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For nearly 14 years, an online message board called Memegen has served as a virtual water cooler for Google employees.Memegen was a place where employees could offer blunt criticism of their bosses, share dark humor about job cuts or joke about receiving notes from their parents to excuse them from returning to the office after the pandemic.But Google executives, after watching employees criticize the war in Gaza in recent months, are making big changes to lower the temperature on their company's beloved forum, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.One of the most significant changes to Memegen will be the removal of the virtual thumbs down. The most liked memes rise to the top of Memegen based on these votes. The unpopular ones quickly disappear from sight. Another ...

Germany began defending itself at the International Court of Justice on Tuesday against charges that it is aiding genocide in Gaza by supplying weapons to Israel.Nicaragua took the case against Germany to the tribunal in The Hague. In hearings that opened Monday, Nicaragua argued that Germany is facilitating the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by providing Israel with military and financial aid, and called for emergency measures ordering the German government to stop its support for Israel in time of war.Berlin denied violating the Genocide Convention or international humanitarian law and sent a delegation of international lawyers, including some from Britain and Italy, to the UN tribunal.Germany is Israel's second-largest arms supplier after the United States and a nation whose...

They are found in makeup, dental floss, and menstrual products. They're in nonstick pans and takeout food wrappers. The same goes for rain jackets and firefighting equipment, as well as pesticides and artificial turf on sports fields.They are PFAS: a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are also called "forever chemicals" because the bonds in their chemical compounds are so strong that they do not break for hundreds or thousands of years, if at all.They are also in our water.A new study of more than 45,000 water samples worldwide found that about 31% of groundwater samples analyzed that were not near any obvious source of contamination had levels of PFAS considered harmful to human health by Environmental Protection Agency. About 16% of the su...

Two and a half years ago, bankers and investors attended the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, an annual event normally dominated by activists and politicians. It was considered a milestone as the financial sector agreed to commit to the fight against climate change.Hundreds of banks, insurers and asset managers have pledged to invest $130 trillion of capital to reduce carbon emissions and finance the energy transition by introducing the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. But a recent study, published by the European Central Bank, has cast doubt on the effectiveness of such promises.“Our findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of voluntary climate commitments to reduce financed emissions, whether through divestment or commitment,” wrote economists from the central bank, th...

Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker's driver-assist software for the 2018 death of a California man, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company's technology several months before it planned to unveil a self-driving taxi.The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer known as Walter, was expected to begin Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most high-profile ones involving Tesla's Autopilot software, attracting considerable public attention and spurring an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.The terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang's children and other members of his family were not disclosed, and Tesla filed court documents seeking to prevent them from bei...

For Nicaragua's representative to the International Court of Justice, this week's hearing before the World Court was a case of déjà vu.But experts in the Central American nation saw it as a cynical move by a totalitarian government to boost its profile and distract attention from its own worsening repression.Weeks after being sharply criticized by a United Nations investigative team for human rights abuses, Nicaragua, a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, on Monday took Germany to the international tribunal in The Hague for supplying weapons to Israel.After accusing Germany of ignoring what it calls clear signs of genocide, Nicaragua asked the court to order Germany to stop selling weapons to Israel.Carlos J. Argüello Gómez, Nicaragua's agent before the 15-judge United...

Over the past decade, RIP Medical Debt has grown from a small nonprofit group that received less than $3,000 in donations to a multimillion-dollar force in healthcare philanthropy.He did so with a unique and simple strategy to address the enormous sums Americans owe hospitals: purchasing old bills that would otherwise be sold to collection agencies and writing off the debt.Since 2014, RIP Medical Debt estimates it has eliminated more than $11 billion in debt with the help of major donations from philanthropists and even city governments. In January, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced plans to donate $18 million to the organization.But a study released Monday by a group of economists calls into question the assumptions of this high-profile charity. After tracking 213,000 people in debt a...

Israel's account of the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy raises important legal questions, even if the attack was the result of a series of mistakes, experts say.The Israeli army announced on Friday that its preliminary investigation had revealed a series of errors that led to the deaths of seven aid workers. He took responsibility for the failure, saying there was “no excuse” and citing “misidentification, errors in decision making and an attack against standard operating procedures.”But the description of events that emerged raises broader questions about the military's ability to identify civilians and its procedures for protecting them, legal experts told the New York Times — including new concerns about whether Israel complied with international law in its conduct o...

Online data has long been a valuable commodity. For years, Meta and Google have used data to target their online advertising. Netflix and Spotify have used it to recommend more movies and music. Political candidates have turned to data to understand which groups of voters to target.Over the last 18 months it has become increasingly clear that digital data is also crucial for the development of artificial intelligence. Here's what to know.The more data, the better.The success of AI depends on data. This is because AI models become more accurate and more human-like with more data.In the same way that a student learns by reading more books, essays, and other information, large language models – the systems that underpin chatbots – also become more accurate and more powerful if they a...

Nicaragua, a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, is expanding its legal battle over the Gaza conflict at the International Court of Justice by bringing a case against Germany, a major arms supplier to Israel.Nicaragua claims in its statement that “Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide” in Gaza and is violating the Genocide Convention by providing Israel with military and financial aid. He calls for emergency measures ordering Berlin to suspend its wartime support for Israel.In hearings opening on Monday at the Hague court, Nicaragua is also expected to argue that Germany allows serious violations of the Geneva Conventions by Israel, in particular the obligation to protect civilians during armed conflicts.The case brought by Nicaragua raises new questions about the re...