U.S. Added 216,000 Jobs in December, Outpacing Forecasts
5Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Business

U.S. Added 216,000 Jobs in December, Outpacing Forecasts

The labor market ended the year with a bang.Employers added 216,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, surpassing economists’ forecasts. It was the 36th consecutive month of gains.Altogether, the U.S. economy added roughly 2.7 million jobs over the past year. That’s a smaller gain than in 2021 or 2022, during the economy’s initial resurgence from pandemic lockdowns. Yet the gains of 2023 are still stronger than those in the late 2010s.The numbers are buoying expectations of what has been called a soft landing — in which the economy is able to avoid significant job loss while shifting into a calmer, more sustainable gear, after the disorienting volatility that began with the arrival of Covid-19 roughly four years ago.Many experts cautio...
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U.S. Moves Closer to Filing Sweeping Antitrust Case Against Apple
5Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Technology

U.S. Moves Closer to Filing Sweeping Antitrust Case Against Apple

The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter.The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company’s devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active.Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system for the iPhone,...
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Behind the scenes with Curt Menefee, ‘leader’ and ‘therapist’ for ‘Fox NFL Sunday’
5Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Sports

Behind the scenes with Curt Menefee, ‘leader’ and ‘therapist’ for ‘Fox NFL Sunday’

LOS ANGELES — Terry Bradshaw spills a cup of coffee, but Curt Menefee doesn’t flinch. Menefee leans toward a tray not visible on television for some tissue to help clean up as Bradshaw continues to make a point about the Cincinnati Bengals.Howie Long helps with the cleanup, and Bradshaw keeps talking. Jimmy Johnson listens intently.Menefee then ribs Bradshaw about needing another cup of coffee, and Johnson uses coffee as a transition to talk about the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks.“So Terry spills coffee on live TV … now, how do you react?” Menefee said shortly after while sitting in a dressing room at Fox Studios. “Instead of going into panic mode, we made it part of the show, and we laughed it off and had some fun with it.”It’s a funny moment in the studio. And Menefee, the longt...
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Florida Health Official Calls for Halt to Covid Vaccines
4Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Health

Florida Health Official Calls for Halt to Covid Vaccines

Florida’s surgeon general on Wednesday called for a halt to the use of Covid vaccines, citing widely debunked concerns that contaminants in the vaccine can permanently integrate into human DNA.“These vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general and highest-ranking health official, said in a statement released by the Florida Department of Health.Federal health officials and other experts have repeatedly sought to counter Dr. Ladapo’s erroneous comments about the vaccines, noting that careful review of the scientific evidence has found no basis for his declarations.The Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday that it had not identified any “safety concerns related to the sequence of, or amount of, residual DNA.”The Covid vaccines...
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Canada’s Boreal Forests Badly Damaged by Logging
4Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
World

Canada’s Boreal Forests Badly Damaged by Logging

Canada has long promoted itself globally as a model for protecting one of the country’s most vital natural resources: the world’s largest swath of boreal forest, which is crucial to fighting climate change.But a new study using nearly half a century of data from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec — two of the country’s main commercial logging regions — reveals that harvesting trees has inflicted severe damage on the boreal forest that will be difficult to reverse.Researchers led by a group from Griffith University in Australia found that since 1976 logging in the two provinces has caused the removal of 35.4 million acres of boreal forest, an area roughly the size of New York State.While nearly 56 million acres of well-established trees at least a century old remain in the region, logging ...
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Xerox to Cut 15% of Its Work Force in the First Quarter of 2024
4Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Business

Xerox to Cut 15% of Its Work Force in the First Quarter of 2024

Xerox said on Wednesday that it was cutting 15 percent of its work force as part of a restructuring, the company’s latest effort to shift focus to its business-services offerings and away from its iconic photocopiers.In a news release, the company said it would reduce its global staff, which included roughly 23,000 employees in 2022, and name a new leadership team. The layoffs are expected to take place in the first quarter of 2024.The company’s shares fell more than 12 percent after the layoff news was announced. Its share price had been steadily rising over the past year, in part because Xerox had saved billions of dollars after starting a cost-cutting program in 2018. It reported a roughly 6 percent drop in revenue in the third quarter of 2023 compared with the previous year.Xerox was f...
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Auto Sales Are Expected to Slow After a Strong 2023
4Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Technology

Auto Sales Are Expected to Slow After a Strong 2023

After enjoying a strong rebound in sales in 2023, the auto industry appears headed for slower growth this year as consumers struggle with elevated interest rates and high prices for new cars and light trucks.Edmunds, a market researcher, expects the industry to sell 15.7 million vehicles this year. That would amount to a modest increase from the 15.5 million sold last year, when sales jumped 12 percent.“There’s definitely pent-up demand out there, because people have been holding off purchases for a while,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds. “But given the credit situation, we don’t think the industry will see a ton of growth this year.”Since the coronavirus pandemic, automakers have struggled with shortages of critical parts that have prevented them from producing as many...
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Valencia’s Nou Mestalla ‘ghost ground’: After 15-year delay, will it finally be built?
4Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Sports

Valencia’s Nou Mestalla ‘ghost ground’: After 15-year delay, will it finally be built?

The cheers rang long and loud around Valencia’s Mestalla Stadium as fans celebrated Hugo Guillamon’s late equaliser against Barcelona in their final home match before La Liga’s Christmas break.Four kilometres away, on the other side of Valencia’s old city centre, all was quiet around the site of the Nou Mestalla — where the club’s half-built new home has sat untouched for the past 15 years.Through all that time, one of La Liga’s most storied clubs has found itself stuck in this bizarre situation — unable to raise the money to finish a modern new ground, unable to sell its historic home.Meanwhile, a team used to competing at the highest level in national and European competition has found itself fighting relegation, with the club’s historic debts becoming ever more difficult to deal with.On...
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Monica Bertagnolli, NIH’s New Leader, Wants to Broaden Participation in Medical Research
2Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
Health

Monica Bertagnolli, NIH’s New Leader, Wants to Broaden Participation in Medical Research

When Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli moved into the director’s suite at the National Institutes of Health, she brought with her a single piece of art, a lithograph created by the granddaughter of a cancer patient she once treated. It depicts an abstract geometric female figure and the organs she lost to cancer. Its title: “We Are Not What You Have Taken: A Response to Cancer.”The image speaks to Dr. Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon who previously led the National Cancer Institute and is a breast-cancer survivor herself.After being nominated by President Biden in the spring and winning Senate confirmation last month, she became the 17th director of the N.I.H., which has a budget of more than $47 billion and occupies a sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md. She is only the second woman to lead the biomedi...
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Japan Earthquake Death Toll Rises to at Least 48
2Jan By Edwards ElrickNo Comments
World

Japan Earthquake Death Toll Rises to at Least 48

At least 48 people were killed in the powerful earthquake that struck western Japan on Monday, the authorities said a day after the disaster, as they continued to comb through the rubble of collapsed and burned buildings.The dead included 19 in Wajima, a city in Ishikawa Prefecture, the coastal epicenter of the earthquake, which triggered tsunami warnings, extensive evacuations and widespread power outages after it hit around 4:10 p.m. on New Year’s Day.A large fire broke out in Wajima after the quake, which registered 7.6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale. Some died after being trapped in rubble from destroyed buildings.The tsunami warnings were lifted on Tuesday morning, and the quake did not produce waves as high as initially feared. The police, firefighters and members of the cou...
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