Monday briefing: Babies evacuated from Al-Shifa
Babies evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital
Nearly four days after the Israeli army stormed the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization described the complex as a “death zone” where several patients had died because medical services were closed.
There were 291 patients remaining in Al-Shifa hospital, the UN agency said in a statement late on Saturday, after Israeli forces gave a UN team a tour of the facility for an hour. Israel has not yet provided conclusive evidence of an underground military base near the hospital.
Yesterday, 31 premature babies in extremely critical condition were taken to the Al-Helal Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah, in the south of the enclave, the Palestinian Red Crescent and WHO said on social media. According to UN estimates, another 10,000 people left for southern Gaza on Saturday via a route designated by the Israeli army.
Read the latest.
Hostages: Israel and Hamas are close to reaching an agreement to pause fighting for several days so hostages can be released, but Jon Finer, President Biden’s deputy national security adviser, warned yesterday that “nothing has been agreed until everything is agreed.” reaches.”
Unrest at one of the largest AI developers
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was removed from his role at the AI start-up by the board on Friday. Greg Brockman, another co-founder and president of the company, quit in protest later that evening.
The vote to impeach Altman showed how a philosophical movement dedicated to the fear of AI had become an inevitable part of tech culture. Two board members have ties to the Rationalist and Effective Altruist movements, groups deeply concerned that AI could one day destroy humanity, and some within OpenAI are said to have worried that Altman was not concerned enough about its risks.
The company’s board members did not give a specific reason for Altman’s firing, other than saying in a blog post that they did not believe he communicated honestly with them. Read the full story about the fear and tension within the start-up, and listen to Hard Fork’s emergency podcast.
On Saturday, after protests from Altman’s supporters and OpenAI’s investors, anonymous sources told The Times that Altman and Brockman were in discussions with board members about returning.
The fear of bed bugs has come to Asia
It’s a good time to be a professional insect killer in Asia.
Fears of major bed bug outbreaks have been palpable for weeks across the Asia-Pacific region, heightened by breathless news media coverage of an outbreak in France earlier this year and a smaller, more recent outbreak in South Korea. In Hong Kong, reports of a bedbug sighting on an airport train sparked several days of feverish reporting.
Nasreen, a talented young poet, wanted more freedom than her family would give her, and fled to Delhi to escape an arranged marriage. Ultimately, she found an escape from the oppressive patriarchy through a path she never expected: romance.
Read her story.
Lives lived: Lt. Viktor Belenko walked from the Soviet Union to the West in 1976, flying a Russian fighter jet feared by the US. He died at the age of 76.
Preserving a writer’s legacy
Bessie Head’s novels are taught in classrooms across Africa, but she never achieved the fame of some of her male counterparts on the continent. As more and more female African writers gain recognition, Head is celebrated as a pioneer, and a small museum in her adopted hometown seeks to preserve her archive for future generations.
An activist, journalist and author, Head was born in South Africa in 1937 and later sought asylum in Botswana from the apartheid regime. Her collection is housed in a community museum in Serowe, the city in central Botswana where Head lived until her death in 1986 at the age of 48.
The curators are seeking partners and funding to digitize the collection, including audio tapes of Head’s conversations with American poet Nikki Giovanni.
Her novels, such as “When Rain Clouds Gather” and “Maru,” eschew the big political stories of the 1960s and 1970s in favor of stories about ordinary people struggling with moral questions. “She was a philosophical, spiritual writer, and much of her early work addresses questions of good and evil, and not in superficial ways,” says Mary Lederer, a member of the Bessie Head Heritage Trust. — Lynsey Chutel, briefing writer based in Johannesburg