Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Shoot Me Up With Everything’

    For a reporter who covers infectious diseases, vaccines are an indispensable news gathering tool.Vaccines are an indispensable news gathering tool. They permit reporters to travel to areas where fatal or debilitating diseases are prevalent; exactly the places that warrant coverage by The New York Times.That’s why the Museum at The Times displays a carton that once contained the vaccine Ixiaro. It prevents Japanese encephalitis, which is related to yellow fever, dengue and West Nile virus. Mosquitoes spread the disease. It is considered endemic in much of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region.“The symptoms can be anything from a mild fever to, in rare cases, seizures and death,” Donald G. McNeil Jr. wrote in an email last week. “There’s no treatment. The vaccine isn’t recommended for most travelers to Asia, but if you go to rural areas and sleep in rooms with no A.C. or window screens — as I sometimes did — it’s protection.” He donated the Ixiaro carton the museum.Mr. McNeil is the author of “The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons From 25 Years of Covering Pandemics” and is a frequent contributor to the website Medium. He worked for The Times from 1976 to 2021, covering many infectious diseases, most recently Covid-19.Many of his Times assignments took him to tropical areas. In 2014, aware that new vaccines had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, he went to the New York Center for Travel and Tropical Medicine.“Shoot me up with everything,” Mr. McNeil said.Five jabs followed: Ixiaro; RabAvert, for rabies; Typhim Vi, for typhoid; a booster shot of a vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough; and probably an inactivated polio vaccine. (The clinic didn’t enter the fifth injection on Mr. McNeil’s yellow vaccine record card.)“I don’t remember any bad side effects,” Mr. McNeil wrote. “The worst side effect I’ve ever had from a shot was from my second shingles shot — and all it did was make me feel sort of nauseous and flu-ish and I went to bed without supper. I’ve been very lucky that way.”“The rabies shot was one of those ‘it wouldn’t hurt to have it’ decisions. I’m not a dog cuddler, and I definitely don’t pet strays. But they’re often hanging around in poor countries, and I did have to get up close to village dogs in rural Chad for a piece on how Guinea worm, a human parasite, was establishing a reservoir in dogs. And in some of the places I’ve slept, it wasn’t unthinkable that I might be bitten by a rat or a bat.” More

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    COP29 Climate Talks Get a Deal on Money, but Only After a Fight

    The financing plan, which calls for $300 billion per year in support for developing nations, was immediately assailed as inadequate by a string of delegates.Negotiators at this year’s United Nations climate summit struck an agreement early on Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple the flow of money to help developing countries adopt cleaner energy and cope with the effects of climate change. Under the deal, wealthy nations pledged to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, up from a current target of $100 billion.Independent experts, however, have placed the needs of developing countries much higher, at $1.3 trillion per year. That is the amount they say must be invested in the energy transitions of lower-income countries, in addition to what those countries already spend, to keep the planet’s average temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, global warming will become more dangerous and harder to reverse.The deal struck at the annual U.N.-sponsored climate talks calls on private companies and international lenders like the World Bank to cover the hundreds of billions in the shortfall. That was seen by some as a kind of escape clause for rich countries.As soon as the Azerbaijani hosts banged the gavel and declared the deal done, Chandni Raina, the representative from India, the world’s most populous country, tore into them, saying the process had been “stage managed.”“It is a paltry sum,” Ms. Raina said. “I am sorry to say that we cannot accept it. We seek a much higher ambition from developed countries.” She called the agreement “nothing more than an optical illusion.”Speakers from one developing country after another, from Bolivia to Nigeria to Fiji, echoed Ms. Raina’s remarks and assailed the document in furious statements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Scenes From the Atmospheric River That Drenched California and the Pacific Northwest

