Author: NY TIMES

Amazon said on Monday that it was abandoning plans to buy iRobot, the maker of the self-driving Roomba vacuum, after regulators raised concerns the deal would hurt competition.The announcement is a rare admission of defeat by Amazon, which has in recent years acquired an eclectic mix of companies such as Whole Foods and MGM Studios, and is a sign of how the world’s largest tech companies are being forced to adjust their business practices, products and policies as a result of stiffening regulatory scrutiny globally, particularly in the European Union.In November, E.U. antitrust regulators warned Amazon that they might try…

Philips Respironics announced on Monday that it would halt sales of all of its breathing machines in the United States after reaching a settlement with the Food and Drug Administration over continuing problems with the devices.Millions of the company’s ventilators and CPAP machines, used to ease breathing at night, were recalled after reports that they blew bits of foam and potentially toxic gases into consumers’ airways.Under the settlement, Philips said it would have to meet a list of standards in a “multiyear” plan before it could resume business in the United States. The company said further details would be disclosed…

“Don’t think you know me,” Thom Yorke intones near the end of the Smile’s second studio album, “Wall of Eyes.” He adds, “Don’t think that I am everything you say.” With its new LP, the Smile makes itself increasingly elusive. It’s now a band intent on destabilizing structures and dissolving expectations.The Smile is still unmistakably a Radiohead spinoff. It’s the trio of Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, with the British jazz drummer Tom Skinner. Yorke’s tormented voice has stayed upfront, and the songwriting leans into Radiohead’s dissonances, odd meters and fully enveloping aura of anxiety.The Smile’s 2022 debut album,…

The brightly colored packaging is a slick mix of ombré pink and lime green. The nicotine inside comes wreathed in a “strawberry kiwi” flavor.Increasingly, plastic disposable vapes like this one are making their way into the hands of children, with one in five young people in Britain between the ages of 11 and 17 trying vaping last year, according to Action on Smoking and Health, an independent public health charity.Soon, they will be banned in Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on Monday, as he unveiled a package of measures to ban single-use vapes, restrict flavors, and regulate packaging and…

Back when Nikki Haley, the last woman standing in the race for the Republican nomination, began dating her now-husband, she took a look at him and asked him what his name was.Puzzled, he told her it was Bill, which she already knew.“You just don’t look like a Bill. What’s your whole name?” she replied, to which he answered, “William Michael.”“From that point on, I started calling him Michael, and all my friends did the same,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir, “Can’t Is Not an Option.”“Before we knew it, he was universally known as Michael,” she continued. “Everyone who knew…

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, is raising salaries and benefits for store managers as it looks for ways to retain them.Walmart said on Monday that managers of its U.S. stores would be eligible for grants of up to $20,000 in company stock every year. The stock will vest over a three-year period, with a percentage vested each quarter.The announcement came a few weeks after Walmart said it would increase the average salary for store managers to $128,000, up from $117,000. The big-box retailer also said bonuses for store managers could reach up to 200 percent of base salary, with…

Most post-nomination Oscar chatter focuses on surprises and snubs connected to the fiction nominees. But I’m a nonfiction nerd, so for me the documentaries are where it’s at, and in recent years, the picks have grown delightfully unpredictable. This year, two seeming slam dunks were left off the list: “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” and “American Symphony,” about the musician Jon Batiste. Both are artful, and their nominations had seemed assured because, at least in the past, well-made portraits tended to get eyeballs and thus votes.But here we are, in a strange new world. Biographical documentaries are still hugely…

The United States struck two Houthi anti-ship missiles in Yemen, the military’s Central Command said on Tuesday, resuming what U.S. officials said were short-notice attacks against the Iran-backed militia’s imminent threats to merchant vessels, as well as Navy ships in the Red Sea and nearby waters.The U.S. strikes — the ninth in two weeks — came a day after the United States and Britain carried out much larger military salvos against nine sites in Yemen controlled by the Houthis. Those strikes against multiple targets at each location hit radars, as well as drone and missile sites, and underground weapons storage…

A panel of three arbitrators for the top court in sports on Monday ruled that Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian Olympian whose positive doping test upended the figure skating competition at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, issued her with a four year ban.The punishment, announced by a three-member panel empowered by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, will be retroactive to Dec. 25, 2021. That is the date Valieva, who was 15 at the time, provided a tainted sample at a competition only months before the Olympics. The ban will end in 2025, just in time for her to…

Neither of them dated anyone else as they developed Preferabli together. She often traveled for work, staying in Airbnbs for months at a time, while he stayed in New York. When the coronavirus pandemic hit and airline travel was halted, Ms. Dillon became stranded in New York.“The world looked bleak with Covid, and I was scared,” she said. “I asked Stephen if I could move in with him. He said yes.”In late 2020, while strolling through Central Park, Ms. Dillon shared her worries that Preferabli might not survive the pandemic. But Mr. Dillon made her feel secure. “He said we…