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Rex Heuermann was a quiet architect who lived with his family in Massapequa Park, Long Island and commuted to Manhattan for work. Until a discarded pizza crust led to his arrest in 2023, linking him to a string of unsolved murders known as the Gilgo Beach serial killings. Andrea Cavallier reports

Eleven older Amazon devices will be affected with the change

Hundreds killed and injured in Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday, according to country’s civil defence

The mother of an freelance American journalist who was released from captivity in Iraq says she hopes her daughter will finally return home to rural Wisconsin after living abroad for decades

A major escalation in Lebanon by Israel threatens to derail the Iran ceasefire less than a day after it was announced

The 68-year-old delivery driver has received a retirement gift few could imagine

Vice President JD Vance was the most vocally opposed to the United States going to war with Iran, according to the report

A fire broke out at Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Park in the early hours of Wednesday morning

Mariam is one of more than 11,000 patients who have been evacuated from Gaza since October 2023

Israel launched a major offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran threatened to retaliate if the strikes were not “immediately halted.” The Trump administration and Iran disagree about whether Lebanon was included in the truce.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party is expected to win two special elections that could give the government broader powers in Parliament.

Deadly airstrikes pummeled Lebanon in Israel’s largest bombing wave yet in the monthlong war with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

President Trump knows that even if a cease-fire runs out with no final agreement on the issues dividing Washington and Tehran, the political risk of renewing hostilities is high.

Across Europe and the globe, the war has damaged economies, roiled politics and underscored a lack of options in dealing with President Trump’s whims.

Hours after a tenuous pause to a six-week war, Iranians expressed relief and trepidation about the future. Some fear the government will crack down on its domestic critics.

If you aren’t losing weight with GLP-1 drugs, this may be one reason why  The Washington PostDNA may help explain why weight-loss jabs do not always work, say scientists  The GuardianWeight-loss drugs: Who benefits most and why?  BBCDNA Helps Determine Weight-Loss Drug Success, Study Finds  bloomberg.comHow well GLP-1 weight loss drugs work may depend on your genetics  scientificamerican.com

Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates  404 MediaDeveloper of VeraCrypt encryption software says Windows users may face boot-up issues after Microsoft locked his account  TechCrunchVeraCrypt, WireGuard maintainers locked out by Microsoft, unable to deliver Windows updates  CybernewsMicrosoft Terminates VeraCrypt Account – Leaving Windows Users Without Updates  Gadget Review

The defense secretary described the state of hostilities mostly in past tense. The Joint Chiefs chairman took a more cautious approach.

Iran is reportedly planning to demand that shipping firms pay tolls in cryptocurrency to let their oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has emerged as one of the European Union's leading critics of U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran.

Meta debuted its first major large language model, Muse Spark, spearheaded by chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, who leads Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Here are the companies making headlines in midday trading.

Rex Heuermann's plea ends a case that police took 13 years to solve, frustrating the public and victims' family.

Trump’s threat to “wipe out” Iran has divided Republicans.

England World Cup winners Rosie Galligan and Marlie Packer announce they are expecting a baby together, with Galligan due to give birth in October.

Only a few vessels have crossed the strait since the US-Iran ceasefire deal, according to BBC Verify analysis.

Whether or not a lasting peace deal can be reached, the war and its consequences are reshaping the Middle East, writes international editor Jeremy Bowen.

The animal charity says it has been forced to refute that an image of the dogs was AI-generated.

Analysts say doubts over stability of the ceasefire and damage to production sites mean the energy crisis is far from overMiddle East crisis – live updatesIf the US-Israeli ceasefire with Iran holds, it could offer the clearest hope of an end to the energy crisis since Iran’s Revolutionary Guards assumed control of the strait of Hormuz after the conflict began 40 days ago.The deal is already looking shaky with Iran arguing late on Wednesday that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon breach it and state media claiming that the key waterway had again been closed. Continue reading...

Report comes as ceasefire looks increasingly shaky, Lebanese PM says Israel is killing unarmed civilians as Trump says country not included in ceasefireMiddle East ceasefire in serious doubt as Israel assaults Lebanon and Iran blocks oil tankersWill shipping in the strait of Hormuz – and oil prices – return to normal?A genocidal threat, and then the US president, Donald Trump, blinked – without any apparently meaningful concessions from Iran. As in so much concerning the second Trump administration, the two week ceasefire “deal” that will see the strait of Hormuz reopened – if it can be described as such – is maddeningly vague and short on detail, apparently kicking the can on key issues down the road.Iran’s nuclear issue, Trump said, would be solved “perfectly.” “It was a big day for world peace”, Trump posted on Truth Social. “Iran can start reconstruction” he added. “Big money” could be made. Yada. Yada. Yada. Continue reading...

Record high set on Monday and raised on Tuesday, with 14.4GW of electricity generated in sunny spring weatherBritain’s sunny spring weather powered the grid to new solar energy records on two consecutive days this week.Solar farms in England, Wales and Scotland generated 14.1 GW of low-carbon electricity at lunchtime on Monday, surpassing the previous high of 14GW in July last year. Continue reading...

New York Times report claims London-born Adam Back is creator of the cryptocurrency after comparing writingsA British computer scientist has insisted he is not the elusive developer of bitcoin, after a report claimed to unmask him as its creator.A story in the New York Times details a years-long effort to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious author of the bitcoin white paper which laid the theoretical foundations for modern digital currencies. Continue reading...

High of 26.5C recorded in Kew Gardens in south-west London, but rain and cooler conditions are on the wayMany across the UK witnessed soaring temperatures as the country recorded its warmest day of the year so far – and one of the hottest April days in the last 80 years.Temperatures reached a high of 26.5C (79.7F) in Kew Gardens, south-west London, on Wednesday, the Met Office said. It was the hottest day recorded in the first half of April since 1946, according to the forecaster. Continue reading...