    A gusty, rain-soaked storm swept through the Pacific Northwest and Northern California this week, killing at least three people and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of customers.The dangerous weather, fueled by the season’s first major atmospheric river from the Pacific Ocean, battered the region starting on Tuesday. Forceful winds wiped out power for half a million customers in Washington. Among the places hardest hit was the Seattle area, where falling trees killed two people. The storm then moved into Northern California, where it disrupted hundreds of flights, flooded creeks, drenched San Francisco and brought heavy snow to parts of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. On Saturday, a body was recovered in floodwaters in Sonoma County, local authorities said. Though the storm is weakening as it inches south, residents are still reeling from the damage. More than 90,000 customers in Washington were still without power on Saturday morning, along with about 17,000 in California. In the region north of San Francisco, which includes Napa Valley, flooding is expected to continue through Saturday.Here are photos of the storm’s toll this week.Saturday, Nov. 23Hale Irwin/Sipa, via Associated PressCars drive on a snowy highway over Donner Summit in California.ReutersWater rescue teams deployed in Forestville, Calif.Friday, Nov. 22Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesA cyclist rides through a flooded intersection in San Francisco.Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesFog rolled in around the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.ReutersFlooding in Santa Rosa caused road closures and detours.Rachel Bujalski for The New York TimesSome streets were flooded in Rohnert Park, Calif.Rachel Bujalski for The New York TimesStaci Harpole looks over a flooded vineyard off Wohler Road in Forestville.Noah Berger/Associated PressA mudslide near a home in Sonoma County, Calif.Rachel Bujalski for The New York TimesFlooding in Santa Rosa, Calif.Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated PressLivestock graze on a patch of grass surrounded by the swollen Eel River in Ferndale, Calif.Thursday, Nov. 21Mason Trinca for The New York TimesA giant tree fell on Front Street in Crescent City, Calif.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesPolice officers help a woman walk through a flooded parking lot in Santa Rosa.ReutersRoads and vineyards were flooded in Sebastopol, Calif.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesPolice officers wave to a car trying to drive through a flooded parking lot in Santa Rosa.KOMO via Associated PressEmergency crews responded to a downed tree in Issaquah, Wash.Wednesday, Nov. 20David Ryder/ReutersResidents survey storm damage in Seattle.Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty ImagesTara Brown surveys storm damage while walking her dog in Lake Stevens, Wash.Noah Berger/Associated PressUtility workers tend to downed power lines in Sonoma County.Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty ImagesTiffani Palpong stands in front of her property in Lake Stevens where her son was trapped by downed power lines and trees.Noah Berger/Associated PressIsabella Karamitsos, a U.S. Geological Survey employee, deploys a sensor to measure water flow in Santa Rosa.Kate Selig More

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    Trump’s Choices for Health Agencies Suggest a Shake-Up Is Coming

    The picks to oversee public health have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream.A longtime leader of the anti-vaccine movement. A highly credentialed surgeon. A seven-term Florida congressman. A Fox News contributor with her own line of vitamins.President-elect Donald J. Trump’s eclectic roster of figures to lead federal health agencies is almost complete — and with it, his vision for a sweeping overhaul is coming into focus.Mr. Trump’s choices have varying backgrounds and public health views. But they have all pushed back against Covid policies or supported ideas that are outside the medical mainstream, including an opposition to vaccines. Together, they are a clear repudiation of business as usual.“What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration.Some doctors and scientists are bracing themselves for the gutting of public health agencies, a loss of scientific expertise and the injection of politics into realms once reserved for academics. The result, they fear, could be worse health outcomes, more preventable deaths and a reduced ability to respond to looming health threats, like the next pandemic. “I’m very, very worried about the way that this all plays out,” Dr. Offit said.But other experts who expressed concerns about anti-vaccine views at the helms of the nation’s health agencies said that some elements of the picks’ unorthodox approaches were welcomed. After a pandemic that closed schools across the country and killed more than one million Americans, many people have lost faith in science and medicine, surveys show. And even some prominent public health experts were critical of the agencies’ Covid missteps and muddled messaging on masks and testing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    California Educator Is Charged With Molesting 8 Children

    David Braff was first accused of misconduct years ago but has since held a series of school jobs. The authorities are investigating the possibility of additional victims. A Los Angeles assistant principal was arrested on Friday and charged with molesting eight children between 2015 and 2019, while he was working as an elementary school counselor in Ventura County. The defendant, David Lane Braff Jr., 42, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., is accused of molesting children aged 6 to 10 in an office at McKevett Elementary School in the Santa Paula Unified School District, roughly 70 miles west of Los Angeles. The charges emerged out of a cold case sexual abuse unit, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said. He noted that officials at McKevett Elementary had reached out to authorities at the time of the alleged incidents.Nevertheless, Mr. Braff has held several jobs in public education since and has also volunteered in a number of programs for children.Mr. Nasarenko described an “extensive search for the possibility of other victims at other school sites and locations.” “This shakes the very foundation of the notion of a school site as a safe learning environment,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Owners of Colorado Funeral Home Admit to Abusing Nearly 200 Corpses

