Author: Press Room

Until 2020, few Americans needed to think about how viruses spread or how the human immune system works. The pandemic offered a painful crash course. Sometimes, it seemed that the science was evolving as quickly as the virus itself.So The New York Times asked experts to revisit the nightmare. Of the most significant public health measures introduced during Covid, which have held up scientifically, and which turned out to be wrongheaded?The question is particularly important now, because pandemics that could upend American lives are inevitable. One candidate has already surfaced: bird flu.Perhaps the biggest lesson learned, several experts said, is…

Herman Graf, a major and intrepid figure in independent publishing who sold copies of Henry Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” to bookstores after it was embroiled in a legal fight over whether it was obscene, died on Feb. 27 at his home in Flushing, Queens. He was 91.His nephew Paul Lichter said the cause was Parkinson’s disease.Among Mr. Graf’s many other accomplishments in publishing, he helped turn John Kennedy Toole’s satirical novel, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” into a best seller long after the author’s death.A raconteur with a booming voice, Mr. Graf was a bibliophile who loved the works of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Financier Crispin Odey made an unexpected visit to the court where former Barclays boss Jes Staley is challenging the UK financial regulator over allegations he downplayed ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Odey, who faces his own enforcement action from the UK Financial Conduct Authority in a separate investigation, briefly entered the courtroom in London after the conclusion of proceedings on Thursday and spoke to a lawyer for Staley.Odey, who founded the hedge fund Odey Asset Management, stands accused by women…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Goldman Sachs collectively awarded four of its top executives a 30 per cent pay raise for their work in 2024, far greater than the bank’s overall workforce, and gave its president John Waldron personal use of the company’s private plane.In its proxy filing released on Friday, Goldman disclosed Waldron earned $38mn for 2024, finance chief Denis Coleman received $27mn and general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler’s pay was $22.5mn. The Wall Street bank in January said last year’s pay for chief executive David Solomon…

Sean “Diddy” Combs pleaded not guilty to the newest version of the government’s allegations against the rapper during a Friday court hearing.The new indictment against Diddy lengthened the timeline of his alleged sex-trafficking and racketeering behavior and added two more victims. The prosecution also accused the “Last Night” rapper of forcing employees to work long hours by threatening them with physical or reputational harm and forcing an employee to engage in a sexual encounter with the musician.Diddy appeared in court Friday with noticeably grayer hair. The rapper wore a tan jumpsuit and was supported by his family – his mother…

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.From the time Beulah Henry was a child in the late 19th century, she dreamed of ways to make life easier. That impulse would eventually drive her to secure dozens of patents and would earn her a nickname: Lady Edison.When she died in the early 1970s, she held far more patents than any other woman, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and in 2006 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for…

An airstrike killed a senior Islamic State leader believed to be the head of the group in Iraq and Syria on Friday, in a joint Iraqi and U.S. operation using intelligence from both countries, Iraq’s prime minister said. A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, confirmed the strike and said that special operations forces from both countries were in Anbar Province, in Iraq, gathering material from the strike site. The Islamic State leader, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay’i, who was also known as Abu Khadija, was “one of the most dangerous terrorists in the…

U.S. consumer sentiment swooned in March to a more than two-year low, with a preliminary gauge released by the University of Michigan proving far weaker than economists had expected.The preliminary results show the index fell to 57.9, compared with 64.7 a month ago, according to the Friday report. The reading marks the lowest level since November of 2022, researchers that compile the data said. Economists had expected consumer confidence to hold relatively steady, according to financial-data company FactSet. The results are “a reflection of the Great Uncertainty around the economic policies put forward by the Trump administration,” commented Carl Weinberg at High Frequency…

The federal government took aim on Friday at a small project that helps students seeking business school degrees, along with 45 graduate programs across the country involved with it, as part of a Trump administration promise to dismantle diversity programs.The target is a program called the Ph.D. Project, and its stated mission is to promote the racial diversity of professors in the nation’s business schools, with the idea of “enriching education for all.”The schools named in the investigation include Ivy League institutions like Yale and Cornell and public universities like Ohio State and Arizona State. The Ph.D. project, based in…

The Nova Scotia government’s plan to double a deed transfer tax for non-resident homebuyers needs to be reconsidered, says the association for the province’s Realtors. Increasing the tax would effectively add a “tariff” on Canadian buyers at a time when the country is trying to reduce internal trade barriers, says Suzanne Gravel, who will assume the presidency of the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors at the end of March.The 2025-26 provincial budget would increase the tax to 10 per cent from five per cent as of April 1, with officials estimating the increase would raise an additional $13 million.“Nova Scotia has just shut the door” on out-of-province buyers, Gravel said in an interview Friday.“If they want to buy a cottage property … they are going to think twice about where they are going to go, if not financially…