to the Capitol to register their discontent.As officers and members of the mob clashed outside, lawmakers had been debating an objection to the certification of Arizona electors, ensconced in their respective chambers. The extraordinary day in Washington laid bare deep divisions both between the two parties and within Republican ranks, when the ceremonial counting of electoral votes that unfolds every four years in Congress turned into an explosive spectacle.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, warned of a death spiral for democracy, while Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, listed a litany of accusations of election fraud with little evidence.By Wednesday evening, former President George W. Bush was among the high-profile Republicans who sharply condemned what he called mayhem and a violent assault on the Capitol.This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic not our democratic republic, he said in a statement.

Politics

State of the ArtFeb. 19, 2014If the tech business were fair, you would be considering the Nokia Icon for your next smartphone.The Icon, which goes on sale this week for $199 with a two-year Verizon contract, has a lot to like: a graceful design, a brilliant display, a remarkable camera and an innovative set of microphones to make better-sounding home videos. The Icon runs Microsofts Windows Phone operating system, which has a cleaner and more coherent user interface than Googles Android, and a more flexible and more informative home screen than Apples iOS.But the tech business isnt fair.While the Icon is nice, you should not make it your next phone if you expect to be able to do everything with your phone that you can do on Android or iOS. Like any Windows Phone, the Icon is a fundamentally hobbled device, all but locked out of the teeming ecosystem of new apps and smartphone-powered gadgets that are expanding techs frontiers.While this disadvantage might not be apparent in your day-to-day use of the Icon youll have no problem making calls and sending texts the phones shortcomings will haunt you whenever you want to try the next great thing. If you want to use your phone to play the latest games, to experiment with new social-networking apps, to try the newest ways to pay for merchandise or to control the newest smartphone-connected devices (say, a smart thermostat), Windows Phone isnt for you, at least not now. If you do choose a Windows Phone, go into it with your eyes open to the fact that you are most likely volunteering for a second-class digital existence.The Nokia Icon illustrates the tragedy of Windows Phone and, in a larger sense, the tragedy of Microsoft and Nokia, two companies of once-legendary prowess that have struggled to find a foothold in the market for smartphones and tablets. Two years ago, the two entered into a strategic partnership, and last year, Microsoft announced a plan to acquire Nokias mobile phone division.Judged by their products alone, the partnership has been a staggering success. The Icon is just the latest in a series of fantastic Nokia Windows Phones, which have combined deep technical innovations (like the 41-megapixel camera in Nokias Lumia 1020) with a striking design sensibility. Nokia is making just about the best phones on the market today. Its lineup beats Samsung, HTC, and Motorola, and it is nearly on par with Apple.ImageCredit...Stuart GoldenbergThe tragedy is that the technology industry is not a meritocracy. Making great products is often not sufficient for success, and sometimes its not even required. In tech, marketing, branding, partnerships and timing can be as important as how well your product works.Whats more, how a companys product works is largely dependent on the companys position in the market. Microsoft and Nokias consumer businesses are governed by the vicious rules of network effects the economic idea that products get better as more people use them. The more people who use a particular operating system, the more likely an app developer is to build for that system. And the more apps that are developed, the more the operating system appeals to consumers. The cycle builds on itself.For more than a decade, Microsoft rode a network-effects engine to great success; you used Windows and Office because everyone else used them. But in the smartphone business, Microsoft and Nokia were caught flat-footed by the popularity of the iPhone and its Android imitators, and they were far too late in creating similarly powerful touch-screen smartphones.Now, despite their daring efforts to catch up, Microsoft and Nokia find themselves on the wrong side of the Android and iOS network-effects steamroller. Figuring out how to avoid getting crushed in the smartphone business is one of the first problems that Satya Nadella, Microsofts incoming chief executive, needs to solve. He doesnt have many great options ahead of him.Microsoft loyalists will argue that Im exaggerating the downsides of choosing a Windows Phone. In the last few years, Microsoft has aggressively courted developers including sometimes offering payments and the store is now growing quickly, with about 500 apps added every day. And Windows Phone has managed to attract many of the worlds most popular mobile apps. There are apps for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, Vine and Pandora.I sympathize with the position, too, that apps are overrated that right out of the box, modern smartphones perform most functions that most people need, and lots of people can get by just fine without filling up their phones with extras.And Microsofts market position is on the upswing. According to ABI Research, which tracks global mobile phone sales, shipments of Windows Phone devices in the last quarter of 2013 were up 104 percent over the last quarter of 2012, a higher growth rate than all other mobile operating systems. Yes, Windows Phones market share is still tiny ABI says that only 4 percent of the smartphones shipped for the holidays ran Windows, compared with 18 percent for Apple and 77 percent for Android. But at least Windows Phone isnt a dying platform like BlackBerry. Its more accurate to call Windows Phone a long-shot platform, a system that could still catch a lucky break and take off, as sometimes happens in that unpredictable business.But thats small comfort to any potential customer. Even if you dont crave every new app, youre bound to run into situations where your phones limitations will stand in the way.Google, for instance, doesnt make any apps for Windows Phone. You can still use some of Googles services on the device, including Gmail, but youll be shut out of Googles most innovative features, like the predictive personal assistant Google Now (which is available on both Android and iOS). Yes, this is Googles fault, not Microsofts, but its still a headache. Like I said this business isnt fair.Other Google services, including YouTube, are available through so-called unofficial apps created by programmers who arent associated with Google. The Windows Phone Store is clogged with these unofficial apps, and many arent quite up to snuff. The YouTube app created by Microsoft is barely worthy of the name. It simply opens up the video site in your Windows web browser; I found it mostly worked, though slower and without much of the design polish of the official YouTube apps found on iOS and Android. Other unsanctioned apps are disastrous. The unofficial app for the house-sharing service Airbnb the only Airbnb app I could find is in French.But wait, theres less. Windows Phone doesnt have access to almost all the latest games that crowd the most-popular list on the iOS App Store and it lacks some of the most creative and useful apps by start-ups (like the credit-card reader Square). And Windows isnt supported by many of the companies making intelligent devices that are controlled by your phone, like health-tracking devices or smart home appliances. There are no official Windows Phone apps to support the Fitbit health tracker, the Withings bathroom scale, the Nest home thermostat or Sonos multiroom speaker system.Android doesnt have some of the latest apps, either. But almost every app developer I talk to thinks of Android as an eventual priority, the second platform to aim for after iOS. Windows apps arent considered a similar necessity among developers. Often, they arent even considered.This month, Charles Arthur, of the British newspaper The Guardian, published a persuasive column calling on Microsoft to throw out Windows Phone and instead create a custom or forked version of Android, much like Amazon has done for its Kindle Fire tablets. Microsofts forked Android might carry the look and feel of the current Windows Phone, but it would be optimized for Bing, Outlook, OneDrive and other Microsoft services, rather than Googles. Because it would share Androids guts, current Android developers might need to adjust only a few lines of code to let their apps run on Microsofts Android almost instantly solving Microsofts app shortage. (Microsoft declined to comment on that possibility.)I was skeptical of the Android plan until I began using the Icon and bumped up against the phones shortcomings again and again ugh, theres no app for the ride-sharing service Uber, and, ugh, there are no plans for a Windows Phone version of the addictive trivia game QuizUp.Ben Thompson, who runs the insightful tech blog Stratechery and who also supports the plan to fork Android, argues that until Microsoft has a more robust app store, none of its other smartphone ideas are going to matter. The problem for Microsoft and Nokia is that innovations like a great camera just arent enough to overcome the holes in their app store you cant get past the app store to even consider things like the great camera, he said.Thats the feeling I got while using the Icon: Heres another fantastic Nokia device that has been hamstrung by Windows Phone.

Tech

Science|How Good Is a Bad Nights Sleep?https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/science/how-good-is-a-bad-nights-sleep.htmlQ&ACredit...Victoria RobertsNov. 28, 2016Q. Is a nights sleep physiologically beneficial even if it includes emotionally disturbing nightmares?A. Almost certainly yes, said Dr. Neomi Shah, a specialist at the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center in New York. Despite the problems nightmares can cause, sleeping and having them is better than not sleeping, research suggests.Nightmares can make it difficult to sleep and interfere with daytime functioning, but physiological indicators of sleep patterns and quality do not differ in people who have nightmares, Dr. Shah said.Frequent long, distressing and vivid dreams often wake people and cause problems like insomnia and poor sleep quality, she said. Research has also consistently demonstrated that nightmares can harm general well-being, affect mood and elevate stress.Some studies suggest there are measurable sleep problems for people who have nightmares, while others show no difference. The studies that show such a link found that people who woke up stayed awake longer and that certain stages of sleep did not last as long. But people in those studies who had nightmares also had longer periods of rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, when most dreaming occurs.A weakness of these studies is that they were not conducted in the subjects normal sleeping environment. A more recent study in such an environment found no differences in so-called sleep architecture, sleep-cycle and REM durations, or sleep patterns for just the nights with nightmares.Therefore, Dr. Shah said, despite upsetting nightmares, sleep architecture appears to be preserved, and subjects with frequent nightmares are likely deriving the physiological benefits of sleep. [email protected]

science

June 26, 2017ImageCredit...Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesDURHAM, N.C. Dr. Luke Smith drove slowly through the unlit streets of a neighborhood filled with immigrants, searching for an address among small houses with windows ribbed by iron bars. Pharmacy bags lay at his feet.His mission: to deliver medication to patients too frightened to pick up their prescriptions.On this evening, Dr. Smith, a psychiatrist, was looking for the family of a 12-year-old boy with attention deficit disorder. Like most people who have sneaked into the United States illegally, the boys parents, from Puebla, Mexico, do not have drivers licenses.Now, when they drive, being stopped at one of the frequent traffic checkpoints here can have consequences far more costly than a fine. Shaken by the Trump administrations broad deportation orders, they and many others like them are retreating into the shadows, forgoing screenings, medications and other essential medical care.Several times a week, Dr. Smith picks up prescriptions at pharmacies, then meets patients at their homes to hand them the medications they require.I cant have my patients taking risks to get medicine I prescribe for them, he said.ImageCredit...Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesAcross the country, from Venice, Calif., to Brooklyn, clinics that serve an immigrant population report a downturn in appointments since the administrations crackdown. In a recent national poll of providers by Migrant Clinicians Network, which is based in Austin, Tex., two-thirds of respondents said they had seen a reluctance among patients to seek health care.Some parents have been withdrawing children from federal nutrition programs to avoid scrutiny. In Baltimore, health care workers who have for years visited Latino neighborhoods to test people for sexually transmitted infections now wait in vans outside 7-Elevens and Home Depots.Its been like a ghost town, said Dr. Kathleen R. Page, co-director of Centro SOL, a health center for Latinos at Johns Hopkins.Experts say the toll for avoiding the health care system is far-reaching. Poorer Latinos, in particular, suffer from high rates of obesity, diabetes, liver disease and high blood pressure. Patients who are already sick will have a much harder time getting better, Dr. Page said. Those who dont get care for infectious diseases, she said, are much more likely to transmit infections to others.Yet as medical costs present a burden for millions of Americans, many people question why citizens who can scarcely afford their own health care should support through taxes the care of those living here illegally.One provider surveyed in the Migrant Clinicians Network poll wrote: There has been a fair amount of animosity towards me for helping the workers. Locals think that the workers are receiving grand benefits.Here in central North Carolina, where immigrants work in tobacco fields and chicken-processing factories, and wash dishes and clean bathrooms in booming downtown restaurants and hotels, some health care providers are going to unusual lengths for patients.ImageCredit...Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesDr. Smith walked onto a dark porch and knocked on a door. Est Jorgito? he called out.Eyes peered out through slats of a lowered blind. Jorgito, a taco truck owner, flung open the door and rushed forward, beaming.In the crowded front room, Jorgito, who, like other illegal immigrants interviewed for this article, asked that his last name be withheld to prevent officials from identifying him and his family, introduced the doctor to his friends, relatives and pastor.Only after the family had urged him to sample some homemade, thick Central American-style tortillas, did Dr. Smith discreetly hand Jorgito the medication for his son, a bashful sixth grader lolling on a couch.This fall, when Dr. Smith met the boys parents at school and told them that medication could help their distracted, failing son, the father was standoffish and suspicious. But since then, the boys diligence, grades and self-esteem have improved and so has Jorgitos confidence in Dr. Smith.Despite the familys entreaties to stay, Dr. Smith begged off. It was nearly 10 oclock. Another family was waiting for medicine.Shattered TrustExcept for absolute necessities, Rodolfo, an itinerant construction worker who entered the United States illegally from Puebla six years ago, does not leave his house these days.But for a month now, his 8-year-old daughter, Leslie, has been doubling over in pain after meals. So, uneasily, on buses and on foot, Rodolfo took her to the community health clinic in Carrboro, a liberal, well-heeled town just west of Chapel Hill.In the exam room, the child shrank into herself, stiff and uncomfortable. Lisanna Gonzalez, a family nurse practitioner, could find no physical cause for her discomfort.Eventually Leslie admitted she was terrified that she would come home from school one day and find her parents gone. Kids were always talking about it, she said, even teasing her. Her brother, 13, kept showing her social media updates about raids.Fear is making people sick, said Dr. Evan Ashkin, a professor of family medicine at the University of North Carolina who directs a residency program for doctors who work with poor patients.Providers, he explained, have seen an increase in common physical manifestations of depression and anxiety: stomach aches, blurred vision, dizziness, insomnia, headaches, spikes in blood pressure, shortness of breath.I understand why youre worried, and I hope nothing like that will happen, Ms. Gonzalez told Leslie and her father, in Spanish. We cant take away the stress, but we can give you some ways to to manage the anxiety.ImageCredit...Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesShe handed Rodolfo a checklist, assembled by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, on how to prepare for a possible deportation: Decide who can care for your children. Write down their medications and important phone numbers. Tell your family whom to call if you are detained.Providers at these federally qualified health centers, which receive some government funds to serve the uninsured and underinsured, do not ask patients about their citizenship status. Instead, the patients, who are required to pay a modest clinic fee, must show proof of residence and income.For decades, these clinics have been safe havens. When police officers parked in the Carrboro clinics lot for a coffee break, a doctor chased them off because she didnt want patients to be frightened.But that was a year ago.Now some insulin-dependent patients have been no-shows at appointments. Diabetes patients, who must exercise, have told doctors here they will not even walk around the block, skittish about the cruising police cars even though a few departments have announced they will not check immigration status.Dr. Ashkin has built up relationships with many uninsured immigrants over the years. But recently a longtime patient, pregnant but having first-trimester bleeding, refused to take his advice to go for an ultrasound at the university medical center at Chapel Hill.She was fearful that immigration agents might be waiting. Fortunately, the bleeding stopped.Referring to the dread among his patients, Dr. Ashkin said, Their trust in us is breaking down.This is not the first time that fear has kept undocumented patients away. Researchers found that in the wake of expanded immigration enforcement in Arizona in 2010, illegal immigrants used health services less frequently, according to a study published in The American Journal of Public Health.After a large federal immigration raid in 2008 in Postville, Iowa, babies born to Latinas had a 24 percent higher risk of low birth weight than those born a year earlier, according to a study published this year in The International Journal of Epidemiology.The effects of deferred health care will be felt in many ways, experts said. Hospitals and emergency departments, exponentially more expensive than primary care, will treat more sick patients, said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. School systems will feel the impact of more students with a range of health-related challenges.Researchers have also looked at the question of federal benefits for illegal immigrants.Many are paid off the books in cash. But certainly not all. Between 2000 and 2011, immigrants not authorized to work here contributed between $2.2 billion and $3.8 billion a year more to Medicare than they withdrew, according to a 2016 study.Jos, 42, works year-round for a tobacco grower; his wife, Irma, 44, picks tobacco and also works at a local steakhouse, wiping down tables and mopping floors. They do not have Social Security numbers because they are here illegally.But we pay taxes! Irma declared, responding to the argument that taxpayer-funded clinics should serve only legal citizens.ImageCredit...Michael Kirby Smith for The New York TimesTheir paycheck deductions are taken with individual tax identification numbers. But, she noted, neither is eligible for the programs those taxes fund, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.Post-Traumatic Stress Flares UpSiler City is a town of about 8,000 an hour southwest of Durham. The road there runs past tobacco fields, a derelict former chicken-processing factory and trailer parks into a downtown lined with storefront Pentecostal churches. A sign in an art gallery window warns: No Weapons Allowed.In a ranch house with chipped gray-blue siding is a branch of El Futuro, Dr. Smiths mental health clinic. Post-traumatic stress disorder is prevalent among patients, said Karla Siu, the clinical program director.A 9-year-old recalls sleeping in the desert, awakening to a snake. Women quake from memories of being raped on the road. Men seethe, mortified, less from having been stiffed of a days wages than from being too afraid to file a complaint.As stories of raids churn through rumor mills, therapy sessions have become especially tense. Clinicians report that some patients conclude sessions with ever more elaborate farewells.The client is grieving the possibility of not seeing the therapist again, Ms. Siu said. So saying goodbye with hugs and tears each time is a form of control, because its on their own terms.El Futuro has waiting lists of people who want help. But in a survey of patients, the clinic found that some people are afraid to come in. Elizabeth, 27 and here illegally, is among them.With great reluctance she showed up at the clinic for an interview with a reporter, arriving late, uneasy. Apologizing, she said she leaves her apartment these days only to go to the grocery store and to her job as a hotel maid.She has no one who will care for her two young children if she is deported, she explained haltingly, tears welling up.And in Mexico, another danger awaits: her ex-boyfriend. Years ago, when the couple arrived in North Carolina, she said, he began to beat her so badly that she finally called the police. They arrested him and had him deported.Now, fearful for her children and for her own safety, Elizabeth is consumed by anxiety. Her nightmares from that violent period are back.After recounting her story, Elizabeth walked toward El Futuros reception area, clutching her 5-year-old daughters hand. Even if she cleared the clinics wait list, she said, it just seemed too risky to come back.

