In its first front page editorial since 1920, it said it was "a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency".
In a column titled "End The Gun Epidemic in America", the newspaper said: "It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically - eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.
"Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership.
Tashfeen Malik and her husband Syed Farook
"It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens."
US-born Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, died in a shootout with police hours after Wednesday's attack on a holiday party at a social services centre in San Bernardino.
The attack - which saw the pair storm into the building and open fire with assault weapons - is being investigated by the FBI as an "act of terrorism".
Citing other deadly mass shootings in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina. Virginia and Connecticut, the paper argued: "Let's be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism."
The New York Times editorial follows a call by The Daily News on Thursday for stricter gun controls, in which it accused Republicans in Congress of "saluting the flag of the National Rifle Association", which supports Americans' right to keep and bear arms.
The debate over gun control has been a long-running contentious issue in the US.
President Barack Obama has urged stricter gun controls, but they have been fiercely opposed by Republicans in Congress.
In his statement on the California shooting, he called for all US lawmakers to make it "a little harder" for individuals to get access to weapons when they wanted to use them to harm others.
Tyson Fury became the new world heavyweight champion last week
The newly crowned heavyweight champion of the world has drawn criticism for saying in an interview that fellow SPOTY nominee Jessica Ennis-Hill "slaps up well".
An online petition calling for him to be removed from the shortlist has now garnered over 50,000 signatures.
The BBC said although the corporation did not endorse his views, he would not be dropped.
A spokesman said: "The Sports Personality shortlist is compiled by a panel of industry experts and is based on an individual's sporting achievement - it is not an endorsement of an individual's personal beliefs either by the BBC or members of the panel."
And Fury, who defeated Wladimir Klitschko to win his world titles last Saturday, was himself defiant.
He tweeted: "I've got more personality than all the other competitors put together, in this years BBCSPOTY who can compete with my sporting achievement!"
Fury, 27, was asked his opinion on women in an interview with iFL TV, three days before his world title fight.
When asked about female boxers he said: "It's up to everybody what they want to do. 'I'm all for it. I'm not a sexist.
"I believe if a man can to go work all his life a woman can. Who am I to say, 'Don't do that 'cos you're a girl'?
"But I believe a woman's best place is in the kitchen and on her back, that's my personal belief. Making me a good cup of tea, that's what I believe."
Fury laughed off the comment but when asked about Olympic champion heptathlete Ennis-Hill during the interview, he said: "I think she's good, she's won quite a few medals for Britain, and she slaps up good as well, when she's got a dress on she looks quite fit."
The Change.org petition also cites an interview Fury gave to the Mail on Sunday, in which campaigner Scott Cuthbertson said he expressed "homophobic views".
The boxer's comments were even addressed in Parliament on Thursday by shadow leader of the Commons Chris Bryant.
The Labour MP said: "There are only three things, he has said, that need to be accomplished before the devil comes home. One of them is homosexuality being legal in countries, one of them is abortion and the other one is paedophilia.
"Leaving aside the bizarre rather heterodox theology, this equates homosexuality with paedophilia."
Mr Bryant said that was "profoundly offensive" and the "kind of language that leads to more young people committing suicide".
In the course of my work as a scientific researcher, I’ve had the chance to meet governors, cabinet members, music celebrities, and the heads of Fortune 500 companies. Their skills and accomplishments vary, but as a group, one thing is remarkably constant. I’ve repeatedly been struck by how liberating it is for them not to have to worry about whether there is someplace else they need to be, or someone else they need to be talking to. They take their time, make eye contact, relax, and are really there with whomever they’re talking to. They don’t have to worry if there is someone more important they should be talking to at that moment because their staff— their external attentional filters— have already determined for them that this is the best way they should be using their time.
Must be nice since you and I have to multitask and cut things short to try and get everything done, stressing the whole time.
But here’s the thing: You can be like that too. And it doesn’t require a staff of 10.
