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Fears of an Iranian attack have drawn an American general to IsraelThe United States has sent its top military commander for the Middle East to Israel to discuss a widely expected retaliatory attack by Iran, officials said.Iranian leaders have repeatedly vowed to punish Israel for the April 1 attack in Syria that killed several top Iranian commanders. Israel has put its military on alert and President Biden has said Iran is threatening a “significant” attack. General Michael Kurilla, American commander, will also speak about the war in Gaza and humanitarian aid operations in the area.Biden, who has become increasingly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct in the Gaza war, said American support for Israel in the face of danger from Iran was "ironclad."Netanyahu said ...

Apple on Thursday said it would ease limits on repairing new iPhones with used parts such as screens, batteries and cameras, a reversal from its previous practice of using software to encourage people to work with new, more expensive parts approved by Apple.The change comes weeks after Oregon passed a law banning Apple's practice of attaching parts to software, known as "part matching." Similar bills are under consideration in Colorado and more than a dozen other states. Apple had opposed Oregon's legislation before its passage, saying customers could be left vulnerable to safety risks if Apple was forced to allow lower-priced parts made by third-party suppliers.In the past, if an iPhone owner broke a part, such as a screen, and installed an original, used Apple screen purchased ...

Since 2004, when the system was established, two famines, according to this definition, have occurred. In 2011, the IPC declared famine in parts of Somalia, which had endured decades of conflict. Years of drought have destroyed the agricultural sector and the economy, forcing many people to leave their homes in search of food. At the same time, a group of Islamic rebels blocked the escape of starving people and forced Western humanitarian organizations to abandon them. In all, around 250,000 people died.Six years later, famine was declared in parts of South Sudan. The country had suffered years of drought, but the UN said the famine was man-made. Millions of people had fled a civil war that was destroying the country's economy, and rebel forces and government soldiers had blocked...

Evan Stark, who studied domestic violence with his wife and then pioneered a concept called "coercive control," which describes the psychological and physical domination that abusers use to punish their partners, died March 18 at his home in Woodbridge, Connecticut. 82.His wife, Dr. Anne Flitcraft, said the cause was most likely a heart attack that occurred while he was on a Zoom call with women's advocates in British Columbia.Through studies begun in 1979, Drs. Stark and Flitcraft became experts in intimate partner violence, raising the alarm that beatings — and not car accidents or sexual assaults — were the leading cause of injuries that sent women to the emergency room.But in speaking with battered women and veterans who had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder as a result ...

Nijole Sadunaite, a fearless but forgiving Roman Catholic nun and anti-Soviet Lithuanian nationalist inspired by Pope John Paul II and publicly acclaimed by President Ronald Reagan, died March 31 in Vilnius. She was 85 years old.Her death was confirmed by Sister Gerarda Elena Suliauskaite, winner of the Freedom Prize of the Republic of Lithuania, also awarded to Sister Sadunaite in 2018 for her defense of democracy and human rights. She was the first woman to receive the award.In 1975, Sister Sadunaite (pronounced sah-DOO-nay-teh) was arrested by KGB agents who raided an apartment where she was writing an underground newspaper, The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, which documented abuses against Christians in the Baltic. state.“I had written six pages when I got caught, so...

One recent afternoon, I held a bagel in front of me and said, “Look and tell me if this is healthy.”A monotone voice replied that the bagel was unhealthy because it was high in carbohydrates, which could contribute to weight gain.I wasn't talking to a techie obsessed with the ketogenic diet. It was the Ai Pin, a tiny $700 computer equipped with a virtual assistant that pulls data from OpenAI (the research company behind the ChatGPT chatbot), Google, Microsoft and others to answer questions and perform tasks.Shaped like a pin that could be a "Star Trek" throwback, it attaches to your clothes with magnets and is supposed to offload tasks you'd normally do with a smartphone, such as taking notes, searching the Web and taking photos. Instead of a screen, the pin shines a green laser ...

A senior Hamas official said Wednesday that Hamas did not have 40 living hostages in Gaza who met the criteria for an exchange under the proposed ceasefire deal with Israel being negotiated.A senior Israeli official said Israel had been conveyed Hamas's claim, and the senior Hamas official said the group had informed mediators facilitating the negotiations. The Israeli and Hamas officials requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.The statement raised fears that more hostages may have died than previously believed and came as talks between Hamas and Israel stalled over disagreements over the continuation of the ceasefire, the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza and other issues.International negotiators have proposed an initial six-week ceasefire duri...

Overall, the health needs of women in Bangladesh take a backseat to those of men. “In our male-dominated society, when a man has a problem, he requires immediate attention, but women can wait,” she said.But the effects of declining vision can be especially pronounced for women, who are often responsible for earning extra income for their families on top of childcare and household chores, Ms. Mahjabeen said. “When it takes longer to sew and clean, or you can't get all the kernels out of the rice, domestic violence occurs in some families,” she said.VisionSpring distributes more than two million pairs of glasses per year across South Asia and Africa, up from 300,000 in 2018.The PLOS One study builds on previous research involving tea pickers in India who found a significant increase in...

Trevor Griffiths, a prolific and avowedly Marxist writer for stage and screen, best known for his play “Comedians,” which ran in London and on Broadway, died March 29 at his home in Yorkshire, England. He was 88 years old.His agent, Nicki Stoddart, said the cause was heart failure.An important figure on the English left, Griffiths bridged the political with the personal and expressed this affinity across a wide range of topics, whether related to British party politics or comparable upheavals abroad.Its maximum visibility occurred during the decade from 1975 onwards. That period included the premiere of “Comedians” in Nottingham, England, in 1975, as well as its premiere in New York in 1976 – it was his only play on Broadway – and his lone foray into Hollywood, as Warren's collaborat...

After the birth of her second child, Chelsea Becker took a one-year unpaid leave from her full-time job as a flight attendant. After watching a video on TikTok, she found a side business: training artificial intelligence models for a website called Data Annotation Tech.For a few hours each day, Ms. Becker, 33, who lives in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, sat at her laptop and interacted with an AI-powered chatbot. For every hour of work she was paid between 20 and 40 dollars. From December to March she earned over $10,000.The boom in artificial intelligence technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a type of work that doesn't require you to leave home. The growth of large language models like the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT has fueled the need for trainers like Ms. Be...