Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare in Record Numbers
22Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Health

Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare in Record Numbers

Why It Matters: The Affordable Care Act is expanding its reach.Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power.Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also lengthened the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll.“More and more people are realizing they can come onto the marketplace,” said Cynthia Cox, the director of the Program on the A...
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Football conspiracy theories: Are we in a ‘golden age’ of fan paranoia?
22Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Sports

Football conspiracy theories: Are we in a ‘golden age’ of fan paranoia?

One of the most eye-catching bios on X, or Twitter as we all know it, belonged to a sports writer with one of the UK’s biggest national newspapers. It was plain and simple and boiled down to five words: “Biased against your football club.”Which is true. If you’ve followed football for any length of time, then you know that every arm of the media is out to get the club you support. You should see The Athletic’s morning meetings where we plot against the teams we most want to stitch up (all of them, obviously). Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean we aren’t trying to get Mikel Arteta banned from the touchline. Or perpetuating bias in favour of London. Or scheming for more points deductions at Everton. It’s All the President’s Men meets 24.Truthfully, more attention is paid to the subsid...
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New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea
22Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Technology

New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea

A man involved in a brazen plot to manipulate the stock price of a New Jersey deli’s parent company pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday.James T. Patten, 64, of North Carolina, admitted to orchestrating a series of misleading trades in an apparent bid to enrich himself and two co-defendants in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J.Mr. Patten faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million for securities fraud. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.Mr. Patten’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, said in an interview on Wednesday that attention on the case “was exaggerated beyond any perception — that this was some $100 million fraud involving a delicatessen...
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U.S. Prepares to Lift Ban on Sales of Offensive Weapons to Saudi Arabia
22Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Business

U.S. Prepares to Lift Ban on Sales of Offensive Weapons to Saudi Arabia

The Biden administration is preparing to relax restrictions on some weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said on Thursday, crediting the kingdom’s peace talks with a militia in Yemen for hastening an easing of the constraints.President Biden imposed the ban two years ago amid concerns that U.S. weapons were being used against civilians in Yemen, where hundreds of thousands of people have died from airstrikes, fighting, disease and hunger as a Saudi-led military coalition waged war against an Iran-backed militia called the Houthis.The expected loosening of the limits — which blocked sales of major offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia — comes as the kingdom attempts to finalize a U.S.-backed peace accord with the Houthis.A representative for the White House National Security Council de...
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Hamas Leader Is in Egypt for Talks About War in Gaza: Live Updates
20Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
World

Hamas Leader Is in Egypt for Talks About War in Gaza: Live Updates

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib was at home in San Francisco when the panicked calls started. An Israeli airstrike on Thursday had hit his family’s home in Rafah, in the so-called safe zone of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought refuge from the war.Soon, his phone was flooded with news footage of the home, where he used to go for family barbecues and to play with his grandmother’s ducks. He watched neighbors scramble over its smoking ruins, looking for survivors.Instead, they found at least 31 bodies, he said, including two women in their 70s, several people in their 60s, and nine children between the ages of 3 months and 9 years. More remain missing. He learned the names of the dead from texts and Facebook updates, spread out over hours and days.“It was sickening and na...
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Gunfire Echoing Through School Grounds? Parents Are Terrified. Kids Stopped Noticing.
20Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Health

Gunfire Echoing Through School Grounds? Parents Are Terrified. Kids Stopped Noticing.

The gunshots rang out at 8:13 a.m., echoing across the high school football field and middle school garden. They continued for 49 minutes without interruption: an AR-15-style rifle, with .223-caliber bullets, ripping at 94 decibels through a community that did not even pause to wonder if a disaster was unfolding at the schools.It was just a typical morning in Cranston, R.I., where more than 2,000 children attend school within 500 yards of a police shooting range. There, local police officers sharpen their gun skills, sometimes until 8:30 at night.Some days they shoot Glock pistols, like the weapons used in the mass shootings at Virginia Tech, the Charleston church and Thousand Oaks, Calif. Other days, they use AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, similar to the ones used in the killings in Ne...
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Sean Payton’s flare-up at Russell Wilson puts coach-QB relationship back in spotlight
20Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Sports

Sean Payton’s flare-up at Russell Wilson puts coach-QB relationship back in spotlight

(Editor’s note: This is excerpted from Mike Sando’s Pick Six of Dec. 18, 2023.)Sean Payton blasting quarterback Russell Wilson on the sideline, then suggesting he was merely upset about officiating, invited all sorts of speculation.It’s hard to fault Payton for losing his cool when officials wiped out a Broncos touchdown with an offensive offside call that seemed indefensible. As one former head coach put it, officials have “lost their minds” searching for penalties associated with Philadelphia’s tush-push plays.It’s just difficult to understand why Payton would funnel any of that rage toward his quarterback.GO DEEPERSean Payton downplays sideline flare up with Russell WilsonThe nature of Payton’s relationship with Wilson faded into the background during a five-game winning streak fueled b...
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The Year in Social Media
20Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Technology

The Year in Social Media

Ozempic ManiaWeight loss drugs made their way to the online set this year, with some influencers casting stigma aside and unabashedly proclaiming their Ozempic use.Djerf Dupe DramaMatilda Djerf, a popular Swedish influencer and a founder of the fashion brand Djerf Avenue, irked fans when her team started reporting TikTok videos that mentioned places to purchase dupes — inexpensive copies — of her pricey designs.Rocky Hockey RomanceDrama rippled through a niche literary community — fans of hockey romance novels — when Felicia Wennberg, the wife of the N.H.L. player Alex Wennberg, said that certain book lovers had become “predatory and exploiting” in their comments about her husband.Bud Light BacklashIn April, the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney partnered with Bud Light for a video pro...
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What Social Trends Taught Us About the 2023 Economy
20Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
Business

What Social Trends Taught Us About the 2023 Economy

This year, the world learned that some men just can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire. Over here at The New York Times, we can’t stop thinking about what social trends like that one tell us about the American economy.We had no shortage of viral memes and moments to discuss in 2023. Americans flocked to Paris (and overseas in general). Millennial women stocked up on the Stanley thermoses their dads used to use, one of a range of female-powered consumer fads. Thanks partly to Barbie, Birkenstocks also came back harder than a ’90s trend. People spoke in Taylor Swift lyrics.Social developments like those can tell us a lot about the economy we’re living in. To wrap up 2023, we ran through some of the big cultural events and what they taught us about the labor market, economic growth and th...
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Brazil’s Congress Weakens Protection of Indigenous Lands, Defying Lula
15Dec Avatar photoBy Liam WalkerNo Comments
World

Brazil’s Congress Weakens Protection of Indigenous Lands, Defying Lula

Brazilian officials served up an array of plans and figures at the recent COP28 climate summit in Dubai, presenting itself as a world leader, on track to protect its forests and the people who live there.But on Thursday, Brazil’s Congress approved a law that threatens Indigenous people’s rights to most of the land they inhabit or claim, potentially opening vast territories to deforestation, farming and mining.The new law requires that Indigenous people must provide concrete evidence that they occupied the land they claim on Oct. 5, 1988, when the country’s current Constitution was enacted — a requirement that many of them have little or no hope of meeting.Under the new rule, not only can Indigenous land claims currently going through the legal process be thrown out for lacking such documen...
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