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The run-up to Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmö, Sweden, was unusually tense and distressing, with months of protests over Israel's involvement in the competition, one contestant suspended just hours before the start of the show and clashes between police and militants. Palestinian protesters outside the arena at night.But when the final began, the uproar quickly disappeared. Instead of protests and outrage, there was the usual high-class spectacle, with singers emoting about lost love, half-naked dancers and, at one point, a performer emerging from a giant egg.At the end of the four-hour show, Nemo, representing Switzerland, won with “The Code,” a catchy song in which the non-binary artist rapped and sang operatically about his journey to realizing his identity. ...

Days before the expected sale of $840 million worth of artwork at an auction that included paintings by Warhol and Basquiat, the auction house experienced what it described as a "technological security issue" that took his website offline.Some collectors and art consultants noticed the problem Thursday evening. The next morning, the website redirected visitors to a temporary page outside of its web domain. “We apologize that our website is currently offline,” she said. “We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”Edward Lewine, a spokesman for Christie's, said a security issue affected some of the company's systems, including the website.“We are taking all necessary steps to manage this matter, with the engagement of a team of add...

Around 300,000 Palestinians in southern and northern Gaza are forced to flee once again. says the United Nations, while Israel issued new and expanded evacuation orders on Saturday. But many don't know where to find safe refuge in a war-torn place.The expanded evacuation orders apply to the city of Rafah, at Gaza's southern tip, where more than a million Gazans have gathered after fleeing Israeli shelling elsewhere over the past seven months. They have compounded fears that the Israeli military is poised to proceed with an invasion of Rafah that Israeli leaders have long promised, a prospect that international aid groups and many countries have condemned.Around 150,000 people have already fled Rafah in the last six days. according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that helps th...

When Surgeon General Vivek Murthy went on a nationwide college tour last fall, he started hearing the same kinds of questions over and over again: How can we connect with each other when no one is talking anymore?In an era when participation in community organizations, clubs and religious groups has declined and more social interaction occurs online rather than in person, some young people report levels of loneliness that, in decades past, were typically associated with older adults.It's one of the many reasons why loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our lives. In a study published Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting in young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline ...

After air raid warnings that lasted all night, a tired Kharkiv woke up Saturday morning to a heavy, gray sky and the disconcerting news that the Russian army was continuing to advance on nearby Ukrainian territory.All night, dull explosions from battlefields 40 miles away echoed in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. On Saturday morning, the day after Russian forces seized several villages along the border and Ukraine sent reinforcements to the area, the ghostly wail of air raid sirens continued to hover over the city's deserted parks and long empty avenues.Thousands of people are fleeing the border areas and arriving in shelters in Kharkiv.Tetiana Novikova is one of them.Until Friday, he had spent all of his 55 years in Vovchansk, a small town near the Russian border. She wa...

Utility regulators in California on Thursday changed how most residents will pay for energy by adding a new flat monthly fee and lowering the rates applicable to energy consumption. Officials said the change would reduce the monthly bills of millions of residents and support the use of electric vehicles and appliances that run on electricity, rather than fossil fuels.The California Public Utilities Commission's decision will apply to rates charged by investor-owned utilities, which provide power to about 70% of the state. Starting next year, most customers of these companies will be required to pay a monthly fee of $24.15. Low-income customers will pay $6 to $12 a month.Regulators said revenue from the flat rate would be matched by a roughly 20% reduction in rates, assessed by the n...

The Biden administration believes Israel most likely violated international standards by failing to protect civilians in Gaza, but has found no specific cases that justify withholding military aid, the State Department told Congress on Friday.In the administration's most detailed assessment of Israel's conduct in Gaza, the State Department said in a written report that Israel "has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices to mitigate civilian harm in its operations military".But he added that “the findings on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” about whether the Israel Defense Forces are making sufficient use of such tools.Even so, the report – which at some points seemed at odds with itself – claimed that th...

Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a medical ethicist who pioneered the use of hospital bedside mediation to navigate the complex dynamics between stubborn doctors, anguished family members, and patients in their final days, died April 14 at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 82 years old.The cause was heart and lung disease, his family said.A Harvard-educated lawyer who won the presidency as an undergraduate by campaigning to disband student government, Ms. Dubler was a revolutionary figure in health care who sought, in her words, to "level the playing field" and “amplify non-medical voices” in complex medical situations, especially when deciding next steps for the sickest patients.In 1978, Dubler founded the Bioethics Consultation Service at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx...

People in Britain were amazed by the unusual and spectacular display of the Northern Lights on Friday evening, the result of a strong solar storm that was brewing and expected to continue over the next few days.The Northern Lights, also known as the Northern Lights, usually don't reach that far south. They are seen more often at higher latitudes, closer to the North Pole. People in other European countries, including Denmark and Germany, have also reported seeing the lights.Viewers marveled at the sight, posting their surprise, delight and sometimes shock on social media. As one user wrote: “Aurora Borealis? This time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Located entirely in Edinburgh?”Another viewer wrote: "It's really gorgeous though."The Northern Ligh...

Early last year Apple's top software executives decided that Siri, the company's virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant.The decision came after executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product's use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri seem antiquated, said two people familiar with the company's work, and who didn't they were allowed to speak publicly.Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant of every iPhone, Siri was limited to individual requests for years and was never able to follow a conversation. Questions are often misunderstood. ChatGPT, on the other hand, knew that if someone asked the weath...