Health

Science|Some Elephants Are Getting Too Much Plastic in Their Dietshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/science/india-elephants-plastic.htmlTrilobitesIn India, the large mammals see trash in village dumps as a buffet, but researchers found they are inadvertently consuming packaging and utensils.Credit...Danita Delimont Creative/AlamyMay 24, 2022Some Asian elephants are a little shy about their eating habits. They sneak into dumps near human settlements at the edges of their forest habitats and quickly gobble up garbage plastic utensils, packaging and all. But their guilty pleasure for fast food is traveling with them elephants are transporting plastic and other human garbage deep into forests in parts of India.When they defecate, the plastic comes out of the dung and gets deposited in the forest, said Gitanjali Katlam, an ecological researcher in India.While a lot of research has been conducted on the spread of plastics from human pollution into the worlds oceans and seas, considerably less is known about how such waste moves with wildlife on land. But elephants are important seed dispersers, and research published this month in the Journal for Nature Conservation shows that the same process that keeps ecosystems functioning might carry human-made pollutants into national parks and other wild areas. This plastic could have negative effects on the health of elephants and other species that have consumed the material once it has passed through the large mammals digestive systems.Dr. Katlam first noticed elephants feeding on garbage on trail cameras during her Ph.D. work at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was studying which animals visited garbage dumps at the edge of villages in northern India. At the time, she and her colleagues also noticed plastic in the elephants dung. With the Nature Science Initiative, a nonprofit focused on ecological research in northern India, Dr. Katlam and her colleagues collected elephant dung in Uttarakhand state.The researchers found plastic in all of the dung near village dumps and in the forest near the town of Kotdwar. They walked only a mile or two into the forest in their search for dung, but the elephants probably carried the plastic much farther, Dr. Katlam said. Asian elephants take about 50 hours to pass food and can walk six miles to 12 miles in a day. In the case of Kotdwar, this is concerning because the town is only a few miles from a national park.This adds evidence to the fact that plastic pollution is ubiquitous, said Agustina Malizia, an independent researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina who was not involved in this research but studied the effects of plastic on land ecosystems. She says the study is extremely necessary, as it might be one of the first reports of a very large land animal ingesting plastic.Plastic comprised 85 percent of the waste found in the elephant dung from Kotdwar. The bulk of this came from food containers and cutlery, followed by plastic bags and packaging. But the researchers also found glass, rubber, fabric and other waste. Dr. Katlam said the elephants were likely to have been seeking out containers and plastic bags because they still had leftover food inside. The utensils probably were eaten in the process.While trash passes through their digestive systems, the elephants may be ingesting chemicals like polystyrene, polyethylene, bisphenol A and phthalates. It is uncertain what damage these substances can cause, but Dr. Katlam worries that they may contribute to declines in elephant population numbers and survival rates.It is known from other animals that their stomachs may get filled with plastics, causing mechanical damage, said Carolina Monmany Garzia, who works with Dr. Malizia in Argentina and was not involved in Dr. Katlams study.Other animals may consume the plastic again once it is transported into the forest through the elephants dung. It has a cascading effect, Dr. Katlam said.Dr. Katlam said that governments in India should take steps to manage their solid waste to avoid these kinds of issues. But individuals can help, too, by separating their food waste from the containers so that plastic does not end up getting eaten so much by accident.This is a very simple step, but a very important step, she said.We need to realize and understand how the overuse of plastics is affecting the environment and the organisms that inhabit them, Dr. Mealizia said.

science

Credit...Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMarch 7, 2016CLEVELAND Just minutes after the patients name was placed on the waiting list for a transplant, details about a matching donor popped up.I was shocked, said Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis, the director of solid organ transplantation at the Cleveland Clinics hospital in Weston, Fla. I really considered it an act of God.Less than 24 hours later, on Feb. 24, the patient, a 26-year-old woman from Texas, became the first in the United States to receive a uterus transplant, in a nine-hour operation here at the Cleveland Clinic. Born without a uterus, she hopes the transplant will enable her to become pregnant and give birth.I have prayed that God would allow me the opportunity to experience pregnancy, and here we are at the beginning of that journey, she said on Monday at a news conference, where doctors revealed details of her operation. She gave only her first name, Lindsey, to protect her familys privacy. She and her husband, Blake, also 26, have three adopted sons.The New York Times interviewed Lindsey in November as a candidate for an experimental uterus transplant, but it was not clear then whether she would be selected. At that time she did not want even her first name to be mentioned.Uterus transplant surgery, still experimental, is meant to help women who want to become pregnant but cannot because they were born without a uterus, suffered damage to it or had to have it removed. Between 3 percent and 5 percent of women of childbearing age worldwide are estimated to be infertile for these reasons, and about 50,000 women in the United States are thought to be potential transplant candidates.VideotranscripttranscriptFirst U.S. Uterus Transplant a SuccessDr. Andreas G. Tzakis from the Cleveland Clinic confirmed that the first uterus transplant performed in the United States was a success and that the patient was doing very well.(SOUNDBITE) (English) DOCTOR ANDREAS TZAKIS FROM THE MEDICAL TEAM AT CLEVELAND CLINIC SAYING: The surgery on the donor and the recipient, used techniques that have been well established through transplantation of the other solid organs. Theyre a little bit more complex for this particular transplant because the uterus lies deep inside the pelvis and is difficult to access and the vessels are all deep inside the pelvis as well. So its a little bit more difficult that way. Our first uterine transplant took place on February 24th lasted approximately nine hours and Im pleased to report to you that our patient is doing very well. (SOUNDBITE) (English) LINDSEY, FIRST UTERUS TRANSPLANT PATIENT IN U.S., SAYING: First and foremost I would like to take a moment to express the immense gratitude I feel towards my donors family. They have provided me with the gifts that I will never be able to pay and I am beyond thankful for them. However the reason I chose to speak today is that I want to be open and honest and to share my story and that when I was 16 and was told I would never have children. And from that moment on I have prayed that God would allow me the opportunity to experience pregnancy and here we are today at the beginning of that journey. I am so thankful to this amazing team of doctors and all the nurses and staff who worked around the clock to ensure my safety and I feel like I found a new family in all of them. I am a mother already to three beautiful little boys that Blake and I have adopted through the foster care system. Because of that I would ask that you would all please respect our privacy and we will give updates as we can.Dr. Andreas G. Tzakis from the Cleveland Clinic confirmed that the first uterus transplant performed in the United States was a success and that the patient was doing very well.CreditCredit...Dustin Franz for The New York TimesThe Cleveland Clinics ethics panel has given the hospital permission to perform 10 uterine transplants in women ages 21 to 39, as an experiment. Officials will then decide whether to continue. Another patient is on the waiting list, and the clinic is still screening possible candidates. So far, 250 women have been evaluated.Two other medical centers in the United States Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston have announced similar pilot programs, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which vets transplant programs and oversees the nationwide distribution of organs from deceased donors.If the first transplants succeed, the procedure could come into widespread use, said Dr. David K. Klassen, chief medical officer of the organ sharing network.At the news briefing in Cleveland, Lindsey expressed immense gratitude to the family of the deceased donor. The uterus is an organ not usually removed for transplantation, and donor families must be asked for special consent.The donor, healthy and in her 30s, had several children, and had died suddenly, said Dr. Tzakis, who did not give the cause.Dr. Tzakis said the call about Lindseys donor had come in the middle of the night, and he and a gynecologic surgeon, Dr. Tommaso Falcone, had immediately flown to another city to remove the uterus. As soon as they determined that the organ was healthy, they notified surgeons back in Cleveland to begin preparing Lindsey, who had flown there with her husband.The transplant surgery took nine hours, longer than the doctors had expected, even though they had practiced on animals and cadavers.Dr. Tzakis and the other doctors said Lindsey was doing well, but would need close monitoring and monthly biopsies to make sure that her body was not rejecting the uterus.Medically, uterus transplants are a new frontier. Ethically, they reflect an increasing acceptance that transplants are justified not only to save lives, but also to improve the quality of life. That belief has already led to hand and face transplants for people with horrific injuries. Penis transplants may be next: Doctors at Johns Hopkins University plan to perform them for men wounded in combat.The transplant is not without risk: Patients face the usual surgical hazards of bleeding and infection, and the increased odds of infection and possibly even cancer, from the anti-rejection drugs, which suppress the immune system.But the drug risks will be relatively short-lived, as will the transplants themselves. After the woman has had one or two babies, the uterus will be removed so that she can stop taking anti-rejection drugs. A woman who wants two babies would probably keep the transplanted uterus for about five years, doctors said.The program in Cleveland has been about 10 years in the making. Dr. Tzakis, who led the team, spent time in Sweden to learn from doctors at the University of Gothenburg, who are the only ones in the world to have performed successful uterine transplants. They have operated on nine women so far taking the uterus from a living donor, often the recipients mother and five have given birth. The babies have been premature but healthy, according to Dr. Mats Brannstrom, the leader of the program.The Cleveland team is using dead donors, to avoid putting live ones at risk, but Dr. Falcone said the team might consider living donors in the future.Lindsey found out that she had been born without a uterus after a series of medical tests were performed to find out why, at 16, she still had not had menstrual periods. The news was devastating: She had always hoped to have a large family. Even though she has three adopted children, she said she still craved the experience of pregnancy and childbirth.She first contacted Dr. Tzakis about four years ago, when she saw his name in news reports about the transplants in Sweden. He was not ready to proceed. She kept emailing him periodically, and finally, in March 2015, he said the time would soon be right.If the procedure succeeds, the soonest Lindsey can give birth is about two years from now. She will have to wait a year before trying to become pregnant, to heal from the surgery and let doctors adjust the medications she will need to prevent her immune system from rejecting the transplant.To become pregnant, she will need in vitro fertilization. The surgeons did not connect fallopian tubes, so it is not possible for her to conceive naturally. Before the transplant, Lindsey had eggs removed surgically, fertilized with her husbands sperm, and frozen. The team required six to 10 embryos; otherwise, it would not have performed the transplant.In about a year, the embryos will be thawed and transferred into Lindseys uterus, one at a time, until she gets pregnant. If she does, the baby would be delivered by cesarean section; the strain of labor and vaginal delivery may be too much for a transplanted uterus, the doctors said. The Swedish patients have all given birth by cesarean.When a uterus is transplanted, blood vessels are connected, but nerves are not. As a result, patients do not feel sensations from the uterus itself, like menstrual cramps or contractions, according to Dr. Brannstrom. But when pregnant, the women do feel the fetus move, probably through sensations from the abdominal wall, he said.Transplant patients and the families of deceased donors normally do not find out each others identity unless both sides agree to allow it. Lindsey has not been told who the donor was, a clinic spokeswoman said. But if the donors relatives see Lindsey speaking out, they will realize that she received her transplant from their loved one. They will know because the death occurred just before Lindseys surgery date, and she is the only recipient so far.Lindsey said she realized that the donors family members would know who she was, and it did not trouble her. She said she thought of them every day, knowing that her opportunity had come from their loss.

Health

Nelly Countersues Rape Accuser She Lied Just to Get Me Arrested 1/26/2018 Nelly is firing back, as promised, at his rape accuser with a countersuit ... claiming she came on to him, and then lied about their sexual encounter to get him criminally prosecuted. Nelly filed the suit in Seattle Friday, and in the docs says ... Monique Greene made her way into his VIP section of the nightclub where he was headlining, and started enthusiastically flirting with him. He says he invited her to join him and others back on his tour bus. Nelly insists they had consensual sex, and Greene only got pissed when one of his performers -- he told police it was a backup dancer -- entered the room to use his bathroom. He describes Greene as "aggressive and disruptive" and says she was asked to leave at that point. As we've reported, Greene called for an Uber and then called police to report the incident ... leading to Nelly's arrest for rape. According to the docs, obtained by TMZ, after Nelly's arrest ... Greene and her attorney made several statements on the Internet that falsely accused him of raping her. He says the statements were a clear and malicious attempt to get him prosecuted. Nelly adds her claims cost him money -- he was forced to cancel a scheduled performance -- and also damaged his reputation in the music biz. We broke the story ... the criminal case against the rapper was eventually dismissed when Greene refused to cooperate with prosecutors. He's also filed a motion to strike Greene's claim he sexually harassed at least 2 other women -- and wants her defamation suit against him dismissed because he has every right to publicly deny what he says is a false claim of rape.

Entertainment

Technology|Antifa falsehood tops list of misinformation after Capitol rampage.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/antifa-falsehood-tops-list-of-misinformation-after-capitol-rampage.htmlJan. 8, 2021, 2:03 p.m. ETJan. 8, 2021, 2:03 p.m. ETCredit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMisinformation and distortions of the truth have run rampant on social media in the days after a mob of Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, disrupting lawmakers counting electoral votes to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s win.A conservative outlet, The Washington Times, claimed that facial recognition showed evidence that the mob was made up of members of antifa, a loose network of anti-fascist activists. The article has since been corrected. Other misleading and false articles and posts claimed that the mobs work was a setup or an inside job. And still others said President Trump would soon declassify information on how the election was stolen.The media insights company Zignal Labs compiled a list of the most popular false and misleading narratives on social media about Wednesdays events, counting their mentions on cable television and social media and in print and online news outlets on Wednesday and Thursday. Here is the list.1. Rioters on the Capitol were actually antifa: 411,099 mentionsThe false narrative that antifa supporters were actually behind the unrest at the Capitol peaked at 66,122 mentions on Wednesday evening, according to Zignals data. Rep. Matt Gaetz even referenced the false Washington Times article as proof that the mob was in fact members of the violent terrorist group antifa.On Thursday, The Washington Times published a new version of its article, reporting that it was actually neo-Nazis and other extremists who were identified in photos of the mob, after BuzzFeed News challenged the outlets reporting.2. The mobs actions were a setup and an inside job: 122,287 mentionsThe idea that the mobs work was an inside job spread widely on social media, even though there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theory. People said the setup had been planned by the deep state, which is shorthand for the conspiracy theory about Democratic elites secretly exercising political control over the public. The narrative peaked at 12,593 mentions from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Zignals data.3. President Trump knew that the mob would happen, and people should trust the plan and hold the line: 83,990 mentionsThe distorted idea that President Trump knew about the mobs actions in advance and that people should trust the plan and hold the line was widespread especially among supporters of the conspiracy movement QAnon which is based upon the false premise that the country is run by a Democrat-led cabal of pedophiles whom President Trump is bringing down.4. The mob at the Capitol was made up of people posing as MAGA: 64,258 mentionsA popular false narrative that people in the mob were simply posing as MAGA peaked early on Wednesday, before accusations specifically zeroed in on antifa.5. President Trump will declassify information on how the election was stolen: 63,190 mentionsSome supporters of the president pushed the falsehood that he would soon declassify information on how the election was stolen, in spite of overwhelming evidence and a host of court rulings that no widespread fraud was found in the election.In some versions of the baseless rumor, people stated that this was the real reason that Mr. Trumps opponents in Congress were calling on the president to be stripped of his power from office under the disability clause of the 25th Amendment.

Tech

Sports Briefing | SoccerJan. 31, 2014Arsenal signed the Swedish midfielder Kim Kallstrom on loan, the only major move by a top Premier League club at the transfer deadline. Kallstrom left Spartak Moscow to join Arsenal for the rest of the season.Borussia Dortmund signed the Serbian midfielder Milos Jojic in the Bundesligas top deal at the transfer deadline. In Serie A transfers, the Italian striker Pablo Osvaldo joined Juventus on loan from Southampton, and Inter Milan signed the Brazilian midfielder Hernanes from Lazio.

Sports

Credit...Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesMarch 8, 2017WARSAW Only one country in the European Union has publicly opposed the reappointment of Donald Tusk as president of the European Council: his own.Mr. Tusk was Polands prime minister for seven years, until 2014, when he was chosen to lead the Council, which helps set the blocs agenda. He was a driving force in last years deal with Turkey to address the migration crisis, and he has coordinated the European Unions response to Britains plan to withdraw.But the right-wing government that took power in Poland in 2015 wants him out of the job. It has even suggested without evidence that he has betrayed his country.The dispute has injected a note of high drama as leaders of the blocs 28 members gather in Brussels on Thursday for a summit meeting where Mr. Tusks future is on the agenda.The situation is without precedent: Herman Van Rompuy, a former prime minister of Belgium, was selected unanimously in 2009, when the job was created, and again in 2012; Mr. Tusks appointment was also unanimous.The expectation is to reach a decision by consensus, but if Poland forces the issue, the rules call for a system of weighted voting by the member countries.Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of Malta, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union, is expected to ask national leaders on Thursday afternoon if there are any objections to Mr. Tusks reappointment for a second term of two and a half years. That would give the Polish prime minister, Beata Szydlo, a chance to take the floor.Ms. Szydlo is expected to propose that Mr. Tusk be replaced by Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a Polish member of the European Parliament since 2004 and, until recently, a member of Mr. Tusks political party, now the largest opposition group in Poland.The idea that Poland could try to force a different candidate for the job has been met with bewilderment, and even derision, in Brussels. Mr. Tusk has broad support among the national leaders, and some see Polands move as little more than a stunt.There has been speculation, however, that Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, also a right-winger, could support Ms. Szydlos move. She is not without options for embarrassing Mr. Tusk, if not for blocking his reappointment.She could call for a formal vote, though that is rare at the level of national leaders in the European Union. In 2014, when he was Britains prime minister, David Cameron demanded such a vote to register his opposition to the selection of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. Mr. Orban also voted against Mr. Juncker.Ms. Szydlo could abstain. Lithuanias president did so in 2014 to express qualms about the confirmation of Federica Mogherini, an Italian diplomat, as the blocs foreign policy chief.ImageCredit...Stephanie Lecocq/European Pressphoto AgencyMs. Szydlo or other leaders could also push to delay the decision. But that could run risk worsening the widespread perception that the European Union has become too hard to govern.Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Center, a research organization in Brussels, said that a rebuff of Warsaws position would most likely be portrayed as a move for stability.Nationalistic populism has a very domestic focus, but it also entails attacks on the European Union, and what were seeing is a counterreaction to that, he said.If Mr. Tusk is reappointed, Mr. Zuleeg said, it might even help Warsaw in its off-and-on conflict with Brussels. Having a candidate of your country appointed, whos not supported by you, gives you another reason to claim that E.U. decisions arent legitimate, and that youre defending Polish interests, he said.The controversy is ultimately more about Polish politics and the feud is personal.Mr. Tusk was prime minister in 2010 when Lech Kaczynski, then Polands president, died in a plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, with 95 others. Mr. Kaczynskis twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the right-wing Law and Justice Party that is now in power, has blamed Mr. Tusk mainly for not ensuring better security for the plane, but he has also hinted, more darkly, that Mr. Tusk may have plotted the crash with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is said to have viewed Lech Kaczynski as a threat.His brother has persisted in raising alternative theories, though official investigations in Poland and Russia attributed the crash to pilot error.The Polish government cannot endorse someone so biased and disloyal toward his own country, Ryszard Czarnecki, a Law and Justice official and vice president of the European Parliament, said of Mr. Tusk in a phone interview.Mr. Tusk criticized the party and threatened to take action against Poland if it refused to take in its share of refugees, Mr. Czarnecki said, adding, We are not some yes-men who will agree to anything.In a letter to fellow leaders, posted online on Wednesday, Ms. Szydlo wrote: President Tusk has failed to demonstrate adequate impartiality. He used his E.U. function to engage personally in a political dispute in Poland. We cannot accept such a conduct.But Ewa Kopacz, another former prime minister of Poland and a friend of Mr. Tusks, said in an interview that the dispute amounted to a vendetta. It all comes down to personal vengeance and pettiness rather than constructive criticism, she said, adding that the Polish dispute could not have come at a worse time for the European Union, as it debates its future.As for Mr. Saryusz-Wolski, after he decided last week to challenge Mr. Tusk, he was excluded from both his party in Poland and from a faction in Brussels for which he once served as vice president.He did not respond to a request for comment, though he has been active on Twitter, writing, No government would allow itself to support a candidate who abuses its international position to actively instigate opposition against a democratic verdict. Even Mr. Czarnecki concedes that the Polish governments bid is a long shot. And in any case, Whatever happens on Thursday, he said, I bet all my money that the next president of the European Council will be a Pole.

