Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip rolled across a newly built U.S. floating pier into the besieged enclave for the first time Friday as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hinder food and other supplies reaching people there. The shipment is the first in an operation that American military officials anticipate could scale up to 150 truckloads a day entering the Gaza Strip as Israel presses in on the southern city of Rafah as its 7-month offensive against Hamas rages on. Before the war, more than 500 truckloads entered Gaza on an average day.
Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico is between life and death two days after an assassination attempt that sent shock waves across Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told public radio on Friday. The shooting was the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader for more than 20 years, and has drawn international condemnation. Political analysts and lawmakers say it has exposed an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate both in Slovakia and across Europe.
Russia's diplomacy with the West is in crisis management mode and is focused on trying to ensure that tensions do not spill over into a large-scale conflict, the TASS news agency on Friday reported a top diplomat as saying. TASS cited Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as telling it in an interview that security guarantees which Russia had sought and discussed with the West in 2021 were no longer relevant and that Moscow had no trust in the NATO military alliance. "Our scale of priorities, including in the sphere of ensuring our own security and forming a more stable framework for these efforts, has completely changed (since 2021)," Ryabkov told TASS.
Britain's Sainsbury's said on Friday it has agreed a five-year strategic partnership with Microsoft that will use the technology company's artificial intelligence capabilities and the supermarket group's rich data. Seeking revenue gains and cost savings, more retailers are using generative AI to boost personalised shopping experiences for consumers and make staff working practices more efficient. Sainsbury's, Britain's second-largest grocer after Tesco, said it would use AI to create a more interactive shopping experience for online shoppers, while also improving search functions.
A fiery exchange between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jasmine Crockett leads to chaos in the House Oversight Committee.
Boeing's annual meeting on Friday comes amid an exceptionally difficult period for the crisis-ridden company, creating potential for drama at an event that is usually a snooze-fest.The company, under heavy regulatory scrutiny following recent safety and quality control problems, has defeated shareholder proposals at past annual meetings that usually have lasted an hour or less.
OpenAI will have access to Reddit data for training its artificial intelligence models and will put its technology to work on the popular discussion platform, the companies said Thursday.OpenAI will access Reddit data in real-time, enhancing such content in ChatGPT and powering tools on the social media platform, the companies said.
One of the latest events in Europe to be hit with accusations of anti-Semitism, the Vienna Festival kicks off Friday, with its new director, Milo Rau, urging that places of culture be kept free of the "antagonism" of the Israel-Hamas war while still tackling difficult issues.Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things," Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especial
A top Chinese economic official said Friday the state could buy up commercial real estate in a bid to boost the country's ailing housing market, currently battling an unprecedented debt crisis.And in a bid to boost the ailing market and ensure millions of unused homes go to those in need of housing, Beijing's State Council met Friday, state news agency Xinhua said.
Housing prices in China slumped in the first four months of the year, although factory output rose nearly 7%, according to data released Friday, as the country prepares to announce fresh measures to reinvigorate its ailing property industry. Officials of the National Bureau of Statistics acknowledged that domestic demand — spending by consumers and businesses — remained “insufficient” and said the government was considering further ways to revitalize the property industry after housing prices sank 9.8% in January-April from a year earlier. Liu Aihua, spokesperson for the bureau, said that in keeping with policies set by the Communist Party leadership, there was a need to find ways to balance supply and demand, meet public expectations for high-quality housing and “seize the opportunity to build a new model of high-quality development of the real estate sector.”
A now-extinct stretch of the Nile once flowed near Egypt’s Great Pyramid and likely played a key role in the construction of ancient monuments, according to new research.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, the Republican federal prosecutor who declined to recommend charges against him over his handling of classified documents.
At least four people have died in Houston as severe weather blasted through the city, an official said, as strong storms lashed parts of Texas with destructive winds and dangerous flooding.
Storms battered Texas and Louisiana late Thursday and early Friday with destructive winds and torrential rain, leaving at least four dead, flooded roads and more than 1 million homes and businesses without power — and more floods could plague parts of the Gulf Coast Friday.
Latinos seeking jobs and affordable housing have transformed Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in recent decades, but a federal lawsuit argues the way representatives are elected to their local school board is unfairly shutting them out of power. Nearly two-thirds of students in the Hazleton Area School District are Hispanic, but no Hispanic person has ever been elected to its school board, prompting the court challenge claiming non-Hispanic white voters have employed the district's “at-large” election system to keep things that way. Two mothers of children enrolled in the anthracite coal region district sued in February, asking for changes to a system they argue dilutes their voting strength and violates the federal Voting Rights Act and the constitutional right to equal protection of the law.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah this week struck a military post in northern Israel using a drone that fired two missiles. The attack wounded three soldiers, one of them seriously, according to the Israeli military. Hezbollah has regularly fired missiles across the border with Israel over the past seven months, but the one on Thursday appears to have been the first successful missile airstrike it has launched from within Israeli airspace.
The National Rifle Association is kicking off its annual meeting Friday in downtown Dallas, gathering for the first time in decades without Wayne LaPierre at the helm as board members prepare to elect his replacement. Upwards of 70,000 people are expected at the three-day event with a scheduled speech by former President Donald Trump, seminars, receptions and acres of guns and gear. A board of directors meeting on Monday is expected to include elections of LaPierre’s replacement and other officers.
South Africa's election will determine how weary the country has become of the ruling African National Congress party that has been in power since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule 30 years ago. President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC are struggling to keep their parliamentary majority and opinion polls predict that the party will likely receive less than 50% of the national vote for the first time in the May 29 election. Instead, South Africans who have turned away from the ANC have gone looking for answers among an array of opposition parties.
Amy Kremer stood near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, and told thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. “Hello, deplorables,” she said, embracing a label Hillary Clinton once lobbed against Trump’s followers. Kremer, a conservative activist from suburban Atlanta, wasn't part of the mob that hours later stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify Democrat Joe Biden as Trump’s successor.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — Atef Al-Buhaisi, 6, once dreamed of a career building houses. In Israel's war with Hamas, Atef's home has been bombed, his teacher killed and his school in Nuseirat turned into a refuge for displaced people. Since the war erupted Oct. 7, all of Gaza's schools have closed — leaving hundreds of thousands of students like Atef without formal schooling or a safe place to spend their days.