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Credit...Eirini Vourloumis for The New York TimesDec. 11, 2015ATHENS Demetri Politopoulos, the founder of a midsize beer producer in northern Greece, says he nearly fainted when he heard the news late one night in October.The Greek Parliament was planning to pass a law that would increase the tax he paid for each hectoliter of beer he sold by 50 percent.Just like that, the microbrewery he started 17 years ago would go under, as his new tax bill of 1.6 million euros would wipe out his expected 1.45 million euros in profit for the year.I about had a heart attack, said Mr. Politopoulos, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who for more than 10 years has been trying to persuade bureaucrats in Brussels and Athens that Greeces monopolistic beer market was damaging his business.So he hopped on a plane to Athens and to the surprise of many was able to persuade the government to shelve the law within a day an extraordinary turnaround given how slow the Greek state usually moves.It was a triumph for Mr. Politopoulos and his Vergina beer brand.But the tale is also important on a larger scale as it shows how many of the revenue-raising measures that Greece is rushing to put into effect at the behest of its creditors are threatening to put small Greek businesses the beating heart of the countrys downtrodden economy out of business.It was midday here, and Mr. Politopoulos was sitting in a cafe, chain-smoking cigarettes and nursing beers.He had stayed up most of the previous night celebrating the victory with friends and family and the low growl of his voice and untouched plate of food before him signaled that the evenings effect was still with him.Yeah, he said. We really partied. I dont know how my brother got on a 7 a.m. flight today.The celebration was a long time coming. Educated in the United States, Mr. Politopoulos returned to his native land 19 years ago with a dream to become an independent brewer. At the time, there were no Greek beer companies: The Dutch-based behemoth Heineken had locked up the market.He started his business in 1998, but even as demand for his Vergina beer grew, his share of the market stayed in the low single-digits as the market leader did all in its power to prevent shops and restaurants from selling his product.Even now, after 15 years and a 7 percent market share, it is almost impossible to find a Vergina beer in Athens.In 2005, Mr. Politopoulos took his case to the Hellenic Republic Competition Commission, citing numerous examples of what he said were unfair business practices by Heineken, from persuading retailers to not stock Vergina to more serious examples of bullying and intimidation.But as is often the case in Greece, his petition went nowhere.With Greece under unremitting pressure to find new revenue sources, the idea to close the gap between the way small and large brewers are taxed may have seemed a good idea.That is, until Mr. Politopoulos took the floor in Parliament on Nov. 2.We are proud to pay taxes in Greece, but this is going to put us out of business, he said. And when we do pay our taxes, we expect services like justice. Without justice in a society, there is nothing.His 10-minute declamation hit a cord. A video of the speech went viral and parliamentary members rallied to his cause.Indeed, concerns are growing here that in a rush to raise much-needed revenue, Greece and its creditors are placing an unfair burden on an already decimated private sector.In the teeth of a five-year depression, Mr. Politopoulos says business is holding up fairly well. Via his company, which also sells tea drinks, and the farmers who grow barley and tea, he estimates that Vergina supports more than 1,000 families in the area of Komotini, which is just a short drive from the Turkish border.How, he asked, could a tax increase and the closure of his beer factory be seen as good for Greece?The government of Alexis Tsipras seems to have gotten the message. The tax bill was quickly shelved and a number of Parliament members called for an investigation into why the competition commission was taking so long to render a decision.Last week, the commission did give its opinion, saying that Heineken would be fined 31 million euros for unfair business practices.In a statement, Heineken said the decision was unfair and ungrounded and that it would appeal the ruling.It has been an emotional time for Mr. Politopoulos. He is not married and has no children as he likes to say, making beer in Greece (and frequently drinking it) is his life.I am really proud that we can make a difference, he said, searching a bit to find the right words. This shows there are Davids and Goliaths and that sometimes the Davids win. | Business |
Credit...Steve Marcus/ReutersDec. 3, 2015A little more than a year ago, David Crane was busy broadcasting plans to transform NRG from a conventional power producer to a new breed of green utility.In charge of the company for more than 12 years, Mr. Crane had been investing in wind farms and buying small start-ups to help capture emerging markets like rooftop solar, electric-vehicle charging and home automation, all part of a bid, he wrote to shareholders, to become like an Amazon, Apple, Facebook or Google of electricity.If that indeed comes to pass, he will not be there to see it.Mr. Crane, 56, stepped down as chief executive, the company said Thursday, and Mauricio Gutierrez, who has been executive vice president and chief operating officer since 2010, will take his place. The companys stock tumbled over the last several months, a decline that went largely unabated despite a reorganization and shift in strategy announced by Mr. Crane in September.He clearly had a vision for the power company of the future, and wanted NRG to be that company, and took real steps toward that, said Shayle Kann, who leads GTM Research, which focuses on clean energy industries. And then Wall Street didnt get convinced.The move comes as utilities here and abroad struggle to cope with the changing economics, policies and technologies in bringing more renewables into the power mix. In Germany, for instance, the large utility RWE, squeezed by low prices for conventional fuels, recently announced that it planned to split its renewables, retail and grid businesses into a separate entity.At NRG, which operates a large fossil-fuel-based fleet that tends to produce steady dividends, Mr. Crane became a high-profile proponent of change, traveling extensively to gatherings with energy executives and clean-energy advocates like Bill Clinton and Richard Branson and making attention-getting commitments to reduce the companys carbon footprint. NRG, he said, would be positioned to take advantage of the shift not only to renewable energy but also away from the traditional monopoly business model to a more decentralized power system.At the same time, Mr. Crane made a series of bets aimed at helping NRG make the transition to what he saw as a future where customers would have much more control over the sources and use of their electricity. He bought companies and reorganized NRG into three units. NRG Business was for conventional wholesale energy enterprises, including coal, nuclear and gas power plants. NRG Renew was focused on developing renewable energy sources including large-scale wind and solar farms and microgrids for commercial customers like businesses or governments. And NRG Home offered residential customers energy products and services like solar systems and electric-vehicle charging.But, as a combination of low oil and gas prices and the threat of rising interest rates led to turbulence in the energy markets and skittishness among renewable energy investors, the company pulled back from its ambitions. The company said it would cut costs, reduce debt and spin off the green enterprises into a separate company on a tight leash. The new green company, which NRG could eventually take public, could attract investment from people interested in growth and clean energy who would not ordinarily invest in NRG, Mr. Crane said at the time.But the moves were not enough. Now, how things go forward will be up to Mr. Gutierrez, 45, who has been at the company in various roles since 2004. Mr. Crane will assist in the transition through the end of the year, NRG said, but it declined to make him or Mr. Gutierrez available to comment.For the industry in general, said Anda Ray, vice president for environment at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit industry group, its important to understand your stakeholders, your employees, your consumers and what is their appetite for the pace and scale of change.She added: Oftentimes, were very enamored by the next newest thing. At the same time to build that into our everyday lives is actually a significant change. | Business |
Business BriefingDec. 10, 2015Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill jumped more than 5 percent on Thursday after its founder pledged strict new food-safety practices and apologized to patrons who fell ill after eating at the companys restaurants. This was a very unfortunate incident and Im deeply sorry that this happened, but the procedures were putting in place today are so above industry norms that we are going to be the safest place to eat, Chipotles founder and co-chief executive, Steve Ells, said in an interview on NBC. As of Thursday, 141 students had reported to Boston College Health Services with symptoms of norovirus after eating at a Chipotle last weekend, a Boston College spokesman, Jack Dunn, said. | Business |
Astronomers had already spotted two other rocks orbiting the asteroid known as 130 Elektra, and think more quadruple systems are out there.Credit...Yang/ESOFeb. 8, 2022We already knew the asteroid 130 Elektra was special. Astronomers previously discovered it had two moons, making it a rare triple asteroid system. Now a third moon may have been found, making it even more uncommon the first-known quadruple asteroid in the solar system.Elektra was first discovered in 1873, orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Oblong-shaped and 160 miles across on its longest side, it is a relatively large asteroid and completes an orbit of the sun every five years.In 2003, the first moon was discovered orbiting Elektra, and in 2014 a second. The discoveries were interesting, but not unusual more than 150 asteroids are known to have one or two moons, in the same way planets can have moons that are gravitationally bound to them. Multiple moons can be found around large asteroids, said Bin Yang, an astronomer from the European Southern Observatory in Chile who discovered Elektras second moon. A NASA mission, DART, is on target to collide with one such asteroids moon later in the year.But until now, an asteroid with three moons has eluded astronomers. Anthony Berdeu from the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand and colleagues used images from the Very Large Telescope (V.L.T.) in Chile to take a closer look at Elektra, and they found evidence for a previously hidden moon inside the orbits of the other two.This is the first asteroid with three moons, Dr. Berdeu said. We are pretty confident. Its quite exciting.Their results were published Tuesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.At a paltry one mile across, the moon would be slightly smaller than its siblings at 1.2 and 3.7 miles across. It swings around Elektra once every 16 hours at a distance of only 220 miles. To an observer standing on the third moons surface, Elektra would loom large in the sky.Dr. Berdeu says he was able to find the moon using a new algorithm to eke out its extremely faint light in images taken by the V.L.T. The data reduction techniques employed by the algorithm allowed for a sharper image of Elektra and its surroundings.Dr. Yang, who was not involved in this paper, said that she and other astronomers had been trying to look for quadruple systems for a while, and that her team also saw tantalizing hints of this third moon in their studies of 130 Elektra. This discovery would be a very exciting result, she said, although further observations will be needed to confirm the moons existence.Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer from Queens University Belfast who was also not involved in the paper, says the moons are most likely chunks of Elektra that were broken off in a collision when another object smashed into the asteroid in the past. They all look like theyre from the same material, he said.Further study of this system could reveal the stability of such multi-moon asteroids. This third moons orbit is misaligned to the other two, something thats very strange, Dr. Berdeu said. Dr. Yang said that she thought the system was unstable and that the inner moons may eventually fall back onto Elektra.It could also tell us more about the formation of multi-moon asteroids. This new finding will inspire modelers to look at asteroid impact formation, and try to set a limit on how many moons an impact can form, Dr. Yang said. How many moons can a system really sustain?Further studies are expected to unearth more quadruple systems too. New telescopes, such as the Extremely Large Telescope currently being built in Chile, will have the observing power necessary to more easily spot these multi-moon asteroid systems.And astronomers may not stop at quadruple asteroids. There is no limit to what we can find, Dr. Berdeu said. We expect to find more quadruple systems, and why not quintuple or sextuple. | science |
Dennis Rodman Leaves Rehab Begins 'Long-Term Treatment' 1/24/2018 After completing a week at an inpatient rehab center in Jersey, Dennis Rodman is out ... but swears to continue working on his sobriety. Rodman had checked in to the Turning Point treatment center following his DUI arrest earlier this month. Now, his rep Darren Prince says he's moving to a nearby outpatient center operated by Turning Point before continuing his long-term treatment in California. "Hes been working with psychotherapists as well as in group recovery classes," Prince says ... adding, "[Rodman] has finally been accountable for his behavior from alcohol over the years." Rodman also commented ... saying, "The doctors and nurses at Turning Point were really cool and made me feel comfortable and understand how I got myself into this position and what I need to do to stay on this path." | Entertainment |
N.B.A.|Randolph Lifts Grizzlies to 5th Straighthttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/sports/basketball/randolph-lifts-grizzlies-to-5th-straight.htmlSports Briefing | Pro BasketballJan. 31, 2014Zach Randolph had 26 points and 12 rebounds, and the visiting Memphis Grizzlies overcame a strong effort by Kevin Love to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 94-90.Love led Minnesota with 28 points and 16 rebounds. The Grizzlies have won five straight and 10 of their last 11. Arron Afflalo scored 21 points, Tobias Harris added 18, and the host Orlando Magic ran past the Milwaukee Bucks, 113-102, to end a three-game losing streak. Mike Scott and Elton Brand scored 18 points apiece to lead the Atlanta Hawks to a 125-99 victory over the 76ers in Philadelphia. Seven Hawks scored in double figures. A former security guard was sentenced to 180 days in jail on charges he stole three Los Angeles Lakers championship rings and hundreds of gift cards from a team training center in El Segundo, Calif., last year. | Sports |
Women's Figure Skating Mao Asada is one of a handful of women to perform a triple axel in competition. Coming after a disastrous short program performance, she landed the most difficult jump to be attempted in this event, boosting her score. Kim Yu-na's triple lutz-triple toe combination was the highest scoring element of the short program competition. Mens Giant Slalom Ted Ligety won the gold medal with a first run that put him well ahead of the field. His line was tight and elegant through the race. Here, the bottom section of Ligety's winning run. Men's Ski Slopestyle Joss Christensen executed a left double cork 1260 on the first jump of his gold medalwinning run as the United States swept the podium. Women's Short-Track Speedskating Three of the four competitors in the 500-meter final lost control in the first corner of the race. China's Li Jianrou cruised to the gold. Men's Aerials Skiing The first- and second-place finishers in the mens aerials each attempted jumps with three somersaults. The gold medalist, Anton Kushnir of Belarus, had a jump with five twists, and the silver medalist, David Morris of Australia, had a jump with four. Pairs Figure Skating Maxim Trankov and Tatiana Volosozhar performed a throw triple loop and returned Russia to its familiar position atop the Olympic medal podium. Men's Snowboard Slopestyle The American Sage Kotsenburg, left, and the Canadian Mark McMorris won gold and bronze. Kotsenburg began this rails sequence with a short half-cab leap into a layback slide, which mimics a surfers hand going in the water. Men's Figure Skating Yuzuru Hanyu won gold despite falling twice in his free skate. Hanyu lost his timing in the air on his first jump, a quadruple salchow. Men's Downhill Matthias Mayer of Austria won by remaining consistent, especially in the course's challenging middle section. Here, Mayer is shown over the final jump of the downhill course. Mens Hockey Team USA Coach Dan Bylsma called on T. J. Oshie, a 27-year-old forward for the St. Louis Blues, six times during the teams 4-3 shootout victory over Russia. Oshie scored four times, including the game-winner shown here. More on NYTimes.com | Sports |
Credit...Carlo Allegri/ReutersDec. 4, 2015Prosecutors in Manhattan have decided not to retry Steven H. Davis, the former chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the once-prominent New York law firm that collapsed in bankruptcy in 2012, a person briefed on the matter said on Friday.Two other former executives of Dewey are expected to be headed to a new trial on charges they oversaw an accounting fraud at the firm.The criminal trial of Mr. Davis and the two other former Dewey executives Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders ended in a mistrial in October.On Friday, a prosecutor working for Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said the office intended to conduct a new trial when a jury was unable to reach a verdict on 93 charges against the three men after 21 days of deliberation. The trial judge declared a deadlock in the proceeding after the jury earlier acquitted the men on 58 charges.But in speaking before Justice Robert M. Stolz of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, the prosecutor, Peirce Moser, was unclear on whether Mr. Vance intended to retry all three defendants, or just some of them.Mr. Moser declined to elaborate on his comment about a new trial when he was asked about it after the brief court appearance. A spokeswoman for Mr. Vance also declined to comment further.Mr. Moser and lawyers for the three defendants are scheduled to be in court on Monday, when it is expected that Mr. Vances office will make clear its intentions on retrying any of the defendants.Over the last several weeks, the lawyers for Mr. Davis, Mr. DiCarmine and Mr. Sanders have had meetings with top prosecutors to argue why their clients should not be retried. Mr. Vance has attended some of those meetings.Prosecutors are considering dismissing the charges against Mr. Davis by offering him a deferred prosecution agreement that would require him to refrain from any improper conduct for a period of time, said another person briefed on the matter.Such an agreement would be unusual given that Mr. Davis was already indicted on dozens of criminal charges and tried once by a jury. But the deal, if approved, would enable prosecutors to avoid retrying Mr. Davis without dismissing the charges outright.The first trial of the three men began at the end of May and concluded with a hung jury in October.In interviews conducted after the trial, jurors told reporters and the lawyers involved in the case that prosecutors presented too many charges against the defendants and the case was too complex. The jurors also gave different views on the relative culpability of the three defendants.Mr. Moser, who led the prosecution in the first trial, appeared before Justice Stolz on Friday to discuss the timing of a trial for a fourth defendant, Zachary Warren, a low-level employee at Dewey who was also indicted but not tried with the law firms three former executives.Mr. Moser told the judge that Mr. Warren should be tried after any retrial of the former executives. Mr. Warrens lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said it would be unfair to make Mr. Warren, currently working as a lawyer for a small firm in Pittsburgh, wait that long for a trial on the charges against him.Justice Stolz seemed to sympathize with Mr. Warrens plight. He told Mr. Moser that if Mr. Warrens trial were conducted first, it would not pose much legal danger to any retrial.There arent too many secrets in this case, the judge said.The judge, however, put off making any decision on the timing of trials until the conference on Monday, during which lawyers for all of the defendants, including Mr. Warren, will be present.Justice Stolz must still decide motions filed by the defense lawyer for the former executives to dismiss the charges the jury could not reach a verdict on.The former executives are still facing dozens of counts of grand larceny, falsifying business records and scheming to defraud. | Business |
Tennis|Murray Propels Britain to a Rare Win Over the U.S.https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/sports/tennis/davis-cup-roundup.htmlDavis Cup RoundupFeb. 2, 2014The Wimbledon champion Andy Murray beat Sam Querrey, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (3), 6-1, 6-3, to clinch Britains opening-round Davis Cup victory, 3-1, against the United States on Sunday in San Diego. The fourth singles match was canceled.Murray won his 18th straight Davis Cup singles match, and Britain beat the Americans for the first time since 1935.Britain advanced to the World Group quarterfinals, which will be held April 4-6, for the first time since 1986. It will face Italy. The United States will face a playoff to remain in the elite World Group.CZECH REPUBLIC ADVANCES The Czech Republic, the defending champion, reached the quarterfinals after TomasBerdychwon the first reverse singles to clinch the first-round series against the Netherlands in Ostrava, Czech Republic.Seeking their third straight title, the Czechs will face Japan in the quarterfinals.HOME CROWD BOOS GERMANY Daniel Brands defeated Roberto Bautista Agut, 7-6 (5), 6-4, to wrap up a 4-1 win for Germany over Spain in the first round.Germany reached the quarterfinals for the first time in three years, but home supporters in Frankfurt were angered by the no-show of three German players for the other reverse singles match with the result already decided.Germany, which last won the trophy in 1993, will play France in the quarterfinals, while Spain, a five-time champion, faces a World Group playoff in September after its second successive first-round exit.A POINT FOR SERBIA Dusan Lajovic and Filip Krajinovic won the reverse singles to take some of the sting out of Switzerlands 3-2 triumph over Serbia in their first round World Group matchup in Novi Sad, Serbia.Switzerland will face Kazakhstan in the quarterfinals. Kazakhstan won, 3-2, over Belgium in Astana, Kazakhstan.FRANCE DEFEATS AUSTRALIA Gal Monfils completed Frances 5-0 rout of Australia in the first round by defeating, Nick Kyrgios 7-6 (5), 6-4, in La Roche-Sur-Yon, France.ITALY BEATS ARGENTINA Italy reached the quarterfinals when Fabio Fognini defeated Carlos Berlocq of Argentina to give Italy an unassailable 3-1 lead in Mar Del Plata, Argentina. It was Italys first victory over Argentina in Davis Cup play, and the loss ended Argentinas 12-year streak of reaching the quarterfinals.A FIRST FOR JAPAN Japan sailed into the quarterfinals for the first time with a 4-1 victory after Frank Dancevic of Canada retired with an injury. (REUTERS) | Sports |
Hockey|An Islander Plays on Saturday, but Wont in Sochihttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/sports/hockey/an-islander-plays-on-saturday-but-wont-in-sochi.htmlFeb. 8, 2014Defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky, who played his sixth game for the Islanders on Saturday night after returning from an early-season concussion, will not skate for Slovakia at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Lubo said he doesnt feel physically well enough to play at the Olympics, Otto Sykora, Slovakias general manager, said earlier Saturday. For us, its a big loss, but we have to deal with that.Visnovsky, 37, has played for Slovakia in four previous Olympics and was considered perhaps its best defenseman after Zdeno Chara. But Islanders General Manager Garth Snow said this week that he did not feel comfortable letting Visnovsky go to Sochi.Im not healthy enough, and the doctors decided that it would be better for me if I skip the Olympics and stay in New York, Visnovsky said Friday.He sustained a concussion in October and missed 46 games. Going into Saturdays game against the Colorado Avalanche at Nassau Coliseum, he had averaged more than 20 minutes a game since returning to action Jan. 27. Im sorry, because I did everything to be ready to start the Olympics, Visnovsky said. Unfortunately, it did not work. JEFF Z. KLEIN | Sports |
From Justice Anthony M. Kennedys decision to retire from the Supreme Court to upsets in midterm primaries, it was a busy week in American politics. Here are some of the highlights from the headlines this week.June 29, 2018Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. ImageCredit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesJustice Anthony M. Kennedy announced Wednesday that he would retire from the Supreme Court at the end of July, giving President Trump the opportunity to cement the conservative tone of the United States highest court. Over his 30-year tenure, Justice Kennedy was often a crucial deciding vote in some of the courts most divisive decisions on gay rights, abortion rights and campaign finance. His departure raised concerns for Democrats and liberal activists that those verdicts could be overturned.A political fight began to brew in Washington between conservatives determined to confirm a nominee quickly and activists vowing to fight to preserve the courts liberal precedents. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, promised a Senate vote on a nominee by the fall. With only one Republican vote needed to derail a nomination, Democrats are hoping they might sway Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska or Susan Collins of Maine, who are among the most moderate Republicans in the Senate. ImageCredit...Annie Tritt for The New York TimesAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political newcomer, defeated Representative Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, in a New York primary on Tuesday. Mr. Crowleys defeat reverberated through the Democratic caucus in Congress, as lawmakers grappled with the loss of a likely candidate for speaker and the prospect of new leadership for the party. In other midterm primaries held Tuesday, it was apparent that liberal activists had defeated the establishment while Republican voters stuck with candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump a break from the pattern of the past few years. Additional ReadingIs This the Year Women Break the Rules and Win?Michael Grimm Falls Back to Earth. In a Ballroom on Staten Island.Crowleys Loss Heralds an End of an Era: Last of the Party BossesThe Supreme Court upheld Mr. Trumps travel ban. ImageCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesA federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administrations separation of migrant families.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesImageCredit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesRod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, publicly faced off on Thursday with House Republicans in an ugly televised fight as lawmakers accused him and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, of hiding information from Congress to protect their own interests.The House also voted to give the Justice Department seven days to produce sensitive documents related to the Russia inquiry and to the F.B.I.s investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. Some Republicans accused Mr. Rosenstein of misconduct related to the investigation into Russian election interference.The two leaders, both appointed by Mr. Trump, defended the special counsel investigation and their response to congressional investigators.In the days after the firing of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, Mr. Rosenstein repeatedly expressed anger over the White Houses treatment of him and has said the experience damaged his reputation. Additional ReadingEx-Aide to Roger Stone Is Subpoenaed in Russia Investigation | Politics |
Some people recovering from a coronavirus infection had an elevated heart rate for months, according to a new study.Credit...Michele Tantussi/ReutersJuly 7, 2021Last spring, when the nations Covid-19 cases were soaring and tests were in short supply, some scientists wondered whether a new approach to disease surveillance might be on Americans wrists.One in five Americans uses a Fitbit, Apple Watch or other wearable fitness tracker. And over the past year, several studies have suggested that the devices which can continually collect data on heart rates, body temperature, physical activity and more could help detect early signs of Covid-19 symptoms.Now, research suggests that these wearables can also help track patients recovery from the disease, providing insight into its long-term effects.In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers studying Fitbit data reported that people who tested positive for Covid-19 displayed behavioral and physiological changes, including an elevated heart rate, that could last for weeks or months. These symptoms lasted longer in people with Covid than in those with other respiratory illnesses, the scientists found.This was an interesting study, and I think its important, said Dr. Robert Hirten, a gastroenterologist and wearables expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who was not involved in the new work. Wearable devices offer an ability for us to be able to monitor people unobtrusively over long periods of time to see in an objective way how really has the virus affected them?The results are from the Digital Engagement and Tracking for Early Control and Treatment (DETECT) trial run by scientists at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif. From March 25, 2020 to Jan. 24, 2021, more than 37,000 people enrolled in the trial.Participants downloaded the MyDataHelps research app and agreed to share data from their Fitbit, Apple Watch or other wearable device. They also used the app to report illness symptoms and the results of any Covid-19 tests.In October, the same researchers reported in Nature Medicine that when they combined wearable data with self-reported symptoms, they could detect Covid-19 cases more accurately than when they analyzed symptoms alone.But the data, the researchers realized, could also help them track what happened to people after the worst of the illness had passed. People recovering from Covid have reported a wide range of lasting health effects, including fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, headache, depression, heart palpitations and chest pain. (These lingering effects are often known as long Covid.)The new study focuses on a subset of 875 Fitbit-wearing participants who reported a fever, cough, body aches or other symptoms of a respiratory illness and were tested for Covid-19. Of those, 234 people tested positive for the disease. The rest were presumed to have other kinds of infections.ImageCredit...Gregory Bull/Associated PressParticipants in both groups slept more and walked less after they got sick, and their resting heart rates rose. But these changes were more pronounced in people with Covid-19. There was a much larger change in resting heart rate for individuals who had Covid compared to other viral infections, said Jennifer Radin, an epidemiologist at Scripps who leads the DETECT trial. We also have a much more drastic change in steps and sleep.The scientists also found that about nine days after participants with Covid first began reporting symptoms, their heart rates dropped. After this dip, which was not observed in those with other illnesses, their heart rates rose again and remained elevated for months. It took 79 days, on average, for their resting heart rates to return to normal, compared with just four days for those in the non-Covid group.This prolonged heart rate elevation may be a sign that Covid-19 disrupts the autonomic nervous system, which regulates basic physiological processes. The heart palpitations and dizziness reported by many people who are recovering from Covid may be symptoms of this disruption.Lots of people who get Covid end up getting autonomic dysfunction and a kind of ongoing inflammation, and this may adversely affect their bodys ability to regulate their pulse, Dr. Radin said.Sleep and physical activity levels also returned to baseline more slowly in those with Covid-19 compared to those with other ailments, Dr. Radin and her colleagues found.The researchers identified a small subset of people with Covid whose heart rates remained more than five beats per minute above normal one to two months after infection. Nearly 14 percent of those with the disease fell into this category, and their heart rates did not return to normal for more than 133 days, on average.These participants were also significantly more likely to report having had a cough, shortness of breath and body aches during the acute phase of their illness than did other Covid patients.One limitation of the study is that it did not ask participants to continue reporting their symptoms in the weeks and months after they first fell ill. But the scientists are planning to ask volunteers to do that in future research.We want to kind of do a better job of collecting long-term symptoms so we can compare the physiological changes that were seeing with symptoms that participants are actually experiencing, Dr. Radin said. So this is really a preliminary study that opens up many other studies down the road.In February, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would provide $1.15 billion over the next four years to fund research on long Covid. The new study highlights the role that wearables could play in that research, Dr. Hirten said: Combining these sort of techniques with other studies that are being done looking at this issue of long-term symptoms could really offer a nice objective insight into whats going on with people. | Health |
Credit...Tuomas Lehtinen/AlamyNov. 20, 2018At least three dozen students have come down with chickenpox at a private school in North Carolina nearly one-quarter of the student body in what health officials call the largest outbreak in the state since the chickenpox vaccine became available more than two decades ago.The students, who range in age from 4 to 11 years old, attend the Asheville Waldorf School in Asheville, N.C., about 120 miles west of Charlotte. They began falling ill in mid-September, said Dr. Jennifer Mullendore, the medical director for Buncombe County Health & Human Services.The school has 152 children in nursery school through sixth grade, and one of the states highest rates of religious exemptions for vaccination.The size of this outbreak and the fact that this school continues to have a large number of unvaccinated students makes it very likely there will be continued spread of chickenpox within the school, Dr. Mullendore said. This also poses a risk of spread to the surrounding community.North Carolina requires students to receive the chickenpox vaccine, but exceptions can be made for medical or religious reasons.During the 2017-2018 school year, about two-thirds of the 28 kindergartners at Asheville Waldorf School received a religious exemption from the required vaccinations, state data shows, the highest percentage in the state for schools with kindergarten enrollment of at least three students.Schools in the county have had smaller chickenpox outbreaks in recent years of no more than five to 11 children, Dr. Mullendore said. This year, however, was different.There is a significant amount of misinformation about vaccines on the internet and social media, which parents may find confusing and concerning, Dr. Mullendore said. We encourage parents to talk with their childs health care provider and review medically accurate, scientifically sound information about the serious risks of vaccine-preventable diseases compared to the very rare risks of vaccination.Officials with Asheville Waldorf School, which is on vacation this week, did not immediately respond to a request for comment when asked about the outbreak.Chickenpox, transmitted by the varicella-zoster virus, is highly contagious and results in a blisterlike rash, itching, fatigue and fever.ImageCredit...Bsip/UIG, via Getty ImagesIt usually presents as a mild illness, but can sometimes cause complications like bacterial skin infections, bloodstream infections, pneumonia, infection of the brain even death.It is important to understand that even healthy children and adults may develop serious complications from varicella, Dr. Mullendore said.The illness can be more severe in immunocompromised people, children younger than 1 year of age, pregnant women, adolescents and adults, she added.While most parents in the United States are making sure their children get the recommended vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen an increase in the number of children younger than 2 years old who do not receive any vaccines; there are about 100,000 who are not protected, said Kate Fowlie, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C.Thats not necessarily because of parental choice, she added. Some parents may think they cannot afford vaccines, or may not have ready access to a doctor.The C.D.C. recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children: The first is administered to babies from 12 to 15 months old and the second to children ages 4 through 6.Those who have never had the vaccine may still receive it after being exposed to the virus, ideally within three days, to either prevent the illness or lessen its severity.Chickenpox outbreaks have declined greatly since 1995, when the chickenpox vaccine became available. It has been shown to be about 90 percent effective at preventing the virus.All 50 states have laws requiring school immunizations, but in 45 states and Washington, D.C., parents who object for religious reasons are exempt from the vaccine requirements, according to the Immunization Action Coalition.Eighteen states permit parents to seek exemptions for personal or philosophical reasons. A study published in June in PLOS Medicine found that the states that permitted both religious and personal exemptions had a rise in the number of enrolled kindergartners with nonmedical exemptions since 2009.Some people think that natural immunity obtained by getting sick with infections is better or safer than the immunity provided through immunization, Dr. Mullendore said. However, vaccine-preventable diseases are not benign and can lead to serious illness, something that is not seen with immunizations. | Health |
TrilobitesScientists say they have discovered the first case of mammals mimicking insects to defend themselves from being eaten.Credit...Marco ScalisiMay 9, 2022To scare off potential predators, some animals display the traits of more deadly creatures. A scarlet kingsnake, for example, wears a red, black and yellow striped pattern similar to that of a venomous coral snake; innocuous butterfly species display the same beautiful splashes of color on their wings as their noxious relatives; and nestlings of species of Amazonian bird are thought to avoid predation by exhibiting the movement and bright orange hue of a toxic caterpillar.These evolutionary adaptations are examples of Batesian mimicry named after the 19th-century British naturalist Henry Walter Bates when harmless species evade predators by mimicking more dangerous species that their hungry foes know to avoid.Most instances of Batesian mimicry that have been discovered are visual. In comparison, there are few examples of mimicry with sound. Acoustic mimicry is very rarely documented in nature, said Leonardo Ancillotto, an ecologist at the University of Naples Federico II.Dr. Ancillotto and colleagues have discovered not only a new case of acoustic Batesian mimicry, but also the first documented between mammals and insects. In their work, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, they report a species of bat that mimics the buzzing sound of stinging insects like hornets to deceive owls that might otherwise eat them.Is this a bat or hornet?Its a greater mouse-eared bat, and it does not want to be eaten by an owl.Bats are well-known for using echolocation to maneuver through the air and locate their prey, but they also use various social calls to communicate with one another.We know that sound is very important for bats, said Gloriana Chaverri, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Costa Rica and an author of the study.Even knowing this, Dr. Chaverri was fascinated by the acoustic mimicry finding. This is something really new theyre using the sound to confuse, to deceive predators, she said.It was around two decades ago that the idea for this research first came about. Danilo Russo, a study co-author and now an ecologist at the University of Naples Federico II, was a graduate student working to create a database for all Italian bat species echolocation calls. When handling one species in the field, greater mouse-eared bats, he was struck by their intense buzzing. But he had to wait years until he was able to test the hypothesis that they did this to deter predators.To test if these buzzing bats do in fact mimic buzzing insects to evade predators, the researchers focused on hornets, bees and two owl species common to the bats geographic range. Wild owls likely to have come across a stinging insect before and owls raised in captivity were both included in the study.The researchers collected data on how the owls behaved while audio of a variety of sounds were played over a speaker. The owls generally moved away from the speaker when they heard any buzzing, and approached it in response to a non-buzzing bats social call. But the response of the wild owls was far more pronounced than the response of owls raised in captivity, supporting the researchers hypothesis that the greater mouse-eared bat adapted to evade predators by mimicking the sound of stinging insects that their predators knew to avoid.The researchers also discovered after analysis of the audio that the owls, because of their hearing range, would find the bats and hornets particularly similar sounding.David Pfennig, an evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was not a part of the study, is intrigued by the possibility of an adaptation that involves species that diverged from their last common ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago.Mimicry is just such a powerful idea in science and evolutionary biology in particular, he said. It shows how you can get remarkable adaptations even among really distantly related groups.Sean Mullen, an evolutionary biologist at Boston University also not involved in the research, noted the potential limitations of the work, including the small number of owls used, and said he would be curious to see if on a larger scale the data supported the hypothesis.But he was enthusiastic to learn more.Any time we can find examples where evolution may have led to adaptation its more evidence for how amazing life is, he said. | science |
Feb. 1, 2014Super Bowl and bargain are words not typically linked. But the steady and precipitous decline in the offering price for tickets to Sundays game may invite some fans on a budget.According to TiqIQ.com, a search engine that scans the listings of online ticket resellers, the average asking price for a ticket is $2,645.12, which is 34 percent less than on Jan. 19, the day of the A.F.C. and N.F.C. title games.The cheapest ticket for sale as of Saturday night was $1,600, down 28.35 percent over the same period.The decline in asking prices is a sign that ticket-holders may have been too optimistic about interest in the game. Fears of bad weather may have dulled demand, and the fact that both teams are from distant time zones may have limited the number of fans traveling to the New York area.Still, the average price of ticket sales that have been completed is $2,376.54, according to TiqIQ.com, a level eclipsed only by ticket sales for the Super Bowl in 2011 between Green Bay and Pittsburgh at the Dallas Cowboys stadium.AWARD WINNERS NAMED Denver quarterback Peyton Manning won his fifth Associated Press N.F.L. Most Valuable Player award. No other player has won more than three.Manning, who also won the Offensive Player of the Year award, earned 49 M.V.P. votes from a nationwide panel of 50 news media members who regularly cover the league. New England quarterback Tom Brady received the other vote.The Carolina Panthers grabbed two major awards, with Ron Rivera being named coach of the year and linebacker Luke Kuechly the top defensive player.San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers took the Comeback Player of the Year award. Chicago cornerback CharlesTillmanwon the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award.Jets lineman Sheldon Richardson won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award. Green Bay running back Eddie Lacy won the Offensive Rookie of the Year award.Richardson was the 13th overall pick in the draft in April, a selection the Jets acquired when they traded Darrelle Revis to Tampa Bay. Richardson, who also scored two touchdowns as a fullback, joked about the possibility of winning both the offensive and defensive awards.Eddie Lacy beat me out there, Richardson said. He had a few more touchdowns than I did. (AP)FAMILIAR FACES FOR IDZIK John Idzik, who was hired as the Jets general manager in January 2013, spent six years in the Seattle Seahawks front office and said the teams berth in the Super Bowl makes it special.Idzik, who will be at MetLife Stadium for the Super Bowl, added, When youve spent so much time with them and youve kind of grown with them, you build very close relationships and you really wish them well.Idzik also addressed issues facing his current team, including the decision to retain Coach Rex Ryan and give him a contract extension.I just think its stability for the organization, Idzik said, and Rex is our coach.Idzik, who like Ryan has not committed to Geno Smith as the Jets starting quarterback for next season, said he was not concerned about some incidents involving Smith this off-season.When youre a quarterback for an N.F.L. franchise in a big market such as New York, all eyes are on you, 24-7, Idzik said, adding, Ive kept in close contact with him, and I think this is all part of learning how to deal with those things. (AP)BEFORE GAME, A RACE Mayor Bill de Blasio and Senator Charles E. Schumer, two of New York Citys leading politicians, celebrated the Super Bowl silliness by riding down a giant slide set up in Times Square with N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell; the Jets owner, Woody Johnson; and the Giants owner Jonathan Tisch.Beforehand, Schumer did a little trash talking, calling New Jersey, where the game is being played, a very good suburb for New York. Johnson then reminded Schumer that he and Tisch were born in New Jersey.Goodell was the first to the bottom. (AP)ACCIDENT NEAR STADIUM The New Jersey State Police said a trooper and a New Jersey National Guard member helping with Super Bowl security were injured when their patrol vehicle crashed at MetLife Stadium.The authorities said the trooper was driving when the vehicle struck a fence and a tree around 5:30 a.m. The two men sustained moderate injuries and were being treated at a hospital. (AP) | Sports |
Most Americans get health insurance from a job or government program, but about 8 percent, or some 22 million people, now buy individual policies under the Affordable Care Act. Insurers began offering these plans in 2014. How Americans under 65 get health insurance Republican lawmakers and President Trump have criticized Obamacare, saying it took away peoples ability to choose their health plans and doctors, pointing to a recent exodus of insurers that could leave areas with a single insurer or none at all. Mr. Trump has insisted the markets are failing. And the markets took another hit on Tuesday when Anthem, one of the nations largest insurers, pulled out of Ohio, leaving about 20 counties with no Obamacare carrier. Supporters of the Affordable Care Act hoped the law would spur more competition among insurers across the country. But so far, the law has not delivered on that promise, especially in states that never had much competition, but it didnt create the lack of choice in those states, according to a Times analysis of insurer participation provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The data looks at state markets where all insurers must sell plans that meet Obamacare standards, regardless of how theyre purchased. More than half of the 22 million people who buy their own insurance use Obamacare marketplaces, where most of them get a federal tax credit to help pay for coverage. The rest buy directly from an insurer or broker, and they do not get a tax credit. In South Carolina, for example, only one insurer is selling through the marketplace, but there are four over all that offered Obamacare plans in 2017. Despite insurer exits, the market size hasnt declined much. The total number of insurance companies now selling plans in the individual market is not that different from when Obamacare took effect in 2014. Total number of insurers in the individual market One of the goals of Obamacare was to prevent the sale of junk insurance, which was much cheaper but wouldnt pay more than a few thousand dollars in claims. So, initially, there was a sharp decline in carriers nearly 200 of them left when the new law required insurers to offer comprehensive coverage. A small surge followed in 2015, but companies have steadily left since. Most of the so-called co-ops created under the law to foster competition failed, and some of the largest insurers, like UnitedHealth Group and Aetna, also exited many of the markets after reporting that they lost hundreds of millions of dollars. The continued struggle of some insurers to make money and the uncertainty over the future as Republicans talk of dismantling the law has led to defections of prominent insurers like Humana and Wellmark, a Blue Cross plan from Iowa, for 2018. But the biggest drop in insurers is among those who sell plans exclusively on the Obamacare marketplaces. Where insurers are selling Many companies a third of the total are choosing to sell outside the Obamacare marketplaces, where their customers are not eligible for federal subsidies. Where insurers sold in 2017 One reason for that may be that people with higher incomes, who dont need federal subsidies, tend to be healthier. A new analysis by the Trump administration says the cost of insurance is higher now than before Obamacare. But the comparison does not include people who buy outside the Obamacare marketplaces, where premiums may be lower. It also does not reflect the lower premiums paid by a majority by people who receive federal tax credits. The most competitive states have always been that way. Even before Obamacare, there have always been two distinct markets: states that still have plenty of competition and states that rely heavily on one or two insurers. It is remarkable how much of a connection there seems to be between a states current situation and their pre-A.C.A. environment, said Katherine Hempstead, a policy expert at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who recently wrote an analysis of the market. In 15 states, eight or more insurers offer Obamacare plans. They are mostly the same ones where no single insurer had a dominant share of the market in 2013, before the law was enacted. Big states like Pennsylvania and Texas, with major cities, have always appealed more to insurers because they offer a large pool of potential customers, and the companies can strike better deals with some of the hospitals and doctors. But states with more rural populations and poorer residents tend to struggle because insurers are reluctant to enter markets where there are fewer customers that may be costly to cover. The least competitive states never had much to begin with. But the 19 states that currently have fewer than five carriers statewide are all ones where a single insurer had more than half of the overall market before Obamacare. The largest insurer was typically a local Blue Cross plan, which offers coverage within a state and works closely with local hospitals and doctors. In Alabama, Rhode Island and Vermont, the Blue Cross plan covered about nine out of every 10 people. The local Blue Cross plan is often the remaining stalwart in states with little competition, especially in the Obamacare marketplaces, although there have been a few exits to date. The Blue Cross plans are carrying the exchange markets right now, said Cynthia Cox, a policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. | Health |
Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesJune 12, 2017More than 10 percent of the worlds population is now obese, a marked rise over the last 30 years that is leading to widespread health problems and millions of premature deaths, according to a new study, the most comprehensive research done on the subject.Published Monday in The New England Journal of Medicine, the study showed that the problem had swept the globe, including regions that have historically had food shortages, like Africa.The study, compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and funded by the Gates Foundation, looked at 195 countries, essentially the worlds population, finding that rates of obesity at least doubled in 73 countries including Turkey, Venezuela and Bhutan from 1980 to 2015, and continuously increased in most other countries.Analyzing some 1,800 data sets from around the world, researchers found that excess weight played a role in four million deaths in 2015, from heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease and other factors. The per capita death rate was up 28 percent since 1990 and, notably, 40 percent of the deaths were among people who were overweight but not heavy enough to be classified as obese.The study defined obese as a body mass index of 30 or higher and overweight as a B.M.I. from 25 to 29.By those measures, nearly 604 million adults worldwide are obese and 108 million children, the authors reported. Obesity rates among children are rising faster in many countries than among adults.In the United States, 12.5 percent of children were obese, up from 5 percent in 1980. Combining children and adults, the United States had the dubious distinction of having the largest increase in percentile points of any country, a jump of 16 percentage points to 26.5 percent of the overall population.A range of nutrition scientists, including ones who differ significantly on some issues in the field, uniformly praised the breadth, depth and quality of the study, and the significance of its message.Its global implications are huge, said Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. He echoed others in saying the findings tend to also affirm smaller, more regional studies.This study shows what we know: No country in the globe has reduced overweight or obesity levels. This is astounding given the huge health and economic costs linked with overweight and obesity.The study largely did not go deeply into the causes of obesity, but the authors said the growing accessibility of inexpensive, nutrient-poor packaged foods was probably a major factor and the general slowdown in physical activity was probably not.The change in physical activity preceded the global increase in obesity, said Dr. Ashkan Afshin, assistant professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and lead author of the study.We have more processed food, more energy-dense food, more intense marketing of food products, and these products are more available and more accessible, he added. The food environment seems to be the main driver of obesity.Others agreed on the availability of poor diet, noting that such food can often be the most accessible and affordable.What people eat is the key factor in whether they become obese or not, said Adam Drewnowsk, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, who was not affiliated with the study, which he deemed brilliant work by the best people in the business.He said getting people healthy food was easier said than done.It is all very nice to talk about the need to eat less unhealthy foods and more healthy foods, he said. But unhealthy foods cost less; healthier foods often cost more. People eat what they can afford.The research characterized growth of obesity in two ways, one that looked at countries that had the biggest leap in percentage points. After the United States, other countries with particularly significant jumps in percent of the population who are obese included Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt.But other countries had rates that rose much faster, even though they remained lower as an overall percent of the population. Broadly, the fastest rises were found in Latin America, Africa and China.In China, for example, less than 1 percent of the population was obese in 1980, but now more than 5 percent is, a fivefold increase. The rise in childhood obesity in China roughly paralleled that overall change.Three countries in Africa Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea-Bissau had the fastest growth. Burkina Faso, the country with the fastest growth in the world in obesity, began in 1980 with around one-third of a percent of its population as obese. Its rate rose to nearly 7 percent of the population.The future health and economic burden facing all these countries is immense, Dr. Popkin said.Regarding the overall health implications of the study, one point made by the researchers is that there is a good news/bad news pattern emerging. The good news is that the disease burden caused by obesity is actually falling in some of the wealthiest nations. In the United States, the death rates associated with obesity fell from 63 per 100,000 in 1990 (the baseline year for this measure) to 61 per 100,000 people, reflecting medications that deal with the effects of obesity, like hypertension.The bad news is those remedies are not available in developing countries or are available only to the wealthiest people, leading to growing rates of associated deaths and without a clear solution.Most of the obese people are dying because of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, said Dr. Afshin, lead author of the study. That has been somewhat mitigated in the United States and other developed nations with the use of drugs.But we cannot have all people on drugs, he said. Ideally, we want to go to the root causes and address the problem of overeating.To date, he said, no country has been able to control the food environment, which seems to be the main driver of obesity. | Health |
the new old ageThese patients are not aware of the true risks, and surgeons arent telling them, new research suggests.Credit...James SteinbergDec. 13, 2019The patient, a man in his 70s, had abdominal pain serious enough to send him to a VA Pittsburgh Healthcare hospital. Doctors there found the culprit: a gallstone had inflamed his pancreas.Dr. Daniel Hall, a surgeon who met with the patient, explained that pancreatitis can be fairly mild, as in this case, or severe enough to cause death. Recovery usually requires five to seven days, some of them in a hospital, during which the stone passes or a doctor uses a flexible scope to remove the blockage.But because it can be life-threatening, after patients recover, we usually take out the gall bladder to prevent its happening again, Dr. Hall said.A cholecystectomy, as that operation is known, isnt high-risk surgery. When done with a laparoscope to avoid large incisions, its usually an outpatient procedure.But Dr. Hall advocates screening all older patients for frailty, and this patient met the criteria. He had coronary artery disease and liver disease, had lost weight and took multiple medications.He was sunken behind the eyes, skinny, unsteady on his feet, Dr. Hall recalled.Dr. Halls research, recently published in JAMA Surgery, has found that frail, older adults are more likely than other patients to die after even supposedly minor procedures and even when the surgery goes well, without complications.Frail, older patients frequently undergo such operations, which surgeons tend to see as routine, simple fixes but may not be. Our data indicate that there are no low-risk procedures among patients who are frail, Dr. Hall and his co-authors concluded in their study.So he had a lot to talk over with this patient and his son, who joined the discussion by phone.Whats frailty? Its an accumulation of problems that leave the patient vulnerable to stressors, said Dr. Ronnie Rosenthal, a surgeon at the Yale School of Medicine. And surgery is a big stress.Even in healthy patients, surgery demands a lot of reserve from your body, she added. But when they become frail, people already use whatever reserve they have just to maintain their daily lives.After operations, frail patients find it harder than others to regain strength and mobility, and to return to independent lives.Doctors and researchers assess frailty in a variety of ways. Geriatricians often measure things like gait and grip strength, and look for unintended weight loss and exhaustion.That face-to-face approach doesnt work well for researchers examining large populations, so Dr. Hall and his colleagues developed a tool they called the risk analysis index. It allows them to calculate frailty based on illnesses, cognitive decline, ability to perform activities of daily living and other factors derived from medical records.They applied that index to about 433,000 patients (average age: 61) undergoing common surgeries categorized as low-, moderate- or high-stress procedures at VA hospitals from 2010 to 2014. Then the team looked at the patients subsequent mortality rates.In this mostly male sample, 8.5 percent of patients were deemed frail and another 2 percent very frail. (At older ages, the proportion would almost certainly be higher; a 2012 review found that depending on definitions, frailty affects 14 to 24 percent of the over-65 population.)Previous studies have shown that surgery poses higher risks for such patients, but does frailty only matter for the big operations? Dr. Hall wondered.Results from the new study, limited to non-cardiac procedures, appear to answer that question.Surgeons consider operations high-risk if their 30-day mortality rate exceeds 1 percent. But for frail patients, even the lowest-risk procedures including removing a cyst from the hand or wrist, repairing a hernia or removing an appendix had a 1.5 percent mortality rate within 30 days. For the very frail, the figure was more than 10 percent, Dr. Hall and his colleagues found.A moderate-risk procedure like gall bladder removal or joint replacement involved a risk of death that was higher than 5 percent within a month for frail patients, and a nearly 19-percent risk for the very frail.Those numbers rose over time. By 90 days, mortality after supposedly low-risk surgery climbed to 5 percent in the frail and about 23 percent in the very frail; for moderate-risk operations, the rates were about 11 percent and 34 percent, respectively.After six months, roughly 9 percent of frail patients whod had the lowest-risk procedures and 16 percent of those undergoing moderate-risk surgeries had died. So had 35 to 43 percent of the very frail.It might not be the hernia repair or cyst removal, or complications thereof, that caused their deaths, of course. Those patients have shortened life expectancies, with or without surgery.Frailty means youve probably entered the last season of your life, said Dr. Hall (who is also an Episcopal priest).Moreover, living longer is not older peoples only concern, or even their primary one, Dr. Rosenthal pointed out. We dont ask patients often enough, Whats important to you?A frail patient, she noted in an editorial published in JAMA Surgery, may opt for an operation that increases comfort or mobility, even if it also raises the odds of dying.Screening patients for frailty may allow those facing greater risk to begin several weeks of so-called pre-habilitation, to improve their nutrition and endurance.But frailty also brings greater urgency to the discussions surgeons have with patients and families, who need to understand not only surgical risks, but what their lives may be like after surgery.It might not dominate the decision, but it could engender a few more questions, Dr. Hall said.Unhappily, another recent study in JAMA Surgery shows how difficult it remains to pose these questions.Dr. Gretchen Schwarze, a vascular surgeon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies doctor-patient communications, has too often heard patients say they had no choice but surgery, or were blindsided by how debilitated they felt afterward.So she and her colleagues recently developed an 11-question brochure for older adults considering major surgery. Working with surgeons at five hospitals, the team sent it to 223 patients before their consultations.Did those patients, who all had other serious illnesses, ask their surgeons more questions than a control group who didnt receive the brochure? The team recorded everyones visits and learned that no, they didnt. About half hadnt even read the brochure.If you want to change communications, you probably have to work on the surgeons more than the patients, Dr. Schwarze concluded.But she noted that such questions will serve any older patient contemplating surgery, minor or major: What are my options? Will surgery make me feel better? Help me live longer? How much longer?What will daily life look like right after surgery, or three months or a year later? What serious complications might arise? What will those mean for me?When Dr. Hall discussed such matters with his frail patient, whose pancreatitis might never return, the man decided against gall bladder surgery. Time spent in the hospital, possibly in intensive care, and the potential need for recovery in a nursing home sounded unappealing.From the patients perspective, the risks of doing the surgery were greater than the risk of recurring pancreatitis, Dr. Hall said. We chose not to do the operation. | Health |
DealBook|Chinas State Power Investment Corporation to Buy Renewable Energy Companyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/business/dealbook/china-state-power-pacific-hydro-investment.htmlDec. 16, 2015HONG KONG Chinas State Power Investment Corporation agreed on Wednesday to buy Pacific Hydro, a renewable energy company, from the Australian pension fund IFM Investors for an undisclosed price.Pacific Hydro has electric and wind facilities in Australia, Brazil and Chile, and it will be added to the Chinese companys roster of assets in 35 countries. State Power, or SPIC, was formed from a merger of China Power Investment Corporation and State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation and has interests in logistics and coal power.The acquisition of Pacific Hydro will add a high quality global renewable development platform to SPIC, Wang Binghua, the chairman of State Power, said in a news release.Kyle Mangini, the global head of infrastructure at IFM Investors, said the fund had invested heavily in growing the business over the last 10 years.We are not surprised with the level of buyer interest in the business and are particularly pleased that Pacific Hydro is transitioning to an owner of the quality of SPIC, who will continue the path of growth and excellence, he added.The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year. Previous reports have said the deal would be worth $2 billion to $3 billion.Santander Global Corporate Banking and King & Wood Mallesons advised State Power. Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch and Herbert Smith Freehills advised IFM. | Business |
The first- and second-place finishers in the mens aerials each attempted jumps with three somersaults. The gold medalist, Anton Kushnir of Belarus, had a jump with five twists, and the silver medalist, David Morris of Australia, had a jump with four. The composite image below shows their winning jumps from the final round. 2nd David Morris Australia Back double full-full-full Difficulty: 4.525 Score: 110.41 points 1st Anton Kushnir Belarus Back double full- full-double full Difficulty: 5.0 Score: 134.5 points More on NYTimes.com | Sports |
Technology|Huaweis sales tumble as phone buyers flee the Chinese giant.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/technology/huaweis-sales-tumble-as-phone-buyers-flee-the-chinese-giant.htmlU.S. sanctions contributed to a nearly 30 percent fall in overall revenue over the first half of the year.Credit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesAug. 6, 2021Sales are falling fast at Huawei, the Chinese tech titan that American officials have deemed a national security threat and sought doggedly to undermine.The company said on Friday that its shrinking smartphone business caused overall revenue for the first half of the year to slide by nearly 30 percent from last year, to about $50 billion. Its net profit margin, however, was 9.8 percent, up from 9.2 percent last year.As a closely held company, Huawei is not legally obligated to report its earnings. It publishes only a small selection of financial results, and not on a quarterly basis.Our aim is to survive, and to do so sustainably, Eric Xu, one of Huaweis deputy chairmen, said in a statement on Friday.Over the past few years, Huaweis ability to work with the international computer chip industry has narrowed because of a series of rules that were imposed by the Trump administration. It has become extremely hard for the company to produce the cutting-edge phones that had made it a global Goliath not long ago. Huawei denies that its products threaten any nations security.The U.S. sanctions also prevent Huawei devices from running Googles most popular apps. That has been driving away customers outside of China for awhile.But even within China, where many Google apps have long been blocked, Huaweis handset business is sinking quickly. In the latest quarter, for the first time in over seven years, Huawei was not one of Chinas five best-selling phone brands, according to the market research firm Canalys. The top five, in order, were Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, Apple and Honor.Honor had been a Huawei brand until it was spun out late last year to put it out of reach of the U.S. restrictions. That contributed to the drop in Huaweis smartphone revenue, a company spokesman said. | Tech |
Business BriefingDec. 22, 2015The United Auto Workers union has filed charges against Volkswagen, claiming the carmaker is refusing to enter into collective bargaining for some workers at its factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. The charges were filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday. On Dec. 4, more than 70 percent of the 161 skilled trades workers at the VW plant voted to join the U.A.W. There are about 1,450 auto assembly workers at the plant. The outcome was seen as important for the union because it was the first time workers at an auto assembly plant in the southern United States and owned by a foreign automaker voted to join the union. | Business |
Credit...Leah Millis/ReutersJune 5, 2018WASHINGTON A White House communications aide who made headlines in May for cracking a macabre joke about the health of Senator John McCain has left the White House.The aide, Kelly Sadler, made off-the-cuff comments about the Republican senators opposition to President Trumps nominee for C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, saying that it did not matter because Mr. McCain was dying anyway.Mr. McCain, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, has a malignant brain tumor and has been in treatment for several months. The joke was shared with the news media, igniting a firestorm in which the president personally promised to pursue leakers.The White House addressed the departure in a brief statement on Tuesday evening, saying that Ms. Sadler was no longer employed within the executive office of the president. The move was first reported by CNN.Still, Ms. Sadler did not leave in light of her comments, according to two people familiar with the situation.Instead, they suggested that Ms. Sadler was pushed out over reports that she had told Mr. Trump that Mercedes Schlapp, the White House strategic communications director, had been the one leaking to the news media. Tensions between the two had reached a point where Ms. Sadler, who worked in the White House communications office focusing on immigration, and Ms. Schlapp were unable to be in the same room together, White House aides said.The White House in recent weeks has reduced the size of the daily communications meeting, and aides have discussed decreasing the size of the communications staff. Such changes have been threatened before, but on Tuesday, one senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that more departures may be coming.In the days after Ms. Sadlers comments on Mr. McCain, White House officials dodged questions on whether what Ms. Sadler had said was inappropriate. Instead, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and her deputy Raj Shah have suggested that the leaks were worse than the actual comments. Mr. Shah stressed that the situation was an internal matter, and in an appearance last month on Fox & Friends, the presidents preferred TV program, Ms. Sanders targeted leakers in particular.I think it is disgusting and some of the most shameful behavior that you can ever engage in, Ms. Sanders said. Its an honor and a privilege to work for the president and to be part of his administration. Anybody who betrays that, I think, is a total and complete coward. And they should be fired.Members of the Republican leadership did not publicly rally around Mr. McCain after the comments were made. Several Republican senators who met with the president shortly after said they did not have time to bring up the issue.But others lashed out at the White House for its insensitivity.People have wondered when decency would hit rock bottom with this administration, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in a statement. Given this White Houses trail of disrespect toward John and others, this staffer is not the exception to the rule; she is the epitome of it.Mr. McCains family expressed astonishment and outrage after the remark became known.May I remind you my husband has a family, 7 children and 5 grandchildren, his wife, Cindy McCain, wrote to Ms. Sadler on Twitter.His daughter Meghan McCain asked for a public apology from Ms. Sadler. Ms. Sadler made no public comment but called Ms. McCain to apologize.At ABC News, on an email chain that included the White House statement about Ms. Sadlers departure, one network employee Ms. McCain replied to everyone: Bye, Felicia. | Politics |
The rare operation has implications for wounded soldiers, accident victims, cancer patients and those undergoing sex reassignment. Credit...Elise Amendola/Associated PressDec. 6, 2019A 36-year-old man born without testicles received one transplanted from his identical twin brother in a six-hour operation performed on Tuesday in Belgrade, Serbia, by an international team of surgeons.The surgery was intended to give the recipient more stable levels of the male hormone testosterone than injections could provide, to make his genitals more natural and more comfortable, and to enable him to father children, said Dr. Dicken Ko, a transplant surgeon and urology professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who flew to Belgrade to help with the procedure.The operation was only the third known transplant of this type. The first two were performed 40 years ago in St. Louis, also for identical twins, each pair with a brother lacking testicles.The absence of testicles is an exceedingly rare condition, but doctors say that the surgery may have broader applications for transgender people, accident victims, wounded soldiers and cancer patients. But the procedure raises questions about the ethics of transplants that are not lifesaving, and about the possibility of recipients someday fathering children with sperm from donors who may not even be related to them.The surgery was performed at the University Childrens Clinic in Tirsova, a section of Belgrade. The Serbian brothers are doing well, doctors said. By Friday, the recipient already had normal testosterone levels. Hes good, he looks good, his brother looks good, Dr. Ko said in a telephone interview on Friday. The donor, who already has children, should remain as fertile as he was before, despite giving up a testicle.Dr. Ko said the brothers, who have been sharing a hospital room, were expected to go home this weekend. They preferred not to be identified or interviewed, the doctors said.Because the patients are identical twins with the same genetic makeup, there is no concern that the recipients body will reject the transplant, so he does not have to take the immune-suppressing drugs that most transplant patients need.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Surgeons operated on the brothers simultaneously, in adjoining rooms. The procedure was challenging because it required sewing together two arteries and two veins that were less than 2 millimeters wide.Once you remove the testicle from the donor, the clock starts ticking very fast, said Dr. Branko Bojovic, an expert in microsurgery at Harvard Medical School and part of the team in Belgrade.Within two to four hours, you have to have it re-perfused and working again, Dr. Bojovic said. Without a blood supply, a testicle is viable for only four to six hours.It can take 30 to 60 minutes to make each of the four blood-vessel connections. But the team managed to complete them all in less than two hours, he said.The team did not connect a structure called the vas deferens, which carries sperm out of the testicles. The surgeons could not find the tissue in the recipient needed for the connection, which means that for now, he cannot father children in the usual way. Another operation to make the connection may be possible. Otherwise, if the recipient wants children, he might undergo a procedure to extract sperm from the testicle for in vitro fertilization. Or his twin brothers sperm could be used.Dr. Ko and Dr. Bojovic were both part of the surgical team that performed the first penis transplant in the United States, in 2016, on a man whose penis had been removed because of cancer. Dr. Miroslav Djordjevic, who led the team in Belgrade, specializes in urologic reconstruction and sex reassignment surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and at the University of Belgrade. He said the brothers approached him after learning that he had performed a successful uterus transplant between twins sisters, which enabled the recipient to give birth. ImageCredit...Bill Greenblatt/UPI, via AlamyDr. Bojovic said that after the penis transplant, the surgical team received inquiries from people undergoing female-to-male sex reassignment who wondered if they might receive transplants instead of the usual surgery, which creates a penis from the patients own tissue. But a transplant from any donor other than an identical twin would require immune-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection. The drugs have side effects that lead some experts to argue that the bar for such transplants must be very high. Its becoming more of a popular topic for these patients, Dr. Bojovic said. They say, If immunosuppression is getting safer, I dont want to use a big piece of tissue from my forearm or thigh or back for something that looks like phallus but isnt. He added that in patients having male-to-female reassignment surgery, the penis and testicles that were surgically removed are discarded, but in theory could be used for transplants. The lead surgeon, Dr. Djordjevic, said that he had developed a surgical plan for transplanting a penis onto a body that is anatomically female, and that he hoped to begin performing that surgery within the next year or so. We have to do this as soon as possible, to stop putting healthy organs in the garbage, he said. But he would not transplant testicles as part of transgender surgery, he said. Doing so would open up the thorny possibility that the recipient could have children produced by the donors sperm. If the idea were extended to deceased organ donors, special permission would be required from them before death, or from their families. Then the offspring is technically whose child? asked Dr. Ko, who is also chief medical officer at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Boston. It raises much debate in the literature of medical ethics.Last year, when surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital transplanted a penis, scrotum and other tissue to a young soldier who had been maimed in combat, they deliberately left out the testicles. The idea that he might father children who were genetically someone elses was considered unacceptable.The first report of a testicle transplant, by Dr. Sherman J. Silber, a fertility specialist in St. Louis, was published in a medical journal in 1978. In that case, the twin brothers were 30 when they consulted Dr. Silber. The brother without testicles had not reached puberty until he was given testosterone at age 18, which caused a growth spurt that left him four inches taller than his brother. He needed regular testosterone injections to maintain his masculine characteristics, but the hormone levels fluctuated and sometimes caused mood swings. He spent five years searching for a doctor who could perform a testicle transplant before he found Dr. Silber, after reading a New York Times article about his work published in 1975.Dr. Silber said that he had performed more than 2,000 kidney transplants in rats, which required microsurgical techniques to sew together minute blood vessels the same size as those in human testicles.So doing a testicle transplant was not a big deal, he recalled in an interview on Thursday. It was like just another kidney transplant in a rat. He said the operation took two hours. Dr. Silber said that the donor was gay and the recipient straight, and that the brothers told him they wondered if the transplanted testicle might somehow alter the recipients sexual orientation. There is no scientific reason for such an effect, and none occurred.The transplant was a success, and the recipient eventually had five children, Dr. Silber said. A year or so later, he performed the surgery again for another pair of identical twin brothers, though he did not write up their case in a journal.Regarding the operation in Belgrade, Dr. Silber said, I imagine these surgeons must be pretty good, because most people wouldnt dare to try this. | Health |
Credit...Ariel Schalit/Associated PressNov. 18, 2018JERUSALEM Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made an impassioned attempt on Sunday to salvage his crumbling government, warning his teetering coalition partners that toppling the government at such a complex time for national security would be irresponsible.In a live 10-minute address timed for the main evening television news broadcasts, Mr. Netanyahu drew on his military record and political clout to try to prevent early elections, listing his accomplishments in what commentators described as a pre-emptive campaign pitch.We are in the midst of a battle, and in the middle of a battle we dont abandon our posts, Mr. Netanyahu said. In the middle of a battle, we do not play politics. The security of the nation is beyond politics, and the security of the nation is also beyond personal considerations.The political crisis was precipitated by the resignation on Wednesday of the hard-line defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who cited the governments lack of resolve in handling the latest conflict with Gaza a move that critics said had more to do with Mr. Liebermans own political agenda.Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who leads another party in Mr. Netanyahus coalition the hawkish Jewish Home party then demanded to be named defense minister; he was rebuffed by the prime minister.Mr. Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, also of Jewish Home, are scheduled to make statements on Monday morning, when they are expected to issue an ultimatum or even quit the government.An exit by Jewish Home would bring down the government, forcing elections as early as March, since Mr. Liebermans withdrawal of his party from the coalition last week left it with a precarious majority of one seat in Parliament.Elections were originally scheduled to take place a year from now.Mr. Netanyahu who also serves as foreign minister and, nominally, as health minister said that he was for now taking on the role of defense minister. In addition to the volatile situation along the southern border with Gaza, Israel has been grappling with what it views as the graver threat of Iranian entrenchment across its northern border, in Syria.Mr. Lieberman quit his post as defense minister after the government accepted what he and many other Israelis viewed as a premature and humiliating cease-fire with Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, to end a fierce 48-hour bout of cross-border fighting.Mr. Netanyahu said that he understood the criticism, but that the public could not be privy to all of the details for security reasons. He also hinted at plans for further military action.I will not say this evening when we will act and how we will act, Mr. Netanyahu said. I have a clear plan. I know what to do and when to do it. And we will do it.We will overcome our enemies, he added gravely. And I tell you in advance, it will require sacrifice.Recalling his service to the country, and how he had lost friends, his older brother and almost his own life in battle, he said, I dedicate my whole life for the security of Israel.He recounted his efforts as a former finance minister to strengthen the countrys economy, and said that Israels international relations were now at an all-time peak, without a drop of exaggeration.Pressing his point that early elections would be an unnecessary distraction from the urgent affairs of state, he hurried off with the parting words Im going to work. | World |
Credit...Felipe Dana/Associated PressNov. 18, 2016The World Health Organization declared an end to its global health emergency over the spread of the Zika virus on Friday, prompting dismay from some public health experts confronting the epidemic.An agency advisory committee said it ended the emergency formally known as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern because Zika is now shown to be a dangerous mosquito-borne disease, like malaria or yellow fever, and should be viewed as an ongoing threat met as other diseases are, sometimes with W.H.O. help.Committee members repeatedly emphasized that they did not consider the Zika crisis over.We are not downgrading the importance of Zika, said Dr. Peter Salama, executive director of the W.H.O.s health emergencies program. We are sending the message that Zika is here to stay and the W.H.O. response is here to stay.Like all mosquito-borne diseases, Zika is seasonal and may repeatedly return to countries with the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry it, Dr. Salama added.Individual countries facing serious new Zika outbreaks could still declare local emergencies, said Dr. David L. Heymann, chair of the advisory committee.But other experts worried that the W.H.O.s declaration might slow the international response to an epidemic that is still spreading, and lull people at risk into thinking they were safe.Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is funding efforts to find a Zika vaccine, suggested that it was premature to lift the state of emergency since summer is just beginning in the Southern hemisphere.Are we going to see a resurgence in Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere? he asked. If they pull back on the emergency, theyd better be able to reinstate it. Why not wait a couple of months to see what happens?His agency would not slow down its vaccine efforts, he said.Since the W.H.O. first declared a state of emergency on Feb. 1, the Zika virus has spread to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere except Canada. Thousands of babies suffer deformities caused by the infection, and more are expected.Recent outbreaks and related birth defects have also been detected in Southeast Asia, although scientists believe the Zika virus has circulated there for decades.The most severe deformity is microcephaly, a tiny head with a severely underdeveloped brain; but fetuses have also been killed by the virus, and infected infants have been born blind, deaf, with clubbed feet and permanent limb rigidity.Scientists also fear that many infected babies who appear normal now may suffer from intellectual deficits or mental illnesses later in their lives.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed no opinion about the W.H.O.s decision, but noted that it did not change the urgent need to continue our work.The agency also reiterated the warning it issued in January that pregnant women should avoid traveling to areas where the virus was being transmitted.Although the virus is not killing or deforming as many babies as originally expected, the international response has been lethargic, Dr. Gostin said.W.H.O.s action to call off the global emergency has provided reason for governments and donors to pull back even more, he said.Even if the outbreak no longer meets the technical definition of an emergency under 2005 international health regulations, there is an important psychological component to declaring an emergency.Headlines suggesting the crisis is over may lead people to take fewer precautions against sexual and mosquito-borne transmission, experts said.We are still not out of the woods, said Scott C. Weaver, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who was among the first to warn that the virus threatened the Americas.The disaster in northeast Brazil, where more than 2,000 babies have been born with microcephaly, will probably not be repeated, Mr. Weaver said. And he would not be surprised if the disease had run its course in Central America and the Caribbean.But, he added, I think the worst is yet to come in southern Brazil places like So Paulo. And some places in the Amazon havent seen the virus at all yet.When a large portion of a population has been infected with a virus and has recovered, rising herd immunity usually ends the transmission of a virus for several years, until enough susceptible victims are born.Dr. Albert I. Ko, a Yale epidemiologist who has worked in northeast Brazil for years, said he understood the W.H.O.s rationale but felt the agency had acted too soon. The full extent of the damage in Latin America is unknown, he said, because many infected babies are yet to be born.Also, Asian governments are just beginning to realize that they face a crisis, he added, and may now take fewer countermeasures.When the W.H.O. declared an emergency in February, it was intended in part to get scientists to explore the Zika-microcephaly connection and to make countries cooperate in fighting the epidemic.At the time, it was unknown whether Brazils surge in microcephalic babies was caused by the Zika virus, which had been discovered in 1947 and was considered a mild disease.Later, W.H.O. officials declared themselves satisfied that Zika was the main cause of the microcephaly outbreak.In a later meeting, officials decided that the risk was not sufficient to justify canceling the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, but was high enough that pregnant women should avoid traveling to the area. | Health |
Credit...Mike Blake/ReutersFeb. 15, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia The Russian skicross racer Maria Komissarova underwent a successful six-and-a-half-hour operation after she broke and dislocated her spine while training Saturday, Russian officials said.Komissarova, 23, was taken to a hospital near the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, and the decision was made to operate there instead of moving her down the mountain.Mikhail Verzeba, a spokesman for the Russian freestyle ski federation, said that Komissarova had fractured the 12th dorsal vertebra in her lower-middle back.Komissarova fell while exiting the third jump in a series near the top of the 1,200-meter course, according to Jenny Wiedeke, a spokeswoman for the international ski federation.SWEDES RALLY FOR RELAY VICTORY When Charlotte Kalla of Sweden started her anchor leg of the womens cross-country relay, the two leaders were 25 seconds ahead and the four-time Olympic champion Marit Bjorgen of Norway was chasing close behind.Kalla erased a huge deficit on the final leg and then won a three-way sprint to give her country its first gold medal of the Sochi Olympics.It was Swedens first victory in the womens 4x5-kilometer relay since 1960, and it came on a day when Norway, the heavy favorite, finished fifth.Kalla was 25.7 seconds behind Finlands Krista Lahteenmaki and Germanys Denise Herrmann after the final exchange but gradually erased the deficit and caught up to the leaders as they entered the stadium.On the final straight, the Swede overtook both and beat Lahteenmaki by half a second. Herrmann and her German teammates settled for bronze.CHINESE SHORT-TRACK WIN Zhou Yang of China overcame a false start to win the womens 1,500-meter short-track speedskating gold medal, successfully defending the Olympic title she won four years ago.Shim Suk-hee of South Korea earned the silver. Arianna Fontana of Italy took the bronze, earning her second short track medal of these games. Fontana won silver in the 500.SWISS WOMEN UPSET RUSSIA Stefanie Marty scored midway through the first period, and Florence Schelling stopped 41 shots to give Switzerland a 2-0 victory over Russia and a spot in the womens hockey semifinals.Lara Stalder added an empty-net goal with 21 seconds left for Switzerland, which will face top-seeded Canada in the semifinals Monday.Anna Prugova made 27 saves for Russia, which moves to the classification round and can finish no better than fifth.In the womens hockey quarterfinals, Emma Eliasson scored with 4 minutes 15 seconds to play, and Sweden beat defending bronze medalist Finland, 4-2 a reversal of the result from the third-place game four years ago.Valentina Wallner made 29 saves for Sweden, which will play the United States in the semifinals. Finland, the No. 3 seed in the world, drops to the classification bracket and can finish no better than fifth.SLOVENIA SHOCKS SLOVAKIA Anze Kopitar scored the third of three goals in a six-minute stretch of the third period to give Slovenia a surprising 3-1 victory over Slovakia.Slovenias Rok Ticar broke a scoreless tie 3:23 into the final period. His teammate Tomaz Razingar scored midway through the third, and Kopitar, the only N.H.L. player on his team, scored 23 seconds later.Slovenia goaltender Robert Kristan stopped the first 27 shots he faced before Tomas Jurco scored with 17.8 seconds left in the game for Slovakia.Jaroslav Halak, the Slovakia and St. Louis Blues goaltender, made 28 saves.Slovenia (1-1) qualified by beating Belarus, Ukraine and Denmark and was competitive for two-plus periods against host Russia before losing, 5-2, on Thursday. It will play the United States on Sunday.TIE FOR LEAD IN MENS CURLING China and Sweden claimed easy wins to move into a two-way tie for the lead in mens curling and guarantee at least a tiebreaker for a spot in the semifinal.Canada beat Britain, 7-5, in a game that went down to the final rock, leaving both teams at 5-2.China silenced the home crowd early in a 9-6 win over Russia, and Sweden needed just nine ends to beat Germany, 8-4. Both winning teams are 6-1.Switzerland beat Denmark, 9-3, in the other game in the afternoon session. | Sports |
Africa|Somali Militant Leader Believed Killed in Drone Strikehttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/africa/american-strike-shabab-somalia.htmlApril 1, 2016WASHINGTON An American drone strike in Somalia is believed to have killed a key leader of the Shabab militant group, a United States government official said Friday, as the Obama administration continued its intensified air campaign against the group.First word of the strike came when the Pentagon press secretary, Peter Cook, said in a statement emailed to reporters that the American military, in cooperation with the government of Somalia, was still assessing whether Thursdays attack had succeeded in killing Hassan Ali Dhoore, described as an important member of the Shabab security and intelligence wing. Defense Department officials said he was involved in two high-profile attacks in Mogadishu more than a year ago in which Americans were killed.But one United States official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe initial assessments of the attack, said the military believed that Mr. Dhoore and two others had been killed in the strike, which occurred near Jilib, south of Mogadishu.In his statement, Mr. Cook said the Shabab leader played a direct role in the Dec. 25, 2014, attack on Mogadishu International Airport, resulting in the death of several African Union Mission in Somalia personnel and one U.S. citizen. He said Mr. Dhoore was also directly responsible for the March 2015 attack on the Maka al-Mukarram Hotel in Mogadishu, which resulted in the deaths of 15 people, including one Somali-American. Officials said Mr. Dhoore was also involved in the assassination of a dual-citizen member of the Somali Parliament.A second Defense Department official said the drone had struck in the early evening hours as Mr. Dhoore, who has been under American surveillance on and off for a considerable time, was riding in a vehicle with two other Shabab members.Last month, American warplanes struck a training camp belonging to the Shabab just as about 150 fighters were undergoing what Defense Department officials said was a graduation ceremony in preparation for a large-scale attack against United States troops and their regional allies in East Africa.That strike was the largest attack on the Shabab in the more than decade-long American campaign against the Qaeda affiliate in Africa. | World |
Baseball|Marlins Minor Leaguer Is Suspendedhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/sports/baseball/marlins-minor-leaguer-is-suspended.htmlSports Briefing | BaseballJan. 31, 2014A minor league pitcher in the Miami Marlins organization was suspended for 50 games.The commissioners office said the pitcher, the right-hander Ronny Fermin of the rookie-level Gulf Coast League, had tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance. | Sports |
The retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, long a critical swing vote, could move the Supreme Court to the right if he is replaced with a reliable conservative. Related Article Term beginning: 1937 40 50 60 70 80 90 2000 10 +4 Thomas +3 Alito +2 Gorsuch +1 Roberts Martin- Quinn ideology score Kennedy -1 Breyer Kagan -2 Ginsburg -3 Sotomayor -4 -5 The median justice is the one who can help secure a five-vote majority in controversial cases. Justice Kennedy has been the median justice for 18 of the 30 years he has served on the court. -6 -7 Term beginning: 40 50 60 70 80 90 2000 10 +4 Thomas +3 Alito +2 Gorsuch +1 Roberts Kennedy -1 Breyer Kagan -2 Ginsburg -3 Sotomayor Martin-Quinn ideology score -4 -5 The median justice is the one who can help secure a five-vote majority in controversial cases. Justice Kennedy has been the median justice for 18 of the 30 years he has served on the court. -6 -7 The Supreme Court Loses Its Center July 1, 2018 | Politics |
VideotranscripttranscriptObama on Trumps Nuclear Weapons RemarksAsked about Donald J. Trumps recent comments on nuclear weapons, President Obama said the Republican presidential front-runner doesnt know much about nuclear policy or the world generally.naAsked about Donald J. Trumps recent comments on nuclear weapons, President Obama said the Republican presidential front-runner doesnt know much about nuclear policy or the world generally.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesApril 1, 2016WASHINGTON President Obama on Friday questioned Donald J. Trumps fitness for office after statements from the Republican front-runner that the United States and its allies should move away from decades of constraints on the use of nuclear weapons. We dont want somebody in the Oval Office who doesnt recognize how important that is, Mr. Obama said.Speaking to reporters at the end of a summit meeting devoted to nuclear security, the president said the comments by Mr. Trump reflected a person who doesnt know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally.Mr. Obama has not hesitated to criticize Mr. Trump for contributing to a coarse tone and circuslike atmosphere on the campaign trail. But his criticism of the candidates comments on nuclear proliferation was not about public language or personal style, but about one of the gravest responsibilities of an American president. It carried an extra edge because it involved an issue that Mr. Obama has made a central goal of his presidency.He said world leaders and other participants at the conference had expressed concerns about Mr. Trumps comments during private conversations with him at the summit meeting, which gathered more than 50 world leaders to discuss ways to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack, whether from the leakage of nuclear fuel or the theft of a bomb by a terrorist group.Even those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand that the president of the United States needs to know whats going on around the world, Mr. Obama said.For the president, the two-day Nuclear Security Summit underscored both the loftiness of his vision for a nuclear-free planet and the hurdles of translating that vision into reality in a world of insecure leaders and of terrorist groups plotting to seize weapons. But the remarks of an American presidential candidate roiled the waters.Mr. Trump said he was open to allowing Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons to deter their rogue neighbor, North Korea. He also declined to rule out using nuclear weapons in a military conflict in Europe, saying, You dont want to, say, take everything off the table.He first broached the issue of a nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea in an interview with The New York Times last week, putting it in the context of his case that the United States should no longer bear the full burden of defending its Asian allies. He defended his comments in a town-hall-style meeting on Tuesday in Milwaukee, televised by CNN.You have so many countries already China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia you have so many countries right now that have them, he said. Now, wouldnt you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? A senior Japanese government official quickly reiterated that it was Japans policy never to possess nuclear weapons.On Friday, Mr. Obama described the alliance with Japan and South Korea as one of the cornerstones of our presence in the Asia-Pacific region one that was paid for with the sacrifices of American soldiers during World War II, one that has expanded American influence and commerce and one that has underwritten the peace and prosperity of that region.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesYou dont mess with that, Mr. Obama added.In summarizing the accomplishments of the Nuclear Security Summits this was the fourth and final one of his presidency Mr. Obama acknowledged a tension between his emphasis on nonproliferation and the American militarys relentless efforts to improve the efficiency of its existing stockpile of nuclear warheads. These American technological advances rattle Russia and China, which cite them as a pretext to develop their own new weapons. Ive tried to strike the proper balance, Mr. Obama said. He noted that he had tried to negotiate a further round of arms reductions with Russia after the New Start treaty. But the return to the presidency of Vladimir V. Putin ended those prospects. In the meantime, he said, the United States needed to make sure its stockpile was safe and reliable.Mr. Putin boycotted this meeting, which foreclosed the possibility of ambitious agreements, since Russia is one of the worlds two largest nuclear-weapons states, along with the United States.Earlier on Friday, Mr. Obama argued that his marquee accomplishment in nonproliferation the nuclear deal with Iran had achieved a substantial success. Because of restrictions that the deal imposed on Irans nuclear program, he said, it would now take the Iranians about a year to build a bomb if it breached the deal as opposed to two to three months before the diplomatic effort began in mid-2012.Asked about reports that the Treasury Department would allow Iran to conduct transactions in United States dollars, Mr. Obama did not answer directly, but suggested that Iran could get access to American banking markets indirectly through European banks. The reports have drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers, including the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, who urged the White House not to go ahead.Beyond that issue, Mr. Obama said Tehran could attract more American businesses by adhering not just to the letter of the nuclear deal but to its spirit, which meant not shipping missiles to the militant group Hezbollah, or otherwise destabilizing the region.The attacks in Brussels and Paris led the president to add a session on terrorism and nuclear security. After banishing reporters and cameras from the room, he showed the leaders a video depicting a terrorist attack in a city involving a nuclear device. Afterward, the leaders discussed how they would handle such an attack.Fortunately, no terrorist group has yet succeeded in getting their hands on a nuclear device, Mr. Obama told them beforehand. Our work here will help ensure that were doing everything possible to prevent that.The meeting generated a list of announcements, including the reduction of stockpiles of highly enriched uranium in a variety of countries, including Poland and Kazakhstan, and an agreement to remove separated plutonium from Japan. The nature of these gatherings is that each nation brings along its gifts, or proposed offerings, and American officials say that having the leaders all show up for the summit meeting creates a forcing mechanism to get that work done.But there are also moments that reveal behind-the-scenes disagreements, and one was evident Friday with Japan.The energy secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, appeared with a senior Japanese official to celebrate the removal of half a ton of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium, which was shipped to the United States. But the two men took no questions, leaving the Japanese unchallenged about the fact that they are moving ahead on a new plutonium reprocessing plant that should produce up to eight tons of plutonium each year.That raises concern that Japan will sit on a large supply of nuclear fuel, always a source of tension with its neighbors. Francie Israeli, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said that Japan had removed some of the most sensitive materials and that we understand that they intend to balance any future reprocessing activities with consumption or disposition. | World |
