Elections

The endangered sei whale, usually found in deep waters, was discovered on the bow of a cruise ship as it arrived at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, marine authorities said.As the cruise ship approached New York on Saturday, it was found to be carrying a grim, and unexpected, catch: The corpse of a 44-foot-long endangered whale, draped across its bow.The whale, which marine authorities described as a sei whale, is known for its rapid swimming and preference for deep waters, far from the coast. Its body was discovered as the ship neared the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, and the authorities were “immediately notified,” said MSC Cruises, which owns the ship.A spokeswoman for the company said in an email that it had “comprehensive measures” in place to avoid such collisions, including training deck officers and altering itineraries in certain areas to avoid them. “We will continue to evaluate and update our procedures with our partners and the authorities,” she said.Marine authorities said that they had towed the animal, estimated to weigh some 50,000 pounds, from the bow, and transferred it by boat to a beach in Sandy Hook, N.J., where they conducted a necropsy on Tuesday.The investigation is continuing, but preliminary results — broken bones in the whale’s right flipper; tissue trauma along its right shoulder blade; a full stomach and decent layer of blubber — all pointed toward the animal having been in otherwise good health when it was likely struck and killed by the ship, said Robert A. DiGiovanni, the chief scientist of the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, which is leading the investigation.The whale was already “pretty decomposed” by the time scientists began the necropsy, he added, so they worked quickly to collect samples that could be tested for contaminants and other biotoxins that would indicate any other relevant health issues. “It looks like the animal was alive and it was hit by a vessel,” he said, noting that investigators had not ruled out other factors.Mr. Giovanni said that his conservation group, which is federally authorized to respond to marine mammal strandings in New York, had dealt with around 100 whales over the past several years, many of which had been entangled in nets or struck by vessels. Most of those whales were humpback and North Atlantic right whales, he added, noting that it was more uncommon to come across a sei whale.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

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More than 40 people were arrested Monday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the police department at the University of California, Los Angeles.Police officials at the University of California, Los Angeles, said on Wednesday that the dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested in a parking garage on campus earlier this week had tools and other items that were intended to help occupy a campus building.Members of the group had several metal pipes, a pair of bolt cutters, super glue, padlocks and a long chain, according to a statement from the U.C.L.A. Police Department. They also had literature that included “The Do-It-Yourself Occupation Guide” and the “De-Arrest Primer.”Police officers initially arrested 44 people and charged most of them with conspiracy to commit a crime, according to the statement. Two local journalists were among those detained, but they were released without charges after being taken to a Los Angeles Police Department jail. The police said they did not have press credentials. A third person was also released without charges.Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a freelance journalist who has been covering the U.C.L.A. protests, was one of the two journalists arrested. He said he stumbled across the students in the parking lot after they were detained and began filming. His arrest “came out of nowhere,” he said.“The idea that someone who quite clearly was just there to film, being guilty of a conspiracy, is absolutely cuckoo bananas,” he added.Of those arrested, 35 were U.C.L.A. students, the police said. Four of the people arrested on Monday had also been arrested on May 2 when the police shut down a pro-Palestinian encampment at the campus. The 41 who face charges were released after being booked and cited, the police 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

An ad meant to show how the updated device can do many things has become a metaphor for a community’s fears of the technology industry.The trumpet is the first thing to be squished. Then the industrial compressor flattens a row of paint cans, buckles a piano and levels what appears to be a marble bust. In a final act of destruction, it pops the eyes out of a ball-shaped yellow emoji.When the compressor rises, it reveals Apple’s latest commodity: the updated iPad Pro.Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, posted the advertisement, called “Crush,” on Tuesday after the company held an event to announce new tablets. “Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created,” Mr. Cook wrote, adding, “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.”Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create. pic.twitter.com/6PeGXNoKgG— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 7, 2024