Schumer spoke after top House Democrat called for immediate vote on Donald Trump’s ‘reckless war of choice’Sign up for the Breaking News US emailPete Hegseth repeated Donald Trump’s social media comments that Iran will cease uranium enrichment – a condition that Tehran has previously refused to budge on.“Any material they should not have, will be removed right now,” Hegseth said. “The president has been clear from the beginning, there will be no Iranian nuclear weapons.” Continue reading...

US vice-president says on visit to Budapest ‘we had to show’ support for Viktor Orbán, as opposition leads polls Hungary elections: what is at stake and who is likely to win?JD Vance has pushed back against claims that the US is interfering in Hungarian politics, describing the accusations as “darkly ironic”, as a set of polls suggested the opposition Tisza party could win a supermajority in the forthcoming elections.After spending his first day in Budapest excoriating the EU and accusing it of being behind one of the “worst examples” of foreign interference, the US vice-president spent part of Wednesday morning speaking at a thinktank and educational institution linked to Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán. Continue reading...

AI company says purpose of its Claude Mythos model is to bolster defenses against hacking in common applicationsAnthropic on Tuesday said its yet-to-be-released artificial intelligence model called Claude Mythos has proven keenly adept at exposing software weaknesses.Mythos has laid bare thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which no patch or fix exists, prompting the San Francisco-based AI startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists to bolster defenses against hacking and withhold wide distribution. Continue reading...

Voters pick Clay Fuller for US House over Democrat who opposes Iran war, but by smaller margin than in the pastUS politics live – latest updatesSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailRepublican Clay Fuller supports the war in Iran. Democrat Shawn Harris opposes it. Voters in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former district in north-west Georgia decided that this distinction was not enough to propel a Democrat into a conservative-leaning House seat on Tuesday night.But Fuller won with 56% of the vote, against Harris’s 44%, according to the Associated Press, a result that comes after Greene secured the district by 28 points in 2024 and 32 points two years earlier. Democrats claim the swing to the left in the north-western corner of Georgia is a notable shift that’s worth celebrating. Continue reading...

Oil heads for biggest daily fall since pandemic as Iran says it will reopen strait of Hormuz under its managementMiddle East crisis – live updatesUS and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire as Tehran says it will reopen strait of HormuzOil prices tumbled on Wednesday and global stock markets rallied after the US and Iran agreed a two-week conditional ceasefire.Investors welcomed the news that Donald Trump had held off on his threat to bomb Iran into “the stone ages”, while Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said passage through the strait of Hormuz would be allowed for the next two weeks under the management of Iran’s military. Continue reading...

Architect admits to murdering eight women, whose remains were mostly found along Long Island’s coastSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxRex Heuermann, a Long Island architect accused of seven murders known as the Gilgo Beach killings dating back to 1993, pleaded guilty on Wednesday – and added an eighth murder to his gruesome tally.Heuermann, who has been held in custody since he was arrested on a Manhattan street in July 2023, appeared in court in Riverhead, Long Island, and changed his plea to guilty in the murders of women whose remains were found years after they disappeared. Continue reading...

PM will meet leaders in the region to discuss diplomatic efforts to support the ceasefire agreed between the US and IranOpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is proposing the extension of the four-day working week, as a response to AI taking over some of the work done by humans. But for the Conservative party the four-day working week, at least in the public sector, is viewed as a menace. Officially, that’s a value-for-money position, but it also overlaps with their opposition to civil servants working from home, which has some of the traits of a culture war obsession.Today the Conservatives have announced that, if they were in government, they would ban councils from letting staff work a four-day working week on full pay. Explaining why, the Tories say in a news release:The four-day working week, as introduced by Liberal Democrat-run South Cambridgeshire district council, has left residents with more council tax for less public service. Bin collectors and social housing officials receive 100 per cent of their pay for around 80 per cent of their originally contracted hours.The Labour government have failed to act. As communities secretary, Angela Rayner scrapped [Whitehall opposition to the South Cambridgeshire policy]. Labour are refusing to legislate against a four-day week, giving councils an effective green light to get away with charging more for less work. Consequentially, Labour-run Cambridge City Council has become the second council to sign up to the four-day week.Those areas which saw a statistically significant improvement include: the percentage of calls answered by the contact centre; the average number of days taken to update housing benefit and council tax support claims; the average number of weeks for householder planning applications to be decided; the percentage of planning applications (both large and small) decided within target or agreed timescales; the percentage of council house repairs complete within 24 hours; [and] the percentage of complaints responded to on time.If performance variations caused by Covid are discounted, every single service monitored either got better or stayed the same. Continue reading...

Mr. Shell, the former C.E.O. of NBCUniversal, is leaving after becoming entangled in a legal battle with a professional gambler, R.J. Cipriani.

Pam Bondi had already been working to avoid testifying before she was fired as attorney general. The House Oversight Committee said she would not honor her subpoena because she was no longer in the post.

Workers could shut down America’s busiest passenger rail service beginning on May 16 if they do not reach a deal with transit officials.

Yemeni child killed by suspected Houthi sniper while heading to school in Taiz sparks grief and outrage among locals.

Armed men have raided Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, apparently with support from the Israeli army.

Before a single term has been negotiated, Trump is claiming total victory over Iran, but is this really a win?

Israeli drone strike kills Mohammed Wishah, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher, west of Gaza City.

Lebanon's PM Nawaf Salam expressed optimism in de-escalation hours after Tehran and Washington struck a ceasefire deal.