World

on techHow tech companies and all of us can help slow global warming.VideoCreditCredit...By Rad MoraJuly 23, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.A growing share of Americans are concerned about the environment, and the big U.S. tech companies would seem to be in a position to lead the way on fighting climate change.Theyre rich and staffed with smart people, and they have generally pledged to do more to reduce the carbon emissions that warm the planet.My colleague Somini Sengupta, who writes about climate change and used to cover the tech industry, walked me through confusing climate change terms and how tech companies and all of us can help slow global warming.Shira: What does it mean when a company pledges to go carbon neutral or carbon negative?Somini: A company will still produce carbon emissions, but it will offset that by doing things that absorb emissions from the atmosphere like planting forests. Trees are great! They absorb carbon dioxide. At least some portion of Amazons and Apples climate action plans involve reforestation.But thats not enough. Climate scientists say global emissions must be cut by half by 2030 if we stand a chance of averting the worst impacts of warming.How do tech companies contribute to climate change, and how are they helping?First, the industry uses lots of electricity, including for computer data centers. If much of that comes from coal, it creates a boatload of planet-warming emissions. This is a relatively easy problem to solve if companies use renewable energy, which is expanding fast and getting cheaper.Amazon, Google and Microsoft have also gotten attention for selling technology to help the oil and gas industry extract fossil fuels, which are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Google promised to stop.Other areas to watch: Can Apple, Amazon and Google compel manufacturers of their devices to reduce factory emissions and switch to cleaner energy? And can they reuse and recycle the materials inside of devices? In general, recycled materials are better for the environment.Then theres the question of how much internet companies like Facebook are helping spread disinformation on climate science.Is it effective for companies to pick their own paths on climate change? What about governments?As a former technology reporter, this moment reminds me of when big U.S. tech companies didnt want regulations on data privacy. They changed their privacy policies and promised to do better.Its possible that big tech companies are again setting themselves voluntary targets to forestall national legislation, like on emissions standards. Both Britain and the European Union now require their countries to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Thats bound to affect tech and every other industry.What can we do as consumers of technology?We can educate ourselves on what goes into the technology we buy, what the climate impacts are and how long a product might last.We can also think about what we buy in the first place. Making shiny new things contributes to global warming. So does shipping, delivering and returning stuff. We can help by making our existing products or devices last longer by replacing the battery or making a repair, or buying used.If you dont already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.Three ways to enjoy scary technologyInstead of doomscrolling today, how about flopping on the sofa to take in great entertainment about uh nightmarish technology?Margot Harrison, a fiction writer and editor at the Vermont newspaper Seven Days, offered us three recommendations for works dealing with malevolent technology. Her latest novel, The Glare, was released this month. Also check out her recent essay in The New York Times.Infinite Detail: A Novel by Tim MaughanIn this 2019 dystopian novel, the only thing scarier than the all-pervasive presence of the internet is its abrupt disappearance. The story is told in alternating sections labeled Before and After. In the former, anarchist hackers unravel the web that holds us all; in the latter, they deal with the consequences of succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.While depicting many all-too-plausible extensions of control and surveillance technology, Maughan suggests that its impossible to take a simple stand for or against the machines with which our ways of life are already fused.Feed by M.T. AndersonThis was the book that convinced me that young adult fiction might be especially open to exploring technological anxieties because teens have never known a world offline.Anderson envisions a future in which everyone has an implant feeding them entertainment, social interactions and micro-targeted advertising. The concept isnt new, but Andersons narrator has an unforgettable voice: Holden Caulfield with a near-lethal injection of swaggering early-aughts MTV.The Nosedive episode of Black MirrorNo piece of fiction has channeled my personal anxieties about social media quite as effectively as this.In a near future in which peoples status and livelihood depend directly on the ratings others give them, a young woman makes a fatal series of small mistakes that zero out her social credit. Its a nightmare that might convince you to put down the phone.Before we go The cyberattack deterrence isnt working: To fight cyberattacks from China and Russia, the U.S. government for years has tried to name, shame and indict those behind them, and sometimes even counterattacked. But those punishments havent been sufficient to deter continued cyberattacks and disinformation operations, reported David E. Sanger, the Times national security correspondent.You cant pry this phone out of my hand: Just about every tech company in the world considers India the emerging internet gold rush, but the companies are finding one big barrier: Many millions of Indians opt for basic cellphones over smartphones. This makes life harder for Netflix, Facebook and WeChat. The Chinese tech publication Abacus looks at why the basic cellphone in India is far more appealing than that Nokia you had in the early 2000s.Our national cake obsession didnt last long: Five minutes ago, it was impossible to avoid surreal social media videos of cakes disguised as Crocs, pickles or human heads. Now the craze is dying, NBC News reported. Like any fun thing, weird cake was ruined because The Olds got into it. (I am An Old as well. I swear. Its fine.)Hugs to thisPlease enjoy very good dog Spike romping in a meadow. (And if you dont already, follow the dog sledder and author Blair Braverman on Twitter for lots of very good dogs.)We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at [email protected]. If you dont already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here.

Tech

Credit...GoogleMay 14, 2019SAN FRANCISCO For years, Google and Amazon stuck to their strengths. Googles search monopoly and universe of online services seemed to present little overlap with Amazons web commerce empire.But as the ambitions of each have expanded, it is becoming unavoidably, inescapably clear that the technology giants are heading for a collision.On Tuesday, at its annual Google Marketing Live conference, Google unveiled a list of new products meant to help it become a destination for shoppers and for marketers hoping to reach consumers considering spending decisions.Googles latest move into Amazons core business is playing out as the retail giant makes gains in what has traditionally been the search companys home turf: digital advertising.As online commerce has become synonymous with Amazon, shoppers are starting more of their product searches at the companys website instead of Googles the traditional on-ramp to all things internet and marketers are spending advertising money there.In 2015, about 54 percent of product searches started on Google, and 46 percent started on Amazon. By 2018, the numbers had flipped, according to the marketing analytics firm Jumpshot.Google may be synonymous with many things search, ads, email, even artificial intelligence but online shopping is not one of them. That is not to say the company does not try.The companys shopping site, Google Express, looks similar to Amazons familiar online marketplace. Whether someone buys an item from, say, 99 Ranch Market and 1-800-Flowers, products are displayed in the same way and the payments are handled through Google Pay, the companys digital payment system. Customers must meet certain spending minimums to get free delivery, which is limited to the United States.Googles financial reports do not break out how much the company makes on e-commerce, nor will the company say how many people use Google Express, but analysts assume it is a sliver of Googles $116 billion in annual ad sales.Amazon, on the other hand, sold $277 billion in goods online last year, which analysts estimate is between a third and a half of all e-commerce sales. Amazons other business segment, which it says is primarily ads, brought in $10.8 billion in the past 12 months, a tiny sum compared with the ad businesses of Google and Facebook, but growing.Both of these companies are arriving at the same conclusion from different points, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the Marketplace Pulse, a research company. For Amazon, it makes sense because why wouldnt they? They have all this traffic, and all this interest from brands.Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on Googles new shopping plans.The two companies, which competed only on the fringes of their businesses for years, now have a range of overlapping interests.Google Cloud is challenging Amazon Web Services in cloud computing. Amazons Twitch is becoming a popular alternative to Googles YouTube for online video content. The Google Home and Amazon Echo are smart speaker vessels for competing intelligent assistants from the companies.Google said on Tuesday that it planned to beef up its e-commerce with a shopping feature that would allow people to make purchases directly from searches, images and YouTube videos. By clicking ads in those settings, a shopper would buy products through Google.For users whose credit card and shipping information is stored with Google, which declined to say how many that is, the company would fill out that information to speed up checking out. Google said it wanted to make shoppers more comfortable buying from retailers that they may not be familiar with by serving as a middleman that guarantees a consistent return policy and customer service.Google also said it planned to introduce new Discovery ads in YouTube, its Discover news feed, which appears beneath the search field in the Google app and mobile website, and Gmail later this year. The goal is to target audiences across different Google properties using what Google knows about users based on their online searches, the videos they watch on YouTube, the websites they browse and the apps they download.[Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.]Were making more of Google shoppable, said Brad Bender, the vice president of product management for the companys ads division.Google has made other efforts to slow Amazon in e-commerce, with little success. It started a shopping service in 2013, initially offering free same-day delivery before scrapping it. It also tried grocery delivery but gave up on that, too.More recently, Google has spent several years building its Google Express, featuring more than 1,000 retailers, including Best Buy, Costco and Target. As part of its new shopping push, Google said, it will create a shopping home page that is personalized for users.Google is adding new advertising and shopping products as it tries to quell concerns that its revenue growth has started to decelerate.Last month, Googles parent company, Alphabet, announced quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street expectations, dragging down its share price. One concern raised by analysts was that paid clicks on ads on sites like Google and YouTube had grown 39 percent, below the increases of 50 to 60 percent in recent quarters.Even as Amazon has become a giant in online sales, only recently has it had an advertising awakening. Many analysts see advertising as a rising third pillar of the business, along with the companys retail sales and cloud computing services. In an analysis released Tuesday morning, Morgan Stanley estimated that Amazons ad business would be valued at $85 billion on Wall Street.The company has been building more tools for brands to place ads on and off its website, and it has added more space for ads when people search for products.People may turn to Google to research their interests, but Amazon is about buying actual goods, said Brian Wieser, who analyzes media for GroupM, which directs more than $48 billion in ads each year on behalf of brands. You are actually doing, not just intending to do, which is why its viewed as being so much more useful.The core of Amazons ad offerings are sponsored product listings, which direct shoppers to specific items based on the keywords they searched. The top of most search pages also now has a rectangular banner ad, called a sponsored brand, that points shoppers to a companys page or to particular items.Amazon has also quietly been building tools to help brands show video and display ads to consumers on other websites based on the rich data they have on their customers. For example, someone using a credit card from one bank to pay for Amazon purchases may see ads for another banks cards when reading the news online.Googles latest move lets the company sell ads and services that are more closely tied to actual transactions, which they can charge more for.Mr. Kaziukenas said that for now, Googles plans were not a risk at all for Amazon. The reason, he said, is that Amazon has a large advantage over other retailers after more than a decade of building out the infrastructure to ship items quickly and reliably, while Google is depending on merchants to fulfill orders on their own.Google historically has tried to not do things in the physical world, Mr. Kaziukenas said. Obviously for them that has been very profitable.

Tech

Credit...Carlo Allegri/ReutersDec. 10, 2015When the pilot of an Alitalia jetliner reported seeing a drone while approaching Kennedy Airport in New York in March 2013, the likelihood of a collision between a drone and a commercial jet seemed pretty remote.But over the past two years, aviation experts and regulators have become increasingly concerned about the growing number of drones flying near airports and the risks they could potentially create for aviation safety. Last Saturday, for instance, a California Highway Patrol helicopter nearly crashed into a drone and the pilot avoided a collision only because he veered away.If you go through the windshield and you hit the pilot, thats game over, a highway patrol spokesman, Jim Andrews, told local reporters. If it goes into the rotor blades, depending on where or what it hits, it could be the same situation.But while the number of drones is growing rapidly, their impact on flight safety is still being debated. More than 400,000 drones were sold last year and this year the Consumer Technology Association is forecasting sales of 700,000 more.In August, the Federal Aviation Administration said reports of close calls by pilots had soared, even though F.A.A. rules prohibit flying drones near airports. It reported cases in which commercial pilots had seen drones flying above 10,000 feet and pointed to instances in which firefighters battling wildfires in the western part of the country had to ground their operations after spotting drones nearby.Drone enthusiasts criticized the agency as sensationalizing the issue as it seeks to regulate it. Critics, for instance, said laser beams pointed at pilots were a far bigger and more malicious threat to commercial aviation.There have been more than 5,000 reports of lasers aimed at airplanes, a number that has risen over the past few years, according to pilot representatives. Also, aircraft last year recorded about 13,000 bird strikes, a well-known threat to aviation safety, according to F.A.A. statistics.The Academy of Model Aeronautics, which represents model plane hobbyists, produced its own report that found that only a tiny number of drones were involved in close encounters with airplanes where pilots had to take evasive action. The F.A.A. itself has found only two instances of possible drone collisions with an aircraft, but has not been able to confirm either episode, according to a spokesman.But Hulsey Smith, the chief executive of Aero Kinetics, a maker of commercial drones, said the risks of accidentally flying into the path of an airplane or a helicopter was statistically just a matter of time.The general public has no sense of how dangerous these toys really are, he said. If we dont have an honest conversation about those risks, we could set this industry back years and decades.The F.A.A. is considering requiring drone owners to register themselves when they acquire a drone, probably before the end of this year. Regulators are also working on new rules for commercial drone operators, which will be completed next year. Under those rules, drones would be barred from flying above 500 feet, or faster than 100 miles per hour. Operators will also have to maintain a line of sight with drones.Mr. Smith said that registering drone owners was a necessary first step but not enough. He supports setting up a system to certify a drones airworthiness to prove it can operate safely, and possibly equipping drones with costly tracking beacons or collision avoidance systems.A study by two researchers at the Center for the Study of the Drone, at Bard College, due to be released Friday, tries to provide a more comprehensive overview of the risks. The study broadened the definition of close encounter to include incidents in which a drone flew close to a plane, not just those in which a pilot had to take evasive action.The study reviewed 922 incidents involving drones and manned aircraft in the national airspace over the past two years. These incidents were reported to the F.A.A. and NASAs Aviation Safety Reporting System, a confidential reporting system for pilots, from December 2013 to September 2015.The researchers found that 327 incidents or 35 percent of the cases could be described as close encounters, defined as drones coming within 500 feet of aircraft.In 158 of those cases, a drone came within 200 feet or less of an aircraft, and in 28 instances, a pilot reported having to maneuver to avoid a collision. The study also found 90 close encounters between a commercial jet aircraft and a drone, and 38 involved helicopters.Arthur Holland Michel, one author of the study, said regulators and policy makers, as well as the public, needed more accurate and impartial data to get a better understanding of the risks.The seriousness of the problem is still somewhat up for debate in terms of the particulars, he said, about whether a drone could bring down a commercial airliner or whether the episodes represent malicious intent.But the challenge of integrating drones in the domestic airspace can only be addressed through a combination of solutions, he said. And it will take collaboration between the industry, the regulators and the drone users.

Business

Disney Star Adam Hicks Video Captures Armed Robbery (UPDATE) 1/26/2018 TMZ.com TMZ has obtained video ... allegedly showing Disney star Adam Hicks committing armed robbery, casually strolling to his getaway vehicle and driving away. TMZ broke the story ... Hicks, who starred in "Zeke and Luther," "Pair of Kings," and "Lemonade Mouth," was arrested with his girlfriend for allegedly committing 4 or 5 armed robberies in the Burbank area. The video shows a black SUV stop on a residential street and a man jump out of the vehicle, targeting a man who is walking to his car. You see the robber with a gun tucked under his arm standing with the man, who is clearly terrified. The victim hands over property and then bolts in fear. The robber strolls to the waiting SUV, jumps in and the vehicle takes off. Hicks and his girlfriend, actress Danni Tamburo, were both arrested and booked for armed robbery. They allegedly targeted people walking in the Burbank area, demanding money, cellphones and other items. Two of the other alleged victims are women in their 70s. -- The L.A. County D.A. just charged Hicks and Tamburo with 2 counts of 2nd degree robbery, and 3 counts of attempted 2nd degree robbery ... all felonies. All the alleged incidents happened Wednesday, Jan. 24. His bail's been set at $350,000 and hers is $300k. Hicks faces up to 60 years in prison, if convicted, while Tamburo could be put away for 15 years.

