LAST month, as I was driving down a backbreaking road between Goma, a provincial capital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kibumba, a little market town about 20 miles away, I came upon the body of a Congolese soldier. He was on his back, half hidden in the bushes, his legs crumpled beneath him, his fly-covered face looking up at the sun. The strangest thing was, four years ago, almost to the day, I saw a corpse of a Congolese soldier in that exact same spot. He had been killed and left to rot just as his comrade would be four years later, in the vain attempt to stop a rebel force from marching down the road from Kibumba to Goma. The circumstances were nearly identical: a group of Tutsi-led rebels, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda, eviscerating a feckless, alcoholic government army that didn’t even bother to scoop up its dead. Sadly, this is what I’ve come to expect from Congo: a doomed sense of déjà vu. I’ve crisscrossed this continent-size country from east to west, … [Read more...] about The World’s Worst War
How much do inside wireman make
Clark Clifford, a Major Adviser To Four Presidents, Is Dead at 91
See the article in its original context from October 11, 1998 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Clark M. Clifford, the silver-haired Brahmin of the nation's political establishment who advised Presidents across half a century of American history, died yesterday morning at the age of 91 at his home in Bethesda, Md. A Secretary of Defense for one President, friend and confidant of three others, Mr. Clifford frequently played the role of capital Wise Man in inner sanctum crises, helping President Harry S. Truman keep peace with labor and warning President Lyndon B. Johnson about the folly of the Vietnam War. With a gentle drawl and an insider's run of the halls of power, Mr. Clifford was consulted as well by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, bridging the nation's postwar political era until he ran afoul of legal troubles in high-finance brokering. For all the … [Read more...] about Clark Clifford, a Major Adviser To Four Presidents, Is Dead at 91
Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images Early this year, Google teased a fundamental change to its core product, the search engine through which much of the world accesses the web. Soon, the company said, Google would start using AI to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats.” By May, the company had a real product to share. For Google, it was an obvious and incremental feature update combining two of the company’s products: a text generator plugged into a search engine, basically. Searchers ask a question, and Google tries to answer it with short, article-style “snapshots.” For publishers, however — of news, how-to content, reviews, recommendations, reference material, and a range of other content one might describe as existing to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats” — it looked like nothing less than an existential crisis. Google was getting into content, automating the … [Read more...] about Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
Past Into Present: 4 Journeys That Changed Us
An African-American resort town in Michigan, circa 1970; a raucous family road trip from Kansas City, Mo., to New York state; a bittersweet return to Hyderabad, India; and a college student’s self-discovery in Australia: Four New York Times Travel contributors share their memories of trips that still impart a sense of wonder and hope. Lost in Time on the Shores of Lake Idlewild By Ron Stodghill At some point, even as I began racking up frequent-flier miles, I came to accept a simple truth: I’d find no sleep as peaceful as I found on Lake Idlewild. My slumbers in Michigan’s densely wooded, all-black resort started as a kid. Belly full of fried catfish, Jones Homemade Ice Cream and ZotZ penny candy from Lee-John’s Novelty and Soda Bar, I would curl up on a lounge chair by the lake and snooze for hours to the sound of waves gurgling along the shore, the purring of fishing boats motoring by, the crackling of the Detroit Tigers radio broadcast wafting … [Read more...] about Past Into Present: 4 Journeys That Changed Us
What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in June
Newly Reviewed Chelsea Joan Brown Through June 17. Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, Manhattan; 212-243-0200, matthewmarks.com . You could call the mature style of the great American painter Joan Brown (1938-1990) extra-late Egyptian, with her figures often rendered fully frontal or fully in profile. This formality — along with expanses of startling solid colors — contributes to the hypnotic stillness of her mainly autobiographical works. (Besides painting, her interests included her family, Hinduism, ballroom dancing, serious amateur swimming and Egyptian art.) It’s not always clear what Brown, who appears in six of the paintings here, is thinking about, but the seriousness is undeniable. So it’s not surprising that this show of a dozen paintings, mostly from the 1970s, includes “The Visitor” (1977). It depicts the artist seated with an Egyptian pharaoh at a restaurant. The pharaoh is deep turquoise — the color of Egyptian faience — as is the wall … [Read more...] about What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in June
The Adams Administration Has a New Policy for Jail Deaths: Cover-up
Criminal-justice activists protesting at the gate to Rikers Island on February 28, 2022. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images The City reported on Thursday that the New York City Department of Correction will no longer notify the media when a person dies while incarcerated, ending a consistent process that has been in effect for two years. “That was a practice, not a policy,” Frank Dwyer, the department’s new spokesman, told the outlet. The Legal Aid Society, the city’s largest provider of public defense, slammed the move in a statement: “This is another lowlight in the Department of Correction’s campaign to keep outside eyes away from the catastrophe that is the city’s jail system and the harm it inflicts daily on New Yorkers trapped inside its deadly walls.” The city’s shift in approach came to light following the deaths of two inmates on Rikers Island in recent weeks that the DOC did not publicize. The deaths were among five incidents mentioned in a … [Read more...] about The Adams Administration Has a New Policy for Jail Deaths: Cover-up
