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Tom Stoppard, playwright of Oscar-winning 'Shakespeare in Love,' dies at 88

admin - Latest News - November 29, 2025
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British playwright Tom Stoppard, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare In Love” has died.



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November 25, 2025
Nov. 25, 2025, 6:40 AM ESTBy Evan BushAs we age, the human brain rewires itself. The process happens in distinct phases, or “epochs,” according to new research, as the structure of our neural networks changes and our brains reconfigure how we think and process information.For the first time, scientists say they’ve identified four distinct turning points between those phases in an average brain: at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83. During each epoch between those years, our brains show markedly different characteristics in brain architecture, they say.The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that human cognition does not simply increase with age until a peak, then decline. In fact, the phase from ages 9 to 32 is the only time in life when our neural networks are becoming increasingly efficient, according to the research. During the adulthood phase, from 32 to 66, the average person’s brain architecture essentially stabilizes without major changes, at a time when researchers think people are generally plateauing in intelligence and personality. And in the years after the last turning point — 83 and beyond — the brain becomes increasingly reliant on individual regions as connections between them begin to wither away. “It’s not a linear progression,” said Alexa Mousley, a postdoctoral researcher associate at the University of Cambridge, who is the study’s lead author. “This is the first step of understanding the way the brain’s changing fluctuates based on age.” How AI is transforming healthcare across the country03:59The findings could help identify why mental health and neurological conditions develop during particular phases of rewiring.Rick Betzel, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the research, said the findings are intriguing, but more data is needed to support the conclusions. The theories may not hold up to scrutiny over time, he said.“They did this really ambitious thing,” Betzel said of the study. “Let’s see where it stands in a few years.” For their research, Mousley and her colleagues analyzed MRI diffusion scans — which are essentially images of how water molecules move within the brain — from about 3,800 people from age 0 to age 90. The goal was to map the neural connections across the average person’s brain at different stages in life. In the brain, the bundles of nerve fibers that transfer signals are encapsulated in fatty tissue called myelin. Think of it like wiring or plumbing. Water molecules diffused in the brain tend to move in the direction of these fibers, rather than across them, meaning researchers can infer where the neural pathways are located. “We can’t crack open skulls … we rely on non-invasive approaches,” Betzel said of this type of neuroscience research. “What we’re trying to figure out is where these fiber bundles are at.” Based on the MRI scans, the new study maps the neural network of an average person across a lifespan, determining where connections are strengthening or weakening. The five “epochs” it describes are based on the neural connections the researchers observed. The first phase is from 0 to age 9, they suggest. The brain rapidly increases in gray and white matter; it prunes extra synapses and restructures itself. From ages 9 to 32, there is an extended period of rewiring. The brain is defined by rapid communication across the entire brain and efficient connections between different regions. Most mental health disorders are diagnosed during this time period, Mousely said: “Is there something about this second era of life, as we find it, that could lead people to be more vulnerable to the onset of mental health disorders?”From 32 to 66, the brain plateaus. It’s still rewiring itself, but less dramatically and more slowly. Then, from 66 to age of 83, the brain tends toward “modularity,” where the neural network is divided into highly connected subnetworks with less central integration. At age 83, connectivity declines further. Betzel said the theory described in the study likely jives with people’s lived experiences with aging and cognition. “It’s intuitively something we gravitate towards. I have two kids and they’re really young. I think all of the time, ‘I’m getting out of my toddler era,’” Betzel said. “Maybe the science ends up being there. But are those the exact right ages? I don’t know.” In the ideal version of a study like this, he added, the researchers would have MRI diffusion data for a large group of people, each of whom were scanned during every year of life from birth to death. But that wasn’t possible because the technology wasn’t available decades ago. Instead, the researchers combined nine different data sets containing neuroimaging from previous studies and attempted to harmonize them. Betzel said each of those data sets varies in quality and approach, and the effort to make them correspond with one another could wash away important variability, ultimately leading to bias in the results. Nonetheless, he said the authors of the paper are “thoughtful” and skilled scientists who did their best to control for that possibility. “Brain networks change over the lifespan — absolutely. Is it discrete such that there are five exact change points? I’d say stay tuned. It’s an interesting idea.”Evan BushEvan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.
