Cactus three

The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more

2Mar

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

Sports

The business of Sarah Nurse: She’s one of the faces of hockey, but her sights are set on more

TORONTO — Sarah Nurse was driving home from a recent PWHL Toronto practice when she got a bit of sage advice.It wasn’t from a podcast or a friend on the phone. The advice came courtesy of a billboard on the side of the road in Canada’s most populous city, featuring her own face with the Adidas slogan “You got this.”“I was like, yeah, I do,” Nurse said with a laugh.The billboard she drove past is one of many across the country, including a massive advertisement at Yonge-Dundas Square — Toronto’s closest approximation to Times Square in New York City — that pairs Nurse with Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and World Cup champion Lionel Messi.Nurse, 29, has had major partnerships in the past. In 2020, Tim Hortons and Mattel collaborated to make a Barbie doll in her likeness. In 2022, she was fe...

Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for Violating the Company’s Principles

2Mar

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

Technology

Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for Violating the Company’s Principles

OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence company that ousted and then reinstated its high-profile chief executive three months ago, faces a new drama: a lawsuit from Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world and a co-founder of the A.I. lab.Mr. Musk sued OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in developing artificial intelligence ahead of the public good. A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI developed with Microsoft, Mr. Musk said, represented an abandonment of a founding pledge to carefully develop A.I. and make the technology publicly available.“OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company, Microsoft,” said the lawsuit filed...

California’s Economy Pinched by Unemployment

2Mar

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

Business

California’s Economy Pinched by Unemployment

For decades, California’s behemoth economy has outpaced those of most nations, holding an outsize role in shaping global trends in tech, entertainment and agriculture.While that reputation remains, the state has a less enviable distinction: one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.Nationwide, the rate is 3.7 percent, and in January, the country added 353,000 jobs. California’s job growth has been slower than the nationwide average over the last year, and the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high — 5.1 percent in the latest data, a percentage point higher than a year earlier and outpaced only by Nevada’s 5.4 percent.With layoffs in the tech-centered Bay Area, a slow rebound in Southern California from prolonged strikes in the entertainment industry and varying demand for agricultu...

Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister Who Led Canada Into NAFTA, Dies at 84

1Mar

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

World

Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister Who Led Canada Into NAFTA, Dies at 84

Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th prime minister, whose statesmanship on what he called “great causes,” from free trade and acid rain in North America to the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, gave way to accusations of financial misdoing and influence-peddling after he left office, died on Thursday in a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla., where he had a home. He was 84.A spokesman for his daughter Caroline Mulroney, a cabinet minister in Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government, said Mr. Mulroney had been hospitalized after a fall at his home. “He died peacefully, surrounded by family,” Ms. Mulroney wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Born into a blue-collar family in northeastern Quebec, Mr. Mulroney transcended his small-town roots to become a prosperous lawyer and business executive before se...

One in Six Abortions Is Done With Pills Prescribed Online, Data Shows

1Mar

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

Health

One in Six Abortions Is Done With Pills Prescribed Online, Data Shows

How It WorksPills are prescribed by virtual-only providers and by clinics that also offer in-person services. Patients fill out an online questionnaire or meet with a clinician via video or text chat. This method began nationwide in 2020, when the Food and Drug Administration began allowing abortion providers to mail pills without an in-clinic visit during the pandemic.Some of the prescriptions included in the new count were given to patients in states where abortion is banned, a new development made possible by shield laws. These laws protect clinicians in states where abortion is legal when they prescribe and mail pills to patients in states where it is not. Shield laws were in effect in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont and Washington during the period covered by the new data, ...

Rafael Nadal is ready to play again. In America. On hard courts. Should he?

29Feb

By Benjamin HallNo Comments

Sports

Rafael Nadal is ready to play again. In America. On hard courts. Should he?

For more than a month, the smoke signals out of Rafael Nadal’s camp have kept the tennis world on its toes, sparking predictions of everything from a triumphant spring on the red clay of Paris to him never playing another competitive match following yet another hip injury in Australia in January. The only thing that seemed clear was that the 22-time Grand Slam champion was prioritizing the clay court season in Europe this spring. Nadal said as much in January when he returned following a year-long layoff because of hip surgery. Sure, he was happy to be back and competing in Australia, where he won the year’s first Grand Slam as recently as 2022, but he was singularly focused on being in top form — or, at least, as close as he can get to it at this point — in three months when the red clay ...