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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Wednesday he will continue to urgently push for a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite a counterproposal from Hamas that he said includes unacceptable demands.After more than eight months of war in Gaza, the proposed ceasefire agreement follows an outline made public last month by President Biden and has the approval of the United Nations Security Council. But Israel and Hamas still seem far from reaching an agreement.“In the days ahead, we will push with urgency,” Blinken said, “to try to get this deal done.”Speaking at a news conference in Doha, Qatar, alongside Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who serves as both prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of Qatar, Blinken said “there was a deal on the t...

Space changes you, even on short trips off-planet.Four people who spent three days off Earth in September 2021 experienced physical and mental changes that included modest declines in cognitive tests, immune system stress and genetic changes within their cells, scientists report in a package of published papers Tuesday in the journal Nature and several other related journals.Almost everything that changed in the astronauts returned to normal after the crash on Earth. None of the changes appeared to constitute a warning to future space travelers. But the findings also highlighted how little medical researchers know.Christopher Mason, a professor of genomics, physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and one of the leaders of the research, called the collection o...

Saudi Arabia has already launched a hostile takeover of professional golf. He has invested billions of dollars in world football. Now he wants to own professional boxing too.An ambitious and expensive Saudi plan that would reshape the economy, structure and future of boxing is in the final stages of approval, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan.Saudi Arabia's giant sovereign vehicle, the Public Investment Fund, would finance the project. The fund is holding final negotiations on the distribution of the initial investment – ​​said to amount to $2 billion – that the plan would require, according to the two people involved in the planning. Both people declined to be identified because the project does not have final approval.The Public Investment Fund, known as P...

What's a five-letter word for an activity that media and technology companies are increasingly relying on to acquire subscribers and keep them coming back?GAMANDSApple released a series of word-focused puzzles to its subscription news service last fall. LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, launched a series of word games this spring. News sites including Morning Brew, The Washington Post, Vox Media and The Boston Globe have added new puzzles beyond the crossword and have hired staff to work on the games. The publication you're reading has also invested in a collection of puzzles.It's not all fun and games, exactly. For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as their sites face declining traffic from Google, X and Meta, which have pulled back from emphasizing new...

As sirens sounded in northern Israel on Wednesday, Israeli Army Radio reported that around 150 rockets had been fired from Lebanon in an apparent response to the Israeli attack. Hezbollah has claimed attacks on a number of military bases, including Mount Meron, an area that hosts a military radar station about five miles south of the border. Hezbollah also claimed to have struck an arms factory belonging to Plasan, a company that makes armored vehicles used by the Israeli army.The army said in a statement that several rockets were intercepted, but that several hit the ground and started fires, which firefighters were working to put out. He said he responded Wednesday by striking a series of launch sites across the border. Lebanon's state news agency reported heavy Israeli airstrike...

Morrie Markoff, a supercentenarian blogger and scrap metal sculptor believed to be the oldest man in the United States and whose brain was donated for research into so-called super-aging, died June 3 at his home in downtown Los Angeles. Angeles. He was 110 years old.He had two strokes in recent weeks, his daughter, Judith Markoff Hansen, said, confirming his death.People who live to 110 years or older are considered supercentenarians, and the Gerontology Research Group, in Los Angeles, lists more than 150 of them worldwide.Mr. Markoff, born in New York on January 11, 1914, six months before the start of World War I, joined the club this year and was considered the oldest living man in the United States after his death, in January of Francis. Zouein, aged 113, in California.As of April, ...

During a meeting with priests in Rome on Tuesday, Pope Francis repeated an anti-gay slur, the same offensive term he was accused of using two weeks ago. The Vatican, in summarizing the meeting, said only that the pontiff had warned against allowing gay men into Roman Catholic seminaries.The Vatican did not respond to reports from two of Italy's most important news agencies, ANSA and Adnkronos, that he had again used the word "faggot", an offensive Italian slang term referring to gay men. The reports cited anonymous sources who they said were present at the meeting.The New York Times could not independently verify the pope's use of the term. A Vatican spokeswoman declined to comment late Tuesday.The context in which Francis is said to have used the insult remained unclear. The I...

Elon Musk on Tuesday dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of the online chatbot ChatGPT, a day before a state judge in San Francisco was expected to consider whether it should be dismissed.The lawsuit, filed in February, accused the artificial intelligence start-up and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, of violating OpenAI's founding agreement by prioritizing commercial interests over the public good.A multibillion-dollar partnership that OpenAI signed with Microsoft, Musk's lawsuit argued, represented an abandonment of the company's commitment to carefully develop artificial intelligence and make the technology available to the public.Musk had argued that the founding contract stipulated that the organization should instead focus on building artificial...

Hezbollah said Tuesday that Israeli forces killed one of its commanders in an attack in southern Lebanon, fueling concerns about the conflict escalating on another Israeli front.The commander, Taleb Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb, was among the highest-ranking Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon to have been killed by Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 sparked war in the Gaza Strip. Gaza and inflamed tensions throughout the territory. The northern border of Israel.Abdallah's role in Hezbollah was not immediately clear. But the group has not referred to a dead fighter as “commander” since January, when Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, a commander of the group's Radwan unit, was killed in an attack. In a clear indication of Abdallah's seniority, Hezbollah published a...

The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed removing medical debt from the credit reports of more than 15 million Americans, making it easier for them to qualify for auto, home and small business loans.The proposed rule, which will go through a public comment period, would not take effect immediately. It would ban health care providers from sharing medical debt with loan providers and prohibit those providers from considering medical information when it comes to making loans.Vice President Kamala Harris said the move would improve “the financial health and well-being of millions of Americans.”“One of the most significant consequences of carrying medical debt is the damage it does to a person's credit score,” Ms. Harris said. “Medical debt makes it harder for millions of Americans to...