Every culture wants to memorialize its dead. Every family needs the missing to be identified to reach closure. Perhaps that is why a wartime mass grave offends something so deep in the human conscience. Little can be said with certainty about the hundreds of bodies discovered last week at Izium, in a pine forest in northeastern Ukraine, other than that they are the beginning of a long story.

Restoring human dignity to the most dehumanising of scenes; heaped anonymous corpses, the reduction of lives to nothing, and the stench of abandonment is a painstaking forensic endeavour.

For many months, perhaps years, the work will continue to match DNA samples, collate the scraps, establish the cause of death, and determine what crimes may have been committed by the Russian forces who fled a week ago.

Any mass grave from Bosnia to Rwanda, from Argentina to Guatemala demands of our humanity the reconstitution of the individual lives ended there.&nbsp;

“On one side in Britain you see the Queen’s dignified burial and on the other this mass grave stemming from mass violence,” said Anjli Parrin, the Kenyan deputy director of the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. “They are two extremes that remind us that the idea of someone missing, buried anonymously, is a violation of a fundamental instinct to honor the dead.”

When President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia retreats, evidence of possible atrocities surfaces. That now seems to be a pattern of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, most recently in Izium. The post-apocalyptic scene last spring in Bucha, near Kyiv, of dozens of corpses arrayed in black plastic bags beneath weeping birches laden with mistletoe has proved to be the prelude to another troubling landscape.

The exhumation of a burial site in a pine forest, after more than five months of Russian occupation of Izium, has revealed one mass grave of Ukrainian Army soldiers, seventeen of them, according to an inscription on a cross. There were also 445 mainly unmarked individual graves. Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s commissioner for human rights, spoke of “genocide of the Ukrainian population.”

But genocide&nbsp;requiring the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnicial, racial or religious group, as such,” in the words of the 1948 Genocide Convention is not easily proved. Other international crimes, including crimes against humanity and extrajudicial executions, may also have occurred.

It took nine years for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to rule that the 1995 Serbian killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys around Srebrenica constituted genocide. This was the worst single massacre in Europe since 1945. 
It was also a massacre foretold.

For any correspondent covering the war there, as I did, it was clear for a long time that the so-called “safe areas” of Bosnia under the protection of the United Nations were no such thing. The blue helmets of UN troops had become a symbol of impotence. The horror, when it came, was merely a re-enactment, on a different scale, of the eviction and slaughter of the Muslim population of Bosnia by Serbian forces three years earlier, at the start of the war in 1992.

Izium, if the war in Ukraine endures and festers (even for years as seems possible), is unlikely to be the last site of myriad graves lost in the forest. Nor are the horrors emerging in Ukraine new to a nation with a poignant history in this regard, including at Babyn Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where more than 33,000 Jews were massacred in 1941 by the Nazis.

My colleague in Bosnia, Elizabeth Neuffer of the Boston Globe, who was later killed in Iraq, wrote of the Cerska mass grave 27 kilometres&nbsp;northwest of Srebrenica in “Crimes of War,” a book edited by Roy Gutman and David Rieff:

“The corpses were dressed in civilian clothes. They had gunshot wounds to the back of their heads. Their decaying hands were bound behind their back.” She continued: “Each part of the human skeleton,&nbsp;some two hundred bones and thirty-two teeth, has its tale to tell.”

They will come to Izium, the forensic pathologists, the ballistic experts, the forensic odontologists examining teeth, the anthropologists, the radiologists, the police investigators, the national and international authorities intent on establishing what violence produced those graves. Establishing the cause and manner and circumstance of death in war is hard. That much I have learned.

“It’s not just the collection of evidence that is difficult, it is preserving it,” Ms Parrin, who has been working on mass graves in the Central African Republic, said. “You are labeling and numbering and photographing under enormous stress and trauma, and you have to demonstrate the chain of custody...who passed what to whom and who locked it in which office and when.” 
It’s easy to get something wrong. Mistaken identity is not unusual.

Before Bosnia, there was Argentina, which I covered in the mid-1980s. Buenos Aires was awakening then to the scope of a national nightmare. Every conversation seemed to end in tears as parents, haunted by desperate imaginings, recalled their children who had been “disappeared” by the military junta. That many of the tens of thousands of “desaparecidos” had been dumped from planes into the South Atlantic between 1976 and 1983 was not yet known.

So did the Argentine military turn “disappear” into a transitive verb and the ocean into a mass grave. I sat and listened. That’s what journalists do: listen through silence, awaiting a clue, the revealing epiphany, the face that crumples like a dynamited building. 
The grief of bereaved parents was overwhelming. Sudden disappearance was too much to bear. There was no farewell and no adequate means to mourn. This twisted minds toward desperate acts.

I took away the conviction that for the bereaved, disappearance into an anonymous mass grave turns every living being into someone with a possible resemblance to a lost child, whose death can never be entirely accepted.

Before Argentina, there was Lithuania. My grandmother came from Zagare, a small Lithuanian town renowned for its cherries. The last Jew there, Aizikas Mendelsonas, died in 2011. When he was born in 1922, there were almost 2,000 Jews in Zagare, with its seven synagogues.

The Nazis ended all that after pushing into Lithuania in June 1941. On October&nbsp;2, 1941, the Jews of Zagare were ordered into the main square before being taken into the woods for execution.

In 1944, the Soviet Red Army, having fought its way into Lithuania, examined a mass grave in the forest outside Zagare and found 2,402 corpses (530 men, 1,223 women, 625 children, and 24 babies), as I discovered in researching a book on my family. A sign in the woods points to the “Graves of the Victims of the Jewish Genocide,” now also commemorated by a monument on the main square.

The hypothetical European fate of my family, had they not left Zagare in time, was to die nameless in a nameless ditch. Perhaps that is why mass graves have haunted me.

These things linger, subliminally or not. Two decades after Srebrenica, a French photographer, Adrien Selbert, showed me photographs of the town, now gathered in a book called “Srebrenica, From Night to Night.” They captured a town overcome by the weight of the past, unable to shake it off, gripped by a kind of sullen idleness. Stray dogs wander empty streets. Neon signs and streetlights glare into vacancy.

It was clear that all the bullets the Serbs emptied into their male victims constituted equal violence upon their female survivors, who were left with the hurt of the unsayable.

What Russia has done, in Izium and elsewhere, is forge a Ukrainian national identity that is more powerful than ever, along with wounds that will be refracted down through the generations.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE:&nbsp;

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&nbsp;

Every culture wants to memorialize its dead. Every family needs the missing to be identified to reach closure. Perhaps that is why a wartime mass grave offends something so deep in the human conscience.

Every culture wants to memorialize its dead. Every family needs the missing to be identified to reach closure. Perhaps that is why a wartime mass grave offends something so deep in the human conscience. Little can be said with certainty about the hundreds of bodies discovered last week at Izium, in a pine forest in northeastern Ukraine, other than that they are the beginning of a long story. Restoring human dignity to the most dehumanising of scenes; heaped anonymous corpses, the reduction of lives to nothing, and the stench of abandonment is a painstaking forensic endeavour. For many months, perhaps years, the work will continue to match DNA samples, collate the scraps, establish the cause of death, and determine what crimes may have been committed by the Russian forces who fled a week ago. Any mass grave from Bosnia to Rwanda, from Argentina to Guatemala demands of our humanity the reconstitution of the individual lives ended there. “On one side in Britain you see the Queen’s dignified burial and on the other this mass grave stemming from mass violence,” said Anjli Parrin, the Kenyan deputy director of the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. “They are two extremes that remind us that the idea of someone missing, buried anonymously, is a violation of a fundamental instinct to honor the dead.” When President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia retreats, evidence of possible atrocities surfaces. That now seems to be a pattern of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, most recently in Izium. The post-apocalyptic scene last spring in Bucha, near Kyiv, of dozens of corpses arrayed in black plastic bags beneath weeping birches laden with mistletoe has proved to be the prelude to another troubling landscape. The exhumation of a burial site in a pine forest, after more than five months of Russian occupation of Izium, has revealed one mass grave of Ukrainian Army soldiers, seventeen of them, according to an inscription on a cross. There were also 445 mainly unmarked individual graves. Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s commissioner for human rights, spoke of “genocide of the Ukrainian population.” But genocide requiring the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnicial, racial or religious group, as such,” in the words of the 1948 Genocide Convention is not easily proved. Other international crimes, including crimes against humanity and extrajudicial executions, may also have occurred. It took nine years for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to rule that the 1995 Serbian killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys around Srebrenica constituted genocide. This was the worst single massacre in Europe since 1945. It was also a massacre foretold. For any correspondent covering the war there, as I did, it was clear for a long time that the so-called “safe areas” of Bosnia under the protection of the United Nations were no such thing. The blue helmets of UN troops had become a symbol of impotence. The horror, when it came, was merely a re-enactment, on a different scale, of the eviction and slaughter of the Muslim population of Bosnia by Serbian forces three years earlier, at the start of the war in 1992. Izium, if the war in Ukraine endures and festers (even for years as seems possible), is unlikely to be the last site of myriad graves lost in the forest. Nor are the horrors emerging in Ukraine new to a nation with a poignant history in this regard, including at Babyn Yar, the ravine in Kyiv where more than 33,000 Jews were massacred in 1941 by the Nazis. My colleague in Bosnia, Elizabeth Neuffer of the Boston Globe, who was later killed in Iraq, wrote of the Cerska mass grave 27 kilometres northwest of Srebrenica in “Crimes of War,” a book edited by Roy Gutman and David Rieff: “The corpses were dressed in civilian clothes. They had gunshot wounds to the back of their heads. Their decaying hands were bound behind their back.” She continued: “Each part of the human skeleton, some two hundred bones and thirty-two teeth, has its tale to tell.” They will come to Izium, the forensic pathologists, the ballistic experts, the forensic odontologists examining teeth, the anthropologists, the radiologists, the police investigators, the national and international authorities intent on establishing what violence produced those graves. Establishing the cause and manner and circumstance of death in war is hard. That much I have learned. “It’s not just the collection of evidence that is difficult, it is preserving it,” Ms Parrin, who has been working on mass graves in the Central African Republic, said. “You are labeling and numbering and photographing under enormous stress and trauma, and you have to demonstrate the chain of custody...who passed what to whom and who locked it in which office and when.” It’s easy to get something wrong. Mistaken identity is not unusual. Before Bosnia, there was Argentina, which I covered in the mid-1980s. Buenos Aires was awakening then to the scope of a national nightmare. Every conversation seemed to end in tears as parents, haunted by desperate imaginings, recalled their children who had been “disappeared” by the military junta. That many of the tens of thousands of “desaparecidos” had been dumped from planes into the South Atlantic between 1976 and 1983 was not yet known. So did the Argentine military turn “disappear” into a transitive verb and the ocean into a mass grave. I sat and listened. That’s what journalists do: listen through silence, awaiting a clue, the revealing epiphany, the face that crumples like a dynamited building. The grief of bereaved parents was overwhelming. Sudden disappearance was too much to bear. There was no farewell and no adequate means to mourn. This twisted minds toward desperate acts. I took away the conviction that for the bereaved, disappearance into an anonymous mass grave turns every living being into someone with a possible resemblance to a lost child, whose death can never be entirely accepted. Before Argentina, there was Lithuania. My grandmother came from Zagare, a small Lithuanian town renowned for its cherries. The last Jew there, Aizikas Mendelsonas, died in 2011. When he was born in 1922, there were almost 2,000 Jews in Zagare, with its seven synagogues. The Nazis ended all that after pushing into Lithuania in June 1941. On October 2, 1941, the Jews of Zagare were ordered into the main square before being taken into the woods for execution. In 1944, the Soviet Red Army, having fought its way into Lithuania, examined a mass grave in the forest outside Zagare and found 2,402 corpses (530 men, 1,223 women, 625 children, and 24 babies), as I discovered in researching a book on my family. A sign in the woods points to the “Graves of the Victims of the Jewish Genocide,” now also commemorated by a monument on the main square. The hypothetical European fate of my family, had they not left Zagare in time, was to die nameless in a nameless ditch. Perhaps that is why mass graves have haunted me. These things linger, subliminally or not. Two decades after Srebrenica, a French photographer, Adrien Selbert, showed me photographs of the town, now gathered in a book called “Srebrenica, From Night to Night.” They captured a town overcome by the weight of the past, unable to shake it off, gripped by a kind of sullen idleness. Stray dogs wander empty streets. Neon signs and streetlights glare into vacancy. It was clear that all the bullets the Serbs emptied into their male victims constituted equal violence upon their female survivors, who were left with the hurt of the unsayable. What Russia has done, in Izium and elsewhere, is forge a Ukrainian national identity that is more powerful than ever, along with wounds that will be refracted down through the generations. (Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.) WATCH WION LIVE HERE:

The singular offense of the mass grave: Story of Izium and beyond

After New York Times published an article titled 'India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public' on April 16, India has shot back by sharing its concerns over the methodology adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the analysis. &nbsp;

On several occasions, it has already raised the issue with the other member states. It sent several formal communications including six letters, which were issued to the WHO. The matter was also pointed out in virtual meetings, Indian government said in a press release. &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/wishes-pour-in-as-indian-actor-r-madhavans-son-wins-silver-at-danish-open-471411" hreflang="en">Wishes pour in as Indian actor R Madhavan's son wins silver at Danish Open</a>

In these exchanges, specific queries were raised regarding the methodology and use of unofficial sets of data by India along with other member states like Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, China, Ethiopia and Egypt. &nbsp;

The concern is that how the statistical model project estimates for a country of geographical size and population of India can also fit in with other countries, which have smaller populations. The WHO is yet to share the confidence interval for the present statistical model across several countries. &nbsp;

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“The model also gives two highly different sets of excess mortality estimates of when using the data from Tier I countries and when using unverified data from 18 Indian states. Such a wide variation in estimates raises concerns about the validity and accuracy of such a modelling exercise,” the Indian government said. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Watch:&nbsp;British PM Boris Johnson to visit India; agreements on defence, security &amp; education likely

Although India has shared many concerns on several occasions, a satisfactory response from the WHO is still awaited. &nbsp;&nbsp;

The Indian government also said it believes in-depth clarity on methodology and clear proof of its validity are crucial for policy makers to feel confident about any use of such data. &nbsp;

“It is very surprising that while New York Times purportedly could obtain the alleged figures of excess COVID-19 mortality with respect to India, it was 'unable to learn the estimates for other countries',” the Indian government said.&nbsp;&nbsp;

After New York Times published an article titled 'India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public' on April 16, India has shot back by sharing its concerns over the methodology adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the analysis.

After New York Times published an article titled 'India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public' on April 16, India has shot back by sharing its concerns over the methodology adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the analysis. On several occasions, it has already raised the issue with the other member states. It sent several formal communications including six letters, which were issued to the WHO. The matter was also pointed out in virtual meetings, Indian government said in a press release. Also Read: Wishes pour in as Indian actor R Madhavan's son wins silver at Danish Open In these exchanges, specific queries were raised regarding the methodology and use of unofficial sets of data by India along with other member states like Iran, Bangladesh, Syria, China, Ethiopia and Egypt. The concern is that how the statistical model project estimates for a country of geographical size and population of India can also fit in with other countries, which have smaller populations. The WHO is yet to share the confidence interval for the present statistical model across several countries. “The model also gives two highly different sets of excess mortality estimates of when using the data from Tier I countries and when using unverified data from 18 Indian states. Such a wide variation in estimates raises concerns about the validity and accuracy of such a modelling exercise,” the Indian government said. Watch: British PM Boris Johnson to visit India; agreements on defence, security & education likely Although India has shared many concerns on several occasions, a satisfactory response from the WHO is still awaited. The Indian government also said it believes in-depth clarity on methodology and clear proof of its validity are crucial for policy makers to feel confident about any use of such data. “It is very surprising that while New York Times purportedly could obtain the alleged figures of excess COVID-19 mortality with respect to India, it was 'unable to learn the estimates for other countries',” the Indian government said.

In response to New York Times article on WHO, India shares concerns over methodology adopted for analysis

Western Media is known for peddling narratives especially when they understand the story only halfway. Now, we are talking about a familiar culprit the New York Times now in their latest headline reads -'India is stalling the WHO's efforts to make global covid death toll public'.

New York Times is defaming India over it's covid-19 toll

The New York Times has drawn the ire of Twitter users, especially in the Indian Twitter space for its coverage and characterisation of the general strike.

National trade unions in India have called for a two-day general strike beginning on Monday (March 28). On the same day, NYT published a story with the headline 'General strike throws India into confusion'.

The strike called by trade unions in India is focussed on their two demands

1. Rolling back proposed changes to the labour law

2. Slowing down privatisation

Although the strike had&nbsp;been called on a national level, there were no reports of any widespread disruption in the daily lives of citizens barring in a few pockets of the country.

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In the southern Indian state of Kerala and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, there were partial shutdowns. However, even there, essential services were not affected.

In most other parts of the country, cars were moving freely on the roads, trains were plying as usual and government offices were functioning as usual.

There were no reports of mass rallies from these regions, there was no violence and certainly no 'confusion' as the NYT chose to put it.

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A two-day nationwide strike in India is as visible as independent journalism in The New York Times 😂
— Shashank Shekhar Jha (@shashank_ssj) <a href="https://twitter.com/shashank_ssj/status/1508499994298368001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

The NYT report has quotes from two people of which one is a communist party member and the other is a trade union representative. The report did not have any comment from the government, no response from an official.

The report said, "...In Kerala, in the south, streets were empty and shops shuttered..."

However, the report does not mention that Kerala High Court had barred government employees from taking part in the strike.

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Apparently no one in India knows anything about this supposed strike. When I tell you the NYT is not even a reliable news outlet for basic news, I'm not even joking. My contacts in India know nothing about this strike and the comments here are lit <a href="https://t.co/iE35s9yVZD">https://t.co/iE35s9yVZD</a>
— Ukranian Hacker Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) <a href="https://twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1508435481318641671?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

The New York Times' coverage of the strike has had many Indians expressing their displeasure on Twitter.

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Been 19.5 hours since Monday started in India. Still can't see a strike. Please help me find one 🙏
— ishmohit (@ishmohit1) <a href="https://twitter.com/ishmohit1/status/1508443987673518084?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
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It is not that NYT has not attempted to gauge the intensity of protests around the world.

An NYT headline on March 9 read "Trucker convoy near Washington, D.C., is a low-key protest".

But when it came to India, a strike that was not widespread was seen to have "spared no corner of India" 
&nbsp;

The New York Times has drawn the ire of Twitter users, especially in the Indian Twitter space for its coverage and characterisation of the general strike. National trade unions in India have called for a two-day general strike beginning on Monday (March 28).

