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Contents contributed and discussions participated by ethanshilling

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ethanshilling

California and Florida Prepare to Give Vaccine Access to All Adults - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...alifornia-florida-vaccine.html

US pandemic vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Governors across the United States are speeding up eligibility for coronavirus vaccines as the number of new cases nationally plateaus, adding more urgency to vaccination efforts.
  • California will open up vaccine eligibility on April 1 to any resident who is 50 or older, and will expand that to residents 16 or older on April 15, state officials announced on Thursday, saying they could do so because of increasing supplies of vaccine from the federal government.
  • In Connecticut, which is among the most-vaccinated states in the country, Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that all residents 16 and above would be eligible beginning April 1.
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  • Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said the state would open vaccinations to those 40 and older starting Monday, adding that a mask mandate would stay in place for at least another 30 days.
  • Alaska, Mississippi, Utah and West Virginia are the only states where all adults are now eligible to receive shots, but many more have announced plans to expand eligibility on or before May 1, a goal set by President Biden.
  • The nation is averaging about 2.5 million doses of vaccine a day. At that pace, about half of the nation’s population would be at least partially vaccinated by mid-May.
  • State officials said they expected California to start receiving 2.5 million doses a week in the first part of April, and more than three million by the second half of the month, a major increase from the current pace of about 1.8 million doses a week.
  • The governor has repeatedly said that short and unpredictable supplies have been to blame for what has been criticized as a confusing and chaotic vaccination process that has left many poorer communities to lag behind.
  • Florida, more than most states, has emphasized age, rather than occupation or other risk factors, in its approach to vaccine eligibility.
  • The number of new virus cases reported in Florida has been hovering around 4,600 a day in recent weeks, a level that health officials say is still too high, even though it has fallen significantly from a peak earlier this year.
  • The state’s efforts to reopen its tourism industry has not been without problems. In Miami Beach, local officials have been overwhelmed with spring break revelers who have ignored safety precautions like mask wearing and social distancing.
ethanshilling

North Korea's Arsenal Has Grown Rapidly. Here's What's in It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...north-korea-arsenal-nukes.html

nuclear weapons north korea

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • North Korea test-launched what it called a newly developed tactical guided missile ​on Thursday, violating international sanctions.
  • It was the country’s first ballistic missile test in a year and its first provocation to the Biden administration, prompting the​ American president to warn that there will be “responses” if North Korea continues to escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
  • North Korea​ has rapidly expanded its nuclear program and modernized its missile fleet under Kim Jong-un, the country’s young leader. The expansion of the arsenal is a growing threat to the United States and allies​ in the region. ​Here’s what’s in it.
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  • As of January 2020, North Korea had 30 to 40 nuclear warheads and could produce enough fissile material for six or seven bombs a year, according to an estimate by the Arms Control Association.
  • North Korea has extracted plutonium, an atomic bomb fuel, from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
  • North Korea’s ballistic missiles can carry nuclear warheads, and the country conducted six increasingly sophisticated underground nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. The last four of them happened under Mr. Kim.
  • And at a party congress in January, Mr. Kim doubled down on his nuclear arms buildup, offering a laundry list of weapons he said he planned to develop. They included “multi-warhead” nuclear missiles, “hypersonic” missiles, land- and submarine-launched I.C.B.M.s that use solid fuel, and “ultramodern tactical nuclear weapons.”
  • By the end of the year, Mr. Kim claimed that his country had the ability to launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States.
  • In 2017, North Korea made big strides in its weapons capabilities.That year, the country fired its intermediate-range ballistic missile, Hwasong-12, over Japan and threatened an “enveloping” strike around the American territory of Guam.
  • When North Korea resumed missile tests in 2019 following the collapse of the Kim-Trump talks, the tests featured three new weapons, code-named KN-23, KN-24 and KN-25 by outside experts.
  • Unlike its older missiles that used liquid fuel, all three of the new missiles used solid fuel. The new solid-fuel weapons, mounted on mobile launchers, are easier to transport and hide and take less time to prepare.
  • Mr. Kim said in January that his country would also build a nuclear-powered submarine in order to acquire the means to deliver nuclear weapons to its adversaries more stealthily.
  • North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world, with more than one million soldiers. But much of its equipment is old and obsolete, and the military lacks fuel and spare parts.
  • North Korea has sought to make up for its shortcomings by building nuclear weapons.
  • At the January party congress, Mr. Kim said that his weapons program “never precludes diplomacy” but “guarantees its success.” He has also said he no longer holds any expectations for dialogue unless Washington makes an offer that satisfies his government.
  • It showed that “North Korea was pushing ahead with the plans” set down by Mr. Kim during the party meeting, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
ethanshilling

