Monday, October 7
N.F.L. Week 2 Predictions: Our Picks Against the Spread
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Sports

N.F.L. Week 2 Predictions: Our Picks Against the Spread

Las Vegas Raiders at Buffalo Bills, 1 p.m., CBSLine: Bills -9.5 | Total: 47Four careless turnovers from Josh Allen doomed the Bills (0-1) against the Jets’ formidable defense. He can rebound against the Raiders (1-0), who face uncertainty over the playing status of two key contributors. Defensive lineman Chandler Jones was away from the team last week amid a conflict with staff that trickled out in a since-deleted social media rant, and it is unclear if he will play this week. The team’s No. 2 receiver, Jakobi Meyers, entered the concussion protocol after he was leveled on the game-ending drive against the Broncos and could be out this Sunday. If Allen is more precise and varies his downfield looks to Stefon Diggs, the Bills could run away with this one. Pick: Bills -9.5Los Angeles Charger...
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Meet the Man Making Big Banks Tremble
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Economy

Meet the Man Making Big Banks Tremble

Yelling at Michael Barr, the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, has never been particularly effective, his friends and co-workers will tell you. That hasn’t stopped America’s biggest banks, their lobbying groups and even his own colleagues, who have reacted to his proposal to tighten and expand oversight of the nation’s large lenders with a mix of incredulity and outrage.“There is no justification for significant increases in capital at the largest U.S. banks,” Kevin Fromer, the president of the Financial Services Forum, said in a statement after regulators released the draft rules spearheaded by Mr. Barr. The proposal would push up the amount of easy-access money that banks need to have at the ready, potentially cutting into their profits.Even before its release, rumors of what the ...
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MDMA Therapy for PTSD Inches Closer to U.S. Approval
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Health

MDMA Therapy for PTSD Inches Closer to U.S. Approval

MDMA-assisted therapy seems to be effective in reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study published on Thursday.The research is the final trial conducted by MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, a company that is developing prescription psychedelics. It plans to submit the results to the Food and Drug Administration as part of an application for approval to market MDMA, the psychedelic drug, as a treatment for PTSD, when paired with talk therapy.If approved, “MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first novel treatment for PTSD in over two decades,” said Berra Yazar-Klosinski, the senior author of the study, which was published in Nature Medicine, and the chief scientific officer at the company. “PTSD patients can feel some hope.”PTSD affects about 5 percent of the ad...
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A Family Who Survived Morocco’s Earthquake Feel Blessed By New Life
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
News

A Family Who Survived Morocco’s Earthquake Feel Blessed By New Life

Essaadia Boukdir stumbled through a valley of death in the throes of labor. Her husband, Brahim Bel Haj, held her up on one side. A cousin supported her on the other.She worried her baby would die, as so many of her neighbors had only two days earlier, when an earthquake struck high up in a valley on the Atlas Mountains on Friday, cracking concrete, hurling giant boulders down the rocky slopes and burying people in their mud-brick and rock homes.The earthquake, the most powerful to strike Morocco in more than a century, killed more than 2,900 people, most of them in the small villages scattered in mountains near the southwestern city of Marrakesh.The valley where Ms. Boukdir lives, in the more distant province of Taroudant, is about 50 miles from the epicenter but reachable only by traveli...
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How to Navigate Apple’s Shift From Lightning to USB-C
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Technology

How to Navigate Apple’s Shift From Lightning to USB-C

The iPhone 15 (technically, the 17th iteration of the iconic Apple phone) has arrived with a big change that is sure to annoy many of us. Eventually, however, we’ll breathe a sigh of relief.Allow me to unpack that. To comply with recent European regulations, the iPhone 15, unveiled Tuesday, will abandon the Lightning connector that has been the method for charging iPhones for 11 years. In its place will be a different oval-shaped connector: USB-C.For the average tech user, change isn’t fun. This all means that when Apple customers buy their next iPhones, they will no longer be able to plug in all the Lightning accessories they have collected, such as charging cables, speaker docks and earbuds. They will have to replace those with new products that use USB-C connectors to plug into the new ...
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Women’s World Cup Final: Spain Beats England to Win Its First World Cup
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Sports

