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The Biden administration said this week that it opposes gender reaffirmation surgeries for minors, the most explicit statement yet on the topic from a president who has always been a staunch supporter of transgender rights.The White House announcement was sent to the New York Times on Wednesday in response to an article reporting that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, had solicited an influential organization International Transgender Health Committee to remove age minimums for surgery from its guidelines for the treatment of minors.The interim guidelines would have lowered the minimum age limits to 14 for hormone treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgery, and 17 for genital sur...

Rishi Sunak’s gamble was remarkable. Five weeks ago, the British prime minister bet the house on his belief that a summer election would give his Conservative Party a better chance of holding on to power than waiting until the autumn.Calling a snap election was Sunak’s last throw of the dice. But it has since emerged that in the days before he announced to the country in the pouring rain on May 22 that he was going to the polls, a number of colleagues and underlings were placing bets of a more literal kind.Looking at data from the week before Mr Sunak’s announcement, bookmakers noticed a spike in bets placed on the election date. The amounts wagered were small, totalling just a few thousand pounds, but the sudden flurry of activity was enough to warrant further investigation.The question o...

What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has imagined this for decades. Now AI developers are taking inspiration from movies, creating voices for real machines based on dated movie fantasies about how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed updates to its AI chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning to hear, see, and converse in a natural voice, one that sounded a lot like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a raspy timbre, a soothing effect, and a sexy edge. It was pleasant and modest; it seemed ready for anything. After Sky’s debut, Johansson expressed disappointment that it sounded “disturbingly similar” and said she had previously rejected OpenAI’s request t...

As voting took place in Iran's presidential election on Friday, early estimates from election officials showed that only about 40% of eligible voters appeared to have voted. The low turnout was a potential blow to ruling clerics, who have made voter participation an indicator of their legitimacy and hoped to achieve a 50% turnout, compared to 70% in past presidential elections.Hafez Hakami, campaign manager of the sole reformist candidate, Dr Masoud Pezeshkians, confirmed in a telephone interview after polls closed that voter turnout had been lower than expected. "We really expected a turnout of more than 50 percent," he said, "but unfortunately the social atmosphere for the vote was still heavy, it was not possible to convince people to show up at the polls."After enduring years of e...

On the surface, abortion rights have fared well on the Supreme Court this term. Two weeks ago, the justices unanimously allowed the abortion pill to remain widely available. On Thursday, the court dismissed a case related to Idaho's strict abortion ban, which has had the effect of allowing emergency rooms in the state to perform the procedure when the patient's health is at risk.But the two sentences were so technical as to be ephemeral. They seemed designed to avoid and delay, to put off a volatile topic, or at least beyond Election Day.Some abortion rights advocates called these rulings Pyrrhic victories, fearing they would pave the way for further restrictions, either by the courts or by a second Trump administration.In the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organiz...

In the early 1870s, an émigré painter watched from a railway bridge as a steam engine left a station on the suburban fringes of London. His name was Camille Pissarro, and he was developing a style of plein air painting that would soon be called “Impressionism.”Pissarro and another émigré, Claude Monet, remained in London for only a few months. In April 1874, they were among the painters who held the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris, the subject of a retrospective that will run until July 14 at the Musée d'Orsay and open on September 8 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.But London was one of their earliest muses. Monet painted the River Thames and the Palace of Westminster, among other central landmarks, while Pissarro captured suburban scenes where houses and railwa...

Listen and follow 'Hard Fork'Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YoutubeRecord labels — including Sony, Universal, and Warner — are suing two major AI-powered music companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry group that represents music labels, talks about their case. Next, we look at defense technology and discuss why Silicon Valley appears to be changing its tune on working with the military. Chris Kirchhoff, who used to run a special Pentagon office in Silicon Valley, explains what he thinks is behind the shift. And finally, we play another round of HatGPT.Guest:Mitch Glazier, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of AmericaChris Kirchhoff, founding partner of the Defense Innova...

One of the children who made the crossing Thursday was a 10-month-old girl named Sadeel Hamdan.For months, his family had watched with growing fear as Sadeel’s condition worsened. His belly had swollen like a balloon from severe liver failure, and he was in desperate need of a transplant, said his father, Tamer Hamdan.On Thursday morning, after weeks of waiting, Mr. Hamdan and Sadeel were finally allowed to leave the enclave. After entering Israel, they were transported along with other patients to Nitzana, an Israeli border crossing, where they entered Egyptian territory, he said.“Thank God,” said Mr. Hamdan, who was reached by phone as he sat on a bus on the Egyptian side of the checkpoint. "We are so happy to have brought Sadeel out safely. Now we just need to complete her treatment."...

All Americans 6 months and older should receive one of the new Covid-19 vaccines when they become available this fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.The recommendation comes as the nation faces a summer surge in Covid, with infection numbers rising in at least 39 states and territories.Most Americans have acquired immunity to the coronavirus through repeated infections or vaccine doses, or both. Vaccines now offer an incremental boost, remaining effective for only a few months as immunity wanes and the virus continues to evolve.Yet across every age group, the vast majority of Americans hospitalized for Covid did not receive one of the vaccines offered last fall, according to data presented Thursday at a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization ...

European Union leaders on Thursday chose three senior politicians to lead the bloc’s institutions for the next five years, signaling commitment to Ukraine and the need for stability amid electoral upheaval in Europe and, potentially, the United States.At a summit in Brussels, the heads of government of the 27 EU members agreed to propose Ursula von der Leyen, a German conservative, for a second term at the helm of the powerful European Commission, the Union's executive body.António Costa, a socialist and until recently prime minister of Portugal, was chosen as president of the European Council, which comprises the 27 heads of government, thus balancing Ms von der Leyen's political and geographical background.And Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, a hawk on Russia, was the officia...