A US attempt to have the UN Security Council call for “an immediate and lasting ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip failed on Friday after Russia and China vetoed the US resolution, which includes some of the strongest statements made by Washington since the beginning of the war.

The resolution reflected the Biden administration’s growing frustration both with the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and with Israel’s conduct in a war that has killed some 30,000 people and left much of the enclave in ruins. The government is putting pressure on Israel not to attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million civilians have taken refuge, and to allow more aid to enter the area.

But international friction, including over Washington’s past use of its veto power in the Security Council and its refusal to call for a permanent ceasefire, doomed the resolution. Eleven members voted in favor of the resolution, but Russia and China – the permanent members – voted against, as did Algeria. Guyana abstained.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who toured Israel on Friday, expressed disappointment that the resolution failed.

“I think we were trying to show the international community a sense of urgency about reaching a ceasefire linked to the release of hostages, something that everyone, including the countries that vetoed the resolution, should have been able to get behind,” he said. said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his position that, despite growing international criticism, his country’s ground forces would launch an offensive against Rafah to root out Hamas, the group that led the October 7 attack that precipitated Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The Biden administration has repeatedly said that an incursion into Rafah, which borders Egypt, would cause heavy civilian casualties and hamper aid delivery.

“We have no way to defeat Hamas without entering Rafah and eliminating the rest of the battalions there,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Friday after a meeting in Tel Aviv with Mr Blinken. “And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the US. But if we have to, we will do it alone.”

The US resolution states that the Security Council “determines the need for an immediate and lasting ceasefire.” Representatives of the three dissenting countries and Guyana said it did not go far enough in demanding or enforcing a ceasefire.

Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, said a reference in the measure to reducing harm to civilians in “ongoing and future operations” in Gaza implied a “license for continued bloodshed.”

“The text presented today does not convey a clear message of peace,” Mr Bendjama said.

After the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield defended the resolution, which condemned Hamas, saying it was “put forward in good faith after consultation with all Council members and after multiple rounds of editing.”

She said Russia and China vetoed the resolution for two reasons: they refused to condemn Hamas and they “simply did not want to vote for a resolution drafted by the United States because it would rather see us fail than see it Council would succeed. .”

Whether or not Russia and China were motivated by a desire to thwart or embarrass the United States, it is clear that their relations with Washington are as hostile as ever before, with conflict over a host of issues, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese plans for Taiwan, economic sanctions and trade tariffs. In 2022, Russia vetoed two Security Councils that condemned its behavior in Ukraine.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield said the US draft would have placed the weight of the Security Council behind diplomatic efforts “to secure an immediate and lasting ceasefire as part of an agreement leading to the release of all hostages” and “enabling much more humanitarian assistance.” to enter Gaza.”

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, had denounced the US-backed measure before the vote, calling it a “hypocritical initiative” and “a watered-down formulation” regarding a ceasefire.

“To save the lives of peaceful Palestinians, this is not enough,” he said. The draft, he claimed, was written with US political interests in mind, to “play to voters and encourage them.”

He urged Council members to vote against the resolution, saying: “We cannot allow the Security Council to become an instrument to further Washington’s destructive policies in the Middle East.”

The United States had vetoed three previous resolutions demanding a halt to fighting in Gaza, arguing that the measures could disrupt hostage negotiations and undermine Israel’s right to defend itself after the 7 Hamas-led attack to defend October vigorously. Voting in the Council, the United States was the only one to vote against the resolutions. Russia and Britain abstained in the first vote in October, and Britain abstained in December and February.

But as the death toll in Gaza has risen and hunger and disease have worsened across the territory, President Biden and other US officials have become increasingly critical of Mr Netanyahu and his handling of the war, calling on him to provide more aid the Gaza Strip. Gaza and to do more to protect civilians.

After meeting on Friday with Mr. Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet, Mr. Blinken said at a news conference that an immediate ceasefire would allow the release of hostages and “ramp up” humanitarian aid to alleviate acute suffering to relieve the population. territory has 2.2 million citizens.

Mr Blinken, concluding his sixth trip to the Middle East since the start of the war, warned that a major military ground operation in Rafah was not the way to guarantee Israel’s long-term security.

