AGAINST VARIANT BOOSTER SHIELDS PFIZER SUGGESTS

1 23-year-old male, Leeds, England 25-year-old female, Pennsylvania 18-year-old male, Houston 49-year-old male, Darlington, England 24-year-old female, Cumbria, England 17-year-old male, Frisco, Texas 25-year-old male, Connecticut 20-year-old male, Texas 32-year-old female, Missouri 16-year-old female, Illinois 19-year-old female, Richmond, Va. 23-year-old female, Glasgow 42-year-old male, Ohio 30-year-old male, Canada 35-year-old male, Mississippi 20-year-old female, Costa Mesa, Calif. 27-year-old male, Schertz, Texas 21-year-old male, Langley, British Columbia 20-year-old female, Radcliffe, England 16-year-old male, Salt Lake city 22-year-old male, Australia 25-year-old male, Portadown, Northern Ireland 58-year-old male, Texas 22-year-old male, Perth, Australia 35-year-old female, Kirkhill, Inverness, Scotland 26-year-old male, North Carolina 28-year-old female, New Jersey 25-year-old female, Wisconsin 19-year-old male, Rome 19-year-old male, Rome 18-year-old male, Bassano del Grappa, Italy 20-year-old female, Palermo, Italy 30-year-old female, Italy 31-year-old female, Amherst, Ohio 56-year-old, California 28-year-old female, North Haven, Conn.

2 29-year-old male, Widnes, England 31-year-old male, Leiston, England 21-year-old male, Sunderland, England 31-year-old male, Kansas city , Mo. 30-year-old male, Grapevine, Texas 32-year-old male, Leicestershire, England 31-year-old female, England 28-year-old male, Scotland 24-year-old female, ScotlandAs Matthew van Antwerpen, a 17-year-old in suburban Dallas, struggled withremote schooling during the pandemiclast year, he grew increasingly despond-ent. Searching online, he found a websiteabout suicide. Any enjoyment or progress I make inmy life simply comes across as forced, he wrote on the site after signing up. Iknow it is all just a distraction to blowtime until the end. Roberta Barbos, a 22-year-old studentat the University of Glasgow, first postedafter a breakup, writing that she was unbearably lonely.

3 Shawn Shatto, 25,described feeling miserable at her ware-house job in Pennsylvania. And DanielDal Canto, a 16-year-old in Salt Lake city ,shared his fears that an undiagnosedstomach ailment might never get after joining, each of them suicide websites are about pre-vention. This one started in March2018 by two shadowy figures callingthemselves Marquis and Serge pro-vides explicit directions on how to four young members were amongtens of thousands around the world whohave been pulled in. On the site s publicforums, in live chats and through privatemessaging, they discuss hanging, poi-son, guns and gas. Strangers seek outpartners to meet face to face and killthemselves routinely nudge one an-other along as they share suicide plans,posting reassuring messages, thumbs-up and heart emojis, and praise for thosewho follow through: brave, a legend, a hero.

4 Though members are anonymous,The new york Times identified 45 whohad killed themselves in the UnitedStates, the United Kingdom, Italy, Cana-da and Australia and found that thetrail of deaths is likely much than 500 members a rate of Where the Despairing Learn Ways to DieBy MEGAN TWOHEYandGABRIEL DANCEC ontinued on Page A22 The website has the trappings of popular social media, a young audience and explicit content on suicide that other parts of theinternet don t allow. It is linked to a long line of lives cut MYKNxxx,2021-12-09,A,001,Bs-4C,E1U(D54G1 D)y+,!z!&!$!=WASHINGTON PFIZER andBioNTech said Wednesday thatlaboratory tests suggest a boostershot of their coronavirus vaccineoffers significant protectionagainst the fast-spreading Omi-cron VARIANT of the companies said that tests ofblood from people who had re-ceived only two doses found muchlower levels of antibodies protect-ing AGAINST Omicron than againstan earlier version of the SUGGESTS that two doses may not be sufficient to protectagainst infection by the new vari-ant, the companies limited in scope to getfast results, the companies exam-ined only about 39 samples thefindings provided a bit of hopefulnews at a time of renewed uncer-tainty.

5 Health departments areidentifying close to 100,000 casesa day, hospitalizations are tickingup and deaths are again on therise in the United States, almostall due to the Delta companies summarizedtheir findings in a news releaseand did not release any data. Theirstudy followed a preliminary re-port on lab experiments in SouthAfrica that also found Omicronseemed to dull the power of twodoses of the PFIZER were 43 cases of Omicroninfection, most of them mild, inabout 20 American states as ofWednesday, The Associated Pressreported. Cases are rising muchfaster in South Africa and Europe;early modeling and analysis sug-gest that this latest VARIANT maymove twice as fast as South Africa, where Omicron PFIZER SUGGESTSBOOSTER SHIELDSAGAINST VARIANTPRELIMINARY LAB TESTSD rugmaker Says ResultsShow 2 Doses MayNot Be Sufficient By SHARON LaFRANIEREP fizer-BioNTech s boosterstudy was limited in WILSON/THE new york TIMESC ontinued on Page A17 When Bill de Blasio first took of-fice as mayor of new york in 2014,he called two powerful real estatedevelopers who had activeprojects in the city , and askedthem to donate money to a non-profit organization that he hadcreated to advance his request to help his nonprof-it, the Campaign for One NewYork, seemed to violate the city sethics law.