So who is your assistant? You are. Then who’s the VIP? You are. (Yes, I am actively encouraging you to develop a split personality.)
With enough planning ahead of time, you can make sure you’re as calm and organized as the President of the United States.
(For more on what the most productive people do, click here.)
We just need to get a few systems in place ahead of time. What’s the first step?
1) The VIP’s Brain Is Empty. And That’s A Good Thing.
The President of the United States is not desperately trying to remember his to-do list.
He has outsourced to his staff all the things that come next so he can focus 100% on what’s in front of him.
No, you don’t have a group of aides but there’s still a key principle you can use: Get it out of your head.
Shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world… Writing them down gets them out of your head, clearing your brain of the clutter that is interfering with being able to focus on what you want to focus on.
Everything you’re worried about, every to-do, every concern gets written down in one place.
One. Not scattered across a notepad at home, your iPad in the office, your email inbox, sticky notes on your monitor, and your unreliable memory.
That scattering makes you wonder if you’ve forgotten something — and research shows it produces anxiety.
So get it out of your head and on one list. Afterwards, Getting Things Done author David Allen says break it up into 4 categories:
Do it
Delegate it
Defer it
Drop it
Once you have those 4 lists you know what you actually need to do and it’s all in one place. Just having that list is a big step toward VIP cool.
Why does this work? There’s some neuroscience behind it. Writing things down deactivates “rehearsal loops.”
When we have something on our minds that is important— especially a To Do item— we’re afraid we’ll forget it, so our brain rehearses it, tossing it around and around in circles in something that cognitive psychologists actually refer to as the rehearsal loop, a network of brain regions that ties together the frontal cortex just behind your eyeballs and the hippocampus in the center of your brain… The problem is that it works too well, keeping items in rehearsal until we attend to them. Writing them down gives both implicit and explicit permission to the rehearsal loop to let them go, to relax its neural circuits so that we can focus on something else.
Time management also requires structuring your future with reminders. That is, one of the secrets to managing time in the present is to anticipate future needs so that you’re not left scrambling and playing catch-up all the time.
Ironically, your phone probably interrupts you with unimportant texts, emails, and status updates — but not about the key priorities for your day.
Few of us have our calendar so organized ahead of time that we can let it dictate all our actions moment to moment.
What’s the key? Alarms don’t work with to-do lists.
As Cal Newport recommends, assign every to-do a block of time on your calendar. Then you can gauge how much you can actually get done:
Scheduling forces you to confront the reality of how much time you actually have and how long things will take. Now that you look at the whole picture you’re able to get something productive out of every free hour you have in your workday. You not only squeeze more work in but you’re able to put work into places where you can do it best.
You’re less likely to procrastinatewhen an activity has an assigned block of time, because the decision was already made.
And once it has a time block, you can be the VIP. Alarms allow your mind to be calm knowing you’ll be reminded about the next thing.
I know what some of you are thinking: But I get interrupted. I get distracted.
But there’s a way to deal with interruptions — even if you don’t have a Secret Service detail to keep people out of your office.
3) Set Up Filters
Every morning the President gets a top secret document with everything he needs to know from the agencies beneath him.
What’s key isn’t what the document contains, it’s what it doesn’t contain: 50 status updates, 100 tweets, 10 cat pictures and 1000 unimportant emails.
He can focus on what matters because he isn’t distracted by what doesn’t. Meanwhile, you probably feel overwhelmed by information.
Today, our attentional filters easily become overwhelmed. Successful people— or people who can afford it— employ layers of people whose job it is to narrow the attentional filter. That is, corporate heads, political leaders, spoiled movie stars, and others whose time and attention are especially valuable have a staff of people around them who are effectively extensions of their own brains, replicating and refining the functions of the prefrontal cortex’s attentional filter.
“I have information overload!”, you scream. But as technology visionary Clay Shirky says, “It’s not information overload; it’s filter failure.”
Your attention is limited and valuable. You need less information. You need good filters.
