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Israeli settler siege in West Bank draws US rebuke

QUSRA, West Bank — For five nights, Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes on the outskirts of a town in the occupied West Bank, preventing the families from leaving safely as their food and water supplies dwindled. Qusai Abu Rida was holed up inside with his teenage son when settlers cut the water and electricity, leaving them to drink well water as dozens of Israeli settlers erected tents outside. His Palestinian American brother in Ohio, who owns the house, watched the siege unfold on security cameras and called for updates. The standoff in the northern West Bank ...

Horoscope: Thursday, August 13

Once an ancient trade route linking distant worlds, it carried spices, stories, fortunes and remarkable friendships. Aries (March 21-April 19) A stubborn problem seems to resist your efforts to solve it. Consider setting this one aside for a while. Let time do some of the work. Circumstances will shift and with them, the light. New illumination will make the solution obvious. Taurus (April 20-May 20) You know your schedule fits your life when an interruption doesn’t ruin the whole day. Real life has surprises, messes, opportunities and spontaneous fun too good to pass up. Part of ...

Medical therapy called for with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Dear Dr. Roach: I’m a physically active 75-year-old man. I’m taking atorvastatin, losartan and amlodipine. During my annual physical in January 2025, my physician noticed a heart murmur. I had an echocardiogram done in February 2025 that showed a dilated proximal ascending aorta, measuring at 4.1 centimeters. It was 3.9 centimeters in January 2024. In February 2026, I had a repeat echocardigoram to check my ascending aorta, and it stabilized at 4.1 cm. However, it showed that there’s a mid-cavitary gradient of 44 mmHg at rest that increased to 99 mmHg with a Valsalva maneuver. ...

Granddaughter’s boyfriend keeps cheating on her

Dear Annie: My granddaughter has a boyfriend who keeps cheating on her — three times now, and those are only the times I know about. Each time, she takes him back, swearing he’s changed. I’m old enough to know how that story ends. She’s smart and kind, and I hate watching her with someone who doesn’t treat her the way she deserves. I’ve bitten my tongue up until now — it’s her life, after all, and she’s entitled to her own decisions — but I don’t have the heart to sit quietly through this when it inevitably happens again. How do I get her to see what I see before ...

Don’t malign the American economy

The United States of America may be the greatest place for functionally illiterate people to live in all of human history. An eye-popping column in the Financial Times the other day noted how people in the U.S. with very low literacy make about as much per hour as the average worker in the U.K. Is this the result of brilliant public policy, carefully crafted to boost the prospects of those on the margins? No, it’s a byproduct of the vast, endlessly dynamic wealth-generating machine that is the American economy. The Financial Times also compared cohorts of low-literacy workers ...

Let’s move on drone to door

There’s a new delivery system in town. Well ... maybe not in your town. In some places, drones are now allowed to deliver small packages, groceries and takeout. Companies like Wing and Zipline bring people hot meals in under 10 minutes. I had to watch it to believe it. You can see it in my new video. Drone delivery makes sense. Drones are faster and usually more efficient than sending cars to people’s homes — why use a whole car and driver for a single burrito? Drone delivery was supposed to be common years ago. Jeff Bezos told “60 Minutes” he expected Amazon to be ...