Jumaa al-Batran is fifth infant to die from winter-related causes as Israeli genocide causes harsh living conditions.

Yassine Fall discusses Senegal’s vision for economic independence and diplomacy.

Israel’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has been condemned amid demands to release director whose whereabouts are unknown.

The education secretary defends ending tax breaks for private schools as the policy is set to begin.

Mikheil Kavelashvili has been sworn in as Georgia’s new president in parliament.

Australia's tail pushes the lead past 300 on fourth day of fourth Test but Jasprit Bumrah keeps Indian hopes alive.

Southern right whales are thriving again. Now they face an even bigger threat – the Anthropocene era.

Voters to choose a new parliament, provincial assemblies and local councils but the opposition has called for a boycott.

A plane crash has killed almost everyone on board the South Korean Jeju Air Flight 2216.

Mikheil Kavelashvili sworn in as Georgia's new president as pro-EU predecessor refuses to recognise his legitimacy.

Palestinians, campaigners express concern after Abu Safia and others from Kamal Adwan Hospital are detained by Israel.

On The Stream: We look back at various student protest movements prompted by young people in 2024.

Most of the 181 people on board are presumably dead, making it one of the worst aviation disasters to hit South Korea.

For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as "rineanswsaurs" or sarcastic as "srkastik."  The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension. "I just assumed I was stupid," she recalled of her early grade school years.  But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has helped her keep up with classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits a customized AI-powered chatbot, a word prediction program and other tools that can read for her.  "I would have just probably given up if I didn't have them," she said.  New tech; countless possibilities Artificial intelligence holds the promise of helping countless  students with a range of visual, speech, language and hearing impairments to execute tasks that come easily to others. Schools everywhere have been wrestling with how and where to incorporate AI, but many are fast-tracking applications for students with disabilities.  Getting the latest technology into the hands of students with disabilities is a priority for the U.S. Education Department, which has told schools they must consider whether students need tools like text-to-speech and alternative communication devices. New rules from the Department of Justice also will require schools and other government entities to make apps and online content accessible to those with disabilities.  There is concern about how to ensure students using it — including those with disabilities — are still learning.  Students can use artificial intelligence to summarize jumbled thoughts into an outline, summarize complicated passages, or even translate Shakespeare into common English. And computer-generated voices that can read passages for visually impaired and dyslexic students are becoming less robotic and more natural.  "I'm seeing that a lot of students are kind of exploring on their own, almost feeling like they've found a cheat code in a video game," said Alexis Reid, an educational therapist in the Boston area who works with students with learning disabilities. But in her view, it is far from cheating: "We're meeting students where they are."  Programs fortify classroom lessons  Ben Snyder, a 14-year-old freshman from Larchmont, New York, who was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, has been increasingly using AI to help with homework.  "Sometimes in math, my teachers will explain a problem to me, but it just makes absolutely no sense," he said. "So if I plug that problem into AI, it'll give me multiple different ways of explaining how to do that."  He likes a program called Question AI. Earlier in the day, he asked the program to help him write an outline for a book report — a task he completed in 15 minutes that otherwise would have taken him an hour and a half because of his struggles with writing and organization. But he does think using AI to write the whole report crosses a line.  "That's just cheating," Ben said.  Schools weigh pros, cons  Schools have been trying to balance the technology's benefits against the risk that it will do too much. If a special education plan sets reading growth as a goal, the student needs to improve that skill. AI can't do it for them, said Mary Lawson, general counsel at the Council of the Great City Schools.  But the technology can help level the playing field for students with disabilities, said Paul Sanft, director of a Minnesota-based center where families can try out different assistive technology tools and borrow devices.  "There are definitely going to be people who use some of these tools in nefarious ways. That's always going to happen," Sanft said. "But I don't think that's the biggest concern with people with disabilities, who are just trying to do something that they couldn't do before."  Another risk is that AI will track students into less rigorous courses of study. And, because it is so good at identifying patterns, AI might be able to figure out a student has a disability. Having that disclosed by AI and not the student or their family could create ethical dilemmas, said Luis Perez, the disability and digital inclusion lead at CAST, formerly the Center for Applied Specialized Technology.  Schools are using the technology to help students who struggle academically, even if they do not qualify for special education services. In Iowa, a new law requires students deemed not proficient — about a quarter of them — to get an individualized reading plan. As part of that effort, the state's education department spent $3 million on an AI-driven personalized tutoring program. When students struggle, a digital avatar intervenes.  Educators anticipate more tools  The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding AI research and development. One firm is developing tools to help children with speech and language difficulties. Called the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, it is headquartered at the University of Buffalo, which did pioneering work on handwriting recognition that helped the U.S. Postal Service save hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processing.  "We are able to solve the postal application with very high accuracy. When it comes to children's handwriting, we fail very badly," said Venu Govindaraju, the director of the institute. He sees it as an area that needs more work, along with speech-to-text technology, which isn't as good at understanding children's voices, particularly if there is a speech impediment.  Sorting through the sheer number of programs developed by education technology companies can be a time-consuming challenge for schools. Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, said the nonprofit launched an effort this fall to make it easier for districts to vet what they are buying and ensure it is accessible.  Mother sees potential Makenzie wishes some of the tools were easier to use. Sometimes a feature will inexplicably be turned off, and she will be without it for a week while the tech team investigates. The challenges can be so cumbersome that some students resist the technology entirely.  But Makenzie's mother, Nadine Gilkison, who works as a technology integration supervisor at Franklin Township Community School Corporation in Indiana, said she sees more promise than downside.  In September, her district rolled out chatbots to help special education students in high school. She said teachers, who sometimes struggled to provide students the help they needed, became emotional when they heard about the program. Until now, students were reliant on someone to help them, unable to move ahead on their own.  "Now we don't need to wait anymore," she said. 

The Central African nation delayed elections citing financial challenges and the COVID pandemic.

The crash occurred as the Jeju Air plane was landing at the Muan International Airport in South Korea.

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday sided with key supporter and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the program for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters.  Trump's remarks followed a series of social media posts from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who vowed late Friday to "go to war" to defend the visa program for foreign tech workers.  Trump, who moved to limit the visas' use during his first presidency, told The New York Post on Saturday he was likewise in favor of the visa program.  "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," he was quoted as saying.   Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa, has held an H-1B visa, and his electric-car company Tesla obtained 724 of the visas this year. H-1B visas are typically for three-year periods, though holders can extend them or apply for permanent residency.  The altercation was set off earlier this week by far-right activists who criticized Trump's selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence, saying he would have influence on the Trump administration's immigration policies.  Musk's tweet was directed at Trump's supporters and immigration hard-liners who have increasingly pushed for the H-1B visa program to be scrapped amid a heated debate over immigration and the place of skilled immigrants and foreign workers brought into the country on work visas.  On Friday, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidante, critiqued "big tech oligarchs" for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.  In response, Musk and many other tech billionaires drew a line between what they view as legal immigration and illegal immigration.  Trump has promised to deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, deploy tariffs to help create more jobs for American citizens, and severely restrict immigration.  The visa issue highlights how tech leaders such as Musk — who has taken an important role in the presidential transition by advising on key personnel and policy areas — are now drawing scrutiny from his base.  The U.S. tech industry relies on the government's H-1B visa program to hire foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labor force that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.   Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected in November. He has posted regularly this week about the lack of homegrown talent to fill all the needed positions in American tech companies. 

Push comes as Syria's new de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa met Bahraini, Libyan delegations in Damascus.

Two presidents have been impeached in a month and their replacement is under pressure.

Before their trip to Leicester City, coach Pep Guardiola has assured fans he won't walk away from Man City's crisis.