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The extreme anarchy that has gripped the Gaza Strip is making it too dangerous and difficult to distribute desperately needed aid in the south, aid groups and others say, despite a daily lull in fighting that Israel is seeing along a key road in that area .Days after the pause began, more than 1,000 trucks loaded with supplies remained stranded in Gaza near the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, with thousands of tons of food, medicine and other goods just miles away from Palestinians who had need, aid groups and Israeli officials say. .The threat of looting and attacks by armed gangs have forced humanitarian groups to stop providing assistance in southern Gaza. Trucks traveling on supply routes were riddled with bullet holes. Businessmen sending commercial goods to the territory...

In July 2016, a heat wave hit Boston, with daytime temperatures averaging 92 degrees for five consecutive days. Some local college students staying in town for the summer got lucky and lived in dorms with central air conditioning. Other students not so much: They were stuck in older dorms without air conditioningJose Guillermo Cedeño Laurent, a Harvard researcher at the time, decided to take advantage of this natural experiment to see how heat, and especially night heat, affected the cognitive performance of young adults. He asked 44 students to take math and self-monitoring tests five days before the temperature rose, every day during the heat wave and two days after.“Many of us think we are immune to heat,” said Dr. Cedeño, now an assistant professor of environmental and occupational ...

Add one item to the list of problems facing French President Emmanuel Macron less than two weeks before crucial legislative elections: potential financial sanctions from the European Union for failing to get the nation's ballooning deficit and debt under control.The rebuke, announced in Brussels on Wednesday, highlights France's fragile finances at a time of political turbulence, as the far-right National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen, and a left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front, appear increasingly positioned to form a new government that could weaken Macron's grip on power.Macron threw French politics into disarray earlier this month by calling for early parliamentary elections after his party was defeated by the far right in European Parliament elections.The tax war...

When five men died on June 18, 2023, in the implosion of the submarine Titan during a dive to the Titanic's resting place, Paul-Henri Nargeolet's knowledge was also lost. It was the Nargeolet's 38th dive on the sunken liner. Known as Mr. Titanic, he helped recover thousands of artifacts that have been displayed in museums and at events around the world.A year later, the company he worked for as director of underwater research is preparing a July expedition that will employ a pair of robots instead of people aboard submersibles to search for more treasure to recover in the future.Jessica Sanders, president of the RMS Titanic which is organizing the expedition, said: "There is an art to artefact recovery and a human element that technology can never replace - and it shouldn'...

As the war raged in Gaza, another battle unfolded in parallel along Israel's northern border with Lebanon – a risky game of tit-for-tat that has intensified in recent weeks, with a much stronger enemy.Sensing the danger of a full-scale war breaking out, President Biden sent one of his most senior aides, Amos Hochstein, to Israel on Monday and Lebanon on Tuesday to push for a diplomatic solution.Unlike Hamas, the Palestinian militia fighting Israel in Gaza, Hezbollah has troops who are battle-hardened fighters and has long-range, precision-guided missiles that can hit targets inside Israel.Despite clear efforts on both sides to prevent the cycle of attacks and counterattacks from escalating into a full-blown war beyond the one raging in Gaza, civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been ki...

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy announced Monday that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms to warn parents that use of the platforms could harm teenagers' mental health.Warning labels – like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products – are one of the most powerful tools available to the nation's top health officials, but Dr. Murthy cannot require them unilaterally; the action requires congressional approval.The proposal builds on several years of mounting warnings from the surgeon general. In a May 2023 advisory, he recommended that parents immediately set limits on phone use and urged Congress to quickly develop health and safety standards for technology platforms.He also called on tech companies to make changes: to share internal data on the ...

Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, fended off a primary challenge from a well-financed right-wing businessman on Tuesday, putting him on track to win a 12th term.Mr. Cole, first elected to Congress in 2002, has long been a fixture of Oklahoma politics and an influential legislative voice behind the scenes in Congress. The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after the polls closed, with Cole leading by an overwhelming margin.Mr. Cole rose to the helm of the influential Appropriations Committee in April, taking a coveted position on Capitol Hill that put him in charge of allocating federal spending. The committee's top members can direct federal dollars not only within the government, but also into their ow...

Move over, Microsoft and Apple. The stock market has a new king.On Tuesday, Nvidia leapfrogged two of the tech industry's most storied names to become the world's most valuable public company, according to data from S&P Global. Its rise has been fueled by the boom in generative artificial intelligence and growing demand for the company's chips – known as graphics processing units, or GPUs – that have made it possible to create artificial intelligence systems.Nvidia's rise is among the fastest in the history of the market. Just two years ago, the company's market valuation was just over $400 billion. Now, in the span of a year, it has gone from $1 trillion to more than $3 trillion.Nvidia's stock price rose 3.6% on Tuesday, bringing its value to $3.34 trillion. B...

Did the break make a difference?Aid groups say the pause appears to have taken hold, but it will not automatically result in a free flow of aid.Supplies are stored in warehouses before distribution. Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, said Tuesday that it was "almost impossible" to find warehouses in Rafah, the aid epicenter, because they had been destroyed or were inaccessible.Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that 1,400 trucks of aid that had been transferred from Israel to Gaza "remain uncollected" by international organizations. Before the war, the enclave received about 500 truckloads of food and other goods a day, according to the United Nations' humanitarian affairs office.The entry of aid and commercial goods through Gaza'...

Lesa Walton had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for years. “It was terrible,” said Ms. Walton, 57, who lives in Wenatchee, Wash. “I kept getting sicker and sicker.”She also had high blood pressure and was obese. Doctors told her to go on a diet and exercise, which she did, to no avail.Then she found a doctor who prescribed Wegovy, one of the new obesity drugs. Not only has she lost more than 50 pounds, she said; Her arthritis resolved and she no longer needed pills to lower her blood pressure.Her new doctor, Dr. Stefie Deeds, an internist and obesity medicine specialist in private practice in Seattle, said Ms. Walton exemplifies a growing movement in obesity medicine.Proponents call it “obesity first.” The idea is to treat obesity with drugs approved for that use. As obesity come...