Author: NY TIMES

It wasn’t until after college that Kendra Baker began to consider becoming a nun. She had been raised a Roman Catholic, and after her father fell from the roof of their home, suffering life-threatening injuries, her family called a priest to come and pray with them. A few hours later, her father opened his eyes.“He’s relearned to walk, talk, drive — he can eat normally,” Ms. Baker, 25, said. “And doctors had told us to prepare for a funeral.”That wasn’t the only experience that nudged Ms. Baker, who, after graduating from Western Washington University in 2021, moved to Seattle and…

NASA will be renting some cool wheels to drive around the moon.Space agency officials announced on Wednesday that they have hired three companies to come up with preliminary designs for vehicles to take NASA astronauts around the lunar south polar region in the coming years. After the astronauts return to Earth, these vehicles would be able to self-drive around as robotic explorers, similar to NASA’s rovers on Mars.The self-driving capability would also allow the vehicle to meet the next astronaut mission at a different location.“Where it will go, there are no roads,” Jacob Bleacher, the chief exploration scientist at NASA,…

In 1817, James Parkinson expressed a hope about the disease that is named after him. He thought that at some point there would be a discovery and “the progress of the disease may be stopped.”Now, nearly 200 years since Parkinson expressed his hope, and after four decades of unsuccessful clinical trials, a group of French researchers reports the first glimmer of success — a modest slowing of the disease in a one-year study.And the drug they used? A so-called GLP-1 receptor agonist, similar to the wildly popular drugs Ozempic, for diabetes, and Wegovy, for obesity.As many as half a million…

This week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Beyoncé’s new album, “Cowboy Carter,” and how it faces the genre battle head-on by playing with decades of country and rock signifiers, plus how the conversation about its specifics can obscure the conversation about its qualityThe new album by Future & Metro Boomin, “We Don’t Trust You,” which marks a return to form for Future and includes a verse from Kendrick Lamar (and some lyrics from the host) seemingly aimed at Drake, potentially reigniting a hip-hop cold warSongs…

Democrats in Congress, increasingly concerned about how Israel is waging war in Gaza, are weighing whether to use their leverage over weapons sales to register objections to the civilian death toll and ratchet up pressure on President Biden to place conditions on American backing for the military offensive.While the top Republicans on the congressional foreign affairs committees have signed off on a State Department plan to sell $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets to Israel, according to several people familiar with the consultation, the deal remains in limbo. That strongly suggests that the top two Democrats on the Senate…

Leaning for centuries at a worrisome tilt, the Garisenda Tower in Bologna has endured insults and trauma. Dickens called it “sufficiently unsightly,” if extraordinary, while Goethe said it was “a spectacle that disgusts.” And then there were the earthquakes, the Allied bombing raids of the city during World War II and urbanization that doomed other towers.The Garisenda has stood through it all, a beloved symbol of this medieval city, a reminder of a past when important families or communities would erect towers to remind others of their status, and for defense.But now, the Garisenda is in trouble.After sensors attached to…

NBA players are always well-received by fans, whether at home or on the road. It comes with the job.But this season, the sky is getting darker and darker.The recent surge in legalized gambling in every professional league and across college sports has impacted American sports in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. But amid the potential benefits of hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue for the NBA and other leagues, there’s also something new and ominous: the invective directed at players and coaches simply because of fans’ bets.deeperTrotter: Will society be the biggest loser as…

The expression “to give someone their flowers” means to praise a person and show them care.Beyoncé has taken that literally.The pop superstar recently sent elaborate all-white floral arrangements, along with personalized notes — some handwritten — to artists she admires, or who she says have inspired her work, including Jack White, SZA and K. Michelle.As the artists have shared photos of the bouquets on social media, Beyoncé’s fans have shared their excitement and expressed their jealousy as they parsed the list of recipients for clues about what her next musical project might be.Beyoncé has been known to send surprise, and…

When Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen traveled to Beijing last summer, her mission was to re-establish a dialogue between the world’s largest economies and stabilize a relationship that appeared to have reached rock bottom.The United States and China created formal economic working groups to keep the conversation going. Months later, Ms. Yellen met with her Chinese counterparts in San Francisco and Morocco. And the Treasury secretary’s consumption of a dish made with psychedelic “magic” mushrooms at a Yunnan-style restaurant in Beijing sparked something of a culinary craze in China, where Ms. Yellen is popular for being an acclaimed economist.But despite…

The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine.It’s a messy patchwork that has been assembled over decades, and is held together with the digital equivalent of Scotch tape and bubble gum. Much of it relies on open-source software that is thanklessly maintained by a small army of volunteer programmers who fix the bugs, patch the holes and ensure the whole rickety contraption, which is responsible for trillions of dollars in global G.D.P., keeps chugging along.Last week, one of those programmers may have saved the internet from huge trouble.His name…