Dr. Moirs radical and iconoclastic theories defied conventional views of the disease. But some scientists were ultimately won over.Credit...Jon Chase/Harvard UniversityPublished Dec. 20, 2019Updated Dec. 23, 2019Robert D. Moir, a Harvard scientist whose radical theories of the brain plaques in Alzheimers defied conventional views of the disease, but whose research ultimately led to important proposals for how to treat it, died on Friday at a hospice in Milton, Mass. He was 58.His wife, Julie Alperen, said the cause was glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. Dr. Moir, who grew up on a farm in Donnybrook, a small town in Western Australia, had a track record for confounding expectations. He did not learn to read or write until he was nearly 12; Ms. Alperen said he had told her that the teacher at his one-room schoolhouse was a demented nun. Yet, she said, he also knew from age 7 that he wanted to be a scientist.Dr. Moir succeeded in becoming a researcher who was modest and careful, said his Ph.D. adviser, Dr. Colin Masters, a neuropathologist at the University of Melbourne. So Dr. Masters was surprised when Dr. Moir began publishing papers proposing an iconoclastic rethinking of the pathology of Alzheimers disease.Dr. Moirs hypothesis was and is a really novel and controversial idea that he alone developed, Dr. Masters said. I never expected this to come from this quiet achiever, he said.Dr. Moirs theory involved the protein beta amyloid, which forms plaques in the brains of Alzheimers patients.Conventional wisdom held that beta amyloid accumulation was a central part of the disease, and that clearing the brain of beta amyloid would be a good thing for patients.Dr. Moir proposed instead that beta amyloid is there for a reason: It is the way the brain defends itself against infections. Beta amyloid, he said, forms a sticky web that can trap microbes. The problem is that sometimes the brain goes overboard producing it, and when that happens the brain is damaged.The implication is that treatments designed to clear the brain of amyloid could be detrimental. The goal would be to remove some of the sticky substance, but not all of it.The idea, which Dr. Moir first proposed 12 years ago,was met with skepticism. But he kept at it, producing a string of papers with findings that supported the hypothesis. Increasingly, some of the doubters have been won over, said Rudolph Tanzi, a close friend and fellow Alzheimers researcher at Harvard.Dr. Moirs unconventional ideas made it difficult for him to get federal grants. Nearly every time he submitted a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Tanzi said in a phone interview, two out of three reviewers would be enthusiastic, while a third would simply not believe it. The proposal would not be funded.But Dr. Moir took those rejections in stride.Hed make a joke about it, Dr. Tanzi said. He never got angry. I never saw Rob angry in my life. Hed say, What do we have to do next? He was always upbeat, always optimistic.Dr. Moir was supported by the Cure Alzheimers Fund, and he eventually secured some N.I.H. grants.Dr. Moir first came to the United States in 1994, when Dr. Tanzi was looking for an Alzheimers biochemist to work in his lab. Working with the lab as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a faculty member with his own lab, Dr. Moir made a string of major discoveries about Alzheimers disease.For example, Dr. Moir and Dr. Tanzi found that people naturally make antibodies to specific forms of amyloid. These antibodies protect the brain from Alzheimers but do not wipe out amyloid completely. The more antibodies a person makes, the greater the protection against Alzheimers.That finding, Dr. Tanzi said, inspired the development of an experimental drug, which its manufacturer, Biogen, says is helping to treat some people with Alzheimers disease. Biogen plans to file for approval from the Food and Drug Administration.ImageCredit...via Massachusetts General HospitalRobert David Moir was born on April 2, 1961, in Kojonup, Australia, to Mary and Terrence Moir, who were farmers. He studied the biochemistry of Alzheimers disease at the University of Western Australia before joining Dr. Tanzis lab.Once he learned to read, Ms. Alperen said, he never stopped he read science fiction, the British magazine New Scientist and even PubMed, the federal database of scientific publications.Rob had an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world, she said.He shared that love with his family, on frequent hikes and on trips with his young children to look for rocks, insects and fossils. He also played Australian-rules football, which has elements of rugby as well as American football, and helped form the Boston Demons Australian Rules Football Team in 1997, his wife said.In addition to his wife, with whom he lived in Sharon, Mass., Dr. Moirs survivors include three children, Alexander, Maxwell and Holly Moir; a brother, Andrew; and a sister, Catherine Moir. His marriage to Elena Vaillancourt ended in divorce. | science |
TrilobitesThese Plants Act Like Bees in a HiveThe plants seem to divide labor to maximize the health of their colonies that grow up the sides of trees.Credit...Mauritius Images GmbH/AlamyJuly 2, 2021K.C. Burnss favorite research days are the ones where he puts on his backpack and walks into the wilderness with no agenda. On one hike on Australias Lord Howe Island, he came across a cluster of staghorn ferns. They are common potted plants, but in nature they grow in dense colonies that cling to treetops. In the volcanic islands stunted forest, those treetops are right at eye level.I almost looked beyond it, said Dr. Burns, a biologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Then he peered closer and realized the plants within the colony were doing different jobs to survive. Ferns growing higher up had waxy fronds that seemed to direct rainwater into the colonys center. Farther down, ferns grew spongier leaves that were damp to the touch. Some plants werent reproducing at all they seemed to have dedicated their lives to collecting water for their neighbors entangled roots.It struck Dr. Burns that the ferns were working together as a kind of superorganism, perhaps like bees in a hive.I sat down and thought, oh my God, he said. In a paper published last month in Ecology, Dr. Burns and his co-authors argued that colonies of the staghorn fern Platycerium bifurcatum show a kind of collective behavior known as eusociality. Until now, scientists had only recognized eusociality in some species of animals like bees or ants that live in colonies and divide their labor.To measure how ferns divided labor, the researchers sampled plants growing at different heights within 24 colonies. They counted two types of leaves on each plant. One type, which they called nest fronds, are rounded and mostly brown, clasping the tree like cupped hands. The other fronds, long, green and forked like antlers, can grow spores on their undersides that will become the next generation of ferns.Plants closer to the top of each colony had more spore-bearing fronds. Plants near the bottom had more of the cupped, non-reproducing nest fronds. About 40 percent of individual plants werent reproducing at all, like worker bees.Next the scientists cut out wedges from nest fronds, dried them, then soaked them in water to measure how much they sopped up. They found that nest fronds from the bottom of a colony were more absorbent.ImageCredit... Chirasak Tolertmongkol/AlamySince the colonys roots grew in a tangled network, these spongy leaves might help the whole colony stay hydrated. The scientists found that larger colonies (the biggest one they studied held 58 individual ferns) had more spore-bearing fronds per capita. Living in a big group, then, might improve the ferns fitness.For the most part, the groups are families. We quickly realized the genetics is important, Dr. Burns said, because eusocial animals live in closely related groups.When researchers analyzed DNA from 11 fern colonies, they found that most plants within a colony were as closely related as possible: They were clones. New plants arise from buds in the root systems of others, Dr. Burns said.Being clones means that the different individuals have aligned interests genetically, said Guy Cooper, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford. By helping a neighboring clone, a plant is also helping its own genes survive.Dr. Cooper said he would like to know more about the life cycle of a colony, and how much the individual ferns depended on one another.Even if staghorn ferns arent as social as bees, it was very cool to see that there might be similar sorts of complex social behaviors happening in plants, he said.He also pointed out that some plants that spread by cloning themselves were considered to be one individual, not many. For example, aspen trees sprout massive groves of clones from one root network. An aspen forest in Utah nicknamed Pando is sometimes called the worlds largest single organism, covering 106 acres.You then have to wonder about some more philosophical questions about whether they are different individuals to start with, Dr. Cooper said of the ferns. Maybe the ferns within a colony are more like limbs on a body than bees in a hive.Cloning doesnt explain the whole story of staghorn ferns, though. In some Lord Howe Island colonies, Dr. Burns and his colleagues found unrelated plants. They dont know how those ferns became part of the treetop communities.Plants are some of the most flexible living things on Earth, said Karen Kapheim, a biologist at Utah State University who studies the evolution of social behavior in bees. Maybe its not surprising that a fern could also evolve social tendencies, she said.Science is revealing more and more about how plants behave and communicate, Dr. Kapheim said. I think adding social behavior to that fits in with this new, emerging understanding of plants. | science |
Credit...Al Drago for The New York TimesJune 20, 2018President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday after a national outcry over the zero tolerance immigration policy that was forcibly separating migrant families along the border.The following is the language of that order, as released by the White House.[Read the latest coverage of the zero-tolerance immigration policy and how Washington is responding.]___________________Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family SeparationIssued on: June 20, 2018By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of this Administration to rigorously enforce our immigration laws. Under our laws, the only legal way for an alien to enter this country is at a designated port of entry at an appropriate time. When an alien enters or attempts to enter the country anywhere else, that alien has committed at least the crime of improper entry and is subject to a fine or imprisonment under section 1325(a) of title 8, United States Code. This Administration will initiate proceedings to enforce this and other criminal provisions of the INA until and unless Congress directs otherwise. It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources. It is unfortunate that Congresss failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.Sec. 2. Definitions. For purposes of this order, the following definitions apply:(a) Alien family means(i) any person not a citizen or national of the United States who has not been admitted into, or is not authorized to enter or remain in, the United States, who entered this country with an alien child or alien children at or between designated ports of entry and who was detained; and(ii) that persons alien child or alien children.(b) Alien child means any person not a citizen or national of the United States who(i) has not been admitted into, or is not authorized to enter or remain in, the United States;(ii) is under the age of 18; and(iii) has a legal parent-child relationship to an alien who entered the United States with the alien child at or between designated ports of entry and who was detained.Sec. 3. Temporary Detention Policy for Families Entering this Country Illegally. (a) The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members.(b) The Secretary shall not, however, detain an alien family together when there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the childs alien parent would pose a risk to the childs welfare.(c) The Secretary of Defense shall take all legally available measures to provide to the Secretary, upon request, any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families, and shall construct such facilities if necessary and consistent with law. The Secretary, to the extent permitted by law, shall be responsible for reimbursement for the use of these facilities.(d) Heads of executive departments and agencies shall, to the extent consistent with law, make available to the Secretary, for the housing and care of alien families pending court proceedings for improper entry, any facilities that are appropriate for such purposes. The Secretary, to the extent permitted by law, shall be responsible for reimbursement for the use of these facilities.(e) The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85-4544 (Flores settlement), in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.Sec. 4. Prioritization of Immigration Proceedings Involving Alien Families. The Attorney General shall, to the extent practicable, prioritize the adjudication of cases involving detained families.Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.(b) This order shall be implemented in a manner consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.DONALD J. TRUMPTHE WHITE HOUSE,June 20, 2018. | Politics |
Credit...Mohamed Abdiwahab/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesJune 10, 2018WASHINGTON A medical evacuation helicopter reached five United States soldiers in Somalia on Friday roughly 20 minutes after they radioed that they were being shelled by Islamist militants, according to a military spokesman, a prompt response that underlines the disparity in American military resources spread across Africa.One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Conrad, 26, of Chandler, Ariz., who was identified by the Pentagon on Saturday, died from his injuries shortly after he arrived at an American base in Kismayo, a town about 225 miles southwest of Mogadishu. The four other Americans were wounded in the attack by the militant group the Shabab.The response to the firefight stood in stark contrast to the one after a bloody ambush in October on the Niger-Mali border in West Africa, when it took more than four hours to evacuate the wounded.American troops have found themselves fighting militants affiliated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in several countries on the African continent.The roughly 500 American troops in Somalia stationed at a small constellation of bases throughout the East African nation have been training and fighting alongside local troops there for more than a decade. They are now buttressed by invigorated airstrike authorities under the Trump administration.Until recently, Special Operations troops in Somalia had been fighting a noticeably different war from their counterparts in West Africa, one constrained by a smaller geography and the longtime presence of extremist groups.For any large operation like the one in Somalia on Friday, Special Operations troops routinely pre-stage medical evacuation helicopters and have armed air support.By contrast, in the October ambush in Niger, which was led by more than 50 militants from the group known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the troops relied on contracted medical evacuation that is not as capable as the militarys. The only armed air support arrived by way of French fighter jets, more than an hour after the gun battle started.The Americans vehicles were lightly armored pickup trucks and a sport utility vehicle. Four American soldiers died in the ambush.During a seven-month investigation into the attack, led by officials from the Pentagons Africa Command, the Special Operations general in charge of American commandos in Africa issued a series of orders that roughly mirrored the actions in Somalia, putting in place stringent guidelines to ensure that those on the ground had the proper support before leaving on a mission.The lower-level commands in Somalia and Niger, however, are different. In West Africa, Special Operations forces are overseen by Army Special Forces, while the Naval Special Warfare Command, often known as the Navy SEALs, leads operations in Somalia.The attack on Friday came toward the end of a dayslong operation in which a team of Green Berets from the Thirrd Special Forces Group the same unit that fought in the ambush in Niger worked to clear several villages from Shabab control alongside 800 local troops from Somalia and Kenya. The American team, which numbered about 25, including civil affairs and intelligence personnel, had also helped with the construction of a combat outpost.According to Maj. Casey Osborne, a spokesman for the Africa Commands Special Operations branch in Germany, the enemy attack was quick, giving the armed reconnaissance aircraft overhead little time to find the militants firing at the Americans. According to one military official familiar with the attack, the Special Forces soldiers had less than a month left on their deployment.The Shabab said in a post translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremist message boards, that its fighters had attacked a joint American-Somali base near Kismayo, mounting what it called a fierce attack.Over the past year, the Pentagon has shown renewed concerns about the Shabab, which was responsible for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on African soil when it struck a popular shopping mall in 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people.American military officials worry that the group is growing once more, even after losing much of its territory in Somalia in recent years and being targeted by American drone strikes.Major Osbourne provided a timeline of how the firefight played out.At 2:42 p.m., the Green Berets reported that they were under attack, and five minutes later an American HH-60G Black Hawk helicopter left Kismayo to evacuate the wounded.The aircraft picked up three wounded American team members and one wounded African soldier, leaving the landing zone near the attack at 3:05 p.m. The helicopter returned at 3:18 p.m. to Kismayo, where the wounded were treated. Sergeant Conrad died soon after.The Black Hawk flew back to the battlefield at 4:52 p.m., retrieving another wounded American one who was most likely in a more stable condition than his previously evacuated teammates and arrived back at Kismayo at 5:21 p.m. At 7:22 p.m., an American C-130 transport plane left Kismayo with three wounded soldiers and the remains of Sergeant Conrad. It landed in Nairobi at 9:45 p.m., and the wounded were treated at a civilian hospital.Our strategy in East Africa is to build partner capacity to ensure that violent extremist organizations, who wish harm in the region, wish harm on the European continent, and ultimately wish to harm the United States, are contained, Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the head of the Africa Command, said in a statement on Saturday.Sergeant Conrad deployed twice to Afghanistan, in 2012-13 and again in 2014, before completing French language training and being assigned to the Third Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., as a human intelligence officer, someone who is trained to interact closely with local populations to learn information about militant groups. Much of the Third Groups work is in French-speaking West Africa.His death was the second American combat loss in Somalia in the past 13 months. Last May, a member of the Navy SEALs, Senior Chief Petty Officer Kyle Milliken, was killed and two other American troops were wounded in a raid. | Politics |
Its the first study of individualized brain stimulation to treat severe depression. Sarahs case raises the possibility the method may help people who dont respond to other therapies.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesPublished Oct. 4, 2021Updated Oct. 5, 2021Listen to This ArticleDriving home from work in Northern California five years ago, a young woman was so overwhelmed with depression that all she could think about was ending her life.I couldnt stop crying, recalled Sarah, now 38. The thought that consumed me the entire way on that road was just driving my car into the marshland so I can drown.She made it home, but soon after, moved in with her parents because doctors considered it unsafe for her to live alone. No longer able to function at work, she quit her health technology job.She tried nearly every treatment: roughly 20 different medications, months in a hospital day program, electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation. But as with nearly a third of the more than 250 million people with depression worldwide, her symptoms persisted. Then Sarah became the first participant in an unusual study of an experimental therapy. Now, her depression is so manageable that shes taking data analysis classes, has moved to her own place and helps care for her mother, who suffered a fall.Within a few weeks, the suicidal thoughts just disappeared, said Sarah, who asked to be identified by only her first name to protect her privacy. Then it was just a gradual process where it was like my lens on the world changed.Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco surgically implanted a battery-operated, matchbook-sized device in Sarahs brain a pacemaker for the brain some call it calibrated to detect the neural activity pattern that occurs when she is becoming depressed. It then delivers pulses of electrical stimulation to stave off depression.Twelve days after Sarahs device was fully operational in August 2020, her score on a standard depression scale dropped to 14 from 33, and several months later, it fell below 10, essentially signaling remission, the researchers reported.The device has kept my depression at bay, allowing me to return to my best self and rebuild a life worth living, Sarah said.Sarahs is the first documented case of personalizing a technique called deep brain stimulation to successfully treat depression. Much more research is needed before its clear how effective the approach could be and for how many patients. But several teams of scientists are now working on ways to essentially match the electrical stimulation to what happens in an individual patients brain.Deep brain stimulation is used to treat Parkinsons disease and several other disorders, but isnt approved by federal regulators for depression because results have been inconsistent. While some previous studies suggested benefits, two trials sponsored by U.S. device companies were stopped in the last decade because stimulation seemed no better than the placebo effect of a sham implant that provided no stimulation.But those studies didnt target individualized locations or patterns of electrical activity in peoples brains. It was one size fits all, said Dr. Darin Dougherty, director of neurotherapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital, who worked on one of the halted trials. He called the personalized approach with Sarah, which he wasnt involved in, very exciting.One persons depression might look very different from another persons depression, said Dr. Katherine Scangos, an assistant professor of psychiatry at U.C.S.F. and an author of a report about Sarahs case, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. The senior authors were Dr. Andrew Krystal, an expert in neuro-modulation and mood disorders, and Dr. Edward Chang, whose work includes brain implants for paralyzed patients who cannot speak.To identify the specific brain activity pattern linked to Sarahs depression, researchers conducted an intensive 10-day exploration of Sarahs brain, placing multiple electrodes in it and asking about her feelings when they applied stimulation to different locations in varying doses.ImageCredit...Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesSarah remembers an aha moment when she felt like the Pillsbury Doughboy, emitting a giant belly laugh, which she said was the first time I spontaneously laughed and smiled in five years. Another feeling resembled being in front of a warm fire and reading a comforting book, while a negative sensation felt like nails on a chalkboard.Eventually, the team identified a specific pattern of electrical activity that coincided with Sarah becoming depressed.The exploratory phase guided the researchers to place the stimulation device in Sarahs right brain hemisphere linked to electrodes in two regions. One was the ventral striatum, involved in emotion, motivation and reward, where stimulation consistently eliminated her feelings of depression, and the other the amygdala, where changes could predict when her symptoms were most severe, Dr. Scangos said.While deep brain stimulation is typically delivered continuously, Sarahs device is set to supply only a six-second burst when it recognizes her depression-linked brain activity pattern. The goal, said Dr. Dougherty, is that stimulation will disrupt or shift the neural activity to produce a healthier pattern that will ease depressive symptoms.Sarah has continued taking psychiatric medications, and the stimulation hasnt eliminated depression-causing activity in her brain. But she can manage her illness much better, she said, instead of being unable to make even the smallest decisions, like what to eat.Now, youre experiencing that whole negative, depressive, whatever the triggering thing is, and then its like suddenly the ultra-rational side of you comes on and those emotions can be separated, she said in an interview, wearing a T-shirt that said Take it easy lemon squeezy.That separation helps her productively use tools from talk therapy, like staying calm and maintaining perspective.About 30 percent of people with depression dont respond to standard treatments or find the side effects intolerable. Deep brain stimulation wouldnt be appropriate for all because it costs tens of thousands of dollars and brain surgery to implant the device carries risks like infection. But if the new attempts work, it might help a significant number, experts said. Dr. Chang said the research may also lead to noninvasive approaches that would help more people.Our job now is really to figure out what is it that identifies who needs this kind of intervention, said Dr. Helen Mayberg, director of the Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, who pioneered the concept of deep brain stimulation for depression nearly 20 years ago.Dr. Mayberg uses a different method of individualization. With imaging, she finds the location in each persons brain where four white matter bundles intersect near a key depression-related region. After implanting electrodes and a stimulation device, we pretty much set it and forget it, delivering stimulation continuously, while also helping patients with conventional therapy.ImageCredit...Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesNeural activity is monitored to learn the brain signature that heralds an impending depressive relapse or need for a dose adjustment or just indicates that the person is just having a bad week, Dr. Mayberg said. She led one of the halted trials, but her work has also allowed patients to experience improvements that continue for years if stimulation is sustained.In another approach, Dr. Sameer Sheth, an associate professor of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine, and colleagues study a patients specific brain activity pattern to identify which of billions of combinations of stimulation characteristics, like frequency and amplitude, improve that patients depression.He then tunes electrodes in two regions and applies that specific combination as continuous stimulation.Dr. Sheth said the first patient, given the device in March 2020, is remarkably well now, maintaining a relationship and becoming a father. To test for a placebo effect, researchers gradually stopped stimulation to one brain region without the patient knowing when. His depression got worse and worse said Dr. Sheth, until he needed rescue. After stimulation restarted, he improved, suggesting the effect is definitely stimulation-related.Several months ago, Sarah needed a rescue too. Shortly after she entered a study phase where the device is either turned off or left on for six weeks without the participant knowing which, the suicidal thoughts were back, Sarah said. Her family tried to get her hospitalized, but the hospitals were full. Things were really bad, Sarah said.She did have a very severe worsening of her depression, said Dr. Scangos. She said she couldnt disclose whether stimulation had been off or on, but said a device company technician was sent to Sarahs home to make a rescue change.Afterward, Sarah said, she improved again.Over the year, the number of times a day that Sarahs device has detected depression-linked brain activity and delivered stimulation has decreased somewhat, but is still substantial, Dr. Scangos said. Still, some days Sarah doesnt need the maximum amount the device is set to provide: 300 times or 30 total minutes daily. (It automatically stops around 6 p.m. because evening stimulation made her too alert to sleep.)Longer-term and more detailed data on Sarah will be published later, said the researchers, who have two other participants so far. The device is intentionally tuned so Sarah cannot feel the stimulation, but she believes she knows that its occurred because she subsequently develops a sense of emotional distance that keeps negative feelings compartmentalized, she said.Also, I feel alert, she said. I feel present. Thats a really good sign, said Dr. Dougherty, who is considering using a similar approach for depression and possibly addiction. The emotions are still there, but instead of sticking like mud, its running off like water.To help researchers correlate brain activity with emotional states, two or three times a day, Sarah holds a doughnut-shaped magnet to her head, triggering the device to save the next 90 seconds of neural activity, and she completes a mental health survey. Shes been encouraged to pick moments when shes in a very good mood or a bad mood, Dr. Scangos said. Also, twice daily, 12 minutes of neural data are automatically relayed to the device company and researchers.One question, experts said, is whether Sarahs results support the theory that stimulating briefly whenever depression begins works because it keeps the brain from becoming accustomed to the treatment. Or, Dr. Sheth asked, does Sarahs need for many daily doses after a year suggest continuous stimulation would be as or more effective?Another question is whether the therapy can prompt lasting brain changes to eventually avert depression with little or no continuing stimulation.ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesResearchers, several of whom consult for device companies or have patents related to deep brain stimulation, expect it will take years to learn if individualized approaches are effective enough to be approved. Different methods might work for different peoples depression, and individualized stimulation might eventually help other psychiatric disorders, researcher say. The most elemental things have improved for Sarah, who said shes started to relearn my life and that hobbies I used to distract myself from suicidal thoughts suddenly became pleasurable again. When depressed, Sarah, a passionate cook and foodie, had such slow reflexes and trouble functioning that shed cut or burn herself in the kitchen and doctors told her it wasnt safe to cook anymore. Foods had little flavor. But after receiving the device, she ate Vietnamese pho in the hospital cafeteria and was thrilled she could taste the brightness and the herbs, she said. While being driven home from the hospital, she saw the marshes and exclaimed: God, the color differentiation is gorgeous. Now, she said, shes seeing things that are beautiful in the world, and when I was in the depths of depression, all I saw was what was ugly.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. | Health |
TrilobitesCredit...Kiichiro Sato/Associated PressNov. 22, 2016Your phone is pretty much a high-tech bucket of germs. Thousands of microscopic bugs crawl around on its surface. Remnants of dirty, old skin cells smudge its cover. Tiny hairs stick inside its buttons. And your hands have smeared hundreds of chemicals across its surface. The foundation on your face, the antidepressants you take, the shampoo in your shower and even the hard-core mosquito repellent you applied down in Panama four months ago: All of these things leave traces on your hands and phone. Thats why scientists say they can use your phone to learn a lot about your lifestyle.In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, Pieter Dorrestein, a biochemist at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues asked: Can scientists or maybe one day police investigators profile a person chemically, based on the objects he or she possesses? They started with your phone, which you touch on average, about 2,617 times a day.In the study, they swabbed the hands of 39 people, along with their phones, producing hundreds of chemical samples. Then they used techniques from biochemistry to break down, analyze and identify some of the chemicals, matching them with entries in a database of crowdsourced chemical structures. Based on the compounds common to both hands and phones, they made inferences about each persons lifestyle, like whether they drank tea or coffee, liked citrus fruits or spent time in the sun.Not every molecule is a clue, said Dr. Dorrestein, but those that are enable you to build a lifestyle sketch of the particular owner or user of that object.The study, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency of the United States Department of Justice, calls these high-tech deductions molecular lifestyle signatures, which could be used in criminal investigations to narrow down a subject pool when DNA or fingerprint evidence doesnt yield a match. Some legal experts said the technique could improve upon the subjective impressions of investigators.This is not different in kind from what happens all the time in criminal investigation, except that it purports to do it more systematically, more scientifically, and potentially more reliably, Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia who has written about profiling and stereotyping and was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.The suggestion is worrisome to some forensic scientists. Its easy to imagine the scenario playing out in a courtroom drama: no match from the DNA in the phone? Pull out the test tubes. Turn on the mass spectrometer. Cue the montage music.If you watch a lot of TV and films, you can think this is whats coming next, said Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and criminal profiler.But Dr. Turvey says that exaggerating the techniques potential could take the actual science too far too soon, as it has with gunshot residue analysis. As gunshot residue became a greater part of investigations, forensic scientists determined that it can turn up in places other than the hands of a person who fired a gun, potentially creating false positives.While chemical profiling could one day find its way to a crime lab for use in limited circumstances, Dr. Schauer said there was a fat chance it would ever make it into the courtroom. Expert evidence has to reach an extremely high standard for admission at trials, which the technique may not be able to meet.Jonathan Koehler, a behavioral scientist at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, worries that if this technique were to take off, investigators might ignore or undervalue other leads and push courts to prematurely admit evidence based on potentially inaccurate inferences.I dont smoke and am rarely around cigarette smoke, but I just happened to be around someone yesterday who was smoking up a storm, he said. So what would detection of nicotine on my iPhone really say about my lifestyle, other than something really misleading?Dr. Dorrestein, the studys lead author, acknowledged that even if a chemical profile could narrow down a pool of suspects, later proving someones identity, and perhaps their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, ultimately comes down to a full investigation.That means your filthy phone is more likely to reveal that you remembered your meds or sunscreen than it is to nail you in court. | science |
Credit...Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesJune 13, 2018WASHINGTON In the office of Attorney General Jeff Sessions hangs a portrait of his predecessor Edwin Meese III, the Reagan-era conservative. Near the desk of the deputy attorney general is a painting of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who pressed to expand the Justice Departments powers after Sept. 11.The departments inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, chose for his office a portrait of the disgraced Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, who was nearly impeached, forced to resign in 1924 and later tried twice on charges of defrauding the government.Mr. Daughertys visage serves as a reminder for Mr. Horowitz: Malfeasance is never far away.Equal parts auditor, investigator and cop, Mr. Horowitz has navigated his role as one of the most powerful arbiters of conflict in Washington the investigators investigator with a diplomats instinct for recognizing fault lines, a prosecutors focus on justice and a Washington insiders knack for amassing allies on Capitol Hill.Now, he has been thrust into the clash of law enforcement and politics that has consumed much of the capital for the past two years. On Thursday, he will issue the highly anticipated findings of his examination of the F.B.I.s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. He is expected to castigate the decision making by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey; his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe; and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Another high-profile test looms beyond that. Mr. Horowitz, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has begun a review of aspects of the Russia investigation. His findings could land in 2020 amid the presidential race.In interviews with nearly two dozen friends, former colleagues and political leaders, a portrait emerged of Mr. Horowitz as a principled, savvy investigator. Mr. Horowitz is good-humored and even-tempered, said past co-workers, who ribbed him for his cameos as a prosecutor on K Street, HBOs short-lived 2003 show about lobbyists. He delivered lines like, You need to have at least a general understanding of the financial flow of funds, with the lan of a career civil servant.He has faced criticism over his most highly charged reports, including on the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal. In it, he offered harsh assessments about one official, but critics expressed concern that the report inflated the officials role in the episode.His allies said that attacks were inevitable. In the Fast and Furious report, I disagreed with some of Michaels conclusions, but not his motives, said John Roth, a former federal prosecutor and former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. You dont take this job to make a lot of friends.ImageCredit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressMr. Horowitz, 55, grew up in Suffern, N.Y., his mother a purveyor of antiques and his father the owner of the womens clothing maker Paul Allen. He attended Brandeis University and Harvard Law School and later married Alexandra Kauffman, then a field producer at CNN.In 1991, Mr. Horowitz joined the federal prosecutors office in Manhattan, where he briefly overlapped with Mr. Comey. He led a huge investigation that implicated almost an entire police precinct in Harlem in a scandal involving drug dealing, robbery and bribery.It took an extraordinary amount of independence, said Mary Jo White, the former United States attorney in Manhattan. Prosecutors work with police on their cases, so he was investigating and prosecuting, in effect, his partners in law enforcement. He won an award from the attorney general, and Ms. White named him head of her offices public corruption section.In 1999, Mr. Horowitz moved to Washington to join the Justice Departments criminal division and became chief of staff to its leader, James K. Robinson, where his judgment was lauded. He had to know what to ask the prosecutors, without having intimate knowledge of a case, judge the quality of the incoming information and send it to the boss, said Shan Wu, who was counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno, noting that Mr. Horowitz took notes on a single notecard and simply remembered the rest of the information.Mr. Horowitz left the Justice Department in 2002 to join Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as a defense lawyer and was later nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Sentencing Commission. In 2012, President Barack Obama tapped him to be the Justice Departments inspector general.By the time Mr. Horowitz started his job, his office was well into its investigation of the Fast and Furious scandal, a botched operation in which officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives let guns enter Mexico in the hopes of tracing them back to criminals.Mr. Horowitz handled the politically fraught situation by reaching out to Democrats and Republicans on the congressional oversight committees. In a meeting with former Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, and Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, Mr. Horowitz told them about his own conflicts of interest and said he had assigned others in his office to handle those parts of the investigation.It went a long way to help bolster our confidence that hed call balls and strikes fairly, Mr. Chaffetz said, adding that no inspector general had taken that step before with him.Mr. Horowitzs eventual report faulted law enforcement officials for poor communication and a failure to see red flags. He assigned significant blame to Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division. Mr. Horowitz was critiqued for focusing too much on a career prosecutor in Washington, rather than the A.T.F. leaders in Arizona, the center of the operation, or the departments top political appointees.Mr. Weinstein accused Mr. Horowitz of using him as a scapegoat.I have been singled out because of the desire to blame someone of rank within Main Justice, even though my only knowledge about Fast and Furious consisted of repeated false assurances from those who supervised the investigation, Mr. Weinstein said in a statement at the time.Others defended Mr. Horowitzs report. It was highly critical of the department and was accepted by both sides of the aisle, said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the oversight committee.Mr. Horowitz also leveraged his tactical know-how amid an internecine battle with the F.B.I. over documents and other information that his office viewed as essential to perform oversight. The bureau had refused requests to turn over the material.He became a key behind-the-scenes player in the 2016 passage of a law intended to reinforce the power of inspectors general, working with colleagues to lobby all 72 government watchdogs at the time to sign a letter to lawmakers outlining their challenges. Two years earlier, only 47 had signed a similar letter.An access issue for one I.G. is an access issue for all of us, said Allison C. Lerner, the inspector general at the National Science Foundation. Michael thought that we had to speak out as a community on that fundamental issue, and many of us agreed.Mr. Horowitz ensured the backing of his fellow inspectors general again after the 2016 election by helping protect them from political interference, in large part through his relationships with lawmakers.At the time, Trump transition officials had told some inspectors general they would be replaced. But under longstanding norms, they are treated more like judges, who decide when to leave. Mr. Horowitz immediately reached out to allies on Capitol Hill; no one was let go.ImageCredit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressCongress understands that I.G.s are often their main source of desperately needed information on routine and significant threats to the agencies, said Paul C. Light, a New York University professor who studies the offices.Now, Mr. Trump poses a unique threat to Mr. Horowitz and his credibility as a neutral judge.Responding to Justice Department officials and Congress, Mr. Horowitz initiated in March a review of the F.B.I.s surveillance of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign official. But Mr. Trumps proclamations that the bureau had abused its power contributed to a perception that the Justice Department was conceding to his wishes, rather than acting independently.Still, law enforcement officials may have put some distance from the presidents order by referring it to Mr. Horowitz.No one orders inspectors general to do things, Mr. Light said. They determine the agenda. They take input and decide whether to accept the request.Mr. Horowitz has already issued a short but scathing report that found Mr. McCabe had lacked candor about his dealings with a journalist. Mr. Trump crowed about the findings as he had when Mr. McCabe was fired hours before he was eligible for retirement. He LIED! LIED! LIED!, Mr. Trump said on Twitter, adding, McCabe is Comey!!"No one, not even an independent inspector general, is fully immune from the type of political pressure that has been applied in Mr. McCabes case, Michael R. Bromwich, a former inspector general who represents both Mr. McCabe and Mr. Weinstein, wrote in a statement.Mr. Trump is already laying the groundwork to attack Mr. Horowitzs coming report. What is taking so long with the Inspector Generals Report on Crooked Hillary and Slippery James Comey, he wrote on Twitter this month. Hope Report is not being changed and made weaker!But Mr. Horowitzs alliances, cultivated over years in Washington, may serve to pad him from the presidents criticism. Mr. Gowdy, who as the chairman of the House oversight committee has been one of the Justice Departments sharpest critics, called him professional, fair, fact-centric and evenhanded.Added Mr. Chaffetz: Republicans and Democrats alike really need to take to heart whatever it is he finds, even if it doesnt fit our political agendas. People will spin and throw political barbs, but if you read the actual text, my gut is thats the truth. | Politics |
Science|A Memory From Out of the Blue https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/science/memory-mind-pop.htmlQ&APeople sometimes experience random recollections during routine tasks such as housekeeping. Scientists call them mind-pops. Nov. 24, 2018ImageCredit...Victoria RobertsQ. Why does a memory come seemingly out of nowhere?A. This kind of involuntary recall usually involves words, phrases or names, rather than events. Generally, there does not seem to be any immediate trigger or reminder.The phenomenon was given a name, mind-popping, by one of the few researchers to study it, George Mandler, a pioneer in memory research who died in 2016.He and his colleagues found that such a memory usually occurred during a task that was relatively automatic, such as routine grooming or housekeeping, which left the mind free to wander. They speculated that the recall might involve what is called long-term priming, information related to the memory that was acquired days or even weeks earlier than the actual recollection. | science |
Credit...Ilvy Njiokiktjien voor The New York TimesMarch 13, 2017Deze week trekken Nederlandse kiezers naar de stembus na een luide en verdelende campagne die focuste op immigratie, de eerste in een reeks Europese verkiezingen dit jaar, die een populist aan de macht zouden kunnen brengen. Geert Wilders, de verwoede anti-immigratie leider van de Nederlandse Partij Voor de Vrijheid, of PVV, heeft een voortrekkersrol gespeeld in het immigratiedebat, en zo de centrumrechtse partijen meegesleept.In de aanloop naar de verkiezingen, vroegen we aan Nederlandse lezers om ons te vertellen hoe immigratie hun leven heeft benvloed en hun politieke ideen heeft gevormd. Meer dan 2,300 mensen van over heel Nederland antwoordden en gaven ons een beeld van de verschillende achtergronden en politieke ideen. Er waren kleurrijke voorbeelden van een verwelkomende samenleving, uitingen van frustratie en angst, en passionele pleidooien voor en tegen migratie. Vele anderen zeiden dat ze vermoeid en ontgoocheld waren door het politieke debat.Een bredere kijk op de WereldKhalid Nabil, 28, is een vertaler die woont in de Noordelijke stad Heerhugowaard. Hij is een derde-generatie afstammeling van immigranten in de jaren 60. Mijn hoop is dat op een dag immigranten weer zo welkom zullen zijn als ze dat waren in de jaren 60 en 70 toen we ze nodig hadden. En dat de problemen, die ik niet ontken, niet worden bekeken vanuit een perspectief van angst en segregatie, maar met een oprechte interesse in de oorzaak van de problemen. Mijn zorg is dat het eens-zo-tolerante Nederland zal veranderen in een angstig rechts land dat niet meer herkenbaar is._____Goda Choi, 37, is een internist en hematoloog in Haarlem, origineel van Seoul, Zuid-Korea.Als Koreaanse immigrant, groeide ik op in Nederland in de jaren 80. Ik ging naar een multi-ethnische school met kinderen van allerlei achtergronden, waaronder Suriname, de Antillen, Turkije en Marokko. We spraken allemaal Nederlands, juichten voor het nationale voetbalteam wanneer het de Europese kampioenschap won in 1988, en op school mochten we alles delen wat onze cultuur bijzonder maakte. We vierden Pasen en Kerstmis, maar altijd met heerlijke lekkernijen van over de hele wereld. En bedreiging maakte me angstig als kind: Ik had een beetje angst dat alle immigranten zouden worden gedeporteerd als de extreem-rechtse politieke partij Centrum Democraten aan de macht zou komen._____Wietske de Jong, 35, is een professor in theologie die in Rijswijk leeft. Zij zei dat ze online vijandigheid had ondervonden als ze zich positief uitsprak over het opvangen van vluchtelingen en het verwelkomen van immigranten.Ik ben een blanke Nederlandse vrouw en ik trouwde met een Nederlandse man van Turkse afkomst. Wanneer ik mensen over hem vertel, zijn ze vaak verbaasd en vragen ze mij hoe zijn familie reageerde. De veronderstelling is dat Nederlandse mensen tolerant zijn, maar dat Turkse mensen of moslims dat niet zijn. Ik heb nooit achterdocht van mijn schoonfamilie ondervonden. Ironisch genoeg, de achterdocht en de vooroordelen die ik tegenkomen zijn afkomstig van blanke Nederlanders._____Inge van Leipsig, 41, is een sociale werkster in Rotterdam. Ze zei dat immigratie haar een bredere kijk op de wereld had gegeven.Ik kan me mijn leven niet voorstellen zonder de Libanese keuken, ras-el-hanout, tzatziki, pho of banh mi. Het is geweldig om de deur uit te kunnen wandelen en om de hoek Turkse, Marokkaanse en Indische winkels te vinden. Immigratie heeft me de mogelijkheid gegeven om meer te leren over andere culturen en religies, en ik heb er erg van genoten.Deugdelijkheid Zien in RechtsStefan Schenk, 25, is een student die in Andijk woont. Het is geen immigratie, het is een invasie. Als het niet wordt gestopt, dan zal geweld het overnemen van vredevolle democratische oplossingen. Ik slingerde van links naar rechts. Geert Wilders is de enige leefbare kandidaat._____Henk Biesheuvel, 47, uit Vierpolders, werkt in de maritieme scheepvaart. Hij zei dat hij vreesde dat een Islamitische golf het land zou overnemen.We hebben immigranten verwelkomd sinds de jaren 1950 of zo. Zij deden het werk dat wij weigerden te doen. Dat was de eerste generatie, en ik denk dat we nu aan de vierde generatie zijn. Zij hebben nooit echt problemen gemaakt. Wat wel een probleem is is de geforceerde immigratie, ons opgelegd door de E.U., van vluchtelingen. Het zorgt voor beroering en onzekerheid, en we blijken maar niet in staat te zijn om een 100-percent-zekere methode te vinden om de kwade jongens eruit the filteren en te verzekeren dat alleen de ergste gevallen (die onze hulp het meeste nodig hebben) worden toegelaten om te blijven._____Aldo de Beunje, 45, werkt in de informatietechnologie in Tilburg. Hij wil vluchtelingen verwelkomen maar gelooft dat sommige groepen meer crimineel zijn dan andere, en dat zij die het systeem misbruiken moeten worden teruggestuurd. Sommige moslims hebben geen respect voor onze waarden (ten opzichte van vrouwen, homos, abortus, enz.). Dit is iets waarvoor wij gevochten hebben door de jaren heen. Als je naar Nederland komt, dan aanvaard je dit. Of je vertrekt. Wij willen vasthouden aan onze waarden. Verder moet criminaliteit worden aangepakt. Ik had nooit gedacht dat ik serieus zou overwegen om op Wilders te stemmen, maar dat doe ik.Thijs de Boer, 22, is een student in Den Haag. Hij zei dat leven in een wijk met een meerderheid aan immigranten hem toleranter had gemaakt ten opzichte van immigratie.Ik moet beschaamd toegeven dat toen ik in een dorp woonde ik de ideen en idealen van de PVV gezind was, ook al was ik nooit in contact gekomen met immigranten. Sommige van mijn vrienden daar zijn de PVV gunstig, en ik heb moeite om me daarmee te vereenzelvigen. Alles wat ik kan zeggen is praat met mensen voordat je een negatieve opinie over ze vormt. Het heeft mij veel geholpen!We Kunnen Dit Allemaal AanLian Priemus, 51, is een tv-regisseur uit Amsterdam. Vorig jaar heeft ze voornamelijk een klein opvangcentrum voor vluchtelingen open gehouden. Sommige vluchtelingen, zei ze, zijn echte vrienden geworden. Maar ze bleef bezorgd over hun integratie.Naar mijn mening, kunnen wij als een vrije, democratische samenleving dit allemaal aan, maar het vergt veel meer tijd en moeite dan wij en onze overheid beseffen. En misschien meer dan sommige van ons willen toegeven. Maar ik geloof dat de problemen en zorgen ontkennen de foute oplossing is. Als we dat doen, dan duwen we de mensen met problemen weg van ons en duwen we hen in de richting van extreem-rechts._____Rene Blanken-Verstraten, 66, is een gepensioneerde bankbediende uit Rotterdam.Mijn zorg is dat terroristen meekomen met mensen die oorlogsslachtoffers zijn. Die slachtoffers zijn natuurlijk uiterst welkom hier. Als de immigranten bereid zijn om zich aan te passen, dan zou onze samenleving interessanter kunnen worden. Men kan altijd leren van de gebruiken, cultuur, keuken en religie van andere mensen.Ik Herken Me Niet MeerKoen Verschoor, 33, is een marktonderzoeker die in Amsterdam woont. Hij zei dat de toon van het debat over immigratie de meeste invloed had op zijn gemeenschap, niet de immigratie zelf.Ik herken me niet meer in het politieke systeem dat veranderd is in een populariteitswedstrijdals het gaat over gevoelige en zeer complexe onderwerpen zoals immigratie. Immigratie op zich heeft mijn Nederlandse identiteitsgevoel niet veranderd, maar het publieke debat en de richting die we uitgaan heeft er zeker voor gezorgd dat ik minder trots ben geworden op mijn land.De Nieuwe Zondebok van de PolitiekJasper Stel, 29, woont in Groningen en werkt als financieel adviseur. Hij zei dat onderwerpen rond economie en klimaat een grotere rol speelden in zijn politieke keuzes dan immigratie. Alles wat niet goed gaat in onze (zeer welvarende) samenleving wordt afgeschoven op immigratie en indirect ook op de E.U. Als ik om me heen kijk zie ik geen verandering met een aantal jaren geleden. En dat terwijl de immigratie is gegroeid en de emigratie is gedaald afgelopen jaar ten opzichte van het jaar daarvoor. Dit is misschien niet de sensatie die jullie willen horen. Maar geloof me dat het merendeel van Nederland geen last heeft van immigranten._____Eva Bezem, 30, bracht haar jeugd door in Vlaanderen, dat zij beschrijft als rechts en conservatief. Vandaag is ze immigratie-advocaat in Amsterdam. Ik help vrouwen die het slachtoffer zijn van huiselijk geweld, vaak van Marokkaanse nationaliteit, en die afhankelijk zijn van hun echtgenoot voor hun Nederlandse verblijfsvergunning. Ze zijn jarenlang binnenshuis gehouden zonder ook maar iets van de cultuur of taal te leren. Veel van hen hebben mijn leeftijd, en ze verlangen om Nederlands te gaan leren, en hun leven zelf te gaan leiden. Zij zullen succesvol integreren wanneer ze beslissen om op zichzelf te starten.Als ik weer terugkeer naar het Zuiden van Nederland of naar Vlaanderen, dan heb ik niet de indruk dat mensen vinden dat mijn werk een positieve invloed heeft op de samenleving ze zullen eerder de hele discussie terugbrengen op angst voor terroristen en/of criminelen. Maar, wanneer ik een individueel voorbeeld van een immigrantenfamilie geef en wat zij hebben doorstaan, dan begrijpen mensen het en sympathiseren ze. Het lijkt eerder vrees voor het onbekende te zijn. | World |
