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On Wednesday, Kendric Cromer, a 12-year-old boy from a Washington suburb, became the first person in the world with sickle cell disease to start a commercially approved gene therapy that could cure the disease.For the approximately 20,000 people with sickle cell disease in the United States who qualify for treatment, the start of Kendric's months-long medical journey may offer hope. But it also signals the difficulties patients face when trying a pair of new treatments for sickle cell disease.For a lucky few, like Kendric, treatment could make the life they longed for possible. As a solemn and shy teenager, he had learned that ordinary activities – riding a bicycle, going out on a cold day, playing football – could cause episodes of excruciating pain.“Sickle cell anemia always steals...

An American soldier detained in Russia last week will remain in prison until at least July while authorities investigate theft charges against him, Russian media reported Tuesday, citing local court officials.The soldier was arrested on Thursday in the eastern Russian port city of Vladivostok, a local court spokesman told Russian business daily Kommersant. His detention came to light on Monday, when the US departments of State and Defense said he was being held.A U.S. military officer identified him as Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, 34, an Army sergeant about to return home to Texas after being stationed in South Korea.A Vladivostok court said in a news release Tuesday that an American citizen identified only by the letter B had been arrested on charges of robbing a woman, causing her "consider...

As experts warn that AI-generated images, audio and video could influence the fall elections, OpenAI is releasing a tool designed to detect content created by its popular image generator, DALL-E. But the prominent AI start-up recognizes that this tool is only a small part of what will be needed to combat so-called deepfakes in the months and years to come.On Tuesday, OpenAI said it would share its new deepfake detector with a small group of disinformation researchers so they could test the tool in real-world situations and help identify ways it could be improved.“It's about sparking new research,” said Sandhini Agarwal, an OpenAI researcher who focuses on security and politics. “It's really needed.”OpenAI said its new detector could correctly identify 98.8% of images created by D...

After the Israeli army issued the evacuation order, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated that he was "deeply concerned" about an invasion, while Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry warned Israel against advancing what he called a “bloody and systematic” campaign to storm all of Gaza and displace its residents.In Rafah, some Palestinians quickly dismantled their tents in the pouring rain and began to leave. Others wondered whether it was safe to leave. Gazans and aid groups said the Israeli military had shelled areas it had previously designated as safe for civilians.Nidal Kuhail, 29, a former Gaza City resident, said he was overcome with anxiety and divided about what to do. The tent he was taking refuge in was not in the area of ​​Rafah covered by the Israeli evacuation order....

When Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer – the most advanced form – at 23, questions swirled in her head: “Why didn't anyone tell me to check my breasts? Why didn't I know I could get breast cancer at 23?If she hadn't known she might have breast cancer so young, there was a very good chance others would be equally misinformed, she said in a 2021 interview with The Guardian. She spent the next 15 years educating young people about early detection through her nonprofit, CoppaFeel, and in a 2021 memoir, “Glittering a Turd.”On Monday, CoppaFeel announced that Ms. Hallenga had died at the age of 38. A spokesperson for the organization said that she had died at her home in Cornwall, England, and that the cause was breast cancer.“Survival has never been enough,” ...

Laurent Cantet, an eminent director who made insightful films about the thorny aspects of French life and society, died on April 25 in Paris. He was 63 years old.His writer and editor, Robin Campillo, said he died of cancer in hospital.Cantet's best-known film was “Entre les Murs” (“The Class”), which won the Palme d'Or, the top prize of the Cannes Film Festival, in 2008 and was nominated for an Oscar as best film in foreign language. “The Class” was something new in French cinema: an extended snapshot of the interior of a school classroom in a working-class neighborhood of Paris, using a real-life former teacher and real-life schoolchildren and walking a provocative line between documentary and fiction. .This ambiguity infuses the film with a rare tension, as a hapless language...

Wayve, a London-based maker of artificial intelligence systems for autonomous vehicles, said Tuesday it had raised $1 billion, an eye-popping sum for a European start-up and an example of investor optimism about AI's ability to reshape industries.SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that backed Uber and other tech companies, was the lead investor, along with Microsoft and Nvidia. Previous investors in Wayve include Yann LeCun, Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist.Wayve, which previously raised about $300 million, did not disclose its valuation after the investment.Wayve was co-founded in 2017 by Alex Kendall, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge specializing in computer vision and robotics. Unlike generative AI models, which create human-like text and images and ...

But Israeli leaders have also vowed to conduct a major military operation in Rafah against Hamas forces they believe are fortified there. Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Israel will invade Rafah with or without a ceasefire agreement.Hamas wants Israel to withdraw all its forces, but Israel says it must maintain control of security in Gaza.Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza after previous conflicts with Hamas in 2014 and 2009, but this time Israeli leaders say it's not that simple.During the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Palestinian gunmen overwhelmed communities and military bases near Gaza, killing around 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.Israeli leaders have pledged to do whatever is necessary to ensure that such an attack can never happen again, and say that means ...

Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer's that would mean up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease.Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer's cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study published Monday, could broaden the scope of efforts to develop treatments, including gene therapy, and influence the design of clinical trials.It could also mean that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone could, if they wanted, receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer's before developing any symptoms of cognitive decline, even though there are currently no treatments for people at that stage.The new classification would make this type of Alzheimer...

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, put pressure on China on Monday to help resolve the war in Ukraine, saying Beijing should "use all its influence on Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine." .He spoke after accompanying French President Emmanuel Macron on a meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, who on Sunday began his first visit to Europe in five years. Ms von der Leyen has consistently taken a stronger line on China than Macron.With Russian President Vladimir V. Putin again suggesting he may be ready to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, he said Xi played “an important role in debunking Russia's irresponsible nuclear threats.” She was confident, von der Leyen said, that Xi “would continue to do so against the backdrop of cont...