Israel's Shadow War With Iran Moves Out to Sea - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...israel-iran-shadow-war.html

israel war

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The sun was rising on the Mediterranean one recent morning when the crew of an Iranian cargo ship heard an explosion. The ship, the Shahr e Kord, was about 50 miles off the coast of Israel, and from the bridge they saw a plume of smoke rising from one of the hundreds of containers stacked on deck.
  • But the attack on the Shahr e Kord this month was just one of the latest salvos in a long-running covert conflict between Israel and Iran. An Israeli official said the attack was retaliation for an Iranian assault on an Israeli cargo ship last month.
  • The Israeli campaign, confirmed by American, Israeli and Iranian officials, has become a linchpin of Israel’s effort to curb Iran’s military influence in the Middle East and stymie Iranian efforts to circumvent American sanctions on its oil industry.
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  • “This is a full-fledged cold war that risks turning hot with a single mistake,” said Ali Vaez, Iran program director at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization. “We’re still in an escalatory spiral that risks getting out of control.”
  • Since 2019, Israeli commandos have attacked at least 10 ships carrying Iranian cargo, according to an American official and a former senior Israeli official. The real number of targeted ships may be higher than 20, according to an Iranian Oil Ministry official, an adviser to the ministry and an oil trader.
  • The extent of Iran’s retaliation is unclear. Most of the attacks are carried out clandestinely and with no public claims of responsibility.
  • The Israeli ship attacked last month was a car freighter, the Helios Ray, carrying several thousand German-made cars to China.
  • Several tankers were similarly attacked in the Red Sea last fall and winter, actions some officials attributed to the Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel movement in Yemen.
  • Iran has denied involvement in all of these attacks which, like the Israeli ones, appeared intended not to sink the ships but to send a message.
  • Israel has tried to counter Iran’s power play by launching regular airstrikes on Iranian shipments by land and air of arms and other cargo to Syria and Lebanon. Those attacks have made those routes riskier and shifted at least some of the weapons transit, and the conflict, to the sea, analysts said.
  • “Neither Israel nor Iran want to publicly take responsibility for the attacks because doing so would be an act of war with military consequences,” Hossein Dalirian, a military analyst affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, told The New York Times in a Clubhouse discussion on Thursday.
  • Analysts say that Iran wants to continue to needle Israel and to arm and support its Middle Eastern allies, both to surround Israel with well-armed proxies and to give Iran a stronger hand in any future nuclear negotiations.
  • The Israeli offensive against Iranian shipping has two goals, analysts and officials said. The first is to prevent Tehran from sending equipment to Lebanon to help Hezbollah build a precision missile program, which Israel considers a strategic threat.
  • The tankers targeted by Israel were carrying Iranian oil to Syria, contravening American sanctions and most likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
  • President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, also under sanctions, is in dire need of oil. Iran, its economy decimated by American sanctions, needs cash. Hezbollah has also been hit hard by the severe economic and political crisis in Lebanon and a cyberattack on its financial system.
  • The effectiveness of the Israeli campaign is unclear. Some of the targeted ships were forced to return to Iran without delivering their cargo, the American official said.
  • While the Israeli Navy can make its presence felt in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, it is less effective in waters closer to Iran. And that could make Israeli-owned ships more vulnerable to Iranian attacks as they pass Iran’s western shores on their way to ports in the Gulf, said Shaul Chorev, a retired Israeli admiral who now heads the Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center at the University of Haifa.
ethanshilling

What the 'Invisible' People Cleaning the Subway Want Riders to Know - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-mta-subway-cleaning.html

new york pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Yaneth Ochoa, a Colombian woman who lives in Queens, was glad to find a job cleaning the subway last summer, as demolition jobs had dried up during the pandemic.
  • But as trains rolled into the Jamaica-179 Street Station in Queens, she learned she would not just be wiping down cars to remove traces of the coronavirus.
  • Like workers at end-of-line stations all over New York City, Ms. Ochoa, 30, was expected to scrub away grime, sputum and even human excrement, she said, without adequate training or special equipment.
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  • Cleaning the New York City subway has always been a dirty job. But when the pandemic hit last spring, it became even more challenging.
  • The thousands of workers the contractors hired — largely low-income immigrants from Latin America — were envisioned as a stopgap measure, as M.T.A. workers were falling ill and dying of the virus.
  • Now, as the M.T.A. prepares to welcome more riders, the workers are pushing back, raising concerns about their safety, salaries and working conditions that they say feel like exploitation.
  • The New York Times interviewed a dozen contract cleaners, including three who in late February had met with Patrick J. Foye, the chairman and chief executive of the M.T.A. to describe their job and share a list of “needs” with transit agency leadership.
  • “It’s so scary to be left without work right now that you’ll accept almost anything,” she said.
  • A spokeswoman for the M.T.A., Abbey Collins, said the agency was disinfecting the subway with the help of “licensed and reputable outside companies whose performance is monitored regularly.”
  • The cleaning program, which the M.T.A. plans to continue indefinitely, will cost about $300 million this year.
  • “If you’ve got workers on the property for a year, it’s a matter of basic equality,” said Zachary Arcidiacono, the chair of the Train Operators Division for the union.
  • Ms. Ochoa, who earned around $15 per hour, New York State’s minimum wage, finally quit after refusing to clean a train smeared with excrement with just a few rags, she said.
  • Their accounts paint a picture of dismal working conditions, and highlight their unequal treatment compared with transit cleaners, who are paid up to $30 an hour and enjoy health insurance and other benefits, uniforms and MetroCards to swipe themselves into the system.
  • Transit officials said they had called on City Hall to send more police officers and mental health workers into the subway to ensure that all workers and passengers were safe.
  • “Many people were getting paid minimum wage or just a dollar or two more,” Mr. Tecaxco said. “The conditions were terrible.”
  • Ms. Muñoz, who cleaned the offices of an architecture firm before the pandemic, said the work was taxing and the rules were strict. Workers were let go for arriving minutes late, or for calling in sick, including from Covid-19, she said.
  • Ms. Muñoz said she was fired in November without explanation. As the sole provider for her four children and parents in Puebla, Mexico, she pleaded to keep her job.
  • Since then, she has not found steady work; she cleans someone’s home every two weeks. As for her former co-workers at the end of the Q line, “My compañeros are still there,” Ms. Muñoz said. “Nothing has changed.”
ethanshilling

