Elections

Mr. Musk’s move to open up the code behind Grok is the latest volley in a war to win the A.I. battle, after a suit against OpenAI on the same topic.Elon Musk released the raw computer code behind his version of an artificial intelligence chatbot on Sunday, an escalation by one of the world’s richest men in a battle to control the future of A.I.Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company Mr. Musk founded last year. While xAI is an independent entity from X, its technology has been integrated into the social media platform and is trained on users’ posts. Users who subscribe to X’s premium features can ask Grok questions and receive responses.By opening the code up for everyone to view and use — known as open sourcing — Mr. Musk waded further into a heated debate in the A.I. world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse.Mr. Musk, a self-proclaimed proponent of open sourcing, did the same with X’s recommendation algorithm last year, but he has not updated it since.“Still work to do, but this platform is already by far the most transparent & truth-seeking (not a high bar tbh),” Mr. Musk posted on Sunday in response to a comment on open sourcing X’s recommendation algorithm. The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Mr. Musk and ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire sued recently over breaking its promise to do the same. Mr. Musk, who was a founder and helped fund OpenAI before departing several years later, has argued such an important technology should not be controlled solely by tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which is a close partner of OpenAI.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

President Vladimir V. Putin described the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny as an “unfortunate incident” and claimed he had been ready to release him in exchange for Russian prisoners held in the West.Mr. Putin, in a news conference after Russia’s presidential election, said that “some people” had told him before Mr. Navalny’s death “that there was an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people held in correctional facilities in Western countries.”“I said, ‘I agree,’” Mr. Putin said. “Just with one condition: ‘We’ll trade him but make sure that he doesn’t come back, let him stay over there.’”He added: “But this happens. That’s life.”The comments, in response to a question from NBC News, were Mr. Putin’s first about Mr. Navalny’s death at a penal colony in the Arctic— and a rare moment, if not the first, when the Russian president uttered Mr. Navalny’s name in public.Aides to Mr. Navalny asserted after his death that he had been on the verge of being freed in a prisoner exchange. A Western official told The New York Times at the time that “early discussions” on the possibility of such a swap had been underway when Russian authorities reported Mr. Navalny dead on Feb. 16.The Western official said that the discussions had involved swapping Mr. Navalny along with two Americans imprisoned in Russia — Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive and former Marine — in exchange for Vadim Krasikov. Currently imprisoned in Germany, Mr. Krasikov was convicted of killing a former Chechen separatist fighter in Berlin in 2019.“This is a sad event,” Mr. Putin said about Mr. Navalny’s death. “But we’ve had other cases when people have passed away in correctional facilities. And what, hasn’t this happened in the United States, too?”While Mr. Navalny was alive, Mr. Putin’s distaste for him was such that he never said his name in public, according to the Kremlin’s archive of Mr. Putin’s interviews and speeches.Mr. Navalny nearly died in 2020 after being poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent while on a trip to Siberia. Western officials described the poisoning as an assassination attempt by the Russian state. More

Trent H. Evans sends out a few letters.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Most crosswords that appear in The New York Times are themed grids, with the exception of Fridays and Saturdays. These themes come in all shapes and sizes. They may make use of puns or anagrams — or, in the occasional devilish Thursday puzzle, require the solver to enter more than one letter per square. In each case, cracking the code is up to the solver.In today’s crossword, Trent H. Evans gives us the runaround, using a distinctive theme style. The pattern is subtle, and takes no great pains to identify. Sam Ezersky, a puzzle editor for The New York Times, described it as “simple, but also executed very elegantly.”The theme’s simplicity is, notably, what makes this a perfect Monday puzzle. Mr. Ezersky encouraged those who are anxious about crosswords, themed or otherwise, to give this one a shot: “This puzzle is just the sort of puzzle I want to point to future solvers and say, ‘See, you can do this!’”Today’s ThemeMr. Evans’s themed entries struck me as having a certain cinematic quality: They seemed to be zooming out with each passing row.We begin in a close-up, with 17A: “In Europe, it’s known as a ‘twin town.’” That’s a SISTER CITY. Our frame widens with the “Hotly contested area in a U.S. election” (29A), better known as a PURPLE STATE. “France, for the 2024 Olympics” (45A) takes us wider with HOST COUNTRY, and we end on an aerial view with “Extraterrestrial’s home, to us” (60A), an ALIEN WORLD. Credits roll.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a review of the way New York State licenses cannabis businesses after calling the sluggish rollout of legal cannabis a “disaster.”Gov. Kathy Hochul has told New York officials to come up with a fix for the way the state licenses cannabis businesses amid widespread frustration over the plodding pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout and the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries.The governor has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the state’s licensing bureaucracy, to begin Monday — weeks after she declared the rollout “a disaster” and called off a Cannabis Control Board meeting when she learned the body was prepared to hand out only a few licenses.The main goal of the review, to be conducted by Jeanette Moy, the commissioner of the Office of General Services, is to shorten the time it takes to process applications and get businesses open, officials said.The state Office of Cannabis Management, which recommends applicants to the board for final approval, received 7,000 applications for licenses last fall from businesses seeking to open dispensaries, grow cannabis and manufacture products. But regulators have awarded just 109 so far this year. The agency has just 32 people assigned to evaluate the applications.Ms. Moy has “a proven track record of improving government operations,” the governor said in a statement, and will provide a playbook to turn around the cannabis management office “and jump-start the next phase of New York’s legal cannabis market.”In an interview, Ms. Moy said her goal was to work with the cannabis management office “to identify ways in which we can support them as they look to streamline and move forward some of the backlogs and challenges that may be faced in this industry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

