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On Saturday, in his first official visit to Syria to meet the new government, the Lebanese prime minister asked the two countries for a way to allow the masses of Syrian refugees in Lebanon to return home.Prime Minister Najib Mikati met Saturday afternoon in the Syrian capital Damascus with Ahmad al-Shara, the leader of the new Syrian government, according to the Lebanese prime minister's office. Al-Shara leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamic group that spearheaded the flash offensive that toppled the decades-long rule of Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian president, last month.At a news conference in Damascus, Mikati said both countries should quickly resolve the issue of the more than one million refugees Lebanon has welcomed following the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. While s...

Ukrainian authorities announced the capture of two North Korean soldiers in Russia on Saturday, saying they were the first to be captured alive since Pyongyang sent troops to assist Moscow's war effort.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two wounded soldiers were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukrainian troops have been fighting to hold onto territory captured in a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.In a post on various social media channels, Zelensky said the soldiers received medical treatment, as required by the Geneva Conventions, and were taken to Ukraine's capital, Kiev, for interrogation.Ukraine's domestic intelligence service, the SBU, said one of the soldiers was captured on Thursday. He gave no details on where or when the second was ta...

Mark Zuckerberg kept the circle of people who knew his thoughts small.Last month, Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, reached out to some of its top political, communications executives and others to discuss the company's approach to online discourse. He had decided to make sweeping changes after visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving. Now he needed his employees to turn these changes into policy.Over the next few weeks, Zuckerberg and his select team discussed how to do this in Zoom meetings, conference calls and late-night group chats. Some subordinates slipped away from family dinners and holiday gatherings for work, while Mr. Zuckerberg took stock between trips to his homes in the San Francisco Bay Area and on the island of Kauai.By New Year's Day, Mr....

James Arthur Ray, an Oprah-backed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison for manslaughter after the deaths of three people in a sweat lodge in 2009, the culmination of a three-day spiritual program he led in the Arizona desert , died January 11, 2009. 3 in Henderson, Nevada. He was 67 years old.His brother Jon Ray announced his death on social media. He did not say where in Henderson Mr. Ray died or cite a cause, but said the death was unexpected.Ray was struggling to succeed as a motivational speaker when he appeared in “The Secret,” a 2006 documentary made by Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne. The “secret,” espoused by Ray and others, was the idea that positive thinking can literally make the world change in your favor.Things began to move quickly for Mr. Ray. He ap...

The Israeli military said on Friday that Hamza Ziyadne, an Arab Israeli citizen held hostage in Gaza, was killed in the Palestinian enclave, as efforts by mediators to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas to free the hostages met with little success .More than 15 months after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, around 98 hostages remain in Gaza. About 36 of them are believed to have died according to Israeli authorities.Confirmation of Mr Ziyadne's death comes just a day after family and friends buried his father, Youssef Ziyadne, 53, who was also taken hostage. The Israeli army said their bodies were found together in a tunnel under the southern Gaza city of Rafah, along with the dead of their captors. It is unclear when they were found.Prior to the ...

“Praise the Lord for 'Tammy Faye,'” Matt Wolf exulted in the New York Times when the Elton John musical opened in London in 2022. The show, Wolf added, “has a heart as big as the big hairdo of the title character".Two years later, reviewing the Broadway transfer, Elisabeth Vincentelli begged to differ. “Disjointed, strangely bland,” he wrote, also in the Times. Trying to get “behind the mask of this complicated, outsized woman,” she argued, had made her “smaller than life.”Critics, even those who are colleagues, disagree, sometimes in diametrically opposite ways. It's part of the pleasure of criticism and going to the theater. But English transfers have been too pervasive of late to be random. The new musicals “Tammy Faye” and “Back to the Future,” as well as the recent revivals of “Cabare...

The next big battle over offshoring is taking place in Washington, and this time it involves artificial intelligence.The Biden administration, in its final weeks in office, is rushing to issue new regulations to try to ensure that the United States and its close allies have control over the development of artificial intelligence in the years to come.The rules have triggered an intense battle between tech companies and the government, as well as administration officials.The regulations, which could be issued as early as Friday, would dictate where American-made chips critical to artificial intelligence could be shipped. Such rules would then help determine where data centers that create AI would be built, with a preference for the United States and its allies.The rules would allow most Euro...

In early 1988, British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself inundated with letters from people who believed they had survived a brush with death.“I floated slowly down a tunnel, not afraid in any way, but anxiously waiting for something,” one man wrote to him. “When it arrived I was absolutely at peace and walking into the most wonderful light. Trust me, it was amazing. No worries, problems or anything, just wonderful.”In another letter, a woman described walking along a country road and coming across golden gates.“Inside was the most beautiful garden, with no lawn, path, or anything, but flowers of every kind,” he wrote. “The ones that attracted me most were Madonna lilies, delphiniums and roses, but there were many, many others.”The letters were among more than 2,000 received by...

Lebanon's fractured parliament broke through more than two years of stalemate on Thursday to choose a new president, a key step toward stability for a country trying to recover from economic catastrophe and a devastating war.Lawmakers elected General Joseph Aoun, commander of the Lebanese army, with an overwhelming majority in the second round of voting, after he failed to reach the necessary majority in the initial vote. It marked a turning point towards the formation of a government with the mandate to lead the country after the stalemate characterized by a weak caretaker government.The vote was seen as a crucial milestone for Lebanon, which has suffered a series of disasters in recent years, including an economic collapse and a war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbolla...

President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened tariffs on many countries for many different reasons.On Monday, he found a new purpose for his favorite economic tool. Trump said he would “tariff Denmark at a very high level” if it refused to allow Greenland – a North American island that is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark – to become part of the United States.“They should give it up, because we need it for national security,” Trump said of Greenland. Denmark, which has a smaller population than New York City, is not a large trading partner for the United States. The country — a U.S. ally and NATO member — sent more than $11 billion worth of goods to the United States in 2023, just a small slice of more than $3 trillion in imports. The United States, in turn, sends D...