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At Azara Ballet, dancers are not expected to maintain eye contact with directors and choreographers. If company members need an impromptu break from the bright stage lights during rehearsals, they take one. They also receive clear guidance on hair and makeup well in advance of the performances.The priority at Azara is the health of the dancers. Founded in 2022 by dancers Kate Flowers and Martin Roosaare, who are both autistic (and are a married couple), the company, which is based in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida, is a haven for neurodivergent artists. (The company is made up of 10 dancers, not all of whom are neurodivergent.)“When I dance,” Flowers said, “as long as it's in a good environment and a safe space, expression through nonverbal movement is something that helps me a lot.”Azara...

High-level ceasefire talks appeared to gain momentum Monday, as Arab and American mediators pressed for a deal to halt fighting in Gaza and release hostages held by Hamas before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes over. assignment on January 20th.It is not yet clear whether the sides have reached a resolution on all the central disputes that proved insurmountable in previous rounds of negotiations, but officials have expressed optimism that a deal is possible.President Biden suggested on Monday that a deal between Israel and Hamas was imminent. “We are on the brink of a proposal that I detailed months ago about the war between Israel and Hamas finally coming to fruition,” he said in a foreign policy speech.Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said there was "a real possibilit...

Greenland is ready to talk.Responding Monday to the diplomatic earthquake unleashed last week by President-elect Donald J. Trump as he contemplated seizing the giant island in the Arctic Ocean, Greenland's prime minister said the territory would like to work more closely with the United States on defense and natural resources.“The reality is that we will work with the United States – yesterday, today and tomorrow,” Prime Minister Múte Egede said at a news conference in Nuuk, Greenland's small frozen capital.But he was firm: Greenlanders did not want to become Americans.“We have to be very smart in how we act,” he said, adding: “The power struggles between the superpowers are increasing and now they are knocking on our door.”Trump has refused to rule out using economic or military force to ...

The Biden administration on Monday issued sweeping rules regulating how artificial intelligence chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, in an effort to create a global framework that will guide the spread of artificial intelligence around the world for years to come.With the power of artificial intelligence growing rapidly, the Biden administration has said the rules are needed to keep a transformative technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries who could use it to enhance its armies, carry out cyberattack operations, and otherwise threaten the United States.Tech companies have protested the new rules, saying they threaten their sales and the future prospects of the American tech industry.The rules place various limit...

To overcome this problem, one of the major projects funded by HEAL focuses on studying the nervous systems of people with chronic pain more directly, in part by recovering malfunctioning dorsal root ganglia and trigeminal nerves from patients undergoing surgery for chronic pain, as well as from cadaver donors. . These samples are then cultured and examined using a range of new technologies – things like proteomics, spatial transcriptomics and metabolomics – to see how they differ from normal tissue. The goal, Gereau explained, is to identify what changes occur at the cellular level when pain becomes chronic and to create an atlas of those mechanisms and variations. Understanding this, he added, would eventually open the door to precision medicine, in which drugs could be designed to specif...

As Western diplomats explore the possibility of establishing ties with the rebels who have seized power in Syria, a religious minority has led its own diplomatic push to ensure protection for its members as the country rebuilds.A representative of the group, the Druze, recently traveled to Washington to meet with lawmakers, members of the Biden and Trump administrations and diplomats to plead their case.“We are very worried about the future,” Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif said in an interview in Washington, where he urged US officials to prioritize the protection of Syria's 1.2 million Druze as part of their engagement with the new government of village.In December, after a long civil war, a coalition of Syrian rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad and established an interim government. The re...

Italy's justice minister has called for the reversal of the arrest of an Iranian wanted by the United States for allegedly supplying material used in a drone attack that killed three American soldiers, the Italian government announced Sunday.Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, 38, was arrested last month in Milan and the US Department of Justice had requested his extradition. He was accused of illegally supplying material used in an attack by an Iranian-backed militia on a US military base in Jordan.On Sunday evening, IRNA, Iran's state news agency, reported that Mr. Abedini had reached Tehran. Despite repeated requests for confirmation, Italy has not yet announced that it has freed the man or that he has left the country.The Italian ministry's request, which was filed in court, came just days af...

An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take unofficial positions in the US government in the name of cost-cutting.As President-elect Donald J. Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency prepares for the battle against "wasteful" spending, it prepares to send individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies the entire federal government.After Inauguration Day, the group of wide-eyed, Silicon Valley-influenced recruits will be arrayed in the alphabet soup of Washington agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they try to cut costs like Musk did with X, his social media platform.This story is based on inter...

You may be among the millions of people who have seen a surprisingly specific warning like this on the labels of the medications you take:Avoid eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice while using this medication.Such warnings are issued for dozens of substances, including docetaxel, an anti-cancer drug; erythromycin, an antibiotic; and some statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to more than a third of American adults over 40.The problem is a set of molecules, furanocoumarins. High levels of furanocoumarins interfere with human liver enzymes, among other processes. In their presence, drugs can build up to unhealthy levels in the body. And grapefruits and some related citrus fruits are full of them.But there is no similar warning for other types of citrus fruits, such as ...

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...