Author: NY TIMES

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Dr. Martin A. Makary as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health, installing two critics of the medical establishment to influential posts amid a Trump administration campaign to cut spending at health agencies.In a 56-to-44 vote, Dr. Makary was confirmed to lead an agency with broad regulatory authority over products including drugs and vaccines, putting him at the center of debates about the safety of the abortion pill and a wide range of inoculations.Dr. Bhattacharya’s confirmation — 53 to 47, on a party-line…

For the Bronx crew ESG, another group formed by sisters — Renee Scroggins and her younger siblings Valerie, Deborah and Marie, along with a friend, Tito Libran — Lincoln Center was the far-off home of the New York Philharmonic, watched on PBS. Renee Scroggins, ESG’s frontwoman, said the show next month will be the first time she has set foot in the space. (ESG has performed at Carnegie Hall, and in arenas like Barclays Center, opening for Robyn, one of the many acts that followed in its sonic footprints.)ESG — it stands for emerald, silver and gold — was born…

The Israeli police questioned a Palestinian director of an Oscar-winning documentary on Tuesday, according to the authorities and his lawyer, after witnesses reported that Israeli settlers attacked him near his home in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.The police were holding Hamdan Ballal, 37, one of the directors of the film, “No Other Land,” and two other Palestinians on suspicion of hurling stones at Israeli vehicles and injuring a settler — accusations they all deny, according to Leah Tsemel, a lawyer representing the detainees.One settler, a minor, was also detained, but he was released for medical treatment and would be questioned later,…

After 45 years at Cambridge Typewriter Company, Tom Furrier is retiring and closing the shop.

Eric Schmieman worked for 15 years on the modern engineering equivalent of the Great Pyramid — building a giant protective shield for a damaged reactor at Chernobyl that would protect the world from further fallout from the worst ever nuclear disaster.The steel shell, slid into place over Reactor No. 4 on railroad tracks in 2016, is the world’s largest movable structure. It is as tall as a football field and weighs almost 40,000 tons. More than 45 countries and organizations spent almost $1.7 billion building it.“We did a lot of safety analysis, considering a lot of bad things that could…

On average, about one goal per 30 corners. However, success rates tend to rise dramatically when goalkeepers and their entire defense stand outside their six-yard box.It was an extraordinary scene in the UEFA quarterfinals in Dortmund on Sunday. Germany’s Jamal Musiala turned the ball into an empty net against an Italian team, behaving like they thought the game would stop putting the report into the place where everything went wrong in the first half.Joshua Kimmich had other ideas, as well as a combination of his excellent agile thinking and Musiala’s goal hanging – combined with a ball boy who was…

Increased federal spending in recent years has helped to improve U.S. ports, roads, parks, public transit and levees, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers.But that progress could stagnate if those investments, some of which were put on hold after President Trump took office in January, aren’t sustained.Overall, the group gave the nation’s infrastructure a C grade, a mediocre rating but the best the country has received since the group’s first report card in 1998. Most infrastructure, including aviation, waterways and schools, earned a C or D grade; ports and rail did better.…

For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them.The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative A.I., which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs.A.I. could go “quite wrong,” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, testified in Congress in May 2023. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”But since President Trump’s election, tech leaders and their companies have changed…

President Trump has selected Susan Monarez, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency permanently.The president withdrew his first nominee, Dr. Dave Weldon, just hours before his confirmation hearing. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Monarez, an infectious-disease researcher, will be the first nonphysician to lead the agency in more than 50 years.“Americans have lost confidence in the C.D.C. due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement,” the president wrote on Truth Social, adding that Dr. Monarez would work with the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to address the chronic disease epidemic and…

Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78.His son Jazz Callner said the cause was not yet known.Over a half-century, Mr. Callner worked with some of the biggest names in popular culture, including Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, Robin Williams, George Carlin, the Rolling Stones and Chris Rock.Mr. Callner, who preferred to stay in the background but was far from shy,…