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The sky above Athens turned orange on Tuesday as clouds of dust from the Sahara blew north, casting an eerie glow over the Greek capital's monuments.The phenomenon is not new: sandstorms from North Africa have enveloped Britain, Greece and Spain in the past, but the event has led to extraordinary scenes around the Acropolis and other parts of Athens.That's because the dust cloud was more concentrated than those that hit Greece in previous episodes, according to Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory in Athens.“It's the worst case in years,” he said.On Wednesday, as the dust had cleared, Greece's Health Ministry urged people to avoid exercising outdoors and to keep doors and windows closed.Here are the photos of Athens on Tuesday.

Two years ago, Nina Jankowicz briefly led an agency at the Department of Homeland Security created to combat disinformation, the establishment of which prompted a political and legal battle over the government's role in policing lies and other harmful content online that continues to reverberate.Now she has re-entered the fray with a new nonprofit intended to combat what she and others have described as a coordinated campaign by conservatives and others to undermine researchers, like her, who study the sources of misinformation.Already a lightning rod for critics of her work on the topic, Jankowicz launched the organization with a letter accusing three Republican committee chairs in the House of Representatives of abusing their subpoena powers to silence think tanks and universities th...

The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza, including one discovery days ago about which Israeli and Palestinian authorities have offered differing accounts.The Palestinian Civil Defense said over the weekend that it had found a mass grave containing 283 bodies on the grounds of Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis, two weeks after a similar mass grave was found at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital City.Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency services organization, said some of the bodies found in Khan Younis were handcuffed, shot in the head or wearing detainee uniforms. He accused Israeli forces of killing and burying t...

Federal regulators said Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk from across the country tested positive for inactive residues of the avian influenza virus that has infected dairy cows.The viral fragments pose no threat to consumers, officials said. “To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial supply of milk is safe,” the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement.Over the past month, the avian influenza virus known as H5N1 has been detected on more than 30 dairy farms in eight states. The virus is also known to have infected a farmer, whose only symptom was pink eye.Scientists have been critical of the federal response, saying the Agriculture Department has been too slow to share important data and has not adequately pursued testing cattle fo...

A Russian deputy defense minister has been arrested on charges of accepting a “large-scale” bribe, the country's top law enforcement investigators announced Tuesday.The investigative committee's brief announcement revealed few details about what led to the detention of Timur Ivanov, the deputy minister. But the legal statute he is accused of violating involves accepting bribes “on a particularly large scale,” more than a million rubles, or more than $10,000.The Ministry of Defense did not comment on the investigation.Ivanov, deputy defense minister since 2016, has long been responsible for military construction projects, including most recently the huge contracts awarded to rebuild the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine, which was devastated by Russian attacks so...

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...