Garber street

Apple Takes a Humble Approach to Launching Its Newest Device

21Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Technology

Apple Takes a Humble Approach to Launching Its Newest Device

When Apple released the Apple Watch in 2015, it was business as usual for a company whose iPhone updates had become cultural touchstones. Before the watch went on sale, Apple gave early versions of it to celebrities like Beyoncé, featured it in fashion publications like Vogue and streamed a splashy event on the internet trumpeting its features.But as Apple prepared to sell its next generation of wearable computing, the Vision Pro augmented reality device, it marched far more quietly into the consumer marketplace.The company said in a news release this month that sales of the device would begin Friday. No big product event was scheduled, though Apple has created a catchy commercial about the device and offered individual demonstrations of it to tech reviewers. And in a departure for the sec...

Medvedev’s 3.40am finish is latest absurd example of why tennis has to change

21Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Sports

Medvedev’s 3.40am finish is latest absurd example of why tennis has to change

It happened again. Of course it did.Two tennis players, starting near midnight, battling nearly to sunrise in front of a scattering of fans, with a squad of kids in their early teenage years scurrying after balls at nearly four in the morning. Last year it was Andy Murray duelling with Thanasi Kokkinakis until the night sky began to lighten at around 4am. On Thursday, and into Friday, it was Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland doing the tennis version of the 2am jazz set. “I would not have stayed,” Medvedev said in an on-court interview after he completed his comeback from two sets down and eliminated Ruusuvuori 3-6, 6-7(1), 6-4, 7-6(1), 6-0. Judging from the scoreline, Ruusuvuori decided not to and it was hard to blame him.The dynamic would seem absurd if it wasn’t so...

With Harsh Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Law, Uganda Risks a Health Crisis

20Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Health

With Harsh Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Law, Uganda Risks a Health Crisis

For decades, Uganda’s campaign against H.I.V. was exemplary, slashing the country’s death rate by nearly 90 percent from 1990 to 2019. Now a sweeping law enacted last year, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, threatens to renew the epidemic as L.G.B.T.Q. citizens are denied, or are too afraid to seek out, necessary medical care.The law criminalizes consensual sex between same-sex adults. It also requires all citizens to report anyone suspected of such activity, a mandate that makes no exceptions for health care providers tending to patients.Under the law, merely having same-sex relationships while living with H.I.V. can incur a charge of “aggravated homosexuality,” which is punishable by death.Anyone who “knowingly promotes homosexuality” — by hiring or housing an L.G.B.T.Q. person, or by not repo...

Fresh From Battles Won With U.A.E. Arms, Sudanese General Takes Victory Lap

20Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

World

Fresh From Battles Won With U.A.E. Arms, Sudanese General Takes Victory Lap

Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of a notorious paramilitary force fighting for supremacy in Sudan’s civil war, is not the president of his country. Yet on a recent whirlwind tour of six African nations, he was treated just like one.Some of the continent’s most powerful leaders rolled out the red carpet for General Hamdan after he arrived on a luxury jet for meetings in late December and early January, having swapped his military fatigues for business suits. In Kenya, traditional dancers waited at the plane steps. In South Africa, he sank into an armchair beside a smiling President Cyril Ramaphosa.And in Rwanda, General Hamdan posed solemnly at a memorial to victims of the 1994 genocide — even though his own troops have faced accusations of genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.The surprise...

The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted

19Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Business

The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted

When Jan Sramek walked into the American Legion post in Rio Vista, Calif., for a town-hall meeting last month, everyone in the room knew that he was really just there to get yelled at.For six years a mysterious company called Flannery Associates, which Mr. Sramek controlled, had upended the town of 10,000 by spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy every farm in the area. Flannery made multimillionaires out of some owners and sparked feuds among others. It sued a group of holdouts who had refused its above-market offers, on the grounds that they were colluding for more.The company was Rio Vista’s main source of gossip, yet until a few weeks before the meeting no one in the room had heard of Mr. Sramek or knew what Flannery was up to. Residents worried it could be a front for ...

