Author: NY TIMES

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today.On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence.The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to…

Seizures of psychedelic mushrooms across the nation by law enforcement officials have increased significantly in recent years as attitudes regarding their use have grown more permissive, according to a government-funded study released Tuesday.Researchers found that law enforcement officials confiscated 844 kilos of mushrooms containing psilocybin in 2022, an increase of 273 percent from 2017. Psilocybin is the psychoactive component in the fungi commonly known as magic mushrooms.Officials at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which commissioned the study, said that the increase in seizures of magic mushroom reflected rising use of the drugs, rather than an indication that counternarcotics officials…

Celine Dion, the Canadian pop superstar who announced in 2022 that she has a rare neurological disease that makes it difficult for her to sing, appeared at the Grammy Awards to present the final award of the night, album of the year.Walking out to “The Power of Love,” Dion looked moved by the standing ovation, saying, “When I say that I’m happy to be here I really mean it from my heart.”“Those who have been blessed enough to be here,” she went on, “must never take for granted the tremendous love and joy that music brings to our lives and…

A Haitian prosecutor has recommended charges against 70 people for the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Among the former Colombian soldiers and Haitian government officials accused in the case is one unexpected name: former First Lady Martine Moïse, who was seriously injured in the attack.A copy of a criminal complaint filed by a public prosecutor and submitted to a Haitian court that was obtained by The New York Times does not accuse her of planning the killing or offer any direct evidence of her involvement.Instead, it says that she and other accomplices gave statements that were contradicted by other…

At a recent Monster Jam event at the Prudential Center in Newark, as shark-finned and dog-eared and zombie-limbed monster trucks careened around a stadium floor caked in doughy, cinnamon-brown dirt, I remembered the first pseudo-sentence I ever spoke: “Big truck go by.” Gaggles of young children wiggled around the stands, their mouths agape and their ears covered by muffs or a parent’s palms.Big trucks were going by, loudly.They also went up into the air. They crashed back into earth recently dug out of a storage facility near MetLife Stadium. They bounced aloft again — that is, if they were lucky…

The Federal Aviation Administration’s top official plans to tell a House panel on Tuesday that the agency will step up its on-the-ground presence monitoring aircraft manufacturing.The official, Mike Whitaker, will appear before lawmakers one month after a door panel blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet while in flight, raising new questions about Boeing’s quality-control practices, as well as the F.A.A.’s oversight of the plane maker.“Going forward, we will have more boots on the ground closely scrutinizing and monitoring production and manufacturing activities,” Mr. Whitaker plans to say in his testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s…

If you’ve presented the same arm for every dose of a particular vaccine, you may want to reconsider. Alternating arms may produce a more powerful immune response, a new study suggests.The researchers studied responses to the first two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Those who alternated arms showed a small increase in immunity over those who got both doses in the same arm.For individuals who respond poorly to vaccines because of age or health conditions, even a small boost may turn out to be significant, the researchers said. At this point in the pandemic, with most people having had multiple vaccine…

Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of the biggest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.His death was announced on his official website, which said that he passed “peacefully” surrounded by his family.The singer announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. In a recent interview with KWTV News 9, an Oklahoma-based TV station, Mr. Keith, who played a run of shows in…

“I stopped counting how many neighborhoods I’ve erased,” the caption reads on the video posted to his personal TikTok, accompanied by a militaristic anthem.Since Israel’s invasion in October, soldiers have shared videos from Gaza on social media, offering a rare, unsanctioned look at operations on the ground. Some have been viewed by small circles of people; others have reached tens of thousands.The New York Times reviewed hundreds of these videos. Some show unremarkable parts of a soldier’s life — eating, hanging out or sending messages to loved ones back home.Others capture soldiers vandalizing local shops and school classrooms, making derogatory…

For nine years, Yemen was torn by a war that erupted when the Houthis, a Yemeni militia supported by Iran, ousted the government and took control of the country’s northwest, sowing chaos across the border from Saudi Arabia.A Saudi-led military coalition began a bombing campaign, backed by American weapons and military support, in an attempt to reinstate the government. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people died from fighting, starvation and disease, and the coalition pulled back under international pressure, leaving the Houthis in power.When 2023 dawned, it looked as if the Houthis and the Yemeni factions they had been fighting…