We were so confused. My wife’s mother was going through medical issues that could potentially have left her needing long-term care. But we had never taken a hard look at our options if that happened. She lives 2,000 miles away, and we all had to start thinking about what the next steps would be if…
“Taco Tuesday” got bad news on Wednesday. More specifically, the United States Patent and Trademark Office turned down the basketball superstar LeBron James’s attempt to trademark the phrase “Taco Tuesday.” The patent office said that the phrase was “a commonplace term, message or expression widely used by a variety of sources that merely conveys an…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes, at a time when hundreds of people have been sickened by mysterious lung illnesses and teenage vaping continues to rise. Sitting in the Oval Office with the government’s top health officials, President Trump acknowledged that there was…
Thousands of municipal governments nationwide and nearly two dozen states that sued the pharmaceutical industry for the destructive opioid crisis have tentatively reached a settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, members of the Sackler family. The deal is a landmark moment in the long-running effort to compel Purdue, the company whose signature opioid, OxyContin,…
Maria Davila lay mute in a nursing home bed, an anguished expression fixed to her face, as her husband stroked her withered hand. Ms. Davila, 65, suffers from a long list of ailments — respiratory failure, kidney disease, high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat — and is kept alive by a gently beeping ventilator and…
In Mexican culture, the Día de Muertos — or Day of the Dead — is when the gateway between the living and the dead is said to open, a holiday during which the living honor and pay respects to loved ones who have died. A new Día de Muertos Barbie, set to be released on…
On Tuesday night in Brooklyn, Rihanna made her bid for global underwear domination. It took place in the Barclays Center, against a gigantic set that was part stairway to heaven, part Roman Colosseum, part “Chicago” (the Bob Fosse version) and part “Laugh-In,” with a reflecting pool in the middle. It involved famous singers, famous models…
Caroline Calloway is a 27-year-old personality whose preferred medium of expression is the posting of photos and screen shots of text to Instagram. She has become a fixture in the digital daily tours of some young, literary, edgy people, particularly women. Her Instagram photos are often accompanied by lengthy captions. She has dabbled with expanding…
My dental hygienist and I have a longstanding, unspoken agreement: I won’t get any cavities, and she’ll pretend to believe me when I tell her I floss every day. Truth be told, it’s more like once a week. Despite reports that flossing may be “overrated,” the American Dental Association (A.D.A.) and the US Department of…
A cutting-edge cancer treatment can also cure certain kinds of heart failure in mice, scientists reported on Wednesday. The treatment is a type of immunotherapy known as CAR-T, which has proved life-changing for some patients with blood cancers. CAR-T relies on engineered white blood cells — T cells — that seek out and destroy malignant…