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he ferocity of Israel’s response to the murder of more than 1,400 Israeli citizens has been such that international concern for the Palestinians of Gaza—half of whom, or more than 1 million, are children under the age of 15—has now largely eclipsed any sympathy that might have been felt for the victims of the crimes that precipitated the war in the first place.

Israel has a right to defend itself, and it has a right to seek to destroy, or at least severely degrade, the primary perpetrator of the attacks of October 7,

I am worried that Israel has staked out maximalist objectives, not for the first time, and will, as it did in 2006 against Hezbollah in Lebanon, fall far short of those objectives, allowing the enemy to claim a victory—a Pyrrhic victory, to be sure, but a victory nonetheless.

Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, one of OpenAI’s independent board members, told Forbes in January that there was “no outcome where this organization is one of the big five technology companies.”

“My hope is that we can do a lot more good for the world than just become another corporation that gets that big,” D’Angelo said in the interview. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Two of the board members who voted Altman out worked for think tanks backed by Open Philanthropy, a tech billionaire-backed foundation that supports projects preventing AI from causing catastrophic risk to humanity

OpenAI was reportedly working on an advanced system before Sam Altman’s sacking that was so powerful it caused safety concerns among staff at the company.

The artificial intelligence model triggered such alarm with some OpenAI researchers that they wrote to the board of directors before Altman’s dismissal warning it could threaten humanity, Reuters reported.

The model, called Q* – and pronounced as “Q-Star” – was able to solve basic maths problems it had not seen before, according to the tech news site the Information, which added that the pace of development behind the system had alarmed some safety researchers. The ability to solve maths problems would be viewed as a significant development in AI.

haven’t we been adapting to new technologies for most of human history? If we’re going to use them, shouldn’t the onus be on us to be smart about it

This line of reasoning avoids what should be a central question: Should lying chatbots and deepfake engines be made available in the first place?

A.I.’s errors have an endearingly anthropomorphic name — hallucinations — but this year made clear just how high the stakes can be

Sometime in recent history, possibly around 2004, Americans forgot to have fun, true fun, as though they’d misplaced it like a sock.

Instead, fun evolved into work, sometimes more than true work, which is where we find ourselves now.

Fun is often emphatic, exhausting, scheduled, pigeonholed, hyped, forced and performative

For the last few years, though, I’ve felt the opposite — that so much of my work was decrying bad choices made by big players

Vladimir Putin’s tightening dictatorship and aggression, culminating in his brutal invasion of Ukraine; Xi Jinping’s reversal of China’s opening; Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history; the cascading effects of climate change; the loss of control over America’s southern border; and, maybe most ominously, an authoritarian drift, not only in European countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary but in America’s own Republican Party as well.

If I think about the three pillars that have stabilized the world since I became a journalist in 1978 — a strong America committed to protecting a liberal global order with the help of healthy multilateral institutions like NATO, a steadily growing China always there to buoy the world economy, and mostly stable borders in Europe and the developing world — all three are being shaken by big choices by big players over the last decade

A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. White House officials say Mr Biden is unlikely to offer specific policy proposals or seek to issue an executive order in the coming weeks to avoid interfering with delicate negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans. The president's visit comes days after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos shot his grandmother, and then opened fire on a classroom of fourth-graders with a legally acquired AR-15 style assault rifle.

The senior officer on the scene decided to wait until the school janitor arrived with the keys because they thought that either "no kids were at risk" by then, or "no-one was living anymore".

San Antonio resident Eduardo Messa said: "I mean, we have age limits for things like cigarettes and alcohol, why not for guns, you know, this is just... this kind of massacre that occurred this week is just so heart-breaking and sad."

He and his father, 38-year-old Gerald Parks, were fatally shot while sitting in their vehicle on Carver Street a few yards from their home.“I just heard a whole bunch of gunshots and I came outside and just seen him in the car slumped over, unresponsive,” Frame said.According to the family, the father and son returned from a cookout and had just parked their vehicle when someone opened fire leaving shattered glass on the ground and bullet holes in a nearby rowhome.Jamel’s mother has one word to describe how she’s feeling.“Numb, like literally numb. Like, I don’t have any words. I’m just in shock. I can’t believe this is happening right now. I feel like it’s a dream, a nightmare,” Frame said.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney condemned the recent violence, tweeting: “We must all work together to end this heartbreaking, maddening epidemic and make a safer city for everyone.”In the city’s Overbrook section, police say a young man, approximately 18 to 21 years old, was shot multiple times and killed on Sunday afternoon.Police say the shooting happened in a rear alleyway on the 6300 block of West Columbia Avenue around 1:45 p.m. The man was transported to the hospital by police and pronounced dead at 1:58 p.m.