“It risks further isolating Israel around the world and endangering its long-term security and status,” he said, adding that US officials looked forward to meeting with Israeli officials in Washington next week “to discuss about another way to achieve those objectives. .”

Mr Netanyahu said in his statement that Israel recognized the need to protect civilians and ensure humanitarian aid to Gaza, but was determined to go ahead with the planned invasion.

Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival, appeared to endorse this view, saying in a statement that Israel “must dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure, including in Rafah.” Mr. Gantz, an opposition leader who crossed parliamentary lines to join the war cabinet, thanked Mr. Blinken “for his support for Israel and the deep American commitment to its security.”

U.S. officials said they believed no operation in Rafah by the Israeli military was imminent, giving the United States time to either reach a hostage deal that would broker a temporary ceasefire or propose other options to the Israelis at meetings next week. .

Israel is not yet prepared to push its forces into Rafah, which will be a difficult ground operation to carry out, they said.

As the Secretary of State made the final stop of a multi-part tour of the Middle East, William J. Burns, the director of the CIA, traveled to Qatar to participate in talks aimed at reaching an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would mark the beginning of a time-limited ceasefire. fire and an exchange of Palestinians captured by Israel for Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Speaking to reporters in Cairo on Thursday, Mr Blinken said the gap between Hamas and Israel’s negotiating positions was “narrowing” but that striking a deal would be difficult.

Julian E Barnes reporting contributed.

When it comes to the artificial intelligence that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, China lags behind the United States. But when it comes to producing the scientists behind a new generation of humanoid technologies, China is leading the way.

New research shows that China has in some ways eclipsed the United States as the largest producer of AI talent, with the country producing nearly half of the world’s top AI researchers. In contrast, about 18 percent come from American undergraduate institutions, according to the studyfrom MacroPolo, a think tank led by the Paulson Institute, which promotes constructive ties between the United States and China.

The findings show a jump for China, which three years earlier produced about a third of the world’s top talent. The United States, on the other hand, remained largely the same. The research draws on the backgrounds of researchers whose papers were published at the 2022 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS, as it is known, focuses on advances in neural networks, which are driving recent developments in the field of generative AI have anchored

The talent imbalance has been growing for more than a decade. For much of the 2010s, the United States benefited as large numbers of top Chinese executives moved to American universities to pursue doctorates. A majority of them remained in the United States. But the research shows that the trend is also starting to reverse: a growing number of Chinese researchers are staying in China.

What happens in the coming years could be crucial as China and the United States battle for primacy in AI – a technology that can potentially boost productivity, strengthen industries and spur innovation – giving researchers a of the world’s geopolitically important groups. .

Generative AI has taken over the technology industries in Silicon Valley and China, creating a financing and investment frenzy. The boom was led by US tech giants like Google and start-ups like OpenAI. That could attract Chinese researchers, although rising tensions between Beijing and Washington could also deter some, experts say.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)

China has nurtured so much AI talent, in part because it has invested heavily in AI education. Since 2018, the country has added more than 2,000 undergraduate AI programs, including more than 300 at the most elite universities, said Damien Ma, MacroPolo’s managing director, although he noted that the programs were not heavily focused on the technology that led to breakthroughs. by chatbots such as ChatGPT.

“A lot of the programs are about AI applications in industry and manufacturing, not so much about the generative AI stuff that is currently coming to dominate the U.S. AI industry,” he said.

While the United States has pioneered AI breakthroughs, most recently with the uncannily human-like capabilities of chatbots, a significant portion of that work has been done by Chinese-trained researchers.

Researchers originally from China now make up 38 percent of the top AI researchers working in the United States, while Americans make up 37 percent, the study shows. Three years earlier, top Chinese talent made up 27 percent of the top talent working in the United States, compared to 31 percent from the United States.

“The data shows how crucial Chinese-born researchers are to the United States in terms of AI competitiveness,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Chinese AI.

He added that the data appeared to show that the United States is still attractive. “We are the global leader in AI as we continue to attract and retain talent from around the world, but especially from China,” he said.

Pieter Abbeel, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of Covariant, an AI and robotics start-up, said that working with large numbers of Chinese researchers within leading US companies and universities was taken for granted.

“It’s just a natural course of events,” he said.

