We Are in a Big Covid Wave. But Just How Big?
Health

We Are in a Big Covid Wave. But Just How Big?

The curves on some Covid graphs are looking quite steep, again.Reported levels of the virus in U.S. wastewater are higher than they have been since the first Omicron wave, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though severe outcomes still remain rarer than in earlier pandemic winters.“We are seeing rates are going up across the country,” said Amy Kirby, program lead for the C.D.C.’s National Wastewater Surveillance System. The program now categorizes every state with available data at “high” or “very high” viral activity.The surge might reach its peak this week or soon after, modelers predict, with high levels of transmission expected for at least another month beyond that.Hospitalizations and deaths have remained far lower than in previous years. There wer...
Michigan stymies Michael Penix Jr., Washington to claim first national championship since 1997 season
Sports

Michigan stymies Michael Penix Jr., Washington to claim first national championship since 1997 season

By Lauren Merola, Max Olson, Austin Meek, Jim Trotter and Nicole AuerbachIt’s been 26 years, but finally, no one has it better than Michigan.The Wolverines rushed for 303 yards and held flame-throwing Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. in check to emerge as the College Football Playoff national champion with a 34-13 defeat of the Huskies on Monday night at NRG Stadium in Houston. The win marked Michigan’s first national title since 1997 and the completion of a long-anticipated return to the top of college football under head coach Jim Harbaugh.The Wolverines, who entered the night ranked second in the FBS in passing yards allowed per game, held the Heisman Trophy runner-up Penix to 255 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions on 27-of-51 passing, well below the usual output from th...
SEC’s X Account Hacked, Causing Frenzy Over Bitcoin ETF
Technology

SEC’s X Account Hacked, Causing Frenzy Over Bitcoin ETF

For 15 minutes, the cryptocurrency industry was euphoric.At 4:11 p.m. on Tuesday, the official X account of the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that regulators had approved a new investment product tracking the price of Bitcoin, an apparent victory for the embattled crypto industry. Coinbase, a giant crypto exchange, posted a celebratory banner. Crypto fans hailed it as a historic day for the industry. Bitcoin’s price spiked.Then at 4:26 p.m., Gary Gensler, the chair of the S.E.C., posted that the agency’s account had been compromised, resulting in an “unauthorized tweet.” An S.E.C. spokeswoman confirmed the hack in an emailed statement.The security breach was the latest twist in the crypto industry’s yearslong pursuit of an investment vehicle known as an exchange traded fund ...
World Bank Warns of Energy Price Surge if Mideast War Spreads
Business

World Bank Warns of Energy Price Surge if Mideast War Spreads

The global economy is at risk of a “wasted” decade and the weakest stretch of growth in 30 years, the World Bank warned on Tuesday, saying a sluggish recovery from the pandemic and crippling wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are expected to weigh heavily on output.In its semiannual Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank projected that the growth in world output will slow further in 2024, declining to 2.4 percent from 2.6 percent. Although the global economy has been surprisingly resilient, the report warned that its forecasts were subject to heightened uncertainty because of the two wars, a diminished Chinese economy and the increasing risks of natural disasters caused by global warming.The converging crises in recent years have put the world economy on track for the weakest ha...
Quebec Still Longs for Its Lost Hockey Team, a Nationalist Symbol
World

Quebec Still Longs for Its Lost Hockey Team, a Nationalist Symbol

When the Nordiques left Quebec nearly 30 years ago, the hockey team’s departure fueled the kind of mythologizing and nostalgia familiar to fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers.The Nordiques’ stint in Quebec, playing there in the N.H.L. from 1979 to 1995, overlapped with the French-speaking province’s two failed attempts to secede from the rest of Canada, and the team’s identity melded with that of their fans: a linguistic minority struggling to assert itself in a part of the world dominated by English speakers.The Nordiques wore their politics on their sleeves, literally, putting the Quebec flag’s fleur-de-lis on their uniforms. They also sang Canada’s national anthem only in French.The team’s exit “left a hole in Quebec City and Quebec regional politics, and a hole in Francophone identity, as wel...
Paxlovid Cuts Covid Death Risk. But Those Who Need It Are Not Taking It.
Health

Paxlovid Cuts Covid Death Risk. But Those Who Need It Are Not Taking It.

