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Russian President Vladimir V. Putin will travel to North Korea on Tuesday for the first time in 24 years after vowing to take ties with Pyongyang to new heights and jointly fight what he called the United States' "global neocolonial dictatorship" .The war against Ukraine brought Putin closer to the North's leader, Kim Jong-un, who gained new status in the Kremlin by opening his vast ammunition depots in Moscow.Nine months ago, after Kim arrived by armored train in the Russian Far East, the two men met at a Russian cosmodrome and toasted their "sacred struggle" against the West. The North Korean leader, between visits to sensitive Russian missile and fighter aircraft facilities, invited Putin to pay a reciprocal visit.Now the Russian president has accepted the offer. And the deepe...

After years of organizing Amazon workers and pressuring the company to bargain wages and working conditions, two major unions are teaming up to challenge the online retailer.The partnership was made permanent by voting that concluded Monday after members of the Amazon Labor Union, the only union formally representing Amazon warehouse workers in the United States, voted overwhelmingly to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters , which has 1.3 million members. The vote was overseen by Amazon's union.The ALU scored a surprise victory in a Staten Island warehouse election in 2022. But it has yet to begin bargaining with Amazon, which continues to dispute the election results. Leaders of both unions said the affiliation agreement would put them in a better position to ch...

The United States on Monday imposed new sanctions aimed at cutting off weapons, supplies and funding to the Iran-backed Houthis, who control much of Yemen and have struck commercial vessels in the Red Sea to show support for Palestinians in Gaza.“The United States remains determined to use the full range of our tools to stop the flow of military-grade materials and funds from the sale of raw materials that enable these destabilizing terrorist activities,” Brian E. Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury Department for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement. The sanctions were imposed on two individuals and five entities that facilitated the procurement of weapons for the Houthis, as well as on one individual, one company and one ship that contributed to the shipment of ...

On a busy day at the Kwapong Health Center in rural Ghana, Beatrice Nyamekye inserted contraceptive implants into the arms of half a dozen women and gave eight or nine others a three-month hormone injection to prevent pregnancy. Some were looking for condoms or birth control pills, but most wanted something longer lasting.“They especially like the implants and injections,” said Ms Nyamekye, a community health nurse. “It frees them from worry and is private. They don't even have to discuss it with a husband or partner.The uproar at the Kwapong clinic is echoed throughout Ghana and much of sub-Saharan Africa, where women have the lowest rate of access to contraception in the world: only 26% of women of reproductive age in the region use a modern contraceptive method. – something othe...

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin will travel to North Korea for a two-day visit starting Tuesday to meet with a major arms supplier for his war against Ukraine.As the war dragged on, Russia found itself in desperate need of conventional weapons, including artillery shells, which North Korea could provide.Here's some background on what's happened so far and why it matters.What do we know about previous weapons shipments?The United States first accused North Korea of ​​selling artillery to Russia as early as September 2022, seven months into the war. North Korea denied the allegations at the time.Then, last August, the White House warned that Putin and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, were holding arms negotiations, and in September, Kim visited Putin in eastern Russia. A f...

Remo Saraceni, the sculptor, toy inventor and technology fantasist best known for creating the Walking Piano to which Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced in a beloved scene from the 1988 hit film "Big," died June 3 at Swarthmore , Pennsylvania. 89.The cause was cardiac arrest, said Benjamin Medaugh, his assistant and caretaker. Mr. Saraceni died at Mr. Medaugh's home, where he had lived for the past several years.Mr. Saraceni's specialty was "interactive electronics," he told New York magazine in 1976. His other inventions included a clock that could respond aloud when you asked it the time, a stethoscope stereo system that could resonate your heartbeat and clouds of plexiglass that lights up at the sound of a whistle with a pastel color suitable for lighting a room. All were fue...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disbanded his war cabinet, an Israeli official said Monday, after the departure of two top members prompted far-right politicians to demand representation in the influential group.The two members, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, left Netanyahu's small war cabinet last week due to disagreements over the direction of the war in Gaza. The men, both former military leaders, had been seen as voices of moderation in the body formed in October after the Hamas-led assault on Israel and which had made many decisions on the conflict.The Israeli official suggested that Netanyahu's decision to disband the body - which was communicated to ministers at a wider cabinet meeting on Sunday - was largely symbolic given that Gantz and Eisenkot had already ...

As far as public health authorities know, the avian flu outbreak in dairy cattle has so far spread to just three farm workers in the United States. All had mostly mild symptoms.But that doesn't guarantee that the virus, called H5N1, will remain benign if it begins to spread between people. Accumulated evidence from the animal world and data from other parts of the globe, in fact, suggest the opposite.Some dairy cows never recovered from the H5N1 virus and died or were slaughtered from it. The infected terns appeared disoriented and unable to fly. The baby elephant seals had difficulty breathing and developed tremors after contracting the virus. Infected cats went blind and walked in circles; two-thirds of them died.“I definitely don't think there's room for complacency he...

The Mayor of Derry gave a speech. The Prime Minister and Deputy Ministers of Northern Ireland took to the stage. They were all women, and all were in the city on Thursday to celebrate the opening of the Yes festival, a hymn to female artists and creativity which also closes the celebration of the two-year anniversary of the publication of "Ulysses", the work of James Joyce. Vast and encyclopedic novel."Ulysses," which Joyce modeled on Homer's "Odyssey," is devoted primarily to the reflections and actions of men - the protagonist Leopold Bloom, his friend Stephen Dedalus and a variety of Dublin characters - as Leopold travels through the city in just one day, June 16th.But it is Leopold's wife, Molly Bloom, who says the novel's last word in the final episode, "Penelope." Or ...

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce has been convening an annual meeting of local business leaders since the 1800s, but the most recent meeting had a decidedly modern theme: artificial intelligence.The goal was to demystify technology for the Chamber's approximately 2,000 members, especially small businesses.“My sense is not that people are wary,” said Ralph Schulz, the chamber's chief executive. “It's just not clear its potential use for them.”When generative AI entered public consciousness in late 2022, it captured the imagination of businesses and workers with its ability to answer questions, compose paragraphs, write code, and create images. Analysts predicted that technology would transform the economy by driving a boom in productivity.Yet so far the impact has been l...