ALEX BLOG

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Law enforcement agents have been gathering more potential evidence as the search for "Today" show hostSavannah Guthrie's mother heads into its third week.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her Arizona home on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities say her blood was found on the front porch. Purportedransom noteswere sent to news outlets, but two deadlines for paying have passed.

Authorities have expressed concern about Nancy Guthrie's health because she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff's dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.

Here's what to know about her disappearance and the intense search to find her:

Video of masked man

The Federal Bureau of Investigationreleased surveillance videosof a masked person wearing a handgun holster outside Guthrie's front door in Tucson the night she vanished. A porch camerarecorded videoof a person with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, jacket and gloves.

On Thursday, the FBI called the person a suspect. It described him as a man about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build. The agency said he was carrying a 25-liter "Ozark Trail Hiker Pack" backpack.

Investigators initially said there was no surveillance video available since Guthrie didn't have an active subscription to the doorbell camera company. But digital forensics experts kept working tofind images in back-end softwarethat might have been lost, corrupted or inaccessible.

Studying DNA

Investigators collected DNA from Guthrie's property which doesn't belong to Guthrie or those in close contact with her, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said. Investigators are working to identify who it belongs to.

Evidence requiring forensic analysis is being sent to the same out-of-state lab that has been used since the beginning of the case, the department said.

Investigators found several gloves, the nearest about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home, and submitted them for lab analysis, the sheriff's department said. It did not specify what type of gloves.

The sheriff stressed his department is working closely with the FBI.

Sorting through tips

The Pima County sheriff and the FBI announcedphone numbersand awebsiteto offer tips. Several hundred detectives and agents have been assigned to the case, the sheriff's department said.

The FBI said it has collected more than 13,000 tips since Feb. 1, the day Guthrie was reported missing. The sheriff's department, meanwhile, said it has taken at least 18,000 calls.

The sheriff's department has not said whether any tips have advanced the investigation.

Intensive searches

Late Friday night, law enforcementsealed off a roadabout 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home as part of their investigation. A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock.The sheriff's department said the activity was part of the Guthrie investigation but declined to detail specifics.On Tuesday, sheriff deputies detained a person for questioning during a traffic stop south of Tucson. Authorities didn't say what led them to stop the man butconfirmed he was released.The same day, deputies and FBI agents conducted a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, about an hour's drive south of the city.Family pleasSavannah Guthrie, her sister and her brother have shared on social mediamultiple video messagesto their mother's purported captor.The family's Instagram videos have shifted in tone from impassioned pleas to whoever may have their mom, saying theywant to talkand are even willing topay a ransom, to bleaker and more desperate requests for the public's help.The latest video on Thursday was simply a home video of their mother and a promise to "never give up on her."A quiet neighborhoodNancy Guthrie lived alone in the upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood, where houses are spaced far apart and set back from the street by long driveways, gates and dense desert vegetation.Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and once worked at a television station in the city, where her parents settled in the 1970s. She joined "Today" in 2011.In a video, she described her mother as a "loving woman of goodness and light."

Late Friday night, law enforcementsealed off a roadabout 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home as part of their investigation. A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock.

The sheriff's department said the activity was part of the Guthrie investigation but declined to detail specifics.

On Tuesday, sheriff deputies detained a person for questioning during a traffic stop south of Tucson. Authorities didn't say what led them to stop the man butconfirmed he was released.

The same day, deputies and FBI agents conducted a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, about an hour's drive south of the city.

Family pleas

Savannah Guthrie, her sister and her brother have shared on social mediamultiple video messagesto their mother's purported captor.

The family's Instagram videos have shifted in tone from impassioned pleas to whoever may have their mom, saying theywant to talkand are even willing topay a ransom, to bleaker and more desperate requests for the public's help.

The latest video on Thursday was simply a home video of their mother and a promise to "never give up on her."

A quiet neighborhood

Nancy Guthrie lived alone in the upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood, where houses are spaced far apart and set back from the street by long driveways, gates and dense desert vegetation.

Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and once worked at a television station in the city, where her parents settled in the 1970s. She joined "Today" in 2011.

