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      A UnitedHealthcare and Mount Sinai Dispute May Force Thousands to Switch Doctors

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      As Mount Sinai Hospital and UnitedHealthcare haggle over pay rates, patients may have to pay out-of-network prices if they want to keep their doctors.Stalled contract negotiations between UnitedHealthcare, the health insurance giant, and Mount Sinai Health System, a leading New York City hospital system, are forcing tens of thousands of New Yorkers to switch doctors or risk paying out-of-network prices.The impasse has dragged on for months. Mount Sinai has sought to raise prices significantly, but the insurance company has refused to agree to pay the new proposed rates. As a result, Mount Sinai’s hospitals are now out of network for patients insured by UnitedHealthcare or Oxford, which are subsidiaries of the same company. But the issue is about to become even more urgent for many patients because many Mount Sinai affiliated doctors — in addition to the hospitals themselves — are about to be removed from UnitedHealthcare’s network, starting March 22. That means patients with United who have employer-sponsored or individual plans will be billed out-of-network rates when they see a Mount Sinai affiliated doctor at a doctor’s office.The negotiations have sent many patients scrambling to find new doctors. UnitedHealthcare says about 80,000 Mount Sinai patients are affected.What Happened?The dispute between the insurance giant and the hospital system is a rare instance in which health care contract negotiations have spilled into public view.Mount Sinai sought to negotiate better rates with UnitedHealthcare, demanding that the insurance giant pay the hospital more for doctor visits and hospital stays. United claims Mount Sinai was asking for rates to go up some 58 percent over the next four years.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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      National Guard Can’t Carry Long Guns While Checking Bags in Subway

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an order forbidding the weapons at bag-check stations on Wednesday, directly after her announcement that soldiers would be deployed to New York City’s subways.Shortly after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that hundreds of National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system and check riders’ bags, her office made an adjustment: Soldiers searching bags would not carry long guns.The change, which was first reported by The Daily News, was ordered by Ms. Hochul on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. Ms. Hochul issued a directive that National Guard members would be prohibited from carrying long guns at bag-check stations, he said. Soldiers not working at the stations would presumably be allowed to carry them.Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ban on long guns at bag-checking stations a “relief,” but said the Guard’s presence underground remained “an unnecessary overreaction based on fear, not facts.”“Deploying military personnel to the subways will not make New Yorkers feel safe,” Ms. Lieberman said. “It will, unfortunately, create a perfect storm for tension, escalation and further criminalization of Black and brown New Yorkers.”Early images of the National Guard’s deployment showed soldiers standing near turnstiles in the subterranean system, wearing camouflage and military gear and holding long guns.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said the move to flood the system with reinforcements — 750 members of the New York National Guard, and an additional 250 personnel from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — would help commuters and visitors feel safe.Subway safety, a perpetual concern for New Yorkers, has been a challenging issue for public officials, who can be as sensitive to the perception that mass transit is dangerous as they are to an actual rise in crime.In February, following a 45 percent spike in major crimes in the first month of the year compared with the same period last year, Mayor Eric Adams ordered an additional 1,000 police officers into the subway system. Reported crime rates in the system declined that month, according to city data, and the overall rise in major crimes for the year as of March 3 was 13 percent, Police Department data shows.Ms. Hochul’s announcement this week drew criticism from public officials and from some members of her own party.Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that the plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Emily Gallagher, an assemblywoman and democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said that Ms. Hochul’s move was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that validated “G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.”John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, cited recent statistics suggesting that transit crime had dropped.“Our transit system is not a ‘war’ zone!” he wrote on X. More

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      A Mercer Labs Exhibit Uses Braille. Is It Accessible to All?

