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The United Nations' human rights chief has called on member states to put a moratorium on the sale and use of artificial intelligence systems until the "negative, even catastrophic" risks they pose can be addressed.

The remarks by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet were in reference to a new report on the subject released in Geneva.

Microsoft is about to make it easier for those of us who struggle to keep track of our passwords or remember which one we used for each account.

Starting this week, the tech giant is rolling out passwordless sign-in for consumers, so you no longer have to enter a password to gain access to your Microsoft accounts.

Philip Morris International is buying British pharmaceutical firm Vectura in a deal that will see a company synonymous with Big Tobacco taking over a firm that makes asthma inhalers. The American Lung Association, Asthma UK and other health groups have spoken out against the takeover.

It's one of the nation's great mysteries: The first permanent colony of English settlers in what would become the U.S., founded in North Carolina in 1587 by Sir Walter Raleigh, disappeared three years later with virtually no trace.

Now, archaeologists hope a new search for the Lost Colony will unearth clues about what happened to 117 men, women and children who vanished and were never seen again.

In December, NASA is scheduled to launch the huge $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is sometimes billed as the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope.

The new telescope, the largest and most powerful ever put into space, will travel to a lonely spot 1 million miles from Earth, where it will be able to peer out into the farthest reaches of the universe.

After a setting-up period of about six months, NASA will unveil the telescope's first images to the public.

For now Republicans' 2022 midterm election message could be summed up by an old slogan used in the 1990s by Democrats: "It's the economy, stupid."

GOP lawmakers in recent weeks have piled on the Biden administration for the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and argued it has failed to respond sufficiently to the continuing pandemic the president had vowed to get under control.

It's a bad time to get sick in Oregon. That's what many doctors are telling their patients and the public as hospitals full of COVID-19 patients have been forced to postpone some treatments of other medical conditions.

Charlie Callagan's scheduled bone-marrow transplant was postponed. Now he's waiting for a new surgery date, hunkered down at his home in Merlin, a small Rogue Valley town in southern Oregon.

The stark situation of COVID's impact on Alaska has affected the ability of the state's largest hospital to provide care for some patients.

On Wednesday, the state reported 1,068 new virus infections — a level 13% higher than last week and one shattering the state's daily case rate since the pandemic began. The highest number of cases is in Anchorage, which reported more than 470 new cases.

The signs that it's officially Hispanic Heritage Month are all around us, be it a Google Doodle or an annual film festival.

But the national attention paid to Latinos and Hispanics this time of year belies a persistent reality, according to a new report: Latino and Hispanic Americans are still underrepresented and poorly represented in popular films.

Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis wed his longtime partner on Wednesday, marking the first same-sex marriage of a sitting United States governor.

In 2018, Polis became the first openly gay man ever elected governor in the U.S. A decade earlier, he was the first openly gay man elected to the U.S. House.

"Over the course of Jared's career in Congress, you know, we didn't set out to be the first of anything. Things sort of happened that way," said his now-husband, Marlon Reis.

In a rare step, President Biden announced on Wednesday that the United States plans to share its nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia as part of a new defense partnership with that country and the United Kingdom.

California's Gavin Newsom can now count himself among a select group of political survivors — he's just one of two governors ever to face a recall vote and win.

Then again, most recall campaigns flounder before the voters go to the polls.

The unsuccessful vote against Newsom, who angered many in the state by dining at an upscale Napa Valley restaurant in contravention of his own guidance on pandemic gatherings, follows the 2012 effort to recall then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who narrowly turned back an effort by the state's Democrats to oust him.

The International Criminal Court has authorized a formal investigation into the controversial anti-drug war of the Philippines that has drawn international outrage.

By official count, at least 6,000 Filipinos, mostly poor drug peddlers and addicts, have been killed in the anti-drug police operations. But rights groups estimate the number of victims could be four times that.

Gen. Mark Milley says he was conducting the duties of his office — not circumventing presidential authority — when he spoke to his Chinese counterpart shortly before last year's election, according to a statement the Pentagon issued Wednesday.

Milley's actions in the final months of former President Donald Trump's term made headlines this week after a new book by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was attempting to head off a potential armed conflict when he called Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng.

RuPaul has a new accomplishment to add to his resume: having a (fabulous) insect named after him.

People applying to immigrate to the U.S. will have to show they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 as part of a required medical exam, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says. The new policy takes effect on Oct. 1.

The requirement includes an exception for children who are too young to receive the vaccine as well as for people with medical conditions that rule them out for the shot. It also outlines a waiver process for people who refuse to be vaccinated due to religious and other reasons.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead does extensive background research whenever he works on a book. For his latest novel, Harlem Shuffle, that meant learning how stolen items get "fenced."

"There's not a lot of literature about fences," Whitehead says. "But there is actually a book ... [that's] a sociological a study about these guys in the Midwest in the '60s, and one of the first things that struck me was their description of [the fences] being a wall between the straight world and the crooked world."

Blue Bayou moved me a lot more than I expected or maybe even wanted it to. Scene by scene, this story of a Korean American adoptee facing deportation is frequently heavy-handed and overwrought. There were moments when I was certain I loathed it — only for it to reel me back in. By the end, I found myself wiping away furious tears, a little angry perhaps at the filmmakers for their sledgehammer tactics, but much angrier at the injustice of what they show us: an immigration system that can tear families apart.