Month: February 2024

Snap Lays Off 10% of Its Work Force

Snap Lays Off 10% of Its Work Force

Snap, the parent of the Snapchat messaging app, said on Monday that it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024. “We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, after tens of thousands across…
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How Nevada Is Pushing to Generate Jobs Beyond the Casinos

How Nevada Is Pushing to Generate Jobs Beyond the Casinos

Before the pandemic brought everyday life to a halt, Joe Kiele supported himself through the industry that dominates Nevada’s economy. He waited tables at a steakhouse inside a casino in Reno.Four years later, Mr. Kiele, 49, remains in Reno, yet he now spends his workday inside a factory. In place of worrying about the doneness of a customer’s rib-eye, he trains people on the proper handling of industrial chemicals.His employer, Redwood Materials, is constructing an enormous complex across a lonely stretch of desert. There, the company has begun recycling batteries harvested from discarded smartphones and other electronics. It extracts critical…
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El Salvador’s Bukele Expected to Win Re-Election: What to Know

El Salvador’s Bukele Expected to Win Re-Election: What to Know

In El Salvador’s presidential contest on Sunday, there is no real competition: Nayib Bukele, the millennial president who reshaped the country with a crackdown on gangs and civil liberties, is expected to win re-election in a landslide.Legal scholars say Mr. Bukele, 42, is violating a constitutional ban by seeking a second consecutive term, but most Salvadorans don’t seem to care.Surveys show that voters overwhelmingly support Mr. Bukele’s candidacy and will likely cement his party’s supermajority in the legislature on Sunday, extending the leader’s unimpeded control over every lever of government for years.“They want to show that they can do this,…
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When a Spouse Goes to the Nursing Home

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

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

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…
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Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview for Second Year in a Row

Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview for Second Year in a Row

President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.CBS said on Saturday that the White House had turned down a request for Mr. Biden to participate in a televised interview with its news division, which would have aired in the highly rated hours ahead of the big game on Feb. 11.In a tradition dating to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, although there have been exceptions. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Mr. Biden declined to appear on Fox, home…
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