Author: Admin
The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat. The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service cited feedback from more than 7,000 public comments and said they would “evaluate whether it should update” current salmonella regulations. The rule would have required poultry companies to keep levels of salmonella bacteria under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six strains most…
Mike Patrick, a versatile sportscaster for ESPN who called National Football League games on Sunday nights for 18 years, died on Sunday in Fairfax, Va. He was 80.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his physician, Dr. Mark Vasiliadis. Kevin Kiley, a friend and former colleague at ESPN, said Mr. Patrick had been treated for heart and kidney illnesses.Mr. Patrick was one of ESPN’s best-known announcers, calling college basketball, football and baseball, in addition to N.F.L. games. He brought a commanding voice and an unobtrusive style that made it easy for analysts to work with him.“He was probably as…
Stocks rose on Thursday, marking a third consecutive daily rally as investors hope for an easing of President Trump’s trade wars and weigh comments from a Federal Reserve official on tariffs’ economic impacts.The S&P 500 gained 2 percent after stalling in early trading. The index has seesawed this week: Monday saw a sharp sell-off, followed by three days of sizable gains after President Trump on Tuesday said that he was prepared to be “very nice” in trade negotiations with China.The rally then paused after officials in China said they were not holding talks with the United States about easing trade…
Consumers, worried about the economy, are pulling back on their spending, and that anxiety is translating into lower sales and profits for some of the country’s largest consumer-oriented companies.On Thursday, PepsiCo cut its full-year guidance outlook, citing a reduction in consumer spending as well as the impact the company is feeling from increased global tariffs.“Relative to where we were three months ago, we probably aren’t feeling as good about the consumer now,” Jamie Caulfield, the chief financial officer of PepsiCo, told Wall Street analysts and investors on an earnings call Thursday morning.The company, which manufactures Pepsi and Gatorade drinks as…
Every Monday, Maurine Gentis, a retired teacher, waits for a delivery from Meals on Wheels South Texas.“The meals help stretch my budget,” Ms. Gentis, 77, said. Living alone and in a wheelchair, she appreciates having someone look in on her regularly. The same group, a nonprofit, delivers books from the library and dry food for her cat.But Ms. Gentis is anxious about what lies ahead. The small government agency responsible for overseeing programs like Meals on Wheels is being dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly half its staff…
A quiet honor student who had recently graduated from Immaculate High School in Danbury, Veer Chetal was about to begin studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 2022, he completed a “future lawyers” program, and a story that year on the Immaculate website showed a photo of a smiling kid with glasses wearing a Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker over a red polo.Classmates remember Chetal as shy and a fan of cars. “He just kind of kept to himself,” says Marco Dias, who became friends with Chetal junior year. According to another classmate named Nick Paris, this was true of Chetal…
One of the first things to catch your eye on entering the Populus hotel in downtown Denver is what looks like sheets of cowhide hanging above the restaurant’s bar. But the art installation material is actually Reishi, a leathery material made from mycelium, a root-like structure found in fungus. It’s just one of many elements at the new 265-room hotel (rates from $299) that are meant to evoke nature and underscore a broader mission to offer what the Populus bills as an exceptional level of sustainability. (A second, 120-room Populus with a similar approach will open in Seattle this spring.)In…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working with California on a project that is offering gift cards to encourage people to get tested or vaccinated near farms with bird flu, the state says.Some clinics in the state are giving $25 in gift cards to people in the community to get swabbed for a potential bird flu infection or to get a shot of the regular seasonal influenza vaccine. California is providing the gift cards at the clinics, which are run by the state’s vendor. The CDC also has a testing van from the agency’s Avian Flu Influenza Area…
This week is National Infertility Week, and one woman from Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood wanted to give back after science helped her grow her own family.Amanda Nelson is now serving as a gestational surrogate — carrying a child who is not genetically hers for people she didn’t know.Nelson knows well the struggle that roughly one in six people have when trying to conceive. She herself now has a song and dance of chaos and cuteness with her two boys, but her journey to the delivery room was harder than most.”Getting negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test,” Nelson said.Then came…
One of my most deeply held values as a tech columnist is humanism. I believe in humans, and I think that technology should help people, rather than disempower or replace them. I care about aligning artificial intelligence — that is, making sure that A.I. systems act in accordance with human values — because I think our values are fundamentally good, or at least better than the values a robot could come up with.So when I heard that researchers at Anthropic, the A.I. company that made the Claude chatbot, were starting to study “model welfare” — the idea that A.I. models…