Year: 2024

The State Department notified Congress on Friday that it had approved a $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets and related equipment to Turkey after the country’s leader signed documents allowing Sweden’s long-delayed entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, department officials and the Pentagon said.Although Congress could move to formally block the sale, four senior lawmakers told the State Department on Friday evening that they would not object, after their aides reviewed the documents signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, U.S. officials said.Congressional officials had demanded to see the documents before signaling their approval of the sale,…

The genetic testing company 23andMe is being accused in a class-action lawsuit of failing to protect the privacy of customers whose personal information was exposed last year in a data breach that affected nearly seven million profiles.The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in federal court in San Francisco, also accused the company of failing to notify customers with Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage that they appeared to have been specifically targeted, or that their personal genetic information had been compiled into “specially curated lists” that were shared and sold on the dark web.The suit was filed after 23andMe submitted…

In June 2021, the insurance plan for North Carolina state employees was paying for 2,800 people to take weight-loss drugs.Last year, it paid for nearly 25,000. Medications like Wegovy cost the North Carolina State Health Plan $100 million last year, rising seemingly out of nowhere to represent 10 percent of its spending on prescription drugs.“This is something we never anticipated,” said Dale Folwell, the state treasurer, whose office runs the health plan.Alarmed by the ballooning costs, the health plan’s governing board voted on Thursday to end all coverage of medications for weight loss, including Wegovy, which accounts for the vast…

Only a few torn pieces of the crime scene tape around Lorenza Cano’s house are left. The shards of glass from the front door are gone. So are the bullet casings.All that remains is the hope that Ms. Cano will be found.The 55-year-old activist is one of hundreds of women in Mexico who became advocates for the country’s disappeared population after their own loved ones went missing. Ms. Cano’s brother, José Francisco, was abducted in 2018 and never found.Now, she herself has vanished.Last week, gunmen burst into her home in Salamanca, an industrial city in Mexico’s central state of Guanajuato,…

The rumour mill is still. The gossip columns are sparse. The Sky Sports News totaliser sits dormant. Fabrizio Romano seems to be tweeting more about deals that aren’t happening than ones that are. The Athletic has given David Ornstein the month off (just kidding: we would never let him have any time off).This has been a quiet January transfer window.There are nine days to go until the February 1 deadline and between the 20 clubs of the Premier League, there have been only six permanent purchases for actual money, for a total of around £44million ($56m).Five of those won’t be…

Tesla’s profit from sales of electric cars slumped in the last three months of last year because of price cuts intended to thwart increasingly intense competition, the company said on Wednesday as it warned of a tough year ahead.Profit in the fourth quarter nearly doubled to $7.9 billion, up from $3.7 billion a year earlier. But $5.9 billion of that profit came from a tax benefit. Without that one-time accounting effect, profit would have fallen.Tesla has slashed prices for the two cars that make up the bulk of its sales — the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y sport…

“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.Jam the towel under the door. Open the window. And hide the bong.For decades, college students have found ways to mask the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke on campuses. Wanda James, however, did not always feel a need to hide. A 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Ms. James would sit on the steps outside her dorm and roll joints with her friends.It would be decades before Colorado became one of the first two states in the country to legalize recreational cannabis, but on campus, James…