The New York Times has drawn the ire of Twitter users, especially in the Indian Twitter space for its coverage and characterisation of the general strike. National trade unions in India have called for a two-day general strike beginning on Monday (March 28). On the same day, NYT published a story with the headline 'General strike throws India into confusion'. The strike called by trade unions in India is focussed on their two demands 1. Rolling back proposed changes to the labour law 2. Slowing down privatisation Although the strike had been called on a national level, there were no reports of any widespread disruption in the daily lives of citizens barring in a few pockets of the country. × In the southern Indian state of Kerala and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, there were partial shutdowns. However, even there, essential services were not affected. In most other parts of the country, cars were moving freely on the roads, trains were plying as usual and government offices were functioning as usual. There were no reports of mass rallies from these regions, there was no violence and certainly no 'confusion' as the NYT chose to put it. A two-day nationwide strike in India is as visible as independent journalism in The New York Times 😂 — Shashank Shekhar Jha (@shashank_ssj) March 28, 2022 × The NYT report has quotes from two people of which one is a communist party member and the other is a trade union representative. The report did not have any comment from the government, no response from an official. The report said, "...In Kerala, in the south, streets were empty and shops shuttered..." However, the report does not mention that Kerala High Court had barred government employees from taking part in the strike. Apparently no one in India knows anything about this supposed strike. When I tell you the NYT is not even a reliable news outlet for basic news, I'm not even joking. My contacts in India know nothing about this strike and the comments here are lit https://t.co/iE35s9yVZD — Ukranian Hacker Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) March 28, 2022 × The New York Times' coverage of the strike has had many Indians expressing their displeasure on Twitter. Been 19.5 hours since Monday started in India. Still can't see a strike. Please help me find one 🙏 — ishmohit (@ishmohit1) March 28, 2022 × It is not that NYT has not attempted to gauge the intensity of protests around the world. An NYT headline on March 9 read "Trucker convoy near Washington, D.C., is a low-key protest". But when it came to India, a strike that was not widespread was seen to have "spared no corner of India"

New York Times' coverage of general strike in India draws ire online

The New York Times reported that a two-day general strike had 'thrown India into confusion'. "What strike?" was the response in India. In reality, the limited strike was barely noticed by Indians who carried on with their normal life. Palki Sharma tells you why NYT chose to mislead its viewers.

Gravitas: NYT misleads readers on Indian strike

The two-day nationwide strike in India by the central trade unions has entered its second day today. While the two-day strike has been largely peaceful, a report in the New York times is blowing the strike out of proportion.

NYT misleads readers about India strike, article's title blows the strike out of proportion

Superstar tennis player Serena Williams has lashed out at a top newspaper, The New York Times, after it mistakenly used a photo of Serena's elder sister, Venus Williams, in a report on the former's venture capital firm.

Serena took to her official Twitter handle, on Wednesday (March 02), and shared a screenshot of the mistake along&nbsp;with the caption,&nbsp;&nbsp;"No matter how far we come, we get reminded that it's not enough. This is why I raised $111M for @serenaventures. To support the founders who are overlooked by engrained systems woefully unaware of their biases. Because even I am overlooked. You can do better, @nytimes."

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No matter how far we come, we get reminded that it's not enough. This is why I raised $111M for <a href="https://twitter.com/SerenaVentures?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@serenaventures</a>. To support the founders who are overlooked by engrained systems woefully unaware of their biases. Because even I am overlooked. You can do better, <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a>. <a href="https://t.co/hvfCl5WUoz">pic.twitter.com/hvfCl5WUoz</a>
— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) <a href="https://twitter.com/serenawilliams/status/1499058086165639169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Serena had&nbsp;recently launched an early-stage venture capital firm -- known as Serena Ventures -- and raised an inaugural fund of $111 million, as&nbsp;per a report carried out by The New York Times. Nonetheless, the newspaper's mistake made a lot of noise as several social media users pointed out the same and it became a talking point before Serena herself jumped into the bandwagon.&nbsp;

ALSO READ |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/sports/exclusive-sport-brings-in-great-culture-and-peace-ropan-bopanna-on-changes-in-tennis-amid-ukraine-crisis-458290">Exclusive | 'Sport brings in great culture and peace' - Ropan Bopanna on changes in tennis amid Ukraine crisis</a>

At present, the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena is out of the top 50 in the world rankings. It is the first time after 16 years that&nbsp;she has&nbsp;dropped out of the top 50. At 40, the American player occupies the 59th position and can see herself go further down in the rankings in the ongoing calendar year. For the unversed, she had opted out of the first-ever Grand Slam of 2022, i.e. the Australian Open, due to fitness concerns.

Back then, she had stated, "While this is never an easy decision to make, I am not where I need to be physically to compete. Melbourne is one of my favorite cities to visit and I look forward to playing at the AO every year. I will miss seeing the fans, but am excited to return and compete at my highest level," she had added.

Superstar tennis player Serena Williams has lashed out at a top newspaper, The New York Times, after it mistakenly used a photo of Serena's elder sister, Venus Williams, in a report on the former's venture capital firm.

Superstar tennis player Serena Williams has lashed out at a top newspaper, The New York Times, after it mistakenly used a photo of Serena's elder sister, Venus Williams, in a report on the former's venture capital firm. Serena took to her official Twitter handle, on Wednesday (March 02), and shared a screenshot of the mistake along with the caption, "No matter how far we come, we get reminded that it's not enough. This is why I raised $111M for @serenaventures. To support the founders who are overlooked by engrained systems woefully unaware of their biases. Because even I am overlooked. You can do better, @nytimes." No matter how far we come, we get reminded that it's not enough. This is why I raised $111M for @serenaventures. To support the founders who are overlooked by engrained systems woefully unaware of their biases. Because even I am overlooked. You can do better, @nytimes. pic.twitter.com/hvfCl5WUoz — Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) March 2, 2022 × Serena had recently launched an early-stage venture capital firm -- known as Serena Ventures -- and raised an inaugural fund of $111 million, as per a report carried out by The New York Times. Nonetheless, the newspaper's mistake made a lot of noise as several social media users pointed out the same and it became a talking point before Serena herself jumped into the bandwagon. ALSO READ | Exclusive | 'Sport brings in great culture and peace' - Ropan Bopanna on changes in tennis amid Ukraine crisis At present, the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena is out of the top 50 in the world rankings. It is the first time after 16 years that she has dropped out of the top 50. At 40, the American player occupies the 59th position and can see herself go further down in the rankings in the ongoing calendar year. For the unversed, she had opted out of the first-ever Grand Slam of 2022, i.e. the Australian Open, due to fitness concerns. Back then, she had stated, "While this is never an easy decision to make, I am not where I need to be physically to compete. Melbourne is one of my favorite cities to visit and I look forward to playing at the AO every year. I will miss seeing the fans, but am excited to return and compete at my highest level," she had added.

You can do better: Serena Williams lashes out at top newspaper for confusing her with sister Venus

The chief executive officer of the New York Times, Meredith Kopit Levien has warned his employees against the formation of a union.

As&nbsp;per the leaked documents and messages obtained by the 'Guardian,' Levien tried to influence his employees to why saying no in a union election is the right choice.

The election was being held at XFun, the group responsible for positioning product design as an important voice at the highest levels of the company.

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“In short, we don’t believe unionising in XFun is the right move. But that’s not because I’m anti-union,” said Kopit Levien.

Talking about the disconnect workers feel due to working from home during the pandemic, she cited Wirecutter’s union as an example of what could go wrong if the 600 employees voted in favour of the formation of the union.

''It took Wirecutter two years to reach an agreement with the NewsGuild. And the result of those prolonged Wirecutter negotiations was a set of terms that are, in most ways, what the rest of the company already enjoys. This was two years of uncertainty and discord to negotiate terms that were largely in line with what they and their non-union colleagues already had in place,'' she said in a memo.

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Highlighting the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, she said a union could disrupt the relationship between the management and workers.

“This is an unproven experiment with permanent consequences,” she added.

Meanwhile, Times chief product officer Alexandra Hardiman said, “A union is not a silver bullet. “It will introduce another layer into our process that we believe will make it harder to work – and achieve – together.”

“If you have any concerns about how your voice will be represented in negotiations, we urge you to vote no for the union,” said chief growth officer Hannah Yang.

The newspaper was an early adopter of the paywall when it started digital subscription plans back in 2011. That strategy helped it buck the trend of falling print revenues and build a digital business.

(With inputs from agencies)

The chief executive officer of the New York Times, Meredith Kopit Levien has warned his employees against the formation of a union. As per the leaked documents and messages obtained by the 'Guardian,' Levien tried to influence his employees to why saying no in a union election is the right choice.

The chief executive officer of the New York Times, Meredith Kopit Levien has warned his employees against the formation of a union. As per the leaked documents and messages obtained by the 'Guardian,' Levien tried to influence his employees to why saying no in a union election is the right choice. The election was being held at XFun, the group responsible for positioning product design as an important voice at the highest levels of the company. “In short, we don’t believe unionising in XFun is the right move. But that’s not because I’m anti-union,” said Kopit Levien. Talking about the disconnect workers feel due to working from home during the pandemic, she cited Wirecutter’s union as an example of what could go wrong if the 600 employees voted in favour of the formation of the union. ''It took Wirecutter two years to reach an agreement with the NewsGuild. And the result of those prolonged Wirecutter negotiations was a set of terms that are, in most ways, what the rest of the company already enjoys. This was two years of uncertainty and discord to negotiate terms that were largely in line with what they and their non-union colleagues already had in place,'' she said in a memo. Highlighting the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, she said a union could disrupt the relationship between the management and workers. “This is an unproven experiment with permanent consequences,” she added. Meanwhile, Times chief product officer Alexandra Hardiman said, “A union is not a silver bullet. “It will introduce another layer into our process that we believe will make it harder to work – and achieve – together.” “If you have any concerns about how your voice will be represented in negotiations, we urge you to vote no for the union,” said chief growth officer Hannah Yang. The newspaper was an early adopter of the paywall when it started digital subscription plans back in 2011. That strategy helped it buck the trend of falling print revenues and build a digital business. (With inputs from agencies)

New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien warns employees against formation of union

The five letters, six attempts, puzzle named Wordle has been sold to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum, revealed its creator. Josh Wardle is the Reddit engineer who created this game and launched it in October.&nbsp;

As per Josh, the response had become "a little overwhelming."

Earlier while speaking to The Guardian, he said, “It going viral doesn’t feel great, to be honest. I feel a sense of responsibility for the players. I feel I really owe it to them to keep things running and make sure everything’s working correctly."

He further said that “it’s not my full-time job and I don’t want it to become a source of stress and anxiety in my life.”

The online brain teaser has become an internet sensation since its launch, attracting millions of users worldwide. Several people can be seen posting the game's grid on their social media handles.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/lifestyle/news-viral-what-in-the-wordle-five-letter-puzzle-is-the-new-internet-obsession-444275">Also read |&nbsp;Viral: What in the Wordle? Five-letter puzzle is the new internet obsession</a>

Josh, in a statement, said, "It has been incredible to watch a game bring so much joy to so many, and I feel so grateful for the personal stories some of you have shared with me - from Wordle uniting distant family members, to provoking friendly rivalries, to supporting medical recoveries."

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An update on Wordle <a href="https://t.co/TmHd0AIRLX">pic.twitter.com/TmHd0AIRLX</a>
— Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish) <a href="https://twitter.com/powerlanguish/status/1488263944309731329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 31, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The New York Times’ crossword editor deemed Wordle as a great puzzle. He further said, “It doesn’t take long to play, which makes it perfect for our age when people have short attention spans.”

Jonathan Knight, general manager for the New York Times Games while speaking to a Times reporter said that the game has managed to do what a few games have done. "It has captured our collective imagination and brought us all a little closer together," he said.

According to The New York Times, 90 people played this game on November 1. However, two months later, on January 2, more than 300,000 took the Wordle challenge.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

The five letters, six attempts, puzzle named Wordle has been sold to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum, revealed its creator. Josh Wardle is the Reddit engineer who created this game and launched it in October.

The five letters, six attempts, puzzle named Wordle has been sold to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum, revealed its creator. Josh Wardle is the Reddit engineer who created this game and launched it in October. As per Josh, the response had become "a little overwhelming." Earlier while speaking to The Guardian, he said, “It going viral doesn’t feel great, to be honest. I feel a sense of responsibility for the players. I feel I really owe it to them to keep things running and make sure everything’s working correctly." He further said that “it’s not my full-time job and I don’t want it to become a source of stress and anxiety in my life.” The online brain teaser has become an internet sensation since its launch, attracting millions of users worldwide. Several people can be seen posting the game's grid on their social media handles. Also read | Viral: What in the Wordle? Five-letter puzzle is the new internet obsession Josh, in a statement, said, "It has been incredible to watch a game bring so much joy to so many, and I feel so grateful for the personal stories some of you have shared with me - from Wordle uniting distant family members, to provoking friendly rivalries, to supporting medical recoveries." An update on Wordle pic.twitter.com/TmHd0AIRLX — Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish) January 31, 2022 × The New York Times’ crossword editor deemed Wordle as a great puzzle. He further said, “It doesn’t take long to play, which makes it perfect for our age when people have short attention spans.” Jonathan Knight, general manager for the New York Times Games while speaking to a Times reporter said that the game has managed to do what a few games have done. "It has captured our collective imagination and brought us all a little closer together," he said. According to The New York Times, 90 people played this game on November 1. However, two months later, on January 2, more than 300,000 took the Wordle challenge. (With inputs from agencies)

Viral game Wordle has been sold to New York Times for a seven-figure sum

People in Israel have started a social media campaign against 'The New York Times' that portrayed them as 'angry' and displeased.'

They are posting pictures with the hashtag 'sad, sad Israel' to mock the article by the New York-based American daily newspaper.

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The <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> has portrayed Israelis in their latest article as angry and displeased. 
 
If we put aside the fact that Israel was ranked the 12th happiest country in the world, they are right, we are sad sad, look at my face. 😂 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> <a href="https://t.co/sXzWUBgT74">pic.twitter.com/sXzWUBgT74</a>
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) <a href="https://twitter.com/HananyaNaftali/status/1455679049498603521?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Calling Israel a ''divided'' land, the article that provoked many Israelis talks&nbsp;about ''incompatible factions'' and grievances of the people living in the country.

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Some folks, like <a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickKingsley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PatrickKingsley</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a>, choose to see only the negative in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Israel?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Israel</a>. They come here with set preconceptions and refuse to take off their blinkers. Suggest open your eyes, talk to people, get out of your comfort zone. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> <a href="https://t.co/SgjDzyJqMn">pic.twitter.com/SgjDzyJqMn</a>
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ostrov_A/status/1455601600622469122?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Just two sad sad Israelis in the middle of a war, getting engaged. Look how sad we are! 
 
I guess <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickKingsley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PatrickKingsley</a> hate this since they want to portray Israelis as sad miserable people in their latest absurd article.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/YosephHaddad?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@YosephHaddad</a> <a href="https://t.co/luubozRqFH">pic.twitter.com/luubozRqFH</a>
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) <a href="https://twitter.com/emilykschrader/status/1455576418340032517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> published an article that portrayed Israel as a polarized state whose citizens are resentful and angry. To my delight, social media is full of Israelis proving otherwise. Even if there are things to fix, we love our country 🇮🇱 
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> 
<a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickKingsley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PatrickKingsley</a> <a href="https://t.co/7gZJ1v5Qo9">pic.twitter.com/7gZJ1v5Qo9</a>
— יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) <a href="https://twitter.com/YosephHaddad/status/1455569059928489984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The article had also&nbsp;highlighted&nbsp;how many Arab Israelis were increasingly asserting their Palestinian identity.

Israelis have criticised the negative outlook of NYT and have lambasted its preconceptions. They have also highlighted that Israel was ranked the 12th happiest country in the world.

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.<a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> we're sooo sad<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> <a href="https://t.co/Oev7JZ6dGP">pic.twitter.com/Oev7JZ6dGP</a>
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1455548418315673600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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We stay out all night and swim in warm sea water, or argue with our friends on crowded corners, or drink whiskey until sunrise or dance until our feet hurt and then stop for a minute and keep on dancing… we chose life with our arms and eyes wide open. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SadSadIsrael?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SadSadIsrael</a> <a href="https://t.co/HXSxWL4aQO">pic.twitter.com/HXSxWL4aQO</a>
— (((TuttleSinger))) سارا تاتل سينجر שרה טאטל-סינגר (@TuttleSinger) <a href="https://twitter.com/TuttleSinger/status/1455537203833196544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The country's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had become the first leader to include an independent Arab party in its coalition.&nbsp;

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It comes as Palestinians facing eviction from the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah rejected a deal that would have seen them accept the temporary ownership of their homes by an Israeli settler organisation.

The long-running legal battle over the evictions helped trigger an 11-day war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, and the case has been a regular source of tension across East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/israel-indicts-palestinian-jail-breakers-417910">Also read |&nbsp;Israel indicts Palestinian jail breakers</a>

Seeking a compromise, Israel's Supreme Court in October proposed a deal that would have seen four Palestinian families remain in their homes for 15 years as "protected tenants" while paying rent to settlers who claim the land.

The deal would have required the Palestinians to recognise the settlers' ownership claims on land their families have lived on for generations - a condition they have long rejected. It also would have granted them the right to prove ownership in the future.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, occupying and later annexing it. It regards the entire city as its undivided capital - a status not recognised internationally.

Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza.

People in Israel have started a social media campaign against 'The New York Times' that portrayed them as 'angry' and displeased.' They are posting pictures with the hashtag 'sad, sad Israel' to mock the article by the New York-based American daily newspaper.

