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Sameh Shoukry, Egypt's foreign minister, immediately objected, saying the crossing was still closed because of Israel's control over it and because its military operations were endangering truck drivers and aid workers. In a statement from Egypt's Foreign Ministry, Shoukry rejected what he described as "the policy of distorting facts."Israeli officials rarely publicly criticize Egypt, with which Israel maintains a decades-old peace treaty and sensitive security cooperation.Defying international pressure, Israel launched a limited invasion of Rafah on May 6, seizing areas to the east. Even if the trucks were allowed to pass through the Rafah crossing, it is unclear whether they could safely cross into eastern Rafah, where Israeli forces are fighting Hamas militants.Israel rece...

STDs are on the rise across the United States. More than 3,700 cases of congenital syphilis have been reported in 2022, about 11 times the number recorded ten years ago.Syphilis during pregnancy can lead to miscarriages and stillbirths, and children who survive may become blind or deaf or have severe developmental delays. But timely testing and treatment can prevent most of these outcomes.Sexually transmitted infections disproportionately affect communities of color. Socioeconomic status and education level can also influence prenatal care.I cover infectious diseases at the Times. I would love to hear firsthand from women who have had syphilis during pregnancy. Were you offered testing during pregnancy? If you tested positive were you treated? How has syphilis affected your child...

Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be quite serious and predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of status, of office, of pageantry and lineage.This is why Jonathan Yeo's new official portrait of King Charles III, the first since the king's coronation, has sparked so much controversy.The portrait, a large canvas (7.5 feet by 5.5 feet), shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, his hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly it hovers just above his right shoulder. His whole body is immersed in a crimson sea, so his face seems to be floating.Although the butterfly was ostensibly the key element of the semiology – intended, Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles&#...

For the past 10 months, Chelsea Prudencio, a student at Baruch College in Manhattan, has been taking a crash course in artificial intelligence through a new program for young, low-income, Latina and Black women majoring in computer science.As part of the program, called Break Through Tech AI, Ms. Prudencio completed an intensive course developed by Cornell Tech faculty with input from technology executives. She embarked on an artificial intelligence student project for Pfizer to create heart disease prediction models. She and she were mentored by a Citigroup cybersecurity executive on how to ace technical job interviews.These are the types of important learning and career opportunities that can help computer science majors find jobs in rapidly evolving fields like artificial intelligence...

With Israeli troops returning to clear Hamas for the second or third time from parts of northern Gaza, and also fighting further south in Rafah, the Israeli government has found itself facing more vocal discontent from a important constituency: its own military leaders.Current and former senior military officials have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to present a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are forced – in the eighth month of the war – to fight again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared.Two Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said some generals and members of the war cabinet are particularly frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ...

Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation.It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant's core AI lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an AI technology that helps scientists understand the behavior of the microscopic mechanisms that drive cells on the planet. Human Body.An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had plagued scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem”.Proteins are the microscopic molecules that guide the behavior of all living things. These molecules begin as strings of chemical compounds befo...

Darren Criss, who parlayed his starring role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but also about life, love and loss.The show, "Maybe Happy Ending," is a Broadway rarity: a completely original musical, not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul at the end of the 21st century and is about two old-fashioned helper robots who meet in a robot retirement home and form a relationship while dealing with own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016 and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the ...

With Israeli troops returning to clear Hamas for the second or third time from parts of northern Gaza, and also fighting further south in Rafah, the Israeli government has found itself facing more vocal discontent from a important constituency: its own military leaders.Current and former senior military officials have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to present a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are forced – in the eighth month of the war – to fight again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared.Two Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said some generals and members of the war cabinet are particularly frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ...

Geriatrics is a field of investigation. To solve medical puzzles, doctors must become detectives, identifying the effects of overlapping causes that include chronic conditions, acute injuries, social factors, and the normal aging process. It is a challenge that tests the patience of many doctors; the number of board-certified geriatricians in the United States, now just over 7,000, has been decreasing since 2017.By masquerading as a diagnosis, the term "growth failure" shortens the investigative process, stopping the investigation before doctors can determine the true cause, said Dr. Clara Tsui, a geriatrician at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last month, she saw the label in the medical records of an 82-year-old man with Alzheimer's who had fallen and hit ...

Some $300 billion in Russian assets, frozen in the West after the invasion of Ukraine, are racking up profits and interest earnings by the day. Now, Europe and the United States are considering how to use these gains to help the Ukrainian military as it wages a grueling battle against Russian forces.For months, there was debate about whether it was legal or even wise to confiscate the frozen assets altogether. While the United States and Britain favor the confiscations, significant objections have come from countries such as France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan and Saudi Arabia, as well as officials such as Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank.They argue that confiscation would set a bad precedent, a violation of sovereignty, and could lead to legal challenges, financ...