In a video, she described her mother as a "loving woman of goodness and light."

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Medecins Sans Frontieres has halted "non-critical" medical activities at a major hospital in southern Gaza following reports from patients and its own staff of armed men inside the facility and concerns over the movement of weapons within it.

MSF's statement appeared to ‌mark the first time that an international humanitarian group in Gaza has publicly reported the presence of armed men in a hospital or ‌the possible use of such a facility for moving weapons.

The Geneva-based medical charity said non-essential operations at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis were suspended on January 20 over concerns with the "management of ​the structure, the safeguarding of its neutrality, and security breaches."

In recent months, patients and personnel had "seen armed men, some masked," in areas of the hospital compound, MSF said.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said in a statement it was committed to preventing any armed presence inside hospitals, and that legal action would be taken against violators. It suggested that armed members of certain Gazan families had recently entered hospitals, but did not identify those involved.

'UNACCEPTABLE ACTS' REPORTED, INCLUDING WEAPONS MOVEMENTS

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ‌ceasefire in October as part of a U.S. plan ⁠to end the war in Gaza. Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of violations.

Since the ceasefire, "MSF teams have reported a pattern of unacceptable acts, including the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients, and a recent situation ⁠of suspicion of movement of weapons," it said.

According to Gaza's Health Ministry, more than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in the territory since the ceasefire began, while Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers in the same period.

MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, disclosed the Nasser Hospital suspension in a "frequently asked questions" section on ​its ​website about its work in Gaza, last updated on February 11.

The armed men had ​been seen in areas of the hospital compound where MSF ‌does not carry out activities, but their presence, along with suspected weapons transfers, posed serious security risks to patients and personnel, MSF said.

An MSF representative told Reuters the organisation continued to support some critical services at Nasser Hospital, including inpatient and surgical care for certain patients requiring lifesaving treatment.

'HOSPITALS MUST REMAIN NEUTRAL SPACES'

MSF said it had expressed concern to the relevant authorities, without detailing whom the reports were submitted to.

"Hospitals must remain neutral, civilian spaces, free from military presence or activity, to ensure the safe and impartial delivery of medical care," MSF said.

Israel last month ordered MSF and 30 other international organisations to stop its ‌work in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank if they did not meet new rules, ​including sharing details about their staff.

MSF on January 30 said it would not submit a staff ​list to Israel after failing to receive assurances over their safety.

PARTS ​OF TUNNEL NETWORK FOUND UNDER HOSPITALS

The Israeli military says it has targeted hospitals during the war because Hamas fighters were ‌operating inside them, and parts of Hamas' tunnel network have been ​found running beneath medical facilities. The Palestinian ​Islamist group denies using hospitals for military purposes.

Some Israeli hostages, taken during Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that ignited the war, have said they were held at Nasser Hospital, the largest in southern Gaza.

Hospitals are protected sites under international law. Both attacking hospitals and ​their use for military purposes are typically considered a ‌breach of law.

Although medical facilities can lose their protected status under certain conditions, rights groups say Israel has not shown sufficient evidence ​in many cases to justify its attacks on them during the war.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo ​and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

BEIJING, Feb 14 (Reuters) - China's ByteDance has ‌rolled out its ‌Doubao 2.0 chatbot, an ​upgrade of Doubao which is currently the country's most ‌widely used ⁠artificial intelligenceapp, according to ⁠QuestMobile, the company said on Saturday.

One ​year after ​Chinese ​startup DeepSeek ‌rattled the global tech industry with the release of a low-cost artificial intelligence ‌model, its ​domestic rivals ​are ​better prepared, ‌vying with it to ​launch ​new models, some designed with more ​consumer ‌appeal.

(Reporting by Kevin ​Yao; Editing by ​Muralikumar Anantharaman)

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Law enforcement agents have been gathering more potential evidence as the search for "Today" show hostSavannah Guthrie's mother heads into its third week.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her Arizona home on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities say her blood was found on the front porch. Purportedransom noteswere sent to news outlets, but two deadlines for paying have passed.

Authorities have expressed concern about Nancy Guthrie's health because she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff's dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.