People in Israel have started a social media campaign against 'The New York Times' that portrayed them as 'angry' and displeased.' They are posting pictures with the hashtag 'sad, sad Israel' to mock the article by the New York-based American daily newspaper. The @nytimes has portrayed Israelis in their latest article as angry and displeased. If we put aside the fact that Israel was ranked the 12th happiest country in the world, they are right, we are sad sad, look at my face. 😂 #SadSadIsrael pic.twitter.com/sXzWUBgT74 — Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) November 2, 2021 × Calling Israel a ''divided'' land, the article that provoked many Israelis talks about ''incompatible factions'' and grievances of the people living in the country. Some folks, like @PatrickKingsley of @nytimes, choose to see only the negative in #Israel. They come here with set preconceptions and refuse to take off their blinkers. Suggest open your eyes, talk to people, get out of your comfort zone. #SadSadIsrael pic.twitter.com/SgjDzyJqMn — Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 2, 2021 × Just two sad sad Israelis in the middle of a war, getting engaged. Look how sad we are! I guess @nytimes and @PatrickKingsley hate this since they want to portray Israelis as sad miserable people in their latest absurd article.#SadSadIsrael @YosephHaddad pic.twitter.com/luubozRqFH — Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) November 2, 2021 × The @nytimes published an article that portrayed Israel as a polarized state whose citizens are resentful and angry. To my delight, social media is full of Israelis proving otherwise. Even if there are things to fix, we love our country 🇮🇱 #SadSadIsrael @PatrickKingsley pic.twitter.com/7gZJ1v5Qo9 — יוסף חדאד - Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) November 2, 2021 × The article had also highlighted how many Arab Israelis were increasingly asserting their Palestinian identity. Israelis have criticised the negative outlook of NYT and have lambasted its preconceptions. They have also highlighted that Israel was ranked the 12th happiest country in the world. .@nytimes we're sooo sad#SadSadIsrael pic.twitter.com/Oev7JZ6dGP — Israel ישראל (@Israel) November 2, 2021 × We stay out all night and swim in warm sea water, or argue with our friends on crowded corners, or drink whiskey until sunrise or dance until our feet hurt and then stop for a minute and keep on dancing… we chose life with our arms and eyes wide open. #SadSadIsrael pic.twitter.com/HXSxWL4aQO — (((TuttleSinger))) سارا تاتل سينجر שרה טאטל-סינגר (@TuttleSinger) November 2, 2021 × The country's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had become the first leader to include an independent Arab party in its coalition. It comes as Palestinians facing eviction from the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah rejected a deal that would have seen them accept the temporary ownership of their homes by an Israeli settler organisation. The long-running legal battle over the evictions helped trigger an 11-day war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, and the case has been a regular source of tension across East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Also read | Israel indicts Palestinian jail breakers Seeking a compromise, Israel's Supreme Court in October proposed a deal that would have seen four Palestinian families remain in their homes for 15 years as "protected tenants" while paying rent to settlers who claim the land. The deal would have required the Palestinians to recognise the settlers' ownership claims on land their families have lived on for generations - a condition they have long rejected. It also would have granted them the right to prove ownership in the future. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, occupying and later annexing it. It regards the entire city as its undivided capital - a status not recognised internationally. Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza.

Cheeky protest: Israelis mock NYT on social media for article with negative portrayal of country

A new idea is gaining currency among some politicians and policymakers in Washington: The United States is in a “Cold War” with China. It’s a bad idea — bad on history, bad on politics, bad for our future.

The Biden administration has wisely pushed back on the framing. But the president’s actions suggest that his strategy for dealing with China may indeed suffer from Cold War thinking, which locks our minds into the traditional two-dimensional chess model.

Competition with China, though, is a three-dimensional game. And if we continue to play two-dimensional chess, we will lose.

While neither the conflict with the Soviet Union nor the current competition with China has led to all-out combat, the games are very different. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a direct military and ideological threat to the United States. We had almost no economic or social connections: Containment was a feasible objective.

Because the game was based on a simple two-dimensional premise — that the only fight was between their respective militaries — each side depended on the other not to pull the trigger. But with China, the three-dimensional game features a distribution of power at each level — military, economic and social — not just one.

That is why the Cold War metaphor, although convenient, is lazy and potentially dangerous. It obscures and misleads us by underestimating the real challenge we face — and offering ineffective strategies.

On the economic level, the United States and China are deeply interdependent. The United States had more than half a trillion dollars in trade with China in 2020. While some voices in Washington talk about “decoupling,” it would be foolish to think we can separate our economy completely from China without enormous costs. And we should not expect other countries to do so either, since China is reportedly now the largest trading partner of more countries than the United States.

The social fabrics of the United States and China are also deeply intertwined: There are millions of social connections, from students and tourists and others, between the two countries. And it’s physically impossible to decouple ecological issues like pandemics and climate change.

Interdependence is a double-edged sword. It creates networks of sensitivity to what is happening in another country that can encourage caution. But it also creates vulnerabilities that both Beijing and Washington can try to manipulate as tools of influence.

Despite the above factors, a two-dimensional mind-set assumes the United States can take on China largely because of its military superiority. While China is modernizing its forces, the United States is still the only truly global power. (Though it’s unclear how long that will last.) We must carefully plot our horizontal moves — like improving relations with India and reinforcing our alliance with Japan — on the traditional military board of chess to maintain the balance of power in Asia. At the same time, we cannot continue to ignore the different power relations on the economic or transnational boards — and how those levels interact. If we do, we will suffer.

On the economic board, the distribution of power is multipolar, with the United States, China, Europe and Japan the largest players. And on the transnational board, when it comes to issues such as climate change and pandemics, nongovernmental actors play powerful roles and no country is in control.

And yet, the United States has an inadequate trade policy for East Asia, which leaves the field to China. On transnational issues, the United States risks letting sour relations with Beijing jeopardize climate goals. China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has warned America not to expect climate negotiations to remain an oasis in a desert of overall relations.

No country can solve transnational issues like climate change and pandemics alone. And so the politics of ecological interdependence involve power with as well as over others.

The political competition today is also different. The United States and its allies are not threatened by the export of communism in the same way they were in the days of Stalin or Mao. There is less proselytizing; few today take to the streets in favor of “Xi Jinping thought.”

Instead, China manipulates the system of deep economic and political interdependence to support its authoritarian government and to influence opinion in democracies to counter and pre-empt criticism. For evidence of that, we just have to look at China’s economic punishment of our allies Norway and Australia for daring to knock China on human rights. A three-dimensional strategy would recognize and respond to the fact that these actions taken by China create opportunities for us to take supportive steps that will in turn increase our influence. Trade agreements would help, as does the recent agreement to export our nuclear submarine technology to Australia.

For better and worse, we are locked in a “cooperative rivalry” with China that requires a strategy that can accomplish those two contradictory things — compete and cooperate — at the same time.

At home, the United States must reinforce its technological advantages by increasing support for research and development. On the military board, this means restructuring traditional forces to incorporate new technologies and strengthening the aforementioned alliances.

On the economic board, American withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership left a gaping hole in an important area of trade. And on transnational issues we need to strengthen and develop institutions and international treaties — such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord — to cope with health and climate issues.

Pessimists look at China’s population size and economic growth rates and believe they will prevail. But if we treat our allies as assets, the combined military strength and economic wealth of Western-aligned democracies — the United States, Europe, Japan — will far exceed that of China well into this century.

President Biden is correct that Cold War rhetoric has more negative than positive effects. But he also needs to ensure that his China strategy suits the three-dimensional game.

A new idea is gaining currency among some politicians and policymakers in Washington: The United States is in a “Cold War” with China. It’s a bad idea — bad on history, bad on politics, bad for our future.

A new idea is gaining currency among some politicians and policymakers in Washington: The United States is in a “Cold War” with China. It’s a bad idea — bad on history, bad on politics, bad for our future. The Biden administration has wisely pushed back on the framing. But the president’s actions suggest that his strategy for dealing with China may indeed suffer from Cold War thinking, which locks our minds into the traditional two-dimensional chess model. Competition with China, though, is a three-dimensional game. And if we continue to play two-dimensional chess, we will lose. While neither the conflict with the Soviet Union nor the current competition with China has led to all-out combat, the games are very different. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a direct military and ideological threat to the United States. We had almost no economic or social connections: Containment was a feasible objective. Because the game was based on a simple two-dimensional premise — that the only fight was between their respective militaries — each side depended on the other not to pull the trigger. But with China, the three-dimensional game features a distribution of power at each level — military, economic and social — not just one. That is why the Cold War metaphor, although convenient, is lazy and potentially dangerous. It obscures and misleads us by underestimating the real challenge we face — and offering ineffective strategies. On the economic level, the United States and China are deeply interdependent. The United States had more than half a trillion dollars in trade with China in 2020. While some voices in Washington talk about “decoupling,” it would be foolish to think we can separate our economy completely from China without enormous costs. And we should not expect other countries to do so either, since China is reportedly now the largest trading partner of more countries than the United States. The social fabrics of the United States and China are also deeply intertwined: There are millions of social connections, from students and tourists and others, between the two countries. And it’s physically impossible to decouple ecological issues like pandemics and climate change. Interdependence is a double-edged sword. It creates networks of sensitivity to what is happening in another country that can encourage caution. But it also creates vulnerabilities that both Beijing and Washington can try to manipulate as tools of influence. Despite the above factors, a two-dimensional mind-set assumes the United States can take on China largely because of its military superiority. While China is modernizing its forces, the United States is still the only truly global power. (Though it’s unclear how long that will last.) We must carefully plot our horizontal moves — like improving relations with India and reinforcing our alliance with Japan — on the traditional military board of chess to maintain the balance of power in Asia. At the same time, we cannot continue to ignore the different power relations on the economic or transnational boards — and how those levels interact. If we do, we will suffer. On the economic board, the distribution of power is multipolar, with the United States, China, Europe and Japan the largest players. And on the transnational board, when it comes to issues such as climate change and pandemics, nongovernmental actors play powerful roles and no country is in control. And yet, the United States has an inadequate trade policy for East Asia, which leaves the field to China. On transnational issues, the United States risks letting sour relations with Beijing jeopardize climate goals. China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has warned America not to expect climate negotiations to remain an oasis in a desert of overall relations. No country can solve transnational issues like climate change and pandemics alone. And so the politics of ecological interdependence involve power with as well as over others. The political competition today is also different. The United States and its allies are not threatened by the export of communism in the same way they were in the days of Stalin or Mao. There is less proselytizing; few today take to the streets in favor of “Xi Jinping thought.” Instead, China manipulates the system of deep economic and political interdependence to support its authoritarian government and to influence opinion in democracies to counter and pre-empt criticism. For evidence of that, we just have to look at China’s economic punishment of our allies Norway and Australia for daring to knock China on human rights. A three-dimensional strategy would recognize and respond to the fact that these actions taken by China create opportunities for us to take supportive steps that will in turn increase our influence. Trade agreements would help, as does the recent agreement to export our nuclear submarine technology to Australia. For better and worse, we are locked in a “cooperative rivalry” with China that requires a strategy that can accomplish those two contradictory things — compete and cooperate — at the same time. At home, the United States must reinforce its technological advantages by increasing support for research and development. On the military board, this means restructuring traditional forces to incorporate new technologies and strengthening the aforementioned alliances. On the economic board, American withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership left a gaping hole in an important area of trade. And on transnational issues we need to strengthen and develop institutions and international treaties — such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord — to cope with health and climate issues. Pessimists look at China’s population size and economic growth rates and believe they will prevail. But if we treat our allies as assets, the combined military strength and economic wealth of Western-aligned democracies — the United States, Europe, Japan — will far exceed that of China well into this century. President Biden is correct that Cold War rhetoric has more negative than positive effects. But he also needs to ensure that his China strategy suits the three-dimensional game.

When it comes to China, don’t call it a ‘Cold War’

For almost 60 years, the artist known as Christo dreamed of wrapping the Arc de Triomphe. As a young man, having fled communist Bulgaria, he would gaze at the monument from his tiny garret apartment. A photomontage dated 1962 shows the 164-foot-high arch crudely bundled up. Freedom trumped the sacred. He always wanted people to look again at what perhaps they did not see.

 
Now, a little over a year after Christo’s death at the age of 84, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped” is a reality. About 270,000 square feet of silvery blue fabric, shimmering in the changing light of Paris, hugs the monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 at the giddy height of his power. The polypropylene material, its tone reminiscent of the city’s distinctive zinc roofs, is secured but not held rigidly fast by almost 1.9 miles of red rope, in line with the artist’s meticulous instructions.

 
“He wanted a living object that, with its moving folds, would turn the monument’s surface into something sensual,” Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew and project director, told me. Suddenly, at the top of the Champs Élysées, a magical pale object beckons, its glistening lightness anchored by steel slabs weighing 150 tons. The effect is at once disorienting and riveting.

 
Yavachev moved from New York to Paris two years ago to lead the project. The work has been arduous. France’s League for the Protection of Birds expressed concern about two falcons nesting high in the facade. That led to a first delay, before the pandemic caused a second.

 
Bastille Day, on July 14, and Armistice Day, on Nov. 11, when ceremonies take place at the monument, left a limited window. Building the cages whose steel bars pass an inch or two from the outstretched hand or foot of a frieze or a funereal relief was painstaking. So was rappelling down to work under the overhangs of the cornice. In all, 1,200 people labored on the wrapping.

 
“It was difficult, stressful,” lead engineer Sebastien Roger said as we stood under the arch. “You have to be careful, it’s the Arc de Triomphe after all!”

 
From its official opening Saturday through Oct. 3, the arch has in fact become something else — transformed into an oversize imagined object through the liberating obsession of an artist who refused to accept limits.

 
Born into the stifling oppression of the Soviet imperium, Christo — whose full name was Christo Vladimirov Javacheff — always had one core guiding idea: the inalienability of freedom. When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, he made a wall of oil barrels on the Rue Visconti in Paris, a first defiant public statement.

 
Standing at the Arc de Triomphe this week, President Emmanuel Macron said, “I think that what we believe is this: crazy dreams must be possible.” The wrapping of a monument at once military, historical, artistic and a repository of national memory made French people “extraordinarily proud,” he suggested, “because this is what artistic adventure is all about.”

 
There was some grumbling. Florian Philippot, a rightist politician, denounced “a garbage bag draped over one of our most glorious monuments.” In the daily Le Monde, Carlo Ratti, an Italian architect, asked if it was environmentally acceptable to use vast amounts of fabric to wrap a monument. In fact, almost all the material used is being recycled, Yavachev said. 
 
Like Christo’s “The Gates” — all 7,503 of them — that threaded a tapestry of deep saffron across New York City's Central Park in 2005, or the Reichstag wrapped in Berlin in 1995, or the 3,100 umbrellas deployed along inland valleys in Japan and California, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe seems certain to induce in people a sense of collective wonder. The crowds expected are so large that the Place Charles de Gaulle is being closed to traffic on weekends until the arch is unwrapped, allowing viewers to get close without dodging the cars normally slaloming at high speed across the large circular expanse.

 
As with all of Christo’s major projects, no sponsors or donors were accepted. The wrap has been entirely funded by the artist’s estate.

 
“My uncle always told me that if you are accountable to anyone, you don’t have freedom,” Yavachev said. “Remember, in art school in communist Bulgaria, he was criticized by the authorities because the peasants in his painting did not look happy enough! That was too much for him.”

 
Roselyne Bachelot, the culture minister, said: “The Arc de Triomphe is taken away from our gaze and at the same time overexposed to our gaze. This subtraction and this overexposure lie at the core of the work. Thank you, Christo, for offering us the gift of looking in another way, in a new way, at masterpieces built by other artists.”

 
The Arc de Triomphe, like any great monument, was built to last. Christo’s conceptual art is ephemeral. Within weeks it will be dismantled. There is something liberating in this, perhaps because the fleeting nature of the work makes possession impossible. The work is immense, yet insubstantial. The fabric seems to express something nomadic, in keeping with Christo’s own peripatetic life.

 
After living in Paris for many years, he moved to New York, living in the country illegally with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, from 1964-67, before getting a green card and becoming a citizen in 1973. By the time the United States opened its arms to him, he had been stateless for 17 years. Freedom meant something. America was also an idea. 
This is not the first time that Christo has wrapped a Paris icon. In 1985, after many years of battling the authorities for permission (he was a specialist in the attritional bureaucratic warfare often required to achieve his aims), the artist wrapped the Pont Neuf and the 44 streetlamps on the bridge in a sandstone-colored fabric. Three million visitors came to see the installation during its two-week life.

 
For the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe, a project supported by Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, permission came more quickly — even if those falcons and COVID made life difficult. From July 15, Roger, the engineer, said, teams worked in shifts around the clock to do the preparatory work.

 
Only once before has the arch been partially covered by fabric. In 1885, on the occasion of the funeral of beloved poet and author Victor Hugo, a large black shroud was hung from the monument. More than 2 million people joined the funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pantheon, where Hugo was interred.

 
Christo loved Paris. It was his second city, alongside New York. “I miss my uncle’s excitement — he would have been hopping around!” Yavachev said. It has been a tough year for the French capital, often under curfew as a result of the pandemic, the restaurants and cafes that are the connective tissue of the city closed for long periods. So, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped” feels like a liberating moment, a major public artwork to which large crowds will throng.

 
“Christo overwhelms us, prods us, makes us talk,” Hidalgo said. “He plays with light, with the Paris sky that reverberates through his ephemeral work.”

 
A few years before he died, I met Christo in Doha, Qatar. During a 45-minute interview he refused to sit down, speaking with irrepressible vitality. Eat little, he counseled, in order to channel energy (in his case, yogurt with garlic for breakfast, then nothing until dinner). Decide what you want — the difficult part — and apply yourself without compromise to that end. So determined was he that a posthumous work has come to fruition in Paris with what Yavachev described as his uncle’s spirit “everywhere around me.”

 
The Arc de Triomphe is many faceted. It began life as a monument to military glory. Names of Napoleon’s great battles are engraved across it. It was a tribute to a victorious emperor. But war is also terrible loss, as the 20th century demonstrated. In 1920, two years after World War I, the tomb of the unknown soldier was placed under the arch. The inscription on it reads: “A French soldier dead for the homeland 1914-1918.” An eternal flame burns. 
The presence of the tomb made it impossible for military parades to pass under the arch, as if to declare the futility of war.

 
During the project, the tomb was carefully respected. The people who tend to the flame every evening at 6:30 p.m. were able to complete their task. One of them told journalists Thursday that “the unknown soldier has been in his shroud for 100 years. Christo left us prematurely and is now in his shroud. And I believe this temporary shroud tells us the arch is wrapped but you will see it again soon — so there is a kind of unity around us.”

 
Certainly, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe — light, breathing, glimmering — speaks of anything but war. After completing a project, Christo liked to say, “We didded it!” Yes, he did, even from beyond the grave. Freedom is also a fierce act of the imagination.

For almost 60 years, the artist known as Christo dreamed of wrapping the Arc de Triomphe. As a young man, having fled communist Bulgaria, he would gaze at the monument from his tiny garret apartment.

