Author: KnowledgeHippo

The Israeli military continued its shelling of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, signaling that the passing of a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire for the holy month of Ramadan the previous day was not shaking Israel’s determination to keep fighting.The military said its warplanes had hit “more than 60 targets” in Gaza the previous day. It added that its forces were also operating in central Gaza, where it said it had killed “a number of terrorists”. The military also said on Tuesday it had confirmed the death of a senior Hamas leader. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority news agency,…

Birmingham-Southern College, a private liberal arts school in Birmingham, Ala., is set to close at the end of May, bringing a bitter end to the school’s nearly 170-year history after failing to secure a multimillion-dollar loan from the state.The school’s board of trustees voted unanimously Tuesday to close the school, with the college’s hundreds of students and staff receiving formal notice soon after.”This is a tragic day for the college, our students, our employees and our alumni,” the Rev. Keith D. Thompson, chairman of the board of trustees, said in a news release. “But it’s also a terrible day for…

NBC News’ decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as a political commentator has sparked a round of sharp criticism from her new colleagues in recent days. Top personalities at NBC and its cousin, MSNBC, including Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow, took the unusual step of publicly condemning their bosses’ decision.Those inside critics said that by hiring Ms. McDaniel, the network was endorsing electoral denial. In the days following the 2020 election, Ms. McDaniel promoted some false theories promoted by then-President Donald J. Trump, including miscounting votes in key battleground states and helping pressure…

As a Tunisian human rights activist in the 2000s, Amira Yahyaoui organized protests and blogged about government corruption. In interviews, she described being beaten by the police. When she was 18, she said, she was kidnapped off the street, dropped off at the Algerian border and exiled for several years.Ms. Yahyaoui’s fascinating background helped her stand out among entrepreneurs when she moved to San Francisco in 2018, where she founded a student aid start-up called Mos. The app shot to the top of Apple’s App Store, and Ms. Yahyaoui raised $56 million from high-profile investors including Sequoia Capital, John Doerr…

When Elon Musk first established the Tesla factory in China, he seemed to have the upper hand.He gained access to top leaders and secured policy changes that benefited Tesla. It also acclimated workers to long hours and fewer protections, after clashing with US regulators over working conditions at its California plant. The Shanghai factory has helped make Tesla the world’s most valuable car company and Mr Musk extremely wealthy.But Tesla is struggling now. Mr. Musk has helped create his competition, Chinese electric vehicle makers that are gaining market share and becoming a security concern for the United States and Europe.Tesla…

Killer whales are some of the most cosmopolitan creatures on the planet, swimming in all the world’s oceans. They patrol the icy waters near both poles and periodically appear in the tropics, in locations from West Africa to Hawaii.Although their habitats and habits vary widely, all killer whales are considered part of a single, global species: Orcinus orca. (Despite their common name, killer whales are actually part of a family of marine mammals known as oceanic dolphins.)Now, scientists have drawn on decades of research to suggest that two populations of killer whales frequently sighted off the Pacific coasts of the…

“I love how, collectively, the internet – especially TikTok – will just somehow make crazy situations funny,” Ms Iascofano said. “Well, I’m kind of comforted by the fact that we’re all pretty much dealing with, like, this traumatic news.”Zarinah Williams, author of a weekly newsletter on pop culture, politics, beauty and travel, also shared her thoughts on the Boeing fiasco on TikTok, where she joked that “the B in Boeing stands for ‘borrowed time.'”There’s a lot of dark humour,” Ms Williams, 38, said.Although she hasn’t watched any of the videos herself, Helen Lee Bouygues, president of the Reboot Foundation, a…

No matter what stock market analysts, political pollsters and astrologers might say, we cannot predict the future. In fact, we can’t even predict the past.So much for the work of Pierre-Simon Laplace, the French mathematician, philosopher and king of determinism. In 1814, Laplace stated that if it were possible to know the velocity and position of every particle in the universe at a particular moment—and all the forces acting on them—“to such an intellect nothing would be uncertain, and the future , like the past, would be the present in it.”Laplace’s dream remains unfulfilled because we cannot measure things with…

Visa and Mastercard have agreed to limit the so-called swipe fees they charge merchants who accept their credit cards as part of a class-action settlement that could save merchants about $30 billion over five years — the latest development in nearly 20 -year legal battle.Every time a customer uses one of their credit cards, Visa or Mastercard collects a swipe fee — also called an interchange fee — to process the transaction, which it shares with the card-issuing banks. Merchants pass these charges on to customers, a practice that effectively inflates prices (and can trigger discounts given to customers who…

For years, US investors who backed ByteDance, the Chinese internet company that owns TikTok, have struggled with the complexities of owning a piece of the geopolitically fraught social networking app.Now it has become even more complicated.A bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok is finalizing in the Senate after passing the House this month. Questions about whether TikTok’s Chinese ties make it a national security threat are growing. And U.S. investors, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group and Sequoia Capital — which collectively poured billions into ByteDance — are facing increased pressure from state and federal lawmakers to answer for…