‘It’s the West Bank’: Lebanese villagers on life inside Israel’s ‘yellow line’

‘It’s the West Bank’: Lebanese villagers on life inside Israel’s ‘yellow line’

The Guardian reports: For hours, Hussein Abdel al-El and his wife, Um Alaa, did not move. They sat in the bathroom in the dark, not daring to touch their phones; the faint glow of the screen might give them away to the Israeli soldiers outside. It was 1am, the Israelis were raiding their neighbours’ house, and the septuagenarian couple did not want their door knocked on next. In the next house over, Israeli soldiers had forced residents against the wall…

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U.S.-Israel war on Iran driving historic levels of global hunger, UN says

U.S.-Israel war on Iran driving historic levels of global hunger, UN says

The Guardian reports: The continuing US-Israel war on Iran has compounded other global disasters to drive record numbers of people into hunger at a time when funding to combat famine has fallen dramatically, the deputy head of the UN World Food Programme has said. The WFP says 363 million people around the world are now at risk of acute hunger, 45 million of them as a result of conflict in the Middle East and the consequent oil price spike. The…

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The State Department’s ‘Office of Remigration’ is a shady operation, lacking oversight or accountability

The State Department’s ‘Office of Remigration’ is a shady operation, lacking oversight or accountability

Wired reports: The State Department doesn’t seem to want anyone to know that it has an Office of Remigration. There’s no mention on the department’s social media feeds or even on the official website. There aren’t many details about when it was established, who is running the office, or what work it is carrying out. When WIRED reached out to ask if the office exists, the State Department wouldn’t share specific details about the office and its work. But the…

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Former judges urge inquiry into slush fund deal Trump struck with IRS

Former judges urge inquiry into slush fund deal Trump struck with IRS

The New York Times reports: A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges on Wednesday asked the judge who oversaw President Trump’s remarkable lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service to reopen the case and conduct an inquiry into whether the hasty deal to resolve it could be challenged as an act of fraud. The move by the former judges was one of an increasing number of legal efforts to attack the validity of the two extraordinary benefits that emerged from…

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Trump wants all federal employees to sign NDAs

Trump wants all federal employees to sign NDAs

Don Moynihan writes: Scott Kupor, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, explained why nearly every federal employee should sign a Non Disclosure Agreement In much of the private sector, employees handling sensitive business or customer information are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements, and the federal government should not be held to a lower standard. Set aside the small problem that Kupor — previously a longtime executive at Andreessen Horowitz — does not work in the private sector…

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Neuroscience needs to stop treating the brain as if it is a computer

Neuroscience needs to stop treating the brain as if it is a computer

Àlex Gómez-Marín writes: What is a brain? The question might seem obvious, but it is not trivial. Neuroscience has progressed in the past century, with the development of sophisticated techniques to measure and manipulate brain cells, neural circuits and even animal behaviours. Yet how the brain actually works still eludes us. In The Brain, In Theory, neuroscientist Romain Brette deconstructs the predominant model of the brain, which treats the organ like a computer. He concedes that engineering metaphors can be…

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The Democratic Party cannot continue giving unconditional support to Israel

The Democratic Party cannot continue giving unconditional support to Israel

Sen. Chris Van Hollen writes: Democrats need to face a hard truth. While Republicans’ approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has failed, so has ours. The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values. For decades, we have called for a two-state solution, but we’ve failed to use our leverage to make it real. It’s past time that we use that leverage to end the occupation and…

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Israel escalates Lebanon offensive as U.S. pushes for Iran peace deal

Israel escalates Lebanon offensive as U.S. pushes for Iran peace deal

The New York Times reports: Israel intensified its military campaign against Hezbollah on Tuesday, striking targets across Lebanon and advancing deeper into Lebanese territory after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to “increase the blows” against the Iran-backed group. The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 Hezbollah sites overnight in southern and eastern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and command centers. It also issued an evacuation warning on Tuesday for the entire city…

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Iran threatens to renew strikes against U.S. amid ongoing push for diplomatic deal

Iran threatens to renew strikes against U.S. amid ongoing push for diplomatic deal

The New York Times reports: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Tuesday that it would launch a “decisive reciprocal response” to any attack that violated the cease-fire, injecting more uncertainty into fragile diplomatic efforts a day after the U.S. military struck targets in southern Iran. Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also suggested that the country could renew strikes on U.S. military installations in the Persian Gulf, which Tehran had repeatedly targeted after the United States and Israel started bombing…

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Southern Poverty Law Center seeks dismissal of ‘vindictive’ Justice Department indictment

Southern Poverty Law Center seeks dismissal of ‘vindictive’ Justice Department indictment

The Independent reports: A Justice Department indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center is part of a “top-down” campaign of retribution against President Donald Trump’s perceived political enemies and constitutes a vindictive prosecution that must be dismissed, lawyers for the nonprofit argued Tuesday in urging a judge to toss the case out. The Alabama-based nonprofit was indicted in April on fraud and money laundering charges that accuse it of misleading donors by paying informants inside white supremacist and other extremist…

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As Trump politicizes the DOJ, prosecutors struggle with grand juries

As Trump politicizes the DOJ, prosecutors struggle with grand juries

The New York Times reports: Grand juries are the heart of the criminal justice system, the inner sanctum where prosecutors, working unchecked and in secret, have enormous power to indict their fellow citizens. But under President Trump, the Justice Department has had serious difficulties presenting cases to grand juries, running into problems that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant…

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Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify the money spent on AI tokenmaxxing

Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify the money spent on AI tokenmaxxing

Business Insider reports: A top Uber exec said AI is not giving the company bang for its buck. In a Rapid Response interview released on Saturday, Uber’s operations chief, Andrew Macdonald, said it was becoming harder to justify AI costs within the company. He said that Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga went viral after telling The Information in an April interview that Uber had already blown through its Claude Code budget for 2026. The comment led to what he described…

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Pope Leo just schooled the tech bros on Tolkien

Pope Leo just schooled the tech bros on Tolkien

Miles Klee writes: Nobody was surprised that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and previous pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of spiritual guidance, “Magnifica humanitas,” released Monday. But the name that immediately jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with high fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic author of The Lord of the Rings. Leo’s letter is concerned with “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” a major theme of his first year…

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Pope Leo denounces ‘culture of power’ and new forms of ‘colonialism’ driving rise of AI

Pope Leo denounces ‘culture of power’ and new forms of ‘colonialism’ driving rise of AI

Pope Leo writes: Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information. These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide…

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