For decades, Apple has been the toast of the creative class. It has won over designers, musicians and film editors with promises that its products would help them “Think Different.”But some creators took a different message from the one-minute iPad ad. Rather than seeing a device that could help them create, as Mr. Cook suggested, they saw a metaphor for how Big Tech has cashed in on their work by crushing or co-opting the artistic tools that humanity has used for centuries.The image was especially unnerving at a time when artists fear that generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry and create movies, might take away their jobs.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

The latest installment in an excellent series finds mythology turning into power.For a series with a goofy premise — what if talking apes overthrew humanity — the “Planet of the Apes” universe is uncommonly thoughtful, even insightful. If science fiction situates us in a universe that’s just different enough to slip daring questions past our mental barriers, then the “Apes” movies are among the best examples. That very premise, launched with talking actors in ape costumes in the 1968 film, has given storytellers a lot to chew on, contemplating racism, authoritarianism, police brutality and, in later installments, the upending of human society by a brutal, fast-moving virus. (Oops.)Those later virus-ridden installments, a trilogy released between 2011 and 2017, are among the series’ best, and well worth revisiting. The newest film, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” picks up exactly where that trilogy left off: with the death of Caesar, the ultrasmart chimpanzee who has led the apes away from what’s left of humanity and into a paradise. (The scene was a direct quotation of the story of Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, but dying before he could set foot there.) The apes honor his memory and vow to keep his teachings, especially the first dictum — “ape not kill ape.” Caesar preached a gospel of peacefulness, loyalty, generosity, nonaggression and care for the earth; unlike the humans, they intend to live in harmony.The teachings of peaceful prophets, however, tend to be twisted by power-seekers, and apparently this isn’t just a human problem. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, leaps forward almost immediately by “many generations” (years matter less in this post-human world), and the inevitable has happened. The apes have fractured into tribes, while Caesar has passed from historical figure to mythic one, a figure venerated by some and forgotten by most.That there even was a Caesar is unknown to Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee whose father, Koro (Neil Sandilands) is leader of his clan and an avid breeder of birds. That clan has its own laws, mostly having to do with how to treat birds’ nests, and that’s all that Noa and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham) have known.But then one day tragedy strikes, in the form of an attack on the clan by the soldiers of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the leader of a clan of coastal apes. Noa finds himself alone, searching for his clan, who have been carted away. On his journey Noa meets a human (Freya Allen) who, like the other humans, doesn’t speak.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

The company has racked up bills after long-running legal fights with regulators and cabdrivers.Uber reported earnings on Wednesday that disappointed investors, as mounting legal bills and weaker ride demand in some parts of the world led to a shortfall compared with analysts’ forecasts.Uber recently settled a lawsuit brought by Australian taxi drivers and is facing a new one from cabdrivers in London. Some regulators have also challenged the way it classifies workers, which shields it from providing drivers with some benefits.The company also cited softer-than-expected demand and took a hit because some of its investments had lost value during its latest quarter.Uber’s operating profit in the first quarter was $172 million. That was up from a $262 million operating loss in the same period last year but still less than half of what analysts had expected for that measure. It also recorded a net loss of $654 million for the quarter, worse than the $157 million last year and also far weaker than what analysts had expected.Uber’s shares dipped more than 7 percent in early trading.The ride-hailing app, which was founded in 2009, reported its first full-year profit as a public company last year, but it has sometimes struggled to grow at a pace that satisfies investors. As it moves into other areas, like freight and food deliveries, regulatory challenges have made growth tricky. Its main rival, Lyft, reported higher-than-expected earnings on Tuesday amid stronger demand.Uber’s gross bookings — which is the amount of money Uber collects from a ride, meal delivery or freight shipment — rose 20 percent from a year ago, to $37.7 billion, coming in slightly below analysts’ expectations.Uber is working to grow its restaurant delivery arm, Uber Eats. The company announced on Tuesday that it would partner with Instacart, allowing users of the grocery delivery app to order from restaurants through Uber Eats.Even with that partnership, the company still intends to expand its Uber Eats delivery capacity into grocery stores and retail, Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, said in a statement on Wednesday. By allowing Instacart users to order through Uber Eats, the ride-hailing app can expand its base in key areas like the suburbs, he said, and better compete with rivals like DoorDash. More