$1 Million Raised After Attack on Asian Woman Will Go to Fight Racism, Family Says - Th... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...co-elderly-woman-attacked.html

US racism

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • After a Chinese grandmother was attacked by a white man in broad daylight in San Francisco last week, she fought back.The woman, Xiao Zhen Xie, 75, was punched while walking down Market Street on March 17. She responded by hitting her assailant with a board. A suspect was arrested, and Ms. Xie was left with several injuries, including two black eyes.
  • Ms. Xie’s grandson, John Chen, used GoFundMe to raise money for medical treatment and therapy for his grandmother. The public response to his fund-raiser far exceeded the family’s goal: By Thursday, about $1 million had been raised.
  • Over the past year, the Bay Area has seen a spate of violent attacks and robberies against Asian-Americans, as well as pandemic-related racism.
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  • The report was released on the same day that eight people, six of them Asian, were fatally shot at three Atlanta-area massage parlors.
  • The attack against Ms. Xie was one of several that have been captured, at least in part, on vide
  • Her assailant, whom the police identified as Steven Jenkins, 39, first attacked an 83-year-old Vietnamese man, Ngoc Pham, who had been grocery shopping on March 17.
  • Video footage from the immediate aftermath of the assault shows Ms. Xie holding an ice pack to her face and telling officers and bystanders about her attacker. “One big punch came down on me,” she said in Cantonese, wailing in distress.
  • “It’s been difficult on the Asian-American community — of course I understand,” Mr. McBurney said Thursday.
  • Mr. McBurney added that he would provide more details about Mr. Jenkins, and about what happened on March 17, in the near future.
  • As days passed, the donations grew. On Tuesday, Mr. Chen wrote that his grandmother was finally able to open her swollen left eye and that she was in better spirits than before.
  • It is unclear how the funds will be spent. Ms. Xie and Mr. Chen could not be reached on Thursday, and GoFundMe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ethanshilling

Opinion | I Survived 18 Years in Solitary Confinement - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...litary-confinement-reform.html

US injustice prison

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Mr. Manuel is an author, activist and poet. When he was 14 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole and spent 18 years in solitary confinement. His forthcoming memoir, “My Time Will Come,” details these experiences.
  • As a 15-year-old, I was condemned to long-term solitary confinement in the Florida prison system, which ultimately lasted for 18 consecutive years. From 1992 to 2010. From age 15 to 33. From the end of the George H.W. Bush administration to the beginnings of the Obama era.
  • For 18 years I didn’t have a window in my room to distract myself from the intensity of my confinement. I wasn’t permitted to talk to my fellow prisoners or even to myself. I didn’t have healthy, nutritious food; I was given just enough to not die.
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  • In the summer of 1990, shortly after finishing seventh grade, I was directed by a few older kids to commit a robbery. During the botched attempt, I shot a woman. She suffered serious injuries to her jaw and mouth but survived.
  • For this I was arrested and charged as an adult with armed robbery and attempted murder.
  • I was thrown into solitary confinement the day I arrived at the Reception and Medical Center, a state prison in Lake Butler, Fla., because of my young age.
  • But a year and a half later, at age 15, I was put back into solitary confinement after being written up for a few minor infractions.
  • Florida has different levels of solitary confinement; I spent the majority of that time in one of the most restrictive. Nearly two decades caged in a roughly 7-by-10-foot room passed before I was rotated between the general population area and solitary for six more years.
  • Researchers have long concluded that solitary confinement causes post-traumatic stress disorder and impairs prisoners’ ability to adjust to society long after they leave their cell.
  • Yet the practice, even for minors, is still common in the United States, and efforts to end it have been spotty
  • More aggressive change is needed in state prison systems. Today, dozens of states still have little to no legislation prohibiting juvenile solitary confinement.
  • I also witnessed the human consequences of the harshness of solitary firsthand: Some people would resort to cutting their stomachs open with a razor and sticking a plastic spork inside their intestines just so they could spend a week in the comfort of a hospital room with a television.
  • I served 18 consecutive years in isolation because each minor disciplinary infraction — like having a magazine that had another prisoner’s name on the mailing label — added an additional six months to my time in solitary confinement.
  • It is difficult to know the exact number of children in solitary confinement today. The Liman Center at Yale Law School estimated that 61,000 Americans (adults and children) were in solitary confinement in the fall of 2017.
  • No matter the count, I witnessed too many people lose their minds while isolated. They’d involuntarily cross a line and simply never return to sanity.
  • Solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, something prohibited by the Eighth Amendment, yet prisons continue to practice it.
  • When it comes to children, elimination is the only moral option. And if ending solitary confinement for adults isn’t politically viable, public officials should at least limit the length of confinement to 15 days or fewer, in compliance with the U.N. standards.
  • In the meantime, prisoners in Florida like Darryl Streeter, inmate No. 514988, are forced to spend their lives in long-term isolation. He recently told me by phone that he’s been in solitary confinement for 24 consecutive years.
  • As I try to reintegrate into society, small things often awaken painful memories from solitary. Sometimes relationships feel constraining.
  • I will face PTSD and challenges big and small for the rest of my life because of what I was subjected to. Some things I’ve grown accustomed to. Some things I haven’t. And some things I never will — most of all, that this country can treat human beings, especially children, as cruelly as I was treated.
ethanshilling

