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UnitedHealth Group spent nearly $1.7 million on security for its top executives in 2024, the healthcare conglomerate disclosed on Monday, months after the fatal shooting of senior executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in December. The company also paid $207,931 on behalf of certain family members of the executives to provide them with personal and home security services, it said. The security spending disclosures, absent from UnitedHealth’s previous annual filings, underscore how the December shooting is prompting companies to reassess the risk of targeted violence against top management. U.S. drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly also in…

U.S. health officials said they plan to phase out eight petroleum-based artificial colors from the nation’s food supply, triggering an overhaul of scores of brightly hued products on American store shelves. Details of the plan are expected to be announced Tuesday afternoon by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, who have advocated the change as part of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The officials are expected to spell out a regulatory path for removing the color additives, a process that typically requires public notice and agency review. It would be a sweeping change for U.S. food produ…

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday signaled support for the religious rights of parents in Maryland who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters. The court seemed likely to find that the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, could not require elementary school children to sit through lessons involving the books if parents expressed religious objections to the material. The case is the latest dispute involving religion to come before the court. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. “I’m surprised this is the hill to…

Few moments in Pope Francis‘ papacy better exemplify his understanding of climate change and the need to address it than the rain-soaked Mass he celebrated in Tacloban, Philippines, in 2015. Wearing one of the cheap plastic yellow ponchos that were handed out to the faithful, Francis experienced first-hand the type of freak, extreme storms that scientists blame on global warming and are increasingly striking vulnerable, low-lying islands. He had traveled to Tacloban, on the island of Leyte, to comfort survivors of one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, Typhoon Haiyan. The 2013 storm killed more than 7,300 people, flattened villages and displaced about 5 …

Stalking, but with a side of Dr Pepper? A number of streamers in Japan have recently had run-ins with a mysterious stream sniper known only as the Dr Pepper Guy. As Dexerto first reported, after tracking down streamers in random locations, the unknown figure silently cracks open a cold Dr Pepper, hands it over, and disappears without a word. Stream sniping—where viewers deliberately join or disrupt a live stream—has become increasingly common as IRL livestreaming grows in popularity on Twitch. While it sometimes raises safety concerns, resulting in unwelcome stalking and harassment, other times it’s a bizarre example of the internet at its weird and wonderful best…

A commercial airliner was on final approach to San Francisco’s international airport in November when the crew spotted a drone outside the cockpit window. By then it was too late “to take evasive action,” the pilots reported, and the quadcopter passed by their windshield, not 300 feet away. A month earlier, a jetliner was flying at an altitude of 4,000 feet near Miami’s international airport when its pilots reported a “close encounter” with a drone. In August, a drone came within 50 feet of clipping the left wing of a passenger jet as it departed Newark International Airport. The incidents were all classified as “near midair collisions” — any one of which could ha…

Arborists are turning vacant land on Detroit’s eastside into a small urban forest, not of elms, oaks and red maples indigenous to the city but giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees that can live for thousands of years. The project on four lots will not only replace long-standing blight with majestic trees, but could also improve air quality and help preserve the trees that are native to California’s Sierra Nevada, where they are threatened by ever-hotter wildfires. Detroit is the pilot city for the Giant Sequoia Filter Forest. The nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is donating dozens of sequoia saplings that will be planted by staff and volunteers from A…

Bottles and bags, food wrappers and straws. Piping, packaging, toys and trays. Plastic is everywhere — and yet some people may be surprised at how much they actually wear. A typical closet is loaded with plastic, woven into polyester activewear, acrylic sweaters, nylon swimsuits and stretchy socks — and it’s shedding into the environment nonstop. When garments are worn, washed and put through the dryer, they shed plastic fiber fragments. A single load of laundry can release millions that are so tiny wastewater treatment plants can’t capture them all. They wind up in local waterways that connect to the ocean. Marine animals eat them, and that can pass plastic to larger a…

