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A new problem is plaguing humanitarian aid convoys attempting to deliver supplies to Gaza’s starving population: attacks by organized mobs looking not for the flour and medicine trucked in, but for the cigarettes smuggled inside the cargo.In the tightly blockaded Gaza Strip, cigarettes have become increasingly rare, now typically selling for $25-30 each. UN and Israeli officials say coordinated attacks by groups seeking to sell contraband cigarettes for profit are a formidable obstacle to transporting desperately needed aid to the southern Gaza Strip.Israeli authorities carefully monitor everything entering and leaving Gaza through Israeli-administered checkpoints. But cigarettes have managed to pass for weeks inside aid trucks, mainly through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.To ...

The nervous energy was palpable as hundreds of cyclists, clad in brightly colored Lycra, awaited the start of the 50-mile ride known as the Half-Century from the Santa Fe Railyard, a hub of art galleries, restaurants, and a weekly farmers market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then, finally, we were riding through town with eight motorcycle cops ahead of us, patrolling the intersections.We passed the Roundhouse, where the New Mexico Legislature meets. We passed Museum Hill, where four museums explore the Native American Southwest, the Spanish colonial past, and more. Then, finally, after a dozen miles or so, Santa Fe was far away and we were alone, riding through rolling ranchland.It was the second day of a two-day cycling event that each spring attracts more than 1,500 participants, who come for...

Emphatic, combative and demanding: this style found its peak in the speech given by far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon before an inflamed crowd of thousands celebrating his victory in Sunday's French legislative elections.Standing before supporters in the working-class 20th arrondissement of Paris, Mr. Mélenchon addressed President Emmanuel Macron, and not in a polite manner. “The president should resign or appoint one of us as prime minister,” he declared.Other leftist leaders have said there should be "discussions" about the country's future. Not this one. The crowd roared Sunday.Mr. Mélenchon’s tone and hard line have won him a devoted, young following—the only leftist leader with one—and made him both adored and hated, marginalized and central to French politics. More French pe...

In 1994, when Sumner M. Redstone bought Paramount Pictures for about $10 billion, the equivalent of about $22 billion today, he did more than buy a company. He ascended to a cultural throne.Studios like Paramount, founded in the 1910s, which operated complexes of recording studios and controlled vast film libraries, were valuable companies on the verge of striking a goldmine: the DVD. But perhaps more importantly, they gave their owners a valuable identity as certified members of the cultural elite.Movies still dominated. The top-selling films of 1994 included such landmarks as "The Lion King," "Schindler's List," "Interview with the Vampire," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Philadelphia," "Speed," and "Pulp Fiction." In 1995, when Paramount's "Forrest Gump" won the Academy Award for Best Pictu...

The images are haunting: black-and-white prints of a snow-covered shack and paintings surrounded by barbed-wire fences and skeletal trees, eerie depictions of a World War II camp in France where Jews were interned before being deported to concentration camps.Artist Jacques Gotko created one painting using a background of crushed eggshells glued to a wooden board; for others he used a piece of old tire as a printing block. These were some of the few materials available to him in the camp where he was held before being transported to Drancy, another camp in France, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, in 1943.Fragile and rarely exhibited, these works are part of a vast archive of Holocaust-related artifacts, including millions of pages of documents, tens of thousands of pages of testimonies, ...

According to official visitor logs, a Parkinson’s disease expert from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center visited the White House eight times in eight months from last summer to this spring, including at least once for a meeting with President Biden’s physician.The expert, Dr. Kevin Cannard, is a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and recently published a paper on Parkinson’s. The logs, released by the White House, document visits from July 2023 to March of this year. More recent visits, if any, would not be released until later, under the White House’s voluntary disclosure policy.It was unclear whether Dr. Cannard was at the White House to specifically consult with the president or if he was there for unrelated meetings. Dr. Cannard’s LinkedIn page describes him as...

A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital on Monday highlighted the growing number of deadly attacks on medical facilities, vehicles and workers in the country this year. It adds to World Health Organization data suggesting that more Ukrainians could be on track to be killed in such attacks this year than last.Prior to the attack on Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, WHO documented 18 deaths and 81 injuries from more than 175 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in Ukraine for the first half of 2024. The organization also recorded 44 attacks on medical vehicles during that period.In all of 2023, the organization counted 22 deaths and 117 injuries from 350 such attacks, and 45 more specifically on medical vehicles such as ambulances. Other organizations have estim...

Bruce Bastian, a founder of WordPerfect Corporation whose word processor was the preferred writing tool during the early days of personal computing—and who later renounced his Mormon faith and funded LGBTQ causes after coming out as gay—died June 16 at his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 76.Michael Marriott, executive director of the BW Bastian Foundation, said the cause was complications from pulmonary fibrosis.In the late 1970s, Mr. Bastian was finishing his undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University when he founded the company that would become WordPerfect with Alan C. Ashton, his computer science professor and the nephew of David O. McKay, the influential former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In the 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Bastian and Mr...

If the Biden administration prevails, many more electronic chips would be produced in factories located in, say, Texas or Arizona.They would then be shipped to partner countries, such as Costa Rica, Vietnam or Kenya, for final assembly and sent around the world to power everything from refrigerators to supercomputers.These places may not be the first that come to mind when you think of semiconductors. But administration officials are trying to transform the world’s chip supply chain, and they’re negotiating hard to do it.Key elements of the plan include convincing foreign companies to invest in U.S. chipmaking and finding other countries to set up factories to do the work. Officials and researchers in Washington call it part of the new “chip diplomacy.”The Biden administration argues that ...

  Aydın şehrindeki klima sorunları, hızlı ve etkili bir şekilde çözülerek, kullanıcıların konforunu ve güvenliğini sağlamak için büyük önem taşımaktadır. Özellikle sıcak yaz aylarında klima arızalarıyla karşılaşmak, beklenmedik bir sürpriz gibi gelir. Ancak Aydın Altus Servis gibi uzman ekipler, en yakın Aydın kombi servisi ve en yakın Aydın klima servisi hizmetleriyle bu sorunlara hızlı bir şekilde müdahale etmektedir. Klima arızalarının aniden ortaya çıkması, ev sahiplerini ve işletmeleri olumsuz etkileyebilir. Ancak Aydın'da bulunan profesyonel servisler, kısa sürede adresinize gelerek sorunu tespit eder ve etkili çözümler sunar. Bu sayede, klimanızın beklenmedik bir patlamayla karşılaşma riski en aza indirilir ve konforunuz kesintisiz devam eder. Klima sorunlarının hızlı ...