Tornadoes and Violent Storms Hit Southeast, Leaving at Least Five Dead - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tornadoes-southeast.html

US climate storms

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • At least five people died and homes and businesses were leveled in Alabama as a result of powerful storms and tornadoes moving across the Southeast on Thursday.
  • The National Weather Service reported multiple tornadoes in Alabama, including one that likely traveled over 100 miles, from near Birmingham to the northeastern corner of the state.
  • In Florence, Ala., a police officer was struck by lightning during the height of the afternoon storm, said Chief Mike Holt. The officer suffered burns but survived.
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  • More than 45,000 properties across several states had lost electricity by evening, according to PowerOutage.us.
  • The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, urging residents facing the most imminent danger to “TAKE COVER NOW!”
  • “Our priority at the moment is identifying those citizens in need of emergency medical attention,” John Samaniego, the sheriff in Shelby County, said in a statement, adding that there had been “significant tornado damage,” including residences that had been “completely destroyed.”
  • In Birmingham, James Spann, an ABC33/40 meteorologist, was reporting on the storms when a tornado struck his own home.
  • “It’s not a good situation,” Mr. Spann said when he returned. “The reason I had to step out —we’ve had major damage at my house. My wife is OK, but the tornado came right through there.”
  • Officials warned residents to prepare as schools and government offices closed early. “Stay home, stay safe, stay informed,” Andy Berke, the mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., said on Twitter.
  • The destructive weather returned a week after some of the same areas were hit by an outbreak of powerful storms that swept through Mississippi and Alabama before moving on to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.
  • In 2020, the United States saw almost 1,000 tornadoes and 76 tornado deaths, according to preliminary counts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • Officials have also warned residents to have an emergency supply kit on hand, complete with items like a first aid kit, nonperishable food, water and batteries.
  • In Florence, Ala., meanwhile, Chief Holt marveled at the unlikely chance that his officer would be hit by lightning and his relatively good fortune at surviving. “He’s doing really well for someone who got struck by lightning,” Mr. Holt said.
ethanshilling

Papua New Guinea Had Zero Covid-19 Cases for Months. Now It's Overwhelmed. - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ua-new-guinea-coronavirus.html

world pandemic crisis

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The emergency rooms are heaving, health care workers are falling sick, and misinformation about the coronavirus is running rife. It has all left Papua New Guinea, an island nation just north of Australia, in the grip of a deadly crisis, as a tripling of infections over the past month has swamped an already fragile health care system.
  • The toll on health workers has been severe. About 10 percent of workers have tested positive at the country’s major hospital, in Port Moresby, a city of 380,000 people that has been hit hardest.
  • The situation in the island nation is exactly what public health experts have warned of as wealthy countries buy up the world’s vaccine stockpiles and put the pandemic largely behind them, while smaller and poorer nations are left with cap in hand
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  • “We fear that we are going to fill all these beds and then we will have nowhere else to continue to care for Covid patients,” said Mangu Kendino, an emergency physician and the chair of the Covid-19 committee at Port Moresby General Hospital.
  • “They have challenges accessing health care at the best of times,” said Rob Mitchell, an emergency physician specializing in triage in the Pacific.
  • “When the pandemic was first announced by the W.H.O. and we went into lockdown, the government reacted pretty quickly,” said Dr. William Pomat, the director of the PNG Institute of Medical Research.
  • But late last year, he added, “many of us became very complacent. A lot of the things we were supposed to be doing, we didn’t do anymore.”
  • In one of the field hospitals, Dr. Nou said, he and others, dressed in full protective equipment, often work in humid conditions as they struggle to keep their patients cool and hydrated.
  • In response, Australia has donated 8,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as protective equipment and ventilators. It has also deployed a small team to the country.
  • Fearing spread of the virus, the Australian authorities have ramped up efforts to vaccinate the population of the Torres Strait Islands, an archipelago bordering northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.
  • “They’re our family. They’re our friends. They’re our neighbors. They’re our partners,” Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, said last week.
  • “Even for the educated health worker, it’s causing a lot of doubt,” said Dr. Nou, the Port Moresby-based physician, who has conducted a survey of health care workers’ views about the pandemic.
  • “It’s not good enough to just respond to Covid and then have someone die of another cause,” said Dr. Suman Majumdar, an infectious diseases specialist at the Burnet Institute, an Australian medical research facility. “We have feared the worst,” he added, “and this is happening.”
ethanshilling

Pfizer Begins Testing Its Vaccine in Young Children - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ldren-vaccinations-pfizer.html

