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The Senate headed toward a critical vote Tuesday to clear the way for final consideration of the $95.3 billion aid package to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, setting the stage for the bill's passage and sending to President Biden for his signature.The measure, which passed the House on Saturday, is expected to gain broad bipartisan support in a test vote scheduled for early afternoon. That would trigger a vote on final approval as early as Tuesday evening. Biden urged lawmakers to move quickly on the bill so he can sign it into law.“The Senate is coming together at a time that is nearly six months in the making,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader. “A few days ago, the House of Representatives finally approved critical national security funding for Ukra...

General Motors on Tuesday reported a big profit increase for the first three months of the year, based on the strength of its gasoline-powered vehicle business, and raised its outlook for the rest of the year.The company has seen slow growth in electric vehicles, but robust sales of internal combustion vehicles, particularly pickup trucks, helped boost its profits to $3 billion in the first quarter, a 24% increase over the same quarter. period of one year ago. GM also said it now expects to make profits of $10.1 billion to $11.5 billion this year, compared with a previous forecast of $9.8 billion to $11.2 billion.“We are maximizing the strength of our ICE business, growing our electric vehicle business and improving profitability,” GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said on a confer...

“Everyone risks their lives for a bag of flour,” he recalled. In those moments, he said, he felt as if he were doomed to be crushed under the wheels of trucks or killed by Israeli forces.At one point during the winter, Mr. Barda said he managed to get two bags of flour from a convoy. Then someone threatened him, saying that if he did not give up one, the stranger would take them both by force.In February, Mr. Barda was dashing to get a sack of flour from a United Nations truck when he collided with another man who was cutting the ropes holding the aid. In the chaos, the blade cut off Mr. Barda's finger, splattering his prize with blood. But it was a beautiful day. His family managed to make the 25 kilogram bag last for two months.Before the war, Mr. Barda worked as a baker in a ch...

Dr. Joel Breman, an infectious disease specialist who was part of the original team that helped fight the Ebola virus in 1976, died April 6 at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at age 87.His death was confirmed by his son, Matthew, who said his father died of complications from kidney cancer.“We were scared to death,” Dr. Breman, recalling his pioneering mission, told a National Institutes of Health newsletter in 2014, as a new and even deadlier Ebola epidemic raged that year.Nearly 40 years earlier, his team of five had just landed in the interior of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, at a remote Roman Catholic mission hospital. They found themselves faced with an unnamed viral infection, the origin of which was unknown, and which was accompanied by high fever and bleeding th...

Opening statements at Trump's trial in ManhattanThe first criminal trial of a former US president began yesterday, with lawyers from both sides presenting divergent views of Donald Trump in their opening statements.Prosecutors have provided a stark account of Trump's sordid past, painting him as a co-conspirator in a plot to cover up three sex scandals that threatened his 2016 election victory and alleging that Trump lied "over and over and over" to protect his candidacy.Trump's lawyers called the case a "breach of corporate records" which it was not, arguing that the 34 crimes Trump faced amounted to "only 34 pieces of paper." They sought to undermine the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, such as Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer.The day also included brief test...

European Union regulators on Monday threatened to fine TikTok over potentially addictive features on a version of its app called TikTok Lite, which was released to run more smoothly on slower wireless networks.The EU investigation adds to TikTok's regulatory challenges as the US Senate prepares to vote on a bill that would order the app's owner, Chinese internet company ByteDance, to sell TikTok or be banned. The company is under increasing pressure due to its ties to China, data collection practices and potentially harmful effects on children.In Europe, authorities said TikTok had not conducted a legally required risk assessment before introducing features that let users earn rewards such as gift cards for watching videos, liking content and following certain creators. They said...

Israel has provided no evidence to support its allegations that many employees of the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees are members of terrorist organizations, according to an independent study commissioned by the United Nations and published on Monday.The review did not address Israel's allegations that a dozen employees of the agency, known as UNRWA, were involved in the Hamas-led assault on Israel on October 7. “It is a separate mission and does not fall within our mandate.” said Catherine Colonna, the former French foreign minister who led the investigation.The review was announced in January, before Israel released claims that one in 10 of UNRWA's 13,000 employees in the Gaza Strip were members of Hamas or its ally, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that some of those...

Lori and George Schappell, conjoined twins whose skulls were partially fused but who managed to lead independent lives, died April 7 in Philadelphia. There were 62 of them.Their deaths, which occurred in hospital, were announced by a funeral home, which cited no cause.Dr. Christopher Moir, a professor of surgery at the Mayo Clinic, who was part of teams that separated six pairs of conjoined twins - although none of them were joined at the head - said that when one of the Schappells died, the other would have to almost certainly followed quickly.“Conjoined twins share circulation,” he said, “so unless you somehow emergently split their connection, it's absolutely a fatal process and not viable.”The Schappells lived much longer than expected when they were born as craniopagus twins, joi...

Huw Edwards, one of the BBC's most high-profile hosts who was suspended last year over allegations he paid for explicit images, resigned from the broadcaster on Monday.Mr Edwards, 62, led the BBC's coverage of major national events, including the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. He started as a trainee in 1984 and by the end of his career was the regular presenter of "BBC News at Ten".He was suspended by the BBC in July after tabloid The Sun reported that an unnamed host at the station had paid a teenager $45,000 for sexually explicit images, starting when the person was 17. Mr. Edwards' wife later publicly identified her husband as the host. in the report. The age of consent in Britain is 16, but sharing or possessing indecent images of anyone under 18 is a crime.La...

A new wave of AI-created child pornography threatens to overwhelm authorities already held back by antiquated technology and laws, according to a new report released Monday by Stanford University's Internet Observatory.Over the past year, new artificial intelligence technologies have made it easier for criminals to create explicit images of children. Now, Stanford researchers warn that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit that serves as the central coordinating agency and receives the majority of its funding from the federal government, lacks the resources to combat the growing threat .The organization's CyberTipline, created in 1998, is the federal clearinghouse for all online reports of child pornography, or CSAM, and is used by law enforcement to ...