(Pinterest)
This post is the continuation (the second part) of my previous post under the title “Pleasant Morning Briefings by ‘The New York Times’ – Part 1“.
I will go on with the summary of 2020 and then I will share other different topics covered by NY Times such as some successful Netflix series and the simple recipe of ‘Katharine Hepburn Brownies‘ which look stunning.
Year 2020 Through The Photos of ‘The New York Times’ with Info (Comments of NY Times) as Seen in My Screenshots (CONTINUED):
Sept. 1, 2020
Photo on right: A sniffer dog in Finland trained to recognize the scent of the coronavirus. (Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Lehtikuva, via Associated Press). A few dogs working at the Helsinki airport have been trained to detect an infection on arriving passengers in about one minute. – Sept. 24, 2020
Personal note: This news caught my attention for ‘Hotel Rwanda‘, which is based on a true story, is among the films I cannot forget since I watched it at ‘Istanbul Film Festival’. The film was so touching. Don Cheadle had portrayed hotelier Paul Rusesababagina in the film. You can find the film ‘Hotel Rwanda‘ in Amazon in DVD and Blu-ray format. (Istanbul International Film Festival is held every year in April in Istanbul. Many quality films from all over the world are shown at this festival which has also hosted many film directors and actors so far. I once had the chance to see Ian Mckellen before the screening of ‘Richard III‘. The festival once held special sessions for the 100th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman‘s birth at one of which I had watched one of his marvelious films, ‘Wild Strawberries‘. I definitely suggest this festival to film lovers.) [You can find the films Richard III, Hobbit Trilogy,
The Lord of The Rings Trilogy of Ian Mckellen in Amazon. You can also find Ingmar Bergman’s Four Masterworks Collection including the film ‘Wild Strawberries’ here.]
Photo on right: A scene from the film ”Hotel Rwanda” (Deutsche Welle).
Photo on right: ”How Australia became a solar powerhouse. (Faye Sakura for NY Times). Australia is the second-largest exporter of coal in the world. But the country has also quietly became a renewable energy powerhouse. One in four homes has panels on its roof, well ahead of the numbers in Germany, Japan and California, a top solar power user in the U.S.” – Sept. 30, 2020
Photo on right: ”Chess is now a streaming obsession. Since the start of the pandemic, life for Hikaru Nakamura, a 32-year-old chess grandmaster, has taken a drastic turn. (Thomas Wehle/TSM). He is still playing – but to an audience of tens of thousands of fans, who watch him stream live on Twitch, the Amazon-owned site where people more often broadcast themselves playing video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.” – Sept. 17, 2020
Photo on right: ”A protest against the latest coronavirus measures in Madrid. (Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images).” – Sept. 25, 2020
Photo on right: ”A Stockholm nursing home. (Felix Odell for NY Times). Among the people in Sweden whose deaths have been linked to the coronavirus, 45 percent had been among the country’s citizens living in nursing homes.” – Oct. 9, 2020
Photo on right: ”The state-owned El Palito refinery, which sacrificed basic maintenance to keep production going and recently had a large oil spill. (Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for NY Times). Venezuela looks to a future without oil riches.” – Oct. 8, 2020
Photo on right: A Pret a Manger in Russell Square, in Central London. (Tom Jamieson for NY Times). The sandwich and coffee chain has become the go-to lunch spot for harried British office workers, … . But with offices deserted because of the pandemic … the company is willing to try almost anything to get back on its feet including selling coffee beans on Amazon. You can even get a coffee subscription and the first month is free.” – Oct. 15, 2020
Photo on right: ”A nearly empty street in Milan on the first day the city imposed new restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. (Alessandro Grassani for NY Times).” – Nov. 2, 2020
Photo on right: Sean Connery and Harrison Ford in ‘Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade’ (Pinterest) (Check here in Amazon for Indiana Jones film collection and here for James Bond film collection).
Photo on right: ”Demonstrators and onlookers near the White House in Washington on Tuesday night. (Kenny Holston for NY Times). Late on Election Night, no clear result.” –
Nov. 4, 2020
Photo on right: ”A fig tree, almost a century old, in the commercial neighborhood of Westlands in Nairobi. (Khadija Farah for NY Times). The government authorities plan to take it down to make way for a four-lane highway but are facing growing public opposition.” – Nov. 9, 2020
Photo on right: ”Barry Berih, a resident of a public housing in Melbourne. (Christina Simons for NY Times). The ombudsman in The Australian state of Victoria is conducting an investigation into a strict, two-week lockdown placed on nine public housing towers in Melbourne.” – Nov. 13, 2020
Photo on right: ”Pedestrians walked past Christmas-themed window displays in central London. (Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images). Britain plans for a less restricted Christmas. Britons from up to three households will be able to come together and celebrate between Dec.23 and 27.” – Nov. 25, 2020
Photo on right: ”Times Square in October. (Todd Heisler / NY Times). For months now, the typical throngs of visitors have disappeared from New York City’s famous destination.” –
Dec. 2, 2020
Photo on right: ”One of 1,500 pavilions in Italy – decorated with primroses, the symbol of the country’s coronavirus vaccination campaign – where people can get inoculated. The slogan for the program: ‘With a flower, Italy comes back to life‘.” – Dec. 29, 2020
Photo on right: ”St. Pancras station in London on Sunday, as people waited to board final trains out of the capital before a new, stricter lockdown. (Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Associated Press). A worrying virus variant in Britain.” – Dec. 21, 2020
More Topics covered by NY Times Morning Briefings …
As I also stated at ‘Part 1’ of this post, NY Times briefings are not just a summary of world news and cover different topics such as social life, interesting discussions, news about films, series and streaming platforms and current events, which is the reason I find them very pleasant. These briefings can keeing you up to date while also providing you with some interesting and pleasant subjects to read.