world pandemic vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Pfizer has begun testing its Covid-19 vaccine in children under 12, a significant step in turning back the pandemic. The trial’s first participants, a pair of 9-year-old twin girls, were immunized at Duke University in North Carolina on Wednesday.
  • Moderna also is beginning a trial of its vaccine in children six months to 12 years of age. Both companies have been testing their vaccines in children 12 and older, and expect those results in the next few weeks.
  • AstraZeneca last month began testing its vaccine in children six months and older, and Johnson & Johnson has said it plans to extend trials of its vaccine to young children after assessing its performance in older children.
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  • Immunizing children will help schools to reopen as well as help to end the pandemic, said Dr. Emily Erbelding, an infectious diseases physician at the National Institutes of Health who oversees testing of Covid-19 vaccines in special populations.
  • Children under 18 account for about 23 percent of the population in the United States, so even if a vast majority of adults opt for vaccines, “herd immunity might be hard to achieve without children being vaccinated,” Dr. Erbelding said.
  • Scientists will test three doses of the Pfizer vaccine — 10, 20 and 30 micrograms — in 144 children. Each dose will be assessed first in children 5 through 11 years of age, then in children ages 2 through 4 years, and finally in the youngest group, six months to 2 years.
  • “It sounds like a good plan, and it’s exciting that another Covid-19 vaccine is moving forward with trials in children,” said Dr. Kristin Oliver, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
  • More than 3.3 million children have tested positive for the virus, at least 13,000 have been hospitalized and at least 260 have died, noted Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who represents the American Academy of Pediatrics on the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
  • Children often react more strongly to vaccines than adults do, and infants and toddlers in particular can experience high fevers.
  • “But this is a little different, because we’ve already had experience with tens of millions of people with these vaccines,” Dr. Maldonado said. “So there’s a higher degree of confidence now in giving this vaccine to kids.”
  • Parents will want to know how the companies and the F.D.A. plan to monitor and disclose side effects from the vaccines, and how long they will continue to follow trial participants after the vaccines’ authorization, Dr. Oliver said.
ethanshilling

Giant Ship Blocking Suez Canal Could Take 'Days, Even Weeks' to Free - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...suez-canal-ship.html

world canal egypt

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • As tugboats strained against the weight of the mammoth ship and dredgers worked to clear sand and mud, a salvage company working on the operation warned on Thursday that releasing the container vessel blocking traffic in the Suez Canal in Egypt could take days or even weeks.
  • The stuck ship, the Ever Given, has been wedged in the canal since running aground amid the heavy winds of a sandstorm on Tuesday. Its bow is lodged in the canal’s eastern bank and its stern in the western bank.
  • Eight large tugboats were attempting to push and drag the ship from its unintended berth, the Suez Canal Authority said in a statement on Thursday, but at about 1,300 feet long — roughly equivalent to the height of the Empire State Building — and weighing around 200,000 metric tons, dislodging the Ever Given is proving challenging.
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  • The Japanese company that owns the ship, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that the situation was “extremely difficult” and apologized for the disruption caused by the episode. “We will continue to do our utmost” to move the ship, it said.
  • Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Royal Boskalis Westminster, which has been appointed by Ever Given’s owner to help move the vessel, told the Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur on Wednesday that the operation to free the ship could take “days, even weeks.”
  • Mr. Berdowski said that the Ever Given, operated by a company called Evergreen, was too heavy for tugboats alone, adding that salvagers might need to extract fuel, pump out water from the ballast tanks and remove some of the containers to make the ship lighter and therefore easier to move.
  • The ship’s manager has said in a statement that a preliminary investigation found that the vessel grounded because of strong winds, not because of mechanical or engine failure.
  • The global shipping and supply industry — already battered by the surge in orders caused by the coronavirus pandemic and recent disruptions at factories in Japan and Texas — waited to see whether the disruption from the traffic jam would amount to a couple of days’ minor inconvenience, or something worse.
  • Egypt opened a new lane in one section of the canal in 2015, an $8 billion expansion that the president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, heralded as a historic national accomplishment. But the Ever Given is sitting diagonally across another section of the canal, one that has only one lane.
ethanshilling

Today's Business News: Live Updates on United Airlines and Unemployment Claims - The Ne... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...stock-market-today

US economics pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • While vaccination efforts have gathered speed and restrictions on activities have receded in many states, the job market is showing signs of life.
  • Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell last week to 657,000, a decrease of 100,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It was the lowest weekly level of initial state claims since the pandemic upended the economy a year ago.
  • “This is definitely a positive signal and a move in the right direction,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics.
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  • In addition, there were 242,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits, a decrease of 43,000.
  • Although the pace of vaccinations, as well as passage of a $1.9 trillion relief package this month, has lifted economists’ expectations for growth, the labor market has lagged behind other measures of recovery.
  • Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton, said she hoped for consistent employment gains but her optimism was tempered by concern about the longer-term displacement of workers by the pandemic.
  • “The numbers are encouraging, but no one is jumping the gun and hiring up for what looks to be a boom this spring and summer,” she said. “There is a reluctance to get ahead of activity.”
ethanshilling

President Joe Biden's First News Conference - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-news-today

US Politics biden conference

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden will face reporters in his first formal news conference Thursday afternoon, using the stately backdrop of the White House to promote the benefits of his economic recovery efforts, call for action on gun control and respond to criticism about his handling of the border with Mexico.
  • It will be Mr. Biden’s first high-stakes grilling by reporters since taking office more than two months ago. Since then, his advisers have carefully controlled his interactions with the press, which have included one-on-one interviews and some limited opportunities for reporters to ask questions during brief appearances.
  • In the wake of two mass shootings in a week, the president will probably be asked why gun control has not been a more pressing priority for his administration.
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  • Mr. Biden said this week that Congress should tighten background checks for gun buyers and renew the ban on assault weapons, which expired years ago.
  • Mr. Biden has said that responding to the coronavirus crisis is his No. 1 responsibility. In recent months, the numbers of cases and deaths have fallen, in part because of the accelerating pace of vaccinations.
  • The president campaigned on reversing former President Donald J. Trump’s immigration agenda, and he moved quickly to do so during his first hours in office.
  • Reporters will most likely press Mr. Biden on how he intends to resolve the immediate issue of border facilities crowded with children.
  • The administration is poised to announce sanctions on Russia for a series of actions, including the SolarWinds cyberattack, which compromised U.S. government agencies and companies.
  • Fresh off passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which is intended to help the economy recover and to finance the virus response, Mr. Biden is expected to soon propose another round of spending on climate change and infrastructure repairs that could total an additional $3 trillion.
ethanshilling