For almost 60 years, the artist known as Christo dreamed of wrapping the Arc de Triomphe. As a young man, having fled communist Bulgaria, he would gaze at the monument from his tiny garret apartment. A photomontage dated 1962 shows the 164-foot-high arch crudely bundled up. Freedom trumped the sacred. He always wanted people to look again at what perhaps they did not see. Now, a little over a year after Christo’s death at the age of 84, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped” is a reality. About 270,000 square feet of silvery blue fabric, shimmering in the changing light of Paris, hugs the monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 at the giddy height of his power. The polypropylene material, its tone reminiscent of the city’s distinctive zinc roofs, is secured but not held rigidly fast by almost 1.9 miles of red rope, in line with the artist’s meticulous instructions. “He wanted a living object that, with its moving folds, would turn the monument’s surface into something sensual,” Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew and project director, told me. Suddenly, at the top of the Champs Élysées, a magical pale object beckons, its glistening lightness anchored by steel slabs weighing 150 tons. The effect is at once disorienting and riveting. Yavachev moved from New York to Paris two years ago to lead the project. The work has been arduous. France’s League for the Protection of Birds expressed concern about two falcons nesting high in the facade. That led to a first delay, before the pandemic caused a second. Bastille Day, on July 14, and Armistice Day, on Nov. 11, when ceremonies take place at the monument, left a limited window. Building the cages whose steel bars pass an inch or two from the outstretched hand or foot of a frieze or a funereal relief was painstaking. So was rappelling down to work under the overhangs of the cornice. In all, 1,200 people labored on the wrapping. “It was difficult, stressful,” lead engineer Sebastien Roger said as we stood under the arch. “You have to be careful, it’s the Arc de Triomphe after all!” From its official opening Saturday through Oct. 3, the arch has in fact become something else — transformed into an oversize imagined object through the liberating obsession of an artist who refused to accept limits. Born into the stifling oppression of the Soviet imperium, Christo — whose full name was Christo Vladimirov Javacheff — always had one core guiding idea: the inalienability of freedom. When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, he made a wall of oil barrels on the Rue Visconti in Paris, a first defiant public statement. Standing at the Arc de Triomphe this week, President Emmanuel Macron said, “I think that what we believe is this: crazy dreams must be possible.” The wrapping of a monument at once military, historical, artistic and a repository of national memory made French people “extraordinarily proud,” he suggested, “because this is what artistic adventure is all about.” There was some grumbling. Florian Philippot, a rightist politician, denounced “a garbage bag draped over one of our most glorious monuments.” In the daily Le Monde, Carlo Ratti, an Italian architect, asked if it was environmentally acceptable to use vast amounts of fabric to wrap a monument. In fact, almost all the material used is being recycled, Yavachev said. Like Christo’s “The Gates” — all 7,503 of them — that threaded a tapestry of deep saffron across New York City's Central Park in 2005, or the Reichstag wrapped in Berlin in 1995, or the 3,100 umbrellas deployed along inland valleys in Japan and California, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe seems certain to induce in people a sense of collective wonder. The crowds expected are so large that the Place Charles de Gaulle is being closed to traffic on weekends until the arch is unwrapped, allowing viewers to get close without dodging the cars normally slaloming at high speed across the large circular expanse. As with all of Christo’s major projects, no sponsors or donors were accepted. The wrap has been entirely funded by the artist’s estate. “My uncle always told me that if you are accountable to anyone, you don’t have freedom,” Yavachev said. “Remember, in art school in communist Bulgaria, he was criticized by the authorities because the peasants in his painting did not look happy enough! That was too much for him.” Roselyne Bachelot, the culture minister, said: “The Arc de Triomphe is taken away from our gaze and at the same time overexposed to our gaze. This subtraction and this overexposure lie at the core of the work. Thank you, Christo, for offering us the gift of looking in another way, in a new way, at masterpieces built by other artists.” The Arc de Triomphe, like any great monument, was built to last. Christo’s conceptual art is ephemeral. Within weeks it will be dismantled. There is something liberating in this, perhaps because the fleeting nature of the work makes possession impossible. The work is immense, yet insubstantial. The fabric seems to express something nomadic, in keeping with Christo’s own peripatetic life. After living in Paris for many years, he moved to New York, living in the country illegally with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, from 1964-67, before getting a green card and becoming a citizen in 1973. By the time the United States opened its arms to him, he had been stateless for 17 years. Freedom meant something. America was also an idea. This is not the first time that Christo has wrapped a Paris icon. In 1985, after many years of battling the authorities for permission (he was a specialist in the attritional bureaucratic warfare often required to achieve his aims), the artist wrapped the Pont Neuf and the 44 streetlamps on the bridge in a sandstone-colored fabric. Three million visitors came to see the installation during its two-week life. For the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe, a project supported by Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, permission came more quickly — even if those falcons and COVID made life difficult. From July 15, Roger, the engineer, said, teams worked in shifts around the clock to do the preparatory work. Only once before has the arch been partially covered by fabric. In 1885, on the occasion of the funeral of beloved poet and author Victor Hugo, a large black shroud was hung from the monument. More than 2 million people joined the funeral procession from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pantheon, where Hugo was interred. Christo loved Paris. It was his second city, alongside New York. “I miss my uncle’s excitement — he would have been hopping around!” Yavachev said. It has been a tough year for the French capital, often under curfew as a result of the pandemic, the restaurants and cafes that are the connective tissue of the city closed for long periods. So, “L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped” feels like a liberating moment, a major public artwork to which large crowds will throng. “Christo overwhelms us, prods us, makes us talk,” Hidalgo said. “He plays with light, with the Paris sky that reverberates through his ephemeral work.” A few years before he died, I met Christo in Doha, Qatar. During a 45-minute interview he refused to sit down, speaking with irrepressible vitality. Eat little, he counseled, in order to channel energy (in his case, yogurt with garlic for breakfast, then nothing until dinner). Decide what you want — the difficult part — and apply yourself without compromise to that end. So determined was he that a posthumous work has come to fruition in Paris with what Yavachev described as his uncle’s spirit “everywhere around me.” The Arc de Triomphe is many faceted. It began life as a monument to military glory. Names of Napoleon’s great battles are engraved across it. It was a tribute to a victorious emperor. But war is also terrible loss, as the 20th century demonstrated. In 1920, two years after World War I, the tomb of the unknown soldier was placed under the arch. The inscription on it reads: “A French soldier dead for the homeland 1914-1918.” An eternal flame burns. The presence of the tomb made it impossible for military parades to pass under the arch, as if to declare the futility of war. During the project, the tomb was carefully respected. The people who tend to the flame every evening at 6:30 p.m. were able to complete their task. One of them told journalists Thursday that “the unknown soldier has been in his shroud for 100 years. Christo left us prematurely and is now in his shroud. And I believe this temporary shroud tells us the arch is wrapped but you will see it again soon — so there is a kind of unity around us.” Certainly, the wrapped Arc de Triomphe — light, breathing, glimmering — speaks of anything but war. After completing a project, Christo liked to say, “We didded it!” Yes, he did, even from beyond the grave. Freedom is also a fierce act of the imagination.

Wrapped Arc de Triomphe is Christo’s fleeting gift to Paris

A Facebook post about a “healthy” doctor dying two weeks after taking the COVID-19 vaccine was the “most viewed content” on its platform in the first three months of 2021, the social media giant said in its transparency report.

The content reportedly attracted nearly 54 million views.

This information was part of Facebook’s first-quarter content transparency report that was released on Saturday—initially believed to be shelved.

The tech giant released the report after the New York Times claimed that the executives at the social media firm held back from sharing it with the public as it would “look bad for the company”.

However, countering the claims, Facebook’s Policy Communications Manager Andy Stone took to Twitter to issue a clarification.

&nbsp;

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We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favorable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look -- and making note of some of the components of the story.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) <a href="https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1429207926800068612?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2021</a></blockquote>
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“We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favourable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look — and making note of some of the components of the story.” “News outlets wrote about the south Florida doctor that died. When the coroner released a cause of death, the Chicago Tribune appended an update to its original story; NYTimes did not. Would it have been right to remove the Times story because it was COVID misinformation?” he tweeted.

He said the reason the report wasn’t released earlier "because there were key fixes to the system we wanted to make.”

The story was initially published by the South Florida Sun Sentinel which was later reposted by the Chicago Tribune.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/facebook-set-to-label-all-covid-related-posts-to-battle-misinformation-370595">Facebook set to label all COVID-related posts to battle misinformation</a>

The report revealed that a doctor in Miami died two weeks after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, calling it “possibly the nation’s first death linked to the vaccine.”

The story was then updated stating that the doctor died from a condition that causes internal bleeding, but a medical examiner's report couldn't rule out whether the vaccine was the key factor.

Facebook and other social media companies have been criticised for how they handle the spread of misinformation on their platforms.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

A Facebook post about a “healthy” doctor dying two weeks after taking the COVID-19 vaccine was the “most viewed content” on its platform in the first three months of 2021, the social media giant said in its transparency report.

A Facebook post about a “healthy” doctor dying two weeks after taking the COVID-19 vaccine was the “most viewed content” on its platform in the first three months of 2021, the social media giant said in its transparency report. The content reportedly attracted nearly 54 million views. This information was part of Facebook’s first-quarter content transparency report that was released on Saturday—initially believed to be shelved. The tech giant released the report after the New York Times claimed that the executives at the social media firm held back from sharing it with the public as it would “look bad for the company”. However, countering the claims, Facebook’s Policy Communications Manager Andy Stone took to Twitter to issue a clarification. We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favorable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look -- and making note of some of the components of the story. — Andy Stone (@andymstone) August 21, 2021 × “We’ve been getting criticism for holding an internal report until it was more favourable for us and then releasing it. Getting criticism isn’t unfair. But it’s worth taking a closer look — and making note of some of the components of the story.” “News outlets wrote about the south Florida doctor that died. When the coroner released a cause of death, the Chicago Tribune appended an update to its original story; NYTimes did not. Would it have been right to remove the Times story because it was COVID misinformation?” he tweeted. He said the reason the report wasn’t released earlier "because there were key fixes to the system we wanted to make.” The story was initially published by the South Florida Sun Sentinel which was later reposted by the Chicago Tribune. Also read | Facebook set to label all COVID-related posts to battle misinformation The report revealed that a doctor in Miami died two weeks after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, calling it “possibly the nation’s first death linked to the vaccine.” The story was then updated stating that the doctor died from a condition that causes internal bleeding, but a medical examiner's report couldn't rule out whether the vaccine was the key factor. Facebook and other social media companies have been criticised for how they handle the spread of misinformation on their platforms. (With inputs from agencies)

Facebook’s most viewed article was on COVID vaccine death, says firm amid reports of withholding info

The New York Times has published a fake news report claiming India is prioritising Afghan Hindus & Sikhs for VISAs. But India's emergency VISA portal is open to all persecuted Afghans, irrespective of religion. Palki Sharma busts NYT's misleading report.

Gravitas | New York Times: India putting Afghan Hindus, Sikhs first

The specific purpose of the New York Times seems to be to appeal to candidates who can write against the democratically elected government in India and supports anti-Modi ideology at the same time.

Is being anti-Modi a qualification for a job at NYT?

The ruling could not have been more clear.

One of soccer’s six regional bodies had engaged in discriminatory behavior against a female official by hindering her chances of getting a seat on its board and a leadership position with the sport’s global governing body, FIFA.

The official, Mariyam Mohamed, also convinced judges at sports’ top court that an influential Kuwaiti sheikh had actively interfered in elections held by the Asian Football Confederation in 2019 to achieve his desired outcome.

The full ruling, which has not been published, was obtained by The New York Times. In it, a panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland concluded that the inaction by Asian soccer officials over several months amounted to a “denial of justice” for Mohamed. Yet two months since the decision was announced, the effect of what appears to be a powerful denunciation of ethics breaches and a disregard for women’s rights has had all the effect of a snowball hitting a tank.

Nothing has happened.

The tainted elections will not be rerun. The men who offered Mohamed inducements to drop out have not been punished. And soccer’s leaders have taken no action.

FIFA said in an email it had no comment, even though it previously insisted it would follow up on the court’s findings with soccer officials in Asia. Asian soccer’s governing body also declined to comment, saying its leaders had nothing to add to a January statement in which they had pledged the organization would review the findings.

For Mohamed, the silence has been maddening.

“It’s just a game for them, justice denial, the same process that I was in,” she said in a phone interview. “They’re waiting for time to pass by, and hoping I get fed up. Now the verdict has come, and it’s just very sad. I don’t know where else to go now.”

Mohamed, who filed her complaints to the Asian federation’s disciplinary department in May 2019, says she initially celebrated the ruling, but came to realize it may amount to a Pyrrhic victory.

She has not been contacted by officials from the AFC, she said. Nor has she heard from ethics investigators from FIFA, even though the organization’s rules state that gender discrimination is “strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”

The case and its aftermath have highlighted how power works in global sports. It shows how a tainted Gulf royal linked to other cases of corruption has been able to exert significant control over one of soccer’s largest governing bodies even though he has no official role in its affairs. And it shows how a strategy of delay can be its own kind of injustice.

Mohamed’s case had roots in FIFA’s response to its own problems with discrimination: To address a lack of women on its governing board, the organization since 2013 set aside specific seats for women, starting with one voting member in 2013 and now a minimum of one from each of FIFA’s six regional confederations.

Mohamed, a former soccer player and coach from the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, had hoped to win the AFC’s spot in a vote in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in April 2019. It did not take her long to realize that the power brokers of Asian soccer had already decided the election’s outcome.

She filed her first complaints about the election to the Asian confederation’s disciplinary department a month later. Emails show the organization responded to her inquiries by insisting it had begun an investigation, although it appears little was done. The AFC, citing confidentiality, refused to supply any evidence of its investigation to the court.

At a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport last July, the AFC hardly put up a defense. Its lawyers offered no witnesses to challenge Mohamed’s testimony that a top confederation official and the head of the soccer federation of Qatar had been present in a luxury hotel suite when the Kuwaiti sheikh, Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, told Mohamed he had decided that his preferred candidate, Mahfuza Akhter Kiron of Bangladesh, would be elected as the AFC’s female representative to the FIFA Council.

Mohamed was told she should drop her candidacy, and do so within 24 hours. She later claimed, in testimony that went unchallenged by the AFC, that Sheikh Ahmad attempted to mollify her by saying he had so much sway in international soccer circles that he could obtain for her “any other position of her choosing at the AFC or FIFA” in exchange for her withdrawal.

By this point, Sheikh Ahmad had no official role in soccer, having resigned his position on the FIFA Council in 2017 after allegations emerged in a U.S. federal court that he had bribed Asian officials. But Mohamed’s decision to take her case to court provided a rare public glimpse into his continuing stature as a power broker in global sports through his role as the president of the Olympic Council of Asia, an organization created by his father in 1982.

At a 2013 International Olympic Committee meeting, for example, Sheikh Ahmad’s support helped Thomas Bach secure the IOC presidency and also deliver the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo. Since he was indicted in a forgery case unrelated to sports in 2018, he has “self-suspended” from two prominent Olympic roles. But his opinion still carries weight.

Before the AFC’s 2019 elections, his legal troubles did not seem to be an issue. A list of his favored candidates was distributed to AFC voters on the eve of the elections and, aware of the talks with Mohamed and of Sheikh Ahmad’s preference for a different candidate, the leaders of several federations pressured Mohamed to drop out, she said. She declined to withdraw, and lost the vote, 31-15. Every candidate on Sheikh Ahmad’s list, however, was elected to seats on the AFC’s executive board or, as in Kiron’s case, as a confederation representative to FIFA.

After reviewing the evidence presented by Mohamed and her lawyers, the CAS panel made clear in the summary of its decision that it agreed with her version of the events. The panel confirmed that the 2019 elections had breached FIFA and AFC rules on gender discrimination. It concluded that Sheikh Ahmad had tried to influence the outcome, and that the AFC had denied Mohamed justice by not making a ruling on her complaint. It did, however, also say that by not bowing out of the elections, Mohamed ensured the sheikh’s efforts to influence the election in her case were not effective.

But the court said it was powerless to order that the flawed elections be annulled, or to punish any of the individuals accused of interfering with them. Any decision on further action was for FIFA, and the AFC, to decide, the court said.

Because of the rules governing the court, the panel’s full findings have been cloaked in secrecy since the verdict was announced on Jan. 25.

“If nothing happens it is a disgrace for FIFA, the AFC, and undermines the authority of CAS indirectly,” said Miguel Maduro, the former FIFA governance head who gave evidence in Mohamed’s case. “This award and what follows tells us at once that CAS has exposed corruption at the highest level of elections in football and at the same time tells us they cannot do anything about it.”

Maduro added that at the very least, FIFA should have initiated an ethics inquiry after the ruling. To date, it has not.

Such a move, though, would be extremely sensitive for soccer’s global leadership. The FIFA official responsible for overseeing the 2019 election, Eduardo Ache, told the CAS panel that soccer’s guidelines to improve female representation were mere recommendations. The panel said Ache’s evidence suggested he was “prepared to accept any discrimination provided at least one woman was elected to FIFA.”

But pressing for discipline in the case also could be uncomfortable for FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who relies on the support of national and regional soccer leaders to push his agenda. He recently spent two weeks touring Africa, for example, to ensure that his favored candidate, a South African billionaire with no high-level experience in soccer administration, was elected president of the continent’s regional confederation. And he is unlikely to press for discipline against the leader of Qatar’s soccer federation — reportedly present when Mohamed was offered inducements to step aside — or any other Asian leader a year before Qatar hosts the 2022 World Cup.

The longer the full ruling in Mohamed’s case goes unpublished, though, the more it will give the appearance soccer’s leaders are trying to brush a problematic situation under the carpet, said Johan Lindholm, a professor of law at Umea University in Sweden who has published a book on CAS.

“Whether it’s because of bad PR or there are other things going on, then you would probably want to keep it as secret as possible,” Lindholm said.

The ruling could not have been more clear. One of soccer’s six regional bodies had engaged in discriminatory behavior against a female official by hindering her chances of getting a seat on its board and a leadership position with the sport’s global governing body, FIFA.

