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The alleys are in permanent semi-darkness, covered with black nylon tarps to hide Palestinian fighters from Israeli drones flying overhead. Green Hamas flags and “martyrs” memorial banners hang from buildings, many of them badly damaged in Israeli raids and airstrikes in an effort to quell growing militancy in the territory, fueled by the war in Gaza.This is not Gaza or a traditional Hamas stronghold. It is a refugee camp in Tulkarem, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the relatively moderate Palestinian faction Fatah has long held sway.I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, broken-down alleys. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they switched allegiances from the relatively moderate ...

Since scientists discovered that the flu was infecting American cows earlier this year, they have puzzled over how it spreads from animal to animal. An experiment in Kansas and Germany has shed light on the mystery.Scientists have found no evidence that the virus can spread as a respiratory infection. Juergen Richt, a virologist at Kansas State University who helped lead the research, said the findings suggest the virus is primarily infectious through contaminated milking machines.In an interview, Dr. Richt said the findings offer hope that the epidemic can be stopped before the virus evolves into a form that could spread easily among humans.“I think this is good news, that we can probably control it more easily than people thought,” Dr. said. Richt. “I hope we can now kick this thing in...

For many, France looked like a completely different place on Monday.The results of the first round of legislative elections, held on Sunday, revealed a deeply fractured country, with an emerging far right winning record numbers of votes and the near collapse of President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party."The far right at the gates of power," read the cover of the daily newspaper Le Parisien, the morning after the end of the first half of the early elections called by Mr Macron.“Twelve million of our fellow citizens voted for a far-right party that is clearly racist and anti-republican,” the left-wing newspaper Libération said in an editorial, referring to Marine Le Pen's National Rally party. “The head of state threw France under the bus, the bus continued without slowing down, an...

The Olympics have ancient origins. Now they will also have a dose of the latest technology.This year, the highlights of the Summer Olympics will be told by artificial intelligence and, more specifically, by Al Michaels' AI-generated narration.Executives at NBCUniversal and the Peacock streaming service said Wednesday that a daily personalized video of Olympic highlights will be available to streaming subscribers. The video will feature the voice of Mr. Michaels, the 79-year-old American television host who first covered the Olympics decades ago.Mr. Michaels, however, will not be holed up in a broadcast booth every night to briefly summarize the dozens of Olympic events that have taken place. Instead, the Peacock program has been trained by NBC clips of Mr. Michaels (he joined the netwo...

Taliban officials attended a rare U.N.-led conference of international envoys to Afghanistan on Sunday, the first such meeting Taliban officials have agreed to attend, after organizers said Afghan women would be excluded from the talks.The two-day conference in Doha, Qatar, is the third of its kind. It is part of a United Nations-led effort, known as the “Doha process,” which began in May 2023. It aims to develop a unified approach to international engagement with Afghanistan. Envoys from around 25 countries and regional organizations will participate, including the European Union, the United States, Russia and China.Taliban officials were not invited to the first meeting and refused to attend the second, held in February, after objecting to the inclusion of Afghan civil society groups p...

Dr. Mildred Thornton Stahlman, a Vanderbilt University pediatrician whose research into fatal lung diseases in newborns led to life-saving treatments and the creation of one of the first neonatal intensive care units in 1961, died Saturday at her home in Brentwood , Tennessee. She was 101 years old.His death was confirmed by Eva Hill, wife of Dr. Stahlman's nephew, George Hill.On October 31, 1961, Dr. Stahlman placed a gasping premature baby into a miniature iron lung machine, also known as a negative-pressure ventilator, of the kind used for children with polio. The machine worked by opening the baby's fragile chest muscles to help draw in air. The child survived.That initial success, along with the results of Dr. Stahlman's studies on newborn lambs, helped launch a new era ...

The National Rally party won a landslide victory in the first round of voting for the French National Assembly on Sunday, according to early projections, bringing its long-taboo brand of nationalist, anti-immigrant politics to the threshold of power for the first time .Polling projections, usually reliable and based on preliminary results, suggested that the party would take around 34% of the vote, far more than the centrist Renaissance party of President Emmanuel Macron and his allies, who took around 22% to finish in third place.A coalition of left-wing parties, called the New Popular Front and ranging from moderate socialists to the far-left France Unbowed, was projected to win about 29% of the vote, boosted by strong support among young people.Turnout was high, around 67 percent, compa...

In Japan, engineers are trying to make robots imitate a typically human expression: the smile.They created a face mask from human skin cells and attached it to robots with an innovative technique that hides the binding and is flexible enough to transform into a grimace or cheesy smile.The effect is halfway between the terrifying Hannibal Lecter mask and the Gumby claymation figure.But scientists say the prototypes pave the way for more sophisticated robots, with an outer layer that is elastic and strong enough to protect the machine while making it more humane.According to a study published June 25 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, the “skin equivalent,” as researchers call it, made from live skin cells in the laboratory, can scar, burn and even self-heal. .“Human-like faces a...

Aside from the tattered posters of Iranian presidential candidates plastered on highway overpasses, there were few signs this weekend that the country had held a presidential election on Friday and was headed toward a runoff.There were almost no demonstrations to applaud the two most voted candidates, who come from opposite ends of the political spectrum and between whom Iranians will decide on July 5.Even from the government's official numbers, it was clear that the real winner of Friday's election was Iran's silent majority who either left their ballots blank or didn't vote at all. About 60 percent of those eligible did not vote or opted for a blank ballot.That's because there was no point in voting, said Bita Irani, 40, a housewife in Tehran, Iran's capital. "We...

When I was little, my father, who left the country only a few times, told me about the trip to Europe he took with his parents when he was 14, in 1966. He told me how Nonie loved the immaculate Swiss streets and the flowerbeds that sparkled with flowers; the fireplace in the house on the hill outside Lugano, where his father was born, with ingenious alcoves on either side for hanging clothes or warming bread; the palpable poverty of the house in Pozzuoli, a town just outside Naples, where Nonie’s aunt had lined the walls with newspaper for better insulation. Every so often, my father would get out his projector and show me his Kodachrome slides.As an adult, I spent years telling him that he and I should repeat the trip together – or at least a short version in which we would go to Switzerl...