Latest news with #UniversityofMassachusettsAmherst
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Paper City Clothing Co. opens new location, saving historic Holyoke building
HOLYOKE — Carlos Peña and Katy Peña Moonan are reopening the Paper City Clothing Co., at 144 High St., and also saving a historic building from demolition at the same time. The building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been fully restored and will serve as the new location for the business, as well as a community art gallery and event space. 'We are a small business, not developers, but jumped at this opportunity,' said Carlos Peña. 'There are still many vacant and abandoned properties that take away from how special this city is. With the right partnerships in place, what we've done could be a replicable model for other small businesses ready to own instead of rent their space.' Peña's inspiration for the business came from a 'Thundercats' T-shirt he saw in New York City in 2000. 'I wanted to know why this vendor in Harlem was selling T-shirts for $100. I was like, 'Why the T-shirt is so much money, and he was like, 'Because it's an original T-shirt, and I made it myself; this is my design.' I was intrigued about that,' he said. Peña attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he discovered silk screening at the craft center. After graduating, Peña and Peña Moonan turned his passion into a real business, with her handling the paperwork and taxes, and they officially opened Paper City Clothing Co. in December 2016. Paper City Clothing Co. aims to expand opportunities for youth through custom printing services, creative retail, and an art gallery and event space. The couple mentors kids in entrepreneurship, teaching them how to create designs and become entrepreneurs. The building also features three residential units on the second floor and two commercial storefronts on the ground floor. The first show at the new Paper City gallery, 'Memes, Screams and Dreams,' will feature 10 local artists and is curated by Billy Myers, head curator at Art for the Soul Gallery in Springfield. 'It's always been our dream to revitalize a vacant building, living in Holyoke with so many vacant properties around us. We would drive around, thinking maybe one day we could find a way,' Katy Peña Moonan said. The thought of renovations costing millions of dollars made it seem impossible, but they also knew renting a place wouldn't be sustainable if they were to continue to provide opportunities to the community, they said. 'Having a gallery and selling T-shirts are not necessarily money makers,' Carlos Peña said. A friend then informed them about Holyoke's list of surplus properties, updated every Monday at 7 a.m. The building's restoration took three years and cost nearly $700,000, funded by public and private sources, Katy Peña said. Initially, the contractor estimated $300,000, but unexpected costs because of COVID-19 and the need for sprinkler installation caused everything to change, leading to the higher final cost, she said. Despite these hurdles, the couple was committed to creating a space for marginalized artists to showcase their work. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held today at 11 a.m. Holyoke Mayor Joshua Garcia and state Rep. Patricia Duffy delivered remarks, along with leaders from MassDevelopment, the chief funding partner for the building restoration. Aaron Vega, director of the city's Office of Economic Development, praised the couple's efforts in revitalizing the historic building. 'Seeing people like Katy and Carlos supporting the revitalization of High Street is important. They have vision, and it's contagious. It excites others,' Vega said. At one point, the city considered demolishing the building, which would have cost around $90,000 or more, he said. The city instead put out requests for proposals and received several inquiries. Turning around a property that could have been a $100,000 liability on High Street has huge economic effects, he said. 'It's great to get retail back on the ground floors and residential units on the upper floors,' Vega said. Many buildings in Holyoke are historic, and the city loves to see rehab projects, though not every building can be saved, Vega said. The city keeps a comprehensive list of properties and meets monthly to discuss challenging ones. 'We talk about properties with back taxes, absentee owners, or those damaged by fire. We work together to either demolish or return them to private hands,' Vega said. Other historic properties undergoing rehabilitation include The Caledonian Building at 185-193 High St., built in 1874. Weld Management Co. Inc. is leading the revitalization efforts for this landmark. The 111-year-old Appleton Mill in downtown Holyoke, formerly the Farr Alpaca Co., is being transformed by WinnDevelopment into 88 affordable apartments for seniors aged 55 and older. This project is supported by MassDevelopment, MassHousing and tax credits. Additionally, C Elliott Developers LLC, which has already revitalized a building on Main Street, is now working on 174 Lyman St. This project will bring 14 residential units and commercial space back to downtown Holyoke. 'The last business in that building was Saint Marks Paint Company, which closed about 10 years ago,' Vega said. That building has been a little bit of eyesore, as it's right at the start of Holyoke's annual St. Patrick's Road Race, Vega said. 'We're hoping by next year when the when the road race kicks off that people live in that building, and the property is already being cleaned up and improving that neighborhood,' he said. Vega said a historic property the city hopes to see revitalized is the Armory building next to the Senior Center. It's a good area that is right off Interstate 91, Vega said. While its historic front structure is intact, the rest of the building is falling down but can be rehabbed, he said. Read the original article on MassLive.
