Text
stringlengths 91
48.9k
| Category
stringclasses 8
values |
|---|---|
Credit...Joe Skipper/ReutersDec. 23, 2015Explosions in Takatas airbags raised alarms at the highest levels of the airbag manufacturer and its biggest customer, Honda, more than five years ago, according to internal documents unsealed by a Florida court on Wednesday.Safety investigators additionally linked yet another death to the defect, bringing the total to eight in the United States and nine worldwide.Twelve automakers have recalled more than 19 million cars to repair components in the defective airbags, which can explode when they deploy, sending metal fragments flying.The documents were unsealed as part of a lawsuit brought against Takata in Florida. According to minutes of a meeting at Hondas American headquarters in Torrance, Calif., on July 22, 2009, Hidenobu Iwata, who at the time oversaw the automakers manufacturing operations in the United States, pressed Takatas president, Shigehisa Takada, on the extent of the defect.I am constantly worrying how far it spreads out, Mr. Iwata told Mr. Takada and other Takata executives at the meeting, according to the minutes. I want you to study the reason quickly. An engineer identified only as Otaka pressed Takata on the reasons for the defect, according to the minutes. Why does the propellant deteriorate with age? Why does it explode? I want to know the truth.That meeting was called two months after the first known death linked to a Takata airbag rupture. Ashley Parham, 18, of Oklahoma bled to death after her driver-side airbag ruptured in a crash in May 2009, shooting out a piece of debris that sliced open an artery in her neck.At that time, only about 4,000 vehicles had been recalled over what Takata and Honda described at the time as a limited manufacturing problem. Five days after the meeting, Honda recalled an additional 440,000 vehicles over the defect, but both companies continued to assert that the defect was limited to isolated manufacturing issues.In November of that year, regulators began an investigation into those recalls, but shut down that inquiry six months later, saying it had found insufficient information to suggest that Honda had not been forthcoming to regulators over the defect.Takata declined to comment on the internal documents. Bloomberg first reported on the documents.Also on Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had identified another death linked to the defective airbags.The victim was in a 2001 Honda Accord whose driver-side airbag exploded after an accident near Pittsburgh in July, said Gordon Trowbridge, spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The victim, who was not identified, had severe injuries and died several days later, he said.The safety agency learned of the crash last week when lawyers retained by the family contacted the agency. Regulators will examine the vehicle with Honda and Takata representatives, Mr. Trowbridge said. Honda said it had sent several recall notices to the previous owner of the Accord between 2010 and 2012, but the cars airbag had not yet been repaired.Honda mailed an additional recall notice to the cars current owner on July 21, a day before the crash, said a Honda spokesman, Chris Martin. He declined to give further details.Our thoughts and sincere sympathies are with the family, Mr. Martin said in a statement. We are working hard to understand this crash and the cause of the injuries that resulted in this fatality. A Takata spokesman, Jared Levy, also expressed condolences to the victims family.In addition to disclosing another fatal crash, Mr. Trowbridge said that the safety agency was expanding the recalls to include several hundred thousand Honda, Mazda and Subaru vehicles.The new recalls are being issued for 2005-8 Subaru Legacy and Outback vehicles, 2005-8 Mazda 6 cars, and 2002-4 Honda CR-Vs, Mr. Trowbridge said. These were being recalled based on results of continuing testing, he said.The recalls, in addition to the millions of cars already recalled, are intended to replace a component in the airbag called an inflater, which contains the propellant that can unexpectedly cause the airbag to explode. Experts in explosives have questioned the stability of that compound, ammonium nitrate, which is typically used in large-scale applications like mining.The agency has said that unless Takata can prove that ammonium nitrate is stable and safe to use, all airbag inflaters that use the compound will eventually be recalled potentially vastly expanding an already widespread recall.That is almost certainly an additional tens of millions of inflaters, Mr. Trowbridge said.The safety agency has fined Takata $70 million for failing to disclose the defect promptly, and warned that the penalty could increase by $130 million if Takata did not live up to the terms of the consent order. That condition would make the fine a record civil punishment for the auto industry.To oversee Takatas airbag testing and recall efforts, Mr. Trowbridge said that the agency had appointed John D. Buretta, a former principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Departments criminal division, as an independent monitor. The appointment was part of the consent order that Takata agreed to.Two senators on Wednesday expressed concern over the pace of the recall.The current pace of recall efforts is completely unacceptable and a massive disappointment, Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said in a statement.Only about 27 percent of cars with recalled driver-side airbags had been repaired as of Dec. 4, the safety agency said, though Mr. Trowbridge said the number of cars being taken in for repairs was accelerating rapidly.Automakers have been prioritizing recalls in some more humid states, including Florida, Georgia and Hawaii, where investigators say ruptures are more likely to happen because the high humidity is thought to degrade the ammonium nitrate propellant over time. In those humid areas, about 34 percent of cars with driver-side airbag recalls have been serviced, the agency said. | Business |
The Notorious B.I.G. Looking Down On His Murder Scene 1/22/2018 The marketing team behind "Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G" found a brilliant spot to promote the series ... right above Biggie's actual murder scene. B.I.G. was gunned down March 9, 1997 as he left L.A.'s Petersen Automotive Museum -- on the corner of South Fairfax & Wilshire. Now, a huge billboard right above that intersection shows his face with the tagline "20 Years. Still Unsolved." The true crime scripted series also covers Tupac's murder, which happened 6 months before Biggie's. There is no billboard up at the Vegas intersection where 'Pac was killed. Not yet, anyway. The show premieres February 27. #HonkforBiggie. | Entertainment |
N.B.A.|Louisville Gets Back on Trackhttps://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/sports/basketball/louisville-gets-back-on-track.htmlAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports Briefing | Women's BasketballBy The Associated PressFeb. 13, 2014Shoni Schimmel had 21 points and No. 4 Louisville (24-2, 12-1 American Athletic Conference) rebounded from a loss Sunday to No. 1 Connecticut with a 60-50 win over visiting Temple (12-12, 6-7). (AP)AdvertisementContinue reading the main story | Sports |
Terrell Owens Takes Hall of Fame Shot at 49ers 1/31/2018 TMZSports.com Terrell Owens is clearly still pissed about the way things went down at the end of his career in San Francisco ... because he just threw some Hall of Fame shade at the 49ers. T.O. touched down in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl festivities when we asked if he thought he would finally get the votes to be enshrined in Canton this year. Owens insists he doesn't give A DAMN about the Hall of Fame -- but if he DID get inducted, he would show no love to 9ers ... the team that launched his career. Yeah, we know our question about picking a team to be enshrined with is more of a baseball thing -- but you get the point. Of course, things ended nasty between Owens and the 49ers when a contract dispute erupted in the final year of his deal. He ended up leaving and signing a $49 million contract with the Eagles. Despite all the drama, T.O.'s old 49ers QB Jeff Garcia tells TMZ Sports he strongly believes Owens belongs in the Hall. TMZSports.com | Entertainment |
Business BriefingDec. 25, 2015Ferrari North America is recalling some 2016 California T vehicles because of the risk of a fuel leak in the engine compartment, according to a United States Department of Transportation notice on Friday. The recall, which began on Dec. 14, affects up to 185 vehicles manufactured between Sept. 8 and Nov. 11, 2015. The higher risk of a leak, which increases the chances of fire, was the result of a manufacturing defect in a part provided by a supplier, according to a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The move comes after Ferrari, owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V., recalled upward of 800 cars in the United States to fix a problem with its Takata airbags over the summer. Ferrari issued a stop sale notice to dealers of the 2016 model California T, which has a list price of just over $167,000 according to The Car Guide, on Nov. 23, filings show. Dealers will replace the line free of charge, the notice read. | Business |
The panel also called on countries to ensure that beneficial forms of genetic alteration be shared equitably.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated PressJuly 12, 2021A committee of experts working with the World Health Organization on Monday called on the nations of the world to set stronger limits on powerful methods of human gene editing.Their recommendations, made after two years of deliberation, aim to head off rogue science experiments with the human genome, and ensure that proper uses of gene-editing techniques are beneficial to the broader public, particularly people in developing countries, and not only the wealthy.I am very supportive, said Dr. Leonard Zon, a gene therapy expert at Harvard University who was not a member of the committee, but called it a thoughtful group. Recent gene-editing results are impressive, he said, and the committees recommendations will be very important for therapy in the future.The guidelines proposed by the W.H.O. committee were prompted in large part by the case of He Jiankui, a scientist in China who stunned the world in November 2018 when he announced he had altered the DNA of human embryos using CRISPR, a technique that allows precision editing of genes. Such alterations meant that any changes that occurred in the genes would be replicated in every cell of the embryo, including sperm and egg cells. And that meant that the alterations, even if they were deleterious instead of helpful, would arise not just in the babies born after gene editing but in every generation their DNA was passed on to.Dr. Hes goal was to alter the DNA of babies in an attempt to make them genetically unable to contract H.I.V. from their parents. A court in China determined he had forged ethics documents and misled subjects in the experiments who had not realized what his gene-editing experiment consisted of. He was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2019.ImageCredit...Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe fact that such an experiment, known as germline editing, could take place raised the question of how to control gene editing and how to be sure it was used to benefit people.The W.H.O. standards say that Dr. Hes use of germline editing was unacceptable and that it is irresponsible to even consider using it now. But other sorts of gene editing are a different story.Scientists already are attempting gene editing to correct the mutation that causes sickle cell disease. The edited gene would be in blood-forming bone marrow cells of people who have the disease, not in sperm or egg cells, so the changes would not be passed down through the generations. But even that use of CRISPR raises other questions.The W.H.O. committee described an invented scenario where researchers from a rich country want to do a clinical trial of sickle-cell gene editing in sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease is prevalent. If the trial succeeds, the gene-editing treatment would be too expensive for all but very few citizens of the country where it is to be tested.Another hypothetical situation involves a gene-editing trial to correct a gene mutation that causes Huntingtons disease, a progressive brain disorder. People who inherit the mutated gene will develop Huntingtons disease with absolute certainty. If the gene-editing experiment succeeds, it may spare them that horrific disease. And because the editing does not involve sperm and eggs, the changes will not be heritable.But it would take years, perhaps even decades, to know if study participants whose genes were edited were protected from Huntingtons disease. Participants would not be freed of the terrible fear that, despite the gene editing, they might still develop the fatal brain disease.In such a scenario, the W.H.O. group asked if there were more rapid ways of assessing the treatments effectiveness. It also proposed that researchers consider the psychological burden on participants who are left hoping they are cured but not knowing for sure.Yet gene editing is here and holds enormous promise, the committee said. The W.H.O. has started a registry of studies underway and says it already includes 156 experiments involving genes that are not in sperm or eggs.The W.H.O. committee stressed that each country must have guidelines to be sure the research is conducted ethically and with appropriate oversight, and with conditions in place to ensure access and social justice. With the costs of treatment expected to be very high, at least at first, the group said the goal must be to ensure that the benefits of gene editing accrue equitably to people around the world.That is not an easy challenge, said Franoise Baylis, a committee member who is a medical ethics researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. | science |
Credit...Rolex Dela Pena/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 16, 2017MANILA A Philippine opposition lawmaker filed an impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday, accusing him of murder and crimes against humanity in connection with his bloody antidrug campaign, as well as corruption.With Mr. Dutertes allies overwhelmingly dominating the House of Representatives, there was little chance that the president would actually be impeached. But the move could eventually make it easier to bring charges against Mr. Duterte at the International Criminal Court, as at least one Philippine lawyer has pledged to do, by showing that domestic attempts to stop Mr. Dutertes crackdown have failed, a human rights lawyer said.It is high time that President Duterte is punished for his sins against the country, Gary Alejano, the opposition lawmaker who filed the complaint, said Thursday. We are of the firm belief that he is unfit to hold the highest office of the land and that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy to this situation.Thousands of drug users and dealers have been killed by police officers or vigilantes since Mr. Duterte, who routinely threatens criminals with death and has boasted of killing them personally, took office in June. Human rights groups have said the president may have committed crimes against humanity by inciting such killings, many of which witnesses have described as being carried out in cold blood, despite police claims of self-defense.Mr. Alejanos complaint accuses Mr. Duterte of murder in connection with the killings, saying he implemented a state policy that encouraged them in the name of fighting drugs. It also accuses him of running a death squad when he was mayor of the southern city of Davao, before becoming president. Two professed hit men have testified that they belonged to such a death squad, which they said was overseen by Mr. Duterte.The impeachment complaint also accuses Mr. Duterte of maintaining thousands of fictitious employees on Davaos payrolls as mayor in order to collect their salaries, and of having as much as $40 million in undeclared bank accounts, an accusation previously made by an opposition senator, Antonio Trillanes.One third of the House of Representatives must support an impeachment motion for the case to go to the Senate for trial, and with more than 260 of the bodys 292 members allied with Mr. Duterte, there was little chance of that happening. The speaker of the House, Pantaleon Alvarez, a close ally of Mr. Duterte, said all of the charges had been fabricated.ImageCredit...Ted Aljibe/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThey seem to believe their own lies, Mr. Alvarez said of Mr. Alejano and other opposition lawmakers. We are entitled to our own stupidity.Aides to Mr. Duterte called the impeachment bid an attempt to destabilize the government apparently alluding to the involvement of Mr. Alejano and Senator Trillanes, when both men were junior military officers, in a 2003 coup attempt against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Both men were imprisoned but were later pardoned, and went on to enter politics.Mr. Alejano said there was nothing extralegal about his impeachment complaint. We are not staging a coup dtat or any other means to oust Duterte, he said.The complaint, however, appeared to have been timed to support an effort by a lawyer for Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascaas, the two men who say they belonged to the Davao death squad, to bring a case against Mr. Duterte at the International Criminal Court at The Hague alleging crimes against humanity. The lawyer, Jude Josue Sabio, has said he would do so by April.Romel Regalado Bagares, a human rights lawyer at the Center for International Law in the Philippines, said that bringing such a case to the international court now would be premature. The court can only have jurisdiction if domestic remedies like impeachment have been exhausted, he said.Even if an attempt to impeach the president fails, it will make for a stronger case that the alleged offenses cannot be addressed by Philippine institutions and that the international court is needed, Mr. Bagares said.Bringing a case to the international court before then could unintentionally lead to the further escalation of impunity, as a prompt dismissal of the case because of its fatal flaws could only give the perpetrators a deepened sense of invincibility, Mr. Bagares said.The last impeachment of a Philippine leader was in 2000, when then-President Joseph Estrada was accused of corruption and violating the Constitution. His impeachment trial stalled in January 2001, triggering mass protests that forced Mr. Estrada out of office after serving just two and half years of his six-year term. Mr. Estrada was eventually convicted of corruption charges and later pardoned. | World |
Credit...Kathryn Ziesig/The Post and Courier, via Associated PressJune 23, 2018Katie Arrington, a South Carolina state lawmaker who this month defeated Representative Mark Sanford in a House Republican primary, was seriously injured in a car crash on Friday night, according to her spokesman.Ms. Arrington and a friend were traveling to Hilton Head, where Ms. Arrington was scheduled to receive an award from a state medical organization on Saturday morning, the spokesman, Michael Mule, said on the lawmakers social media accounts.Katie sustained a fracture in her back and several broken ribs, as well as injuries that required Katie to undergo major surgery including the removal of a portion of her small intestine and a portion of her colon, a Facebook post said. Additionally, the main artery in her legs has a partial collapse and will require a stent.Ms. Arrington was awake and alert, Mr. Mule said by phone on Saturday. She was expected to have two more operations over the next couple of days, he said, adding, Shes as tough as they come.Mike Biundo, one of Ms. Arringtons consultants, said on Saturday morning that it was a rough night.He said he did not know how long her recovery might take. As you can imagine, this is still an ongoing and fluid situation, he said.The Charleston County Sheriffs Office said that a two-car collision happened around 9 p.m. on Highway 17 near Charleston.Ms. Arrington and her friend, Jacqueline Goff, 59, were traveling south when another driver traveling in the wrong direction hit their vehicle, Capt. Roger Antonio, a spokesman for the office, said in a statement. The driver of the other vehicle died, he said.Ms. Arrington, 47, won a surprise upset against Mr. Sanford in his Charleston-area district after she ran a relentless campaign that took aim at his criticism of President Trump.We are the party of President Donald J. Trump, she told supporters after the returns made her victory clear on primary night and just hours after Mr. Trump endorsed her campaign with a tweet belittling Mr. Sanford.Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble, Mr. Trump said on Twitter. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!On Saturday, Mr. Trump tweeted that his thoughts and prayers were with Ms. Arrington and those involved in the crash.Ms. Arrington, who was serving her first term in the State Legislature, harnessed grass-roots anger toward Mr. Sanford over his attacks on Mr. Trump and lingering unease over his well-publicized marital infidelity.The Democratic opponent she will face in the general election, Joe Cunningham, a lawyer, has assailed Ms. Arrington for her unswerving fealty to Mr. Trump.After news of the crash, Mr. Cunningham said on Twitter on Saturday that he was suspending all campaign activities until further notice.Just hearing about the terrible accident that occurred overnight involving Katie Arrington, he wrote. Amanda and I are lifting her and her family up in prayer right now. Please join us.Rob Godfrey, a onetime aide to Nikki R. Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, said news of the crash was certainly something that gives everybody pause.Neither Ms. Arrington nor her challenger, Mr. Cunningham, was very well known, Mr. Godfrey said, but both had demonstrated an ability to fire up their base of supporters, raise a significant amount of money and generate excitement nationally.Combine that with a national backdrop that is favorable for Democrats, he said, and the race has become one of the ones to watch.I think once Representative Arrington has had a chance to focus on the things that are important, and had a chance to recover, people will start to think about the political side of it again, he said.While it was far too early to speculate about whether Ms. Arrington would stay in the race, experts said that even if Republicans had to scramble to find a new nominee, it was unlikely that the open seat would go to a Democrat. South Carolinas 1st Congressional District typically favors Republicans.It is an uphill battle for a Democrat to win, said Chip Felkel, a political analyst and the chief executive of the communications firm the Felkel Group. It would take unique circumstances.Robert Oldendick, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina, said Ms. Arrington had a natural advantage in the district. So if shes able to come out of this and resume campaigning, I think shes pretty much a favorite, he said.If she decides not to or is unable to continue her campaign, that might give Mr. Cunningham a little better of a chance, he said.There is a speculation out there about the blue wave coming this November, he said. I dont see any of that in South Carolina. | Politics |
Credit...Pasieka/Science SourceJune 14, 2017If youve ever had milk, youre probably familiar with the work of Louis Pasteur, the 19th-century French chemist and biologist. He prevented diseases, developing a process widely known as pasteurization for killing microbes in milk and wine. He also created vaccines for rabies and anthrax. And his ideas led to the acceptance of germ theory, the notion that tiny organisms caused diseases like cholera. Pasteur even helped us brew better beer.Hes considered the benefactor of mankind, said Joseph Gal, a chemist and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado.But before all that, Pasteur was an artist. And without his early creative explorations, he may not have made one of his most monumental, but least talked about, discoveries in science, one with far-reaching implications.In a paper published last month in Nature Chemistry, Dr. Gal explains how a young Pasteur fought against the odds to articulate the existence of chirality, or the way that some molecules exist in mirror-image forms capable of producing very different effects. Today we see chiralitys effects in light, in chemistry and in the body even in the drugs we take.And we might not know a thing about them if it werent for the little-known artistic experience of Louis Pasteur, says Dr. Gal.Hands and cue ballsPasteur was born in 1822 to a French family of modest means. His dad was a soldier in Napoleons army and a tanner. As a teenager, Pasteur made portraits of his friends, family and dignitaries. But after his father urged him to pursue a more serious profession one that would feed him he became a scientist. At the age of 24 he discovered chirality.To understand chirality, consider two objects held up before a mirror: a white cue ball from a pool table and your hand. The reflection of the ball is exactly like the original. If you could reach into that mirror, pull out the reflection and cram it inside the original, theyd match up point for point. But if you tried the same thing with your hand, no matter how much you tried, the mirror image would never fit into the original.ImageCredit...Annales de Chimie et de PhysiqueAt the molecular level some objects are like cue balls, and they are always superimposable. But other things are like hands, and they can never be combined. Hands, like the crystals Pasteur would eventually discover, are chiral. And that discovery all came down to an accident in a vat of wine.Molecular secrets in wineDuring winemaking, a chemical called tartaric acid builds up on vat walls. In the 18th and 19th centuries, makers of medicine and dyes used this acid.In 1819, factory workers boiled wine too long and accidentally produced paratartaric acid, which had unique properties that intrigued scientists like Pasteur.The study of the acid was related to the study of crystal structures, which at the time seemed like a way to help solve the mystery of how molecules were built. Observing the various ways crystals interacted with light gave scientists clues about their properties.Earlier in the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Biot, a French physicist, discovered that tartaric acid was optically active. That is, when Biot shined polarized light (which moves out in only one direction, say vertically or horizontally, rather than all directions) through tartaric acid crystals in a solution, they rotated the light clockwise or counterclockwise. But no one knew how the crystals did it.When studying the paratartaric acid, Pasteur found that it produced two kinds of crystals one like those found in tartaric acid and another that was the mirror opposite. The crystals were handed, or what the Greeks call chiral (kheir) for hand. And they were not optically active, like the tartaric acid.Pasteur concluded that the mirror-image crystals, together as a 50/50 mix in the solution, canceled out each others ability to rotate polarized light. And without even knowing how a molecule was built, just eight months after receiving his doctorate, he said that their molecular structure was chiral, too. Chemistry changed forever.Several famous or much more accomplished scientists, some well along their illustrious careers, studied the same molecules, the same substances, said Dr. Gal. Realistically you would think theyd have beaten him to the punch, and yet they missed it.ImageCredit...Culture Club, via Getty ImagesSo why did this young, inexperienced chemist get it right?Dr. Gal thinks the answer might lie in the artistic passions of Pasteurs youth. Even as a scientist, Pasteur remained closely connected to art. He taught classes on how chemistry could be used in fine art and attended salons. He even carried around a notebook, jotting down 1-4 ratings of artwork he visited.And then Dr. Gal stumbled upon a letter Pasteur had written to his parents about a lithographic portrait he had made of a friend.Lithography back then involved etching a drawing onto a limestone slab with wax or oil and acid, and pressing a white piece of paper on top of it. The resulting picture was transposed, like a mirror image of the drawing left on the slab.In his letter, Pasteur wrote:I think I have not previously produced anything as well drawn and having as good a resemblance. All who have seen it find it striking. But I greatly fear one thing, that is, that on the paper the portrait will not be as good as on the stone; this is what always happens.Eureka. Isnt this the explanation of how he saw the handedness on the crystals because he was sensitized to that as an artist? Dr. Gal proposed.Mirror, mirror, everywhereFor various reasons, Pasteur eventually turned to biology. Perhaps he recognized that chirality could play a big role in it, some suggest.We now know that many drugs contain molecules that exist in two chiral forms, and that the two forms can react differently in the body. The most tragic example occurred in the 1950s and 60s, when doctors prescribed Thalidomide, a drug for morning sickness and other ailments, to pregnant women. The drug also contained a chiral molecule that caused disastrous side effects in many babies.Today, pharmaceutical companies work harder to separate the active and inactive forms of molecules, and the Food and Drug Administration issued rules to crack down on many chiral drugs in the 1990s. But not all are dangerous, and some were grandfathered in. For example, the pain reliever ibuprofen, as formulated in the United States, contains a 50/50 mix of chiral molecules: one that reduces headaches and its mirror image, which does not appear to be harmful.Many objects in our universe have this property of chirality, said Dr. Gal.In the mirror, in a vat of wine heated too long, on a piece of limestone and in your body: The non-superimposable hands of the universe were discovered by a man who wanted to be an artist, but settled for science. | science |
Tech Were UsingCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 6, 2018How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter in Washington, discussed the tech hes using.What are your most important tech tools for staying on top of your beat?My single most important tool? Backup power.Its been an obsession of mine since my days as a homeland security and disaster reporter at The Times, when I covered the Sept. 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. I never leave the house without a portable power supply that keeps me going at least 20 hours. That means I carry an Anker PowerCore 20100mAh, which can charge my Pixel 2 cellphone at least seven times. I also have an extra six-cell battery for my ThinkPad X270 laptop, which already has a super-large six-cell battery built in.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesI also have two Plantronics Voyager Bluetooth headsets (the best on the market in terms of sound quality), as I use them so much I keep the second one charged and ready to go. I also carry an Anker 40W 4-Port USB Wall Charger, as well as enough random charger wires that airport security officers give me an odd look (and often a second scan) when I pass through the checkpoint even with my T.S.A. PreCheck. (Yes, well worth the $17-a-year cost.)I often work inside a Google ecosystem, as I find there are a bunch of Google tools that make me much more productive. They include Google Voice, which allows me to have a single telephone number that rings on any phone I choose, or as many as six phones simultaneously. Google Voice also transcribes my voice mail messages instantly and texts me the message, so I never listen to voice mail. It also allow me to use my laptop to dial phone calls just by clicking on a number, which then connects instantly via my cellphone. So most of my outgoing calls on my cellphone are via Google Voice, including international ones, which are super cheap.Google Docs is also massively important for me, as it allows multiple people to simultaneously be writing and editing in the same file, constantly saving all changes, with a detailed revision history. It also comes with an edit trace function, so you can see what others are doing if you turn it on. One story I helped deliver had reporters in Latin America, Asia, the United States and Europe in the same file, as if we were standing over the same typewriter composing the piece together.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAnother important tool is my Olympus WS-821 digital recorder, which comes with a USB stick so I can immediately transfer interview recordings into my laptop and name them by subject and date. Then if I need a quick rough transcript, I upload it to Trint, by far the best automated transcription service, at $15 for each transcribed hour of interviews. Within minutes, I can have a relatively clean transcript of an interview.If I need to record a telephone interview (and have permission to do so), I use a low-tech option: the Olympus TP-8 Telephone Pick-up Microphone, which works instantly and reliably on any phone I might have to use, land line or cellular.Whenever I travel for work, I constantly take photos with my Pixel 2 cellphone that might seem like irrelevant details but that offer fact-checkable color in greater detail than I could ever write down in a notepad. They are then automatically backed up when I am on Wi-Fi by Google Photos.Also: LastPass helps me securely manage the dozens of websites I have passwords for. LinkedIn is helpful, in finding people and getting biographical information, as is an extension called ContactOut, which helps find emails and other contact info for LinkedIn users. Signal has become an important tool to communicate with certain sources. Twitter is a huge distraction, but is also an essential tool to keep up to date on topics I am tracking, and to help promote the work of The Times.One of your recent scoops involved uncovering the emails of Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. You must pore through thousands of documents for these investigations. Do you use any special tools to stay organized or streamline the process?One of the most challenging parts of my job is the massive number of documents I have to read, most of which are junk, but hidden in there are some real gems. A PDF reader is just not good enough.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesI have traditionally used Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, as it has good optical character recognition tools, which index the words on each page, allowing you to do word searches. More recently, I have been trying out a service called Logikcull, created for law firms to do document discovery work but useful when trying to analyze and annotate piles of documents that I get via Freedom of Information Act requests, which in some cases can run to 18,000 pages. Document Cloud is also a tremendous tool.I have a simple but low-tech trick for keeping track of documents. As I extract individual emails, other documents or audio files, I name them this way: 2017_04_24 Pruitt NMA Naples Fla Calendar Entry. That date format means that if you have, say, 20 documents in a folder, they will automatically line up chronologically. It is a super fast way to have a timeline of all your primary source documents, and makes it easy to find them instantly in chronological order. Try it out. It is pretty cool.Away from the office, what tech product do you and your family love?I am pretty low tech when not working. I have concluded I prefer to read books on paper. I ride my bike all around Washington. And I find all those Alexa and Google Home devices sort of creepy and unnecessary. I do have an Ecobee thermostat with extra sensors in our house that targets heating or cooling only to rooms that are occupied.What could be better with some of the tech tools you use?Trint is a tremendous technology. But it is still not perfect, particularly if the recording is not really sharp.Similarly, Logikcull is a super cool tool. But I think it needs to be tweaked before it can fully address my needs, such as being able to upload and optically recognize that 4,366-page FOIA response I got this month. I tried that and was told to break it up into 100-page chunks. (Not worth the effort, although the company told me that it would soon be able to handle bigger documents.)Most annoying: the fan on my ThinkPad laptop. It never seems to turn off. It is always running hot. Guess I am a power user. | Tech |
DealBook|AstraZeneca Exploring Strategic Options With Acerta Pharmahttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/dealbook/astrazeneca-acerta-pharma-talks.htmlDec. 14, 2015Credit...Phil Noble/ReutersLONDON The British drug maker AstraZeneca said on Monday that it was exploring potential strategic options with Acerta Pharma, a privately held cancer-drug developer with operations in the Netherlands and California.An acquisition would be the latest such deal by AstraZeneca as it seeks to bolster its pipeline of cancer treatments.The company fought off a $119 billion takeover bid by Pfizer last year, which would have created the worlds largest pharmaceutical company.There can be no certainty that any transaction will ultimately be entered into, or as to the terms of any transaction, AstraZeneca said on Monday in a news release. The company said it would make a further announcement if and when appropriate.The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that AstraZeneca was in advanced talks to buy Acerta Pharma for more than $5 billion.Since fighting off the Pfizer bid, AstraZeneca, which has an attractive portfolio of cancer drugs, has trumpeted the strength of its own drugs in development and has said it would be willing to pursue small to midsize deals to bolster its pipeline.In November, it agreed to acquire ZS Pharma, a California-based biopharmaceutical company, for $2.7 billion in cash. AstraZeneca also cut a deal in November with Sanofi to exchange their proprietary chemical compounds. | Business |
Floyd Mayweather Sr. Allegedly Punched Woman at Canelo vs. GGG Fight 1/23/2018 Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin weren't the only two people fighting at T-Mobile Arena back in Sept. ... cops say Floyd Mayweather Sr. attacked a woman that night and now there's a warrant out for his arrest. But, Floyd Sr. says the allegations are 100% not true. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ Sports ... the alleged incident went down in Vegas the early hours of Sept. 17 ... following the big Canelo vs. GGG fight. We're told the alleged victim was heading toward Floyd's car when an argument broke out between the two. Floyd allegedly told the woman to get out of the car, but she refused so he reached in and dragged her out by the leg. 65-year-old Floyd allegedly made things worse by punching her in the leg once she was out of the car. The accuser claims Floyd then got in the driver's seat and sped off without her. The woman was hospitalized for minor injuries. Officials eventually charged Floyd with misdemeanor battery and on January 16, a warrant was issued for his arrest, according to court records. We spoke with Floyd Sr.'s rep who tells us the alleged victim is "trying to extort money and she's angry because she's not getting the money from Floyd. It's not going the way she wants it to go." | Entertainment |
The push by Democrats to impeach the president for his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol underscores how American politics has been profoundly shaken in ways still hard to measure.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesJan. 9, 2021WASHINGTON Barely 11 months after President Trump was acquitted in a momentous Senate trial, the nation now confronts the possibility of yet another impeachment battle in the twilight of his presidency, a final showdown that will test the boundaries of politics, accountability and the Constitution.No president has ever been impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors twice. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi was weighing bringing a new article of impeachment to the House floor charging Mr. Trump with incitement of insurrection for encouraging the mob that ransacked the Capitol to disrupt the solemn process finishing his own election defeat.If Ms. Pelosi proceeds, the House could approve the article in days, this time with the support of even some disaffected Republicans, sending it to the Senate for a trial unlike any of the previous three in American history. While it seemed unlikely that 17 Senate Republicans would join Democrats for the two-thirds necessary for conviction, the anger at Mr. Trump was so palpable that party leaders said privately it was not out of the question.The fresh bid to remove Mr. Trump from office and strip him of his power without waiting until his term expires on Jan. 20 capped a traumatic week that rattled Washington more than any since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as National Guard troops stood watch over the Capitol and downtown businesses remained boarded up.Emotions were raw. The White House was in meltdown. The military was on edge. The cabinet was in revolt. The Republican Party was in civil war. And an unrepentant president was in hiding, stripped of his social media bullhorn, ostracized by many allies and at odds even with his staff and loyal vice president.The storming of the Capitol by Mr. Trumps supporters that left five people dead, among them a police officer, transformed the politics of the city in ways that were still hard to measure. A new impeachment would be more than a do-over of the drive that failed last year because this time the offense was not a phone call to a foreign leader captured on the dry pages of a transcript but the siege of American democracy played out live on television for all to see.Insurrectionists incited by Mr. Trump attacked our nations Capitol to stop Congress from accepting the Electoral College results, said Representative Ted Lieu of California, who began drafting the article of impeachment with Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island while sheltering during the Capitol takeover and was later joined by Jamie Raskin of Maryland. People died. We cannot just issue sternly worded press releases as a response. Unless Trump resigns, Congress must impeach to hold him accountable.ImageCredit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesWith Mr. Lieu and his co-partners planning to introduce their article on Monday with more than 190 co-sponsors, Ms. Pelosi spent Saturday consulting fellow Democrats and told them in a letter to be prepared to return to Washington within days for possible action. She did not say explicitly that she would pursue impeachment but vowed to hold Mr. Trump accountable. There must be a recognition that this desecration was instigated by the president, she wrote.Yet the timing of such an effort, with just 11 days until Mr. Trump is to leave office, scrambled the equation. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, indicated that under Senate rules a trial could not begin until Jan. 19, the day before President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s inauguration, meaning the process would not advance quickly enough to avert any feared dangerous moves in Mr. Trumps last days in power.That raised the prospect of conducting a trial after Mr. Trump vacates the White House, overshadowing the opening days of Mr. Bidens administration at a time when he would like to turn the page and confront crises like the coronavirus pandemic, which has grown even deadlier while attention has focused on Washingtons political wars. A nationally televised trial could dominate discussion and would prevent other business in the Senate.If the House does send articles of impeachment over, they really get the Biden administration off to a bad start, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said in an interview on Saturday. Whether thats the first 10 days or the first 20 days of the Biden administration, its certainly not how youd want to start your presidency off.Some of Mr. Trumps critics argued that it would be important to hold a trial even if he is already out of power in order to bar him from ever seeking office again, a penalty envisioned by the Constitution and perhaps more important, to render a verdict condemning his actions for the sake of history.Weve never had to consider even the possibility of impeaching a president twice, or in the final days of his presidency, said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional scholar at the University of North Carolina who testified in Mr. Trumps first impeachment and favors another trial. But weve never had a president before whos encouraging sedition as Trump has done in his last few days in office.Yet even some of the presidents harshest critics worried that a last-minute impeachment and an overtime trial could help him rally supporters by presenting himself as a victim not a villain, allowing him to turn the focus from his own actions to those of his opponents.It historically will be important, said Andrew Weissmann, who was a deputy to the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and recently published a book, Where Law Ends, expressing frustration that the president was not held fully accountable for his actions during the Russia investigation. But the danger is he is acquitted and the momentum of condemnation now is lost. Plus, until we change the mentality of his base, we have not gotten at the underlying issue.At the moment, a strong majority of Americans holds Mr. Trump responsible for the attack, with 63 percent saying he has a good amount or even a great deal of blame, according to a PBS Newshour-Marist poll. But when asked whether steps should be taken to remove him from office as a result, Americans retreated to their partisan corners, with 48 percent saying yes and 49 percent saying no.A Reuters-Ipsos survey found that 57 percent of Americans want Mr. Trump to leave office right away. But most of them favored removal by Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet through the disability clause of the 25th Amendment, with just 14 percent calling for another impeachment.Mr. Trump has few defenders among Republican officeholders for exhorting the crowd before it marched on the Capitol and even some in the conservative news media turned on him, most notably The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which called his actions impeachable and urged him to resign. Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, told Fox News on Saturday that the president committed impeachable offenses, joining at least three other Senate Republicans who have called on Mr. Trump to resign, expressed openness to impeachment or voted for conviction last year.But in the face of impeachment threats, some Republicans began taking up the fight against his opponents again. They may not like Mr. Trump or believe it is politically viable to be seen as excusing his behavior but many are still energized by battling his enemies on the left.On Sean Hannitys Fox News program on Friday night, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who was accosted by Trump supporters at an airport for opposing the presidents efforts to overturn the election, was suddenly back to castigating Mr. Trumps rivals and talking about Hunter Biden.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMr. Graham focused on Mr. Trumps video message Thursday calling for healing and reconciliation, a video the president privately expressed regret for making. Instead of trying to match what President Trump has done, the radical Democrats are talking about another impeachment that will destroy the country even further, Mr. Graham said.Still, Mr. Trump might have a challenge finding lawyers to defend him in any trial. Jay Sekulow, who was a leader of the defense team in the impeachment trial last year, called the idea of a second impeachment a gigantic mistake by Democrats during a radio show, but has not participated in Mr. Trumps legal efforts to overturn Mr. Bidens election and did not respond to a message asking if he would represent the president again. Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who teamed up with Mr. Sekulow, has been so upset about the Capitol attack that he has considered resigning.One of the few members of his defense team who said he would stick with the president was Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School emeritus professor who had a secondary role last time. In an email on Saturday, he said he would defend Mr. Trump on free expression grounds.Trumps speech, whatever one may think of it on the merits, is clearly protected by the First Amendment, he said. To impeach him for a constitutionally protected speech would violate both the First Amendment and the constitutional criteria for impeachment and would do enduring damage to the Constitution.Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who testified in the House against Mr. Trumps first impeachment, said the latest drive was a rush to judgment out of partisan anger. The fact that Mr. Trumps critics have called for him to be removed either by impeachment or the 25th Amendment, he said, showed that they are interested only in the outcome, not the legitimacy of the method.This opportunistic use of impeachment would do to the Constitution what the rioters did to the Capitol: leave it in tatters, Mr. Turley said. The Democrats, he added, should not repeat one impulsive, destructive act in the Capitol with another in such an impeachment. The House voted almost entirely on party lines to impeach Mr. Trump in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in connection with his effort to pressure Ukraine to incriminate Mr. Biden in wrongdoing while withholding vital security aid. But the Senate acquitted him last February also on a nearly party-line vote.A second impeachment would in some ways revise how that first one looks in history. Some have argued that focusing on the Ukraine episode was too narrow given Mr. Trumps many actions violating norms in Washington. Others have said it served as a warning that the president would use his power to cheat in an election, a forecast now borne out.While there is scholarly debate about whether an official can be impeached or tried after leaving office, there is precedent. When William Belknap, the war secretary under President Ulysses S. Grant, was accused of corruption, he rushed to the White House to submit his resignation minutes before the House impeached him. Lawmakers proceeded anyway and the Senate went ahead and put him on trial, although it acquitted him.The Constitution specifically provides for the Senate to bar anyone convicted from holding federal office in the future, a secondary penalty that can be approved in a separate vote but requires only a simple majority of 51 senators rather than two-thirds. The Senate has applied this penalty to impeached judges in the past.At some point, democracies have to be able to defend themselves, said Corey Brettschneider, an impeachment expert at Brown University. The framers probably didnt give us enough to protect us against a president, but disqualification is one thing they rightly did give us. | Politics |
TrilobitesCredit...iStockNov. 27, 2016In the wake of the election, its clear American society is fractured. Negative emotions are running amok, and countless words of anger and frustration have been spilled. If you were to analyze this news outlet for the ratio of positive emotional words to negative ones, would you find a dip linked to the events of the past few weeks?Its possible, suggests a study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Analyzing Google Books and The New York Timess archives from the last 200 years, the researchers examined a curious phenomenon known as positive linguistic bias, which refers to peoples tendency to use more positive words than negative words. Though the bias is robust and found consistently across cultures and languages social scientists are at odds about what causes it.In this study, the authors shed light on some possible new patterns behind the effect. Across two centuries of texts, they found that peoples preference for positive words varied with national mood, and declined during times of war and economic hardship.Its been shown that linguistic positivity bias exists, over and over again. What people havent actually looked at is how this phenomenon fluctuates over time, and whether there are certain predictors for it, said Morteza Dehghani, a professor of psychology and computer science at the University of Southern California and an author of the paper.To measure linguistic positivity, Dr. Dehghanis team looked at catalogs of words associated with positive and negative emotions, from a collection called the linguistic inquiry and word count, or LIWC, database. The positive category included about 400 words, including awesome, pretty and grace. The negative one included about 500 words, including suffer, grief and hatred.Then the researchers looked at how many times these positive and negative words appeared each year, across 1.3 million texts in Google Books and 14.9 million New York Times articles. They also analyzed word usage relative to unemployment and inflation rates, wartime casualty estimates and national happiness surveys.Looking for changes over time can provide clues about the mechanism behind the linguistic positivity bias, said William Hamilton, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University who focuses on linguistic trends and was not involved in the study.Many theories have been proposed: Maybe its because were social creatures, and affirmative language promotes group bonding and cooperation. Maybe we inherently privilege positive information. Maybe, optimistically, more good things than bad things happen overall, and the words we use reflect that.When youre looking at a static snapshot of time, its hard to disentangle all these competing hypotheses, Mr. Hamilton said.The new study provides evidence that positive language use may change depending on objective circumstances, such as war and poverty, as well as subjective happiness. What may be less compelling is the researchers finding that there is an overall decrease in positive language use over the last 200 years.Tools like the LIWC database were developed around the way people write and talk today, said Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was not part of the study. As a result, the database doesnt capture changes in word meanings and frequency of use. Over time the word awesome, for instance, changed from meaning daunting to being synonymous with good.Additionally, experts in linguistics and textual analysis say that the composition of text collections like Google Books change over time, confounding attempts to extract chronological patterns.Its a compelling trend they find, Mr. Hamilton said, but there needs to be more follow-ups for me to be totally confident this is something thats happening.Rumen Iliev, a psychology researcher at Stanford University and a co-author of the paper, said these concerns are legitimate, but that this study is just the beginning.We hope that our research will generate novel research which will use both different dictionaries and different databases, he said. | science |
Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 25, 2018WASHINGTON American Express did not violate the antitrust laws by insisting in its contracts with merchants that they do nothing to encourage patrons to use other cards, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday.The decision has implications not only for what one brief called an astronomical number of retail transactions but also for other kinds of markets, notably ones on the internet, in which services link consumers and businesses.Such two-sided platforms, the court said, require special and seemingly more forgiving antitrust scrutiny.The vote was 5 to 4, with the courts more conservative members in the majority. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the specialized nature of credit-card transactions justified what in other circumstances might have been anti-competitive conduct.Retailers pay so-called swipe fees when customers use credit cards. American Express charges higher fees than Visa or Mastercard, meaning that merchants have good reason to prefer those other cards.But credit card networks create two-sided platforms, Justice Thomas wrote, and they differ from traditional markets in important ways. Since card companies deal with both merchants and consumers, he wrote, people challenging actions as anticompetitive must take account of the effect on both sets of market participants.Viewed that way, Justice Thomas wrote, American Express promoted competition by designing rewards programs to attract affluent customers.Amexs business model sometimes causes friction with merchants, he wrote. To maintain the loyalty of its cardholders, Amex must continually invest in its rewards program. But, to fund those investments, Amex must charge merchants higher fees than its rivals.Even though Amexs investments benefit merchants by encouraging cardholders to spend more money, merchants would prefer not to pay the higher fees, Justice Thomas wrote. One way that merchants try to avoid them, while still enticing Amexs cardholders to shop at their stores, is by dissuading cardholders from using Amex at the point of sale.The steering agreements were justified in these circumstances, Justice Thomas wrote.While these agreements have been in place, Justice Thomas wrote, the credit-card market experienced expanding output and improved quality. Amexs business model spurred Visa and Mastercard to offer new premium card categories with higher rewards. And it has increased the availability of card services, including free banking and card-payment services for low-income customers who otherwise would not be served.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the majority opinion.Justice Stephen G. Breyer read his dissent from the bench, a rare move indicating profound disagreement. He said the implications of the ruling were vast and could hurt competition in many realms.I particularly fear the interpretive impact of the majoritys discussion of what it calls two-sided platforms, in an era when that term might be thought to apply to many internet-related goods and services that are becoming ever more important, Justice Breyer said.Merchants expressed disappointment with the decision.Todays ruling is a blow to competition and transparency in the credit card market, said Stephanie Martz of the National Retail Federation. The American Express rules in question have amounted to a gag order on retailers ability to educate their customers on how high swipe fees drive up the price of merchandise.American Express issued a statement saying the long court battle was well worth the fight because important issues were at stake: consumer choice, fair market competition, and the ability to deliver innovative products and services to our customers, both consumers and merchants.In 2010, the Justice Department and 17 states sued several credit card companies, saying that their steering practices had violated the antitrust laws. Visa and Mastercard settled, but American Express fought the case.In 2015, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the United States District Court in Brooklyn ruled that contracts forbidding merchants to steer customers toward other forms of payment were an unlawful restraint of trade.The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, disagreed, ruling that Judge Garaufis had unduly focused on merchants interests while discounting the interests of cardholders.This approach does not advance overall consumer satisfaction, Judge Richard C. Wesley wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. Though merchants may desire lower fees, those fees are necessary to maintaining cardholder satisfaction and if a particular merchant finds that the cost of Amex fees outweighs the benefit it gains by accepting Amex cards, then the merchant can choose to not accept Amex cards.Eleven states asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, Ohio v. American Express, No. 16-1454, saying that the appeals courts decision was at odds with established antitrust principles and affected an astronomical number of retail transactions in the United States.The Supreme Court affirmed the appeals courts decision.In dissent, Justice Breyer faulted every part of the majoritys analysis. He said that the way American Express deals with merchants should be considered in isolation and that its contracts were anti-competitive.He added that two-sided transactions were commonplace.Consider a farmers market, Justice Breyer wrote. It brings local farmers and local shoppers together, and transactions will occur only if a farmer and a shopper simultaneously agree to engage in one.What about travel agents that connect airlines and passengers? he asked. What about internet retailers, who, in addition to selling their own goods, allow (for a fee) other goods-producers to sell over their networks?Nothing in antitrust law, to my knowledge, suggests that a court, when presented with an agreement that restricts competition in any one of the markets my examples suggest, should abandon traditional market-definition approaches and include in the relevant market services that are complements, not substitutes, of the restrained good, Justice Breyer wrote.Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.American Express, Justice Breyer concluded, had other ways to achieve its goals.If American Express merchant fees are so high that merchants successfully induce their customers to use other cards, American Express can remedy that problem by lowering those fees or by spending more on cardholder rewards so that cardholders decline such requests, Justice Breyer wrote. What it may not do is demand contractual protection from price competition. | Politics |
Tell us whether you plan to have your children immunized and what factors led to your decision.Published Oct. 21, 2021Updated Nov. 2, 2021ImageCredit...Shawn Rocco/Duke Health/Via ReutersThe director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday formally endorsed the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. But recent surveys show that many parents are wrestling with whether to allow the shots for their children.If you have children who will be eligible, Times journalists would like to know your thoughts. Your name and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. A reporter or editor from The Times may follow up with you directly. | Health |
From racist graffiti to missed promotions, employees say a systemic pattern of racial bias permeates the company.Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York TimesJune 24, 2020SEATTLE Last week, Jeff Bezos, Amazons chief executive, wrote a rare note to all of the companys employees. His leadership team had been reflecting on the systemic racism facing black communities, he said, and he urged employees to take time to learn and reflect on Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.Im canceling all my meetings on Friday, and I encourage you to do the same if you can, he said.But some of Amazons employees said there was one big problem with his suggestion: For the vast majority of Amazons black workers, canceling a meeting is not an option. They work in Amazons fulfillment operations, packing, shipping and delivering products to millions of customers.Several other retailers, like Target, J.C. Penney and Nike, made Juneteenth a paid holiday. At Amazon, many warehouses recognized the day by encouraging workers to dress in black.What does a black shirt do for anybody in terms of social justice? said Adrienne Williams, a black contract driver for Amazon in the Bay Area, who organized a vigil for Juneteenth. Better pay, she said, would do far more. That would cut down the pre-existing condition that is poverty, she said.Ms. Williams and more employees and contractors are arguing that Amazon, one of the nations largest employers, needs to do much more to address racial inequality within its own walls. The calls for change including diversifying its top ranks and addressing racism in its warehouses have generated an unusual degree of turmoil inside the tech giant.ImageCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMany other large businesses also face calls for change from within. But Amazon stands out because it has a large percentage of black employees more than a quarter of its 500,000-person domestic work force, most of them in hourly jobs at its sprawling logistics operations, where they earn far less than their corporate counterparts. That percentage is slightly higher than among Walmarts employees in the United States, and far higher than at other big tech companies. At Facebook, for example, less than 4 percent of its work force is black.And few executives have been as blunt in their public support of the Black Lives Matter movement as Mr. Bezos, the worlds richest person. On Instagram, Mr. Bezos posted disturbing messages he had received in response to his support of racial equality, including an email from a person named Dave, who used racist slurs and said that he would no longer do business with Amazon.Dave, Mr. Bezos wrote, youre the kind of customer Im happy to lose.Johnnie Corina III, who last week filed a discrimination complaint accusing Amazon of fostering a hostile work environment for black warehouse employees, said it was hard to consider those statements as more than lip service.The in thing right now is Black Lives Matter and equal justice, Mr. Corina said. You can tell when something is genuine and something is not.An Amazon spokeswoman, Jaci Anderson, said that the company stood in solidarity with the black community, and that it was committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear. She said employees had been free to take vacation or accrued unpaid time off to attend Juneteenth events. We respect and encourage their choice to do so, she said.This month, the company said it would temporarily stop selling its facial recognition software, which researchers have found to misidentify people of color, to police departments. The one-year moratorium was striking because Amazon had long denied problems and resisted calls to slow its deployment.But Amazons critics, including some employees, say even that was a half-step pointing out that the company did not directly acknowledge concerns about the technology nor did it stop selling the tools to federal law enforcement offices.The pause is a great start, one employee wrote on an internal website. But the goal, the person wrote, should be broader, to ensure the products Amazon builds are not directly at odds with promoting inclusion and diversity and perpetuating biases and injustices to black and brown communities.ImageCredit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesEmployees and some shareholders have long groused about the lack of diversity on Mr. Bezoss senior leadership team, a group known as the S-Team that has 22 executives, none of whom are black.At a town hall in 2017, after Michael Brown, Philando Castile and Sandra Bland had already become household names, an employee asked Mr. Bezos about the lack of diversity on his team. Mr. Bezos said his top deputies had been by his side for years, and he saw the low turnover as an asset. Any transition on the team, he said, would happen very incrementally over a long period of time.In April, before George Floyd was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, a group of midlevel employees wrote to Mr. Bezos and his senior team, saying there was a systemic pattern of racial bias that permeates Amazon, according to emails viewed by The New York Times. They said they were prompted to write after a leak of meeting notes showed that David Zapolsky, Amazons general counsel, had called a black warehouse employee in Staten Island not smart or articulate.Mr. Zapolsky had said his comments were personal and emotional and that he did not know the employee was black. But in their email, the corporate employees said it was not an isolated incident, but rather a symptom of a bigger problem.They said Amazon adopted the entrenched racism that plagued America, evidenced by the homogeneity of the its leadership compared with the rich racial and ethic diversity amongst our hourly worker population.The group proposed almost a dozen specific changes, including conducting a third-party audit of bias, releasing detailed figures on race and promotions, establishing goals for representation in management and leadership roles, and having the head of diversity be a member of Mr. Bezoss S-Team.Amazon said that senior leaders offered resources to help the group develop their suggestions into a formal proposal.On Tuesday, Microsoft, one of Amazons top competitors for tech talent, said it would spend $150 million on diversity efforts and planned to double the number of black managers and senior employees by 2025.Mr. Bezos leadership team in recent weeks has been holding listening circles with black employees, and many Amazon executives have written personal emails to their departments. Some teams have moved away from biased technical terms, ditching phrases like black lists and white lists to connote network access, according to an email shared among some employees.ImageCredit...Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesBut many employees want more to be done. They have been collaborating on a document to propose that Amazon make diversity a new leadership principle, the guiding list of attributes Amazon uses to hire, review and promote workers.In the document, dozens of employees anonymously cited experiences of discrimination in daily work interactions. When a black employee said something honest, he was told, Youre not earning trust, one wrote. But when a White Stanford M.B.A. said the exact same thing, he got an accolade. Others wrote about being passed over for promotions, or not being mentored.The document was earlier reported by Business Insider. Ms. Anderson said that the anecdotes do not reflect our values. The company does not tolerate workplace discrimination, she said, and it investigates all claims reported through official channels. She added that the current leadership principles encouraged diversity because they remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and constantly earn others trust.In the warehouses where Ms. Williams and the bulk of Amazons black employees work, the concerns of some workers can be even more explicit. Mr. Corina, in his discrimination complaint filed in California, said Amazon repeatedly failed to adequately respond to racist graffiti in bathrooms of the warehouse where he works east of Los Angeles.Mr. Corina, who is involved with the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that since November he had repeatedly reported racist graffiti and that the language worsened after Mr. Floyds death. Some used racial epithets to express hatred toward black people and said that they should go back to Africa.He said Amazon had not addressed the warehouses employees to say such behavior was unacceptable, nor had he seen any evidence that Amazon has investigated who wrote the racist graffiti, even though he had asked.The result, he said, left him scared to go to work. To not do any interventions is really not a safe environment for a black person, he said.In another complaint filed last week with Californias fair employment agency, a black janitorial contractor at the same warehouse said he was fired in early June because Amazon thought he had taken a photo of new racist graffiti that a colleague posted on Twitter.The contractor, Donald Archie II, said that Amazon had not tried to uncover who wrote the racist words.They are firing a black guy because of their perception that he was responsible for calling out racism in their facility, said Dennis Moss of Moss Bollinger, the lawyer representing Mr. Corina and Mr. Archie.Amazon said it told warehouse employees about unacceptable graffiti in December, and then discussed it again in February. The company said it started to investigate the markings in June. Mr. Archie was removed from Amazon buildings for not escalating concerns about the graffiti and violating the companys cellphone use policy, the company said.On June 16, a colleague sent Mr. Archie a photo from the bathroom, with racist phrases once again scrawled on the wall. Below it was an internal newsletter that quoted Amazons public statement from May 31, reading, The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop. | Tech |
Technology|Four Top Tech C.E.O.s Will Testify in Antitrust Inquiry, Panel Sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/technology/amazon-apple-alphabet-facebook-congress-antitrust.htmlThe hearing this month would be a central moment in the continuing backlash against the power of Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet and Apple.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJuly 1, 2020WASHINGTON The chief executives of four of the worlds biggest technology companies will appear before Congress this month as part of its sweeping antitrust investigation into their market power, according to the committee running the inquiry, setting up a high-profile face-off between the companies and skeptical lawmakers.Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, will appear at the hearing, said Shadawn Reddick-Smith, a spokeswoman for the House Judiciary Committee, which is said to be nearing the end of its investigation.The date and whether the executives will appear in person or virtually, as has become common during the coronavirus pandemic, are still being discussed, Ms. Reddick-Smith said.The hearing will allow lawmakers to ask the executives about accusations of antitrust abuses at their companies, all of which are the focus of investigations by federal regulators or state attorneys general. The executives are also likely to face questions about other issues, like Amazons treatment of its warehouse workers or the spread of hate speech on Facebook and YouTube.The hearing would be a central moment in the continuing backlash against the power of major tech companies. Prosecutors at the Justice Department are preparing a possible antitrust case against Google this year, after an inquiry homed in on its control of advertising technology and the search engine market. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazons business and Facebooks acquisition of smaller companies.A number of state attorneys general are investigating similar issues and could pursue their own actions or work with federal authorities.It will be the first time that Mr. Bezos will testify before Congress. Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Pichai and Mr. Cook have appeared in front of Capitol Hill lawmakers before.Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon declined to comment on the record about the committees plans. An Apple spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The plans for the hearing were reported earlier by Kara Swisher, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.The lawmakers investigation has focused on different aspects of each business. They have raised many questions about Amazons treatment of brands that sell products on its e-commerce site. Much of the attention on Google has been on its lucrative ad business. With Apple, lawmakers have asked about how its App Store terms hurt developers. Their questions to Facebook have been largely about its use of past acquisitions to cement its dominance in social media.Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook are four of the five biggest tech companies by market value. The fifth, Microsoft, has not been subjected to the same public scrutiny in recent years. It faced a landmark antitrust case a generation ago. | Tech |
Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMarch 19, 2017DEFIANCE, Ohio James Waltimire, a police officer on unpaid medical leave, has been going to the hospital in this small city twice a week for physical therapy after leg surgery, all of it paid for by Medicaid.Mr. Waltimire, 54, was able to sign up for the government health insurance program last year because Ohio expanded it to cover more than 700,000 low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. He voted for President Trump in part because of Mr. Trumps support for law enforcement but is now worried about the Republican plan to effectively end the Medicaid expansion through legislation to repeal the health care law.Originally the president said he wasnt going to do nothing to Medicaid, Mr. Waltimire said the other day after a rehab session. Now they say he wants to take $880 billion out of Medicaid. Thats going to affect a lot of people who cant afford to get insurance.As Republicans in Washington grapple with how to meet their promise of undoing the greatest expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society, they are struggling with what may be an irreconcilable problem: bridging the vast gulf between the expectations of blue-collar voters like Mr. Waltimire who propelled Mr. Trump to the presidency, and longstanding party orthodoxy that it is not the federal governments role to provide benefits to a wide swath of society.If they push forward the House-drafted health bill, which could come to a vote as early as this coming week, Republicans may honor their vow to repeal what they derided as Obamacare, but also risk doing disproportionate harm to the older, working-class white voters who are increasingly vital to their electoral coalition.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMany of those voters live in small Midwestern cities like Defiance and neighboring Bryan, home of a candy company that makes Dum Dum lollipops but has moved many of its jobs to Mexico. Though unemployment is low in the region, where farmland stretches for miles between towns, the slow erosion of manufacturing has taken a toll, and whats left in our communities are lower-paying jobs, said Dr. Neeraj Kanwal, the president of Defiance Regional Hospital.The region has voted Republican in presidential contests for decades, but its support for Mr. Trump he took 64 percent of the vote in Defiance County and an even larger share in most of the surrounding counties was more resounding than for any candidate since Ronald Reagan. Yet many people here tend to have conflicting values that make repeal of the health law appealing on its face but ultimately hard to swallow.People in this community are very conservative. They struggle with the federal budget deficit, and they like the idea of personal responsibility, said Phil Ennen, the president and chief executive of Community Hospitals and Wellness Centers, which has a 75-bed hospital in Bryan. But at the same time, we have a lot of friends and family and neighbors who just dont have a lot going for them. There is a population out there that needs Medicaid. Thats the dilemma.It is a daunting paradox for a party that, at least in theory, was once unified around a belief that Washington should be tamed, not empowered. But by winning the White House under the banner of economic nationalism, and carrying a series of Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states, Mr. Trump has left his adopted party struggling to come to terms with the reality of who are now voting for Republicans and what they expect from their government.Nearly a million Ohio residents gained coverage under the health care act, either through expanded Medicaid or via the new marketplaces created by the law.The governor, John Kasich, who has become one of his partys leading pragmatists, was one of several Republican governors who carried out the Medicaid expansion. Late this past week, he joined some of them in a letter to the congressional leadership requesting that the new health care bill be changed so that the Medicaid expansion is not ended entirely. The states Republican senator, Rob Portman, has been among the most outspoken Republican lawmakers expressing concern over any attempt to quickly end the expansion. But the Republican congressman who represents Defiance and the surrounding area, Bob Latta, is an ally of the House leadership and has supported the replacement bill.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesFor all the focus on demands by the party hard-liners that the repeal-and-replace bill be less expansive, there is also rising concern among mainline Republicans from states with large numbers of lower-income whites about a backlash. The group includes Mr. Portman, as well as Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.The folks who Hillary Clinton called the deplorables are actually those who want better coverage, who wed be hurting if we dont change this bill, Mr. Cassidy said, noting that Mr. Trump promised hed give them better care.The senator, a physician who once worked in his states charity hospital network, bluntly said that the philosophical debate was over and that his party ought to be pragmatic about how best to create a more cost-efficient and comprehensive health care system.Theres a widespread recognition that the federal government, Congress, has created the right for every American to have health care, he said, warning that to throw people off their insurance or make coverage unaffordable would only shift costs back to taxpayers by burdening emergency rooms. If you want to be fiscally responsible, then coverage is better than no coverage.A new Pew Research Center survey indicated that the number of Republicans making below $30,000 a year who believe the federal government has a responsibility to ensure health coverage for all had risen to 52 percent from 31 percent last year. And while just 14 percent of Republicans who make between $30,000 and about $75,000 last year said the government bore responsibility for health care, now 34 percent of such voters do.This is a function of Donald Trump engineering a takeover of the Republican Party, said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. It was takeover more than assimilation, and this is the eminently predictable result.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut now that it is Mr. Trumps Republican Party, those who elected him will expect him to fulfill his campaign commitments.Few Republicans can appreciate the political challenges of the Affordable Care Act like Davy Carter, a Republican and former speaker of the Arkansas House, who shepherded the laws Medicaid expansion through his conservative legislature in a state where President Barack Obama was disdained.If he doesnt do what he said he was going to do, it will alienate the very voters that put him in office, Mr. Carter said, referring to Mr. Trump.He has a warning for fellow Republicans who represent states with large working-class populations that, like his own, have shifted away from their Democratic roots: They did not change parties because they suddenly became free-market conservatives.Mr. Trump, who pledged repeatedly on the campaign trail to undo Mr. Obamas disastrous health law, appears torn. He is struggling between the political imperative to fulfill that promise essential both for symbolic purposes of notching a win and for procedural reasons to go forward with an overhaul of the tax code and his assurances that everyone will be covered under the new system.We will take care of our people or Im not signing it, he said when pressed in a Fox News interview last week about how his voters might fare.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIf Congress moves ahead with the House version of the bill, vulnerable voters might find some allies within the health industry: Hospitals that serve the rural regions in what could be called Trump country would be particularly vulnerable. Their patients tend to be older, poorer and sicker, and their profit margins much narrower, if they make any profit at all.Mike Abrams, president and chief executive of the Ohio Hospital Association, worries that repeal of the health law could force some hospitals to close. But honestly, he said, even if they didnt close, they would have to make some decisions that would be unwelcome by the community.At Defiance Regional, where Mr. Waltimire, the injured police officer, gets his care, Medicaid provides 22 percent of the revenue, up from 15 percent before the Affordable Care Act took effect. The 25-bed hospital, part of the ProMedica Health System in Toledo, has expanded mental health services and is adding a second medical office building.Randy Oostra, ProMedicas president and chief executive, said the Republican proposal to give states a fixed amount of money for each person on Medicaid, instead of a large share of whatever each state needs to spend, would be particularly wrenching.It will drive down reimbursement over time, and were going to start stripping care away, Mr. Oostra said. They may have Medicaid, but itll be so stripped down that they basically wont have coverage.For those who get private coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, the Republican plan would provide tax credits based on age instead of income to help with the cost. Independent analyses have found that people in their 50s and 60s would be especially likely to find coverage unaffordable under the new system, which would also allow insurers to charge older people five times as much as younger ones.ImageCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesPegge Sines, 62, of rural Edgerton, Ohio, did not vote for president, but her husband, a longtime factory worker who died of lung cancer in December, was an ardent Trump supporter. They had subsidized private insurance through the health care law that covered virtually all his treatment, she said.Ms. Sines now pays $222 a month for her insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, with a tax credit of $712 covering the rest. That $8,544 annual subsidy is more than twice the $4,000 annual tax credit she would get under the Republican plan.An aim of Republican legislation is to reduce private premiums, but Ms. Siness son, who along with her other two grown children signed up for Medicaid under the expansion, has been warning that their coverage could be in trouble, she said. She cannot believe Mr. Trump would allow that to happen.I cant imagine them not keeping it like it is now, said Ms. Sines, who runs a group home for the elderly.Mr. Waltimire said he hoped to return to the police force, and the health benefits it provides, this year. But with no guarantee of good health he was injured in a fall in 2009 and has had circulatory problems ever since he also hopes other options remain available.Its kind of hard for me, he said of having free government coverage. Ive always worked all my life. But like my counselor said, sometimes you just have to say thank you and move forward.Referring to Mr. Trump, he added, I hope he makes it so that everybody can afford insurance. | Health |
Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated PressDec. 17, 2015Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and Republican donor, and his family have formally owned The Las Vegas Review-Journal for a week.In that time, they have been broadly criticized for a lack of transparency in keeping their ownership secret, prompting questions about the papers editorial independence. They said they refrained from announcing they were the papers owners to avoid taking attention away from the Republican presidential debate, held on Tuesday at Mr. Adelsons Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas.It is not yet clear what the second week will bring.That is largely because everyone directly connected with the sale, with the running of the newspaper or with the family has stopped answering the phone or declined to respond to messages seeking comment. Even many of those inside Mr. Adelsons Las Vegas Sands company were unaware of the details of the purchase. One person close to the deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, asked whether the journalists at The Review-Journal needed to know who owned the paper at all.And so the $140 million question why Mr. Adelson, 82, and his family would want the newspaper at such a lavish price remains mostly unanswered. It is particularly pressing to many in Nevada because he is perhaps the most powerful and overtly political figure in the state.Mr. Adelson rose from modest beginnings to 15th on the Forbes 400 list, with a current estimated net worth of about $25 billion. He is chairman and chief executive of Sands, and he aggressively defends his interests by wielding the influence his essentially unlimited funds furnish. He gave more than $100 million to Republican presidential candidates in 2012. Newspapers he owns in Israel tend to staunchly promote the right-wing agenda that he agrees with.He has pursued libel suits against journalists whose reporting on his sprawling empires drew his ire. In one continuing case, Mr. Adelson sued a reporter from The Wall Street Journal over an article about another legal battle Mr. Adelson was engaged in with a former employee.John L. Smith, a columnist for The Review-Journal who filed for bankruptcy while defending himself against a lawsuit brought by Mr. Adelson over a book Mr. Smith had written, said when reached by phone on Thursday that he would have to seek permission before speaking to a reporter. In a 2013 column about the lawsuit, Mr. Smith wrote that his lawyer had realized that the case wasnt about defamation, but about making me an object lesson for my newspaper and other journalists who dared to criticize the billionaire. (Adelson eventually dropped the case.)The newsroom has not heard from the Adelson family beyond a statement issued in response to The Review-Journals own comprehensive article on the deal, said Michael Hengel, the papers editor. It was a report that was accomplished through sheer tenacity, he said.Lets face it, they werent being very cooperative, Mr. Hengel said of those in charge, noting that the chief executives of the company that runs the paper, Gatehouse, and the chief executive of the company that sold it to Mr. Adelson, New Media Investment Group, had not returned his reporters calls.ImageCredit...Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesAsked whether he was concerned about conflicts arising between his newsroom and Mr. Adelsons myriad business and political interests, Mr. Hengel said, Yes, absolutely. He said, too, that he had argued with the newspapers publisher, Jason Taylor, over Mr. Taylors decision to remove references in an online article by The Review-Journal that raised questions about the ownership. But, he said, What weve got to go on right now is their statement that they are going to allow us to pursue journalism the way we should and the way were expected to. I am going to take them at their word on that, until they prove otherwise.Howard Stutz, a reporter at The Review-Journal who covers the gambling industry, declined to comment on whether he was concerned about potential conflicts of interest.Ive been covering the casino industry for 11 years, and Im going to do my job just like Ive done for the past 11 years, Mr. Stutz said. Ive been fair and impartial my entire career.The familys statement, released to The Review-Journal, said that they had purchased the newspaper as both a financial investment as well as an investment in the future of the Las Vegas community. The details had been kept secret, the statement said, to avoid distracting from the Republican debate. The family said they believed in the community, and wanted to help make Las Vegas an even greater place to live. We believe deeply that a strong and effective daily newspaper plays a critical role in keeping our state apprised of the important news and issues we face on a daily basis.Some remain skeptical. I think theres a lot of consternation, not just inside The Review-Journal, but outside, said Jon Ralston, a veteran Nevada political journalist. What is he going to do with this newspaper, and will he do the same as he did in Israel? he said, referring to Israel Hayom, a newspaper Mr. Adelson owns there, which supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.In Nevada, Mr. Adelsons interests run the gamut. His casinos are sometimes pulled into skirmishes with the local Clark County Commission, which oversees the Las Vegas Strip.Mr. Adelson has been involved in the gubernatorial race, and is a supporter of the states new attorney general, Adam Laxalt, who recently supported a bill backed by Mr. Adelson that seeks to ban or curtail Internet gambling and online poker.In national politics, where Nevada is a key electoral state, he is known as one of the most generous and aggressive backers of Republican presidential candidates. That leaves very few coverage areas for Review-Journal journalists to pursue without running into potential conflicts with their new owner, Mr. Ralston said.On Wednesday, before Mr. Adelson was formally revealed as the man behind the deal for the newspaper, Representative Dina Titus, Democrat of Nevada, had called on the House floor for transparency from the papers new owner.On Thursday, she issued a statement. I applaud the Adelson family for coming forward as the new owners of The Review-Journal, she said. It was never about who bought the paper, but rather knowing who bought it.I trust the editorial policy will be fair, she added, and hope one day I will get their endorsement. | Business |
Credit...Haidar Mohammed Ali/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 4, 2015VIENNA Even as United Nations climate-conference delegates met near Paris on Friday seeking ways to reduce the globes dependence on high-carbon fuels like oil, some of the worlds biggest petroleum producers vowed to keep pumping flat out.The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Friday that it would keep producing oil at current levels, which are estimated to exceed 31 million barrels a day.But with petroleum prices continuing to plummet and world leaders intent on steadily reducing the burning of oil and natural gas, OPEC, meeting in this holiday-bedecked city, might be celebrating what history could show to be Big Oils last hurrah. Some OPEC members, including the United Arab Emirates, have acknowledged that their economies need to diversify and wean themselves from an oil-rich diet.VideotranscripttranscriptOPEC Will Not Slow Oil ProductionOfficials at the summit of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries say they have no plans to curb oil production despite a current global oversupply.(SOUNDBITE) (English) IRANS OIL MINISTER, BIJAN ZANGENEH, SAYING: We have tested our fields, tested our wells, and they are operating well and we are sure that we can produce one million barrel new production and one million barrel new production to the market. And we are sure we can export one million barrel of new oil to the market. (SOUNDBITE) (English) QATARS ENERGY MINISTER AND ACTING PRESIDENT OF OPEC, MOHAMMED BIN SALEH AL-SADA, SAYING: The strategy is working, the only question remaining is when the market is going to be balanced between the supply and demand, and we think that we are heading towards the right direction. There is a huge drop in investment, it will manifest itself through the reduction in oil production and signs of the reduction is already there, you can see it happening.Officials at the summit of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries say they have no plans to curb oil production despite a current global oversupply.CreditCredit...Ronald Zak/Associated PressIn fact, the United Arab Emirates delegation to the climate conference has pledged to increase their use of clean energy sources a mere 0.2 percent of the mix last year to 24 percent by 2021.The United Arab Emirates, whose seven members include Abu Dhabi, plan to use their oil wealth to lay the groundwork for the post-petroleum era whenever it comes.I need to be living in a world where my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren will be able to live in a healthy environment, said Ahmad Belhoul, chief executive of a state-owned Abu Dhabi company, Masdar, that is at work on various solar energy projects for the government. Masdar will lead the renewable energy effort, which will include building nuclear power plants.The United Arab Emirates, Mr. Belhoul said, need to have a well-diversified economy that can work and deliver for them the economic activity and the jobs they require regardless of the future of oil.But, meanwhile, the pumping continues unabated. The United Arab Emirates say they are producing close to three million barrels a day, up about 180,000 barrels a day from last years levels.The dozen OPEC countries, and other big oil producers like Mexico and Russia, find themselves in a double bind pressed by the new low-carbon ethos represented by the climate conference and squeezed by a global oil glut that has caused prices to plunge by more than 50 percent since early last year. New supplies, led by shale oil from the United States, have caused the dollar-value oil revenue of OPEC, Mexico and Russia to fall by half since 2014. Their response is to keep producing and selling, with an almost fire-sale desperation.Individual countries are trying to get every bit of revenue they can in this tough situation, said Spencer Welch, an analyst at IHS, a research firm.As OPECs market clout has diminished, the organization has become increasingly fragmented. Members including Venezuela and Algeria are urging production limits in hopes of propping up prices. ImageCredit...Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesBut Saudi Arabia still the worlds single biggest petroleum exporter argues, along with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, that production cuts would be pointless because they would only cede more of the global market to the shale producers in the United States and other rivals.What distinguishes OPEC members from other producers, now that the group sets neither prices nor output quotas? said Bhushan Bahree, an OPEC analyst at IHS. Nothing, really.OPEC said on Friday that the group had decided to wait to make any changes in production quotas until it could see how much oil Iran would be exporting once Western sanctions are lifted. The group also wants to see what effect continued low prices might have on production levels from non-OPEC producers.We need to wait and watch, Nigerias oil minister, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, who presided over the OPEC meeting, told journalists on Friday.ImageCredit...Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesIn a statement, OPEC said that at its meeting the group stressed the importance of its members to be actively and positively engaged in the Paris climate negotiations and agreed that climate change, environmental protection and sustainable development are a major concern for us all.Seth Kleinman, an analyst at Citigroup, in Vienna for the OPEC meeting, said that on the climate issue, the biggest OPEC exporter, the Saudis, were damned if they do and damned if they dont.New curbs on fossil-fuel consumption would put the Saudi economy at risk, he said. But the Saudis risk global scorn if they are seen as climate obstructionists, and Saudi Arabia knows its own environmental future hangs in the balance. Unless something is done soon about global warming, the sun-baked, arid Arabian Peninsula could become almost uninhabitable.But Saudi Arabia, which is participating in the climate talks, has not yet been willing to make many concessions.ImageCredit...Karim Sahib/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesThe country, which is a big consumer of its own oil and gas and was the worlds 11th-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2013, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, has pledged to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 130 million tons by 2030, compared with what the level would have been without intervention. But Saudi Arabia has not said what the level would have been otherwise.The Saudi document describing the plan says that even this pledge is conditional on the economys continuing to grow with a robust contribution from oil export revenues and on international climate-change policies not imposing a disproportionate or abnormal burden on the kingdoms economy.But like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia acknowledges that climate concerns are a reason to make its economy more diversified and energy-efficient. Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old son of Saudi Arabias king, is said to be leading the effort.Sadad al-Husseini, a former executive vice president of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, who now heads his own consulting firm, said, There is a big move to reduce energy consumption in the kingdom.The Saudi government, Mr. Husseini said, is considering imposing tougher vehicle fuel-efficiency standards as well as raising the price of water derived from energy-intensive desalination plants. It is also studying the feasibility of collecting carbon dioxide emitted from factories and pumping it into aging oil wells. That might squeeze more production from nearly depleted wells, but would at least offset some of the carbon debt.But analysts caution not to expect any quick shifts by Saudi Arabia, which still depends on oil for nearly half of its economic output and 90 percent of its export revenue. Though the country is a monarchy, analysts say, the leadership prefers to act on the consensus of the countrys technical experts and will be wary of upsetting constituents by raising fuel prices particularly at a time when so much of the region is in political chaos.In the United Arab Emirates, a much smaller economy where the rulers take a more top-down approach, diversification has come much faster. Three-quarters of the economy now involves non-oil activities. Progress away from petroleum has been quicker, with 75 percent of gross domestic product coming from non-oil activities.Mr. Belhoul, the chief of Masdar, which is leading the United Arab Emirates energy-diversification efforts, recently showed a visiting reporter one of his companys showcase experiments: a desalination project on the Persian Gulf. Engineers are trying to harness the suns clean energy to transform seawater into drinking water an energy-intensive process on which Gulf countries now expend large volumes of fossil fuels.Although less than 1 percent of his countrys energy now comes from clean sources, Mr. Belhoul said he was optimistic that climate concerns, along with ever-improving alternative technologies, would enable the United Arab Emirates to meet their goal of 24 percent by 2021.Renewable energy is no longer an expensive alternative it is becoming a technology of choice, he said. Climate change is no longer an academic debate. Its a reality. | Business |
Credit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesDec. 30, 2015During a preholiday shopping trip to New York, Lisa Libretto received an enticing alert on her iPhone: an offer for a $25 discount on a Vince Camuto handbag that she had coveted on the retailers website.If my phone is alerting me to the discount or some information about items I might like, that will totally pull me in, said Ms. Libretto, who lives in Ridgefield, Conn.The alert arrived at an opportune time, pinging as she neared the entrance of the Vince Camuto store. And it cemented her decision: She would buy the purse after all.But the timing was no coincidence. The app that she had downloaded from ShopAdvisor used beacon technology, a new addition to location-based marketing, to pinpoint her whereabouts before sending the discount. I hope its a technology more companies will use, she said.Ms. Libretto, 44, an artist and stay-at-home mother with two young sons, has embraced online shopping. My time is so short that when I do get to shop, the alerts are fantastic, she said.Because retailers are acutely aware that despite the popularity of online shopping nearly 92 percent of retail sales are made at brick-and-mortar locations, a technology that will help drive shoppers into stores is certain to attract a lot of attention.And with the ubiquity of smartphones, now owned by two-thirds of Americans, retailers and technology companies have spent the last few years trying, with modest success, to find ways to combine a shoppers desires with innovative mobile apps, to get legions of consumers into stores.Now, ShopAdvisor, a four-year-old company based in Concord, Mass., has added a wrinkle to location-based mobile marketing that it hopes will be the breakthrough retailers are seeking. GPS-based mobile apps are not new and geofencing, the ability to create a virtual perimeter around a designated location such as a shopping mall, has given retailers the ability to send push alerts to prospective customers nearby.ImageCredit...Richard Perry/The New York TimesBut beacon technology can pinpoint a customers location so precisely that a retailer knows when that shopper is lingering in the shoe department or browsing in lingerie. ShopAdvisor, which offers its own mobile shopping app and specializes in creating multichannel mobile shopping platforms for media companies, as well as retail brands, has incorporated beacon technology in a novel way.With the aim of driving shoppers into stores, ShopAdvisor incorporates data analytics that filter a shoppers preferences and provide a way for retailers to send personalized alerts to consumers who have downloaded a brands app, offering discounts, highlighting sales and providing content such as product reviews that might instantly sway a buying decision.Weve had at least three years of heavy-duty location-based marketing under retailers belts, said JiYoung Kim, senior vice president for Ansible, the mobile division of the Interpublic Group, the global marketing company. Everybody has the same tool, and targeting alone can only take you so far.What makes the ShopAdvisor approach enticing, Ms. Kim said, is that it not only precisely locates a shopper in a store but provides personalized creative content from that retailer to that shopper on the spot. Offer that shopper a 20 percent discount on some new black pumps she has been eyeing, along with a positive review from a popular fashion magazine, and a purchase is far more likely.Shoppers who have downloaded apps from various retailers in the last three years have been flooded with repetitious push alerts that have become like robocalls and tend to be annoying. For proximity mobile marketing to be effective, it requires something more.When you give people a marketing message about something that they actually want, in a location where they can act on it, that doesnt feel like an ad or an annoyance, said Scott Cooper, ShopAdvisors founder and president. It feels like a service to them. They tend to respond to it.The companys revenues come from monthly fees paid by clients, like media companies and retailers, based on the scale, scope and frequency of the campaigns. It also draws revenue from retailers that subscribe to its proximity marketing service.ShopAdvisor spent its first two years searching for a promising value proposition. It raised $11 million in venture financing but was still in search of what Mr. Cooper called the breakout business model. The advent of beacon technology this year solidified the mission. That last leg on the stool has really exploded the business, he said.For example, when Elle, the popular womens magazine, began planning for its 30th anniversary this year, the publication decided it had to do something noteworthy in addition to its celebratory September fashion and beauty issue. The 668-page issue, the largest in Elles history, would be flush with special content to support its many advertisers but we felt it was incumbent upon us to do something innovative, said Kevin OMalley, Elles senior vice president and publisher.ImageCredit...ShopAdvisorElle connected with ShopAdvisor and in August they started a pilot program called Shop Now. As part of the Shop Now campaign, Elle formed partnerships with such advertisers as Guess, Levis and Vince Camuto, and ShopAdvisor placed beacons in more than 1,600 stores around the country. Beacons, introduced in the last two years, are inexpensive, battery-powered, hockey-puck size digital sensors placed in locations to precisely identify and communicate with customers carrying smartphones.ShopAdvisor created a mobile app using beacon and geofencing technology for Elle readers, who tend to be avid shoppers. The geofence detects that an Elle reader with the app is near, and the beacon then precisely tracks that shoppers movements when she enters the store. It also sets off push alerts for that customer, suggesting specific items such as jeans or shoes that the customer has previously expressed interest in, along with curated content from Elle magazine. The content includes product reviews, top picks from Elle editors, coupons and other personalized marketing messages just for the customer.If you get a generic jeans offer from Guess, you are more likely to disregard it or delete it, Mr. OMalley said. Of course Guess will tell you they are the best. But if we say those skinny, low-rise jeans in this model is one of our picks, thats an editorial endorsement and brings third-party credibility and authority to the alert.According to Mr. OMalley, previous location-based marketing resulted in less than 1 percent of smartphone users entering stores, a disappointing result. After six weeks of the Shop Now campaign, more than 8 percent of those who received the app visited the stores, an increase retailers consider highly significant. Elle plans to start the next phase of the program in early 2016.Vince Camuto, the womens shoes and fashion retailer, saw immediate results. According to Leah Robert, executive vice president of the company, the Elle campaign was introduced in 23 locations and within a week, average sales per transaction rose 30 percent and the number of units sold increased significantly. Not only were many new customers coming into the stores but regular customers were visiting more frequently.The number of transactions per week almost doubled versus a typical average week for us, Ms. Robert said. We had click-through rates that were five times the industry benchmark. We drove several thousand additional shoppers into the stores over a four-week period..Since the Elle pilot campaign ended on Oct. 1, 20 percent of the same customers have, unprompted, returned to the stores of the participating retailers, according to ShopAdvisor. Users of its app who had been prompted to visit Vince Camuto stores during the Elle program did so 32 percent more than customers who did not use the app.Part of the success of the Elle campaign is ShopAdvisors ability to identify customers who have shown serious interest in products using the companys app. If you clicked on Vince Camuto black pumps and got near a Vince Camuto store, we can be superaggressive with you, Mr. Cooper said. You are absolutely someone who wants that message. If you have never shown any interest in that stuff at all, we leave you alone. We dont bother you.Privacy concerns loom as the biggest challenge for companies that contact smartphone users. Customers want to feel special, but they dont want to feel its too Big Brother, said Ms. Robert of Vince Camuto. We have to be personal but not creepy.Despite the early success indicators, however, analysts remain wary.Beacons are very new, and these are very small examples, Ms. Kim said. This is a crowded and very competitive space, and everybody wants a piece of what ShopAdvisor is doing. Because of privacy issues as well as not wanting to freak people out, nobody wants to be the first to do something dumb with a technology that powerful. The results so far are good but they are still in the very early stages. | Business |