Here's what to know about her disappearance and the intense search to find her:

Video of masked man

The Federal Bureau of Investigationreleased surveillance videosof a masked person wearing a handgun holster outside Guthrie's front door in Tucson the night she vanished. A porch camerarecorded videoof a person with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, jacket and gloves.

On Thursday, the FBI called the person a suspect. It described him as a man about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build. The agency said he was carrying a 25-liter "Ozark Trail Hiker Pack" backpack.

Investigators initially said there was no surveillance video available since Guthrie didn't have an active subscription to the doorbell camera company. But digital forensics experts kept working tofind images in back-end softwarethat might have been lost, corrupted or inaccessible.

Studying DNA

Investigators collected DNA from Guthrie's property which doesn't belong to Guthrie or those in close contact with her, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said. Investigators are working to identify who it belongs to.

Evidence requiring forensic analysis is being sent to the same out-of-state lab that has been used since the beginning of the case, the department said.

Investigators found several gloves, the nearest about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home, and submitted them for lab analysis, the sheriff's department said. It did not specify what type of gloves.

The sheriff stressed his department is working closely with the FBI.

Sorting through tips

The Pima County sheriff and the FBI announcedphone numbersand awebsiteto offer tips. Several hundred detectives and agents have been assigned to the case, the sheriff's department said.

The FBI said it has collected more than 13,000 tips since Feb. 1, the day Guthrie was reported missing. The sheriff's department, meanwhile, said it has taken at least 18,000 calls.

The sheriff's department has not said whether any tips have advanced the investigation.

Intensive searches

Late Friday night, law enforcementsealed off a roadabout 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home as part of their investigation. A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock.The sheriff's department said the activity was part of the Guthrie investigation but declined to detail specifics.On Tuesday, sheriff deputies detained a person for questioning during a traffic stop south of Tucson. Authorities didn't say what led them to stop the man butconfirmed he was released.The same day, deputies and FBI agents conducted a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, about an hour's drive south of the city.Family pleasSavannah Guthrie, her sister and her brother have shared on social mediamultiple video messagesto their mother's purported captor.The family's Instagram videos have shifted in tone from impassioned pleas to whoever may have their mom, saying theywant to talkand are even willing topay a ransom, to bleaker and more desperate requests for the public's help.The latest video on Thursday was simply a home video of their mother and a promise to "never give up on her."A quiet neighborhoodNancy Guthrie lived alone in the upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood, where houses are spaced far apart and set back from the street by long driveways, gates and dense desert vegetation.Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and once worked at a television station in the city, where her parents settled in the 1970s. She joined "Today" in 2011.In a video, she described her mother as a "loving woman of goodness and light."

Late Friday night, law enforcementsealed off a roadabout 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from Guthrie's home as part of their investigation. A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock.

The sheriff's department said the activity was part of the Guthrie investigation but declined to detail specifics.

On Tuesday, sheriff deputies detained a person for questioning during a traffic stop south of Tucson. Authorities didn't say what led them to stop the man butconfirmed he was released.

The same day, deputies and FBI agents conducted a court-authorized search in Rio Rico, about an hour's drive south of the city.

Family pleas

Savannah Guthrie, her sister and her brother have shared on social mediamultiple video messagesto their mother's purported captor.

The family's Instagram videos have shifted in tone from impassioned pleas to whoever may have their mom, saying theywant to talkand are even willing topay a ransom, to bleaker and more desperate requests for the public's help.

The latest video on Thursday was simply a home video of their mother and a promise to "never give up on her."

A quiet neighborhood

Nancy Guthrie lived alone in the upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood, where houses are spaced far apart and set back from the street by long driveways, gates and dense desert vegetation.

Savannah Guthrie grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and once worked at a television station in the city, where her parents settled in the 1970s. She joined "Today" in 2011.

In a video, she described her mother as a "loving woman of goodness and light."

The Pima County Sheriff's Office is searching a residence about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's Tucson-area home in connection with her disappearance.

"Law enforcement activity is underway at a residence near E Orange Grove Rd & N First Ave related to the Guthrie case," the Pima County Sheriff's Office said late Friday night. "Because this is a joint investigation, at the request of the FBI - no additional information is currently available."

