Author: NY TIMES

Back in the 1980s, it seemed as if everyone with a spare quarter was playing the arcade game Donkey Kong, scooting up ramps and climbing ladders while avoiding barrels hurled by a giant ape.For most players, the video game provided a few minutes of excitement before inevitable defeat. But a handful of top players had the superhuman ability to rescue Pauline, the damsel in distress, over and over again, earning one of the high scores not just in their own arcade but in the whole world.Now a settlement has been reached in a long-running disagreement over disputed world records set…

Nancy E. Adler, a health psychologist whose work helped transform the public understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic status and physical health, died on Jan. 4 at her home in San Francisco. She was 77.The cause was pancreatic cancer, her husband, Arnold Milstein, said.Dr. Adler was instrumental in documenting the powerful role that education, income and self-perceived status in society play in predicting health and longevity.Today, the connection is well known — a truism among public health experts is that life expectancy is determined more by your ZIP code than your genetic code. But it was an obscure notion as…

Pitchfork, once a cultural bastion for music criticism, will be merged with the men’s magazine GQ, leading to layoffs within the online publication, according to a memo from Anna Wintour, the chief content officer of Condé Nast, their parent company.“This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance, and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” Ms. Wintour wrote in her memo, which was issued to the staff on Wednesday.Among the casualties of the merger was Puja Patel, the site’s editor…

When Iran launched a barrage of airstrikes this week into Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, it was not just showing off the reach and sophistication of some of its newest missiles but also staking a claim: This is a new era in which Iran can flex its muscles at will and, as an added benefit, bolster its credentials as an important arms supplier.In at least one of the attacks — a strike that Tehran claimed targeted the Islamic State terrorist group in Idlib, Syria — Iran appeared to make use of one of its longest-range and most advanced missiles, the Kheibar…

A private astronaut mission is scheduled to launch on Thursday to the International Space Station. But unlike on earlier such flights, none of the passengers are wealthy space tourists paying their own way to orbit.Instead, three nations — Italy, Sweden and Turkey — are taking advantage of new commercial possibilities to send astronauts from government space programs to the orbital outpost. For Turkey, it will be the country’s first astronaut.The private astronaut mission is the third for Axiom Space of Houston, which has been sending paying customers for two-week stays at the International Space Station. In 2019, NASA opened up…

TAMPA, Fla. – From the first day Todd Bowles and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered training camp, few outside the organization gave them much of a chance this season.Quarterback Baker Mayfield is the fourth team in 19 months to try to fill the void left by the recently retired Tom Brady. The roster is devoid of household names from the Buccaneers’ 2020 Super Bowl season, instead adding unproven youth at some key positions. Oddsmakers predict that Bowles could be one of the first NFL head coaches to be fired this season. The Buccaneers never had that championship feel, at least…

Just as the worlds of architecture and industrial design have played with novel color combinations in recent years, so has the luxury watch sector, with brands including ArtyA, Chronoswiss, Oris and Zenith capitalizing on color as a way to stand out in the crowded Swiss watch field.By using cutting-edge techniques and processes such as lasers and chemical alterations of materials, their watch parts not only display distinctive hues, but some change dramatically depending on light conditions and viewing angles.One of the most technically advanced techniques is atomic layer deposition (A.L.D.), which, at a company called Positive Coating, is carried out…

A topic that’s not getting a lot of attention Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have been speaking at length about artificial intelligence, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. election, climate change and more.But one topic dominating a lot of discussion among U.S. business leaders and policymakers has been largely missing from the official agenda: rising antisemitism after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Some executives are working to change that.Only one panel to discuss the topic is on the agenda out of the forum’s hundreds of presentations.The panelists at the session this afternoon include Doug…

On the volcanic slopes of Hawaii’s Big Island, hundreds of farmers in the Kona region produce one of the most expensive coffees in the world.Those farmers recently won a series of settlements — totaling more than $41 million — after a nearly five-year legal battle with distributors and retailers that were accused of using the Kona name in a misleading way.The class-action lawsuit, aided by a novel chemical analysis of coffee from Hawaii and around the world, prompted some companies to include the percentage of authentic Kona beans on product labels. The plaintiffs said they hoped the hefty settlements —…

Florida’s plan to save money by importing medications from Canada, authorized this month by the Food and Drug Administration, has renewed attention on the cost of prescription drugs in the United States.Research has consistently found that drug prices in America are significantly higher than those in other wealthy countries. In 2018, they were nearly double those in France and Britain, even when accounting for the discounts that can substantially reduce how much American health plans and employers pay.“The U.S. market is the bank for pharmaceutical companies,” said Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School. “There’s a…