Three months after the country’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abruptly stopped holding regular briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, its director, Dr. Robert Redfield, restarted them on Friday amid growing calls for the agency to claim a more prominent role in the virus response. The C.D.C. also released a…
ImageFan at the opening of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in 2010 in Harrisonburg, Va.Credit…Traci White/Daily News-Record, via Associated Press When J.K. Rowling was accused of transphobia about two years ago for “liking” a tweet that referred to transgender women as “men in dresses,” much of the Harry Potter fandom tried to give their…
Here’s what you need to know: ImageMedical workers registering people at a testing site in Miami in May.Credit…Lynne Sladky/Associated Press KEY DATA OF THE DAY Florida and Texas report records for daily highs in new cases. Two of the nation’s most populous states, Texas and Florida, both reported this week their highest daily totals of…
Everything was telling Sam Thirlwall not to take this job. Joining Zapproved, a legal services technology company in Portland, Ore., would mean a pay cut. It also would mean being a manager responsible for a large team, rather than doing what he had done for years, which was building cybersecurity software. Mr. Thirlwall, 36, didn’t…
As protesters filled the streets of downtown San Jose, Calif., recently, the police fired munitions known as rubber bullets into the crowd — a common technique to disperse throngs. Breanna Contreras’s head jerked back from the impact as a black projectile “roughly the size of an extra-jumbo marshmallow” struck her temple, near her eye. “I…
Has everyone’s surreptitious chocolate chip consumption gone way up since we’ve all had to stay at home? Or is this phenomenon limited to my particular kitchen? And is it also why, no matter how often I replenish the stock, there’s never quite enough left in the bag whenever I try to bake cookies? Luckily, chocolate…
Hannah Bronfman and her husband, Brendan Fallis, both New York-based event D.J.s, have watched most of their live gigs dry up because of the coronavirus outbreak. But they’re still keeping busy. The couple, who celebrated their third wedding anniversary on May 20, have been out at their two-acre Amagansett, N.Y., home since mid-March, gardening, building…
People around the globe shell out billions of dollars each year on professionally manufactured games: According to a recent study, spending worldwide on playing cards and board games is expected to reach nearly $22 billion by the year 2025. But the truth is that you can turn anything into a game — even a newspaper!…
[Sign up here to receive Love Letter, a weekly newsletter about relationship highs, lows and woes, in your inbox every Friday.] If you’ve ever wondered if the old saying “familiarity breeds contempt” is true, then this pandemic has provided the perfect testing ground. Whether it’s suddenly cohabitating with a partner or hunkering down with family,…
For months, scientists have debated why one genetic variation of the coronavirus became dominant in many parts of the world. Many scientists argue that the variation spread widely by chance, multiplying outward from explosive outbreaks in Europe. Others have proposed the possibility that a mutation gave it some kind of biological edge and have been…