When a Spouse Goes to the Nursing Home
Health

When a Spouse Goes to the Nursing Home

Even as the signals of approaching dementia became impossible to ignore, Joseph Drolet dreaded the prospect of moving his partner into a long-term care facility.Mr. Drolet, 79, and his beloved Rebecca, 71, both retired lawyers and prosecutors in Atlanta, had been a couple for 33 years, though they retained separate homes. In 2019, she began getting lost while driving, mishandling her finances and struggling with the television remote. The diagnosis — Alzheimer’s disease — came in 2021.Over time, Mr. Drolet moved Rebecca (whose surname he asked to withhold to protect her privacy) into his home. But serving as her round-the-clock caregiver, as she needed help with every daily task, became exhausting and untenable. Rebecca began wandering their neighborhood and “getting dressed in the middle ...
​​NHL player poll: Why 78 percent say there should be no neck-guard mandate
Sports

​​NHL player poll: Why 78 percent say there should be no neck-guard mandate

Mandatory neck guards are coming to youth hockey in the United States.Already required in Canada and many other countries, USA Hockey, which governs the sport at the amateur level in the U.S., has long held its line at “recommending” laceration protection — namely neck guards, but also cut-resistant socks, sleeves and undergarments.The decision was announced Sunday and will go into effect on Aug. 1, about nine months after the issue was thrust into the spotlight when former NHL player Adam Johnson died of a skate cut to the neck during a game in England.More NHLers have begun to wear neck protection in the months since, either regularly or to try to find something comfortable.“You’re seeing more and more of it,” one player told The Athletic. “I wear the shirt for my wrists. I think you’re ...
Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine
Technology

Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine

On a sweltering July evening, the din from thousands of computers mining for Bitcoins pierced the night. Nearby, Matt Brown, a member of the Arkansas legislature, monitored the noise alongside a local magistrate.As the two men investigated complaints about the operation, Mr. Brown said, a security guard for the mine loaded rounds into an AR-15-style assault rifle that had been stored in a car.“He wanted to make sure that we knew he had his gun — that we knew it was loaded,” Mr. Brown, a Republican, said in an interview.The Bitcoin outfit here, 45 minutes north of Little Rock, is one of three sites in Arkansas owned by a network of companies embroiled in tense disputes with residents, who say the noise generated by computers performing trillions of calculations per second ruins lives, lower...
A City Built on Steel Tries to Reverse Its Decline
Business

A City Built on Steel Tries to Reverse Its Decline

Gary, Ind., was once a symbol of American innovation. The home of U.S. Steel’s largest mill, Gary churned out the product that built America’s bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers. The city reaped the rewards, with a prosperous downtown and vibrant neighborhoods.Gary’s smokestacks are still prominent along Lake Michigan’s sandy shore, starkly juxtaposed between the eroding dunes and Chicago’s towering silhouette to the northwest. But now they represent a city looking for a fresh start.More than 10,000 buildings sit abandoned, and the population of 180,000 in the 1960s has dropped by more than half. Poverty, crime and an ignoble moniker — “Scary Gary” — deter private investors and prospective homeowners.As U.S. Steel stands at a crossroads — a planned acquisition would put it under foreign cont...
Wildfires Threaten 2 Chilean Cities, Destroying 1,000 Homes and Killing 46
World

Wildfires Threaten 2 Chilean Cities, Destroying 1,000 Homes and Killing 46

Forest fires ripping through central Chile’s coastal hills since Friday have killed at least 46 people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, with many more feared dead, according to the national government.The wildfires are encroaching on Viña del Mar and Valparaíso, two cities that form a sprawling region that is home to more than one million people on Chile’s central coastline, about 75 miles northeast of the capital, Santiago.Just after midday, President Gabriel Boric flew over the area in a helicopter, and said his government had worked to “secure the greatest resources” in Chile’s history to fight the blazes during the country’s wildfire season, which typically hits during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer and reaches a peak in February.“I assure you all that we will be there as a gover...
6 Reasons That It’s Hard to Get Your Wegovy and Other Weight-Loss Prescriptions
Health

