Music: Studnitzky — ‘Memento Odesa’
Americans more supportive of humanitarian aid to Gaza than military aid to Israel
Among Democrats, 25% strongly/somewhat support military aid to Israel for Gaza war while 44% oppose; and 66% strongly/somewhat support humanitarian aid to Gaza, while 7% oppose. https://t.co/Pyx4LUeCOa — Shibley Telhami (@ShibleyTelhami) March 22, 2024
‘Biden dramatically misread the Israeli political dynamic.’ Daniel Levy on how Biden hitched himself to Netanyahu
Omid Memarian writes: In the 1990s and again in the early 2000s, Daniel Levy worked as a peace negotiator in Israel’s talks with the Palestinians, under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. He saw firsthand the promise of the Oslo peace process—and its ultimate failure, “eventually just becoming another way of managing the occupation,” he tells Democracy in Exile. With the Biden administration reviving vague talk of a two-state solution—even as it has vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions…
How Putin’s police state leaves Russia vulnerable to terrorist attacks
Steve Gutterman writes: A week after the last Russian presidential election, in 2018, a fire at a crowded mall in Siberia killed more than 60 people, many of them children. Five days after the conclusion of this year’s voting, camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire at a concert hall just outside Moscow, killing at least 115 people in an attack claimed by the militant group Islamic State. The Kremlin casts President Vladimir Putin as something close to a savior, a strong leader…
What happens when an AG dares to investigate Leonard Leo’s network
Politico reports: Allies of Leonard Leo have mounted a monthslong offensive against the man investigating the judicial activist’s network: Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb. Since news of the probe broke last August, the GOP chairs of powerful congressional committees launched their own investigation of Schwalb’s investigation; conservative media wrote articles criticizing Schwalb on unrelated crime issues — based on a social media post from a top Leo lieutenant; and a group of his Republican law enforcement peers sent letters…
DOJ’s sweeping Apple antitrust lawsuit draws expert praise
The Verge reports: The Department of Justice’s antitrust division has come into its own, having filed its third tech monopoly lawsuit in four years. The accumulated experience shows up in the complaint, according to antitrust experts who spoke with The Verge about the complaint filed Thursday accusing Apple of violating antitrust law. The DOJ describes a sweeping arc of behaviors by Apple, arguing that it adds up to a pattern of illegal monopoly maintenance. Rather than focusing on two or…
The last time a Trump company went public it didn’t go well for investors
NBC News reports: Donald Trump’s social media company could go public as soon as next week, paving the way for a potentially huge windfall for a former president who raked in tens of millions of dollars the last time one of his companies was listed on a stock exchange. That previous, decades-ago experience, however, did not end well for the company or its investors. While a 2016 Washington Post review found that Trump made over $44 million, the company —…
How chain-of-thought reasoning helps neural networks compute
Ben Brubaker writes: Your grade school teacher probably didn’t show you how to add 20-digit numbers. But if you know how to add smaller numbers, all you need is paper and pencil and a bit of patience. Start with the ones place and work leftward step by step, and soon you’ll be stacking up quintillions with ease. Problems like this are easy for humans, but only if we approach them in the right way. “How we humans solve these problems…
Music: Studnitzky — ‘Luba’
UNICEF official tells of ‘utter annihilation’ after travelling length of Gaza
The Guardian reports: An aid official who travelled the length of Gaza this week has described scenes of “utter annihilation”, with “nothing left” of what were once thriving and crowded cities in the territory. “The depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it,” said James Elder, a spokesperson with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). “As soon as you drive through the north, you get that universal gesture of hunger of people putting their hands to their mouths….
What did U.S. Gaza ‘ceasefire’ resolution say and why did Russia and China veto it?
Patrick Wintour writes: After months of vetoing other UN security council resolutions in an effort to defend Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the US has in recent weeks gone on to the diplomatic front foot in New York, drafting and tabling its own resolution that was put to a vote on Friday before being vetoed by Russia and China. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the resolution would send “a strong signal”. But what was that signal precisely?…
Doctors, back from Gaza hospitals, tell Washington of horrors and press for immediate ceasefire
The New York Times reports: The memories are indelible. Screaming families carrying bloodied loved ones through the doors of an overcrowded hospital. A boy trying to resuscitate a child who looked not much older than himself. A 12-year-old with shrapnel wounds to his head and abdomen being intubated on the ground. What he saw that January day at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza — after a missile strike on an aid distribution site — has haunted…
More young Americans favor Palestinians than Israelis, while half of Americans are ignorant about the death toll in Gaza
Middle East Eye reports: More young Americans have favourable views of Palestinians than they do of Israelis in the current war in Gaza, while about half of the US population doesn’t know which side has a higher death toll, according to a new poll by Pew Research Center. The poll is the latest research conducted on American attitudes toward Israel’s war, which began in October. It found that 60 percent of Americans between the ages of 18-29 expressed favourable views…
U.S. says ISIS was responsible for deadly Moscow concert hall attack
The New York Times reports: A branch of the Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for the attack in Moscow that killed at least 40 people and injured about 100 others, and U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly afterward. The United States collected intelligence in March that Islamic State-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, the branch of the group based in Afghanistan, had been planning an attack on Moscow, according to officials. ISIS members have been active in Russia, one U.S. official…
Inside Garland’s effort to prosecute Trump
The New York Times reports: After being sworn in as attorney general in March 2021, Merrick B. Garland gathered his closest aides to discuss a topic too sensitive to broach in bigger groups: the possibility that evidence from the far-ranging Jan. 6 investigation could quickly lead to former President Donald J. Trump and his inner circle. At the time, some in the Justice Department were pushing for the chance to look at ties between pro-Trump rioters who assaulted the Capitol…
How microbes influence our brain health
Anthony King writes: You feel tension in the pit of your stomach as you begin your big public talk. You get butterflies as you wait for exam results. A mentor tells you to trust your gut feelings on a career decision. It’s no wonder ancient thinkers viewed the gut as the seat of emotions, or that a medieval physician even proposed that perception and our soul resided in our digestive organs. ‘Back in history we used to think the gut…