Author: NY TIMES

In November, managers at the Arenas del Mar resort near Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica, challenged employees to come up with ways to operate more sustainably. The maintenance crew suggested electric locks on guest room doors. The food and beverage department proposed making jams from fruit peels. And the housekeepers advised: Ditch the slippers.“It didn’t make sense because you use them once and throw them out,” said Hans Pfister, the president and co-founder of Cayuga Collection, the hotel group that manages the resort, which took housekeeping’s advice. “It’s very wasteful.”Like plastic straws and mini bottles of shampoo, disposable…

Throughout the Covid pandemic, various supply chain issues and high inflation, Starbucks could still count on its consumers to buy their iced oat milk lattes. But that economic certainty may be in doubt after the coffee giant reported weaker-than-expected revenue and earnings in the latest quarter.Starbucks said on Tuesday that global revenue fell 1.8 percent, to $8.56 billion, while net earnings slid 15 percent, to $772.4 million, in the three months that ended March 31. The company’s executives blamed some of the declines in the United States on poor weather and fewer customer visits to its stores.Starbucks also lowered its…

Getir, the rapid grocery-delivery company that boomed during Covid lockdowns, said it was ending its operations in the United States and Europe, a major retreat by another pandemic darling.The company, which aimed to deliver groceries and other small conveniences in as fast as 10 minutes, said it would refocus on its home base, Turkey. At its height, the privately held Getir was valued at nearly $12 billion after expanding quickly, buying up competitors and operating in nine countries.The company announced the decision in a short statement on Monday, adding that FreshDirect, its U.S. subsidiary, would continue operations.“Getir generates only 7…

Philips Respironics has reached a $1.1 billion settlement over claims that people who used their CPAP and other breathing devices were harmed by noxious gasses and flecks of foam that lodged in their airways, sometimes for years.Thousands of people contended in lawsuits that they had been injured by popular Philips DreamStation machines. The settlement affects CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure, machines that people with sleep apnea or other respiratory difficulties use at night to improve their breathing, as well as other types of machines used at home and in hospitals.Philips did not admit any fault in the settlement, including…

Stewart also shines on “Francesca,” a new album by the eminent saxophonist David Murray, out later in May. “He plays my bass lines with such conviction,” Murray said in a phone interview. “I’ve had some great bass players in my life,” he added, naming late masters such as Art Davis, Fred Hopkins and Wilber Morris, “so he’s kind of in the line of their tradition.”Growing up, Stewart said, a connection with any jazz tradition felt remote. Raised in Ocean Springs, a small city on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, he played saxophone early on and later picked up the bass after a…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed anew on Tuesday to launch an invasion into the southern Gaza Strip, even as a renewed push for a cease-fire agreement was showing glimmers of a potential breakthrough.After seven months of an Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the United States, Qatar and several other countries have been hoping to broker a cease-fire, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is visiting the Middle East to press for an agreement.But with Hamas arguing that any agreement should include an end to the war, and with right-wing politicians in Israel threatening to leave the government coalition…

As the sheen on dating apps dulls, more Americans are reporting bad experiences on them. Frustrated by bots, subscription costs and high effort-to-reward ratios, Gen Z is fleeing the apps in hope of real-life meet-cutes. Earlier this year, “Bustle” declared that dating apps are in their “flop era.”Not all of the apps are taking this backlash without a fight. On Tuesday, after months of internal shake-ups and stock market woes, Bumble took a shot at winning back hearts and minds with a redesign, which includes a break with the app’s requirement that women make the first move.A new feature, which…

Every major currency in the world has fallen against the U.S. dollar this year, an unusually broad shift with the potential for serious consequences across the global economy.Two-thirds of the roughly 150 currencies tracked by Bloomberg have weakened against the dollar, whose recent strength stems from a shift in expectations about when and by how much the Federal Reserve may cut its benchmark interest rate, which sits around a 20-year high.High Fed rates, a response to stubborn inflation, mean that American assets offer better returns than much of the world, and investors need dollars to buy them. In recent months,…

Meta, the American tech giant, is being investigated by European Union regulators for the spread of disinformation on its platforms Facebook and Instagram, poor oversight of deceptive advertisements and potential failure to protect the integrity of elections.On Tuesday, European Union officials said Meta did not appear to have sufficient safeguards in place to combat misleading advertisements, deepfakes and other deceptive information that is being maliciously spread online to amplify political divisions and influence elections.The announcement appears intended to pressure Meta to do more ahead of elections across all 27 E.U. countries this summer to elect new members of the European…

The StudyThe new study, conducted by researchers in Taiwan, compared data from two large data sets: the Taiwan National Student Fitness Tests, which measures student fitness performance in schools, and the National Insurance Research Databases, which records medical claims, diagnoses prescriptions and other medical information. The researchers did not have access to the students’ names but were able to use the anonymized data to compare the students’ physical fitness and mental health results.The risk of mental health disorder was weighted against three metrics for physical fitness: cardio fitness, as measured by a student’s time in an 800-meter run; muscle endurance,…