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere

19Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Technology

Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon Lander Burns Up in Earth’s Atmosphere

A spacecraft that was headed to the surface of the moon has ended up back at Earth instead, burning up in the planet’s atmosphere on Thursday afternoon.Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced in a post on the social network X that it lost communication with its Peregrine moon lander at 3:50 p.m. Eastern time, which served as an indication that it entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific at around 4:04 p.m.“We await independent confirmation from government entities,” the company said.It was an intentional, if disappointing, end to a trip that lasted 10 days and covered more than half a million miles, with the craft traveling past the orbit of the moon before swinging back toward Earth. But the spacecraft never got close to its landing destination on the near side of the m...

Remembering the Zambia air disaster – ‘The boys would say: ‘This plane will kill us”

19Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Sports

Remembering the Zambia air disaster – ‘The boys would say: ‘This plane will kill us”

Follow live coverage of Senegal vs Cameroon in the Africa Cup of Nations today“The spirit of the 1993 team will always be there for Zambia.”Kalusha Bwalya, Zambia’s former football captain, is reflecting on the day that changed his life forever.On April 27, 1993, a military aircraft taking 18 of his team-mates and their coach to a World Cup qualifier against Senegal crashed shortly after refuelling in Gabon. All 30 people aboard died.Bwalya would have been on the plane, too, but for the fact that he was playing for PSV Eindhoven at the time. Being based in the Netherlands meant he made his own way to the match from Europe and ultimately saved his life — although it did not spare him from crushing, numbing grief.“You couldn’t imagine the whole team you play with are not there anymore,” Bwal...

King Charles’s Prostate Treatment Is Common Among Men His Age

18Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Health

King Charles’s Prostate Treatment Is Common Among Men His Age

King Charles III will have a procedure to address an enlarged prostate at a hospital next week. The 75-year-old British monarch’s diagnosis is common among men his age, and experts say that typical treatments are not dangerous.An enlarged prostate, known also as benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH, is a noncancerous condition that occurs frequently among older men. By age 60, more than half of men have at least mild BPH symptoms, which include difficulty urinating and a sense of urgency to urinate. But often the symptoms are not severe enough to require treatment.The condition is analogous to menopause in women, said Dr. Peter Albertsen, a urologist and prostate specialist at the University of Connecticut. Menopause usually begins around age 50 when levels of testosterone and estrogen sta...

In Guatemala, New Utopian Neighborhood? Or a Testament to Inequality?

18Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

World

In Guatemala, New Utopian Neighborhood? Or a Testament to Inequality?

Try going for a stroll in much of Guatemala City: It is a pedestrian’s nightmare.Motorcycles speed down crowded sidewalks. Rifle-grasping guards squint at each passerby, sizing up potential assailants. Smoke-belching buses barrel through stop signs.But tucked within the chaotic capital’s crazy-quilt sprawl, there is a dreamlike haven where none of that exists.In the City of Cayalá, a utopian domain created by one of Guatemala’s richest families, the streets are quiet and orderly, the stores are upscale and the homes attainable — if only to families from the country’s small, moneyed elite, or foreigners, like the American diplomats stationed at the huge newly built United States embassy nearby.Evoking the feel of a serene Mediterranean town, Cayalá features milky white buildings with red-ti...

Supreme Court Hears Case That Could Overturn Key Chevron Precedent

18Jan

By James W. BrownNo Comments

Business

Supreme Court Hears Case That Could Overturn Key Chevron Precedent

Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed inclined on Wednesday to limit or even overturn a key precedent that has empowered executive agencies, threatening regulations in countless areas, including the environment, health care and consumer safety.Each side warned of devastating consequences should it lose, underscoring how the court’s decision in a highly technical case could reverberate across wide swaths of American life.Overruling the precedent, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices, would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.”But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh responded that there were in fact “shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in, whether it’s communications law or securities law or competition law...