Author: NY TIMES

Patti Sietz-Honig, a video editor at Fox 5 in New York, filed a complaint in 2022. The cost of seeing a specialist for chronic back pain had spiked, and she faced roughly $60,000 in bills.Ms. Sietz-Honig pressed for updates about her complaint and sent articles critical of MultiPlan from Capitol Forum, a site focused on antitrust and regulatory news. Last March, the agency emailed her that her employer and her insurer, Aetna, had agreed to a “temporary exception” and made additional payments.“Unfortunately,” the agency wrote, the law “does not prohibit the use of third-party vendors” to calculate payments.Meanwhile, her longtime…

The Metropolitan Opera premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” on Sept. 27, 2021, was a momentous event. Doubly so: “Fire” was the company’s first staged opera after an 18-month pandemic closure, and it was, after 138 years, its first work by a Black composer.The opera, with a score by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, took on some of the grandeur and excitement of that moment. The raucous fraternity step dance that opens the third act brought down the house.That step dance still stopped the show on Monday evening, when “Fire” returned to the Met. Two…

United Nations workers and Gazan health officials returned to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday to begin burying the unidentified remains of scores of people who died there during a 12-day Israeli raid on the complex in March.The raid pitted Israeli soldiers against Gazan gunmen and drew international condemnation, as did an earlier incursion into the hospital by Israeli forces in November.But the battle in March reduced what was once the Gaza Strip’s largest health care facility to ruins. On Monday it was a scene of shattered concrete, buildings stripped of their facades, overturned cars and a half-crushed ambulance.…

For just over a week, Mt. Etna, one of Europe’s most active volcanoes, has been spewing circular, mostly white smoke rings into the skies over Sicily.It’s not the first time Mt. Etna has enchanted onlookers with its puffing (it’s been dubbed the Gandalf of volcanoes, after the pipe-puffing wizard in “Lord of the Rings.”) But experts there say this month Etna “has broken all previous records,” with the frequency of the rings, according to Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, who posted about the phenomenon on Facebook.The rings, known as volcanic vortex…

CLEVELAND — As Dawn Staley stood in front of her team during a meeting the night before the national championship game, she took a swig of water and started coughing.”Coach, are you going to cry?” a player called from the back of the room.”No,” she said, then paused. “But if we win, I’ll probably be on Sunday.”The team members laughed, but the assistants heard the sincerity of the statement. They’ve seen the burden Staley has shouldered this year as she adjusts to a younger, looser team. Teams that sometimes don’t respond to text messages or are late for meetings. This…

There will be all manner of watchmaking stories at the Watches and Wonders trade show this week — from heritage and throwback narratives to female-led ones — but HYT is hoping to add a comeback chapter.Known for its disruptive timekeeping technology that mixes liquid and mechanics, HYT — for Hydro Mechanical Horologists — burst onto the scene in 2012. Orders of more than 21 million Swiss francs, or $23.3 million, were quickly placed, but then came years of quality issues before a short-lived revival, followed by a bankruptcy in 2021.A second rebirth was equally brief, scuppered by a newly appointed…

President Biden has intensified efforts to shield American industries from foreign competition in an election year, as he courts blue-collar workers and attempts to avoid being outflanked on trade by his Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump.The moves have strained Mr. Biden’s relationships with international allies and rivals alike, drawing charges of protectionism from diplomats and some economists, including top Chinese officials during Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s recent trip to Beijing.But the measures have cheered labor unions, environmental groups and other key members of Mr. Biden’s political support base, particularly in the swing states of the industrial Midwest.Mr.…

Zwickau, a city in Germany’s east, may not be as famous as Detroit, but its economy has revolved around internal combustion engines since August Horch established Audi here at the beginning of the 20th century.So when Volkswagen announced in 2018 that it would convert its Zwickau factory, the largest private employer in the area, to manufacture nothing but electric vehicles, it was a big deal.“A lot of people were skeptical,” said Michael Fuchs, who has worked at the factory for more than a quarter century. They wondered, “What’s going to happen?” he said.Volkswagen shut down assembly lines churning out its…

New Yorkers, beware: If you come across a bird or animal that is sick, dead or behaving strangely, keep yourself and your pets at a safe distance. The bird flu virus, H5N1, is present in at least some small fraction of New York City birds, according to a new study.The finding is not entirely surprising, given that H5N1 has now been shown to affect migratory birds, a wide range of wild animals, poultry and, as of last month, dairy cows. Still, its discovery in the city is an unpleasant reminder that urban spaces are not exempt.People generally associate zoonotic diseases…

And when the Bayerische Staatsorchester, the house’s pit orchestra, performed at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland last year, Jurowski didn’t stop climate change protesters who stormed the stage during a Bruckner symphony. After a brief disruption, he told the audience that he had made a deal with them: They could speak their minds, then remain quiet for the rest of the concert. When audience members tried to shout down the protesters, Jurowski gestured for them to be respectful.He later exchanged emails with the two protesters, from Renovate Switzerland, sharing his worries about the mounting crises of the world. But, he…