On Pro BasketballCredit...Brendan Maloney/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFeb. 5, 2014We know what N.B.A. All-Star voting has typically been: a chance for fans to participate in the selection process for a showcase. No registration is required to prove that one knows Kobe Bryant from Krusty the Clown. Its a popularity contest that cannot be taken seriously.But thats only for the starters. It is the coaches who choose the reserves. It is the coaches who talk about respecting the game, playing it right and recognizing substance over style. They understand, or should understand, the immeasurable contributions that win the games that count the most.In the case of the Western Conference, what is the coaches excuse for discounting Tim Duncan?Something is wrong when Duncan a 14-time All-Star and 4-time champion, who missed a fifth ring by the thinnest of margins last spring is not shown the same respect as other N.B.A. greats. When Duncan at 37, still playing at a remarkably high level for a San Antonio team that remains stubbornly among the elite is not rewarded for all that he has been and still is.Many who know Duncan will shrug and cite his career-long reticence when it comes to promotional forums and platforms.Im sure Tim will be happy to have the time off to be with his kids, said R. C. Buford, the Spurs general manager, referring to All-Star weekend, Feb. 14-16, in New Orleans.After a pause, he added: Im also sure his feelings are hurt a bit. Hes just never been one to show them.On the subject of Duncans unexpressed feelings, last season ended with a most public display of suffering over a Game 7 loss in the league finals in Miami, to the point where it was painful to watch. We saw him slap the floor with both hands after missing a late-game jump hook and a tap-in, and sink to his knees in apparent surrender after LeBron Jamess title-clinching jumper.We saw him on the bench, close to tears, unable to manufacture his familiar mask of indifference.Doesnt caring so deeply also count as helping to sell the game? Doesnt playing and behaving selflessly and professionally for 17 years promote the league in a way that cannot be quantified in numbers like jersey sales?Doesnt seamlessly executing scores of high screen-and-rolls and setting the example in making the Spurs a basketball purists dream team speak to those who might otherwise be inclined to dismiss the N.B.A. as a rapacious dunk-and-pony show?In a telephone interview, Buford agreed that the Duncan snub reflected a general attitude about the Spurs organization, which has long recognized the league and shoe company agenda for selling Allen Iverson and hip-hop.He added: For years people have told us, You need to market yourselves more, open up your practices. But we always felt that if you handle yourself in a way thats professional, do the things that are important, have good people, why do you have to be something youre not?Buford offered the educated guess that Duncan, who received 492,657 fan votes, sixth among Western Conference frontcourt players, was more insulted by the coaches exclusion. He also acknowledged that the selection process was complicated in the talent-laden West, where Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin and Kevin Love were chosen by the fans as starters, and Dwight Howard, Dirk Nowitzki and LaMarcus Aldridge were added by the coaches.In his first season with the rising Houston Rockets, Howard is averaging more points (18.3) and rebounds (12.3) than Duncan (15.1 points, 10 rebounds) but in five more minutes per game. Duncan averages more assists (2.9) and blocked shots (2.1) than Howard (1.7 assists, 1.8 blocks).But beyond the numbers, a strong case can be made that Howard does not come close to Duncan as a proponent of what matters most winning with team-first values.What nobody knows and nobody sees is the time he puts in, how he has always been the basis of what our program has become, Buford said. No matter how difficult it is for him to verbalize, we all see it, the angst of him missing the shot, how he beats himself up more than any great player Ive ever seen.Even now, months later, the subject of not winning Game 6 in Miami after it seemed to be in hand casts an instantaneous pall over a conversation with a member of the Spurs. Buford did not deny the toll it took on Duncan. Just the same, he said, softy, Tim was the first guy back in the gym, within days.In recent N.B.A. telecasts, Jeff Van Gundy has had fun contending that no player from a losing team should be an All-Star. That is extreme, and the fans, as long as they are voting, wouldnt have it.That said, the Spurs will step onto the Barclays Center floor in Brooklyn on Thursday night to play the Nets with roughly the same record as Miami, which landed three players on the albeit less-formidable Eastern Conference team.But by choosing only Tony Parker from the Spurs, havent the coaches mimicked the marketers and shortchanged a team that for a generation has raised the maturity bar and brought adult appeal to a sport overrun with branding hype targeted to youth?The coaches should have known better, but theres a chance for Duncan to be added to the All-Star team by Commissioner Adam Silver as an injury replacement for Bryant or possibly Chris Paul.Buford sighed at the mention of that.Thatll really tick him off, he said. | Sports |
Health|Senate Confirms Stephen Hahn to Head F.D.A.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/health/fda-stephen-hahn.htmlThe Food and Drug Administration has been without a permanent commissioner since April, when Dr. Scott Gottlieb resigned.Credit...Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, via Getty ImageDec. 12, 2019The Senate voted 72 to 18 to confirm Dr. Stephen Hahn as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, as the agency faces pressure to reduce teenage vaping and weighs competing interests on a long-delayed proposal to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Dr. Hahn, chief medical executive at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was nominated by President Trump to replace Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who left the post in the spring. Since then, the F.D.A. has been run by two acting commissioners. In two recent appearances before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Dr. Hahn, 59, sidestepped questions on whether he supports the F.D.A.s proposal to ban most flavored e-cigarettes. Although President Trump promised to do so in September, he has since backed away from that plan, flummoxing public health lobbyists and industry executives alike. Under tough questioning by Democrats, Dr. Hahn said repeatedly that he would use the best science to make regulatory decisions. But he stopped short of saying whether he supported the agencys original proposal. This week, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and a longtime critic of the tobacco and vaping industries, said he would support Dr. Hahn, saying he hoped the new commissioner would use the force of the office to seek a ban on all non-tobacco e-cigarette flavors. Dr. Hahn may find himself in a compromised position soon, and I told him as much, Mr. Durbin said in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday. If it comes to the point where the president has abandoned his effort against vaping, and the industry is going to prevail, then Im afraid Dr. Hahn will wear the collar for some of the things that follow.Besides tobacco products, Dr. Hahn, a noted oncologist, will oversee a sprawling agency, which has regulatory authority over prescription drugs, food safety, vitamin supplements, cosmetics, medical devices and even pet products and treatments. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] | Health |
Science|Who else was aboard the flight?https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/science/blue-origin-crew-bezos.htmlPublished July 20, 2021Updated Oct. 13, 2021Mr. 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. | science |
Photo Credit Dale De La Rey/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Alibabas deal to buy The South China Morning Post has raised questions about the direction of the newspaper. The English-language publication is based in Hong Kong, where freedom of the press is guaranteed by law. Although some critics say the newspaper has turned increasingly pro-Beijing in recent years, it has taken aim at controversial topics in China. Questioning Undue Influence in Voting Process The South China Morning Post, also known as The SCMP, reported that pro-Beijing candidates in district elections in November had arranged free rides for elderly residents and influenced their voting. When asked for whom they had voted, one resident said, They will teach us whom to vote for when we get upstairs. The paper also reported that Daniel Lam Tak-shing, a candidate for the pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, gave out gifts to residents at a home for the elderly and encouraged them to register as voters. Photo Pro-democracy protesters in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong in November 2014 during the Umbrella Movement. Credit Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse Getty Images Keeping Up With Occupy Hong Kong The newspaper provided extensive coverage of the Occupy Hong Kong protests in 2014, a movement that drew the ire of the Chinese government. Its intensive coverage also included a live blog. The SCMP followed up with two free e-books on how the so-called Umbrella Movement grew; one year after the protests, it interviewed Hong Kongers about their experiences. Photo A woman closing her eyes as she joins tens of thousands of people attending a candlelight vigil at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on June 4, 2014, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chinese military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing. Credit Kin Cheung/Associated Press Tiananmen Uncensored The South China Morning Post covered the annual vigil in Hong Kong to mark the crackdown on June 4, 1989, of the protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. On the 25th anniversary in 2014, the paper published a retrospective with accounts from witnesses, student leaders and former government officials. State media in China does not cover the anniversary or even acknowledge it. Photo A broadcast at a Hong Kong shopping mall in 2013 showing Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who fled to the city. Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press Snowden and Cybersecurity The South China Morning Post published exclusive interviews with the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden when he fled to Hong Kong. Although Beijing benefited from some of Mr. Snowdens disclosures, he also created a diplomatic problem. The Chinese government had to consider its relationship with the United States, despite many in China and Hong Kong feeling that Mr. Snowden should be protected from the reach of the United States government.The Chinese state news media initially seized on Mr. Snowdens leaks. But the media were less quick to report on a United States government presentation, leaked later, that said China had stolen data on a stealth jet. The SCMP has a wire article covering this on its website. The Columnist vs. the Tycoon The columnist and China editor Willy Wo-Lap Lam left in 2000 after a public spat with the papers owner, Robert Kuok. Mr. Lam wrote that tycoons, including Mr. Kuok, had been invited to Beijing by the Chinese government and had been offered lucrative business deals in return for supporting Tung Chee-hwa, then the chief executive of Hong Kong, who had been appointed by Beijing. The SCMP published a letter from Mr. Kuok scolding Mr. Lam. Mr. Kuok wrote that Mr. Lam this time has not only gone overboard, he has fallen into a trap of innuendo that is not supported by events. The article is full of distortions and speculation. The newspaper published a response by Mr. Lam, saying he stood by his column. Those articles were what got me into trouble, Mr. Lam said of his columns. The propaganda department and liaison office complained about my articles when they met with senior executives at The Post. Photo People in Hong Kong attending a candlelight vigil to mourn the Chinese labor activist Li Wangyang's death in Hong Kong. Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press The Death of a Dissident The SCMP reported the death of Li Wangyang, a pro-democracy activist who was found dead in 2012, but its coverage stirred controversy. Wang Xiangwei, the editor in chief, was reported to have reduced the length of the article in the paper. Alex Price, a senior copy editor at The SCMP, shared emails with The Asia Sentinel, a web-based regional publication, showing that when he had questioned the decision, Mr. Wang said: I made the decision, and I stand by it. If you dont like it, you know what to do. Criticizing the Courts Under the editor Jonathan Fenby in 1999, the newspaper published an editorial criticizing the Hong Kong governments decision to ask China to overturn an immigration ruling by the territorys highest court. Mr. Fenby wrote that Hong Kong had eroded the rule of law by politicizing its judiciary. After the editorial was published, Anson Chan, the Hong Kong governments No. 2, visited The SCMP to explain the administrations position. | Business |
Politics|A congressman who voted against certification tests positive for Covid-19.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/a-congressman-who-voted-against-certification-tests-positive-for-covid-19.htmlCredit...Evert Nelson/The Topeka Capital-Journal, via Associated PressJan. 7, 2021Representative Jake LaTurner, Republican of Kansas, announced that he received a positive test result for the coronavirus on Wednesday night, after he spent the day participating in a failed effort to stop Congress from formally certifying President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.Mr. LaTurner, a first-term lawmaker who assumed office this month, took the test as part of travel guidelines from the District of Columbia that require visitors to be tested, according to a message from his Twitter account posted early Thursday. He was not experiencing any symptoms.As a group of Trump supporters, many without masks, stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, members of Congress and their staffers crowded together to hide from the violence and chaos that unfolded. Senators were rushed in close quarters to safety through the Capitol tunnels.Coronavirus cases in the United States on Wednesday continued to rise, with 255,730 daily cases and nearly 4,000 deaths reported. It was the countrys worst day of the pandemic so far, in both categories, though reporting delays over the holidays may have affected the totals.Congress has come under fire for lacking consistent procedures to protect members and staff from the coronavirus. More than 100 members of Congress have either tested positive, quarantined or come into contact with someone who had the virus, according to GovTrack.Mr. LaTurner does not plan to return to the House floor for votes until he is cleared to do so, a message from his Twitter account said.Anyone traveling to Washington from a district with more than 10 coronavirus cases per 100,000 people must get a test within 72 hours of traveling, and visitors to the city must be tested within three to five days of arrival. | Politics |
Credit...Orlando Sierra/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesApril 4, 2016This summer, some yellow-fever mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus are expected to arrive along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere in the continental United States. Health officials are urging people to use insect repellents with DEET to avoid being bitten.The mounting evidence that the virus is strongly linked with birth defects makes this a priority for pregnant women. But is it safe to use repellents containing DEET with a baby on the way?Although the scientific evidence is a bit thinner than some experts would like, most say the answer is yes, as long as you do not overapply.Few published studies address the effects of DEET, short for N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide, in mothers-to-be and their offspring. None involved pregnant women in the first trimester, the period when most birth defects occur.Still, the existing evidence in pregnant women is reassuring. Even though there is not a lot of research, it makes sense to use DEET to protect yourself from something we know is truly unsafe, like Zika, said Dr. Laura E. Riley, a specialist who works with high-risk pregnancies and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital.A randomized trial of roughly 900 women in Thailand, published in 2001, provides some of the strongest evidence that using DEET daily for months will probably not hurt a fetus.ImageCredit...Marvin Recinos/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesA malaria infection in pregnancy can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth. To prevent it, half of the women in the study applied a 20 percent concentration of DEET mixed with a makeup called thanaka daily in their second and third trimesters. The other half wore only thanaka.DEET can cross the placenta and reach the fetus, the researchers found. But DEET was detected in the blood of the umbilical cord in just four of 50 users.Importantly, the newborns werent affected in terms of growth or development from DEET exposure, said Dr. Rose McGready, the studys lead author and a professor of tropical maternal and child health at the University of Oxford. No adverse effects on growth were found among the children a year later, either.But the study didnt include the first trimester, Dr. McGready said. Thats an important missing component.Asked about the paucity of published studies looking at DEET use in the first trimester, Jack Housenger, the director of the Environmental Protection Agencys office of pesticides programs, replied in a statement, DEET is safe, including for pregnant women at any stage.In 2014, a safety review by the E.P.A. did not identify any risks of concern to human health if the directions are followed. The agencys review assessed the potential risks of long- and short term use of DEET in pregnant animals.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counsels pregnant women to use any E.P.A.-registered repellent, including those with picaridin (a synthetic compound), IR3535 (a biopesticide) and DEET. In animal studies, the E.P.A. has found no evidence that either picaridin or IR3535 is harmful to the developing fetus.DEET was registered with the E.P.A. for public use in 1957, picaridin in 2005 and IR3535 in 1999, but the last two were used abroad for years before.Bob Peterson, a professor of entomology at Montana State University, published a risk assessment of DEET and picaridin in 2008. Exposures are acceptable in adults and children if they are used according to instructions on the package, he said.An estimated 104 million Americans use DEET every year, and reports of adverse events are relatively small by comparison, the E.P.A. wrote in its safety review.Only minimal amounts of DEET cross into a pregnant mothers bloodstream, suggesting babies are exposed to very little.In 2010, researchers, including some from the C.D.C., analyzed the blood of 150 pregnant women in New Jersey and their umbilical cords for a range of pesticides.DEET was not at remarkable levels, said Mark Robson, the studys senior author and a professor of plant biology and pathology at Rutgers University. Birth weight, length and circumference were all normal for all infants.Pregnant women who wish to be extremely cautious may use a repellent with a lower concentration of DEET to limit how much gets in their blood, said Dr. Sarah G. Obican, a maternal fetal specialist and a member of the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists.Using a 6 percent DEET product will last you two hours, and 20 percent one will last close to four hours, Dr. Obican said. Why not use the lower concentration and apply more often?A 1999 trial with 60 men and 60 women who used a 31 percent concentration of DEET found women had significantly less protection over time than men did from Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes.Still, DEET will give you the best protection, even if it doesnt protect as long a duration for a woman as it does for a man, said Dawn Wesson, an associate professor of tropical medicine at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.Until a few years ago, DEET formulations smelled like a chemical, Dr. Wesson said, and people have this perception that if it smells this way, its not safe, and thats not true.Pregnant women in areas where the Zika virus is spreading are currently at far greater risk than those in the continental United States. The C.D.C. is predicting that a quarter of Puerto Ricos 3.5 million people may be infected with the Zika virus within a year.Dr. John Meeker, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and others are following 1,000 pregnant women in Puerto Rico. They are tracking concentrations of pesticides, including DEET and two of its metabolites, in urine to see if there is any link to adverse pregnancy outcomes. | Health |
The suit is the first antitrust action against the company to result from investigations by American regulators.Credit...Laura Morton for The New York TimesOct. 20, 2020The Justice Department sued Google on Tuesday, accusing the company of illegally abusing its dominance in internet search in ways that harm competitors and consumers.The suit is the first antitrust action against the company, owned by Alphabet, to result from investigations by the Justice Department, Congress, and 50 states and territories. State attorneys general and federal officials have also been investigating Googles behavior in the market for online advertising. And a group of states is exploring a broader search case against Google.Here is what you need to know about the suit.What is really happening here?This is one step against a single company. But it is also a response to the policy question of what measures, if any, should be taken to curb todays tech giants, which hold the power to shape markets, communication and even public opinion.Politics steered the timing and shape of this suit. Attorney General William P. Barr wanted to move quickly to take action before the election, making good on President Trumps pledge to take on Big Tech. Eleven states joined the suit.What is the Justice Department saying Google did illegally?This is a monopoly defense case. The government says Google is illegally protecting its dominant position in the market for search and search advertising with the deals it has struck with companies like Apple. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to have its search engine set as the default option on iPhones and other devices.The Justice Department is also challenging contracts Google has with smartphone makers that use Googles Android operating system, requiring them to install its search engine as the default. The Justice Department also investigated Googles behavior and acquisitions in the overall market for digital advertising, which includes search, web display and video ads. Online advertising was the source of virtually all of Alphabets $34 billion in profit last year.But the search case is more straightforward, giving the government its best chance to win. To prevail, the Justice Department has to show two things that Google is dominant in search, and that its deals with Apple and other companies hobble competition in the search market.What will be Googles defense?In short: Were not dominant, and competition on the internet is just one click away.That is the essence of recent testimony in Congress by Google executives. Googles share of the search market in the United States is about 80 percent. But looking only at the market for general search, the company says, is myopic. Nearly half of online shopping searches, it notes, begin on Amazon.Next, Google says the deals the Justice Department is citing are entirely legal. Such company-to-company deals violate antitrust law only if they can be shown to exclude competition. Users can freely switch to other search engines, like Microsofts Bing or Yahoo Search, anytime they want, Google insists. Its search service, Google says, is the runaway market leader because people prefer it.What is the consumer harm when Googles search service is free?Consumer harm, the government argues, can result in several ways. Less competition in a market means less innovation and less consumer choice in the long run. That, in theory, could close the market to rivals that collect less data for targeted advertising than Google. Enhanced privacy, for example, would be a consumer benefit.Goods that are free to consumers are not exempt from antitrust oversight. In the landmark Microsoft case of the late 1990s, the software giant bundled its web browser for free into its dominant Windows operating system. Microsoft lost because, using restrictive contracts, it bullied personal computer makers and others to try to prevent them from offering competing web browser software competition that could have undermined the Windows monopoly.What happens next?Unless the government and Google reach a settlement, theyre headed to court. Trials and appeals in such cases can take years.Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain: Google will face continued scrutiny for a long time. | Tech |
White Collar WatchCredit...Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesDec. 21, 2015The indictment of Martin Shkreli, the widely reviled head of a pharmaceutical company that secured the rights to a decades-old drug and then increased its price more than fiftyfold, was described by a F.B.I. official as the securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed nothing particularly new when it comes to defrauding hedge fund investors.What makes the case interesting is that a lawyer, Evan Greebel, has been charged as an accomplice for not protecting his corporate client that Mr. Shkreli is accused of using essentially as a personal piggy bank.Lawyers are important players in corporate transactions, ensuring their clients comply with the rules. But when legal advice pushes over the line into enabling fraud, then a lawyer can wind up on the wrong side of the law.Mr. Shkreli was charged with securities fraud and conspiracy for misleading investors in a hedge fund he managed about losses it suffered. As The New York Times pointed out, this aspect of the case was little more than a small-time fraud in which investors were duped into believing their investment of a few million dollars was profitable when in fact Mr. Shkreli made a series of bad stock picks hardly the stuff of front-page headlines.After the investors protested, he was accused of funneling the assets of a biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin, of which he was the chief executive, to pay those claims. Pulling that off required much more than fast talk because the company was publicly traded, so there were supposed to be internal controls in place to ensure proper management of its assets and a board of directors designated to watch over the enterprise.That is where Mr. Greebel comes into the picture. He was the lead outside counsel and corporate secretary for Retrophin while working as a partner at the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman (he moved last summer to Kaye Scholer). Mr. Greebels practice involved working on corporate transactions and, more recently, helping firms involved in Bitcoin.Mr. Greebel is charged with one count of conspiring with Mr. Shkreli to commit wire fraud in connection with the claimed misuse of Retrophins assets to pay off the hedge fund investors. According to the indictment, he helped draft sham consulting agreements to mask the payments so that they appeared to be related to the companys business.In an email sent in response to a question from Mr. Shkreli about why this type of arrangement was needed, Mr. Greebel wrote, We can call it a settlement agreement, but given [the auditors] recent behavior they may require it to be disclosed in the financials. I was trying to prevent that issue. That sounds like standard legal advice a lawyer would give to a client about how to structure a transaction, setting forth alternatives and then explaining why one approach is better.The prosecution of Mr. Greebel raises the question about when legal advice crosses the line into aiding and abetting a fraud. The starting point in the analysis is identifying the client, because that is the party the lawyer must ensure receives the benefit of the legal services. That seemingly simple issue becomes much more complicated when a small corporation like Retrophin is the client because lawyers can sometimes let themselves slip into thinking that it is the individual officers, especially the chief executive, who are in need of protection.In a comment posted on Investorshub in February, Mr. Shkreli defended his actions by claiming that every transaction Ive ever made at Retrophin was done with outside counsels blessing (I have the bills to prove it), board approval and made good corporate sense. That certainly makes it sound as if the lawyer was working on behalf of the chief executive.But if the Justice Departments charge against Mr. Greebel is true, then the first misstep appears to be that he put Mr. Shkrelis interests ahead of Retrophin, his actual client.Mr. Greebel has pleaded not guilty and is fighting the charges.There is nothing inherently wrong with settling a case by creating a consulting arrangement, unless it is done to mislead the company making the payment into believing it is a legitimate transaction. The reference in his email to Mr. Shkreli about avoiding scrutiny from the outside auditor can be evidence that the agreements were not intended to protect the corporate client but rather to mislead it, something a companys lawyer is certainly not supposed to do.Unlike a hedge fund investor who falls for a pitch from a fast-talking entrepreneur, shareholders depend on the company to have in place the protections needed to ensure it is being properly managed.Since the demise of Enron in 2002 after its lawyers did little to protect the company from wrongdoing by its executives, corporate counsel is now seen as one of the gatekeepers for a corporation required to ensure that it stays within the law. When the companys lawyer steps out of that role by aiding a chief executive in advancing his own interests, one of the key protections in place for investors is lost.The Securities and Exchange Commission, which also filed civil fraud charges against Mr. Shkreli and Mr. Greebel, has emphasized that it wants to focus on corporate gatekeepers for failing to protect companies and their investors from fraud.Kara M. Stein, an S.E.C. commissioner, raised the issue of whether the agency was not being tough enough in pursuing lawyers for misconduct at corporate clients. Are we treating lawyers differently from other gatekeepers, such as accountants? I think we should carefully review the role that lawyers play in our markets, with a view towards how they can better help deter misconduct and prevent fraud, she said in a speech in 2014.The charge against Mr. Greebel focuses on his role as one of Retrophins gatekeepers, claiming that the failure to protect his client constitutes aiding and abetting Mr. Shkrelis crime. If the lawyer confuses who the client is, then it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing that the best interests of an individual officer are paramount.For Retrophin, the indictment represents a measure of vindication. The charges largely track a lawsuit filed by the company against Mr. Shkreli in August claiming that he violated his fiduciary duty of loyalty to the company by misusing its assets for personal purposes by paying off investors in his hedge funds, seeking $65 million in compensation. (Mr. Greebel was not named in that lawsuit.)But in an odd twist, Retrophin may have to pay more money in the case before it can ever recover. Under its bylaws, the company is required to advance the legal expenses of any director or officer who is the subject of a criminal prosecution or civil lawsuit related to conduct while at the company. Retrophin is incorporated in Delaware, whose Chancery Court has been aggressive in protecting the rights of individuals seeking payment of legal fees from a former corporate employer.That means the company may have to pay for the lawyers while Mr. Shkreli and Mr. Greebel defend the criminal and civil cases, a claim it is sure to fight but may wind up losing. | Business |
Steve Brown Attacker Laughed Before Going Off And He Drew Blood!!! 1/22/2018 TMZ.com Comic Steve Brown says the guy who viciously attacked him during his stand-up act over the weekend was loving the show when all of a sudden he seemed to go from Jekyll to Hyde. Steve told us what happened in the moments before his attacker stormed the stage and started wielding a mic stand like a samurai sword. Steve says he's not sure what set him off, and it didn't help that the venue's security didn't jump to his rescue. Tumika LaSha Cops still haven't found the guy, and even with a battle wound on his arm ... Steve had to think twice when we asked if he was going to press charges. | Entertainment |
Credit...Robin Utrecht/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 15, 2017THE HAGUE Elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday are being watched especially closely across Europe and beyond as a key gauge of whether formerly strong barriers to the far right still stand on a continent with painful memories of fascism, but also with a growing number of aspiring nationalist leaders.The Dutch vote is the first of several critical European elections this year, to be followed by those in France, Germany and possibly Italy. A common thread in the campaigns has been attacks on the European Union for diluting sovereignty, opening borders to migrants and leaving nations vulnerable to terrorism.These are the quarterfinals in trying to prevent the wrong sort of populism from winning, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and leader of the center-right Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, said of the Dutch election.The half finals are in France in April and May and in September in Germany, we have the finals, he said.Almost everywhere populist parties have risen with nationalist calls to stem immigration to secure and preserve local cultures. The question now is whether the populists will maintain their momentum or be blunted by a newfound hesitancy among voters.Even as support for centrist parties craters nearly everywhere, some analysts see new hints of wariness of the protest and anti-elite votes that aided the rise of recent populist politicians, given the uncertainty and conflict ushered in by the first weeks of the Trump administration and the British vote last year to exit the European Union, or Brexit.Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said he had detected early signs in the past several weeks of a backlash against populism.In Germany, for example, the far-right Alternative for Germany party has slipped in the polls. Mr. Funke said he thought that voters in Europe were looking at Brexit and the Trump presidency not as points of inspiration, but rather with deep concern.ImageCredit...Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThere is no Trump effect, he said. Nothing happened. On the current moment for populist parties, he said, I see stagnation, or decline.In the Netherlands, Mr. Funke noted, Geert Wilders, one of the most stridently anti-Muslim politicians in Europe, has struggled to improve his standing in recent weeks after climbing quickly in the polls.There is a danger that it can go out of control, as far as the voting for Wilders, he said, but I doubt that will be the case.Even if populists like Mr. Wilders do not prevail, other analysts said, their high profiles and often inflammatory presence had moved much of the political debate to the far rights turf. The battle in many ways is already won.Since the entrance of Geert Wilders into the political arena, he hasnt had any office but he has exerted influence, said Bert Bakker, a communications professor at the University of Amsterdam.Discussions in the Netherlands now often center on restrictions on immigrants, identity politics and nationalism.Professors, pollsters and others who closely watch elections emphasize that, at least in the Netherlands, the far right is not going to win or control the government or even come close not least because the other right-leaning parties have promised publicly not to work with Mr. Wilders in a coalition.That has not stopped them from adopting somewhat milder versions of the far rights positions on many issues. One result is that the far rights views have dominated the debate, crowding out other views and issues.Even if these parties are not actually winning or part of the government, everything is moving to a more anti-immigration stance, more pro-nationalist, to try to win voters who are the losers in globalization, said Jasper Muis, a professor of sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam, who studies populism.VideoThis is Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician with aspirations to be the next prime minister of the Netherlands. He has compared the Quran to "Mein Kampf" and has called Moroccans "scum."CreditCredit...Bart Maat/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesImmigration and asylum seekers become the focus on the one hand and values and norms on the others, he said, but not much is said about economic development or employment and thats a part of the success story of the populist right: that theyve been able to make it difficult to talk about other subjects.In the most optimistic outlooks, Mr. Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party, will get about 15 percent of the vote. Even if his votes were combined with those of other far-right and anti-establishment parties, the combined number of likely seats in the 150-seat Parliament would not exceed about 30, or 20 percent of the Parliament.However, the Christian Democratic Appeal party is promoting a line almost as conservative on immigration as that of Mr. Wilders, a change from its more moderate position of several years ago. That party now looks likely to win about as many seats as Mr. Wilders, and if the mainstream rights seats are added to that, the far-right and center-right parties would have a majority.Even if the right has dominated the campaign, the reality is that the Netherlands is deeply divided and its centrist parties are losing ground in an increasingly fractured political landscape.There are 28 parties on the ballot. Only between 10 and 12 will get enough votes to win a seat in Parliament. There are still likely to be four or five parties in the governing coalition all but guaranteeing it will include both left- and right-leaning parties.For that reason some experienced observers of European politics say the rightward drift by the Dutch may be more important as a harbinger of trends on the Continent than for its practical impact.Some analysts are far more worried about the French vote, because the far-right leader of the National Front, the presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has a bloc of voters that is much more solidified behind her.The bloc for Le Pen is very consistent, which is different than the other populists, said Mr. Funke of the Free University in Berlin.An even greater concern may be Italy, where the populist Five Star party and the Northern League could win if elections are held, in part on a platform proposing a referendum on whether Italy should continue to use the euro. That could trigger a loss of confidence by foreign investors and capital flight from the Continent.Italy is potentially the worst case because if they are forced by election results to have a euro referendum, Mr. Funke said, then there would be a big danger. | World |
Credit...Center for Strategic and International StudiesMarch 4, 2017Washington usually cloaks its most critical defense programs in secrecy.But in the case of using cyberstrikes, electronic warfare and other exotic forms of sabotage to redefine antimissile defense for the United States, many high-ranking officials and officers have been talking openly, often to persuade Congress to fund the secretive efforts.The public conversation about the new antimissile approach, known as left of launch, has been careful. Typically, military leaders and contractors have spoken vaguely about technologies and targets. But at moments they have also declared that it is all about North Korea and Iran, at least for now.The idea is to strike an enemy missile before liftoff or during the first seconds of flight. The old approach waited until much later after swarms of warheads had been released, had traveled thousands of miles and were racing toward targets at speeds in excess of four miles a second.Officials have praised left-of-launch strikes as a novel way of knocking out enemy missiles at a tiny fraction of the usual cost. In presentations and congressional testimony, senior officials have described the method as a potentially revolutionary way to strengthen the defenses of the United States.The public unveiling began in late 2013 when Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nations highest-ranking military officer, warned of falling budgets and rising missile threats. That dilemma, he wrote in a policy guidance document for American troops, called for the development of unconventional defenses that would be far cheaper than traditional rocket interceptors.In 2014, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Atlantic Council that left-of-launch strikes would, by definition, remain a novel adjunct to wider antimissile efforts.While we would still obviously prefer to take a threat missile out while its still on the ground, he said, we wont always have the luxury of doing so. The result, he added, would be the continuing need for solid right-of-launch capability in other words, the traditional methods.In 2015, top antimissile experts gathered at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Archer M. Macy Jr., a retired Navy rear admiral, said the Defense Department was developing ways not only of preventing successful missile launches but of interfering in their flights and navigation.Kenneth E. Todorov, a retired Air Force brigadier general, raised the question of how to authorize what would amount to pre-emptive war of attacking first to gain a strategic advantage. Are we, as a military and a nation, he asked, prepared to go after potential targets in advance? No consensus emerged.Raytheon, the nations top antimissile contractor, went wide rather than deep. In a conference presentation, it disclosed that the new developments included not just cyber and electronic strikes but the targeting of enemy factories, hinting at industrial sabotage. The glossy presentation included a lineup of sophisticated adversaries, including Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.Last year, the Pentagons budget request for 2017 said an antimissile program known as Nimble Fire had advanced General Dempseys goals by exploring electronic attack and offensive cyber operations. The details, it said, were classified secret.In April, a number of budget hearings in the House and Senate focused on left-of-launch programs. Some of the most revealing testimony came before Senator Jeff Sessions, then chairman of the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee and now attorney general.Vice Adm. James D. Syring of the Navy, director of the Pentagons Missile Defense Agency, described left-of-launch strikes and other unorthodox approaches as game changing because they reduced the need to rely exclusively on expensive interceptors.Brian P. McKeon, then the Pentagons under secretary of defense for policy, said the Defense Department sought new and old antimissile arms to deal with the threat of missiles from either North Korea or Iran. Of all the nations that might threaten the United States, he noted in his testimony, those two countries are driving our investments.At a House hearing, Adm. William E. Gortney, then head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which has the responsibility for firing the nations antimissile weapons in time of war, was asked what Congress should do to ensure our military forces can execute left-of-launch strikes.Admiral Gortney said that in the committees secret session he could discuss the development of classified technologies where investments are absolutely critical. | World |
Travis Scott Arrested for Inciting Riot in Arkansas 5/14/2017 -- Rogers PD issued a statement saying Travis encouraged people to rush the stage at his show, bypassing security protocols in the process. They add ... several people were injured, including a security guard and a cop. A source close to Travis tells TMZ that he saw available space in the general admission toward the front, so he invited seated guests in the back to come forward. We're told he had no intention of putting anyone in danger. Travis Scott's concert in Arkansas came to a rude ending when cops hauled him way for inciting a riot ... TMZ has confirmed. Travis was performing in Rogers, Arkansas Saturday night, and according to several witnesses the officers met him as soon as he left the stage. Law enforcement sources tell us he was booked for inciting a riot, endangering welfare of a minor and disorderly conduct. He was released without bail around 11:30 PM. He'll also have to return to Arkansas for a court date. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. You'll recall ... he got busted for the same thing a couple years ago at Lollapalooza in Chicago. More recently, Travis encouraged fans in NYC to jump from balconies. It's kinda his thing ... getting fans super turnt, but cops in Arkansas weren't having it. It doesn't appear Kylie Jenner was with him last night. Not shockingly, #freetravisscott is already a thing ... even though he's already free. 04/30/17 TMZ.com | Entertainment |
TrilobitesCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersJune 1, 2017Coral reefs are sprawling, intricate ecosystems that house an estimated 25 percent of all marine life and can sometimes be seen from space. Yet they are formed by a process invisible to us.A study published in Science on Wednesday now presents a microscopic picture of the biology that makes corals skeletons grow. The findings suggest that coral may be more robust in the face of human-driven ocean acidification than commonly thought.Corals grow their armor by diligently secreting a chunk of hard skeleton smaller than the width of a human hair each day. This process is called calcification and scientists have debated which parts of it are most important for decades.One view prioritizes chemical interactions with the seawater. Using ion pumps, corals can possibly decrease the acidity of seawater enough that calcium carbonate the stuff of limestone and chalk and the basis of coral skeletons forms spontaneously. Under these circumstances, if oceans become more acidic a potential consequence of human-emitted carbon dioxide in the atmosphere being absorbed by the seas coral may struggle to form a skeleton.The alternative view contends that calcification is primarily a biological process, coordinated by proteins similar to the ones that help us make our teeth and bones. The new study provides evidence for this perspective and some hope for corals in a world with more carbon.ImageCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersCoral is not just a rock, said Paul Falkowski, a professor of marine sciences at Rutgers University and senior author of the study. And because of that, were pretty confident that theyll be able to continuing making their skeletons even if the ocean becomes slightly more acidic.Not all scientists agree.The problem is, we have lots of data that show many coral species are very sensitive to environmental change, said Alexander Venn, a senior scientist at the Scientific Center of Monaco, who was not involved in the study. While this paper builds a strong model for the biological control of calcification, there are still pieces of the puzzle missing.Dr. Falkowski and his colleagues used ultrahigh-resolution microscopic imaging and techniques for observing the structure of molecules to study skeletal branches from smooth cauliflower coral, a well-studied species common in the Indo-Pacific.The result is a model of coral calcification that starts with a malleable form of calcium carbonate, called amorphous calcium carbonate.The researchers say they believe that amorphous calcium carbonate is initially formed by proteins. Through a process not yet fully understood, little balls of the material then give way to aragonite, the form of calcium carbonate that makes up a mature coral skeleton.Similar transitions have been observed in sea urchins and shellfish, and some scientists even suspect amorphous calcium carbonate may be a common precursor for calcification across the tree of life.ImageCredit...Viacheslav Manichev and Stanislas Von Euw/RutgersWhen we precipitate aragonite in the lab, just in a bucket of seawater, it forms this very characteristic pattern with very long, needle-shaped crystals, said Nicola Allison, a lecturer in earth sciences at the University of St. Andrews, who did not participate in the research.This is the first report of amorphous calcium carbonate in coral, and it really does suggest the organism is able to control how solid material is deposited, she added.Alex Gagnon, an assistant professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who was not involved in the research, suggested it was an oversimplification to take seawater chemistry out of the equation. Acid dissolves calcium carbonate, so the more acidic the ocean is, the more difficult it is for corals to organize that first bit of skeleton.At the end of the day, the fundamental rules of chemistry and physics still apply, he said.Its true that corals lose calcium carbonate in a more acidic environment but they maintain the ability to grow back that skeleton, which is good news, Dr. Falkowski said.Given current projections of ocean warming and acidification, he is more concerned about warming, which stresses the algae living inside corals and causes coral bleaching.That said, Dr. Falkowski acknowledges that the cause of warming and acidification is one and the same: carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. For all intents and purposes, theyre linked, he said. | science |
