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The mediating country, Qatar, announced on Saturday that the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will take effect the following day, kicking off final preparations for a truce that much of the world hopes will end 15 months of destruction in Gaza.The deal is expected to take effect on Sunday at 8.30am local time, said Majed al-Ansari, spokesman for Qatar's foreign ministry, which has spent months alongside the United States and Egypt fighting to broker a deal.The Israeli cabinet approved the deal early Saturday morning, after hours of deliberations and amid rifts within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. The approval cleared a final hurdle, raising the hopes of Israelis who want to see their loved ones returned and Gazans who survived one of the most intense ...

Russia attacked Ukraine's capital with drones and ballistic missiles before dawn on Saturday, officials said, killing at least three people in central Kiev as part of a broader assault that targeted towns and cities in the whole country.Air raid warnings sounded as emergency crews raced to search for the dead and wounded - a sadly familiar routine in a nation that has been battered by relentless Russian bombing for nearly three years. Moscow called the attack a retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, which appear to have intensified in recent weeks.The Ukrainian Air Force said that four ballistic missiles and 39 attack drones were launched during the assault, and that two ballistic missiles were shot down in the Kiev region. Although the city is attacked by drones almost ev...

TikTok said late Friday that its service will “go dark” on Sunday for its 170 million American users due to a ban in the United States over concerns that its Chinese ownership poses a threat to national security.The company said in a statement that "unfortunately, TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19" unless the Biden administration assures Apple, Google and other companies that they will not be punished for providing TikTok services in the United States.The statement was TikTok's latest attempt to pressure the administration to grant it an extension from a law, upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday, that would effectively ban its service starting Sunday.The law states that app stores and major cloud computing providers cannot provide TikTok to U.S. consumers unless the company i...

Howard Buten, a college dropout from Detroit, juggled three extraordinary lives.In one, he was a cuddly, clumsy, speechless red-nosed clown named Buffo. It sold out in theaters around the world. Critics have compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.In another, he volunteered as an assistant with autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, helped create a pioneering therapy for autism and opened a treatment center.He has made a third life as a novelist. "Burt," written in the voice of a disturbed 8-year-old, failed in the United States but incredibly achieved "Catcher in the Rye" status in France, where it sold nearly a million copies and became, to his amusement, and a slight displeasure, a cultural sensation.“Howard Buten is a kind of walking poem,” wro...

Since the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel was announced on Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes have continued across the Gaza Strip, with northern Gaza facing the heaviest attacks, officials said Friday morning emergency in the area.The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency services organization, said more than two dozen children were among the victims and that more than 200 people were injured across the territory. The highest toll was in Gaza City, where more than 80 Palestinians were killed, Civil Protection said.The group's figures cannot be independently confirmed. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.Wafa, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency, said Israeli warplanes hit houses in northeast Gaza City, causing deaths and injuries. Rescuers and ambulance...

Shortly after Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested by police in France last summer and accused of failing to prevent illicit activity on the app, a French law professor specializing in cybersecurity received online messages from a man name Isaac Steidl.“I would like to talk to you,” said an email signed by Mr. Steidl, who introduced himself as the founder of the online chat site Coco. "My case is very similar to Telegram's, as are the charges."Michel Séjean, the professor, who shared copies of the messages with The New York Times, said he did not know Mr. Steidl, had no interest in helping him and never responded. However, he was familiar with Coco, a website where anonymous users could chat without leaving a trace of the conversation.French law enforcement had linked the sit...

Less than six months after rolling out a slew of AI features, Apple is disabling one of its signature features: news notification aggregation and summarization.The company revealed the change Thursday in a software update for developers. This followed an outcry from the British media that Apple software was misrepresenting the news.In December, the BBC was among the first to urge Apple to change its software. The call came after the BBC sent readers a notification about Luigi Mangione, the man arrested for the murder of Brian Thompson, the health insurance executive, in New York City. Some iPhones summarized BBC news by saying: “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.” He hadn't.In addition to disabling news summaries, Apple said it will add a warning for users who have opted in to receive notifica...

More Americans are surviving cancer, but the disease strikes younger, middle-aged adults and women more frequently, the American Cancer Society reported Thursday.And despite overall improvements in survival, Black and Native Americans die from some cancers at rates two to three times higher than white Americans.These trends represent a stark shift for a disease that has long been considered a disease of aging, affecting many more men than women.The changes reflect declines in smoking-related cancers and prostate cancer among older men and a staggering increase in cancer in people born since the 1950s.Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, but the leading cause among Americans under 85. The new report predicts that there will be approximately 2,041,910 new cases t...

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has dealt devastating blows to Hamas: It has killed top Hamas leaders and thousands of militants, pummeled the militant group's tunnel network, and undermined its ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire .When Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, it hoped to trigger a regional war that would draw in its allies and lead to Israel's destruction. Instead, he was left to fight Israel almost entirely alone. Its allies have been decimated in Lebanon, overthrown in Syria and weakened in Iran. The Houthis in Yemen have only managed to launch occasional rocket and drone attacks, most of which Israel has intercepted.Despite its isolation, however, Hamas remains the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza even after 15 months of Israeli bombardment,...