A 31-year-old man was shot once in his left leg during a fight with another man in West Philadelphia, police say. The shooting happened on the 5900 block of Market Street just after 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. Police say they made an arrest and recovered a weapon. The man was placed in stable condition.In Philly’s Torresdale neighborhood, police say a 26-year-old man was shot once in his right leg. The incident happened on the 3900 block of Rowena Drive around 10 p.m. on Saturday. He was placed in stable condition.

The Long Room, with its imposing oak ceiling and two levels of bookshelves laden with some of Ireland’s most ancient and valuable volumes, is the oldest part of the library in Trinity College Dublin, in constant use since 1732.

But that remarkable record is about to be disrupted, as engineers, architects and conservation experts embark on a 90 million euro, or $95 million, program to restore and upgrade the college’s Old Library building, of which the Long Room is the main part.

“We already knew that the Old Library needed work because of problems with the building,” said Prof. Veronica Campbell, who initiated the project. “When we saw Notre Dame burning, we realized, ‘Oh, my God, we need to do something now!’”

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to send Ukraine more advanced rocket systems and munitions to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield. The White House had been hesitant to send the weapons, which have long been requested by Kyiv.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described Russian bombing in the front-line eastern city of Sievierodonetsk as “insanity” given the presence of a large-scale chemical plant.Residents of Sievierodonetsk have been warned not to leave bomb shelters due to the risk posed by toxic fumes.

“We believe that the U.S. is deliberately pouring oil on the fire. The U.S. is obviously holding the line that it will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian,” Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters.His comments echo those made by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov who had claimed President Joe Biden’s administration increased the risk of direct clashes between Moscow and Washington by supplying rockets to Ukraine.— Sam Meredith

Speaking to the RIA Novosti news agency, Ryabkov said of U.S. foreign policy that “the remnants of a responsible, sound approach to the situation have simply been scrapped.”

In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey unpacked lipstick, an iPhone and something else from her purse in one campaign advertisement — “a little Smith & Wesson .38,” she said. A Republican candidate for governor in Georgia declared in a different spot, “I believe in Jesus, guns and babies.”

As the nation reels from a massacre at a Texas elementary school in which a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, a review of Republican and Democratic advertising during the first months of 2022 highlights the giant cultural chasm over guns in America. As both parties have navigated their respective primary seasons, Republicans have been far more likely to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms than Democrats — who are largely in agreement on the issue of combating gun violence, but have seen one legislative effort after another collapse.

But more than 100 television ads from Republican candidates and supportive groups have used guns as talking points or visual motifs this year. Guns are shown being fired or brandished, or are discussed but not displayed as candidates praise the Second Amendment, vow to block gun-control legislation or simply identify themselves as “pro-gun.”

Russia is advancing in the east behind a barrage of artillery that has strained Ukrainian defenses and Western unity over support for a protracted war.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the U.S. would be sending Ukraine the high mobility artillery rocket system, or HIMARS. "This new package will arm them with new capabilities and advanced weaponry, including HIMARS with battlefield munitions, to defend their territory from Russian advances," he said in a statement.

He said that combined with their targeting capacity aided by commercial drones and counter battery radars, the systems would provide a “distinct qualitative and quantitative improvement” to Ukraine’s combat capability.

Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from her role as Chief Operating Officer at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook.Sandberg joined Facebook in early 2008 as the No. 2 to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and helped turn Facebook into an advertising juggernaut and one of the most powerful companies in the tech industry, with a market cap that topped $1 trillion at one point.

Meta has come under fire in recent years for its massive influence, its lack of success in stopping the spread of misinformation and harmful material, and its acquisitions of one-time rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg and other execs have been forced to testify before Congress multiple times in the last three years, although Sandberg has largely escaped that spotlight. The company currently faces an antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and could see scrutiny from other agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission after a whistleblower filed a complaint about its efforts to combat hate on its platform.

In 2013, she released the book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” focusing on the challenges women face in the workplace and what they can do to advance their careers.In 2015, she was faced with the unexpected death of her husband Dave Goldberg, who suffered cardiac arrhythmia and collapsed on a treadmill. Sandberg has spoken at length about dealing with the grief of Goldberg’s passing, and in 2017, she released a book titled “Option B” centered around the topic.