The agency faced criticism for approving Aduhelm for all Alzheimers patients. Now it recommends that the drug be given only to those with mild symptoms.Credit...Pool photo by Jessica RinaldiPublished July 8, 2021Updated Sept. 2, 2021Under fire for approving a questionable drug for all Alzheimers patients, the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday greatly narrowed its previous recommendation and is now suggesting that only those with mild memory or thinking problems should receive it.The reversal, highly unusual for a drug that has been available for only a few weeks, is likely to reduce the approximate number of Americans who are eligible for the treatment to 1.5 million from six million.The approval of Aduhelm early last month was one of the most contentious F.D.A. decisions in years. Groups that represent Alzheimers patients had intensely lobbied the agency to sign off on the first new drug to treat the disease in 18 years and the first ever designed to attack its biological underpinnings.But many scientists, as well as the F.D.A.s independent advisory committee, said there was not convincing evidence that the drug worked.In addition, the agencys recommendation that Aduhelm be available to all Alzheimers patients, not just those showing early symptoms, stirred up even more concern among medical experts, including those who had supported the drugs approval.After the approval, three members of the advisory committee resigned in protest. One, Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, described it as the worst approval decision that he could remember.The drugs maker, Biogen, said last month that it would charge $56,000 annually for the drug. Associated costs such as for diagnostics and safety monitoring, since the drugs side effects include brain swelling and bleeding could add tens of thousands of dollars to each patients annual bill.Analysts expected that the drugs widespread use would strain Medicares budget. By one estimate, it could leave taxpayers on the hook for $29 billion in new spending, more than the annual budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.The new guidance does not prevent doctors from prescribing Aduhelm to patients with moderate or severe Alzheimers. But the about-face sends a strong message to doctors and insurers about who should receive the drug.It also substantially increases the odds that Medicare and private insurers will restrict coverage of the drug, which is given as a monthly intravenous infusion. That would mean that patients with moderate or severe Alzheimers would have to pay the five-figure annual costs out of their own pockets, which experts regard as unlikely to happen frequently.Michael Felberbaum, a spokesman for the F.D.A., said the agency had changed its recommendation after confusion regarding the intended population for treatment.Dr. Al Sandrock, Biogens head of research and development, said in a statement that the company was committed to continue to listen to the communitys needs regarding Aduhelm. Biogens stock has soared 29 percent since the drug was approved on June 7.When Biogen conducted clinical trials of Aduhelm, it included only people with early symptoms of cognitive decline. The drug appeared slightly effective, at best.In one late-stage trial, the highest dose of the drug appeared to slow patients cognitive decline by a fraction of a point on an 18-point scale that assesses their memory, problem-solving skills and function. But in an identically designed second clinical trial, the drug showed no benefit at all.ImageCredit...Biogen, via Associated PressThe F.D.A. signed off on the drug under a framework known as accelerated approval. That allows drugs that have not yet shown they can help patients to be approved if they have a substantial effect on a biomarker of a disease.The agency acknowledged last month that there was not convincing evidence that Aduhelm slowed patients cognitive decline. Instead, it based its approval on the drugs ability to reduce levels of a protein called amyloid, which clumps into plaques in the brains of Alzheimers patients.But many Alzheimers experts have said there is not solid evidence that reducing amyloid levels has any effect on peoples cognitive problems.At a forum last month sponsored by the Alzheimers Association, which had pushed for approval of Aduhelm, a panel of clinicians with varying views of whether the drug should have been approved were united in saying its use should be limited. The consensus was that Aduhelm should be only for patients in mild stages of the disease whose brains have high levels of amyloid and who dont have medical conditions that could make them vulnerable to Aduhelms potentially dangerous side effects.On Thursday, Dr. Lon Schneider, director of the California Alzheimers Disease Center at the University of Southern California, said the F.D.A. should further narrow its guidelines which are listed on the drugs label for who is eligible for the drug.Dr. Schneider, who worked on one of the clinical trials of Aduhelm and opposed its approval, said the trials had excluded people with diabetes and high blood pressure and those taking blood thinners. As a result, we dont know any extent of increased risk for those patients, he said, adding that the drugs label should include warnings about treating those patients with Aduhelm.The F.D.A. is being run by an interim commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, because President Biden has not nominated a permanent leader. Before becoming interim commissioner in January, Dr. Woodcock was the longtime leader of the arm of the agency responsible for approving drugs. Officials said she was not involved in the Aduhelm decision, though she has defended it as very solid.Some experts said the F.D.A.s quick reversal was a sign that it had mishandled its initial review and was now ending up closer to where it should have started.The revision of this label is yet another piece of evidence that should cause the American public to be concerned about how F.D.A. is practicing its regulatory science, said Dr. Jason Karlawish, a co-director of the University of Pennsylvanias Penn Memory Center.The fallout from the initial approval of the drug is still spreading.In Congress, two House committees last month announced an investigation into Aduhelms approval and price. Senators from both parties have called for an investigation in that chamber, too.Researchers said such outside scrutiny was important because of the controversy swirling around the drug and the F.D.A.s decision-making. This event only adds to the importance of having those congressional hearings to figure out whats going on at F.D.A. and why theyre doing this, Dr. Karlawish said.Some analysts said the narrower eligibility for the drug could help Biogen deflect criticism from lawmakers. This helps their case to say, Hey, were not just completely pushing boundaries as hard as we can, said Brian Skorney, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Company. He said he expected Aduhelm to generate $7.5 billion in revenue for Biogen in 2025.Biogen has not yet announced how many patients have received the drug, but its distribution is expected to be slow in the first months because of challenges administering it.The F.D.A.s narrowed guidance only applies to when people start taking the drug. Mr. Felberbaum, the spokesman, said some patients on Aduhelm whose symptoms grow more severe may benefit from ongoing treatment.The caveat is that there is no scientific evidence that Aduhelm will help such people. | Health |
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/technology/personaltech/a-case-that-lets-you-be-the-designer.htmlGadgetwiseFeb. 19, 2014With a sea of device accessories designed by other people, one company, Caseable, is turning the tables and letting you be the designer.The company, which has offices in Brooklyn and Berlin, has its eye on urban consumers who like to customize their devices. To meet their desire, Caseable offers easy tools on its website to let customers create their own cases for Apple, Samsung and Kindle devices, among others. The cases incorporate durable recycled products wherever possible; iPhone cases, for instance, are made entirely from recycled plastic bottles.Users can upload their graphics or photos, edit them and add text. To offer ideas to those who might need a little creative inspiration, Caseable has a gallery dedicated to user submissions, which include a lot of selfies and vacation photos, but also a few smart designs.The website also includes a gallery of ready-to-use designs from featured artists. The series, a collaborative effort between Caseable and graphic artists around the world, includes some striking urban artwork this is definitely not Shutterfly. Artists receive about 10 percent of net sales, according to Caseable.To create a case for my iPhone 5, I submitted a high-resolution image of Batman (naturally, because Im a nerd). About a week later, my handmade case arrived in the mail. Caseable says the typical delivery time from click to door is less than 12 days.The case was sturdy, although a little stiff, as you might expect of a product made from recycled plastic. The design looked great, and it has not faded or scratched in the couple of weeks that Ive used it.Caseable offers a fun way to personalize your devices and show off your artistic side. At $35 for an iPhone case, the price is low enough that I can afford to get a Superman case to go with the Dark Knight. | Tech |
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/personaltech/gmail-smart-compose.htmlTECH TIPGoogles new machine-learning tools for its mail service can save you time and typos as long as you are comfortable sharing your thoughts with the software.June 1, 2018Q. The new Gmail feature that lets the software write your mail messages for you sounds intriguing, if not unsettling. How does it work, and has the feature rolled out to regular users so I can see it for myself?A. The Smart Compose feature of Googles recent Gmail update does not exactly write your full message for you. The program uses machine learning techniques to evaluate what you are writing and then suggests what to type next based on that analysis. Gmails text suggestions appear in slightly lighter gray type at the end of the sentence you are writing. If you choose to accept the computer-generated words, tap the Tab key to add the material and move on to the next sentence. ImageCredit...The New York TimesIn theory, the Smart Compose tool can speed up your message composition and cut down on typographical errors. While machine learning means the software (and not a human) is scanning your work-in-progress to get information for the predictive text function, you are sharing information with Google when you use its products.If you have already updated to the new version of Gmail, you can try out Smart Compose by going to the General tab in Settings and turning on the check box next to enable Experimental Access. Next, click Save Changes at the bottom of the Settings screen. When you return to the General tab of the Gmail settings, scroll down to the newly arrived Smart Compose section and confirm that Writing suggestions on is enabled. If you do not care for Googles assistance after sampling the feature, you can return to the settings and click Writing suggestions off to disable Smart Compose.The new feature is available only for English composition at the moment, and a disclaimer from Google warns: Smart Compose is not designed to provide answers and may not always predict factually correct information. Google also warns that experimental tools like Smart Compose are still under development and that the company may change or remove the features at any time.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
Six former employees were recently named in federal charges that were an indication of the lengths some companies will go to hit back at detractors.Credit...John G Mabanglo/EPA, via ShutterstockJune 27, 2020Last summer, members of eBays private security team sent live roaches and a bloody pig mask to the home of a suburban Boston couple who published a niche e-commerce newsletter.The harassment campaign, which also included physical surveillance, sending pornographic videos to the couples neighbors, posting ads inviting sexual partners to the couples home and an attempt to attach a tracking device to their car, was detailed earlier this month in a federal indictment against six former eBay employees.The lurid, 51-page indictment, describing how the employees of a multibillion-dollar company were loosed in what authorities described as an unhinged and illegal effort to intimidate critics, drew national attention to the stunning lengths some tech companies will go when responding to their critics.Silicon Valley companies have stacked what they often call their trust and safety teams with former police officers and national intelligence analysts. More often than not, their work is well within the law: protecting executives and intellectual property, fending off blackmail attempts and spotting theft. They conduct background checks on companies that could be acquisition targets and they ensure employees arent doing anything illegal.But the industrys intense focus on reputation can lead their security units astray. Those perils were laid bare when federal authorities revealed the charges against the eBay employees.Most companies, especially established high-tech companies, have units within them that do this kind of work, respond in as close to real time as they can to online criticism of the company, to take steps to protect the brand, Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said. But, he added, I can tell you that at least internally, we have never seen a company that did something like this before.Prosecutors charged the six eBay employees with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and witness tampering, but noted that eBays campaign against the husband-and-wife publishing duo was ordered up by senior executives.I want her DONE, Steven Wymer, eBays former communications chief, told James Baugh, the companys former senior director of safety and security. She is a biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.In case there was any confusion, Mr. Wymer added, I want to see ashes.ImageCredit...Mike Coppola/Getty ImagesContacted this past week, Mr. Wymer, who was not one of the employees charged in the indictment, said, I would never condone or participate in any such activity. He added that he was constrained in what he could say beyond that. EBay said in a statement that neither the company nor any current eBay employee was indicted.Private security teams have long been part of corporate America, among them insurers fraud investigators and the seed police, as farmers call investigators for the agricultural giant Monsanto who secretly videotape farmers, infiltrate community meetings and recruit informants in their hunt for patent infringement.These private detective teams, which typically operate under fraud divisions, are projected to grow into a $23.3 billion global industry this year from a $17.3 billion industry in 2018, according to Grand View Research.Few industries have embraced the notion of private security as much as tech. One Silicon Valley investigator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of nondisclosure agreements, said a start-up executive had paid his firm $50,000 over one weekend to root out employees he believed were plotting his ouster. (They were.) The total tab for the work was as much as half a million dollars.ImageCredit...Cj Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockBut as with the eBay team, these private security groups are sometimes accused of crossing legal lines.In 2006, for example, investigators hired by Hewlett-Packard were caught riffling through reporters trash cans and phone records. About a year ago, Tesla made headlines for its aggressive efforts to root out and punish an employee, Martin Tripp, who had tipped reporters off to waste at the carmakers Nevada factory.According to police reports and whistle-blower complaints filed by two Tesla security operators with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla was accused of hacking into Mr. Tripps phone, having him followed by private investigators and passing along an anonymous, false tip to the local authorities that Mr. Tripp planned to shoot up Teslas factory.Teslas investigators were tailing him, showing up at weird places, and completely spooked him, Robert Mitchell, Mr. Tripps lawyer, said in an interview. Mr. Tripp has since moved to Hungary out of fears for his familys safety.Tesla did not respond to requests for comment, but the company has sued Mr. Tripp for $167 million for what it has said was data theft. Mr. Tripp has filed a countersuit for defamation and unspecified damages. Both suits are ongoing.When working for tech companies, private investigators have advantages over traditional law enforcement: They have access to more data, deal with far less red tape, and they have the ability to quickly cross jurisdictions and borders.ImageCredit...Emma Howells for The New York TimesJustin Zeefe, a former intelligence officer who is now the president of Nisos, a security firm in Virginia, said his company has worked for tech companies on a wide range of cases. On one occasion, they learned that a companys overseas suppliers had ties to foreign intelligence agencies.Another client asked his firm to determine whether an acquisition target had been infiltrated by foreign hackers. Yet another hired Nisos to determine the source of multiple cyberattacks. It turned out to be the work of a competitor that had intercepted the companys Wi-Fi from an apartment rented across the street.Joe Sullivan, the chief information security officer at the internet company Cloudflare, still remembers the frantic call he received from a colleague while working as a security executive at Facebook several years ago.She had met a man on Match.com who claimed to work in construction in San Jose, Calif., and he had convinced her to send him a topless photo. He was threatening to email the photo to the entire company if she did not pay him $10,000.With her permission, Mr. Sullivans team took over her account and redirected her extortionist to a payment scheme that they knew would reveal his identity. They determined he was a former Google intern living in Nigeria.Mr. Sullivans team hired Nigerian contractors to confront him. He confessed and surrendered access to his computer and online accounts, which showed he was extorting female executives across Silicon Valley. Investigators were able to destroy the nude photos and warned his victims not to pay.It could have taken years, Mr. Sullivan said, for law enforcement to identify the extortionist and even longer for Nigerian authorities to do something about it.Mr. Sullivan learned that lesson as a security executive at eBay in 2006. Romanian fraudsters were running rampant on eBay, and Romanian authorities refused to address the problem. It was only after Mr. Sullivans team shut off eBay access to all of Romania with a message blaming eBays shuttering on Romanian law enforcements refusal to pursue online criminals that Romanian police took action.But Mr. Sullivans experience shows how easily techs aggressive security tactics can run into trouble. In 2016, two hackers approached Uber with security flaws that allowed them to obtain login credentials for more than 57 million riders and drivers, and the pair demanded a $100,000 payout in return. | Tech |
Karl-Anthony Towns Fly Eagles, Fly! ... Bring On the Patriots! 1/22/2018 TMZSports.com He plays for Minnesota, but NBA star Karl-Anthony Towns was ALL ABOUT PHILLY on Sunday -- decked out in Eagles gear ... and celebrating after the victory! The Timberwolves star (who's in town to play the Clippers) hit up Craig's -- in a very good mood -- reveling in his team's NFC Championship victory over the Minnesota Vikings. FYI, KAT grew up in Edison, NJ -- about 60 miles from Philly. So, how does he feel about the Eagles' chances against Tom Brady? He likes it. A lot. | Entertainment |
Swarms of accounts are amplifying Beijings brash new messaging as the country tries to shape the global narrative about the coronavirus and much else.Credit...Yifan WuPublished June 8, 2020Updated July 7, 2021As the Trump administration lashes out at China over a range of grievances, Beijings top diplomats and representatives are using the presidents favorite online megaphone Twitter to slap back with a pugnaciousness that is best described as Trumpian.Behind Chinas combative new messengers, a murky hallelujah chorus of sympathetic accounts has emerged to repost them and cheer them on. Many are new to the platform. Some do little else but amplify the Beijing line.No doubt some of these accounts are run by patriotic, tech-savvy Chinese people who get around their governments ban on Twitter and other Western platforms. But an analysis by The New York Times found that many of the accounts behaved with a single-mindedness that could suggest a coordinated campaign of the type that nation states have carried out on Twitter in the past.Of the roughly 4,600 accounts that reposted Chinas leading envoys and state-run news outlets during a recent week, many acted suspiciously, The Times found. One in six tweeted with extremely high frequency despite having few followers, as if they were being used as loudspeakers, not as sharing platforms.Nearly one in seven tweeted almost nothing of their own, instead filling their feeds with reposts of the official Chinese accounts and others.In all, one third of the accounts had been created in the last three months, as the war of words with the Trump administration heated up. One in seven had zero followers.The United States and China are battling to dominate the global narrative. China was criticized for its early mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak, but it has regained confidence as other countries have made their own stumbles. With the United States in turmoil, upended first by the epidemic and now by protests, Beijing sees a chance to define itself as a global leader, one unafraid to press its interests in Hong Kong and the region.ImageCredit...Getty ImagesIt is far from clear that the Chinese government is behind the swarms of accounts helping to spread its gospel on Twitter. Online information campaigns are becoming increasingly sophisticated as malicious actors get better at disguising their digital activity, security experts say. They now rarely make telltale mistakes such as using social media accounts that were all created on the same day, follow one another and post the same material.Campaigns are often uncovered one small piece at a time. Twitter has declared operations to be state-backed after identifying as few as six accounts.Much is unknown about Chinas covert influence activities in particular. Twitter last year suspended more than 200,000 accounts that it called a Chinese state-backed operation aimed at discrediting Hong Kongs protesters, though it said little about how it came to that conclusion.Still, The Timess findings add to other recent evidence suggesting that Twitter is being manipulated to amplify pro-Beijing messages. Next Dim, a data firm in Israel, discovered two mundane-looking tweets praising Chinas coronavirus response that were liked and reposted hundreds of thousands of times in March, possibly with the help of strategically placed influencer accounts.The U.S. State Department found inauthentic-seeming accounts that in April cited a Cambridge University study to raise doubts that the coronavirus originated in China. The most active of these accounts referred to the study in scores of tweets, even though the studys lead author dismissed that interpretation of its findings.Neither Next Dims findings nor the State Departments have been previously reported.Improving the health of the public conversation is a priority for our company, Twitter said in a statement. Platform manipulation, including spam and other attempts to undermine the public conversation, is a violation of the Twitter Rules.The State Department has denounced Chinas efforts to burnish its image and drown out criticism during the pandemic, comparing them to Russias disinformation campaigns. Both countries are using a range of tools to shape and tilt any given information environment in their favor, said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the departments Global Engagement Center.I think the Chinese Communist Party is still trying to define its relationship with Twitter, said Kristine Lee, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. But the Covid-19 pandemic has served as an important period of experimentation.The U.S.-China tongue-lashing adds to the questions vexing Twitter about how it treats inflammatory or misleading remarks from world leaders. Mr. Trump has accused the company of censoring him and other Republicans while ignoring questionable posts by Democrats and the Chinese government.Beijings Twitter brigade includes Hua Chunying, the head of the foreign ministrys information department. Since joining the platform in October, Ms. Hua has attracted more than half a million followers with her feisty put-downs of the United States.In a Communist Party journal last year, Ms. Hua wrote that China had to find a voice in international affairs that was commensurate with its economic strength. We have walked closer to the center of the world stage than ever before, but we still do not grasp the microphone completely in our hands, she wrote.One reason, she wrote: a lack of fighting spirit.Another foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, became notorious after tweeting that the U.S. military might have brought the coronavirus to China. Twitter later added a fact-checking label to Mr. Zhaos post.The Times analyzed all of the tweets that Ms. Hua, Mr. Zhao and 12 other Twitter users linked to the Chinese government posted between May 18 and May 25.The other users included the foreign ministrys main account, as well as the accounts of Chinas ambassadors to the United States and Britain. They also included nine accounts run by state news outlets.That week, Beijing moved to tighten its control over Hong Kong. Mr. Trump threatened to cut off funding to the World Health Organization. American officials congratulated Taiwans president on the start of her second term. China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, was furious.Ms. Hua mused about whether the coronavirus actually originated in the United States: Scientists at the US NIH began developing a #COVID19 vaccine on January 11. There were reports of cases as early as November last year. Any explanation or investigation? Her post, which refers to the National Institutes of Health, was liked 4,600 times.The Timess analysis found that hundreds of the 4,600 accounts that reposted the Chinese government mouthpieces that week behaved suspiciously. Many were incessant tweeters despite having limited followings. After excluding accounts that had zero followers and had tweeted five times or fewer, over a sixth of the accounts had posted 100 or more times for every follower.A few accounts repeatedly retweeted at set lengths of time after the original post 9 hours and 49 minutes after, 19 hours and 34 minutes after suggesting that software had been used to schedule their tweets. Twitter has since suspended some of the accounts for violating its policies.When contacted by The Times, several pro-China Twitter users denied being part of a government campaign but acknowledged that they joined the platform specifically to follow the foreign ministry representatives. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment.ImageCredit...Wu Hong/EPA, via ShutterstockOthers said they were either curious about Mr. Trumps tweets about China or felt demonized by them.He has done so many shameless things for re-election, one user, @beautifullady76, said in a Twitter message. Countless Chinese people are angry and everyone has the right to the truth. We just want to say a fair word for China!Public records show that Beijing is trying to expand its influence on the Western internet. Chinas internet regulator has sought out contractors to help it make use of overseas social media platforms to develop online propaganda on major themes, procurement documents show.Much of this kind of activity may not appear in official documents, however. The regulator did not respond to a request for comment.Theres no reason to think that the parts of the Chinese government that are formally in charge of conducting information operations are not able to conduct operations that are as sophisticated as others, said Camille Franois of the network analysis company Graphika. They just havent been publicly exposed and dissected yet.Researchers remain on the lookout. ProPublica tracked 10,000 fishy accounts that posted about the coronavirus and the Hong Kong protests. Alkemy, an Italian digital marketing firm, found that inauthentic-looking users were behind many posts celebrating Chinese medical aid to Italy.In March, two tweets lauding Chinas handling of the outbreak were liked and reposted hundreds of thousands of times. The posts were not shocking, funny or newsworthy, and originated from users with modest followings.That caught the attention of Next Dim, an Israeli company that uses network analytics to identify and prevent financial crime.While scanning Twitter, our systems automatically discovered a huge irregularity, said Next Dims chief executive, Netta Marrom. Too huge, he believes, to be the result of chance.On March 12, the first user, @manisha_kataki, posted a video showing workers disinfecting streets in China. At this rate, China will be back in action very soon, may be much faster than the world expects, the user wrote.The next day, another user, @Ejiketion, retweeted the post, marveling at how China had locked down cities and built coronavirus hospitals. In the West, by contrast, We washing our hands LOL, @Ejiketion wrote. The account has since been deleted.The two posts together received more than 382,000 retweets and 1.1 million likes, many of them within the first two days. That made them roughly as popular as Elon Musks tweet, also from March, in which the head of Tesla called the coronavirus panic dumb.Two other posts that also retweeted @manisha_kataki but translated @Ejiketions comment into Spanish and French received a combined 67,000 retweets and 181,000 likes.Next Dim identified around 20 Twitter users whose followers accounted for thousands of the retweets of @manisha_katakis and @Ejiketions posts. Some of these users had immense followings but rarely tweeted about China.ImageCredit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via ShutterstockNext Dims analysis uncovered other signs that the two tweets popularity may not have been organic. Few of the first users to retweet @manisha_katakis post were followers of the account, which means they were unlikely to have seen the tweet in their timelines. Thousands of accounts reposted both tweets, even though @Ejiketions tweet was itself a repost of @manisha_katakis.Neither @manisha_kataki nor @Ejiketion responded to requests for comment.Wang Yiwei and Lin Qiqing contributed research. | Tech |
Woe to the human who takes the lives of geese too lightly, or looks to them for relief from the coronavirus blues.Credit...Charlie Riedel/Associated PressMay 6, 2020I had been looking to geese to keep my spirits up during the pandemic lockdown.Silly me. You just cant depend on geese, if what you are looking for is entertainment. They insist on leading their own troubled lives in the face of human attempts to cast them as comedians. The nerve.I had been watching geese at a nearby park until it closed. The geese were not a problem. They squawked and honked and paraded around in their self-important waddles as geese do. Delightful.People were the problem. They were not obeying social-distancing rules. They too were flocking to the park, squawking and honking and waddling around in large, unmasked groups. As people do. Not as amusingly as geese.So with no park available, I began paying closer attention to a pair of geese that had set up housekeeping on the bank of the Hudson near my apartment building. The female had made a nest at the top of a steep bank of rip rap against a chain-link fence. On the other side of it is a bit of lawn, which the male patrolled, hissing to enforce the parameters of human/goose distancing that he felt were appropriate.I never saw the female move from her eggs. In fact, I never actually saw the eggs, I just assumed they were under her. Sure enough, one day the male and female swam by with five tiny goslings. They must have just hatched. This was the beginning of a good spring, I thought, not to mention a nice little essay about bumbling birds and life reborn in a time of human distress.I thought it would be like the previous spring, when my wife and I often watched what I believe was the same goose pair with a similar brood. One day we saw the whole group leave the shore following the parents, except for one dawdler who was poking at something interesting under a rock. Suddenly the young goose, still fuzzy in its baby feathers, looked up and saw its family paddling away. It made a mad dash for the water and tripped, tumbling head over large, webbed feet in a pratfall made for a funny home video.I knew it wasnt a pratfall to the gosling, just a stab of panic and a fall. Still the baby quickly rejoined its family. We giggled. No harm done. You can see why I had high hopes this year.ImageCredit...James GormanTwo or three rainy, cold days passed until I saw the two adult geese again. Only one gosling was with them. I couldnt process what had happened at first. I thought, maybe it was a different pair, or maybe the other goslings went somewhere on their own. But I knew that wasnt possible. Goslings less than a week old dont go off, leaving their parents behind. In a few more days the lone gosling was gone too.They may have been victims of the weather. They could have been eaten by a hawk, I suppose. Are there fish in the Hudson that eat goslings? I dont know.It was sad. And surprisingly disorienting. In my mind I had a nice drawing-room comedy going. The geese were my cast. Nothing bad was supposed to happen to them. The plot was simple and satisfying the goslings would grow. There would be minor setbacks, but as the coronavirus curve flattened they would fatten. The late spring would be good for us all.No such luck, at least for the goslings. And really, I should have known better. Death is common for young geese as it is for all young animals. In a recent year, among the Canada geese that migrate along the Atlantic Flyway, 30 percent of pairs lost their entire brood in the first three weeks.We humans dont face those odds, but our odds have changed recently, and most of us are probably more aware of mortality rates than we used to be. We will do what we can to keep our chins up, and masked. But one failed strategy, for me, was to pretend that the lives of geese are better than our own.I have no idea what geese feel about lost goslings. If they experience subtle emotions like sadness they dont express them in a way that I understand. Im pretty sure they dont get discouraged or depressed. They can live 25 years, and pairs generally stay together and make a nest each year, whatever happened the last time.Now that I have freed the geese from my preconceived plot, how do I feel about them? George Gaylord Simpson, an evolutionary biologist who wrote wonderfully about the natural world, once posed the question what good is a penguin? which I am taking the liberty of reading as what good is a goose? It depended on what you mean by good, he said, dismissing unworthy definitions involving tastiness and other utilitarian ways in which wild animals might seem good to humans.He said, if youll forgive one word change: If you mean Good as it is good in itself to be a living creature enjoying life, you are not being crass, stupid or vicious. I agree with you and I am your brother as well as the gooses.Good luck to the geese. Good luck to us all.ImageCredit...Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times | science |
Credit...Muhammed Muheisen/Associated PressMarch 14, 2017LONDON The European Unions highest court waded into the politically explosive issue of public expressions of Muslim identity on Tuesday, finding that private employers can ban female workers from wearing head scarves on the job.The ruling comes as Europe is beginning a critical election season, with races in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and with anti-immigrant, anti-Islam populism rising in many countries. Dutch voters go to the polls on Wednesday, and the far-right party of the anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders is expected to fare well.In its ruling, the European Court of Justice found that company regulations banning the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign did not constitute direct discrimination so long as such prohibitions applied to religious garb from all faiths, a requirement that legal experts say could also encompass a Sikh turban and a Jewish skullcap, among other religious symbols.It is a very bold step, said Camino Mortera-Martinez, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in Brussels, describing the ruling as a landmark decision, if also a political and pragmatic one. Recently we have seen the court being much more attentive to the political winds rather than being so legalistic, because of the recognition that the E.U. is at risk of collapse.She characterized the ruling as further evidence that the European court has been pivoting after years of rulings that favored the rights of minorities. This month, the court ruled that European Union member states were not obliged to issue visas to people who planned to seek asylum in their countries, even if they were vulnerable to inhuman treatment or were threatened with torture.Far-right leaders surely would have pounced had the court ruled differently. Along with Mr. Wilders, the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has stirred up anti-Islam anger by accusing Muslims of failing to integrate. Europe has been struggling to accommodate huge numbers of migrants, many from predominantly Muslim countries.Few issues are more politically fraught in Europe than the issue of the rights of observant Muslim women to cover their faces and bodies. Last summer, for instance, a few French municipalities generated global headlines and outrage when Muslim women were prohibited from swimming in the sea while wearing a body covering known as the burkini.Several countries including France, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands have either passed laws that led to bans on full face-covering veils in public, or are considering legislation that would do so. Those laws, however, apply to public and government spaces.The ruling on Tuesday, which experts said was the first time the court had issued a ruling on women wearing head scarves while on the job, applies only to the workplace and provides a minimum legal standard that member states must meet.The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, interprets the law for the 28-nation European Union, and its decisions are binding for member states. Its ruling on Tuesday followed advisory opinions in two distinct cases before the court.In a case in May, Juliane Kokott, an advocate general with the court, issued an opinion saying that a company could prohibit a Muslim employee from wearing a head scarf, provided that the policy applied to attire for all religions and did not single out Islam.That opinion came after a complaint by Samira Achbita, a Muslim woman in Belgium, who was fired as a receptionist for the international security services company G4S after she insisted that she be allowed to wear a head scarf at work.Ms. Achbita sued the company, and the Belgian Court of Cassation asked the European Court of Justice for clarification about what European law required.The Court of Justice concurred on Tuesday with the advisory ruling, saying that Ms. Achbita had not been subject to discrimination because the internal directive was broadly written and did not single out Islam.The court said it was up to the Belgian Court of Cassation to determine whether an employer had committed indirect discrimination if any directive ultimately affected persons adhering to a particular religion or belief.In a separate case, from July, Eleanor Sharpston, another advocate general for the court, said that Micropole, an information technology consultancy, had engaged in unlawful discrimination when it fired a Muslim woman, Asma Bougnaoui, in 2009 for refusing to remove her head scarf when dealing with clients.Ms. Bougnaoui took her case to a French court, which referred it to the European Court of Justice. In her advisory opinion, Ms. Sharpston said the companys decision to dismiss Ms. Bougnaoui had constituted direct discrimination based on religion or belief.Ms. Sharpston said there was no evidence to suggest that Ms. Bougnaouis scarf interfered with her ability to perform her job as a design engineer. If she had covered her face completely, the opinion found, the situation would have been different, because eye-to-eye contact was important in Western business interactions.But the court on Tuesday found that, in the absence of an internal company policy, it was not enough for an employer to simply justify a dismissal by pointing to a customers desire not to interact with someone wearing a head scarf.Legal experts said the courts ruling could give greater leeway to employers across Europe to regulate religious attire in the workplace, as long as they did so with neutral policies that did not target Muslims.Simon Cox, a senior legal officer specializing in anti-discrimination issues with the Open Society Foundations, said the ruling will force employers to choose which side they are on and open the door to a greater willingness not to employ women in head scarves.Maryam Hmadoun, a policy adviser who is also with the Open Society Foundations, expressed concern that the ruling could potentially help exclude many Muslim women from the work force. This disappointing ruling weakens the guarantee of equality that is at the heart of the E.U.s anti-discrimination directive, she said.Colm OCinneide, a professor of human rights and constitutional law at University College London, said the ruling could lead to more bans on religious attire in workplaces.He also noted that the ruling required that any ban on religious attire be objectively justified and that imposing a ban could be difficult when employees were not the public face of the company or interacting with customers directly.Depending on a country and its internal debates, companies that want to have a head scarf ban will feel more comfortable doing so, and this ruling gives them some legal cover, Mr. OCinneide said. | World |
Credit...Dominic BugattoJune 18, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Apples chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, may be the leader of the worlds most valuable public company, but lately he has had to act a lot like the tech industrys top diplomat.Last month he visited the Oval Office to warn President Trump that tough talk on China could threaten Apples position in the country. In March, at a major summit meeting in Beijing, he called for calmer heads to prevail between the worlds two most powerful countries.In a trade and technology showdown between the United States and China, Apple and Mr. Cook have a lot to lose. With 41 stores and hundreds of millions of iPhones sold in the country, there is arguably no American company in China as successful, as high-profile and with as big a target on its back.Since he took over Apple from its co-founder Steve Jobs, in 2011, questions about whether Mr. Cook, 57, could recreate the magic that led to the iPod and iPhone have persisted. For Mr. Cook, the analogous breakthrough and potentially his legacy as the heir to Mr. Jobs has come not from a gadget, but from a geography: China.Under Mr. Cooks leadership, Apples business in China grew from a fledgling success to an empire with annual revenues of around $50 billion just a bit under a quarter of what the company takes in worldwide. He did this while China was tightening internet controls and shutting out other American tech giants.Now, with the Trump administration saying on Monday that it will identify another $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that could face tariffs on top of the $50 billion already planned, and China having threatened retaliation, Apple is stuck in the middle.The Trump administration has told Mr. Cook that it would not place tariffs on iPhones, which are assembled in China, according to a person familiar with the talks who declined to speak on the record for fear of upsetting negotiations. But Apple is worried China will retaliate in ways that hamstring its business, according to three people close to Apple who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Apple fears the Chinese-bureaucracy machine is going to kick in, meaning the Chinese government could cause delays in its supply chain and increase scrutiny of its products under the guise of national-security concerns, according to one person close to the company. Apple has faced such retaliation before, another person said, and Reuters reported Ford vehicles are already facing delays at Chinese ports.There is also concern that Apple could face reprisals for legal and regulatory efforts in Washington that have made it difficult for the Chinese tech giant Huawei to sell its phones and telecom equipment in the United States.Apple executives and lobbyists in Beijing and Washington, led by Mr. Cook, have been trying to work both sides. They have fostered close ties to the administration of the countrys leader, Xi Jinping, an effort called Red Apple by employees at Apples manufacturing partner Foxconn, after the official color of the Chinese Communist Party.ImageCredit...Billy H.C. Kwok/BloombergAt the same time, Mr. Cook has been pleading with the Trump White House to understand that a trade war is bad for the economy and bad for Apple.Mr. Cook, who knows a bit of Mandarin, has attended Chinas most important political events in a critical year for Mr. Xi. Days after a Chinese Communist Party congress wrote Mr. Xis ideas and name into the constitution, elevating him to the same status as Mao Zedong, Mr. Cook joined a small group of American and Chinese executives for a meeting where Mr. Xi lectured about innovation and reform.Later, Mr. Cook attended Chinas World Internet Conference, an effort by Beijing to create a Davos-like conference for technology. There he met Wang Huning, a new member of Chinas standing committee the partys top leadership group and an ideological force behind Chinas deepening authoritarianism.In March, just after an annual meeting of Chinas rubber-stamp Parliament formally abolished presidential term limits, Mr. Cook attended a major summit meeting that brings together Chinese policymakers and corporate leaders.Mr. Cook has long defended Apples presence in China as a way to help change the country from the inside. Each country in the world decides their laws and their regulations. And so your choice is: Do you participate, or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be? he said at a Fortune event in China in December. You get in the arena, because nothing ever changes from the sideline.ImageCredit...Aly Song/ReutersMr. Cook has also put in time in the halls of power in Washington. Last month, he visited the White House to meet with Mr. Trump and his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. Mr. Cook began by applauding new corporate-tax rules and reminded Mr. Trump that Apple said it would contribute $350 billion to the American economy over the next five years, according to two people familiar with what Mr. Cook said.Then Mr. Cook switched to explaining why he thought a trade war would reverse the new tax laws progress, the people said. Mr. Cook told the president that tariffs were effectively a tax on consumers and that the trade deficit with China is inflated because of flaws in how it is calculated, one of the people said.He was very helpful in making some suggestions, and I might also add he loves the tax cut and tax reform, Mr. Kudlow said on CNBC shortly after the meeting. He says Apple is going to be building plants, campuses, adding jobs, lots of business investment. That was the first point he made to President Trump.Mr. Trump has also told crowds this year that Apple planned to build multiple factories in the United States. Apple has no plans to do so and has not publicly corrected him.Mr. Cook has found cabinet members more accessible in the Trump administration than the Obama administration, according to a person familiar with the talks, and he has seen eye to eye with Mr. Kudlow, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary and, on some issues, Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary.ImageCredit...Alexander F. Yuan/Associated PressHe has met with Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, but they tend to disagree on trade issues, this person said, and he has avoided engaging with perhaps the administrations most hawkish member on trade, Peter Navarro, a top adviser to the president.Mr. Cook still sees an opening to engage on the trade issue because of disagreement inside the White House, and he doubts that a trade war or Chinese retaliation against Apple ultimately will happen, this person said.Hes willing to put a brave face on and work with the Trump administration because they probably have more at stake than any other tech company when it comes to China and the tariffs, said Gene Munster, a longtime Apple analyst and partner at the investment firm Loup Ventures.The specter of Chinese retaliation against Apple has increased since the administration targeted the Chinese tech company ZTE for breaking American sanctions against Iran and North Korea. But the administration backed away from stiffer penalties this month and said it would fine ZTE $1 billion and install a compliance team picked by the United States.Other measures targeting Chinas larger telecom champion, Huawei, could lead to new strains. Indeed, congressional pressure this year appeared to quash a deal in which AT&T would sell Huawei phones in America.ImageCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesApple, meanwhile, has a deal with Chinas biggest telecom company, China Mobile, giving it a direct channel to nearly 900 million subscribers in China. The competition to sell smartphones in the country has become increasingly intense, with a number of other Chinese companies also offering high-end but usually lower-priced phones.Mr. Cooks frequent visits to China are part of Apples increased efforts to court Chinas leadership, started in 2016 after the country suddenly removed Apples iTunes Movies and iBooks Store there.Apple set up two research-and-development centers in China, made a $1 billion investment in the Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing, and created a new position, head of China, that reports directly to Mr. Cook. The company appointed Isabel Ge Mahe, who was born in China, to the role.Apple also complied with Chinese orders to store its data on Chinese-run servers and to pull certain apps from its App Store, including The New York Times app and many that allowed Chinese users to get around censorship that blocks sites like Facebook and Twitter.The company has reason to fear retaliation. In 2014, the Obama administration indicted five Chinese military hackers, stoking tensions already high from leaks about American surveillance from the former government contractor Edward J. Snowden.Months later, Chinese regulators delayed approvals of the iPhone 6 for additional security reviews. Apple executives perceived the moves as retaliation, said people familiar with the matter, which has not been previously reported.Apples primary leverage with the Chinese government is Chinese consumers love for Apple products, said Dean Garfield, head of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that represents Apple and other tech companies.However, Mr. Garfield added, Chinese consumers would also love Facebook and Google, two products blocked in China. There are limits, he said. Xi and the national party will do whats in their interest. | Tech |
Credit...Erin Schaff for The New York TimesJune 25, 2018WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday largely upheld an array of congressional and state legislative districts in Texas, reversing trial court rulings that said the districts violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against voters on the basis of race.The vote was 5 to 4, with the courts more conservative members in the majority. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the trial court had committed a fundamental legal error by requiring state officials to justify their use of voting maps that had been largely drawn by the trial court itself.In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion represented a dark day for voting rights.The Constitution and the Voting Rights Act secure for all voters in our country, regardless of race, the right to equal participation in our political processes, she wrote. Those guarantees mean little, however, if courts do not remain vigilant in curbing states efforts to undermine the ability of minority voters to meaningfully exercise that right.The court today does great damage to that right of equal opportunity, she wrote. Not because it denies the existence of that right, but because it refuses its enforcement.A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in San Antonio had ruled that a congressional district including Corpus Christi denied Hispanic voters their opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. The court rejected a second congressional district stretching from San Antonio to Austin, saying that race had been the primary factor in drawing it. In a separate decision, the court found similar flaws in several state legislative districts.The Supreme Court reversed almost every part of those rulings, though it did hold that a state House district in Tarrant County was an impermissible racial gerrymander.There was an odd wrinkle in the case: The San Antonio court itself had for the most part endorsed the contested maps in 2012, after the Supreme Court rejected earlier ones and told the court to try again. The 2012 maps, the panel later said, had been considered in haste in advance of pending elections. In 2013, the Texas Legislature decided not to draw new maps and instead mostly adopted the one drawn by the San Antonio court.After three election cycles using the interim maps, the court ruled that they were flawed. Although this court had approved the maps for use as interim maps, given the severe time constraints it was operating under at the time of their adoption, the court said, that approval was not based on a full examination of the record or the governing law and was subject to revision.The court concluded that Texas adoption of the interim maps was part of a litigation strategy designed to insulate the 2011 or 2013 plans from further challenge, regardless of their legal infirmities.Justice Alito disagreed. There is nothing to suggest that the Legislature proceeded in bad faith or even that it acted unreasonably in pursuing this strategy, he wrote.Much of the dispute between the two sides in Mondays decision concerned whether the case was properly before the justices at all.The San Antonio court had not issued an injunction compelling the state to do anything, Justice Sotomayor wrote. Instead, it instructed Texas officials to promptly advise it about whether they would try to draw new maps. That meant, she said, that there was no lower-court decision for the Supreme Court to review.But Justice Alito wrote that the trial courts action was effectively an injunction and that the Supreme Court therefore had jurisdiction to hear the states appeal.The short time given the Legislature to respond is strong evidence that the three-judge court did not intend to allow the elections to go ahead under the plans it had just condemned, he wrote. The Legislature was not in session, so in order to take up the task of redistricting, the governor would have been required to convene a special session which is no small matter.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch joined the majority opinion in the two consolidated cases, Abbott v. Perez, No. 17-586, and Abbott v. Perez, No. 17-626.In dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority had gone badly astray.The court today goes out of its way to permit the State of Texas to use maps that the three-judge district court unanimously found were adopted for the purpose of preserving the racial discrimination that tainted its previous maps, she wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan.This disregard of both precedent and fact comes at serious costs to our democracy, Justice Sotomayor wrote. It means that, after years of litigation and undeniable proof of intentional discrimination, minority voters in Texas despite constituting a majority of the population within the state will continue to be underrepresented in the political process. | Politics |
