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Inside the Funeral Home for New York’s Elite
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. John Lennon. Greta Garbo. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Mae West. Arthur Ashe. Ivana Trump. Luther Vandross. Heath Ledger. George Balanchine. George Gershwin. Mario Cuomo. Biggie Smalls. Nikola Tesla. Celia Cruz. Joan Rivers. Aaliyah. Ayn Rand. Lena Horne. Norman Mailer. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Logan Roy.What do these people have in common?The answer is that, shortly after their deaths, they passed through the Frank E. Campbell funeral home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.For over a century, Frank E. Campbell has been the mortuary of choice for New York’s power brokers and celebrities. In some circles, to end up anywhere else would be a fate even worse than death.The writer Gay Talese, a longtime Upper East Sider, has lost count of how many services he has attended there.“For a certain kind of person, they must end up at Campbell as a matter of honor and status,” Mr. Talese, 92, said. “And Campbell is the rare New York business that might never close, because it will never run out of customers — because everyone dies.”“Eventually, sure, I’ll probably have my own moment at Campbell,” he continued. “I’ll enter reclined on my back and have a moment of silence there while friends and relatives come to stare at me. It’s the final stop. The last picture show.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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3 Die Amid Outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease at an Assisted Living Home
Twenty-five people connected to the home, in Albany, N.Y., have been hospitalized amid the outbreak, officials said.Three people who tested positive for Legionnaires’ disease have died amid an outbreak at an assisted living home in Albany, N.Y., that sickened at least seven others, officials said on Friday.The deaths came amid what Maribeth Miller, the interim Albany County health commissioner, described in an email as a “cluster” of Legionnaires’ cases at the Peregrine Senior Living at Shaker home that officials had learned of on Aug. 30.Water samples from the home showed the presence of Legionella bacteria, which causes the disease, Ms. Miller wrote. She said the county Health Department had placed certain restrictions on water use at the home, one of 11 that Peregrine operates in New York and Maryland, while more tests were conducted. Water filters have been installed on some showers and sinks so that residents can still use bathrooms, she added.“There is no threat to the community at large,” Ms. Miller wrote.Kristyn Ganim, the home’s executive director, said employees had been working with health officials to address the outbreak. In addition to installing filters across the water treatment system, she said, staff members were providing residents with bottled water.“I want to reassure all of our residents, staff and visitors that our community is completely safe,” she said in a statement.Legionella bacteria occurs naturally in water, and people typically contract Legionnaires’ disease by inhaling mists or water vapor containing the bacteria, according to the state Health Department. The bacteria can grow in poorly maintained industrial water systems; cooling towers; or heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Time to Say Goodbye to the B.M.I.?
The body mass index has long been criticized as a flawed indicator of health. A replacement has been gaining support: the body roundness index.Move over, body mass index. Make room for roundness — to be precise, the body roundness index.The body mass index, or B.M.I., is a ratio of height to weight that has long been used as a medical screening tool. It is one of the most widely used health metrics but also one of the most reviled, because it is used to label people overweight, obese or extremely obese.The classifications have been questioned by athletes like the American Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher, whose B.M.I. of 30 technically puts her on the cusp of obesity. “But alas,” she said on Instagram, addressing online trolls who tried to shame her about her weight, “I’m going to the Olympics and you’re not.”Advocates for overweight individuals and people of color note that the formula was developed nearly 200 years ago and based exclusively on data from men, most of them white, and that it was never intended for medical screening. Even physicians have weighed in on the shortcomings of B.M.I. The American Medical Association warned last year that B.M.I. is an imperfect metric that doesn’t account for racial, ethnic, age, sex and gender diversity. It can’t differentiate between individuals who carry a lot of muscle and those with fat in all the wrong places.“Based on B.M.I., Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was a bodybuilder would have been categorized as obese and needing to lose weight,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program at Yale University.“But as soon as you measured his waist, you’d see, ‘Oh, it’s 32 inches.’”So welcome a new metric: the body roundness index. B.R.I. is just what it sounds like — a measure of how round or circlelike you are, using a formula that takes into account height and waist, but not weight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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At Least 12 Die Trying to Cross English Channel, French Authorities Say
The French maritime authorities said that 65 people were picked up from the sea after their vessel encountered unspecified difficulties.At least 12 people died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of northern France on Tuesday during an attempt to cross the English Channel, the French authorities said. It was the deadliest episode in the waterway this year as French and British governments struggle to prevent attempts at the perilous crossing.Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister, said on the social media platform X that the vessel sank off the coast of Wimereux, in an area of the Pas-de-Calais region where several similar tragedies have occurred this year. Two people were still missing and several others were injured, Mr. Darmanin said.“All government services are mobilized to find the missing and care for the victims,” he said.The French maritime authorities said in a statement that dozens of people fell into the sea after their vessel encountered unspecified difficulties on Tuesday morning off the coast of Cap Gris-Nez, which at some points is less than 30 miles from the British coastline.Rescue workers picked up 65 people out of the water, some of them in critical condition, and rescue operations involving helicopters and several ships are still continuing, the maritime authorities said in a statement.One of the worst migrant-related accidents in the Channel happened in 2021, when 27 people died after their boat capsized, but similar tragedies have repeatedly occurred on a smaller scale. Five people died at sea in January near Wimereux as well; five people died in similar circumstances around the same area in April.Last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France pledged to increase cooperation in the English Channel and to dismantle human smuggling networks, which the authorities on both sides of the waterway have blamed for the repeated deaths.