6 Reasons That It’s Hard to Get Your Wegovy and Other Weight-Loss Prescriptions

About 3.8 million people in the United States — four times the number two years ago — are now taking the most popular weight-loss drugs, according to the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, an industry data provider.Some of these prescriptions are for diabetes. The medicines are Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy (the same drug sold under different brand names), and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound (also the same drug).Pent-up demand is even higher, because many people who want the drugs cannot find or afford them. Without insurance coverage, people have to pay out of their own pockets. If they obtain a coupon offering a discount from Eli Lilly, people with commercial insurance pay $550 a month for Zepbound. For those who are commercially insured, a coupon from Novo Nordisk for Wegovy ...
Hey NBA, Knicks’ Jalen Brunson is damn good and proving the naysayers wrong
Sports

Hey NBA, Knicks’ Jalen Brunson is damn good and proving the naysayers wrong

After yet another disappointing, early-season loss, Jalen Brunson stood at his locker, ready to speak with the media in Milwaukee.As the point guard turned around, straight-faced as usual following the Knicks’ fourth defeat in six games, he donned a homemade T-shirt, all black and with white lettering on it, that appeared as if it were straight off the Vistaprint presses.Across Brunson’s chest read a familiar idiom: The magic is in the work.“This is a Sandra Brunson production,” Brunson said, referencing his mother, who stamped the family’s longtime motto onto the crewneck. Of course, “The magic is in the work” is not a Brunson family original.Anyone who knows Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau has a Pavlovian relationship with that expression. Those 19 letters form his favorite saying. Find ...
He’s Lost His Marriage, His Followers and His Lamborghini
Technology

He’s Lost His Marriage, His Followers and His Lamborghini

With its streamlined curves and glow-in-the-dark sound system, the silver Lamborghini Huracán Performante was the stuff of teenage fantasy: $350,000 of aerodynamic metals and lightweight upholstery, packed into a taut and powerful body. Ben Armstrong loved it dearly.When he started shopping for a Lamborghini, Mr. Armstrong, a cryptocurrency evangelist with more than one million YouTube subscribers, worried that he’d have to spend months searching. “I think I have to go to Italy to get the Lambo I want,” he texted a business partner. “I don’t want to compromise.” But fate smiled on him. In the fall of 2021, a car dealership in Charlotte, N.C., shipped the Huracán to Mr. Armstrong’s production studio in an Atlanta suburb.As the Lamborghini was lowered from a delivery truck, Mr. Armstrong, be...
U.S. Hits Back at Iran With Sanctions, Criminal Charges and Airstrikes
Business

U.S. Hits Back at Iran With Sanctions, Criminal Charges and Airstrikes

In the hours before the United States carried out strikes against Iran-backed militants on Friday, Washington hit Tehran with more familiar weapons: sanctions and criminal charges.The Biden administration imposed sanctions on officers and officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s premier military force, for threatening the integrity of water utilities and for helping manufacture Iranian drones. And it unsealed charges against nine people for selling oil to finance the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.The timing seemed designed to pressure the Revolutionary Guards and its most elite unit, the Quds Force, at a moment of extraordinary tension in the Middle East. Although the sanctions have been brewing for some time and the charges were filed earlier under seal, the regio...
Israel-Hamas War and Middle East Crisis: Updates and News
World

Israel-Hamas War and Middle East Crisis: Updates and News

President Biden on Thursday ordered broad financial and travel sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, a forceful gesture aimed in part at Arab American voters in the United States who have expressed fury about the president’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.Mr. Biden authorized the sanctions with an executive order that goes further than a directive issued in December by the State Department, which imposed visa bans on dozens of Israeli settlers who have committed acts of violence in the West Bank. The sanctions will initially be imposed on four Israelis, who will be cut off from the U.S. financial system and from accessing any American assets or property. They also will be prevented from traveling to the United States or engaging in any ...