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/technology/personaltech/indoor-maps-gps.htmlTECH TIPMap apps and websites have compiled quite a bit of outdoor cartography, but floor plans and diagrams for interior spaces are also available at certain locations.Credit...The New York TimesJune 28, 2018Q. How do indoor maps work? I thought GPS had a hard time getting signals if your phone wasnt outdoors in a clear area.A. The United States Global Positioning System (GPS) currently uses a system of 31 operational satellites transmitting radio signals to receivers on the ground. Once the GPS device on the ground receives signals from four or more satellites, it can use geometry to calculate its three-dimensional position on the earths surface. According to the federal GPS.gov website, GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate within a 16-foot radius under open skies but that precision falls off if the phone is near bridges, tall structures and trees. Signal blockage from being inside a building or underground (in a subterranean parking garage, for instance) can also prevent a map app from pinpointing your location.Some indoor maps are simply static floor plans of the building for easy reference, much like a directory map at a shopping mall; flight tracker apps, for example, often include airport guides for travelers. For maps that do provide fairly accurate positioning indoors, information from your phones Wi-Fi network data, special Bluetooth beacons and radio-frequency identification systems or even dedicated hardware installed by the place you are visiting can help mark your spot. Apple Maps, Google Maps and Microsofts Bing Maps all have some indoor maps available, typically for large public places (like airports, museums and shopping centers), that you can use for directions and navigation. To see an indoor location that has been mapped, zoom in; Apple Maps uses a blue Look Inside button.A Microsoft Research blog post, Path Guide: A New Approach to Indoor Navigation, describes some of the current approaches to interior mapping and how its own Path Guide app for Android works for creating user-recorded indoor maps. Some venues also map their own interiors for customer service, and often for tracking user movement around the space especially in a store.Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to [email protected]. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually. | Tech |
March 24, 2016The Food and Drug Administration proposed guidance on Thursday for drugmakers to encourage the development of generic versions of abuse-deterrent formulations of opioids. Abuse-deterrent pills are hard to crush or dissolve so that they cannot be injected or snorted. There are no such generic forms on the market today.A spokeswoman for the agency said the guidance was meant as a rough blueprint to make it easier for the industry to develop such generic drugs, including information about what studies need to be submitted. But no financial incentives are being offered. The guidance is open for comment for 60 days. | Health |
Fact-Check of the DayPresident Trump said he was doing recommendations on Muhammad Ali. In 1971, the Supreme Court overturned Alis draft evasion conviction, and President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket amnesty in 1977. June 8, 2018what was said There will be more pardons. In fact, were doing, right now, recommendations on you know, frankly, were doing recommendations on Muhammad Ali. Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters on Friday. THE FACTSThis requires context. Muhammad Ali, the boxing great who died in 2016, was convicted of draft evasion in 1967. The Supreme Court overturned Alis conviction in 1971. Ali had twice failed Army aptitude tests during the Vietnam War. But he was deemed eligible for military service in 1966, after the Selective Service lowered its qualifications. Ali refused to be drafted and applied to be classified as a conscientious objector, citing his religious beliefs. I aint got nothing against them Vietcong, he told reporters.He was stripped of his heavyweight championship titles and boxing licenses, and convicted of draft evasion. He appealed.The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Alis favor in an 8-to-0 vote on June 29, 1971. In its decision, the court called the Justice Department simply wrong as a matter of law to not consider Alis argument that he was a conscientious objector based on his religious beliefs and sincerely held views.With that, Alis conviction was void. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter issued a full, complete and unconditional pardon for most who violated draft laws. In theory, Mr. Trump could issue another pardon for Alis draft evasion conviction, but the boxers family or his lawyer could reject it. We appreciate President Trumps sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary, Ron Tweel, a lawyer for Alis estate and family, said in a statement on Friday.Ali was also charged in 1967 with traffic violations making an improper left turn and driving without a license but Mr. Trump can pardon only federal crimes. In his comments on Friday, Mr. Trump said he was looking at a list of what he described as 3,000 names of people who could be pardoned because some folks that have sentences that arent fair. Jeffrey Crouch, a political-science professor at American University and the author of a book on presidential pardons, questioned why Mr. Trump was undertaking the legal project now. One way to interpret this is that hes using clemency to brand the Department of Justice as unfair, much like he has the media with fake news, Mr. Crouch said. Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Justice Departments special counsel investigation into his presidential campaigns ties with Russia and whether he tried to obstruct justice.Source: Supreme Court, New York Times, Justice Department, interviews with Ron Tweel, Jeffrey Couch | Politics |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 5, 2018WASHINGTON Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the federal commission on school safety set up this year after the Parkland, Fla., school massacre will not focus on the role guns play in school violence.The comments, provided in testimony before the Senate subcommittee that oversees education spending, perplexed senators who questioned how the commission, led by Ms. DeVos and convened by President Trump, could avoid the subject when it was a military-style assault rifle that left 17 students and staff dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.Thats not part of the commissions charge, per se, Ms. DeVos said in response to a question from Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, about whether the commission would look at the role of firearms in the gun violence that has plagued the nations schools.So well look at gun violence in schools, but not look at guns? An interesting concept, Mr. Leahy said in response.Ms. DeVoss comments came about 24 hours before the commissions first public forum, scheduled for Wednesday at the Education Department, where it will solicit feedback on solutions to improve school safety. And it comes after months of criticism including from the students who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas attack that in their response to the school shootings, the nations political leaders have zeroed in on everything but guns.Shortly after Parkland, Republicans pointed to Obama-era school discipline policies as a potential culprit. As the gun-control legislation flagged in Congress, leaders shifted their focus toward measures that would beef up security at the nations schools, including the possibility of arming teachers.In recent weeks, the commission has held closed-door meetings with survivors of school attacks dating to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, and last week Ms. DeVos visited a school in Maryland where she observed a popular discipline alternative strategy, called positive behavioral intervention and supports.Our focus is on raising up successful, proven techniques and approaches to ensuring schools are safe, Ms. DeVos said.When the White House announced the commission, it listed several areas the group would examine. The first was age restrictions on certain firearm purchases.The commissions members include Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. It is charged with bringing meaningful and actionable recommendations to keep students safe at school.Among other areas, the commission is slated to examine ratings systems for video games, the consumption of violent entertainment and the effects of news media coverage of mass shootings. The group is also charged with considering whether to repeal a package of Obama-era school discipline policies targeted at addressing disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minority students. The commission is also looking to fund and bolster mental health and school infrastructure resources.Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the department, clarified after the hearing that the secretary and the commission continue to look at all issues the president asked the committee to study and are focused on making recommendations that the agencies, states and local communities can implement.Its important to note that the commission cannot create or amend current gun laws that is the Congresss job, Ms. Hill said.Bob Farrace, a spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said, If the commission wont address the role of guns in school violence, we hope that means it also wont recommend a proliferation of guns in schools arming teachers, eliminating gun-free school zones and other ill-advised proposals that will make schools less safe.During the hearing, Ms. DeVos evaded questions that would draw her into the gun control debate.When Mr. Leahy asked whether she thought that an 18-year-old high school student should be able to walk into a store and purchase an AR-15 military-style weapon and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Ms. DeVos pivoted.I know that this body and your counterparts have addressed a number of these issues, and I know that youre going to continue to debate them, she responded, adding that teenagers access to guns was very much a matter for debate.Mr. Leahy replied, Well, youre studying things like how much time they spend on video games and all that, but you can go to a lot of other countries where they spend just as much time but have only a tiny fraction of the shootings that we do.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, implored Ms. DeVos to look at the policies of other countries where school shootings are rare or nonexistent.Ms. Shaheen cited statistics showing that school shootings in the United States occur at a scale far beyond any other industrialized nation. Since 2009, she said, the United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as the rest of the Group of 7 large advanced economies combined 288 in American schools, compared with two in Canada and France, one in Germany and zero in Japan, Italy and Britain.It does seem to me that you should think about reworking the mission of the commission, she said.Ms. DeVos said the commission would make its recommendations by the end of the year. Since the committee was announced in March, there has been at least one more mass shooting at a school.Last month, a 17-year-old student opened fire at his high school in Santa Fe, Tex., killing 10 people. | Politics |
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports BriefingBy The Associated PressFeb. 6, 2014The Atlanta Falcons have released cornerback Asante Samuel and linebacker Stephen Nicholas. Samuel, 33, started only 10 games in 2013, when the Falcons finished 4-12. Samuel, who began his career with the Patriots, has 51 career interceptions. Nicholas made 51 starts in seven seasons with the Falcons, including only four starts in 2013. AdvertisementContinue reading the main story | Sports |
DealBook|American Homes 4 Rent to Merge With Rivalhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/business/dealbook/american-homes-4-rent-to-merge-with-rival.htmlDec. 3, 2015American Homes 4 Rent agreed Thursday to combine with American Residential Properties in a $1.5 billion acquisition, among the biggest deals yet in a year ripe with single-family home-rental consolidation.The combined company will own more than 47,000 homes in the United States, just shy of the 50,000 homes that the Blackstone Group rents through its Invitation Homes, which is the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the country.The trend toward consolidation in the single-family home rental space began in earnest this year with Silver Bay Realty Trust buying 2,400 homes from a smaller firm, the American Home, which is not associated with American Homes 4 Rent.This summer, Cerberus Capital Management acquired about 4,200 homes from BLT Homes. More recently, Colony American Homes announced in September that it would merge with Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust. Colony American, organized by Colony Capital, is one of the nations largest operators of single-family home rentals, ranking right behind Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent.The industry is consolidating as bulk purchases of cheap homes in the wake of the housing and foreclosure crisis has ended with the rebound in home prices in many parts of the country. Single-family home-rental operators are finding they need greater geographic diversity and heft to generate decent returns from rental income. The rebound in home prices has also tempted some smaller firms to cash out and book the profits that were made from buying homes at cheap prices.Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, each share of American Residential Properties will be exchanged for 1.135 shares of American Homes 4 Rent, representing a value of about $19.01 a share. That price is an 8.7 percent premium over American Residential Properties stock price on Wednesday.ImageCredit...Minh Uong/The New York TimesThe publicly traded real estate investment trusts together would have a market valuation of about $5.5 billion.American Residential Properties has a high quality portfolio of homes which fit strategically in our markets, offering significant opportunities to capture further operating efficiencies on the combined platform, said David Singelyn, chief executive of American Homes 4 Rent in a statement Thursday.American Homes 4 Rents stock declined on Thursday, while American Residential Properties gained.Shares of single-family rental-home companies that have gone public have not performed well. American Homes 4 Rent currently trades at just 30 cents above the $16 price it sold shares at in its 2013 initial public offering. The lackluster stock performance of companies like American Homes 4 Rent is believed to be one reason Blackstone is taking its time before bringing Invitation Homes to the public markets.The trend toward renting, instead of buying, which became more prominent after the housing bust in 2008, is projected to continue. The Urban Institute said that renter households would increase to almost 48 million in 2020 from 40.7 million in 2010, according to a June report.American Homes 4 Rent will keep its corporate headquarters in Agoura Hills, Calif. American Residential Properties investors will hold about 12.6 percent of the outstanding shares in the combined company. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016.The companies said they would be able to cut out duplicative costs, such as Internet charges, property-management employees and technology.Barclays and Raymond James provided financial advice to American Residential Properties. Hunton & Williams was the legal counsel for American Residential Properties, while Hogan Lovells served as legal counsel for American Homes 4 Rent. | Business |
Justin Bieber And Your Latin Grammy Goes to ... Marc Anthony's Producer! 1/30/2018 Justin Bieber came up empty-handed after winning a Latin Grammy for "Despacito" ... because it was sent to Marc Anthony's producer by accident. Carlos Escalona Cruz -- who worked on Marc's Grammy-winning children's album -- "Marc Anthony for Babies" -- tells TMZ he got Bieb's award in the mail this week. Bieber won the accolade back in November for his feature on Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's "Despacito" remix -- but he wasn't there in person, so didn't get it the day of. Looks like he didn't get it all, actually -- 'cause it showed up on Cruz's doorstep Monday. Cruz tells us he was shocked to have received the Biebs' hardware, and says he reached out to Grammy brass (ha) right away to clear up the confusion. He says they apologized for the mistake and instructed him to send it back right away to get it to the rightful owner. It's unclear whether Bieber got Cruz's Grammy -- but one thing is for sure ... sometimes it's worth showing up to these things in person. Just a thought, JB. | Entertainment |
The Great ReadA lab in Massachusetts may have finally found an eight-armed cephalopod that can serve as a model organism and assist scientific research.April 4, 2022The tank looked empty, but turning over a shell revealed a hidden octopus no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball. She didnt move. Then all at once, she stretched her ruffled arms as her skin changed from pearly beige to a pattern of vivid bronze stripes.Shes trying to talk with us, said Bret Grasse, manager of cephalopod operations at the Marine Biological Laboratory, an international research center in Woods Hole, Mass., in the southwestern corner of Cape Cod.The tiny, striped octopus is part of an experimental colony at the lab where scientists are trying to turn cephalopods into model organisms: animals that can live and reproduce in research institutions and contribute to scientific study over many generations, like mice or fruit flies do.Cephalopods fascinate scientists for many reasons, including their advanced, camera-like eyes and large brains, which evolved independently from the eyes and brains of humans and our backboned relatives. An octopus, cuttlefish or squid is essentially a snail that swapped its shell for smarts. They have the biggest brain of any invertebrate by far, said Joshua Rosenthal, a neurobiologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory. I mean, its not even close.Model cephalopods would be a boon for biologists. But keeping these brainy and often bizarre animals in captivity particularly octopuses presents both ethical and logistical challenges. The researchers at Woods Hole have had earlier success with raising squid over multiple generations. Yet a single squid cant tell scientists everything about cephalopods.Having different models to answer different questions is, I think, incredibly valuable, said Caroline Albertin, a developmental biologist at the facility.But octopuses have long confounded scientists because of several unfortunate habits: They eat each other. Theyre notorious escape artists. Mothers die as soon as they reproduce, so its hard to build up a breeding population.That has made the model octopus a kind of white whale until last year, when Mr. Grasse and his colleagues announced they had raised three consecutive generations of an especially promising octopus species in their lab, more than anyone had before.Meet Octopus chierchiae, a miniature, zebra-striped octopus with a trick up its sleeves.Roy Caldwell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, first met Octopus chierchiae, also called the lesser Pacific striped octopus, in the mid-1970s in Panama. He was pulling rocks from the ocean to find mantis shrimp hiding in cracks. Every once in a while, these cute little striped octopus would come out, he said.He brought a few of the octopuses back to Berkeley. Soon after, One of the females laid eggs, and I thought that was kind of a bummer because I knew that she would die, Dr. Caldwell said. And she didnt die. A couple of months later, she laid eggs again.A 1984 paper by Arcadio Rodaniche, a Panamanian scientist, confirmed Dr. Caldwells observation: Females of this species, unlike nearly every other octopus, could reproduce several times.This trait, combined with their convenient size, made them an enticing subject for lab research. Unfortunately, Dr. Caldwell couldnt find any more in Panama. None of the biologists or collectors he asked had seen any, either.The little cephalopod was only a memory until around 2010, when I got an email from a high school student, Dr. Caldwell said, who wanted to know how he could take care of his new pet octopus. The student sent a photo. The octopuss zebra stripes were unmistakable.Dr. Caldwell traced the octopus back to a collector in Nicaragua. Finally, he could obtain a few lesser Pacific striped octopuses and try to get a colony going in his lab. But over three or four years of attempts, he never got past the second generation. After that, Dr. Caldwell said, the females eggs didnt hatch. He suspected inbreeding was a problem, as well as diet. We didnt know quite what to feed them.That question was still unanswered in 2016, when Dr. Rosenthal came to the Marine Biological Laboratory with a dream of making model cephalopods to aid scientific research. He recruited Mr. Grasse, who was known as something of a cephalopod whisperer, from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Taylor Sakmar, also a Monterey Bay aquarist, came to Cape Cod to help build a new kind of facility for many-armed animals.Today, that facility is a dim, burbling room packed with rows of tanks and smelling of seawater. People squeeze between racks, checking tanks, mopping puddles and feeding several species of cephalopod around the clock.When the scientists started their Octopus chierchiae colony in 2018 with seven animals from Nicaragua, they offered the creatures a buffet of live and frozen seafood. Then they watched the animals body language and changing skin colors to see what they liked best. (Lesser Pacific striped octopuses always have their stripes, but can dial up the contrast or fade the stripes away almost entirely.)After you work with these cephalopods long enough, you essentially can learn how to speak cephalopod, Mr. Grasse said.An octopus will reach out to taste an offered item with its suckers. If it tastes good, the octopus quickly wraps the food close with all eight arms and scoots off to a shelter to eat it. If it doesnt like whats offered, the octopus may fling the food onto the side of its tank.Observing the octopuses in their care, the scientists also discovered that males who are ready to mate perform a rapidly vibrating dance with their arm tips, as if twirling a bunch of maracas.After the octopuses mated and babies emerged from their eggs, Mr. Grasse housed the young which are bright orange and smaller than a lentil in individual PVC-pipe cylinders so they wouldnt snack on one another. He discovered that the hatchlings go through a phase of intense swimming, where they can escape through the tiniest gap between an enclosure and its lid.Typically, materials such as AstroTurf or the fuzzy side of a Velcro strip can keep octopuses from scaling vertical surfaces, Mr. Grasse said, because their suckers wont stick. But the extra-small babies of the lesser Pacific striped octopuses could climb these materials like a ladder.Typically, octopuses are more easily secured than this species, Mr. Grasse said.He now uses expandable foam lids to tightly seal the hatchlings enclosures. A tank for adult Octopus chierchiae has a perimeter of Velcro, along with what Mr. Grasse called his really high-tech security system a heavy rock on the lid.In 2015, Dr. Albertin was part of a team that sequenced the very first cephalopod genome. I am astonished at how fast this has all gone, she said. Cephalopods have a lot to teach us about the world. And were finally at a point where we can try to start understanding them.But an ideal lab animal for the molecular age isnt just one you can keep healthy for many generations, Dr. Rosenthal said. Its also one whose DNA scientists can manipulate. By turning genes off, or adding new genes or markers to an animals cells, scientists can see the machinery of biology more clearly. Such research in mice and other lab animals has let researchers directly test the roles of individual genes, for example, and create animal models of human diseases. But it has been more challenging with cephalopods, especially the octopus.Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory have succeeded in using the tool CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genes of a squid local to Cape Cod, as well as the labs hummingbird bobtail squid, they said. To inject materials into these animals tough eggs, theyve used sharpened quartz needles and specially designed tiny scissors.For scientists who want to manipulate cephalopod genetics, the hummingbird bobtail squid is the most promising model animal to date, Dr. Albertin said: Easy to raise, easy to poke and easy to keep in our incubation chambers.But studying squid isnt enough.People often think about cephalopods as kind of all the same thing, Dr. Albertin said. Octopuses, squid theyre all squishy and float around in the ocean. But theyre actually quite different.Theres a problem with octopus eggs, though. All the ones Dr. Albertin has worked with have a hard, leathery eggshell, she said. Her needles cant pierce it. Shes been able to cut into the eggs with scissors only to encounter another problem, which Dr. Rosenthal politely called positive pressure, and Dr. Albertin described as the yolk squeezing out of its eggshell like toothpaste out of a tube.Honestly, I dont know that anyone has figured out how to inject into an octopus egg yet, Dr. Albertin said.The scientists dont think its impossible. But theyll have to figure it out before the lesser Pacific striped octopus becomes the type of model organism Dr. Rosenthal has envisioned.While gene editing with the lesser Pacific striped octopus remains elusive, the species could help tackle another cephalopod mystery.Octopus bimaculoides, or the California two-spot octopus, is a common lab cephalopod that scientists can get from the wild. But it has disadvantages. For one, its much bigger a two-spot octopus tank at the Marine Biological Laboratory has a brick on top so its occupant cant get out.The other problem is that the moms die. One two-spot octopus at the lab was active and curious, shooting a jet of water at visitors; a neighboring tank held a dying female hunched over her clusters of transparent eggs. The mother was unmoving, one eye visible.The rapid decline of mother octopuses fascinates Z. Yan Wang, an evolutionary neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle. This animal that has such a complex nervous system lives such a short amount of time, Dr. Wang said.In a 2018 study, she documented how female two-spot octopuses first stopped eating while they tended their eggs, stroking them and blowing water across them. Then the mothers turned pale and began acting strangely, sometimes eating their own arm tips or wounding themselves with their suckers, before dying.Dr. Wang hopes to learn more about this process when she launches her own lab this fall. She plans to acquire lesser Pacific striped octopuses from the colony started by Mr. Grasse and company, and start her own colony using their methods. In the animals brains, she may find the key that lets them survive reproduction.She has been meeting with a group of other cephalopod researchers, including the Cape Cod team, to talk about how to move forward with using the lesser Pacific striped octopus in research. Were all very invested in this species, Dr. Wang said.Dr. Caldwell, who wasnt able to breed Octopus chierchiae beyond two generations, has also been a part of these conversations. He said the results at the facility in Woods Hole, keeping the animals alive for three generations, show promise.From the seven wild Octopus chierchiae, Mr. Grasse and his colleagues have raised over 700 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In the last generation, though, they let the colony peter out.It was 2020, and because of Covid restrictions, only one person could be in the facility at a time. The scientists had to put the brakes on breeding the octopuses, to make sure they didnt make more animals than they could care for. Only one colony member, a geriatric female over 2 years old, is still alive.Additionally, the colony was showing signs of inbreeding trouble. Fewer hatchlings were living to adulthood. One baby hatched with 16 arms.This winter, though, five new lesser Pacific striped octopuses arrived at the facility from Nicaragua. The scientists will use what theyve learned to start a new colony. This time, they hope to keep the gene pool healthy by periodically adding new wild animals.With their welfare in mind, Mr. Grasse is providing shells, artificial plants and other objects to enrich all the cephalopods artificial homes. He also makes sure the animals have variety in their diets, changes of scenery and now and then a fun project such as a shrimp in a jar. These enrichments help their mental health, he said.Letting species perform their natural behaviors, whether that means hunting for prey or hiding in sand, lowers their stress, said Robyn Crook, a neuroscientist at San Francisco State University. In her own lab, The enclosures we use for octopuses are incredibly rich, to the point that we often cant find them, she said.Dr. Crook keeps a self-sustaining colony of hummingbird bobtail squid, which she began with individuals from the Marine Biological Laboratory. In a study last year, she showed that octopuses seem to experience pain. She hopes that her labs biological findings will influence how other scientists care for these animals in captivity.The better the welfare of the animal, the better experimental data that you get. And the fewer animals you need, Dr. Crook said. And just generally, its better science.In the United States, no laws regulate research on invertebrates. When scientists want to study an animal with a backbone, such as a mouse or bird or fish, they need ethics approval from a committee within their institution. Scientists studying worms or highly intelligent cephalopods can do whatever they want.Some institutions, including the Marine Biological Laboratory, are voluntarily using the same review process for their research on cephalopods. We want to do the right thing by them, Dr. Rosenthal said.In the absence of new laws, Dr. Crook says captive breeding is another way to improve the welfare of octopuses and other cephalopods. If an animal comes from the wild, researchers dont know how it was caught or handled before reaching them.Theres not really any sources of captive bred cephalopods other than the M.B.L. So its an amazing resource, she said.Dr. Crook hopes that by raising animals like the lesser Pacific striped octopus, the team in Woods Hole will not only improve the lives of lab animals, but give scientists a powerful new tool to answer big questions in biology.Theyre incredibly complex evolutionarily speaking, neurobiologically speaking and theyre totally different from us, which is why we study them, Dr. Crook said. Cephalopods are in a really unique position to tell us things about the brain that we might not otherwise ever learn.Video | science |
Kodak Black 'There He Go' ... Back to Jail 2/28/2017 Kodak Black is back behind bars for violating the terms of his house arrest and probation ... 3 months after he'd been released from lockup. Kodak was booked into Broward County Jail Tuesday after a court hearing, where the judge found he violated a number of conditions of his probation. Law enforcement sources tell us Kodak failed to complete an anger management program, and left his house without permission at least 2 times. We're told at least 1 of those trips was to a strip club. Kodak walked out of jail back in December. He'd been serving time for drug and sexual conduct charges. The first single he dropped when he got out was, "There He Go." Should be quite the sing-along in jail tonight. | Entertainment |
Technology|Google Promises Its A.I. Will Not Be Used for Weaponshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/technology/google-artificial-intelligence-weapons.htmlCredit...Jim Wilson/The New York TimesJune 7, 2018SAN FRANCISCO Google, reeling from an employee protest over the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes, said Thursday that it would not use A.I. for weapons or for surveillance that violates human rights. But it will continue to work with governments and the military.The new rules were part of a set of principles Google unveiled relating to the use of artificial intelligence. In a company blog post, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, laid out seven objectives for its A.I. technology, including avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias and be socially beneficial.Google also detailed applications of the technology that the company will not pursue, including A.I. for weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people and technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms of human rights.But Google said it would continue to work with governments and military using A.I. in areas including cybersecurity, training and military recruitment.We recognize that such powerful technology raises equally powerful questions about its use. How A.I. is developed and used will have a significant impact on society for many years to come, Mr. Pichai wrote.Concern over the potential uses of artificial intelligence bubbled over at Google when the company secured a contract to work on the Pentagons Project Maven program, which uses A.I. to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.More than 4,000 Google employees signed a petition protesting the contract, and a handful of employees resigned. In response, Google said it would not seek to renew the Maven contract when it expired next year and pledged to draft a set of guidelines for appropriates uses of A.I.Mr. Pichai did not address the Maven program or the pressure from employees. Its not clear whether these guidelines would have precluded Google from pursuing the Maven contract, since the company has insisted repeatedly that its work for the Pentagon was not for offensive purposes.Google has bet its future on artificial intelligence, and company executives believe the technology could have an impact comparable to the development of the internet.Google promotes the benefits of artificial intelligence for tasks like early diagnosis of diseases and the reduction of spam in email. But it has also experienced some of the perils associated with A.I., including YouTube recommendations pushing users to extremist videos or Google Photos image-recognition software categorizing black people as gorillas.While most of Googles A.I. guidelines are unsurprising for a company that prides itself on altruistic goals, it also included a noteworthy rule about how its technology could be shared outside the company.We will reserve the right to prevent or stop uses of our technology if we become aware of uses that are inconsistent with these principles, the company said.Like most of the top corporate A.I. labs, which are laden with former and current academics, Google openly publishes much of its A.I. research. That means others can recreate and reuse many of its methods and ideas. But Google is joining other labs in saying it may hold back certain research if it believes others will misuse it.DeepMind, a top A.I. lab owned by Googles parent company, Alphabet, is considering whether it should refrain from publishing certain research because it may be dangerous. OpenAI, a lab founded by the Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and others, recently released a new charter indicating it could do much the same even though it was founded on the principle that it would openly share all its research. | Tech |
Basketball Wives' Star Jennifer Williams My Ex Is Abusive Please, Judge, I Need a Restraining Order 1/29/2018 "Basketball Wives" star Jennifer Williams has fired back at her ex-boyfriend, claiming he's violent and she's deathly afraid of him. Jennifer was in court Monday AM asking a judge for a domestic violence restraining order against James "Tim" Norman. He obtained a restraining order against her last month, claiming she slashed his tires in a rage. Jennifer says in her new legal docs Norman is lying "purely to harass and stalk me, and possibly to drum up attention for himself and his own television show." He has a show called "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's," which is on Oprah's OWN network. Jennifer says she did not slash Norman's tires ... she has an alibi, claiming she was at a friend's birthday brunch. She says in her legal docs Norman has a long history of abusing her. She says in Sept 2016 at a Drake concert he verbally abused her and threatened to beat up a guy who was looking at her. Jennifer says Norman sent her a text message afterward, saying, "I'm not really the type of bitch n**** you obviously think I am for you to stand there next to me eyeing that sand n****." Jennifer says there were other instances ... he went on her phone, confronted her and threw the phone at her, calling her a lying bitch. She says he accused her of sleeping with other men. She says she ended the relationship last September, and since then he has been hounding her friends, asking them to get in touch with her on his behalf. She's currently in court and has a witness ... fellow "Basketball Wives" star Evelyn Lozada. Evelyn filed a declaration saying Jennifer called her on December 17 and said she was extremely afraid of Norman because he could be very violent. | Entertainment |
Credit...Tom Brenner/The New York TimesJune 3, 2018WASHINGTON Two weeks ago, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, declared that the trade war with China was on hold and that the United States would temporarily holster its tariffs. The reassuring comments calmed markets and raised hopes that Mr. Mnuchin, one of President Trumps most enduring and trusted advisers, was winning the internal trade battle that has gripped the White House.Then Mr. Trump weighed in. In a one-two punch last week, the president doubled down on the trade war with China and threw in ones with Canada, Mexico and Europe for good measure.This weekend, some of those countries hit back, as finance ministers from the six other nations attending the Group of 7 meeting in Canada issued an unusual rebuke over Americas trading practices and the use of tariffs against allies. The statement said that tariffs undermine open trade and confidence in the global economy and called on Mr. Mnuchin to make their worries known to Mr. Trump.The scolding laid bare the uncomfortably familiar spot that Mr. Mnuchin finds himself in: trying to be a voice of moderation and a statesman in an administration that sees diplomatic norms and protocols as signs of weakness.He has so far managed to stay in Mr. Trumps good graces while advocating a more free-trade approach, but that balancing act is showing signs of strain.Mr. Mnuchin, unflappable in public, is privately making his case with a president who campaigned on blowing up trade agreements and surrounded himself with hard-line advisers who continue to toe that line.You have an intellectual slugfest going on in the White House, said Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation economist who advised Mr. Trumps campaign.Sometimes Mnuchin has victories and sometimes he has failures, but he is clearly one of the strongest voices for the free-trade position.The internal tensions boiled over in May during a trade mission Mr. Mnuchin led to China, when he got into an argument with Peter Navarro, Mr. Trumps hawkish trade adviser, by reminding him where he stood in the administrations pecking order after Mr. Navarro confronted him about his sidelining of the rest of the team from the talks.On the plane ride home, Mr. Navarro sat in a separate cabin from Mr. Mnuchin and remained publicly silent for days about the trip while Mr. Mnuchin declared the talks a success and said the trade war was on hold.The victory was short-lived.He didnt say it was on hold indefinitely, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said last week as the White House announced that the China tariffs and investment restrictions would be coming, after all.ImageCredit...Leah Millis/ReutersAnd look, the president ultimately makes the decisions on trade, she added. And when he does, we announce them. And thats exactly whats taken place in this process.Mr. Mnuchin has managed to remain in Mr. Trumps good stead by rolling with the punches, avoiding the fate that has befallen Mr. Trumps campaign managers, chiefs of staff and cabinet secretaries by pleasing a president who prizes the unpredictable and governs by whim. That has given Mr. Mnuchin a key role inside the West Wing and the presidents ear.Current and former White House and Treasury officials say Mr. Mnuchin has managed to thrive by employing a mix of assertiveness and obsequiousness, staking out his position to the president but quickly changing course to carry out Mr. Trumps marching orders, even if his message did not win the day.Hes kept the focus on the presidents agenda, rather than himself, said Jason Miller, a former campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump who worked closely with Mr. Mnuchin. Hes managed to do it without elevating his profile too high.That skill was on display in mid-May, when Mr. Trump tweeted that he was going to find a way to help put back in business a Chinese telecommunications company that had been punished for violating American sanctions on Iran and North Korea. The decision blindsided administration officials and lawmakers, including Democrats who publicly criticized Mr. Trumps decision and said the president was caving to China.Mr. Mnuchin, along with the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, was dispatched to Capitol Hill to try to calm angry Republican lawmakers and explain the rationale behind allowing the company, ZTE, to remain in business. Several of the lawmakers appeared unconvinced and, according to a person who was in the meeting, Mr. Mnuchin advised them to take their concerns directly to the president.He has also learned when to fight and when to toe the presidents line. While colleagues describe Mr. Mnuchin as someone who believes in free markets and views trade barriers as a last resort, those close to the secretary say he has learned to appreciate Mr. Trumps use of the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tool.In talks with China, he has been focused on the presidents desire to see the bilateral trade deficit reduced, rather than emphasizing some of the other trade barriers that many lawmakers and executives say put American companies at a disadvantage.Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trumps former top strategist, has said that Mr. Mnuchin is in over his head in the negotiations and that he is letting Mr. Trumps leverage slip away by failing to force China to make major changes to its industrial policy.David Loevinger, the Treasury Departments senior coordinator for China from 2009 to 2012, said it was apparent that the Chinese government was trying to elevate Mr. Mnuchins role in the negotiations because they see him as the American official most likely to cut a deal.Among the possible choices, they see Mnuchin as being less hawkish than some of the other counterparts, Mr. Loevinger said.Mr. Trump dispatched Mr. Ross to Beijing to continue talks through Monday, but the president has expressed wavering confidence in his deal-making abilities. The China hawks within the administration, Mr. Navarro and Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, continue to have sway with Mr. Trump. And populist voices outside the administration have already been heckling Mr. Mnuchin as inept amid reports that the United States was on the verge of making an agreement with China that was viewed as merely symbolic.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. Mnuchin has at times found himself the subject of derision, characterized as a fawning banker who cannot tell the president no.Last year, the Treasury secretary was scoffed at by economic policymakers from across the political spectrum for insisting that the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cuts would pay for themselves. Nearly every independent economic analysis found otherwise, and the analysis produced by the department was mocked for its lack of rigor.He has also clashed with some of the more conservative members of the Republican Party. Last year, as the White House pressed lawmakers to raise the ceiling on how much the government can borrow, Mr. Mnuchin told members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to vote for the debt ceiling for me. His plea was met with groans and hisses.His stance on social issues has also propelled him into controversy. Last August, fellow alumni of Yale, where Mr. Mnuchin earned a bachelors degree, called on the secretary to resign when he defended Mr. Trumps handling of racially inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va. A month later, Lawrence Summers, a Clinton administration Treasury secretary, called Mr. Mnuchin the greatest sycophant in cabinet history for supporting Mr. Trumps criticism of football players who knelt during the national anthem.His travel, as well, has been the subject of fierce scrutiny, including a Treasury inspector general investigation, after he took several government planes to travel to places such as New York and Miami at a cost of nearly $1 million. He drew fire for inquiring about the use of an official military jet for his honeymoon, and for taking time out of a trip to Fort Knox to watch a solar eclipse with his wife, Louise Linton.When he returned to Los Angeles for the holidays last December, he found a box of horse manure addressed to him, waiting near his home.Mr. Mnuchin publicly brushes off the criticism and points to his role in successfully steering the Republican tax cut package, which many said would never pass, through Congress.Within the Treasury Department, Mr. Mnuchin has developed a reputation as a micromanager. He resisted choosing a full-time deputy for more than a year, preferring to oversee everything from carrying out the new tax law to overseeing financial sanctions.That has at times created problems. When the Internal Revenue Service systems failed on Tax Day, the response to the crash was slowed because Mr. Mnuchin was in New Hampshire at a tax event with Ivanka Trump, the presidents daughter. He had required that any big decisions be cleared by him, according to a senior government official.A Treasury spokesman said that this reflected the secretarys commitment to being hands-on when problems arose and did not slow the response.Mr. Mnuchins closest aides describe him as a collegial and mentoring figure. Despite his earnest persona on television, he is known to possess a wry sense of humor, even occasionally brandishing impressions from old movies such as The Pink Panther Strikes Again to lighten the mood.But when it comes to the president, Mr. Mnuchin puts up little resistance when policy decisions are made, and he even keeps his pet peeves to himself.While Mr. Mnuchin insists that most people refer to him by his given name, Steven, he does not flinch when Mr. Trump just calls him Steve. | Politics |
Sports BriefingFeb. 18, 2014Forward Lamar Odom, who has had a drunken-driving arrest and a divorce from Khloe Kardashian since he last played basketball, agreed to a two-month contract with Baskonia, the ninth-place club in the 18-team Spanish league. Odom, 34, has not played since finishing out last season with the Los Angeles Clippers. Indiana postponed its game against No. 15 Iowa after an 8-foot piece of metal fell from the ceiling and damaged seats at Assembly Hall about six hours before tip-off. | Sports |
Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 3, 2018MANILA An Australian nun who had criticized President Rodrigo Dutertes policies, including his brutal war on drugs, arrived home from the Philippines on Sunday, more than six months after the president ordered her arrest and deportation.The nun, Sister Patricia Fox, 71, who has worked in the Philippines for almost 30 years, had exhausted all legal means to fight her expulsion from the Philippines. She attended her last Mass at St. Josephs Church in Manila before leaving for the airport, accompanied by a motorcade of supporters.She landed in Melbourne on Sunday morning, where she told ABC News: The human rights abuses are just increasing. Its a reign of terror.From Manila before her departure, Sister Fox said, I will continue to seek justice for the victims and do all I can to support the peoples struggle for true peace based on justice.She added that she bore Mr. Duterte no ill will, but wished that he would consider the plight of the poor and the small people, not just the military and business people.Sister Fox has long been involved in political and social activism in the Philippines, and since Mr. Duterte took office in 2016 she has spoken out repeatedly against his drug war, which has left thousands of mostly poor Filipinos dead at the hands of police officers or vigilantes.Mr. Duterte cited such criticism in April when he said he had ordered the Bureau of Immigration to arrest and deport the nun. You are a foreigner, who are you? he said. You do not have the right to criticize us. Do not insult us every time you open your mouth.Sister Fox, who spent a night in jail before being released, later won a reprieve from deportation when the Justice Department said the Immigration Bureau had overstepped its authority. But since then, the bureau has downgraded her missionary visa to a temporary visa, which was due to expire on Saturday.You cannot force the government to give you a visa, so I chose to go out and take my advocacy elsewhere, Sister Fox said on Saturday.The Duterte administration has taken similar action against a number of foreign critics of the presidents policies. In August, the immigration bureau detained an 84-year-old Australian professor, Gill Boehringer, at the Manila airport and barred him from entering the country because he had joined protests against Mr. Duterte.Also this year, three foreign missionaries, including an American, were detained and deported in July after visiting the southern Philippines to investigate allegations that the army had carried out abuses there, including the December killings of at least eight members of an indigenous community in the province of Lake Sebu.One of Sister Foxs lawyers, Katherine Panguban, said they would continue to appeal her case to the immigration bureau while the nun is in her native Melbourne. This clearly shows that this government is intolerant of dissent, Ms. Panguban said of the case.A spokesman for Mr. Duterte, Salvador Panelo, said on Saturday: The departure of Sister Patricia Fox is a timely reminder to all foreigners who stay or sojourn in this country that they are not entitled to all the rights and privileges granted to the citizens of the Philippines.She underwent a legal process where she was given the opportunity to be heard, he said, adding, We wish Sister Fox well in her travel, and we thank her for whatever good deeds she has performed during her stay in the country.Officials in the Catholic Church, which has considerable influence in the Philippines and has been active in the opposition to Mr. Duterte, said Sister Foxs expulsion was a blow to the missionary spirit of the church.The government should have taken the moral high ground in taking up the case of the embattled nun, said Father Jerome Secillano of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.Mr. Duterte has often expressed contempt for the church and joked about founding a religion based on himself. He did so again on Thursday, which was All Saints Day, during a visit to the northern Philippines.The Catholics are crazy. We dont even know those saints, who those fools are, those drunkards, he said in a mix of English and Tagalog.Ill give you one patron saint so you dont go astray, he said. Get a hold of a picture of me. Place that in your altar. Saint Rodrigo. | World |
Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesPublished July 8, 2021Updated Aug. 13, 2021Many Americans felt socially isolated during the pandemic, cut off from friends and family as they hunkered down and kept their distance to try to protect themselves from infection.But new research released Thursday suggests many peoples sense of isolation increased even as the public health crisis in the United States began to abate, with communities opening up and the economy improving.While the level of social isolation declined during the spring of the pandemic after the initial shock of the crisis subsided, it then increased sharply over the summer months last year, according to researchers at Harvard, Northeastern, Northwestern and Rutgers universities, before leveling off during the fall.People began to feel less disconnected last December through April of this year, but the levels of social isolation measured by the researchers increased again this June.The findings suggest recovery from the pandemic may take a long time and could affect peoples view of their relationships over time. There were cumulative effects from the social isolation, said David Lazer, a professor of political science and computer sciences at Northeastern and one of the study authors.To determine social isolation, the researchers asked each person about the number of people they could count on to care for them if they got sick, to lend them money, to talk to about a problem if they were depressed, or to help them find a job. Someone who said they had only one person, or no one they could turn to, in a given category was considered socially isolated.The researchers polled a total of 185,223 individuals over 12 different surveys from April 2020 to June 2021.Even now, with many more people vaccinated against the coronavirus and much more actively engaged in their communities, people may be thinking differently about those they previously relied on for help. That pause in life may be causing a lot of revisitation in our relationships, said Dr. Lazer, who pointed to the unusual number of people deciding to leave their jobs as the pandemic ends. It takes a while to heal the social fabric.The increase in feelings of isolation even when the most severe restrictions were lifted is striking, said Mario L. Small, a professor of sociology at Harvard who was not involved in the study. People may have felt they had fewer people to lean on because they remained physically distant from a broad network of acquaintances and friends, he said, even when the lockdowns had eased.The researchers found peoples isolation increased last summer even though they were seeing people more. Our findings show that recovering from social isolation is hard and does not simply stem from increased social contact, the researchers concluded.The researchers also point to a strong association between social isolation, particularly for those people who said they lacked people they could turn to for emotional support, and moderate or severe depression.Many of those hardest hit by the pandemic, with lower incomes and less education, seem slower to improve, Dr. Lazer said. We definitely do see a separation of fates in respect to socioeconomic status, he said, with some groups experiencing a longer and more uneven recovery. | Health |