October 7, 2025
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November 26, 2025
Nov. 25, 2025, 8:34 PM ESTBy Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube and Abigail WilliamsIn a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kyiv last week, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll delivered a grim assessment. Driscoll told his counterparts their troops faced a dire situation on the battlefield and would suffer an imminent defeat against Russian forces, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.The Russians were ramping up the scale and pace of their aerial attacks, and they had the ability to fight on indefinitely, Driscoll told them, according to the sources. The situation for Ukraine would only get worse over time, he continued, and it was better to negotiate a peace settlement now rather than end up in an even weaker position in the future.And there was more bad news. The U.S. delegation also said America’s defense industry could not keep supplying Ukraine with the weapons and air defenses at the rate needed to protect the country’s infrastructure and population, the sources said.Driscoll’s message came after he had presented a U.S.-backed peace plan that Kyiv officials viewed as a capitulation to Moscow, according to the two sources.“The message was basically — you are losing,” one of the sources said, “and you need to accept the deal.”The meeting between Driscoll and the Ukrainians was part of an effort by some Trump administration officials to press the Ukrainians to accept the new U.S.-backed peace proposal without delay, even though it embraced Russia’s maximalist demands and required painful concessions from Kyiv’s government, multiple current and former Western officials said. Ukraine politely declined to sign on to the peace plan as it was presented, and the proposal has been heavily revised since the discussions between Driscoll and Ukrainian officials last week.The meeting was just the latest example of a long-running rift inside the Trump administration over how to end the war in Ukraine. The split features a looming potential political rivalry between two former senators and potential presidential hopefuls positioning themselves for 2028: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.One camp, including Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and other officials, views Ukraine as the primary obstacle to peace and favors using U.S. leverage to force Kyiv to make major compromises, according to multiple current and former officials. The other camp, represented by Rubio and other officials, sees Russia as the culprit for having launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor and says Moscow will relent only if it pays a price for its aggression through sanctions and other pressure.With his deputies vying for his attention along with Republican lawmakers and European leaders, President Donald Trump has veered back and forth on how to resolve the conflict. “It was clear for some time that there was a divide, but we’ve never seen it in action publicly quite the way we have in the last few days,” said a former senior U.S. diplomat with experience in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian servicemen fire a Caesar self-propelled howitzer toward Russian troops near the front-line town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Sunday. Anatolii Stepanov / ReutersReached for comment Tuesday, the White House referred to a social media post in which Trump said the original peace plan has been “fine-tuned, with additional input from both sides, and there are only a few remaining points of disagreement.”“I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump added in the post. A State Department spokesperson said, “President Trump’s entire team, including Secretary Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff, Secretary Driscoll, and many others, are working in lockstep, as they have been for 10 months, to bring an end to the senseless and destructive war.”The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.Grave doubtsThe frenetic diplomacy began last week after a purported 28-point U.S. peace plan leaked to the media. The plan was the product of discussions in Miami between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and his U.S. counterpart, Witkoff, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting. White House officials told reporters it was an American proposal, even though the document embraced Russia’s repeated demands to force Ukraine to cede territory it controls, scale back its military and give up ever joining the NATO alliance. Some elements of the plan contradicted the Trump administration’s previously stated positions, including language that implied U.S. military forces would be barred from Poland. Republican and Democratic senators said Rubio had told them it was a plan drafted by the Russians. But Rubio later said their account was false, and he and the White House later insisted it was a U.S. proposal with Russian and Ukrainian “input.” In an unusual move, the White House chose Driscoll, the Army secretary, to brief the Ukrainians on the proposal, instead of a senior diplomat. Driscoll, an old Yale Law School classmate of Vance’s, was headed to Ukraine on a previously scheduled visit to discuss drone technology, NBC News previously reported. Taken aback by the peace proposal’s terms, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed grave doubts but stopped short of vetoing the plan, saying his government was ready to hold diplomatic discussions. Rubio used cautious language about the plan after it leaked, posting on X that peace would “require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions” and that the United States would “continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war.”Trump, meanwhile, ramped up pressure on Ukraine, telling reporters that Zelenskyy’s choice was to accept a peace deal or “continue to fight his little heart out.”Andriy Yermak, chief of staff the Ukrainian presidential office, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a news conference after their closed-door talks at the U.S. Mission in Geneva on Sunday.Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty ImagesRubio flew to Geneva over the weekend, and after talks with the Ukrainians and appeals from European diplomats, the most problematic provisions for Ukraine were removed or revised, according to multiple Western officials and sources with knowledge of the matter. Instead of the take-it-or-leave-it tone White House officials used about the peace plan earlier, Rubio portrayed the discussions as fluid and said the plan was rapidly evolving. “This is a living, breathing document. Every day with input it changes,” he told reporters in Geneva.By Tuesday, the Ukrainians had struck a positive note, expressing optimism about what was now a 19-point plan under discussion. “Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, wrote on social media. And he raised the prospect of a possible visit to Washington by Zelenskyy to seal the deal.Driscoll traveled on to Abu Dhabi, where he held talks with a Russian delegation Monday and Tuesday, officials said.With the peace plan revised from its original form, it resembled previous proposals that Russia has rebuffed. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who had “welcomed” the initial draft from last week, suggested Tuesday that the Kremlin might reject what was now on the table. Lavrov cited discussions in August between Trump and Putin at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, saying the latest draft proposal appeared to contradict the understanding reached in those talks.“Some forces want to jeopardize efforts by Donald Trump and to change the peace plan,” Lavrov said, adding, “If the ‘spirit’ of Anchorage will be wiped out from this plan, then it’s going to be a whole other story.”As in previous U.S. diplomatic efforts, one faction in the administration had tried to champion a proposal that favored Russia and other officials had pushed back, with the backing of European governments and senior Republicans in Congress, according to Western officials, former U.S. diplomats and experts.“If the split lasts, it’s going to be very difficult to pursue a coherent policy,” said William Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. Dan De LuceDan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. Courtney KubeCourtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.Abigail WilliamsAbigail Williams is a producer and reporter for NBC News covering the State Department.Gordon Lubold and Peter Nicholas contributed.
October 27, 2025
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