Entertainment

Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers are back on the ground after completing their short flight to space.VideotranscripttranscriptHighlights From Blue Origins SpaceflightBlue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.Theres Oliver on the left, Jeff Bezos on the right. We are about to go to space, everybody. Command engine start two, one, ignition. We have liftoff. The Shepard has cleared the tower. And New Shepard has cleared the tower, on her way to space with our first human crew. And booster touchdown, welcome back New Shepard. First up, your booster has landed. Booster landed. Our rocket went over Mach 3. And now theyre coming, floating back down at just about 15 or 16 miles an hour. What a flight. Welcome back to Earth. Congratulations to all of you. All of you. [cheering] Welcome back, astronauts.Blue Origins first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen. The team traveled more than 60 miles above Earth.CreditCredit...Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressJeff Bezos, the richest human in the world, went to space on Tuesday. It was a brief jaunt rising 60-some miles into the sky above West Texas in a spacecraft that was built by Mr. Bezos rocket company, Blue Origin.The flight, even though it did not enter orbit, was a milestone for the company that Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started more than 20 years ago, the first time a Blue Origin vehicle carried people to space.Best day ever, Mr. Bezos exclaimed once the capsule had settled in the dust near the launch site.That Mr. Bezos himself was seated in the capsule reflects his enthusiasm for the endeavor and perhaps signals his intent to give Blue Origin the focus and creative entrepreneurship that made Amazon one of the most powerful economic forces on the planet.Outside of short delays in the countdown, the launch proceeded smoothly.Just after 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, the four passengers arrived at a bridge atop the launch platform, with each ringing a bell hung at one end before crossing to the capsule. They then began boarding the capsule one at a time and strapped into their seats.The stubby rocket and capsule, named New Shepard after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, rose from the companys launch site in Van Horn at 9:11 a.m., a thin jet of fire and exhaust streaming from the rockets engine.Once the booster had used up its propellant, the capsule detached from the rocket at an altitude of about 47 miles. Both pieces continued to coast upward, passing the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space.ImageCredit...Thom Baur/ReutersMr. Bezos and the passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, cheering in the capsule as they experienced about four minutes of free fall.You have a very happy crew up here, I want you to know, Mr. Bezos said as the capsule descended.The booster landed vertically, similar to the reusable Falcon 9 booster of the rival spaceflight company SpaceX. The capsule then descended until it gently set down in a puff of dust.At 9:21 a.m., 10 minutes and 10 seconds after launch, it was over.The four passengers exited the capsule just after 9:30 a.m., and embraced loved ones, friends and ground crew as they celebrated.What is the New Shepard rocket and what did it do?VideotranscripttranscriptVideo Shows Inside the Blue Origin Flight to SpaceThe Blue Origin crew included four passengers who had fun during the short flight, playing with Skittles and experimenting with gravity.You just have to wait for it. Who wants a Skittle? Oh yeah, throw me one. See if you can catch this in your mouth. Group: Yeah! Well done. Here, toss me one. Here, catch. Oh, yeah. Whoo hoo! Has it been everything you thought it would be? Fantastic! Here, look Oliver.The Blue Origin crew included four passengers who had fun during the short flight, playing with Skittles and experimenting with gravity.CreditCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesNew Shepard, the Blue Origin spacecraft, is named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space. It consists of a reusable booster and a capsule on top, where the passengers sit. Unlike Virgin Galactics space plane, New Shepard is more of a traditional rocket, taking off vertically. Once the booster has used up its propellant liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen the capsule detaches from the booster. During Tuesdays flight, both pieces continued to coast upward, above the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space. During this part of the trajectory, the passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, experiencing about four minutes of free fall and seeing views of Earth and the blackness of space from the capsules large windows.The booster then landed first and vertically, similar to the touchdowns of SpaceXs Falcon 9 rockets. The capsule landed minutes after the booster, descending under a parachute and cushioned by the firing of a last-second jet of air. The whole flight lasted about 10 minutes.Is New Shepard safe?ImageCredit...Blue OriginBefore Tuesdays flight, Blue Origin had launched New Shepard 15 times all without anyone onboard and the capsule landed safely every time. (On the first launch, the booster crashed; on the next 14 launches, the booster landed intact.)During one flight in 2016, Blue Origin performed an in-flight test of the rockets escape system where thrusters whisked away the capsule from a malfunctioning booster. A solid-fuel rocket at the bottom of the crew capsule fired for 1.8 seconds, exerting 70,000 pounds of force to quickly separate the capsule and steer it out of the way of the booster. Its parachutes deployed, and the capsule landed softly.Not only did the capsule survive, the booster was able to right itself, continue to space, and then, firing its engine again, land a couple of miles north of the launchpad in West Texas, a bit charred but intact.Still, the federal government does not impose regulations for the safety of passengers on a spacecraft like New Shepard. Unlike commercial passenger jetliners, the rocket has not been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Indeed, the F.A.A. is prohibited by law from issuing any such requirements until 2023.The rationale is that emerging space companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic need a learning period to try out designs and procedures and that too much regulation, too soon would stifle innovation that would lead to better, more efficient designs.The passengers must sign forms acknowledging informed consent to the risks, similar to what you sign if you go skydiving or bungee jumping.What the F.A.A. does regulate is ensuring safety for people not on the plane that is, if anything does go wrong, that the risk to the uninvolved public on ground is minuscule.Who else was aboard the flight?Mr. Bezos brought his younger brother. Mark Bezos, 50, has lived a more private life. He is a co-founder and general partner at HighPost Capital, a private equity firm. Mark Bezos previously worked as head of communications at the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that aids anti-poverty efforts in New York City.Blue Origin auctioned off one of the seats, with the proceeds going to Club for the Future, a space-focused charity founded by Mr. Bezos. The winning bidder paid $28 million and we still do not know who that was.ImageCredit...Daemen FamilyLast week, the company announced that the auction winner had decided to wait until a subsequent flight due to scheduling conflicts.Instead, Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands who was one of the runners-up in the auction, and who had purchased a ticket on the second New Shepard flight, was bumped up.The fourth passenger was Mary Wallace Funk she goes by Wally a pilot who in the 1960s was among a group of women who passed the same rigorous criteria that NASA used for selecting astronauts.Wally Funks long wait for a trip to space.At 82, Wally Funk has become the oldest person to ever have gone to space. But that is not what makes her so special.In 1961, three years before Jeff Bezos was born, Ms. Funk and 12 other women went through testing as part of the Woman in Space Program. The tests had been designed by Dr. William Lovelace for the Mercury astronauts. He wanted to put women through the same tests to see if they would be good candidates for space.Across the board, the women who passed that initial round of testing did as well or better than their male counterparts, and of that group, Ms. Funk excelled.When you hear about these women today, they are often called the Mercury 13, but they called themselves the FLATs: First Lady Astronaut Trainees.None of those women have gone into space. The U.S. government shut down the program just as the Cold War space race was heating up. Ms. Funk said that when she learned the program was canceled, she wasnt discouraged.I was young and I was happy. I just believed it would come, she said in the book Promised the Moon by Stephanie Nolen. If not today, then in a couple of months.ImageCredit...Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesOver the years, she applied four times to be an astronaut and was turned down because she had never gotten an engineering degree. By contrast, when the astronaut John Glenn was selected for the Mercury program, he also did not have an engineering degree.Ms. Funk has spent the past 60 years trying to find another way into space.I was brought up that when things dont work out, you go to your alternative, she said.Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut who served aboard the space shuttle and the space station, sees in the invitation a message to Ms. Funk and many more unsung women in space and aviation.Wally you matter. And what youve done matters. And I honor you, is what Dr. Coleman thinks Mr. Bezos is saying. She adds that When Wally flies, we all fly with her.But for many women and nonbinary people involved in space and astronomy, the moment is more nuanced.These individual stories and victories are important, but they are not justice, said Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Mary Robinette Kowal What will it cost to fly on New Shepard?ImageCredit...Blue Origin, via Associated PressFor the first flight, Blue Origin auctioned off one of the seats with the proceeds going to Mr. Bezos space-focused nonprofit, Club for the Future. The winning bid was $28 million, an amount that stunned even Blue Origin officials, far higher than they had hoped. Blue Origin announced it will distribute $19 million of that to 19 space-related organizations $1 million each.The 7,600 people who participated in the auction provided Blue Origin with a list of prospective paying customers, and the company has started selling tickets for subsequent flights.Blue Origin has declined to say what the price is or how many people have signed up, but representatives of the company say there is strong demand.Our early flights are going for a very good price, Bob Smith, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said during a news conference on Sunday.During the auction for the seat on Tuesdays flight, the company said that auction participants could buy a seat on subsequent flights. It has not publicly stated what it charged those who placed bids, or how many seats have been sold.Ariane Cornell, director of astronaut and orbital sales at Blue Origin, said that two additional flights are planned for this year. So we have already built a robust pipeline of customers that are interested, she said.Virgin Galactic, the other company offering suborbital flights, has about 600 people who have already bought tickets. The price was originally $200,000 and later raised to $250,000, but Virgin Galactic stopped sales in 2014 after a crash of its first space plane during a test flight. Virgin Galactic officials say they will resume sales later this year, and the price will likely be higher than $250,000.Bezos thanks Amazon workers and customers for his vast wealth, prompting backlash.ImageCredit...Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesFrom groceries and streaming subscriptions to web servers and Alexa, Amazon has become one of the most powerful economic forces in the world. And after Jeff Bezos returned from his brief flight to space on Tuesday in a rocket built by his private space company, Blue Origin, he made remarks that drew attention to the vast wealth the company had created for him.I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this, Mr. Bezos said during a news conference after his spaceflight.Mr. Bezos comment prompted swift critical reactions, including from a member of the House of Representatives who serves on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.Space travel isnt a tax-free holiday for the wealthy, said Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon. We pay taxes on plane tickets. Billionaires flying into space producing no scientific value should do the same, and then some!Mr. Blumenauer expressed concerns about the environmental effects of such space tourist flights. He said he had introduced legislation he called the Securing Protections Against Carbon Emissions (SPACE) Tax Act, aiming to make passengers on such flights pay a tax to offset their pollution impact.He wasnt alone in connecting Mr. Bezos spaceflight with concerns about how Amazons business practices have affected his companys employees as well as small businesses.While Jeff Bezos is all over the news for paying to go to space, lets not forget the reality he has created here on Earth, Representative Nydia Velazquez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. She added the hashtag #WealthTaxNow on Tuesday morning and included a link to an article about how much Amazons employees had been paid.While those congressional Democrats offered criticism, the message from the White House was more welcoming.This is a moment of American exceptionalism, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said when asked about the flight during a Tuesday news conference.What Jeff Bezos and crew wore to space.ImageCredit...Blue Origin, via Associated PressWhen Jeff Bezos blasted into space on Tuesday, he wasnt channeling the Apollo astronauts in at least one respect: his sartorial choice.Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, told NBCs Today show on Monday that he wouldnt need a traditional spacesuit for the more than 62-mile jaunt above the Earth.Mr. Bezos and the three other crew members aboard the New Shepard capsule wore light flight suits with a shiny sheen that resemble the jumpsuits worn by military pilots, or perhaps even a NASCAR drivers racing suit.The blue suits, revealed in pictures and videos published by Mr. Bezos and his fellow passengers before the flight, have a mission patch on the upper left chest that features Blue Origins rocket blasting into space.It feels good to be in the flight suit, Mr. Bezos said in a promotional video that he posted on Monday on Instagram.The crew members first initials and surnames are printed in white letters on the chest area of the suits, which have black trim and the Blue Origin name emblazoned on the left sleeve. On the right arm is a flag patch, similar to those worn by astronauts and fighter jet pilots the American flag for the Bezos brothers and Wally Funk, and the Dutch flag for Oliver Daemen.Blue Origin wasnt the only company to make distinctive fashion choices in the competition between billionaires in their attempted private conquest of space.When Richard Branson realized his dream of traveling to space last week in a Virgin Galactic rocket plane, he wore a darker blue jumpsuit made by the sports apparel giant Under Armour, complete with the companys ubiquitous logo.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, enlisted a costume designer who worked on Batman v Superman, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers and X-Men II to create the prototype for the more functional spacesuit worn by astronauts flying in SpaceXs Crew Dragon capsule.Correction:July 20, 2021An earlier version of this article misstated the altitude of a Blue Origin flight. It went to space, not orbit.Why did Jeff Bezos take this risk?Jeff Bezos, a child during the Apollo era, grew up fascinated by space. Space is something that I have been in love with since I was 5 years old, he said in 2014. I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon, and I guess it imprinted me.But that passion long took a back seat to his early business ventures. Mr. Bezos, now 57, first worked on Wall Street, and then started Amazon in 1994. Six years later he founded Blue Origin, the company behind the spaceship he is flying in on Tuesday. But building Amazon his day job, as he once called it consumed the vast majority of his time, as he transformed it from an online bookseller into one of the most powerful and feared retail forces ever.In recent years he began to step back a bit from Amazon, handing more day-to-day responsibilities to deputies. He would typically spend a day a week usually Wednesdays focused on Blue Origin, and in 2017 he announced that he would sell $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund the space venture.ImageCredit...Nick Cote for The New York TimesAmazons success kept propelling Mr. Bezos fortune higher, and in 2018, he surpassed Bill Gates to become the wealthiest person in the world. Booking trips to space rose to the top of his spending list.The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel, he said, couching his investment as a form of philanthropy, after he had been criticized for not doing more to share his wealth. The solar system can easily support a trillion humans, he said. If we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power.Thats the world, he said, that I want my great-grandchildrens great-grandchildren to live in.He briefly re-engaged in Amazons daily operations at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But in February, he announced plans to step down as Amazons chief executive. Andy Jassy, one of his top deputies, took over the role early this month.Mr. Bezos said he wanted to devote more focus on Blue Origin and his other ventures.Ive never had more energy, and this isnt about retiring, he told Amazon employees. Im super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.Now, two weeks after officially stepping aside, he has flown to space.What else is Blue Origin building for spaceflight?ImageCredit...Mike Blake/ReutersBlue Origin is developing a larger rocket, New Glenn (named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth), to launch satellites and other payloads. The first launch of New Glenn is to occur no earlier than the latter part of next year, delayed by two years.The rocket engine that Blue Origin developed for New Glenn will also power a competing rocket, Vulcan, built by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The first launch of Vulcan is to occur early next year, and will carry a robotic lander to the moon paid for by NASA.The company also led a proposed design for a lander to take NASA astronauts back to the moon in the coming years. NASA had intended to select two lander designs, but because Congress did not provide as much money to the program as requested, NASA chose only one, from Elon Musks SpaceX.Blue Origin as well as Dynetics, the third company in the competition protested NASAs decision with the Government Accountability Office. A decision on the protests is due in early August.What will these suborbital flights mean for the space industry?When Jeff Bezos flew into space on Tuesday, Rick Tumlinson, founding partner of the venture capital firm SpaceFund, hoped to catch a glimpse of the launch.To see two flights in two weeks is truly the beginning of the tipping point, said Mr. Tumlinson, who owns property not far from Blue Origins launch site near Van Horn, Texas, and, like millions of other people, watched Richard Bransons flight on Virgin Galactics space plane last week.Mr. Tumlinson isnt alone in his excitement. Space start-up founders and investors see Mr. Bezos and Mr. Bransons suborbital flights driving additional interest to the space industry. They shrug off criticisms over Mr. Bezos, Mr. Branson and SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk pouring some of their billions into the private space race.And their high-profile launches come as investor funding pours into space start-ups, fueling companies that are working to make satellites smaller and launches more accessible. Space start-ups raised over $7 billion in 2020, twice as much as two years earlier, and are on track to continue that rise this year, according to the space analytics firm BryceTech.ImageCredit...Virgin Galactic, via ReutersThe news of the day is that theyre going to put people in space, said Charles Miller, chief executive of the satellite internet start-up Lynk. But he believes that successful private space companies will benefit humanity by making it easier to put people and satellites in orbit.Its going to have a profound impact on life on Earth, he added.Space technology is a relatively small, tight-knit field, investors and founders said, full of people who have spent decades working for the broader interest and attention the industry is currently enjoying. And for many of them, the appearance of rivalry between Mr. Bezos, Mr. Branson and Mr. Musk is a positive for the industry, not a chance to take sides.Everybody got up really early to watch Branson, and everyone will watch with bated breath what happens on Bezos flight, said Lisa Rich, a founder of the venture capital firm Hemisphere Ventures and the orbital mission company Xplore.Tim Ellis, the chief executive of the 3D-printed rocket start-up Relativity Space, added: We all cheer for each other. Erin Woo Did New Shepard really go to space?The United States Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration put the boundary of outer space at 50 miles. The F.A.A. has granted astronaut wings to anyone who flies above that altitude, including crew members of Virgin Galactics space planes that fly just over it.Internationally, however, the altitude that marks the start of space is usually set at 100 kilometers, or just over 62 miles, what is known as the Krmn line. The Blue Origin spacecraft exceeded this altitude during its flight. Blue Origin highlighted this fact, and several other features of New Shepard, in a tweet on July 9, that compared the spacecraft with Virgin Galactics SpaceShipTwo days before its fight with Mr. Branson aboard.From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Krmn line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the worlds population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Krmn line. pic.twitter.com/QRoufBIrUJ Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2021 What else is going on in private spaceflight?TV and film projects in orbit are attracting the greatest attention so far. In the year ahead, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and a Russian broadcaster, Channel One, are behind an effort in the year ahead to send Yulia Peresild, an actress, and Klim Shipenko, a filmmaker, to the space station to make the movie Challenge. Ms. Peresild will play a surgeon sent to orbit to save the life of a Russian astronaut.They will fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket. So will a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa, and Yozo Hirano, a production assistant. Their 12-day trip, scheduled to launch in December, is a prelude for a more ambitious around-the-moon trip Mr. Maezawa hopes to embark on in a few years in the giant SpaceX Starship rocket that is currently in development. His trip to the space station is being arranged by Space Adventures, a company that arranged eight similar visits for private citizens between 2001 and 2009.The Discovery Channel has announced a reality TV show, Who Wants to Be an Astronaut? in which the winner gets to travel to the International Space Station. The eight-episode show, in development, is to run next year.SpaceX has a couple of missions in the next 12 months that are scheduled to take private citizens to orbit. One is scheduled to launch in September and will carry Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, and three other amateur astronauts, on a trip to orbit. A second, booked by the company Axiom Space, will carry three wealthy individuals and an astronaut working for the company to the International Space Station.

science

Middle East|Egyptian Sentenced to Death in Killing of Christian Doctorhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/world/middleeast/egypt-christian-doctor-islamic-state.htmlNov. 17, 2018CAIRO An Egyptian man accused of supporting the Islamic State was sentenced to death on Saturday in the fatal stabbing of an 82-year-old Christian doctor in Cairo.Prosecutors said the killing in September 2017 happened when the 40-year-old defendant requested to see the doctor, pretending to be a patient.The man, who was not identified, started stabbing the doctor when he was shown into the clinics examination room, and then stabbed the physicians assistant as she intervened to try to stop the attack, officials said.Prosecutors said the defendant had embraced the extremist ideology of the Islamic State. The local affiliate of the group has targeted Egypts minority Christian population as punishment for its support of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has cracked down on Muslim groups since taking power after the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.The Islamic State in Egypt has expanded an insurgency that started in the Sinai Peninsula in recent years to include attacks on Christians in churches and major cities and outside monasteries.Earlier this month, the militant group said it was behind an ambush on two buses in which gunmen fatally shot dead at least seven Coptic Christian pilgrims and wounded at least 16 others. The attack came after a nearly yearlong lull in major attacks on Copts in Egypt.The two buses were carrying pilgrims left the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor, 85 miles south of Cairo, in Egypts Western Desert.In November 2017, dozens of militants opened fire on a mosque in Sinai affiliated with the Sufi strain of Islam which extremists view as heretical killing at least 311 people, in the deadliest act of terrorism in Egypts modern history.

World

Business BriefingDec. 23, 2015Breckenridge Brewery, one of Colorados largest and oldest craft breweries, is promising beer drinkers that nothing will change even though it is being bought by Anheuser-Busch InBev. The beer giant said it was acquiring Breckenridge for an undisclosed amount and would add it to its craft and import brand unit, the High End. In an open letter to supporters, the president of Breckenridge, J. Todd Usry, said the brewery would continue to make its own decisions about the beers it creates. I hope you will give us the chance to prove to you over time that we will continue to be Breckenridge Brewery, he said. The sale was a surprise to many in Colorado, with people accusing Breckenridge, the states sixth largest craft brewer, of being more interested in money than craft. Kyle Leingang, a lawyer for Dorsey & Whitney who works on craft brewing mergers and acquisitions, said Anheuser-Busch seemed to be pursuing a strategy of acquiring successful, regionally focused brewers. InBev is banking on the real definition of craft being higher quality and not who the owner is, and well see how that plays out, he said.

