Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator’s benefactor. But they’re both inspired by an obscure software developer who has some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society.

The US’s largest labor union has retaliated against the three-day strike of its 350 staff members.

Christopher Gregor has been found guilty of the aggravated manslaughter of his 6-year-old son after jurors saw surveillance video showing the New Jersey father deliberately increasing the speed of a treadmill that the boy was running on. The verdict in the death of Corey Micciolo came Friday following a four-week trial in Ocean County Superior Court for Gregor, who was also charged with first-degree murder and child endangerment in March 2022. While the jury found Gregor guilty of aggravated manslaughter and child endangerment, they rejected the more serious murder charge against him. Aggravated manslaughter can carry a prison term of 10 to 30 years. Had he been convicted of murder, Gregor could have faced life in prison. Jurors watched the disturbing video from March 2021 of the 31-year-old Gregor repeatedly pressing the speed button as Corey ran on the treadmill, causing the boy to fall off the machine six times.

A Dutch beach volleyball player convicted and imprisoned eight years ago for raping an underage girl in Britain has qualified for the Paris Olympics. Steven van de Velde, 29, and partner Matthew Immers were one of two men's teams from the Netherlands that qualified for the beach volleyball competition. Van de Velde was sentenced to four years in prison in Britain after being convicted in 2016 of having sex with an underage girl he reportedly got to know online.

FIFA has postponed its decision on whether to suspend Israel from international soccer, extending the deadline until after the Paris Olympics. The Palestinian Football Association (PFA) initially proposed that its Israeli counterparts be suspended in May, urging FIFA to take action similar to past suspensions of nations like Russia and Apartheid-era South Africa. FIFA — world soccer’s governing body which is responsible for running the Olympic soccer tournaments — has made the decision to delay after requests for more time to submit their arguments from the PFA and Israeli Football Association. The PFA, who delivered a passionate speech at FIFA’s annual congress in Bangkok, highlighted the ongoing conflict in Gaza and alleged violations of FIFA regulations by Israeli teams operating in Palestinian territories. Led by president Jibril Rajoub, the PFA had called for Israel’s suspension, citing the impact of Israel’s military operations in Gaza — which Rajoub claimed to have resulted in the deaths of more than 250 Palestinian athletes and the destruction of several football stadiums.

As congressional hearings open on the Secret Service’s failure in Butler, Pennsylvania, the agency is already moaning that it needs more resources. But while presidential protection is job one and “no fail” according to the agency, most of what it does day-to-day — from investigating unemployment fraud and identity theft to providing protection for the White House Press Secretary — has nothing to do with its primary mission. Sure, most of the 7,000 Secret Service agents, technicians and bureaucrats in over 150 offices spring to action when Joe Biden or Kamala Harris visits, but mostly what they do is protect an endless list of cabinet and White House officials, foreign dignitaries, and former presidents. That is, when they're not dealing with the integrity of the money system, banking fraud, cyber crime, and critical infrastructure protection. The sweeping and bifurcated mission is in part a historical artifact of the Secret Service having formerly been a part of the Treasury Department, where in its original form was responsible for counterfeiting. After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security, where the Secret Service was relocated. A host of additional and ancillary missions were piled on, including counter-terrorism, but the agency fought to keep the old as well. During a press briefing last Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave the first public indication that the department was wasting no time to use the almost assassination to drum up more money for the Secret Service. (The Secret Service’s budget has more than doubled in the past decade, and now stands at over $3 billion annually.) When asked by a reporter if the Secret Service was stretched too thin, Mayorkas replied, “I do intend to speak with members of the Hill with respect to the resources that we need.

The two of us are humanitarian surgeons. Together, in our combined 57 years of volunteering, we’ve worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on four continents. We’re used to working in disaster and war zones, of being on intimate terms with death and carnage and despair. None of that prepared us for what we saw in Gaza this spring. The constant begging for money, the malnourished population, the open sewage — all of that was familiar to us as veteran war zone doctors. But add in the incredible population density, the overwhelming numbers of badly maimed children and amputees, the constant hum of drones, the smell of explosives and gunpowder — not to mention the constant earth-shaking explosions — and it’s no wonder UNICEF has declared the Gaza Strip as “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” We have always gone where we were most needed. In March, it was obvious that the place was the Gaza Strip.

The “alpha” version of the EV company’s first pickup had problems with braking, handling, noise, and leaks, according to an internal presentation.

Biden, after a five-decade political career, faced a reckoning over his age and whether he could defeat Donald Trump. His party now faces a historic effort to replace him.

