Author: ALJAZEERA

The video that OpenAI released to unveil its new text-to-video tool, Sora, has to be seen to be believed. Photorealistic scenes of charging woolly mammoths in clouds of snow, a couple walking through falling cherry blossoms and aerial footage of the California gold rush. The demonstration reportedly prompted movie producer Tyler Perry to pause an $800m studio investment. Tools like Sora promise to translate a user’s vision into realistic moving images with a simple text prompt, the logic goes, making studios obsolete. Others worry that artificial intelligence (AI) like this could be exploited by those with darker imaginations. Malicious actors…

In the beginning of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, China appeared to be on the same page with its regional partners, Saudi Arabia and Iran, when it came to the big questions. All three condemned the Israeli aggression, called for a negotiated settlement addressing Palestinian grievances and held conferences and summits together to express their collective opposition to the conflict. But the Houthi attacks on shipping routes in the Red Sea have upset this consensus. As Iran officially denies any direct involvement despite its unquestionably close relationship with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia remains strategically quiet after the end of…

Rafah, Gaza – A tiny little girl called Wafaa is sitting in front of a tent in Tal as-Sultan, playing in the sand listlessly as she cries with hunger. It is difficult to tell how old she is given her emaciated frame, but her mother, Tahrir Baraka, 36, tells Al Jazeera that Wafaa is two years old. Baraka is despondent in the family’s worn-out tent, holding a can of peas and trying to start a fire to cook something for her five children. “I’m worried so much about my children. I don’t care if I eat, I worry about them,…

Beirut, Lebanon – Officials in the United States say undersea telecommunications cables in the Red Sea were cut on Tuesday, disrupting 25 percent of data traffic between Asia and Europe. A US official told the BBC they were attempting to find out if the cables had been sabotaged or if it was the result of an anchor dragging along the seafloor. But what are these cables? Who put them there? How important are they? Here’s everything you need to know about the world of undersea cables. What are undersea cables for? Communication. Telecommunication signals and messages cross stretches of the…

For most countries, the first day of fasting is likely to be March 12, depending on the sighting of the new moon.The first day of fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Mecca will be Monday, March 11 or Tuesday, March 12, depending on the sighting of the new moon. Ramadan is determined by the Islamic lunar calendar, which begins with the sighting of the crescent moon. Saudi Arabia and other Muslim-majority countries rely on the testimonies of moon sighters to determine the start of the month. How is the Ramadan moon sighted? For the moon to be…

EXPLAINERIsrael continues attacks while its forces turned back a 14-truck food aid convoy.Here’s how things stand on Wednesday, March 6, 2024: Fighting and humanitarian crisis On Wednesday morning, Israeli forces killed three civilians and injured an unknown number of others in an attack on a home in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Separately, on Tuesday, Israeli forces turned back a 14-truck food aid convoy bound for northern Gaza following a three-hour wait at a checkpoint, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it has distributed flour to some 370,000 families in southern…

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Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam – On a sunny California afternoon in late September, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh took a tour of Silicon Valley, cosying up to officials at semiconductor firms Synopsys and Nvidia. A little over a month earlier in Hanoi, Pham tasked four government ministries with increasing the number of Vietnamese engineers capable of working in semiconductor production by the tens of thousands. Government efforts to make Vietnam an attractive option for chip investment have continued in the new year. Minister of Science and Technology Huynh Thanh Dat last month told local media that authorities had put…

Three days of negotiations end at an impasse, as Hamas and Israel insist the other give in to their demands.Three days of negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire in Gaza have failed to achieve a breakthrough, less than a week before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – the informal deadline for a deal. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent weeks trying to broker an agreement in which Hamas would release Israeli captives in return for a six-week ceasefire, the release of some Palestinian prisoners and more aid to Gaza. Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said…

Beijing sets one of its lowest targets in decades amid property crisis, slowing exports and population decline.China has set its economic growth target for 2024 at 5 percent, far below the double-digit growth that for decades powered the world’s second-largest economy. China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) officially unveiled the target on Tuesday as its $18 trillion economy is facing serious headwinds. “We should communicate policies to the public in a well-targeted way to create a stable, transparent and predictable policy environment,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang said as he delivered his maiden work report outlining policy goals for the year. Li…