Credit...Erik Tanner for The New York TimesSundar Pichai, chief executive of Googles parent company for less than a year, already faces the internet giants biggest threat in its 22 years.Googles chief, Sundar Pichai, may seem an unlikely candidate to lead its fight with the federal government.Credit...Erik Tanner for The New York TimesOct. 21, 2020OAKLAND, Calif. When Sundar Pichai succeeded Larry Page as the head of Googles parent company in December, he was handed a bag of problems: Shareholders had sued the company, Alphabet, over big financial packages handed to executives accused of misconduct. An admired office culture was fraying. Most of all, antitrust regulators were circling.On Tuesday, the Justice Department accused Google of being a monopoly gatekeeper of the internet, one that uses anticompetitive tactics to protect and strengthen its dominant hold over web search and search advertising.Google, which has generated vast profits through a recession, a pandemic and earlier investigations by government regulators on five continents, now faces the first truly existential crisis in its 22-year history.The companys founders, Mr. Page and Sergey Brin, have left the defense to the soft-spoken Mr. Pichai, who has worked his way up the ranks over 16 years with a reputation for being a conscientious caretaker rather than an impassioned entrepreneur.Mr. Pichai, a former product manager, may seem an unlikely candidate to lead his companys fight with the federal government. But if the tech industrys bumptious history with antitrust enforcement is any lesson, a caretaker who has reluctantly stepped into the spotlight might be preferable to a charismatic leader born to it.Mr. Pichai, 48, is expected to make the case as he has for some time that the company is not a monopoly even though it has a 92 percent global market share of internet searches. Google is good for the country, so goes the corporate message, and has been a humble economic engine not a predatory job killer.He has to come off as an individual who is trying to do the right thing not only for his company but broader society, said Paul Vaaler, a business and law professor at the University of Minnesota. If he comes off as evasive, petulant and a smart aleck, this is going to be a killer in front of the court and the court of public opinion.Google declined to make Mr. Pichai available for an interview. In an email to employees on Tuesday, he urged Google employees to stay focused on their work so that users will continue to use its products not because they have to but because they want to.Scrutiny is nothing new for Google, and we look forward to presenting our case, Mr. Pichai wrote. Ive had Googlers ask me how they can help, and my answer is simple: Keep doing what youre doing.Few executives have faced a challenge like this, and the most iconic figures in the technology industry have wilted under the glare of antitrust scrutiny.ImageCredit...Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesBill Gates, who was chief executive of Microsoft in the last big technology antitrust case brought by the Justice Department two decades ago, came across as combative and evasive in depositions, reinforcing the view that the company was a win-at-all-costs bully. Mr. Gates said last year that the lawsuit had been such a distraction that he screwed up the transition to mobile phone software and ceded the market to Google.Mr. Page dealt with impending antitrust scrutiny with detachment, spending his time on futuristic technology projects instead of huddling with lawyers. Even as the European Union handed down three fines against Google for anticompetitive practices, Mr. Page barely addressed the matter publicly.On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, officials at the Justice Department declined to reveal whether they had spoken to Mr. Page during its investigation.In its complaint, the Justice Department, along with 11 states, said Google had foreclosed competition in the search market by striking deals with handset manufacturers, including Apple, and mobile carriers to block rivals from competing effectively.For the sake of American consumers, advertisers and all companies now reliant on the internet economy, the time has come to stop Googles anticompetitive conduct and restore competition, the complaint said.Google said that the case was deeply flawed and that the Justice Department was relying on dubious antitrust arguments.Google is also the target of an antitrust inquiry by state attorneys general looking into its advertising technology and web search. And Europe continues to investigate the company over its data collection even after the three fines since 2017, totaling nearly $10 billion.At Mr. Pichais side are senior executives who are also inclined to strike an accommodating tone. He has surrounded himself with other serious, buttoned-up career Google managers who bring a lot of boring to the table.The point person for handling the case is Kent Walker, Googles chief legal officer and head of global affairs. Though Mr. Walker, who worked at the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney and joined Google in 2006, oversees many of the companys messiest issues, he rarely makes headlines a testament, current and former colleagues said, to his lawyerly pragmatism.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesGoogle has appointed Halimah DeLaine Prado as its new general counsel. A 14-year veteran of the companys legal department, Ms. Prado was most recently a vice president overseeing the global team that advised Google on products including advertising, cloud computing, search, YouTube and hardware. While Ms. Prado doesnt have a background in antitrust, she has been at Google since 2006 and is, by now, well versed in competition law.The company is expected to rely heavily on its high-priced law firms to help manage the battle, including Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a top Silicon Valley firm, and Williams & Connolly, which has defended Google in other competition law cases.Wilson Sonsini has represented Google from the companys inception and helped it defend itself in a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its search business. In 2013, the agency chose not to bring charges.Regardless of the legal argument for prosecuting Google as a monopoly, the case may shape the public perception of the company long after it has been resolved.Until now, Googles public posture has been a shrug. Mr. Pichai has said that the antitrust scrutiny is nothing new and that, if anything, the company welcomes the look into its business practices. Google has argued that it competes in rapidly changing markets, and that its dominance can evaporate quickly with the emergence of new rivals.Google operates in highly competitive and dynamic global markets, in which prices are free or falling and products are constantly improving, Mr. Pichai said in his opening remarks to a House antitrust panel in July. Googles continued success is not guaranteed.ImageCredit...Pool photo by Graeme JenningsMr. Pichai is familiar with the machinations of antitrust proceedings. In 2009, when he was a vice president of product management, he lobbied the European competition authorities to take action on Microsofts Internet Explorer web browser.We are confident that more competition in this space will mean greater innovation on the web and a better user experience for people everywhere, Mr. Pichai wrote in a blog post at the time, sentiments that search rivals say about Google today.But shortly after he became Googles chief executive in 2015, Mr. Pichai displayed his tendency for pragmatism when he buried the hatchet with Microsoft. The two companies agreed to stop complaining to regulators about each other.Early in his tenure running Google, Mr. Pichai was reluctant to press its case in Washington a job that one of his predecessors, Eric Schmidt, had reveled in. Mr. Schmidt, a big donor in Democratic politics, was a frequent visitor to the White House during the Obama presidency and served on the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.In 2018, Google declined to send Mr. Pichai to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Annoyed senators left an empty seat for the companys representative next to executives from Facebook and Twitter. (Mr. Page was also invited to testify, but there was never any expectation from people within the company that he would.)Since then, Mr. Pichai has made frequent trips to Washington, testified at other congressional hearings and held meetings with President Trump.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMicrosofts long battle with the government has also influenced how Google plans to wage its antitrust fight. Many Google executives believe Microsoft was too combative with the Justice Department, bringing the company to a standstill.For most of the last decade, even as Google has dealt with antitrust investigations in the United States and Europe, the company has continued expanding into new businesses and acquire companies, such as the fitness tracker maker Fitbit last year.Now the bill for that growth may have come due. And like it or not, it has been left to Mr. Pichai. Mr. Page, who is a year younger than Mr. Pichai and who Forbes says is worth $65 billion, is pursuing other interests.Mr. Pichai hasnt had to deal with anything of this magnitude, said Michael Cusumano, a professor and deputy dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management. He has to face the government. He has no choice. | Tech |
Health|Yellow Fever Outbreak in Angola Strains Health Organizationshttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/health/yellow-fever-outbreak-angola-who.htmlGlobal HealthApril 4, 2016Angola is experiencing a major urban yellow fever outbreak that threatens other countries, including China, and is exposing how poorly prepared the world is to fight two mosquito-borne epidemics at once.Angolas outbreak, which is known to have killed about 200 people, has already consumed the World Health Organizations emergency stockpile of yellow fever vaccine.ImageCredit...Salvatore Di Nolfi/European Pressphoto AgencyThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it cannot give Africa as much help as it normally would: Most of its mosquito-disease experts are fighting the Zika virus in Brazil, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.Yellow fever usually kills about 3 percent of its victims, although some epidemics have had much higher mortality rates.Last month, the disease-alert service ProMED which said almost a year ago that Zika might spread in Latin America issued an unusual warning. John P. Woodall, a founder of the service, calculated how much yellow fever vaccine the world has and can make this year, and said that if the disease spread to parts of Asia with the right climate and mosquitoes, hundreds of thousands could die before Y.F. vaccine stocks could be boosted and delivered.The W.H.O. is so concerned that its director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan, flew to Angola this week to draw attention to the crisis.Yellow fever normally circulates in monkeys, and human outbreaks are usually limited to jungle villages, logging camps and mining areas. But in December, the virus spread to Angolas capital, Luanda, which has more than six million people. It is the third most populous city in the Portuguese-speaking world, after So Paolo and Rio de Janeiro.Yellow fever is spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which also carry Zika, dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and other diseases.With more than five million Angolans vaccinated, cases in Luanda have dropped. But new clusters are growing in a third of the countrys provinces, and cases have turned up in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in China. Many Chinese work in Africa building roads and bridges, and in oil fields and other industries. | Health |
Politics|Traitor! Dozens of Trump supporters heckle Lindsey Graham for breaking with the president.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/politics/traitor-lindsey-graham.htmlTraitor! Dozens of Trump supporters heckle Lindsey Graham for breaking with the president.Credit...Michael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockJan. 8, 2021Jeering supporters of President Trump accosted Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Friday at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, angrily denouncing the Republican as a traitor and a liar for voting to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.Traitor! Traitor! one woman could be heard yelling in a pair of videos shared with The New York Times. You said you had his back and you didnt.Get out of here, another woman shouted at Mr. Graham, who was once considered Mr. Trumps closest ally in the Senate. You dont represent America.The tense scene vivified the continuing crisis unfolding in the Republican Party, as lawmakers, their voters and the nation reel from an insurrection by Mr. Trumps supporters that overtook the Capitol this week while Congress was meeting to count the electoral votes.Mr. Graham was far from alone, as elected Republicans who rejected Mr. Trumps attempt to overturn the election faced intense backlash from their own constituents, who have been persuaded by the presidents false claims that he won. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, also had a nasty airport confrontation with supporters of Mr. Trump, while other Republicans were accosted outside the Capitol by voters from their states who had traveled to Washington at the presidents urging to protest his election defeat.After four years of standing beside Mr. Trump, including some of his baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Graham made a clean break Wednesday night after the mob had been cleared from the Capitol, saying enough is enough. He seemed to foresee the coming crisis.I cannot convince people, certain groups, by my words, but I will tell you by my actions, he said in the Senate.On Friday, Mr. Graham could be seen in another video, posted by Politicos Daniel Lippman, being escorted out of the waiting area by uniformed police officers as several dozen people harassed him. (An earlier version of this post misspelled Mr. Lippmans surname.)One day they will not be able to walk down the street, said one woman, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the initial Q, a reference to QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory. It is today.Mindy Robinson, a self-described conservative activist and commentator, posted yet another video in which a woman, apparently her, called Mr. Graham a garbage human being.Its going to be like this forever, wherever you go, for the rest of your life, the woman taunted. | Politics |
Credit...Yaakov Lederman/Flash90Nov. 2, 2018BEIT SHEMESH, Israel Orthodox and other Jewish women in Beit Shemesh, a fast-growing, ultra-Orthodox stronghold, have been stoned, pepper-sprayed, spat on or called whore by puritanical Jews who take their beliefs about modesty to violent extremes. So the election this week of a woman as mayor with the support of thousands of ultra-Orthodox voters who defied their rabbis to support her was felt across this hilly city like nothing less than an earthquake.Aliza Bloch, a 51-year-old former high school principal, didnt just defeat the two-term incumbent, an ultra-Orthodox man who enjoyed the backing of rabbis from the dominant sects. She did it by uniting nonreligious longtime residents angry about being turned into minorities in their own city, English-speaking Orthodox immigrants impatient with inadequate government services, and forward-thinking ultra-Orthodox who were both sick of being denigrated as not religious enough and embarrassed by the bad press that Beit Shemesh has earned as a hotbed of religious fanaticism.Until now, radicals controlled the discourse, Ms. Bloch told a cheering crowd of supporters who had waited around till after 3 a.m. Thursday for her razors-edge victory to be assured with the counting of absentee ballots. They prevented us from seeing one another as human beings. Until today, they were the ones who set the tone.But no longer, she vowed: From now on, the city would become a model for all Israel. Weve realized that we share a common good that unites us, Ms. Bloch said, adding: No more I take care of the people in my sector. Were done with that sort of talk in Beit Shemesh.Tuesdays mayoral and council elections, a once-every-five-years affair in Israel, were dotted with small-scale coups, comedowns and comebacks across the country. But it was the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, sector that showed the most intriguing new uses of its considerable political clout.In Haifa, one of the leading Haredi parties, Degel HaTorah, or Flag of the Torah representing the so-called Lithuanian wing of the non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox broke with the others and endorsed a nonreligious woman, Einat Kalisch Rotem, 48, who rolled to victory over a longtime incumbent to become the first woman elected as mayor of Israels third-largest city. (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the two largest cities, have elected only men to the top job.)ImageCredit...Corinna Kern for The New York TimesGilad Malach, head of the ultra-Orthodox program at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the Haredi sects believe Jewish law dictates that only men should lead, and that women should avoid calling attention to themselves in the way that politics requires. Their belief is a woman shouldnt be a mayor, prime minister or even a member of the Knesset, he said. I dont remember a time when they had a choice and they chose a woman.Even more groundbreaking, Degel HaTorah leaders celebrated and even bragged about Ms. Rotems victory in public. One of the partys elected lawmakers, Moshe Gafni, placed a fawning congratulatory call to her Now you can do everything you think should be done, he said. We are with you and then posted a videotape of the call online. And when the new mayor-elect showed up at one of the sects synagogues late that night, hundreds of young yeshiva students sang and danced around her as if she were a renowned Torah scholar.They welcomed her as a rabbi it was unbelievable, Mr. Malach said.Yet as big a step as this was, activist ultra-Orthodox women reacted bitterly to the celebrations and congratulations for Ms. Rotem, saying it showed how far they still had to go. The Haredi establishment supports secular women becoming mayors, but what about Haredi women and their daughters? Let them stay at home and stick to their measly jobs, Michal Chernovisky, a leader in an effort to help ultra-Orthodox women enter politics, wrote in Hebrew on Facebook.The ultra-Orthodox sects have typically wielded political power by voting as a bloc and by uniting across internal rifts Hasidic and non-Hasidic, Ashkenazi and Sephardic to deliver the biggest possible numbers for their candidates and their allies. But with the Haredi population already more than one million, or about 12 percent of the country, and still growing fast, the sects are starting to strike out on their own, Mr. Malach said.In the Jerusalem mayors race this year, for example, Yossi Daitch, a Hasidic candidate, ran with the backing of the Hasidic party Agudat Yisrael, or Union of Israel. But the two other major ultra-Orthodox factions, Degel HaTorah and Shas, the Sephardic party, endorsed Moshe Leon, a non-Haredi businessman. Mr. Daitch stayed in the race even when it became clear he was unlikely to win a sign of bad blood between the Haredi parties that, if unresolved, could mean trouble for Mr. Leon in his runoff with Ofer Berkovitch, a nonreligious deputy mayor.But it was the mayoral upset in Beit Shemesh, in the Judean foothills west of Jerusalem, that had veteran political analysts reaching in vain for historical comparisons and calling it almost biblical.If Ms. Bloch was facing a well-entrenched incumbent in Moshe Abutbul, he was highly unpopular, seen as having neglected the needs of many of his constituents and done little more than watch as many of the non-Orthodox fled seeking a better quality of life elsewhere.And ultra-Orthodox voters realized they were being ill served, too, said Daniel Goldman, a supporter of Ms. Blochs and chairman of Gesher, a group that promotes coexistence among nonpracticing Jews, the ultra-Orthodox and everyone in between. The new places in town are all Haredi, and the public infrastructure there is shocking, he said, with school children studying in trailers, inadequate bus service and too few ritual baths and synagogues.Ms. Bloch promised to bring fairness to the delivery of city services, reverse the exodus of young people and attract new employers in technology and other desirable industries. Mindful that Beit Shemeshs population growth has also included worldlier English-speaking ultra-Orthodox, she also promised to hire English speakers in the schools and city offices to make their adjustments easier to life in Israel.But she also faced challenges unique to Israels ultra-Orthodox milieu. A self-described religious woman herself, if not Haredi, Ms. Bloch demonstrated great deference to Haredi sensibilities in her campaign, by keeping her own face off nearly all her campaign posters. I was really challenged in a male-dominated area, Ms. Bloch said in a phone interview as the votes were being counted. Im a religious woman who made herself aware to others through very hard work even harder because I did not post photos of myself in synagogues, or reading the Torah.Tal Schneider, the political reporter for Globes, an Israeli business newspaper, said she was bowled over by Ms. Blochs restraint in her advertising. Now she can change policy, but to get there she had to take out the most important component of democracy, which is the person, Ms. Schneider said. Its mind-blowing.It also worked. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox voters voting their own minds, rather than their rabbis dictates split their tickets, voting for Ms. Bloch for mayor and for Haredi candidates for the City Council. Many more, unwilling to defy rabbinical authority outright, simply did not vote.As the final votes were being tallied early Thursday, one more twist clinched the victory for Ms. Bloch.The violence in Beit Shemesh had not just affected women and girls: Ultra-Orthodox Jews have even beaten up religious soldiers who dared to be seen around town in uniform. But it was the soldiers of Beit Shemesh who put Ms. Bloch over the top. After trailing by about 250 votes with all precincts reporting, she pulled ahead thanks to overwhelming support from army bases and others whose ballots were counted last.She did what I think most of us thought was impossible, said Mr. Goldman, of Gesher. Im eating my hat with mustard today, and its the best meal Ive had all year. | World |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 6, 2018WASHINGTON Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has temporarily halted relieving the debt of some student borrowers who were defrauded by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, after a federal judge found her department misused earnings data to calculate loan forgiveness.In response to a court order last week, the Education Department said that it would grant a temporary postponement of loan payments for Corinthian students in lieu of federal debt-relief claims. It also said it would stop collection payments for four students who sued the department over its new formula for determining how much debt they would have to repay.The halt came after Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of Federal District Court in San Francisco found that the department had violated the Privacy Act by sharing student borrower information, such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, with the Social Security Administration to obtain earnings data. The judge ordered the Education Department to end the practice and its collection of Corinthian student debts.In December, Ms. DeVos announced a new system to manage the thousands of students who filed so-called borrower-defense claims after several for-profit colleges began imploding in scandal in 2015, leaving students saddled with debt and tarnished degrees. The department began dividing borrowers according to a tiered system of debt relief, based on whether they had gone on to find gainful employment.Judge Kims ruling resulted from a class-action lawsuit filed by the Project on Predatory Student Lending of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School and the group Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, which challenged Ms. DeVoss partial-relief system shortly after it was announced. They argued that the new policy was arbitrary, capricious and illegal.While the plaintiffs cheered the judges order, they maintained that the department has already illegally granted only partial relief to thousands of students and has left thousands more in limbo. Another hearing is scheduled for next week to determine whether the department will be required to grant full relief to all students.The court has already ruled that the Department of Education must immediately stop using its illegal partial denial rule, said Eileen Connor, litigation director for the Project on Predatory Student Lending. Apparently the Department of Education will go to any lengths to side against defrauded students.In her ruling, the judge ordered the department to halt the use of its average earnings rule, which has been used to determine borrower-defense claims since December.But the order did not rule on the departments ability to issue partial relief, only that its methodology was illegal.The Education Department made clear in its response to the ruling that it still believes that using earnings data is the best method for determining how much relief students should receive from the federal government.Were encouraged that the court recognized the secretarys discretion to establish a borrower defense claims process that determines compensation based on harm incurred by the borrower, said Liz Hill, the Education Departments spokeswoman.The department told the judge that it would continue assessing the validity of borrower-defense claims as of April 1, there were 147,000 total claims filed, and 99,000 claims pending and explore ways of using earnings data to assess educational value in a manner that would not implicate the Privacy Act. Education Department officials proposed options such as using publicly available data, or requesting earnings information from borrowers themselves.Ms. DeVos has defended the new system as a reversal from an all or nothing approach to loan forgiveness, by relieving students of debt based on whether they received any educational benefit from their institutions. She said the new calculation would allow claims to be adjudicated quickly and protects taxpayers from being forced to shoulder massive costs that may be unjustified.Students whose earnings are less than 50 percent of graduates from a comparable education program would receive full relief. Those whose earnings are at 50 percent or more of their peers will receive proportionally tiered relief to compensate for the difference and make them whole.According to the judges order, the department identified 79 Corinthian programs and submitted information identifying the names of 61,717 former Corinthian students to obtain earnings data. More than 10,000 students have received partial relief, attorneys said.In the case of the four plaintiffs, the judge found that the students have shown irreparable harm because the economic harm they are suffering affects their ability to pay for lifes most basic necessities.Alina Farajian was promised that she could attend Everest College to become a medical assistant, even though she had a learning disability. She was told that the college would help her get a job, and the brochures boasted high placement rates. So she and her mother borrowed $15,000.The only job Ms. Farajian was able to get in her field was a one-month temporary position. She now drives a Lyft and nets $250 a month. The department forgave 30 percent of her loan.Jennifer Craig was sold on the job-placement rates at Everest College in California, where she borrowed $9,019 to study medical insurance and billing. Although she was able to graduate, she never received a diploma because the school closed. With no diploma and only one year of training, she was not able to find work in her field. The department forgave 20 percent of her loan. | Politics |
Canada LetterNov. 16, 2018Many years ago a friend defined the perfect Canadian political scandal as someone having lunch at the governments expense and enjoying it. His joke came back to me again and again while I was reporting on the protracted saga that is 24 Sussex Drive, the rundown official residence of Canadas prime minister.[Read: Justin Trudeaus Official Home: Unfit for a Leader or Anyone Else]ImageCredit...Ian Austen/The New York TimesA new American president can mean, among many other things, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on new china for the White House. But Canadian prime ministers often seem vaguely embarrassed about hanging their hats at 24 Sussex, the countrys official residence since 1951. And the willingness of politicians to spend money on 24 Sussex, even for things as prosaic as making sure the wiring wont burn it down, is almost nonexistent.Sure, there are significant differences between the two countries. Unlike the American president, Canadas prime minister is not the nations head of state. Canada doesnt have a nonprofit group to pick up the tab for things like state dinnerware. And, of course, Ottawa is crowded with official homes, including Rideau Hall, an estate of 26 buildings including one now housing Mr. Trudeau and his family. Not far away is Stornoway, a residence for the leader of the opposition.But, above all, theres a parsimony among Canadians when it comes to politicians spending money on themselves thats almost alien to Americans.[Want the Canada Letter in your inbox every week? Subscribe here.]As a result, years of deferred maintenance have left 24 Sussex basically an uninhabitable dump, as I wrote in my article. Certainly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didnt move his family in after coming to office. But proposing to spend tens of millions of dollars to deal with the problem is so radioactive that no one, including Mr. Trudeau, has been willing to touch it.We might be an incredibly diverse society, but when it comes to our political culture, were 100 percent Presbyterian, Peter Donolo, the director of communications for Jean Chrtien when he was prime minister, told me. I think theres something healthy in a political culture thats egalitarian and that looks down on ostentation.ImageCredit...Ian Austen for The New York TimesThere are two broad lines of thinking on what to do with Canadas top fixer-upper. While Mr. Donolo and others want to renovate and restore the house, which lost most of its Victorian charm in a 1950s renovation, others suggest knocking it down and starting over.Scott Weir, an architect and writer in Toronto, suggested a great Canadian compromise: Keep the interesting parts of the current house, like its stonework, and add elements that reflect 21st century Canada. The government, he said, should set a budget and ask architects across Canada to submit proposals.ImageCredit...Ian Austen/The New York TimesWhat do you think? Should the government tear down 24 Sussex and start over, or should it renovate? What about the hybrid proposal? And what do you think it says about Canada and its politics that the official home of the prime minister has become uninhabitable? Send your thoughts to [email protected]. Please include your full name. We may highlight some of your replies in an coming newsletter.Behind the Book ReviewA reminder that Sam Tanenhaus, the former editor of The New York Times Book Review, will moderate a panel on book reviewing on Friday, Nov. 30, in Toronto. All the details are here. Newsletter readers who use the code CANADALETTER will get $5 off the ticket price.Hidden TreasureImageCredit...mile Barrire/Photo Press ServiceBy our best estimate, The Times has roughly six million photos dating back to the 19th century in an archive known internally as the morgue. Now, for the first time, all of those millions of photos are being electronically scanned.One immediate result of this massive digitization effort is a new feature called Past Tense, an archival storytelling project from The Times. Its debut was a series of photos of the World War I armistice, 100 years ago. The size of the celebratory crowds in some of the photos is staggering.ImageCredit...Press Illustrating ServiceThat photo essay was swiftly followed by a multimedia presentation on our history of photographing California.[Read: California: State of Change]If you can, do the photos justice by viewing them on a computer or a tablet, rather than a phone screen.Taking a HitThis week, the National Hockey League announced a proposed settlement of a lawsuit filed by 318 former players who contend that it withheld what it knew about hockey-related brain injuries, actively encouraged fighting, and didnt help players after they hung up their skates. Jeff Arnold met with Daniel Carcillo, who has become the public face of the lawsuit, and learned that he planned to vote against the deal.Im going to fight until the end. Its not acceptable. Not in the slightest, said Mr. Carcillo, who suffered seven concussions during his career.[Read: For Daniel Carcillo, the Fight Against the N.H.L. Goes On]Ken Belson, my colleague in Sports who covers football, took a look at the settlement agreement and found that it falls short of a similar deal struck by the N.F.L. in 2013.[Read: In N.H.L. Concussion Settlement, Owners Win the Fight]Trans CanadaCatherine Porter, our Toronto bureau chief, asked parents how they are handling the era of legal marijuana.Make sure you read Dan Levins head-spinning and highly amusing tale of Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo, sisters from Toronto who are sometimes called the Canadian Kardashians for their devotion to spandex bodysuits, private jet travel, Christian Louboutin and social media.Working from a cluttered office in Ottawa, a former cybersecurity expert for the Canadian government is now something of a guru for the elites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Some of his advice may surprise you.Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor who died last weekend, never saw the film that included his most famous role.Voters in Calgary turned down making another Winter Olympics bid this week. Just before they voted, Michael Powell, the Sports of The Times columnist, was among the voices encouraging Calgary to take a pass after he visited the city. So many optimistic cities and nations have walked this path only to tumble down the Olympic stairs of inflated hopes, spiraling costs and corruptions bruises, he wrote.Chris Santella followed steelhead trout anglers to the tributaries of British Columbias Skeena River and declared that for any serious steelheader, the rivers of the Skeena drainage are Valhalla. | World |
A late-stage trial was halted after strong early results, according to the company, but the data have not yet been published or peer-reviewed.Credit...Shannon Stapleton/ReutersApril 11, 2022An experimental drug halved the death rate among critically ill Covid patients who were receiving supplemental oxygen and were at high risk for serious lung disease and death, the drugs developer announced on Monday.There is a pressing need for new treatments for critically ill patients. Drugs like Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, are aimed primarily at patients who have mild or moderate disease. Other treatments administered to hospitalized patients in serious condition have shown limited effectiveness.The new drug, sabizabulin, reduced deaths among hospitalized Covid-19 patients so drastically in a clinical trial that independent safety monitors recommended stopping it early, officials at Veru Inc., the drugs maker, said. The trial was halted on Friday.The results of that trial have not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. Veru announced the findings at an early-morning news conference. The companys stock soared in trading Monday following the announcement.About half of the 52 trial participants given a placebo or dummy pill along with regular care died within 60 days, an indicator of how very sick they were. But the death rate was 20 percent among the 98 participants who received sabizabulin, who were just as ill. The drug was given once a day for up to 21 days.Sabizabulin is the first drug to demonstrate a clinically and statistically meaningful reduction in deaths in hospitalized patients, Dr. Mitchell Steiner, chief executive of Veru, said. This represents a big step forward.Most Covid restrictions have been lifted in the United States after declining case numbers, but cases, hospitalizations and deaths around the world continue to be high, Dr. Steiner added. New variants are bound to emerge, and surges will follow.Close to a million Americans have died of Covid, and there are still 570 fatalities every day on average.The drug was granted so-called fast-track status by the Food and Drug Administration in January, Dr. Steiner said. The designation is intended to prompt faster development and review of new treatments that address unmet medical needs and target serious or life-threatening conditions.Dr. Steiner said the company plans to meet with the agency later this month and will be applying for emergency-use authorization for sabizabulin. An F.D.A. spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency did not confirm, deny or comment on pending applications.No safety concerns related to the drug were identified in the course of the clinical trial, company officials said.Despite it being two and a half years into the battle, we are still working hard to get highly effective drugs into the mix to treat this specific population of patients, and this is a fairly dramatic improvement in 60-day mortality, said Dr. Michael Gordon, one of the trial investigators and chief medical officer at HonorHealth Research and Innovation Institute in Scottsdale, Ariz.But Dr. Gordon leavened his optimism with caution, saying he was eager to see more detailed analyses. Additional data were still being analyzed on Monday, including the proportion of treated patients without respiratory failure, the number of days they spent in intensive care, the length of their hospital stay and how long they were on mechanical ventilation.No drug works for everybody, Dr. Gordon said. The benefit that was seen is mortality who is living and who is dying not who is getting off oxygen, though I anticipate we will see improvement in other parameters, too.Patients on both arms of the multicenter trial received all standard care and treatment. The participants were in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria, and they had been infected with both the Delta and Omicron variants. The drug is effective regardless of the variant type, Dr. Gordon and company officials said.Sabizabulin was given in a 9-milligram dose in a capsule that was taken once a day. It doesnt require refrigeration, and the capsule can be given by mouth or opened up so that the contents can be added to a feeding tube.The drug is intended only for hospitalized patients at this point, so making it accessible to patients in the United States will be simpler than making it available to outpatients, which requires distributing it to pharmacies and educating general doctors about its use.Sabizabulin works by disrupting the transport of the coronavirus through microtubules in cells. It disrupts these highways and breaks them down, so the virus cant get from Point A to Point B, Dr. Steiner said.The disruption also interferes with the movement of the bodys own cytokines, which works to tamp down inflammation, he added. | Health |
Sports Briefing | GolfJan. 31, 2014Rory McIlroy hit a wedge within 5 feet of the pin to set up a birdie on the 18th hole on Friday to retain the lead halfway through the Dubai Desert Classic. McIlroy, at 11 under par, was one shot ahead of the American Brooks Koepka, who birdied his opening three holes.Tiger Woods carded a one-over 73, dropping into a tie for 44th place, eight shots back. Bubba Watson and Matt Jones shared the lead at 12 under after the second round of the Phoenix Open.Phil Mickelson, the defending champion, shot a four-under 67 that left him eight strokes behind. | Sports |
Credit...David Rae Morris for The New York TimesMarch 30, 2016The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it would allow the use of an experimental test to screen blood donations for contamination with the Zika virus.The move means that Puerto Rico, which had halted local blood donations and had imported nearly 6,000 units of red blood from the continental United States, will soon be able to resume collecting donations from residents. And it should help blood banks elsewhere in the country avoid similar ordeals.The bottom line is we are going to work with blood centers in Puerto Rico to try to help as many as possible make use of the investigational test, said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.He estimated that the test, manufactured by Roche Molecular Systems, would be ready within the next week or so.Experts noted that it took almost a year to develop a test to screen blood donations for West Nile virus, and some applauded the rapid progress described Wednesday.It is amazingly fast, said Dr. Darrell J. Triulzi, the director of the division of transfusion medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. This is a testament to the speed at which industry was able to respond to a need. He added that the F.D.A. deserved praise for fast-tracking the test.The new screening test should forestall a situation that had greatly concerned some scientists and doctors.Officials have been rushing to protect the nations blood supply from the Zika virus, which has been linked to temporary paralysis in adults and brain damage in infants born to infected mothers. The pathogen can also be sexually transmitted.Primarily carried by the yellow-fever mosquito, the virus is creeping northward from South America, the Caribbean and other regions in which it is circulating. Local infections are expected along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere by summer.Without a way to screen potential donors, blood banks in areas experiencing outbreaks would have been forced to shut down local collections of whole blood and red blood cells. Many had already begun planning to import as much as they could from states farther north that were free of the Zika virus.It is logistically difficult, but it can be done, said Dr. Jeffrey McCullough, professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. But unexpected surges in demand in these areas would have been tough to accommodate.Blood Systems, which has banks in 24 states, had hoped to import blood from Rocky Mountain states, or those in the Northern Plains, if donations had to be suspended in Texas or Louisiana because of local Zika transmission, said Dr. Ralph R. Vassallo, chief medical and scientific officer.OneBlood, which collects more than one million blood products annually, including in Florida, had planned to shift collections from affected areas to ones that were not to maintain the safety of the blood supply with no interruption of their services, said Dr. Rita Reik, the chief medical officer.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks the yellow-fever mosquito, works with the F.D.A. to determine which areas have active transmission of the Zika virus.If public health officials can pinpoint where local transmission is occurring and its in a tiny area, were likely to temporarily suspend collections there, Dr. Vassallo said. If a larger area is affected, well be able to continue collections by using this test.The new blood test makes it much less likely that officials will have to declare blood donation moratoriums in states like Florida, Texas and Louisiana this summer, as they were forced to do in Puerto Rico.Every day, roughly 36,000 units of red blood cells are required for patients with cancer, transplant recipients and accident victims nationwide, according to AABB, the group that represents most blood donation groups stateside.Annually, more than 9.5 million people give blood, which is screened for H.I.V., hepatitis B and C viruses and West Nile virus. Contaminated blood is taken out of circulation.Zika had posed a special challenge to blood banks: Roughly 80 percent of people who are infected do not have symptoms.Take Ebola; youre so sick theres no way youre donating blood, said Dr. Simone Glynn, the chief of the branch of blood epidemiology and clinical therapeutics at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.Without a screening test for the Zika virus, you dont know whether blood transfusions with infection might be occurring, she said.A handful of cases of Zika infection via blood transfusion have been reported in Brazil. During the 2013 French Polynesian outbreak, researchers found roughly 3 percent of asymptomatic blood donors actually tested positive for Zika infection, which they deemed unexpectedly high.It is not yet known how commonly recipients of Zika-contaminated blood end up infected, or how they fare. But, Dr. Glynn said, if theres an association with microcephaly or a neurological syndrome, we dont want to take the chance.Zika infection is usually mild, but it can be life-threatening and even fatal for patients with underlying conditions. Doctors in Colombia recently reported that a teenager died from complications of her sickle cell disease after getting Zika infection and transfusions.Blood banks wishing to use the new test must contact Roche and ask to be included in a continuing research study, Dr. Marks of the F.D.A. said.Weve got the equipment and weve got the kits, and were fully committed to working with any blood screening center who wants to test for Zika, said Paul Brown, the head of molecular solutions at Roche Diagnostics. | Health |
Credit...BBCMarch 13, 2017Professor Robert E. Kelly, a political-science professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, sat down on Friday in what appeared to be his home office for a BBC World interview via Skype on a serious subject: the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.Then his children burst in.Soon after the segment began, video footage shows, a toddler casually strolled into his office, punching the air with her elbows. She was soon followed by a baby in a walker. Then his wife slid frantically into the room, grabbed the two kids and herded them out as Professor Kelly remained mostly composed.Many readers said they could relate to the slapstick interruption of Professor Kellys serious moment, sharing stories of disruptions not only from kids, but pets and naked spouses, too.Here is a selection of tales received on the website and Facebook page of The New York Times. Comments have been edited for length and clarity.My Child Woke UpI was on a long conference call with a colleague and some clients, calling in from home as I had a sick child sleeping in the next room. As a subject matter expert, I only had about five minutes of the call in which I actually had to speak, and everything seemed to be going along fine, until my child suddenly woke up, came looking for me to tell me that he felt sick and proceeded to vomit all over the stairs. Which coincided with my colleague asking me to provide the crucial information the client needed from my area of expertise.I took the phone off of mute and calmly said, Im sorry, my child has just thrown up on the stairs; can I have five minutes? Client was very gracious, got my kid cleaned up and tucked back in bed then chimed back in acting every bit the total professional. DMC, SeattleShoved the Pacifier in His MouthAs a playwright with a new production coming up, I was doing a telephone interview on live radio on the home phone. I thought my baby Sam was asleep in his crib when his deafening cries started. As the interviewer began his next question, I dropped the phone receiver, ran into Sams room, shoved the pacifier in his mouth, ran back to the phone and started answering a question I hadnt heard, trying to use impressive sounding abstract theater jargon that might be applicable. I loved this video, and it made me and thousands of other worker parents feel less alone! JoannaI Looked Up to See My 1-Year-Old Rolling Down the StairsOnce upon a time I was presenting our monthly numbers to the sales team when I heard a loud bang over and over. I looked up to see my 1-year-old rolling down the stairs with my wife chasing after her. She picked her up and raced back up the stairs. I continued with my presentation and never heard a cry. She logrolled and didnt hurt herself at all, thankfully! Joe Grammatico, via FacebookThe Candidate Had Locked His Children OutI am glad professor Kelly was not applying for a job. I was once a member of a panel hiring a school director. We were interviewing a candidate via Skype, and in the middle of it we could all hear a door being pounded. It turned out the candidate had locked his children out of his apartment in an attempt to have a quiet environment for his interview: The kids just couldnt take it, and started banging the door. It was not a determinant factor in the hiring, but it did cause an impression, and I am afraid it was not positive. RoseMarieDC, Washington, D.C.Daddy, Whatcha Doing?This happens to me sometimes when I have to take a call and Im working from home. My office door opens and I hear, Daddy, whatcha doing? Any shushing just prompts him to ask louder. I either put the phone on mute or ask if I can call the person later. Worse is when my two kids get into a screaming match. Dhananjay Deshpande, via FacebookThe Interviewers Husband Walked Into the Frame Completely NudeI once had a Skype interview and, in the middle of the interview, the interviewers husband walked into the frame completely nude. I tried my best to keep a straight face while he figured out that I could see him. Im not certain she knew I had just seen her husband, but we both pretended nothing happened and faked our way through the rest of the interview.Needless to say, I did not get that job. Tom, ChicagoI HAVE LICEMy mom likes to tell a story of taking me to work with her when I was little. I couldnt go to school, but she had a deadline that couldnt wait. She set me up in a conference room and told me to read and color quietly until she was done. Angry at being shut up all by myself, I made a sign saying, I HAVE LICE and taped it to the window of the conference room for all her co-workers to see. Kids are unpredictable. Emily, Minneapolis He Began Rolling His Toy Trucks Over My ToesWhen I was doing an important telephone interview at home for my newspaper, my youngest son decided I wasnt paying enough attention to him, and after trying to get my attention and failing to do so, he began rolling his toy trucks over my toes. I can fully relate to this situation. I think its hilarious. Its what comes with having kids. Anne Amato, via FacebookMommy, Come Wipe Me!Oh, this brings back memories. My favorite was when I was on a call with the executive team of the Fortune 500 health insurance company I worked for discussing health care reform when one of my children yelled from the bathroom, very loudly, Mommy, come wipe me! Ann Kuhns, SacramentoMy Toddler Decided to Take His Clothes OffI dont work from home unless Im on call. I once took a phone call and stepped outside to get some quiet. My toddler decided to take his clothes off and run around the front yard and then start down the street. So I chased a naked child for a few minutes before negotiating with him to put clothes on. I did a pretty good job of keeping the phone muted when I didnt need to talk. Except for one time when I said: O.K. fine, you can stay out here with me, but you have to put clothes on. At least shorts. Gretal Kinney, via FacebookThe Cats Show No RespectI am on the phone all morning while working from home. My talking puts my two dogs fast asleep, and other than the occasional snoring, they are quiet. The cats, however, show no respect. There is a piano just outside my work area, and during a call when I was training a group, the cat decided to jump up on the keyboard and slowly walk on the keys, playing his own tune. Luckily, everyone on the call enjoyed the show and we continued on after completion of the interlude. Rigaudon, Connecticut | World |