Business

With inpatient psychiatric services in short supply, adolescents are spending days, even weeks, in hospital emergency departments awaiting the help they desperately need.Credit...Published May 8, 2022Updated May 9, 2022On a rainy Thursday evening last spring, a 15-year-old girl was rushed by her parents to the emergency department at Boston Childrens Hospital. She had marks on both wrists from self-harm and a recent suicide attempt, and earlier that day she confided to her pediatrician that she planned to try again.At the E.R., a doctor examined her and explained to her parents that she was not safe to go home.But I need to be honest with you about whats likely to unfold, the doctor added. The best place for adolescents in distress was not a hospital but an inpatient treatment center, where individual and group therapy would be provided in a calmer, communal setting, to stabilize the teens and ease them back to real life. But there were no openings in any of the treatment centers in the region, the doctor said.Indeed, 15 other adolescents all in precarious mental condition were already housed in the hospitals emergency department, sleeping in exam rooms night after night, waiting for an opening. The average wait for a spot in a treatment program was 10 days.The girl and her family resigned themselves to a stay in the emergency room while she waited. But nearly a month went by before an inpatient bed opened up.VideoWhy are so many American teenagers feeling anxious, depressed and even suicidal? Our video looks at the science behind the teen mental health crisis.CreditCredit...The New York TimesThe girl, being identified by her middle initial, G, to protect her privacy, spent the first week of her wait in a psych-safe room in the emergency department. Any equipment that might be used for harm had been removed. She was forbidden to use electronics to keep her from searching the internet for ways to commit suicide or asking a friend to smuggle in a sharp object, as teens before her had done. Her door was kept open night and day so she could be monitored.It was padded, insane-asylum-like, she recalled recently in an interview. Just walls all you see is walls.She grew catatonic, her mother recalled. In this process of boarding we broke her worse than ever.Mental health disorders are surging among adolescents: In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Gs story describes one of its starkest manifestations of the crisis. Across the country, hospital emergency departments have become boarding wards for teenagers who pose too great a risk to themselves or others to go home. They have nowhere else to go; even as the crisis has intensified, the medical system has failed to keep up, and options for inpatient and intensive outpatient psychiatric treatment have eroded sharply.Nationally, the number of residential treatment facilities for people under the age of 18 fell to 592 in 2020 from 848 in 2012, a 30 percent decline, according to the most recent federal government survey. The decline is partly a result of well-intentioned policy changes that did not foresee a surge in mental-health cases. Social-distancing rules and labor shortages during the pandemic have eliminated additional treatment centers and beds, experts say.Absent that option, emergency rooms have taken up the slack. A recent study of 88 pediatric hospitals around the country found that 87 of them regularly board children and adolescents overnight in the E.R. On average, any given hospital saw four boarders per day, with an average stay of 48 hours.There is a pediatric pandemic of mental health boarding, said Dr. JoAnna K. Leyenaar, a pediatrician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the studys lead author. In an interview, she extrapolated from her research and other data to estimate that at least 1,000 young people, and perhaps as many as 5,000, board each night in the nations 4,000 emergency departments.We have a national crisis, Dr. Leyenaar said.This trend runs far afoul of the recommended best practices established by the Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that helps set national health care policy. According to the standard, adolescents who come to the E.R. for mental health reasons should stay there no longer than four hours, as an extended stay can risk patient safety, delay treatment and divert resources from other emergencies.Yet in 2021, the average adolescent boarding in the E.R. at Boston Childrens Hospital spent nine days waiting for an inpatient bed, up from three and a half days in 2019; at Childrens Hospital Colorado in Aurora in 2021, the average wait was eight days, and at Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford, it was six.Emergency-department boarding has risen at small, rural hospitals, too, with no pediatric or mental health specialists, said Dr. Christian Pulcini, a pediatrician in Vermont who has studied the trend in the state. There is one clear conclusion, he told the Vermont legislature recently. The E.D. is not the appropriate setting for children to get comprehensive, acute mental health services.Doctors and hospital officials emphasize that adolescents should absolutely continue to come to the E.R. in a psychiatric emergency. Still, many emergency-room doctors and nurses, trained to treat broken bones, pneumonia and other corporeal challenges, said the ideal solution was more preventive care and community treatment programs.Frankly speaking, the E.D. is one of the worst places for a kid in mental health crisis to be, said Dr. Kevin Carney, a pediatric emergency room doctor at Childrens Hospital Colorado. I feel at a loss for how to help these kids.Actually a good dayImageThe challenge was evident one day in late February when Dr. Carney arrived for his shift at 3 p.m. The childrens hospital has 50 exam rooms in its emergency department, which fill with patients who have gone through an initial screening and need further evaluation. By midafternoon, 43 of the rooms were full, 17 of them with mental health cases.Its breathtaking, Dr. Carney said as he stood in the hallway. Forty percent.On clocking in, Dr. Carney had inherited a block of 10 exam rooms from a doctor who was clocking out. Seven are mental health issues, Dr. Carney said. Six are suicidal. Three of them made attempts.The adolescents who were deemed to be at physical risk to themselves or others could be readily identified: Their exam room doors were open so they could be monitored, and they wore maroon-colored scrubs instead of their own clothes. No shoelaces, belts or zippers.Throughout the day, staff members at the hospital had called eight inpatient facilities in the region, looking for available slots in treatment centers where the 10 young boarders, as well as 17 other adolescents boarding at three smaller Colorado Childrens Hospital campuses around the state, could be placed.One of the adolescents waiting in Aurora, a Denver suburb, was a 16-year-old who had been stabilized after attempting suicide and who needed a residential treatment spot. But there are no beds, Jessica Friedman, a social worker, said she had told the family.I have eight or nine conversations like this a day, Ms. Friedman, standing in the hallway, told a reporter; so far that day she had had only two. This is actually a good day.Standing nearby, Travis Justilian, a nurse and the interim clinic manager in the emergency department, said the flood of boarders is crushing our staff. He added, Were fixers and were sitting here doing nothing but watching them watch TV.Colorado is struggling with the same shortage of services that has hit hospitals nationwide. The state has lost 1,000 residential beds serving various adolescent populations since 2012, according to Heidi Baskfield, vice president of population health and advocacy for Childrens Hospital Colorado. The state closed one 500-bed facility, Ridgeview, which served at-risk young people, in 2021 because of instances of poor quality and abuse. Another facility, Excelsior, closed its 200 beds in 2017 because reimbursement rates were not high enough to support ongoing operations, the chief executive officer said at the time of the closing.A major cause, Ms. Baskfield said, was the low reimbursement rates paid by Medicaid, the state insurance program. From 2006 to 2021, the daily Medicaid rate in Colorado allotted roughly $400 for a therapeutic residential bed less than some families spend to send their kids for a night to sleepaway camp, Ms. Baskfield said.The low rates also accounted for some of the quality issues, she said; it was hard to hire experienced staff. (In the past year, Colorado has raised its reimbursement to $750 per day by using money from the American Rescue Plan, but new beds have yet to open, and that source of money is temporary.)Lisette Burton, chief policy and practice adviser for the Association of Childrens Residential and Community Services, a nonprofit advocacy group, noted that, nationally, the closure of facilities and the loss of beds was the result of many factors, including a well-intended, decades-long effort to keep foster children and other children out of institutional settings. But the intended substitutes more nimble and specialized treatment options were never funded and remain largely unavailable, she said.Then came the pandemic, amplifying labor shortages and introducing social-distancing and quarantine guidelines that reduced the capacity for patients. Demand went up, supply went down, Ms. Burton said. Now were in full-blown crisis.On that February day in Colorado, one inpatient bed finally opened up. It happened to be in the 12-bed inpatient ward of Childrens Hospital Colorado, just a few minutes walk from the E.R.The wards hallways are wide, the walls painted light green and the lighting bright, to instill a feeling of comfort and calm. Each bedroom has windows looking outside and, next to the door, a glass panel enabling hospital staff to discreetly peer inside.In a small communal room, four adolescent girls in maroon scrubs sat on blue chairs and couches. One listened to headphones and sang aloud to the soundtrack to Encanto. Another worked on a jigsaw puzzle of the sea. Two others chatted with a counselor.The emergency department is just a collection of rooms where patients are expected to stay in their rooms and comply with rules, said Lyndsay Gaffey, director of patient care services at Childrens Hospital Colorado. In the inpatient ward, she said, the aim instead was to stabilize patients by having them work through trauma, receive therapy and interact with peers.But they must be closely watched here, too. When a reporter rested a pen on a countertop, a staff member swept it up. You cannot have this here unless it is on your person, she said. If a patient walks over and grabs it, it can basically be used as a weapon.Is it safe to go home?In severe cases of mental distress, emergency-room doctors can compel an adolescent to board in the E.R. until inpatient services become available, however long that takes. Often, parents opt to return home with their child, to try to manage there while waiting for a treatment opening. But that option requires family and doctors alike to work through a difficult question: Is the adolescent safe to go home?In early February, a 12-year-old boy, J, was struggling toward an answer at the emergency room of the Highlands Ranch campus of Childrens Hospital Colorado. (He is being identified by his first initial for privacy reasons.)He had arrived that morning with his mother, after she discovered that he had been searching the internet for ways to commit suicide. Over the course of his day in the E.R., he was asked several times how safe he felt to go home. The mother recounted one exchange:Do you think you can go home? the doctor asked.Whats the other option? J asked.Youd be in the emergency room.I can go home with my mom, J said. But if I feel like Im going to kill myself, what do I do?Youll come back to the emergency room, the doctor replied.Js mother took him home and hid every medicine and every knife, she said. J wanted to get help and asked her that first night: So can I start tomorrow?No, his mother told him, hed have to wait. Sixteen days went by before a spot for J opened in an intensive treatment program. She watched her son around the clock. It was the scariest two weeks of my life, she said.The longest waitFor adolescents like G, who stayed in the emergency room of Boston Childrens Hospital last spring, the experience can be wrenching.G lives in a Boston suburb with a teenage brother, father and mother. The family has a history of anxiety and depression, the mother said, but G had been a happy and adventurous child. In middle school she started talking back and acting somewhat obsessively, behavior that her mother figured was typical for a teenager.What Gs mother did not know was that her daughter had been cutting herself for two years, since seventh grade, before the pandemic began. I cut with literally anything I could find hockey cards, pipe cleaners, paper clips, anything, G said. She described the self-harm as a coping mechanism to deal with inner pain. She hid the activity with sweaters, hoodies, foundation.As the pandemic set in, G withdrew, and her grades fell. Then came April 29, her mother said. We had a life before April 29 and a life after April 29.That day, she picked up G at school for a routine visit to the pediatrician. As G got into the car, her mother saw the marks on her wrists.At the emergency room, G told the medical team she had tried to overdose a few weeks earlier and had regretted the next morning that she was still alive. In the exam room, she noticed a container of hand sanitizer. I told them, Im thinking about drinking this, G recalled.Admitting to her pain and self-harm provided her with kind of a little bit of relief, she said. After two years of cutting and trying to kill myself, I was finally going to get some help. But I didnt really get help.That first night, she was moved for safety reasons to a room that contained just a bed and, for her mother, a rollaway. With the door open, sleeping was difficult. A sitter was literally staring at my kid, Gs mother said. It felt demoralizing.Mother and daughter played Uno, Go Fish, checkers and Connect Four. G, anxious and awake, received Ativan on three of the next four nights, then was prescribed Trazodone for chronic anxiety.Boarding night after night in an emergency department can overwhelm some adolescents, said Dr. Amanda Stewart, an emergency room pediatrician at Boston Childrens. One day this February, she was treating an infant with a respiratory infection when she heard screaming. It came from a 12-year-old boy with attention-deficit disorder and autism who had threatened suicide and was boarding down the hall.Other patients started escalating, Dr. Stewart recalled. One of them, across the hall, started hitting her head against the wall. The girl, 15, had entered the E.R. after a suicide attempt and had been calm until that point.Dr. Stewart said that some teens tell her that boarding in the emergency department intensified their suicidal urges. Ive heard that from kids many times, she said, recalling that they will say: Im not going to tell you next time, because it means Im going to have to come here again.Dr. Patricia Ibeziako, a child psychiatrist at Boston Childrens Hospital, said that adolescents do, in fact, receive some treatment while boarding in the emergency department, including basic counsel aimed at crisis stabilization that is all geared to safety.Boarding is not a great thing, but its still care, Dr. Ibeziako said. Were not just putting a kid in a bed.Kid on fireMay 7 arrived Gs eighth day in the emergency ward and still no inpatient beds were available in the region. But a bed did open in the hospital, upstairs in the pediatric medical unit; this room had a window and a private bathroom, and a caregiver who watched G around the clock.She was very, very, very depressed and dejected, her mother recalled. She didnt even cry anymore.Finally, 29 days after G arrived, a bed was located for her at an inpatient facility in an outlying suburb. She spent a week there but did not find the experience all that helpful.We learned the same coping skills over and over, she said. Over the summer, she worked a fast-food job, but she continued cutting herself, she said, and did a better job of hiding it.In the fall, she told a counselor at school that she planned to kill herself; she was quickly re-admitted to the same inpatient unit, given priority as a former patient, and spent two weeks there. When her stay ended, G went into an intensive outpatient program. But a counselor there told her mother that G needed more intensive care because she had described a plan to kill herself.They told me, This kid is on fire, shes too acute to be here, Gs mother recalled. This time, the family went to the emergency room at a different Boston-area hospital, Salem Hospital, where G boarded only one night and, this time, was lucky to get a bed in that hospitals inpatient unit, where she spent three weeks, until mid-October.Gs mood these days is better than it was, but it still sucks, she said recently. And, she added, Im better at covering things up more.Once people ask you a question, Do you feel suicidal, you have to say nope, she said. You cant tell them anything or theyll send you to the hospital. How Matt Richtel spoke to adolescents and their parents for this series In mid-April, I was speaking to the mother of a suicidal teenager whose struggles Ive been closely following. I asked how her daughter was doing. Not well, the mother said: If we cant find something drastic to help this kid, this kid will not be here long term. She started to cry. Its out of our hands, its out of our control, she said. Were trying everything. She added: Its like waiting for the end. Over nearly 18 months of reporting, I got to know many adolescents and their families and interviewed dozens of doctors, therapists and experts in the science of adolescence. I heard wrenching stories of pain and uncertainty. From the outset, my editors and I discussed how best to handle the identities of people in crisis. The Times sets a high bar for granting sources anonymity; our stylebook calls it a last resort for situations where important information cant be published any other way. Often, the sources might face a threat to their career or even their safety, whether from a vindictive boss or a hostile government. In this case, the need for anonymity had a different imperative: to protect the privacy of young, vulnerable adolescents. They have harmed themselves and attempted suicide, and some have threatened to try again. In recounting their stories, we had to be mindful that our first duty was to their safety. If The Times published the names of these adolescents, they could be easily identified years later. Would that harm their employment opportunities? Would a teen a legal minor later regret having exposed his or her identity during a period of pain and struggle? Would seeing the story published amplify ongoing crises? As a result, some teenagers are identified by first initial only; some of their parents are identified by first name or initial. Over months, I got to know M, J and C, and in Kentucky, I came to know struggling adolescents I identified only by their ages, 12, 13 and 15. In some stories, we did not publish precisely where the families lived. Everyone I interviewed gave their own consent, and parents were typically present for the interviews with their adolescents. On a few occasions, a parent offered to leave the room, or an adolescent asked for privacy and the parent agreed. In these articles, I heard grief, confusion and a desperate search for answers. The voices of adolescents and their parents, while shielded by anonymity, deepen an understanding of this mental health crisis.

Health

Credit...Zach Gibson/The New York TimesMay 31, 2015WASHINGTON With his presidential campaign flagging, Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican known for a strong libertarian bent and a penchant for dramatics, understood on Sunday that he had to make good on his Stand With Rand sloganeering.He needed to block a vote on the Senate floor to extend the vast surveillance authority the government has used since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was a task he performed with relish, and he succeeded, at least temporarily.The week leading up to the clash on the Senate floor was not good for Mr. Paul. The Republican establishment seemingly rose as one in umbrage after he faulted Republican hawks for the birth of the radical Islamic State, or ISIS. C-Span cameras caught one of those hawks, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, rolling his eyes mockingly on the Senate floor as Mr. Paul denounced the post-9/11 national security state.A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Mr. Paul leading a second tier of Republican candidates. He trailed five early front-runners including long shots like former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson by a narrow margin.So it came as no surprise when Mr. Paul took to the floor on Sunday evening to fulfill his promise to use his power as a single senator to try to ensure that the section of the Patriot Act used by the National Security Agency to vacuum up reams of telephone data would expire at midnight.The people who argue that the world will end and we will be overrun by jihadists are trying to use fear, Mr. Paul warned. Little by little, weve allowed our freedom to slip away.Mr. Pauls stand was a lonely one. His tactics were publicly shunned by some of his Republican colleagues, and he did not attend a Republican strategy session before a critical vote to move forward on a replacement surveillance bill passed by the House.For much of the rare Sunday session of the Senate, he stood apart from other senators, dressed in khakis, a blue blazer and Nubuck shoes, clustered with two like-minded House Republicans, Justin Amash of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.After Mr. Paul objected to a request by Mitch McConnell, the other Kentucky senator and the majority leader, to extend two relatively uncontroversial surveillance authorizations for two weeks, Mr. McConnell criticized his opponents campaign of demagoguery and disinformation. Mr. Paul sat impassively in the corner of the chamber.In truth, Mr. Pauls stand only delayed passage of the USA Freedom Act, which would curtail the governments dragnet authority, however insufficiently from Mr. Pauls perspective. A single senators objection can stretch out the parliamentary hurdles faced by legislation but, with enough time, cannot derail it.Still, Sunday was Mr. Pauls moment. The public gallery was filled with supporters in bright red Stand With Rand T-shirts.He is definitely the lead messenger in this movement, Mr. Massie said admiringly. Senator Paul has elevated this issue nationally.For more than a week, the senators official business and campaign imperatives have aligned seamlessly. When he gave a 10-and-a-half-hour talkathon on the Senate floor Wednesday to delay consideration of a Patriot Act extension, his campaigns emails and Twitter feed urged supporters to post pictures of themselves in front of screens showing the senators performance on C-Span. All the while, the campaign hawked T-shirts and bumper stickers.Americas Liberty PAC, the political action committee backing Mr. Pauls White House ambitions, produced an Internet video framing the showdown on the Senate floor as a monster truck rally. The brawl for liberty, this Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, the narrator bellowed.The Paul campaign broke an explicit Senate rule with its own video, which presented extensive footage of Mr. Paul speaking from the Senate floor, a forbidden political use, especially for a fund-raising appeal.There has been a little too much political grandstanding and crusading for ideological causes that have skewed the debate on this issue, John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A., said Sunday on the CBS News program Face the Nation.Mr. Pauls protest of the surveillance program has no doubt solidified his position with the libertarian wing of his party that stood with his father, Ron Paul, during his own presidential campaign in 2012. The libertarians are a demanding lot, even when their position runs contrary to the rest of the Republican Party and the nation as a whole. They believe in as little government as possible, one that provides for defense and not much else.Mr. Paul seems to have decided that he is not taking these supporters for granted.There is a group of us who represents a new generation of Republicans who care a lot about civil liberties and want to grow the Republican Party, and he has been extremely influential on us, said Mr. Amash, who is, if anything, less compromising than Mr. Paul.But the one-man stand was a big gamble. Mr. Paul has spent more than a year cozying up to Mr. McConnell, trying to bolster his bona fides with the party establishment. A series of speeches on foreign policy appeared to have been aimed at defusing concern that a Paul presidency would undercut American support for Israel. Mr. Paul seemed to be mending fences with the national security wing, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who once called him a whacko bird.Now, it appears that those overtures might have been for naught.Mr. McCain and Mr. Paul traded barbs all night on the Senate floor Sunday. Shortly after the Senate went into session, Senator Dan Coats, Republican of Indiana, was lamenting the perils facing the country without surveillance, and Mr. Paul tried to break in. Mr. McCain angrily interjected: I want regular order. The senator from Kentucky needs to learn the rules of the Senate.That altercation was a continuation of a battle that ran all week. On Wednesday, Mr. Paul said on the MSNBC show Morning Joe that ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party, who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. That brought denunciations from all corners of the Republican Party, including from Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a rival for the presidential nomination, and the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer.Mr. Grahams eye roll was a bit of comic relief, but it prompted Mr. Paul to open fire on his critics, especially Mr. McCain.If Im going to slug it out Sunday with the spy state apologists, Im going to need all the help and support I can get, he wrote to supporters on Wednesday. Unfortunately, it seems the president, the senior senator from Arizona and other members of the eye roll caucus who cant stand any mention of the Bill of Rights are all operating out of the same playbook.