“The leaders agreed to do more together to dismantle smuggling routes further upstream and increase intelligence sharing,” Mr. Starmer’s office said in a statement after the two leaders met in Paris.The Channel is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Its waters are especially icy in the winter, winds can be treacherous, and migrants trying to cross often crowd onto flimsy inflatable boats.“It’s a particularly dangerous sector even when the sea looks calm,” the maritime authorities said in their statement on Tuesday.Most of those who try to cross the Channel leave from the Pas-de-Calais. Many are from Afghanistan, Albania, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Syria, according to the French authorities, and they cluster in makeshift camps on the coast of northern France before trying to cross.Many prefer risking the trip over staying in France because they see Britain as an attractive destination with a strong job market where English is spoken, or because they already have family there or people they know from their home country. More
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‘Pinnacle Man’ Found Frozen Near Appalachian Trail Is Identified
The man, Nicholas Paul Grubb, was found frozen near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania in 1977. His identity remained a mystery until a state trooper found his fingerprints.For 47 years, he’s been known as the Pinnacle Man.On a brutally cold winter’s day on Jan. 16, 1977, two hikers found a man’s frozen body in a cave below the Pinnacle, a scenic viewpoint off the Appalachian Trail in Albany Township in eastern Pennsylvania, about 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia.The authorities performed an autopsy, took the victim’s fingerprints and determined that he was a male between 25 and 35 years old, with blue eyes and reddish curly long hair.There were no signs of foul play, and the authorities determined the death was suicide from a drug overdose.When no one came forward to claim him, the Pinnacle Man was buried in a potter’s field.At some point, the original fingerprints taken during the autopsy went missing, and the copies of those prints were too poor in quality to use for identification, the authorities said.More than four decades later, the man now has a name: Nicholas Paul Grubb, who was 27 and from Fort Washington, Pa.At a news conference last week, officials with the Berks County Coroner’s Office explained that a Pennsylvania state trooper tracked down the missing fingerprints to help identify Mr. Grubb.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Hostage Rescued in Gaza as Israeli Airstrikes Kill Scores of Palestinians
A Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel was rescued after Israeli commandos found him alone in an underground warren, apparently abandoned by his captors.An elite Israeli military unit rescued a frail and gaunt hostage from a tunnel deep beneath the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the eighth living captive to be freed by Israeli troops in nearly 11 months of war and the first to be found alive in the subterranean labyrinth used by Hamas.The rescue came amid Israeli airstrikes across Gaza that Palestinian emergency services said killed at least 20 people. At one of the bombing sites in the southern city of Khan Younis, emergency crews frantically searched for survivors trapped under a collapsed building.The rescued hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, 52, a member of Israel’s Bedouin Arab minority, was freed by commandos without a fight after being discovered in a room roughly 25 yards underground, Israeli officials said. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 30 of whom are now presumed dead by the Israeli authorities.The Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, portrayed the operation to rescue Mr. al-Qadi, as “complex and brave.” He said the soldiers reached him after “precise intelligence” was collected by Israel’s security services.But that account was at odds with details provided by two senior Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter.Mr. al-Qadi, the Israeli officials said, was found by chance during an operation to capture a Hamas tunnel network. A team led by Flotilla 13, Israel’s equivalent to the U.S. Navy SEALs, were combing the tunnels for signs of Hamas when, to the forces’ surprise, they found Mr. al-Qadi on his own, without guards, the officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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At Least 38 Killed in Attacks in Southwestern Pakistan
At least 38 people have been killed in several assaults across Baluchistan Province since Sunday in what appears to be part of a campaign by armed separatists in the region.The violence began with blasts that ripped through a military camp in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province late Sunday night, killing at least one soldier. Around the same time, armed men stormed into at least four police stations in the province, spraying bullets at officers and setting police vehicles on fire, local officials said.By daybreak, militants had destroyed a bridge, bringing the major railway that runs across it to a halt. Then early Monday morning, the violence hit its apex when gunmen held up traffic on a major highway, shooting and killing nearly two dozen people.Over a 24-hour period, the new wave of violence carried out by an armed separatist group has seized Baluchistan Province in southwestern Pakistan and left at least 38 people dead, worsening the country’s already deteriorating security situation.The spate of coordinated attacks in Baluchistan began on Sunday, as the group, the Baluch Liberation Army, or B.L.A., announced that it was starting a new operation across the province. The B.L.A. is one of several insurgent groups that has demanded the province’s independence from the central government in Islamabad.The deadliest single attack in the campaign so far unfolded in Musakhel, a district in Baluchistan, officials said, when armed men stopped traffic on a highway and demanded that passengers on buses and trucks show them their identity cards, officials said.The gunmen forced some of the passengers out of the vehicles, and then shot and killed them, officials said. Nearly all of the victims were from Punjab Province, officials said, and the gunmen set at least 10 buses and trucks ablaze before fleeing the area.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