DealBook|Theranoss Wounded Credibility Hurts Other Start-Upshttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/dealbook/theranoss-wounded-credibility-hurts-other-start-ups.htmlBreakingviewsDec. 21, 2015Credit...Mike Blake/ReutersTheranos, a privately held blood-analysis company that is valued by investors at $9 billion, faces new charges of finagling with its herpes test, a product essential to its success, according to The Wall Street Journal.Unless the company wins vindication from independent experts, the damage may be too serious to fix. That harms similar start-ups, whose survival depends on investor trust.The Food and Drug Administration is investigating claims by former employees that Theranos continued administering tests despite accusations of inaccuracy. One contention is that the company modified its equipment while its herpes study was already underway. That would be a fundamental violation of research practices. The company denies it did anything wrong, and says it provided complete and accurate information to regulators.This is not just any kerfuffle. A big part of Theranoss valuation is based on its proprietary technology for detecting medical conditions cheaply and effectively, using minuscule blood samples. The company aims to introduce more than 100 tests with the F.D.A.s blessing. The problem is that Theranos has not subjected its technology and methods to experts strict review.With the news of the investigation, the companys precarious situation could reflect badly on all so-called unicorns, the name for private start-ups ostensibly valued at $1 billion or more.There are more than 140 unicorns, according to CB Insights. Publicly traded companies must disclose reams of information, including audited financial statements, but private firms do not face anywhere near as much scrutiny. In fact, thats one reason many large enterprises choose to remain private.The lack of disclosure means that investors must in many ways take what start-ups tell them on faith. That will be harder to do in the wake of Theranoss self-inflicted wounds, a development that could hobble all single-horned creatures. | Business |
Nicole Eggert Taped 'Dr. Oz' Over Scott Baio Sexual Allegations Show Was Shelved 1/29/2018 Nicole Eggert will make an appearance on Megyn Kelly's show Tuesday to discuss her allegations that Scott Baio repeatedly molested her during the run of "Charles in Charge" when she was underage, but it was not the first time she taped a show talking about the allegations. We've learned Nicole, her manager David Weintraub and her lawyer Lisa Bloom, went to New York City to tape "The Dr. Oz Show" January 10. After the taping, Baio's reps sent a threatening letter to the folks at 'Dr. Oz' saying he denied the allegations and argued Nicole's timeline did not make sense. She alleges Baio molested her from ages 14 to 17. He says they had a consensual sexual relationship, but only when she was 18. Our sources say Dr. Oz decided not to run the show. David Weintraub and Lisa Boom tell TMZ producers told them there were "discrepancies on the show between Nicole's timeline and Scott's." We contacted the show, and they would only say they are "investigating." | Entertainment |
The Trojan asteroid 2020 XL5, which follows the same path around the sun as our planet, was revealed only after a decade of searching.Credit...NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/SpaceengineFeb. 2, 2022Astronomers have discovered a captive asteroid shadowing Earth in its orbit.The asteroid, known as 2020 XL5, is only the second of its type ever seen, shepherded by Earths gravity into an orbit that is locked in synchrony with our planets. It has not shared our orbit for long a few centuries, probably. And it will not be there in the far future. Simulations indicate that 2020 XL5 will slip out of Earths grasp within 4,000 years and head into the wider solar system.But its presence offers a tantalizing glimpse of what else might be out there in the local gravitational whirlpools. Some bits might date back to the beginning of the solar system shades of the building blocks that coalesced into our planet.These objects are not as exotic as we think, said Toni Santana-Ros, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author of a paper describing the discovery, which was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. (A separate team of astronomers came to a similar conclusion in December.)When two objects orbit each other, there are five points, known as Lagrange points, where the gravity of the two essentially balance, and a much smaller mass can sit there in equilibrium. Two of the five Lagrange points, known as L4 and L5, are stable: If a small body there is nudged slightly, it remains at that point. At the three unstable Lagrange points L1 through L3 a nudge will push the small body away for good.(The unstable Lagrange points can still be very useful. The newly launched James Webb Space Telescope is about 900,000 miles away at the second Lagrange point, or L2, of the sun-Earth system. The instrument relies on thrusters to keep it from drifting away.)Back in 1906, Max Wolf, a German astronomer who developed a photographic technique to discover asteroids, found an asteroid in the same orbit as Jupiter, always ahead of the planet by 60 degrees, or one-sixth of an orbit. Later observers found other asteroids in about the same place as well as asteroids that lagged Jupiter by the same margin.These fit a prediction made more than a century earlier by mathematician Jose-Louis Lagrange. Astronomers started naming these objects after heroes of the Trojan War, and the bodies became known as the Trojan asteroids.Many of Jupiters more than 11,000 Trojans do appear to be primordial remnants from the formation of the solar system. In October, NASA launched a probe named Lucy, after the fossilized skeleton of an early hominid ancestor, to visit several of them.Similar asteroids appear to be trapped in the orbits of Venus, Mars, Uranus and Neptune. None have been found sharing Saturns orbit the disruptive gravity of Jupiter is thought to be at fault or Mercurys, where any tiny Trojans would be all but impossible to find in the glare of the sun.Earth also appeared to lack Trojan asteroids until astronomers found one in 2010 at the L4 Lagrange point, 60 degrees ahead of Earth. Subsequent searches came up empty until Pan-Starrs, an automated sky survey in Hawaii, turned up an intriguing object, 2020 XL5, that seemed like it might also be trapped around L4.But the initial observations were insufficient to definitively pin down the objects orbit. In 2021, an international team of astronomers including Dr. Santana-Ros made additional sightings of 2020 XL5 using three ground-based telescopes. The team was then able to search through images dating back to 2012 where the asteroid indeed appeared, although no one had recognized it as one.A decade of data was finally enough to firmly chart 2020 XL5s elliptical orbit. We were 100 percent sure this was an Earth Trojan, Dr. Santana-Ros said.Although 2020 XL5 is trapped in an orbit around a stable Lagrange point, it is not particularly close to L4. Its elliptical orbit, tilted nearly 14 degrees to the orbit of the planets, sweeps it closer to the sun than Venus and almost as far out as Mars.This makes it vulnerable to gravitational buffeting from other planets, especially Venus.The researchers ran computer simulations of the orbit of 2020 XL5, tweaking it 800 times. Sometimes the asteroid escaped from the Lagrange point within 3,500 years; sometimes it loitered 5,000 years or more. But the orbit appears unlikely to remain stable for much longer than thatFrom appearances, 2020 XL5 is a dark, carbon-rich body, perhaps an interloper from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The researchers estimate its diameter at about three-quarters of a mile, much larger than the Earth Trojan discovered in 2010, which was estimated to be about a quarter-mile in diameter and is also located at the L4 Lagrange point.Whereas the two known Earth Trojans appear to be transitory additions to our orbital neighborhood, other bodies that hover closer to the stable Lagrange points could remain in place indefinitely, raising the possibility that some of the primordial building blocks of Earth might still be found there.All the formation models gives you the idea that planets should have these families going around their L4 and L5 points from the beginning, said Federica Spoto, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who was not involved with the research.She added, If we were able to find something like that, we might be able to understand what happened at the beginning, basically. | science |
Researchers analyzed the largest database of private insurance claims in the United States in the first four months after a diagnostic code for long Covid was created.Credit...Alex Wroblewski for The New York TimesMay 18, 2022More than three-quarters of Americans diagnosed with long Covid were not sick enough to be hospitalized for their initial infection, a new analysis of tens of thousands of private insurance claims reported on Wednesday.The researchers analyzed data from the first few months after doctors began using a special diagnostic code for the condition that was created last year. The results paint a sobering picture of long Covids serious and ongoing impact on peoples health and the American health care system.Long Covid, a complex constellation of lingering or new post-infection symptoms that can last for months or longer, has become one of the most daunting legacies of the pandemic. Estimates of how many people may ultimately be affected have ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent of infected adults; a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that between 7.7 million and 23 million people in the United States could have developed long Covid. But much remains unclear about the prevalence, causes, treatment and consequences of the condition. The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that, while patients who have been hospitalized are at greater risk for long Covid, people with mild or moderate initial coronavirus infections who make up the vast majority of coronavirus patients can still experience debilitating post-Covid symptoms including breathing problems, extreme fatigue and cognitive and memory issues. Its generating a pandemic of people who were not hospitalized, but who ended up with this increased disability, said Dr. Paddy Ssentongo, an assistant professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Penn State, who was not involved in the new study.The analysis, based on what the report calls the largest database of private health insurance claims in the United States, found 78,252 patients who were diagnosed with the new code from the International Classification of Diseases diagnostic code U09.9 for Post COVID-19 condition, unspecified between Oct. 1, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2022. Dr. Claire Steves, a clinical academic and physician at Kings College London, who was not involved in the new research, said the overall number of people who received the diagnosis was huge, given that the study covered only the first four months after the diagnostic code was introduced and did not include people covered by government health programs like Medicaid or Medicare (though it did include people in private Medicare Advantage plans). Thats probably a drop in the ocean compared to what the real number is, Dr. Steves said.The study, conducted by FAIR Health, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health care costs and insurance issues, found that 76 percent of the long Covid patients did not require hospitalization for their initial coronavirus infection. Another striking finding was that while two-thirds of the patients had pre-existing health conditions in their medical records, nearly a third did not, a much larger percentage than Dr. Ssentongo said he would have expected. These are people who have been healthy and theyre like, Guys, something is not right with me, he said.The researchers plan to continue to track the patients to see how long their symptoms last, but Robin Gelburd, the president of FAIR Health, said that the organization decided to publish data from the first four months now, given the urgency of the issue.She said researchers were working to try to answer some of the questions that are not addressed in the report, including providing detail on some patients previous health conditions to try to identify whether certain medical problems put people at higher risk of long Covid.The organization also plans to analyze how many patients in the study were vaccinated and when, Ms. Gelburd said. More than three-quarters of the patients in the study were infected in 2021, most of those in the last half of the year. On average, patients were still experiencing long Covid symptoms that qualified for the diagnosis four and a half months after their infection.The findings suggest a potentially staggering impact of long Covid on people in the prime of their lives, and on society at large. Nearly 35 percent of the patients were between the ages of 36 to 50, while nearly one-third were ages 51 to 64, and 17 percent were ages 23 to 35. Children were also diagnosed with post-Covid conditions: Nearly 4 percent of the patients were 12 or younger, while nearly 7 percent were between ages 13 and 22.Six percent of the patients were 65 and older, a proportion that most likely reflects the fact that patients covered by the regular Medicare program werent included in the study. They were much more likely than the younger groups with long Covid to have had pre-existing chronic medical conditions.The insurance data analyzed did not include information about the race or ethnicity of patients, researchers said.The analysis, which Ms. Gelburd said was evaluated by an independent academic reviewer but not formally peer-reviewed, also calculated a risk score for the patients, a way of estimating how likely people are to use health care resources. Comparing all the insurance claims the patients had up until 90 days before they contracted Covid with their claims 30 days or more after they were infected, the study found that average risk scores went up for patients in every age group.Ms. Gelburd and other experts said the scores suggested that the repercussions of long Covid are not simply confined to increased medical spending. They signal how many people are leaving their jobs, how many are being given disability status, how much absenteeism is there in school, Ms. Gelburd said. Its like a pebble thrown into the lake, and these ripples circling that pebble are concentric circles of impact.Because the study captured only a privately insured population, Dr. Ssentongo said, it almost certainly understates the scope and burden of long Covid, especially since low-income communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus and often have less access to health care. I think it may even be worse if we added in the Medicaid population and all these other people that would have been missed in the studys data, he said.Sixty percent of the patients with the post-Covid diagnosis were female, the study reported, compared with 54 percent of Covid patients overall in the FAIR Health database. In the oldest and youngest age groups, however, there were roughly as many males as females.I think there is a female preponderance in terms of this condition, Dr. Steves said, adding that the reasons could include differences in biological factors that make women more prone to autoimmune conditions.The insurance claims showed that nearly one-quarter of the post-Covid patients had respiratory symptoms, nearly one-fifth had coughs and 17 percent had been diagnosed with malaise and fatigue, a far-reaching category that could include issues like brain fog and exhaustion that gets worse after physical or mental activity. Other common issues included abnormal heartbeats and sleep disorders.Generalized anxiety disorder was more common for 23- to 35-year-olds than for other age groups, the study reported, while hypertension was more common in the oldest patients.Last year, FAIR Health published a study tracking insurance records of nearly two million people who had contracted Covid, which found that one month or more after their infection, almost one-quarter of them 23 percent sought medical treatment for new conditions.The new study tried to determine how common certain symptoms were before the patients got infected compared with the period when those same patients were diagnosed with post-Covid conditions. It found that some typically uncommon health issues were much more likely to emerge during long Covid. For example, muscle problems occurred 11 times more often in the patients with long Covid, pulmonary embolisms occurred 2.6 times more often and certain types of brain-related disorders occurred two times more often, the study said.Like previous studies, the report found that if patients did need hospitalization for their initial infection, they were at higher risk of long-term symptoms than patients who were not hospitalized. The report came to that conclusion because about 24 percent of the patients diagnosed with a post-Covid condition had been hospitalized more of them male than female while only about 8 percent of all coronavirus patients needed hospitalization.Still, because the vast majority of people do not need to be hospitalized for their infection, medical experts said that this and other studies indicate that many people with mild or moderate initial illness will end up with lingering symptoms or new post-Covid health problems.Ms. Gelburd and medical experts said that as doctors become more acquainted with the U09.9 code, they might use it in different circumstances than they did in the first four months. One recent analysis found that doctors use of the code has been inconsistent so far. Given the likely scale of long Covid, Dr. Ssentongo said he expects that in the future doctors will ask patients if they have ever been diagnosed with post-Covid conditions, just as doctors ask about other previous medical problems so they can treat patients appropriately.Post-Covid syndrome is going to become perhaps one of the most common pre-existing comorbidities going forward, he said. | Health |
Credit...Tim Shaffer/ReutersDec. 8, 2015Dow Chemical and DuPont, two of the biggest and oldest companies in the American chemical industry, are in talks to merge in what would be one of the largest transactions in a year full of huge deals, people briefed on the matter said on Tuesday.Under the terms being discussed, a merger of the two companies each with a market value of roughly $60 billion could eventually be followed by a breakup of the company, two of these people said.Combined, the two companies would be the second-biggest chemical company in the world, in terms of revenue, after BASF of Germany, with more than $92 billion in annual sales. The next step being discussed would be to break up the merged company into three businesses: agricultural chemicals, specialty products, and materials, like plastics.An announcement could come soon, these people added, while cautioning that talks were incomplete and could still collapse.Dow and DuPont the former founded in 1897 as a bleach producer in Michigan, the latter born in 1802 in Delaware as a gunpowder manufacturer are among the best-known names in the chemicals business. Dow has produced a slew of plastics and agricultural chemicals, while DuPont claims innovations such as Kevlar and Teflon.Yet each company has come under attack from activist investors unhappy with its financial performance. Last year, Dow settled a brief but bitter dispute with Daniel S. Loeb, the billionaire who runs the hedge fund Third Point, by adding four independent directors.And this May, DuPont formally E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company successfully fended off a board challenge by Nelson Peltz, dealing the billionaire financier his first loss since he opened his current firm, Trian Fund Management, a decade ago.In both cases, Mr. Loeb and Mr. Peltz have argued that the chemical makers they were targeting suffered from corporate bloat and missed financial earnings targets. The two companies argued that they were taking steps to trim excess costs and improve their operations, as well as buy back shares and increase stock dividends.While it made its name in chemicals, DuPont has made big strides on the agriculture side of its business, especially in its corn seed technology.Competition is fierce, especially from the likes of Monsanto. But DuPont has a number of patents that keep many of its products proprietary. In addition to agriculture, DuPonts portfolio includes electronics and communication, advanced materials, and safety and protection.Dow Chemicals portfolio is split into two groups: specialty and basic chemicals. The company has been focusing more on specialty chemicals, which carry higher prices, whereas basic chemicals are more commoditized. Dow is also more exposed to the volatility of the energy market.Since Dow settled with Mr. Loeb, its shares have stayed roughly flat.Yet victory for DuPont did not necessarily please shareholders. Shares of the company have fallen about 11 percent since the company won its battle with Mr. Peltz.In after-hours trading on Tuesday, shares of the two companies rose after The Wall Street Journal reported they were in talks.Representatives from Dow and DuPont declined to comment.Should the two sides agree on a deal, it would be yet another blockbuster merger in what has already proved to be one of the most fruitful years for deal makers. More than $4 trillion worth of deals have been since struck the beginning of this year, surpassing 2007 as the busiest year for acquisitions.Among the biggest deals announced this year are Pfizers $150 billion acquisition of the Botox maker Allergan, Anheuser-Busch InBevs $106 billion union with its fellow beer giant SABMiller, and Charter Communications $55 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable.In weighing a breakup of the combined Dow and DuPont, the two companies are following a path that both Pfizer and Anheuser-Busch InBev have embarked on. Pfizer is leaning toward splitting itself up into a faster-growing drug manufacturer and a slower-growing pharmaceuticals business, while Anheuser-Busch InBev has already agreed to sell off big swaths of its and SABMillers combined beer brands.Edward D. Breen, who recently became DuPonts chief executive, replacing Ellen Kullman, is no stranger to corporate breakups. As chief executive of Tyco, he oversaw its split into three separate companies, including the home alarm unit ADT, a valve-and-pipe unit, and a commercial fire and security business. | Business |
Credit...Mulugeta Ayene/Associated PressMarch 20, 2017ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia At the moment when she lost her home and family, Hanna Tsegaye was spending her Saturday night with a neighborhood friend.Around 8 p.m. on March 11, Ms. Hanna, 16, heard a strange sound, like rushing wind, and felt the ground shake beneath her feet. She rushed outside and saw that an enormous pile of garbage at a nearby landfill had collapsed.Her home, which had been a couple of hundred yards from the trash heap, was buried. So were her parents and two siblings.At least 113 people, according to the latest government estimate, were killed when part of the Repi landfill, in the southwest of Ethiopias capital, Addis Ababa, collapsed. In the days since, grieving survivors have been tormented by a pressing question: Could this tragedy have been prevented?We dont know how such a thing could happen, a weeping Ms. Hanna said. Hopefully, someone can tell us and find a solution for the future. I hope this can be a lesson for the government, and that they remember us.The disaster is at odds with the image Ethiopia wants to project as a rapidly developing country. Poverty rates have decreased by more than 30 percent since 2000, according to the World Bank, and government officials have claimed economic growth in the double digits over the last decade. Addis Ababa, home to the African Union, is a bustling city where new malls, hotels and apartment buildings are constantly being built.ImageCredit...Mulugeta Ayene/Associated PressBut that has caused large-scale displacement for the poor in the capital. The government has been constructing high-rise apartment blocks on the edges of the city to house people at subsidized rates, but critics say those efforts have been plagued by corruption. Many of the displaced have resorted to building makeshift shelters in dangerous and undesirable areas, including on and around the Repi landfill.The government must take responsibility for what happened and come up with a better plan for a sustainable solution for these people, said Girma Seifu, who was the only opposition member in Parliament until a 2015 election gave the governing coalition every seat.Ethiopia has been under a state of emergency since October, enacted after months of sometimes deadly protests by demonstrators demanding more political freedom.Repi is now a mass grave. More than a week after the collapse, a horrible smell of trash and decomposing bodies still wafts through the neighborhood, which is crowded with survivors, mourners and volunteers. Corpses are still being pulled from the refuse.The idea that they died buried in dirt, just like they lived in dirt, is heartbreaking, Mr. Girma said.A security worker at the site, who did not want to give his name for fear of retribution, said that he thought the death toll could exceed the governments estimate by hundreds of victims, and that many families were finding it difficult to identify the recovered bodies.ImageCredit...Mulugeta Ayene/Associated PressRepi, which covers more than 60 acres and whose vast heaps of waste are blanketed by a noxious haze, has been Addis Ababas main dumping ground for about half a century. The site is also known as Koshe, derived from the Amharic word koshasha, or dirty.Hundreds of people used to comb through the refuse every day, looking for scraps to use or sell, even though basic landfill infrastructure for drainage, containment and odor control was essentially nonexistent.The government had planned to shut down the site and open a new landfill outside the capital early last year. But that was in a town called Sendafa in the Oromia region, home to the countrys largest ethnic group, the Oromo, who have long complained of marginalization at the hands of the government.Oromo grievances erupted into widespread protests starting in late 2015, and security agents often responded with deadly force. After Oromo farmers blocked garbage trucks from dumping at the Sendafa site in July, Repi had to resume its role as Addis Ababas main dumping ground.Some work has been done there in recent years. A project to capture and flare methane fumes, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, has been operational since 2013.There is also a major project under construction, set to open this year, that aims to burn 1,400 tons of Repi garbage daily and generate 185 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually. Cambridge Industries, the development and construction company that is spearheading the project, estimates that it could power 25 percent of the capitals households.ImageCredit...Mulugeta Ayene/Associated PressSamuel Alemayehu, the East Africa managing director for the company, commended the government for investing in renewable power. But he said the deadly landslide was absolutely horrific and should not have happened at all.The government has not yet given a cause for the collapse, but is starting an investigation, said Negeri Lencho, a government spokesman.He added that officials had created a committee to provide victims with sustainable support because they have lost their homes, and the government is responsible for resettling these people.Community members have volunteered time, money and supplies in the aftermath of the disaster. Martha Tadesse, 26, a photographer, used to tutor students in the Repi area. Now, she is attending funerals and helping to organize donations of baby food, clothing and sanitary pads.I do see many people being involved, due to social media, she said, adding that people have been reaching out to offer help.But for those who lost their homes and families, this outpouring of support came too late. Repi has long been considered a blight on the citys outer limits, and the people who live in the area describe a lifetime of governmental neglect made worse by discrimination from their compatriots.Adane Kebede, a young man who lost friends in the collapse, said other Ethiopians had sometimes refused to speak with him because he grew up near the landfill.No one considered us worthy before the disaster, he said. But death does not discriminate. We are now visible. Hopefully the world will know our sorrow. | World |
Ken Bone Bone Zone Got Bombed Off Trump Drinking Game 1/31/2018 TMZ.com Ken Bone, the red sweater-wearing star of one of President Trump's 2016 debates, has an admittedly sloshed review of 45's first State of the Union address. Bone's giving Trump an 8 out of 10 for his speech because he wasn't contentious, and preached unity and bipartisanship ... even if many members of Congress weren't buying it. Now, to why Bone was bombed during the speech. He created a drinking game for SOTU viewers ... a pretty complicated one, actually. SOTU in five minutes! Play along but know your limits. I beg you not to drive or operate heavy machinery after more than a few seconds of this game.Periscope with drunk Ken after the speech. pic.twitter.com/ztdQDqmLl2 @kenbone18 The Bone Zone wasn't all shots and giggles during the SOTU ... he actually called out Trump on Twitter for his coal industry comment. Yes, he was drunk tweeting. Ken says he'd like a do-over on that ... the drinking game, not his tweet. | Entertainment |
DealBook|Under Fire, Debt Restructuring Amendment Is Pulledhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/under-fire-debt-restructuring-amendment-is-pulled.htmlCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesDec. 15, 2015The spending bill on Capitol Hill no longer includes an amendment that had hedge funds and other investors in Caesars Entertainment at loggerheads.The amendment would have made changes in an obscure Depression-era law meant to protect the interests of bondholders in a corporate reorganization. But it was seen as handing a victory to a limited group of investors in Caesars Entertainment and its owner, Apollo Global Management, at the expense of other hedge funds and other investors.The proposal prompted an outpouring of opposition from legal scholars, House Republicans and others, including six big asset managers that made a last-hour appeal in a letter to congressional leaders on Monday to drop the amendment.Opponents have fought to remove the amendment since it first appeared in highway legislation in November. After it was removed from the highway bill, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the Senate minority leader, revived it and put it into the omnibus spending bill.Bondholders in a number of restructuring deals, including the one involving Caesars, have been battling over the guarantees they had on their debt holdings, citing the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, which protects them from the actions of other bondholders that would limit their ability to collect principle or interest.Courts have backed the dissenting bondholders and the cases are being appealed. Some complained that the amendment was a way for powerful private equity funds to alter important aspects of the restructuring process without public debate.This effort is less about resisting a change in the law and more that it should be done in the sunlight, Oaktree Capital Managements co-chairman, Howard Marks, said in a phone interview on Tuesday before news broke that the amendment had been removed. Oaktree, which is a party in the Caesars restructuring effort, signed the letter in opposition to the amendment.The other asset managers signing the letter were BlackRock, DoubleLine Group, Pacific Investment Management Company, T. Rowe Price Associates and Western Asset Management.Millions of Americans rely upon the protections of the Trust Indenture Act, including our clients, the letter from the asset managers said. Their retirement and other assets are routinely invested in bonds and other public debt securities, including through pension funds and 401(k) accounts.Those on the other side of the debate say the recent court decisions create incentives for companies to seek more expensive bankruptcy court solutions rather than out-of-court settlements with creditors. They said the amendment was an attempt to clarify existing law, not rewrite the books.Advocates of the amendment said on Tuesday that its removal was disappointing but that they hoped the courts would return to the traditional interpretation of the law. | Business |
DealBook|Trading Sags 36% at Jefferies Grouphttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/trading-sags-36-at-jefferies-group.htmlDec. 15, 2015Jefferies Group said on Tuesday that its sales and trading revenue fell 36 in the fourth quarter, dealing a blow to its results.The investment bank, a unit of the Leucadia National Corporation, reports its quarterly results roughly a month before the big banks do, and for that reason it is seen as an sign of how trading has fared on Wall Street. The outlook has turned bleaker of late for trading broadly, with some investment banks hinting at disappointing results to come because of market volatility.Jefferies has been dogged by a difficult trading environment in recent quarters. The firm said that fixed-income trading revenue in the quarter ending in November fell 83 percent, while equities trading fell 22 percent.Over all, sales and trading revenue of $132 million was down 36 percent from the quarter a year ago.Our full-year results did not meet our expectations and we have made significant changes and are committed to improving our performance in 2016, Richard B. Handler, Jefferies chairman and chief executive, and Brian Friedman, the chairman of its executive committee, said in a joint statement on Tuesday.Mr. Handler acknowledged that fixed income, once a solid business for the firm, did not perform well in the quarter, blaming low interest rates and turbulent energy markets. Trading volume dried up and there were periods of extreme volatility, he said.For the quarter, Jefferies had a profit of $24.7 million compared with a loss of $100 million in the quarter a year ago.The firm had made a big bet on the oil and energy markets in recent years, and that has come back to bite it in the current environment. Earlier this year, it agreed to sell its Bache commodities and derivatives unit to Socit Gnrale of France.The sale of that business removes a significant drag on Jefferies profitability, the executives said.The company has also cut its exposure to distressed energy trading in recent quarters.Revenue from investment banking rose 18 percent, to $372 million. | Business |
Health|A New York City anime convention was not a superspreader event, a C.D.C. study finds.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/health/nyc-anime-convention-2021-superspreader-event.htmlCredit...Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesFeb. 17, 2022After the first person known to have become infected with the Omicron variant in the United States was revealed to have attended a 53,000-person anime convention in Manhattan, concerns quickly mounted that the event had sown the seeds of a major coronavirus outbreak.But a new study released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that a combination of good air filtration, widespread vaccination and indoor masking had in fact helped prevent the anime convention in November from becoming a superspreader event.The share of attendee tests that came back positive was similar to the share of coronavirus tests that were positive across New York City around the same time, the C.D.C. said. Whats more, the few positive samples that were genetically sequenced were largely of the Delta variant, not Omicron.And conventiongoers who became infected were more likely than those who tested negative to have gone to bars, nightclubs or karaoke clubs.Still, the C.D.C. said that the viruss spread at the convention could have been much worse had it been held after Omicron became dominant in the city, given that the variant is so contagious and capable of spreading among the vaccinated. At the anime convention, the C.D.C. said in a separate report on Thursday, the only documented Omicron infections were in a single cluster of at least 16 positive cases.The first study relied largely on people who came forward for testing after the event, which introduced potential biases: Those people could have been more cautious than the average convention attendee, or more inclined to report cautious behaviors. Health officials had urged attendees to get tested. The C.D.C. could only look for cases among people on a registration list of ticket buyers, which did not account for the full number of attendees.The agencys findings matched those of New York City contact tracing officials, who said in early December that they had not found signs of widespread transmission at the anime convention.In the aftermath of the event, held at the sprawling Javits Center, the convention organizers came under scrutiny as people reported seeing attendees flouting masking rules and pushing past checkpoints.But among attendees who were tested, the C.D.C. said, evidence of widespread transmission during the event was not identified.The study drew on test results identified through health department surveillance systems for 4,560 attendees. Of those, 119 people 2.6 percent tested positive. Researchers also sent online surveys to attendees asking about their test results, symptoms and activities during the convention.The anime convention required attendees to have received at least one vaccine dose. The C.D.C. said that among attendees who could be matched with test and vaccination data in health department surveillance systems, 85 percent had completed their primary vaccination series, another 12 percent had received a booster dose and 3 percent were partly vaccinated.The C.D.C. study also credited the convention hall for being outfitted with HEPA filters, which have been shown to efficiently remove coronavirus particles from the air. | Health |
Philadelphia Eagles Post-Beatdown Get Down ... To Chief Keef & Meek Mill 1/22/2018 Here's video of the Philadelphia Eagles dancing their damn faces off after destroying the Minnesota Vikings ... and we gotta say, the guys look like they could've gone another two quarters. Moments after the game was over, WR Alshon Jeffery took his celebration to IG live and got live with his teammates ... while Chief Keef and Meek Mill blasted in the background. Highlights included Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie getting into the act, but the guy who stole the show was CB Jalen Mills, who broke it down with a Macarena-style turn up we've never seen before. Good luck in the Super Bowl guys ... you're probably going to need it. | Entertainment |
Asia Pacific|2 Taliban Bombings Kill 23 People in Kabulhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/world/asia/bombings-kabul-taliban.htmlCredit...Rahmat Gul/Associated PressMarch 1, 2017KABUL, Afghanistan The Taliban set off two explosions in quick succession in the capital on Wednesday, killing 23 people and wounding 106, according to Afghan officials.Three of the dead were security force members, but most of the rest were believed to be civilians.Officials said a bomb first went off at a neighborhood police headquarters in the southwestern part of the city. A short time later, a second explosion was heard in the eastern side of the city, near offices of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency.Faraidoon Obaidi, head of the Kabul police criminal investigations division, said two attackers had entered the police headquarters, while another pair assaulted a nearby recruitment center for the Afghan National Army. The later strike also used two attackers.After the explosions, the attackers apparently fought with the authorities. An exchange of small-arms fire was heard in both areas for five hours. The attackers were presumably killed.A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, emailed and posted social media messages claiming responsibility for the bombings soon after they took place.Officials originally said 12 people died, but Qamaruddin Sediqi, a spokesman for the Afghan Health Ministry, revised the death count to 23 and the number of injured to 106, up from 50, after receiving more complete information from hospitals.The attack on the security office involved a suicide bomber, but it was unclear what sort of detonation took place at police headquarters. It was the first insurgent bombing in Kabul since Feb. 7, when a suicide bomber killed more than a dozen people outside the Supreme Court offices.Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Wednesday, a district in the northern province of Baghlan fell to the Taliban on Wednesday, according to Faizullah Amiri, the governor of Tala Wa Barfak district. It was believed to be the first time in recent years that a district in Baghlan, normally a government stronghold, had fallen to the insurgents.We were under siege for four days, Mr. Amiri said. Our supply routes from Bamian were blocked and the route to Baghlan was also blocked and eventually the district collapsed to the Taliban.He said three security force members and seven Taliban militants had died in the fighting. | World |
Credit...Nick Ut/Associated PressFeb. 5, 2014LOS ANGELES More than three decades after guiding the Los Angeles Lakers from mediocrity to excellence, and nearly two years after helping purchase the bankrupt Los Angeles Dodgers, Magic Johnson rescued another local team.Johnson and Mark Walter, the chairman of the Dodgers, bought the W.N.B.A.s Los Angeles Sparks, the league and team announced Wednesday at Staples Center.The Sparks are one of the W.N.B.A.s founding franchises and home to some of the leagues greatest players. Lisa Leslie spent her W.N.B.A. career with the Sparks, won league championships with them in 2001 and 2002, and finished her career as the W.N.B.A.s career leading scorer. Candace Parker joined the Sparks in 2008 and has won the leagues Most Valuable Player award twice.I love the Sparks; I was at the first game, Johnson said of the 1997 game against the Liberty that marked the W.N.B.A.s debut. I had three sisters who played. Mark has a daughter who plays right now, and my daughter played for two years. We love womens basketball already. This is a no-brainer for us.Paula Madison, the Sparks majority owner since 2007, told league officials in December that her company could no longer afford to operate the franchise.Madison said that the Sparks never made a profit after $12 million was invested in the team and that she expected the Sparks to lose more than $1 million this coming season. On Dec. 31, Madison laid off the entire staff, including Coach Carol Ross, who signed a contract extension Dec. 5, and General Manager Penny Toler.We bought the team because we feel we can turn it around, Johnson said. We knew what we were up against before we bought the team. But were aggressive businessmen and aggressive investors, so we know we can make some things happen to improve the bottom line.The sale to Johnson and Walter ends five weeks of speculation that the Sparks would fold or move to the Bay Area. Joe Lacob, owner of the Golden State Warriors, had interest in the Sparks, saying last month, Its been sort of a dream of ours to have a W.N.B.A. franchise.Johnson said he and Walter were the last, best hope to keep the Sparks in Los Angeles.The team was leaving, Johnson said. It was very close. We came in at the 11th hour, and I think we were the last ones. If we dont come in and make a deal, I think it was gone. We wanted to keep the team in L.A. Im glad we were able to save it.Laurel Richie, the W.N.B.A. president, said the new owners brought the resources, the business savvy, the tentacles into the community, the love of the game that the team needed.The fact that we were able to find all of those qualities and stay in L.A., I couldnt be happier, she said.Johnson said he would reinstate Ross and Toler and would make no changes until after the season, which begins in May.Johnson added that the Sparks would continue to play at Staples Center, home of the Lakers and the Clippers. The Sparks lease expired after last season.The Sparks, the Liberty and the Phoenix Mercury are the only founding W.N.B.A. teams still operating in their original cities. Four of the eight teams the Houston Comets, the Cleveland Rockers, the Charlotte Sting and the Sacramento Monarchs have folded. A fifth, the Utah Starzz, moved to San Antonio in 2003.Despite the Sparks financial problems, Johnson expressed optimism and requested that fans be patient with him and Walter.I wish we were starting with a clean slate, Johnson said. But we knew what were stepping into. Its going to take a little while, but were happy where were at. We know what we have to do. | Sports |
News AnalysisCredit...Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesDec. 31, 2015WASHINGTON Is the party over for Americas super-rich?For 20 years beginning in the early 1990s, the effective tax rates for those at the very top of the income ladder generally dropped. Then, in 2013, after a pair of unusual tax increases negotiated by the Obama White House went into effect, taxes went up on this group.According to data released on Wednesday by the Internal Revenue Service, the average rate for federal income taxes paid by the countrys top 400 income earners rose from 16.7 percent in 2012 to 22.9 percent in 2013, almost exactly where they stood in the early 2000s, though well below the level of the early 1990s. By any measure, thats a victory for the cause of tax justice, analysts said.But the recent rate increases, many experts also noted, still do little to overcome the broader issue of a separate, more comfortable tax system for the ultrawealthy.The 2013 increase in the capital gains rate was a significant move towards greater tax fairness, said Jared Bernstein, who was the top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during President Obamas first term. But when you consider the breadth of the tax avoidance industry, much of which is about sheltering income from exposure to any tax liability at all, its just a drop in the bucket.Even with the higher tax rates in 2013, the top 400 highest-earning taxpayers, who took home an average of about $265 million that year, paid a significantly lower share of their reported income in taxes than those just below them. For example, the top 1 percent of earners whose average income was $1.24 million paid roughly 27 percent of their income in taxes.Moreover, when payroll taxes are taken into account, many people with much lower incomes, in the range of $150,000 to $200,000, pay effective tax rates that are similar to those imposed on the rich.Essentially, the rich have benefited from two crucial developments over the last few decades: The first was a declining tax rate on investment income, which fell in the late 1990s under pressure from a Republican Congress after President Bill Clinton raised income tax rates in 1993. It fell even further under President George W. Bush in the early 2000s, who cut both ordinary income rates and investment rates.(Both went back up with the 2013 tax increase, though the rate on investment income remains lower than in the early 1990s.)Supporters of keeping tax rates on capital gains and dividends lower than ordinary income tax rates say there are good reasons for doing this. They note that the policy helps limit double taxation of corporate income and argue that it fosters innovation by encouraging greater investment and risk-taking.But because the ultrawealthy derive an outsize portion of their income from investments, these tax cuts disproportionately benefited them.The tax cuts on investment income then had a second important effect: They brought back from an earlier era the incentive for the ultrawealthy, working in tandem with highly sophisticated tax advisers, to game the tax system by transforming ordinary income into investment income, which is now taxed at about half the top rate.To take one recent example: Private equity fund managers have historically received part of their income in management fees, on which they pay the relatively high standard income tax rate, and part of their income as a share of their funds profits, on which they pay the relatively low tax rate on investment income.In recent years, however, it has become common for private equity fund managers to waive a substantial portion of their management-fee income and instead receive an even greater portion of their income as a share of profits from their funds, which are taxed at a lower rate. (The I.R.S. has recently proposed rules that would limit this practice.)Historical experience has shown that partly as a result of this gaming, the ultrawealthy tend to whittle down the rates they actually pay over time for any given level of official tax rates. By contrast, the average rates for most other taxpayers tend to remain relatively stable when tax laws do not change.Between 2004 and 2012, official income tax rates on regular income and investment income did not budge for affluent or wealthy taxpayers.But during that time, thanks in part to techniques like fee waivers, the top 400 income earners went from paying an average rate of 18.2 percent to an average rate of 16.7 percent. For the top 1 percent of earners, excluding the wealthiest top one-tenth of 1 percent, rates rose ever so slightly, to 24.1 percent from 23.9 percent.This historical evidence suggests that the ultrawealthy will soon find ways to limit the impact of the recent rate increases under President Obama. For example, many wealthy taxpayers already exploit tax strategies, like keeping income in offshore entities, that allow them to defer taxes on investment income for years, allowing the money to compound on a tax-free basis.The goal of the tax avoidance industry is to shelter income from exposure to any tax liability at all, Mr. Bernstein said. I guarantee you theyre figuring out a workaround to this higher gains rate as we speak.Indeed, many ultrawealthy taxpayers can be expected to explore additional strategies for deferring investment income in response to the higher tax rates, according to Victor Fleischer, an expert on tax law at the University of San Diego. (He noted that the tax avoidance caused by deferrals wouldnt show up in I.R.S. data because the income isnt recorded until it is taxed years after the fact.)While some of these strategies may be of dubious legality, the ability of the I.R.S. to weed them out has been eroded. Adjusting for inflation, the agencys budget dropped by nearly 20 percent from 2010 to 2015, falling to $10.9 billion from $13.4 billion, according to calculations done by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, relying on government data. This has led to significant cuts in enforcement officials tasked with clawing back tax revenue from the wealthy.The Republican leadership in Congress, which has influence over the I.R.S. budget, has given little indication that it is open to reversing this trend.In the end, the ultimate arbiter of the fate of the Obama tax increases is likely to be his successor. Every leading Republican presidential candidate has proposed reducing some or all of the rates Congress agreed to raise on the wealthy in 2012, which were part of a deal to avoid even more extensive tax increases. Under any of those proposals, taxes on the rich would probably fall below even their recent lows.By contrast, the leading Democratic candidates have called for preserving or increasing those rates. If they were to raise taxes further on investment income, it could have the dual effect of both raising rates on the wealthy and making certain tax avoidance strategies less lucrative. | Business |