The Indian space agency has been tight-lipped about the fate of Vikram, but crowdsourcing and NASAs openness led to its discovery.Credit...Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesDec. 6, 2019On Nov. 19, Mark S. Robinson opened an email with the subject line, Vikram Landers final resting place (Images with Proof).Dr. Robinson is the principal investigator for the sharp-eyed camera aboard Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA spacecraft that has been mapping the moon for a decade, and he had received a lot of these emails since an Indian robotic spacecraft disappeared in September as it attempted to land on the moon. But this one turned out to be the crucial clue in finding the missing lander, and on Monday NASA announced the location of the crash site, with photographs showing the scar on the moonscape.The accomplishment was a triumph of crowdsourcing in modern space research, and pointed to the value of NASAs openness with its data and operations. Most of the data from American civilian space missions is freely available to both academics and curious amateurs, who were able to scour pictures from a NASA orbiter for signs of the Indian spacecraft.By contrast, the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, the agency that runs Indias space program, has been parsimonious in revealing what it knew about the fate of Vikram, which was part of Chandrayaan-2, a mission that launched in July. An accompanying orbiter continues to operate around the moon. If Vikram had successfully made it to the surface, India would have become only the fourth nation to accomplish that feat. But as it descended, something went awry about a mile above the surface. Vikram shifted off course, then went quiet.A day later, the Indian space agency posted on its website that it had already found the lander: Vikram lander has been located by the orbiter of Chandrayaan-2, but no communication with it yet.This week, K. Sivan, ISROs director, dismissed the NASA announcement, repeating the claim that Vikrams location had been identified back in September.However, the Indian space agency never released images or other data to corroborate the statement, nor did it share the coordinates of where Vikram supposedly sat on the moons surface. Only last month did the Indian government admit failure.Thus, NASA and others looked for Vikram without ISROs help.The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been methodically mapping the lunar surface for a decade, happened to pass over the Vikram landing site 10 days after its crash. Dr. Robinson and other camera scientists examined the images, but there were no obvious signs of Vikram. The high-resolution images encompassed about a billion pixels, and the small lander, if it were not hidden in the shadows, would be only a few pixels wide.There was a huge search area, said Dr. Robinson, a professor of earth and space exploration at Arizona State University. There were five or six people who pitched in and spent a day. They then returned to their more scientific tasks. It was interesting to do, Dr. Robinson said. There wasnt a lot of scientific value in it.ImageCredit...ISRO/EPA, via ShutterstockThe orbiter made additional flyovers of the site on Oct. 14, Oct. 15 and Nov. 11, adding more pictures to analyze. The direction the spacecraft was pointing during the Nov. 11 flyover provided better lighting and sharper resolution in the images.Amateur enthusiasts continued to examine the NASA images, and many claims of Vikram sightings landed in Dr. Robinsons inbox. For most, a quick before-and-after comparison with older photographs showed that the purported impact crater was already a feature of the lunar surface.While NASAs openness has enabled many more eyes to look over the scientific data, the space agency, with management of its missions spread around the country, is not always diligent in following up on tips.The November email came from Shanmuga Subramanian, a computer programmer and mechanical engineer living in the south Indian city of Chennai, who had already tried for a month to tell NASA what he thought he had found. On Oct. 3, Mr. Shanmuga posted on Twitter a tiny white speck that was not visible in an older image, which he said he thought could be Vikram.Two weeks later, he emailed Noah E. Petro, the project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Five days later he followed up with Dr. Petro and John W. Keller, the deputy project scientist. But it was only on the third email that he added Dr. Robinson, who forwarded the email to other scientists on the camera team, and they quickly found the crash site.VideoBefore and after images show the Vikram impact point. NASA/Goddard/Arizona State UniversityCreditCredit...NASA/Goddard/Arizona State UniversityFirst, they confirmed that the speck Mr. Shanmuga identified was not there before September but was also visible in the October and November flybys. That ruled out the possibility that the speck was unlucky camera noise.They then found changes in the brightness of nearby soil caused by bits of the moon flying upward and outward after the impact. The pattern looked like a splash of water and pointed to where Vikram had slammed into the moon, about 2,500 feet to the southeast of the speck Mr. Shanmuga had seen. The speck turned out to be a piece of Vikram thrown out by the impact, and the scientists spotted other bits of wreckage.The debris is spread out over a wide area, Dr. Robinson said. While Indian authorities had initially suggested that the spacecraft could still be operational after a harder-than-designed landing, the images showed Vikram had disintegrated.It wasnt a hard landing, Dr. Robinson said. It was a crash.Dr. Robinson said it took a few days to carefully check the analysis before he informed Dr. Petro and Dr. Keller, who in turn told agency officials before Thanksgiving.A NASA spokesman said that the release of the findings was coordinated with the Indian space agency. But the spokesman said ISRO did not share with NASA the coordinates of where it thought Vikram had ended up. ImageCredit...Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesISRO did not respond to questions about the claim that the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter had already located the lander in September.Vikrams inadvertent strike of the moon reveals properties of the soil in the area that scientists would not have seen otherwise. At the impact point, the surface became darker. That material is not itself necessarily darker, but rather chunkier and thus casting more shadows, making it appear darker.That tells something about the cratering mechanics, Dr. Robinson said. Farther away, lighter-colored material emanates outward. The lighter streaks are not a coating of material thrown out by the impact but rather, the surface was smoothed out, making it more reflective and brighter, Dr. Robinson said. Seeing that could aid future studies of the moons surface._____Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi. | science |
RoundupFeb. 21, 2014OKLAHOMA CITY LeBron James scored 33 points before leaving in the fourth quarter with a bloody nose, and the Miami Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 103-81, on Thursday night.James went down with 5 minutes 50 seconds remaining after he was struck by Oklahoma Citys Serge Ibaka on a drive to the basket. James finished a dunk but left the court with a towel over his face.Dwyane Wade had 24 points and 10 assists, and Chris Bosh added 24 points for Miami, which won its fourth straight and avenged an earlier loss to Oklahoma City.Kevin Durant scored 28 points to lead the Thunder. Russell Westbrook, who had missed the previous 27 games after having surgery on his right knee, started and scored 16 points.Oklahoma City lost at home for the first time since Jan. 5.The Thunder overcame an early 18-point deficit on Jan. 29 to roll past the Heat, 112-95, in Miami, and the home fans on Thursday hoped for a regular-season sweep against the Heat, which beat Oklahoma City in the 2012 N.B.A. finals.The crowd erupted as Westbrook was introduced as a starter. His first minute of action lifted the fans to their feet. His first basket was a two-handed, fast-break dunk 37 seconds into the game, and he got a steal 17 seconds later.The excitement quickly evaporated, though. James scored 10 points on 5-for-5 shooting in the first 3:11, and Miami made 13 of its first 14 shots to take a 28-13 lead. James scored 16 points to help the Heat lead by 34-17 at the end of the first quarter. The Thunder rallied before halftime, but Miami took control in the third quarter and had a 76-65 lead entering the fourth. PACERS MAKE BIGGEST MOVE AT DEADLINE The Indiana Pacers decided Evan Turner gave them a better shot against the Heat than Danny Granger did.Many other teams decided there was not much worth doing.Big names and big deals were mostly absent before the N.B.A.s trade deadline Thursday, with the Pacers swap with the Philadelphia 76ers late in the day being the one that could have the biggest impact on the playoff race.Indiana sent Granger and a second-round draft pick to Philadelphia in exchange for Turner and Lavoy Allen.It gives the Pacers a potential upgrade in Turner, a former No. 2 overall pick whose average of 17.4 points a game is about twice that of Granger, who is working his way back from a series of injuries.We felt we needed to make this trade to strengthen the core unit and our bench, Larry Bird, the Pacers president of basketball operations, said in a statement. Kevin Love, Pau Gasol and Rajon Rondo had been mentioned in trade rumors for weeks, but Love received attention Thursday only when he denied that he had already told Flip Saunders, the Minnesota Timberwolves president, that he would not stay once he became a free agent after next season.At the end of the day, I just want to play basketball, Love said. I dont want to think about, you know, whether or not Im going to be here or somewhere else in 2015-2016, whenever it is.The Denver Nuggets addressed their point-guard problem by sending Andre Miller to the Washington Wizards and acquiring Aaron Brooks from the Houston Rockets.The Wizards parted with two seldom-used players, forward Jan Vesely and point guard Eric Maynor. Vesely went to Denver while Maynor went to Philadelphia, which also received second-round picks from the Nuggets and the Wizards.Vesely and Brooks, who was acquired in exchange for shooting guard Jordan Hamilton, were expected to join the Nuggets for their game at Chicago on Friday night.The Atlanta Hawks, looking for more front-line help as they try to remain in the Eastern Conference playoff race, acquired the 37-year-old forward Antawn Jamison from the Los Angeles Clippers.The Clippers received the rights to shooting guard Cenk Akyol, a 2005 second-round pick now playing in Turkey, in the deal.NUGGETS 101, BUCKS 90 Kenneth Faried continued his recent hot streak, scoring 26 points to carry Denver past host Milwaukee. Faried scored a career-high 28 against the Clippers on Feb. 3 and was coming off a 21-point performance against Phoenix. | Sports |
After an outbreak killed scores of people in 1979, she showed how even a tiny amount of a biological warfare agent could threaten a population.Credit...Jean-Baptiste GuilleminPublished Dec. 22, 2019Updated Dec. 23, 2019Jeanne Guillemin, an eminent medical anthropologist and scientific sleuth who helped expose a secret biological warfare lab in the Soviet Union as the source of a lethal anthrax outbreak, died on Nov. 15 at her home in Cambridge, Mass. She was 76. Her husband, Matthew Meselson, said the cause was cancer.Dr. Guillemin (pronounced GILL-men) was a prominent advocate for curbing the use of biological and chemical weapons. In the 1980s, she and her husband, a world-renowned molecular biologist at Harvard, undertook a series of investigations into biological warfare and how government programs were misusing biomedical science.One of their most important investigations took place in 1992 in Russia, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Along with a small team of American and Russian scientists, they examined 66 of perhaps 100 anthrax deaths that occurred in 1979 in the Ural city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg.The Soviet government claimed that the deaths were caused by the consumption of anthrax-tainted meat. American intelligence officials were skeptical, suspecting that the anthrax was a result of Soviet experiments with biological weapons in violation of a 1972 international treaty.Dr. Guillemin went door to door interviewing family members and survivors, establishing where they lived and worked. She plotted them on a map, which showed that on April 2, 1979, most townspeople who would soon start falling ill had been in a narrow zone directly downwind from a Cold War-era military research lab known as Compound 19. Her information, combined with meteorological data, pinpointed the lab as the source of the anthrax release. The pathogen contaminated humans, sheep and cows in its path and remains the largest documented outbreak of human inhalation anthrax in the world.Dr. Guillemin, Dr. Meselson and their team reported their findings in the Nov. 18, 1994, issue of the journal Science. They did not determine what had caused the anthrax release; subsequent reports said it was an accidental failure to replace an air filter at the plant.But their report was significant because it showed that even a tiny amount of a biological warfare agent could threaten a population in this case up to 30 miles away.The scientists estimated, based on experiments with monkeys, that the amount of anthrax spores that were released may have been less than, and possibly a lot less than, one gram, or about a quarter of a teaspoon of salt.And if the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction that day toward the city of Sverdlovsk deaths could have been in the hundreds of thousands.Dr. Guillemin described the episode in ANTHRAX: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak (1999). It was among several books she wrote about her medical sleuthing and helped establish her as an authority on biological agents.When envelopes containing anthrax were mailed within the United States shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the news media sought out Dr. Guillemin for her expertise. Those anthrax attacks killed five people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, which was still reeling from 9/11. In the midst of that hysteria, Dr. Guillemin was a voice of calm, saying that the anthrax attacks were probably the work of one person and not likely to lead to mass deaths.I think we shouldnt panic, she told CNN in October 2001. We should go about our business with reasonable alertness and prudence and not in a state of fear. I know a lot about anthrax, and I feel that we are not at great risk for a large epidemic of it.A nearly eight-year F.B.I. investigation, the largest into a bioweapons attack in American history, concluded that one man, Dr. Bruce Ivins, a troubled Army biodefense expert, had acted alone in carrying out the crimes, which became known as Amerithrax.Jean Elizabeth Garrigan, who later changed the spelling of her first name to Jeanne, was born in Brooklyn on March 6, 1943. Her father, James Philip Garrigan, was a businessman and her mother, Mary Eileen (Harley) Garrigan, a homemaker.They moved to Rutherford, N.J., where Jean was educated by Dominican nuns. Her husband said the nuns had given her a strong foundation in morality and instilled in her a feeling that the world should be civil.She received her bachelors degree in social psychology from Harvard in 1968 and her doctorate in sociology and anthropology from Brandeis University in 1973.Her first marriage, in 1963 to the painter Robert Guillemin, ended in divorce. (He died in 2015.) They had two sons, John and Robert, whom she raised for a time as a single mother. She married Dr. Meselson in 1986.The couple spent their summers in Woods Hole, Mass., on Cape Cod, where they hosted a regular salon that brought together humanists and scientists. In Cambridge, Dr. Guillemin was a member of a writing group with four other women who met every month for 30 years to discuss their works in progress.In addition to her husband and her sons, she is survived by a stepdaughter, Zoe Meselson Forbes; two sisters, Patricia and Eileen Garrigan; a brother, Russell Garrigan; and five grandchildren. Another brother, Brian Garrigan, died in 2018, as did another stepdaughter, Amy Meselson.Dr. Guillemin was a professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston College, where she taught for 33 years. She was also a senior fellow in the security studies program at M.I.T. from 1999 until her death.While at M.I.T., she established an endowment at the M.I.T. Center for International Studies to support female doctoral candidates and energize their sense of inquiry and search for knowledge.After her Soviet experience with anthrax, she wrote two more related books: Biological Weapons: From State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (2005), which examined how the United States, the Soviet Union and other nations developed anthrax and other microbes as strategic weapons, and American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nations Deadliest Bioterror Attack (2011).Her last book was Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial (2017). It described Imperial Japans little-known use of biological weapons against China in the 1940s and its experimentation on humans. The book asserts that during the Tokyo war crimes trials from 1946-48, American officials suppressed evidence of Japans biological weapons program because they were conducting their own secret biowarfare research and wanted to ensure that the United States and not the Soviets would benefit from Japans technology and expertise. In a blurb for the book, the medical ethicist Arthur Caplan wrote that it provides a long overdue scholarly remedy to the disappearance from history of Japans germ-warfare program. Thanks to Dr. Guillemin, he added, the reasons this indefensible omission occurred are lucidly and skillfully presented. | science |
11 Things Wed Really Like to KnowPossibly. There is no scientific support for inevitable doom, one expert notes. Credit...Jens Mortensen for The New York TimesNov. 19, 2018Are we doomed?If youre an expert in climate science, you probably get this question a lot.I do, said Kate Marvel, associate research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And Ive been hearing it more recently. Its no mystery why. Reports of the threats from a warming planet have been coming fast and furiously. The latest: a startling analysis from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting terrible food shortages, wildfires and a massive die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040, unless governments take strong action. The Paris climate accord set a goal of keeping the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. At 2 degrees, things are bad enough: Arctic sea ice is 10 times more likely to disappear over the summer, along with most of the worlds coral reefs. As much as 37 percent of the worlds population becomes exposed to extreme heat waves, with an estimated 411 million people subject to severe urban drought and 80 million people to flooding from rising sea levels. But if we can hold the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, Arctic sea ice is far likelier to survive the summers. Coral reefs will continue to be damaged, but will not be wiped out. The percentage of people exposed to severe heat waves would plummet to about 14 percent. The number exposed to urban drought would drop by more than 60 million people.[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]Still, no major industrialized nation is on track to meet the 2-degree goal, much less the 1.5-degree mark. And the Earth has already warmed by 1 degree. Even if, through huge effort and force of will, we cut our greenhouse gas emissions greatly, the effects of todays carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be felt for centuries to come. While that is undoubtedly grim, its not as bad as it could be. Reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could eventually reverse some of the most troublesome effects of warming. The worst-case scenarios are so dire that a type of climate coverage has emerged that tends toward the apocalyptic. This year, William T. Vollmann published a two-volume work, Carbon Ideologies, that he purported to write for inhabitants of a calamitous and wretched future. After describing the amount of energy that goes into making glass, he added, I hope that you have at least inherited a few of our windowpanes. Maybe you pried them out of drowned properties and fitted them into your caves.To James Hansen, the scientist who warned of climate change in landmark congressional testimony 30 years ago, the apocalyptic talk gets old. I find the people who think we are doomed to be very tiring and unhelpful, he said. The most catastrophic outcomes can be avoided if we are smart, and I think we are capable of being smart. Dr. Marvel agreed. Its worth pointing out there is no scientific support for inevitable doom, she said. Climate change is not pass-fail, she added. There is a real continuum of futures, a continuum of possibilities.So yes, things will be bad. And yes, we need to do more, so much more, to head off what could come. But how awful things get, and for how many people, depends on what we do. And although humans famously avoid acting on long-term problems, the species does possess a capacity for looking ahead. We do think about the future, Dr. Marvel said. We plant trees, and we have children.Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, noted that her professional peers tend to be conservative about their findings: If they say somethings bad, you know its probably a lot worse than they said. Still, I do find hope. Young people are becoming climate leaders, she noted, and developing technologies already can pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Its expensive, but the fact that we can do it is pretty danged hopeful, she said. Part of getting to a better future comes down to explaining more effectively the problems of the present, Dr. Hayhoe said. A message of inevitable doom creates a self-fulfilling prophesy, she said: The worst will happen, because we give up. It might feel that attacking climate change is like moving an enormous boulder with just a few hands to push it, she added. But theres millions of hands already on the boulder, thanks to things like the economic trends favoring renewable energy. The world is changing, Dr. Hayhoe said. It just isnt fast enough.There is not just one way to talk about climate change, however. As Dr. Marvel put it, Theres nothing thats going to work on everybody, and theres no definition of work that everybody agrees on. One message might motivate people to act, another might evoke an emotional response, and yet another might teach a concrete fact. All of these are worthy goals. They are not the same thing, she said.Dr. Marvel is no fan of the message some people divined from a recent climate report that there is just over a decade to correct the problem. Im willing to bet you a lot of money, a million dollars, that in 12 years there will still be human beings on the planet, she said. Thats certainly no reason for complacency, however. Theres no cliff, she said, but theres for sure a slope, and the world can continue to slide into greater trouble over time.Ultimately, she said, we really need to have as many voices as possible, coming from as many people as possible, to do this. After all, she noted: There is nobody that is not going to be touched by climate change in some way. | science |
Aug. 31, 2018So much for a quiet end to the lazy days of summer in Canada.ImageCredit...Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressImageCredit...Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressNafta wasnt the only source of turmoil and potential political trouble for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week.The already overheated debate over expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to an oil tanker port in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby became even hotter on Thursday when the Federal Court of Appeal slapped down the government for not conducting sincere and meaningful consultations with Indigenous people. The court also ordered the National Energy Board to look at the environmental effects of more tankers in the waters off British Columbias coast.[Read: Canadian Court Halts Expansion of Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline]Though the project is unpopular with many Liberal supporters, the government had solidly backed the expansion of the pipeline it is soon to purchase, in part as a way to get Alberta onside with its carbon tax program. So it wasnt surprising to see an angry Rachel Notley, Albertas premier, appearing on television a few hours after the news broke to announce that her provinces government was pulling out of the carbon reduction program until construction workers actually start building the pipeline expansion.But Ms. Notley, whose political fortunes also rest on the project, wasnt the only person with tart words for Mr. Trudeau. Many Indigenous groups, who were the main applicants in the lawsuit, called on the prime minister to kill the expansion, as did environmentalists and politicians on the left.Some are opposed because the pipeline mainly carries oil from Albertas oil sands, which they regard as a particularly polluting energy source. Others, including John Horgan, the premier of British Columbia, fear catastrophe if a tanker sinks or splits open off the provinces coast.On the other side, Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader, charged that Mr. Trudeau had bungled the issue.So whats a prime minister to do?As part of his oft-stated position that Canada needs the economic strength of its energy industry as it deals with climate change, Mr. Trudeau announced in May that the government would buy Trans Mountain from its American owner. That company, Kinder Morgan, had earlier abandoned plans to expand the pipeline over opposition from British Columbias government.Mr. Trudeaus promise to finish the project has made the government a player in the energy industry for the first time since it created and owned Petro-Canada. And thats led to criticism from the right, even among those who support pipelines.Opponents of the expansion were quick to portray the Court of Appeals decision as a crippling blow to the expansion plans. But legal experts I spoke to, and even the ruling itself, suggest that description might be a vast overstatement.The ruling does not give Indigenous groups an effective veto over the pipeline, nor does it require the government to negotiate with the groups. The government does, however, have to go back and do a better job of consulting with them, a process experts say could take as little as six months.ImageCredit...Dennis Owen/ReutersAs for the marine review, the government claims to have already assessed those issues, just not through the National Energy Board. So that may be cleared up just as quickly.Taking care of the legal questions, of course, will only get pipeline construction crews to work. Calming the political tensions wont be as easy. For Mr. Trudeau, the biggest challenge may be stopping Trans Mountain from turning into something that ultimately satisfies no one.A Film First (and a Giveaway)ImageCredit...Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesLast year Catherine Porter, our Toronto bureau chief, wrote about an ambitious project that was then underway on British Columbias west coast: Canadas first Haida-language feature film.[Read: Reviving a Lost Language of Canada Through Film]Edge of the Knife will debut at the Toronto International Film Festival next Friday, Sept. 7. The film has an entirely Haida cast, and retells the Haida story of the wildman, who is lost and becomes feral in the forest. In this telling, the wildman loses his mind after the death of a child, and is brought back to his community through a healing ceremony.We have a limited number of free tickets to the screening for New York Times subscribers. Were offering them on a first-come-first-served basis and you can find more information here.And one last reminder that Ill be moderating a talk on the state of American politics in the age of Donald J. Trump at our first-ever Ottawa event. Joining me from Washington at the National Gallery of Canada on Sept. 5 will be Julie Hirschfeld Davis, a White House correspondent, and political reporters Jonathan Martin and Astead Herndon. There are still a few tickets available and you can find all the details here. Im looking forward to meeting Canada Letter readers after the event.ScreeningOur colleagues at Watching, The Timess guide to viewing on screens of all sizes, have come up with their September list of recommendations for Netflix subscribers in Canada. This months films include the critically acclaimed superhero epic Black Panther, and Jane, a documentary about the chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall by Brett Morgen, featuring an original soundtrack by Philip Glass. The television series American Vandal also returns for its second season.Read: The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix Canada in SeptemberAround The TimesAs the bitter reality of Labor Day looms, you may now be reviewing your iPhone photos from the summer. Are they not what you hoped? J.D. Biersdorfer, our in-house tech guru, has a guide to turning that disappointment into delight.David Pecker, a friend to President Trump, stepped down this week as a director of Postmedia, the publisher of a wide array of Canadian newspapers, including The National Post, The Ottawa Citizen and The Calgary Herald. Mr. Peckers is also chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer. For decades, he used his position to buy up dirt on Mr. Trump to keep it hidden. This week the reporters Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman revealed that Mr. Trump had worked on a plan to buy up that hoard.Global warming is increasing the appetite of bugs, and its our food that theyll use to satisfy their growing hunger.Some top-tier American universities are facing lawsuits over how they handle students coping with emotional distress.Lego wants to switch from the petroleum-based plastics it has used for more than 50 years to make the toy bricks that have injured the bare feet of countless parents. Achieving that wont be easy. | World |
Credit...Vince Hill/Nashville Public Radio, via Associated PressJune 1, 2018WASHINGTON For those who view the Justice Departments pardon system as slow and sclerotic, with its backlog of more than 11,000 cases, they need only look to the case of Matthew Charles.Mr. Charles was sentenced in 1996 to 35 years in prison for selling crack cocaine. In prison, he took college classes, became a law clerk and taught fellow inmates. He was released early, in 2016, and began rebuilding his life, volunteering at a food pantry and even falling in love.Last month, Mr. Charles was sent back to prison after a federal court determined that he did not technically qualify for early release. His lawyers plan to ask the Justice Department to commute the rest of his sentence, and he appears to fall within its guidelines for clemency. But with nearly 9,000 petitioners for a commutation ahead of him, it could take years for federal law enforcement officials to decide his fate.Cases like Mr. Charless make some criminal justice reform advocates say they would welcome a reform-minded president willing to bypass the system and more boldly wield the constitutional power to grant pardons.Now they have one in President Trump, who has pardoned five people in his first 17 months in office and bypassed the Justice Departments recommendation system to do so. This week, he pardoned Dinesh DSouza, the conservative commentator who pleaded guilty in 2014 to violating campaign finance law. Mr. DSouza responded on Twitter by claiming victory over what he viewed as a political prosecution and by mocking Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney in Manhattan whose office prosecuted the case.But by choosing to pardon political supporters whose cases largely failed to meet the basic guidelines for pardons, Mr. Trump could turn a slow and imperfect system into an unequal and unjust one, both liberal and conservative advocates warn, in which those with fame, money or access to the presidents ear are first in line to receive clemency.A more regular and robust use of presidential clemency, and a willingness to go around the Justice Department process, would be applauded by many, said Kevin Ring, a conservative public policy expert and the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The issue is whether the president will still apply standards and meritocracy. Will he weigh the injustices and mete out justice to reflect the needs of a situation? That doesnt seem to be the case.Mr. Trump has pardoned some people, like Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff convicted of criminal contempt for his campaign against undocumented immigrations, who did not serve out their entire sentences. And he said he might commute the sentence of Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, who in 2011 was sentenced to 14 years in prison for trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.Their cases stand in stark contrast to those of Mr. Charles, whose plight has gained national prominence, or John Knock, who in 2000 was given two life sentences plus 20 years without parole for conspiracy to launder money and distribute marijuana. While in prison, Mr. Knock has taken and taught home-building classes, served as a mentor in the Fathers Behind Bars Discussion Group and has a clean disciplinary record, according to a petition created by his sister. Mr. Obama denied his application for a commuted sentence.The pardon office has a reputation for slow decision making, in part because of the time needed to carefully vet a case. Of the backlog of 11,203 pardon and commutation cases, only 2,876 have been filed since Mr. Trump became president.A lack of resources has also bogged down the process, according to officials involved. The previous pardon attorney, Deborah Leff, resigned because she said she could not get the resources necessary to meet Mr. Obamas goal to prioritize petitions that would shorten sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.Since taking office, Mr. Trump has denied 180 pardon and sentence-reduction applications sent to the Justice Department. In the pardon cases, some felons had pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm. One had served time for selling methamphetamines. And in another case, a man convicted in 1995 of mail fraud, extortion and fixing union elections had also worked as a government informant.Advocates who want to see the pardon system overhauled generally support its guidelines for granting pardons and commuting sentences. In general, felons wait five years after conviction or release to petition for a pardon. They must show evidence of rehabilitation and demonstrate that they have led responsible and productive lives after release for a significant period of time. The recommendations of officials including federal prosecutors and judges are also taken into consideration.A president that circumvents this system is not necessarily a bad idea, said Shon Hopwood, Mr. Charless lawyer. Legal scholars have argued for years that its inappropriate to have the office of the pardon attorney at the Justice Department. It asks the people who grant pardons and clemency to correct their colleagues, the prosecutors who put people in prison.Mr. Charless lawyers and the judge who allowed for his early release say that he takes responsibility for the crimes he committed.In the late 1980s, Mr. Charles was charged with domestic violence, fled the police while being questioned and wounded a man while trying to steal his car and escape. He served his sentence and was later caught selling drugs, earning him a 35-year maximum sentence in part because of his criminal record. He is not asking for those crimes to be pardoned, only to have his sentence shortened to reflect that his behavior meets the guidelines for commutation.I get that what he did was really bad, but he deserves an opportunity for redemption, said Kevin Sharp, the judge who released Mr. Charles. Mr. Sharp has since left the bench.Mr. Hopwood said he hoped to speak to White House officials while he prepared a clemency petition for his client.Matthew has kept a job and taken care of himself without public assistance, said Naomi Tharpe, Mr. Charless girlfriend. By returning him to prison, he will cost taxpayers over $55,000 a year, more than the average American makes. We should utilize our tax money for a greater need.Both Democrats and Republicans have also called on Mr. Trump to commute Mr. Charless sentence, and an editorial in the conservative National Review called for a full pardon.But doing so would have implications for the already frayed relationship between Mr. Trump and his Justice Department. Federal prosecutors have declined to recharge Mr. Charles with lesser offenses, according to Mr. Sharp, which could have paved the way for a shorter sentence overall and little to no prison time.Granting such a request would be difficult for federal prosecutors, Mr. Sharp said, because Attorney General Jeff Sessions has instructed them to ask for the most severe penalties allowed by law, including mandatory minimum sentences.It is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense, Mr. Sessions wrote in a memo last year. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.Though federal prosecutors declined to recharge Mr. Charles, they do believe he is a good candidate for a commuted sentence.As the government has previously noted, Charless evident rehabilitation is commendable, and may well provide a compelling basis for executive clemency, Donald Q. Cochran, the United States attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, wrote in a briefing. | Politics |
Credit...Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersFeb. 6, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Bruno Banani is a German mens underwear company. The brand, which features styles with colorful names like Booty Bass, Rusty Iron and Blockbuster (it can come as a G-string), is well known in Europe for its unusual marketing campaigns. The company has sent its garments underwater to the Bermuda Triangle, and in 1998, Russian astronauts wore the underwear aboard a space station.Bruno Banani is also an Olympic luger from Tonga. Surprisingly, this matching of names is not a coincidence: Banani (the racing luger) and Banani (the racy underwear) have combined to create a situation at the Sochi Games that is a uniquely Olympic blend of underdog inspiration crossed with strident capitalism.The back story, at least the nonunderwear part of it, sounds like something out of a movie. A Polynesian who does not even know what luge is and has never lived a day in his life with a temperature colder than 60 degrees hears a radio advertisement announcing a national search for Tongas first winter Olympian. He shows up for the tryout, wows the panel and goes on to make history. It is a one-man version of the Jamaican bobsled team and the film Cool Runnings, but for luge.The rest of the tale, though, is where it turns bizarre. Makai, a global company that highlights its experiential marketing, coordinated the search for a winter athlete in 2008 because one of its executives had a connection with the Tongan royal family. Princess Salote Mafileo Pilolevu Tuita wanted to see an athlete from her country compete at the Winter Games.Banani, who was known then by his original name, Fuahea Semi, beat about 30 other hopefuls in a tryout that included fitness testing, a run through an obstacle course and a short ride on a luge with wheels down a slope that was not much steeper than the typical driveway. Shortly after being chosen, Banani said, Makai officials explained to him that luge was an expensive sport and that he would most likely need a sponsor to help cover costs.Their suggestion: Bruno Banani, the underwear company, which was situated near Makais German offices and had a reputation for adventurous campaigns.I loved when they sent their underwear into space, said Mathias Ihle, the head of Makais European division. Look, this was quite a risky plan. We were a very young agency. We had just started. We wanted to prove that we were creative. So in order to promote him, we came up with the idea of changing his name.Jan Jassner, the general manager of Bruno Banani, said he and other officials were immediately intrigued when Makai approached them. We thought it was really cool and a little bit funny, he said. We have heard from other people who have names Bruno Banani. But this was a different kind of story, a great story. We watched him in a luge race in Germany, and we saw that he was coming down and doing a good job and he was finishing. So we said, Lets go for it.Reaction to the strategy has been mixed. Some observers, like Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, were skeptical; he called it a perverse marketing idea in a published interview two years ago. Ihle pointed out that the marriage of athlete and product was hardly a novel one (although even he would admit that usually the product is named after the athlete and not the other way around). He also noted that athletes and entertainers changed their names to seem more marketable all the time.Within the athletic community, Banani the luger has been welcomed. Part of that is because of his natural humbleness. Banani said it came from his awareness of how fortunate he was. After all, he said, he was studying computer science and playing rugby with his friends most days when he suddenly fell into a new job and, after consulting with his family, a new name.The fastest you can drive a car in Tonga is 70 kilometers per hour, or about 40 miles per hour, Banani said through a smile on Wednesday. I love speed I know that I will be able to go faster than that here.Banani is trained by a German coach, Isabel Barschinski, who worked with Makai from the beginning of the casting call. (She calls him Bruno, as everyone does these days.) Barschinski helped Banani channel his natural athletic ability into shrewdness on the track. Banani moved to Germany to train, and he and Barschinski now have a partnership with the German luge program that has helped Bananis progress even more.In 2010, Banani nearly qualified for the Vancouver Games but narrowly missed out after a bad crash. In this Olympic cycle, he qualified for the Sochi Games at a race in December after a 28th-place finish (out of 42 lugers) in Park City, Utah.While Banani may not be as fast as his namesake the garments were called the fastest underpants in the world after a 2002 stunt in which the company put them in a particle accelerator he does not hide his joy about achieving a goal that even his coach thought might be unrealistic.I wasnt sure this was possible, Barschinski said. But Bruno has learned very quickly, and that shows how hard he is willing to work.Bananis first official run will come Saturday. His sister is traveling to Russia to watch him compete, and Banani said he planned to stay for the rest of the Olympics after the luge competition was finished, to soak in the experience.He does not yet know what he will do afterward. He would like to continue competing, he said, but if his sponsorship agreement is not renewed, then he will most likely return to Tonga and try to find a job in computers.One thing he will not do, however, is change his name. Again.This is the name that makes history in Tonga, he said. Why would I change it? | Sports |
Credit...Houston Cofield for The New York TimesDoctors Without Patients: Our Waiting Rooms Are Like Ghost TownsAs visits plummet because of the coronavirus, small physician practices are struggling to survive.Credit...Houston Cofield for The New York TimesMay 5, 2020Autumn Road in Little Rock, Ark., is the type of doctors practice that has been around long enough to be treating the grandchildren of its eldest patients.For 50 years, the group has been seeing families like Kelli Rutledges. A technician for a nearby ophthalmology practice, she has been going to Autumn Road for two decades.The groups four doctors and two nurse practitioners quickly adapted to the coronavirus pandemic, sharply cutting back clinic hours and switching to virtual visits to keep patients and staff safe.When Kelli, 54, and her husband, Travis, 56, developed symptoms of Covid-19, the couple drove to the groups office and spoke to the nurse practitioner over the phone. She documented all of our symptoms, Ms. Rutledge said. They were swabbed from their car.While the practice was never a big moneymaker, its revenues have plummeted. The number of patients seen daily by providers has dropped to half its average of 120. The practices payments from March and April are down about $150,000, or roughly 40 percent.That wont pay the light bill or the rent, said Tabitha Childers, the administrator of the practice, which recently laid off 12 people.ImageCredit...Houston Cofield for The New York TimesWhile there are no hard numbers, there are signs that many small groups are barely hanging on. Across the country, only half of primary care doctor practices say they have enough cash to stay open for the next four weeks, according to one study, and many are already laying off or furloughing workers.The situation facing front-line physicians is dire, three physician associations representing more than 260,000 doctors, wrote to the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, at the end of April. Obstetrician-gynecologists, pediatricians, and family physicians are facing dramatic financial challenges leading to substantial layoffs and even practice closures.By another estimate, as many as 60,000 physicians in family medicine may no longer be working in their practices by June because of the pandemic.The faltering doctors groups reflect part of a broader decline in health care alongside the nations economic downturn. As people put off medical appointments and everything from hip replacements to routine mammograms, health spending dropped an annualized rate of 18 percent in the first three months of the year, according to recent federal data.While Congress has rushed to send tens of billions of dollars to the hospitals reporting large losses and passed legislation to send even more, small physician practices in medicines least profitable fields like primary care and pediatrics are struggling to stay afloat. They dont have any wiggle room, said Dr. Lisa Bielamowicz, a co-founder of Gist Healthcare, a consulting firm.None of the money allocated by lawmakers has been specifically targeted to the nations doctors, although the latest bill set aside funds for community health centers. Some funds were also set aside for small businesses, which would include many doctors practices, but many have faced the same frustration as other owners in finding themselves shut out of much of the funding available.Federal officials have taken some steps to help small practices, including advancing Medicare payments and reimbursing doctors for virtual visits. But most of the relief has gone to the big hospital and physician groups. We have to pay special attention to these independent primary care practices, and were not paying special attention to them, said Dr. Farzad Mostashari, a former health official in the Obama administration, whose company, Aledade, works with practices like Autumn Road.The hospitals are getting massive bailouts, said Dr. Christopher Crow, the president of Catalyst Health Network in Texas. Theyve really left out primary care, really all the independent physicians, he said.Heres the scary thing as these practices start to break down and go bankrupt, we could have more consolidation among the health care systems, Dr. Crow said. That concerns health economists, who say the steady rise in costs is linked to the clout these big hospital networks wield with private insurers to charge high prices.ImageCredit...Houston Cofield for The New York TimesWhile the pandemic has wreaked widespread havoc across the economy, shuttering restaurants and department stores and throwing tens of millions of Americans out of work, doctors play an essential role in the health of the public. In addition to treating coronavirus patients who would otherwise show up at the hospital, they are caring for people with chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma.Keeping these practices open is not about protecting the doctors livelihoods, said Michael Chernew, a health policy professor at Harvard Medical School. I worry about how well these practices will be able to shoulder the financial burden to be able to meet the health care needs people have, he said.If practices close down, you lose access to a point of care, said Dr. Chernew, who was one of the authors of a new analysis published by the Commonwealth Fund that found doctors visits dropped by about 60 percent from mid-March to mid-April. The researchers used visit data from clients of a technology firm, Phreesia.Nearly 30 percent of the visits were virtual as doctors rushed to offer telemedicine as the safest alternative for their staff and patients. Its remarkable how quickly it was embraced, said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a hospitalist and associate professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, who was also involved in the study. But even with virtual visits, patient interaction was significantly lower.Almost half of primary care practices have laid off or furloughed employees, said Rebecca Etz, an associate professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-director of the Larry A. Green Center, which is surveying doctors with the Primary Care Collaborative, a nonprofit group. Many practices said they did not know if they had enough cash to stay open for the next month.ImageCredit...Lyndon French for The New York TimesPediatricians, which are among the lowest paid of the medical specialties, could be among the hardest hit. Federal officials used last years payments under the Medicare program to determine which groups should get the initial $30 billion in funds. Because pediatricians dont generally treat Medicare patients, they were not compensated for the decline in visits as parents chose not to take their children to the doctor and skipped their regular checkups.This virus has the potential to essentially put pediatricians out of business across the country, said Dr. Susan Sirota, a pediatrician in Chicago who leads a network of a dozen pediatric practices in the area. Our waiting rooms are like ghost towns, she said.Pediatricians have also ordered tens of thousands of dollars on vaccines for their patients at a time when vaccine rates have plunged because of the pandemic, and they are now working with the manufacturers to delay payments for at least a time. We dont have the cash flow to pay them, said Dr. Susan Kressly, a pediatrician in Warrington, Pa.Even those practices that quickly ramped up their use of telemedicine are troubled. In Albany, Ga., a community that was an unexpected hot spot for the virus, Dr. Charles Gebhardt, a doctor who is treating some infected patients, rapidly converted his practice to doing nearly everything virtually. Dr. Gebhardt also works with Aledade to care for Medicare patients.But the telemedicine visits are about twice as long as a typical office visit, Dr. Gebhardt said. Instead of seeing 25 patients a day, he may see eight. We will quickly go broke at this rate, he said.Although he said the small-business loans and advance Medicare payments are a Godsend, and they will help us survive the next few months, he also said practices like his need to go back to seeing patients in person if they are to remain viable. Medicare will no longer be advancing payments to providers, and many of the small-business funding represents a short-term fix.While Medicare and some private insurers are covering virtual visits, which would include telephone calls, doctors say the payments do not make up for the lost revenue from tests and procedures that help them stay in business. Telehealth is not the panacea and does not make up for all the financial losses, said Dr. Patrice Harris, the president of the American Medical Association.To keep the practices open, Dr. Mostashari and others propose doctors who treat Medicare and Medicaid patients receive a flat fee per person.Even more worrisome, doctors groups may not be delivering care to those who need it, said Dr. Mehrotra, the Harvard researcher, because the practices are relying on patients to get in touch rather than reaching out.Some doctors are already voicing concerns about patients who do not have access to a cellphone or computer or may not be adept at working with telemedicine apps. Not every family has access to the technology to connect with us the right way, said Dr. Kressly, who said the transition to virtual care is making disparities worse.Some patients may also still prefer traditional office visits. While the Rutledges appreciated the need for virtual visits, Kelli said there was less time to talk about other things.Telehealth is more inclined to be about strictly what you are there for, she said.Private equity firms and large hospital systems are already eying many of these practices in hopes of buying them, said Paul D. Vanchiere, a consultant who advises pediatric practices.The vultures are circling here, he said. They know these practices are going to have financial hardship. | Health |
