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Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi announced Tuesday that he would resign in early March, citing in part the failure of the army under his command to protect Israelis from Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.The heavy toll from the attacks – 1,200 dead in Israel and another 250 taken hostage in Gaza – had long come with expectations in Israel that at least some of the country's leaders would eventually step down. Only a few officials have done so, and General Halevi is the highest-ranking military leader to resign so far.“My responsibility for the terrible failure accompanies me every day, every hour and every will for the rest of my life,” he said in a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, announcing the h...

President Trump moved quickly to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization on Monday, a move that public health experts say will undermine the nation's position as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic.In an executive order issued about eight hours after he was sworn in, Trump cited a number of reasons for the withdrawal, including the WHO's "mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic" and "failure to urgently adopt reforms necessary." .” He said the agency demands “unfairly burdensome payments” from the United States and complained that China pays less.The move was not unexpected. Trump has been railing against the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency for its approach to the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withhold U.S. funding....

A fire swept through a 12-story hotel at a ski resort in Turkey on Tuesday, killing at least 76 people and injuring 51 others, authorities said, turning an idyllic vacation spot into a smoke-filled nightmare.The disaster occurred during the winter holidays in Türkiye, when children do not go to school and many families go on holiday, including to ski resorts. It is unclear how many children were among the dead, but some were reported by acquaintances.The cause of the fire was unclear.Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on social media that six prosecutors had been assigned to investigate the fire. Nine people, including the hotel owner, had been arrested.The fire broke out before dawn at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya, 180 miles east of Istanbul, sending large flames from the windows a...

President Trump signed an executive order Monday to delay enforcement of the federal TikTok ban for 75 days, though the law took effect Sunday and it's unclear whether such a move would prevail over it.The order, one of Trump's first acts after taking office, instructs the attorney general to take no action to enforce the law so that his administration will have "the opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action to follow ". The order is retroactive to Sunday.As he signed the order, Trump told reporters that "the United States should have the right to get half of TikTok" if a deal is reached for the app, without going into detail. He said he thought TikTok could be worth a trillion dollars.The order could immediately face legal challenges, including over whether a president has...

Gazans realized the scale of the devastation of their old neighborhoods and Israelis awaited news on the three newly released hostages as a day-long ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continued Monday.With the war's 15-month lull, Palestinians returned to the parts of the Gaza Strip from which they fled, picking their way through vast areas of rubble and trying to salvage what they could – a sofa, a mattress, a chair or a crate – from the rubble of their old homes.“People can barely recognize the destroyed places where they lived,” said Montaser Bahja, an English teacher, a day after visiting his old neighborhood in the northern city of Jabaliya.In a video shared with The New York Times, Mr. Bahja, 50, can be seen running through the streets with his son Alhassan, 21, and trying to reconci...

More Americans are surviving cancer, but the disease strikes younger, middle-aged adults and women more frequently, the American Cancer Society reported Thursday.And despite overall improvements in survival, Black and Native Americans die from some cancers at rates two to three times higher than white Americans.These trends represent a stark shift for a disease that has long been considered a disease of aging, affecting many more men than women.The changes reflect declines in smoking-related cancers and prostate cancer among older men and a staggering increase in cancer in people born since the 1950s.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, but the leading cause among Americans under 85. The new report predicts that there will be approximately 2,041,910 new cases t...

The moment well after midnight, when one day slides into the next, is usually a lonely moment, observed by security guards and nurses, insomniacs and students cramming for exams. But this weekend, at the National Gallery in London, thousands of people were there together. They had come from Friday to Saturday to see some of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh ever made.“There is an intrigue,” said Digenis Koumas, a visitor, reflecting on the artist's appeal. “It's kind of an enigma, his life. The struggles, the battles he had with himself, with his psyche.Koumas, like many other art lovers, had disrupted his circadian rhythms and braved London's unpredictable night-time public transport options to take one last look at "Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers," which had remained open all day. night in...

Chinese social media app RedNote is full of cute and heartwarming moments after some 500,000 American users took refuge there last week to protest the US government's impending ban on TikTok.Calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” these users paid the “cat tax” to join RedNote by posting photos and videos of cats. They answered many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several large dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is one country? That most Americans have two days off every week?The Americans also asked questions of their new friends. “I heard every Chinese person has a giant panda...

The sounds of celebration replaced those of explosions in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, as a fragile ceasefire took effect after 470 days of war, allowing some hostages to return home to Israel, Palestinians imprisoned in Israel to be released and the displaced people of Gaza search for what remained of their homes. Under the terms of the hard-won deal, fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas militants stopped at 11:15 a.m., raising hopes of a more lasting end to a war that has plunged the Middle East into fear and uncertainty .The first hostages – three women seized when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 – were released shortly after. Early Monday morning, the Israeli Prison Service said it had released 90 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, where they were welcomed by emotional ...

Three years ago, when Bob and Sandy Curtis moved into an upscale continuing care retirement community in Port Washington, NY, they thought they had found the best possible solution for senior care.In exchange for a steep entry fee — about $840,000, financed by the sale of the Long Island home they've owned for nearly 50 years — they would be taken care of for the rest of their lives at Harborside. They selected a contract from several options that set a stable monthly fee at about $6,000 for both of them and that would reimburse half of the entry fee to their estate after their deaths.“This was the final chapter,” Mr. Curtis, 88, said. “That was the deal I made.”CCRCs, or community living plans, provide increasing levels of care on a single campus, from independent and assisted living to n...