In the past, U.S. defense officials were not as concerned about flows of AI talent from China, partly because many of the largest AI projects did not deal with classified data and partly because they reasoned that it was better to have the best minds. The fact that so much of the leading research in AI is openly published has also held back concerns.

Despite bans introduced by the Trump administration banning entry into the United States of students from a number of military-linked universities in China and a relative slowdown in the flow of Chinese students entering the country during Covid-19, the study showed large numbers of the most promising AI. spirits continued to come to the United States to study.

But this month, a Chinese national who was an engineer at Google was accused of trying to transfer AI technology — including critical microchip architecture — to a Beijing-based company that secretly paid him, according to a federal indictment.

The significant numbers of Chinese AI researchers working in the United States now pose a conundrum for policymakers who want to counter Chinese espionage without discouraging the continued flow of top Chinese computer engineers to the United States, according to experts focused on American competitiveness.

“Chinese scientists are almost at the forefront of AI,” said Subbarao Kambhampati, professor and researcher of AI at Arizona State University. If policymakers try to bar Chinese nationals from research in the United States, he said, they are “shooting themselves in the foot.”

The track record of US policymakers is mixed. A Trump administration policy aimed at curbing Chinese industrial espionage and intellectual property theft has since been criticized for wrongfully prosecuting a number of professors. Such programs, Chinese immigrants said, have encouraged some to stay in China.

The survey shows that most Chinese who completed their PhDs in the United States will stay in the country for the time being, making the country the global center of the AI ​​world. Still, the U.S. lead is starting to decline, home to about 42 percent of the world’s top talent, down from about 59 percent three years ago, the study found.

When it comes to the artificial intelligence that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, China lags behind the United States. But when it comes to producing the scientists behind a new generation of humanoid technologies, China is leading the way.

New research shows that China has in some ways eclipsed the United States as the largest producer of AI talent, with the country producing nearly half of the world’s top AI researchers. In contrast, about 18 percent come from American undergraduate institutions, according to the studyfrom MacroPolo, a think tank led by the Paulson Institute, which promotes constructive ties between the United States and China.

The findings show a jump for China, which three years earlier produced about a third of the world’s top talent. The United States, on the other hand, remained largely the same. The research draws on the backgrounds of researchers whose papers were published at the 2022 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS, as it is known, focuses on advances in neural networks, which are driving recent developments in the field of generative AI have anchored

The talent imbalance has been growing for more than a decade. For much of the 2010s, the United States benefited as large numbers of top Chinese executives moved to American universities to pursue doctorates. A majority of them remained in the United States. But the research shows that the trend is also starting to reverse: a growing number of Chinese researchers are staying in China.

What happens in the coming years could be crucial as China and the United States battle for primacy in AI – a technology that can potentially boost productivity, strengthen industries and spur innovation – giving researchers a of the world’s geopolitically important groups. .

Generative AI has taken over the technology industries in Silicon Valley and China, creating a financing and investment frenzy. The boom was led by US tech giants like Google and start-ups like OpenAI. That could attract Chinese researchers, although rising tensions between Beijing and Washington could also deter some, experts say.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)

China has nurtured so much AI talent, in part because it has invested heavily in AI education. Since 2018, the country has added more than 2,000 undergraduate AI programs, including more than 300 at the most elite universities, said Damien Ma, MacroPolo’s managing director, although he noted that the programs were not heavily focused on the technology that led to breakthroughs. by chatbots such as ChatGPT.

“A lot of the programs are about AI applications in industry and manufacturing, not so much about the generative AI stuff that is currently coming to dominate the U.S. AI industry,” he said.

While the United States has pioneered AI breakthroughs, most recently with the uncannily human-like capabilities of chatbots, a significant portion of that work has been done by Chinese-trained researchers.

Researchers originally from China now make up 38 percent of the top AI researchers working in the United States, while Americans make up 37 percent, the study shows. Three years earlier, top Chinese talent made up 27 percent of the top talent working in the United States, compared to 31 percent from the United States.

“The data shows how crucial Chinese-born researchers are to the United States in terms of AI competitiveness,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Chinese AI.

He added that the data appeared to show that the United States is still attractive. “We are the global leader in AI as we continue to attract and retain talent from around the world, but especially from China,” he said.