As Covid rises again, killing about 1,500 Americans each week, medical researchers are trying to understand why so few people are taking Paxlovid, a medicine that is stunningly effective in preventing severe illness and death from the disease.A study of a million high-risk people with Covid found that only about 15 percent who were eligible for the drug took it. If instead half of the eligible patients in the United States had gotten Paxlovid during the time period of the research, 48,000 deaths could have been prevented, the authors of the study, conducted by the National Institutes of Health, concluded.It’s not because people don’t know about the drug — most do — but the reluctance seems to come from doctors worried about interactions with other drugs and people wary of a possible reboun...
Bird, ‘The Wire,’ a life sentence paroled and a Colts game 40 years in the making
Sports

Bird, ‘The Wire,’ a life sentence paroled and a Colts game 40 years in the making

Bleary-eyed from 16 hours on a Greyhound bus, he strolled into the stadium running on fumes. He’d barely slept in two days. The ride he was supposed to hitch from Charlotte to Indianapolis canceled at the last minute, and for a few nervy hours, Antonio Barnes started to have his doubts. The trip he’d waited 40 years for looked like it wasn’t going to happen.But as he moved through the concourse at Lucas Oil Stadium an hour before the Colts faced the Raiders, it started to sink in. His pace quickened. His eyes widened. His voice picked up.“I got chills right now,” he said. “Chills.”Barnes, 57, is a lifer, a Colts fan since the Baltimore days. He wore No. 25 on his pee wee football team because that’s the number Nesby Glasgow wore on Sundays. He was a talent in his own right, too: one of his...
How 2024 Will Be A.I.’s ‘Leap Forward’
Technology

How 2024 Will Be A.I.’s ‘Leap Forward’

At an event in San Francisco in November, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, was asked what surprises the field would bring in 2024.Online chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will take “a leap forward that no one expected,” Mr. Altman immediately responded.Sitting beside him, James Manyika, a Google executive, nodded and said, “Plus one to that.”The A.I. industry this year is set to be defined by one main characteristic: a remarkably rapid improvement of the technology as advancements build upon one another, enabling A.I. to generate new kinds of media, mimic human reasoning in new ways and seep into the physical world through a new breed of robot.In the coming months, A.I.-powered image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney will instantly deliver vid...
First Flight of the Vulcan Rocket Sends an American Lander Toward the Moon
Business

First Flight of the Vulcan Rocket Sends an American Lander Toward the Moon

A brand-new rocket lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla., sending a robotic spacecraft toward the surface of the moon. No American spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon since 1972.For United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the successful launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket was crucial. Vulcan is designed to replace two older rockets, and the United States Space Force is also counting on it to launch spy satellites and other spacecraft that are important for U.S. national security.The Vulcan is also the first of several new rockets that could chip away at the current domination of the space launch market by Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX. SpaceX sent nearly 100 rockets into orbit last year. Other debut orbital launches in the co...
Israel Says It Dismantled Hamas Operations in Northern Gaza: Live Updates
World

Israel Says It Dismantled Hamas Operations in Northern Gaza: Live Updates

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, held meetings on Sunday with leaders in Jordan as part of a days-long Middle East tour aimed at reducing the risk that the war in Gaza could spread in the region.Mr. Blinken met separately in Amman with King Abdullah II, the ruler of Jordan, and Ayman Safadi, the foreign minister. He then visited a warehouse with boxes of canned food that was intended to be brought into Gaza on trucks organized by the United Nations World Food Program.Sheri Ritsema-Anderson, the resident U.N. coordinator in Jordan, told reporters that in her 15 years working in the Middle East, she had never seen a humanitarian situation as dire as the one in Gaza, describing it as an “epic catastrophe.”She said about 220 trucks of various types of aid and fuel are now gettin...