Politics

Credit...John Amis/Associated PressJune 14, 2018ATLANTA The leading Republican candidate in Georgias high-profile governors race, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, bought a condominium in downtown Atlanta 10 years ago from a State Capitol lobbyist, seemingly at a discount, a New York Times investigation has found.Real estate records show that Mr. Cagle, who faces a runoff for the Republican nomination on July 24, purchased the one-bedroom apartment at 24 percent less than its appraised value below comparable sales prices and sold it last year at a 29 percent profit. He was preparing for his first run for governor when, without an agent, he negotiated the deal with Terry E. Hobbs, a longtime lobbyist who represents the natural gas marketer Scana.As lieutenant governor, Mr. Cagle presides over the Senate and controls the flow of legislation there. The direct financial transaction between him and a lobbyist with business before the government raises ethical questions comparable to those afflicting Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator. News reports in April revealed that Mr. Pruitt last year rented a Washington condo at a bargain rate from the wife of a lobbyist with clients seeking audiences with E.P.A. officials. The arrangement is being investigated by the agencys inspector general.Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a government watchdog group, said that such cozy relationships raised suspicions of pay-to-play.Lobbyists and elected officials should never be involved in business deals together, she said. It gives the impression that the lobbyist and their interests will find favor with that official when it comes to awarding contracts and determining public policy that might financially benefit them.In a telephone interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Cagle said that the deal did not show bad judgment, and that Mr. Hobbs had not lobbied him on any issue near the time of the sale.Let me just be very clear, he said. This was a legitimate transaction, a purchase of real estate that was a willing buyer and a willing seller that had nothing to do with anything other than a willing buyer and a willing seller.Mr. Cagle noted that the sale took place in an era of high volatility for real estate valuations, and disputed that his purchase price was out of line. He also argued that if it posed an ethical problem to enter a business transaction with a lobbyist, the same ridiculous logic could extend to consuming products sold by industries with state interests. So I can no longer purchase a car from someone who has representation at the gold dome, right? he asked, referring to Georgias gilded Capitol.Mr. Cagle, who has been lieutenant governor for nearly 12 years, finished first in a crowded Republican primary last month but now faces a worrisome challenge from Georgias secretary of state, Brian Kemp. The winner advances to a November general election against Stacey Abrams, a Democratic state representative who is drawing national attention and money as the first African-American woman to win a major partys nomination for governor.The contest is seen as an important gauge of how quickly states like Georgia, with growing minority and immigrant voting strength, could shift from red toward blue. It may also provide clues about the cohesion of President Trumps coalition in a Southern state that is both urban and rural, and about whether Democrats can win in the region by tacking left to energize their base.The Cagle campaign suffered an embarrassment last week when one of the lieutenant governors vanquished opponents released secretly recorded audio of their private meeting to discuss a possible endorsement. In the recording, Mr. Cagle explains a recent dispute over tax credits for private school scholarships in brazen political terms, acknowledging that he had supported legislation he considered bad public policy purely to undercut the fund-raising of a former rival.Mr. Cagles leads in polling and fund-raising have made him the candidate to beat in this race. At 52, he is running as a steady conservative with long experience in state government he first was elected to the Senate in 1994 at age 28 and as a small-business owner, entrepreneur and investor.After leaving Georgia Southern University when an injury ended his football career, he returned to Hall County, an hours drive northeast of Atlanta, where his family has lived for seven generations. He managed and then bought a tuxedo rental shop, founded a small bank (quadrupling his initial $50,000 stake when it was acquired by a larger bank five years later) and invested in rental property and other real estate.Mr. Cagle aborted his first race for governor in 2009 after announcing he had a degenerative spinal condition that required surgery. His withdrawal left an opening for another Hall County resident, Nathan Deal, to run and become the states current two-term governor.Mr. Kemp, 54, who has served two terms as secretary of state, separated himself from the Republican primary pack with lighthearted ads that emphasized his political incorrectness. He has some momentum but is vulnerable to Mr. Cagles attacks on competence. In 2015, Mr. Kemp, whose office oversees state elections, took responsibility for a data breach that resulted in the release of the Social Security numbers and birth dates of six million Georgia voters.Mr. Kemp has also been named in two lawsuits by lenders who claim that he and other investors defaulted on $700,000 in loans for a canola-crushing business. Kentucky officials suspended the companys license to buy grain directly from farmers because it owed them millions of dollars. The Kemp campaign has responded that he is a minority shareholder of the firm, Hart AgStrong, and does not control its operations; financial disclosure forms show that Mr. Kemp owned 16 percent of the company last year and 24 percent in 2009.Although both men promote their business acumen, they are each worth less than when they took statewide office. Mr. Kemp, who has interests in agriculture and real estate, reported a net worth of $5.2 million on his financial disclosure last year, down from $6.3 million in 2009. Mr. Cagle, who earns about $91,000 as lieutenant governor, reported a worth of $1.58 million, down from $1.74 million in 2005.The Timess examination of Mr. Cagles real estate holdings suggests he has consistently overstated their value in his disclosure filings.For instance, he bought Mr. Hobbss condominium, on the 12th floor of a 55-year-old high-rise called the Landmark, for $97,000 in 2008. But in both his 2009 and 2013 disclosures he valued it at $175,000, well above its county appraisal. By 2011, with Atlantas real estate market in a deep slump, Fulton County assessors had dropped their appraisal as low as $44,900 before it started to rebound. Mr. Cagle sold the unit last year for $125,000.ImageCredit...Melissa Golden for The New York TimesHe bought a second Atlanta apartment in 2008 for $65,500 but valued it at $130,000 on his 2009 disclosure report. He sold it four years later to a family friend for $40,000, roughly its appraised value at the time.In four quadrennial disclosure reports starting in 2005, the increase in Mr. Cagles self-valuations relative to actual purchase prices had the effect of inflating his stated net worth by between 26 percent and 91 percent.Mr. Cagle said that improvements made to each of his real estate investments accounted for the increased valuations on his disclosure reports. But he could not explain why, in the case of the Landmark condo, his valuations remained high even after its appraised value plummeted.The lieutenant governor said he bought the apartment to house his three sons as they attended nearby Georgia State University. He said he liked the Landmarks location, posted a notice in the lobby and got a response from Mr. Hobbs. He said he had a unit, take a look at it, Mr. Cagle said. I did and I said, Whats your price? He said, 97,000, and I said, Ill take it.The apartment had been appraised for four years at $127,800 by the Fulton County Board of Tax Assessors, according to county records. It remained at that level in 2009 even as the recession battered Georgia real estate.There were not many sales in the building during the period, but Mr. Cagle paid less per square foot than other buyers $95.57 versus an average of $139.60 for the four other qualified sales between 2007 and 2009. The Board of Assessors labeled his purchase unqualified for appraisal purposes, meaning the price suggested it may have been influenced by factors other than market value.Mr. Cagle pointed to other one-bedroom apartments that had sold for $2,000 less and $11,500 more than his. I am well within the range of what the value was, he said. But property records reveal those units are much smaller.Campaign finance records show that Mr. Hobbs has donated about $240,000 to Georgia candidates, including nearly $12,000 to Mr. Cagle and $1,700 to Mr. Kemp. In 2008, shortly before selling the Landmark condo to Mr. Cagle, he reported spending $1,500 during the three-month legislative session to stock a hospitality room there for legislators.Lobbyists and corporate interests have given generously to the lieutenant governors political committees, and an outside nonprofit group supporting his campaign, Citizens for Georgias Future, is led by two longtime Capitol lobbyists.Reached by telephone, Mr. Hobbs, who has been a registered lobbyist in Georgia at least since 2006, acknowledged selling the property to Mr. Cagle but declined further comment.You have all the records there, and I have no interest in talking to the press about anything, thank you, he said before hanging up.

Politics

Credit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesJune 20, 2018For the past five years, the hottest thing in artificial intelligence has been a branch known as deep learning. The grandly named statistical technique, put simply, gives computers a way to learn by processing vast amounts of data. Thanks to deep learning, computers can easily identify faces and recognize spoken words, making other forms of humanlike intelligence suddenly seem within reach.Companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft have poured money into deep learning. Start-ups pursuing everything from cancer cures to back-office automation trumpet their deep learning expertise. And the technologys perception and pattern-matching abilities are being applied to improve progress in fields such as drug discovery and self-driving cars.But now some scientists are asking whether deep learning is really so deep after all.In recent conversations, online comments and a few lengthy essays, a growing number of A.I. experts are warning that the infatuation with deep learning may well breed myopia and overinvestment now and disillusionment later.There is no real intelligence there, said Michael I. Jordan, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of an essay published in April intended to temper the lofty expectations surrounding A.I. And I think that trusting these brute force algorithms too much is a faith misplaced.The danger, some experts warn, is that A.I. will run into a technical wall and eventually face a popular backlash a familiar pattern in artificial intelligence since that term was coined in the 1950s. With deep learning in particular, researchers said, the concerns are being fueled by the technologys limits.Deep learning algorithms train on a batch of related data like pictures of human faces and are then fed more and more data, which steadily improve the softwares pattern-matching accuracy. Although the technique has spawned successes, the results are largely confined to fields where those huge data sets are available and the tasks are well defined, like labeling images or translating speech to text.ImageCredit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesThe technology struggles in the more open terrains of intelligence that is, meaning, reasoning and common-sense knowledge. While deep learning software can instantly identify millions of words, it has no understanding of a concept like justice, democracy or meddling.Researchers have shown that deep learning can be easily fooled. Scramble a relative handful of pixels, and the technology can mistake a turtle for a rifle or a parking sign for a refrigerator.In a widely read article published early this year on arXiv.org, a site for scientific papers, Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University, posed the question: Is deep learning approaching a wall? He wrote, As is so often the case, the patterns extracted by deep learning are more superficial than they initially appear.If the reach of deep learning is limited, too much money and too many fine minds may now be devoted to it, said Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. We run the risk of missing other important concepts and paths to advancing A.I., he said.Amid the debate, some research groups, start-ups and computer scientists are showing more interest in approaches to artificial intelligence that address some of deep learnings weaknesses. For one, the Allen Institute, a nonprofit lab in Seattle, announced in February that it would invest $125 million over the next three years largely in research to teach machines to generate common-sense knowledge an initiative called Project Alexandria.While that program and other efforts vary, their common goal is a broader and more flexible intelligence than deep learning. And they are typically far less data hungry. They often use deep learning as one ingredient among others in their recipe.Were not anti-deep learning, said Yejin Choi, a researcher at the Allen Institute and a computer scientist at the University of Washington. Were trying to raise the sights of A.I., not criticize tools.Those other, non-deep learning tools are often old techniques employed in new ways. At Kyndi, a Silicon Valley start-up, computer scientists are writing code in Prolog, a programming language that dates to the 1970s. It was designed for the reasoning and knowledge representation side of A.I., which processes facts and concepts, and tries to complete tasks that are not always well defined. Deep learning comes from the statistical side of A.I. known as machine learning.Benjamin Grosof, an A.I. researcher for three decades, joined Kyndi in May as its chief scientist. Mr. Grosof said he was impressed by Kyndis work on new ways of bringing together the two branches of A.I.Kyndi has been able to use very little training data to automate the generation of facts, concepts and inferences, said Ryan Welsh, the start-ups chief executive.The Kyndi system, he said, can train on 10 to 30 scientific documents of 10 to 50 pages each. Once trained, Kyndis software can identify concepts and not just words.In work for three large government agencies that it declined to disclose, Kyndi has been asking its system to answer this typical question: Has a technology been demonstrated in a laboratory setting? The Kyndi program, Mr. Welsh said, can accurately infer the answer, even when that phrase does not appear in a document.ImageCredit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesAnd Kyndis reading and scoring software is fast. A human analyst, Mr. Welsh said, might take two hours on average to read a lengthy scientific document, and perhaps read 1,000 in a year. Kyndis technology can read those 1,000 documents in seven hours, he said.Kyndi serves as a tireless digital assistant, identifying the documents and passages that require human judgment. The goal is increasing the productivity of the human analysts, Mr. Welsh said.Kyndi and others are betting that the time is finally right to take on some of the more daunting challenges in A.I. That echoes the trajectory of deep learning, which made little progress for decades before the recent explosion of digital data and ever-faster computers fueled leaps in performance of its so-called neural networks. Those networks are digital layers loosely analogous to biological neurons. The deep refers to many layers.There are other hopeful signs in the beyond-deep-learning camp. Vicarious, a start-up developing robots that can quickly switch from task to task like humans, published promising research in the journal Science last fall. Its A.I. technology learned from relatively few examples to mimic human visual intelligence, using data 300 times more efficiently than deep learning models. The system also broke through the defenses of captchas, the squiggly letter identification tests on websites meant to foil software intruders.Vicarious, whose investors include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, is a prominent example of the entrepreneurial pursuit of new paths in A.I.Deep learning has given us a glimpse of the promised land, but we need to invest in other approaches, said Dileep George, an A.I. expert and co-founder of Vicarious, which is based in Union City, Calif.The Pentagons research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has proposed a program to seed university research and provide a noncommercial network for sharing ideas on technology to emulate human common-sense reasoning, where deep learning falls short. If approved, the program, Machine Common Sense, would start this fall and most likely run for five years, with total funding of about $60 million.This is a high-risk project, and the problem is bigger than any one company or research group, said David Gunning, who managed Darpas personal assistant program, which ended a decade ago and produced the technology that became Apples Siri.

Tech

Credit...Joshua Lott for The New York TimesDec. 3, 2015Johnny Burris, a former broker at JPMorgan Chase, might have known he was walking into a minefield when he decided to go public with his concerns about his former employer.Mr. Burris complained in 2013 that JPMorgan was pressuring brokers like him to sell the banks own mutual funds even when the offerings from competitors were more suitable. A few weeks after an article in The New York Times about Mr. Burriss concerns appeared, complaints from some of his former clients in Arizona began showing up on his disciplinary records that are maintained by a regulatory agency and publicly available.The client complaints made it hard for Mr. Burris to get another job and helped scuttle his case against JPMorgan for wrongful termination. But when Mr. Burris recently reached two of the clients whose names had been on the complaints, they told him they had not, in fact, written the complaints a JPMorgan employee had.Carolyn Scott, the ostensible author of one of the letters complaining about Mr. Burris, said in a recent interview with The Times that she had not written the document, but had signed it without knowing the contents after a JPMorgan employee had told her it was something that could help her get some money back.I was stupid enough I didnt read it myself, Ms. Scott said. I had no problems with Johnny. No problems whatsoever.Another man who supposedly wrote a letter of complaint was, it turned out, essentially unable to read or write, and said in an interview that he had never had an issue with Mr. Burris.I would never have known how to draft a complaint letter, nor could I have drafted the letter in question, the man said in a declaration that he recently signed in front of a notary public to support Mr. Burris after the declaration was read back to him aloud.For Mr. Burris, the explanation behind these complaints was clear: This was retaliation for his criticism of JPMorgan, though retaliation carried out poorly.How do you believe I feel knowing that the bank solicited, drafted false, erroneous complaints about me? he wrote to JPMorgan in late October, after speaking with his old clients.During the arbitration in 2014, Mr. Burriss lawyer asked his former supervisors if anyone at JPMorgan had helped draft the complaints and was told: Absolutely not.This week, though, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, Patricia Wexler, said that one of Mr. Burriss former colleagues, Laya Gavin, had, in fact, assisted the clients as a courtesy by typing up what they told her verbally, reading it back to them for accuracy, and submitting them for review.Both clients involved disputed that description of the events and said that the complaints Ms. Gavin wrote up did not reflect their sentiments and added that Ms. Gavin had not read the complaints to them before having them sign the documents.A spokeswoman for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Michelle Ong, said that her organization was aware of these allegations about the complaints and was looking into them. Finra is the agency that maintains broker disciplinary records. It is not difficult to understand why JPMorgan employees might have been unhappy with Mr. Burris. In 2012, he made secret recordings of his supervisors at the bank pressuring him to sell the JPMorgan mutual funds instead of similar funds from competitors.After he shared these recordings with journalists and regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating the issue. JPMorgan is now preparing to pay more than $100 million to settle an investigation into the banks marketing of proprietary funds, according to people briefed on the negotiations.Mr. Burris has a pending whistle-blower case before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, arguing that he was fired because of the concerns he had raised about the JPMorgan proprietary funds.Mr. Burriss case is a continuing headache for JPMorgan in a business line financial advice and asset management that has been seen as among the primary sources of growth for it and other big banks. Since the financial crisis, the kind of work that Mr. Burris did, managing money for clients, has been seen as relatively risk-free revenue for the banks.But his case has been a reminder of how the asset management business can expose the banks to conflicts of interest, especially when they run their own mutual funds. It also shows how hard it can be for the banks to police the far-flung multitudes of brokers and financial advisers they are assembling.Mr. Burris worked as a financial adviser in Arizona at the JPMorgan Sun City West branch, outside Phoenix, mostly serving retirees in the area. His problems at the firm mounted quickly in 2012.At the beginning of the year, he received a glowing employee review from the same woman who later wrote up the complaints against him, and he was promoted to work in the elite Chase Private Client division. At the time Mr. Burris had no client complaints on his regulatory records.But Mr. Burris says he began to push back internally when his supervisors urged him to sell his customers JPMorgan-branded mutual funds in so-called managed accounts. Other JPMorgan brokers complained publicly around the same time about facing similar pressures from their superiors.It was soon after Mr. Burris began raising these concerns that his supervisors voiced unhappiness with some of his practices as a broker and within a few months he was fired.Mr. Burris said that he was fired because he refused to sell in-house mutual funds. He questioned the supposed misdeeds that the bank cited for dismissing him. In a few cases, Mr. Burriss supervisors said he had encouraged a client to make a trade but then marked it down as if the trade had been initiated by the client suggesting that Mr. Burris was hiding his activity.Mr. Burris has received signed declarations from the clients on whose behalf he made the trades. Both men stated that the trades were their ideas, not Mr. Burriss, contrary to what his supervisors said.I never found him to push me into anything, Paul Hudson, one of Mr. Burriss former clients, said in an interview. I made no complaints. I wasnt aware that I had anything to complain of myself.The state judge overseeing Mr. Burriss unemployment claim questioned JPMorgans explanation of Mr. Burriss firing and said that it appeared to have been done in a rushed manner that bypassed JPMorgans progressive disciplinary procedures.The more serious criticisms of Mr. Burris began to show up on his disciplinary record soon after he went public with his grievances against JPMorgan. In the course of two weeks, three client complaints showed up on his regulatory records.During his arbitration case, Mr. Burriss lawyer asked a JPMorgan supervisor at his old branch in Arizona whether the client complaints were written by someone at JPMorgan or if any JPMorgan employee had helped draft them.Absolutely not, the JPMorgan employee, Umbreen Kazmi, responded to both questions.It was only after the arbitration case was over that Mr. Burris tracked down the clients and learned that the letters had, in fact, been drafted by one of his old colleagues at JPMorgan, Ms. Gavin, a close associate of Ms. Kazmi.Ms. Wexler, the JPMorgan spokeswoman, said this week that during the hearing Ms. Kazmi answered truthfully based on what she knew she did not realize that anyone had provided the customer with the courtesy of typing up a verbal complaint or issue.The clients who spoke with The Times all said that they felt bad when they heard that Mr. Burris had been affected by the complaints that they ostensibly had made, because they had not had negative experiences with Mr. Burris.It disturbs me to no end, said Leona Weakland, who made a declaration on Mr. Burriss behalf.After Mr. Burris was fired, Ms. Weakland and her husband took their money from JPMorgan to have it managed by Mr. Burris again.

