Golf with a purpose: How The Park dared to be different
25Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Sports

Golf with a purpose: How The Park dared to be different

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It’s lunchtime on a mid-November Saturday afternoon and the word of the day is eclectic. I’ve just finished my morning round at The Park with a three-putt for par on the forgiving 18th hole, and I saddle up at the cabana, the bar/small bites stand strategically located at the front of the property.A foursome that was a few holes ahead of me is heading off to their vehicles — while allowing for their anonymity, let’s just say they can be members anywhere they want to be in the golf-rich West Palm Beach/Jupiter area. Making the turn to the back nine are the bros wanting to chase down their transfusions with High Noons. Though they represent very different ends of the Saturday golfer spectrum, you recognize both groups as what a golfer “looks” like.But the cabana occup...
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Bristol Myers to Acquire the Drugmaker Karuna for Billion
23Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Health

Bristol Myers to Acquire the Drugmaker Karuna for $14 Billion

Bristol Myers Squibb, the global pharmaceutical giant, said on Friday that it would acquire Karuna Therapeutics, which makes drugs to treat schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, in an all-cash deal valued at $14 billion as it looks to strengthen its pipeline of neuroscience drugs.Bristol Myers said in a statement that it would pay $330 per share in cash, a premium of roughly 53 percent to Karuna’s share price on Thursday.An increasing prevalence of schizophrenia, driven in part by an aging population, has led to a push to make more drugs to treat it. The market for such therapies is estimated to grow to $12.6 billion by 2032, according to the research firm Market.Us. Earlier this month, the biomedical company AbbVie bought Cerevel Therapeutics, which develops drugs to treat psychiatric and neurol...
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Israel-Hamas War Security Council: Latest Updates
23Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
World

Israel-Hamas War Security Council: Latest Updates

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Friday calling for a surge in aid to desperate civilians in Gaza and pauses in the fighting to deliver that aid safely, ending nearly a week of intense diplomatic wrangling intended to ensure that the United States would not block the measure.The vote was 13-0, with the United States and Russia abstaining. At U.S. insistence, the measure did not demand an immediate truce. Instead, it called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors” of unspecified timing and location, “to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.”The United States, under pressure from Jerusalem to preserve Israeli inspections of aid, delayed multiple scheduled votes on the resolution as negotiators tried to work out a compromise and avoi...
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Price Increases Cooled in November as Inflation Falls Toward Fed Target
23Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Business

Price Increases Cooled in November as Inflation Falls Toward Fed Target

A closely watched measure of inflation cooled notably in November, good news for the Federal Reserve as officials move toward the next phase in their fight against rapid price increases and a positive for the White House as voters see relief from rising costs.The Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation measure, which the Fed cites when it says it aims for 2 percent inflation on average over time, climbed 2.6 percent in the year through November. That was down from 2.9 percent the previous month, and was less than what economists had forecast. Compared with the previous month, prices overall even fell slightly for the first time in years.That decline — a 0.1 percent drop, and the first negative reading since April 2020 — came as gas prices dropped. After volatile food and fuel prices we...
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Substack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech
23Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Technology

Substack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech

Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform.“I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those views,” Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, said in a statement. “But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse.”The response came weeks after The Atlantic found that at least 16 Substack newsletters had “overt Nazi symbols” in their logos or graphics, and that white supremacists had been allowed to publish on, and profit...
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No Hit League? The ‘lost art’ of body checking in the NHL
23Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Sports

No Hit League? The ‘lost art’ of body checking in the NHL

Seventeen years and more than 1,200 games ago, Andrew Cogliano remembers how difficult it was to traverse the state of California.The Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks were three of the biggest, heaviest teams in the league. If you had to play all three in succession? Well, good luck. Not only were those teams willing to play a punishing brand of hockey, but they were all highly skilled and generally successful, too.After a few years in Edmonton where he broke into the league, Cogliano was dealt to the Ducks as a free agent in the summer of 2011 and was part of a team that qualified for the playoffs in six straight seasons from 2012-13 through 2017-18. Those California road trips became regular intrastate battles. And they were vicious.“My first couple years in Anaheim, ...
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Bellevue Hospital Bariatric Surgery Program Is Under NY State Scrutiny
21Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Health

Bellevue Hospital Bariatric Surgery Program Is Under NY State Scrutiny

The New York State Department of Health is scrutinizing Bellevue Hospital’s use of unlicensed technicians to assist doctors in weight-loss surgeries.Bellevue, a large public hospital in Manhattan, churns thousands of low-income patients through bariatric surgery every year, The New York Times reported this month. Doctors are paid in part based on the volume of surgeries.In their push for speed, bariatric surgeons have at times asked equipment technicians to scrub in and participate in surgeries because the surgeons were short on assistants, two Bellevue doctors told The Times. Those technicians, who worked for an outside vendor called Surgical Solutions, were not licensed to treat patients.The state health agency has begun an inquiry into the allegations, which could lead to a formal inves...
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A Cold War Era Dispute Between Venezuela and Guyana Complicates U.S. Relations
21Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
World

A Cold War Era Dispute Between Venezuela and Guyana Complicates U.S. Relations

It was the depths of the Cold War in the 1960s, and Caracas was on edge.Marxist guerrillas in Venezuela were getting weapons and training from Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Along Venezuela’s eastern border, anticolonial leaders in what was then British Guiana were agitating for independence.Alarmed that a Guyanese leader could create a Cuban beachhead in South America, Venezuela’s staunchly anti-Communist president, Rómulo Betancourt, came up with a strategy, which blunted the independence push: At the United Nations, his government resurrected a long-festering claim to more than half of Guyana’s territory.Now the dispute over Essequibo — an oil-rich, Guyanese region nearly the size of Florida — has flared back to life. This month, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, unveiled new maps displaying...
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Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’?
21Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Business

Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’?

The battle in “Home Alone” between 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and two burglars known as the Wet Bandits has unfolded on screens around the world every Christmas since the film premiered in 1990.And each year, for some viewers, the McCallisters’ grand home and lifestyle inspires its own tradition: wondering just how rich this family was.The New York Times turned to economists and people involved with the film to find the answer.The McCallisters are the 1 Percent.Early in the film, one of the burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci), tells his fellow Wet Bandit, Marv (Daniel Stern), that the McCallister home is their top target in a wealthy neighborhood.“That’s the one, Marv, that’s the silver tuna,” Harry says, before speculating that the house contains a lot of “top-flight goods,” i...
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New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea
21Dec Avatar photoBy Winry RockbellNo Comments
Technology

New Jersey Deli Scheme Leads to Securities Fraud Guilty Plea

A man involved in a brazen plot to manipulate the stock price of a New Jersey deli’s parent company pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday.James T. Patten, 64, of North Carolina, admitted to orchestrating a series of misleading trades in an apparent bid to enrich himself and two co-defendants in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J.Mr. Patten faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million for securities fraud. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.Mr. Patten’s lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, said in an interview on Wednesday that attention on the case “was exaggerated beyond any perception — that this was some $100 million fraud involving a delicatessen...
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