Blog

Last week, Google unveiled its biggest search shift in years, showing off new artificial intelligence features that answer people's questions in the company's bid to catch up to rivals Microsoft and OpenAI.The new technology has since spawned a litany of falsehoods and errors – including recommending glue as part of a pizza recipe and ingesting rocks as nutrients – giving Google a black eye and causing an uproar online.Incorrect answers in the feature, called AI Overview, have undermined trust in a search engine that more than two billion people turn to for authoritative information. And while other AI-powered chatbots tell lies and behave strangely, the backlash has shown that Google is under more pressure to safely incorporate AI into its search engine.The launch also extends a ...

Aid trucks from Egypt entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday under a new U.S.-brokered deal to reopen a vital channel for humanitarian aid, the Israeli army and the Egyptian Red Crescent said. Egypt had blocked aid from entering the enclave through its territory following Israel's seizure of the Rafah crossing - which provides access to southern Gaza - in early May. The two sides have traded blame for the closure of that crossing, even as aid has piled up on the Egyptian side. After pressure from the United States, Egypt announced Friday that it had agreed to divert trucks through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, which is about two miles from the Rafah crossing, as a temporary measure.Some 126 trucks from Egypt containing food, fuel and other essential goods entered the Gaza S...

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and provides behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism is born.Molly Mirhashem is used to running in circles, literally.Six days a week, Ms. Mirhashem runs near her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Much of her weekly mileage takes place on the same approximately 3.5-mile loop at a nearby park. Her training will come in handy: This weekend she will run the Buffalo Marathon in upstate New York. It will be the ninth time she has run 22 kilometers since she first became passionate about the marathon in 2017.Ms. Mirhashem, a fitness editor at Well Desk, came to the New York Times last month from Outside Magazine, where she spent eight years assigning and editing articles on health and wellness, among other responsibilities.One of his...

Twelve people were injured Sunday during turbulence on a Qatar Airways flight from Doha that landed safely as scheduled in Ireland, Dublin Airport said.The plane, a Boeing B787-9, was flying over Turkey when it encountered turbulence, injuring six passengers and six crew members, Dublin Airport said on social media.The flight landed in Dublin just before 1pm local time and was met by emergency medical workers, the airport said.Passengers were checked for injuries before leaving the plane and eight people were taken to hospital.Dublin Airport said its operations had not been affected and that the airline's return flight to Doha was still scheduled to leave later on Sunday.Qatar Airways said in a statement that "a small number" of passengers on flight QR017 suffered minor injuries.“The m...

Federal regulators on Thursday approved an investment product tied to the cryptocurrency Ether, the most valuable digital asset after Bitcoin, in a major boost for the cryptocurrency industry.The Securities and Exchange Commission said a group of exchanges may begin listing investment products known as exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, tied to the price of Ether. The products would offer people a quicker and easier way to invest in cryptocurrencies, potentially boosting prices and promoting wider adoption of digital currencies.In January, the SEC approved similar products that track the price of Bitcoin, leading to a flurry of new investments that helped push the price of Bitcoin to a record high.The impact of Ether approval may take longer to hit the market. Before exchanges can begin off...

This is how Dr. Yuval Bitton remembers the morning of Oct. 7. Being jolted awake just after sunrise by the insistent ringing of his phone. The frantic voice of his daughter, who was traveling abroad, asking, “Dad, what’s happened in Israel? Turn on the TV.”News anchors were still piecing together the reports: Palestinian gunmen penetrating Israel’s vaunted defenses, infiltrating more than 20 towns and military bases, killing approximately 1,200 people and dragging more than 240 men, women and children into Gaza as hostages.Even in that first moment, Dr. Bitton says, he knew with certainty who had masterminded the attack: Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and Inmate No. 7333335 in the Israeli prison system from 1989 until his release in a prisoner swap in 2011.But that was not all. ...

The last oneColorectal cancer rates are rising rapidly among adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and the most common warning sign for the disease is blood in the stool, according to a new scientific review.Rectal bleeding is associated with a five-fold increased risk of colorectal cancer, according to the new analysis, which looked at 81 studies that included nearly 25 million adults under 50 from around the world.Abdominal pain, changes in bowel habits and anemia are other common warning signs of the disease and should not be ignored, said the researchers, who published the paper Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open.Because matterColon and rectal cancer rates have increased among young adults while rates have decreased among older adults, who are much more likely to undergo colonoscopi...

Russia bombed a hardware superstore in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Saturday afternoon, killing at least six people and wounding at least 40 others, Ukrainian officials said. The attack was the latest in a prolonged bombing campaign against the city that has made life increasingly difficult and dangerous for civilians.Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said 16 people were still missing, suggesting the death toll could rise. He added that another airstrike on Saturday in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, wounded at least 14 people.“For the whole day, Kharkiv was under Russian terrorist attacks. The airstrike in the Kharkiv region has been ongoing for more than 12 hours,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on soc...

Shortly before Russian troops crossed Ukraine's northern border this month, members of Ukraine's 92nd Assault Brigade lost a vital asset. The Starlink satellite internet service, which soldiers use to communicate, gather intelligence and conduct drone strikes, has slowed.Operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, Starlink has been crucial to the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war with Russia. Without full service, the Ukrainian soldiers said, they could not quickly communicate and share information about the surprise assault and resorted to sending text messages. Their experiences were repeated along the new northern front line, according to Ukrainian soldiers, officials and electronic warfare experts.At the heart of the disruptions: Russia's increased interference....

The Israeli army was carrying out the operation in Rafah on Saturday, according to three Israeli officials, a day after the world's top court appeared to order Israel to "immediately" cease its military campaign in the southern city of Gaza, amid a growing international outcry over the offensive.Officials did not say exactly in which part of the city his forces were striking and fighting. An official said the army continued to advance slowly, but warned that it was too early to conclude how Israel would respond to the court order because it takes time for a military ground operation to change course. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.Palestinian media reported that an Israeli attack killed one person in central Rafah and that t...