After a year and a half of careful wedding planning, Sally Niebuhr was ready to watch her oldest daughter, Kiki LaCroix, walk down the aisle at a winery in Sonoma, Calif., last October. But Mother Nature had other plans. When the Kincade fire struck the area just a few days before the wedding was scheduled…
Wuhan’s mayor blamed higher-ups. A senior disease control official blamed layers of bureaucracy. A top government expert blamed the public: The people, he said, simply didn’t understand what he told them. As China grapples with a mysterious coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 420 people and sickened thousands, the country’s 1.4 billion people are…
In another setback in the long quest to prevent H.I.V. infection, a trial in South Africa has been shut down because an experimental vaccine was not working, federal health officials announced on Monday. The trial, which began in 2016, followed one in Thailand that ended in 2009. That vaccine offered only modest protection against infection.…
Carla Gugino’s résumé is rather idiosyncratic. The film and television side is packed with comic-book adaptations (“Watchmen”), horror (“The Haunting of Hill House”), thrillers (“Karen Sisco”) and sci-fi (“Wayward Pines”). The theater side lists plays by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill and Athol Fugard. Who else straddles such a wide range? We’ll wait.…
LUTZ, Fla. — Karyn McMullen is tired of being asked how she cooks bacon without any clothes on. It’s one of those jokes people can’t help but make about nudists, and to Ms. McMullen, who has been cooking naked for more than two decades, it shows how misunderstood nudism is. Many people think only about…
This time last year, Alfred Portale was in the middle of his fourth decade as the chef of Gotham Bar & Grill. The loftlike dining room still looked so much like 1985 that it could have served as a set for “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” in the unlikely event that any studio wanted to…
In Turkey, winter is the season of salep. In the streets, peddlers pushing carts sell the hot, milky drink traditionally made from ground orchid tubers. Between classes, students warm their cold fingers around flimsy paper cups filled with steaming salep. On the ferry across the Bosporus, businessmen sip it with one hand and check their…
Higher birth weight may predict better cardiovascular fitness in adulthood, researchers report. Scientists measured fitness in 286,761 Swedish men ages 17 to 25 by having them ride a bicycle ergometer and recording the wattage they were able to generate. They used data on birth weights from the Swedish Medical Birth Registry. They found that as…
As the coronavirus spreads across the world and airlines cancel flights to and from China, many travelers have been stuck in limbo. Some are trying to get refunds, while others are unsure of whether to rebook their trips for later dates or cancel them altogether. With the State Department issuing a “do not travel” advisory…
GUANGZHOU, China — One person was turned away by hotel after hotel after he showed his ID card. Another was expelled by fearful local villagers. A third found his most sensitive personal information leaked online after registering with the authorities. These outcasts are from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, which is at the center…