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As Draymond Green returns, can he and Warriors wind down a dynasty the right way?

18Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Sports

As Draymond Green returns, can he and Warriors wind down a dynasty the right way?

In the backyard of Draymond Green’s $10 million home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, where white columns and a marble patio overlook the greenest of grass, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr chatted with the heartbeat of his team.Hours earlier, the Warriors had landed in Los Angeles to a whirlwind of drama. The night before, Dec. 12 in Phoenix, Green had protested an uncalled foul by spinning and flailing his arms. He struck Suns center Jusuf Nurkić in the face, incurring a Flagrant 2 foul and automatic ejection. This was just shy of a month after his previous Flagrant 2, a five-second chokehold of Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert that landed Green a five-game suspension and a promise of harsher future league penalties.So while the basketball world waited for the league’s latest punishm...

18Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Technology

How AI Could Change Travel in 2024

It is hard to believe that it has only been about a year since travelers started dabbling in ChatGPT-created itineraries. This year will bring even more experimentation and innovation. “A.I. is like a teenage intern,” said Chad Burt, co-owner of the travel adviser network Outside Agents, “better, smarter, faster than you, but you need to lead them.”The expanding use of A.I. could influence how we book online, what happens when flights are canceled or delayed, and even how much we pay for tickets.“In 2024, we will see a new breed of intelligent travel agents built on top of chatbots,” said Oren Etzioni, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington. That means travelers will begin interacting with sites like Airbnb, Expedia and Priceline by typing out questions in a...

At Art Fraud Trial, Sotheby’s Is Pressed on Role in Sales to Russian Oligarch

18Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Business

At Art Fraud Trial, Sotheby’s Is Pressed on Role in Sales to Russian Oligarch

The painting Sotheby’s was trying to sell was a newly discovered work by one of the world’s greatest artists, Leonardo da Vinci. It was known as the “Salvator Mundi” and was a depiction of Christ.But it had a code name: Jack.Samuel Valette, a Sotheby’s specialist, testified in a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday about how one day in March 2013 he had taken the painting crosstown in an S.U.V. from the auction house’s headquarters on York Avenue to a premier apartment overlooking Central Park.It was one of the many trips he had made to display paintings for a prospective buyer, Valette said. He was, as usual, accompanied by security personnel, and the painting, already valued at tens of millions of dollars, was in a protective crate.The apartment was owned by Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian olig...

Israel-Hamas War Live Updates: Displaced Gazans Flee Nasser Hospital Amid Intense Fighting

17Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

World

Israel-Hamas War Live Updates: Displaced Gazans Flee Nasser Hospital Amid Intense Fighting

The Biden administration plans to designate Yemen’s Houthi militia as a terrorist organization, partly reimposing penalties it lifted nearly three years ago on the Iran-backed group whose attacks on Red Sea shipping traffic have drawn a U.S. military response.Beginning in mid-February, the United States will consider the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist” group, according to a U.S. official, blocking its access to the global financial system, among other penalties. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a policy that had not yet been officially announced.But Biden officials stopped short of applying a second, more severe designation — that of “foreign terrorist organization” — which the Trump administration imposed on the Houthis in its final days. The S...

An Ultrasound Experiment Tackles a Giant Problem in Brain Medicine

17Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Health

An Ultrasound Experiment Tackles a Giant Problem in Brain Medicine

There is a problem with the recently approved Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm. It can remove some of the amyloid that forms brain plaques that are hallmarks of the disease. But most of the drug is wasted because it hits an obstacle, the blood-brain barrier, that protects the brain from toxins and infections but also prevents many drugs from entering.Researchers wondered if they could improve that grim result by trying something different: they would open the blood-brain barrier for a short time while they delivered the drug. Their experimental method was to use highly focused pulses of ultrasound along with tiny gas bubbles to pry the barrier open without destroying it.The investigators, at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University, reported their results last week in Th...

Christian Pulisic interview: ‘I want to show the world what the U.S. can do’

17Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Sports

Christian Pulisic interview: ‘I want to show the world what the U.S. can do’

Christian Pulisic is perched on a bar stool in the old clubhouse overlooking the first-team training pitch at Milanello, AC Milan’s training ground.He makes a hand gesture, one he didn’t need the past six months living in Italy to learn. Pulisic is talking about himself as one of the “older guys” on the USMNT and, as he does so, he is sure to put air quotes around it.Nearby is a portrait of Milan legend Paolo Maldini lifting a trophy, a player who retired in his forties. Pulisic isn’t that age yet. He turned 25 shortly after joining Milan from Chelsea in August. But as the United States get ready to host the Copa America as a guest competing nation this summer, the first newly-expanded 32-team Club World Cup the following year and then the biggest men’s World Cup finals yet, with 48 countr...

16Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Technology

Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’?

Breana Newton, a legal coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts regularly about books on TikTok, was one of the people who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I am going to show you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her own. “Ready?”She then gives viewers a brief tour of her home, showing books everywhere — on shelves, in overflow piles here and there, and strewed across the bed. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books were bought with the consideration of how they would look on Instagram.In an interview, Ms. Newton said that she worried trends like bookshelf wealth encourage overconsumption. This year, she added, she is trying not to buy any new books.Another critic of the trend, Keila Tirado-Leist, said in a reaction video: “Who does it ...

A Fed Governor Reiterates That Rate Cuts Are Coming

16Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Business

A Fed Governor Reiterates That Rate Cuts Are Coming

A prominent Federal Reserve official on Tuesday laid out a case for lowering interest rates methodically at some point this year as the economy comes into balance and inflation cools — although he acknowledged that the timing of those cuts remained uncertain.Christopher Waller, one of the Fed’s seven Washington-based officials and one of the 12 policymakers who get to vote at its meetings, said during a speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday that he saw a case for cutting interest rates in 2024.“The data we have received the last few months is allowing the committee to consider cutting the policy rate in 2024,” Mr. Waller said. While noting that risks of higher inflation remain, he said, “I am feeling more confident that the economy can continue along its current trajectory.”Mr. Wa...

Guatemala’s New President Is Sworn In, Despite Efforts to Stop Him

15Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

World

Guatemala’s New President Is Sworn In, Despite Efforts to Stop Him

Despite staunch resistance from his opponents in the government, the anticorruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was inaugurated early Monday morning as Guatemala’s president, a turning point in a country where tensions have been simmering over widespread graft and impunity.His inauguration had been scheduled for Sunday, but members of Congress delayed it, and concerns persisted about whether it would happen at all. But after an international outcry and pressure from protesters, Mr. Arévalo was sworn in shortly after midnight, becoming Guatemala’s most progressive head of state since democracy was re-established in the 1980s.His rise to power — six months after his victory at the polls delivered a stunning rebuke to Guatemala’s conservative political establishment — amounts to a sea change in...

The Billionaires Spending a Fortune to Lure Scientists Away From Universities

15Jan

By Harrison Jordan LewisNo Comments

Health

The Billionaires Spending a Fortune to Lure Scientists Away From Universities

In an unmarked laboratory stationed between the campuses of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a splinter group of scientists is hunting for the next billion-dollar drug.The group, bankrolled with $500 million from some of the wealthiest families in American business, has created a stir in the world of academia by dangling seven-figure paydays to lure highly credentialed university professors to a for-profit bounty hunt. Its self-described goal: to avoid the blockages and paperwork that slow down the traditional paths of scientific research at universities and pharmaceutical companies, and discover scores of new drugs (at first, for cancer and brain disease) that can be produced and sold quickly.Braggadocio from start-ups is de rigueur, and plenty of ex-academics have s...