The Paley Center for Media just opened an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing,” the NBC series I wrote from 1999 to 2003. Some of the show’s story points have become outdated in the last quarter-century (the first five minutes of the first episode depended entirely on the audience being unfamiliar with the acronym POTUS), while others turned out to be — well, not prescient, but sadly coincidental. Gunmen tried to shoot a character after an event with President Bartlet at the end of Season 1. And at the end of the second season, in an episode called “Two Cathedrals,” a serious illness that Bartlet had been concealing from the public had come to light, and the president, hobbled, faced the question of whether to run for re-election. “Yeah,” he said in the third season opener. “And I’m going to win.” Which is exactly what President Biden has been signaling since the day after his bad night. Because I needed the “West Wing” audience to find President Bartlet’s intransigence heroic, I didn’t really dramatize any downward pull that his illness was having on his re-election chances. And much more important, I didn’t dramatize any danger posed by Bartlet’s opponent winning. But what if the show had gone another way? What if, as a result of Bartlet revealing his illness, polling showed him losing to his likely opponent? And what if that opponent, rather than being simply unexceptional, had been a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions? What if Bartlet’s opponent had been a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder who related to his supporters on a fourth-grade level and treated the law as something for suckers and poor people? And was a hero to white supremacists? We’d have had Bartlet drop out of the race and endorse whoever had the best chance of beating the guy. The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats. But there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican. At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney. Nominating Mr. Romney would be putting our money where our mouth is: a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about it, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power. Surely Mr. Romney, who doesn’t have to be introduced to voters, would peel off enough Republican votes to win, probably by a lot. The double haters would be turned into single haters and the Nikki Haley voters would have somewhere to go, Ms. Haley having disqualified herself when she endorsed the leader of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government. Does Mr. Romney support abortion rights? No. Does he want to aggressively raise the minimum wage, bolster public education, strengthen unions, expand transgender rights and enact progressive tax reform? Probably not. But is he a cartoon thug who did nothing but watch TV while the mob he assembled beat and used Tasers on police officers? No. The choice is between Donald Trump and not-Trump, and the not-Trump candidate needs only one qualification: to win enough votes from a cross section of Americans to close off the former president’s Electoral College path back to power. Part of the wish fulfillment of “The West Wing” was that oratory can be persuasive. So Barack Obama could come forth at the Democratic convention next month in Chicago and remind us, once again, that we’re not red states and blue states but the United States by full-throatedly endorsing his old rival. And Mr. Romney could make the case that the Democrats are putting country before party in ways that the MAGA movement will not, and announce his bipartisan cabinet picks at the convention as well. After the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump last Saturday, rallygoers pointed at reporters and shouted, “You’re next!” and Republicans in Congress and on television were blaming Mr. Biden and D.E.I. for the shooting, so it doesn’t look as if that terrible moment will serve as the healing event we’ve all been waiting for. But Democrats nominating a Republican could be. And when it loses the popular vote for the eighth time in nine presidential elections, the Republican Party can then rebuild itself back into a useful force for democracy. The writing staff would tell me I was about to jump the shark, that this is a “West Wing” fantasy that would never, ever happen. But as Bradley Whitford used to say, “Isn’t the biggest fantasy on television a mafia boss in therapy?” The Democrats need to break the glass and this is a break-glass plan, but it’s more than that. It’s a grand gesture. A sacrifice. It would put a lump in our throats. But mostly, it would be the end of Donald Trump in presidential politics.

The latest attack on a UN-run school in Nuseirat camp kills 17, wounds about 80.

The air raids killed three people a day after a drone attack by the Yemeni group killed one person in Tel Aviv.

Gymnast Shoko Miyata, 19, left Japan's training camp in Monaco after an investigation found she allegedly violated the Japan Gymnastics Association's rules on drinking alcohol and smoking.

About 84% of Georgia's rivers and streams are polluted to the point of being unsafe for swimming, according to the EPA.

Under former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, detectives secretly investigated and urged the state attorney general to prosecute a Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote on a leaked list of problem deputies.

The heat and humidity in the Persian Gulf region have soared to nearly intolerable levels this week, and there’s little relief in sight. Some locations have seen the heat index, or how it feels when factoring in the humidity, reach 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 65 Celsius), fueled by an intense heat dome, the warmest water temperatures in the world and the influence of human-caused climate change. Temperatures at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Asaluyeh, Iran, climbed to 108 (42 C) on Wednesday and 106 (41 C) on Thursday, with both days recording a peak heat index of 149 (65 C). In Dubai, the temperature topped out at 113 (45 C) on Tuesday and the heat index soared to 144 (62 C). Other extreme heat indexes in recent days include 141 (61 C) in Abu Dhabi and 136 (58 C) at Khasab Air Base in Oman. The maximum air temperatures this week — generally between 105 and 115 (41 and 46 C) — have only been somewhat above normal. But the dew points — which are a measure of humidity — have been excessive, climbing well into the 80s (27 to 32 C). In the United States, any dew point over 70 degrees (21 C) is considered uncomfortably humid. It’s the very high dew points that have propelled heat indexes up to 30 degrees (16 C) above actual air temperatures. The extreme humidity levels are tied to bathtub-like water temperatures in the Persian Gulf, the warmest in the world. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, sea surface temperatures are as warm as 95 degrees (35 C).

The Houston Democrat announced earlier this year that she had cancer.

At many elite programs training is seen as impossible if sessions are stopped to care for injured players

Matt’s overall point is that it’s tempting to think that the metaverse just fizzled out after the huge explosion of hype that came after Facebook renamed itself to Meta, hype which the lackluster Quest Pro and messy Horizon platform couldn’t really live up to. And hype which eventually got totally washed away by the arrival of generative AI.

Thai authorities were quick to stress they believed the incident involved a personal dispute and did not reflect any threat to foreign visitors. Thai police believe the six — four Vietnamese nationals, and two U.S. citizens of Vietnamese heritage — died of cyanide poisoning motivated by a dispute over an investment. Forensic evidence and police interviews with relatives of the dead are said to support their hypothesis.