Pieter Abbeel, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of Covariant, an AI and robotics start-up, said that working with large numbers of Chinese researchers within leading US companies and universities was taken for granted.

“It’s just a natural course of events,” he said.

In the past, U.S. defense officials were not as concerned about flows of AI talent from China, partly because many of the largest AI projects did not deal with classified data and partly because they reasoned that it was better to have the best minds. The fact that so much of the leading research in AI is openly published has also held back concerns.

Despite bans introduced by the Trump administration banning entry into the United States of students from a number of military-linked universities in China and a relative slowdown in the flow of Chinese students entering the country during Covid-19, the study showed large numbers of the most promising AI. spirits continued to come to the United States to study.

But this month, a Chinese national who was an engineer at Google was accused of trying to transfer AI technology — including critical microchip architecture — to a Beijing-based company that secretly paid him, according to a federal indictment.

The significant numbers of Chinese AI researchers working in the United States now pose a conundrum for policymakers who want to counter Chinese espionage without discouraging the continued flow of top Chinese computer engineers to the United States, according to experts focused on American competitiveness.

“Chinese scientists are almost at the forefront of AI,” said Subbarao Kambhampati, professor and researcher of AI at Arizona State University. If policymakers try to bar Chinese nationals from research in the United States, he said, they are “shooting themselves in the foot.”

The track record of US policymakers is mixed. A Trump administration policy aimed at curbing Chinese industrial espionage and intellectual property theft has since been criticized for wrongfully prosecuting a number of professors. Such programs, Chinese immigrants said, have encouraged some to stay in China.

The survey shows that most Chinese who completed their PhDs in the United States will stay in the country for the time being, making the country the global center of the AI ​​world. Still, the U.S. lead is starting to decline, home to about 42 percent of the world’s top talent, down from about 59 percent three years ago, the study found.

Ultimately, it was a discarded piece of gum, casually spit on the ground in 2021, that held the key to solving the cold-case murder of a college student that had baffled authorities in Oregon for more than four decades.

Robert Arthur Plympton had been under police surveillance since authorities determined that year that he had “likely contributed” to a DNA profile developed from swabs taken from the body of Barbara Mae Tucker, who was 19 when she was killed on the Mount Hood Community. University campus in 1980.

On Friday, Mr. Plympton, 60, was found guilty of Ms. Tucker’s murder after a three-week trial in Portland, Oregon. According to The Oregonian, that reported on the research And Mr. Plympton’s convictionIt was the oldest cold case murder in Gresham, Oregon, east of Portland.

On the night of January 15, 1980, Ms. Tucker was expected in a class at college where she was studying business administration. She never arrived.

Students heading to class the next morning found her “partially clothed” body on a brush-covered slope near a campus parking lot, The Oregonian reported at the time. There were signs that Ms. Tucker had been sexually assaulted and that she had struggled with her attacker.

For decades, authorities were unable to identify a suspect or make an arrest.

The first step toward a break in the case came in 2000, when vaginal swabs taken during Ms. Tucker’s autopsy were sent to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab for analysis. Laboratory technicians were then able to develop a DNA profile from the smears.

In 2021, Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia company whose services include DNA-based forensics, identified Mr. Plympton as “a likely contributor to the unknown DNA profile developed in 2000,” according to the Multnomah County Prosecutor’s Office. said in a statement. It was not clear how the DNA connection was made; The Public Prosecution Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Detectives from the Gresham Police Department discovered that Mr. Plympton lived in Troutdale, Ore., east of Portland and northeast of Gresham, and began surreptitiously monitoring him, prosecutors said.

When investigators saw Mr. Plympton spit a stick of gum onto the ground, they collected it and sent it to a state police crime lab, prosecutors said.

“The laboratory determined that the DNA profile developed from the chewing gum matched the DNA profile developed from Ms. Tucker’s vaginal swabs,” the district attorney’s office said.

Mr. Plympton was arrested on June 8, 2021, as he drove away from the Troutdale home he shared with his wife and son, The Oregonian reported.

