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Keir Starmer, leader of the British Labour Party, nodded sympathetically as a young mother recalled, in heartbreaking terms, watching CCTV footage of the fatal stabbing of her 21-year-old son, whose heart had been pierced by a single bullet.“Thank you for this,” a grim Mr Starmer told the woman and other relatives of knife victims as they stood around a wooden table last week discussing how to tackle violent crime. “It’s really, really powerful.”It wasn’t the most edifying campaign event for a candidate, the week before an election his opposition party is widely expected to win. But it was entirely in keeping with the character of Mr Starmer, a 61-year-old former human rights lawyer who still acts more like a prosecutor than a politician pursuing a case.Sincere, intense, practical and not ...

The Supreme Court eluded a final resolution Monday in a pair of cases challenging state laws designed to limit social media companies’ power to moderate content. The ruling dashed an effort by Republicans who had pushed the legislation as a remedy for what they say is a bias against conservatives.It was the latest case in which the Supreme Court considered, and then sidestepped, a major decision on the parameters of expression on social media platforms.State laws differ on the specifics. Florida’s bars platforms from permanently banning candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’s bars platforms from removing any content based on a user’s views.The justices unanimously agreed to remand the cases to the lower courts for review. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, n...

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 ...

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, the wife of Dr. Stahlman's nephew, George Hill.On October 31, 1961, Dr. Stahlman placed a panting premature baby into a miniature iron lung machine, also known as a negative-pressure ventilator, of the type used for children with polio. The machine worked by opening the baby's fragile chest muscles to help suck in air. The child survived.That initial success, along with the results of Dr. Stahlman's studies on newborn lambs, helped launch a new...

For many, France seems like a completely different place on Monday.The results of the first round of Sunday's legislative elections showed a deeply fragmented country, with a rising far right winning a record number 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 Le Parisien newspaper, 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, and is now parked i...

The Olympics have ancient origins. Now they will also have a dose of the latest technologies.This year, the highlights of the Summer Olympics will be narrated by artificial intelligence, and more specifically, by Al Michaels’ AI-generated storytelling.Executives at NBCUniversal and the Peacock streaming service said Wednesday that a customized daily highlight reel for the Olympics would be available to streaming subscribers. The reel 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 hole up in a TV booth every night to succinctly recap the dozens of Olympic events that have taken place. Instead, Peacock's program was trained by NBC clips of Michaels — he joined the network in 200...

Taliban officials attended a rare UN-led conference of global envoys in Afghanistan on Sunday, the first such meeting that Taliban representatives agreed to attend, after organizers said Afghan women would be excluded from interviews.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 pre...

Ann Lurie, a self-described hippie who became one of Chicago’s most celebrated philanthropists, once donating more than $100 million to a hospital where she once worked as a pediatric nurse, died Monday. She was 79.Her death was announced in a statement from Northwestern University, to which Ms. Lurie, a trustee, had donated more than $60 million. The statement does not say where she died or specify a cause.An only child raised in Miami by a single mother, Ms. Lurie protested the Vietnam War while in college and planned to join the Peace Corps after graduation. In interviews, she said that she chafed at the trappings of wealth herself after marrying Robert H. Lurie.Mr. Lurie had built a real estate and investment empire as a partner at Equity Group Investments, teaming with a former Univ...

France begins a new week of frenetic election campaigning on Monday, a day after the far-right National Rally party dominated the first round of legislative elections that attracted an unusually high turnout and dealt a major blow to President Emmanuel Macron.Voters are being asked to choose their representatives in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lowest and most important house of the country's Parliament. They will return to the polls on July 7 for the second round of voting.If a new majority of anti-Macron MPs takes office, he will be forced to appoint a political opponent as prime minister, radically changing France’s domestic politics and confusing its foreign policy. This will be especially true if he is forced to govern alongside Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president o...

Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer now living in exile in the Philadelphia suburbs, has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s response recently has been severe, with vulgar and menacingly personal attacks online.According to researchers at Clemson University and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, a secret propaganda network linked to the country's security services bombarded not only Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms. social media.The content, posted by users with fake identities, appeared in replies to Mr. Deng's posts on the social media platform arsonist and prostitute.“I tried to delete these posts,” Mr. Deng said of the online attacks, speaki...