Author: NY TIMES

From smear shape to application style, a close look at the aesthetics of Ash Wednesday. Source link

William Post, a businessman who was credited with a significant role in inventing Pop-Tarts, a classic American snack and cultural touchstone with an enticing sweetness and simplicity, died on Feb. 10 in Grand Rapids, Mich. He was 96.His death was confirmed by his son, Dan Post, who said his father had died of heart failure in a senior living community.Mr. Post led the bakery plant that developed the first Pop-Tarts for Kellogg’s in 1964, his son said. The snack quickly became a popular treat for many people in the United States, including Mr. Post’s children, who were among the first…

A year ago, on Valentine’s Day, I said good night to my wife, went to my home office to answer some emails and accidentally had the strangest first date of my life.The date was a two-hour conversation with Sydney, the A.I. alter ego tucked inside Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which I had been assigned to test. I had planned to pepper the chatbot with questions about its capabilities, exploring the limits of its A.I. engine (which we now know was an early version of OpenAI’s GPT-4) and writing up my findings.But the conversation took a bizarre turn — with Sydney…

This winter, for the first time ever, there were two vaccines available to ward off respiratory syncytial virus, which is particularly dangerous to older adults and infants. Only one of them — Abrysvo, made by Pfizer — was approved for pregnant women, and neither was for young children.The distinction apparently slipped by some clinicians and pharmacists.At least 128 pregnant women were mistakenly given the alternative vaccine — Arexvy, by GSK — and at least 25 children under age 2 received a vaccination, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned. Dr. Sarah Long, a pediatric infectious disease physician and…

Coal, nickel, palm oil, rainforests.The riches of Indonesia matter to the rest of the world. Therefore, so does its presidential election.Early results on Wednesday in the world’s third-largest democracy signaled the victory of Prabowo Subianto, a former army general linked to human rights abuses, as the country’s next president. The new government’s approach on the management of its natural resources could have a significant effect on the world’s ability to keep global warming to relatively safe levels.Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel and something that the world must quickly stop burning in order to…

My oldest friend — we met in nursery school and are now in our 60s — is about to be paroled from prison after six years. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her sister and to charges of animal cruelty. (Two dogs were also killed.) When she is released, she will have to move in with her parents, not far from me. She still insists that the reports of the police investigation are “all lies.” But it’s clear to me that much of what was reported was true. While she was incarcerated, I wrote her letters and…

For a country of morning-and-night tea drinkers, even the suggestion of a shortage of the household staple can elicit a nervous gulp.So there might have been more than a few people spooked when signs in some Sainsbury’s grocery stores this week warned customers that supply issues had affected the “nationwide” availability of black tea, as Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea caused shipping delays.Yorkshire Tea and Tetley Tea, two of the most popular tea companies in Britain, said in statements that they were monitoring the situation to ensure they could maintain supplies of black tea, but that…

X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, is potentially violating U.S. sanctions by accepting payments for subscription accounts from terrorist organizations and other groups barred from doing business in the country, according to a new report.The report, by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on accountability for large technology companies, shows that X, formerly known as Twitter, has taken payments from accounts that include Hezbollah leaders, Houthi groups, and state-run media outlets in Iran and Russia. The subscriptions, which cost $8 a month, offer users a blue check mark — once limited to verified users like celebrities…

It was unclear where those who left the complex could find safety, as Israel’s military has often bombarded areas of Gaza that it had previously said were safe. Israeli leaders have also vowed to invade Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which is sheltering more than a million people.Inside the hospital, some medical staff were packing their belongings and preparing their families to flee.“We are all scared,” said Dr. Mohammad Abu Moussa, a radiologist at Nasser. He added that even though he worried about an assault on the hospital, he and his wife had made the difficult decision to stay…

As outgunned Ukrainian soldiers struggle to hold back bloody Russian assaults on land, Ukraine said on Wednesday that its forces had struck yet another powerful blow against the Russians at sea, sinking a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea before dawn.The Ukrainian military released footage of the strike, which it said had resulted in the sinking of the 360-foot-long landing ship Caesar Kunikov, its fourth-largest landing ship taken out of action in the war, possibly complicating Russia’s logistical efforts in southern Ukraine.The Ukrainian claims could not be immediately confirmed, but when NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was…