TrilobitesMonitor lizards, believed to be invasive species on some Pacific islands, got there long before humans, a new study says.Credit...James ReardonMay 15, 2020You cant accuse a monitor lizard of being a picky eater.The carnivorous, fork-tongued reptiles feed on insects, spiders, bird eggs, mollusks, crabs, fish, amphibians and rodents dead or alive. Deer represent a large portion of the diets of the Komodo dragon, the largest monitor lizard species, which is native to eastern Indonesia.Theyll feed at garbage piles and eat chicken bones. Whatevers available, said Fred Kraus, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan. They probably would take puppies too, if they get them.Monitor lizards have been found living on the most far-flung islands of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean. For decades, people assumed humans dropped off these unfussy carnivores, turning them into especially threatening ecological invaders. But a study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science refutes this presumption, demonstrating that the monitor lizards of Palau, the Western Caroline Islands and the Mariana Islands are previously undescribed species native to those islands.The team of scientists argues that the lizards likely rode ocean currents up to 1,500 miles in some cases, from Indonesia northeastward, where they naturally colonized these Pacific islands hundreds of thousands of years ago.Some of those islands are so remote. Its pretty difficult to explain how they got there, said Valter Weijola, a biologist at Finlands University of Turku and lead author of the study. But his teams research shows they made this ocean crossing without help from humans. And since their disembarkment, theyve evolved into two distinct species.Researchers examined more than 50 Micronesian monitor lizard specimens from museums around the world. First, they compared physical characteristics, measuring and noting details like body proportions, scale pattern and tongue color.Then they ran molecular tests on tissue samples. DNA sequencing and analysis revealed two Micronesian species were genetically distinct from other known monitor lizards in the Asia-Pacific region. It also suggested each evolved in geographic and genetic isolation long before any humans arrived in Micronesia.Used this way, DNA analysis can be a bit like looking at an ecological question through a microscope and a telescope simultaneously.It takes you back in time and allows you to see things in greater detail, said Julie Lockwood, a Rutgers University ecologist and invasive species biologist who was not involved in the study.That the islands included in the study have never been in contact with any continental landmass, nor with each other, indicates the lizards must have arrived overseas, perhaps on a raft of vegetation.Theyre predisposed to being swept out to sea, Dr. Kraus said. They can survive a good while, riding that current.It is possible that humans, particularly German and Japanese colonialists, introduced monitor lizards to some Micronesian islands during the early 20th century. But the study proves at least some of the islands monitor lizards got there before humans.Because the lizards have been presumed to be invasive predators, local officials and inhabitants of these Micronesian islands have tried to curb or eradicate these populations.Poisonous cane toads, for example, were brought to Kayangel Atoll in Palau to reduce monitor lizards predation on livestock. In the early 2010s, bounty programs in Angaur State, Palau, culled hundreds. And on Cocos Island off Guams coast, monitor lizard populations have been controlled to protect an endangered native bird. More plans are underway, according to the paper, to eradicate monitor lizards from Losiep Island in the Caroline Islands.Whether a species is invasive or not reshapes conversations around conservation, Dr. Lockwood said. In a similar scenario in 2012, genetic testing revealed that red foxes preying on threatened shorebirds in the southeastern United States had arrived through the expansion of a natural Canadian range and not from an overseas translocation, as previously believed.You may still have a reason to cull a predator population. But you cant use their native or nonnative status as justification, she said. Its possible well uncover more of these.Researchers hope the revelation that monitor lizard species are natives could shift eradication efforts toward the islands other known invasives, such as brown tree snakes, feral pigs and nonnative deer, cats and rats. | science |
Credit...Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesMarch 27, 2016BEDFORD, Mass. In a small room banked by refrigerators of preserved brains, a pathologist held a specimen up to the light in frank admiration. Then it was time to cut once in half and then a thick slice from the back, the tissue dense and gray-pink, teeming with folds and swirls.It was the brain of a professional running back.There, said Dr. Ann McKee, the chief of neuropathology at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and a professor of neurology and pathology at Boston Universitys medical school, pointing to a key area that had an abnormal separation. Thats one thing we look for right away.Over the past several years, Dr. McKees lab, housed in a pair of two-story brick buildings in suburban Boston, has repeatedly made headlines by revealing that deceased athletes, including at least 90 former N.F.L. players, were found to have had a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., that is believed to cause debilitating memory and mood problems. This month, after years of denying or playing down a connection, a top N.F.L. official acknowledged at a hearing in Washington that playing football and having C.T.E. were certainly linked.His statement effectively ended a very public dispute over whether head blows sustained while playing football are associated with the disorder. But it will not resolve a quieter debate among scientists about how much risk each football player has of developing it, or answer questions about why some players seem far more vulnerable to it than others.Some researchers worry that the rising drumbeat of C.T.E. diagnoses is far outpacing scientific progress in pinpointing the symptoms, risks and prevalence of the disease. The American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology, an organization of brain injury specialists, is preparing a public statement to point out that much of the science of C.T.E. is still unsettled and to contend that the evidence to date should not be interpreted to mean that parents must keep their children off sports teams, officials of the group say.Ive had parents come into my practice, their child had a single concussion and they think he or she has permanent brain damage, said Karen Postal, the organizations president and an instructor at Harvard. Theres no basis for that.Dr. Postal has been jointly designated by the N.F.L. Players Association, which represents the players, and the league as a neutral expert available to assess players as part of the injury grievance process. Dr. Postal said she had not received any research support from the N.F.L. or the players. The organization she heads includes some members who have worked for N.F.L. teams; most have not, she said.The Boston lab, which has amassed the largest C.T.E. brain bank in the world, contends that anyone playing a head-jostling sport like football, hockey, rugby or soccer runs some level of risk, and that it is cumulative exposure to head hits, not only concussions, that is most critical. But others in the field contend that far more study is needed.The problem is that these findings are being put out there too fast, and stated too strongly, by one group, before we understand who gets C.T.E., how it evolves over time, whats the risk any of that, said Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati, a brain pathologist at the University of Toronto who said she had received no financial support from either the N.F.L. or the Players Association.Members of the Boston lab say they have raised the alarm for a good reason the risk is real but agree that the C.T.E. story is far from complete. This research is in its infancy, said Robert Stern, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the Boston University School of Medicine, who works with Dr. McKee. There are many outstanding questions, but were now working to answer them and making some progress. The National Institutes of Health has committed some $20 million to research, and the N.F.L. more than $70 million.The group has made its diagnoses of C.T.E. with authority, often stating them in terms of stages similar to a cancer diagnosis. Dr. McKee has determined four pathological stages, which she has linked to psychological problems, like depression or explosive anger. She said the stages themselves are clearly distinguishable on post-mortem slides of brain tissues, but she acknowledged that their proposed link to specific symptoms is totally preliminary; it probably wont hold up. We dont know yet how the pathology stages predict behavior.Part of the challenge in answering these questions is that doctors can only diagnose C.T.E. after death, by dissecting a brain. That process allows them to identify a subtle pattern of a brain protein called tau, clumped in critical areas.It was only last year that a panel of experts, convened by the federally funded National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, agreed that this tau pattern was definitively distinct from patterns of tau that signal other conditions like Alzheimers disease or age-related decline.That was a first step, nothing more, said Dr. Walter Koroshetz, the institutes director. We had to establish minimal criteria, so that all researchers were using the same standards. The agency is now funding research into detecting C.T.E. in living people and clarifying the link between its stages and symptoms.The medical literature generally describes C.T.E. as closely related to punch-drunk syndrome, or dementia pugilistica the stiffness, tremors and early dementia first found in some professional boxers a half-century ago. But when Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist in Pittsburgh, reported the telltale pathology in a deceased football player in 2005 which became the basis for the 2015 movie Concussion the research took a different turn. Team contact sports produce different kinds of blows to the head than boxing, and research into those athletes accelerated.Dr. McKee and Dr. Stern had studied Alzheimers disease for decades. After Dr. Omalus report, Dr. Stern was giving a lecture about dementia when he met Chris Nowinski, a former wrestler and football player who spoke to him about C.T.E. He said, Look, this is a big problem, are you interested in looking into it? Dr. Stern said.Dr. Stern and Dr. McKee said they immediately saw an opportunity to make a contribution in the relatively unexplored area. Dr. McKee had been running brain banks for years, including one for the landmark Framingham Heart Study, and Dr. Stern had been studying brain trauma as a risk factor for later dementia.ImageCredit...Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesBy 2014, Mr. Nowinski had helped their lab collect more than 100 brains from athletes, and the team found the tau signature in dozens of them. Perhaps their most explosive finding was a report released last fall, which found that 76 of the 79 pro football players brains they examined showed evidence of C.T.E.But the Boston groups collection of brains is not representative of the pro-football population, as the researchers there acknowledge. The brains were given to the center by families of athletes who were showing severe symptoms of the injury, and not from former players who were not. We cant say from this sample whether the rate of C.T.E. in pro players is 1 percent or what; we have no idea, Dr. McKee said.But, she added, I dont think its extremely rare. I would have to have some golden touch to see this many, if it were.In the best study to determine risk so far, published in December, a research team at a Mayo Clinic bank in Jacksonville found C.T.E. in 21 of 66 brains of people who had played contact sports. It found no evidence of the disorder in 198 people with no record of playing such sports. But the authors said they had no way to know whether those 21 former athletes had symptoms linked to C.T.E.; some had other neurological disorders as well when they died.These are very early days, and we badly need larger studies, that include both athletes and nonathletes, said Dr. Dennis Dickson, the studys senior author.Another uncertainty is individual susceptibility to risk. The Boston group has found C.T.E. in people who played only high school football and in Tyler Sash, the 27-year-old former New York Giant who was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in September. These are young people; what are they doing in my lab? Dr. McKee said. This tells me that some people are at high risk.ImageCredit...Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesFour of the brains from pro players in her lab had no evidence of the disorder. Half the 22 athletes in the University of Torontos bank did not have C.T.E., including the former hockey enforcer Todd Ewen, the researchers reported last month.These are extremely important cases, Dr. Hazrati, the University of Toronto pathologist, said. Some people are clearly resistant to developing this, for reasons we dont understand.Others may be living with the telltale signature brain scarring of C.T.E. without having any related symptoms, Dr. Hazrati and others said. This also happens with the plaques and tangles of Alzheimers disease: some peoples brains are found to be riddled with them, even though they showed no evidence of dementia while alive.The answers to these questions are likely to be slow in coming, most scientists said.Researchers are now testing methods of diagnosing C.T.E. in living people, including a brain scan intended to identify the tau signature. In a just-concluded study funded by the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Stern and a research team compared about 100 living former N.F.L. players with 30 healthy men of the same age. The team is still analyzing the data.Dr. Stern and another team have also begun a second study funded by the National Institutes of Health to follow 120 former N.F.L. players, 60 former college players, and 60 healthy men of the same age who had not played football. What wed like to know, in addition to predicting risk, is whether we can pick it up early, whether we can intervene, to stop it from getting worse or, is it reversible? Dr. Stern said.Until then, athletes and parents will have to weigh the real but poorly understood risk of C.T.E. against the upsides of contact sports. Dr. Postal, the Harvard-affiliated neuropsychologist, has two boys who play football and a 7-year-old daughter in a flag league. If she wants to play tackle, Ill be delighted, Dr. Postal said.The Boston groups Dr. Stern has a son who played football in high school but decided not to play in college. In retrospect, I am very glad that he did not play in college, Dr. Stern said, and, if he were in high school now, he would not be playing football. | Health |
Nov. 3, 2018KABUL, Afghanistan A Utah mayor serving in Afghanistan was reportedly killed and another service member was wounded when an Afghan commando opened fire on them on Saturday in Kabul.Maj. Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, was killed, according to the states lieutenant governor, Spencer J. Cox, who expressed shock in announcements on Twitter and Facebook.I hate this. Im struggling for words, Mr. Cox wrote. I love Mayor Taylor, his amazing wife Jennie and his 7 sweet kids. Utah weeps for them today.I hate this. Im struggling for words. I love Mayor Taylor, his amazing wife Jennie and his 7 sweet kids. Utah weeps for them today. This war has once again cost us the best blood of a generation. We must rally around his family. Thank you for your sacrifice my friend. https://t.co/uS9emZgv7s Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) November 3, 2018 Major Taylor had taken leave from his position in North Ogden, a city of about 20,000 people, to serve with the Utah National Guard in Afghanistan. Service is really what leadership is all about, he wrote on Facebook in January before what was to be a years deployment.He said the assignment, his fourth deployment, was as part of an advisory team training an Afghan commando battalion.Debra Richardson, a NATO spokeswoman, said in Kabul, the capital, that the gunman appeared to have been a member of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.The attacker was immediately killed by other Afghan forces, she said.NATO had not released the identities or ranks of the service members, or the location of the attack. But United States officials suggested it had occurred at an American special operations forces hub in Kabul that is used as a staging base for missions around the capital and in neighboring provinces.The attack was the second of its kind in less than two weeks. On Oct. 22, an Afghan commando opened fire on members of the American-led NATO coalition in the western province of Herat, killing one and wounding two.So-called insider attacks have long been a problem for coalition forces in Afghanistan. At their peak in 2012, 61 coalition soldiers were killed by such attacks.Major Taylor decided to join the military someday after the Sept. 11 attacks while attending Brigham Young University, according to a profile published in January in The Deseret News, a Salt Lake City newspaper. His five brothers also joined the Army in the years after the 2001 attacks, it said.His wife, Jennie Taylor, said in the article that service was an important part of their lives, and an example for their seven children. I hope they know that in our family, we help, she said. In our family, we do what we can. If its something we can do, and the call comes to serve, we say yes.Major Taylor urged others to action as well, saying on Facebook in January that whether reading to children at a school, or simply helping a neighbor, there are ways all around us to brighten someones day.Last Sunday in what appeared to be his last Facebook post, he called on all Americans to vote. Whether the Republicans or the Democrats win, he said, it is important that we all remember that we have far more as Americans that unites us than divides us.Accolades poured out for Major Taylor late Saturday across social media.He was the best of men with the ability to see potential and possibility in everything around him, North Ogdens website said in announcing his death. It added, He was patriotic to the core and a shining example of what an American politician should be.Mitt Romney, the 2012 presidential candidate who is now running for the Senate in Utah, said on Twitter that he was heartbroken over the news.The latest attack came as the American military has retreated to a more cautious position following a widespread rumor about the killing of the powerful police chief of Kandahar Province, which has created mistrust with Afghan allies.On Oct. 18, the chief, Gen. Abdul Raziq, was shot dead by a teenage Taliban infiltrator as he was walking out of a meeting with the top American and NATO commander, Gen. Austin S. Miller.General Miller, who was standing steps away, survived a second round fired in the direction of the other dignitaries.As detailed in a New York Times report, a guard at the scene, who United States officials said they believed could have been a second infiltrator, shouted that the Americans had shot the Afghan general.It led to tensions with Afghan forces that cast a cloud over the relationship. Afghan and American forces clashed as the American convoy was leaving the compound, with United States forces shooting one Afghan guard dead.The American military has struggled to contain the disinformation, and senior Afghan officials have tried to quash the rumor.The concern peaked after an Afghan commando opened fire on coalition forces on Oct. 22 in the west of the country following what Afghan officials said had been a verbal clash over the killing of General Raziq. | World |
Credit...Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York TimesDec. 7, 2015PARIS As United Nations climate conferees meet near here, Eric Feunteun wishes everyone could agree: If the world is going to curb climate change, there is no choice but to stop driving cars that burn fossil fuels.If we want affordable, practical and fully green technology, Mr. Feunteun said in an interview in an office building on the edge of Paris, the electric vehicle is the answer at this stage.Mr. Feunteun is hardly an unbiased source. He heads the electric car program at the French automaker Renault, which sells more electric vehicles in Europe than any other company and with its Japanese alliance partner, Nissan, accounts for half the all-electric vehicles now on the worlds roads.For all Mr. Feunteuns optimism, the delegates to the United Nations climate conference in nearby Le Bourget, France, confront a sobering fact: The number of automobiles on the worlds roads is on pace to double to more than two billion by 2030. And more likely than not, most of those cars will be burning carbon-emitting gasoline or diesel fuels.That is because much of the expansion will be propelled by the rise of the consumer class in industrializing parts of the globe, especially in China and India, as hundreds of millions of new drivers discover the glory of the open road. Those populous and geographically sprawling countries might be hard pressed any time soon to assemble the ubiquitous electricity grid required for recharging electric vehicles; and much of the electricity China and India will produce in coming decades will come from coal-fired power plants that are some of the planets biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.ImageCredit...Christian Hartmann/ReutersGiven the limitations of electric cars so far including their limited range between charges many experts predict that most of the billion additional cars predicted to be on the road in 2030 will have internal combustion engines that spew greenhouse gases.The United Nations conference will not deal directly with cars or with what countries should do about them or other major sources of carbon emissions, like factories and power plants. Rather, the conference is meant to get countries to commit to reducing their carbon footprints, leaving the details about how to achieve their goals to each individual nation.But virtually everyone who studies the issue understands that transportation, which is still 95 percent reliant on petroleum, is the worlds fastest-growing energy-based contributor to greenhouse gases. About three-quarters of the total comes from motor vehicles.Few disagree that the best solutions include the adoption of electric vehicles and, especially in cities, making it easier for people to forgo cars by using public transportation or riding bicycles.But optimists argue that even in the case of cars with internal-combustion engines, carbon dioxide emissions can be cut significantly by measures like increasing fuel economy and introducing smart-driving technologies to make cars move about with greater efficiency.Lewis M. Fulton, a researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, cites carbon intensity the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each mile traveled as an area where advances can be made. By 2030, he said, it should be possible to cut the carbon intensity of new cars powered by fossil fuel by 50 percent from 2005 levels. Already, he said, there has been about a 20 percent improvement.I believe that this is doable, Mr. Fulton said. I think were going to be serious enough about climate change that were going to see the policy changes we need to make this happen.The countries with the most cars today have set aggressive goals for improving fuel mileage. The United States, under President Obamas fleetwide standards for carmakers, is aiming for an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from about 30 m.p.g. now. China is aiming for 50.1 miles per gallon, and the European Union 60.6.Still, the math is daunting. If the number of cars doubles, and the average mileage improves by only 50 percent, all of the fuel-economy gains would be offset by the emissions from the new vehicles.And that assumes the auto industry does its part to comply with the new standards and that national regulators diligently enforce them. Recent revelations that Volkswagen, for one, deliberately misled regulators, and that European Union air-quality standards and enforcement have been far from rigorous, do not inspire confidence.Reducing tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions is absolutely possible, said Daniel F. Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, an environmental group based in Washington.But the automakers are attacking these standards as we speak, both in Congress and through a review of the program they demanded from the Obama administration, Mr. Becker said. Similar attacks are underway in the E.U.Congress, in an effort to make the United States more energy independent, passed a law in 2007 mandating a 35 m.p.g. auto-fleet standard by 2020. But before that, there had been no official change to American fuel-economy standards in more than 30 years.The U.S. auto industry was successful between 1975 and 2007 in preventing any improvement for mileage standards for CO2 emissions, Mr. Becker said. They exploit every loophole in the standards, making more SUVs, pickups and other light duty trucks than cars because trucks have weaker standards than cars, and more large vehicles because large vehicles have weaker standards than smaller vehicles.Wade Newton, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a carmakers lobbying group in Washington, said he could speak only for the American market. But he defended the industry, noting that in the United States there are more than about 500 makes and models of vehicles that get 30 miles per gallon or more.Thats a 600 percent increase since just 2006, he said. But here in the U.S., its important to remember that CAFE measures what consumers buy, not what we make. So consumer acceptance in the U.S. is key. CAFE, pronounced like sidewalk cafe, is the acronym for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations in the United States.Automakers have made big strides in reducing carbon emissions, to meet fleet standards. In fact, those targets have been a big motivation in the development of hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles and all-electric cars.The green aspect of electric cars is clearly the most important thing, said Mr. Feunteun at Renault. But, he conceded, you need to have all the benefits. That would include an ability to drive farther between charges.We expect to double electric vehicle range by 2020, he said. If that happens, the Renault Zoe, which currently has an effective range of about 150 kilometers, or 93 miles, would be at 300 kilometers enough to meet most drivers day-to-day needs.Mr. Feunteuns boss, Carlos Ghosn, the chairman and chief executive of Renault and Nissan, said at a Brussels news conference on Friday that the auto industry had the technological skills to make cars more environmentally friendly. Electric cars and other cleaner-running vehicles have to be acceptable to the consumer, Mr. Ghosn said. We know that one of the limitations in the development of electric cars in Europe is the lack of charging infrastructure.ImageCredit...Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York TimesMr. Feunteun, for his part, acknowledged that the current generation of electric cars tends to need government incentives to compete economically with vehicles using internal combustion engines. That can include the tax credits many countries now offer, or public support for building a charging network to let drivers refresh their car batteries away from home. One stakeholder cant do it alone, he said. Its an ecosystem.He noted the example of Norway, which has gone further than any other country in encouraging consumers to drive electric cars. Blessed with clean hydropower-generated electricity, Norway has exempted electric cars from vehicle taxes and provided incentives like access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes and free municipal parking for the cars.China and India, with their notoriously polluted air, have strong incentives to embrace greener vehicles. In fact, China is already the worlds fastest-growing market for electric cars.But Mr. Becker, at the Safe Climate Campaign, points out that electric vehicles are only as environmentally friendly as the electricity that recharges them. China, though it is rapidly adopting nuclear power plants, is still heavily reliant on coal-fired electrical plants.And India, where the biggest growth in automobile ownership is expected to occur as the country industrializes and its population surpasses Chinas by 2030, might actually increase its reliance on coal-fired electrical power plants between now and then.Erik Jonnaert, secretary general of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, argued that automakers had done more than any other industry to reduce emissions. Policy makers, he said, should focus on new-car efficiency and on getting older, higher-polluting vehicles off the road through so-called cash for clunker-type programs. That alone could cut CO2 emissions by 30 percent in 2030 from todays level, he said, as efficiency-enhancing technologies are introduced in new cars.But Mr. Jonnaert said that economic trade-offs had to be considered, too, as regulators seek to curb the release of carbon dioxide.At the end of the day, when you talk about transport emissions for transport in general, including for freight transport, they increase when the economy is growing, he said. So what are we going to say, were going to stop the economy to stop emissions? | Business |
Business BriefingDec. 3, 2015A $48 billion deal that would create the nations largest health insurer inched closer to completion after shareholders of both Anthem and Cigna voted in favor of a buyout. The companies said that nearly all of their shareholders approved the deal, announced in July, when the Blue Cross-Blue Shield coverage provider Anthem said it would pay $103.40 and a portion of its stock for each Cigna share. The boards of both companies have already approved the deal, and shareholder backing was widely expected, but the acquisition still has one more key hurdle to clear. Both federal and state regulators are reviewing the deal, which would create an insurance company that would cover more than 50 million people. Anthem and Cigna expect the acquisition to close in the second half of next year. | Business |
Credit...Rick Wilking/ReutersJune 21, 2018SAN FRANCISCO For decades, Intel was one of the most predictable players in the technology industry. On Thursday, the semiconductor maker blindsided Silicon Valley with the abrupt resignation of its chief executive over a relationship with a subordinate.The chip company said it was recently informed that Brian Krzanich had a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee. An investigation by internal and external counsel then found that Mr. Krzanich, 58, had violated a non-fraternization policy that applies to managers, the company said. So Intels board accepted his resignation.The disclosure about Mr. Krzanich, a soft-spoken chip manufacturing specialist who joined Intel in 1982 and has run it for five years, left many questions unanswered. The company declined to identify the employee involved, when the relationship took place or any additional details. It characterized its internal investigation as ongoing.Mr. Krzanichs relationship with the subordinate was not recent, said one person briefed on the situation, who declined to be identified because the company discussions over the matter were confidential. Intel found out about the relationship only a few days ago, this person added.Robert Swan, Intels chief financial officer, was appointed interim chief executive while the company conducts a search for a permanent new leader. Mr. Krzanich could not be reached for comment.We appreciate Brians many contributions to Intel, Andy Bryant, Intels chairman, said in a prepared statement. He added that he knew the company would continue to perform.Mr. Krzanichs resignation is the latest turmoil in executive suites since the #MeToo movement emerged in the wake of allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein. The heightened scrutiny of workplace behavior has led executives at Nike, Lululemon Athletica, Social Finance and many other companies to leave their jobs.Over the years, other chief executives have also been felled after violating workplace behavior standards, either because of affairs or through other incidents, including at Boeing, Hewlett-Packard and Priceline.Intel, which recently yielded the title of the worlds largest chip maker to Samsung, is approaching its 50th birthday. The company, known for microprocessor chips that carry out calculations in most personal computers and server systems, has prided itself as a standard-setter in corporate governance.An Intel spokesman said the companys most recent version of its strict non-fraternization policy, which prohibits managers from sexual or romantic relationships with employees who report directly or indirectly to them, has been in place since 2011.Even so, Intel, like many companies, has not been impervious to romance. Mr. Krzanich, who rose through the ranks at Intel, married a woman who once worked in the companys manufacturing operations. They have two daughters. The wife of Mr. Krzanichs predecessor, Paul Otellini, who died last year, also once worked at Intel.As chief executive, Mr. Krzanich has been changing Intels corporate culture. The company has undergone an exodus of longtime managers such as Renee James, who was Mr. Krzanichs No. 2 but later faded in prominence and left the company and the arrival of senior executives from other companies such as Qualcomm.Mr. Krzanich argued that Intel needed an infusion of fresh thinking to achieve his goal of reducing the companys dependence on the sluggish P.C. market. He also publicly committed the company to increasing the number of employees from groups underrepresented in some technical specialties, including minorities and women.Intel is a different place, and weve done this while growing the business, Mr. Krzanich said at the companys annual shareholder meeting in May.But five former Intel employees, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Mr. Krzanich at times exhibited an arrogant personal style and handled staff changes in ways that created enemies. Some of these people said the #MeToo movement most likely influenced how Intels board handled the matter.Mr. Krzanich also raised eyebrows by selling about $39 million in Intel shares last November, after the company learned of potential security flaws in its chips and before the issue was disclosed this year. The company said the sale was unrelated to the flaws, adding that Mr. Krzanich continued to hold shares in line with Intel guidelines.Mr. Krzanich sought to broaden Intels business, taking the company into fields such as drones and wearable devices. He also presided over major acquisitions such as Intels $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes chips and software used in driver-assistance systems and self-driving cars.Yet Intel has lately struggled to sustain Moores Law, the pace of chip miniaturization named for the companys co-founder, Gordon Moore, which expands the capabilities of its chips. It has announced repeated delays in perfecting its latest production process.During Mr. Krzanichs tenure, Intels market capitalization rose to above $240 billion, with a share price that is up 50 percent since the beginning of 2017. On Thursday, while the companys shares declined 2 percent on the announcement of the leadership change, Intel said it expected to report second-quarter results that exceed Wall Street estimates.Pierre Ferragu, an analyst with New Street Research, said the projection points to a monster quarter for the company. The resignation itself is in our view a completely idiosyncratic event, with no impact to the company, he wrote in a research note.Mr. Swan is a relative newcomer to Intel, joining the company as chief financial officer from General Atlantic in 2016. His past experience includes a stint at private equity firm General Atlantic and nine years as chief financial officer at eBay.Mr. Krzanichs total compensation last year was $21.5 million, according to the executive compensation firm Equilar. That put him at 60th place in an annual ranking of highest-paid chief executives in the United States that Equilar conducted for The New York Times. | Tech |
Technology|Facebook Bug Changed Privacy Settings of Up to 14 Million Usershttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/technology/facebook-privacy-bug.htmlCredit...Jason Henry for The New York TimesJune 7, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Facebook has been fighting for months the perception that it did not do enough to protect peoples privacy. On Thursday, the company said it had again failed to keep the information of millions of users private.As many as 14 million Facebook users who thought they were creating private posts last month that only a small group of friends could see were, in fact, making public posts that anyone could view.Facebook blamed a software bug for the problem. The company did not say how it had found the bug, or how it knew the problem was limited to 14 million people.In a statement, Facebook said the bug affected users from May 18 to May 22, while the company was testing a new feature. By May 27, the company had changed the affected posts from a public setting back to a private one.Wed like to apologize for this mistake, Erin Egan, Facebooks chief privacy officer, said in a statement. We have fixed this issue, and starting today we are letting everyone affected know and are asking them to review any posts they made during that time.In the last few months, Facebook executives have repeatedly been forced to apologize to users for failing to protect their privacy.In March, The New York Times reported that the data of over 87 million people had been collected by Cambridge Analytica, a political firm with ties to the Trump campaign. This week, The Times reported that Facebook had given cellphone makers, including Apple, Samsung and the Chinese firm Huawei, access to data on Facebook users and their friends. Members of Congress are now questioning Facebook and other tech companies about their relationship to Huawei.Trust in Facebook has fallen by 66 percent as a result of news stories in recent months, according to a survey by the Ponemon Institute, an independent research firm specializing in privacy and data protection.Norman Sadeh, co-director of Carnegie Mellon Universitys Privacy Engineering Program, said that although Facebook survived temporary losses of trust from the public in the past, the recent scandals appeared to be taking their toll on the social media company.In response to the problems, the company has added a number of new privacy controls, as well as a centralized page for privacy and security settings. Mr. Sadeh said the new settings were still confusing.One of Facebooks key privacy features is that it lets people decide an audience for their posts. Someone can, for example, share a post with only a limited group of family and friends, or decide to make a post public so that anyone, including people not logged on to Facebook, can see it.It was unclear if users could have done anything to their settings to prevent being affected by the bug the company revealed on Thursday.Until Facebook and other companies improve their approach to privacy and develop settings that are easier to use and more aligned with what users want, people should probably refrain from sharing too much sensitive information with these platforms, Mr. Sadeh said. | Tech |
Tech Were UsingCredit...Idris Solomon for The New York TimesJune 27, 2018How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Steve Lohr, a technology reporter in New York, discussed the tech hes using.Youve worked for The Times for nearly 40 years, so youre like our in-house historian. Tell us a little about that history.I joined The Times when I was 28 years old, in December 1979. I spent less than two years in New York, and then a decade as a foreign correspondent, based in Tokyo, Manila and London. Then, I did a couple of years in two editing stints, before I was able to get back to being a reporter.Over the years, the subjects have run the gamut, including magazine profiles that ranged from the star female impersonator in Kabuki theater to Steve Jobs.How has using technology to report for The Times changed for you over the years?When I started at The Times, nothing was online. To research a story, you started by going to the morgue, a large room where people cut out old stories and placed them in row after row of file drawers, grouped by subject.The files werent just Times articles. They often included pieces from The New Yorker, Life, Esquire, New York and elsewhere.ImageCredit...Idris Solomon for The New York TimesImageCredit...Idris Solomon for The New York TimesPersonal computers were hobbyist curiosities, not yet used in newsrooms. We wrote on terminals linked to a central computer. The terminals were shared, two for every four reporters. Sometimes, that created problems.The most territorial reporters took a squatters rights approach get on a terminal and camp out, no matter how distant their deadline. Rather than fight, I managed to get a password for signing onto any terminal in the building. So Id just find an open terminal in some other part of the newsroom. But that meant you were away from your phone. No cellphones then.In 1980, there was a crash in the silver market that shook Wall Street. I was writing the front-page story for the next day. After filing my story from a terminal in the culture department, I got back to my desk and had three telephone messages from G. William Miller, the Treasury secretary at the time. I missed the calls.When I went to Tokyo, it was back to a typewriter and a small Underwood portable, which was the laptop of its day. We wrote stories, 200 words on a page, and hand-delivered them to the Reuters office across town, to be cabled to New York. Later, we moved to small word-processing computers Tandy 100s and then Tandy 200s, with phone couplers for the modem connections. In some places, the phone service wasnt good enough to transmit by modem. Then, youd just call in your story and dictate it to the Times phone room.Then came the internet era. How did that change how you report?The internet, put simply, is a low-cost communications network. Everything else, like the web, builds on top of that. And having so much information online can be a gold mine for reporting. In my case, I report on technology and economics these days.Silicon Valley is a caldron of innovation. But all the big issues surrounding technologys impact on the world like automation, economic opportunity and income disparity are playing out outside the tech hubs, across the $20 trillion American economy. Tons of research is being done on those subjects, and its all online working papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Social Science Research Network, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and scientific studies.What it means is you can test your assumptions for any trend or explanatory story. Is the lively anecdote you just came across an outlier, or representative of a broader phenomenon? Early in reporting a subject, you can get an answer to the question: What story do the numbers tell you? That is a powerful tool that applies to most fields today, including journalism.ImageCredit...Idris Solomon for The New York TimesThe other, similar change is in the ease, speed and cost of one-to-one communication, which is the most valuable. In one week alone this month, I never thought twice about talking to people in Germany, Israel and France, by phone or Skype. The faster, easier inexpensive communication means you can talk to far more people, wherever they are, on any given story.To explain the difference: When I was a foreign correspondent in Japan, nearly all communication with the New York office was messages typed on paper and sent by cable. In nearly three years, I spoke by phone to the editor who was my boss only twice and the second time was to be told to move to Manila, to cover the waning days of the Ferdinand Marcos regime.By contrast, my 22-year-old daughter has just finished a nine-month fellowship in Russia in Nizhny Novgorod (look it up). I talked to her most every day with video, sometimes for up to an hour on weekends. All it took was a smartphone, Facebook Messenger and a decent Wi-Fi connection.Outside of work, what tech products are you currently obsessed with?I live in an apartment with more than 4,000 books, and yet Ive also become a huge Kindle fan. Its just so convenient, a library in a lightweight tablet. For big books, like William Taubmans biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, published last year, Ill sometimes buy both the hardcover and the digital versions. Each has its advantages.Im also a rapt beneficiary of the renaissance in podcasting a classic example of technology, innovation and investment coming together to eventually get a new medium right. I listen to The Daily from The Times in the evening, after a day in front of a screen. If you havent listened to the Caliphate series, do yourself a favor. Admittedly, both are plugs for The Times, but both are terrific audio programs.I like others, too. High on my list is American History Tellers, which began this year. The producers tap professional historians to help write the scripts for episodes on themes the Cold War, Prohibition, the Age of Jackson and the Space Race. The host is Lindsay Graham. (No, not that Lindsey Graham, hell remind listeners.) This Mr. Graham is a marketing director at Southern Methodist University, and a podcast entrepreneur. | Tech |
Heres what we know about the C.D.C.s new mask recommendations for vaccinated people.Credit...Morgan Lieberman for The New York TimesPublished July 27, 2021Updated Aug. 15, 2021The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Tuesday that people vaccinated against the coronavirus resume wearing masks in schools and in public indoor spaces in parts of the country where the virus is surging, marking a sharp turnabout from their advice just two months ago.The pandemic in the United States is very different than it was in May, when it seemed as if the worst was in the past. Confirmed cases are surging in parts of the country with low vaccination rates, and there are more reports of breakthrough infections with the highly contagious Delta variant in fully immunized people.Vaccines are effective against the worst outcomes of infection, even with the variant, and conditions are nowhere near as bad as they were last winter. But the new guidance amounts to a weary acknowledgment that the lagging vaccination effort has fallen behind the ever-evolving virus. Fewer than 50 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, according to federal data.This is not a decision we at C.D.C. have made lightly. This weighs heavily on me, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the agencys director, said at a news briefing on Tuesday.VideotranscripttranscriptC.D.C. Recommends Masks for Vaccinated People IndoorsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people who have received the coronavirus vaccine should resume wearing masks in indoor public spaces, especially schools.We acted with the data that we had at the time, the data that we had at the time, the country mostly had alpha alpha among breakthrough vaccinated infections was not being transmitted to other people. The data that we have right now is different. We have a country that is full of Delta. Delta is a more transmissible virus. And the new data that we have is that Delta is able, in those rare breakthrough infections, to be transmitted to others. The most important thing that we need to say right now is we have a lot of this country that has a lot of viral burden. Thats driven a lot by people who mostly by people who are unvaccinated. Those are the people that are driving the new infections. But at an individual level, we believe everybody should be wearing a mask in those areas with substantial and high transmission. We are now a country that is the majority of Delta. We know that our young children, 11 and younger, cannot be vaccinated. We know that our vaccinated individuals, in the rare case that there are a breakthrough, have the potential to pass the virus on to unvaccinated individuals. We know that our 12 to 17-year-olds, right now, have only about 30 percent coverage in fully, in being fully vaccinated. And so taking all of that information together, we believe that the C.D.C. the C.D.C. recommends that K through 12 schools should be opened for full-time in-person learning. But in those indoor settings, everyone should be masked. And I think the most important thing to recognize is most of the transmission across this country is related to people who are unvaccinated. That is where the majority of transmissions are occurring.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people who have received the coronavirus vaccine should resume wearing masks in indoor public spaces, especially schools.Heres what we know:Masks in regions seeing case surges and in schoolsThe C.D.C. has long recommended that unvaccinated people wear masks indoors. But Tuesdays regulations mean that even people who have been completely inoculated will once again need to mask up in public indoor spaces in parts of the country where the virus is ascendant.In schools, health officials now recommended universal masking, regardless of vaccination status and community transmission of the virus, and additional precautions for staff, students and visitors. But they should still plan on returning to in-person learning in the fall.How this will play out in states that have prohibited mask mandates in schools remains to be seen as well as communities where people may be weary of wearing masks.Some states immediately adopted the new guidelines, including Illinois. The states public health director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, said that despite the effectiveness of current vaccines, we are still seeing the virus rapidly spread among the unvaccinated.The risk is greater for everyone if we do not stop the ongoing spread of the virus and the Delta variant, she said.Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada followed suit on Tuesday. Starting Friday, Nevada residents in counties with high rates of transmission will be required to wear masks in public indoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status. The mandate includes Clark County, home to Las Vegas.The C.D.C. said Americans should resume wearing masks in areas where there are more than 50 new infections per 100,000 residents over the previous seven days, or more than 8 percent of tests are positive for infection over that period. Health officials should reassess these figures weekly and change local restrictions accordingly, the agency said. By those criteria, all residents of Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, for example, should wear masks indoors. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties qualify, many concentrated in the South.The C.D.C.s director and other officials speak outThe Delta variant is showing every day its willingness to outsmart us, Dr. Walensky said at the news briefing. In rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with a Delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others.Data from several states and other countries show that the variant behaves differently from previous versions of the coronavirus, she added: This new science is worrisome and unfortunately warrants an update to our recommendation.In the past, Dr. Walensky has said the nation is in a pandemic of the unvaccinated a point she reiterated on Tuesday. But she also said that she is concerned that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections might pass the virus on to unvaccinated family members or people with weakened immune systems.With the earlier Alpha variant officials did not believe a vaccinated person could transmit the virus, she said.Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administrations top pandemic adviser, said the C.D.C. is correct to revisit its recommendations as the virus evolves, he said.I dont think you can say that this is just flip-flopping back and forth, he said. Theyre dealing with new information that the science is providing.But that was before the arrival of the Delta variant, which now accounts for the bulk of infections in the United States. C.D.C. officials were persuaded by new scientific evidence showing that even vaccinated people may become infected and may carry the virus in great amounts, Dr. Walensky acknowledged at the news briefing.But she said masking is only a temporary measure, and, adding, What we really need to do to drive down these transmissions in the areas of high transmission is to get more and more people vaccinated and in the meantime, to use masks.When asked whether he thought the C.D.C.s new mask guideline could lead to some confusion, President Biden said on Tuesday afternoon that the pandemic was continuing because of the unvaccinated, and theyre sowing enormous confusion.The more we learn, the more we learn about this virus and the Delta variant the more we have to be worried and concerned, he said. Theres only one thing we know for sure, if those other hundred million people got vaccinated wed be in a very different world. So get vaccinated, if you havent youre not nearly as smart as I said you were.The C.D.C. should have simply made a universal recommendation and told all Americans to wear masks indoors, said Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at University of Washington and former C.D.C. scientist. The director said the guidance is for people in areas of high transmission, but if you look at the country, every state is seeing a rise in transmission, Dr. Mokdad said. So why not say, Everybody in the U.S. should be wearing a mask indoors? The whole country is on fire.Jesus Jimnez contributed reporting. | Health |
Gabrielle Carteris I'm Honored '90210' Fans Still See, Hear Andrea 1/22/2018 Gabrielle Carteris' #MeToo speech at the SAG Awards was so moving, fans thought it echoed one given by her character on "Beverly Hills, 90210" ... and Gabrielle agrees. Carteris -- who's become Prez of SAG-AFTRA in 2016 -- tells TMZ she's "honored" people made the connection to her '90210' role of Andrea Zuckerman. Gabrielle made a powerful statement Sunday night about harassment and abuse in show biz. She says Andrea was always a character who spoke the truth, and thanked her '90210' fans for making the comparison -- "You're the best!" for remembering her commencement speech at West Beverly High. Check out the speeches for yourself ... it's pretty spot on. | Entertainment |