Credit...Christie Hemm Klok for The New York TimesA company operating in the shadow of government regulators has some very particular rules about what workers can say about it.Current and former Google employees say there is an unspoken understanding that its unwise to openly address antitrust topics.Credit...Christie Hemm Klok for The New York TimesPublished Oct. 13, 2020Updated Dec. 14, 2020OAKLAND, Calif. Google employees are not shy about speaking up. In the last few years, they have openly confronted the company about building a censored search engine in China, the handling of sexual harassment claims and its work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence technology for weapons.But there is one subject that employees avoid at all costs: antitrust.They dont address it in emails. They dont bring it up in big company meetings. They are regularly reminded that Google doesnt crush, kill, hurt or block the competition. And if you hope to land an executive job at the internet company, do not bring up the A-word in the interview process.As the Justice Department, a coalition of state attorneys general and a congressional subcommittee have investigated Google for monopoly behavior over the last year, there has been little discussion internally about antitrust concerns. Now, as the department prepares to file a lawsuit against the company, the usual forums where Google employees debate anything and everything have been startlingly subdued about what may be an existential threat to it.Thats because Googles leaders have made it clear that antitrust is not a topic to be trifled with.In compliance courses, employees of the Silicon Valley giant are taught what to say about it and how to say it. The legal department is looped into even innocuous emails to apply attorney-client privilege, another layer of protection from prying regulators. And while there is no written policy banning discussion of antitrust, a former executive recalled coming down like a ton of bricks on an employee who wrote flippantly about antitrust concerns.The caution is not limited to employees. After Google interviewed a candidate for an executive job last year, that person sent a follow-up email to Sundar Pichai, the companys chief executive. In the email, the candidate asked about the antitrust implications of a potential merger, according to two people familiar with the incident. An antitrust question to Mr. Pichai was seen as inappropriate, raising questions about the candidates judgment, the people said. While it did not disqualify the candidate, it was seen as a negative for the persons job prospects.All of this has contributed to an unspoken understanding among Google employees that it is not wise to address the antitrust issues openly, said six current and former employees, who declined to be identified because they either were not permitted to talk publicly or feared retaliation.Its seen as something you dont talk about because there is no productive conversation associating Google with the word monopoly, said Jack Poulson, a Google research scientist who left the company in 2018 and now works at a tech ethics nonprofit. The reality is that Googlers are paid well, and thats because of the monopoly. In effect, the monopoly is on their side.Julie Tarallo McAlister, a Google spokeswoman, said the company had standard competition law compliance trainings like most big companies.We ask our employees to compete fairly and build great products, rather than focus or opine on competitors, she added.Some employees said the caution around antitrust was a byproduct of Googles spending most of the last decade fighting antitrust cases around the world. They said a two-year investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which decided in 2013 to not bring a case against Google, was the turning point that made the company more aware of regulatory risk.Google is now extremely careful about what it puts in emails and company documents, and considers the antitrust implications of its business deals and strategy. One former executive said that after the F.T.C. started its investigation, the company determined that acquisitions to bolster its dominant search business, such as its 2010 purchase of ITA Software, a flight information company, were now off the table.William Fitzgerald, a former policy and communications manager who left Google in 2018, said that while his policy team had discussed antitrust strategy ad nauseam, it hadnt been a topic widely talked about among the broader work force.The direction from top management was to focus on your day job, said Mr. Fitzgerald, who now runs the Worker Agency, a strategic advocacy firm.Some Google employees said they didnt talk about antitrust at work because they didnt care about it. One said it was not a meaningful part of their day-to-day jobs. Another said there were so many reports of antitrust investigations about Google in different countries that it all became white noise.Google said that based on its internal data, employees were not interested in antitrust issues and did not raise them at company events.ImageCredit...John Taggart for The New York TimesYet the company still takes steps to be extra careful. All employees are required to take an annual online training course about how to communicate in a way to avoid legal issues with regulators. In the training, which was reported on earlier by The Markup, employees are told to assume that every document and email will end up in the hands of regulators, so they should refrain from using certain words or phrases.We are not out to crush, kill, hurt, block, or do anything else that might be perceived as evil or unfair, according to a slide used in the training, which The New York Times reviewed.The training seems to be paying off. One part of the compliance course instructs employees to avoid estimating the companys market share. So in February when House lawmakers interviewed Google as part of an investigation into the power of tech giants, the company had an explanation for why it could not supply the market share data that would likely underscore its dominance. Google said it doesnt maintain information in the normal course of business about the market share of its products, according to a report about the inquirys findings.Employees said it was common to hear people in meetings declare that a sensitive subject was not for notes, referring to a written summary of the proceedings. This was especially the case when the conversation turned to how Google intended to compete with a rival or when participants discussed a competitors strategy.In addition, Google employees often marked communication between employees as A/C Priv, which is shorthand for attorney-client privilege, in the subject line. Employees are told to include a lawyer among the recipients and to type A/C Priv, seeking advice in the body of the email, four current and former employees said. While many companies take such measures to keep communications with lawyers confidential, Google is particularly aggressive, according to the current and former employees. Ms. Tarallo McAlister said Google informed employees that privilege only applies to communications that seek legal advice or that are prepared at the direction of a lawyer.Often, emails that are not actually seeking legal advice are marked as privileged, including mundane presentation slides, minor bug fixes or inconsequential department memos. Ultimately, if the Justice Department or other regulators asked for those documents, Google would have the option of declaring them secret communication.Its a delay tactic, said Sam Weinstein, a former official in the antitrust division of the Justice Department and a professor at Cardozo School of Law. It can be effective if the government doesnt have the manpower.In 2012, the Texas attorney general sued Google, accusing it of withholding 14,500 documents claiming attorney-client privilege during an investigation into the company. Greg Abbott, then the states attorney general and now its governor, said Google had not met the burden of proving that privilege was applicable to many of the documents.In one example, he cited an email from a Google executive to his superior marked with attorney-client privilege, which was copied to a Google lawyer and five other employees. The discussion was about changing how to present reviews from other websites and how to present a recommendation to management. The bulk of the email was about purely business matters and did not seek or reference legal advice, the complaint said.Texas dropped the lawsuit two years later without explanation.Years in the glare of the antitrust spotlight have appeared to make Google confident that it can handle the scrutiny. When asked about regulatory concerns and interest from the Justice Department in a conference call with analysts in July 2019, Mr. Pichai said the company was familiar with how to deal with the regulators.Its not new to us, he said. We have participated in these processes before. | Tech |
Politics|A top election official in Georgia says Ossoff will likely prevail.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/gabriel-sterling-georgia.htmlA top election official in Georgia says Ossoff will likely prevail.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021A top election official in Georgia said he was all but certain that Jon Ossoff, the 33-year-old media executive who mounted an unlikely challenge to a sitting senator, would emerge as the victor against David Perdue.Senator-to-be, probably, Ossoff, said Gabriel Sterling, a top Georgia elections official at a news conference Wednesday morning.In his briefing, Mr. Sterling said that it also was likely that Mr. Ossoffs victory would exceed the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger a recount in Georgia elections.Mr. Ossoff currently leads Mr. Perdue by more than 18,000 votes following Tuesdays Senate runoff election, in which more than 4.4 million voters cast ballots, a runoff record in Georgia.During the briefing, Mr. Sterling, a former Republican political operative, said there was no evidence of any irregularities in the Senate election and, once again, expressed frustration with President Trump, whom he accused of sparking a civil war within a G.O.P. that needed to be united to get through a tough fight like this. | Politics |
Stephen A. Smith 'Incredibly Sad' Over Rasual Butler 1/31/2018 TMZSports.com Stephen A. Smith says he's devastated over the death of his friend Rasual Butler -- telling TMZ Sports they knew each other for years ... and the NBA player was a really good dude. "Just incredibly sad," the ESPN star said ... "He's a good guy. We have Philly roots together. I've known him for many years. I love his wife. Love his family." "The world lost a good brother." TMZ Sports broke the story ... Butler lost control of his Range Rover in Studio City, CA early Wednesday morning and slammed into a wall -- killing him and his wife, who was a passenger in the car. Butler was 38. | Entertainment |
Nicole Eggert Told Dr. Oz How Scott Baio Allegedly Lured Her Into Sex 1/30/2018 TMZ.com Nicole Eggert told Dr. Oz earlier this month the story of how Scott Baio allegedly got extremely physical with her when she was only 14 and had sex with her at 17 -- something Baio strongly denies -- and we have video from the taping. As we reported, the episode never aired. Baio's people sent a cease and desist letter to the show, claiming Eggert's timeline didn't make sense. The 'Oz' people shelved the show, although a rep told us they were still investigating. You hear Nicole claim Baio told her he could help her get ready to have sexual relations with boys her own age. She says she agreed, though it was awkward. Dr. Oz asks her where the conversation occurred, and she says at her home when her parents weren't there ... presumably, this is when she was 17. Dr. Oz asked Nicole what he said to lure her into sex, and she said he told her "how much he loved me and, hopefully one day when I was of age, we could be together, and that he understood I needed to go be with boys my own age and it was sort of like a goodbye action. The show was taped January 10 but, as we said, never aired. Nicole and her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, will appear on Megyn Kelly's show today to tell her story. Baio says they did have sex, but not until Eggert was 18. | Entertainment |
Sports BusinessCredit...Barton Silverman/The New York TimesFeb. 13, 2014The Derek Jeter farewell tour is coming, with the inevitable merchandising: caps and T-shirts with a Jeter-centric logo; dirt from his shortstop area packaged in vials; autographs; signed bases, balls, home plates and, well, almost anything else imaginable.The tour was going to happen whenever Jeter said he was retiring and whenever fell Wednesday as he announced that 2014 would be his final season.Didnt Mariano Rivera just say goodbye after his Tour of 2013, when about 20 of baseballs licensees created a long retirement line, including New Era caps with a special Rivera logo; Nike and Majestic apparel; and collectibles by Steiner Sports like a $15,000 game-used bullpen rubber from last Sept. 20 to 23? Delta Airlines dedicated a 757 to Rivera, placing a circle with his No. 42 and pinstripes, and signature, on the jet.The Empire State Building might have to be renamed for Jeter to suit his stature.The breadth and tenor of the season-long Adieu to Derek will largely be up to Jeter; his agent, Casey Close; and his family. He will want to balance his desire to give fans something to remember his final season by and his goal of raising money for his Turn 2 Foundation, as he did in 2011 during his quest for his 3,000th hit.This is really personal to Derek, so well wait and see what, if anything, he wants, said Brandon Steiner, the founder and chief executive of Steiner Sports, the official collectibles licensee for Jeter and the Yankees, among others. I would expect him to be reluctant, but raising money for his foundation is always a premium for him.Tim Brosnan, Major League Baseballs executive vice president for business, said: Derek is conservative in his approach to monetizing anything. We will be respectful and take our marching orders from him.The Yankees quietly kicked off the campaign within hours of Jeters retirement announcement. An email that hailed the coming season as his last offered this makeshift, Trekkian slogan: Captains Final Voyage.Steiner suggested a phrase for his Jeter-goodbye products, but it may need a tweak given its undertakers tone: The Derek Jeter Final Journey Collection.Lonn Trost, the Yankees chief operating officer, said Thursday morning that the team had not thought in detail about Jeters goodbye. Right now, I dont think hes considering what Mo did, but we havent sat down to get his thoughts, Trost said.Rivera swept through major league parks like a benevolent monarch, receiving gifts from rival teams while endearing himself to the stadium workers, fans and families he met at each stop. That might not be Jeters style.Brosnan said he could not remember anything as extensive as the tributes for Rivera, who spent 20 years with a singular club, won five world championships, was in the playoffs however many times, and was the greatest player at his position all time. The merchandised tributes to Jeter for his 3,000th hit and to Rivera were unusual, but they clearly serve as models for Jeters farewell and for those of future star players.Championship teams are commemorated with parades, licensed goods and White House visits. Retiring players usually receive days in their honor, with gifts. But season-long, coordinated campaigns are not de rigueur. It will be interesting to see if Kobe Bryant, a career-long Los Angeles Laker, is treated like Rivera or Jeter. Had todays sports merchandising and marketing existed in the 1930s, Babe Ruths Final Voyage would have been ubiquitous, and Babe-drunk booze bottles could have been repackaged as signed collectibles.Already it is clear that the demand for existing Jeter goods is great and should be greater when they say farewell or have a patch with something like DJ14. Fanatics.com, the online retailer, said that on Wednesday, sales of merchandise with Jeters name soared 600 percent from the day before.Steiner is prepared for whatever course Jeter decides, but Steiners entrepreneurial bent seems to be toward a full-out assault of Jeter merchandise. Steiner has been contemplating a campaign like this for years and slept only two hours Wednesday thinking of its outlines.His New Rochelle warehouse has plenty of Jeter products that need only an additional photograph of his final at-bat, a vial of dirt or a signed ball to complete the type of created collectible that is his specialty.How do you get your arms around this sort of thing? Steiner said. He has so many moments, going back to the dive, to Mr. November, all the World Series. Its massive.That sort of sentiment is what thrills a retail chain like Modells. Jeter 3,000 was insane, said Mitch Modell, the retailers chief executive. I think this will be bigger. | Sports |
VideotranscripttranscriptDraghi Explains E.C.B. ActionsThe European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, said stimulus measures were to strengthen the eurozones resilience to global economic shocks.FRANKFURT, GERMANY (DECEMBER 3, 2015) (ECB - ACCESS ALL // 10. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: We decided to reinvest the principle payments on the securities purchased under the asset purchase programme as they mature for as long as necessary. // 18. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: We are doing more because it works, not because it fails. We want to consolidate something thats been a success. // (SOUNDBITE) (English) MARIO DRAGHI, PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, SAYING: As regards the key ECB rates, we decided to lower the interest rate on the deposit facility by 10 basis points to -0.30 per cent. // 14. (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK, MARIO DRAGHI, SAYING: Todays decisions also enforce the momentum of the euro areas economic recovery and strengthened its resilience against recent global economic shocks.The European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, said stimulus measures were to strengthen the eurozones resilience to global economic shocks.CreditCredit...Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated PressDec. 3, 2015FRANKFURT Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has been regarded as a master of the dark art of managing market expectations.But the reaction to stimulus measures the central bank announced on Thursday steps more timid than had been widely expected suggested that Mr. Draghi somehow miscommunicated with the traders, pundits and prognosticators who set the course of financial markets.Around Europe, stock prices fell on Thursday after the central bank said it would extend its program of buying bonds and other assets by six months but would not raise the amount of monthly purchases. The central bank also changed a key interest rate to encourage banks to lend more, but did not cut key borrowing rates.Based on recent statements by Mr. Draghi and other top officials at the European Central Bank, investors had thought there would be much, much more.He typically has underpromised and overdelivered, said Mujtaba Rahman, practice head for Europe at the consultancy firm Eurasia Group. That is not the case this time around. What weve got is the bare minimum of what people were expecting.It was either a rare case of Mr. Draghi failing to send clear enough signals, or a sign that his proposals had met unexpected resistance among the 25 members of European Central Banks Governing Council, which met in Frankfurt on Thursday morning. At a news conference explaining the new steps, Mr. Draghi would say only that the moves had been approved by a very large majority of the Governing Council.The central bank is trying to give the lumbering eurozone economy a shove at the same time the Federal Reserve is getting ready to risk slowing down the United States economy by raising interest rates.The eurozone economy grew at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the third quarter compared with a 2.1 percent rate in the United States. And unemployment across the 19-country euro currency union is 10.7 percent more than double the United Statess jobless figure.Mr. Draghi rebutted reporters questions about why the new measures seemed more limited than what the economy might need. He described the steps as a recalibration of the central banks stimulus program, which he said had been a success since it began in March.We are doing more because it works, not because it fails, he said. We want to consolidate something that has been a success.But some analysts said that Mr. Draghi had probably been unable to win over members of the Governing Council who think more stimulus is unnecessary, or who want to keep some monetary weapons in reserve in case the economic situation gets worse. Mr. Draghi acknowledged that terrorist attacks in Paris, along with the European influx of migrants from Syria, presented risks to the eurozone economy that are not yet possible to gauge.Draghi is now evidently coming up against more opposition, Jrg Krmer, chief economist at Commerzbank, said in a note to clients. Mr. Draghi does not have sufficient support within the E.C.B. Council to act on a grand scale, Mr. Krmer said.The Governing Council did decide to extend monthly purchases of government bonds and other assets, a way of pumping money into the economy, at least through March 2017.The bank also said it would increase the penalty it charges banks to keep money in its vaults as a way of pressuring them to lend more. Banks will pay interest of 0.3 percent to keep money at the central bank, compared with the previous rate of 0.2 percent.And the central bank expanded its purchases of bonds to include debt issued by regional and local governments.But the central bank did not announce an outright increase in its monthly spending on bonds beyond the current level of 60 billion euros, or about $63.6 billion, as many analysts had expected. And though it said it would be spending more as it reinvests repayments of principal from the bonds and other assets it acquires, the central bank provided no estimate of how big those receipts might be.Nor did it take other steps on interest rates that might encourage commercial banks to increase lending that might help revive the nearly dormant eurozone economy. Some analysts had expected a cut in the rate that banks pay to borrow short-term funds from the central bank. Their hope had been that the rate would drop to zero from its current 0.05 percent.The bond-buying program was originally planned to run at least through September 2016. Mr. Draghi said on Thursday that it could be extended beyond March 2017, if necessary.The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone equities, a key indicator, began falling even as Mr. Draghi was still speaking and ended the day off 3.6 percent. The euro rose more than 2 percent against the dollar, to $1.09, as investors raised their expectations of the returns they are likely to receive on money kept in European assets.A stronger euro is generally negative for the eurozone economy because it makes exports from the region more expensive for foreign customers. In addition, the central bank is trying to make market interest rates go down. A stronger euro means investors expect the rates to go up.Mr. Draghi had signaled in recent months that he was dissatisfied with the performance of the eurozone economy and that the central bank would intensify its already significant efforts to energize the economy and raise the regions worrisomely low inflation to a healthier level. Whether the measures announced on Thursday will make a difference remains to be seen.Eurozone inflation, at an annual rate of only 0.1 percent in November, is far below the European Central Banks official target of just below 2 percent. Mr. Draghi and other members of the banks governing council had all but promised that more stimulus measures would be coming on Thursday unless there was a substantial improvement in economic data.To skeptical questions from reporters on why the central bank was not doing more, in light of the recent data, Mr. Draghi defended the measures and the effects of the stimulus program so far.He said that eurozone government bond yields, a measure of governments borrowing costs, had fallen since the stimulus program began, and that commercial bank lending rates were also lower.Economists are skeptical that the banks stimulus measures so far have had a substantial effect on increasing the availability of credit in the eurozone, which is one of the programs goals. Many banks have other problems, like large numbers of troubled loans, that are keeping them from lending, no matter how cheaply they can borrow from the central bank.But on Thursday, Mr. Draghi could only urge the skeptics to wait and see.All these measures have had an effect on the economy, Mr. Draghi said. I dont think our communication was wrong, he said. These measures need time to be fully appreciated. | Business |
Credit...Jawed Tanveer/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 10, 2018KANDAHAR, Afghanistan At just 2 years old, Madina had been vaccinated seven times. It was not enough: When she fell ill this fall, a trip to the doctor in Kandahar City confirmed that she was among the latest Afghan toddlers to contract polio.Almost a million children in Kandahar Province alone, like Madina, need at least one dose of oral vaccine a month to head off the disease, health workers say. But many of them also live in the most violent and socially disrupted parts of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban control large areas and do not want government health workers going door to door.These realities make a sustained vaccination campaign brutally difficult for health workers here. And Afghanistan, one of three countries where polio is still endemic, is losing ground. Officials have registered 19 cases of polio so far this year, up from 13 each of the previous two years, according to World Health Organization figures. In August, I followed a polio vaccination crew in Kandahar and saw how, even in areas where health workers have been able to function, many things stand in their way: security fears and drought, deep poverty and stifling tradition, widespread illiteracy and superstition. Still, starting just after dawn each day, the vaccination teams are at it, hoping to reach just a few more children. VideoA medical worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in Kandahar.CreditCredit...By Fahim AbedMawlawi Abdul Rashid of Kandahar City, a religious scholar and member of one team, said most of the residents were poor and desperately worried about what their children would have to eat each night. Drought adds to the daily burden, with families in many neighborhoods having to buy water from tankers after wells dry up. Given that, Mr. Rashid said, They dont care about polio vaccine as much.Mohammad Shah, 38, said that as a vaccine campaigner in the city he had been visiting more than 100 houses a day in temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He said some families asked for food and other necessities instead of the vaccine a need that Mr. Shah, a father of five, said he understood.They keep asking us to bring them wheat, soup and other staples, he said.Despite efforts to have religious scholars express support for the vaccine, Mr. Shah said mistrust about it still existed. Many worry about whether strict interpretations of Islam allow the vaccine. Some question its contents and believe conspiracy theories that Westerners have manipulated it to cause infertility.Abdul Razaq, 65, who was administering the vaccine in the Loya Weyala area of Kandahar City, which is dominated by people displaced by fighting, said around 10 of the 200 families there refused it.Its very difficult to convince those families who reject the vaccine, he said. But we try our best.Most families here hold traditional views wary of letting outside men enter a home if no male family members are present. For that reason, the health workers try to have at least one woman on each vaccination team. But there are not enough female workers, and all-male teams are frequently turned away. Polio was eradicated before 2000 in Western countries, but it is still a critical issue for Afghanistan, said Destagir Nazari, of the Ministry of Health. The world is trying to eradicate the virus completely, he said. It is an international responsibility for Afghanistan to eradicate it, and we try our best to do so.Across Afghanistan, more than 10 million children require polio vaccine. The United States, Canada and Japan are among the largest donors for the vaccination drive.The vaccinators days are long. They start early in the morning, gathering in health facilities of each neighborhood of Kandahar City to collect the vaccine and vitamin E tablets, which they carry in plastic coolers. Teams then head out in rented taxis or on motorcycles, armed with lists of families in their areas that have children younger than 5. They go door to door, circling back after a break for lunch and prayer to the houses where children werent home in the morning. At one house, a woman insisted that she didnt want her 3-year-old daughter, Mursal, to be vaccinated. She wouldnt give a reason, but the workers suspected she was worried for religious reasons. Each member of the three-person team tried to persuade her, even reading from a book of religious declarations that allowed the vaccine. The last member of the team to try, Mr. Razaq, was blunt: If you keep rejecting the vaccine, he asked, will you be able to take care of your daughter when she contracts polio? He pleaded, insisting that he was religious, too, but still made sure all his young children were vaccinated. At last, he got through, and Mursal received her dose for the month. Sometimes religious scholars, like Mr. Rashid, accompany the teams and help reassure families. According to Islam, health is very important, and we can use anything to ensure our health, he said. We convinced 70 families this month who were rejecting polio vaccine.Other times, balloons work. That was enough at one house: A woman there said no to the vaccine, but the boy with her wanted a balloon so he got both it and his dose.But bigger fears at work here than childrens distaste for medicine. Many families know the Taliban are suspicious of the government vaccination drive, and worry that they will become targets if they are seen allowing the health workers into their homes.Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that the insurgents were not against the vaccine and that they supported administering it in areas under their control. But they will not allow government teams to go door to door in their areas, saying they believe the workers sometimes act as spies. The Taliban usually insist on distributing the vaccine centrally from mosques. But health workers say only a house-by-house approach can come close to ensuring enough doses are distributed each month. Mr. Shah, who has been administering vaccine for 12 years, said that as hard as this year had been, it was getting better, at least in his area: Last year 25 families there rejected the vaccine. This year, that dropped to eight. When I see a polio victim, I feel very sorry for him and I understand thats why my job is so important, Mr. Shah said. Officials, though, lament that progress is so halting despite all their efforts. Abdul Qayoom Pokhla, head of Kandahar Provinces public health department, said that even without the stress of war, eradicating polio there would take at least one or two years. We need a secure environment to implement the polio vaccine campaign, he said.VideoCreditCredit...By Fahim AbedMujib Mashal contributed reporting from Kabul. | World |
Liam Hemsworth With This Ring I Thee Something 1/27/2018 Liam Hemsworth sure looks like he's wearing a wedding ring. Liam was tooling around Malibu Friday wearing a gold band that screams "married," but both he and fiancee Miley Cyrus have done this before. They got engaged -- the second time around -- in 2016 and there were multiple reports the 2 got hitched since, but various people in their lives have called BS on the stories. Miley has said no wedding plans so far, so take it for what it's worth ... but it sure looks like a wedding ring. | Entertainment |
The social network has discussed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, as tensions grow between the companies over how each treats consumer data.Credit...Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesPublished Jan. 28, 2021Updated April 26, 2021SAN FRANCISCO Facebook has considered filing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, two people familiar with the deliberations said, a move that could escalate tensions between two of the worlds most powerful technology companies.Facebook executives discussed accusing Apple of anticompetitive actions in its App Store, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The social network planned to say in a lawsuit that Apple gave preferential treatment to its own apps, while forcing restrictive rules onto third-party app developers like Facebook, the people said.Facebook discussed filing the suit as recently as December, the people said. It is unclear if the company will move forward with any legal action.The company declined to comment on a potential lawsuit. We believe Apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses, a spokeswoman said.An Apple spokesman declined to comment. The Information earlier reported the possibility of a suit.Tensions between Apple and Facebook have been growing for months, rooted in how the companies are diametrically opposed on how they make money. Apple, which has made privacy a key tenet, prefers that consumers pay for their internet experience, leaving less need for advertisers. In contrast, Facebook relies on data about its users to fuel its digital advertising business.Over time, the Apple chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, and the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, have increasingly taken thinly veiled shots at each other to underline their distaste for the others philosophies on advertising, targeting and privacy.The friction ratcheted up after Apple announced changes last year to its upcoming software for iPhones that could harm Facebooks business. Apple said that it would clamp down on some data collection practices by developers and that it would allow iPhone owners to choose whether to allow companies to track them across different apps. That would likely hurt Facebooks ability to collect user data to target ads.Apple also recently began requiring developers to include privacy labels for their apps in the App Store, which detail an apps information collection practices. In a recent analysis, The New York Times found that the privacy label for Facebooks WhatsApp messaging app showed that it gathered far more information from people than another messaging app, Signal.In response, Facebook has publicly pushed back against Apple. In December, Facebook created a website that slammed Apples moves as potentially harmful to small businesses. (It did not mention that the changes could hurt itself.) Facebook also took out full-page print ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times to declare that it was standing up to Apple.Facebooks line of attack against Apple echoes that made by other companies. Apple wields near absolute power over its App Store, deciding which apps make the cut and which dont, and taking a 30 percent cut of their sales. In 2019, Spotify, the streaming music company, filed a complaint with European regulators, accusing Apple of using its App Store to squash companies that compete with its services, including Apple Music.In August, Epic Games, the creator of the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple for forcing developers to use its payment systems, accusing it of anticompetitive practices in the App Store. Facebook has said it would provide information to Epic in its lawsuit, so that the court would understand the unfair policies that Apple imposes. Epic, Spotify and others have also organized a nonprofit group, the Coalition for App Fairness, to push for changes in app stores and to protect the app economy.This week, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Cook continued trading barbs.On Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts that he viewed Apple as one of Facebooks biggest competitors. He cited iMessage, Apples iPhone-specific texting service, as an existential threat to Facebooks social networking services.He added that Apple had every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with Facebook and other apps. Apple regularly treats its own apps more favorably in the App Store, he said.On Thursday, Mr. Cook, speaking at an European data protection conference, said Apples new tracking features for apps and the new privacy labels were necessary because of a data industrial complex that has compromised consumer privacy.It seems no piece of information is too private or personal to be surveilled, monetized and aggregated into a 360-degree view of your life, Mr. Cook said. Some may think that sharing this degree of information may be worth it for more targeted ads. Many others, I suspect, will not. | Tech |
Mark Salling Stash of Cash Available For Child Porn Victims 1/31/2018 Mark Salling was far from broke before killing himself -- and that's good news for his child porn victims, who now have to sue to get the money he agreed to pay them. According to docs obtained by TMZ ... Salling set up a corporation in 2009 -- right around the time "Glee" took off -- to collect his income from the entertainment biz. As of December 2017, the value of this business was reported to be $1.971 million. His father is listed as the manager. We broke the story ... Salling's suicide essentially screwed over the victims in his child porn case because a judge didn't get to order him to pay them $50k each in restitution. Salling agreed to pay that amount as part of his guilty plea, but the judge hadn't signed off because sentencing was set for March. The victims will have to file suit against Salling's estate, and based on the actor's financial docs ... there's dough to go around. | Entertainment |
Europe|Student, 17, Opens Fire at High School in Southeastern Francehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/world/europe/grasse-shooting.htmlCredit...Olivier Anrigo/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 16, 2017PARIS A heavily armed student burst into a high school in southeastern France on Thursday, firing at the headmaster and wounding at least two students, officials said.Pierre-Henry Brandet, a spokesman for the French interior minister, told the BFM TV news channel that the student, who is 17, was arrested shortly after at the school, the Lyce Alexis de Tocqueville in Grasse, about 20 miles west of the seaside city of Nice.News of the shooting quickly captured national attention in France, where school shootings are rare and where the authorities are still on high alert after a string of terrorist attacks. Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux met with Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Thursday afternoon to discuss the shooting in Grasse and a letter bomb at the International Monetary Fund office in Paris. Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem was scheduled to visit the school later on Thursday.Mr. Brandet said the suspect was not known to French police or intelligence services and was very heavily armed, but he cautioned that it was still unclear whether all the weapons were functional.He opened fire with a long firearm and wounded the headmaster, Mr. Brandet said, adding that at least eight people were lightly wounded, although some might have been hurt in the tumult that followed the shooting.It is obviously too early to say what this individuals motivations were, Mr. Brandet added.Citing information from local police officers, a spokeswoman for the Grasse town hall said the assailant appeared to be with an accomplice also a student who fled.Mr. Brandet also said the police were searching for a potential accomplice, but that it was not yet clear that the gunman had been with one.The French authorities quickly sent an alert about a situation in Grasse through a government-run smartphone app created to warn people of possible terrorist attacks or natural disasters nearby. Intervention underway by the security forces and emergency services, the warning read. Do not put yourself at risk. Schools in Grasse were put on lockdown until Thursday afternoon.Police officers cordoned off the area around the school.Emmanuel Ethis, the superintendent of schools for the Nice area, said on Twitter that students in Grasse were safe, and he asked parents not to rush to schools, where students had been confined inside. | World |
The agency issued a new set of recommendations intended to help communities live with the virus and get back to normal life.Credit...Alex Wong/Getty ImagesFeb. 25, 2022The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday offered a new strategy to help communities across the country live with the coronavirus and get back to some version of normal life.The new guidelines suggest that 70 percent of Americans can now stop wearing masks, and no longer need to social distance or avoid crowded indoor spaces.The recommendations no longer rely only on the number of cases in a community to determine the need for restrictions such as mask wearing. Instead, they direct counties to consider three measures to assess risk of the virus: new Covid-related hospital admissions over the previous week and the percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid patients, as well as new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people over the previous week.Based on these three factors, counties can calculate whether the risk to their residents is low, medium or high, according to the agency, and only areas of high risk should require everyone to wear a mask. The agency had endorsed universal masking in schools since July, regardless of virus levels in the community, but the new guidelines recommend masking in schools only in counties at high risk.The new guidelines are being released as the coronavirus is in retreat across the country. Case numbers have dropped to levels not seen before the surge of the Omicron variant, and hospitalizations have been plummeting. About 58,000 people are hospitalized with Covid nationwide, but those numbers have fallen by about 44 percent in the past two weeks.Several experts said the new guidelines were appropriate for the countrys current situation. Although the number of cases nationwide is still high, were well past the surge, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech. We dont need to be operating in emergency mode anymore.But many places have already shed pandemic restrictions. Most states have eased rules for mask-wearing, and some, like New Jersey, have announced plans to lift mandates even in schools. Others are poised to end indoor mask mandates in the coming weeks. An official recommendation from the C.D.C. may hold some sway in districts that have been more cautious.Under the C.D.C.s previous criteria, 95 percent of the counties in the United States were considered high risk. Using the new criteria, fewer than 30 percent of Americans are living in areas with a high level of risk, the agency said.The new set of guidelines gives people a framework for adapting precautions as virus levels change, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.s director, told reporters on Friday.We want to give people a break from things like masking when our levels are low, and then have the ability to reach for them again should things get worse in the future, she said. We need to be prepared and we need to be ready for whatever comes next.Those who are particularly vulnerable because of their age, health status or occupation may choose to take extra precautions, regardless of the risk level in their community, she added.The availability of high-quality masks such as N95 respirators allows individuals at high risk to continue to protect themselves even if others around them are not taking precautions, Dr. Marr said.She added that it was good that the agency would continue to monitor cases because hospital rates can lag by two to three weeks. By the time hospitals are overwhelmed, its too late, she said.But Dr. Walensky said C.D.C. scientists tested models with data from previous surges to confirm that the new method of calculating risk would have detected the surges early.The Omicron surge made it clear that because so many Americans have some immunity to the virus through vaccinations or prior infection, counties may see high numbers of cases and yet comparatively few that involve serious illness. The new guidelines nod to that reality, and allow for a more sustainable approach to living with the virus, public health experts said.It just looked wrong that the whole country was a single shade of red, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Universitys Bloomberg School of Public Health.Though a growing number of political leaders, public health experts and ordinary citizens now support the easing of restrictions, at least temporarily, others are still wary. They note that millions of people in the United States including children under 5 and billions around the world remain unvaccinated, making the emergence of a dangerous new variant not just possible but likely.The C.D.C. and the Biden administration have declared victory prematurely before, including last spring when they told vaccinated Americans they could go mask-free and celebrate a summer of freedom, only to see the Delta variant send hospitalizations and deaths soaring again.The White House has been working on a pandemic exit strategy that would help Americans live with the virus. But Dr. Walensky said just two weeks ago that it was not yet time to lift mask mandates. And some officials in the C.D.C. and the Department of Health and Human Services are nervous about the changing guidance, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.Some public health experts also balked at the easing of restrictions, noting that the country is recording roughly 1,900 Covid-related deaths every day, children under 5 still do not have vaccines available to them and significant numbers of Americans remain at high risk because of their age, health status or occupation.The agencys new guidelines do not address whether and for how long people who test positive for the virus should isolate themselves, noted Dr. Robby Sikka, who chairs the Covid-19 Sports and Society Working Group, an organization that oversees safety for professional sports teams.A study published by the C.D.C. on Friday suggested that about half of those who tested positive remained contagious after five days the length of isolation that the agency currently recommends. If people isolate for five days, or even worse, we just let people go, its possible that we have the potential to see cases rise, Dr. Sikka said.Even people who do not become seriously ill may suffer long-term consequences from an infection, noted Zo McLaren, a health policy expert at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. We are making pandemic policy under the assumption that the mass infection that occurred during the Omicron wave has few to no health consequences in the population, but there is growing evidence that Covid infection often has persistent health effects, she said.In an open letter to elected officials, a group of 400 experts in public health and education opposed the push to lift indoor mask mandates, saying it was premature and threatens to place children, their school communities, and their families at greater risk for illness, disability, and death. The challenge right now is that we need to consider, certainly, hospital capacity, but we also need to be considering vaccination uptake among children, among adults, said Sonali Rajan, an expert in school health programs at Columbia University and one of the authors of the letter.Ideally, the C.D.C. would continue to refine its models for assessing risk in communities, including incorporating signals from wastewater analysis and other approaches, said Joseph Allen, an expert on buildings quality at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.One thing is clear, there is no bright line cutoff for any of these metrics, Dr. Allen said. I hope C.D.C. avoids that pitfall again.Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting. | Health |
VideotranscripttranscriptSpaceX Rocket Destroyed on LaunchpadAn explosion was seen from the site of a SpaceX rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in September.N/AAn explosion was seen from the site of a SpaceX rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in September.CreditCredit...U.S. Launch Report, via ReutersNov. 4, 2016Engineers investigating the explosion of one of SpaceXs rockets in September have figured out what went wrong, and launches could resume in mid-December, Elon Musk, the companys chief executive, said on Friday.I think weve gotten to the bottom of the problem, Mr. Musk said during an interview on CNBCs Squawk Box program. Really surprising problem thats never been encountered before in the history of rocketry.Mr. Musk described it as the toughest puzzle solved that the company has ever had to solve.The cascade of explosions on Sept. 1 that destroyed the Falcon 9 rocket as well as a $200 million satellite was perplexing because it occurred before the ignition of the engines for a planned test. The actual launch was scheduled for two days later.The accident has complicated NASAs operations with the International Space Station. SpaceX is one of two companies ferrying cargo to the space mission. SpaceXs next flight had been scheduled to launch this month but is postponed indefinitely.On Friday, NASA juggled its order for the next flight from the other company, Orbital ATK of Dulles, Va., switching to a larger rocket that would allow additional cargo. That launch is scheduled for the spring.SpaceX also has a NASA contract to carry astronauts to the space station beginning as early as late next year.Mr. Musk indicated on Friday that the problem occurred during fueling. As liquid oxygen flowed into a tank on the second stage, the propellant was so cold that it froze solid, setting off a domino effect that destroyed the rocket in a succession of fireballs on the launchpad. At normal atmospheric pressures, oxygen turns solid at -362 degrees Fahrenheit.Last week, SpaceX released a statement that it was focusing the investigation on one of three helium containers within the oxygen tank. During launch, as the liquid oxygen is consumed, the helium is heated up and released to maintain pressure within the tank. The company said that its tests had replicated the rupture of the helium containers, made of carbon fiber composite materials.It basically involves a combination of liquid helium, advanced carbon fiber composites and solid oxygen, Mr. Musk said. Oxygen so cold that it actually enters solid phase.Mr. Musk did not provide other details about how solid oxygen affected the carbon fiber composites.In December 2015, SpaceX began using an upgraded Falcon 9 design that uses supercooled liquid oxygen at -340 degrees, 40 degrees colder than what is typically used for rocket propulsion. The lower temperatures make the oxygen denser and improve engine thrust, SpaceX has said.If the helium were in a liquid state, it would be even colder (-452 degrees), and that appears to have provided unintended additional cooling that turned some of the oxygen solid.The Wall Street Journal reported this week that hazards could be greater for future astronauts riding on SpaceX rockets. With supercooled fuel, the launch occurs soon after the fuel is pumped into the rocket. SpaceX has proposed that the astronauts would be strapped in before fueling begins instead of boarding after fueling.In a letter last December, a space station advisory committee headed by retired Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford of the Air Force strongly and unanimously objected to that idea, saying it was contrary to booster safety criteria that has been in place for over 50 years, both in this country and internationally.SpaceX officials have suggested that a change of procedure would prevent a recurrence, and the rockets launch abort system would have carried the astronauts to safety in case of an emergency.When SpaceX resumes launching, the first flight will be for one of its commercial customers, but company officials have not said where the next launch will occur. The accident damaged the Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station that SpaceX has used for almost all of its Falcon 9 launches so far.SpaceX has also been renovating Launchpad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, once used for space shuttle launches, and it also has a launchpad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.For NASA, the space station is not running short of supplies. But Orbital ATK is recovering from its own mishap, when an Antares rocket with NASA cargo exploded two years ago. It then launched two of its Cygnus cargo ships on a competitors rocket, the Atlas 5 built by United Launch Alliance, and last month, it launched with a redesigned Antares.Russian and Japanese cargo ships are scheduled to head to the station before the end of the year.Frank DeMauro, the vice president of Orbital ATKs advanced programs division, said that a couple of months ago, NASA officials began discussions to launch the next cargo flight with an Atlas 5 instead of an Antares rocket. That would increase the cargo capacity by about 660 pounds.Mr. DeMauro said that an Atlas, which has a track record of more than 60 successful launches, would decrease the chances of delays. It highlights our focus on supporting our customer even if it means launching on another companys rocket, he said. | science |
Business|Treasury Auctions Set for the Week of Dec. 14https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/treasury-auctions-set-for-the-week-of-dec-14.htmlDec. 13, 2015The Treasurys schedule of financing this week includes Mondays regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday.At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.23 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.52 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.14 percent.The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAYJacksonville, Fla., $200.3 million of revenue bonds. Competitive.ONE DAY DURING THE WEEKBirmingham, Ala., Special Care Facilities Financing Authority , $85.8 million of revenue refinancing and improvement bonds. Ziegler.Canonsburg/Houston, Pa., Joint Authority, $54 million of sewer revenue bonds. PNC Capital Markets.Denver Urban Renewal Authority, $68.4 million of increment revenue bonds. RBC Capital Markets.Denver Urban Renewal Authority, $70 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.Hammond Local Public Improvement Bond Bank, Ind., $50 million of advance funding program notes. Hutchinson, Shockey, Erley.Kansas City, Mo., Industrial Development Authority, $50.7 million of senior living facilities revenue bonds. Cain Brothers.Morris County, N.J., Improvement Authority, $61.2 million of revenue bonds. Raymond James.New York Transportation Development Corporation, $180 million of special facility revenue refinancing bonds. Citigroup Global Markets.Ohio Water Development Authority, $105.7 million of water pollution control loan fund revenue refinancing bonds. RBC Capital Markets. Pasadena, Tex., $51.5 million of general obligation refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray.Spring Independent School District, Tex., $138 million of unlimited tax refinancing bonds. RBC Capital Markets.Utah Housing Corporation, $100 million of single-family mortgage bonds. Barclays Capital. | Business |
The dazzling phenomenon could be visible on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, experts said, depending on the weather and local light pollution.Credit...Alex Kormann/Star Tribune, via Getty ImagesOct. 30, 2021Magnetic energy had been building up in the sun this week like a rubber band twisted into a corkscrew. On Thursday morning, the rubber band snapped, and the pent-up energy was released as a solar flare, ejecting about a billion tons of plasma gas that could result in the dazzling display known as the northern lights once it reaches Earth this weekend.But will it even be visible on Saturday night or early Sunday morning?If I was in the northern tier of the United States, then I would take a look in the sky, Howard J. Singer, chief scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, said in an interview on Saturday.The prediction center issued a geomagnetic storm watch on Friday that said the storm may drive the aurora borealis, the scientific name for the northern lights, over Washington State, the upper Midwest and the Northeast on Saturday. The storm was classified as a G3 on a scale from G1 to G5. It is not expected to cause technology disruptions, the center said.A CME associated with Thursday's solar flare is expected to reach earth tomorrow. A G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Watch is in effect for Saturday and Sunday, and may drive the aurora over the Northeast, to the upper Midwest, to WA state. Check https://t.co/WeNidVVNv6 for updates. pic.twitter.com/GOvR3a8AJX NOAA Space Weather (@NWSSWPC) October 29, 2021 Typically when we get to that level, we will see northern lights in the northern tier states, William Murtagh, the Space Weather Prediction Centers program coordinator, said in an interview.But there are unknowns associated with any magnetic storm, especially the exact timing of its arrival. The large expulsion of plasma from the sun, called a coronal mass ejection, is traveling in space at about one million to six million miles an hour. With Earth about 92 million miles away from the sun, the commute for the ejected particles is brief, sometimes as short as 15 hours or as long as four days, Dr. Murtagh said.This one is kind of on the fast side, Mr. Murtagh said on Saturday. We expect it sometime today, so itll be a little bit over a 50-hour transit.Since the ejected particles are so far away, however, scientists arent able to predict the exact timing. But if the particles arrive at Earth during the daytime, there wont be a light show, experts said. The same holds true if one lives in a city with high light pollution or in an area experiencing cloudy weather.But if it is nighttime, the skies are clear and there is low light pollution, then chances are good that people will see the aurora borealis, experts said.The prediction center can give people about a 30-minute heads up before the lights are visible because its Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite detects the hurtling tons of particles while they are still between the sun and the Earth.Mr. Murtagh said residents could monitor the centers social media accounts and website for status updates throughout the night.When the magnetic storm does reach Earth, the colorful curtains of purple and green if they materialize will be a result of the suns magnetic projectile interacting with the planets magnetic field, and how it couples with Earths magnetic field will dictate how strong the storm is, Mr. Murtagh said.The stronger the storm, the more likely that areas in lower latitudes will see the northern lights, experts said. This weekends magnetic storm could appear in areas near cities such as New York, Chicago, Boise, Idaho, and Salem, Ore. The lights typically last several hours and could be visible through the entire night, Mr. Murtagh said.In 1859, a solar superstorm caused northern lights that could be seen near tropical latitudes in places like Cuba and El Salvador. In 2011, the aurora borealis was seen as far south as Alabama.Meteorologists across the country were already telling residents that they would not be able to see the lights or advising those traveling north to gaze up at the sky at night.One resident in Des Moines was already prepared on Saturday afternoon to see the spectacle in the sky.Im going to go to a dark sky area, north of the city, and then kind of just sit and wait it out, Brennan Jontz, 28, who is a part of the Iowa Storm Chasing Network on Facebook, said in an interview. Got to be patient; thats the name of the game with the northern lights.He will bring a lawn chair, he said. He will drive toward the corn fields, away from the city lights, and turn on to a gravel road somewhere. Then he will sit down, take out his camera and wait to be illuminated again. | science |