Some Elephants in Africa Are Just a Step From Extinction - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ephants-africa-endangered.html

africa elephants

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A key conservation group counted the continent’s elephants as two species for the first time, highlighting the dire threat to forest elephants.
  • The threat of extinction has diminished the odds of spotting one of these wood-dwelling elephants in recent decades, according to a new I.U.C.N. Red List assessment of African elephants released Thursday.
  • The new assessment is the first in which the conservation union treats Africa’s forest and savanna elephants as two species instead of one.
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  • Both are in bad shape. The last time the group assessed African elephants, in 2008, it listed them as vulnerable. Now it says savanna elephants are endangered, one category worse.
  • Alfred Roca, a geneticist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the I.U.C.N.’s recognition of two African elephant species was a little tardy. More than two decades ago, a study of 295 skulls in museums found “enormous differences” between the two types of elephants, he said.
  • The shy forest elephants have lost nearly nine-tenths of their number in a generation and are now critically endangered — just one step from extinction in the wild.
  • Dr. Okita said that considering the two elephant species separately was helping to reveal just how bad things are, especially for the forest elephant.
  • Even during those few decades, the changes were drastic. The population of savanna elephants has fallen at least 60 percent, the team found. Forest elephants have declined by more than 86 percent.
  • It will be especially hard for forest elephants to bounce back, Dr. Roca added, because of how long they wait to reproduce — six years longer than the savanna elephants.
  • As they knock down trees and chew up huge amounts of plant material, both forest and savanna elephants change their environments in ways that create new habitat for other species.
  • Savanna elephants are “thriving,” Dr. Okita said, in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, which overlaps five countries in southern Africa. In some parts of Gabon and the Republic of Congo, forest elephant populations have stabilized or even grown. Where people are protecting elephants against poachers and planning land use carefully, Dr. Okita said, there has been progress
ethanshilling

Why 'Cursed' Olympics in Tokyo Are Pressing Ahead Amid Covid - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...japan-olympics.html

world olympics pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • From the moment that Japan pitched to host the 2020 Olympic Games, its organizers have framed it as a symbol of recovery: from a decades-long economic slump, from a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster and, after a year’s postponement, from a crippling pandemic.
  • A series of health, economic and political challenges have besieged the Games. Even as the organizers decided last week to bar international spectators, epidemiologists warn that the Olympics could become a superspreader event.
  • The financial hazards are also significant — the Olympic budget has swollen to a record $15.4 billion, increasing nearly $3 billion in the past year alone and adding to longstanding doubts about whether Olympic Games pay off for host nations.
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  • “I don’t know any reason for why you would go out to watch these Olympic Games,” said Hyoung Min Yoo, 29, who works in finance in Tokyo.
  • The president of the Tokyo organizing committee, Seiko Hashimoto, recently cited the “significant challenges” facing the world and the responsibility of the Olympics “to build a legacy for the future society.”
  • In an effort to give itself breathing space, the I.O.C. broke with tradition in 2017 by simultaneously announcing the hosts of the next two Summer Olympics — Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles four years later.
  • The seemingly unstoppable push toward the Olympics this time also reflects an often rigid Japanese bureaucracy, with some even drawing parallels to World War II, when the Japanese public did not want the conflict but no leader dared halt it.
  • “When they say ‘the five rings,’ or if they show up with an Olympic symbol, they think they can command or demand anything,” said Satoko Itani, an associate professor of sports, gender and sexuality at Kansai University. “But people are increasingly saying ‘no.’”
  • The organizers scrapped their first logo after plagiarism accusations. The president of Japan’s Olympic Committee was indicted on corruption charges related to the bidding process.
  • The organizers say that their focus is primarily on safety, and that they have earmarked $900 million in spending on measures to combat the virus.
  • The organizers say vaccination will not be mandatory, however, and many athletes, delegates and others will be coming from places where vaccines are unlikely to be fully available.
  • With more contagious and perhaps deadlier variants circulating around the globe, epidemiologists warn that the Tokyo Olympics have the potential to turbocharge the virus’s spread.
  • Nobuo Sato, 63, who owns a vegetable shop in Tokyo, said he feared that if the Olympics resulted in another coronavirus wave, it would further damage his business, which has suffered over the past year as orders from restaurants have declined sharply.
  • “I just don’t think they should risk the coronavirus spreading in any sense,” he said.
  • But if the Games do not go on, he said he did not regret the $50 million Airweave had invested in its new mattress design or the $9 million the company had reportedly contributed toward the Olympic budget each year since it signed on as a sponsor in 2016.
ethanshilling

More than 40 states say they will meet or beat Biden's May 1 deadline for vaccine eligi... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-vaccine-eligibility.html