I had heard of the two successful series of Netflix -‘Emily in Paris‘ and ‘The Queen’s Gambit‘- before, but when I read about them in the NYT briefings they drew my interest more and I watched them.
Elaine Sciolino, a contributing writer of The New York Times (NYT) who was NYT’s Paris bureau chief in 2002 had interviewed France’s former president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing then, had asked him to imagine he was dining with Americans and that one of them asked, ”Mr. President, could you explain to us how we can understand your country?”. ”You cannot” Mr. Giscard d’Estaing had said. ”I have never met an American, never, who has really understood what drives French society.” (NYT Briefing, Oct.9, 2020). This answer made me smile when I read it and as a person who has been deeply immersed in the French culture for many years till the moment I started learning French, I can sympathize with Mr. Giscard d’Estaing and his answer. I think the difference between the American and French cultures is a long lasting cliche the discussions upon which would never end, and the Netflix series ”Emily in Paris” touches upon these differences in a very sweet way.
”The Queen’s Gambit” is a short series of Netflix. It is very gripping and well shot and it would easily draw in anyone starting to watching it. At a briefing of NYT it says: ”The Queen’s Gambit, a Netflix show about a chess prodigy, has ignited a flurry of enthusiasm and sent chess set sales soaring.” (Nov. 24, 2020). I can confirm this enthusiasm for my son, who is a good chess player and had stopped playing chess for a while, restarted playing it again at the streaming platforms after having watched this series. I would say that watching this series would drive one’s enthusiasm not only for chess but for anything one would like to succeed in life. I also loved the shooting locations of the series ranging from U.S. to Paris and Moskow; you see very nice places as you watch the series. Besides, the stylish clothes the chess prodigy Beth Harmon (main character) wears after she has grown into an adult captures attention.
In one of the briefings, NY Times shared two stories as a podcast written for ”The Decameron Project”. The project was explained as follows: ”As the coronavirus pandemic swept the world, NYT magazine asked 29 authors to write new short stories inspired by the moment – and by Giovanni Boccaccio’s ”The Decameron” which was written as a plague ravaged Florence in the 14th century. (Jul. 12, 2020)”. I thought then that it would be interesting to read ”The Decameron” sometime. You can reach the book titled “The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic” here in Amazon. You can check here in Amazon for the varieties of the book “Decameron” by Boccaccio.
NYT Cooking
I also like the cooking section of the NYT briefings and the recipes of NYT Cooking. I would like to share here the screenshots of ‘Katharine Hepburn Brownies‘, which name I did like. I didn’t try it yet but this recipe seemed very practical to me and these brownies would be perfect with coffee. It was stated in the briefing: ‘Much like its author, this recipe is a no-fuss classic.’.
I enjoy the NYT recipes and their photos. They seem practical yet flavored with some essential touches that may make them preferable in today’s mostly modern cooking style. You can check NYT cooking web page for the NYT recipes. I also liked ”The Essential New York Times Cookbook” I saw in Amazon, winner of the James Beard Award and written by the former NYT food columnist Amanda Hesser.
The New York Times Team
I was wondering how The New York Times manages to bring together all the information from all over the world together with many different interesting topics I mentioned above; and I found part of the answer in one of the recent briefings of NYT.
The New York Times states in the briefing that, at the center of their effort are their three main hubs of newsroom operations: New York, London and an Asia hub that has been in Hong Kong but is moving to Seoul. They explain the process as follows:
”At the end of the workday in New York, editors will hand off coverage to editors in Hong Kong and Seoul, who are currently 13 and 14 hours ahead on the clock. As editors in Asia wind down their day, a waking London newsroom will take over as the primary hub. Several hours later, that team will pass the baton back to New York, and it all repeats again, a rotation that is critical for a 24-hour news operation.”
By means of this post, I would like to thank to The New York Times team for their exclusive journalism and their effort to provide their readers all over the world with these briefings – qualified pieces of reading which are even more valuable in times when people may feel unable to reach some information or catch the time in times of quarantine.
Finally …
In one morning briefing of NY Times (NYT) dated May 12, 2020, I captured a valuable piece of reading about the Silk Road under the heading ”Human endurance and the Silk Road”, which was starting with the following expression:
”Over the Silk Road’s centuries of history, humanity faced horrors from plague to cholera. Still, the trade route – and spirit of discovery – continued.”
It was further stated in the briefing that the stories about the road at the latest Travel issue of ‘T’ (The Times’s style magazine) had been in the works long before the pandemic – but they still held lessons for the way forward.
I would like to finish this post with the words of Hanya Yanagihara, T’s editor in chief, which I liked and which fizzles as a ray of hope from these times of pandemic and travel restrictions:
”Let us fınd some comfort, in the knowledge that we are preceded by centuries of human endurance, those travelers who remind us that every journey, no matter how difficult, ends with our finding our way back. ”
Note: You may check the DVD set about the Silk Road (”The Silk Road – The Complete Story” – 2 DVDs) in Amazon which drew my interest.