Our brains do have the ability to process the information we take in, but at a cost: We can have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all this information processing makes us tired. Neurons are living cells with a metabolism; they need oxygen and glucose to survive and when they’ve been working hard, we experience fatigue…
A good low-tech solution is to hide for part of the day. I’m as serious as a heart attack. Go where people cannot reach you and get solid work done.
That’s not an option for everyone. I get it. No problem. But people who feel technology has left them overloaded with information are using it wrong.
Use technology like a DVR to time-shift your communications. People should reach you when you want them to, not when they want to.
Handle all communications in specified “batches“: a set time when you check email, voicemail, etc.
Some people say, “I can’t do that.” But you probably can do it more than you think, especially early and late in the day.
Maybe your boss wants you ridiculously responsive. Fine. Set up an email filter so only the boss’s emails get through immediately.
…you can set up e-mail filters in most e-mail programs and phones, designating certain people whose mail you want to get through to you right away, while other mail just accumulates in your inbox until you have time to deal with it. And for people who really can’t be away from e-mail, another effective trick is to set up a special, private e-mail account and give that address only to those few people who need to be able to reach you right away, and check your other accounts only at designated times.
So you’ve got reminders and filters and you’re not running around worried anymore.
But when you sit down to work you realize there is still just too much to do. How can you keep calm when there are so many decisions to make?
4) The Incredible Power of “Good Enough”
The President doesn’t make little decisions. The thousands of people working under him handle those so only the big stuff bubbles up to his agenda.
But given you don’t have thousands of people working under you (or maybe any for that matter) you handle every decision, business and personal.
What is satisficing? It’s the art of quickly picking the option that is “good enough.” And research shows it’s the path to productivity — and happiness.
Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it. Warren Buffett can be seen as embracing satisficing to an extreme— one of the richest men in the world, he lives in Omaha, a block from the highway, in the same modest home he has lived in for fifty years… But Buffett does not satisfice with his investment strategies; satisficing is a tool for not wasting time on things that are not your highest priority. For your high-priority endeavors, the old-fashioned pursuit of excellence remains the right strategy.
Will this decision result in you losing your job? No? Then opt for the “good enough” solution and focus on what matters most.
Your boss’s priorities change midday. More stuff keeps getting added to your list. How can this not throw a monkeywrench into your well-laid plan?
5) “Mr. President, There’s Been A Change…”
When changes come up for the Commander-in-Chief he shifts seamlessly because his aides have already revised the day’s plans. So he stays calm.
You can stay cool too, but it requires a little bit more effort. New things will come in, priorities will change and you need to process and adapt.
Always have your notebook ready to capture new ideas and to-do’s.
And throughout the day you need moments of triage and “active sorting” where you restructure the list from your big brain dump.
“Your brain needs to engage on some consistent basis with all of your commitments and activities,” Allen says. “You must be assured that you are doing what you need to be doing, and that it’s OK to be not doing what you’re not doing. If it’s on your mind, then your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind…” That trusted system is to write it down.
One way to exploit the hippocampus’s natural style of memory storage is to create different work spaces for the different kinds of work we do. But we use the same computer screen for balancing our checkbook, responding to e-mails from our boss, making online purchases, watching videos of cats playing the piano, storing photos of our loved ones, listening to our favorite music, paying bills, and reading the daily news. It’s no wonder we can’t remember everything— the brain simply wasn’t designed to have so much information in one place… The neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks goes one further: If you’re working on two completely separate projects, dedicate one desk or table or section of the house for each. Just stepping into a different space hits the reset button on your brain and allows for more productive and creative thinking.
According to productivity guru Tim Ferriss, focus is just the product of removing distractions.
So you want your VIP work area to have what the VIP needs. And nothing else.
WASHINGTON – With Republicans openly welcoming a preordained veto, the Senate on Thursday approved legislation aimed at crippling two of their favorite targets: President Barack Obama's health care law and Planned Parenthood.
