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5 BAGHDAD (AP) — A small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago and recently recovered from the United States formally returned to Iraq on Tuesday. The $1.7 million cuneiform tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, is one of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature and one of the oldest religious texts. It was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. The tablet was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in Washington. Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet from the museum in September 2019. A federal judge in New York approved the forfeiture of the tablet in July …

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5 Eight years ago, a team of researchers launched a project to carefully repeat early but influential lab experiments in cancer research. They recreated 50 experiments, the type of preliminary research with mice and test tubes that sets the stage for new cancer drugs. The results reported Tuesday: About half the scientific claims didn’t hold up. "The truth is we fool ourselves. Most of what we claim is novel or significant is no such thing,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad, a cancer doctor and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the project. It’s a pillar of science that the strongest findings come from experiments that can be repeated with similar results. In reality, there’s little incentive for researchers to share methods and data so others can verify the work, said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers lose prestige if their results don’t hold up to …

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LONDON (AP) — Instagram on Tuesday launched a feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the photo-sharing platform and announced other tools aimed at protecting young users from harmful content on the Facebook-owned service. The previously announced “Take A Break" feature encourages teens to stop scrolling if they have been on the social media platform for a while, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a blog post. It rolled out to the U.S., United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia on Tuesday and would reach the rest of the world early next year, he said. Young users will see notifications about the feature and be urged to set reminders to take more breaks going forward, the post said. It's one of the efforts that Facebook, renamed Meta Platforms, has touted on its platforms as it weathers backlash about not doing enough to rein in harmful content and faces new legislation looking to impose restrictions on tech giants. Former Facebook product manager …

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10 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Tuesday marked the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with a somber visit to the World War II Memorial in the nation’s capital. The Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and other locations in Hawaii killed 2,403 service members and civilians and was a defining moment that led to U.S. entry into World War II. Joe Biden touched a wreath and saluted. The wreath contained a wild sunflower, the state flower of Kansas, in honor of former Sen. Bob Dole, a war veteran who was a driving force in getting the memorial built on the National Mall and who died Sunday at age 98. The first lady laid a bouquet of flowers at the base of the memorial below the New Jersey pillar and softly touched a wall, where she and the president spent a moment. The bouquet was in honor of her father, Donald Jacobs, who served as a U.S. Navy signalman …

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David Gergen has been a White House adviser to four presidents of both parties and is a senior political analyst at CNN. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-founded its Center for Public Leadership. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author. View more opinion at CNN. (CNN) When mourners gather this week to share stories about Bob Dole, what a feast they will have as they reminisce about the venerated politician's friendships, humor and, above all, his commitment to country. One of the GOP's longest-serving leaders, Dole could be a partisan. (He'd blamed his opponents, for example, for causing "Democrat wars." ) But like the relationship between Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, Dole might joust with an opposing president by day and call a truce by night if it was in service of the American people. He had many adversaries in Washington, but few enemies. His world view …

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Kent Sepkowitz is a physician and infection control expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN. (CNN) Just before South African scientists identified the Omicron coronavirus variant, many experts were beginning to focus on a completely different potential problem: the collision of Covid-19 and influenza, which is now in the first weeks of its annual surge. If the issue seems familiar, it is because it is: there was a big fear last year over the possibility of the same unholy alliance. It was so concerning it was even dubbed the " twindemic ," to denote the anticipated one-two punch of both viruses circulating at once. Thankfully, last year's influenza season was extremely mild, perhaps owing to social distancing, masks and other preventative measures. This year, however, the new influenza season may be a " doozy ," as many people across the …

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(CNN Business) Drew, a 21-year-old in Irvine, California, needs help: He's transgender, and after starting hormone replacement therapy he's facing harassment from coworkers. It's gotten so bad, Drew tells a crisis counselor via a text-based chat session, that he's considering suicide. He can't quit his job, however, because he needs the money. "i think about killing myself pretty constantly these days," Drew types. The counselor reassures Drew — thanking him for reaching out to talk, telling him he's not alone — and draws out details about how Drew plans to kill himself. "Have you done anything today to try to kill yourself?" the counselor asks. After a pause, Drew responds, "no i haven't done anything today." Read More It's a hard conversation to read, even with the knowledge that Drew isn't a real person, but rather an artificially intelligent chatbot created by The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention group for …

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Abu Dhabi/London (CNN Business) The United Arab Emirates and its international finance hub Dubai are switching to a four-and-a-half-day work week ending midday Friday to make it easier to do business globally. The move away from the current Sunday to Thursday schedule — the first by a Gulf state — will help the UAE "achieve business continuity and alignment with global economies and banking," the government said in a statement. The change will take effect on January 1. The UAE, which has a predominantly Muslim population, said that work will end at 12 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) on Friday to allow people to attend prayers. Friday is considered the holiest day of the week for Muslims. From January, prayers will begin at 1.15 pm local, about an hour later than at present. Public sector employees will also be offered the chance to work flexibly on Friday, including from home, the government said. UAE becomes first Gulf state to …

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New York (CNN Business) US labor market productivity tanked in the third quarter. Paychecks grew and the number of hours worked jumped, but workers' output increased only at a moderate pace. Revisions to the data that were initially published a month ago show that the productivity drop was even worse than feared, falling 5.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis. That's the steepest decline in the quarterly rate since the second quarter of 1960 when productivity fell 6.1%. The initial read on the data had shown the worst drop since 1981. Unit labor costs, meanwhile, climbed at an annual rate of 9.6% in the third quarter, reflecting a 3% increase in hourly compensation and a 5.2% decrease in productivity. The rapid jobs recovery is leading to more hours worked, and the competition for workers is pushing up wages. But output isn't rising as quickly. Read More Economists warn not to read too much into this one data point. Not only was …

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New York (CNN Business) The US stock market is off to the races on Tuesday, extending its rally from the start of the week as all three major indexes kicked the day off sharply higher. The S&P 500 ( SPX ) , Wall Street's broadest gauge, opened up 1.3%, while the Dow ( INDU ) rose 0.9%, or 330 points. The Nasdaq Composite ( COMP ) , which had lagged behind the others on Monday, gained 1.9%. "Forget about a 'turnaround' for now, this Tuesday is looking more like a terrific one," said analysts at Bespoke Investments of the rally. It has been a volatile few weeks in the market, which was first shaken by worries about the Omicron variant, then by the Federal Reserve's announcement that it might end its pandemic-era stimulus program sooner than expected. But Monday's ascent may have had more to do with technical factors: It's the end of the year and the major indexes have decent returns to show for themselves. The S&P is …

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