Author: NY TIMES

Scores of displaced Palestinians fled the grounds of a hospital in southern Gaza as fighting raged on Wednesday in and around the city of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military says it is trying to crush a Hamas stronghold.Videos verified by The New York Times show families fleeing the hospital, Nasser Medical Center in Khan Younis, carrying duffel bags, backpacks and blankets as the sound of explosions reverberated. The Israeli military said this week that they had detected mortar fire aimed at its forces from the hospital complex, the largest in the southern Gaza Strip.The fighting around the hospital underlines…

To house the evacuees of Grindavik, the Icelandic town where lava poured into some houses last week after a volcanic eruption, a former prime minister proposed building a new town from scratch. A politician said Airbnbs around the island nation should be restricted to make room for the residents. And a radio host suggested turning away asylum seekers to focus resources on helping “refugees” from Grindavik.“To evacuate 1 percent of the nation,” Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir said, “is a major challenge.”Grindavik, a fishing town in southwestern Iceland, is still under the threat of volcanic eruptions, and experts consider it uninhabitable…

There are 32 teams on a mission to win Super Bowl 58 this season. Eight teams remain.Jeff Howe breaks down this weekend’s four divisional round games. AthleticA projection model created by Austin Mock reveals each team’s odds of winning the Super Bowl.AFC After the Bills beat the Steelers, look at the AFC playoff bracket. ◽️ Ravens-Texans: Saturday, 4:30 p.m. ET◽️ Bills-Chiefs: Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET Who do you think will advance to the conference tournament? pic.twitter.com/fsz3vSg6bP — The Athlete (@TheAthletic) January 16, 2024No. 1 Baltimore Ravens vs. No. 4 Houston Texans, Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ETTexans rookie quarterback CJ Stroud…

The visible vestiges of Crystal Hefner’s days as a Playboy Playmate are mostly gone. The snowy blond hair that once characterized Ms. Hefner, the third and last wife of Playboy’s founder, Hugh Hefner, has become more dirty blond. Revealing costumes have been traded for sensible clothes like beige cardigans.But a closer look reveals a woman who is still acclimating to life outside of the infamous Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, which she left about seven years ago, not long after Mr. Hefner died in 2017.On a recent afternoon, Ms. Hefner leaned against a pink banquette in an Italian restaurant in…

In the year ahead, the use of biometrics — an individual’s unique physical identifiers, such as fingerprints and faces — will be expanded at airports in the United States and abroad, a shift to enhance security, replace physical identification such as passports and driver’s licenses, and reduce the amount of time required by travelers to pass through airports. Biometric technology will be seen everywhere from bag drops at the check-in counters to domestic security screening.In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration is expanding its program allowing passengers to opt in for a security screening relying on a facial recognition…

For four years, the computer scientist Trieu Trinh has been consumed with something of a meta-math problem: how to build an A.I. model that solves geometry problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad, the annual competition for the world’s most mathematically attuned high-school students.Last week Dr. Trinh successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic at New York University; this week, he described the result of his labors in the journal Nature. Named AlphaGeometry, the system solves Olympiad geometry problems at nearly the level of a human gold medalist.While developing the project, Dr. Trinh pitched it to two research scientists at…

The newsCancer deaths in the United States are falling, with four million deaths prevented since 1991, according to the American Cancer Society’s annual report.At the same time, the society reported that the number of new cancer cases had ticked up to more than two million in 2023, from 1.9 million in 2022. Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease. Doctors believe that it is urgent to understand changes in the death rate, as well as changes in cancer diagnoses.Background: Treatment improvements help reduce cancer deaths.The cancer society highlighted three chief factors in…

This week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Lil Nas X’s comeback single “J Christ,” a continuation of his trollcore pop narrative, with its ostentatious video and punchline-heavy media rolloutThe new 21 Savage album “American Dream,” the first blockbuster hip-hop album of the year, with many high-profile features and some reckoning with the immigration case that nearly derailed his careerThe sonic shift in Ariana Grande’s new song, “Yes, And?,” her first solo single in three yearsNew tracks from Bizarrap featuring Young Miko, and Jastin MartinSnack of…

Travelers appear to be slowly returning to some Middle East nations despite the continuation of the Israel-Hamas conflict that all but decimated the region’s tourism since it began on Oct. 7. Travel operators said that bookings to countries including Egypt, Jordan and Oman are growing, welcome news for an area that’s dependent on tourist dollars and one that had received a record number of visitors since the height of the pandemic.“The Middle East was on track to be one of our biggest leaders in post-pandemic travel recovery, and with this momentum swinging back, it shows just how powerful its appeal…

Pakistan retaliated with strikes inside IranPakistan announced yesterday that it had carried out strikes against what it said were terrorist hide-outs in Iran. A day earlier, Iran hit what it called militant camps in Pakistan. The military exchange is the latest example of an expanding set of hostilities connected to the Israel-Hamas war.Pakistan indicated yesterday that it did not want its clash with Iran to escalate. The military called the two neighbors “brotherly countries,” and officials refrained from accusing Iran directly, saying that Pakistan targeted only separatists.Iran condemned the attacks, but also appeared to try to defuse tensions. Its foreign…