With a House rubber stamp expected in days, the bill would be the first to reach Obama's desk demolishing his 2010 health care overhaul, one of his proudest domestic achievements, and halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood. Congress has voted dozens of times to repeal or weaken the health law and repeatedly against Planned Parenthood's funding, but until now Democrats thwarted Republicans from shipping the legislation to the White House.
Thursday's vote was a near party-line 52-47.
Republicans said an Obama veto — which the White House has promised — will underscore that a GOP triumph in next year's presidential and congressional elections would mean repeal of a statute they blame for surging medical costs and insurers abandoning some markets. They lack the two-thirds House and Senate majorities needed to override vetoes, assuring that the bill's chief purpose will be for campaign talking points.
"President Obama will have a choice," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "He can defend a status quo that's failed the middle class by vetoing the bill, or he can work toward a new beginning and better care by signing it."
Republicans blame the bill for surging health care costs and insurers abandoning some markets. Government officials said this week that health care spending grew at 5.3 percent in 2014, the steepest climb since Obama took office.
Democrats noted that under the law, millions of people have become insured and said their coverage has improved, with policies now required to insure a wide range of medical services.
"Do they talk to their constituents? Do they meet with them?" Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of Republicans.
With just a 54-46 edge, Republicans had previously failed push such legislation through the Senate. This time, they used a special budget procedure that prevents filibusters — delays that take 60 votes to halt — and let them prevail with a simple majority.
Party leaders initially encountered objections from some more moderate Republicans leery of cutting Planned Parenthood's funds and from presidential contenders, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, who threatened to oppose the measure if it wasn't strong enough.
In the end, Cruz and Rubio voted "yes." Moderate GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois voted no, the only lawmakers to cross party lines, while Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., did not vote.
The Senate bill would all but erase the health care overhaul by dismantling some of its key pillars, including requirements that most people obtain coverage and larger employers offer it to workers.
Also eliminated would be its expansion of Medicaid coverage to additional lower-income people and the government's subsidies for many who buy policies on newly created insurance marketplaces. And it would end taxes the law imposed to cover its costs, including levies on higher-income people, expensive insurance policies, medical devices and indoor tanning salons.
The bill would also terminate the roughly $450 million yearly in federal dollars that go to Planned Parenthood, about a third of its budget. Federal funds can be used for abortions only in rare cases.
A perennial target of conservatives, the group has been under intensified GOP pressure this year for its role in providing fetal tissue to scientists. Citing secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing such sales, some abortion foes have accused the organization of illegally providing the tissue for profit. The group says the videos were deceptively doctored and say it's done nothing illegal.
Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Dawn Laguens said the Senate had given the group's millions of clients "the cold shoulder of indifference."
Senators voted on over a dozen amendments — all symbolic, since the measure was destined to never become law.
They rejected two amendments that would have restored Planned Parenthood's money. They blocked proposals for tightening gun curbs, a response to Wednesday's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, last week's fatal attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and last month's terrorist massacre in Paris.
They also voted 90-10 to permanently repeal taxes on high-priced "Cadillac" insurance policies, a strong signal of growing congressional momentum for erasing that levy.
GOP lawmakers said the overall bill could serve as a bridge to a future Republican health care law. Though Obama's overhaul was enacted five years ago, Republicans have yet to produce a detailed proposal to replace it.
"It's either repeal or nothing," Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who heads the Senate Democratic campaign committee, said of the GOP's failure to propose an alternative. "I'll take that to the polls and we'll talk about it until the cows come home."
Republicans argued voters were on their side.
"We've reached a pretty scary time in our nation's history where we have Americans writing and calling their elected representatives saying they need relief from their own government," said No. 2 Senate Leader John Cornyn of Texas. "We have a mandate, I believe, to repeal this terrible law."
They said the family had no idea Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were capable of such an attack.
The lawyers warned against jumping to conclusions after the FBI said earlier the attack was being investigated as an "act of terrorism".