Credit...John Francis Peters for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2014A bunch of Antonio Garays former N.F.L. teammates sent him text messages Sunday night. A top college football player, Michael Sam, had announced that he was gay; had Garay seen? His reaction: So what?People look at football as such a violent game, a mans game, but there are so many people that are trying to find themselves, said Garay, who played seven seasons before being released by the Jets in training camp. Now he knows who he is. He knows what hes about. By him coming out, the way he breaks barriers now is just by playing football. Sam, a defensive lineman, is set to receive that opportunity in the N.F.L., where he would be the leagues first publicly gay player. His declaration has engendered a range of public reaction, most of it positive, though there is still the unknown of how that will translate during the draft, or when he meets his new teammates. Carolina running back DeAngelo Williams, encapsulating the feelings of the dozens of players who expressed their support on Twitter, posted: I could care less about a mans sexual preference! i care about winning games and being respectful in the locker room!The Giants and the Detroit Lions were among the franchises that issued statements Monday supporting Sams decision, and Packers Coach Mike McCarthy, speaking to reporters in Green Bay, Wis., called Sam a courageous young man and said weve got room for any player that can produce on the field and be a good teammate.John Mara, a Giants co-owner, said in a statement that Sams announcement would not affect his position on the teams draft board. Steve Tisch, a Giants co-owner, said: I hope any N.F.L. team would not hesitate to draft Michael if he is right for their team. Our game is the ultimate team game, and we often talk about how a team is a family. Regardless of where you are from, what your religious beliefs are, what your sexual orientation is, if you are good enough to be on the team, you are part of the family. Teams routinely perform intensive investigations on athletes before deciding whether to draft them, and Sams sexual orientation like family circumstances or criminal record will be another factor that comprises the composite. We pick guys in this league from all different backgrounds guys with all kinds of baggage, this, that, trouble with the law and they still get drafted, said Joe Bommarito, a former scout with the Jets. This guys not committed any crimes that I know of, so Id say youre probably getting a good guy. I wouldnt think that this would be an issue. It is, perhaps, a sign of societys evolution that much of the concern directed toward Sam on Monday tilted toward the mundane, toward his viability as an N.F.L. player instead of his sexual orientation. Listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 260 pounds, Sam is considered, in scouting parlance, a tweener in the N.F.L. not big enough to play on the defensive line and not polished enough to play in space, as traditional outside linebackers do. For that reason, Gil Brandt, a former personnel executive for the Dallas Cowboys who now analyzes the draft for NFL.com, said he had not counted Sam among his top 100 senior prospects. Brandt said he was alarmed by how Sams production tailed off in the second half of the season, when he registered one and a half sacks in Missouris final six games, but that he was impressed by his drive. Based on his talent, Brandt said that he expected Sam to be selected from the fourth to sixth rounds in May, and that he would also not hesitate to draft him if Sam were the best available player on his draft board. Im sure teams are considering, How big of a distraction could this be and will his play override it? Brandt said.What could work in Sams favor, the former Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said, is how Chargers linebacker Manti Teo handled the scrutiny after being victimized by a hoax involving a fake dead girlfriend. After being drafted in the second round by San Diego, Teo was embraced in his locker room and proceeded to have a solid rookie season. Had Teo come in and not played well or been a bust, then there would have been any number of people that would have conjectured why that happened, Billick said. Among the players who voiced encouragement on social media were the Miami offensive linemen Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin, the principals in a bullying scandal that cast the locker-room dynamic into sharp focus. How Sam fits into that culture will depend on how willing the league is to address the issue of workplace harassment and adapt to changing times.If people are talking about how hell fit into the locker room but taking a mind-set from 20 years ago, that could be an issue, because weve evolved a great deal since then, Billick said. His orientation obviously wasnt a big factor in the Mizzou locker room, so I cant imagine it would be any more of an issue in a pro locker room of grown, seemingly mature men.Garay said that he never wondered, or cared, whether he would have a gay teammate. He cared about one thing, and one thing only, which is the same thing that led him to perform an Internet search on Sam on Sunday night.I was more curious of how good of a football player he is, Garay said. | Sports |
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/business/international/imf-sdr-renminbi-china-explainer.htmlCredit...Jens Meyer/Associated PressNov. 30, 2015The United States dollar was once the standard reserve currency for the International Monetary Fund. But in the 1960s and early 70s, as the Vietnam War dragged on and the United States ran persistent trade deficits, the dollar came to be seen as overvalued.A New Means of ExchangeRising trade in the 1960s was putting stress on the supply of two key assets gold and the United States dollar that were needed to support the global monetary standard developed at Bretton Woods after World War II.To ease the strain, the I.M.F. in 1969 created special drawing rights. Each S.D.R. was equivalent to 0.888671 gram of fine gold which, at the time, was the amount of gold one United States dollar could buy. Although an S.D.R. is not a currency as such (it is really just an accounting entry), it can be used by member countries as a reserve asset. S.D.R.s may also be used when the I.M.F. lends money to its member countries or is repaid for loans. A country holding S.D.R.s converts them into one of its component currencies (like dollars or sterling) before they can be spent on goods or services.The Collapse of a StandardThe dollars peg to gold formally ended on Aug. 15, 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon said the government would no longer convert foreign-held dollars into gold. The new policy, announced in a televised speech to the country, was part of a sweeping new economic plan aimed at reducing inflation and unemployment. By 1973, all the major world currencies were floating in value against each other.Responding to the changes, the monetary fund in 1975 based its system on a basket of 16 widely used currencies. Six years later, the basket was simplified to the currencies of the Group of Five industrial nations: the United States dollar, the Japanese yen, the German mark, the British pound and the French franc.The Euro Joins the BasketIn 1999, the collection of reserve currencies was juggled again when the euro was introduced. The euro replaced the French franc and German mark as part of the special drawing rights. The change would be the last until the addition of Chinas renminbi, which will take effect on Oct. 1, 2016.After the change, the weightings of one S.D.R. will be: 41.73 percent for the American dollar, 30.93 percent for the euro, 10.92 percent for the Chinese renminbi, 8.33 percent for the Japanese yen and 8.09 percent for the British pound.Using S.D.R.sAccording to the I.M.F., as of today, 204.1 billion S.D.R.s (equal to about $285 billion) have been created and allocated to member countries.Many central banks use the system in calculating the value of their reserves. By adding the renminbi to this group, the I.M.F. effectively considers the currency to be safe and reliable. Besides the symbolic weight the inclusion carries, there are ways China will gain greater global clout. For example, China will have somewhat more influence in international bailouts, like Greeces debt deal. | Business |
Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 19, 2014KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia Lauryn Williams is not certain where her Olympic track medals are she thinks the silver from the 2004 Olympics may be at her mothers house so it was not hard to believe her on Wednesday night when she said that missing history by a measly tenth of a second was not especially disappointing.Williams could have become the first woman to win gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Games. Instead, Williams, the United States track star turned bobsled brakeman, settled for silver as she and the pilot Elana Meyers lost their first-day lead with a few ill-timed bobbles that allowed the Canadians Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse to zip past. Jamie Greubel and Aja Evans, in another United States sled, finished third and claimed the bronze.Afterward, Williams smiled. She laughed. She held her hands up high on the medal podium and smelled the flowers that were presented to her. She came to bobsled only last summer, after another track athlete, the hurdler Lolo Jones, told her about her own transition to the winter sport in a casual chat in the Rome airport.The part that attracted Williams most? She said you could eat, Williams recalled, laughing. In track, I was always trying to keep my weight down. So run as fast as you can and eat, too? Sounded good to me.History was never on Williamss mind, she said, and even on Wednesday she was not sure exactly what milestone she was chasing.I knew there was history to be made, I guess, she said. But I didnt really know what it was until afterward.She furrowed her brow. I think I did something anyway, right? she asked.She did. Although Williams failed to match Eddie Eagan who won gold in boxing at the 1920 Summer Games and gold in bobsled at the 1932 Winter Games she did join a tiny club of athletes who have won medals in both versions of the Olympics.Williams, who won gold as part of the 4x100-meter relay team at the 2012 London Games, is one of only five athletes to reach the podium in both the Summer and Winter Games.Shes like a Jesse Owens, Jones said. This was her destiny.Jones, who received plenty of attention in the buildup to the Games, praised her teammates afterward. She and the pilot Jazmine Fenlator were in the USA-3 sled and never recovered after falling a full second off the lead in their first run. They finished 11th.They watched, then, along with the rest of the fans at Sanki Sliding Center as Meyers and Williams were last down the track in the fourth and final heat. The United States top pair had built a strong lead of 0.23 seconds after the two runs on Tuesday, but gave more than half of that advantage back in a bumpy third run.On the final trip, Williams had a strong push start that was the fastest in the field among fourth runs, but Meyers struggled to find a consistent line with her driving. An early bump of the wall all but erased the Americans margin, and by the time they made the final turns they were in second place for the first time.They finished with a total time of 3 minutes 50.71 seconds one-tenth of a second short of Canadas winning mark.It slipped away, Meyers said, adding that she knew people will say its a disappointment, but Im not disappointed; I couldnt be prouder. She added: Im glad for silver. I didnt deserve the gold medal today.Standing next to her, Williams nodded and rubbed Meyerss shoulder. After a track career that included an individual silver medal and a relay gold, as well as two disastrous baton exchanges that led to American disqualifications in other relays, Williams happily embraced the camaraderie of the United States bobsled program.Williams, 30, does not plan to continue as a winter athlete; financial planning is her next job, she said, and she hopes to sit for the certification exam in July. For Williams, the Sochi Games were about an experience. History would have been lovely, of course. But a gold medal was hardly necessary.Im going to remember all this, she said, waving her hand toward the icy track that wound its way down the mountain. Its about that. Its not about the thing I get to hold in my hand. | Sports |
At a rally that was supposed to bolster the fortunes of two Republican runoff candidates, the president instead turned the event into a lecture filled with conspiracy theories and personal attacks.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 4, 2021DALTON, Ga. President Trump used a campaign rally on the eve of two critical Senate runoffs in Georgia to once again vent his debunked grievances about the outcome of Novembers presidential election, as he continued his assault on the peaceful transfer of power.In an appearance that was supposed to bolster the fortunes of the two Republican candidates Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler Mr. Trump instead turned the nearly 90-minute rally into a rambling lecture filled with conspiracy theories, rumors, unproven assertions and personal attacks on Democrats, the news media and Georgias Republican officials.Theres no way we lost Georgia, Mr. Trump said just after taking the stage. Ive had two elections. Ive won both of them. Its amazing.Moments later, after briefly mentioning the two Republican senators, he shifted back to his own, losing election: Theyre not going to take this White House. Were going to fight like hell, Ill tell you right now.The performance, which he foreshadowed on Twitter earlier in the day, underscored the presidents attempts to find a way to reverse his loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., even at the risk of alienating Republican voters in Tuesdays Senate contest, which observers in both parties expect to be close. If Democrats win both runoffs, they will take control of the Senate.With Mr. Bidens inauguration 16 days away, Mr. Trump and his allies have turned their attention to Wednesdays joint session of Congress, where scores of Republicans in the House and Senate say they will object to Mr. Bidens victory being certified in what is usually a largely ceremonial event. Their effort is certain to fail, given Democratic control of the House, and it has split the Republican Party.If you dont show up, the radical Democrats will win, he said to a large, cheering crowd at an airport hangar, with Marine One, the presidents helicopter, in the background.But he quickly returned to complaining about his own political fate.Those of you that know how badly screwed we got, I want to be clear that we cant let that happen again, Mr. Trump said. We cant let that happen again. Were going to come back, and I really believe were going to take what they did to us on Nov. 3. Were going to take it back.The partys top lawmakers, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, have rejected Mr. Trumps claims of widespread voter fraud and said it is time to accept Mr. Biden as the next president. Others in the party, including a dozen senators and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, have embraced at least the idea of challenging the certification.Mr. Trump appears to have little patience for those who resist his call for overturning the election. In a tweet on Monday morning, he admonished Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, for saying that challenging the certification could only erode further our system of constitutional government.In his tweet, the president suggested that Mr. Cotton a staunch conservative and Trump supporter should prepare to be challenged in a primary.How can you certify an election when the numbers being certified are verifiably WRONG, Mr. Trump tweeted, adding: @SenTomCotton Republicans have pluses & minuses, but one thing is sure, THEY NEVER FORGET!ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Monday night, Mr. Trump noted Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, was at the rally, but said he was a little angry with him. Mr. Lee has said he will not support objections to the elections certification.On Saturday, the president delivered vague threats of criminal prosecution to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, during a rambling telephone call. Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Raffensperger to find him enough votes to reverse the presidential contest in the state.The conversation prompted calls by Democrats for Mr. Trump to be prosecuted for illegally trying to induce state officials to commit voter fraud. And it spurred outrage from officials in Mr. Raffenspergers office, who accused the president of improperly trying to undo the results of a fair election.Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, delivered a scathing refutation on Monday of Mr. Trumps false claims of voter fraud, running through a long list of debunked conspiracy theories and systematically debunking each one again.It was like Groundhog Day, he said with evident frustration, adding of the fraud claims, This is all easily, provably false, yet the president persists, and by doing so undermines Georgians faith in the election system.The president had previewed his rally remarks on Twitter hours before his departure from Washington, saying that he would reveal at Monday nights event the real numbers about the fraud that he claims happened during the Georgia presidential contest.During the rally, Mr. Trump spent some time delivering his usual campaign stump speech, warning baselessly that Democrats will adopt socialist policies, throw open the border, end private health insurance and wage a war on Christians.Youve got to swarm it tomorrow, he told his supporters, urging them to cast ballots for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue.But he returned again and again to his own election, attacking Mr. Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, saying: They say they are Republicans. I really dont think so. They cant be. The president also vowed that he would be here in a year and a half campaigning against your governor I guarantee you that.The president recited a litany of fake statistics that he said proved the election was stolen from him in Georgia, despite the fact Mr. Raffensperger and state officials had repeatedly told him his assertions were patently false.Mr. Trump said Republicans were able to ride my coattails to victory and pick up seats in the House despite pre-election projections.When that happens, he said, no president loses unless they play games that you dont lose, they play games.That was false. The incoming presidents party has lost ground in Congress in several recent elections. In the 2000 elections, Republicans lost three House seats despite President George W. Bushs victory. In the 1992 election, President Bill Clinton defeated the incumbent president but Republicans made unexpected gains in Congress.And Mr. Trump lamented the legitimate vote counting process, falsely claiming that they keep finding votes in his and other Republican races.I was leading in Pennsylvania by hundreds of thousands of votes, he said. All of a sudden I was tired I said, What happened?What happened was the legitimate vote counting process. Mr. Trumps lead shrank in Pennsylvania and several other states as election officials continued to count mail-in ballots.In addition to using the Georgia rally to try to increase turnout among Republicans in Tuesdays voting, Mr. Trump kept returning his focus to himself, even as his party is trying to save the Republican majority in the Senate.Die-hard supporters of Mr. Trump, including thousands who believe he is the rightful winner of a 2020 election rife with voter fraud, packed a regional airport in northwestern Georgia for the presidents remarks.The event was billed as a final rally for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue, but the crowd was there for Mr. Trump and Mr. Trump alone. Supporters said they backed his unfounded efforts to subvert the election results and his attempts to pressure the Georgia secretary of state into finding the necessary votes.Tim Gilley, 65, who lives in Dalton, said he did not expect Mr. Perdue or Ms. Loeffler to win on Tuesday.Not without President Trump on the ballot, Mr. Gilley said as he waited for the president to arrive from Washington. Were here for him and we support him.Mr. Gilley also defended Mr. Trumps call with the secretary of state, saying the president was only stating what others saw.I thought it was another instance of him fighting for us, Mr. Gilley said.At the same time, another man tried to start a chant among the crowd: Joe Biden is a communist agent, he yelled.Astead W. Herndon reported from Dalton, and Michael D. Shear from Washington. Maggie Astor contributed reporting from New York, Linda Qiu from Washington, and Rick Rojas from Atlanta. | Politics |
Politics|Prosecutors mull charges for theft of national security information after laptops and documents are stolen in Capitol siege.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/stolen-items-prosecutors-charges.htmlProsecutors mull charges for theft of national security information after laptops and documents are stolen in Capitol siege.Credit...Matthew Rosenberg/The New York TimesJan. 10, 2021Michael R. Sherwin, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said on Sunday that the Justice Department was considering charges for theft of national security information after the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday looted laptops, documents and other items from congressional offices.In an interview with NPR, Mr. Sherwin did not go into detail about what was stolen or the extent of the breach, but he had previously alluded to electronic items and documents that had been stolen from offices.Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, posted a video on Twitter in the hours after the riot showing the extent of the damage to his office. He said that the rioters smashed the door virtually off its hinges and stole a laptop from his desk.Drew Hammill, the deputy chief of staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in a tweet on Friday that a laptop had also been stolen from a Capitol conference room, though he added that the device was only used for presentations.In an internal memo sent the day after the attack, Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrative officer for the House of Representatives, said there were no indications that the House network was compromised. But she urged lawmakers and their staff members to take inventory of their electronic equipment and treat any storage devices found as potentially compromised.The mob also had access to paper documents during the breach of lawmakers offices. Richard Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Ark., posed for a photograph holding a personalized envelope from Ms. Pelosis office. He was later arrested.Ali Zaslav, a CNN journalist who was with lawmakers in the Senate chamber as the Capitol was being stormed, posted a video on Twitter showing the office of the Senate parliamentarian vandalized, with documents strewn across the floor.Elijah Schaffer, a reporter for The Blaze, a right-wing media company, was among the mob whom he described as revolutionaries as they ransacked Ms. Pelosis office. He posted a photograph on Twitter showing a computer in the office with emails still on the screen. | Politics |
Our Coverage of the Coronavirus PandemicIn the United StatesEven with coronavirus cases on the rise, millions of Americans are expected to take to the skies and roads Memorial Day weekend, in what is likely to be one of the busiest travel periods since the start of the pandemic.White House officials said that they were introducing new models for distributing Paxlovid, the Covid-19 pill made by Pfizer, in an effort to get the treatment to more people and keep death rates relatively low even as cases increase.Around the WorldBeijing is not under official lockdown yet, but one can barely tell that thats the case. As the Chinese government enforces strict safety measures in the city to prevent a complete shutdown, its hard to find anywhere to go.Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain presided over a disorderly workplace in which there were widespread violations of coronavirus restrictions, according to a long-awaited government reporton lockdown parties at Downing Street.ResearchA large new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in five adult Covid survivors under the age of 65in the United States has experienced at least one health condition that could be considered long Covid.How safe really is it to go back to the gym right now? Research shows that people working out may expel a shocking number of the tiny aerosol particlesthat can transmit the coronavirus.Health GuidanceMasks: Does a mask protect you against Covid if others arent wearing one? This is what the evidence shows.Second Boosters: Should you get a fourth Covid shot? Older individuals and those with some health conditions may benefit from it.Long Covid: There is no universal definition of the condition, but clues about causes and potential treatments are beginning to emerge. Heres what we know so far.At Home: When someone in your house tests positive for Covid, there are some guidelines to follow.Covid Treatments in N.Y.C.: Antiviral pillsand monoclonal antibodies are available across the city. Here is how to get them. | Health |
NFL Legend Cortez Kennedy Donates Brain to CTE Research ... Autopsy Reveals 1/22/2018 NFL Hall of Famer Cortez Kennedy donated his brain to the most famous CTE research center in the world when he passed away in May ... this according to the autopsy obtained by TMZ Sports. Kennedy's body was discovered by a friend on May 23, 2017. At the time, it was unclear how the 48-year-old passed away. But according to the autopsy report, the official cause of death is hypertensive heart disease -- a heart condition caused by high blood pressure, according to Healthline.com. The medical examiner also lists pneumonia and diabetes as a contributing factor to Kennedy's death. He's listed in the autopsy as 6'1" and 265 lbs. As we previously reported, Kennedy was hospitalized for swollen legs just days before he died. The report shows Kennedy's family requested the ex-NFL star's brain be sent to the Boston University CTE Center for further examination. BU is widely regarded as the leader in CTE research -- they've studied the brains of several deceased NFL stars including Aaron Hernandez and Dave Duerson. Kennedy played 11 seasons for the Seattle Seahawks ... and was an 8x Pro Bowler. He was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012. | Entertainment |
DealBook|Keurig Green Mountain Gets Help From New Kind of Deal Makerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/business/dealbook/keurig-green-mountain-gets-help-from-new-kind-of-deal-maker.htmlBreakingviewsDec. 7, 2015Keurig Green Mountain is surfing the frothy merger market to a happy exit and it has a new type of deal maker to thank for it.The company, best known for its K-Cup single-serve coffee pods, is selling to the JAB Holding Company, backed by the Reimann family of Germany, for $13.9 billion.The $92-a-share sale, at a 78 percent premium to Fridays closing share price, is a welcome development for investors in the struggling coffee group, whose shares had fallen nearly 70 percent in the year or so leading up to the deal on Monday. The roster includes Coca-Cola, which invested $1.3 billion in Keurig in 2014 when the shares traded around $80 and eventually took a 17 percent stake, and Eminence Capital, an activist investor with a passive 7 percent interest. Greenlight Capitals David Einhorn, who in October said he had bet against Keurig shares, may not be so happy.The real novelty, though, is JABs caffeine-themed consolidation plan. Keurig sales slipped 4 percent in the fiscal year that ended in September after rising nearly 30-fold over the previous decade. A new line of coffee makers flopped and a deal with Coca-Cola on cold beverages has yet to make up for the hit to the core business.JAB and its co-investors, Mondelez International and BDT Capital Partners, will be hoping to change that in time, in private and in conjunction with its other coffee investments.Its reminiscent of the efforts of 3G Capital, an investment firm with Brazilian backers, to make the most of its acquisitions in consumer foods, including Burger King, H.J. Heinz and Kraft Foods.For its part, JAB in 2013 paid nearly 16 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization a higher multiple than the Keurig transaction to buy Douwe Egberts, which in July merged with Mondelezs coffee brands to form Jacobs Douwe Egberts. Another JAB holding, Peets Coffee & Tea, has also been on the acquisition trail, gobbling up stakes in the upscale caffeine purveyors Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Intelligentsia Coffee.Deep and patient family pockets arent the only thing JAB has in common with 3G. It also has serious industry expertise in the form of its chairman, Bart Becht, the former Reckitt Benckiser boss. In the long term, his investment may pay off. In the short run, Keurig investors should probably count themselves lucky. | Business |
Nancy Kerrigan Hits the Ice With Pats Cheer Squad 1/30/2018 I, Nancy ... am now a New England Patriots cheerleader!! The figure skating superstar dusted off her skates and hit the ice with the Pats cheer squad Tuesday in Minneapolis ... teaching the ladies how to nail some of the basic moves right before the Super Bowl. We gotta admit ... it's an accomplishment in itself that nobody busted their ass. Then again ... they have a 2-time Olympic medalist showing them the ropes. But the teacher turned into the student when Kerrigan was handed a set of pom poms and joined the girls for a "Let's Go Pats" chant ... ON ICE!! Guess this means Tonya Harding's rooting for the Eagles? | Entertainment |
Nicole Eggert Headed to L.A. I'm Filing a Police Report Against Scott Baio 1/31/2018 TMZ.com Nicole Eggert is on her way back to L.A. and she's beelining it for the police department to file a sexual battery report against Scott Baio. Nicole was leaving the Peninsula Hotel in NYC Wednesday when our photog asked if she was going to pull the trigger and go to cops. She wouldn't comment on Scott's appearance on GMA Wednesday, where he essentially called her a liar and invited her to call cops, because he says he never had sexual contact with her until she was 18. Nicole and her lawyer Lisa Bloom also said they were considering filing a lawsuit against Scott. We asked her if she was going to follow through with that, and she somewhat coyly suggested that was in the cards. | Entertainment |
Dr. Hoffman established a family network to help people with borderline personality disorder, a support system that become a model for other conditions.Credit...Owen Hoffmann/Patrick McMullan, via Getty ImagesDec. 2, 2019Perry Hoffman, a former elementary-school teacher and a mother of three with a degree in social work, was working part time in a psychiatric ward when she became fascinated by borderline personality disorder, a poorly understood condition characterized by extreme neediness and dark swarms of emotion. Her interest led her to perform research on the condition, which usually strikes in the teenage years or earlier and takes a harsh toll on family members. That gave her an idea: a support organization for relatives.She went on to co-found and direct a family network that not only provided authoritative education about borderline personality but also built skills to manage it, enlisting parents to teach parents. The program, which became available throughout the world, is seen as a model across psychiatry.Dr. Hoffman died on Nov. 3 at her home in Mamaroneck, N.Y. She was 75. Her husband, Bruce Hoffman, said the cause was Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. Psychiatric researchers had done years of painstaking work to understand how the patterns of communication within families influence the development and course of mental disorders. By the mid-1980s, when Dr. Hoffman was beginning to remake her career, they had linked certain family environments those that are particularly critical, for instance, or overprotective to worse outcomes for people with schizophrenia and depression. Dr. Hoffman wanted to know about the impact of family environments on people with borderline personality disorder, and in the mid-1990s she teamed with Jill M. Hooley, a psychology professor at Harvard.It was an absolutely new idea, to look at the impact of factors like criticism, hostility and emotional overinvolvement in these families, Dr. Hooley said in a phone interview. The findings were entirely unexpected: For instance, a particularly critical family environment did not have much apparent impact on borderline symptoms over time, but an overinvolved, protective and doting one did.Higher levels of emotional overinvolvement were associated with better outcomes and absence of re-hospitalization, the pair concluded, in a landmark paper published in 1999 in The American Journal of Psychiatry.Shortly afterward, in 2001, Dr. Hoffman co-founded the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, which soon became one of the countrys leading parent support organizations in mental health. She and Alan E. Fruzzetti, a psychologist at Harvard, developed the alliances Family Connections program, a series of group sessions in which families teach each other how to cope, guided by some of the very principles used by therapists.She democratized the entire field; she brought together patients, family members, professionals, all in the same room that was her idea, and it was unheard-of at the time, Mr. Fruzzetti said in a phone interview.The success of the program became its own kind of hard evidence in refuting myths about borderline personality disorder, which is marked by neediness, baiting and emotional outbursts that appear so often to be the symptoms of poisoned relationships. A lot of psychotherapists tend to lean in and blame families, and she was a force against all that, said Dr. Lois Choi-Kain, director of the Adult Borderline Center and Training Institute at McLean Hospital.Perry Ann Dunn was born on July 21, 1944, in Manhattan, the second of three children of Joseph Dunn, an engineer, and Edith (Goldstein) Dunn, a homemaker. The couple had fled Belgium during the Nazi era. The family moved to Larchmont, where Perry grew up. She attended Mamaroneck High School, where she met Mr. Hoffman. The two became a couple, and married in 1966.She attended Temple University in Philadelphia, earning a bachelors degree in teaching, and taught elementary school for two years in England before becoming pregnant with her first child. In addition to her husband, Dr. Hoffman is survived by three children, Brendan and David Hoffman and Rennie Silverman; seven grandchildren; and a sister, Joy Dunn. Her brother, Richard Dunn, died before her.On returning to New York, Dr. Hoffman continued to teach elementary school, now part time, while attending Fordham University at night for a masters degree in social work, which she received in 1984. She continued coursework at night and eventually received a Ph.D. from New York University. By that time, while working part time at New York Hospital in White Plains, she had become hooked by the strange family dramas of borderline personality disorder.It was all about family, family, family with Perry, Mr. Hoffman said. Her own, first; and then so, so many others.She later co-wrote two influential treatment texts for therapists and a book for a general audience, Beyond Borderline: True Stories of Recovery From Borderline Personality Disorder (2016), with Dr. John Gunderson. Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver in the National Football League who has been public about his diagnosis, wrote the foreword.In one of the papers she wrote with Dr. Hooley, Dr. Hoffman cited the kind of evidence for family-led treatment that, by all accounts, she was especially aware of. It is not unusual for group members to stay after the formal group meeting ends, she observed. In some cases, families have been asked to leave to permit the custodians to close up the building. | Health |
Science TimesA bone to pick from Germanys Unicorn Cave. Plus fireflies in sync, peer review in crisis and Chinas astronauts at work in their spacesuits.Credit...V. MinkusJuly 10, 2021In 2019, a team of archaeologists climbed a steep, rocky hill in central Germany and burrowed inside the collapsed entrance of the Unicorn Cave, named as such because people in the Middle Ages once scoured it for unicorn bones. Today it is famous for its animal fossils.Over the course of about a month, they excavated an area of just 16 square feet, pulling out of the brown dirt dozens of ancient mammal bones. Most were unremarkable, either the remains of bears who had once used the cave to hibernate, or the butchered castaways from carcasses hunted by Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago.But one specimen, a 2-inch-long foot bone of a giant deer, stood apart. It was carved with six thick rectangular notches, in a distinct chevron pattern.When Thomas Terberger, the projects leader, first saw those cut marks, he knew they could not have been made by accident. We realized it was more profound it was something intentionally carved into the bone surface, said Dr. Terberger, an archaeologist with the State Service for Cultural Heritage Lower Saxony in Hannover, Germany.The bone was likely boiled before being carved, and took about an hour and a half to make, Dr. Terberger said. When the bone stands upright, the chevron pattern points to the sky.Even though Neanderthals were known to have lived in and around the cave, Dr. Terberger initially thought the carving had to have been made by an early Homo sapiens. Such cultural artifacts from Neanderthals are extremely rare, after all, and often contested. But radiocarbon dating showed that the foot was 51,000 years old meaning it was made several thousands of years before the first early modern humans showed up in the region.So the carving, as the scientists published this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution, was almost certainly made by Neanderthals. As Silvia Bello, a researcher at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the discovery, wrote in the same issue of the journal, the finding is one of the most complex artistic expressions by Neanderthals thus far known.Ever since the first major Neanderthal fossil was found in another German cave in 1856, our hominin cousins have been thought of as thick, dumb brutes. Although more recent discoveries have shown that Neanderthals used sophisticated tools, buried their dead and, of course, mated with Homo sapiens, we are still somehow a bit imprisoned in our image of the Neanderthals from the 19th century, Dr. Terberger said.The new carving is one of only a handful of examples of Neanderthal art, like body ornaments, rock engravings and notched animal bones. Many scientists have raised doubts about whether some of these Neanderthal art pieces were actually tools, and whether they picked up their creative proclivities from interactions with early ancestors from our species.The carving was made on the foot of a giant deer, a majestic animal that was rare in the area and may have had symbolic meaning to the people who killed it, Dr. Terberger said.But is this bone carving with its chevron patterns really art? Dr. Terberger prefers to call it a complex decoration, perhaps a precursor to art. But they do not make a decoration complex like this just to have fun, he said.The size suggests its something you can hold in your hand, look at it and inspire your imagination, he said. Everybody can decide for themselves what he sees in this.What were metabolizing latelyAfter 18 months of Covid, scientific publishing and peer review may never be the same. Maggie Koerth reports on what scientists are learning from that.Who gets a kidney transplant? A biracial mans case shows how assumptions about race play into listings for lifesaving organ donations.Did Jaws have a BFF? The social lives of sharks have been highlighted in recent years.China is building a space station in orbit, and a pair of the countrys astronauts took a trip outside for the first spacewalk at the outpost on Saturday.The nine lives of Cat Person. Phew.Finally, beetles, spiky genitals and a quite literal girding of the loins. | science |
News AnalysisCredit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 14, 2018WASHINGTON The report that had much of Washington buzzing on Thursday required 500 pages to outline its findings, but to President Trump, three words mattered most well stop it.Those were the words that a senior F.B.I. agent texted in August 2016 to a colleague who was worried that Mr. Trump would win the election. For the president, that text seemed to validate his claim of a deep state conspiracy out to get him.But the same inspector general report also undercut Mr. Trumps narrative. Whatever the agent, Peter Strzok, meant, the F.B.I. did not stop Mr. Trump, nor did the inspector general find evidence it tried. To the extent that the F.B.I. and its director at the time, James B. Comey, did anything wrong in 2016, according to the report, it was to the disadvantage of Mr. Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton.The sprawling report, the most comprehensive look back at the investigation into Mrs. Clintons use of an unclassified private email server, reflected a messier reality than the simple story line promoted by the White House: An array of senior officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department made mistakes, the inspector general determined, but he found nothing to conclude that anyone went easy on Mrs. Clinton or tried to harm Mr. Trump out of political bias.If anything, the report affirmed the complaints that Mrs. Clinton and her team have lodged against Mr. Comey that he went too far by criticizing her conduct while declining to bring charges, and that he erred by disclosing days before the election that he was reopening the inquiry while never revealing an investigation into contacts between Mr. Trumps campaign and Russia.A fair reading of the report shows that the F.B.I. applied a double standard to the Clinton and Trump investigations that was unfair to Clinton and helped elect Trump, said John D. Podesta, who was Mrs. Clintons campaign chairman. That said, hell use one random Strzok email to spin a deep-state conspiracy which plays to his core.Any independent criticism of Mr. Comey even though for his treatment of Mrs. Clinton helps Mr. Trump undermine the credibility of someone who may be a crucial witness against him in any case of obstruction of justice arising from the presidents decision to fire the F.B.I. director last year.It was Mr. Trumps decision to fire Mr. Comey, who was then leading the investigation into contacts between Russia and the presidents team, that led to the appointment of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.Any report which critiques former senior F.B.I. employees of both Robert Mueller and James Comey and are being used by Mueller as prime witnesses against President Trump is inherently a winner for the president, said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser. The I.G. report continues the delegitimization of the entire Mueller investigation, which is ultimately the fruit of the poisonous and disgruntled James Comey.Mr. Trump initially cited letters from his attorney general and deputy attorney general faulting Mr. Comeys handling of the investigation into Mrs. Clinton as the reason for firing him. But the next day, the president acknowledged that he would have done it even without the letters and that he was thinking about the Russia investigation at the time.More recently, his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said one reason Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey was that the F.B.I. director would not publicly exonerate the president in the Russia inquiry.The report released Thursday did not examine the origins of the Russia investigation, which Mr. Trump has called into question. But it will be used to shape the perception of it.Mr. Trump remained uncharacteristically quiet about the report in the hours after it was released, and his spokeswoman offered just a terse reaction to it.It reaffirmed the presidents suspicions about Comeys conduct and the political bias among some members of the F.B.I., said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.Jennifer Palmieri, who was the communications director for Mrs. Clintons campaign, said that perversely the report will help Mr. Trump on the margins by tarnishing the F.B.I.The report wont move anyone who doesnt already agree with Trump, she said. A nonbiased person can clearly see the F.B.I.s actions only served to help Trump.Robert Bauer, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama, said Mr. Trump will pick out findings he considers beneficial to his argument.How much this report helps Mr. Trump depends on how successfully in the short term he mischaracterizes its findings, Mr. Bauer said. But in the long run, the report stands as a conclusive rebuttal to his persistent claims that Hillary Clinton violated the law and escaped only because the investigation was somehow rigged.Yet while the report did not find that bias influenced the investigation, it did find that five F.B.I. employees assigned to the investigation into Mrs. Clinton expressed statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for candidate Clinton. Those employees brought discredit to themselves and cast a cloud over the investigation.Among them was Mr. Strzok, the senior F.B.I. agent who sent the well stop it text to Lisa Page, a senior F.B.I. lawyer. Mr. Strzok went from the Clinton investigation to the Russia investigation, but was moved off the case by Mr. Mueller last year after other political texts came to light. Ms. Page left her job this spring.He sent her the well stop it message after she texted him asking if Mr. Trump might really become president. Questioned by the inspector general, Mr. Strzok said that he did not remember the message but that it would have been meant to reassure Ms. Page that Mr. Trump would not win, not to indicate that he would use his job to influence the election.Moreover, Mr. Strzok told the inspector general that if the F.B.I. were trying to harm Mr. Trumps chances, it would have revealed its then-secret investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia before the election, which it did not. The report further noted that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page advocated more aggressive measures in the Clinton inquiry.But allies of Mr. Trump said Mr. Strzok and other agents failed to follow up immediately on new emails found in fall 2016 on a laptop belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the husband of an aide to Mrs. Clinton, because they were busy with the Russia investigation.Peter Strzok and the investigative team made a decision to go one direction which would be more damaging to this president than following up on other leads as it relates to Hillary Clinton, Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, said on Fox News.The F.B.I. delayed by several weeks looking into Mr. Weiners laptop. As a result, Mr. Comeys announcement that he was reopening the email investigation came just days before the election and dominated the final days of the campaign.In the end, the F.B.I. found nothing new on Mr. Weiners laptop that changed the decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton. But Mr. Strzok proved to be wrong. Neither he nor anyone else could stop Mr. Trump. | Politics |
Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York TimesMay 7, 2019SAN FRANCISCO The ride-hailing company Lyft went public in March in a blaze of hype. But it stumbled quickly and its shares slid below their offering price amid questions about whether the company could make money.On Tuesday, it answered the question by saying 2019 would be its most money-losing year yet.In its first financial results as a public company, Lyft posted a loss of $1.14 billion for the first quarter, compared with a loss of $234.3 million in the same period a year earlier. The widening loss was driven by a $894 million charge for its stock-based compensation. Excluding that expense, the loss was $211.5 million. The companys revenue rose 95 percent to $776 million.Brian Roberts, Lyfts chief financial officer, said the losses would continue this year, which would be our peak loss year and then we will move steadily towards profitability. Thats because Lyft plans to invest heavily in new branches of its business, including its short-term rentals of electronic bikes and scooters, its autonomous vehicle development and its rollout of driver centers that provide vehicle maintenance and other services to drivers, he said.Lyft reported its earnings days before the scheduled initial public offering by its rival Uber, the largest technology company of the last few years to barrel onto the stock market. Uber has set a pricing range for its offering that values it at up to $91 billion. But it, too, is deeply unprofitable and has prompted questions about whether ride-hailing which involves hefty spending to attract drivers and passengers is a sustainable business in the long run.Both Lyft and Uber are expected to be losing money for years, said Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida and an expert on public offerings. The question is when, if ever, will they turn the corner.[Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.]Lyfts shares were largely flat in after-hours trading. As of Tuesdays market close, the stock was more than 17 percent below its offering price of $72 a share.Logan Green, Lyfts chief executive, said in a statement that the company was off to a strong start to an important year. He emphasized that Lyft was growing and that the number of active riders those who had taken at least one ride in a quarter using the platform had grown 46 percent over the past year, to 20.5 million.Yet the companys losses, even excluding the stock-based compensation expense, showed little improvement. Lyfts spending also increased, with total costs and expenses rising to $1.9 billion in the quarter, compared with $643 million a year earlier.The stock-based compensation charge was substantial because in the first earnings report after its public offering, Lyft had to account for all of the stock that employees had vested over the past several years. In subsequent quarters, the expense will probably decrease because it will reflect just stock that has vested during the quarter.Some analysts said they were looking more at Lyfts growth metrics. John Blackledge, a senior research analyst at Cowen, said he had baked in expectations of losses for Lyft and was paying more attention to numbers such as robustness in riders and revenue per rider. Tom White, a senior research analyst at the financial firm D.A. Davidson, said Lyfts losses were moderating and that it was better than people were expecting.Lyft forecast that its revenue would grow to as much as $3.3 billion by the end of 2019, up 53 percent from a year earlier. That would be slower than 2018, when the companys revenue doubled.Lyft also announced that it was expanding its partnerships with autonomous vehicle manufacturers. That includes entering a partnership with Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company owned by Googles parent company, Alphabet. Under the deal, Lyft plans to offer rides in the Phoenix area on 10 of Waymos autonomous vehicles. Lyft has said that it prefers to work with companies that manufacture self-driving cars rather than building its own.One of Waymos sister companies, CapitalG, an investment firm under Alphabet, is an investor in Lyft and holds a 2.4 percent stake in the ride-hailing company. Waymo and Lyft have discussed ways to collaborate on autonomous vehicles for years.The partnership will allow Lyft users to take what for many will be their first ride in a self-driving vehicle, John Krafcik, Waymos chief executive, said in a statement.Later this week, Lyft faces a different challenge. On Wednesday, ride-hailing drivers across the United States and in Britain and Australia are expected to strike before Ubers public offering to protest low wages and other grievances.Drivers work as independent contractors, not as full-time employees, making them ineligible for benefits and other perks. The ride-hailing companies have said drivers freelance status gives them flexibility. In San Francisco, where Lyft and Uber are based, some drivers said they planned to log out of the companys apps and not provide rides between noon and midnight.We know that access to flexible, extra income makes a big difference for millions of people, and were constantly working to improve how we can best serve our driver community, a Lyft spokesman said. | Tech |
Elton John The Sun's Goin' Down On Me ... Announces Farewell Tour 1/24/2018 Elton John VEVO Elton John is giving touring one last shot, and then he's saying farewell to life on the road. Elton just sat down with Anderson Cooper to announce a world tour, saying it'll span over the course of the next 3 years. The singer says he wants to spend more time with his husband, two kids and family so he's calling it quits. The 70-year-old legend has been on the road for almost 50 years. His first big hit, "Your Song" was released in 1970. What's unclear ... will he continue his Vegas residency after his farewell tour? One thing we know ... he won't stop performing. Our Elton sources say the announcement is ONLY about touring. | Entertainment |