US biden pandemic vaccine

shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The push to get Americans vaccinated has picked up momentum in recent days.
  • “Everybody in the state vaccinated, that ought to be our goal,” said Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, one of five states where everyone 16 and older is already eligible.
  • On Tuesday, Texas, Indiana and Georgia announced universal eligibility dates for late March. On Wednesday, Louisiana and Idaho each moved up the date in their states that eligibility would be expanded to those 16 and older.
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  • In Arizona, everyone 16 and older became eligible this week at state-run sites. In Tennessee, universal eligibility was set for April 5. In New Jersey, officials said they expected to meet Mr. Biden’s May 1 goal.
  • As of Tuesday, all people 50 and over can receive the vaccine in New York, in addition to teachers, some essential workers and people with some medical conditions that make them more susceptible to serious illness from the virus.
  • But a number of essential workers identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Protection as being part of Phase 1c, the third round of priority groups, are not eligible to get vaccinated in the state unless they meet age requirements.
  • The pandemic, however, continues with about 55,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths identified each day. Though the number of new deaths continues to fall, reports of new cases have leveled off in recent weeks as more cases of worrisome variants are detected.
  • With new cases plateauing, “I don’t think you can declare ‘victory’ and say you’ve turned the corner,” said Dr. Fauci, who is the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a pandemic adviser to Mr. Biden.
  • Many officials hope expanding eligibility and increasing the pace of inoculation could bring those outbreaks under control.
ethanshilling

White House Weighs Executive Orders on Gun Control - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-control-executive-orders.html

history US Politics policy gun control

shared by ethanshilling on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • With Congress unlikely to move quickly on gun legislation, the White House is pressing ahead with plans for a series of executive orders that President Biden expects to roll out in the coming weeks as a way of keeping up pressure on the issue.
  • A day after Mr. Biden called on the Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons and strengthen background checks in response to a pair of mass shootings in the past week that left 18 people dead, White House officials said on Wednesday that while moving legislation on gun safety remained a goal, it would take time, given the vehement opposition from Republicans.
  • For now, administration officials have been reaching out to Democrats in the Senate to consult with them about three executive actions.
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  • Aware that any executive actions on guns will face legal challenges, the White House Counsel’s Office has also been vetting those actions to make sure they can withstand judicial review, officials said.
  • “If there’s one thing we learned in this past year is inaction cost lives,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization.
  • But Mr. Biden has acknowledged that he does not know what legislation might be possible, even after the recent shootings in Atlanta and Boulder.
  • Since the transition, Biden administration officials have met regularly with Mr. Feinblatt and other proponents of gun control to talk about what actions are possible that do not need cooperation from Congress.
  • They have also discussed whether to declare gun violence a public health emergency — a move that would free up more funding that could be used to support community gun violence programs and enforcement of current laws.
  • Designating gun violence as a public health crisis, Ms. Brown said, would make more money available that would allow for more regular inspections.
  • For now, one of the administration’s biggest pushes has been on classifying “ghost guns,” as firearms. Such a classification would require them to be serialized and subject to background checks.
  • During the campaign, Mr. Biden promised to create a $900 million, eight-year initiative to fund evidence-based interventions in 40 cities across the country.
  • Although there are no plans for any imminent legislative push on guns from a White House that is dealing with crises on multiple fronts, Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have continued to describe legislative action as an imperative.
  • “It is time for Congress to act and stop with the false choices,” she said. “This is not about getting rid of the Second Amendment. It’s simply about saying we need reasonable gun safety laws. There is no reason why we have assault weapons on the streets of a civil society. They are weapons of war. They are designed to kill a lot of people quickly.”
ethanshilling

Republicans Push for Greater Power Over How Elections Are Run - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...republicans-election-laws.html

US Politics republicans

shared by ethanshilling on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In the turbulent aftermath of the 2020 presidential contest, election officials in Georgia, from the secretary of state’s office down to county boards, found themselves in a wholly unexpected position: They had to act as one of the last lines of defense against an onslaught of efforts by a sitting president and his influential allies to overturn the will of the voters.
  • Buried in an avalanche of voting restrictions currently moving through the Georgia Statehouse are measures that would give G.O.P. lawmakers wide-ranging influence over the mechanics of voting and fundamentally alter the state’s governance of elections.
  • “It’s looking at total control of the election process by elected officials, which is not what it should be,” said Helen Butler, a Democratic county board of elections member.
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  • State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican who has been a chief sponsor of the bills in Georgia, did not respond to requests for comment.
  • Nationwide, Republican lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are angling to pry power over elections from secretaries of state, governors and nonpartisan election boards.
  • In Georgia’s new voting bill, the State Legislature is looking to strip Mr. Raffensperger of his role as the chair of the State Election Board and make him an ex-officio member without a vote.
  • If the bill becomes law, the State Election Board, under control of the Legislature, would have more authority over these county boards, including the ability to review and fire their members.
  • Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Republicans were engaged in an “all-out effort to change the voting rules in lots of ways that would allow for greater opportunity for them to challenge the eligibility of electors,” and that the party would “add micromanagement by state legislatures to the process of running an election.”
  • It’s not just Georgia. In Arizona, Republicans are pushing for control over the rules of the state’s elections. In Iowa, the G.O.P. has installed harsh new criminal penalties for county election officials who enact emergency voting rules.
  • Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has not weighed in publicly on the changes to election administration and oversight.
  • The threat of increased punishment seemed to be directed at three county election officials in the state, who last year chose to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in their counties, drawing the ire of state Republicans.
  • Bobby Kaufmann, the Republican state representative in Iowa who sponsored the voting bill, said the county auditors’ actions were “as much the inspiration for the bill as anything,” pointing to their decisions to mail out ballots with prepopulated information.
  • In Arizona, the Republican-controlled Legislature is pursuing multiple paths to tip the scales of election oversight.
  • Ms. Hobbs, who was the target of many Republican attacks after the 2020 election, said that purely partisan politics were at play in the bills.“The Legislature wasn’t interested in control over elections until I got here and happened to have a ‘D’ by my name,” she said.
  • Efforts in other states to muddle with the mechanics of elections have gone beyond state legislatures. In Michigan, the state Republican Party has indicated that it is unlikely to ask a G.O.P. member of the State Board of Canvassers who chose to certify last year’s election results to return to his post.
  • It is nearly assured that almost all of these bills will face legal challenges from Democrats, who have signaled that combating the efforts to restrict voting will be a top priority through both federal legislation and the courts.
ethanshilling