Women’s World Cup Final: Spain Beats England to Win Its First World Cup

Spain should not have been in contention to win the World Cup. It did not make any sense. Its finest players spent most of the last year on strike. A dozen of them were not invited to the tournament as a consequence. Those that are here are part of a squad held together by an uneasy truce, working under a coach who can count on the loyalty — at best — of a relatively small fraction of his team. These are not the circumstances in which success is forged. And yet, and yet: Spain is champion of the world, testament to an enduring truth of soccer, of sports. Talent can conquer absolutely anything. It can even take a team, one that had prepared for this World Cup in arguably the worst possible way, to the biggest game of all, the grandest stage, and then sweep it past England, the European c...
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U.A.W. Prepares for Partial Strike Against Detroit Automakers on Friday
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Economy

U.A.W. Prepares for Partial Strike Against Detroit Automakers on Friday

Barely 24 hours before the contract deadline, the United Auto Workers leader said Wednesday that his members were prepared for a strike against the three Detroit automakers — first at a limited number of factories, with the walkout expanding if talks remain bogged down.The U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, also ruled out any extension of the existing four-year contracts with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis after they expire on Thursday night. “September 14 is a deadline, not a reference point,” he declared in an address to union members on Facebook Live.He said the initial strike locations would be “limited and targeted,” and would be communicated to members on Thursday night ahead of a Friday walkout.This tactic — a departure from the union’s usual strategy of staging an all-out str...
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C.D.C. Recommends New Covid Vaccines for All Americans
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Health

C.D.C. Recommends New Covid Vaccines for All Americans

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Tuesday that all Americans 6 months and older receive at least one dose of the latest Covid shots, the last of a trifecta of vaccines intended to prevent another surge in respiratory infections this fall and winter.The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved reformulated Covid vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. On Tuesday, scientific advisers to the C.D.C. reviewed the data and voted to recommend the shots. Large pharmacies will likely have the new vaccines available later this week.Vaccines against flu and the respiratory syncytial virus are already on the shelves. The flu vaccine is recommended for everyone aged 6 months and older, and the R.S.V. vaccine for everyone 60 and older, in consultation with a health ca...
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Opinion | People Don’t Want to Be Teachers Anymore. Can You Blame Them?
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
News

Opinion | People Don’t Want to Be Teachers Anymore. Can You Blame Them?

The demoralization of today’s teachers is a problem that may be followed by an even more damaging systemic issue: Fewer college and university students want to become teachers, and the new teacher pipeline is drying up.“The current state of the teaching profession is at or near its lowest levels in 50 years,” according to a working paper published in November by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. In it, Matthew Kraft of Brown and Melissa Arnold Lyon of the University at Albany painted a dire picture of the profession:Perceptions of teacher prestige have fallen between 20 percent and 47 percent in the last decade to be at or near the lowest levels recorded over the last half century. Interest in the teaching profession among high school seniors and college freshm...
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Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg to Discuss AI with Lawmakers in Washington
14Sep Avatar photoBy Austin B. PowerNo Comments
Technology

Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg to Discuss AI with Lawmakers in Washington

Elon Musk warned of civilizational risks posed by artificial intelligence. Sundar Pichai of Google highlighted the technology’s potential to solve health and energy problems. And Mark Zuckerberg of Meta stressed the importance of open and transparent A.I. systems.The tech titans held forth on Wednesday in a three-hour meeting with lawmakers in Washington about A.I. and future regulations. The gathering, known as the A.I. Insight Forum, was part of a crash course for Congress on the technology and organized by the Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.The meeting — also attended by Bill Gates, a founder of Microsoft; Sam Altman of OpenAI; Satya Nadella of Microsoft; and Jensen Huang of Nvidia — was a rare congregation of more than a dozen top tech executives in the same room. I...
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