A top U.N. official says hard-hit northern Gaza is now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory. Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, is the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine. She says a cease-fire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes is essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people. McCain spoke to NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday.

An experimental F-16 fighter jet has taken Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on a history-making flight controlled by artificial intelligence and not a human pilot. Kendall said he came out of Thursday's flight in California, witnessed by The Associated Press, confident enough in AI's capabilities that he would trust it to fire weapons. The flight is serving as a public statement of confidence in the future role of AI in air combat. The military is planning to use the technology to operate an unmanned fleet of 1,000 aircraft. Arms control experts and humanitarian groups are concerned that AI might one day be able to take lives autonomously and are seeking greater restrictions on its use.