More from our inbox:Becoming a Republican to Vote Against TrumpCountering Propaganda From the Fossil Fuel Industry Wayne Miller/MagnumTo the Editor:Re “We’re Not Battling the School Issues That Matter,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, March 7):I completely agree with Mr. Kristof’s column. The situation is serious, not only for education but also for our embattled democracy.I would like to add some nuance. I have been working on a state-by-state analysis of the possible influence of racism, specifically anti-Black racism, on educational achievement.What I have found so far indicates that some children are taught quite well: those in private schools, of course; Asian American children (particularly those whose families are from India); white children of families prosperous enough to be ineligible for the National School Lunch Program; children of college-educated parents; and Hispanic children who are not English-language learners.Some students are in groups that are not likely to be taught to read effectively: Native Americans, children who are poor enough to be eligible for the National School Lunch Program and Black children.None of this will be news to Mr. Kristof. What is surprising to me is the sheer extent and arbitrary nature of the failure by school authorities. Almost everywhere that urban schools, in particular, are failing, socioeconomically similar children are being taught much more effectively in the nearest suburban districts.Part of the reason is money: Per-student expenditure is associated with educational achievement.But part of the problem — most of it — is a matter of administrative decisions: placing the best teachers in schools with the “best” students; equipping schools, in effect, in accordance with parental income; offering more gifted and talented classes to white students — all the perhaps unconscious manifestations of everyday racism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Many appeared to be heeding a call by the opposition to express frustration by showing up en masse at midday. “We don’t have any other options,” said one woman.Long lines of voters formed outside polling stations in major Russian cities during the presidential election on Sunday, in what opposition figures portrayed as a striking protest against a rubber-stamp process that is certain to keep Vladimir V. Putin in power.Before he died last month, the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had called on supporters to go to polling stations at midday on Sunday, the last day of the three-day vote, to express dissatisfaction with Mr. Putin, who is set to win his fifth presidential term in a vote that lacks real competition.Mr. Navalny’s team, which is continuing his work, and other opposition movements reiterated calls for the protest in the weeks leading up to the vote. Simply appearing at the polling station, for an initiative known as Noon Against Putin, they said, was the only safe way to express discontent in a country that has drastically escalated repression since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.The opposition leaders said showing solidarity with like-minded citizens by mere presence was more important than what the voters chose to do with their ballots, because the election lacked real choice.“This is our protest — we don’t have any other options,” said Lena, 61, who came to a polling station in central Moscow before noon with the intention of spoiling her ballot. “All of us decent people are hostages here.” Like other voters interviewed, she declined to provide her last name, for fear of reprisal.Alissa, 25, said she came because she is against the war. “It is so important to see people who think like you, who don’t agree with what is happening,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Many hospitals in Haiti’s capital have been looted by gangs or abandoned by their staffs amid the violence. Some are open, but too dangerous for people in need of care to reach.Taïna Cenatus, a 29-year-old culinary student in Haiti, lost her balance at school one day this month and toppled over, but it was not until she hit the ground that she realized she had been hit in the face by a stray bullet.It left a small hole in her cheek, just missing her jawbone and teeth.Unlike many Haitians wounded by gunfire in the middle of a vicious gang takeover of the capital, Port-au-Prince, Ms. Cenatus was actually lucky that day — she made it to a clinic. But she is still in pain, her wound swelling, and she cannot get any relief, with more and more hospitals and clinics abandoned by staff or looted by gangs.“My teeth hurt,” she said. “I can feel something is wrong.”A gang assault on Haiti’s capital has left an already weak health care system in tatters.More than half of the medical facilities in Port-au-Prince and a large rural region called Artibonite are closed or not operating at full capacity, experts said, because they are too dangerous to reach or their medicine and other supplies have been stolen.In a country where the United Nations estimates that up to one million people are facing the threat of famine, the unraveling of the medical infrastructure threatens to put thousands more lives at risk.Even in periods of less upheaval, the public health system was already in shambles, but now hospitals run by humanitarian groups and churches that many Haitians depend on are closing one by one.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

When the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last Wednesday to pass a bill that would require TikTok to divest its Chinese ownership or face an American ban, it provided a glimmer of hope in a dreary political time. This is exactly what a nation should do when it’s getting serious about the national security threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.It makes no strategic sense for America to permit one of its chief foreign adversaries to exercise control over an app that both vacuums up the personal information of its more than 150 million American users and gives that adversary the opportunity to shape and mold the information those users receive.Indeed, in one of the more astonishing public relations blunders in modern memory, TikTok made its critics’ case for them when it urged users to contact Congress to save the app. The resulting flood of angry calls demonstrated exactly how TikTok can trigger a public response and gave the lie to the idea that the app did not have clear (and essentially instantaneous) political influence.Moreover, the vote demonstrated that it’s still possible to forge something approaching a foreign policy consensus on at least some issues. When a threat becomes big enough — and obvious enough — the American government can still act.Or can it? The bill is now slowing down in the Senate, and there is real doubt whether it will pass. The app, after all, is phenomenally popular, and Congress is not often in the business of restricting popular things.But there’s another reason to question the bill’s prospects. And it not only threatens this particular piece of legislation, but also is yet another indication of the high stakes of the 2024 election: Donald Trump has abruptly flip-flopped from supporting the TikTok ban to opposing it — and that flip-flop is more important than most people realize.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More