Business Mayor
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Mayor
Huge rise in regional online censorship in China: study
China's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's Internet censorship regime in the central Chinese province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country. A research paper titled A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China published this month by Great Firewall Report, an Internet censorship monitoring platform, found that Internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were on average denied access to five times more Web sites than a typical Chinese Internet user between November 2023 and March. 'Our work documents an alarming sign of regional censorship emerging in China,' said the researchers, who include authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Stanford University. Photo: EPA-EFE GREAT FIREWALL China has the world's most sophisticated and extensive Internet censorship regime. Internet users cannot access most Western news Web sites or social media platforms, including services provided by Google, Wikipedia and Meta. Within what has been dubbed the 'great firewall,' online content is monitored and censored by a mixture of government authorities and private companies complying with laws that require them to delete any content considered 'sensitive.' That includes any information about historical or current events that goes against the Chinese Communist Party's official narrative. The researchers began looking into the topic after Internet users in Henan reported that Web sites accessible in other parts of China were inaccessible in their province. They found that millions of domains that were not blocked by China's centralized firewall were at some point inaccessible in Henan. By buying servers from Internet cloud providers, the authors tested the flow of Internet traffic from locations within Henan. They tested the Internet's top 1 million domains daily between November 2023 and March, with a gap of several months last year. The results showed that the Henan firewall blocked nearly 4.2 million domains at some point during the research period, more than five times more than the about 741,500 domains blocked by China's national firewall. The domains that were specifically blocked in Henan were mainly from business-related Web sites. There have been several finance-related protests in Henan in recent years, which the researchers said could be the reason for the additional controls on access to information about the economy being controlled. PROTESTS In 2022, thousands of people in Henan took part in several demonstrations after they were blocked from withdrawing cash from their bank accounts. The crisis escalated when protesters reported that their mobile health codes, part of the pandemic control measures in place at the time, had turned red, preventing them from travelling or entering buildings. Five officials were later punished for abusing the health code system to quell the protests. Other parts of China have also been subjected to enhanced Internet controls. In July 2009, following deadly ethnic riots, the Chinese government imposed an Internet blackout in Xinjiang, a region in western China home to the Uyghur minority, that lasted 10 months. Since then, the use of the Internet in Xinjiang has been much more tightly monitored than in the rest of the country. Online activities in Tibet are also strictly controlled. The emergence of a regional censorship regime in Henan is unusual because it is not a region of China that is normally considered especially restive by the Chinese authorities. The researchers could not determine if the enhanced controls were imposed by the local authorities in Henan or the central government in Beijing. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Rapid advances in China's artificial intelligence (AI) companies are a boon to both the censors and those who wish to evade them. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) recently unveiled new surveillance tools that can monitor people who use virtual private networks, software that allows people to circumvent the Internet firewall. The MPS' research institute also showcased a tool that it claimed could monitor accounts on Telegram, a messaging app. The tool has already collected more than 30 billion messages, the institute said. Mingshi Wu, the lead author of the Henan study, who uses a pseudonym to protect their identity, said: 'On the one hand, AI could be leveraged to create more sophisticated, adaptive and efficient censorship and surveillance tools. On the other hand, AI also enables new opportunities for those seeking to understand and circumvent censorship. For example, AI can assist in developing more agile testing tools for detecting censorship.' The Henan Cyberspace Affairs Commission could not be reached for comment.
