PEACE BUT NOT CEASE: Two schools run by the United Nations in northern Gaza were bombarded over the weekend resulting in as many as 24 deaths plus injuries. The New York Times reports that it verified video from one of the schools that “showed many bloodied and motionless bodies.” 

  Palestinian officials said that a UN-run school was being used as a shelter by adults and children in the Jabaliya area north of Gaza City. The head of the UN agency that runs the schools said on social media that he had received “horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured” at the school that was “sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip.”

  Such incidents increase calls for a cease fire, but President Biden isn’t going for it. Biden in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post over the weekend said he is opposed to a cease fire in Gaza while Hamas militants are still in control. “As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace,” Biden says. “To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.”

  As the killing and wounding goes on, the World Health Organization says that 

piles of medical and solid waste fill the corridors of Gaza’s largest hospital and that at least 80 bodies lie in a mass grave by the hospital’s entrance.

  A UN assessment team says patients are dying for lack of medical care and that there are now only 25 health care workers handling 291 remaining patients, including 32 premature babies in “extremely critical condition.”

SMART MOVE: Hours after the board of OpenAI declined to rehire Sam Altman, the company co-founder, and former president Greg Brockman, Microsoft hired both of them to run an advanced research laboratory.

  Altman has been a leader in the artificial intelligence revolution, overseeing the release of ChatGPT. He was fired by the board of OpenAI for reasons unexplained, and Brockman quit in solidarity. A company memo said rejecting Altman was “the only path to advance and defend the mission of OpenAI.”

THE MOON AND MARS: The second fight of Elon Musk’s gargantuan Starship rocket on Saturday ended with an explosion and the loss of both the booster and the uncrewed SpaceX craft.

  Shortly after separating, the booster with 33 massive engines exploded in a fireball over the Gulf of Mexico. Starship initially continued on its trajectory before SpaceX lost signal and triggered the system’s software to terminate the flight.

  Starship was supposed to fly nearly all the way around the globe before returning to earth. Elon Musk’s hopes of using it as a commuter craft to Mars are meeting terrestrial reality.  

THE OBIT PAGE: Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, one of the most politically active and influential first ladies in history, died yesterday at home in Plains Georgia at age 97. 

  Sometimes known as the “Steel Magnolia,” Rosalynn was a partner to Jimmy both in life and politics. She sat in on cabinet meetings. The former president issued a statement saying, “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I accomplished.” 

  She and former President Jimmy Carter, 99, were married for 77 years and knew each other longer than that. Jimmy Carter’s mother was a nurse who tended to Rosalynn’s birth. Jimmy wrote in his memoir that a few days later his mother took him to Rosalynn’s house where he “peeked into the cradle to see the newest baby on the street.”  They started dating at 18.

  Both Rosalynn and Jimmy shared a deep Christian faith and a work ethics that brought them from a rural Georgia peanut farm to the White House. Following the president’s 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan, the pair became what was known as the best former presidential couple, travelling the world in support of human rights, democracy, and health programs. Here in the US, they even hammered nails building houses for Habitat for Humanity.

THE SPIN RACK:  The FBI has raided the homes of two more people in connection with the investigation of New York Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign financing searched the New Jersey homes of Rana Abbasova, an aide in the international affairs office, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on the Adams transition team. — A group of 20 neo-Nazis dressed in red shirts and black pants while carrying swastika flags marched in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend. In unison they delivered a Nazi salute in front of the state house. — Argentine voters yesterday elected Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian and proponent of conspiracy theories who has been compared to Donald Trump. With his country in economic crisis, Milei has said he wants to replace the Argentine peso with the Us dollar as the national currency.

BELOW THE FOLD: Check and checkmate. Chess Grandmaster and two-time world champion Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine is refusing to play in an upcoming tournament in Saudi Arabia, forgoing what could have been a big payday. 
 She said, “I refuse to play by special rules, wear abaya, be accompanied by a man so I can get out of the hotel, so I don’t feel like a second-class person.” 

  The sport’s governing body, Fide, had claimed a minor victory in persuading the Saudis to allow women competitors to play in high-necked white blouses and blue or black trousers instead of full-body abayas.

  Not for Muzychuk. She went on, “I will follow my principles and not compete in the fast chess and blitz world championship where in just 5 days I could have made more money than with dozens of other combined tournaments.” 

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