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In a surprise election in Iran, reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, who advocated moderate policies at home and improving relations with the West, won the presidential runoff, beating his hardline rival, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday morning.Mr. Pezeshkian, 69, a heart surgeon, won 16.3 million votes to defeat hardline candidate Saeed Jalili, a blow to the conservative faction and a major victory for the reformist faction that had been excluded from politics in recent years. Mr. Jalili received 13.5 million votes.After polls closed at midnight, voter turnout stood at 50 percent, about 10 percentage points higher than in the first round of the election with about 30.5 million total ballots cast, according to Iran's Interior Ministry. The first round saw record low voter turn...

La decisione della Corte Suprema di venerdì di limitare l'ampia autorità di regolamentazione delle agenzie federali potrebbe portare all'eliminazione o all'indebolimento di migliaia di norme in materia di ambiente, assistenza sanitaria, tutela dei lavoratori, sicurezza alimentare e farmaceutica, telecomunicazioni, settore finanziario e altro ancora.La decisione rappresenta una vittoria importante in una campagna decennale condotta dagli attivisti conservatori per ridurre il potere del governo federale, limitando la portata e l'autorità di quello che quegli attivisti chiamano "lo stato amministrativo".Il parere della corte potrebbe rendere più facile per gli oppositori delle normative federali contestarle in tribunale, innescando un'ondata di nuove controversie e, al con...

After 14 years in the shadows, Britain's Labour Party is back in power. And the country's first female Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, faces the daunting task of restoring Britain's economic growth prospects and ending a decade and a half of stagnation.For inspiration, she turned to another glass ceiling-shattering woman on the other side of the Atlantic: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen.Ms Reeves was appointed chancellor on Friday after Labour won a majority in Thursday’s general election. Now in charge of Britain’s budget, she is expected to pursue an economic agenda influenced by Ms Yellen, whose policies have encouraged job creation and a boom in US manufacturing investment.Ms. Yellen’s “modern supply-side economics” aims to boost economic growth by incre...

As Fourth of July celebrations began across the nation, Mark Zuckerberg posted a video to his Instagram account that immediately generated hundreds of thousands of views. Indeed, the clip seemed designed for warp-speed virality.Behind a fast-moving boat, Mr. Zuckerberg wakeboards in a tuxedo and sunglasses while sipping from a Tall Boy. The clip is based on Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 anthem “Born in the USA.” For its half-minute runtime, the multibillionaire CEO of Meta shows off his surfing technique."Unbelievable!" commented Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos' girlfriend.Gaming influencer @StoneMountain64 wrote: "Now that's content."Mr. Zuckerberg responded: “I’m just doing my part.”To Zuckologists, the clip was yet another example of the 40-year-old executive trying to remake his image. I...

Israeli negotiators traveled to the Gulf nation of Qatar for the first time in weeks on Friday to resume talks on a ceasefire deal that could end the war in Gaza and free hostages held there, after weeks of deadlock in negotiations.According to an official familiar with the visit, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, led the Israeli delegation to Doha, the capital of Qatar, and met with Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar's prime minister.Ceasefire negotiations had been stalled for weeks until Wednesday, when Hamas announced it had exchanged ideas with mediators on a new way forward. Both U.S. and Israeli officials said Hamas’ revised position could allow for a deal, but warned that it still faced a series of long and difficult de...

“Hey, buddy, how you doing?” said a man wearing a Boba Fett costume as he leaned over the bed of a young boy in a hospital gown.It was a Sunday afternoon in the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where Dr. Alex Arroyo, the hospital's director of pediatric emergency medicine, often dons one of more than 20 costumes when he sees patients. His favorite is Boba Fett, the famous bounty hunter from the "Star Wars" movies.“I love what I do, but it’s really hot in there!” said Dr. Arroyo, 48, who has worked at the hospital since 2006. She started wearing costumes in 2021.A die-hard “Star Wars” fan who grew up watching the original trilogy with his parents, Dr. Arroyo has passed that love on to his two youngest children, Grayson, 8, and Karra, 6. For New York Comic Con eac...

The Vatican said on Friday it had excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the church's former ambassador to the United States, after finding him guilty of schism for refusing to recognize the authority of Pope Francis and the liberal reforms he implemented after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.Archbishop Viganò has emerged as one of Francis’s most vocal conservative critics, calling him a “false prophet” and a “servant of Satan” in public statements while embracing right-wing conspiracy theories and praising former President Donald J. Trump.In 2018, he wrote a 7,000-word letter calling on the Pope to resign, accusing him of covering up the sexual abuse of an American cardinal. Earlier, in 2015, he invited a gay rights critic to greet the Pope in Washington, challenging Fr...

Japan this week eliminated all regulations requiring the use of floppy disks for administrative purposes, making up for lost time 13 years after the country's manufacturers produced their last units.The floppy disk, invented in the 1970s, was once a ubiquitous part of computing. Since then, other forms of storage such as flash drives and Internet cloud storage have taken over. By the 1990s, it, along with the music cassette, was tossed into the dustbin of obsolete technology.But not in Japan. While famous for its consumer electronics giants, robots, and some of the world’s fastest broadband networks, the country has also been wedded to floppy disks and other old technologies like fax machines and cash.Japan began to abandon the 1900s storage devices, plastic-coated magnetic disks, only...

One promised to confront Iran's enemies, the other vowed to make peace with the world. One intends to double down on social restrictions, the other promises to loosen stifling rules for young people and women. One identifies as an Islamic ideologue, the other as a pragmatic reformist.The race to become Iran's next president has turned into a fierce contest in which, for the first time in more than a decade, the outcome is hard to predict. The winner will be decided in a runoff on Friday after a general election a week earlier failed to produce a candidate with the required 50 percent of the vote.The outcome could depend on how many Iranians who skipped voting in the general election decide to participate in the runoff. Voter turnout hit an all-time low of 40 percent last week, with...

It didn’t become part of vaccination programs in Africa until 2024.What if it had come faster?What if the shots had arrived9 years ago?143,000.That’s how many children’s deaths could have been averted.By Stephanie NolenStephanie Nolen interviewed more than 30 scientists, health officials and other key players in the development of the malaria vaccines to report this article.July 5, 2024Nurses in countries from Sierra Leone to Cameroon are packing a new vaccine into the coolers they tote to villages for immunization clinics: a shot to protect against malaria, one of the deadliest diseases for children.Babies and toddlers in eight countries in the region recently started to get the vaccine as part of their routine childhood shots. Seven other African countries are eagerly awaiting its arriva...