India's Farm Subsidies Lead to Waste but Support Millions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...farmers-protest-subsidies.html

india agriculture economics

shared by ethanshilling on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Jaswinder Singh Gill had plowed 20 years of savings from an earlier career as a mechanical engineer into his family’s nearly 40-acre plot in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab, just a dozen miles from the border with Pakistan.
  • Then India suddenly transformed the way it farms. Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year pushed through new laws that would reduce the government’s role in agriculture, aimed at fixing a system that has led to huge rice surpluses in a country that still grapples with malnutrition.
  • At 56 years old, Mr. Gill doesn’t know what to do next. “How can a man restart at that age?” he said.
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  • Farmers from Punjab and elsewhere have camped outside the capital, New Delhi, for four months in protest. The country’s Supreme Court has suspended the laws while it figures out the next steps.
  • “Agriculture in India does need change,” said Devinder Sharma, an independent economist in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, “but this isn’t the way forward.”
  • Nearly 60 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people make a living from agriculture, though the sector accounts for only about 11 percent of economic output.
  • The change in the farm laws is an example of how Mr. Modi has a penchant for quick, dramatic moves that have roiled the country.
  • The prices are fixed at government-run markets called mandis, where farmers and buyers, for a fee, can meet where grains are sun dried, stored and sold.
  • The system, along with improved techniques, greater use of machinery and fierce competition, increased yields. As a result, India has too much wheat and conventional rice — as compared with basmati rice — enough to fill more than 200,000 shipping containers.
  • The imbalances don’t end there. Price supports help keep smaller farmers in business, but most don’t till enough land to turn a profit, leading to crushing debt and suicides.
  • Under Mr. Modi’s plan, corporate buyers would take a much greater role in Indian agriculture because farmers would have greater power to sell their crops to private buyers outside the mandi system, which he said would lift farmer incomes and increase exports.
  • Unquestionably, India’s current system is outdated. It was introduced in the 1960s to stave off a famine by encouraging farmers to grow wheat and rice. It included minimum prices set by the government, helping farmers sell what they grow for a profit.
  • Ms. Kaur, a widow, said her family lost most of its farm because her late husband needed to feed his drug and alcohol habit. It is only a half acre in size, compared with India’s average of about two and a half.
  • “I repay every six months,” she said, “but with interest, the amount never goes down.”If she loses her farm, “I will have to beg,” she said.
  • “We feel that the struggle of Punjab is everyone’s struggle,” said Gurjant Singh, the village head, “and unless everyone contributes to that cause, the protest will not be successful.”
  • Since he took over the farm in 2005, Mr. Gill has plowed his savings into a smart irrigation system, built a machine to clear crop residue and invested in a pair of John Deere tractors.
  • “Work hard, worship the Almighty, and share the benefits with all mankind,” Mr. Gill said. “That is what is taught to us at the gurdwara every day.”
ethanshilling

Coronavirus Reinfections Are Rare, Danish Researchers Report - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-reinfections.html

world pandemic research

shared by ethanshilling on 23 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The vast majority of people who recover from Covid-19 remain shielded from the virus for at least six months, researchers reported on Wednesday in a large study from Denmark.
  • Prior infection with the coronavirus reduced the chances of a second bout by about 80 percent in people under 65, but only by about half in those older than 65.
  • But those results, published in the journal Lancet, were tempered by many caveats.
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  • Scientists have said that reinfections are likely to be asymptomatic or mild because the immune system will suppress the virus before it can do much damage.
  • “You can certainly not rely on a past infection as protecting you from being ill again, and possibly quite ill if you are in the elderly segment,” said Steen Ethelberg, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s public health agency.
  • Rigorous estimates of second infections have generally been rare because many people worldwide did not initially have access to testing, and laboratories require genetic sequences from both rounds of testing to confirm a reinfection.
  • The researchers looked at the results from 11,068 people who tested positive for the coronavirus during the first wave in Denmark between March and May 2020. During the second wave, from September to December, 72 of those people, or 0.65 percent, again tested positive, compared with 3.27 percent of people who became infected for the first time.
  • She and other experts noted that while 80 percent might not seem superb, protection from symptomatic illness was likely to be higher.
  • The findings indicate that people who have recovered from Covid-19 should get at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine to boost the level of protection, Dr. Krammer added.
  • “I wish it had actually been broken down into specific decades over 65,” Dr. Pepper said. “It would be nice to know whether the majority of people who were getting reinfected were over 80.”
  • “This really does emphasize the need to cover older people with the vaccine, even if they have had Covid first.”
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