The Paris Olympics are 100 days away – Venues ready but questions over opening ceremony and security
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Sports

The Paris Olympics are 100 days away – Venues ready but questions over opening ceremony and security

Follow The Athletic’s Olympics coverage here.In 100 days, Paris will host the most famous sporting jamboree on the planet: the summer Olympic Games.There will be action across 32 sports watched by millions of visitors, as well as an unprecedented opening ceremony set to take place on the River Seine, which runs through the city’s heart. At least, that is plan A, anyway — Emmanuel Macron, the French president, confirmed an off-river contingency for the first time on Monday.Excitement has not quite taken hold in Paris yet. Decorations around the city remain discrete for a Games awarded to the French capital in September 2017. The City Hall has been plastered with Olympic regalia, but the focus of messaging has primarily been on practicality — “anticiper les jeux” (anticipate the Games), as p...
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Tesla Seeks to Revive Musk’s $47 Billion Pay Deal With New Shareholder Vote
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Technology

Tesla Seeks to Revive Musk’s $47 Billion Pay Deal With New Shareholder Vote

Facing criticism that it is overly beholden to Elon Musk, Tesla’s board of directors said on Wednesday that it would essentially give him everything he wanted, including the biggest pay package in corporate history.If setbacks in court and the car market have induced any soul searching among Tesla’s board, there was no sign of it in the latest announcement. If anything, the board doubled down on backing Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, risking riling up activist investors and more litigation.The board’s decision to ask shareholders to endorse a compensation plan for Mr. Musk that is worth about $47 billion came less than three months after a Delaware judge voided the same 10-year pay package. The judge said that it was excessive and that the company had failed to properly disclose detail...
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The Global Turn Away From Free-Market Policies Worries Economists
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Economy

The Global Turn Away From Free-Market Policies Worries Economists

Meeting outside Paris last week, top officials from France, Germany and Italy pledged to pursue a coordinated economic policy to counter stepped-up efforts by Washington and Beijing to protect their own homegrown businesses.The three European countries have joined the parade of others that are enthusiastically embracing industrial policies — the catchall term for a variety of measures like targeted subsidies, tax incentives, regulations and trade restrictions — meant to steer an economy.More than 2,500 industrial policies were introduced last year, roughly three times the number in 2019, according to a new study. And most were imposed by the richest, most advanced economies — many of which could previously be counted on to criticize such tactics.The measures are generally popular at home, ...
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Colorado Bill Aims to Protect Consumer Brain Data
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News

Colorado Bill Aims to Protect Consumer Brain Data

Consumers have grown accustomed to the prospect that their personal data, such as email addresses, social contacts, browsing history and genetic ancestry, are being collected and often resold by the apps and the digital services they use.With the advent of consumer neurotechnologies, the data being collected is becoming ever more intimate. One headband serves as a personal meditation coach by monitoring the user’s brain activity. Another purports to help treat anxiety and symptoms of depression. Another reads and interprets brain signals while the user scrolls through dating apps, presumably to provide better matches. (“‘Listen to your heart’ is not enough,” the manufacturer says on its website.)The companies behind such technologies have access to the records of the users’ brain activity ...
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Long-Acting Drugs May Revolutionize H.I.V. Prevention and Treatment
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Health

Long-Acting Drugs May Revolutionize H.I.V. Prevention and Treatment

A pill taken once a week. A shot administered at home once a month. Even a jab given at a clinic every six months.In the next five to 10 years, these options may be available to prevent or treat H.I.V. Instead of drugs that must be taken daily, scientists are closing in on longer-acting alternatives — perhaps even a future in which H.I.V. may require attention just twice a year, inconceivable in the darkest decades of the epidemic.“This period is the next wave of innovation, newer products meeting the needs of people, particularly in prevention, in ways that we didn’t ever have before,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the H.I.V. prevention organization AVAC.Long-acting therapies may obviate the need to remember to take a daily pill to prevent or treat H.I.V. And for some patien...
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Boban Marjanović intentionally misses free throw to give Clippers fans free chicken
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Sports