The ruling could not have been more clear. One of soccer’s six regional bodies had engaged in discriminatory behavior against a female official by hindering her chances of getting a seat on its board and a leadership position with the sport’s global governing body, FIFA. The official, Mariyam Mohamed, also convinced judges at sports’ top court that an influential Kuwaiti sheikh had actively interfered in elections held by the Asian Football Confederation in 2019 to achieve his desired outcome. The full ruling, which has not been published, was obtained by The New York Times. In it, a panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland concluded that the inaction by Asian soccer officials over several months amounted to a “denial of justice” for Mohamed. Yet two months since the decision was announced, the effect of what appears to be a powerful denunciation of ethics breaches and a disregard for women’s rights has had all the effect of a snowball hitting a tank. Nothing has happened. The tainted elections will not be rerun. The men who offered Mohamed inducements to drop out have not been punished. And soccer’s leaders have taken no action. FIFA said in an email it had no comment, even though it previously insisted it would follow up on the court’s findings with soccer officials in Asia. Asian soccer’s governing body also declined to comment, saying its leaders had nothing to add to a January statement in which they had pledged the organization would review the findings. For Mohamed, the silence has been maddening. “It’s just a game for them, justice denial, the same process that I was in,” she said in a phone interview. “They’re waiting for time to pass by, and hoping I get fed up. Now the verdict has come, and it’s just very sad. I don’t know where else to go now.” Mohamed, who filed her complaints to the Asian federation’s disciplinary department in May 2019, says she initially celebrated the ruling, but came to realize it may amount to a Pyrrhic victory. She has not been contacted by officials from the AFC, she said. Nor has she heard from ethics investigators from FIFA, even though the organization’s rules state that gender discrimination is “strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.” The case and its aftermath have highlighted how power works in global sports. It shows how a tainted Gulf royal linked to other cases of corruption has been able to exert significant control over one of soccer’s largest governing bodies even though he has no official role in its affairs. And it shows how a strategy of delay can be its own kind of injustice. Mohamed’s case had roots in FIFA’s response to its own problems with discrimination: To address a lack of women on its governing board, the organization since 2013 set aside specific seats for women, starting with one voting member in 2013 and now a minimum of one from each of FIFA’s six regional confederations. Mohamed, a former soccer player and coach from the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, had hoped to win the AFC’s spot in a vote in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in April 2019. It did not take her long to realize that the power brokers of Asian soccer had already decided the election’s outcome. She filed her first complaints about the election to the Asian confederation’s disciplinary department a month later. Emails show the organization responded to her inquiries by insisting it had begun an investigation, although it appears little was done. The AFC, citing confidentiality, refused to supply any evidence of its investigation to the court. At a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport last July, the AFC hardly put up a defense. Its lawyers offered no witnesses to challenge Mohamed’s testimony that a top confederation official and the head of the soccer federation of Qatar had been present in a luxury hotel suite when the Kuwaiti sheikh, Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, told Mohamed he had decided that his preferred candidate, Mahfuza Akhter Kiron of Bangladesh, would be elected as the AFC’s female representative to the FIFA Council. Mohamed was told she should drop her candidacy, and do so within 24 hours. She later claimed, in testimony that went unchallenged by the AFC, that Sheikh Ahmad attempted to mollify her by saying he had so much sway in international soccer circles that he could obtain for her “any other position of her choosing at the AFC or FIFA” in exchange for her withdrawal. By this point, Sheikh Ahmad had no official role in soccer, having resigned his position on the FIFA Council in 2017 after allegations emerged in a U.S. federal court that he had bribed Asian officials. But Mohamed’s decision to take her case to court provided a rare public glimpse into his continuing stature as a power broker in global sports through his role as the president of the Olympic Council of Asia, an organization created by his father in 1982. At a 2013 International Olympic Committee meeting, for example, Sheikh Ahmad’s support helped Thomas Bach secure the IOC presidency and also deliver the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo. Since he was indicted in a forgery case unrelated to sports in 2018, he has “self-suspended” from two prominent Olympic roles. But his opinion still carries weight. Before the AFC’s 2019 elections, his legal troubles did not seem to be an issue. A list of his favored candidates was distributed to AFC voters on the eve of the elections and, aware of the talks with Mohamed and of Sheikh Ahmad’s preference for a different candidate, the leaders of several federations pressured Mohamed to drop out, she said. She declined to withdraw, and lost the vote, 31-15. Every candidate on Sheikh Ahmad’s list, however, was elected to seats on the AFC’s executive board or, as in Kiron’s case, as a confederation representative to FIFA. After reviewing the evidence presented by Mohamed and her lawyers, the CAS panel made clear in the summary of its decision that it agreed with her version of the events. The panel confirmed that the 2019 elections had breached FIFA and AFC rules on gender discrimination. It concluded that Sheikh Ahmad had tried to influence the outcome, and that the AFC had denied Mohamed justice by not making a ruling on her complaint. It did, however, also say that by not bowing out of the elections, Mohamed ensured the sheikh’s efforts to influence the election in her case were not effective. But the court said it was powerless to order that the flawed elections be annulled, or to punish any of the individuals accused of interfering with them. Any decision on further action was for FIFA, and the AFC, to decide, the court said. Because of the rules governing the court, the panel’s full findings have been cloaked in secrecy since the verdict was announced on Jan. 25. “If nothing happens it is a disgrace for FIFA, the AFC, and undermines the authority of CAS indirectly,” said Miguel Maduro, the former FIFA governance head who gave evidence in Mohamed’s case. “This award and what follows tells us at once that CAS has exposed corruption at the highest level of elections in football and at the same time tells us they cannot do anything about it.” Maduro added that at the very least, FIFA should have initiated an ethics inquiry after the ruling. To date, it has not. Such a move, though, would be extremely sensitive for soccer’s global leadership. The FIFA official responsible for overseeing the 2019 election, Eduardo Ache, told the CAS panel that soccer’s guidelines to improve female representation were mere recommendations. The panel said Ache’s evidence suggested he was “prepared to accept any discrimination provided at least one woman was elected to FIFA.” But pressing for discipline in the case also could be uncomfortable for FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, who relies on the support of national and regional soccer leaders to push his agenda. He recently spent two weeks touring Africa, for example, to ensure that his favored candidate, a South African billionaire with no high-level experience in soccer administration, was elected president of the continent’s regional confederation. And he is unlikely to press for discipline against the leader of Qatar’s soccer federation — reportedly present when Mohamed was offered inducements to step aside — or any other Asian leader a year before Qatar hosts the 2022 World Cup. The longer the full ruling in Mohamed’s case goes unpublished, though, the more it will give the appearance soccer’s leaders are trying to brush a problematic situation under the carpet, said Johan Lindholm, a professor of law at Umea University in Sweden who has published a book on CAS. “Whether it’s because of bad PR or there are other things going on, then you would probably want to keep it as secret as possible,” Lindholm said.

A soccer official proved her discrimination case. No one was punished.

Urging the Metropolitan Opera to compensate its artists “appropriately,” the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sent a letter to leaders at the Met on Thursday saying that the many months its orchestra and chorus had gone without pay during the pandemic had become “increasingly unacceptable.”

He sent the letter as the Met’s musicians were scheduled to receive their first partial paychecks since they were furloughed in April. Before this week, they had been the last major ensemble in the country without a deal for at least some pay during the pandemic. In addressing the players’ nearly yearlong furlough — and hinting at the tough negotiations ahead, in which the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts from its unionized employees — Nézet-Séguin was doing something rare for a music director: weighing in on labor matters.

“Of course, I understand this is a complex situation,” Nézet-Séguin wrote, “but as the public face of the Met on a musical level, I am finding it increasingly hard to justify what has happened.”

The letter was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by its recipients, which included Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager; the leaders of the negotiating committees representing the chorus and orchestra; and members of the opera’s board of directors.

“We risk losing talent permanently,” Nézet-Séguin warned in the letter. “The orchestra and chorus are our crown jewels, and they must be protected. Their talent is the Met. The artists of the Met are the institution.”

The orchestra committee has said that 10 out of 97 members have retired during the pandemic as the ensemble has gone unpaid, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year.

“Protecting the long-term future of the Met is inextricably linked with retaining these musicians, and with respecting their livelihoods, their income and their well-being,” Nézet-Séguin wrote.

The Met said in a statement that “we share Yannick’s frustration over the lengthy closure and the impact it has had on our employees,” and added that the company was pleased that its orchestra and chorus and others were now receiving bridge pay. The Met said all involved were “working together for new agreements that will ensure the sustainability of the Met into the future.”

The Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, has said that since the pandemic forced it to shut its doors it has lost an estimated $150 million in earned revenue, and that it was seeking pay cuts from its workers, as many arts institutions have. The Met has been trying to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30% — the change in take-home pay would be more like 20%, it has said — and has offered to restore half the cuts when ticket revenue and core donations return to prepandemic levels.

Months into the furlough, the Met offered partial paychecks to its workers if they agreed to those cuts, but the unions resisted. At the end of the year, the Met offered partial paychecks on a temporary basis for simply returning to the bargaining table. Members of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents chorus members, dancers and others, accepted at the end of January and have been receiving paychecks for more than a month. The orchestra musicians voted to accept the offer this week. (The Met has locked out its stagehands, whose contract expired last year.)

Nézet-Séguin wrote in his letter that he was relieved that both the musicians and the chorus members are now being paid, but added that “this is just a start.” The deal allows for temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what the musicians are typically paid.

Nézet-Séguin was named the Met’s music director in 2016, when he was tapped to succeed James Levine, who led the company for four decades (Levine, who stepped down to an emeritus position because of health problems and was then fired two years later after an investigation into sexual abuse allegations, died this month.)

“I implore the fiduciaries of this incredible house to urgently help to find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately,” Nézet-Séguin wrote. “We all realize the challenges, economic and otherwise, that the Met is facing, and therefore I ask for empathy, honesty and open communication throughout this process.”

Urging the Metropolitan Opera to compensate its artists “appropriately,” the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sent a letter to leaders at the Met on Thursday saying that the many months its orchestra and chorus had gone without pay during the pandemic had become “increasingly unacceptable.

Urging the Metropolitan Opera to compensate its artists “appropriately,” the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sent a letter to leaders at the Met on Thursday saying that the many months its orchestra and chorus had gone without pay during the pandemic had become “increasingly unacceptable.” He sent the letter as the Met’s musicians were scheduled to receive their first partial paychecks since they were furloughed in April. Before this week, they had been the last major ensemble in the country without a deal for at least some pay during the pandemic. In addressing the players’ nearly yearlong furlough — and hinting at the tough negotiations ahead, in which the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts from its unionized employees — Nézet-Séguin was doing something rare for a music director: weighing in on labor matters. “Of course, I understand this is a complex situation,” Nézet-Séguin wrote, “but as the public face of the Met on a musical level, I am finding it increasingly hard to justify what has happened.” The letter was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by its recipients, which included Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager; the leaders of the negotiating committees representing the chorus and orchestra; and members of the opera’s board of directors. “We risk losing talent permanently,” Nézet-Séguin warned in the letter. “The orchestra and chorus are our crown jewels, and they must be protected. Their talent is the Met. The artists of the Met are the institution.” The orchestra committee has said that 10 out of 97 members have retired during the pandemic as the ensemble has gone unpaid, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year. “Protecting the long-term future of the Met is inextricably linked with retaining these musicians, and with respecting their livelihoods, their income and their well-being,” Nézet-Séguin wrote. The Met said in a statement that “we share Yannick’s frustration over the lengthy closure and the impact it has had on our employees,” and added that the company was pleased that its orchestra and chorus and others were now receiving bridge pay. The Met said all involved were “working together for new agreements that will ensure the sustainability of the Met into the future.” The Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, has said that since the pandemic forced it to shut its doors it has lost an estimated $150 million in earned revenue, and that it was seeking pay cuts from its workers, as many arts institutions have. The Met has been trying to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30% — the change in take-home pay would be more like 20%, it has said — and has offered to restore half the cuts when ticket revenue and core donations return to prepandemic levels. Months into the furlough, the Met offered partial paychecks to its workers if they agreed to those cuts, but the unions resisted. At the end of the year, the Met offered partial paychecks on a temporary basis for simply returning to the bargaining table. Members of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents chorus members, dancers and others, accepted at the end of January and have been receiving paychecks for more than a month. The orchestra musicians voted to accept the offer this week. (The Met has locked out its stagehands, whose contract expired last year.) Nézet-Séguin wrote in his letter that he was relieved that both the musicians and the chorus members are now being paid, but added that “this is just a start.” The deal allows for temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what the musicians are typically paid. Nézet-Séguin was named the Met’s music director in 2016, when he was tapped to succeed James Levine, who led the company for four decades (Levine, who stepped down to an emeritus position because of health problems and was then fired two years later after an investigation into sexual abuse allegations, died this month.) “I implore the fiduciaries of this incredible house to urgently help to find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately,” Nézet-Séguin wrote. “We all realize the challenges, economic and otherwise, that the Met is facing, and therefore I ask for empathy, honesty and open communication throughout this process.”

Met Opera’s music director decries musicians’ unpaid furlough

Russian lawmakers have passed bills that could grant authorities the power to block access to YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Watch this video to know more.

Russian Parliament backs bills enabling censoring of US media

Credit card giants Visa and Mastercard&nbsp;are investigating their business relationship with Pornhub after a New York Times columnist alleged that the pornographic website shows videos of rape and underage sex.

Mastercard said&nbsp;it does not tolerate illegal activity on its payment network, and that it works with law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and&nbsp;Exploited Children to detect illegal transactions. Pornhub has denied it allows child videos on its site.

"We are examining the charges brought up in the New York Times and are working with MindGeek's bank to comprehend this circumstance, notwithstanding different advances they have just taken," Mastercard said in an articulation. "In the event that the cases are validated, we will make a prompt move."&nbsp;

Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist at The New York Times,&nbsp;wrote Friday&nbsp;that Pornhub carries rape scenes, revenge pornography and other examples of explicit video taken without consent of the participants.

Pornhub said it is “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue” to suggest that it allows images of the sexual abuse of children on its site. Pornhub added that it employs moderators to screen every upload and that it removes illegal material.

The online payment service PayPal last year stopped processing payments to Pornhub, which is owned by the pornography conglomerate MindGeek. The columnist called out other card issuers for working with the site.

In response to Kristof’s story, Visa and Mastercard said they’re investigating the matter.

“We are aware of the allegations, and we are actively engaging with the relevant financial institutions to investigate, in addition to engaging directly with the site’s parent company, MindGeek,” Visa said Sunday.

Visa added that if Pornhub is violating the law or bank policies, then the website will be prohibited from accepting Visa payments.

Meanwhile, Mastercard promised “immediate action″ if the allegations are substantiated.

“We are investigating the allegations raised in the New York Times and are working with MindGeek’s bank to understand this situation,” Mastercard said in a statement.

Processing payments for pornography websites has long divided the payments and banking industry, and sex workers have claimed they’ve had their bank accounts shut down after lenders learned of their profession.

PayPal Holdings Inc. doesn’t process payments for Pornhub.com. American Express Co.’s cards aren’t accepted on Pornhub, and a spokeswoman on Saturday said the firm has a longstanding policy that prohibits card acceptance on digital adult content websites.

Credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are investigating their business relationship with Pornhub after a New York Times columnist alleged that the pornographic website shows videos of rape and underage sex.

Credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are investigating their business relationship with Pornhub after a New York Times columnist alleged that the pornographic website shows videos of rape and underage sex. Mastercard said it does not tolerate illegal activity on its payment network, and that it works with law enforcement and organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to detect illegal transactions. Pornhub has denied it allows child videos on its site. "We are examining the charges brought up in the New York Times and are working with MindGeek's bank to comprehend this circumstance, notwithstanding different advances they have just taken," Mastercard said in an articulation. "In the event that the cases are validated, we will make a prompt move." Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist at The New York Times, wrote Friday that Pornhub carries rape scenes, revenge pornography and other examples of explicit video taken without consent of the participants. Pornhub said it is “irresponsible and flagrantly untrue” to suggest that it allows images of the sexual abuse of children on its site. Pornhub added that it employs moderators to screen every upload and that it removes illegal material. The online payment service PayPal last year stopped processing payments to Pornhub, which is owned by the pornography conglomerate MindGeek. The columnist called out other card issuers for working with the site. In response to Kristof’s story, Visa and Mastercard said they’re investigating the matter. “We are aware of the allegations, and we are actively engaging with the relevant financial institutions to investigate, in addition to engaging directly with the site’s parent company, MindGeek,” Visa said Sunday. Visa added that if Pornhub is violating the law or bank policies, then the website will be prohibited from accepting Visa payments. Meanwhile, Mastercard promised “immediate action″ if the allegations are substantiated. “We are investigating the allegations raised in the New York Times and are working with MindGeek’s bank to understand this situation,” Mastercard said in a statement. Processing payments for pornography websites has long divided the payments and banking industry, and sex workers have claimed they’ve had their bank accounts shut down after lenders learned of their profession. PayPal Holdings Inc. doesn’t process payments for Pornhub.com. American Express Co.’s cards aren’t accepted on Pornhub, and a spokeswoman on Saturday said the firm has a longstanding policy that prohibits card acceptance on digital adult content websites.

Mastercard, Visa investigate financial ties with Pornhub

Halsey is now a New York Times best-selling author. The Grammy-nominated artist and&nbsp;Billboard chart-topping singer/songwriter had added another feather in her cap with her debut book.

'<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/entertainment-us-singer-halseys-sexual-assault-poem-at-womens-march-stuns-the-world-30335">I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry</a>', that came out on Nov. 10, ranked No. 2 as of November 19 on The New York Times Best Sellers hardcover fiction list. The 26-year-old was in disbelief over her latest accolade but acknowledged the years of writing, crying and travelling that she endured getting to this moment.

“I woke up to discover that I am a New York Times Best Selling Author. I am kind of in shock,” she wrote on social media, along with a childhood picture of a young glasses-wearing Halsey (real name Ashley Nicolette Frangipane) doodling on her knee. “Accolades are sometimes based on weird algorithms and viral hits and luck. But sometimes they are based on a true human connection to the art.”

She continues, “The tiny girl who learned all her life lessons in novels, propped up on her elbows with a flashlight at night, thanks you. The teenager distracted through all her high school classes, writing short stories about great loves and world adventures, thanks you. The 20 year old huddled over her phone in her notes app, crying silently through a moment of weakness on the 200th airplane that year, thanks you. 26 year old me who has often seen my art populate because of a pretty outfit or a dating rumor, thanks you.” 
&nbsp;

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Like her songs, Halsey’s collection of poetry takes readers through the highs and lows of her failed relationships, family ties, sexuality and<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/singer-halsey-shares-how-music-helped-to-manage-her-bipolar-disorder-247593"> bipolar disorder.</a> 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/halsey-to-make-acting-debut-in-tv-series-the-players-table-326494">Also read:&nbsp;Halsey to make acting debut in TV series, 'The Player’s Table'</a>

“This is faceless. I am not sexy, or loud, or charismatic for this art. I am sad, and frustrated with myself, and trying to decide which memories scald me the least to touch. Or perhaps which ones do the most. This is for you to find yourself in,” her lengthy tribute concluded. “I hope in your loneliness or sorrow you find a mirror in here. I hope you find a loving embrace. And if you don’t, I hope you at least think the cover looks pretty cool. Love always, Ash.”

&nbsp;

Halsey is now a New York Times best-selling author. The Grammy-nominated artist and Billboard chart-topping singer/songwriter had added another feather in her cap with her debut book.

