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President Joe Biden put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on notice in their first call since Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in Gaza. In a sharp shift, Biden told Netanyahu he wants to see an immediate cease-fire and warned that future U.S.

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Gary Shteyngart spent seven nights (or, as he calls them, seven “agonizing” nights) on the Icon of the Seas, the biggest cruise ship that’s ever sailed. In our May 2024 issue, he writes about what he found there.

This article was originally published by High Country News.
In the summer of 2022, several researchers with USDA Wildlife Services held their breath as a drone pilot flew a large drone, equipped with a camera, toward a wolf standing in a pasture in southwestern Oregon. The team members, watching from a distance, expected the wolf to freeze or run away the minute the whirring rotors approached it. But to their disbelief, it did neither.

The opening months of 2024 have posed a question: How many different people can the Rock be at once? There he goes, taking the stage at the Oscars, grinning and gleaming on The Tonight Show: Movie-Star Rock. Here he is, joining the board of the WWE’s corporate owner, appearing on CNBC: Mogul Rock. (That one wears glasses!) Here he comes, this weekend, making his much-hyped return to Wrestlemania. He’ll climb back into the ring, stomping and slapping: Well, that’s just the Rock.

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One week ago, Beyoncé released a sprawling 27-track album, the second in a promised trilogy. In the days since, it has dominated conversations about country music in America.

In the decade I have lived in California, I’ve learned to be on edge for “The Big One”—an earthquake so powerful, it can bring down houses. The roughly 10 or so tremors I have actually experienced haven’t been like that. Mostly, the shakes are big enough to jolt me upright but small enough to leave me doubting: Was that what I thought it was?
Today, tens of millions of East Coasters got to experience that feeling firsthand when a magnitude 4.

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In the first few months after the release of ChatGPT, AI chatbots felt, to many, like magic: They conjured poems and cocktail recipes, and secretly did at least one writer’s job. These programs appeared to be the first nonhuman entity to master human language, and many people ascribed them with intelligence, even sentience.

A rift has opened between Israel and the United States. No breach between the two countries has been as wide or as deep since the mid-1950s, when the Eisenhower administration compelled Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. President Joe Biden expressed grave displeasure with Israel this week over the strike that killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, and a phone call between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday was reportedly tense.

As an actor, Dev Patel has tended to play bighearted softies in rousing crowd-pleasers. Though he’s occasionally ventured beyond such territory—see his brooding, magnetic work in 2021’s The Green Knight—Patel’s résumé highlights include playing an embattled game-show contestant in Slumdog Millionaire, a kind manager in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, and a haunted adoptee in Lion.