Thirteen-year-old Zakariya Barbakh had spent most of his life shuffling between hospitals across Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel. Born without a lung, he had struggled to breathe. Doctors had predicted he would need a transplant if he were to reach adulthood. But the last 15 months of war in Gaza had made that impossible. When the ceasefire between ...
Theto Ngobeni was just 18 days old when doctors first inserted a shunt into the back of her head to drain excess fluid accumulating in her brain. She was born with a condition known as hydrocephalus, which doctors said was caused by a listeriosis infection that her mother contracted while pregnant. Now seven, Theto has already had six operations to ...
Hours after Donald Trump’s chilly inauguration in Washington, Taiwan’s parliament voted to freeze billions of dollars in defense spending, in a move some worry could frustrate the famously transactional president, who has already demanded Taipei pay “more” for US protection. The US is the main ally and arms supplier of Taiwan, a democratically ruled island and semiconductor powerhouse, which China’s ...
A war of words between Elon Musk and Sam Altman escalated on social media Thursday, as two of the most powerful men in tech sparred over their rival artificial intelligence initiatives. The latest exchange began after OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, was revealed as a key player in Stargate, the AI infrastructure project President Donald Trump announced this week that is ...
UnitedHealthcare on Thursday tapped company veteran Tim Noel as its new CEO following the targeted killing of its former top executive, Brian Thompson, in Manhattan in December. Noel was the head of Medicare and retirement at UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S. It is the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s biggest health-care conglomerate based on revenue and its ...
Store closures in the U.S. last year hit the highest level since the pandemic — and even more locations are expected to shutter this year, as shoppers’ dollars increasingly go to a few industry winners, according to an analysis by Coresight Research. Major retailers, including Party City and Macy’s, closed 7,325 stores in 2024, according to the retail advisory group’s data. That’s the ...
Taiwan plans to cull up to 120,000 green iguanas, with supporters urging humane methods to bring down the animal’s population, which is wreaking havoc on the island’s agricultural sector. Around 200,000 of the reptiles are believed to be in the island’s southern and central areas, which are heavily dependent on farming, according Chiu Kuo-hao of the Forestry and Nature Conservation ...
Micheál Martin became Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) for the second time in his political career on Thursday, a day later than planned. The Irish parliament descended into uproar on Wednesday, its first day back in session after weeks of political horse-trading and coalition-building, following the country’s general election in November. Wednesday’s order of business was scheduled to start with the ...
Italy’s high court has upheld the remaining conviction against American Amanda Knox, who was jailed and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. Knox was convicted of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba by falsely accusing him of Kercher’s murder. Knox, 20 at the time, signed two statements prepared by police regarding her accusation against ...
The female Palestinian inmates were made to kneel in a line on a cold evening last Sunday on the grounds of Israel’s Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank. “This is not a victory for you. We have destroyed and killed in Gaza, in Yemen, in Syria, in Iran. We killed (your) leadership,” one, Rula Hassanein, recalled hearing in a ...