BC FEATURES SPOTLIGHT BUDGET NYT

By Dennis Overbye.

FILM-HANKS-STREEP (Undated) — In a wide-ranging conversation, Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep discuss President Donald Trump, the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein case and why they hadn’t worked together until “The Post.” By Cara Buckley.

With photos.

HOSPITAL-GOWNS (Undated) — As 2018 dawns, and with it the new tax plan, the future of healthcare for many individuals remains uncertain. But there is at least one type of improvement in coverage Americans can look forward to: The end of the dreaded exposed butt cheek, that hospital cliche created by back-tying gowns. The fashion world has woken up to a new dressing opportunity. By Valeriya Safronova.

With photos.

CHINA-SAXOPHONE-CAPITAL (Sidangkou, China) — The saxophone has never had a large following in China, in part because it was long associated with jazz, individuality and free expression. After the Communist revolution of 1949, officials denounced the instrument for producing the “decadent music of capitalists.” But here in this town, the saxophone is king. Sidangkou produces about 10,000 saxophones per month at more than 70 factories. By Javier C. Hernández.

With photos.

SNEAKER-CON (Undated) — Sneaker Con, a gathering of shoe fanatics founded in 2009, brought 500 vendors and over 19,000 people to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York late last year. The heart and soul of the event is the trading pit, an area in the back of the 840,000-square-foot center where a crowd of mostly teenage boys was talking and holding up their sneakers, looking for buyers. By Joanna Nikas.

With photos.

SCI-VOICES-AGING (Undated) — That I have lived as many years in the new millennium — 18 — as I did in the time from birth to finishing high school seems inconceivable to me. I’m 88, and between 1930 and 1948 went from newborn to adult, from toddler to leader of an infantry squad. Those first 18 years were a journey into manhood, while the millennium seems merely its epilogue. By Robert W. Goldfarb.

With photo.

2018-SPACE (Undated) — If you love space and astronomy, 2018 will be an exciting year. NASA has announced windows of time for sending spacecraft to Mars and the sun. Japanese and American probes already in space are set to enter orbit around two near Earth asteroids. And a variety of eclipses and meteor showers offer ample opportunities for skygazing. By Michael Roston.

JAPAN-FOREST-SUICIDE (Aokigahara Forest, Japan) — With a canopy of cypresses and pines towering over lumpy, moss-covered lava rocks from Mount Fuji, this forest has an ethereal beauty that evokes Tolkien’s Middle-earth or the Forest of Endor in Star Wars. It also looms large in the national consciousness, emblematic of a persistent suicide problem in Japan. Signs at the foot of walking paths promote a suicide hotline, and locals patrol the forest, talking to people who are alone or show signs of depression or suicidal plans. By Motoko Rich.

With photos.

GULAG-DIARY-EXHIBIT (Moscow) — For nearly 70 years, Olga M. Ranitskaya’s palm-sized diary slumbered in obscurity. What makes this diary unique is that Ranitskaya created it while incarcerated in the Gulag, the Soviet system of forced labor camps where, at its height, Joseph Stalin imprisoned millions of people from the 1930s to the 1950s. The saga is the subject of the new exhibition “Evidence: Little Book,” which runs through Feb. 8 at the Gulag History Museum in Moscow. By Eva Sohlman and Neil MacFarquhar.

With photos

ROYAL-WEDDING (Undated) — You don’t need an invitation to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding on May 19 to enjoy the ancient castle where they plan to marry, or to attend services at the Gothic chapel where they will say their vows. The wedding is to take place in Windsor, west of London, about 40 minutes to an hour by train. By Stephanie Rosenbloom.

With photo.

SCI-STOLEN-DONKEYS (Undated) — For Morris Njeru and millions of others around the world, donkeys are the primary means to transport food, water, firewood, goods and people. In China, however, they have another purpose: the production of ejiao, a traditional medicine made from gelatin extracted from boiled donkey hides. In November, researchers at the Beijing Forestry University warned that China’s demand for ejiao may cause donkeys “to become the next pangolin.” By Rachel Nuwer.