Francesco Ferretti had a problem. His research expedition to track white sharks in the Mediterranean was suddenly adrift—the boat he’d arranged had vanished into the pandemic’s chaos of canceled plans and family emergencies. With scientific equipment packed and a team of seven researchers ready, the marine biologist found himself scanning the horizon for solutions. It was then that Ferretti turned to six-year-old Yachts for Science, a matchmaking service linking wealthy boat owners with cash-strapped researchers. Soon, an owner of a private yacht offered to help. Though weather conditions limited their time on the water and forced a relocation between countries, t…

Walgreens has agreed to pay up to $350 million in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, who accused the pharmacy of illegally filling millions of prescriptions in the last decade for opioids and other controlled substances. The nationwide drugstore chain must pay the government at least $300 million and will owe another $50 million if the company is sold, merged, or transferred before 2032, according to the settlement reached last Friday. The government’s complaint, filed in January in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that Walgreens knowingly filled millions of illegal prescriptions for controlled substances between Augu…

Pope Francis will be laid to rest Saturday after lying in state for three days in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the faithful are expected to flock to pay their respects to history’s first Latin American pontiff. The cardinals met Tuesday in the Vatican’s synod hall to chart the next steps before a conclave begins to choose Francis’ successor, as condolences poured in from around the world. According to current norms, the conclave must begin between May 5 and 10. The cardinals set the funeral for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, to be celebrated by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. U.S. President Donald The President said he and…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a recall notice that warns consumers to dispose of a certain brand of mushrooms, which have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacterium. Here’s what you need to know about the recall. What is the reason for the recall? On April 16, Harvest NYC Inc. of Brooklyn, New York, announced a recall of an Enoki Mushroom product due to fears of potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. Two days after Harvest NYC initiated the recall, the notice was posted on the FDA’s website. According to the notice, the recall was initiated after the New York State Depar…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Raycast is one of my favorite free apps. It’s a hidden gem that helps you do almost anything on your computer—add to your calendar, list tasks, search files, do math, or control apps—without touching your mouse. It’s free for Mac and coming soon to iOS and Windows. I use Raycast dozens of times daily for tasks that might take seconds individually, but cumulatively interrupt my flow. It saves me half an hour a week I can reallocate to deep work or family time. Read on for seven of my favorite ways to use Raycast and…

From the first time I saw Blade Runner and heard Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty describe “C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate,” I’ve wondered what it would be like to see beyond the limits of human vision. What would it feel like to have eyes that could see what we can’t normally see? I envied animals who can see light frequencies in the infrared and superheroes with X-ray vision that let them see like a NASA telescope. And today, I envy five regular human beings who, after having their eye cones temporarily rewired with a laser, were able to perceive a new color outside the typical range of the human eye. They called this color “olo”—a name derived from…

The fate of Google’s vast empire is now in the hands of a federal judge in Washington, D.C., as hearings begin to determine whether the tech giant should be broken up for maintaining an illegal monopoly in search. If the court rules against Google, the outcome could send shockwaves through the tech industry. The company might be forced to divest major assets—potentially including its Chrome browser or even the Android operating system. While the government has taken similar antitrust actions in the past, it’s been more than 25 years since a household name faced a breakup of this scale. So, what happened to the companies that were split up—or nearly split up—under …

Electric vehicles have seen a lot of success in recent years, but there are still some concerns—from range anxiety to insufficient charging infrastructure—that limit their overall adoption. Hybrids don’t have those same worries, and hybrid sales have been gaining momentum as the growth of EV sales has slowed. That’s caused some carmakers to pull back on EV offerings and prioritize hybrids instead. But now a company called Horse Powertrain is offering an alternative to carmakers who are hesitant to go fully electric while still allowing them to develop EVs—and keep their EV production lines. Called the Future Hybrid Concept, it’s essentially a way for automakers to re…

I’ve always been a doer. I move fast, I love learning new things, and I don’t sit still for long. Productivity has been a faithful companion throughout my career, and I attribute much of my success to one key trait: the courage to take action—even when things seem uncertain or complex. I trace this mentality back to a moment in my childhood. I was about 11 years old, growing up in the Netherlands, where a bicycle isn’t just a toy—it’s your main mode of transportation. One day, I had my first flat tire and it was raining (as it always is). I felt defeated and immobile. No bike meant no freedom, no way to get from A to B. I walked home, and my dad, calm as ever, lo…