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Keir Starmer, leader of the British Labour Party, nodded sympathetically as a young mother recalled, in heartbreaking terms, watching CCTV footage of the fatal stabbing of her 21-year-old son, whose heart had been pierced by a single bullet.“Thank you for this,” a grim Mr Starmer told the woman and other relatives of knife victims as they stood around a wooden table last week discussing how to tackle violent crime. “It’s really, really powerful.”It wasn’t the most edifying campaign event for a candidate, the week before an election his opposition party is widely expected to win. But it was entirely in keeping with the character of Mr Starmer, a 61-year-old former human rights lawyer who still acts more like a prosecutor than a politician pursuing a case.Sincere, intense, practical and not ...

In a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently at work on a weapon of the future.To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. No longer. Instead, after the drone locked onto its target — Mr. Babenko — it flew itself, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track him.The motorcycle’s growling engine was no match for the silent drone as it stalked Mr. Babenko. “Push, push more. Pedal to the medal, man,” his colleagues called out over a walkie-talkie as the drone swooped toward him. “You’re screwed, sc...

Israel on Monday released the head of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital after more than seven months in detention, Palestinian health officials said, a decision that prompted immediate protests in Israel, although no charges were made public against him.Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, was arrested in late November while taking part in an attempt to evacuate patients from the hospital, which was under siege by the Israeli army at the time. The army said he was detained for questioning about Hamas operations at the hospital.The reaction to Dr. Abu Salmiya’s release has underscored divergent views of the war both inside and outside Israel. Human rights groups have said his continued detention without charge was a sign of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian p...

These early studies “highlighted both the potential we could learn from dogs and that we needed larger sample sizes to do it really well,” said Elinor Karlsson, a geneticist at UMass Chan Medical School and the Broad Institute. And so researchers began creating large citizen science projects, seeking DNA samples and data from dogs across the United States.Pet owners have risen to the challenge. The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which began recruiting in 2012, has followed more than 3,000 dogs in an attempt to identify genetic and environmental risk factors for cancer, which is particularly common in the breed. Since 2019, the Dog Aging Project, a long-term study of health and longevity, has enrolled approximately 50,000 dogs.Dr. Karlsson’s personal project, Darwin’s Dogs, numbers 44,000...

American defense officials raised the security alert level at military bases in Europe over the weekend in response to vague threats from the Kremlin about Ukraine using long-range weapons on Russian soil, U.S. and Western officials said.Officials said no specific information had been gathered about possible Russian attacks on U.S. bases. Any such attack by Russia, overt or covert, would represent a significant escalation of its war in Ukraine.Russia has stepped up sabotage in Europe, hoping to disrupt the flow of material to Ukraine. So far, no U.S. bases have been targeted in those attacks, but U.S. officials have said raising the alert level would help ensure service members remain vigilant.Throughout the war, U.S. officials have assessed that President Vladimir V. Putin is reluctant to...

The Supreme Court eluded a final resolution Monday in a pair of cases challenging state laws designed to limit social media companies’ power to moderate content. The ruling dashed an effort by Republicans who had pushed the legislation as a remedy for what they say is a bias against conservatives.It was the latest case in which the Supreme Court considered, and then sidestepped, a major decision on the parameters of expression on social media platforms.State laws differ on the specifics. Florida’s bars platforms from permanently banning candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’s bars platforms from removing any content based on a user’s views.The justices unanimously agreed to remand the cases to the lower courts for review. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, n...

The raid turned Al-Shifa into a symbol of war, and many Gazans saw Israel’s targeting of medical institutions as a sign of contempt for Palestinian life. The detention of Dr. Abu Salmiya reinforced this view. For Israelis, the hospital was an example of Hamas’s exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes.The Israeli military later released some evidence to support its claim that Hamas operated inside the Shifa compound, including showing reporters a fortified tunnel built beneath its grounds. A New York Times investigation suggested that Hamas had used the site as a shelter and stored weapons there. The Israeli military, however, struggled to substantiate its claim that Hamas maintained a command and control center beneath the facility.Dr. Abu Salmiya's release has se...

Dr. Mildred Thornton Stahlman, a Vanderbilt University pediatrician whose research on deadly lung diseases in newborns led to life-saving treatments and the creation of one of the first neonatal intensive care units in 1961, died Saturday at her home in Brentwood , Tennessee. She was 101 years old.His death was confirmed by Eva Hill, the wife of Dr. Stahlman's nephew, George Hill.On October 31, 1961, Dr. Stahlman placed a premature infant he was gasping for air into a miniature steel lung machine, also known as a negative-pressure ventilator, the kind used for children with polio. The machine worked by pulling on the newborn's fragile chest muscles to help him take in air. The newborn survived.That initial success, together with the discoveries of Dr.'s studies. Stahlman o...

For many, France seems like a very different place on Monday.The results of the first round of Sunday's legislative elections showed a deeply fragmented country, with a rising far right winning a record number of votes and the near collapse of President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party.“The far right at the door of power,” read the cover of the daily newspaper Le Parisien the morning after the first half of the early elections called by Macron.“Twelve million of our fellow citizens voted for a far-right party that is clearly racist and anti-republican,” the left-wing newspaper Libération said in an editorial, referring to Marine Le Pen's National Rally party. "The head of state threw France under the bus, the bus continued without slowing down and is now parked in front of the...

The Olympics have ancient origins. Now they will also have a dose of the latest technologies.This year, the highlights of the Summer Olympics will be told by artificial intelligence and, more specifically, by Al Michaels' AI-generated narration.Executives at NBCUniversal and the Peacock streaming service said Wednesday that a daily highlight reel customized for the Olympics would be available to streaming subscribers. The reel will feature the voice of Mr. Michaels, the 79-year-old American television host who first covered the Olympics decades ago.Mr. Michaels, however, will not be holed up in a television booth every night to briefly summarize the dozens of Olympic events that have taken place. Instead, the Peacock program has been trained by NBC clips of Mr. Michaels — he joined the...