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The Biden administration said this week that it opposes gender reaffirmation surgeries for minors, the most explicit statement yet on the topic from a president who has always been a staunch supporter of transgender rights.The White House announcement was sent to The New York Times on Wednesday in response to a story reporting that staffers in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization to remove age minimums for surgery from its guidelines for treating minors.The draft guidelines would have lowered the minimum age to 14 for hormone treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgery, and 17 for genital surgery or hysterectomy. The final...

Rishi Sunak's gamble was considerable. Five weeks ago, Britain's prime minister gambled on his belief that a summer election would give his Conservative Party a better chance of holding on to power than waiting until the autumn.Calling an early election was Sunak's last roll of the dice. But it has since emerged that in the days before May 22, in the pouring rain, he announced to the country that he would go to the polls, a number of colleagues and subordinates were placing bets of a more literal kind.Looking at data from the week before Mr Sunak's announcement, bookmakers noticed a spike in bets placed on the election date. The amounts staked were small, totaling just a few thousand pounds, but the sudden flurry of activity was enough to warrant further investigation.Th...

What does AI sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now AI developers are copying the movies, creating voices for real machines based on outdated movie fantasies about how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed updates to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, is learning to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice, much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a raspy timbre, a soothing effect, and a sexy edge. She was friendly and shy; she seemed ready for anything. After Sky’s debut, Johansson expressed disappointment that she sounded “eerily similar” and said she had previously rejected OpenAI’s request to voice the bot. The compan...

Early in the war against Hamas, as Israeli forces made their way from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, a neighborhood of Gaza City called Shajaiye loomed over the battle. In December, nine soldiers were killed there in what the Israeli army said was one of the deadliest days of the war for its forces.Later, with Shajaiye devastated and Gaza city apparently pacified, soldiers moved in, eventually taking the fighting to Gaza's southernmost city, Rafah, described as Hamas's last major stronghold. In turn, Palestinian civilians who had fled the fighting in Gaza City began to return.On Thursday they were on the run again.Israel ordered people in part of eastern Gaza City to evacuate as Palestinian officials and residents reported heavy attacks and numerous casualties. People in ...

On the surface, abortion rights have had a good run on the Supreme Court this term. Two weeks ago, the justices unanimously let the abortion pill remain widely available. On Thursday, the court rejected a case over Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which has had the effect of allowing the state’s emergency rooms to perform the procedure when a patient’s health is at risk.But the two rulings were so technical as to be ephemeral. They seemed designed to evade and delay, to kick a shaky argument down the road — or at least after Election Day.Some abortion-rights advocates have called the rulings Pyrrhic victories, fearing they would pave the way for further restrictions, either by the courts or by a second Trump administration.In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision ...

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “what’s-I’m-reading” roundup. (After the newsletter started arriving once a week, it got harder to fit them in.) But today I wonder if you feel the same as I do, worried about the state of the world and anxious to find answers—or at least a way to avoid looking for them—in books.Part of that means reading works that are new to me, including “Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict” by Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, and Jacob N. Shapiro.Covering the war in Gaza inevitably brought to mind other conflicts, including U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If, as they say, history doesn’t repeat itself but rhymes, the battles for control of Mosul and Helmand feel like the preceding couplets of a long, dark poem that now a...

Listen and follow 'Hard Fork'Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YoutubeRecord labels — including Sony, Universal, and Warner — are suing two major AI-powered music companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group that represents music labels, talks about their case. Next, we look at defense technology and discuss why Silicon Valley appears to be changing its tune on working with the military. Chris Kirchhoff, who used to run a special Pentagon office in Silicon Valley, explains what he thinks is behind the shift. And finally, we play another round of HatGPT.Guest:Mitch Glazier, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of AmericaChris Kirchhoff, founding partner of the Defense Innova...

After a tense election campaign featuring harsh attacks on the government by nearly all candidates over the economy, internet restrictions and harsh enforcement of the hijab law for women, Iran called elections on Friday to elect a president.The vote comes at a dangerous time for the country, with the incoming president facing a host of challenges, including internal discontent and divisions, a struggling economy and a volatile region that has brought Iran to the brink of war twice this year.With the race being decided by a three-way battle between two conservative candidates and a reformist, many analysts predict that neither will reach the necessary 50 percent of the vote, necessitating a runoff on July 5 between the reformist candidate and the leading conservative.That outcome could be ...

All Americans 6 months and older should receive one of the new Covid-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.The recommendation comes as the nation faces a summer Covid surge, with infection numbers rising in at least 39 states and territories.Most Americans have gained immunity against the coronavirus through repeated infections or vaccine doses, or both. Vaccines now offer an incremental boost, remaining effective for only a few months as immunity wanes and the virus continues to evolve.Yet across every age group, the vast majority of Americans hospitalized with Covid did not receive one of the vaccines offered last fall, according to data presented Thursday at a meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immuniz...

European Union leaders on Thursday chose three senior politicians to lead the bloc’s institutions for the next five years, signaling commitment to Ukraine and the need for stability amid electoral upheaval in Europe and, potentially, the United States.At a summit in Brussels, the heads of government of the 27 EU members agreed to nominate Ursula von der Leyen, a German conservative, for a second term as head of the powerful European Commission, the Union's executive body.António Costa, a socialist and until recently prime minister of Portugal, was chosen as president of the European Council, which includes those 27 heads of government, balancing Ms. von der Leyen's political and geographical background.And Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, a hawk on Russia, was the official chos...