6 And a ban AGAINST ask-ing for contributions from peoplewho had business pending withthe city . Within months of his solic-itations, Mr. de Blasio was for-mally warned by the city s Con-flicts of Interest Board in a pre-viously undisclosed letter not torepeat the even after that warning, themayor continued to hit up well-connected donors for money, ac-cording to documents that the cityhas now released after years of anextraordinary legal campaign bythe de Blasio administration tokeep the documents February 2015, the mayormade a call to Jeffrey Levine,chairman of Douglaston Develop-ment, which had just won city ap-proval for $12 million in financingfor an affordable housing com-plex, and had taken ownership of aparcel of city -owned land in next month, Mr. de Blasiocalled David Von Spreckelsen,president of Toll Brothers, an-other developer.

7 A stop-work or-der had recently been lifted on the De Blasio Got Warning on Ethics,Then Fought to Keep It a SecretBy WILLIAM NEUMANC ontinued on Page A27 JASON GULLEYM alnourished from a lack of food, the mammals are in need of a handout from humans. Page the ManateesBRUSSELS Ukrainepresents NATO with a dilemmamany years in the making onethe alliance, itself, helped 2008, NATO an American-led alliance explicitly created tocounter the Soviet Union prom-ised membership to two formerSoviet republics, Ukraine andGeorgia, but without specifyingwhen or saw the offer as a poten-tial threat on its borders and anencroachment into the heart of itssphere of influence, the most seri-ous in a series of affronts and hu-miliations by the West since thefall of the Soviet Union. From theoutset, some NATO nations ques-tioned whether the offer of mem-bership was a wise move, and it isnot clear that the promise willever be kept, but predictably, ithas fed a lasting conflict withPresident Vladimir V.

8 Ukraine a NATO partnerbut not a member, it does not ben-efit from NATO s core principle,the commitment to collective de-fense, though Ukraine has senttroops to fight in NATO missionsin both Iraq and , as thousands of Russiantroops mass on Ukraine s borders,NATO is not bound by treaty toprotect Ukraine militarily, nor is itlikely to try. Asked on Wednesdayabout the possibility of dispatch-ing forces to Ukraine, Presi-dent Biden flatly ruled it out,telling reporters at the WhiteHouse, That is not on the table. But NATO does have a compel-ling interest in trying both to deterRussia and to avoid provoking aninvasion. It is important to distinguish NATO HauntedBy Ukraine VowAs Putin LoomsBy STEVEN ERLANGERC ontinued on Page A14 WASHINGTON In makinghis case that safety net programsshould be easier to use, JimmyChen, a tech entrepreneur, re-called visiting a welfare officewhere people on food stamps en-dured long waits to submit passed the time as peoplein lines do, staring at their phones which had the potential to dothe work online with greater con-venience, accuracy and image of aid-seekers wast-ing time with a solution literally inhand captures what critics call anoverlooked challenge for people inpoverty: Administrative burdensmake benefits hard to obtain andtax the time and emotional re-sources of those who need help.

9 Too much bureaucracy pre-vents people from getting the helpthey need, said Mr. Chen, whosestart-up, Propel, offers a free appthat five million households nowuse to manage their food to aid are as old as aiditself, and they exist for reasons asvaried as concerns about fraud,the bureaucratic tension betweenaccuracy and speed, and hostilitytoward people in need. But theperils of red tape have drawn newattention since the coronaviruspandemic left millions of Ameri-cans seeking government help,many for the first government approved vastincreases in spending but oftenstruggled to deliver the assist-ance. While some programsreached most households quickly(stimulus checks), others buckledunder soaring demand (unem-ployment benefits) or dauntingcomplexity (emergency rentalaid).

10 The pandemic highlightedhow difficult these programs canbe to access, said Pamela Herd, aprofessor at Georgetown and anauthor, with Donald P. Moynihan,of Administrative Burden, Apps Aid Millions in Unlocking Government Aid By JASON DePARLEM aking Programs LikeFood Stamps MoreAccessibleContinued on Page A18 The creators of the opera adaptation of The Snowy Day want to change per-ceptions about Black identity. PAGE C1 Arias That Fight StereotypesThe high price of urea is hitting Indianfarmers, below, South Korean truckers,British soda makers and more. PAGE B1A Suddenly Precious ChemicalAn updated touch screen feature allowsdrivers to play video games while thevehicle is in motion. PAGE B1B USINESS B1-7 New Safety Concern for TeslaAfter 16 years, Angela Merkel handedover the German chancellery to OlafScholz, leaving behind a changed coun-try and a polarizing legacy.