With photo.

FIRST-MCDERMOTT (Undated) — Happier memories of my childhood stick with me like glue traps. One of those was waiting on John Belushi at the Greenwich Village restaurant my father managed. The year was 1976 and Belushi was quite possibly the biggest star in the world at that time. And I may have been his most ardent fan. By Dylan McDermott.

With photos.

CALIF-MISSING-FIRECATS (Santa Rosa, Calif.) — Finding the missing cats that fled the October wildfires has been an impassioned quest for Jennifer Petruska, an animal lover whose home, pets included, was one of the few in her neighborhood to be spared. Petruska has spent nearly every night since the fires tracking and trapping fire cats, as she calls them, the felines that for weeks have remained missing because of stubbornness, trauma, instinct, or a mix of all three. By Thomas Fuller.

With photos.

AUTHOR-JONES-Q&A (Undated) — Jacqueline Jones' new biography, "Goddess of Anarchy," is about Lucy Parsons, an African-American born into slavery. Jones, who won the Bancroft Prize in 1986 and teaches in the history department at the University of Texas at Austin, talks about the new information she unearthed about Parsons, the way Parsons captivated crowds and more. Five Questions by John Williams.

ALASKA-ANCESTOR Archaeologists discovered an 11,000-year-old skeleton in a burial pit in Alaska in 2010, and on Wednesday an international team of scientists reported they had retrieved the child’s genome from her remains. The second-oldest human genome ever found in North America, it sheds new light on how people — among them the ancestors of living Native Americans — first arrived in the Western Hemisphere. By Carl Zimmer.

With graphic and photo.

CUBA-ISLE (Undated) — The Presidio Modelo, or Model Prison, Cuba’s most dreaded pre-revolutionary prison, was closed a few years after Fidel Castro’s victory in 1959, but it was in this prison that the Cuban revolution was effectively planned. It’s a tribute to the resilience of the young rebels who — whatever their later faults once they took power — took on the brutal Batista dictatorship at great personal risk. As I discovered, almost every corner of Isle of Youth — or simply La Isla, as it is referred to by residents — hides an equally eccentric saga. By Tony Perrottet.

With photos.

NETHERLANDS-FALLING-PREVENTION (Leusden, Netherlands) — The Dutch, like many elsewhere, are living longer than in previous generations, often alone. As they do, courses that teach them not only how to avoid falling, but how to fall correctly, are gaining popularity. Virtually unheard-of just a decade ago, the courses are now common enough that the government rates them, and certain forms of health insurance even cover part of the costs. By Christopher F. Schuetze.

With photo.

HOLLYWOOD-2017-CONVERSATION (Undated) — Something is happening. The tectonic plates in Hollywood show signs of shifting. Filmmakers are agents of that change. So are the scores of women who have called out the systemic abuse of entertainment power brokers like Harvey Weinstein. Change finally may be coming, whether the movie industry is ready or not. The Times’ chief film critics discuss some of the high and low points of an extraordinary year. By A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis.

With photos.

CELEBRITY-TRAINER (Venice, Calif.) — YouTube and Instagram have turned Charles Glass, a bespectacled, beanie-wearing and dreadlocked former bodybuilding champion, into something of a national fitness celebrity. And here at home, in this land of thick necks, turbo tans and tattoo parlors, he is a tourist attraction unto himself. By Jacob Bernstein.

With photos.

ASTROLOGY-INTERNET (Undated) — As astrology has caught on, justifications for its rise have swirled. Maybe young people are turning away from religion, and woo-woo spirituality is filling the gap. Or maybe the unpredictable results of the last election have encouraged us to throw out traditional scientific methods and look to the stars. But I think the astrology boomlet owes as much to the dynamics of the modern internet as it does to any sort of cosmic significance about the millennial’s place in the universe. By Amanda Hess.

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