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Earlier this year, the Republican presidential primary looked as though it would be driven by conservative cultural battles, especially fights over education that had animated the party’s base since the pandemic.Gov. Ron DeSantis seemed poised to lead the charge, thanks to an “anti-woke” agenda he put into effect in Florida, restricting how schools teach America’s racial history, banning lessons about gender identity and empowering parents to have books removed from libraries and classrooms.Even Donald J. Trump seemed to be trying to outflank Mr. DeSantis on education policies, promising to root out “Marxists” in the Education Department.But anti-wokeness has not played as large a role as expected in the Republican race so far. On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has refocused his stump sp...

The German government on Wednesday announced that it was strengthening controls along its border with Poland and the Czech Republic, responding to increasing political pressure to deal with the rising number of people it said are crossing illicitly into the country’s east.The measures follow months of complaints from some eastern regions, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD, has gained strength, that too many migrants and asylum seekers are entering the country. The step also comes ahead of two important state elections in Bavaria and Hesse early next month.Immigration has become a major issue in German politics in recent months, with even mainstream parties urging action to address the rising number of asylum seekers. The calls have come amid increased supp...

Young adults face mounting credit challengesThe Fair Isaac Corporation created the most commonly used credit scoring model in the country. The three-digit FICO score, which has a range from 300 at the low end to 850 at the high end, is a weighted composite of a borrower’s credit risk — that is, the likelihood that they will fail to pay back what they borrow. The scoring model includes five types of data: The most important is payment history, which amounts to more than one-third of the score, followed by the amounts owed, length of credit history, new credit and the mix of different types of credit.While these conditions aren’t age-specific, Gen Z is at a distinct disadvantage because 15 percent of a credit score is derived from the length of a borrower’s credit history. The average credit...

A.I. chatbots can do a passable job of generating short essays. Whether their use on college applications is ethical is the subject of fierce debate.By Natasha SingerNatasha Singer reports on the ways that tech giants and their tools are reshaping education.As high school seniors begin working on their college applications, many are turning to A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard for assistance.Some students say they’re using the tools to suggest personal essay topics or help structure their writing. Others are prompting the A.I. tools to generate rough drafts for their application essays or edit their pieces.Whether college admissions offices are prepared for this new era of A.I.-assisted, or A.I.-produced, personal essays is unclear.By the time ChatGPT reached peak media sensation early t...

At least 68 people were killed and 105 remained missing after an explosion at a fuel depot in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, the region’s government said on Tuesday. The blast occurred as ethnic Armenians rushing to leave the region were lining up to refuel their cars after a military offensive by Azerbaijan last week.The revised death toll came after an earlier statement by Armenia’s health minister, Anahit Avanesyan, at a news conference on Tuesday in which she said that the remains of 125 people had been transferred from Nagorno-Karabakh to forensic centers in Armenia. At least 67 injured people were moved to the country’s national burn center, she added.The human rights ombudsman of Nagorno-Karabakh, Gegham Stepanyan, later explained in the government’s official c...