Halsey is now a New York Times best-selling author. The Grammy-nominated artist and Billboard chart-topping singer/songwriter had added another feather in her cap with her debut book. 'I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry', that came out on Nov. 10, ranked No. 2 as of November 19 on The New York Times Best Sellers hardcover fiction list. The 26-year-old was in disbelief over her latest accolade but acknowledged the years of writing, crying and travelling that she endured getting to this moment. “I woke up to discover that I am a New York Times Best Selling Author. I am kind of in shock,” she wrote on social media, along with a childhood picture of a young glasses-wearing Halsey (real name Ashley Nicolette Frangipane) doodling on her knee. “Accolades are sometimes based on weird algorithms and viral hits and luck. But sometimes they are based on a true human connection to the art.” She continues, “The tiny girl who learned all her life lessons in novels, propped up on her elbows with a flashlight at night, thanks you. The teenager distracted through all her high school classes, writing short stories about great loves and world adventures, thanks you. The 20 year old huddled over her phone in her notes app, crying silently through a moment of weakness on the 200th airplane that year, thanks you. 26 year old me who has often seen my art populate because of a pretty outfit or a dating rumor, thanks you.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by halsey (@iamhalsey) × Like her songs, Halsey’s collection of poetry takes readers through the highs and lows of her failed relationships, family ties, sexuality and bipolar disorder. Also read: Halsey to make acting debut in TV series, 'The Player’s Table' “This is faceless. I am not sexy, or loud, or charismatic for this art. I am sad, and frustrated with myself, and trying to decide which memories scald me the least to touch. Or perhaps which ones do the most. This is for you to find yourself in,” her lengthy tribute concluded. “I hope in your loneliness or sorrow you find a mirror in here. I hope you find a loving embrace. And if you don’t, I hope you at least think the cover looks pretty cool. Love always, Ash.”

Halsey on becoming a New York Times best-selling author:'I am in shock'

French President Emmanuel Macron has accused New York Times and other American publications of legitimising violence. How is he backing up his claim? WION's Molly Gambhir has the answer.

Gravitas: Is the U.S. media legitimising violence?

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No&nbsp;1.

Polgar, the only woman to ever be ranked in the Top 10 or to play for the overall world championship, retired from competitive chess in 2014. Watching the series, which she described as an “incredible performance,” gave her a sense of déjà vu, particularly in the later episodes.

But there was one respect in which she could not identify with Beth’s experience: how the male competitors treated her.

“They were too nice to her,” Polgar said. When Polgar was proving herself and rising in the world rankings, the men often made disparaging comments about her ability and sometimes jokes, which they thought were funny but were actually hurtful, she said.

And no one ever resigned to her, as Shapkin did to Beth in Episode 7 by gallantly holding her hand near his lips.

“There were opponents who refused to shake hands,” she recalled. “There was one who hit his head on the board after he lost.”

Not every woman has had negative experiences. Irina Krush, who won her eighth US&nbsp;Women’s Championship last month, said she felt as if the chess community and men in particular were supportive of her when she was an up-and-coming player. She said of the series, “The spirit of what they are showing conforms to my experience.”

Whether what happens to Beth is typical or not, the popularity of 'The Queen’s Gambit' has inspired anew a debate about inequality and sexism in chess and what, if anything, can be done about them.

Though chess would seem like one area where men and women should be able to compete on equal footing, historically, few women have been able to do so. Among the more than 1,700 regular grandmasters worldwide, only 37, including Polgar and Krush, are women. Currently, only one woman, Hou Yifan of China, ranks in the Top 100, at No&nbsp;88, and she has been playing infrequently, even before the pandemic.

The superiority of men in the game is so well established that the best female players have freely acknowledged it. In a recent issue of Mint, in an article titled 'Why Women Lose at Chess,' Koneru Humpy, an Indian player currently ranked No&nbsp;3 among women, said men are just better players. “It’s proven,” she said. “You have to accept it.”

The dearth of women at the top of the game is one reason that there are separate tournaments for women, including a world championship; the World Chess Federation even created titles for women, such as women grandmaster.

Having such institutionalized, second-class status might seem like a bad idea, but not according to Anastasiya Karlovich, a grandmaster who was the press officer for the World Chess Federation for several years. She said the women’s titles permit more female players to earn a living as professionals, thereby increasing their participation in the game.

Karlovich said the Netflix show has helped her indirectly: It has made the parents of her chess students look at her differently.

“They have more respect for me. They understand better the life of a player,” she said.

While some men have speculated that the reason there are so few top female players is because they are not wired for it — Kasparov once said that it is not in their nature — women think the overriding reason is cultural expectations and bias.

Krush said the cultural cleaving between boys and girls happens at a young age. Scrolling through lists of the top players in the United States who are 7, 8 and 9, Krush pointed out that there are only a handful of girls in the Top 10.

That creates and reinforces another problem that discourages women’s participation: too few social contacts. Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. women’s champion who has written two books about women in chess ('Chess Bitch' and 'Play Like a Girl!') and is the women’s program director at the US Chess Federation, said teenage girls tend to stop playing chess because there are so few of them and they want the social support. That Beth is a loner is likely an important reason she does not quit playing in tournaments.

Of 74,000 members in total, the US Chess Federation said it has about 10,500 female members. Shahade wants to increase that number, as well as their participation. To that end, she and the federation started an online chess club in April to keep female players engaged during the pandemic. In the last few weeks, there have been between 80 and 140 participants, with quite a few older players. The last meeting also had a special guest: Kasparov, who has become a big booster of women’s chess since his retirement from competition in 2005. He was also a consultant on the Netflix series.

To keep the momentum going, Shahade is launching a new online group called the “Madwoman’s Book Club.” The title refers to a pejorative name used for the queen in the 15th and 16th centuries after it became the most powerful piece on the board. The first meeting, this Friday, already has 100 people signed up.

The subject of the discussion should come as no surprise: 'The Queen’s Gambit'&nbsp;by Walter Tevis, the book on which the Netflix series is based. 
&nbsp;

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No 1.

Judit Polgar might be the one woman in the world who knows how Beth, the heroine of the hit Netflix series 'The Queen’s Gambit,' really feels. Like Beth, Polgar, who is from Hungary, stood out during her career because she regularly beat the world’s top players, including Garry Kasparov, in 2002, when he was ranked No 1. Polgar, the only woman to ever be ranked in the Top 10 or to play for the overall world championship, retired from competitive chess in 2014. Watching the series, which she described as an “incredible performance,” gave her a sense of déjà vu, particularly in the later episodes. But there was one respect in which she could not identify with Beth’s experience: how the male competitors treated her. “They were too nice to her,” Polgar said. When Polgar was proving herself and rising in the world rankings, the men often made disparaging comments about her ability and sometimes jokes, which they thought were funny but were actually hurtful, she said. And no one ever resigned to her, as Shapkin did to Beth in Episode 7 by gallantly holding her hand near his lips. “There were opponents who refused to shake hands,” she recalled. “There was one who hit his head on the board after he lost.” Not every woman has had negative experiences. Irina Krush, who won her eighth US Women’s Championship last month, said she felt as if the chess community and men in particular were supportive of her when she was an up-and-coming player. She said of the series, “The spirit of what they are showing conforms to my experience.” Whether what happens to Beth is typical or not, the popularity of 'The Queen’s Gambit' has inspired anew a debate about inequality and sexism in chess and what, if anything, can be done about them. Though chess would seem like one area where men and women should be able to compete on equal footing, historically, few women have been able to do so. Among the more than 1,700 regular grandmasters worldwide, only 37, including Polgar and Krush, are women. Currently, only one woman, Hou Yifan of China, ranks in the Top 100, at No 88, and she has been playing infrequently, even before the pandemic. The superiority of men in the game is so well established that the best female players have freely acknowledged it. In a recent issue of Mint, in an article titled 'Why Women Lose at Chess,' Koneru Humpy, an Indian player currently ranked No 3 among women, said men are just better players. “It’s proven,” she said. “You have to accept it.” The dearth of women at the top of the game is one reason that there are separate tournaments for women, including a world championship; the World Chess Federation even created titles for women, such as women grandmaster. Having such institutionalized, second-class status might seem like a bad idea, but not according to Anastasiya Karlovich, a grandmaster who was the press officer for the World Chess Federation for several years. She said the women’s titles permit more female players to earn a living as professionals, thereby increasing their participation in the game. Karlovich said the Netflix show has helped her indirectly: It has made the parents of her chess students look at her differently. “They have more respect for me. They understand better the life of a player,” she said. While some men have speculated that the reason there are so few top female players is because they are not wired for it — Kasparov once said that it is not in their nature — women think the overriding reason is cultural expectations and bias. Krush said the cultural cleaving between boys and girls happens at a young age. Scrolling through lists of the top players in the United States who are 7, 8 and 9, Krush pointed out that there are only a handful of girls in the Top 10. That creates and reinforces another problem that discourages women’s participation: too few social contacts. Jennifer Shahade, a two-time U.S. women’s champion who has written two books about women in chess ('Chess Bitch' and 'Play Like a Girl!') and is the women’s program director at the US Chess Federation, said teenage girls tend to stop playing chess because there are so few of them and they want the social support. That Beth is a loner is likely an important reason she does not quit playing in tournaments. Of 74,000 members in total, the US Chess Federation said it has about 10,500 female members. Shahade wants to increase that number, as well as their participation. To that end, she and the federation started an online chess club in April to keep female players engaged during the pandemic. In the last few weeks, there have been between 80 and 140 participants, with quite a few older players. The last meeting also had a special guest: Kasparov, who has become a big booster of women’s chess since his retirement from competition in 2005. He was also a consultant on the Netflix series. To keep the momentum going, Shahade is launching a new online group called the “Madwoman’s Book Club.” The title refers to a pejorative name used for the queen in the 15th and 16th centuries after it became the most powerful piece on the board. The first meeting, this Friday, already has 100 people signed up. The subject of the discussion should come as no surprise: 'The Queen’s Gambit' by Walter Tevis, the book on which the Netflix series is based.

How 'The Queen's Gambit' started a new debate about sexism in chess

A few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, David Letterman sat behind his desk at CBS’s “Late Show” and shared the story of a rally in Choteau, Montana, to raise money for New York. Getting choked up, he told his viewers, “If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you.”

Nineteen years later, with the country in the midst of a monthslong pandemic, Letterman found it difficult to conjure up any similarly inspiring anecdotes. One morning last week, this veteran late-night host, broadcaster and comedian, now 73, was sitting in a park here, contemplating the Hudson River and cracking wise about the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

“It looks kind of unfinished,” he said through a fabric mask that barely held back his unruly beard. “Doesn’t it look like the new kid got to design it?”

But truth be told, Letterman was in a more melancholy than mirthful frame of mind. Though he, his wife, Regina, and their son, Harry, have remained safe, he knows several people who were stricken by the coronavirus, some of whom died from it. And he is deeply frustrated by what he feels have been inconsistent, nationwide efforts to inform people about the pandemic and mitigate its spread.

While hardly its most devastating casualty, Letterman’s Netflix interview show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” returns Wednesday but nearly came to a halt. He had recorded two episodes, with Kim Kardashian West and with Robert Downey Jr., before the pandemic, and believed the season — if not the series — was finished.

Instead, he was able to produce two more episodes over the summer, under substantially different circumstances: one with Dave Chappelle, which was recorded at an outdoor pavilion in Yellow Springs, Ohio; and one with Lizzo, at her home studio in Los Angeles, which had no audience at all.

For Letterman, each of these episodes offered him a further education in the evolution of entertainment and deeper insights as an interviewer and observer of human nature. Even so, he found himself yearning for what he called “the carefree days of nonsense” when he could “bring people into a theater and talk to them for an hour, and when we were done I would go out into the crowd and shake hands, and everybody would want to tongue-kiss me.”

“We don’t do that anymore,” he added.

Letterman spoke further about his pandemic experience, the making of his Netflix series and what he hopes the future might hold for him. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Q: How has the pandemic been for you? What is it like for you now?

A: Like everybody else, you forget about it. Six, eight months into it, you go on talking as though things are normal, and then it’s, oh, no, we can’t do that because of the pandemic. In the beginning, it was more than ghastly. The husband of a woman that worked at (“Late Show”), he died. A teacher at Harry’s school died. Paul Shaffer and his wife both had it. Cathy, his wife, was hospitalized. Barbara Gaines, who was a producer on the show, she and her wife both had it. And on and on and on.

Q: How do you feel when you come into contact with people elsewhere in the country who don’t seem to be taking the pandemic as seriously?

A: That makes me very sad. Because we learned a lesson that these other people are dismissing. I was talking to a friend of mine, and he was furious at the mayor of his city for keeping it closed, and he said, “Well, that guy will never be reelected.” And I just thought, do I tell him what this really can be? We’re looking at a quarter of a million people dead soon. But I just didn’t want to have that fight. 
 
Q: After the 9/11 attacks, you gave several “Late Show” monologues where you tried to rally your viewers’ spirits and bring them together. Do you ever feel like saying anything similar now?

A: Something applicable to these times? I wish I had the wherewithal to say something meaningful. But all of these people who are resisting the idea of prevention, I just keep thinking: What about the families of the 220,000 people who are dead? I wonder how they’re feeling. I don’t get it. I have no solution other than to do what is told: Take care of yourself and your family.

Q: How did the pandemic affect your work on your Netflix series?

A: I thought we were done for good. Really. In the beginning, it really seemed like, holy God, they’re coming over the wall, we’re all going to die. People keep reminding me that, at my age, I’m particularly vulnerable. Which I don’t appreciate at all. “Dad, you know you’re close to 100, you’d better not go out.”

Q: How did you decide to continue with your season?

A: We had two more episodes (with Lizzo and Dave Chappelle) in preproduction, and we were eager to do something. We did them within a very short period of time, and then we came home. By that point, there were protocols in place from the production company and from Netflix that we had to observe, gladly, and we got through it OK.

Q: Kim Kardashian West, who is now a prized guest on your Netflix series, was a frequent target of mockery in your “Late Show” days.

A: Oh, I was at the head of that list. I can remember when she would be booked on the show, it was like, I don’t know anything about her, and I’ve never seen her show. And then when we went to talk to Kanye, I thought, oh, I’ve misjudged this woman.

Q: What changed your mind about her?

A: After we met with Kanye West (for the previous season of the Netflix series), I had a long talk with her at their home, and I started to think about how I had used her as a joke and regarded her as someone not to be taken seriously. I found that that impression was not the end of the story. She had a family. She has her prison reform program. I won’t comment on the ease of being married to Kanye West. And if she can keep a show like that on the air for all those years, that’s an accomplishment. If you can stay in business on television that long, good for you.

Q: You went to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to interview Dave Chappelle. Did you perform at his outdoor comedy show there?

A: Yes. I think I did it. (To his publicist) Did I do it? (Publicist answers: “You did it.”) I’m being told I did it (laughs). It was grand. The setting is unique. It’s outdoors. Everybody’s tested, everybody social distanced. He had three or four comics on and each comic made my heart sink deeper. Because when I was doing comedy, a lot of it was (weakly) “Hey, where you from?” But these men and women, whoa — the level of it, the intellect of it, the presentation of it is so much more than it was when me and my little buddies were, “Hey, how ya doin’, I just got in from Indiana.” Really? No one cares. Get outta here.

Q: Do you ever have moments in these interviews where you feel as if you don’t have a shared frame of reference to talk to some of these guests?

A: Yes. Because the experience is barely parallel. We’re all in show business, but that’s as close a comparison as you can make, culturally. I did feel like, is this going to look stupid? An old guy here, trying to talk to people who are thriving and alive and dominating the world through social media? I felt like it was a wreck. That’s the inner dialogue.

Q: How do you get past this?

A: Like anybody else that you talk to, every human being, there are situations that helped develop into what they are. So you’re going to get a story out of anybody. It may not happen in the first five minutes, but in every one of these experiences, there’s always a conduit for mutual experience. “Oh yeah? You think that’s something? Well, one time I choked on a peanut-butter sandwich and nearly died.” You have to make everybody a good interview.

Q: Do you think that late-night television, a genre that you helped to pioneer, has been diminished in recent years — that so much of it has become political comedy that doesn’t really move the needle and crowds out everything else?

A: I know that people have been hugely successful with it. Stephen (Colbert) has done a great job with my old show — his show now. In my day, the goal was just anything to make the audience laugh. That may be part of the dynamic now. People have this hunger to see the current administration being assailed and embarrassing itself. So I think that’s what (late-night shows) worked toward. I don’t fault them for that. After a while, it wears thin, but the appetite for it has not worn thin. I think they still do enough business to keep people happy.

Q: Do you ever find yourself fearing for the future of this country?

A: I really did, until recently. And now I am confident — or more confident than I’ve been in the last four years — that we’re changing presidents in a couple of weeks. And it will be a huge victory. Not just for our culture and our government, but the simple act of voting will have been the reason that the rest of our country is put back together and, in many ways, saved from what appears to be tyranny, certainly jeopardy. I think it will be a huge victory on many fronts, not the least of which is calling attention to the valuable freedom of voting.

Q: Please don’t mistake this for a suggestion, but do you ever think about packing it in as a broadcaster entirely?

A: First of all, you can’t hurt my feelings because I’m dead inside. But the Netflix people put me back in business in a way that has been, for me, really, really fun. On the other hand, I recognize my own shelf life. I’m way overdue. When it happens, I still will enjoy little things here and there, and that’ll be enough. But there’s other people more capable. I got no problem with that. If there is any kind of schedule, it would be when my son is finished with high school. But if it’s tomorrow, that’s fine.

Q: Your son, Harry, is 16 now. Are you worried about how the pandemic is going to affect his life?

A: I think it’s every parent’s concern, regardless of the age of their kids. But for Harry and his buddies, the junior year of high school is a crucial experience. Now they’re starting to look beyond high school, and it’s not good. For guys Harry’s age and older, it might be a setback. Time takes care of everything, and one hopes that that’s the case here.

Q: How do you talk about these feelings with him?

A: I had a conversation with my son the other night that went this way. Because of the pandemic and the fact that he’s getting older, I said, Harry, your mother and I have two responsibilities. One is to keep you safe. And other than the time that your mother let you roll off the bed and land on your head, we have kept you safe. The other responsibility is your happiness. And he said, “Have you been drinking?” So that’s how that works at my house.

&nbsp;

A few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, David Letterman sat behind his desk at CBS’s “Late Show” and shared the story of a rally in Choteau, Montana, to raise money for New York.