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      Roy Nachum designed the spectacle-filled Mercer Labs, which he touts as inclusive. But some advocates for blind people say his use of Braille can feel exploitative.While he was settling into Manhattan after moving from Israel in 2004, the 24-year-old artist Roy Nachum decided to contend with a second challenge: Inspired by his grandmother who had lost her sight, and in search of new inspiration for his artwork, he blindfolded himself. For the next 168 hours, he felt his way around his apartment in the East Village and used a cane to navigate to and from the nearby grocery store.That experience of being engulfed in the sounds and the chaos of a new city helped inspire the exhibits in his new immersive installation, Mercer Labs. It opened for previews in January at a 36,000-square-foot space in a sleek, Brutalist-style building at 21 Dey Street — the site of the former Century 21 department store.Nachum, whose artwork often incorporates Braille, became renowned for designing the Grammy-nominated cover for Rihanna’s album “Anti,” featuring a photo of Rihanna as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille. He and the real estate developer Michael Cayre founded Mercer Labs with an ambitious mandate: to be a “place where the traditional hierarchies between art, architecture, design, technology and culture are dissolved,” and where “diversity and inclusion are celebrated,” according to a news release. The site is expected to open officially on March 28.One of Roy Nachum’s signature designs is this cover image for Rihanna’s 2016 album, “Anti,” which features a photo of her as a child wearing a gold crown embossed with Braille.The founders advertise Mercer Labs as a “museum of art and technology.” At the moment, it contains 14 exhibition spaces that use high-tech projectors, digital screens, LED lights and sound systems to display Nachum’s perception-teasing creations. Some exhibits feature Braille, tactile displays and immersive sounds intended for blind and low-vision visitors as well as sighted ones. In one of the rooms, attendees with vision can don sleeping masks and listen to a set of immersive sounds, the better to understand Nachum’s experiences from 2004 with touch and navigation. In still another space, guests stroll through a cave covered with pink hydrangeas that can be explored through touch.Nachum’s installations are on view at the moment, but when Mercer Labs officially opens in March, Nachum and Cayre intend for it to become a multipurpose site, with exhibitions by other artists, musicians and even actors; event spaces that can be rented for private use; and displays spotlighting fashion brands as well as up-and-coming New York companies. They would not elaborate on which specific brands or artists they have partnered with, citing nondisclosure agreements.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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      Columbia DEI Chief Is Accused of Plagiarizing Dissertation From Wikipedia

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      A complaint said the official, who oversees diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at Columbia’s medical school, also copied work from at least 28 other authors.An official in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center was accused this week of plagiarizing large sections of his doctoral dissertation, according to an anonymous complaint filed with the university.The 55-page complaint accused the official, Alade McKen, of copying material in his 2021 dissertation at Iowa State University from more than two dozen other scholars and from Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers from the general public.The complaint was published online Thursday by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website that led a campaign last year against the former president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. She resigned in January following accusations of plagiarism and after her response to antisemitism on campus was criticized.Plagiarism allegations have rocked the world of elite academia in recent months. They have often had explicitly political overtones, with conservative critics leveling accusations against left-leaning administrators and at least one high-profile accusation that has been portrayed as an act of liberal revenge.The complaint published online on Thursday accused Mr. McKen of copying passages of his dissertation from the Wikipedia entry for “Afrocentric education” and from the published scholarship or the doctoral dissertations of at least 28 people.“Is Alade McKen a plagiarist?” the anonymous author of the complaint wrote at the top of page 1. “A small selection of examples from his dissertation are included below to guide your investigation.”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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      Hochul Pushes Proposals Cracking Down on Unlicensed Cannabis Shops

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      Legal retailers are struggling to get their footing in the face of a much larger illicit market.Gov. Kathy Hochul visited New York City on Wednesday to drum up support for her latest proposals for shutting down the unlicensed marijuana shops that have exploded in number in the wake of the legalization of recreational cannabis.There are more than 400 illicit weed shops in Manhattan alone — outnumbering Starbucks stores in the borough and far surpassing the few dozen licensed cannabis retailers in the entire state.At a news conference at the governor’s office in Midtown Manhattan attended by several owners of licensed dispensaries, Ms. Hochul sought to allay concerns about a return to the heavy-handed enforcement tactics of the war on drugs while pushing for measures that she said would give “some teeth” to the so far ineffective efforts to wipe out the unlicensed shops.Her appearance came as state lawmakers were considering her proposal to strengthen the hand of local agencies by giving them the power to padlock stores. She was joined by licensed dispensary owners who said that the legal market could not compete with the cut-rate prices in illicit shops. The governor and business owners also called on search engines and social media companies like Google and Yelp to remove content about unlicensed shops, which they said added to the confusion among consumers about what weed shops were licensed and which were not.The governor said that the illicit shops posed a public health hazard and undermined the state’s effort to build a cannabis industry that could provide opportunities for people harmed by the war on drugs. She said that efforts to deter the stores with raids and fines over the last year had been concentrated in the hands of too few agencies and had not been effective. Her proposal would make it easier for the state’s Office of Cannabis Management to obtain court orders to padlock stores and would allow for the orders to be executed by local agencies that had more personnel.“More and more cash keeps going in their doors and not the doors of our legitimate operators — and that’s what needs to change,” she 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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      Jeffrey Gibson Will Bring Sculptures of Ancestral Spirits to Met Facade