He had a criminal record, including a conviction for second-degree kidnapping in Multnomah County in 1985, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Mr Plympton was 16 when Ms Tucker was murdered. Witnesses reported seeing her with a man the night she was killed, and several people reported seeing her running into the street clutching her arms, perhaps in an attempt to ask someone for help, The Oregonian reported.

Kirsten Snowden, Multnomah County’s chief deputy prosecutor, said during the trial that there was no evidence that Ms. Tucker and Mr. Plympton knew each other, according to The Oregonian.

Mr. Plympton’s attorney, Stephen Houze, said during the trial that there was “undeniable, unavoidable reasonable doubt” about who killed Ms. Tucker, according to The Oregonian. He said witnesses had described the man seen with Ms Tucker – who was almost six feet tall – as being about her height or taller, but Mr Plympton was closer to six feet tall. He also said investigators never tested Ms. Tucker’s clothing for DNA evidence.

“We will appeal and we are confident that his convictions will be overturned,” Mr. Houze and his law partner Jacob Houze said in a statement on Tuesday.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Amy Baggio found Mr. Plympton guilty of one count of first-degree murder and four counts of “various theories of second-degree murder,” the district attorney’s office said.

“To be clear, this court has no doubt whatsoever that Robert Plympton struck Barbara Tucker in the head and face until she died,” she said during the trial. “He did.”

Judge Baggio found Mr. Plympton not guilty of assault and said prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he assaulted Ms. Tucker while she was alive, The Oregonian reported.

Mr Plympton is expected to be sentenced on June 21. Based on his age at the time of Mrs. Tucker’s death: he faces a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years for first-degree murder.

According to The Oregonian, two members of Ms. Tucker’s family cried and hugged after the verdict was announced. Ms. Tucker’s older sister, Alice Juan, said in a statement Tuesday that her family was “thrilled that this had finally been resolved.”

“I thought it might not be that way as the years went by, but Barbie was a special little girl,” she said. Her little sister, she added, “was smart, cheerful, caring, all those things.”

Kitty Bennett research contributed.

A revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as a former movie idol who descends into madness, received the most nominations on Tuesday for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.

The show ran and will continue to run at the Savoy Theater in London transfer to Broadway this yearis in the running for eleven awards – two more than any other play or musical – including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Jamie Lloyd.

When the production premiered last fall, it impressed London’s often demanding theater critics. Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said that the production, like its main character, was “a bit crazy: reckless and daring, stretching the source material to its limits and beyond.”

“I can’t imagine any other show in London generating similar buzz this season,” Wolf added.

Lloyd’s maverick production features handheld cameras used to spotlight characters’ emotions at crucial moments. Although critics appreciated the technique, Lloyd faces stiff competition in the best director category.

The other nominees include Sam Mendes for “The Motive and the Cue,” which debuted at the National Theater last spring. Jack Thorne’s play dramatizes a fraught backstage relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud as they rehearse a Broadway production.

Rupert Goold is also nominated for best director for ‘Dear England’, a play about the English national football team that also played at the National Theater and transferred to the West End. That show earned nine nominations.

Despite mixed reviews, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a theatrical prequel to the Netflix show playing at the Phoenix Theater, received five nominations, including best new entertainment or comedy. Houman Barekat, reviewing the production in The New York Times, said it was “exactly what you’d expect from a show co-produced by Netflix: cheap thrills, expensively made.”

This year’s nominations have a touch of TV glamor in many categories. Among the nominees for best actress in a play are Sarah Jessica Parker for “Plaza Suite,” which runs through April 13 at the Savoy Theater, and Sarah Snook (of “Succession”) for a one-woman film “ The Picture Of Dorian Gray ” at the Theater Royal Haymarket, until May 11.

They will compete for that title against Laura Donnelly for “The Hills Of California” at the Harold Pinter Theater, Sheridan Smith for “Shirley Valentine” at the Duke Of York’s Theater, and Sophie Okonedo for “Medea” at @sohoplace.

Best Actor nominees include Andrew Scott for one-man film “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and James Norton for his performance in “A Little Life” at the Harold Pinter Theater. The other nominees are Joseph Fiennes for ‘Dear England’, Mark Gatiss for ‘The Motive And The Cue’ and David Tennant for ‘Macbeth’ at the Donmar Warehouse.

The winners of this year’s awards are expected to be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 14.