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Pope Leo says ‘delusion of omnipotence’ is fueling U.S.-Israeli war against Iran

Pope Leo says ‘delusion of omnipotence’ is fueling U.S.-Israeli war against Iran

The Associated Press reports: In his strongest words yet, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and demanded political leaders stop and negotiate peace. Leo presided over an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica on the same day the United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan and as a fragile ceasefire held. History’s first U.S.-born pope didn’t mention the United States or President Donald Trump in…

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Judges fired after blocking deportations of pro-Palestinian students

Judges fired after blocking deportations of pro-Palestinian students

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against international students who had advocated for Palestinians. The firings of the judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, marked the latest efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s immigration courts. The administration has dismissed dozens of immigration judges and, according to those on the bench, has put judges under pressure to deny asylum claims and order deportations. Unlike federal judges…

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The biggest advance in AI since the LLM — why Claude Code changes everything

The biggest advance in AI since the LLM — why Claude Code changes everything

  Gary Marcus writes: Claude Code, an impressive and possibly game-changing “coding agent” for programmers to write code faster is the single biggest advance in AI since the LLM. And the thing is, Claude Code is NOT a pure LLM. And it’s not pure deep learning. Not even close. That changes everything. The source code leak proves it. Tucked away at its center is a 3,167 line kernel called print.ts. print.ts is a pattern matching. And pattern matching is supposed…

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‘First contact’ that may have led to complex life on Earth finally witnessed by scientists

‘First contact’ that may have led to complex life on Earth finally witnessed by scientists

Microscopic image showing newly discovered Asgard archaeon (Nerearchaeum marumarumayae) derived from microbial mats that offers clues to the formation of complex life. Debnath Ghosal By Brendan Paul Burns, UNSW Sydney and Kymberley Oakley, Indigenous Knowledge On the shores of the west coast of Australia lies a window to our past: the stromatolites and microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay). To the untrained eye they look like a collection of rocks and slime – but they are in fact teeming with…

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Iran unable to find mines it laid in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says

Iran unable to find mines it laid in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says

The New York Times reports: Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials. The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and…

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Iran attacks on crucial Saudi pipeline and production facilities slash kingdom’s oil output

Iran attacks on crucial Saudi pipeline and production facilities slash kingdom’s oil output

CNBC reports: Saudi Arabia’s critical pipeline to the Red Sea suffered a recent attack from Iran, cutting throughput by 700,000 barrels per day. The attack hit a pumping station on the East-West pipeline, according to a state news agency report. This pipeline brings crude oil from processing facilities near the Persian Gulf to an export terminal on the Red Sea called Yanbu. The Saudis have relied on the pipeline, which has a capacity of 7 million bpd, as their main…

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Lebanese ask whether peace can ever be possible with a neighbor that repeatedly violates its sovereignty

Lebanese ask whether peace can ever be possible with a neighbor that repeatedly violates its sovereignty

  What is really going on in Lebanon? Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, Israel launched a massive wave of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah across the country. Iran says Israel is violating the terms of the ceasefire – so could the peace talks set to be held tomorrow in Islamabad collapse before they’ve even started? And is this exactly what Israel wants? On this episode of the Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy was joined from Beirut by…

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War has become indivisible from Gaza

War has become indivisible from Gaza

Ghada Abdulfattah writes: Rubble is everywhere. In Gaza, there’s more than one kind. Towers that once held dozens of families have been reduced to hills: broken slabs stacked in layers, steel bars twisted through them like exposed nerves, concrete pancaked over furniture. Sometimes, the remains of a home lean at an angle, like the Tower of Pisa. Other buildings are hollowed out from below, the lower floors erased while the upper floors hang in a crooked pause, held up by…

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Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing

Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing

Illy Pe’ery writes: In October 2023, Gili was called up for reserve duty in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and assigned to the Northern Command. In the days following Hamas’ attacks, while public attention in Israel was fixed on the devastation in the south, Hezbollah began launching rockets and anti-tank missiles toward northern Israel. “We were working 12-hour shifts in an underground operations room, while soldiers in outposts were terrified, but we couldn’t convey that the north was on fire,” she…

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Disciples of Christ never side with warmakers, says Pope Leo

Disciples of Christ never side with warmakers, says Pope Leo

The Wall Street Journal reports: Pope Leo XIV appeared to take aim at religious language used by U.S. officials to justify the war in Iran, in the latest salvo between the pontiff and the Trump administration over the conflict. “God does not bless any conflict,” the American pontiff said on X on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”…

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Why your brain already understands complex music theory

Why your brain already understands complex music theory

ZME Science reports: The human brain operates as a tireless prediction machine. It watches a dropped glass and anticipates the shatter. It listens to a conversation and guesses the final word of a sentence. And, as it turns out, it listens to a melody and inherently knows exactly what chord should fall next. If there’s something in the world most people tend to agree is that they love music. But to feel the music, our minds must decode a hidden…

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Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

The Guardian reports: The flood of wounded came after Israel bombed more than 100 targets across Lebanon in those 10 minutes on Wednesday, killing more than 300 people and wounding 1,165, according to an initial count by Lebanon’s civil defence. The death toll, which was expected to rise as more bodies were found, was higher than Beirut’s 2020 port explosion – one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history. The Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah “command and…

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In a war with no real winners, Netanyahu looks like the biggest loser

In a war with no real winners, Netanyahu looks like the biggest loser

Peter Beaumont writes: In a war where there have been no winners, Israel’s prime minister looks set to be the biggest loser entering a fragile and vague ceasefire with Iran. After years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats against Iran, his stunts at the UN’s general assembly, the dodgy dossiers endlessly wafted under the noses of the world’s media, and diplomatic pressure on successive US presidents to agree to a war against Iran, Israel’s conflict has turned out to be a bust….

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Iran’s rulers are now in a stronger position than before the war began

Iran’s rulers are now in a stronger position than before the war began

The New York Times reports: Their supreme leader and top commanders were killed. Military bases, factories and bridges were reduced to rubble. Their economy has taken blow after blow. Yet Iran’s authoritarian rulers believe they have emerged from this war in a stronger position than when it began. After six weeks of an intense U.S.-Israeli campaign and with a temporary cease-fire in place, Iran’s leadership isn’t conciliatory as it enters into renewed negotiations with the United States. Instead, it has…

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