    Jon and Carie Hallford pleaded guilty to corpse abuse after dozens of decaying bodies were found at their funeral home.A couple who owned a funeral home at two locations in Colorado pleaded guilty on Friday to multiple counts of corpse abuse, more than a year after 191 bodies were found decaying at their businesses in a horrific scene, the authorities said.The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, operated the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo.They agreed to facing 15 to 20 years in prison after they each pleaded guilty in El Paso County Court to 191 felony counts of abuse of a corpse, Michael Allen, the district attorney for the 4th Judicial District of Colorado, said at a news conference.The Hallfords are scheduled to be sentenced in April.Return to Nature advertised to families that their loved ones would be given green burials that included the use of biodegradable caskets, baskets or shrouds.But when a foul odor led investigators to the Penrose location, they found at least 190 improperly stored corpses at the Hallfords’ funeral home in Penrose and Colorado Springs in October last year. They were arrested in November.“The impact on these family members has been immense,” Mr. Allen said.He added that the Hallfords deceived grieving families and that “having somebody violate that trust is something that they’ll likely never recover from.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Picks Brooke Rollins, a Conservative Lawyer, to Lead Agriculture Dept.

    President-elect Donald J. Trump on Saturday chose Brooke Rollins, his former White House domestic policy adviser, to helm the Agriculture Department, whose wide-ranging purview includes supporting farmers who grow the nation’s two biggest crops, corn and soybeans, and setting the nutrition standards in school cafeterias across the nation.Ms. Rollins, a conservative lawyer, was considered for Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, but ultimately lost to Susie Wiles, his campaign manager. She is the chief executive of the America First Policy Institute, a prominent think tank founded in 2021 to promote Mr. Trump’s agenda and staffed with many who worked in the first Trump administration.“Brooke’s commitment to support the American farmer, defense of American food self-sufficiency and the restoration of agriculture-dependent American small towns is second to none,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, in announcing his selection.Before her tenure in the White House, Ms. Rollins served as president of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential nonprofit that has worked to push public funding to private schools, increase the role of Christianity in civic life and heavily promote fossil fuels.Ms. Rollins hails from Glen Rose, Texas, and is a former member of National FFA Organization, which promotes agricultural education for youth, and 4-H, a youth development organization. She studied agricultural development at Texas A&M University and said of her career in a recent video recorded for Ag Women Connect: “It all started in agriculture.”If confirmed, Ms. Rollins would oversee an agency with an annual budget of more than $200 billion and nearly 100,000 employees. The department, responsible for promoting, subsidizing and regulating the nation’s agriculture sector, has a sprawling portfolio. It also administers most federal food assistance programs, supports rural development in part by providing electricity to the most isolated areas of the country, and manages nearly 200 million acres of national forests and grasslands.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Madeleine Riffaud, ‘the Girl Who Saved Paris,’ Dies at 100

    Madeleine Riffaud, a swashbuckling French Resistance hero who survived three weeks of torture as a teenager and went on to celebrate her 20th birthday by helping to capture 80 Nazis on an armored supply train, and who later became a crusading anticolonial war correspondent, died on Nov. 6 at her home in Paris. She was 100.Her death was announced by her publisher, Dupuis.Ms. Riffaud was propelled into the anti-Nazi guerrilla underground in November 1940 by a literal kick in the backside from a German officer. He sent her packing after he saw Nazi soldiers taunting her at a railway station as she was accompanying her ailing grandfather to visit her father near Amiens, in northern France.“That moment,” she said in a 2006 interview with The Times of London, “decided my whole life.”“I landed on my face in the gutter,” she told The Guardian in 2004. “I was humiliated. My fear turned into anger.”She decided then and there to join the French Resistance.“I remember saying to myself,” she said, “‘I don’t know who they are or where they are, but I’ll find the people who are fighting this, and I’ll join them.’ ”Madeleine with her father, Jean Émile Riffaud, in about 1925. Mr. Riffaud, who had been wounded in World War I, was a pacifist.Fonds Madeleine RiffaudShe connected with the Resistance in Grenoble, France, at a sanitarium where she was being treated for tuberculosis. She had contracted the disease while studying midwifery in Paris.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More