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Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, called on a government watchdog to investigate why insurance companies continue to charge women for birth control, a move that brought access to contraceptives back into the spotlight.In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the senator noted that insurance companies are charging Americans for contraceptives that, under federal law, should be free — and that they are also denying appeals from consumers seeking to have their contraceptives covered. Some experts estimate that such practices could affect access to birth control for millions of women.Since 2012, the Affordable Care Act has required that private insurance plans cover the “full range” of Food and Drug Administration-approved contr...

NATO will offer Ukraine a new headquarters to manage its military assistance at the upcoming 75th anniversary summit in Washington, officials said, a pledge of the alliance's long-term commitment to the country's security that it was heralded as a "bridge" to Kiev's eventual membership. .Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with some Central European nations, fervently hoped his country would be offered NATO membership negotiations at the summit, which will take place July 9-11.Instead, the alliance will announce that it has agreed to set up a mission in Germany to coordinate long-term aid of all kinds to Ukraine, American and NATO officials said. The move is intended to send a strong signal of allied commitment, both in Kiev and in Moscow, which hopes the West will ...

The task was clear: test how well the AI ​​could plan a trip to Norway, a place I had never been. So I didn't do any of my usual obsessive online research and instead asked three AI planners to create a four-day itinerary. None of them, alas, mentioned saunas or salmon.Two assistants, however, were eager to learn more about me to tailor their initially generic recommendations, which they had made in seconds. Vacay, a personalized travel planning tool, presented me with a list of questions, while Mindtrip, a new AI-powered travel assistant, invited me to take a quiz. (ChatGPT, the third assistant, didn’t ask anything.)The questions from Vacay and Mindtrip were similar: Are you traveling alone? What is your budget? Do you prefer hotels or Airbnbs? Would you rather explore the great ...

The Israeli Prime Minister says the war in the Gaza Strip will soon enter a new phase.“The intense phase of the war with Hamas is coming to an end,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a television interview Sunday. “This does not mean that the war is coming to an end, but the war in its intense phase is coming to an end.”But whatever relief these comments may bring after more than six months of horrific bloodshed, Netanyahu quickly made two things clear: A ceasefire in Gaza is not within reach. And the next clash could be in Lebanon, with the forces of a Hamas ally, Hezbollah.After recalling troops to Gaza, he said: “We will be able to move part of our forces north.”Mr Netanyahu stopped well short of announcing an invasion of Lebanon, a move that would likely have caused heavy los...

Federal health officials have warned that the risk of contracting dengue in the United States has increased this year, a worrying sign as global cases of the mosquito-borne disease have reached record numbers.In the first half of this year, countries in the Americas reported twice as many cases as in all of 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an advisory to health professionals on Thursday.The region has recorded nearly 10 million virus cases so far in 2024, most of which originated from outbreaks in South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina.While local transmission of the virus in the continental United States has been limited, Puerto Rico, classified as having “frequent or continuous” risk, declared a public health emergency in March and reported near...

Eric Hazan, an influential publisher who brought some of the country's most incendiary left-wing writers to France's attention and was himself a hallmark historian of Paris, died there on June 6 at age 87.His death was confirmed by the publishing house he founded, La Fabrique, which did not release further details. Mr. Hazan had been treated for cancer.From an old building in a working-class neighborhood of Paris, Mr. Hazan's small firm wielded enormous influence, publishing provocative writers such as the left-wing philosophers Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, the scholar Edward Said, and the historian Enzo Traverso.La Fabrique tackled colonialism, Palestinian rights, Israeli politics and the Holocaust, all driven by the hostility that Hazan, the son of Jewish immigrants for...

Cruise, General Motors' driverless car subsidiary, said Tuesday that a video game industry veteran will become its new CEO, eight months after its previous CEO resigned following a series of safety issues with its its vehicles.The appointment of Marc Whitten, who most recently served as an executive at video game technology company Unity, follows a tumultuous year for Cruise, who in October was ordered by California regulators to take his fleet of vehicles off the road after a series of road accidents. The worst incident occurred on October 2, when a pedestrian was dragged under a Cruise car on a San Francisco street.Cruise has since laid off a quarter of its workforce and laid off nine executives.Mr. Whitten, who will take over on July 16, was also a founding engineer of Xbox and chi...

The election of Iran's next president will take place a year early, on June 28, following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month. The vote will lead the Islamic republic to new leadership amid internal discontent, voter apathy and regional turbulence.While the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has the final say on all state matters, the Iranian president sets domestic policy and has some influence on foreign policy.Why are these elections important?The elections offer Iran's leadership a chance to demonstrate that it can handle a disaster such as the unexpected death of a president without destabilizing the country, even as it grapples with domestic protests and tensions with the United States and Israel.The elections also allow the leaders...

Joanna Bailey, a family doctor and obesity specialist, doesn't want to tell her patients they can't take Wegovy, but she's gotten used to it.About a quarter of the people he sees at his small clinic in Wyoming County would benefit from the weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1, which also include Ozempic, Zepbound and Mounjaro, he says. The drugs helped some of them lose 15 to 20 percent of their weight. But most people in the area where she operates don't have insurance that covers the costs, and virtually no one can afford prices of $1,000 to $1,400 a month.“Even my wealthiest patients can't afford it,” Dr. Bailey said. He then mentioned something that many doctors in West Virginia – among the poorest states in the country, with the highest prevalence of obesity, at 41%...

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Russia and its security forces in Crimea committed numerous human rights violations during their decades-long occupation of Ukrainian territory.In a case brought by the Ukrainian government, the court found evidence of illegal persecution and detention of those who criticized Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, as well as systematic repression of ethnic and religious minorities in Crimea. Evidence presented to the court painted a picture of a region under the tight grip of Moscow's authoritarian control, where any criticism is severely punished and accountability is non-existent for those with political connections.The ruling by Europe's top human rights court, based on a case first filed in 2014, was a reminder that the re...