Getting Kristofized: The extra "of" is an accidental tribute to Nick Kristof. Credit: Sree Sreenivasan/CNET Dear Friends (the real kind and social media kind): Let's Kristofize! (or Kristofise, if you prefer the British version of this made-up word). Kristof's Twitter profile photo. Credit: Twitter Nick Kristof (@NickKristof), the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist (he was a finalist this year, too - but hey, they need to spread the wealth around) is someone who uses his talents and platform to make a real difference in the lives of people around the world.Whether he's saving young girls from brothels in Cambodia or bringing attention to the troubles in Darfur or talking about the environment from a serious-yet-accessible way, Kristof has done more than any journalist ... Continue reading →
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense calls Simon Callow. In the invigorating “Being Shakespeare,” now playing at the BAM Harvey Theater, Mr. Callow testifies in support of the playwright. His collaborator, the Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, has supplied all sorts of contextualizing facts, figures, segues and suppositions, allowing Mr. Callow to point his finger unwaveringly at the title character: He did it. “It,” of course, is the most influential, soul-explaining body of literature that the world will ever know. Shakespeare’s authorship has come under increasing fire in recent decades, with challengers disputing that a man of his relatively humble background could have amassed the knowledge — the book smarts, street smarts and existential smarts — to write the way he did. Various high-born ... Continue reading →
“When they talk about dogs in the Bible, it was these,” says Myrna Shiboleth, who has done more than anyone to rescue the breed formally known as Canaan dog. “It was the same dog.”The archaeological evidence bears it out, from 1st-century rock carvings in the Sinai to the skeletons of more than 700 dogs from the 5th century B.C. discovered south of Tel Aviv. When Jesus and Moses turned their heads to the sound of a barking dog, it was the Canaan that they saw.But after surviving the birth of three religions, the Crusades and countless wars, the Canaan dog — one of the oldest known breeds of pariah dogs — is the focus of a battle that pitches people who believe in the value ... Continue reading →
Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:03pm EDT * McCann paid total $9.9 mln * Investment bank chief Kengeter forgoes 2011 bonus* CEO Ermotti paid nearly 6.4 million Swiss francs in 2011By Katharina Bart and Joseph A. GiannoneZURICH/NEW YORK, March 15 (Reuters) - UBS awarded U.S. brokerage chief Robert McCann 9.2 million Swiss francs ($9.9 million) last year for leading the turnaround of the unit, beating out group Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti and investment bank head Carsten Kengeter as the Swiss bank's highest paid executive.McCann, a former Merrill Lynch executive who joined UBS in 2009, received a 1.3 million franc base salary and a stock-based bonus of 4.7 million francs. His pay, exceptional for a brokerage executive, is on par with the estimated $10.5 million James Gorman ... Continue reading →
Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories. People All Over the World Lining Up to Buy an iPad Today, March 16, is iPad day — the next generation tablet from Apple is hitting retail stores all over the world, and buyers are anxiously awaiting their turn to buy the new iPad. One of them is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was traditionally first in line in front of an Apple store in Los Angeles. PayPal Launches Mobile Payment System, PayPal Here Mobile payment solution Square has just gotten a very serious competitor in the form of PayPal Here, ... Continue reading →
Every story, every cartoon, everything in the print magazine and more, every Monday, on iPad, Kindle Fire, NOOK, and Galaxy Tab. Already a print subscriber? Tablet access is included in your subscription. Download and log in for access today. You can subscribe through the Apple App Store (for iPad), Amazon Appstore for Android (for Kindle Fire), BN.com (for NOOK), and Next Issue Media (for Galaxy Tab), or buy single issues of the magazine. The Kindle Fire edition offers a three-month free trial, the NOOK edition offers a fourteen-day free trial, and the Galaxy Tab edition offers a thirty-day free trial. We also offer an E Ink Kindle edition. Continue reading →
The story of America’s recovery from the recession has been one of dashed hopes. In early 2010, and again early last year, the economy looked as if it might be starting to grow under its own power, only to slow markedly in the months that followed. So what should we make of the current signs of rebound? The employment report for February, which came out last week, was solid, meaning that businesses have created more than two hundred thousand jobs a month for three months in a row. Economic data show that the economy, and real incomes, grew at a fine clip at the end of 2011. And unemployment, while still painfully high, has fallen a full two points from its peak. Bitter experience might ... Continue reading →
It had the makings of an email disaster. An otherwise deletable piece of spam arrived, and one person after another hit "Reply All." Like a mutant virus, the message multiplied. Recipients from around the globe—Sydney, Dubai, Rio, London, Toronto—began replying with variations of "Take me off this list." The more people replied, the more people demanded to be removed, and in increasingly hostile tones. "Remove me," one person wrote, adding ominously: "The federal police are now involved." Then, a strange thing happened. Camaraderie broke out amid the spam. There was a drink at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London. A woman in Idaho became interested in a charity backed by a stranger in Toronto. Dozens of people traded contact information. And just like that, ... Continue reading →
The smugglers waiting for us had horses, though we learned they were not for us. They were to carry ammunition and supplies to the Free Syrian Army. That is the armed opposition group, made up largely of defectors from President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal army, we had come to interview, photograph and try to understand. The ammunition seemed evidence of the risk we were taking — a risk we did not shoulder lightly. Anthony, who passionately documented the eruptions in the Arab world from Iraq to Libya for The New York Times, felt it was essential that journalists get into Syria, where about 7,000 people have been killed, largely out of the world’s view. We had spent months planning to stay safe. It turned out the ... Continue reading →
