Author: Reporter

Susan Scarbro stares down a bowling lane at the distant pins. She hears a sound that breaks her focus. Was that a cough? Will her mask protect her? COVID-19 remains a very present threat for the 55-year-old. Scarbro has multiple immune disorders, making her vulnerable to infection. “Any minute anybody could cough, just incidentally,” said Scarbro, who lives in Sunset Beach, North Carolina. “And that cough could be the one thing that could make me sick.” January 20 marked the fifth anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. The virus would go on to kill...

Transplant experts are seeing a spike in people revoking organ donor registrations, their confidence shaken by reports that organs were nearly retrieved from a Kentucky man mistakenly declared dead. It happened in 2021 and while details are murky surgery was avoided and the man is still alive. But donor registries in the U.S. and even across the Atlantic are being impacted after the case was publicized recently. A drop in donations could cost the lives of people awaiting a transplant. “Organ donation is based on public trust,” said Dorrie Dils, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, or...

Millions of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas have already been made public, but President Donald Trump has ordered the release of thousands of still-classified files. Trump signed the executive order on January 23 as part of a flurry of executive actions taken in the first week of his second term. Many people who have studied previously released documents say the public should not anticipate any earth-shattering revelations. But there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it, and other figures of that time. Of...

A frenzy over an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek was upending stock markets on January 27 and fueling debates over the economic and geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China in developing AI technology. DeepSeek’s AI assistant became the No. 1 downloaded free app on Apple’s iPhone store on January 27, propelled by curiosity about the ChatGPT competitor. Part of what is worrying some U.S. tech industry observers is the idea that the Chinese startup has caught up with the American companies at the forefront of generative AI at a fraction of the cost. That,...

Wall Street’s superstars tumbled on January 27 as a competitor from China threatened to upend the artificial intelligence frenzy they have been feasting on. The S&P 500 dropped 1.5%, dragged down in large part by a 16.9% fall for Nvidia. Other Big Tech stocks also took heavy losses, and they pulled the Nasdaq composite down 3.1% for its worst loss in more than a month. The damage was focused on AI-related stocks, while the rest of the market held up much better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 289 points, or 0.7%, and the majority of U.S. stocks climbed....