Author: NY TIMES

The study found that deaths linked to alcohol in the United States increased in five years by 40,000. The toll is stark: About 178,000 people died in 2021 from excessive drinking, compared with 138,000 in 2016. During that period, the deaths rose by 27 percent among men and 35 percent among women.Dr. Siegel attributed the surge possibly to people’s high stress levels during the pandemic alongside increased home-delivery services offered by the beverage industry. “Anytime you make something easier to acquire, you see an increase in use in response,” he said.What’s missing: The data are limited.Researchers concluded that their estimates…

The best theatrical songwriting barely requires a theater. Which is a good thing when so many shows close so quickly.Of the 16 musicals that opened on Broadway in 2023, only four are still running. That’s live theater, perpetually dying.Yet not entirely. Like loved ones who leave behind scrapbooks or tchotchkes, many shows leave souvenirs of themselves in the form of cast albums. And sometimes, shorn of annoying context, they’re better than what was once seen onstage.Below, my highly subjective ranking of the nine 2023 musicals that released cast albums. (One more — “Gutenberg! The Musical!” — is expected, this spring.)…

As Iran prepares for a parliamentary election on Friday, calls to boycott the vote are turning it into a test of legitimacy for the ruling clerics amid widespread discontent and anger at the government.A separate election on Friday will also decide the membership of an obscure, 88-member clerical body called the Assembly of Experts, which selects and advises the country’s supreme leader, who has the last word on all key state matters. While it normally operates behind the scenes, the assembly has the all-important task of choosing a successor to the current, 84-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has…

If everything had gone to plan, Britain’s opposition Labour Party, which is riding high in opinion polls, would be confident of sweeping to victory on Thursday in a special election (known as a by-election in Britain) for the parliamentary district of Rochdale, north of Manchester.Instead, the contest has become a source of acute embarrassment to the party, and whoever comes out on top when results are announced early Friday morning won’t represent Labour.Earlier this month the party had to disown its candidate over antisemitic remarks he made, but it was too late to replace him on the ballot. In the…

Perhaps you, too, know the notorious “Madame X”?She of the aquiline profile, alabaster skin and plunging black neckline has recently been transported to Tate Britain, in London, for the second stop of “Sargent and Fashion” (through July 7), which debuted at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, last fall. The retrospective brings together over 50 works that highlight the portraitist’s interest in how the clothes make the man, or woman.In 1882, John Singer Sargent and his subject Virginie Amélie Gautreau were both 20-something Americans in Paris, outsiders eager to break into the city’s rarefied circles and learn the unspoken rules…

The U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic has been stronger and more durable than many experts had expected, and a rebound in immigration is a big reason.A resumption in visa processing in 2021 and 2022 jump-started employment, allowing foreign-born workers to fill some holes in the labor force that persisted across industries and locations after the pandemic shutdowns. Immigrants also address a longer-term need: replenishing the work force, a key to meeting labor demands as birthrates decline and older people retire.Net migration in the year that ended July 1, 2023, reached the highest level since 2017. The foreign-born now make…

West Texas, from the oil rigs of the Permian Basin to the wind turbines twirling above the High Plains, has long been a magnet for companies seeking fortunes in energy.Now, those arid ranch lands are offering a new moneymaking opportunity: data centers.Lancium, an energy and data center management firm setting up shop in Fort Stockton and Abilene, is one of many companies around the country betting that building data centers close to generating sites will allow them to tap into underused clean power.“It’s a land grab,” said Lancium’s president, Ali Fenn.In the past, companies built data centers close to internet…

Why It Matters: Vaccines often arrive too late to stamp out outbreaks.Public health response to outbreaks often relies heavily on vaccines and treatments, but that underestimates the importance of other measures, said Miguel Paredes, lead author of the new study and an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.Although the Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine for mpox in 2019, getting enough doses produced and into arms proved challenging for many months after the outbreak began. Vaccines for new pathogens are likely to take even longer.The new analysis suggests an alternative. Alerting high-risk communities allowed individuals to…

In Noora Niasari’s deeply felt drama “Shayda,” an Iranian mother finds sanctuary in culture and community while seeking liberation from an abusive marriage. The film unfolds during Nowruz, a regenerative Persian holiday set on the spring equinox. But in Australia, where Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and her young daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) are temporarily residing in a women’s shelter, Nowruz falls in autumn. Like a deciduous tree, Shayda can only access renewal by shedding the life she once knew.In her first narrative feature, Niasari, who based the story in part on her own experiences, demonstrates an astounding control of pacing…

The death toll in Gaza passed a somber milestone on Thursday as the local health ministry reported that more than 30,000 people had been killed in the war since Oct. 7.The number of deaths since Israel launched its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza had already surpassed the tolls of any previous Arab conflict with Israel when it rose above 20,000 in December. Many experts say the official toll is very likely an undercount, given the difficulty of accurately tallying deaths amid unrelenting fighting, communications disruptions, a collapsing medical system and people still believed to be under rubble.Still, the reported…