TrilobitesThe distribution of shells in one population of hermit crabs matched how wealth is shared in some human societies. VideoA hermit crab claims a larger shell, setting off a series of shell changes that scientists call a vacancy chain.CreditCredit...By Lester LefkowitzDec. 13, 2019Hermit crabs face a uniquely competitive real estate market. They need bigger and bigger shells throughout their lives, but cant grow these homes themselves. So they rely on castoff snail shells, and are constantly on the lookout for better properties entering the market. A study that will be published next month in the journal Physica A found that the distribution of these shells in one hermit crab population was surprisingly similar to the distribution of wealth in human societies.That may make hermit crabs one of the first animals known to experience wealth inequality.Ivan Chase, an emeritus professor at Stony Brook University in New York and the studys lead author, researches social systems in animals and described a phenomenon called the vacancy chain in hermit crabs in the 1980s.When a snail dies on the beach, a crab that comes across the empty shell will inspect it closely, turning the shell over in its claws. If the crab decides this home is better than its current shell, it trades up. Another, usually smaller crab may soon find that crabs castoff and move in. Each vacancy lets about three crabs upgrade their shells, Dr. Chase said.Dr. Chase had always wondered whether this system led to a kind of inequality among hermit crabs, with a few crustaceans hoarding the biggest homes. So in 2017, he and his co-authors started testing the idea. They gathered almost 300 hermit crabs from a Long Island beach and briefly removed the crabs from their shells. They weighed and measured each crab and its residence. Then they looked at how shells of different weights were distributed among the population.The distribution curve they found peaked around medium-sized shells, then dropped as the shells got larger, before tapering off very gradually through the largest shells of all. This matches the shape of wealth distribution curves in many human societies.VideoA second hermit crab in the vacancy chain claims a shell that has become available.The team used a number called the Gini coefficient to measure overall inequality among the crabs. It found a value similar to that in small human populations, though not as great as in todays large countries. The top 1 percent of hermit crabs owned only about 3 percent of the total shell weight, Dr. Chase and his co-authors noted: There are no Warren Buffetts or Jeff Bezoses. There is also no transfer of shells between crabs and their offspring.What they discovered suggested that the distribution of shell sizes did not simply depend on crab biology. They did not find similar numbers of crabs in every size of shell, which would be expected if most crabs survive to old age (and if longevity determines shell distribution). Nor did they find that the smallest shells were most abundant, which might occur if crabs most often die young, or are preyed on at a steady rate throughout their life span.Dr. Chase thinks the resemblance between crab and human inequality might come from similarities between crab vacancy chains and the ways people pass on wealth. While smaller crabs dont exactly inherit their wealth from bigger crabs, the largest shells are a scarce resource that only a few crabs are privileged enough to get their claws on.Vacancy chains are just another way of transferring property, he said.Although hes hesitant to draw any societal lessons from the crustaceans, he hopes hermit crabs can one day become a kind of model organism, like lab rats, for scientists studying wealth inequality.The authors have nicely shown that the wealth distribution in crabs is humanlike, said Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, an anthropologist who studies human wealth inequality at the University of California, Davis. The pattern is very much like what researchers have found in small-scale human societies, both historic and contemporary, she said.Although the transfer of wealth and property between people is an important contributor to inequality, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder said many other factors matter too, such as social connections and individual differences in skills and education. She doubts vacancy chains are the whole story in crab society, either.The notion that crabs can teach us about human wealth distribution may be a little preposterous, Dr. Borgerhoff Mulder added. But she said this kind of idea sharing between studies of humans and other animals is making social science, as a whole, richer. | science |
Credit...M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesJune 28, 2018CHELSEA, Mass. It was the day after a Latina community activist in New York toppled an entrenched congressman of her own party in one of the biggest political upsets of the decade. And the shock waves reverberated 200 miles away in Boston, where another woman of color who is challenging an entrenched incumbent was clearly buoyed by the surprising turn of events.Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councilwoman, appearing at a candidate forum at a senior center Wednesday night, gave a brief, impassioned speech about economic inequality and concluded that she this woman! could be a disruptive force for change. The audience whooped and hollered in support.In an interview afterward, Ms. Pressley, her voice raspy from pollen in the air, said she was inspired by the stunning success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday in a New York Democratic House primary.What her victory has done is reaffirmed for us that theres a path to victory, that this is winnable and that its going to come down to the field, Ms. Pressley said, referring to how campaign workers get out the vote.Since Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory over longtime Queens Democrat Joseph Crowley, several other insurgent candidates have drawn inspiration from the success of her unapologetically progressive campaign providing hope that they, too, could upend the Democratic establishment against all odds.This is especially true among women, who are running for Congress in record numbers this year. In Massachusetts, three women who are challenging longtime male House members said the results in New York have provided a jolt of confidence.Every race has its own dynamics, and two of the three women running in Massachusetts remain long shots to win their primaries on Sept. 4. But each also received an uptick in fund-raising and social media interest after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez scored her victory, their campaigns said a testament to just how many progressive voters see 2018 as an opportunity to upend the partys male stalwarts.Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory instantly raised Ms. Pressleys national profile in her race against Representative Michael E. Capuano, increasing media attention, visits to her website (pageviews are up 57 percent since Monday, with 43 percent more people signing up to volunteer or donate) and donations to her campaign. She received 205 contributions from Tuesday night through Thursday morning, most of them under $100, for a total of $18,000; thats three times the number of contributions she received in the same period last week.Brianna Wu, a software engineer running against Representative Stephen Lynch in a district largely comprising communities south of Boston, said her campaign had one of its best fund-raising days in weeks on Wednesday all thanks to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.ImageCredit...M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesSeeing someone in a similar position, and with your positions on the issues, take on the system and win it makes your whole team feel unbelievably energized,Ms. Wu said in a telephone interview.She said both she and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez were focused on energizing new voters who are historically less likely to turn out in midterm elections.What really excites me is her energy, that youre going out and youre talking to constituents who dont feel represented, Ms. Wu said. It lights your soul on fire, it makes you want to get out there and knock on twice as many doors.Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, a lawyer from Springfield, Mass., who is challenging 15-term incumbent Richard Neal in Massachusettss 1st district, said Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory was particularly inspiring to her as a fellow minority woman.We dont have millions of dollars to buy visibility, Ms. Amatul-Wadud said. We have to go door to door. We have to talk to the grass roots. We have to talk to the masses, not just the elite.Neither Ms. Amatul-Waduds opponent nor Ms. Wus responded to requests for comment.Although the insurgent candidates said the intangible benefits of Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory were immense, national political analysts warned against drawing too many parallels between her triumph and other races.The overwhelming majority of Democratic incumbents have been successful in defending their seats this election cycle, and while the party frequently has clashes of ideas and strategy, grass-roots activism traditionally has to be coupled with significant monetary investment to be successful, said Anna Sampaio, who specializes in race, gender and politics at Santa Clara University.I wouldnt say this is a tidal wave, Ms. Sampaio said. The animosity against Trump alone wont make the difference. You have to invest in registering, connecting and mobilizing voters. And without that investment, that tidal wave? I dont see it coming.Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory required the right time, right place, right message and right candidate. She said this alignment, though inspiring, would be difficult to replicate.At most, its a wake-up call to Democrats, and its a wake-up call for incumbents of either party, Ms. Walsh said of Tuesdays results. Never take a re-election for granted.But if there is an analogous situation in the Bay State to Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory, it may be the campaign of Ms. Pressley, who similarly combines grass-roots support with institutional credibility. Ms. Pressley has been endorsed by Justice Democrats, the progressive organization that was among the first to encourage Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to run.ImageCredit...M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesIn the interview, Ms. Pressley sought to align herself closely with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.Neither of us are accepting corporate PAC money, Ms. Pressley said. We both have taken a position to defund and to abolish ICE. We both support health care and Medicare for all. So there are many similarities our convictions, our values, our positions, and the kind of campaigns were running and how we hope to govern.As the primary approaches, Ms. Pressley has mobilized a sizable grass-roots engagement team and hopes to execute the same field strategy that proved so successful for her New York counterpart.Ayannas got an opportunity now, shes got a chance, said Mary Anne Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist. Theres national attention on her because someone like Ocasio-Cortez who was outspent, worked like crazy, organized like crazy and has a great message won. The question is, can Ayanna make good on this opportunity?Doug Rubin, another Democratic consultant in Boston, said he believed the environment was so ripe for change that Ms. Pressley had the potential to win. Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory, he said, would help Ms. Pressley with raising money and her profile and giving more credibility to her victory scenario.But for all their similarities, Ms. Pressley lacks an advantage that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had she is not catching her opponent off guard.Capuano was initially in a state of denial, but then he kicked into gear, and hes putting together a real campaign now, said Ms. Marsh, the strategist. He had a good visit to the border, hes picking up endorsements left and right, and if he cant win them, hes trying to deny them from her.Mr. Capuano has been endorsed by minority establishment figures such as Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon, and organizations like the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus. He also has the crucial backing of Bostons mayor, Martin J. Walsh.Mr. Capuano was not available for comment Thursday, but his spokeswoman said in a statement: Because of Donald Trump, were in the fight of our lives, and we believe people here will recognize that we need to keep Mikes experience, proven skill and strength in that fight.Money remains a challenge for Ms. Pressley. Mr. Capuano raised $838,000 in the first three months of the year, the most recent figures available, compared with $364,000 for Ms. Pressley. He had more than $1.1 million in cash on hand, while she had $260,000. Another challenge for Ms. Pressley is creating ideological separation, because Mr. Capuano has an established progressive voting record in Congress.Ms. Pressley said she knows shes the underdog, but she still sees Ms. Ocasio-Cortezs victory as a tipping point.At the womens march, we held signs that said, Today we march, tomorrow we run, Ms. Pressley said. They didnt believe us, but its coming to pass. Buckle up. | Politics |
Among those under age 50, vaccination even without a booster protected strongly against hospitalization and death, according to new C.D.C. data.Credit...James Estrin/The New York TimesFeb. 4, 2022The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday night published new data on the risks of hospitalization and death from Covid-19 among people who are unvaccinated and vaccinated, with or without booster doses.The agency recommends booster shots for Americans 12 and older. These are the first comprehensive data on the effectiveness of boosters by age in the United States.The figures confirm that booster doses are most beneficial to older adults, as the C.D.C. has previously reported. But the new numbers for younger Americans were less compelling. In those age groups, vaccination itself two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that a booster shot did not seem to add much benefit.The data run only through the end of December, when the Omicron surge had just begun. Because the variant is so highly contagious, booster shots may have helped limit the variants spread through the population, an argument for boosters that would not be fully captured in the new research.Still, several recent studies have found that vaccination alone, without boosters, remained strongly protective against severe illness and death in most people, even after Omicrons appearance.I do not think these data support a universal booster rollout for everyone, said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist at Kaiser Health News.Instead, boosters seem most essential for older adults, she said, and those who have certain immune conditions or live in long-term care facilities. In younger Americans, it may have made sense to make booster shots available only to those with certain medical risks, she said.The advantages of booster shots in various age groups were hotly debated last fall, when the Delta variant was the primary form of the virus in the United States. But many scientists came to favor additional doses after the arrival of the highly contagious Omicron variant.The effect of the booster can be seen in the data sets, but its far smaller than the effect of vaccination compared to not, said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. The real problem is the carnage among the unvaccinated.Unvaccinated people in every age group are at higher risk of infection, hospitalization and death than those who have been immunized, according to the C.D.C.s data a persistent trend ever since vaccines were introduced.As of Dec. 25, the rate of hospitalization among unvaccinated adults older than age 65 was 246 per 100,000 people. That rate dropped to 27.4 per 100,000 among people who were vaccinated without a booster dose, and to 4.9 among those who were vaccinated and received a booster.There were roughly 44 deaths per 100,000 unvaccinated adults 65 and older. Vaccinations dropped that number to about 3.6 deaths per 100,000, one-twelfth as much. Booster shots reduced the rate further, to about 0.5 deaths per 100,000, a figure 90 times as small.But such risk comparisons were less useful in younger people, for whom the rate of severe outcomes was already low.Among adults 50 to 64, 73 unvaccinated adults per 100,000 were hospitalized, compared with nine per 100,000 among those who were vaccinated and just two per 100,000 among those who had also received a booster shot.Boosters made less of a difference in the number of Covid deaths in this age group. Vaccinations decreased the rate to 0.4 deaths per 100,000 from 8.26 per 100,000. With boosters, that number fell to 0.1 deaths per 100,000 people.This is the difference between a relative risk reduction and an absolute risk reduction, Dr. Gounder said. If youre starting off with a relatively low risk, and you further reduce that risk, in the big picture that may not be such a big impact.The agency did not provide hospitalization numbers for adults 18 through 49, perhaps because the numbers were too small. Dr. Gounder added that such data would be really helpful in guiding decisions about boosters.The C.D.C. also did not release data for children age 12 and older, possibly because boosters have not been recommended for long enough in that age group to have generated meaningful numbers.The risk of Covid death among Americans ages 18 to 49 was low. The rate was about 0.9 per 100,000 people among the unvaccinated, and plummeted to 0.03 among people who were vaccinated. With the addition of a booster, deaths were too low to measure.Im in favor of boosters, but I dont want to overstate their importance, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.The benefit of a booster dose is clearly greater in the elderly, he added. It is progressively less in the lower risk groups.One argument for a universal booster recommendation was to limit the number of infections among all groups and reduce the spread of the virus. The Omicron variant was able to sidestep immune defenses and infect many more people than previous variants, including many who were vaccinated.Booster doses cut the risk of infection in vaccinated people by about half across all age groups. The gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated groups was much greater. The numbers most likely reflect only symptomatic cases, and may be different for asymptomatic infections, Dr. Barouch noted.The figures may also vary with time: Boosters were administered fairly recently, and early data from Britain suggest that their effect may wane in a few months, he added.Some people have worried about persistent symptoms even after a mild bout of Covid. But a recent study suggested that the risk of so-called long Covid is highest among people with one of four predisposing factors, including Type 2 diabetes and the presence of autoantibodies.If the C.D.C. had taken a more targeted approach to booster recommendations, younger adults who have one of those risk factors and were concerned about long Covid could still have chosen to receive a booster, Dr. Gounder said.Still, the new data may not make any difference to the C.D.C.s recommendations on boosters, or to the general public.The booster policy is the booster policy. Its not going to change, Dr. Moore said. | Health |
2018 AVN Awards Photos Don't Bare All ... But They Bare Most 1/28/2018 The 35th annual AVN Awards went down in Vegas Saturday night, and the nominees and other showed what they got. 75 awards were handed out, including Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene, Best 3-Way Sex Scene, Best Big Butt Movie, Best Male Newcomer, Best Taboo Relations, Best Group Sex Scene, Best Orgy Gang Bang Movie, BBW Performer of the Year, Best Anal Series, Best Older Woman/Younger Girl Move, Best Polyamory Movie, Best Transsexual Movie, Best Virtual Reality Sex Scene and Best Fetish Manufacturer. Take that, Clive Davis! | Entertainment |
Science|Your A.T.M. Is Covered in Microbes, but Mostly Harmlesshttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/science/atm-keypad-microbes.htmlTrilobitesCredit...Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesNov. 18, 2016Whenever you withdraw money from an automated teller machine, the A.T.M. deposits microbes onto you.That shouldnt be surprising because germs and bacteria are everywhere: on doorknobs, subway seats, staircases, your cat, your dog, your face. You cant avoid them, especially when youre punching in your pin.Researchers in New York City swabbed the keypads of 66 A.T.M.s at banks, bodegas and other places across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. They found that A.T.M.s are mostly covered in microbes from human skin, similar to the ones found in bathrooms, on pillowcases and on televisions.They also found that in addition to leaving bits of ourselves behind whenever we touch the keypads, we also litter the machines with leftovers. Traces of chicken, fish and other seafood were among the most commonly found microbes. In Manhattan they found a mold called Xeromyces bisporus, which is associated with spoiled cakes and other baked goods.New Yorkers love their food, its not that surprising, said Jane Carlton, an urban microbiology ecologist from New York University and an author of the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal mSphere. She added that the microbes they found were pretty consistent across boroughs and stressed that the majority of the microbes they found were harmless. Gross, perhaps, but mostly harmless.To researchers like Dr. Carlton, A.T.M.s act like miniature laboratories where they can study the DNA of the city. The machines house a unique microcosm on their keypads that reflects the people who use them every day. The team did not look at touch screen A.T.M.s.The study is part of a larger research project to investigate New York Citys urban microbiome. So far, researchers have already looked at microbes on the subway system, which provide insight into people from all around the city. The A.T.M. findings, Dr. Carlton said, were just another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of microbes in New York City.To complete their portrait they plan to next look at the citys pets and pests. That means swabbing cats, dogs, squirrels, pigeons, rats and cockroaches. | science |
Feb. 10, 2014A Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner, capable of carrying nearly 200 people up to 7,850 nautical miles, touched down at Kennedy International Airport on Sunday afternoon with only six passengers, including an ace pitcher, his pop star wife, a personal manager and a toy poodle named Haru.The unusual flight manifest was not a joke, but the grand entrance of Masahiro Tanaka, the Yankees flamboyant Japanese pitcher who put his newfound dollars to immediate use.Eager to avoid a snowstorm and arrive in New York in time for his introductory news conference Tuesday, Tanaka rented the plane from JAL for an estimated $200,000. Not even Reggie Jackson made such a colorful entrance to New York when he signed as a free agent with the Yankees in November 1976.It is unclear whether Haru had his own seat, but there were nearly 200 empty ones from which to choose.Totally over the top, said Robert W. Mann, an aviation consultant. So Yankees.But the Yankees did not participate in Tanakas decision to charter a commercial jet, and their most affluent players tend to use private jets rather than fly on commercial airlines. Tanakas new $155 million contract calls for a certain number of first-class tickets between Japan and the United States a year, so he will be reimbursed the equivalent of the price of the first-class ticket. Carol Anderson, a spokeswoman for JAL, confirmed that a flight was chartered from Tokyo to J.F.K. on Sunday, but would not reveal the cost of the flight. She said the plane returned to Tokyo as a ferry flight, meaning it refueled, turned around and flew back empty, perhaps with a few extra dog hairs.ImageCredit...Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse Getty ImagesWhen the Yankees signed Tanaka last month from the Rakuten Golden Eagles in Japan, questions immediately arose about how he would make the adjustment to major league baseball. Would he take to the baseball used in the United States or the mound? Would he be able to handle the schedule and the increased travel? How would he handle the bigger hitters?If nothing else, he has demonstrated resourcefulness.Tanakas commute to Narita Airport from his hotel in downtown Tokyo usually a two-hour journey took eight and a half hours. Trains were not running and the highways were impassable, according to reports in Japan, and Tanakas driver was forced to use tiny, snow-covered surface roads to reach the airport.As is customary for most Japanese baseball players traveling to and from Japan, a news conference was set up at the airport before his departure. Dozens of reporters representing Japanese news media were at J.F.K. on Sunday to record his arrival and photograph the boxes some labeled for New York, others for Tampa, Fla., the teams spring training facility stacked in the luggage area.At Narita, Tanakas personal manager, Yoshiki Sato, said that with bad weather approaching the metropolitan area they thought it best to charter the plane in advance. That way, they would not have to worry about cancellations or missing the flight because of a strenuous trip to the airport. He said Tanaka needed to get to New York in a manner befitting a major league player.Mann, the aviation consultant, said Tanaka could probably have found a less conspicuous way to fly from Tokyo to New York. Flying 5,870 nautical miles is easily within the range of several smaller private jets, including the Gulfstream G-V, G550 and G650 and the Bombardier Global 6000, he said. Those planes can fly the distance nonstop, depending on wind and payload, and in the event of unfavorable wind, a refueling stop in Anchorage is often part of the flight plan. It is believed the JAL charter took less than the usual 13 hours because of the lighter payload. Without the many additional passengers, their luggage and the fuel needed to carry them, the plane is believed to have made the trip to J.F.K. in less than 11 hours.That makes sense, because the scouting report on Tanaka emphasizes his ability to increase his velocity when needed. | Sports |
Credit...Alex Goodlett for The New York TimesJune 27, 2015The players and coaches from the Red Bulls and New York City F.C. crossed paths for only a few minutes on Thursday. Sharing a podium as they changed places at a news conference promoting their game Sunday at nearly sold-out Yankee Stadium, the two players and their coaches awkwardly held team scarves for the kind of posed photos that most news organizations do not publish.It was a staged moment, to be sure, but it was also a symbolic one: two teams passing before Sunday night, when they will renew their one-game-old rivalry in a clash of styles of how to play and visions of how to build a team.No longer are the Red Bulls, whose payroll had, for years, been among the highest in Major League Soccer, a star-driven enterprise that relies on international names like Thierry Henry, Tim Cahill and Rafael Mrquez to attract attention and fans. Instead, under a new management team of Ali Curtis, the sporting director, and Coach Jesse Marsch, the Red Bulls have transformed themselves this season into a team much more reliant on the whole than on any single part. Instead of Henry and Cahill, the big names on last years playoff team, the Red Bulls now feature a journeyman striker (Bradley Wright-Phillips) who nearly broke the league scoring record last season; a playmaker who struggles to catch the attention of his national team coach (Sacha Kljestan); and a lunch-pail captain (Dax McCarty) who seems right at home in a locker room lined with phrases like: We play for each other. We live for each other.Right now, were a team that doesnt have that one big-name guy, McCarty said. Were a little bit more of an underdog in that respect. Were a team that we have to have all 11 guys pulling their weight and then some to be able to be successful.New York City F.C., meanwhile, has embraced the Red Bulls old playbook. It made headlines last summer long before it had played a game by making striker David Villa, a World Cup winner with Spain, its first signing. The team soon added another big name, Frank Lampard, and lured the popular United States midfielder Mix Diskerud home from Europe. Then, last week, it neared completion in negotiations to add Andrea Pirlo, a World Cup-winning midfield maestro for Italys Juventus. The expensive signings have been as flashy as the teams results have not been, and they will take the clubs payroll to about $20 million among the highest in the leagues history. Still, nearing the seasons halfway point, it is still anyones guess if the expensive plan will work. As of last week, Coach Jason Kreis was still waiting for all his stars to align.Were here for what I consider again to be a huge moment for soccer in this city, Kreis said Thursday when asked about Pirlo at the event to promote Sundays game. Its not the time to talk about players that we might be adding.The arrival of Lampard, and the possible arrival of Pirlo, should bolster New York City F.C.s midfield, but it could also complicate it because Diskerud already plays there and Villa sometimes drifts back in search of the ball. Making things work will be up to Kreis, whose mood has brightened amid a three-game winning streak by N.Y.C.F.C. (4-7-5) that followed a winless April and May.The results of off-season tinkering are also a work in progress across the Hudson River at Red Bull Arena. The Red Bulls (5-5-5) started the season well, but before Wednesdays win over Real Salt Lake, they had not won an M.L.S. match since their 2-1 win over N.Y.C.F.C. on May 10. The team has been hampered by poor finishing on Wednesday the Red Bulls failed to score even after Real Salt Lake had two players sent off, and Wright-Phillips could surely use some help up front but it does not appear that the Red Bulls are in a rush to follow their old plan (or the one their neighbors are using) and open its checkbook.For now, the path forward for both teams continues Sunday at Yankee Stadium.It contrasts completely, Red Bulls forward Mike Grella said of the teams approaches to improvement. I think what the Red Bulls are trying to do is build an organization from the bottom up. | Sports |
Storm Chasers' Star Joel Taylor Apparent Fatal OD Triggers FBI Investigation 1/25/2018 The apparent drug overdose that led to the death of a "Storm Chaser" star on a cruise ship has triggered an FBI investigation ... law enforcement sources tell TMZ. TMZ broke the story ... "Storm Chaser" star Joel Taylor had been doing GHB late Monday night going into Tuesday morning, dancing during a wild party, when he lapsed into unconsciousness. Taylor was carried into his cabin and left there. He was pronounced dead later that morning. TMZ.com We're told there were huge quantities of party drugs on board the ship, including cocaine, Ecstasy and GHB. Our sources say several people were arrested before the ship left the Ft. Lauderdale port. After Taylor died, the boat docked in Puerto Rico and passengers tell us there was a lot of commotion involving drugs on board the Royal Caribbean ship, Harmony of the Seas. Passengers tell us, the night Taylor apparently OD'd, drugs were flowing freely among many of the partygoers. We're told the FBI is investigating the circumstances of Taylor's death, how the drugs got on board and who supplied them. | Entertainment |
TrilobitesPerfect crystals of ice microfiber showed the flexibility of a material we usually assume to be rather brittle.VideoIce is brittle and snaps if you break it, right? Not this ice. Video by Xu et al.Published July 8, 2021Updated July 9, 2021Ice is rigid and brittle it would be astonishing to bend an icicle around a softball and have it spring back to its original straight shape. But thats what researchers have now done, although on a much smaller scale.They produced microscopic ice crystals that are not only elastic and flexible but that also transmit light remarkably well along their lengths. These ice microfibers could one day be used to study air pollution, the research team suggested in a paper published Thursday in Science.Limin Tong, a physicist at Zhejiang University in China, and his colleagues said they were inspired to study ice after working with a type of silica glass. Everyday experience teaches us that glass shaped into windows or drinking vessels is brittle, Dr. Tong said. But long, thin pieces of glass, like fiber optic strands, are flexible. Maybe the same is true of ice, the researchers hypothesized.Ice occurs in a wide variety of natural settings like glaciers and icebergs, but Dr. Tong and his colleagues needed to make frozen water that matched very particular specifications. This ice had to be nearly perfect.The team began by making a circular chamber just over an inch in diameter in a 3-D printer. Using liquid nitrogen, they cooled the space within the chamber to negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit. They then inserted tiny tools into this miniature laboratory, including a metal needle with 2,000 volts of electricity applied to it. That voltage created an electrical field, and water molecules present in the air responded to the field by settling on the needle. Very slowly, at a rate of roughly a hundredth of an inch per second, rodlike microfibers of ice grew from the tip of the needle.The microfibers never got very long they could barely be seen with the naked eye but high-resolution imaging revealed that they were single crystals. That means that the atoms within them are arranged in repeating patterns. The atoms are ordered like honeycombs, Dr. Tong said.This structural perfection, paired with the microfibers relative lack of microscopic defects such as tiny cracks, pores and missing atoms or molecules renders them much more flexible than naturally occurring ice, said Erland Schulson, an ice scientist at Dartmouth College, who was not involved in the research.There are no grain boundaries, no cracks, no features that otherwise limit how much elastic strain a body can experience.VideoThe ice microfibers, bent here between two fingers, could be made just visible to the naked eye. Video by Xu et. al.To demonstrate that flexibility, Dr. Tong and his colleagues used microscopic tools to push on the microfibers. They showed that the ice could be bent like a cooked noodle into almost complete circles before returning, unchanged, to its original rodlike shape. There was no permanent deformation, said Dr. Schulson, who wrote a perspective article that accompanied the study in Science.The team also found that the microfibers effectively transmitted light along their lengths. When the researchers sent visible light into one end of the microfibers, more than 99 percent emerged at the other end. They function just like fiber optic strands that enable fast internet communications, Dr. Tong said. They can guide light from one side to the other.These microfibers could one day be used for studying air quality, the researchers suggest. Particles associated with pollution soot and metals, for example often stick to bits of ice in the atmosphere, where they change how the ice absorbs and reflects light. By building a microfiber from polluted ice and studying how light propagates through it, it may be possible to better understand the amount and type of pollution in a region, the team suggests. | science |
Science|Only a fraction of U.S. health care workers are risking their jobs over vaccinations.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/science/covid-us-health-workers-vaccination.htmlOnly a fraction of U.S. health care workers are risking their jobs over vaccinations.Large health care systems around the country say that a very small percentage of their workers have missed vaccination deadlines.Credit...Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesOct. 7, 2021With deadlines for health care workers to take coronavirus vaccinations either passed or quickly approaching, only a fraction of those workers across the United States are risking their jobs by not complying.The consequences that employers warned of are becoming reality.UCHealth System in Colorado fired 119 people this week. Kaiser Permanente, based in California, has suspended more than 2,200 employees. And 400 workers have resigned from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit rather than get inoculated.On Friday, UCHealth, a nonprofit system serving the Rocky Mountain region, sent the last of several email reminders to the 119 employees 0.5 percent of its work force who had not received a vaccination or a medical or religious exemption. They had already been removed from weekend schedules and were notified this week of their termination.Certainly we would have liked 100 percent compliance, Dan Weaver, the vice president of communications, said in an interview on Wednesday. He said that the terminated employees had been encouraged to reapply for their positions if they got vaccinated.Kaiser Permanente, one of the nations largest nonprofit health plans, announced its vaccination requirement on Aug. 2, when 78 percent of its work force had already been inoculated. A spokesman said this week that the level had risen to more than 92 percent.Still, about 1 percent of Kaisers work force across the country approximately 2,200 workers were put on unpaid administrative leave because they had not met the requirement, the spokesman said. They have until Dec. 1 to get vaccinated to be able to return to work.The Henry Ford Health System required its employees to comply with a vaccination requirement by last Friday. The system said on Tuesday that 99 percent of its 33,000 employees had been fully vaccinated, were soon to get their second dose or had received medical or religious exemptions.About 400 employees have resigned over the requirement, but new hires have already made up for the loss, officials said.At Henry Ford, Bob Riney, the chief operating officer and president of health care operations, said that people who had left the company could reapply once they were inoculated.We are doing all we can to keep those doors open, Mr. Riney told reporters. Whatever their choice, we wish them the very best and appreciate the years of service they provided our community and organization.Northwell Health, New York States largest health care provider, said on Monday that 1,400 employees less than 2 percent of its staff had declined to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and had to leave their jobs.President Biden announced a mandate on Sept. 9 that requires workers at nearly every hospital and health system in the country to get vaccinated or be tested weekly for the coronavirus. | science |
Dec. 23, 2015Canadian Pacifics third proposal to acquire Norfolk Southern received the same response from its fellow railroad operator as the first two: No, thank you.Norfolk Southern took a week to consider the newest offer from Canadian Pacific, backed by the billionaire investor William A. Ackman. On Dec. 16, the Canadian railroad added a so-called contingent value right, or C.V.R., that accords Norfolk Southern shareholders up to $3.4 billion extra, based on the combined companies stock price. The C.V.R. would be in addition to the approximately $27 billion cash-and-stock offer that Canadian Pacific made early this month.Norfolk Southern has rejected all three of Canadian Pacifics proposals, arguing that the offers were inadequate and carried too much regulatory risk.It would be inconsistent with the duties of the board to pursue a risky and uncertain offer that substantially undervalues the company, Norfolk Southerns chief executive, Jim Squires, and Steven Leer, the companys lead director, said in a letter to Norfolk Southern executives on Wednesday.CP remains confident that a CP-NS combination would secure regulatory approval as a seamless coast-to-coast single-haul service benefits shippers, the industry and the public, and would generate tremendous shareholder value, Canadian Pacific said Wednesday in a statement.Railroad mergers are subject to the approval of the Surface Transportation Board, a regulator in the Department of Transportation. The board created rules in 2001 after a wave of railroad deals were blamed for missing cargo and crashes requiring that participants in any potential merger demonstrate that it would improve competition and serve the public interest. The standard is even more vague than the typical antitrust regulations and has never been tested.For Norfolk Southern, that regulatory uncertainty was not worth the potential disruption to business that could occur over the few years it could take to get approval. Canadian Pacific suggested putting its own shares in a voting trust, led by an independent trustee, aimed at speeding up the integration of the two companies.But Norfolk Southern doubted that the voting trust would suffice. The railroad requested that Canadian Pacific seek a declaratory order from the transportation board to demonstrate whether the voting trust structure is legal under the regulators rules. Canadian Pacific has not yet pursued the order, Mr. Squires said in Wednesdays letter.E. Hunter Harrison, the chief executive of Canadian Pacific, contends that greater consolidation would be in the public interest because it could make the system more efficient. The company called out Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and CSX in a statement Monday for halting service through Chicago during Christmas, which Canadian Pacific said was disruptive to shippers.Optionality, agility, efficiency and service are at the heart of our proposal and we urge all stakeholders to examine the benefits of a CP-NS combination, Keith Creel, Canadian Pacifics president and chief operating officer, said in Mondays statement.Some shipping organizations have opposed the combination. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers, which together represent the major car manufacturers in the United States, submitted a letter to Mr. Creel arguing that the deal posed significant service and competitive concerns, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. Other associations in the agriculture and manufacturing industries have voiced similar concerns.Canadian Pacific is offering Norfolk Southern shareholders $32.86 in cash per share, plus 0.451 share in the new company, plus 0.451 of the contingent value right.Investors were not too surprised by Norfolk Southerns decision to reject Canadian Pacifics offer. Norfolk Southern shares closed up 0.9 percent and Canadian Pacific closed up 1.8 percent, in line with the broader market. | Business |
Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated PressNov. 9, 2018In a landmark move bound to further shake the tobacco industry, the Food and Drug Administration plans to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes next week as part of its aggressive campaign against flavored e-cigarettes and some tobacco products, agency officials said.The proposal would have to go through the F.D.A. regulatory maze, and it could be several years before such a restriction took effect, especially if the major tobacco companies contest the agencys authority to do so. None of the major tobacco companies would comment on the possibility of barring menthol cigarettes at this early stage.But such a move has been long-awaited by public health advocates, who have been especially concerned about the high percentage of African-Americans who become addicted to menthol cigarettes.Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agencys commissioner, would not comment publicly on the proposal on Friday. But in a recent interview, he said the F.D.A. was revisiting the issue, one that had been weighed in previous administrations. It was a mistake for the agency to back away on menthol, he said earlier this fall.Canada has already imposed a ban on menthol cigarettes, and the European Unions ban is set to go into effect in 2020. Earlier this year, San Francisco passed a prohibition against the sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes.The menthol proposal is just one of several initiatives the F.D.A. plans to announce sometime next week, including a ban on sales of most flavored e-cigarettes, except menthol and mint, at retail stores and gas stations across the country. The products, which include such flavors as chicken-and-waffles and mango, would be mainly relegated to sales online, at sites where the agency hopes to impose strict age verification to ensure that minors could not buy them.As e-cigarettes became a booming business and extremely popular among teenagers and young people, health officials, parents and others became alarmed at the soaring use of nicotine-addicting products that were considered alternatives to traditional smoking for adults.The F.D.A. began targeting the major manufacturers of e-cigarettes, focusing in particular on Juul Labs, the maker of a popular, flashy product that has become nearly ubiquitous in schools and on the streets.Just a day after agency officials began issuing details of next weeks plan to ban some sales, Juul Labs indicated on Friday that it had decided to pull several of its wildly popular flavored e-cigarette pods off store shelves, according to several people briefed by the company.The vaping giant will continue to sell its liquid nicotine pods in mint, menthol and tobacco flavors in brick-and-mortar stores, but will restrict other flavors that could be appealing to younger people to online sales.Juul Labs launched the device, which resembles a flash drive, in 2015, and now has about 77 percent of the United States e-cigarette market.Last month, a competitor, Altria, said it would discontinue most of its flavored e-cigarettes and support federal legislation to raise the age of purchase to 21 for any tobacco and vaping product.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been an advocate of such restrictions.While more must be achieved to fully regulate e-cigs like actual cigarettes, Juuls effort is a good step in snuffing out kid-friendly flavors that have fueled the spiking nicotine addiction amongst Americas youth and can make a difference, Mr. Schumer said in an email.Lisa David, president and chief executive of Public Health Solutions, a New York-based nonprofit group specializing in health issues for low-income and immigrant families, said she opposed keeping mint and menthol flavors easily available in stores, especially given the gateway effect for young people who start vaping and then move to traditional cigarettes.Menthol makes it seem less harsh, and also makes the body absorb more nicotine, she said. That means its easier to start smoking and harder to quit.Ms. David also wondered if Juul's restriction might be too late, because of the many similar devices, called Juul-alikes, already on the market.Juul clearly was a contributor to the really significant uptake of young people using e-cigarettes, Ms. David said. At this point there are a bunch of other versions of the Juul-alikes. They have similar shapes and flavors and are appealing to the same audience.The battle against menthol cigarettes has continued for decades.According to the N.A.A.C.P.s Youth Against Menthol campaign, about 85 percent of African-American smokers aged 12 and up smoke menthol cigarettes, compared with 29 percent of white smokers, which the organization calls a result of decades of culturally tailored tobacco company promotion.The most popular menthol brand in the United States is Newport, which is the second-largest-selling cigarette brand in the industry, according to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Imperial Brands has two strong sellers, Kool and Salem. Altrias best-selling cigarette, Marlboro, is also available in menthol, as is R.J.R.s Camel.A spokesman for R. J. Reynolds declined to comment. Altria and Imperial Brands could not be immediately reached.In a joint statement on Friday, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association and several other public health groups said that action on menthol cigarettes was long overdue.There is overwhelming scientific evidence that menthol cigarettes have had a profound adverse effect on public health in the United States, resulting in more death and disease, the organizations said.Although federal health officials released new reports this week that indicated traditional smoking had reached a record low since 1965, smoking-related deaths still number about 480,000 in the United States every year. | Health |
Health|Researchers find a higher than expected risk of myocarditis in young men after full vaccination.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/health/researchers-find-a-higher-than-expected-risk-of-myocarditis-in-young-men-after-full-vaccination.htmlCredit...Emily Rose Bennett for The New York TimesPublished Oct. 6, 2021Updated Oct. 11, 2021Males between 16 and 29 years of age have an increased risk of developing heart problems after receiving a second dose of coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNtech or Moderna, according to a large new analysis published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.The study, conducted in Israel, estimated that nearly 11 of every 100,000 males in that age group developed myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, a few days after having been fully vaccinated. That figure is higher than most earlier estimates.Boys between 16 and 19 years of age had the highest incidence of myocarditis after the second dose, according to a second study in the journal. The risk of heart problems in boys of that age was about nine times higher than in unvaccinated boys of the same age.The absolute risk is still very small, and the condition temporary. And studies have shown that Covid-19 is much more likely to cause heart problems compared with vaccination.Based on data available in June, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unanimously voted to recommend the vaccine, saying the benefits far outweighed the risk. For every million vaccinated boys ages 12 to 17, the shots might cause a maximum of 70 myocarditis cases, but would prevent 5,700 infections, 215 hospitalizations and two deaths, the agency has estimated.Myocarditis is among the concerns that may have led the Food and Drug Administration to ask Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to enroll more children in their vaccine trials. Potential side effects are likely to dominate the discussion when agency advisers meet next week to review the evidence for a vaccine in children aged 5 to 11 years.One of the new studies looked at data from 2.5 million vaccinated members of Israels largest health care network who were aged 16 years or above. The researchers identified 54 cases of myocarditis, and deemed 41 of them to be mild. About 70 percent of the myocarditis cases were observed after the second dose.One case was severe enough to require ventilation. One patient with a history of heart disease died of an unknown cause soon after being discharged from the hospital. Of the 14 patients who showed heart abnormalities when they were admitted to the hospital, 10 still had some signs of problems when they were discharged.But when the patients were examined again a few weeks later, all five of those for whom results were available appeared to have fully recovered.Across all age groups and sexes, the overall incidence was just over two cases per 100,000 people, the study found. But when the researchers analyzed the results by age and sex, they found the highest incidence among males 16 to 29 years. The risk in females of every age was negligible. | Health |
Politics|A joint session of Congress is expected to last into the night as Republicans try to subvert the election.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/a-joint-session-of-congress-is-expected-to-last-into-the-night-as-republicans-try-to-subvert-the-election.htmlCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesJan. 6, 2021The House and Senate will convene Wednesday afternoon for a remarkable joint session to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Electoral College victory, with President Trump and his allies plotting to transform the counting session into one final, futile attempt to overturn the results.Bipartisan majorities in both chambers are prepared to meet late into the night to beat back the challenges and confirm Mr. Biden as the winner. But by using what is typically a ceremonial proceeding as a forum for trying to subvert a democratic election, Mr. Trump and his allies are going where no party has since the Reconstruction era of the 19th century, when Congress bargained over the presidency.Its implications, for future elections and the Republican Party, could be significant.At least four Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama have agreed to join House members to challenge the results of three battleground states Mr. Biden won: Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Senators were still weighing whether to join House members to similarly challenge the outcome in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.In each case, their objections will force the House and Senate to debate Mr. Trumps baseless claims of election fraud for up to two hours and then vote whether to accept or reject the results certified by the state. A process that typically consists of less than an hour of glorified paperwork could take anywhere from nine to 24 hours, starting at 1 p.m. Eastern.Even before it began, the session was already driving sharp wedges into the Republican Party that threatened to do lasting damage to its cohesion, as lawmakers decided to cast their lot with Mr. Trump or the Constitution. Top party leaders in the House and Senate appeared to be headed for a high-profile split. And while only a dozen or so senators were expected to vote to reject the outcome in key states, as many as 70 percent of House Republicans could join the effort, stoking the dangerous belief of tens of millions of voters that Mr. Biden was elected illegitimately.Presiding over the whole affair will be Vice President Mike Pence, whom statute and tradition dictate must ultimately declare Mr. Biden the winner. Mr. Trump is pressuring him to go rogue and reject electors in key battleground states he lost, handing them a second term.The demand ensures Mr. Pence, too, must choose between the Constitution and his loyalty to Mr. Trump. The answer could shape his own political future. | Politics |
Asia Pacific|Use of Nerve Agent in Kim Jong-nam Killing Is Condemned by Malaysiahttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-malaysia.htmlCredit...Fazry Ismail/European Pressphoto AgencyMarch 2, 2017KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia The Malaysian Foreign Ministry said Friday that it was greatly concerned by the use of a banned chemical weapon in a public place to assassinate Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of North Koreas leader, and has asked for international help in responding to the episode.The ministry strongly condemns the use of such a chemical weapon by anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances, the ministry said in a statement. Its use at a public place could have endangered the general public.Malaysia has reported the use of the toxic chemical, VX nerve agent, to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors chemical weapons banned under international conventions. The organization must now decide whether to bring the matter of the chemicals illegal use before the United Nations Security Council.Analysis of chemical residue on Mr. Kim found it to be VX nerve agent. South Korea has blamed the North for the killing. The Malaysian police have identified seven North Korean men who remain wanted for questioning in the case.If there is compelling evidence that North Korea used the substance, the United States and its allies can push for a resolution against the North at the Security Council and for new sanctions. Washington can also place the North back on its terrorism-sponsor blacklist.But North Korea has already been under heavy sanctions for decades, and analysts say that new steps against the North will have a largely symbolic effect of naming and shaming. Such a move could further dampen what is an already weak desire to start dialogue with the North to address its growing nuclear and missile threats, they said.Malaysia reported the incident to the O.P.C.W. soon after the discovery that the poison was VX nerve agent, and since then the organization has been providing Malaysia with assistance in its investigation of the killing.The ministry is in close contact with the O.P.C.W. regarding the recent incident and the latter has provided the Malaysian authority with some technical materials that have been requested to assist in its investigation, the ministry said.Mr. Kim, the elder brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was killed on Feb. 13 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport by two foreign women who smeared his face with poison, the police say. The two women, one from Indonesia and one from Vietnam, have been charged with murder.North Korea, which has not been allowed to examine Mr. Kims body, asserts that he died of heart failure. North Korean officials contend that it is absurd for Malaysia to say that VX nerve agent was used since it is so toxic that many others at the airport also would have died.After Malaysia reported the use of the chemical, representatives of the O.P.C.W. came to Kuala Lumpur to provide assistance, one official said.The government of Malaysia will fully cooperate with the O.P.C.W. and other international organizations to bring the perpetrators to justice, the ministry said.The Malaysian authorities on Friday released Ri Jong-chol, the only North Korean detained in the killing so far, and handed him over to immigration officials for deportation. The police also issued an arrest warrant for Kim Uk-il, 37, a North Korean who works for Air Koryo, the national airline. The authorities have said that they believed Mr. Kim was at the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur along with another suspect, Hyon Kwang-song, an embassy employee. | World |