Authorities have not confirmed whether anyone has been detained or taken in for questioning.

Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of"Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing for nearly two weeks. She was reported missing Feb. 1, and authorities believe she was taken from her home against her will.

The investigation has intensified in recent days. Earlier Friday, the sheriff's office said DNA was collected from Nancy Guthrie's home.Authorities also recovered glovesabout two miles away and are analyzing them to determine whether they match those worn by a masked man seen on surveillance video outside her house on the morning she was abducted.

Images of that individual were released on Tuesday. The man, who appeared to be armed, was seen in the early morning hours of Feb. 1 attempting to cover Guthrie's doorbell camera. It was disabled minutes later, the sheriff's department said.

Hours after the images were released, aman was taken into custody during a traffic stop south of Tucson. He was released after being questioned by investigators.

Authorities have also been investigating ransom notes sent to multiple news organizations, including KGUN, the Scripps television station in Tucson. The initial note demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin by Feb. 9 in exchange for Guthrie's release. That deadline passed without any payment being made. The FBI has still not said whether the ransom demand was legitimate.

On Thursday, authorities increased the reward for information leading to a resolution of the case to $100,000.

BEIJING, Feb 14 (Reuters) - China's ByteDance has ‌rolled out its ‌Doubao 2.0 chatbot, an ​upgrade of Doubao which is currently the country's most ‌widely used ⁠artificial intelligenceapp, according to ⁠QuestMobile, the company said on Saturday.

One ​year after ​Chinese ​startup DeepSeek ‌rattled the global tech industry with the release of a low-cost artificial intelligence ‌model, its ​domestic rivals ​are ​better prepared, ‌vying with it to ​launch ​new models, some designed with more ​consumer ‌appeal.

(Reporting by Kevin ​Yao; Editing by ​Muralikumar Anantharaman)

James Luckey-Lange has been spending a lot of time looking at the names he carved on a bar of soap he smuggled out of a Venezuelan prison in his underwear.

The 28-year-old New York native spent just over a month detained by Venezuelan officials, whom he says beat him, deprived him of food and only released him on January 13 following theUS captureof the country's then president, Nicolás Maduro.

At one point, he said, "I thought they were just going to execute me. That was the scariest time. Besides that, I was just really frustrated, really aggravated [and] angry."

Now back at his aunt's home in New Jersey, Luckey-Lange is looking up the names of his former prison mates on his soap and searching for their families on Facebook to let them know they might be alive.

He was held in solitary confinement for long stretches and didn't get a good look at many of his prison mates. "I've never seen a lot of these people's faces. It's hard to find their families if you don't know what they look like," Luckey-Lange told CNN.

"I hope they don't think I'm up there getting tortured right now," he said of those he was held with. "I hope they know I got out."

Dozens of Americans have been arrested and detained in Venezuela over the last several years — part of a long campaign by the former Venezuelan leader to use Americans as political pawns. But Luckey-Lange's detention and release came at an unprecedented moment in US-Venezuela relations. President Donald Trump sent special operations forces to snatch Maduro in early January. His administration is now exerting huge amounts of influence on the interim Venezuelan government led by former Maduro acolytes.

Like many Americans detained in Venezuela, Luckey-Lange was accused of espionage and subjected to the harsh conditions of Venezuela's notorious prisons. The experiences take a physical toll on the inmates that can last for months, if not years, and a mental toll that may never go away.

But Luckey-Lange has no regrets about traveling to Venezuela. "I got to learn something" and see "what's really going on" there, he said wryly on a recent Zoom call from a coffee shop in New Jersey.

'I'm not the type of guy that really wants to be confined'

The US government urges Americans not to travel to Venezuela in part because of "a very high risk of wrongful detention."

The warning didn't resonate with a wanderlust like Luckey-Lange.

"I'm not the type of guy that really wants to be confined," he said.

Luckey-Lange is the son of the late Diane Luckey, a singer known as Q Lazzarus whose single was featured in the film "The Silence of the Lambs." Following her death in 2022, Luckey-Lange traveled throughout Latin America, learning Spanish andbloggingabout his adventures. Venezuela was meant to be his last stop on that trip.