Health|Women With Aggressive Breast Cancer Are Living Longerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/health/metastatic-breast-cancer-survival.htmlTake a NumberCredit...James Cavallini/Science SourceJune 5, 2017Women with metastatic breast cancer are living longer.In 1990, there were 105,354 women alive with the disease in the United States, according to a new analysis. Now that figure has risen to an estimated 154,794.Metastatic breast cancer is progressive and incurable, but the analysis in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention found that more than 17 percent of women under age 64 whose metastatic breast cancer was diagnosed between 2000 and 2004 survived for 10 years or longer.From 1992 to 1994, the five-year survival rate for women under age 49 with newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancer was 18 percent. From 2005 to 2012, five-year survival had doubled to 36 percent.Clearly, improvements in treatment are part of the explanation. But better imaging techniques have also resulted in earlier detection of metastatic disease and may help explain the increase in years of survival.In fact, although women are surviving longer, the incidence of metastatic breast cancer has been increasing, especially in young women.Its difficult to know the contribution of early imaging on one hand and better treatment on the other, said the lead author, Angela B. Mariotto, a statistician with the National Cancer Institute.More recent use of imaging may contribute to some of these improvements, because women are diagnosed earlier.But treatment has improved, too. Dr. Mariotto noted in particular the introduction of trastuzumab (Herceptin) in 1998 for the treatment of certain tumors, which has significantly improved long-term survival.We know a lot about the incidence of metastatic breast cancer and a lot about death from the disease, Dr. Mariotto said. But we dont know much about what happens in between. This data fills some of the gaps.Dr. Mariotto is optimistic about breast cancer treatment and survival. Even though its difficult to treat and impossible to cure, she said, still its becoming more a chronic condition. | Health |
Lionel Messi Wedding Soccer Superstar Friends Arrive In Style 6/30/2017 Lionel Messi's soccer buds have arrived at the Barcelona superstar's wedding ceremony ... but it's their smokin' hot wives who stole the show!! Messi and his longtime girlfriend, Antonella Roccuzzo, are tyin' the knot today ... and some of the biggest names in the sport are on the guest list, like Messi's old Barcelona teammates, Xavi, Carles Puyol and Cesc Fabregas. They didn't go stag, of course ... bringing their beautiful wives along for the festivities. Check out the arrivals ... other footballers Sergio Aguero, Ezequiel Lavezzi, and many others. Here's a first look at the ceremony ... with the happy couple sharin' a smooch while being serenaded by a live band. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. | Entertainment |
Credit...Butterfly ConservationMarch 17, 2017LONDON The killer, a former body builder, stalked his frail victims at nature reserves, in one case clambering over a locked gate armed with a net, before he chased them down, trapped them and carried them away, dead or alive.In what prosecutors are calling Britains first conviction of its kind, Phillip Cullen, 57, was found guilty this week of capturing, killing and possessing specimens of the Large Blue butterfly, the countrys rarest butterfly, admired for its beauty and expressionist blue wings. Mr. Cullen, who had denied the charges, could face a maximum of six months in prison when he is sentenced next month.It is an offense to capture, kill or possess that butterfly because it is a protected species in the U.K. It is a unique case, the prosecutor Kevin Withey, told a magistrates court in Bristol, in southwest England. There has never been a prosecution in terms of capturing and killing.The Large Blue (Maculinea arion), first documented in Britain in the 1790s, was declared extinct here in 1979, but can now be found in 33 sites in southwest England thanks to David Simcox, an ecologist who drove his van to Sweden in 1983, collected some eggs and reintroduced them into southwest England.During the trial, the court heard how Mr. Cullen was seen in June 2015 running after the butterflies with a small net at a nature reserve in Gloucestershire, while a friend stood watch nearby. He was also observed acting suspiciously at another Large Blue butterfly hot spot in Somerset.Unluckily for Mr. Cullen, a butterfly expert at the Gloucestershire nature reserve witnessed his treachery. When he confronted Mr. Cullen and asked him what he was doing, prosecutors said Mr. Cullen said he was looking for parasitic wasps not butterflies. The butterfly expert photographed Mr. Cullen trying to catch a Large Blue, evidence that was presented in court.After suspicions were raised, the police last year raided his home near Bristol, where they discovered hundreds of dead butterflies encased in glass. Significantly, two dead Large Blue butterflies were labeled with the letters CH and DB, which prosecutors said stood for Collard Hill in Somerset and Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire, where the butterfly abductions or killings had taken place. (It was not clear exactly where the butterflies were killed.)ImageCredit...Neil Hulme, via Butterfly ConservationMr. Cullen said CH was short for Cobalt Hue and that DB stood for Dark Blue. He acknowledged that he had traded in butterflies in the past, but that he bought them legally and sold them at auction.Asked by his defense lawyer if he had, at any time, chased a blue butterfly, he replied, Not at any time.Did you capture one? his lawyer asked. No, I did not, Mr. Cullen replied.The collecting of butterflies and moths has a long lineage in Britain stretching back centuries, and was considered a gentlemanly hobby in Victorian times, when collectors would proudly display their catches in glass display cases. Two British prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill, were among those who enjoyed the hobby.But the antiquated practice has fallen out of favor in this conservationist age, and of the 59 species of butterflies in the country, six, including the Large Blue, are fully protected, and it is illegal to collect, sell or kill them. The Large Blue is endangered globally.There is nevertheless a small but hard-core group of butterfly catchers who relish collecting rare species and mounting them as their Victorian predecessors did, said Liam Creedon, a spokesman for Butterfly Conservation. A mounted Large Blue butterfly can fetch as much as $400.Britain is a nation of eccentrics, and people engage in odd hobbies like train-spotting, stamp collection and collecting butterflies, he said. Even if butterfly collectors are a small group, they can have a large impact on a rare species like the Large Blue butterfly.The Large Blue has an extraordinary life cycle, which Mr. Creedon likened to a plot from the movie Aliens.Describing the process, he said that first the butterflies lay their eggs in the flowers of wild thyme. After hatching, the caterpillars drop to the ground, and use honey glands to lure unsuspecting foraging red ants. He said the ants then take the tiny caterpillars into their brood chamber, where the caterpillars feed on ant larva. When they turn into butterflies, they manage to scurry to daylight and fly away. | World |
Ansel Elgort Baby Does Karaoke ... No Earbuds Necessary! 1/28/2018 TMZ.com Ansel Elgort practically recreated a scene from his blockbuster film this weekend -- except this time, he actually belted out the words ... and it was just as charming. The "Baby Driver" star hit up a high school pal's 23rd karaoke birthday party Saturday night with his GF, Violetta Komyshan, in NYC -- where he stepped up for at least a couple songs. Ansel sang along to Khalid's "Location" and The Temptations' "My Girl" -- seemingly trying to channel his inner Baby from the flick ... and we gotta say, it's almost spot-on. It's a little hard to tell through the group sing-along here, but this dude can actually croon. Just ask James Corden and Jamie Foxx. | Entertainment |
Science|Eaglet Emerges at National Arboretum, Live on a Webcamhttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/science/bald-eaglet-hatches-arboretum-webcam.htmlVideotranscripttranscriptBald Eaglet HatchesBald eagles nicknamed Mr. President and the First Lady welcomed their first eaglet on Friday as a webcam captured the hatching.SHOWS: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (MARCH 18, 2016) (AMERICAN EAGLE FOUNDATION AND EAGLES.ORG-MANDATORY COURTESY AMERICAN EAGLE FOUNDATION AND EAGLES.ORG/MANDATORY VERBAL COURTESY TO THE AMERICAN EAGLE FOUNDATION/NO ARCHIVE/NO RESALE) 1. BALD EAGLE NESTING 2. CLOSE UP OF EAGLET EMERGING FROM EGG 3. CLOSE UP OF EAGLE NESTING 4. WIDE VIEW OF EAGLE IN NEST 5. EAGLE FLYING IN AND DROPPING FISH IN NEST 6. VARIOUS OF BALD EAGLES IN NESTBald eagles nicknamed Mr. President and the First Lady welcomed their first eaglet on Friday as a webcam captured the hatching.CreditCredit...ReutersMarch 18, 2016An eaglet broke free of its shell Friday morning at the National Arboretum in Washington, where a live webcam has been fixed on a bald eagle nest for 24 hours a day. The hatching started on Wednesday night in the first of two eggs in the nest, with one eaglet making significant progress emerging from its shell.The American Eagle Foundation said the adult bald eagle pair nicknamed Mr. President and the First Lady were the first to nest in the location, high in a tulip poplar tree at the National Arboretum, which is operated by the Department of Agriculture. The eagles began nesting there in 2014, the first to do so since 1947.The adult eagles are sticking close to the eaglet and its unhatched sibling, sometimes making visibility poor on the video stream. This is a wild eagle nest, and anything can happen, the foundations site warns. Things like sibling rivalry, predators and natural disaster can affect this eagle family and may be difficult to watch.In 1963, bald eagles were close to extinction with just 487 nesting pairs remaining, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But the population has since recovered and is no longer considered endangered.Watching live footage of birds in their habitat can be both riveting and a test of patience. Long periods can go by with little happening aside from the ruffle of a feather.But for a spell in 2011, New Yorkers were fixated on a webcam showing red-tailed hawks in a nest overlooking Washington Square Park, following a tale of the health and, ultimately, the death of the mother hawk, named Violet.If you are really into watching eggs hatching, here is another webcam to keep an eye on. It shows a peregrine falcon in her nest on a ledge on the 41st floor of the Rhodes State Office Tower in Columbus, Ohio.A third egg has just appeared in the nest, the Ohio Department of National Resources said Thursday. Watch for a possible fourth egg over the weekend. | science |
Inside the RingsCredit...Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesFeb. 8, 2014SOCHI, Russia Who says the United States and Russia cannot get along?Forget the chilly relationship between President Obama and his counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin.Forget the kerfuffle that has left American athletes without a certain Greek yogurt in the Olympic Village.In ice dancing, the United States and Russia could not be chummier, according to a report in a French sports newspaper. Ah, Olympic ice dancing, an event with more scandals than sequins.On Saturday, the United States Figure Skating Association denied as categorically false a report in the newspaper, Lquipe, that America and Russia were conspiring to rig the pairs and ice dancing competitions at the Sochi Games at the expense of Canada.A pause for explanation: There are two figure skating competitions at these Olympics. The new team event concludes Sunday. Then the traditional disciplines mens, womens, pairs and ice dancing will commence.According to Lquipe, which quoted an unnamed Russian coach, the United States intended to help Russia win the overall team event and the pairs competition. In return, Russia would make sure the Americans Charlie White and Meryl Davis won the ice dancing competition.There is no help between countries, the United States association said in a statement. We have no further response to rumors, anonymous sources or conjecture.Well, wheres the fun in that? Figure skating would cease to exist without rumors, anonymous sources and conjecture. They are more common than photographs of Putin without his shirt.To be fair, there is no smoking gun, only the contention of an unnamed Russian judge. On Saturday, American and Canadian skaters and officials shrugged off the Lquipe accusation.Also, to be fair, no one in figure skating would be surprised anymore if the fix were in.Ice dancing, in particular, has been accused of more predetermined elections than Romania under the Ceausescus. Figure skating has a storied past with all that stuff, said Scott Moir of Canada, who, with his partner, Tessa Virtue, defeated White and Davis to win gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.A vote-trading scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Games discredited both the pairs and ice dancing competitions. In a desperate, Solomonic solution to the pairs fiasco, the International Olympic Committee awarded gold medals to the Russians and the Canadians.If there were to be a rigged outcome in Sochi, it could be almost impossible to detect. Votes are now cast anonymously. This was done to reduce the pressure on judges by their respective national skating federations, which nominate them to officiate at the Olympics. But it has left accountability weak, transparency as murky as a cataract.Nothing has changed, and in my opinion, its worse, Sonia Bianchetti, an Italian who has judged at seven Olympics, recently told The New York Times. Such secret judging, she said, was instituted to help the International Skating Union avoid having another public scandal.Just in case anyone wanted to know, 4 of the 13 countries selected to the judging pool for the ice dancing competition in Sochi happen to be former Soviet republics: Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Azerbaijan.On Saturday, White and Davis deservedly defeated Moir and Virtue in the team events short dance. And Canadian officials took the high road, saying they thought the judging would remain legitimate throughout these Olympics.It would be risky to complain and make ones skaters even more vulnerable to potential shenanigans by the judges.I stay clear of that stuff, Mike Slipchuk, Skate Canadas high performance director, told The Canadian Press. He said he had full confidence that the skaters would perform their best and that the judges would judge it as they see it.Adding intrigue is this: Although the duos are chief rivals, Moir and Virtue train with White and Davis in suburban Detroit and share a Russian coach, Marina Zoueva. Thats the first time were hearing that, Davis said of the Lquipe accusation. Thats unfortunate that theres an article. But were so focused on our jobs, and we really dont know a lot about anything else. I think were confident that what were putting out onto the ice kind of speaks for itself, and thats kind of what we stand behind.White said, We sort of live by our own expectations, adding, We dont let any external factors play any sort of equation to what were doing or what were expecting.Virtue seemed equally blinkered.Thats sort of out of our control, she said. We have to take care of our job on the ice and focus on the task at hand.And hope that the judges focus on the legitimacy of their task. | Sports |
DealBook|Global Payments to Buy Heartland Payment for $4.3 Billionhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/dealbook/global-payments-to-buy-heartland-payment-for-4-3-billion.htmlDec. 15, 2015Global Payments said on Tuesday that it planned to buy Heartland Payment Systems, a fellow payment processor focused on small to midsize businesses, for about $4.3 billion in cash and stock.The combination would be the latest in the payments industry as companies around the world move toward e-commerce of all stripes.Together, Global Payments and Heartland have about 2.5 million customers, and are expected to have over $1 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.Under the terms of the deal, Global Payments will pay 0.6687 of its own shares and $53.28 in cash for each share of Heartland. As of Mondays closing prices, that valued the deal at about $100.31 a share, up about 21 percent from Heartlands closing price.Global Payments said it expected the deal to add to its cash earnings per share by mid-single digits beginning in its 2017 fiscal year.This partnership with Heartland marks a major milestone for our company, significantly enhancing our direct presence in our largest market and transforming Global Payments into the leading provider of integrated payments technology solutions in the world, Jeffrey S. Sloan, Global Payments chief executive, said in a statement.Shares of Global Payments rose 1.6 percent on Tuesday, to $71.43, while those of Heartland closed up nearly 3 percent, at $85.16.The deal is expected to close by the end of next May, pending approval by regulators and Heartlands shareholders. | Business |
Credit...Getty Images; Reuters; Associated Press; Jim Wilson/The New York TimesJune 19, 2018In the weeks since the Trump administration instituted a zero tolerance policy that seeks to criminally prosecute anyone who crosses the border unlawfully and effectively causes children to be separated from their families, criticism has poured in from advocacy groups, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and a host of political luminaries who are no longer in office.Now, in the span of about 24 hours, all four living former first ladies have added their voices to the chorus of public critique, calling the practice immoral, disgraceful and a humanitarian crisis.Even the current first lady, Melania Trump, took the somewhat unusual step of issuing a statement that appeared to align somewhat with her predecessors, while also avoiding assigning partisan blame.Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform, her office said in a statement on Sunday. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.The rare public show of unity among several former first ladies drew a response Monday afternoon from Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, who acknowledged that calling attention to this matter is important and said the situation at the border is a very serious issue that Congress needs to fix, according to a transcript of her remarks.Asked about the criticisms, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said a prior administration was to blame.Frankly, this law was actually signed into effect in 2008, she said.Though the administration officials have called on lawmakers to close loopholes, no law actually requires that families be separated at the border. President Trump ordered the stiffer effort last month and it is the zero tolerance policy that results in unlawful immigrants being taken into federal criminal custody, at which point their children are considered unaccompanied alien minors and taken away.Heres a look at what each former first lady has said and how each of their husbands dealt with immigration during their time in office.Rosalynn CarterIn a statement released by the Carter Center on Monday, Rosalynn Carter condemned the Trump administrations approach.The practice and policy today of removing children from their parents care at our border with Mexico is disgraceful and a shame to our country, Mrs. Carter said.In 1980, her husband, Jimmy Carter, initially offered so-called open arms to tens of thousands of Cuban refugees many fleeing communism. He later abandoned the offer in favor of program designed to reduce the influx of refugees and exclude those who had been imprisoned in Cuba for serious nonpolitical crimes.Separately, Mr. Carter increased the number of Southeast Asian boat refugees who were allowed to resettle here after the Vietnam War.Hillary ClintonAt first, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic nominee for president, offered only a very brief comment on the Trump administration policy.YES! she wrote, signaling her agreement with a tweet by her husband, Bill Clinton, who said on Twitter on Fathers Day that children who had been separated from their parents should not be a negotiating tool.Then, in a series of tweets on Monday, Mrs. Clinton offered additional thoughts, calling situation at the border a humanitarian crisis.Every parent who has ever held a child in their arms, every human being with a sense of compassion and decency, should be outraged, she wrote.We should be a better country than one that tears families apart, turns a blind eye to women fleeing domestic violence, and treats frightened children as a means to a political end, Mrs. Clinton added.During her husbands administration, an anti-immigrant backlash arose in response to the number of Mexicans streaming across the border.Mr. Clinton was at first caught flat-footed to the new political dynamics and had a mixed record on the issue, but by the end of his presidency had helped pass some pro-immigrant legislation, said Frank Sharry, executive director of Americas Voice, a pro-immigrant advocacy organization.Laura BushIn an opinion article published on Sunday by The Washington Post, the former first lady Laura Bush nodded to her Texas roots in urging politicians in Washington to do better to fix this.I live in a border state, she wrote. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.She added, It is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.However, it was her husband, George W. Bush, who initiated the zero tolerance approach for illegal immigration on which Mr. Trumps policy is modeled a point Ms. Sanders alluded to on Monday.In 2005, Mr. Bush began Operation Streamline, a program along a stretch of the border in Texas that referred all unlawful entrants for criminal prosecution, imprisoning them and expediting assembly-line-style trials geared toward rapid deportations. The initiative yielded results and was soon expanded to more border sectors.Back then, however, exceptions were generally made for adults who were traveling with young children, as well as juveniles and people who were ill.In general, Mr. Bush had a moderate approach to immigration, said Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor in California who is now a law professor at the University of Washington.Ms. Fan, who was a prosecutor during the Bush years, said the former president let law enforcement working at the border use discretion in deciding which immigrants were worth prosecuting.Michelle ObamaOn Tuesday, Michelle Obama, who succeeded Mrs. Bush as first lady, retweeted her predecessors opinion article and said simply, Sometimes truth transcends party.But her husbands administration was also heavily criticized for how officials responded to its own immigration crisis. Indeed, Barack Obama earned the nickname deporter in chief for expelling more people than any other president in history.During Mr. Obamas second term, Central American migrants, including many unaccompanied children, began surging across the border. Obama administration officials recently told The New York Times that they considered the possibility of separating parents from their children, but said they quickly decided against it.Instead, they decided to vastly expand the detention of immigrant families and open up new facilities along the border, in which children and their parents could be held together. In the meantime, officials began publicly warning parents that their children would be deported if they entered the United States illegally.Eventually, images emerged of young children many dirty and some in tears who were being held with their families in makeshift detention facilities. Then came legal challenges, and soon afterward Obama administration officials decided to release the families pending the resolution of their asylum cases.On other immigration issues, Mr. Obama took a looser stance. In 2012, he took executive action to protect young people who were brought to the United States as children, in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. He also eventually shifted the priorities for deportation, so that officials focused on removing convicted criminals, foreigners who posed national security threats and people who recently crossed the border.It was a huge sea change from two million deportations to lets just focus on bad actors, Mr. Sharry said.The Trump administration has tried to end DACA, and, in contrast to Mr. Obama, is treating all people who have crossed the border without authorization as subject to criminal prosecution. | Politics |
The InterpreterCredit...Muhammed Muheisen/Associated PressMarch 13, 2017The risk of European disintegration looks significantly more real this week. Multiple crises, each a symptom and cause of the continents deepest problems, are converging simultaneously.Britain took a step toward leaving the European Union, and Scotland toward independence. The far right is expected to do well in Dutch elections. And a growing feud between the governments of Turkey and the Netherlands reveals both the difficulties of keeping Europe together and the forces that could pull it apart.Alone, these are not enough to break apart Europe, which has endured worse. But they represent larger forces that, given enough such crises, could do just that. This weeks events, then, pose something of a test of whether Europe can overcome or at least manage its problems or whether those problems are enough to unravel the post-World War II order.Here is an overview of those crises and why they matter.Far Right Likely to Gain in Dutch ElectionImageCredit...Muhammed Muheisen/Associated PressThe Netherlands will hold a national election on Wednesday in which the far-right Party for Freedom is expected to do well. It currently holds 15 of 150 seats in Parliament. Polls suggest that it will gain five to 15 additional seats, making it the countrys largest or second-largest party.The party is led by Geert Wilders, a populist firebrand who is known for extreme anti-Islam positions.It appears highly unlikely that Mr. Wilders or his party will end up leading the Netherlands. He would need 76 seats to form a governing majority, and the countrys multiparty system means that mainstream parties can easily form a coalition without him.Still, the election is a test case for whether Europe, which will also see major elections in France and Germany this year, can manage its rising populist movements.Far-right parties, even if they cannot secure enough seats to govern, can exert pressure. Mainstream parties could feel compelled to co-opt populist positions, much as Britains Conservative Party adopted leaving the European Union, or Brexit. And keeping the far right out of power risks exacerbating populist backlashes, as voters increasingly believe that establishment parties are conspiring to undermine popular will.In this way, the real test is not Election Day, but how the mainstream handles the next few years with a smaller majority and an emboldened far right. In Germany and France as well, the far right is currently polled to win a larger slice of votes but not enough to take power.The takeaway: The far right probably will not take power, but there will be more pressure to pursue populist policies, such as targeting migrants or weakening European integration, that would undermine Europes postwar order.Turkey and Europe at OddsImageCredit...Emrah Gurel/Associated PressA growing dispute between Turkey and European governments poses its own high-stakes test.Turkish officials are touring Europe to hold rallies encouraging the Turkish diaspora to vote in support of a referendum next month that would give the country a new constitution that would greatly expand the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has invested significant political capital in the measure.But Germany and the Netherlands have blocked the rallies. The Netherlands prevented Turkeys foreign minister from landing in the country and deported the Turkish family minister, in both cases to prevent them from attending pro-referendum rallies.Mr. Erdogan responded by accusing both countries of Nazism.The feud serves the political interests of both Turkish and Dutch leaders. For Mr. Erdogan, it allows him to make a show of standing up to Europe, rallying nationalists at home. Polls have shown a tight vote for the referendum, so he needs every vote.Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, also stands to gain votes among those skeptical of Mr. Erdogan. But so does Mr. Ruttes primary challenger, Mr. Wilders, who has seized the crisis to portray the countrys Turkish minority as alien and hostile.Because governments on both sides are driven largely by domestic electoral politics, they may decide, after their respective votes, that it is in their interest to smooth things over.Or they may not. The Dutch government is likely to emerge under pressure from a larger far right. And Mr. Erdogan, if his referendum passes and he consolidates power away from democratic institutions, may still feel insecure. Both could respond by indulging more such disputes. With each round, they could whip up more public outrage against the other, making it harder for either to back down.The episode, then, is less a danger in itself than a test of whether Europe and Turkey can still get along.That is a question of values as Europe swings toward populism and Turkey toward authoritarianism. But it is also a practical matter: Europe needs Turkey to stem the arrival of refugees, which it has been doing under a year-old deal.Mr. Erdogan, if pushed, could cancel the deal and allow or send millions into Europe. A rapid influx could deeply destabilize European politics and fuel the far right at a delicate moment.The takeaway: Turkey and Europe both have interests in getting along, but political pressures could eventually build to the point of forcing a breakup that hurts everyone.Article 50 Brings Brexit CloserImageCredit...Andy Rain/European Pressphoto AgencyThe British Parliament approved legislation that would permit Prime Minister Theresa May to formally invoke Article 50 of a European Union treaty, which dictates how a member state leaves the union.This legislation is mostly procedural. The debate has largely focused on how to carry out Britains exit from the European Union what role Parliament has in negotiations, for instance, and whether European Union citizens should retain certain rights rather than over whether the exit will occur. British leaders are still set on leaving.The larger significance is that it brings Ms. May a step closer to triggering Article 50, which she had pledged to do by the end of this month and which would officially begin the process of leaving the European Union.Once Article 50 is invoked, Britain will be effectively locked in to leaving the European Union. It will have two years to negotiate the terms of exiting, over things like trade agreements and migration rules.If there is no agreement within that time which seems possible given how much there is to hammer out then the country will be ejected with no agreement. No one knows for sure what that would mean. Britain is desperate for this to go smoothly, but the European Union has every incentive to make this process painful so as to deter other European states from following.The takeaway: Brexit is looking increasingly certain, which will heavily damage both the British economy and European unity.Scotland and Northern Ireland in DoubtImageCredit...Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesNicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, has called for a new independence referendum, which would make Scotland an independent country with the aim of remaining within the European Union. The vote would be held by spring 2019, so almost certainly while Britain is still negotiating Brexit.Ms. Sturgeons statement is not binding, and there are many steps to go. She cannot hold a referendum without permission from the British government, and it is unclear whether she will get it.Scottish voters defeated a 2014 referendum 55 percent to 45 percent. But Brexit could tilt the politics. Most Scots voted to stay in the European Union, and Brexit feels, to many, like proof that Scottish and English voters do not share a common vision for the country and that the more populous English will continue to impose their conservative politics on Scotland.Economic conditions, though, are less favorable to independence. An independent Scotland would rely heavily on exports of oil, the price of which has plummeted since 2014.Less noticed has been the recent election in Northern Ireland, which handed major gains to Sinn Fein, a nationalist party that has called for Northern Ireland to leave Britain and reunite with Ireland.Brexit has brought tremendous uncertainty to the Northern Ireland peace agreements, which rely on relaxed Irish border rules that may no longer be possible after Brexit. Sinn Fein still lacks a majority, but its gains indicate Northern Irish skepticism about following Britain out of the European Union.The takeaway: The United Kingdom could break apart, though it is too early to say whether it will. | World |
on techThe conviction of the journalist Maria Ressa shows that Facebooks harms cant be ignored.Credit...Adam MaidaJune 16, 2020This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.Mark Zuckerberg likes to say that Facebook does more good than harm in the world. But Facebooks effect on the world is multifaceted and complicated, and the good cant simply make us forget the bad.Without Facebook or a digital hangout like it, we might never have seen the bystander video of George Floyd pinned under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, undermining the official account of Floyds death. Facebook gives everyone even a 17-year-old a printing press. Yes, that is often very good.But on the flip side I think about the Philippines, where Facebook has been weaponized by powerful people to vilify and harass their enemies, and where the social network has contributed to a poisoned atmosphere in which even basic facts are in doubt. It is in poorer countries without strong democratic institutions where the good but also the harm of Facebook has been magnified.Facebook has acknowledged that is has been slow to act in some countries and has more work to do to stop harmful abuses of its hangouts. But Zuckerbergs mathematical equation the good outweighs the bad is too simplistic. Every time I think something positive about Facebook, I also hold in my mind the profound damage the company has done and that too should be an indelible part of Zuckerbergs legacy.I am grappling with this again now because on Monday a court in Manila convicted a prominent journalist in the Philippines, Maria Ressa, and a former colleague of cyber libel.Ressa and her defenders have said the legal case was an effort to silence news publications like Rappler, which she co-founded, that have been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte and his war on drugs that has left thousands of people dead and disappeared.Davey Alba, my New York Times colleague, wrote a must-read article two years ago about the ways that Duterte and his allies employed Facebook to build a large base of supporters, smear opponents like Ressa and spread hoaxes.Davey explained to me that Facebook gave Duterte the means to disseminate his message quickly and broadly. And the companys computer-rigged system that is programmed to circulate the most engaging (and often divisive) material lined up perfectly with the fear, outrage and anger that fueled Dutertes political campaign and then his presidency.There were violent world leaders before Facebook, but as in other countries, the social network and an authoritarian were a match.Ressa used Facebook to build an audience for her fledgling news organization. But she and other Rappler staff were also targeted on Facebook, and the news outlet devoted its time and resources to combat false information there. As an official Facebook partner, Rappler was tasked by Facebook to protect the Philippines from the worst of Facebook.Alone, the Philippines shows the worst side of Facebook. But this is not an isolated case. In Myanmar, Sri Lanka and beyond, theres a repeated pattern of Facebooks system rewarding the most outrageous or fear-mongering messages with more distribution, to grave consequence. And Facebook fails to address warnings about the abuses happening under its nose.Yes, we want and need to bear witness to police brutality videos. But we shouldnt accept a genocide in Myanmar or the targeting of a journalist in the Philippines in exchange for it.Big tech accountability is too important to botchMembers of Congress have been trying to get Jeff Bezos, Amazons chief executive, to testify in an ongoing investigation into whether big technology companies wield their power fairly. Amazons lawyer said on Monday that Bezos was willing to appear at a House hearing alongside other C.E.O.s. (Youll notice that is hardly an unqualified yes.)Bezos is rarely in a position like this, facing questions that he is compelled to answer. Ill be watching eagerly, if it happens. But I can already tell you that it will be frustrating and pointless.What Ive learned from congressional fact-finding sessions like this is that they are theater on both sides.Too often, our elected officials use these moments to grandstand or catch executives in a lie, and corporate leaders just as powerful but unelected by the public say things that might be technically true but not all that revealing.Both lawmakers and tech companies share the blame here.Theres a false idea inside tech companies that members of Congress are too old or clueless to understand how tech companies work. But in one of the hearings last year of the House panel investigating competition in technology, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers asked important, probing questions. It was the executives from Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon who mostly dodged those questions.Im not a congressional expert, but I wonder if the format of these legislative accountability sessions needs some tweaks. One critic of tech companies has suggested having congressional staff members tape interviews with witnesses so there would be no time limits and less inclination to show off. A Washington veteran suggested to me that investigative hearings need to happen more frequently because there is a cumulative impact.The power of big tech companies is an important matter of public policy. We should hold both our elected officials and the big companies we rely on accountable for what they do. The hearings as they exist now are unlikely to do this.Before we go Speaking of investigations into big tech power : European regulators are questioning whether Apple abuses its power by setting onerous terms for app makers who want to reach iPhone and iPad users, my colleague Adam Satariano writes. The regulators are also opening a separate investigation to see whether Apple is blocking alternatives to Apple Pay on the companys devices.Can a computer be your friend? Cade Metz, a New York Times tech reporter, has a nuanced look at virtual digital assistants that some people now turn to for companionship or to vent about their problems. Some researchers said leaning on chatbots prevents people from dealing with complex human relationships, but many psychologists and users say these digital helpers provide fulfilling emotional support.What. Is. Going. On. In an alarming display of corporate vigilantism, six eBay employees were charged with harassing a Massachusetts couple who wrote an e-commerce newsletter by sending them boxes of live cockroaches, a Halloween mask of a bloody pigs face and other disturbing material. My colleague Natasha Singer writes that none of the employees now work at eBay.Hugs to thisNo one loves carrots this much. (I recommend watching with the sound on for the full effect of webbed feet on pavement.)We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else youd like us to explore. You can reach us at [email protected]. Get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday; please sign up here. | Tech |
Rasual Butler's death is hitting the NBA hard -- with his friends and former teammates sending their condolences to Butler's family. John Wall -- "I will always remember the time we shared together as teammates, you were the big brother. I appreciate the advice you shared, not just about basketball but life. Sending my deepest condolences to the families of Rasual and Leah. May you both rest in peace." Blake Griffin -- "You were a great teammate and an even better person. Rest in peace my friend." LaMarcus Aldridge -- "Devastated to hear the news about the passing of my former teammate, Rasual, & his wife. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families during this difficult time. Rasual was an amazing teammate and an even better person. He will truly be missed!" Kyle Lowry -- "I remember I called you when you got drafted on draft night and I was at a camp and I wanted to show off because I knew you and you answered the phone for a 16 year old who was one of your biggest fans.. this is truly a sad day for me !! RIP Sual bop my oldhead!!" Austin Rivers -- "It was a pleasure meeting you man. Getting to work with you last year was amazing. For you were not only a knowledgeable player....but more so a great man! Smh Crazy this just happened. May you and your wife RIP in heaven." Kevin Love -- "Incredibly sad news to hear about Rasual Butler and his wife Leah. Prayers to both of their families through this tough time." Ray Allen -- "I cannot believe this!!!!!!!!!My heart is heavy!!! We lost a good one today! RIP Rasual you were such a great talent on the court but an even better man off it! My thoughts are with the entire Butler family as they mourn the tragic loss of their son/brother and his beautiful wife, Leah. Gone too soon. Rest in power." Reggie Miller -- "Saddened by the news and the loss of Rasual Butler and his wife Leah. Talk about a great dude and family man. I know he had many stops during his 13 year NBA journey, but he was beloved becasue of his work ethic in Indiana. New guardian Angels." Paul Pierce -- "So sad this morning to here about my friend and teammate RIP Rasual Butler appreciate the people around u because u never know." Chauncey Billups -- "Im shocked, saddened and in disbelief about the news on my friend Rasual Butler and his wife Leah. May God be with their families. We will miss you 'Sul.'" Allen Iverson -- "Rest easy my brother. See you when I get there!!!" Shaq -- "Still cant believe the news about my main man SOOL BOP. #riprasualbutler#THELILHOMIEFROMPHILLY." Kobe Bryant -- "Rest In Peace my brother #RasualButler." Miami Heat -- "We are deeply saddened by the passing of Rasual Butler and his wife, Leah LaBelle. Our sincere condolences, thoughts and prayers go out to the family and many friends of Rasual and Leah. They will be missed." L.A. Clippers -- "The L.A. Clippers are deeply saddened by the loss of Rasual Butler and his wife, Leah LaBelle. Rasual will long be remembered not only for his accomplishments on the court, but for his vibrant personality, positive outlook and the compassion he had for everyone around him." Indiana Pacers -- "Our entire organization is deeply saddened after learning of the death of Rasual Butler and his wife, Leah LaBelle. In his one season with us, Rasual was the consummate team player and a great role model for our younger players on how a professional should prepare and act, while being a positive influence on everyone who associated with him. We offer our sincerest condolences to he and his wife's family." | Entertainment |
Credit...Michael Short/BloombergJune 1, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work when a current deal expires next year.Diane Greene, who is the head of the Google Cloud business that won a contract with the Pentagons Project Maven, said during a weekly meeting with employees on Friday that the company was backing away from its A.I. work with the military, according to a person familiar with the discussion but not permitted to speak publicly about it.Googles work with the Defense Department on the Maven program, which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes, roiled the internet giants work force. Many of the companys top A.I. researchers, in particular, worried that the contract was the first step toward using the nascent technology in advanced weapons.But it is not unusual for Silicon Valleys big companies to have deep military ties. And the internal dissent over Maven stands in contrast to Googles biggest competitors for selling cloud-computing services Amazon.com and Microsoft which have aggressively pursued Pentagon contracts without pushback from their employees.Googles self-image is different it once had a motto of dont be evil. A number of its top technical talent said the internet company was betraying its idealistic principles, even as its business-minded officials worried that the protests would damage its chances to secure more business from the Defense Department.About 4,000 Google employees signed a petition demanding a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology. A handful of employees also resigned in protest, while some were openly advocating the company to cancel the Maven contract.Months before it became public, senior Google officials were worried about how the Maven contract would be perceived inside and outside the company, The New York Times reported this week. By courting business with the Pentagon, they risked angering a number of the companys highly regarded A.I. researchers, who had vowed that their work would not become militarized.Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, had reached out to tech companies and sought their support and cooperation as the Pentagon makes artificial intelligence a centerpiece of its weapons strategy. The decision made by Google on Friday is a setback to that outreach.But if Google drops out of some or all of the competition to sell the software that will guide future weaponry, the Pentagon is likely to find plenty of other companies happy to take the lucrative business. A Defense Department spokeswoman did not reply to a request for comment on Friday.Ms. Greenes comments were reported earlier by Gizmodo.The money for Google in the Project Maven contract was never large by the standards of a company with revenue of $110 billion last year $9 million, one official told employees, or a possible $15 million over 18 months, according to an internal email.But some company officials saw it as an opening to much greater revenue down the road. In an email last September, a Google official in Washington told colleagues she expected Maven to grow into a $250 million-a-year project, and eventually it could have helped open the door to contracts worth far more; notably a multiyear, multibillion-dollar cloud computing project called JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure.Whether Googles Maven decision is a short-term reaction to employee protests and adverse news coverage or reflects a more sweeping strategy not to pursue military work is unclear. The question of whether a particular contract contributes to warfare does not always have a simple answer.When the Maven work came under fire inside Google, company officials asserted that it was not offensive in nature. But Maven is using the companys artificial intelligence software to improve the sorting and analysis of imagery from drones, and some drones rely on such analysis to identify human targets for lethal missile shots.Google management had told employees that it would produce a set of principles to guide its choices in the use of artificial intelligence for defense and intelligence contracting. At Fridays meeting, Ms. Greene said the company was expected to announce those guidelines next week.Google has already said that the new artificial intelligence principles under development precluded the use of A.I. in weaponry. But it was unclear how such a prohibition would be applied in practice and whether it would affect Googles pursuit of the JEDI contract.Defense Department officials are themselves wrestling with the complexity of their move into cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Critics have questioned the proposal to give the entire JEDI contract, which could extend for 10 years, to a single vendor. This week, officials announced they were slowing the contracting process down.Dana White, the Pentagon spokeswoman, said this week that the JEDI contract had drawn incredible interest and more than 1,000 responses to a draft request for proposals. But she said officials wanted to take their time.So, we are working on it, but its important that we dont rush toward failure, Ms. White said. This is different for us. We have a lot more players in it. This is something different from some of our other acquisition programs because we do have a great deal of commercial interest.Ms. Greene said the company probably would not have sought the Maven work if company officials had anticipated the criticism, according to notes on Ms. Greenes remarks taken by a Google employee and shared with The Times.Another person who watched the meeting added that Ms. Greene said Maven had been terrible for Google and that the decision to pursue the contract was done when Google was more aggressively going after military work.Google does other, more innocuous business with the Pentagon, including military advertising on Google properties and Googles ad platform, as well as providing web apps like email.Meredith Whittaker, a Google A.I. researcher who was openly critical of the Maven work, wrote on Twitter that she was incredibly happy about this decision, and have a deep respect for the many people who worked and risked to make it happen. Google should not be in the business of war.Even though the internal protest has carried on for months, there was no indication that employee criticism of the deal was dying down.Earlier this week, one Google engineer on the companys internal message boards proposed the idea of employees protesting Google Clouds conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in July with a campaign called Occupy Moscone Center, fashioned after the Occupy Wall Street protests.That engineer resigned from the company this week in protest of Maven and planned for Friday to be his last day. But he said he was told on Friday morning to leave immediately, according to an email viewed by The Times.Peter W. Singer, who studies war and technology at New America, a Washington research group, said many of the tools the Pentagon was seeking were neither inherently military nor inherently civilian. He added, This is not cannons and ballistic missiles. The same software that speeds through video shot with armed drones can be used to study customers in fast-food restaurants or movements on a factory floor.Mr. Singer also said he thought Google employees who denounced Maven were somewhat nave, because Googles search engine and the video platform of its YouTube division have been used for years by warriors of many countries, as well as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.They may want to act like theyre not in the business of war, but the business of war long ago came to them, said Mr. Singer, author of a book examining such issues called LikeWar, scheduled for publication in the fall. | Tech |
Africa|7 Congo Army Officers Charged With War Crimes in Massacrehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/world/africa/congo-massacre-war-crimes.htmlVideoFootage shared by human rights activists appeared to show soldiers killing unarmed civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo.March 18, 2017KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo Seven Congolese Army officers have been arrested and charged with war crimes after a video surfaced last month that appeared to show uniformed soldiers opening fire on a group of civilians in a massacre that left at least 13 people dead, the militarys auditor general said on Saturday.The video depicts a squad of soldiers gunning down a group of people, which included women and possibly children, in Congos Kasa-Central Province. Most of the victims were unarmed, though a few men appeared to be holding slingshots. Several analysts who saw the video said that it revealed a government-sponsored massacre of civilians and that the video could be used as evidence of war crimes.In connection with this video, we have found seven suspects, all are F.A.R.D.C. elements, who are currently in detention, said the auditor general, Gen. Joseph Ponde Isambwa, using an abbreviation for the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.The officers, he said, had been charged with several crimes including war crime by murder, war crime by mutilation, war crimes by cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and denial of an offense committed by persons subject to military jurisdiction.Among those arrested was Sgt. Maj. Maneno Katembo, a rifleman who is believed to have recorded the video.Congo has a history of government-led atrocities, including gang rapes and the slaughtering of civilians.The government initially labeled the video a hoax, before reversing itself and ordering the officers arrest. The country is nearly lawless, and the government forces are known to be brutal, underpaid and among the most dreaded.On Monday, two United Nations officials an American and a Swede were kidnapped along with four Congolese also in Kasa-Central Province.On Saturday, the United Nations mission in Kinshasa released a statement expressing concern over reports of renewed fighting in the restive region. | World |