Author: KnowledgeHippo

Not long ago, the few African immigrants in Rouyn-Noranda, a remote town in northern Quebec, all knew each other.There was the Nigerian woman long married to a man from Cebu. The curious researchers from Cameroon or the Ivory Coast. And, of course, the doyen, a Congolese chemist who first made a name for himself driving a Zamboni to hockey games.Today, newcomers from Africa are everywhere — on the streets, in supermarkets, in factories, in hotels, even in the boxing club in the basement of the church.A couple from Benin have taken over Chez Morasse, a city institution that introduced a…

At the Choir School of St. Thomas in Manhattan the other morning, more than a dozen boys, dressed in matching white polo shirts and gray slacks, gathered in a gymnasium to rehearse hymns for Holy Week services, as their predecessors had done for more than a century. .When Jeremy Filsell, the church’s organist and director of music, asked the boys for more precision when they sang the line about “the voice of an angel crying” from Renaissance composer William Mundy’s “Sive Vigilem,” the boys tried again, the their high, clear voices ring out in Latin.”Nice!” he said. “This is!”For 105…

His performance impressed executives at NBC’s parent company, Comcast. In May 2020, Jeff Shell, then chief executive of NBCUniversal, put Mr. Conde in charge of NBC News Group, replacing a veteran journalist, Andrew Lack.Privately, Mr. Shell acknowledged that Mr. Conde had a different background than his predecessor.According to two people familiar with his comments, Mr. Shell said there were three types of leaders who ran news organizations. “Journalists, politicians and businessmen,” Mr. Shell said, the two people recalled. “Cesar is a politician.”Under Mr. Conde’s watch, the news division has expanded its digital efforts, and MSNBC’s and NBC’s flagship television programs…

First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. He then built similar technology that produced full-motion video like something out of a Hollywood movie.Now, he has unveiled technology that can recreate someone’s voice.The high-profile artificial intelligence start-up said on Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, the Voice Engine, that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds…

By the numbers: A rising death rate.The disease is caused by infection with a bacterium called Neisseria meningitidis. Last year, 422 cases of invasive meningococcal disease were reported in the United States, the highest number since 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.However, as of Monday, 143 cases have been reported to the CDC so far this year, 62 more than the number of cases reported last year at the same time.The disease is extremely dangerous. Even with appropriate treatment, 10 to 15 percent of patients who develop meningococcal disease will die. Many recent cases have been…

In February last year, a new Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max was on one of its first flights when an automatic stabilization system appeared to malfunction, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff.Less than two months later, an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane eight hours into the flight was briefly grounded while engineers fixed a problem with a fire detection system. And in November, an engine on a recently delivered United Airlines 737 Max failed at 37,000 feet.Those incidents, which the airlines disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration, were not widely reported. There was no indication…

Airstrikes killed several soldiers near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo early Friday, Syrian state media and an independent group said, in one of the heaviest Israeli attacks in the country in years.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors Syria’s civil war, said the dead included 36 Syrian soldiers, seven Hezbollah fighters and one Syrian from pro-Iranian militias. The group said the attack appeared to have hit several targets, including an arms depot belonging to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran that has a presence in Syria. The airstrikes fueled fears that have unsettled Western…

Sen. Patty Murray was inspired to enter politics when a male state legislator mocked her efforts to fight budget cuts to early education programs, calling her “just a mom in tennis shoes” — a remark she would proudly adopt as her motto election campaign.So it was no surprise that more than 40 years later, Ms. Murray, now the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was able to emerge from the torturous negotiations to fund the federal government with a major victory aimed at children and families. Included in the $1.2 trillion spending law passed by Congress last week was an…

Lottery fever is rising again in the United States. But buyer beware. The advertised jackpots are not as big as they seem.On March 26, someone in New Jersey won a jackpot that Mega Millions advertised on its website as $1.13 billion. And Powerball says its current jackpot is $935 million.Those big lottery prizes are a fortune, no doubt about it. But truth be told, those mouth-watering advertised jackpot numbers that aim to lure people into buying tickets are misleading. Thanks to the magic of rising interest rates, the advertised numbers have been inflated, while the true value of today’s lottery…

But Mr. Tan’s passion, as for a growing number of tech industry leaders, is San Francisco politics. He’s one of those love-or-hate-them tech executives and investors with multiple views of the city and endless stacks of cash to, as they say in the tech industry, move fast and break things. (Their critics would say it’s more like they’re trying to buy City Hall.)To some in San Francisco’s political establishment, Mr. Tan, 43, has become the most annoying in a parade of wealthy tech executives. He’s built a bombastic online persona while spending about $400,000 on local politics in recent years…