Güncel

The United States has not ruled out withholding further military support for Israel's campaign against Hamas should Israel undertake a major attack on Rafah, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday.“If Israel launches this major military operation in Rafah, then there are certain systems that we will not support and provide for that operation,” Blinken said on CBS' “Face the Nation.” He didn't elaborate.Last week, the White House imposed a delay in the delivery of 3,500 bombs over fears of potential harm to civilians in Rafah, where many Gazans have sought refuge since fighting began seven months ago. Blinken said these are the only weapons the U.S. has retained “at this time.”Two days after the State Department sent a report to Congress raising “substantial quest...

The four adult children agreed.Their father, William Curry, a retired electrical engineer and business executive, was sinking deeper into dementia. They had found a memory care facility about a mile from their parents' home in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, where they thought Mr. Curry would do better.But their mother, Melissa, who was 83 when her family began urging her to make this change in 2016, remained determined to continue caring for her 81-year-old husband at home, despite the growing impact on his health. When her children raised the issue of moving, “she didn't want to discuss it,” said her daughter, Shannon Curry, 56. She cried sometimes."Yet even Melissa Curry's memory was slipping. She forgot to give her husband's medications or she got her doses wrong. The f...

Ukraine's military is facing a "critical" situation in the country's northeast due to troop shortages as it tries to repel a Russian offensive that has been advancing for several days, a top Ukrainian general said Monday.Russian troops crossed the border last week to open a new line of attack near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city after Kiev, capturing at least nine settlements and villages and forcing thousands of civilians to flee.“The situation is at the limit,” General Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, said in a video call from a bunker in Kharkiv. "Every hour this situation becomes critical."His bleak assessment echoes that of other Ukrainian officials in recent days that the country's military prospects are dimming. In addition...

Federal officials will provide up to $120 million in grants to Polar Semiconductor to help the company expand its chip manufacturing plant in Minnesota, the Biden administration announced Monday, the latest in a series of awards intended to strengthen the US supply of semiconductors.Commerce Department officials said the grant would help Polar upgrade technology and double production capacity at its facility in Bloomington, Minnesota, within two years. The company makes chips critical to automobiles, defense systems and power grids, federal officials said.“We're making taxpayer money go as far as possible by crowding in private and state investment to create jobs, protect our supply chains and strengthen manufacturing in Minnesota,” said Laurie Locascio, Under Secretary of Commerce fo...

With Israel's most sacrosanct day of remembrance as a backdrop, peace activists in Israel broadcast their annual joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony on Sunday evening, with parallel events in London, New York and Los Angeles.The ceremony, organized by Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle – Families Forum, two peacebuilding organizations, is unusual in that it seeks to recognize not only Israeli pain, but also the toll of Palestinian suffering over the decades. This year's event was particularly poignant given that it was the first since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and comes amid the devastation caused by the war in Gaza.This year the ceremony, which has been held annually since 2006, was pre-recorded to avoid the possibility of disruption by p...

Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists have tried using sign language to converse with monkeys and have trained parrots to use ever-growing English vocabularies.The work quickly attracted media attention and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what appeared to be animal communication could simply have been wishful thinking, with researchers unconsciously causing their animals to respond in certain ways..In the late 1970s and early 1980s the search fell out of favor. “The whole camp is completely disintegrated,” said Irene Pepperberg, a comparative cognition researcher at Boston University who has become known for her work with an African gray parrot named Alex.Today, technological adv...

In the pitch-black auditorium of Rome's Teatro Costanzi, a high-pitched wail rose from the upper galleries. Dozens of torches lit up, their beams crossing wildly, searching for the source of the sound.The rays of light focused on a ghostly figure: a slender, dark-haired woman dressed in white, moving to a funereal rhythm and singing plaintively. In the audience, about 130 children, ages 8 to 10, let out screams, gasps and a "that's not real." Many shouted “Emma, ​​Emma”.The children had just been told that the Costanzi, the capital's opera house, had a resident ghost. No, not that. It is said that this was the spirit of Emma Carelli, an Italian soprano who directed the theater a century ago, and she loved it so much that she was reluctant to leave it, also dead.“The theate...

Le stime stanno ancora superando la soglia dei 20 milioni di dollari e le tele portano ancora le firme di artisti affidabili come Warhol, Basquiat e Picasso. Ma c’è un’ombra che incombe sulla stagione delle aste primaverili che inizierà lunedì.Giovedì un attacco informatico a Christie's ha bloccato il sito web dell'azienda e, domenica mattina, Christie's non ne aveva ancora ripreso il controllo, ma aveva promesso che le aste sarebbero proseguite, almeno di persona. (È stato creato un sito Web segnaposto che consente l'accesso ai cataloghi digitali, ma non consente le offerte online.) Con il sito inattivo e le domande ancora senza risposta sul destino dei dati riservati, gli analisti sono incerti sull'impatto su acquirenti e venditori.Nel corso della prossima settimana...

As the Israeli military ramped up pressure on what it calls Hamas' last stronghold in Gaza, Sunday's fighting elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave led to warnings that the militants could remain a force for a long time to come.Close-quarters fighting between Hamas fighters and Israeli troops raged in parts of northern Gaza over the weekend, both sides said Sunday, even as the world's attention was largely focused on the southern city of Rafah, where Israel stepped up military operations last week.It has become a familiar scenario in the Gaza Strip over the course of the seven-month war: After pitched battles, Israel declares an area free of Hamas, then returns after the militants have rebuilt their forces.On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he was concerned tha...

Richard “Rick” Slayman, who made history at age 62 as the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, died about two months after the procedure.Massachusetts General Hospital, where Mr. Slayman underwent surgery, said in a statement Saturday that its transplant team was “deeply saddened” by his death. The hospital said it had “no indication that it was the result of his recent transplant.”Mr. Slayman, who was black, had end-stage renal disease, a condition that affects more than 800,000 people in the United States, according to the federal government, with disproportionately higher rates among blacks.There are too few kidneys available for donation. Nearly 90,000 people are on the national waiting list for a kidney.Mr. Slayman, a supervisor for the state Department ...