Business

Canadian Autoworkers Ratify Chrysler DealSept. 30, 2012TORONTO (AP) Canadian autoworkers at Chrysler ratified a new contract with the company, the auto union said Sunday.The Canadian Auto Workers union said 90 percent of those voting approved the tentative deal that was reached last week. It was not immediately clear how many of the 8,000 workers at Chryslers plants in Ontario cast ballots in the ratification vote held this weekend.The four-year deal includes lump sum payments, as well as job security provisions. The pact is based on agreements already accepted by union members at the Ford Motor Company and General Motors. At Ford, 82 percent of workers supported their agreement, while 73 percent did so at G.M.Chrysler was the last of the Detroit automakers to reach a contract, ending the possibility of strikes in Canada and that production would move to the United States in the next four years.The auto companies had said Canada was the most expensive place in the world to make cars and trucks, and warned they could move production south if the Canadian union did not agree to cost cuts. The union represents about 21,000 autoworkers in Canada and about 16 percent of auto production in North America.Canadas advantages in the past a weak Canadian dollar and government health care have all but vanished compared with factories in the United States.The Chrysler agreement includes a ratification bonus of 3,000 Canadian dollars, or $3,049, for workers, as well as cost of living lump sum payments of 2,000 Canadian dollars for each of the next three years. It offers protection of current pension benefits for existing workers, as well as job commitments in all locations.It also pays new employees less and extends the time it takes them to rise to the top of the pay scale.United States workers at the Detroit automakers approved a similar two-tier wage agreement five years ago, but in those agreements, workers do not automatically earn the top wage after 10 years.In addition, the United Automobile Workers union in the United States has agreed to steeper concessions than the Canadian union, making United States labor costs less expensive. Going into the talks, the Detroit automakers were paying an estimated $60 to $62 an hour for labor and benefits in Canada, compared with $50 an hour at Chrysler, $56 at Ford and $58 at G.M. in the United States, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit research group.The Canadian government and provincial leaders in Ontario worked in tandem with the United States on auto bailouts in 2009 to maintain Canadas share of North American auto production. Canadas share peaked at 3.2 million cars in 1999, about 17.4 percent of North American production. In 2011, Canada produced 2.1 million vehicles, or about 16 percent.The Canadian Auto Workers president, Ken Lewenza, said on Sunday that the union would shift attention toward developing a revised national auto policy for Canada now that union members had officially signed off on the three major auto agreements.One of our objectives coming into these talks was to position our industry for future growth and success, and we did as much as we possibly could on that front, Mr. Lewenza said. But without a comprehensive sector development strategy, the future of auto manufacturing in Canada remains uncertain, at best.The unions auto strategy proposals include the development of a transparent and consistent auto investment policy, building a green industry, a buy-Canadian vehicle purchasing strategy, a revised automotive trade policy, as well as negotiating Canadian manufacturing footprint commitments.

Business

As vaping grows more popular, especially among teens, here are answers to some basic questions about its health effects.Credit...Joshua Bright for The New York TimesNov. 15, 2018The term electronic cigarette refers to a battery-powered device that heats a tank or cartridge of liquid usually containing nicotine, flavorings and other chemicals, but not the cancer-causing tar found in tobacco cigarettes. Users inhale and exhale the vapor. The devices come in numerous shapes, including ones that look like pens, flash drives and hookahs. Many consumers are confused about the health implications of e-cigarettes. This is a primer about what research so far shows about these devices.Are they safer than traditional cigarettes?Yes. But that does not mean they are safe. E-cigarettes contain far fewer dangerous chemicals than those released in burning tobacco. Tobacco cigarettes typically contain 7,000 chemicals, including nearly 70 known to be carcinogenic. E-cigarettes also dont release tar, the tobacco residue that damages lungs but also contributes to the flavor of tobacco products. In the United States, cigarettes are associated with 480,000 deaths a year from coronary heart disease, stroke and numerous cancers, among other illnesses.The research on e-cigarettes is young because the products have only been around for a little over a decade. Exacerbated by the voltage of a given device, certain e-cigarette flavors can irritate the airways, researchers say: benzaldehyde (added to cherry flavored liquids), cinnamaldehyde (gives cinnamon flavor), and diacetyl (a buttery flavor that can cause lung tissue damage called popcorn lung.) Some flavors become irritants when added to vaping liquids. The process of turning liquid chemicals into vapor releases harmful particulates deep into the lungs and atmosphere, including heavy metals. Can they really help smokers quit?Its unclear. The Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the marketing of e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids. Observational studies of their effectiveness reveal mixed results. Some show that a majority of adult users are former smokers, suggesting the devices are useful in helping them quit. Others reveal that many e-cigarette users also smoke conventional cigarettes. Still others say that a large percentage of e-cigarette users, particularly teenagers, never smoked traditional cigarettes. A 2018 study concluded that e-cigarettes did not help smokers quit at rates faster than smokers who did not use them. But this summer, a British Parliament committee resoundingly endorsed them, even going so far as to suggest that e-cigarettes be made available by prescription through the National Health Service.Does nicotine have risks?Nicotine is not known to cause cancer. It is a stimulant and a sedative, helping to release dopamine in the brains pleasure centers. Some research suggests it can improve memory and concentration although long-term smoking has been associated with cognitive decline. Inhaled nicotine can increase heart rate and blood pressure. The major cause for alarm is that nicotine is highly addictive. It is the chemical in tobacco and e-cigarettes that binds the user.The nicotine in smoking cessation aids like gum, patches and lozenges is absorbed more slowly than in cigarettes. In tobacco smoke, the nicotine is delivered to the lungs, which have a large surface area, said Maciej Goniewicz,a pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y. In one or two puffs, the smoker feels the nicotine go right to brain. The e-cigarette brand Juul in particular seems to closely match tobacco cigarettes in terms of the speed and amount of nicotine delivery, said Dr. Goniewicz, who studies the absorption of such chemicals.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]What are the concerns about teenagers and e-cigarettes? The human brain develops into the mid-20s. Researchers worry that adolescents who vape will be most affected by nicotine addiction, which they can develop with less exposure than adults require.Though studies have not conclusively shown that e-cigarettes can be relied upon to help adult smokers quit, there is substantial evidence that teenagers who use them have a higher risk of smoking cigarettes.Teens are also using vapes to inhale marijuana. It seems that kids who use e-cigarettes are more likely to use marijuana in general smoked or vaped. Is there a gateway effect? Were just getting data now. But its concerning, said Dr. Rachel Boykan, an associate professor at Stony Brook medical school who researches adolescence and tobacco control.Can parents tell if their teenagers are vaping?E-cig use can be very challenging to detect because they are discreet devices that dont emit much odor, said Dr. Sharon Levy, director of the adolescent substance use and addiction program at Boston Childrens Hospital.Parents can look online for photos of devices and pods. If you find those items in your childs room, pockets or backpack, you should assume that your child is using it, Dr. Levy said, not just holding it for a friend. If children say they have only tried e-cigarettes a few times, Dr. Levy said, ask them to stop. Then tell them you will check their room and backpack. And then do it. Kids who have used only sporadically should be able to stop without much intervention.How can you treat teen nicotine dependence?There arent widely accepted protocols for teenagers. Dr. Levy urges families to consult a medical professional. Limited interventions with nicotine replacement therapies like patches, gum or medications may be effective in older teens, she said. But this should be done in conjunction with a good evaluation, since mental health disorders like depression and anxiety and use of other substances are common in kids with nicotine use disorder, she cautioned.On Dec. 5, the Food and Drug Administration is holding a public hearing to discuss possible nicotine withdrawal therapies specifically for teenagers which, if restrictions on flavored e-cigarette brands proceed, could be an imminent challenge.

Health

TrilobitesYou can believe your eyes because lightning bugs really are coordinating their nightly glows.Credit...Floris van Breugel/Nature Picture Library, via AlamyJuly 7, 2021Swarms of synchronous fireflies are rather like melting ice, or at least thats how Raphael Sarfati, a physicist, sees it. Ice remains solid until it warms to a certain temperature and becomes a liquid. Likewise, a loose swarm fireflies will flash the lanterns in their abdomens randomly. But when the swarm reaches a certain density, the fireflies begin to blink in unison.Above that threshold, it is almost perfect synchronization, with rhythmic, coordinated waves of light, said Dr. Sarfati, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.The spontaneous synchronization of certain species of fireflies, such as Photinus carolinus in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, has long baffled humans who observed the peculiar mating ritual, in which blinking males strive to attract the attention of ground-level females. Early-20th-century scientists dismissed the phenomenon as accidental or blamed it on puffs of wind or the twitching eyelids of the people who made these reports, according to one 1935 review in Science.In the past 50 years, scientists collected anecdotal observations of these unified flashes but not enough empirical data to truly study firefly synchronizations mechanisms.Now, Dr. Sarfati and Orit Peleg, a physicist and assistant professor also at the University of Colorado, have filmed the mating hordes of P. carolinus and mapped their flashing patterns in three-dimensional space. Their research, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, adds to evidence that the insects sync their flashes, and suggests what may drive that coordination.I appreciate the excellent experimental work carried out by the authors, Gonzalo Marcelo Ramrez vila, a researcher who studies synchronization at the Higher University of San Andrs in La Paz, Bolivia, who was not involved in the research, wrote in an email. He added the paper will improve future models of firefly synchronization.Their findings confirm what I have seen with my own eyes in the wild for the past 30 years of field work, said Lynn Frierson Faust, the author of Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs, who is known as the Lightning Bug Lady of Tennessee.Dr. Peleg first learned about the phenomenon in an undergraduate physics class, when the insects were offered as an example of synchronization in nature. When Dr. Peleg started her own lab, she knew it was her chance to study fireflies.From prior research on the Great Smokys fireflies, the researchers knew the fireflies flashed only if the swarm reached a high enough density. So they reached out to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which holds an annual synchronous firefly viewing event, and coordinated with park entomologists and Ms. Faust to find an ideal filming spot in the thick of the luminescent fog of mating in June 2020. We walked miles and miles, Dr. Peleg said. But we never saw the end of the swarm.VideoFlashes of Photinus carolinus in the Smoky Mountains, captured with a 360-degree camera.CreditCredit...Peleg Lab at CU BoulderDr. Peleg and Dr. Sarfati placed two cameras 13 feet apart on the ground with an overlapping field of vision. Like producers on a movie set, they calibrated the feeds with a checkerboard and an initial artificial light signal. The overlapping footage allowed the researchers to reconstruct a cone-shaped area of the fireflies flashes in three dimensions. The researchers also placed two cameras in the middle of the vegetation in an attempt to see the swarm through the eyes of a participating firefly. As their cameras recorded, they waited quietly by the edge of the clearing, watching the ribbons of twinkling lanterns.The 3-D reconstruction allowed the researchers to characterize several complex patterns in the swarms behavior. The male fireflies did not flash instantaneously, but rather in a cascading wave across the swarm. For example, sometimes the flashes would begin at the bottom of the ridge and move toward the insects at the top. This relay-like propagation of flashing suggests that fireflies interact with the swarm locally, taking their cues from the fireflies around them, Dr. Peleg said.This propagation pattern is also found in other animal swarms such as schools of fish, she added, where local interactions between fish can ripple out to the entire group.I see my neighbor is flashing, so I flash as well, Dr. Sarfati explained.The reconstruction also revealed that the flashes often occurred in bursts where one flashing firefly on the move would incite other, slower moving insects to flash, too. This observation suggests there is no clear firefly leader or single locus of activity, said Andrew Moiseff, an associate dean for behavioral and life sciences at the University of Connecticut who has researched the Great Smokys synchronizing fireflies since the 1990s.Dr. Moiseff, who advised the researchers, said their findings confirmed what he expected after years in the field. Its spectacular, he said, adding that the 3-D approach had already offered insight into the mechanisms behind the swarm that he had not known how to address in his early research.Though the new paper offers insights into the flashing swarm, many factors remain unknown, such as how individual fireflies respond to their kin from variable distances or multiple flashes from different individuals, Dr. Peleg said.She thinks the holy grail would be a model that can explain how individual fireflies perceive the flashes around them and decide to flash themselves, thus reproducing the communal flash pattern of the swarm. Then I can die in peace, Dr. Peleg added.Dr. Peleg is now conducting experiments on how fireflies respond to artificial light to refine her mathematical models. Next June, she will be back out in the Great Smoky Mountains, watching from the edge of the swarm.

science

Science|Its Cold in the Ocean but Its Hotter Inside Sea Ottershttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/science/otters-muscles-heat.htmlTrilobitesTo stay warm in frigid seas, the marine mammals rely on an unexpected use of the powerhouses of their cells.Credit...Randall DavisJuly 8, 2021Sea otters run hot. Its not just a manner of speaking: Scientists have found that the furry mammals metabolisms work at a rate three times what might normally be expected from a creature their size, burning swiftly through calories.They seem to be using much of that energy to generate heat, keeping themselves at a toasty 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the frigid ocean, where staying warm is a matter of life and death. But the details of their conversion of food and oxygen into vast reserves of heat have been obscure. Now researchers studying sea otters muscles report that the feat involves using the mitochondria in their muscle cells in an unexpected way. Their study was published Thursday in the journal Science.Unlike whales and polar bears, sea otters dont have a thick insulating layer of blubber, and their celebrated fur the thickest in the world, with up to 2.6 million hairs per square inch is not enough on its own to keep them alive in an ocean that can hover on the edge of freezing. Muscles generate heat as they contract, but scientists have known for some time there is another way that muscles can help animals keep warm, a cellular process with the delightful name of proton leak.Inside almost all animal cells, little pill-shaped organelles called mitochondria break down sugar molecules to extract energy. (Mitochondria are often called the powerhouses of the cell.) During the final stage of this process, protons pop through a membrane. In biology textbooks, the protons helpfully trickle through tiny spinning pores, driving them like water wheels to make adenosine triphosphate, a compound that serves as the molecular battery powering cellular processes.But reality is not always so tidy. If protons build up faster than the little water wheels can clear them, they seep across the membrane in other ways. And in skeletal muscle cells, this leakage of protons produces substantial amounts of heat. This is thought to contribute to keeping polar animals warm, said Traver Wright, a professor at Texas A&M University and an author of the new paper.To see how much proton leak might be occurring in sea otters, Dr. Wright and his colleagues put samples of muscle cells from 21 animals into a special chamber that allowed the researchers to monitor the ins and outs of the cells mitochondria. They found that sea otters are capable of tremendous quantities of proton leak, suggesting substantial heat-generating capacity. And they were surprised to discover that this ability was present in both tiny otters and full-grown adults.In general, an organisms metabolic capacity is linked to its activity level, Dr. Wright said. But young otters, of an age when they would often be resting on their mother; adults of all sizes; and even a relatively inactive captive otter all had similarly high metabolisms and a great capacity for proton leak. In fact, they had higher rates than even Iditarod sled dogs.Their leak metabolic rate isnt anywhere near as high as in sea otters, said Dr. Wright of the dogs. For otters, he added, that heat generation is really the driving force of their metabolic development.Sea otters are churning through calories even without a lot of physical activity because that energy goes straight into heat, the results suggest. Otters are among the only animals so far for whom proton leak can explain almost all of their elevated metabolism, Dr. Wright said.The researchers are hoping to study the metabolisms of a variety of animals. They have already published related work on elephant seals, enormous creatures whose lives include both frenetic diving and eating while at sea, as well as weeks of extended lounging on the beach.Curiously, while the seals loll on the sand for a month, their metabolic capacity does not decrease. Humans taking a similar hiatus from movement with a pia colada and beach reading in hand would not be so lucky.

science

Politics|Protesters in New York Urge Ouster of Trump and Pencehttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/new-york-protests-trump.htmlWe have to be out and not hope that this is going to resolve itself because yesterday actually showed where that leads, an organizer said.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesJan. 7, 2021A crowd of several thousand anti-Trump protesters gathered at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday evening, and then filled Flatbush Avenue for a peaceful march to the Prospect Park West home of Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.As the group made its way to Mr. Schumers building, demonstrators chanted No Trump, no K.K.K., no fascist U.S.A., accompanied by the rhythms of drummers and percussionists.Several people in the crowd said that they had been moved to venture into the chilly night after watching Mr. Trumps supporters storm the United States Capitol building on Wednesday in Washington.What we saw was incredibly frustrating and tragic, and a lot of people are looking for direction, said Nina Svirsky, a teacher from Brooklyn.ImageCredit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesDozens of masked, uniformed police officers monitored the rally; no arrests were reported. After most of the crowd had melted away, the talk among some of those left turned specifically to the stark racial disparities in crowd control and enforcement that were on display Wednesday.If it was us, we really would have got beat up, so were upset at that, said Alfred Martinez, 39, a Black man who said he had come from the Bronx.ImageCredit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesIn Manhattan, a much smaller group gathered in Times Square, where members of Refuse Fascism, an activist organization, unfurled a banner with the hashtag #OutNow! and called for the removal from office of President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.We are out here today because what we saw yesterday was an attempted coup, one of the protests organizers, Jennifer Sabel, said through a loudspeaker.Noting the crowds modest size, Ms. Sabel urged those who were there to return on Saturday and to bring others with them for what she said she hoped would be a national day of protest. The demonstration ended after about an hour.ImageCredit...Dave Sanders for The New York TimesEmma Kaplan, another Refuse Fascism organizer, said that she and her compatriots did not feel as though they could just bide their time until President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. succeeds Mr. Trump later this month.The next 13 days, what we do now, is going to determine the future, Ms. Kaplan said. We have to be out and not hope that this is going to resolve itself because yesterday actually showed where that leads.

