Month: January 2024

Hamas’s political chief said on Tuesday that the group was considering a proposal to pause the fighting in Gaza and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, a potentially promising sign for a deal that was immediately followed by a reminder of the hurdles ahead.The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, suggested his openness to a deal in a statement, but stuck to longstanding demands for the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, which the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately rejected.Representatives from four nations — the United States, Qatar, Egypt and Israel — agreed over the weekend at talks in Paris to present…

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The most important run of the night may not have been by Christian McCaffrey. Or Deebo Samuel. Or even by George Kittle on one of his epic catch-and-runs.Nope. It was probably by the game manager. The most momentum-seizing, back-breaking, Lions-taming runs, a case could be made, were by Brock Purdy, the conductor of a 17-point comeback in the San Francisco 49ers’ 34-31 win Sunday over Detroit in the NFC Championship Game.“I’m blocking my man, and next thing I know I hear screaming,” left guard Aaron Banks said from the party in the 49ers locker room at…

Law enforcement officials are bracing for an explosion of material generated by artificial intelligence that realistically depicts children being sexually exploited, deepening the challenge of identifying victims and combating such abuse.The concerns come as Meta, a primary resource for the authorities in flagging sexually explicit content, has made it tougher to track criminals by encrypting its messaging service. The complication underscores the tricky balance technology companies must strike in weighing privacy rights against children’s safety. And the prospect of prosecuting that type of crime raises thorny questions of whether such images are illegal and what kind of recourse there may…

In September, the Mayo Clinic in Arizona created a first-of-its-kind job at the hospital system: chief artificial intelligence officer.Doctors at the Arizona site, which has facilities in Phoenix and Scottsdale, had experimented with A.I. for years. But after ChatGPT’s release in 2022 and an ensuing frenzy over the technology, the hospital decided it needed to work more with A.I. and find someone to coordinate the efforts.So executives appointed Dr. Bhavik Patel, a radiologist who specializes in A.I., to the new job. Dr. Patel has since piloted a new A.I. model that could help speed up the diagnosis of a rare…

Gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital, and killings have more than doubled in the past year, but for the organizers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show simply had to go on.So while judges an ocean away deliberated whether to send a contingent of officers to pacify Haiti’s violence-riddled streets, festival organizers made do by shortening the length of the event to four days from eight, moving the acts from a public stage to a restricted hotel venue and replacing the handful of artists who canceled.As 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the…

Update: The Chiefs beat the Ravens 17-10 to earn a trip to the Super BowlIf Mike Macdonald’s ascent to one of the NFL’s hottest coordinators and a legitimate head-coaching candidate feels meteoric, that’s probably because he has never embraced the art of self-promotion.The 36-year-old second-year Baltimore Ravens defensive boss has consented to side media interviews in recent weeks largely because he wants to tout the chemistry and cohesion of his staff, not because he wants any more attention. He likes to call himself a “steward” of head coach John Harbaugh’s vision and will point you in the direction of two…