IIB Network

3May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

World

Friday Briefing – The New York Times

Hamas hinted at progress on a cease-fireA Hamas leader said yesterday that the group was studying Israel’s latest cease-fire proposal with a “positive spirit,” raising hopes of progress in the stalled efforts for a truce.Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political wing, said that a delegation would travel to Cairo to discuss the cease-fire. The current deal would include a weekslong truce and the release of hostages held by Hamas and of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The proposal would also allow civilians to return to northern Gaza and would enable increased delivery of aid to the territory.The complex cease-fire negotiations have dragged on for months. This week, Israel softened some of its positions, saying that it would allow Palestinians to return north en masse and would low...

Larry Young, Who Studied the Chemistry of Love, Dies at 56

3May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Health

Larry Young, Who Studied the Chemistry of Love, Dies at 56

Prairie voles are stocky rodents and Olympian tunnellers that surface in grassy areas to feast on grass, roots and seeds with their chisel-shaped teeth, sprouting migraines in farmers and gardeners.But to Larry Young, they were the secret to understanding romance and love.Professor Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, used prairie voles in a series of experiments that revealed the chemical process for the pirouette of heart-fluttering emotions that poets have tried to put into words for centuries.He died on March 21 in Tsukuba, Japan, where he was helping to organize a scientific conference. He was 56. The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Anne Murphy, said.With their beady eyes, thick tails and sharp claws, prairie voles are not exactly cuddly. But among rodents, they...

Rafael Nadal’s last tennis match in Madrid: Defeat, but a win

3May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Sports

Rafael Nadal’s last tennis match in Madrid: Defeat, but a win

Imagine having done the same thing for something like 30 years, being better at it than just about anyone who has ever lived, and then one day, it’s all completely new. And so it is for Rafael Nadal in this through-the-looking-glass spring. For years, no place felt more like home than a red clay court. He could lose matches sometimes. Everyone does. But he almost never played poorly.He could leave his guts on the court with an effort that would leave most of the population unable to walk for weeks. Then he would wake up in the morning and, within a few hours, be able to start preparing to do it all over again. And then, sometimes, he really would do it all over again.Those days are done, perhaps never to return. Nearly a year and a half since a debilitating hip injury, nearly a year since ...

Meta and Google Are Betting on AI Voice Assistants. Will They Take Off?

1May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Technology

Meta and Google Are Betting on AI Voice Assistants. Will They Take Off?

A pair of glasses from Meta shoots a picture when you say, “Hey, Meta, take a photo.” A miniature computer that clips to your shirt, the Ai Pin, translates foreign languages into your native tongue. An artificially intelligent screen features a virtual assistant that you talk to through a microphone.Last year, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT chatbot to respond with spoken words, and recently, Google introduced Gemini, a replacement for its voice assistant on Android phones.Tech companies are betting on a renaissance for voice assistants, many years after most people decided that talking to computers was uncool.Will it work this time? Maybe, but it could take a while.Large swaths of people have still never used voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant, and the ov...

What to Watch for at Today’s Fed Meeting on Interest Rates

1May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Business

What to Watch for at Today’s Fed Meeting on Interest Rates

Federal Reserve officials will conclude their two-day policy meeting on Wednesday afternoon, and while central bankers are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged, there is an unusual degree of uncertainty about what exactly they will signal about the future.Officials could stick with their recent script: Their next policy move is likely to be an interest rate reduction, but incoming inflation and growth data will determine how soon reductions can begin and how extensive they will be. But some economists are wondering if the central bank could pivot away from that message, opening the door to the possibility that its next rate move will be an increase rather than a cut. Inflation has proved alarmingly stubborn in recent months and the economy has retained substantial momentum, wh...

