Top Stories — Thursday, April 23, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Israeli Strikes Kill a Journalist and Injure Another in Lebanon — nyt News
- Meta is tracking employee keystrokes on Google, LinkedIn, Wikipedia as part of AI training initiative — CNBC
- Asia markets open higher as Iran ceasefire extension lifts mood — CNBC
Israeli Strikes Kill a Journalist and Injure Another in Lebanon
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/23/2026, 5:57:57 AM
Israeli strikes killed one journalist and wounded another in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, rattling a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said the Israeli military had targeted the journalists in the town of Tayri, where they took shelter in a nearby house after an airstrike struck a vehicle in front of the car they were traveling in. About an hour and a half later, a second strike hit the house they were hiding in, according to a statement by a Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which employed the journalist who was killed.
The Lebanese Red Cross said its teams came under fire while trying to evacuate the journalists from the house, forcing them to withdraw. The rescue crews were targeted by a warning strike and machine-gun fire, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Zeinab Faraj, a photojournalist, was rescued from the house. The other journalist, Amal Khalil, who was a reporter for Al-Akhbar, remained trapped under rubble for hours before emergency medics recovered her body, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense.
In addition to Ms. Khalil, two other people were killed in the strikes, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Amid the 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon, Israel has continued strikes against what it says are Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, citing its right to self-defense. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group, said that it had fired rockets and drones into Israel on Tuesday in response to what it said were violations of the cease-fire. Earlier on Wednesday, the Lebanese News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike killed one person and wounded two others in another part of the country.
The Lebanese health ministry called the strikes in Tayri a “blatant double breach, involving both the obstruction of rescue efforts for a civilian known for her media and humanitarian work, and the direct targeting of an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Cross.”
The Israeli military denied in a statement that it had prevented rescuers from reaching the injured journalists, and said the incident was under investigation.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said Israeli forces had spotted two vehicles emerging from a military building used by Hezbollah. The military observed the vehicles cross what the spokeswoman called the forward defense line, determining the move to be a violation of the truce agreement.
The spokeswoman confirmed that the Israeli military had struck one of the vehicles and the building some of the occupants of the second vehicle had taken shelter in.
Founded in 2006, Al-Akhbar is a popular Lebanese newspaper that champions leftist causes while supporting Hezbollah’s fight against Israel. The paper has close ties to Hezbollah, operating under its protection and securing access to high-ranking officials for interviews.
“As with every act of aggression, wearing a press vest did not protect those who wore it from the treachery of the Israeli enemy,” Al-Akhbar said in a statement. “Instead, it has become a danger to journalists’ lives, as part of a systematic Israeli policy aimed at silencing anyone who seeks to expose the crimes and practices of the occupation.”
In a forceful statement on social media, Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister, accused the Israeli military of war crimes for targeting journalists and obstructing access to medical aid. He said that the Israeli military has long targeted journalists in southern Lebanon, and that Lebanon would pursue legal action in the International Criminal Court.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said that it was outraged by the attack, and that it raised serious concerns of deliberate targeting.
“The repeated strikes on the same location, the targeting of an area where journalists were sheltering, and the obstruction of medical and humanitarian access constitute a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Ashley Ahn covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Meta is tracking employee keystrokes on Google, LinkedIn, Wikipedia as part of AI training initiative
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/23/2026, 5:48:18 AM
Google, LinkedIn and Wikipedia are among hundreds of websites and apps where Meta plans to capture employee keystrokes and mouse clicks as part of a project to train its artificial intelligence models, according to internal messages viewed by CNBC.
A new employee tracking tool, dubbed Model Capability Initiative (MCI), allows Meta to observe and collect data from staffers' actions on their work computers, Reuters first reported on Tuesday. The list of sites being tracked, which also includes Microsoft's GitHub, Salesforce's Slack and Atlassian, has not been previously reported.
Meta properties like Threads and Manus are also on the list, which is still in flux and originally included AI apps like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.