Business Mayor
24-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
‘Alarming' rise in regional internet censorship in China, study finds
China's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country. A research paper published this month by Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were, on average, denied access to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025. 'Our work documents an alarming sign of regional censorship emerging in China,' said the researchers, who include authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Stanford University. China has the world's most sophisticated and extensive internet censorship regime. Internet users cannot access most western news websites or social media platforms, including services provided by Google, Wikipedia and Meta. Within what has been dubbed the 'great firewall', online content is monitored and censored by a mixture of government authorities and private companies complying with laws that require them to delete any content considered 'sensitive'. That includes any information about historical or current events that goes against the Chinese Communist party's official narrative. The researchers began looking into the topic after internet users in Henan reported that websites accessible in other parts of China were inaccessible in their province. They found that millions of domains that were not blocked by China's centralised firewall were at some point inaccessible in Henan. By buying servers from internet cloud providers, the authors tested the flow of internet traffic from locations within Henan. They tested the internet's top 1m domains daily between November 2023 and March 2025, with a gap of several months in 2024. The results showed that the Henan firewall blocked nearly 4.2 million domains at some point during the research period, over five times more than the roughly 741,500 domains blocked by China's national firewall. The domains that were specifically blocked in Henan were mainly from business-related websites. There have been several finance-related protests in Henan in recent years, which the researchers speculated could be the reason for the additional controls on access to information about the economy being controlled. In 2022, thousands of people in Henan took part in several demonstrations after they were blocked from withdrawing cash from their bank accounts. The crisis escalated when protesters reported that their mobile health codes, part of the pandemic control measures in place at the time, had turned red, preventing them from travelling or entering buildings. Five officials were later punished for abusing the health code system to quell the protests. Other parts of China have also been subjected to enhanced internet controls. In July 2009, following deadly ethnic riots, the Chinese government imposed an internet blackout in Xinjiang, a region in western China home to the Uyghur minority, that lasted 10 months. Since then, the use of the internet in Xinjiang has been much more tightly monitored than in the rest of the country. Online activities in Tibet are also strictly controlled. The emergence of a regional censorship regime in Henan is unusual because it is not a region of China that is normally considered especially restive by the Chinese authorities. The researchers could not determine if the enhanced controls were imposed by the local authorities in Henan or the central government in Beijing. skip past newsletter promotion A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Rapid advances in China's artificial intelligence companies are a boon to both the censors and those who wish to evade them. China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) recently unveiled new surveillance tools that can monitor people who use virtual private networks, software that allows people to circumvent the internet firewall. The MPS's research institute also showcased a tool that it claimed could monitor accounts on Telegram, a messaging app. The tool has already collected more than 30bn messages, the institute claimed. Mingshi Wu, the lead author of the Henan study, who uses a pseudonym to protect their identity, said: 'On the one hand, AI could be leveraged to create more sophisticated, adaptive, and efficient censorship and surveillance tools. On the other hand, AI also enables new opportunities for those seeking to understand and circumvent censorship. For example, AI can assist in developing more agile testing tools for detecting censorship.' The Henan Cyberspace Affairs Commission could not be reached for comment.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Alarming' rise in regional internet censorship in China, study finds
China's authorities appear to have implemented an enhanced version of the country's internet censorship regime in the central province of Henan, subjecting tens of millions of residents to even stricter controls on access to information than people in the rest of the country. A research paper published this month by Great Firewall Report, an internet censorship monitoring platform, found that internet users in Henan, one of China's most populous provinces, were, on average, denied access to five times more websites than a typical Chinese internet user between November 2023 and March 2025. 