How Capitalists in Communist Cuba Are an Economic Lifeline

1May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

World

How Capitalists in Communist Cuba Are an Economic Lifeline

A modern grocery store whose shelves are packed with everything from pasta to wine fills a spot in central Havana once occupied by a drab state-owned flower shop, its ceilings and walls repaired and repainted.A former state glass company in a Havana suburb now houses a showroom for a private business selling Cuban-made furniture.And at the Cuban capital’s port, forklifts carefully unload American eggs from a refrigerated container. The eggs are bound for an online private supermarket that, much like Amazon Fresh, provides home delivery.These ventures are part of an explosion of thousands of private businesses that have opened in recent years across Cuba, a remarkable shift in a country where such enterprises have not been permitted and where Fidel Castro rose to power leading a communist r...

When My Mom Got Sick, This TV Show Kept Us Going

1May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Health

When My Mom Got Sick, This TV Show Kept Us Going

Every family has its archetypes, so here’s mine: My dad and my brother and I are all miserable. None of us are quick to experience joy, and all for different reasons — my dad is irritable, my brother is anxious and I’m bitter. The three of us combined could make one moderately unwell person. Instead, we are planets that orbit a sun more optimistic than we could ever be, and we hope that some of that shine rubs off on us periodically.My mother believes in a positive ethos: that things invariably will improve, that everyone is trying their best, that it’s better to be surprised by harm than anticipating it all the time. In April 2023, I was laid off from my job, and she reassured me immediately. “Everything always works out,” she said. But for the first time, I noticed a slash of worry run a...

Tennis Briefing: Kasatkina ‘assurances’ on Saudi Arabia, Alcaraz defies injury

1May

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Sports

Tennis Briefing: Kasatkina ‘assurances’ on Saudi Arabia, Alcaraz defies injury

Welcome to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the story behind the stories from the last week on court.This week, the coveted Masters 1000 in Madrid ran its first week and the stories on court were matched by the drama off it, as the Grand Slams and tennis tours continue their beauty pageant for the future of the sport.If you’d like more tennis coverage, please click here.Can ‘assurances’ on player safety in Saudi Arabia ever be enough?Daria Kasatkina, the highest ranked openly gay player in women’s tennis, was asked Sunday how she felt about the WTA opting to hold its Tour Finals for the next three years in Saudi Arabia, a country, where homosexuality is a crime that can be punished by death.Only the top eight players qualify for the Tour Finals. Kasatkina is curr...

Friends From the Old Neighborhood Turn Rivals in Big Tech’s A.I. Race

30Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Technology

Friends From the Old Neighborhood Turn Rivals in Big Tech’s A.I. Race

Mustafa Suleyman grew up in subsidized housing in one of London’s roughest areas. His father, a Syrian immigrant, drove a taxi. His mother was a nurse with the National Health Service. When the prestigious Queen Elizabeth’s School accepted him at the age of 11, the family moved into a safer, leafier neighborhood a few miles north.There, he met 20-year-old Demis Hassabis, after becoming friends with his younger brother. Demis was a chess prodigy and video game designer whose parents — one a Greek Cypriot, the other a Singaporean — ran a London toy store.Today, they are two of the most powerful executives in the tech industry’s race to build artificial intelligence. Dr. Hassabis, 47, is the chief executive of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central research lab for artificial intelligence....

Inflation Is Stubborn. Is the Federal Budget Deficit Making It Worse?

30Apr

By Anderson W. WhiteNo Comments

Business

Inflation Is Stubborn. Is the Federal Budget Deficit Making It Worse?

A crucial question is hanging over the American economy and the fall presidential election: Why are consumer prices still growing uncomfortably fast, even after a sustained campaign by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy by raising interest rates?Economists and policy experts have offered several explanations. Some are essentially quirks of the current economic moment, like a delayed, post-pandemic surge in the cost of home and auto insurance. Others are long-running structural issues, like a lack of affordable housing that has pushed up rents in big cities like New York as would-be tenants compete for units.But some economists, including top officials at the International Monetary Fund, said that the federal government bore some of the blame because it had continued to pump large amou...