The list of third-party sites and services the MCI tool is tracking was widely circulated internally and discussed on chat boards after a member of the Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL, sent a memo intended to assuage concerns about worker surveillance and privacy. CNBC viewed the memo.
The data gathering project is tied to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious effort to catch up in generative AI, where the company has lagged behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. To try and close the gap, Zuckerberg went on a spending spree starting last summer, bringing in Scale AI's Alexandr Wang to build a team and develop new foundation models.
Earlier this month, Meta unveiled its first major AI model since the costly hiring of Wang. Dubbed Muse Spark, the model marked the debut of the new Muse series developed by MSL, the AI unit that Wang oversees.
Like other tech giants, Meta is pushing hard into AI agents that can perform various office and coding-related tasks that are typically accomplished by white-collar workers.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the project but didn't provide a comment on the list of sites being tracked.
"If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," the spokesperson said. "To help, we're launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications to help us train our models. There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content, and the data is not used for any other purpose."
Multiple Meta employees characterized the data-tracking project as "dystopian" in internal messages viewed by CNBC. Others expressed concerns that MCI could widely expose sensitive data, including user passwords, details about new product development, and personal information about workers' immigration status, health or family members.
The MSL staffer said in the memo that in order to "teach our models to be able to use computers," Meta requires a "big and unbiased" data set that reflects how employees work and do tasks on their corporate devices.
"We need to capture on-screen content as the context of what was being manipulated or interacted with," the memo said.
In listing a "few assurances," the MSL representative noted that the new tool would only be able to view employees' "screen contents" as they see them, and would "not read in files or attachments."
"Any incidental personal information in your corporate email that may get captured from the screen, will not be learned by the model, due to the mitigations above," the memo said.
Meta employees who are still concerned about the data-tracking tool, "can control what shows up on your screen by not doing personal work on your work computer," the memo said.
Asia markets open higher as Iran ceasefire extension lifts mood
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/23/2026, 5:47:44 AM
Asia-Pacific markets opened broadly higher Thursday, tracking U.S. stocks, which rose overnight after President Donald Trump's extension of the Iran ceasefire helped to buoy investor sentiment, while upbeat earnings reports also lifted sentiment.
Trump extended a two-week U.S. ceasefire on Tuesday, saying it was warranted due to Tehran's "seriously fractured" government.
"Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal," Trump said in a Truth Social post.
The ceasefire would be extended until Tehran submitted a proposal or discussions were concluded, and the U.S. military would continue its blockade of Iranian ports, according to Trump.
However, the timeline remains uncertain. Iranian state media reported Wednesday that Tehran's negotiators wouldn't attend the talks with the U.S., calling them a "waste of time." A lack of commitment from Iran reportedly prompted Vice President JD Vance to pause his trip to join peace talks. Meanwhile, Iran's navy also said that it had seized two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The West Texas Intermediate was 0.14% lower at $92.83 per barrel as of 8:02 p.m. ET. Brent crude dropped 0.17% to $101.74 per barrel.
South Korea's Kospi advanced 1.33% while the small-cap Kosdaq was 0.58% higher. The country's economy grew more than expected in the first three months of the year, recording the fastest growth since the third quarter of 2020.
The 1.7% growth in January to March from the previous quarter exceeded Reuters' estimates of 1.0% and rebounded from the 0.2% contraction in the prior quarter.
Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.40%, while the Topix slipped 0.16%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was 0.56% lower.
Hong Kong Hang Seng index futures were at 26,169, compared with the index's last close of 26,163.24. The release of the city's March inflation data will be closely watched by investors.
During Wednesday's regular session, the S&P 500 added 1.05% to finish at 7,137.90, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 1.64% to settle at 24,657.57. The latter had hit a new all-time intraday high in the session.
Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 340.65 points, or 0.69%, to end the day at 49,490.03.
— CNBC's Sean Conlon and Lisa Kailai Han contributed to this report.
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