Wednesday's mass shooting left 14 people dead and 21 injured.
Tashfeen Malik, 27, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, died in a shootout with police after the killings in the southern Californian city, east of Los Angeles.
FBI spokesman David Bowdich told reporters that officers were trying to recover data from two mobile phones found crushed in a waste bin near the scene.
Image copyrightABC NEWS, APImage captionTashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook
Lawyers David Chesley and Mohamed Abuershaid said there was no evidence that the couple had extremist views.
Syed Rizwan Farook's sister, Saira Khan, told CBS News: "I can never imagine my brother or my sister-in-law doing something like this, especially because they were happily married, they had a beautiful six-month-old daughter,"
Farook is said to have had few friends and Malik has been described by family as a "caring, soft-spoken" housewife.
Tashfeen Malik was born in Pakistan and lived for 20 years in Saudi Arabia before moving back to her native country to go to university.
She and Farook, a US national, met on Muslim dating websites, the New York Times quotes officials as saying. The new couple spent about a week in Saudi Arabia last year, before returning to the US together.
She was granted a visa allowing people to enter the US to marry American citizens. Mr Chesley said Malik was very conservative. She did not interact with male family members and wore a burka, he said.
Front-page editorial
The couple used handguns and automatic weapons that had been legally purchased in the US, police say.
In response to the shooting, the New York Times ran an editorial calling for stricter gun controls on the front page of Saturday's print paper. It is the first time since 1920 that the paper has run an editorial on page one.
"It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency," the opinion piece said.
"America's elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing," it added.
The bomb-making equipment and the thousands of rounds of ammunition have all been removed, and the tan-coloured townhouse which Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik called home has now returned to normal.
On Friday, the FBI completed their search of the property on this leafy suburban street, and after confiscating notebooks and computers - and even Christmas tree lights - handed the property back to its owner.
Waiting reporters were allowed a peek behind the venetian blinds, hoping to get some degree of insight into the life of the "clean-cut young man" and his young bride and baby, who never caused problems and always paid their rent on time.
And as we piled across the threshold, we encountered not the remnants of some medieval torture chamber - or even the evidence of a fanatical terrorist cell - but all the trappings of domestic mundanity: powdered baby food in the kitchen, a cot in the upstairs bedroom, nappies, books and tapestries and several copies of the Quran.
FBI Director James Comey said earlier the investigation was in its early stages and that there was still "a lot of evidence that doesn't make sense".
He said that there were indications that the couple had been radicalised and that they were "potentially inspired" by foreign terror groups.
However, he said there was no evidence they were part of a network.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionReporters looked through the suspects' house and found personal items
Earlier, the FBI said it was also investigating reports that Malik had pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS).
She is reported to have posted a message on Facebook in support of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi under a different name. The post has since been removed.
After Wednesday's attack at the Inland Regional Center social services agency, bomb equipment, weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found in the couple's home.
Police said between 75 and 80 people were attending a party there when the shooting began.
The identities of the victims have since been released by San Bernardino's coroner. The youngest was 26 and the oldest was 60.
San Bernardino is the deadliest mass shooting in the US since 26 people were killed at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showed that 51% of Americans view Muslims living in the United States the same as any other community, while only 14.6% were generally fearful of them.
Cowell was said to be 'relieved' his family were safe
The Daily Mirror says the thieves struck at around 2am on Friday morning and escaped with cash and jewellery.
Cowell, his girlfriend Lauren Silverman and son Eric were all asleep at the time.
The Mirror quotes a source as saying: "It was clearly a very traumatic incident.
"Simon is just relieved that his family was safe and all right. Their safety is his number one priority."
Police were sent to the £35m property in Holland Park, but the burglars had fled.
The Met said in a statement: "Police were called to an address in W14 on Friday, 4 December at approximately 02:20hrs to reports of a burglary in progress.
"Officers attended the scene but the suspects had left the area.
"Inquiries continue."
The statement did not say who owned the house or who was inside.
