Author: NY TIMES

For months, some of the biggest players in the U.S. media industry have been in confidential talks with OpenAI on a tricky issue: the price and terms of licensing their content to the artificial intelligence company.The curtain on those negotiations was pulled back this week when The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that the companies used its content without permission to build artificial intelligence products.The Times said that before suing, it had been talking with the companies for months about a deal. And it was not alone. Other news organizations — including Gannett, the…

BackgroundLawmakers passed the measure earlier in December. Those in favor of the bill argued that parents are pressured by doctors to sign off on transition care treatments for their children. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Gary Click, said parents are “being manipulated by the physicians.’’ In addition to banning transition care for minors, the bill says medical professionals who provide the care could lose their licenses and be sued. It also prohibits transgender girls and women from playing on high school and college sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. On Friday, Mr. DeWine said that if the bill were…

Even as FM rock stations moved toward more rigid playlists in the 1980s, Mr. Ladd fought to maintain his independence, in both music and message, often running afoul of station management. With his outspoken ways, he was said to be an inspiration for the 2002 Tom Petty song “The Last DJ,” an indictment of commercial radio that featured lyrics like “Well, the top brass don’t like him talking so much/And he won’t play what they say to play.”In the liner notes for the album of the same name, Mr. Petty thanked Mr. Ladd for “his inspiration and courage.” “Let’s say…

Israeli forces shot at a United Nations convoy of armored vehicles in central Gaza on Thursday evening as it was returning from delivering aid in the northern part of the territory, U.N. officials said.No one in the convoy was injured, the officials said, but the episode highlighted the severe challenges facing humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians struggling to survive amid Israel’s nearly 12-week bombardment of the enclave.“Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli Army,” Thomas White, the Gaza director for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian…

Russia targeted Ukrainian cities with more than 150 missiles and drones on Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the largest air assaults of the war. At least 30 people were killed, and more than 160 were wounded, according to the Ukrainian government, and critical infrastructure was damaged.“This is the biggest attack since the counting began,” Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, said in a brief telephone interview, adding that the military did not track air assaults in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.For several hours on Friday, missiles, drones…

On July 18, 2021, the day Patrick Alan Pennel was supposed to meet Margaret Ann Kretzmer for a first date, he canceled to spend time with someone else he was getting to know. When Ms. Kretzmer offered to meet him the following day instead, he said OK but brought the other girl along.Mr. Pennel, 40, wasn’t being a cad, he just didn’t have much choice: He had recently moved to Santa Monica, Calif., by himself and, to stave off Covid loneliness, was adopting a dog. Emma, the shepherd mix he brought home the day of the postponed date, was too…

Kara and Joe Youssef sold their two apartments, withdrew their life savings, gave up most of their belongings and, in late October, set out for Istanbul for the trip of a lifetime: a three-year cruise around the world, scheduled to depart Nov. 1.But in late November, after months of behind-the-scenes chaos, the Youssefs were stuck in Istanbul, with the cruise company canceling the trip. It did not have a ship that could handle the journey.The Turkish company, Miray Cruises, had announced the cruise, called Life at Sea, in March. It claimed it would be the longest cruise ever — 382…

For generations, Western space missions have largely occurred out in the open. We knew where they were going, why they were going there and what they planned to do. But the world is on the verge of a new era in which private interests override such openness, with big money potentially on the line.Sometime in the coming year, a spacecraft from AstroForge, an American asteroid-mining firm, may be launched on a mission to a rocky object near Earth’s orbit. If successful, it will be the first wholly commercial deep-space mission beyond the moon. AstroForge, however, is keeping its target asteroid…

As the holiday season winds down and Covid-19 cases start to pick up, a variant called JN.1 has now become the most common strain of the virus spreading across the United States.JN.1, which emerged from the variant BA.2.86 and was first detected in the United States in September, accounted for 44 percent of Covid cases nationwide by mid-December, up from about 7 percent in late November, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To some extent, this jump is to be expected. “Variants take some time to get going,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease…

For a spell this summer, it appeared as if Nashville was headed toward another season of polarization.In May, the superstar Jason Aldean released “Try That in a Small Town,” a middling single from his 11th studio album that likely would have fizzled were it not for an incendiary music video, which arrived two months later, filled with scenes of urban unrest and culture-war dog whistles. It became a talking-head flashpoint, a symbol of what’s widely presumed to be a not-so-latent conservatism in country music.Then, into that white-hot climate landed “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a bracing, out-of-nowhere statement of anti-government,…