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The contest for the city hall presidency in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and economic dynamo, is in many ways between one man who is on the ballot and another who is not.The first is incumbent Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a rising star in the political opposition who won a surprise victory in 2019 and is widely seen as a potential presidential contender.The second is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who decades ago was mayor of Istanbul and, after Imamoglu's victory, wanted to bring his hometown back under the control of the ruling Justice and Development Party.The outcome will be decided by Sunday's municipal elections, which in many ways will determine Turkey's political future.A victory for Erdogan's party would allow him to reclaim the political and financial clout of ru...

The phone woke Doug Nordman at 3 in the morning. A surgeon was calling from a hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado, where Mr. Nordman's father had arrived in the emergency room, incoherent and in pain, and then lost consciousness.Initially, staff thought he was suffering a heart attack, but a CT scan found that part of his small intestine had been perforated. A surgical team repaired the hole, saving his life, but the surgeon had some questions.“Was your father an alcoholic?” he asked. Doctors found Dean Nordman malnourished, with his peritoneal cavity "filled with alcohol."The younger Nordman, a military personal finance author who lives on Oahu, Hawaii, explained that his father, 77, had long been a classic social drinker: a scotch and water with his wife before dinner, which was...

“His music may be rigorous, but his gentle, quiet spirit gives his work its inimitable character and pathos,” says American opera director Yuval Sharon, who directed a 2016 production of the opera by Mr. Eotvos from 1998, "Tri Sestri". Vienna, he said in a note. Calling that opera, based on Chekhov's play “Three Sisters,” “undoubtedly one of the greatest works of our time,” Sharon said it was only while working with Eotvos that “he realized how much of his emotional feeling life is invested in work.”For the otherwise reserved Mr. Eotvos, music was the vehicle for expressing that inner life. “In everyday life I'm not a dramatic person at all,” she said in a 2020 documentary about him. “Perhaps this veiled dramatic trait can only come to the surface if it has a job to do.”In the ...

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.archived recording (joe biden)My fellow Americans, please, if you have a seat. Thank you.I speak to you tonight from sacred ground in America — Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is where America made its declaration of independence to the world more than two centuries ago. It was an idea unique among nations — that in America, we’re all created equal.astead herndonIn early September, Joe Biden kicked off the midterms with a message for the country.archived recording (joe biden)Equality and democracy are the rock upon ...

First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. Then, he created similar technology that generated full-motion video like something out of a Hollywood movie.Now it has unveiled technology that can recreate someone's voice.The high-profile AI startup said Friday that a small group of companies was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can recreate a person's voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, you can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like your own.The text does not have to be in your native language. If you speak English, for example, it can recreate your voice in Spanish, French, Chinese or many other languages.OpenAI isn...

The huge rear gate of the Jordanian Air Force cargo plane slowly lowers like a rigid iron jaw, revealing a hazy blue sky and, far below, the battered landscape of northern Gaza.Inside the plane's cavernous hold, supplies delivered by the crew are lined up in neat rows: chest-high bundles of boxes stacked on wooden pallets, each bound with shrink-wrap and heavy straps and marked with images of the flag of Jordan.Now, as light and sound rush in, the bundles slide along rollers in the floor and disappear out the door, floating beneath billowing parachutes as a silent, and quite possibly inadequate, offering to the desperate populace below.With humanitarian groups and others sounding the alarm about a looming famine in northern Gaza and widespread hunger across the territory, airdrops are ...

By the numbers: an increasing mortality rate.The disease is caused by infection with a bacterium called Neisseria meningitidis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 422 cases of invasive meningococcal disease were reported in the United States last year, the highest number since 2014.But as of Monday, 143 cases have been reported to the CDC this year, 62 more than the number of cases reported last year during the same period.The disease is extremely dangerous. Even with adequate treatment, 10 to 15 percent of patients who develop meningococcal disease will die. Many recent cases have been caused by an unusual strain of N. meningitidis called ST-1466. This strain caused 17 deaths among 94 patients whose outcomes are known, for a mortality rate of 18%.Survivors of...

Thirteen years ago, a poor fisherman in a small Turkish village was retrieving his net from a lake when he heard a noise behind him and turned to find a majestic being standing on the bow of his rowboat.Glittering white feathers covered its head, neck and chest, giving way to black feathers on its wings. He stood on thin orange legs that almost matched the color of his long, pointed beak.The fisherman, Adem Yilmaz, recognized it as one of the white storks that had spent the summer in the village for a long time, but he had never seen one so close up, much less hosted on his boat.Wondering if he was hungry, he tossed him a fish, which the bird devoured. He threw another. And another.Thus began an unlikely tale of man and bird that has captivated Turkey over the years - and a clever socia...

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.astead herndonSo there’s this show hosted by Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist. It’s called War Room. And while it’s controversial enough that YouTube and Spotify won’t publish it, in the conservative world it’s a big deal.archived recording (steve bannon)OK, we’re live at CPAC. The War Room posse is —astead herndonA couple of months ago Bannon hosted a live recording at CPAC, basically the most important gathering of influential grassroots conservatives, and he brought out a guest.archived recording (steve bannon)Glenn Story is ...

But Tan's passion, as it is for a growing number of tech leaders, is San Francisco politics. He's part of a love-it-or-hate-them group of tech executives and investors with lots of opinions about the city and endless piles of cash to, as they say in the tech industry, move fast and break things. (Their critics would say it's more like they're trying to buy City Hall.)For some in San Francisco's political establishment, Mr. Tan, 43, has become the most annoying in a parade of wealthy tech executives. He has created a bombastic online persona by spending around $400,000 in local politics in recent years – with potentially much more to come. And on social media site X, where he has 425,000 followers, Mr Tan not only rubs some people the wrong way, he infuriates them.Sh...