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      The Met named its 2025 art commissions, which include Gibson’s facade sculptures and a roof garden installation by the soundsmith Jennie C. Jones.Last summer, Jeffrey Gibson received an honor that most artists wait for their entire lives. Would he represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, the art world’s version of the Olympics? Only a few weeks after accepting, there was another auspicious ring on the telephone.It was the curator David Breslin, wondering if Gibson would become the sixth artist to alter the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade with newly commissioned sculptures.“He called me from the beach,” recalled Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee artist known for infusing abstract works with queer and native themes.For the commission, Gibson will return to the ancestral spirit figures he started assembling in 2015. The challenge will be translating these delicate structures of beadwork, textiles and paint into four weatherproof sculptures that will gaze upon museum visitors from their plinths above Fifth Avenue. They will be on view from September 2025 through May 2026.Breslin, who leads the Met’s modern and contemporary art department, described Gibson as “one of the most incredible artists of his generation.”Gibson’s 2015 sculpture, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” an ancestral spirit figure made from glazed ceramic and repurposed tipi pole, artificial sinew and copper jingles. Gibson will explore his Indigenous heritage, abstraction and popular cultures on the Met facade.Jeffrey GibsonWe 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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      Why the N.Y. Fire Dept. Canceled Its Black History Month Celebration

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      A documentary screening about the city’s first Black fire commissioner was scrapped after his family objected to the film’s exclusion of a Black firefighter group.When the Fire Department sought to commemorate Black History Month this year, a worthy honoree seemed obvious: Robert O. Lowery, New York City’s first Black fire commissioner, who was appointed nearly six decades ago by Mayor John V. Lindsay.A documentary on Mr. Lowery’s life was to premiere Tuesday as the focal point of the department’s celebration of Black History Month, which ends this week. But the event was abruptly canceled after Mr. Lowery’s family protested the film’s failure to more fully include the Vulcan Society, the influential Black firefighters’ association.“My father would not have been fire commissioner without the Vulcan Society,” said Gertrude Erwin, Mr. Lowery’s daughter.The cancellation of the screening of “The First: Fire Commissioner Robert O. Lowery’s Story,” represents an awkward turn of events for an agency that is still struggling to overcome decades of racism and homogeneity in its ranks. All but one of its 23 staff chiefs are white men, while about 10 percent of firefighters are Black in a city whose population is about 23 percent Black.The department first approached Mr. Lowery’s daughters about making the documentary roughly two decades after his death, at a ceremony last year renaming its auditorium in his memory. The family was receptive, provided the department met certain conditions.“We made very clear from the outset that the Vulcan Society was a core element in telling my uncle’s story and that it was an expectation that the Vulcan Society would have some role in the film,” said Chris Lowery, the fire commissioner’s nephew. 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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      N.Y.C. Protest Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire Targets Pro-Israel Senators

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      Demonstrators marched to the Manhattan headquarters of the lobbying group AIPAC, then to the offices of senators who have accepted donations from the group, where some were arrested.More than a dozen people were arrested Thursday evening during a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest inside a Manhattan building where Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrats of New York, have offices.Wearing black T-shirts reading “Cease Fire Now” and holding up signs demanding that the senators “stop funding genocide,” the protesters linked arms and sat on the floor in front of elevators in the lobby of the building at 780 Third Avenue, singing slogans and ignoring instructions to leave until police officers arrested them.The demonstration, organized by a local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive activist group, was the latest in what have become almost daily protests throughout New York City since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Those attacks killed at least 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials; Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza has killed 29,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials. The mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have prompted international calls for a cease-fire.By about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, several hundred protesters had gathered at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, in front of the United Nations headquarters, where the United States this week cast the lone vote against a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. It was the third time the Biden administration had blocked similar resolutions, signaling its continued support of Israel.Accompanied by a heavy police presence, the demonstrators on Thursday marched through a light rain toward the headquarters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobbying group established decades ago to promote Israel’s interests in the United States.Organizers blamed senators supported by AIPAC for passing an aid package this month that included $14.1 billion for Israel’s war against Hamas. The bill must still go through the House, where its fate is uncertain.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