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- The Iran War’s Biggest Loser? Definitely Netanyahu
Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran has been a strategic failure. Assassinating the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and elevating his son Mojtaba did not produce regime change but, as described in a recent New York Times report, a “military junta dominated by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” with “a younger, more brazen generation in power.” That brazenness paid off for Iran when it seized the Strait of Hormuz, slashing Washington’s negotiating leverage by exposing America’s sensitivity to high gas prices. Iran returned to the negotiating table after Operation Epic Fury, but it was already at the table the day the operation began, making similar offers. The president’s art-of-the-deal reputation, already frayed after his tariff madness, is now in tatters. He tore up Barack Obama’s comprehensive deal with Iran, brokered with the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and the European Union. It wasn’t perfect, but it subjected Iran’s nuclear program to strict limits and intrusive inspections. Exactly what Trump and Iran’s negotiators have agreed on to reopen the Strait is unknown, as no text has been released and both sides are giving differing accounts. But Trump’s unwillingness to give a direct answer posed by the Times—regarding whether his agreement matches Obama’s terms on uranium enrichment levels—strongly suggests his hastily cobbled together deal has not improved upon the meticulously crafted containment program forged by his predecessor. But Trump’s humiliation pales in comparison to Benjamin Netanyahu’s. Prime Minister for most of the last 17 years, “Bibi” bet his legacy on three intertwined gambits. The Israeli government should break with its historically bipartisan approach to U.S. relations and tilt toward the Republicans, abandon the Palestinian peace process and its goal of a two-state solution, and scuttle arms control and diplomacy with Iran in favor of vanquishing it militarily. In Trump, Netanyahu saw a Republican who could fulfill his ambitions of war against Iran and was susceptible to arguments that presidents from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Joe Biden chose to ignore. But almost everyone who hitches their wagon to Trump eventually learns that the now-octogenarian president cares only about himself. He does not share your goals and will cut you loose once you’re no longer helpful to him. That the two didn’t perfectly align was evident after Trump’s first term. While Trump proposed a peace deal on terms heavily favorable to Israel,… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 days ago - How Local News Reduces Loneliness
When thinking about the harms caused by the collapse of local news, our minds might first turn to the practical: Less local news means more corruption, more government waste, and meager knowledge of candidates for local office. More recent research has also found that the local news crisis exacerbates polarization and misinformation. When community news contracts, the vacuum is filled by national media (more partisan) and social media (optimized for anger, misinformation-friendly). That got Danny Hayes, a professor of political science at The George Washington University, wondering: If local news influences communal feelings, could it also influence personal feelings? His recent study is stunning. He and researcher Anusha Trivedi compared levels of individual loneliness in comparable communities, some with robust local news and others without. They found that those with less community news had higher levels of loneliness, especially in rural areas. In a state that is half rural, a 10-point increase in the share of the state’s low-news counties leads to a 1.4-point increase in loneliness. Then they examined local news consumption in a nationally representative sample and found a similar pattern. Those who consume more local news were less lonely than those who didn’t. Then, Rebuild Local News and Muckrack, as part of its annual Local Journalist index released this week, explored the data from a different angle. The study focuses on the number of journalists rather than the number of outlets, and found an 82 percent drop in the number of Local Journalist Equivalents since 2002. Looking at matched pairs of states with similar rural populations, those with more journalists per 100,000 residents also had lower loneliness rates. For example, Nevada and Massachusetts have nearly identical rural populations, around five to eight percent, but Nevada has roughly half the journalist density and the highest loneliness rate. Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 residents Percent of adults experiencing loneliness 6% rural Nevada 6.8 40.8% Massachusetts 14.4 33.3% 9% rural Utah 6.2 37.4% Rhode Island 12.9 34.2% 12% rural Connecticut 4.5 39.2% New York 10.3 35.4% 35% rural Kentucky 5 40.5% South Dakota 10.2 35.8% 43% rural Oklahoma 4.9 37.4% Wyoming 13.3 33.9% Why would this be? The mechanism may be the same as why we have more polarization: With less local news, people are more likely to turn to social media and their phones, which has, by itself, been shown to increase loneliness. But Hayes and Trivedi suggest two other possibilities. First, local news, when done well, provides information about events and places that draw people together. If you don’t know about the crafts fair or the community theater’s latest production of… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 days ago - Australia to probe assault claims by Gaza flotilla activists against Israeli for...
Australian activists claim they were kidnapped, raped and tortured after being detained in May. [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago - Gas Prices Slip Below $4 A Gallon For First Time Since April
Crude oil prices also fell more than $4 a barrel on Monday after President Trump announced an Iran deal. [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago - Netflix/iHeart expand podcast partnership with celebrity soaked shows
Star-driven iHeartMedia podcasts are at the center of the company's existing partnership with Netflix as the two companies expand the repertoire of their alliance. Continue Reading → [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago - This Is How America Loses the AI Race
In theory, Donald Trump has a consistent position on AI. On the first full day of his second term, the president declared that he would use his full authority to speed the AI industry along and, in particular, to beat China in the AI race: “We have an emergency,” he said. “We have to get this stuff built.” If AI is poised to become the most important technology ever made, the thinking goes, whichever country commands the most powerful bots will dominate the rest of the century and beyond. The government, it seemed, would just get out of Silicon Valley’s way.But in practice, the Trump administration’s approach to AI has been much more erratic and confusing. Take last week, when Anthropic released its most advanced AI system yet. Called Fable 5, the model is an updated and public version of Claude Mythos Preview, the highly touted and feared AI model that Anthropic announced in April. Anthropic stated that Mythos Preview was so capable at hacking that only a small group of cybersecurity partners would be allowed to use it. In the subsequent months, the company developed guardrails to prevent people from misusing its most powerful AI for cyberattacks, while still allowing them to marshal its capabilities for other sorts of work. The safety measures underwent third-party testing, including with the U.S. government, and after Fable’s release, a chorus of cybersecurity experts complained that, if anything, the model was too restrictive.On Friday, the White House appeared to change its stance. Administration officials deemed Fable 5 a threat to national security and reportedly gave Anthropic 90 minutes to take down Fable 5 and Mythos 5, a newer version of Mythos Preview released to only a small number of organizations. When Anthropic did not, the government issued an export control, a designation that prevents any foreign national from using Fable and Mythos—even those employed by Anthropic within the United States. To rapidly comply, Anthropic shut down the bots for all of its customers. American companies and the U.S. government itself cannot use what’s perhaps the most powerful AI in the world—and the reasons are hazy at best.It’s not unreasonable for the federal government to want to rapidly clamp down on a technology that could be incredibly dangerous. Trump officials had been alerted by researchers at Amazon to a possible way to circumvent Fable 5’s safety systems, which led the model to identify some… [TheTopNews] Read More.7 days ago
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