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A senior Hamas official said Wednesday that Hamas did not have 40 living hostages in Gaza who met the criteria for an exchange under the proposed ceasefire deal with Israel being negotiated.A senior Israeli official said Israel had been conveyed Hamas's claim, and the senior Hamas official said the group had informed mediators facilitating the negotiations. The Israeli and Hamas officials requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.The statement raised fears that more hostages may have died than previously believed and came as talks between Hamas and Israel stalled over disagreements over the continuation of the ceasefire, the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza and other issues.International negotiators have proposed an initial six-week ceasefire duri...

Overall, the health needs of women in Bangladesh take a backseat to those of men. “In our male-dominated society, when a man has a problem, he requires immediate attention, but women can wait,” she said.But the effects of declining vision can be especially pronounced for women, who are often responsible for earning extra income for their families on top of childcare and household chores, Ms. Mahjabeen said. “When it takes longer to sew and clean, or you can't get all the kernels out of the rice, domestic violence occurs in some families,” she said.VisionSpring distributes more than two million pairs of glasses per year across South Asia and Africa, up from 300,000 in 2018.The PLOS One study builds on previous research involving tea pickers in India who found a significant increase in...

America's top military commander in Europe warned Wednesday that Ukraine could lose the war with Russia if the United States doesn't send more munitions to Ukrainian forces, and quickly.“The situation is extremely serious,” Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, head of the Pentagon's European Command, told the House Armed Services Committee.General Cavoli, who is also NATO's top military commander, said Ukraine's allies provided much of the equipment and weapons Kiev needed to fight Russia's larger military, including all the fuel donated and 90% of its tanks. But the United States supplies Ukraine with most of two critical munitions that are in short supply: artillery shells and air defense interceptors.“If we do not continue to support Ukraine, Ukraine will run out of arti...

After the birth of her second child, Chelsea Becker took a one-year unpaid leave from her full-time job as a flight attendant. After watching a video on TikTok, she found a side business: training artificial intelligence models for a website called Data Annotation Tech.For a few hours each day, Ms. Becker, 33, who lives in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, sat at her laptop and interacted with an AI-powered chatbot. For every hour of work she was paid between 20 and 40 dollars. From December to March she earned over $10,000.The boom in artificial intelligence technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a type of work that doesn't require you to leave home. The growth of large language models like the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT has fueled the need for trainers like Ms. Be...

Israeli authorities have improved their aid delivery to Gaza, but “they still need to do more,” President Biden said Wednesday, offering a measured assessment of how well Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delivering on the promises he made last week.In a phone call with Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden said the United States could withhold support from Israel over its conduct in the war against Hamas unless it does more to protect civilians and ensure adequate supplies to Gaza. On Wednesday he said he had been "candid and direct" with the Israeli leader.Since then, Biden said, Israel has done more to ensure access to food, medicine and other essential supplies, but he added that he still expects further action. Netanyahu has pledged to increase the number of humanitarian trucks entering G...

Arizona's 160-year-old abortion ban, upheld Tuesday by the state's highest court, is part of a wave of anti-abortion laws spurred by some historic twists that might seem surprising.For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until movement of the fetus was felt, usually until the second trimester. The movement, known as acceleration, was the threshold because, in an era before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.Before then, “women could try to get an abortion without having to worry that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a history professor at Rutgers University. After expediting, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.“I don't think it's been particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Sch...

Trevor Griffiths, a prolific and avowedly Marxist writer for stage and screen, best known for his play “Comedians,” which ran in London and on Broadway, died March 29 at his home in Yorkshire, England. He was 88 years old.His agent, Nicki Stoddart, said the cause was heart failure.An important figure on the English left, Griffiths bridged the political with the personal and expressed this affinity across a wide range of topics, whether related to British party politics or comparable upheavals abroad.Its maximum visibility occurred during the decade from 1975 onwards. That period included the premiere of “Comedians” in Nottingham, England, in 1975, as well as its premiere in New York in 1976 – it was his only play on Broadway – and his lone foray into Hollywood, as Warren's collaborat...

Beeper, the app that brought iPhone messaging features to Android smartphones, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, to support the development of a single service for sending and receiving chats from WhatsApp, Signal, LinkedIn and others.The deal, worth about $125 million, was announced Tuesday. This comes as regulators in Europe and the United States pressure the biggest tech companies to open up their messaging services to third parties. Regulators believe this will make it easier for people to communicate with friends and family and switch messaging providers.Automattic is betting that the changing regulatory environment will make people more interested in finding a unified messaging system like Beeper, said Toni Schneider, interim CEO of Automattic.Beepe...

Saifeddin Abutaha, an aid worker at World Central Kitchen, was returning home to see his mother when an Israeli missile hit the car he was driving in an aid convoy last week.Mr Abutaha, 25, adored his parents and often texted them as he delivered aid across the Gaza Strip, which is on the brink of famine after six months of war. In his final hours, he had oscillated between food delivery and Ramadan family planning, his brother, Abdul Raziq Abutaha, said in an interview.But since his death on April 1, their mother, Inshirah – who once daydreamed of seeing Saifeddin get married – has been unable to accept his passing.“He still hasn't eaten anything since he died,” said Abdul Raziq, 33. He said she keeps saying, "'He will be back soon, maybe for Eid'" - the holiday that marks t...

Il Servizio Sanitario Nazionale in Inghilterra ha iniziato questo mese a limitare i trattamenti di genere per i bambini, rendendolo il quinto paese europeo a limitare i farmaci a causa della mancanza di prove dei loro benefici e della preoccupazione per i danni a lungo termine.Il cambiamento dell'Inghilterra è il risultato di una revisione quadriennale pubblicata martedì sera dalla dottoressa Hilary Cass, una pediatra indipendente. “Per la maggior parte dei giovani, un percorso medico non sarà il modo migliore per gestire il disagio legato al genere”, conclude il rapporto. In un editoriale correlato pubblicato su una rivista medica, il dottor Cass ha affermato che le prove che i trattamenti di genere per i giovani fossero benefici erano “costruite su fondamenta traballanti”.Il serviz...