A few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, David Letterman sat behind his desk at CBS’s “Late Show” and shared the story of a rally in Choteau, Montana, to raise money for New York. Getting choked up, he told his viewers, “If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you.” Nineteen years later, with the country in the midst of a monthslong pandemic, Letterman found it difficult to conjure up any similarly inspiring anecdotes. One morning last week, this veteran late-night host, broadcaster and comedian, now 73, was sitting in a park here, contemplating the Hudson River and cracking wise about the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. “It looks kind of unfinished,” he said through a fabric mask that barely held back his unruly beard. “Doesn’t it look like the new kid got to design it?” But truth be told, Letterman was in a more melancholy than mirthful frame of mind. Though he, his wife, Regina, and their son, Harry, have remained safe, he knows several people who were stricken by the coronavirus, some of whom died from it. And he is deeply frustrated by what he feels have been inconsistent, nationwide efforts to inform people about the pandemic and mitigate its spread. While hardly its most devastating casualty, Letterman’s Netflix interview show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” returns Wednesday but nearly came to a halt. He had recorded two episodes, with Kim Kardashian West and with Robert Downey Jr., before the pandemic, and believed the season — if not the series — was finished. Instead, he was able to produce two more episodes over the summer, under substantially different circumstances: one with Dave Chappelle, which was recorded at an outdoor pavilion in Yellow Springs, Ohio; and one with Lizzo, at her home studio in Los Angeles, which had no audience at all. For Letterman, each of these episodes offered him a further education in the evolution of entertainment and deeper insights as an interviewer and observer of human nature. Even so, he found himself yearning for what he called “the carefree days of nonsense” when he could “bring people into a theater and talk to them for an hour, and when we were done I would go out into the crowd and shake hands, and everybody would want to tongue-kiss me.” “We don’t do that anymore,” he added. Letterman spoke further about his pandemic experience, the making of his Netflix series and what he hopes the future might hold for him. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Q: How has the pandemic been for you? What is it like for you now? A: Like everybody else, you forget about it. Six, eight months into it, you go on talking as though things are normal, and then it’s, oh, no, we can’t do that because of the pandemic. In the beginning, it was more than ghastly. The husband of a woman that worked at (“Late Show”), he died. A teacher at Harry’s school died. Paul Shaffer and his wife both had it. Cathy, his wife, was hospitalized. Barbara Gaines, who was a producer on the show, she and her wife both had it. And on and on and on. Q: How do you feel when you come into contact with people elsewhere in the country who don’t seem to be taking the pandemic as seriously? A: That makes me very sad. Because we learned a lesson that these other people are dismissing. I was talking to a friend of mine, and he was furious at the mayor of his city for keeping it closed, and he said, “Well, that guy will never be reelected.” And I just thought, do I tell him what this really can be? We’re looking at a quarter of a million people dead soon. But I just didn’t want to have that fight. Q: After the 9/11 attacks, you gave several “Late Show” monologues where you tried to rally your viewers’ spirits and bring them together. Do you ever feel like saying anything similar now? A: Something applicable to these times? I wish I had the wherewithal to say something meaningful. But all of these people who are resisting the idea of prevention, I just keep thinking: What about the families of the 220,000 people who are dead? I wonder how they’re feeling. I don’t get it. I have no solution other than to do what is told: Take care of yourself and your family. Q: How did the pandemic affect your work on your Netflix series? A: I thought we were done for good. Really. In the beginning, it really seemed like, holy God, they’re coming over the wall, we’re all going to die. People keep reminding me that, at my age, I’m particularly vulnerable. Which I don’t appreciate at all. “Dad, you know you’re close to 100, you’d better not go out.” Q: How did you decide to continue with your season? A: We had two more episodes (with Lizzo and Dave Chappelle) in preproduction, and we were eager to do something. We did them within a very short period of time, and then we came home. By that point, there were protocols in place from the production company and from Netflix that we had to observe, gladly, and we got through it OK. Q: Kim Kardashian West, who is now a prized guest on your Netflix series, was a frequent target of mockery in your “Late Show” days. A: Oh, I was at the head of that list. I can remember when she would be booked on the show, it was like, I don’t know anything about her, and I’ve never seen her show. And then when we went to talk to Kanye, I thought, oh, I’ve misjudged this woman. Q: What changed your mind about her? A: After we met with Kanye West (for the previous season of the Netflix series), I had a long talk with her at their home, and I started to think about how I had used her as a joke and regarded her as someone not to be taken seriously. I found that that impression was not the end of the story. She had a family. She has her prison reform program. I won’t comment on the ease of being married to Kanye West. And if she can keep a show like that on the air for all those years, that’s an accomplishment. If you can stay in business on television that long, good for you. Q: You went to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to interview Dave Chappelle. Did you perform at his outdoor comedy show there? A: Yes. I think I did it. (To his publicist) Did I do it? (Publicist answers: “You did it.”) I’m being told I did it (laughs). It was grand. The setting is unique. It’s outdoors. Everybody’s tested, everybody social distanced. He had three or four comics on and each comic made my heart sink deeper. Because when I was doing comedy, a lot of it was (weakly) “Hey, where you from?” But these men and women, whoa — the level of it, the intellect of it, the presentation of it is so much more than it was when me and my little buddies were, “Hey, how ya doin’, I just got in from Indiana.” Really? No one cares. Get outta here. Q: Do you ever have moments in these interviews where you feel as if you don’t have a shared frame of reference to talk to some of these guests? A: Yes. Because the experience is barely parallel. We’re all in show business, but that’s as close a comparison as you can make, culturally. I did feel like, is this going to look stupid? An old guy here, trying to talk to people who are thriving and alive and dominating the world through social media? I felt like it was a wreck. That’s the inner dialogue. Q: How do you get past this? A: Like anybody else that you talk to, every human being, there are situations that helped develop into what they are. So you’re going to get a story out of anybody. It may not happen in the first five minutes, but in every one of these experiences, there’s always a conduit for mutual experience. “Oh yeah? You think that’s something? Well, one time I choked on a peanut-butter sandwich and nearly died.” You have to make everybody a good interview. Q: Do you think that late-night television, a genre that you helped to pioneer, has been diminished in recent years — that so much of it has become political comedy that doesn’t really move the needle and crowds out everything else? A: I know that people have been hugely successful with it. Stephen (Colbert) has done a great job with my old show — his show now. In my day, the goal was just anything to make the audience laugh. That may be part of the dynamic now. People have this hunger to see the current administration being assailed and embarrassing itself. So I think that’s what (late-night shows) worked toward. I don’t fault them for that. After a while, it wears thin, but the appetite for it has not worn thin. I think they still do enough business to keep people happy. Q: Do you ever find yourself fearing for the future of this country? A: I really did, until recently. And now I am confident — or more confident than I’ve been in the last four years — that we’re changing presidents in a couple of weeks. And it will be a huge victory. Not just for our culture and our government, but the simple act of voting will have been the reason that the rest of our country is put back together and, in many ways, saved from what appears to be tyranny, certainly jeopardy. I think it will be a huge victory on many fronts, not the least of which is calling attention to the valuable freedom of voting. Q: Please don’t mistake this for a suggestion, but do you ever think about packing it in as a broadcaster entirely? A: First of all, you can’t hurt my feelings because I’m dead inside. But the Netflix people put me back in business in a way that has been, for me, really, really fun. On the other hand, I recognize my own shelf life. I’m way overdue. When it happens, I still will enjoy little things here and there, and that’ll be enough. But there’s other people more capable. I got no problem with that. If there is any kind of schedule, it would be when my son is finished with high school. But if it’s tomorrow, that’s fine. Q: Your son, Harry, is 16 now. Are you worried about how the pandemic is going to affect his life? A: I think it’s every parent’s concern, regardless of the age of their kids. But for Harry and his buddies, the junior year of high school is a crucial experience. Now they’re starting to look beyond high school, and it’s not good. For guys Harry’s age and older, it might be a setback. Time takes care of everything, and one hopes that that’s the case here. Q: How do you talk about these feelings with him? A: I had a conversation with my son the other night that went this way. Because of the pandemic and the fact that he’s getting older, I said, Harry, your mother and I have two responsibilities. One is to keep you safe. And other than the time that your mother let you roll off the bed and land on your head, we have kept you safe. The other responsibility is your happiness. And he said, “Have you been drinking?” So that’s how that works at my house.

David Letterman isn’t here to cheer you up this time

Once a crown jewel in the New York Times reportage -- Rukmini Callimachi's 'Caliphate' -- is now at the centre of a scandal that has pitted practices of journalism against its ethics.

'Caliphate' relied on the firsthand account of one former ISIS fighter, middle-class Canadian recruit Abu Huzayfah. In the consequence, eyewitnesses, civilians, and others on the ground in Syria and Iraq were also interviewed.

Caliphate examined the rise of the Islamic State terror movement, and a larger part of this thrived on Islamophobia.

The show was, however, primarily driven by the host’s perspective.&nbsp;

Westerners already mystified by the rise of ISIS were made&nbsp;to trust the show's narrative of the group’s methodology and mindset from a&nbsp;distance.

Fear sells, and that's what made the show stand out. Also, the podcast came from the New York Times and Callimachi, a multiple Pulitzer Prize finalist -- raising its stakes.

Sadly, the podcast’s accuracy has now been called into question. The Canadian police arrested Shehroze Chaudhry, also known as Abu Huzayfah, under the country’s terrorism hoax laws.

The police alleged Chaudhry lied about his involvement with ISIS.&nbsp;

In fact, there’s little evidence he even visited Syria -- in contrast witht what the podcast reported.

The good part was the New York Times did not shy away from opening a review of “Caliphate”, paving way for other media houses to scrutinise it.

NYT the appointed media correspondent Ben Smith to investigate the podcasts.

Callimachi’s integrity has also been called into question. It has also been later reported that other journalists within the paper had reportedly expressed concern about her sources and the license she took in situations that were near-impossible to fact-check.

Rukmini Callimachi, once a reverred journalist, is now an object of wonder, and sometimes, ridicule on Twitter.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
'Caliphate' let listeners hear what they wanted to hear. And fear sells <a href="https://t.co/GjDs7NO5pQ">https://t.co/GjDs7NO5pQ</a>
— Laila Al-Arian (@LailaAlarian) <a href="https://twitter.com/LailaAlarian/status/1316702122273132546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Amazing admission by <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nytimes</a> about the grave misreporting by <a href="https://twitter.com/rcallimachi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@rcallimachi</a> (one the Times star reporters). 
Every aspiring journalist must read this story 👇by <a href="https://twitter.com/benyt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@benyt</a>. 
Even great journalists should be fact checked multiple times by their editors.<a href="https://t.co/KyfOT1SNWh">https://t.co/KyfOT1SNWh</a>
— Mohsin Amin (@MohsinAmin_) <a href="https://twitter.com/MohsinAmin_/status/1317073942000111617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 16, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Canadian federal authorities, currently, are pursuing her source, Shehroze Chaudhry, under a law that criminalises terrorist hoaxes. The NYT has organised a group of top editors, including Dean Murphy and Mark Mazzetti, to further probe the matter.

Once a crown jewel in the New York Times reportage -- Rukmini Callimachi's 'Caliphate' -- is now at the centre of a scandal that has pitted practices of journalism against its ethics.

Once a crown jewel in the New York Times reportage -- Rukmini Callimachi's 'Caliphate' -- is now at the centre of a scandal that has pitted practices of journalism against its ethics. 'Caliphate' relied on the firsthand account of one former ISIS fighter, middle-class Canadian recruit Abu Huzayfah. In the consequence, eyewitnesses, civilians, and others on the ground in Syria and Iraq were also interviewed. Caliphate examined the rise of the Islamic State terror movement, and a larger part of this thrived on Islamophobia. The show was, however, primarily driven by the host’s perspective. Westerners already mystified by the rise of ISIS were made to trust the show's narrative of the group’s methodology and mindset from a distance. Fear sells, and that's what made the show stand out. Also, the podcast came from the New York Times and Callimachi, a multiple Pulitzer Prize finalist -- raising its stakes. Sadly, the podcast’s accuracy has now been called into question. The Canadian police arrested Shehroze Chaudhry, also known as Abu Huzayfah, under the country’s terrorism hoax laws. The police alleged Chaudhry lied about his involvement with ISIS. In fact, there’s little evidence he even visited Syria -- in contrast witht what the podcast reported. The good part was the New York Times did not shy away from opening a review of “Caliphate”, paving way for other media houses to scrutinise it. NYT the appointed media correspondent Ben Smith to investigate the podcasts. Callimachi’s integrity has also been called into question. It has also been later reported that other journalists within the paper had reportedly expressed concern about her sources and the license she took in situations that were near-impossible to fact-check. Rukmini Callimachi, once a reverred journalist, is now an object of wonder, and sometimes, ridicule on Twitter. 'Caliphate' let listeners hear what they wanted to hear. And fear sells https://t.co/GjDs7NO5pQ — Laila Al-Arian (@LailaAlarian) October 15, 2020 × Amazing admission by @nytimes about the grave misreporting by @rcallimachi (one the Times star reporters). Every aspiring journalist must read this story 👇by @benyt. Even great journalists should be fact checked multiple times by their editors.https://t.co/KyfOT1SNWh — Mohsin Amin (@MohsinAmin_) October 16, 2020 × Canadian federal authorities, currently, are pursuing her source, Shehroze Chaudhry, under a law that criminalises terrorist hoaxes. The NYT has organised a group of top editors, including Dean Murphy and Mark Mazzetti, to further probe the matter.

How New York Times 'Caliphate' podcast controversy panned out

In many ways, Carlo Acutis was a typical teenager. He loved his PlayStation and making videos of his dogs. He favored Nikes and jeans, and he had a cellphone and an email address.

But in one significant respect, Carlo — who was just 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006 — stands out from his peers: He is on his way to becoming the first millennial to be recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

Carlo, who lived in Milan, was beatified, or declared “blessed” by the pope, on Saturday after a miracle was attributed to him earlier this year. The ceremony, in Assisi, Italy, was the second-to-last step before Carlo can be canonized as a saint.

Since his death, Carlo has become known in some Catholic circles as the patron saint of the internet for his facility with computers and his early and enthusiastic embrace of the web, which he used as an expression of his Catholic faith.

When he was 9, Carlo began studying computer science textbooks and taught himself computer programming and graphic design, his mother, Antonia Acutis, said in a phone interview. In the months before his death, he created a website that cataloged miracles.

“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers have called him an “influencer for God.”

Her son’s life, she said, “can be used to show how the internet can be used for good, to spread good things.”

After his death, the Diocese of Assisi, where his family had a second home, petitioned the Vatican to recognize Carlo as a saint. The diocese dug into his emails and computer search history, and interviewed witnesses. Then they waited for miracles.

Acutis said that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son. In February, Pope Francis attributed the unexplainable healing of a boy with a malformed pancreas to Carlo after the child came in contact with one of his shirts.

Now that he has been beatified, Carlo could become a saint if a second verified miracle is attributed to him and is recognized by the pope. A formal canonization ceremony would follow.

If that happens, Carlo would be joining an elite group. Among the more than 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, just 120 died as children or teenagers, the National Catholic Register reported in 2017.

The time between beatification and sainthood varies widely, and sainthood might not happen at all, said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American studies and history and the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. For some saints, including Joan of Arc, who died when she was about 19, centuries pass between death and canonization.

Hundreds of masked devotees, including Carlo’s parents and siblings, gathered in Assisi on Saturday for his beatification ceremony, which was postponed from March because of the coronavirus. Many watched on screens that were spread throughout the town’s piazzas as a church official read a letter from Pope Francis that declared Carlo “blessed.”

“Already Carlo, he’s only just been beatified, but already he’s a worldwide phenomenon,” said the Rev. Will Conquer, a Catholic priest and missionary in Cambodia who has written about Carlo’s path to sainthood. “What makes it so extraordinary is that he was ordinary. We’re telling people the guy you should be following is a guy very similar to you.”

Carlo’s body, which was exhumed for veneration this month, was displayed in a nearby church with his preferred wardrobe of Nikes, jeans and a sweater.

Those signs of modernity resonated with many young people who see themselves in him, said Paul Jarzembowski, who leads the U.S. Council for Catholic Bishops’ youth and young adult ministries. Carlo was not a theological writer or world leader, he said, but rather an ordinary young person with compassion, a drive to integrate faith into his daily life and “a dedication to make the world a better place.”

“He is truly a patron for our self-isolating, digitally reliant times, and for other young people who are now accompanying all of us as we enter more fully into this new normal,” Jarzembowski said.

Born in London to Italian parents, Carlo moved to Milan with his family as a child, his mother said. He enjoyed soccer and video games, including Pokémon and Mario Kart, limiting himself to one hour a week with those games, his mother said.

He was inquisitive about Catholicism from a young age, inspiring his mother, who was not a practicing Catholic at the time, to return to the faith. He attended daily Mass from the time he was 7, never missing a day, she said.

Carlo sought ways of helping poor, older and disabled people, and refugees. On the way to school, he would stop to chat with people about their problems, she said. He took meals and sleeping bags to homeless people and knew many by name.

At Carlo’s funeral, the church overflowed with people whose lives he had touched, she said.

“People are gravitating to the idea of a young person becoming a saint at a time when young people are leaving the church, becoming disenchanted with the church,” Cummings said.

And, as people worry about the corrosive effects of social media on young people, it is notable, she said, that the church is recognizing a person who used the internet to promote the faith.

Francis has embraced the internet and called it a “gift from God.” Writing to young people last year, he commended Carlo as an example for his use of the internet and quoted him as saying, “Everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies.” The pope added, “Don’t let that happen to you!”

On Monday, the pope wrote on Twitter that Carlo’s example showed that “true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least.”

Francis, who has been known to embrace the internet — notably with Twitter and Instagram accounts — has been outspoken about the harmful effects of social media and the depravity of internet culture.

Carlo’s beatification comes at time when technology has been integrated into religion as never before, as online streaming allows the faithful to participate in services under coronavirus restrictions.

Carlo’s life has inspired hundreds of social media pages as well as books and documentaries. YouTube videos show him as a young boy, sticking his tongue out at the camera and goofing around, playing air guitar and singing.

“There’s really nothing extraordinary about his life,” Conquer said of Carlo. “Everything that he did you can do, honestly. And that’s what gives us all a lot of hope.”

In many ways, Carlo Acutis was a typical teenager. He loved his PlayStation and making videos of his dogs. He favored Nikes and jeans, and he had a cellphone and an email address.