Luckey-Lange wanted to visit Mount Roraima, a plateau in the east of Venezuela with views of Guyana and Brazil. The authorities detained him, he said, in December after he crossed the border from Brazil to ask about a visa.

He was flown several hundred miles from a military base in eastern Venezuela to the capital of Caracas, where he said he was held at the headquarters of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, known as the DGCIM.

Veneuelan prisons generally don't meet "the minimum rules for the treatment of international inmates," much less "the national standards of hygiene, sanitation, care, nutrition, etcetera, that should be met in our prisons," Gonzalo Himiob, vice president of the Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal, told CNN. Foro Penal confirmed that Luckey-Lange was held at a DGCIM facility.

Luckey-Lange said his fellow prisoners were from all over Latin America and the Caribbean, among other places.

"They starved me and didn't give me any water" for days, Luckey-Lange recalled. "I was chained up in solitary with the camera in my room. Every time I would break out of the restraints from the waist, because it was tied by rope and I would untie it, they'd come in, beat me, throw me back in."

From the start, Venezuelan authorities accused him of being a spy, Luckey-Lange said. His hiking boots were military-style, they claimed. They drew maps in his notebook of roads and military bases in an effort, he said, to frame him as some sort of James Bond.

"No matter what I'd say, they say they didn't believe me because they really wanted to catch a spy," he recalled. "They all wanted to go home and tell their wives, tell their higher-ups, that they had caught a spy."

Some four days later after arriving at DGCIM headquarters, Luckey-Lange was transferred to El Rodeo, a prison complex where Maduro imprisoned scores of political prisoners. He languished there for weeks and was only allowed outside once, he said.

"I was making a joke in there, all we have is books and soap," he told CNN. "All the dominoes, all the chess pieces, everything is made out of soap."

Thinking there was a good chance he would get out of prison before the others, "I started carving the names on soap so I can talk to their families, talk to somebody about getting them out," Luckey-Lange said.

About 10 days before his release, US special forces captured Maduro and his wife. Luckey-Lange and his fellow inmates at El Rodeo had no idea what happened until days later. They got fragments of rumors through a game of prison telephone. Cries from people outside on the street suggested something big was afoot. Military and prison officials told Luckey-Lange and other inmates that Maduro would return to power, he said, even though the deposed leader was already in custody in New York.

After Maduro's ouster, the interim Venezuelan government pledged to release political prisoners, including Venezuelans and foreign nationals, without specifying how many or who would be released. The Trump administration had publicly pressed for the release of all political prisoners.

'You're famous'

Luckey-Lange didn't know he was being freed until he was out.

He had heard his name whispered the night before, he recalled. But when the prison director came to his cell, Luckey-Lange thought he might be taken to the "fourth floor," where he said people were tortured.

In the second week of January, Venezuelan officials drove him from El Rodeo to a private airplane hangar on the outskirts of Caracas. US State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration officials were waiting to help him out of the country, he said.

"You're famous," one of the State Department officials told him, dispelling the impression he had that the outside world didn't know he had been thrown in a Venezuelan prison. His story was already being told without him.

Luckey-Lange eventually ended up in Texas, where he and other Americans held in Venezuela took part in the US government readjustment program known as PISA, or Post Isolation Support Activities. It's typically offered to Americans who have been designated as wrongfully detained to help them acclimate after being imprisoned abroad.

A US official confirmed Luckey-Lange participated in a variation of the program.

Luckey-Lange's health had deteriorated in Venezuela, he said. He had a parasite and his teeth were in bad shape.

Still, outward signs that Luckey-Lange had been through such a harrowing experience were minimal.

Sometimes, in moments alone, it hit him.

"I had a breakdown in the shower the second night [after being released]. That was it," he said.

Luckey-Lange said he wants to travel again. Maybe go from Morrocco all the way down to South Africa.

But not before he reaches as many family members of his former prison mates as he can.

"I had promised all those guys that I was going to help them get out, but I didn't know it was going to be so difficult."

CNN's Uriel Blanco and Mauricio Torres contributed reporting.

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