Blog

Current and former U.S. officials expressed fears Tuesday that Israel's airstrikes against the Iranian embassy in Syria could escalate hostilities in the region and provoke retaliatory attacks against Israel and its American ally.Officials said Monday's attack, which killed three Iranian Quds Force generals and four other officers, dealt a major blow to the force, external military service and intelligence services of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Ralph Goff, a former senior CIA official who served in the Middle East, called the Israeli attack “incredibly reckless.”“The result will just be an escalation on the part of Iran and its proxies, which is very dangerous” for American troops in the region who could be targeted in retaliatory attacks by Tehran's proxies, Goff sa...

The Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that hospitals must obtain written informed consent from patients before undergoing sensitive tests — such as pelvic and prostate exams — especially if the patients will be under anesthesia.A New York Times investigation in 2020 found that hospitals, doctors and doctors-in-training sometimes conducted pelvic exams on women under anesthesia, even when such exams were not medically necessary and when the patient had not authorized them. Sometimes these exams were performed only for the educational benefit of medical trainees.On Monday, the secretary of Health and Human Services, along with senior officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the department's Office for Civil Rights, sent a letter to teaching hos...

A young student fatally shot a 12-year-old and wounded two others at a school in Finland on Tuesday, police said, a rare act of violence by a child in a country that changed its gun laws after previous school shootings, but where firearm ownership remains widespread.Police said they arrested a suspect, also 12 years old, who had a gun, about an hour after arriving at the Viertola school in the town of Vantaa, about 10 miles north of Helsinki.“The Vantaa shooting incident is deeply distressing,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said this on X.Finland tightened its gun laws after two school shootings, in 2007 and 2008, in which 20 people, including the perpetrators, died. Those shootings inspired a heated debate over firearms legislation in a country of hunters and gun enthusiasts. A law introdu...

wesley morrisJenna Wortham.jenna worthamWesley Morris.wesley morrisHi.jenna worthamHello. Hi.wesley morrisHow are you?jenna worthamYou know, we’re back, and we’re still in a personal pan pizza, which is what I’m going to call the pandemic, because I gotta take my joy where I can.wesley morrisOh my god.jenna worthamBut it’s been a year, and we’re still on the pancetta. We’re in the pon de replay. And I’m holding on. I’m doing my very best. How about you?wesley morrisOh, man. I am doing my best myself.jenna worthamMhm.wesley morrisAnd one thing that keeps me out of trouble is not going to the gym.jenna worthamThat’s right.wesley morrisSo haven’t been to the gym in a year.jenna worthamGood.wesley morrisAnd just working out in my living room.jenna worthamMhm.wesley morrisAnd I recently had a f...

In recent months, Google has raced to resolve a backlog of lawsuits ahead of major antitrust fights with the Justice Department later this year.The company settled its fourth case in four months on Monday, agreeing to delete billions of data records compiled on millions of Chrome browser users, according to a legal document. The lawsuit, Chasom Brown, et al. v. Google, said the company deceived users by tracking their online activity in Chrome's incognito mode, which they believed would be private.Since December, Google has spent well over $1 billion settling lawsuits as it prepares to fight the Justice Department, which has targeted Google's search engine and its advertising business in a pair of lawsuits.In December, Google settled a lawsuit with dozens of attorneys general cl...

At least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran's covert operations in the Middle East were killed Monday when Israeli warplanes struck a building in Damascus that is part of the Iranian embassy compound, according to Iranian and Syrian officials.The attack on Damascus, the Syrian capital, appears to be among the deadliest attacks in a years-long shadow war between Israel and Iran that has included the assassination of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists.That secret war has become public as tensions between the countries have escalated over Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, the Iran-backed militia that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.Four Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence ...

At least one person in Texas has been diagnosed with bird flu after coming into contact with presumably infected dairy cows, state officials said Monday.The announcement adds a worrying dimension to an epidemic that has affected millions of birds and marine mammals around the world and, more recently, cows in the United States.So far, there are no signs that the virus has evolved in ways that would help it spread more easily among people, federal officials said.The patient worked directly with sick dairy cows, said Lara M. Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. “We have tested about a dozen symptomatic people who work on dairies and only one person tested positive” for the virus, she said in an email.The patient's main symptom was conjunctivitis; the ...

President Mike Johnson has begun publicly outlining potential conditions for extending a new round of American military assistance to Ukraine, the strongest indication yet that he intends to push through the House a package that many Republicans view as toxic and have tried to block.Its conditions could include tying aid for Kiev to a measure that would force President Biden to lift a moratorium on new permits for liquefied natural gas export facilities, something Republicans would see as a political victory against the climate agenda of the Democratic president. The move would also give Johnson a powerful parochial victory, unlocking a proposed export terminal in his home state of Louisiana that would be located along a shipping channel connecting the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Charles.“When...

ezra kleinI’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”[MUSIC PLAYING]So before we get started today, we’re going to be doing an Ask Me Anything episode. So if you’ve got questions you would like to hear me answer on the show, send them to [email protected]. Again, that is [email protected] guests today need little introduction. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative journalist for the New York Times Magazine, where she led the 1619 Project. She won a Pulitzer Prize for the lead essay in that. She’s also done amazing work over the years on racial inequality and segregation in the American education system. Ta-Nehisi Coates, of course, is the author of the National Book Award winner, “Between the World and Me,” the Oprah Book Club pick, “The Water Danc...