Author: palmbeachocean.com

At first, the coup in Niger resembled others that have roiled West Africa in recent years. On July 26, soldiers detained Niger’s president at his home in the capital, Niamey. Hours later, they declared they had seized power. Foreign powers condemned the putsch but did nothing.Then the coup took a different course.The United States and France threatened to cut ties with Niger, endangering hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. The deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, though detained, was able to speak with world leaders, receive visitors and post defiant messages on social media.Neighboring countries threatened to go to war —…

Alan Roland, who brought new insights to psychoanalysis by calling out a Western bias in much of the field and factoring in differences in culture and upbringing among patients, died on July 22 at his home in Monterey, Mass. He was 93.His wife, Joan Roland, said the cause was congestive heart failure.Dr. Roland was best known for “In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross-Cultural Psychology,” an influential 1988 book in which he laid out his ideas.A crucial moment in the evolution of those ideas came in 1971, when he was teaching at the New School in…

‘A Knight’s Tale’ (Aug. 31)Another period musical, this one from the writer and director Brian Helgeland (an Oscar winner for co-writing the “L.A. Confidential” screenplay), takes a similar swing-for-the-fences approach, scoring its story of jousting and romance in 14th century England with ’70s rock hits like “We Will Rock You” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” It’s wildly anachronistic but joyfully so, as Helgeland and his attractive cast — including the charismatic golden boy Heath Ledger, the striking ingénue Shannyn Sossamon and the sneeringly villainous scene-stealer Rufus Sewell — strike just the right balance of good humor and old-fashioned earnestness.Stream it…

In June 2022, on the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, released a statement jointly with the W.N.B.A.’s commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.Silver and Engelbert said the leagues believed “that women should be able to make their own decisions concerning their health and future, and we believe that freedom should be protected.”Less than one year later, one of the N.B.A.’s teams, the Orlando Magic — as an organization — wrote a $50,000 check to Never Back Down, a super PAC promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, financial disclosures revealed this week. The Magic are…

In context: Germanium and gallium are instrumental in manufacturing power chips, radio frequency amplifiers, LEDs, and many other silicon-based components. They aren’t scarce metals, but China has been providing the world with cheap germanium and gallium for decades. However, new policy changes could affect global supplies. China recently announced new export restrictions on germanium and gallium – two fundamental elements for chip manufacturing. As of Tuesday, Chinese companies interested in doing business abroad need to secure a proper export license from Beijing authorities. “Pure” germanium and gallium export, as well as export of any product which includes the two elements,…

Why It Matters: The disease can be treated if doctors recognize it.Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is caused by slow-growing bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae. About 95 percent of people are genetically resistant to the bacteria.There were 159 new cases in 2020, the most recent year for which national data are available. New cases are reported most commonly in Florida, California, Louisiana, Hawaii, New York and Texas. Central Florida accounts for 81 percent of the cases reported in that state.The bacteria are thought to be transmitted by droplets from the nose and mouth of an infected patient, but only after…

The open-air bookstalls that line the River Seine are as symbolic of Paris as the Louvre or the Arc de Triomphe.But most of the boxy, dark green stalls must be dismantled and temporarily removed before the 2024 Summer Olympics for what officials say are security reasons. The booksellers, known as “les bouquinistes,” have said they will not budge, calling the order issued by the Paris police chief last week an affront to the French capital’s history and soul.“Paris without the bouquinistes is like Venice without the gondolas,” said Jean-Pierre Mathias, 76, who has had a stall along the Seine for…

A mysterious organ that’s most active in childhood might play a previously underappreciated role in adults. In a study of almost 2,300 adults who underwent chest surgery, removing the thymus gland was associated with higher rates of death and of cancer within the next few years, researchers report in the Aug. 3 New England Journal of Medicine. The discovery pushes back on a long-held belief that the immune system organ is somewhat expendable in adulthood. “This is a really important finding,” says immunologist Dong-Ming Su of the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, who was not…

Sports are a strangely transformative human event. They change people — the people who play them, the people who watch them. The pandemic changed sports and maybe the athletes, maybe Aaron Rodgers. Looking for unorthodoxy, he discovered villainy and embraced it, perhaps in a scheme to get traded, damning being adored in pursuit of a self that seemed true. People were baffled by that, too. In professional wrestling, they call this sort of manufactured misbehavior a heel turn. Done wrong, it’s baffling.For now, the heel in him appears to have mellowed. So what classification will make sense for Rodgers’ time…

Twitter or “X” CEO Elon Musk today said that he plans to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook about lower App Store fees for creators who earn money through subscriptions on the Twitter/X social network. In a post on creator support, Musk said that he plans to ask Apple to collect 30 percent of the creator fee that Twitter keeps rather than 30 percent of the total fee that a creator on Twitter earns. That would potentially give Apple a much lower cut of the money that Twitter is paying out to creators. Musk said that Twitter does not plan…