'Our work documents an alarming sign of regional censorship emerging in China,' said the researchers, who include authors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Stanford University. China has the world's most sophisticated and extensive internet censorship regime. Internet users cannot access most western news websites or social media platforms, including services provided by Google, Wikipedia and Meta. Within what has been dubbed the 'great firewall', online content is monitored and censored by a mixture of government authorities and private companies complying with laws that require them to delete any content considered 'sensitive'. That includes any information about historical or current events that goes against the Chinese Communist party's official narrative. The researchers began looking into the topic after internet users in Henan reported that websites accessible in other parts of China were inaccessible in their province. They found that millions of domains that were not blocked by China's centralised firewall were at some point inaccessible in Henan. By buying servers from internet cloud providers, the authors tested the flow of internet traffic from locations within Henan. They tested the internet's top 1m domains daily between November 2023 and March 2025, with a gap of several months in 2024. The results showed that the Henan firewall blocked nearly 4.2 million domains at some point during the research period, over five times more than the roughly 741,500 domains blocked by China's national firewall. The domains that were specifically blocked in Henan were mainly from business-related websites. There have been several finance-related protests in Henan in recent years, which the researchers speculated could be the reason for the additional controls on access to information about the economy being controlled. In 2022, thousands of people in Henan took part in several demonstrations after they were blocked from withdrawing cash from their bank accounts. The crisis escalated when protesters reported that their mobile health codes, part of the pandemic control measures in place at the time, had turned red, preventing them from travelling or entering buildings. Five officials were later punished for abusing the health code system to quell the protests. Other parts of China have also been subjected to enhanced internet controls. In July 2009, following deadly ethnic riots, the Chinese government imposed an internet blackout in Xinjiang, a region in western China home to the Uyghur minority, that lasted 10 months. Since then, the use of the internet in Xinjiang has been much more tightly monitored than in the rest of the country. Online activities in Tibet are also strictly controlled. The emergence of a regional censorship regime in Henan is unusual because it is not a region of China that is normally considered especially restive by the Chinese authorities. The researchers could not determine if the enhanced controls were imposed by the local authorities in Henan or the central government in Beijing. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Rapid advances in China's artificial intelligence companies are a boon to both the censors and those who wish to evade them. China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) recently unveiled new surveillance tools that can monitor people who use virtual private networks, software that allows people to circumvent the internet firewall. The MPS's research institute also showcased a tool that it claimed could monitor accounts on Telegram, a messaging app. The tool has already collected more than 30bn messages, the institute claimed. Mingshi Wu, the lead author of the Henan study, who uses a pseudonym to protect their identity, said: 'On the one hand, AI could be leveraged to create more sophisticated, adaptive, and efficient censorship and surveillance tools. On the other hand, AI also enables new opportunities for those seeking to understand and circumvent censorship. For example, AI can assist in developing more agile testing tools for detecting censorship.' The Henan Cyberspace Affairs Commission could not be reached for comment. Additional research by Lillian Yang
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Graduates are feeling trepidation this commencement season, but ‘fear is what needs to drive change,' says MIT class president
Commencement is supposed to be a time of celebration, but this season is shaping up to be subdued. Spring is still spring — students are back on the quad reading, sunbathing, skateboarding, and playing spikeball. Trump's attacks on higher education haven't stopped the steady beat of a cappella concerts or end-of-year parties. Beer pong goes on. 'Seniors are just soaking up what they have left,' said Jack Wile as he sat back in a red lawn chair at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with his sneakers kicked off. Advertisement And yet, even as grounds crews begin to mow pastoral greens and put up graduation banners, there's also a feeling of apprehension thrumming beneath the regular rhythms of college life. 'It's not really a secret that a lot of us are feeling some fear,' Vemuri said. Across Massachusetts, many students are scared to speak out. They've seen friends, classmates, and professors punished for their pro-Palestinian views or simply targeted for their identities. Their peers have been doxxed, detained, arrested, and, in some cases, deported. Foreign students have had their Advertisement Last year, a graduating student used a mortarboard to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians, during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University in Cambridge. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff 'Part of the 'vibe check' depends on who you are,' said Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, where he said more than half the student population comes from other countries. He's anticipating muted ceremonies where students aren't as comfortable expressing themselves — not decorating their mortarboards with Pride flags or Black Lives Matter colors, for instance — due to 'a chilling effect.' It's not just undergraduates and graduate students who are feeling uneasy; it's also faculty and staff. And it's not just at Harvard, where university president Alan Garber is locked in an ideological battle with the Trump administration, with billions of research funding in the balance; or at Tufts, where Turkish graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested by masked immigration officers on a Somerville street. 'When she was finally released last Friday, there was a bit of a collective sigh of relief,' said Aaron Gruen, a senior who's investigative editor of The Tufts Daily. Still, he says, resistance with a capital 'R' has 'sort of dwindled,' and the mood has been 'a lot more dystopian.' 'I think that there's a general fear that exists, both institutionally and individually — fears about being targeted,' said Genny Beemyn, a nonbinary educator and the director of the Stonewall Center at UMass Amherst. 'We worry about our students, particularly our international students, our transgender students, and our undocumented students,' said Carrie Baker, a professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College in Northampton. 'We're tired.' Advertisement Along with exhaustion, disillusionment has set in at schools across the region. And while a handful of college and university presidents have been hailed as leaders of resistance against Trump, some voices on campus tell a different story, painting administrators as virtue signalers who are publicly putting on an act of resistance, while privately acquiescing to Trump's demands. At Harvard, recent moves to Last year, Harvard hosted 10 affinity celebrations for the Class of '24, including ones for Arab, Latinx, and low-income graduates, Harvard senior Elyse Martin-Smith has been involved in planning affinity-group celebrations for Black graduating seniors that Harvard said it will no longer fund. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff She said Harvard's decision to rescind its support was 'hurtful' and has implications for other affinity programming. 'We're at a moment where we fear for the future of Black students at Harvard, and to be able to show our solidarity and our strength for completing the last four years is extremely important to us.' Harvard's Chief Community and Campus Life officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has said Advertisement Fung characterized the past six months as 'whiplash' after 20-plus years of 'trying to figure out many different ways to make the whole environment more inclusive.' There's a sense among critics that some leaders are squelching free expression to avoid political trouble. UMass Amherst associate professor of history Kevin Young was one of around 130 demonstrators arrested last year when There may be no bigger PR opportunity than commencement, and schools around the region are using it to broadcast their own values to students and families as well as alumni, donors, and the American public at large. While some have invited progressive speakers to signal defiance or resistance, others have tapped guests with no obvious connection to politics — suggesting, perhaps, an effort to change the subject or avoid it altogether. A former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, Cody Keenan has about a dozen commencement addresses in the works for clients of his speechwriting firm Fenway Strategies, including one of his own for Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. 'I'd say every single speech we ever wrote for President Obama weighed the tension between the world as it is and the world as it should be,' Keenan said, 'and the same is true of any good commencement speech.' The class of '25 grew up in the aftermath of 9/11, contending with climate change, active shooter drills, and a global pandemic. 'They have every reason to be cynical,' said Keenan. Advertisement Instead, they're asking: How should the world be? And there are as many answers as there are graduating seniors. Vemuri has two minutes to give her speech as class president but knows what she wants to say about the future. She's planning to attend graduate school for neuroscience, but is watching in alarm as Trump targets academia and scientific research. 'It's pretty nerve-wracking to see that break down,' she said, but even more urgent is the immediate threat to free speech and other rights. 'I think what my classmates really need to hear is that this fear is what needs to drive change.' Shira Hoffer is a graduating senior at Harvard who started the Hotline for Israel/Palestine and founded a nonprofit to help people with differences disagree. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff While at Harvard, senior Shira Hoffer started the Hotline for Israel/Palestine after Oct. 7, 2023, as a way to foster civil dialogue around an imminent war. She was inundated with text messages, but soon realized that while the hotline was great for people who had questions, it didn't reach those who 'feel like they know all the answers,' she said. She founded the nonprofit Institute for Multipartisan Education to help people with differences disagree. 'I feel like I've had a foot out the door ever since,' she said. Still, she's excited to see the commencement speaker — Abraham Verghese, author of 'The Covenant of Water' — and to celebrate with her classmates. Her high school ceremony was held in a parking lot. 'Everyone sat separately. We were wearing masks [and] gloves to receive our diplomas,' Hoffer said. 'So I am looking forward to the whole, like, putting on a cap and gown and sitting with my friends and having everything be ... together.' Advertisement Brooke Hauser can be reached at