In many ways, Carlo Acutis was a typical teenager. He loved his PlayStation and making videos of his dogs. He favored Nikes and jeans, and he had a cellphone and an email address. But in one significant respect, Carlo — who was just 15 when he died of leukemia in 2006 — stands out from his peers: He is on his way to becoming the first millennial to be recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Carlo, who lived in Milan, was beatified, or declared “blessed” by the pope, on Saturday after a miracle was attributed to him earlier this year. The ceremony, in Assisi, Italy, was the second-to-last step before Carlo can be canonized as a saint. Since his death, Carlo has become known in some Catholic circles as the patron saint of the internet for his facility with computers and his early and enthusiastic embrace of the web, which he used as an expression of his Catholic faith. When he was 9, Carlo began studying computer science textbooks and taught himself computer programming and graphic design, his mother, Antonia Acutis, said in a phone interview. In the months before his death, he created a website that cataloged miracles. “Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers have called him an “influencer for God.” Her son’s life, she said, “can be used to show how the internet can be used for good, to spread good things.” After his death, the Diocese of Assisi, where his family had a second home, petitioned the Vatican to recognize Carlo as a saint. The diocese dug into his emails and computer search history, and interviewed witnesses. Then they waited for miracles. Acutis said that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son. In February, Pope Francis attributed the unexplainable healing of a boy with a malformed pancreas to Carlo after the child came in contact with one of his shirts. Now that he has been beatified, Carlo could become a saint if a second verified miracle is attributed to him and is recognized by the pope. A formal canonization ceremony would follow. If that happens, Carlo would be joining an elite group. Among the more than 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, just 120 died as children or teenagers, the National Catholic Register reported in 2017. The time between beatification and sainthood varies widely, and sainthood might not happen at all, said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American studies and history and the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. For some saints, including Joan of Arc, who died when she was about 19, centuries pass between death and canonization. Hundreds of masked devotees, including Carlo’s parents and siblings, gathered in Assisi on Saturday for his beatification ceremony, which was postponed from March because of the coronavirus. Many watched on screens that were spread throughout the town’s piazzas as a church official read a letter from Pope Francis that declared Carlo “blessed.” “Already Carlo, he’s only just been beatified, but already he’s a worldwide phenomenon,” said the Rev. Will Conquer, a Catholic priest and missionary in Cambodia who has written about Carlo’s path to sainthood. “What makes it so extraordinary is that he was ordinary. We’re telling people the guy you should be following is a guy very similar to you.” Carlo’s body, which was exhumed for veneration this month, was displayed in a nearby church with his preferred wardrobe of Nikes, jeans and a sweater. Those signs of modernity resonated with many young people who see themselves in him, said Paul Jarzembowski, who leads the U.S. Council for Catholic Bishops’ youth and young adult ministries. Carlo was not a theological writer or world leader, he said, but rather an ordinary young person with compassion, a drive to integrate faith into his daily life and “a dedication to make the world a better place.” “He is truly a patron for our self-isolating, digitally reliant times, and for other young people who are now accompanying all of us as we enter more fully into this new normal,” Jarzembowski said. Born in London to Italian parents, Carlo moved to Milan with his family as a child, his mother said. He enjoyed soccer and video games, including Pokémon and Mario Kart, limiting himself to one hour a week with those games, his mother said. He was inquisitive about Catholicism from a young age, inspiring his mother, who was not a practicing Catholic at the time, to return to the faith. He attended daily Mass from the time he was 7, never missing a day, she said. Carlo sought ways of helping poor, older and disabled people, and refugees. On the way to school, he would stop to chat with people about their problems, she said. He took meals and sleeping bags to homeless people and knew many by name. At Carlo’s funeral, the church overflowed with people whose lives he had touched, she said. “People are gravitating to the idea of a young person becoming a saint at a time when young people are leaving the church, becoming disenchanted with the church,” Cummings said. And, as people worry about the corrosive effects of social media on young people, it is notable, she said, that the church is recognizing a person who used the internet to promote the faith. Francis has embraced the internet and called it a “gift from God.” Writing to young people last year, he commended Carlo as an example for his use of the internet and quoted him as saying, “Everyone is born as an original, but many people end up dying as photocopies.” The pope added, “Don’t let that happen to you!” On Monday, the pope wrote on Twitter that Carlo’s example showed that “true happiness is found by putting God in first place and serving him in our brothers and sisters, especially the least.” Francis, who has been known to embrace the internet — notably with Twitter and Instagram accounts — has been outspoken about the harmful effects of social media and the depravity of internet culture. Carlo’s beatification comes at time when technology has been integrated into religion as never before, as online streaming allows the faithful to participate in services under coronavirus restrictions. Carlo’s life has inspired hundreds of social media pages as well as books and documentaries. YouTube videos show him as a young boy, sticking his tongue out at the camera and goofing around, playing air guitar and singing. “There’s really nothing extraordinary about his life,” Conquer said of Carlo. “Everything that he did you can do, honestly. And that’s what gives us all a lot of hope.”

An Italian teenager could become the first millennial saint

US President Donald Trump Fresh Controversy - US President Donald Trump has found himself in a fresh controversy after a report claimed that he has paid a meagre amount or no federal income tax for many years before he became the president of the United States.&nbsp;

Watch |&nbsp;

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A New York Times report claimed that Trump paid only $750 federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidential election, and 2017 and not a penny of federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years before he became president on grounds that he lost more money than he gained.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-one-liners-rehearsed-performances-and-mammoth-audiences-expected-as-biden-trump-gear-up-for-debates-330793">US: One-liners, rehearsed performances and mammoth audiences expected as Biden, Trump gear up for debates</a>

Trump called the allegations "totally fake news" and said he "he paid a lot of state income taxes", adding everything will be "revealed".&nbsp;

"First of all, I paid a lot and I paid a lot of state income taxes too... It'll all be revealed," Trump said.

The report said the US president reduced his taxes through a $72.9 million refund that gets audited by Internal Revenue audit.&nbsp;

 
It added that Trump used deductions on aircraft, residences, including $70,000 in hairstyling for TV appearances.&nbsp;

The report said his golf courses showed a loss of large amounts of money, and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he took on personal guarantee will soon be due for repayment.&nbsp;

Democrats have sharpened their attacks on the US president with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi describing the findings as "Trump's disdain for America's working families."

Massachusetts representative Richard Neal, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee who earlier has unsuccessfully attempted knowing Trump's tax records, said now it is more essential for his committee to access the documents.

"It appears that the President has gamed the tax code to his advantage and used legal fights to delay or avoid paying what he owes," he said.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

US President Donald Trump Fresh Controversy - US President Donald Trump has found himself in a fresh controversy after a report claimed that he has paid a meagre amount or no federal income tax for many years before he became the president of the United States.

US President Donald Trump Fresh Controversy - US President Donald Trump has found himself in a fresh controversy after a report claimed that he has paid a meagre amount or no federal income tax for many years before he became the president of the United States. Watch | A New York Times report claimed that Trump paid only $750 federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidential election, and 2017 and not a penny of federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years before he became president on grounds that he lost more money than he gained. Also read | US: One-liners, rehearsed performances and mammoth audiences expected as Biden, Trump gear up for debates Trump called the allegations "totally fake news" and said he "he paid a lot of state income taxes", adding everything will be "revealed". "First of all, I paid a lot and I paid a lot of state income taxes too... It'll all be revealed," Trump said. The report said the US president reduced his taxes through a $72.9 million refund that gets audited by Internal Revenue audit. It added that Trump used deductions on aircraft, residences, including $70,000 in hairstyling for TV appearances. The report said his golf courses showed a loss of large amounts of money, and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he took on personal guarantee will soon be due for repayment. Democrats have sharpened their attacks on the US president with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi describing the findings as "Trump's disdain for America's working families." Massachusetts representative Richard Neal, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee who earlier has unsuccessfully attempted knowing Trump's tax records, said now it is more essential for his committee to access the documents. "It appears that the President has gamed the tax code to his advantage and used legal fights to delay or avoid paying what he owes," he said.

Donald Trump faces fresh controversy as bombshell report claims president avoided tax for years

In a report that has stoked fresh controversy for US President Donald Trump, a finding has said that the US president paid more taxes in 2017 in India as compared to the US.&nbsp;

The New York Times report claimed that in 2017 Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in the US, while he/ his companies paid $1,45,400 taxes in India.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/donald-trump-faces-fresh-controversy-as-bombshell-report-claims-president-avoided-tax-for-years-330801">Donald Trump faces fresh controversy as bombshell report claims president avoided tax for years</a>

Trump immediately described the report as "fake news" and added that the true figures would be "revealed".&nbsp;

The report can cause a major blow to Trump's chances of becoming US president for another term as just a little over a month is left for the elections in the US.

Trump has already faced a lot of criticism over his response to the coronavirus pandemic that has worst-impacted the US and for his inability to resolve racial tensions across the country.

The report has also said the US president has not paid any federal income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years before he came to power over the claims that he lost more money than he profiteered.&nbsp;

Trump also used deductions aircraft, residences, that includes $70,000 in hairstyling for TV appearances, the report said.&nbsp;

In a report that has stoked fresh controversy for US President Donald Trump, a finding has said that the US president paid more taxes in 2017 in India as compared to the US.

In a report that has stoked fresh controversy for US President Donald Trump, a finding has said that the US president paid more taxes in 2017 in India as compared to the US. The New York Times report claimed that in 2017 Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in the US, while he/ his companies paid $1,45,400 taxes in India. Also read | Donald Trump faces fresh controversy as bombshell report claims president avoided tax for years Trump immediately described the report as "fake news" and added that the true figures would be "revealed". The report can cause a major blow to Trump's chances of becoming US president for another term as just a little over a month is left for the elections in the US. Trump has already faced a lot of criticism over his response to the coronavirus pandemic that has worst-impacted the US and for his inability to resolve racial tensions across the country. The report has also said the US president has not paid any federal income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years before he came to power over the claims that he lost more money than he profiteered. Trump also used deductions aircraft, residences, that includes $70,000 in hairstyling for TV appearances, the report said.

Trump's businesses paid more taxes for India in 2017 than him for US: Report

Major news publishers are seeking more favorable terms from Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on commissions the iPhone maker collects from them on payments made through its app store, according to a letter posted by a trade body on Thursday.

Digital Content Next (DCN), which represents New York Times Co (NYT.N), the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other publishers, posted the letter, addressed to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, on its website.

Apple, which usually takes a cut that ranges between 15% and 30% from news publishers for first-time subscriptions made through apps on the store, has a reduced rate for Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/apple-becomes-first-us-firm-to-reach-2-trillion-market-cap-321948">Also watch: Apple becomes first U.S firm to reach $2 trillion market cap</a>

In a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Cook said the reduced rate was available to any developer who met certain conditions.

News publishers should qualify for the same terms offered to Amazon for its Prime Video app on Apple's app store, DCN Chief Executive Officer Jason Kint suggested in Thursday's letter to Cook.

“I ask that you clearly define the conditions that Amazon satisfied for its arrangement so that DCN’s member companies meeting those conditions can be offered the same agreement.”

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/apple-helped-us-build-a-top-secret-ipod-claims-former-engineer-321806">Also read:&nbsp;Apple helped US build a 'top secret' iPod, claims former engineer</a>

The letter cited communication between Apple veteran Eddy Cue and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos where the two companies agreed on a 15% revenue-sharing deal for new customer sign-ups for Prime Video through app store. The email emerged during the Committee hearing on July 29.

The latest missive comes days after Apple removed Epic Games’ “Fortnite” from its app store for violating in-app payment guidelines, prompting Epic to file federal lawsuits challenging the rule.

Apple and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Major news publishers are seeking more favorable terms from Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on commissions the iPhone maker collects from them on payments made through its app store, according to a letter posted by a trade body on Thursday.

Major news publishers are seeking more favorable terms from Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on commissions the iPhone maker collects from them on payments made through its app store, according to a letter posted by a trade body on Thursday. Digital Content Next (DCN), which represents New York Times Co (NYT.N), the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other publishers, posted the letter, addressed to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, on its website. Apple, which usually takes a cut that ranges between 15% and 30% from news publishers for first-time subscriptions made through apps on the store, has a reduced rate for Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O). Also watch: Apple becomes first U.S firm to reach $2 trillion market cap In a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Cook said the reduced rate was available to any developer who met certain conditions. News publishers should qualify for the same terms offered to Amazon for its Prime Video app on Apple's app store, DCN Chief Executive Officer Jason Kint suggested in Thursday's letter to Cook. “I ask that you clearly define the conditions that Amazon satisfied for its arrangement so that DCN’s member companies meeting those conditions can be offered the same agreement.” Also read: Apple helped US build a 'top secret' iPod, claims former engineer The letter cited communication between Apple veteran Eddy Cue and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos where the two companies agreed on a 15% revenue-sharing deal for new customer sign-ups for Prime Video through app store. The email emerged during the Committee hearing on July 29. The latest missive comes days after Apple removed Epic Games’ “Fortnite” from its app store for violating in-app payment guidelines, prompting Epic to file federal lawsuits challenging the rule. Apple and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

News publishers push back against Apple over app store terms

Hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were a few youngsters with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times has said.

Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the virtual currency bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many others on Wednesday.

The massive hack of high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden raised questions about Twitter's security as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of November's election.

The attack, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, started with a playful message between hackers on the platform Discord, a chat service popular with gamers.

The paper said it had interviewed four people who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/twitter-says-attackers-downloaded-data-from-up-to-eight-non-verified-accounts-314223">Also read |&nbsp;Twitter says attackers downloaded data from up to eight non-verified accounts</a>

The hack was done by a group of young people -- one of whom says he lives at home with his mother -- who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.

"Based on what we know right now, we believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident," Twitter said in a tweet.

Twitter said it appeared to be a "coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools."

The young hackers interviewed by the Times said a mysterious user who went by the name "Kirk" initiated the scheme with a message and was the one with access to Twitter accounts.

They contended they were only involved in commandeering lesser-known Twitter accounts, particularly to swipe coveted short handles such as an "@" sign and single letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to the report.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/twitter-accounts-of-jeff-bezos-elon-musk-bill-gates-and-others-hit-in-major-hack-313558">Also read |&nbsp;Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others hit in major hack</a>

The young hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for "Kirk" when high-profile accounts became targets.

Some hackers are "obsessed" with hijacking "Original Gangster" social media accounts staked out in the services' early days that have short profile names, according to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.

Hackers involved in the attack on Twitter advertised account names at an OGusers.com website, asking for payment in bitcoin, according to the Times report.

Fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, had said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoin, promising they would receive twice as much in return. More than $100,000 worth of bitcoin was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

Hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were a few youngsters with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times has said.

Hackers involved in the high-profile hijacking of Twitter accounts earlier this week were a few youngsters with no links to state or organised crime, The New York Times has said. Posts trying to dupe people into sending hackers the virtual currency bitcoin were tweeted by the official accounts of Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and many others on Wednesday. The massive hack of high-profile users from Elon Musk to Joe Biden raised questions about Twitter's security as it serves as a megaphone for politicians ahead of November's election. The attack, which Twitter and federal police are investigating, started with a playful message between hackers on the platform Discord, a chat service popular with gamers. The paper said it had interviewed four people who participated in the hacking, who shared logs and screenshots backing up their accounts of what happened. Also read | Twitter says attackers downloaded data from up to eight non-verified accounts The hack was done by a group of young people -- one of whom says he lives at home with his mother -- who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6. "Based on what we know right now, we believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident," Twitter said in a tweet. Twitter said it appeared to be a "coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools." The young hackers interviewed by the Times said a mysterious user who went by the name "Kirk" initiated the scheme with a message and was the one with access to Twitter accounts. They contended they were only involved in commandeering lesser-known Twitter accounts, particularly to swipe coveted short handles such as an "@" sign and single letters or numbers that could easily be sold, according to the report. Also read | Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others hit in major hack The young hackers maintained they stopped serving as middlemen for "Kirk" when high-profile accounts became targets. Some hackers are "obsessed" with hijacking "Original Gangster" social media accounts staked out in the services' early days that have short profile names, according to Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security. Hackers involved in the attack on Twitter advertised account names at an OGusers.com website, asking for payment in bitcoin, according to the Times report. Fraudulent posts, which were largely deleted, had said people had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in cryptocurrency bitcoin, promising they would receive twice as much in return. More than $100,000 worth of bitcoin was sent to email addresses mentioned in the tweets, according to Blockchain.com, which monitors crypto transactions.

Twitter hack was work of young hacker pals, says report

The New York Times on Wednesday said it was moving its digital news hub from Hong Kong to South Korea as a result of a national security law Beijing imposed on the city.

"China's sweeping new national security law in Hong Kong has created a lot of uncertainty about what the new rules will mean to our operation and our journalism," executives wrote in an email to staff, according to a news report published on the New York Times website.

"We feel it is prudent to make contingency plans and begin to diversify our editing staff around the region."

The newspaper has had a regional headquarters in Hong Kong for decades, overseeing Asia coverage and more recently helping to run the newspaper's 24-hour digital news operation.

In its own news report, the Times said it would move its digital team of journalists -- roughly one-third of its Hong Kong employees —- to Seoul over the next year.

It is the first major relocation by an international news organisation since Beijing imposed a sweeping security law on Hong Kong late last month.

The new law has sent a chill through the city because its broad wording criminalises some political speech and ramps up Communist Party control over the city.

One provision expressly calls upon authorities to&nbsp;"strengthen the management" of foreign news organisations.

The Times report said it had recently "faced challenges securing work permits" for its staff in Hong Kong, something it said was "commonplace in China but were rarely an issue in the former colony".

Hong Kong has been a major regional hub for international media for decades thanks to its easy business environment and key civil liberties that Beijing pledged to protect until 2047 under the handover deal with Britain.

Alongside the New York Times, media organisations that have major regional hubs in Hong Kong include AFP, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Financial Times.&nbsp;

The New York Times on Wednesday said it was moving its digital news hub from Hong Kong to South Korea as a result of a national security law Beijing imposed on the city.

The New York Times on Wednesday said it was moving its digital news hub from Hong Kong to South Korea as a result of a national security law Beijing imposed on the city. "China's sweeping new national security law in Hong Kong has created a lot of uncertainty about what the new rules will mean to our operation and our journalism," executives wrote in an email to staff, according to a news report published on the New York Times website. "We feel it is prudent to make contingency plans and begin to diversify our editing staff around the region." The newspaper has had a regional headquarters in Hong Kong for decades, overseeing Asia coverage and more recently helping to run the newspaper's 24-hour digital news operation. In its own news report, the Times said it would move its digital team of journalists -- roughly one-third of its Hong Kong employees —- to Seoul over the next year. It is the first major relocation by an international news organisation since Beijing imposed a sweeping security law on Hong Kong late last month. The new law has sent a chill through the city because its broad wording criminalises some political speech and ramps up Communist Party control over the city. One provision expressly calls upon authorities to "strengthen the management" of foreign news organisations. The Times report said it had recently "faced challenges securing work permits" for its staff in Hong Kong, something it said was "commonplace in China but were rarely an issue in the former colony". Hong Kong has been a major regional hub for international media for decades thanks to its easy business environment and key civil liberties that Beijing pledged to protect until 2047 under the handover deal with Britain. Alongside the New York Times, media organisations that have major regional hubs in Hong Kong include AFP, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

NYT to move some Hong Kong staff over security law

New York Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned from his post amid a furious backlash over the newspaper’s publication of a controversial and unfiltered comment piece penned by a Republican senator. Watch report.

New York Times' opinion Editor steps down after backlash over an op-ed

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