The system, AlphaFold3, could accelerate efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation.It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central artificial intelligence lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence technology that helps scientists understand the behavior of the microscopic mechanisms that drive the cells in the human body.An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem.”Proteins are the microscopic molecules that drive the behavior of all living things. These molecules begin as strings of chemical compounds before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define how they interact with other microscopic mechanisms in the body.Biologists spent years or even decades trying to pinpoint the shape of individual proteins. Then AlphaFold came along. When a scientist fed this technology a string of amino acids that make up a protein, it could predict the three-dimensional shape within minutes.When DeepMind publicly released AlphaFold a year later, biologists began using it to accelerate drug discovery. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, used the technology as they worked to understand the coronavirus and prepare for similar pandemics. Others used it as they struggled to find remedies for malaria and Parkinson’s disease.The hope is that this kind of technology will significantly streamline the creation of new drugs and vaccines.A segment of a video from Google DeepMind demonstrating the new AlphaFold3 technology.Video by Google Deepmind“It tells us a lot more about how the machines of the cell interact,” said John Jumper, a Google DeepMind researcher. “It tells us how this should work and what happens when we get sick.”The new version of AlphaFold — AlphaFold3 — extends the technology beyond protein folding. In addition to predicting the shapes of proteins, it can predict the behavior of other microscopic biological mechanisms, including DNA, where the body stores genetic information, and RNA, which transfers information from DNA to proteins.“Biology is a dynamic system. You need to understand the interactions between different molecules and structures,” said Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s chief executive and the founder of Isomorphic Labs, which Google also owns. “This is a step in that direction.”Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s chief executive and the founder of Isomorphic Labs.Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesThe company is offering a website where scientists can use AlphaFold3. Other labs, most notably one at the University of Washington, offer similar technology. In a paper released on Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature, Dr. Jumper and his fellow researchers show that it achieves a level of accuracy well beyond the state of the art.The technology could “save months of experimental work and enable research that was previously impossible,” said Deniz Kavi, a co-founder and the chief executive of Tamarind Bio, a start-up that builds technology for accelerating drug discovery. “This represents tremendous promise.” More

Visiting friendly leaders in Eastern Europe, the Chinese president commemorated the 25th anniversary of a misdirected U.S. airstrike that destroyed China’s embassy in Belgrade.China and Serbia on Wednesday proclaimed an “ironclad friendship” during a visit to Belgrade by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, underlining the close political and economic ties between two countries that share a wariness of the United States.Mr. Xi arrived in Serbia late Tuesday — the 25th anniversary of a mistaken 1999 airstrike involving the U.S. Air Force during the Kosovo war that destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Three Chinese journalists were killed in the strike.“This we should never forget,” Mr. Xi said in a statement published on Tuesday by Politika, a Serbian newspaper, recalling that “25 years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese Embassy.” He said that China’s friendship with Serbia had been “forged with the blood of our compatriots” and “will stay in the shared memory of the Chinese and Serbian peoples.”Mr. Xi appeared briefly on Wednesday morning with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, before a cheering crowd gathered in front of the Palace of Serbia, the former headquarters of the now defunct government of Yugoslavia that now houses Serbian government offices.In contrast to Mr. Xi’s last visit to Eastern and Central Europe in 2016, during which he faced noisy protests in the Czech Republic, he received a uniformly friendly reception in Belgrade, with the authorities mobilizing state workers to cheer him.China is Serbia’s largest foreign investor and increasingly close economic relations have helped expand a relationship forged before the collapse of Yugoslavia, whose capital was Belgrade, in the early 1990s by shared wariness of Western and Soviet power.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