Crowds waving Israeli flags set off from Damascus Gate -- the main entry to the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City -- dancing and chanting "the nation of Israel lives" and "death to Arabs."

Seventy-nine Palestinians were injured in Jerusalem by rubber bullets, sound grenades and pepper spray, he Palestinian Red Crescent Society said, and one protester was shot with live fire.

More than 50 people have been arrested and detained for involvement in incidents of riots and assaulting police officers, Israel's police said in a statement Sunday.

The white 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was charged Wednesday by a grand jury with domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder.

The charge, Domestic Acts of Terrorism Motivated by Hate in the First Degree, is punishable with a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Murder charges were filed for each of the victims, who ranged in age from 32 to 86 and included eight shoppers, the store security guard and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries. The gunman, carrying an AR-15-style rifle he had recently purchased, opened fire on Saturday afternoon shoppers at the only supermarket in the predominantly Black neighborhood.

The domestic terrorism charge accuses Gendron of killing "because of the perceived race and/or color" of his victims. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed the domestic terrorism hate crime law in August 2019, in the wake of a mass shooting targeting Mexicans at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. The measure, dubbed the "Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act" after an attack at a rabbi's home in Munsey, New York, was signed into law on April 3, 2020, and took effect Nov. 1, 2020.

In an interview with The Washington Post, McLaughlin (R) said he rushed to Hillcrest Funeral Home about 15 minutes after “the first call” reporting that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos had crashed his pickup truck nearby. He found himself standing near an official he identified only as “the negotiator,” while frightened parents gathered outside the school and police waited well over an hour to storm the classroom.

He said he doesn’t believe the negotiator was aware there were children calling 911 and asking police to save them while the gunman was in the classroom. The mayor said he was not aware of those calls, nor did he hear shots fired from inside the school, across the street.

In the recent Texas primary for governor, he opted not to endorse the Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott, labeling him a “fraud” over his approach to the border and immigration. And he has appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” multiple times to lambaste the Border Patrol’s release of migrants into the streets of Uvalde and lament that he cannot get a call back from the state’s two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.

Tulsa Police Department Capt. Richard Meulenberg told CNN multiple people were wounded — he said it was fewer than ten and no one had wounds that were considered life-threatening. He told The Associated Press the medical complex was a "catastrophic scene."

The shooting occurred a little before 5 p.m. local time on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital, Tulsa Deputy Police Chief Eric Dalgleish told reporters. Officers responded to the scene within three minutes and made contact with the gunman about five minutes later, he said.

The amount of time it took police in Uvalde, Texas, to engage the gunman during last week's deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School has become a key and controversial focus of that probe. Officers waited more than an hour to breach the classroom where the gunman attacked.Dalgleish described the gunman as a Black male believed to be between 35 and 40 years old and said he was armed with a long gun and a handgun. Both weapons appeared to have been fired, Dalgleish disclosed.

As the United States moved to ship ever more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine to aid it in its fight to thwart Russia’s eastern offensive, Moscow said the latest move by President Biden threatened to escalate the war in dangerous ways.

the most powerful provided since the start of the war — was the United States “deliberately and painstakingly pouring gasoline on the fire.”

“What it boils down to is we’re going to probably give Ukraine the most limited of the options as far as range,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the retired supreme allied commander for Europe, said at a virtual security event on Wednesday, referring to the rocket system. “That’s unfortunate.”

Suddenly, five low-flying helicopters thrummed overhead, some firing weapons and drawing gunfire in return. Villagers ran for their lives. But there was nowhere to escape: The helicopters were dropping soldiers on the town’s outskirts to block all the exits.

In Moura, the security forces “may have also raped, looted, arrested and arbitrarily detained many civilians,” according to the mission, which is preparing a report on the incident.

However, using satellite imagery, The New York Times identified the sites of at least two mass graves, which matched the witnesses’ descriptions of where captives were executed and buried.

Eyes and ears everywhere, the sort of stuff that makes civil libertarians recite prophetic lines from Nineteen Eighty-Four: “You had to live . . . in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinised.”

Many studies have proved the rather obvious idea that we act differently when we know we are being watched. This instinct to alter our behaviour under watchful eyes is so strong that the mere presence of a picture of eyes can encourage pro-social behaviour and discourage the antisocial sort.

Researchers found that putting a picture of human eyes on a charity donation bucket increased donations by 48 per cent. In another experiment, pictures of a stern male gaze were placed in spots around a university campus where bike theft was rife. The robberies then plummeted by 65 per cent.