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The British Museum on Thursday named Nicholas Cullinan, an art historian who currently heads the National Portrait Gallery in London, as its new director, ending a volatile period in which the august institution was without a permanent leader.It will immediately face a series of challenges, including the fallout from an embarrassing scandal in which the museum says a former curator stole more than 1,800 objects from its warehouses, then sold many of the artifacts on eBay.Cullinan is also expected to conduct a major fundraising campaign to finance a major renovation. And he will have to deal with growing calls for the return of disputed artifacts to their countries of origin, including the Parthenon sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles, and a collection of Benin bronzes.

astead herndonHi. It’s Astead Herndon from The New York Times. I’ll try to call you back later.belinda schoendorfHey. Hey. You there?astead herndonOh, hey. I thought it was the voicemail.belinda schoendorfSorry. Hey.astead herndonAre you there?belinda schoendorfIt was. I was outside, OK?astead herndonHey. Is this Belinda? How are you?belinda schoendorfYes. I’m good. I’m good, thank you.astead herndonI want to thank you for picking up again, even though it was a surprise. Do you mind if we record this for our show?belinda schoendorfAnd tell me — and what’s your first name? Is it Stephan, you said?astead herndonNo, no. It’s Astead, A-S-T-E-A-D. So yeah, it’s the we talked over the summer.belinda schoendorfA-S-T-E-A-D. Right.astead herndonAnd after you took that Times polling.belinda schoendo...

Amazon said Wednesday it added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic, a start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google in the race to build cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.Six months ago, Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco start-up Amazon's largest AI partner. Amazon said at the time that it had the ability to bring its total investment to $4 billion. According to financial documents, they had until the end of March to do so.However, the additional investment shows the enormous resources tech companies are pouring into AI and is indicative of how much financial support Anthropic needs to keep up with its peers.“We believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further enhance our customers' experience an...

The Israeli air force continued to pound the Gaza Strip with strikes on Wednesday, and Hamas fighters continued to attack Israeli soldiers, a further indication that this week's United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire fire had failed to convince both sides while attempts because an agreement seemed to be faltering.In the two days since the UN resolution passed on Monday, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, have said they continue to carry out attacks against Israeli soldiers. The Israeli military said Wednesday that warplanes had struck dozens of targets over the previous day, including tunnels, military bases and militants.Israel has been vocal in its condemnation of the Security Council resolution, which called for a ceasefire for the remainin...

Most of the band members adhered to a young-live-fast lifestyle. But as they partook in the drinking and drug use endemic to the '90s grunge scene after shows at the Whiskey a Go Go, the Roxy and other West Coast clubs, the band's guitarist, Valter Longo, a Ph.D. Italian research obsessed with nutrition. student, struggled with a lifelong addiction to longevity.Now, decades after Dr. Longo abandoned his grunge-era band DOT for a career in biochemistry, the Italian professor finds himself with his floppy rocker hair and lab coat at the nexus of food obsessions and the aging of Italians.“For studying aging, Italy is simply incredible,” said Dr. Longo, a young 56-year-old, in the laboratory he runs at an oncology institute in Milan, where he will speak at a conference on aging at th...

The whirlwind of conspiracy theories that engulfed Catherine, Princess of Wales, before she revealed her cancer diagnosis last week probably didn't need help from a foreign state. But some British researchers said Wednesday that a known Russian disinformation operation had helped mix things up.Martin Innes, a digital disinformation expert at Cardiff University in Wales, said he and his colleagues traced 45 social media accounts that posted false claims about Catherine to a Kremlin-linked disinformation network, which has previously spread controversial stories about the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr. Zelenskyj, as well as on France's support for Ukraine.As in those cases, Professor Innes said, the influence campaign appeared calculated to inflame divisions, deepen a sense of ch...

speaker 2I’m worried that democracy is being eroded.speaker 3Our Democratic system is under direct threat.speaker 4I think democracy’s — I think it’s much more fragile than I realized.archived recording (joe biden)Well, as I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault.archived recording (joe biden)I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy, regardless of your ideology.kirsten gillibrandAnd everybody who’s listening to this podcast, who cares about these issues, needs to fight harder. I mean, make phone calls. Go door to door. Send resources.archived recording (joe biden)In our bones, we know democracy is at risk. But we also know this. It’s within our power, each and every one of us, to preserve our democracy.archived...

For years, U.S. investors who backed ByteDance, the Chinese internet company that owns TikTok, have struggled with the complexities of owning a piece of a geopolitically troubled social media app.Now it has become even more complicated.A bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok is making its way through the Senate after passing the House this month. Questions are growing about whether TikTok's ties to China make it a national security threat. And U.S. investors, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group and Sequoia Capital — who collectively poured billions into ByteDance — are facing growing pressure from state and federal lawmakers to account for their investments in Chinese companies.Last year, a House committee began examining U.S. investments in Chinese companies...

On November 19, minutes after crossing an Israeli military checkpoint along Gaza's central highway, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was asked to step out by the crowd. He put down his 3-year-old son, who he was carrying, and sat down in front of a military jeep.Half an hour later, Mr. Abu Toha heard his name called. Then he was blindfolded and taken away for interrogation.“I had no idea what was happening or how they could suddenly know my full legal name,” said the 31-year-old, who added that he had no links to the militant group Hamas and had been trying to leave Gaza for Egypt.Mr. Abu Toha was found to have come within range of cameras equipped with facial recognition technology, according to three Israeli intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. After his face...

Killer whales are some of the most cosmopolitan creatures on the planet, swimming in all of the world's oceans. They patrol the frigid waters near both poles and periodically appear in the tropics, in locations from West Africa to Hawaii.Although their habitats and habits vary widely, all orcas are considered part of a single global species: Orcinus orca. (Despite their common name, orcas are actually part of a family of marine mammals known as oceanic dolphins.)Now, scientists have drawn on decades of research to suggest that two populations of killer whales often observed off the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada are actually so different from each other – and from other killer whales – that should be considered separate species.In a paper published Tuesday in the journ...