Boban Marjanović intentionally misses free throw to give Clippers fans free chicken

The final day of the 2023-24 regular season saw several playoff teams jockeying for seeding, other teams trying to improve draft lottery odds and a few just hoping to end the campaign on a high note.The Houston Rockets, who had made an unsuccessful late charge for the Play-In Tournament, fell into the latter category, looking for their first non-losing record since the 2019-20 season.As it turned out Sunday, the Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers fans both took home a win.With 4 minutes, 44 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Houston’s eventual 116-105 victory over the Clippers, center Boban Marjanović missed his first free throw. Marjanović — a career 76.4 percent free-throw shooter — then purposefully missed the second to win fans in attendance free chicken.The Clippers organization...
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Microsoft Makes High-Stakes Play in Tech Cold War With Emirati A.I. Deal
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Technology

Microsoft Makes High-Stakes Play in Tech Cold War With Emirati A.I. Deal

Microsoft on Tuesday plans to announce a $1.5 billion investment in G42, an artificial intelligence giant in the United Arab Emirates, in a deal largely orchestrated by the Biden administration to box out China as Washington and Beijing battle over who will exercise technological influence in the Gulf region and beyond.Under the partnership, Microsoft will give G42 permission to sell Microsoft services that use powerful A.I. chips, which are used to train and fine-tune generative A.I. models. In return, G42, which has been under scrutiny by Washington for its ties to China, will use Microsoft’s cloud services and accede to a security arrangement negotiated in detailed conversations with the U.S. government. It places a series of protections on the A.I. products shared with G42 and includes...
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Why Better Times (and Big Raises) Haven’t Cured the Inflation Hangover
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Economy

Why Better Times (and Big Raises) Haven’t Cured the Inflation Hangover

Some 64 percent of Pennsylvanians responding to a Quinnipiac poll in early January described their financial situation as excellent or good; 24 percent characterized it as “not so good,” and only 9 percent called it poor. But in the same survey, only 33 percent of Pennsylvanians described “the state of the nation’s economy” as excellent or good.Vocal frustration with more expensive gas and food, rent-raising landlords and premium-raising insurance companies still animates small talk among friends. Home prices have soared, a blessing for homeowners but a curse for those seeking to join their ranks. Child care and elder care costs, rising before the pandemic, are still ascending. (And beyond needs like auto insurance, there is annoyance with the $4 bag of chips in the checkout aisle, or a $1...
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A Surprising Shadow Was Created by the Total Solar Eclipse
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News

A Surprising Shadow Was Created by the Total Solar Eclipse

Viewers of last week’s solar eclipse were treated to stunning celestial phenomena up and down the event’s path during totality. But those who watched it from Montreal saw a pair of additional surprises in the half-hour before and after the eclipse, when the moon obstructed the sun on April 8.The first was an unusually sharp shadow caused by a passing airplane just after the total eclipse concluded. The second came in the form of a spectacular halo around the partially eclipsed sun.The plane passing over Montreal during the partial phase of the eclipse left a typical contrail in its wake. When this happens in full sunlight, the shadows cast by contrails on clouds are usually too diffuse to see. In this case, the sharpness of the shadows was explained by the eclipse.“Shortly after totality, ...
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David Egilman, Doctor Who Took On Drug Companies, Dies at 71
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Health

David Egilman, Doctor Who Took On Drug Companies, Dies at 71

Dr. David Egilman, a physician and expert witness who, over a 35-year span, gave testimony in some 600 trials involving corporate malfeasance, resulting in billions of dollars in awards for victims and their survivors, died on April 2 at his home in Foxborough, Mass. He was 71.The cause was cardiac arrest, his son Alex said.Many medical experts make a side business in court, offering their informed opinions on the witness stand and helping to validate or undermine plaintiffs’ claims. But few make it a career-long passion in the way Dr. Egilman did. He taught at Brown University and ran a private practice but spent most of his time consulting and testifying in as many as 15 cases a year.He did more than just opine from the stand. A dogged researcher, he dug up incriminating emails and memos...
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