Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez said on Wednesday he is committed to carrying out a transition that will allow exiled people to return to the country and political prisoners to be freed. Gonzalez was named on Friday by the Unitary Platform opposition coalition as its candidate in the July 28 presidential election after primary winner Maria Corina Machado was banned from office and her alternate was unable to register. The 74-year-old former diplomat will appear on the ballot in three opposition party slots, while President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power for more than a decade, will appear for 13 different parties.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday that Europe must continue to step up its help for Ukraine even after the approval of a big U.S. aid package, but made clear that he's sticking to his refusal to send Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Kyiv. Scholz spoke after meeting British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Berlin. The two countries are Europe's biggest suppliers of military assistance to Ukraine as it counters Russia's full-scale invasion, and both vowed to keep that up “for as long as it takes.”
Doctors have transplanted a pig kidney into a New Jersey woman who was near death, part of a dramatic pair of surgeries that also stabilized her failing heart. Lisa Pisano’s combination of heart and kidney failure left her too sick to qualify for a traditional transplant, and out of options. Then doctors at NYU Langone Health devised a novel one-two punch: Implant a mechanical pump to keep her heart beating and days later transplant a kidney from a genetically modified pig.
New orders for key U.S.-manufactured capital goods rose moderately in March and data for the prior month was revised lower, suggesting business spending on equipment was likely sluggish in the first quarter. Non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending plans, increased 0.2% last month, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said on Wednesday. Data for February was revised lower to show these so-called core capital goods orders rising 0.4% instead of 0.7% as previously reported.
Since the railroad already preannounced its disappointing results earlier this month when it disclosed a $600 million settlement over the disastrous February 2023 Ohio derailment there were few surprises in Wednesday’s numbers. Without the settlement and some other one-time costs, the railroad said it would have made $2.39 per share while Wall Street was predicting earnings of $2.60 per share. The Atlanta-based railroad’s profit was down from $466 million, or $2.04 per share, a year ago even though the railroad delivered 4% more shipments during the quarter.
A team of experts from the U.N. nuclear agency inspected the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday for a review of its ongoing discharge of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific. A temporary blackout at the plant due to a mishap at a ground digging site apparently caused damage to an underground electric cable Wednesday morning and halted the treated water discharges for several hours, though the IAEA team was able to complete its inspection, according to the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings. TEPCO said the treated water release resumed Wednesday evening and no abnormalities have been found.
While reading, scrolling and focusing on other objects near our faces increase the risk of developing myopia, a little time outdoors in the sun can help mitigate it.
The United Nations has called for an “independent, effective and transparent investigation” into the discovery of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals that were besieged and raided by Israeli troops this year, a UN statement said on Tuesday.
The nation's school meals will get a makeover under new nutrition standards that limit added sugars for the first time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday. The final rule also trims sodium in kids' meals, although not by the 30% first proposed in 2023. And it continues to allow flavored milks — such as chocolate milk — with less sugar, rather than adopting an option that would have offered only unflavored milk to the youngest kids. The aim is to improve nutrition and align with U.S. dietary guidelines in the program that provides breakfasts to more than 15 million students and lunches to nearly 30 million students every day at a cost of about $22.6 billion per year.
New US school meal standards announced Wednesday will limit the amount of added sugars for the first time and slightly reduce sodium content among other adjustments, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said.
German email service Tuta Mail has complained to European Union tech regulators about what it described as a sudden drop in Google search results on the day the bloc's new tech rules kicked in. The European Commission last month launched investigations into Alphabet unit Google, Apple and Meta Platforms over potential breaches of the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), with Google's case partly focused on whether search results discriminate against third-party services. Tuta Mail, which says it is the second-largest encrypted email service in the world with more than 10 million users, filed a complaint to the DMA taskforce on Tuesday.
Christine Roess is a retired consultant. Ezra Bozeman has spent the last 49 years in prison, serving a life sentence for a murder he says he didn’t commit. Against the odds, the two have fallen in love. Now, with his health failing, she and others are working to free him before it’s too late.