Author: NY TIMES

A Japanese pharmaceutical company is investigating 80 deaths possibly linked to a yeast-containing supplement it sells in Japan, the country’s health ministry said Friday, in a shocking increase from an earlier revelation that is focusing attention on how supplements are regulated.The company, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, in March had reported five deaths potentially linked to its CholesteHelp rice and red-yeast pills. Japanese government health officials said the supplement, which is claimed to help reduce cholesterol, contained the highly toxic compound called puberulic acid that is a product of mold.In response to the sudden surge in reported deaths, Health Minister Keizo Takemi said…

This article is part of our Pets special section on scientists’ growing interest in our animal companions.Many students begin veterinary school with career aspirations that date back to childhood, when they fell in love with the idea of ministering to cats and dogs, or horses, or the exotic animals at the zoo. Jessie Sanders arrived at veterinary school with a more particular passion. “I was the one weird fish kid,” she said.It was an interest that had surprised even her. In college, Dr. Sanders had started volunteering at an aquarium, hoping to work with the whales. Instead, she found herself…

What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now A.I. developers are cribbing from the movies, crafting voices for real machines based on dated cinematic fantasies of how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning how to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice — one that sounded much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a husky timbre, a soothing affect and a sexy edge. She was agreeable…

So many locals over so many decades have left Gourin in rural Brittany for the United States that Air France awarded the town a miniature Statue of Liberty.So proud were residents of that binational identity, they fund-raised four years ago to have the statue recast in bronze. It sits in a place of prominence, in Gourin’s main square, encircled by poles bearing international flags.And yet, in the recent elections for the European Parliament, almost one-third of local voters opted for the far-right National Rally, a French party built on intense anti-immigration sentiment.“This is an area that knows what it means…

For Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, the Parisian luxury house, South Africa is a long way from home. But the country is close to his heart.“My passport is French,” said Mr. Rousteing, 38, on a phone call from Paris. “But my blood is African,” added the designer, who learned relatively late in life that he is of Somalian and Ethiopian descent.The coastal Western Cape region of South Africa provided inspiration for Mr. Rousteing’s latest style collaboration: a Balmain collection developed in partnership with Disney to promote the 30th anniversary of the “The Lion King,” which was released in…

In the stock market, all is not quite as it seems.A slowdown in inflation has boosted investor confidence in the economy this year and, combined with an intense fervor for artificial intelligence, provided the backdrop to a rally that has beaten all expectations.The S&P 500 has climbed 15 percent in the first half of 2024.The gains have been remarkably steady, with the index only once rising or falling more than 2 percent in a single day. (It rose.) A widely tracked measure of bets on more volatility to come is close to its lowest-ever level.But a look beneath the surface…

Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTubeRecord labels — including Sony, Universal and Warner — are suing two leading A.I. music generation companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Mitch Glazier, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group representing the music labels, talks with us about the argument they are advancing. Then, we take a look at defense technology and discuss why Silicon Valley seems to be changing its tune about working with the military. Chris Kirchhoff, who ran a special Pentagon office in Silicon Valley, explains what he thinks is…

Superficially, abortion rights had a good run at the Supreme Court this term. Two weeks ago, the justices unanimously let an abortion pill remain widely available. On Thursday, the court dismissed a case about Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which had the effect of letting emergency rooms in the state perform the procedure when the patient’s health is at risk.But the two rulings were so technical as to be ephemeral. They seemed designed for avoidance and delay, for kicking a volatile subject down the road — or at least past Election Day.Some supporters of abortion rights called the rulings Pyrrhic victories,…

‘Fatal Attraction’ (July 31)Stream it here.This erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne was one of the most successful pictures of 1987 — and one of the most controversial, prompting heating conversations about its depictions of adultery and mental illness that moved from movie listings to opinion pages and magazine covers. The story is simple: Michael Douglas stars as a family man whose seemingly offhand weekend extramarital affair with Glenn Close turns into a matter of literal life and death. It is a deeply flawed picture — Close’s nuanced characterization outclasses the paper-thin caricature she’s given, and critics of the era were…

Part of the roof at a terminal at India’s busiest airport collapsed early Friday amid heavy thunderstorms and rains, killing at least one person and injuring several others, according to officials and local media. The airport suspended all departures from the terminal.India’s minister of civil aviation said in a social media post that rescue operations were in progress at Terminal 1 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and that emergency responders were on site. Airport officials said that the collapse happened around 5 a.m. local time in the departure area of the terminal and that all departures…