Politics

Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesMarch 9, 2017WASHINGTON The tanning industry found little to celebrate during Barack Obamas presidency, but its starting to cheer up.Mr. Obamas signature health law, the Affordable Care Act, put a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services, and during his two terms, the federal government and states sought to deter the use of tanning beds by young people in particular, citing evidence that it causes skin cancer.The tanning industry says the tax has helped force thousands of salons out of business. But now, the bill Republicans proposed this week to repeal the A.C.A. would abolish the tanning tax, along with an array of other taxes imposed to help finance expanded health insurance coverage.Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee brimmed with disdain for the tax in a hearing on the bill this week, with Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri asking why Democrats had not proposed a tax on ice cream or, for that matter, the sun.You could tax a lot of different items if you want to stop behavior, he said.An important public health question whether the tax has deterred people from using tanning beds remains tricky to answer, researchers say. It is clear that fewer teenagers have been using indoor tanning facilities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the prevalence of indoor tanning among high school students decreased to 7.3 percent in 2015, from 15.6 percent in 2009, a year before the A.C.A. and its taxes took effect.But other factors could also have a role, including that a growing number of states have banned or restricted indoor tanning among minors. Not only that, but there is a growing awareness of whats becoming well accepted that indoor tanning is a cause of melanoma, said DeAnn Lazovich, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota whose research focuses on skin cancer. Her study published in JAMA Dermatology last year found that women who tanned indoors were six times more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma before they turned 30.The American Suntanning Association, an industry group, says the number of tanning salons around the country has shrunk by about half, dropping to about 9,500, from about 18,500 in 2010. And while it is hard to confirm the accuracy of those numbers, Chris Sternberg, a spokesman for the group, said most of the closings stemmed from the tanning tax and various state and federal efforts to regulate indoor tanning.It certainly takes away the negative perception that the government has over the last number of years tried to cast upon the industry, Mr. Sternberg said of the planned repeal of the tax, which the Joint Tax Commission estimates will cost the federal government $600 million over 10 years. We think lifting the tan tax is an important step to letting folks know its O.K. to tan.Many dermatologists and researchers strongly disagree. A review of the scientific research published in 2014 estimated that tanning beds accounted for as many as 400,000 cases of skin cancer in the United States each year, including 6,000 cases of melanoma, the deadliest form. And a 2012 study found a 15 percent increase in the risk of certain skin cancers with every four sessions in a tanning bed before age 35.But unlike with taxes on tobacco, the deterrent effect of taxes on tanning salons which are typically passed onto customers have not been carefully studied.Certainly we know from tobacco research, theres very clear evidence that increasing taxation results in declines in adolescent smoking, Ms. Lazovich said. Adolescents are very susceptible to the price increases, so one could imagine that it could also work here. But we dont know the price point at which it will be a deterrent.One small study out of Illinois found that while 26 percent of tanning salons surveyed there reported fewer clients after the A.C.A. tax went into effect, distinguishing the impact of the tax from the current economic climate as the source of decline was difficult. Not only that, but 78 percent of salons reported that clients did not seem to care about the tax.Still, Ms. Lazovich said that if the tanning industrys numbers are accurate and there are fewer salons since the A.C.A. passed, that in and of itself could curb usage. The less access, the fewer people who will be exposing themselves to tanning beds, she said.Dan Humiston, who opened his first tanning salon in Buffalo in 1985 and grew it into a chain of several dozen, gave up on the business in 2015. He said the tanning tax made an already difficult climate worse.It let into peoples minds that this is really not good for you, said Mr. Humiston, a former president of the Indoor Tanning Association, another industry group. It also emboldened all the regulatory agencies; they just felt like they had to come down on us harder on everything.But the atmosphere seems to be changing, said John Overstreet, executive director of the Indoor Tanning Association. Among other things, the industry is increasingly confident that a 2015 proposal by the Food and Drug Administration to ban tanning among minors will be quashed by the Trump administration.For this industry, he said, its certainly a time of hope.

Health

A decade after scientists identified a link between certain implants and cancer, the agency ordered black box warnings and a new checklist of risks for patients to review.Credit...Donna Mcwilliam/Associated PressOct. 27, 2021Federal regulators on Wednesday placed so-called black box warnings on breast implant packaging and told manufacturers to sell the devices only to health providers who review the potential risks with patients before surgery.Both the warnings and a new checklist that advises patients of the risks and side effects state that breast implants have been linked to a cancer of the immune system and to a host of other chronic medical conditions, including autoimmune diseases, joint pain, mental confusion, muscle aches and chronic fatigue.Startlingly, the checklist identifies particular types of patients who are at higher risk for illness after breast implant surgery. The group includes breast cancer patients who have had, or plan to have, chemotherapy or radiation treatments.That represents a large percentage of women who until now were encouraged to have breast reconstruction with implants following their treatment.The Food and Drug Administration is also requiring manufacturers for the first time to disclose the ingredients used to make breast implants, information that patient advocates have long sought. The information must be made public in 30 days.It is not clear how the new requirements will be enforced, and patients are highly unlikely to ever see a warning label on a packaged sterile medical device that is usually handled only by a surgeon. F.D.A. officials said in a statement that the patients must be given the opportunity to sign the checklist.The agencys new warnings have been years in the making. A decade ago, the F.D.A. first identified a possible link between breast implants with a textured surface and a particular cancer, anaplastic large cell lymphoma.In early 2019, after receiving hundreds of thousands of reports of adverse side effects linked to implants over the years, the agency heard testimony from dozens of women about their struggles with cancer and a constellation of other debilitating medical problems that developed after implant surgery, conditions that are often referred to as breast implant illness.Reactions to the new requirements were mixed. While some doctors welcomed the new warning system, others worried that the potential risks and side effects would not be conveyed adequately by plastic surgeons who were eager to reassure patients the procedure is safe and that the new checklist would be handled in a dismissive manner.Critics also said the checklist was overly long and written in obtuse language. Its better than nothing, but its not as good as it could be, said Diana Zuckerman, a scientist who heads the National Center for Health Research and was a member of the working group that advised the F.D.A. on implant safety.They say things like, Breast implants are associated with lymphoma, but lymphoma is actually caused by the implants, Dr. Zuckerman said. People understand it if you say, Breast implants can cause lymphoma.She worried that surgeons would not take the time to adequately review the information with patients.What if a surgeon says, Heres a checklist I know its long, so its up to you if you want to read it or not? Dr. Zuckerman said. Patient groups are very concerned that will happen.But Dr. Mark Clemens, a professor at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston who serves a liaison to the F.D.A. for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons Society, said the black box warning and checklist represented a huge step forward for patient safety and implants.But more high-quality data about long-term outcomes for women with implants is needed, he added.The F.D.A. also issued updates regarding ongoing studies that implant manufacturers are required to carry out. Four of the five so-called post-marketing studies have made inadequate progress, according to the agency.The patient checklist states explicitly that there are some medical conditions that should preclude women from getting implants. (They are listed under the heading Considerations for a candidate for successful breast implantation.)In addition to breast cancer that has been treated, those conditions include active infections, existing cancer or pre-cancer of the breast that has not been treated, pregnancy and nursing.Women with diabetes, which can make healing difficult, and lupus, which interferes with blood clotting, are also listed as having a higher risk of a poor outcome. So, too, are smokers and former smokers.One-third of women who have breast implant surgery will experience breast pain, sensitivity or loss of sensitivity in the breast, or asymmetry, the agency said.Half will experience a painful tightening of scar tissue around the implant, and one-third will have implants that rupture or leak. Nearly 60 percent will need a repeat operation.Breast implants are not considered lifetime devices, the new warnings will say. The longer people have them, the greater the chances are that they will develop complications, some of which will require more surgery.About 400,000 women in the United States get breast implants every year 300,000 for cosmetic reasons and 100,000 for reconstruction after mastectomies performed to treat or prevent breast cancer.

Health

Credit...Christophe Ena/Associated PressNov. 13, 2018PARIS Three years to the day after he lived through the worst terrorist attack in Frances modern history, Fred Dewilde and other survivors, neighbors and families of victims gathered on Tuesday for a subdued commemoration in the area of Paris hardest hit by the violence.We dont really know each other, but we do understand each other and were here for one another, said Mr. Dewilde, 51, who was at the Bataclan concert hall on Nov. 13, 2015, and attended the memorial held in a square nearby, where the crowd released balloons into the sky. Were all citizens of the 13th.That day, like Tuesday, dawned clear and warm for November, but after night fell, suicide bombers attacked Frances largest stadium, armed men shot randomly at busy sidewalk bars and cafes, and three gunmen attacked the crowded Bataclan with Kalashnikov rifles; all told, they killed 130 people and wounded nearly 500.For France, especially for the Paris area, the initial sense of horror gave way to an outpouring of grief, then public defiance. But enough time has passed that many of those who lived through the attacks like Mr. Dewilde, a medical illustrator turned graphic novelist have moved on to processing the trauma through writing, film and the arts.A spate of books, graphic novels, documentaries and exhibitions has emerged, as artists and their audiences try to capture and understand that terrible day.ImageCredit...Christophe Ena/Associated PressIt is the media, the history books, the artistic works, the graphic novels that circulate widely that are going to help in the construction of a collective memory, said Denis Peschanski, a historian at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. He is a co-leader of a project that uses the events of Nov. 13 to study how the memory of trauma changes over time.Memory is a puzzle, Mr. Peschanski said. After a traumatic event, whether people were in immediate danger or just watching on television, they instinctively want to find the pieces of a puzzle, he said.Creative works are now filling in some of those gaps.They are personal, but also trace aspects of the attacks that many people will recognize a body of art that also serves as shared testimony. In addition to the therapeutic value they have for victims and witnesses, the artistic endeavors, many of them open to interpretation, can help others understand what they and their society are going through.The documentary film November 13: Attack on Paris, which was released on Netflix in June, immerses the viewer in the overwhelming event, showing the trauma to individuals, to a neighborhood and to Paris, but it also shows how ordinary people could and did survive it.Catherine Bertrand, who returned to the Bataclan on Tuesday for a ceremony for survivors and families, is one of those who lived through the massacre and was moved to express her experience artistically. Her graphic novel Chronicles of a Survivor tells of her struggle with post-traumatic stress, depicting it as a crushing black ball, far larger than she is, that waits for her when she wakes up in the morning and weighs her down, day after day.ImageCredit...Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe ball brings nightmares, erases her memory of how to do her work and makes her cry easily. She feels distant from friends and family.She learns about her condition and accepts that she needs help, and gradually, the immense ball shrinks. By the books end, she can hold it in her hand and says: One day I will manage to throw that ball away and free myself.Even people who experienced traumas unrelated to the Paris attacks have told her they found solace in her work, she said.A father told me that he had lost his son and that after that he had cut himself off from those close to him because they did not understand, said Ms. Bertrand, 38. When he read my book it made him feel so good that he wrote to thank me. This is my most beautiful success.ImageCredit...Clockwise from top left: Flammarion; La Martinire; Heliopoles; Seuil.With my book, I wanted to lay one little brick that I thought may help rebuild the wall destroyed by this tragedy, said Aristide Barraud, 29, the author of But Dont Sink, one of several memoirs written by survivors.Mr. Barraud, a former professional rugby player, was shot three times as he shielded his sister with his body. He nearly died, suffering injuries so severe that he was forced to end his playing career.For him, writing the book was a way to cope with the trauma, and to fill the void left by his sport.Like Ms. Bertrand, Mr. Dewilde, 51, was moved to use illustration to express his struggles. One of his two graphic novels about the attack, The Bite, illustrated with finely drawn pen-and-ink sketches, is as much a parable of transcending fear and hatred as it is a memoir.He depicts his emotions in The Bite as a black stain on his arm that spreads and morphs into a serpent, and portrays the Bataclan killers as skeletons. The stain feeds on each of the successive terrorist attacks that touched France over the following year, including the killing of a priest and the use of a truck to mow down scores of pedestrians in Nice on Bastille Day 2016.ImageCredit...Pierre Terdjman for The New York TimesAt the books end, Mr. Dewildes character vanquishes the dark stain and malevolent serpent, finding that he has the strength to leave them behind.While no one work can contain an event as vast as the Paris attacks, the documentary November 13: Attack on Paris by the award-winning filmmakers Jules and Gdon Naudet manages to capture the day in its alternating normality, horror and heroism.As Paris natives who had made a documentary about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, they were drawn to do the same for Paris.Their Nov. 13 documentary relies on eyewitnesses victims who survived, firefighters, police officers and government officials, including the president at the time, Franois Hollande. They obtained contemporary footage from a television crew traveling with some of the firefighters who responded, and from the offices of the emergency dispatchers.The result is a remarkable three-part account that opens with the kind of postcard images of sunrise over Paris that are beloved by morning news shows, and moves through the day and night, intersplicing interviews with 42 people who were there.ImageCredit...Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe main point is not to forget either the good or the bad, or to become too emotionally distant from what happened, Gdon Naudet said.In New York, firefighters, family, friends, the people who survived, they are extraordinary, their basic response was positive in the sense that they did not want to let what happened to them destroy them, he said. It was the same spirit in Paris.The Naudet brothers were in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, so their cameras captured the disaster as it unfolded.In 9/11 you were there because we were there, said Jules Naudet. They did not witness the Paris attacks, but wanted the same immediacy, so they asked those they interviewed to speak in the first person and in the present tense.Here we wanted to recreate the same thing but without the images, with only being in the peoples heads, Jules Naudet said.The Naudet brothers decided to show not only the horror and destruction of terrorism, but also the resilience they discovered in those who are touched by terrorism.None of the survivors talk about hatred, revenge and killing, Gdon Naudet said. You have a choice: You go the dark way or you go the way with light.

World

Nick Young Makes Out with Puppet ... While Hypnotized 1/22/2018 Why was Nick Young kissing a puppet and grooving like Michael Jackson over the weekend? Don't worry -- it's 'cause he was hypnotized ... and there's video!! It all went down at the 30th birthday bash for Warriors teammate JaVale McGee ... where Swaggy P got on stage and put under. Like, really under -- dude was OUT. What happened next was Swaggy like you've never seen him before -- putting the moves on a puppet during a slow dance ... and crotch-grabbin' and moon-walkin' like MJ. Of course, JaVale and the rest of the gang LOVED it. Guessing Nick's not quite as pumped.

Entertainment

PrototypeCredit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesDec. 26, 2015One afternoon in early 2014, an employee of the Manhattan co-working space Coworkrs got behind the handlebars of a large tricycle and began pedaling it through the Flatiron district. The tricycle was outfitted with a small desk; the employee seemed to be sitting at her desk while cycling around the city.A company called Peddler Pop-Ups had designed the display and rented out the tricycle for use as a rolling advertisement. (The tricycles can also be used as pop-up stores.) Peddler Pop-Ups is one of six companies founded and operated by a 27-year-old entrepreneur named Danielle Baskin. She does not have any employees, and until this month, Ms. Baskins businesses had their headquarters in a 160-square-foot live-work space in the East Village.She credits a variety of relatively new, inexpensive e-commerce platforms and services with enabling her to test new concepts and quickly start new businesses.Ms. Baskin started her first venture, Inkwell Helmets, in her New York University dorm room in 2008, when e-commerce was much more difficult, and expensive, to break into. As an art student interested in optical illusions, she hand-painted a scene of a blue sky and white clouds on her bike helmet and varnished it to a high gloss. When she wore the helmet on bike excursions around the city, people frequently stopped her to ask where she had gotten it.I didnt intend to turn it into a company, she said. I just thought it was a cool object. But then, once I made a few designs, I thought, There are so many possibilities.She began painting helmets with different images: a brain, an apple, a phrenology chart, a honeycomb. Initially, she tried to persuade boutiques and bike shops to carry her helmets. But although her products were unique, she struggled to break in to the bricks-and-mortar retail industry. So she decided to sell the helmets online.Ms. Baskin couldnt afford to invest in a sophisticated website, so she built what she describes as a really scrappy-looking one. Customers could look at photographs of the helmets on the site but couldnt order or pay for them there. Instead, they ordered them via email and paid with PayPal.After her graduation in 2010, she bounced between apartments and live-work spaces. At one point, her studio was a 20-square-foot area in a loft. Later, she rented a 42-square-foot room in a co-working space; she kept such late hours that she often slept there at night.As Ms. Baskins helmet business began to flourish, she came up with ideas for more products and services. Most stemmed from efforts to solve problems she was facing.While looking for a way to display and sell her helmets at Citi Bike stations, she bought an old tricycle from a friend and turned it into a pop-up store. She realized she could rent out the tricycle when she wasnt using it, and Peddler Pop-Ups was born.When she wanted to safely search for locations of Citi Bike stations while riding a Citi Bike, she designed a smartphone case that attaches to the rectangular handlebars of the bike. Now she sells the cases, which can be used on other bikes, through Trillobox. She also runs a sign-making business called Signmaker.nyc that serves clients in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. And she sells her own artwork and other products through two other companies.By the time Ms. Baskin was ready to test these other ideas to see if they had business potential, technology was available that allowed her to easily create professional-quality websites that accepted credit card payments.These days, more tech firms are catering to small-business owners like Ms. Baskin. There are a lot of plug-and-play elements and services you can access to put it all together, says Leah Edwards, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.Now when Ms. Baskin comes up with a new product or business idea, she gauges whether theres a market for it by quickly setting up a website using the content-management system Squarespace, which links to a payment processor called Stripe. She then relies on digital analytics tools, including Google Analytics and Inspectlet, to see if an idea is catching on. If so, she begins selling the products right away.She can also instantly see if a product is striking out. If no one is going to a certain site or if no ones responding to an email from a certain account, she said, maybe that thing isnt a good idea.ImageCredit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesUntil a few months ago, Ms. Baskin handled her own shipping boxing her products and ferrying them by tricycle to the post office every few days. Now she saves time by mailing them via Shyp, an on-demand shipping service that sends a messenger to her studio to collect the items, wrap them and ship them out.But building an e-commerce business isnt as simple as putting up a website. The problem is that having a little tiny site, say on Shopify an e-commerce service doesnt get you anywhere unless you put in a lot of work to direct people to it, Ms. Edwards said. You have to actually use Facebook or do email campaigns with your friends and create awareness that it exists.To that end, Ms. Baskin has Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter accounts for most of her companies. So far, she has not felt the need to abandon any of her businesses after the early testing period.Inkwell Helmets is her most successful venture. This year, she said, she has sold 20 to 75 helmets a month, an increase of about 200 percent over 2014. The helmets cost $85 to $300 apiece, depending on their intricacy.Still, Ms. Baskin says, despite the help from technological innovations, her workload makes it difficult for her to expand her businesses. Several start-ups have tried to place 200-unit orders for bike helmets painted with their logos, for instance, but she doesnt have the capacity to fulfill the orders because she is solely responsible for product design, fabrication, fulfillment and customer service for all six companies.To churn out products more quickly, she plans to automate aspects of her production processes. Doing that requires a larger studio space with better ventilation, which Ms. Baskin said would be easier to find in California. So this month, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she plans to start a fabrication lab next year.Moving forward, the items will be micro-mass-produced, but wont look like they came out of a factory, she said. I want the quality of a handmade aesthetic.Ms. Baskin says she plans to design even more products and start even more companies. Shell also finally staff up, not with just one or two employees, she says, but an entire small team.Despite her move to car-centric California, Ms. Baskin doesnt intend to abandon the two- and three-wheeled modes of transportation that have stoked her entrepreneurial creativity so far. Shes planning to buy a folding bike to bring on trains and buses fodder, perhaps, for her next big business idea.

Business