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For the government that accused him, he was a “lone wolf,” an out-of-control individual who represented nothing but himself when he fired at least four bullets into Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico.Wednesday's attack, however, highlighted a much larger collective malfunction in Slovakia. In this central European country, society and political culture are so bitterly divided that the violence attributed to a man who authorities say acted alone has become yet another club with which each side can beat the other.“There is a level of polarization that has never existed before in this country,” said Daniel Milo, a former government official responsible for monitoring disinformation who now works for a technology company. "I've never seen anything like it," he added.The Covid-...

Last summer, on their way to a doctor's appointment near their home in Manhattan, Paul Skye Lehrman and Linnea Sage listened to a podcast about the rise of artificial intelligence and the threat it poses to the livelihoods of writers, actors, and other entertainment professionals.The topic was especially important for young newlyweds. They made a living as voice actors, and artificial intelligence technologies began to generate voices that sounded real.But the podcast took an unexpected turn. To highlight the threat posed by artificial intelligence, the host conducted a long interview with a talking chatbot named Poe. He looked just like Mr. Lehrman.“He was interviewing my voice about the dangers of artificial intelligence and the damage it could have on the entertainment industry,”...

Israeli tank fire has killed five Israeli soldiers in Gaza, a military spokesman said on Thursday, in the latest incident with self-inflicted casualties since Israel launched a ground invasion of the enclave in October.Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli army spokesman, said at a news conference that the men were killed by tank fire on Wednesday as they were fighting in a densely populated area of ​​the territory.“There was a friendly fire incident: five soldiers were killed,” he said, adding: “The incident is under review.”The Jerusalem Post reported that the men had been killed in Gaza City, in the territory's north, and that seven soldiers were also wounded when two tanks opened fire. The Israeli army later named the five, who belonged to the Parachute Brigade, on its web...

Engineers and scientists have an enduring fascination with spider silk. Similar to the typical silkworm silk from which comfortable sheets are made, but much stronger, the material inspired the invention of lighter, more breathable body armor and materials that could make aircraft components stronger without adding weight. Researchers are even using examples from spider webs to design sensitive microphones that may one day be used to treat hearing loss and deafness and to improve other listening devices.Spiders use their webs like huge external eardrums. A team of scientists from Binghamton University and Cornell University reported in 2022 that the webs allow the arachnids to detect sound from 10 feet away.When you hear a sound through your ear, what you're actually experiencing ar...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the besieged Kharkiv region on Thursday, meeting with top commanders as their forces battled to slow a new offensive push in the northeast while facing fierce assaults elsewhere on the front lines.Ukraine's military reported Wednesday that it had repelled four ground attacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces crossed the border last week and quickly captured a dozen villages and about 50 square miles of territory. The Russian Defense Ministry has reported no new gains in the Kharkiv region in recent days.“The situation in the Kharkiv region is generally under control,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media on Thursday after meeting in Kharkiv with General Oleksandr Syrsky, head of the Ukrainian Armed...

European Union regulators on Thursday opened an investigation into American tech giant Meta over the potentially addictive effects Instagram and Facebook have on children, an action with far-reaching implications because it cuts to the core of how they are designed the company's products.Meta products could "exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors" to create behavioral addictions that threaten their mental well-being, the European Commission, the executive branch of the 27-member bloc, said in a statement. EU regulators could eventually fine Meta up to 6% of its global revenue, which last year amounted to $135 billion, as well as impose other product changes.The investigations are part of a growing effort by governments around the world to rein in services like Instagram and...

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned on Wednesday that recent successes in providing desperately needed humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip risk being undone by fighting in southern Gaza.The border crossing in the southern city of Rafah has been closed since Israel began what it describes as a limited military operation against Hamas fighters in the city, on the border with Egypt. The United Nations said on Wednesday that 600,000 people had fled Rafah since Israel's ground assault began there.“Just as Israel was taking important and badly needed steps to improve the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” Blinken told reporters in Kiev, Ukraine, “we saw a negative impact on the fact that we have this active, very active conflict in the Rafah area".Josep Borrell Fonte...

The Biden administration, under intense pressure from House lawmakers, moved on Wednesday to ban funding from a prominent virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists had put it at the center of theories that Covid would have leaked from a laboratory.The decision, announced in a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services, came on the heels of a fiery congressional hearing this month in which lawmakers attacked the group's president for allegedly misrepresenting its work with virologists in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began. Republicans went further, demanding that Peter Daszak, the president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, be criminally investigated.For EcoHealth, which relied on federal funding to study the threat of wild animal viruses, the...

Robert Fico, 59, played a key role in Slovak politics in the years after it gained independence in 1993 and served as prime minister longer than any other leader.The country gained independence after the so-called Velvet Revolution, a series of popular, nonviolent protests in 1989 against the Communist Party in what was then still Czechoslovakia.Fico, who had been a member of the Communist Party while in power, founded the Smer party in the late 1990s and began the first of his three terms as prime minister in 2006, serving for four years before moving into opposition after his coalition. missed an election. Slovakia is a landlocked country of approximately 5 million people.The Smer party, which initially started on the political left but has increasingly embraced right-wing views on imm...

When it comes to choosing a commencement speaker, colleges and universities take different approaches. Some reach out locally, selecting well-known people in the area. Others take the high road, opting for a former or current politician. Actors or comedians are often asked to speak.But in a world where artificial intelligence is everywhere, a New York university opted for a robot that uses artificial intelligence to talk to graduates over the weekend.For its spring commencement on Saturday, D'Youville University, a private institution in Buffalo, asked an AI robot named Sophia to address a crowd of more than 2,000 students, faculty and their families in a bold decision that sparked mixed reactions.Dr. Lorrie Clemo, president of D'Youville University, said in an interview Wednesd...