Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) urged residents of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, to evacuate to nearby “safe” zones on Monday as a long-delayed attack by Israel against the last Hamas strongholds appeared to be imminent.
- The apparent mobilization of the IDF came after Hamas fired rockets from close range at the Kerem Shalom crossing, where humanitarian aid crosses from Israel into Gaza, on Saturday, killing four soldiers and wounding several others.
- The U.S. has been telling Israel, privately and publicly, not to attack Rafah since February. Israel insisted it would do so, regardless of international pressure and regardless of hostage talks, to complete its goal of destroying Hamas.
- The IDF has been dropping flyers on Rafah with maps indicating where residents should take refuge during the fighting.
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Important Takeaways:
- Shock survey shows 100M adults now say CIVIL WAR will rip America apart within five years, as student rallies get ugly
- More than four-in-ten US voters say the country is likely to get ripped apart in a second civil war within five years, a shocking new survey reveals.
- The Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 41 percent eye a civil conflict, compared to 49 percent who say it’s not likely. Another 10 percent said they were not sure.
- That amounts to 106 million US adults saying civil war is on the horizon.
- The survey comes against a backdrop of mounting violence on US college campuses, where pro-Palestine protestors clash with law enforcers, conservatives, some Jewish students and others.
- The possibility that America could face another civil war soon is not too far-fetched for a lot of voters,’ the pollsters said about their survey.
- ‘Such discussions got a boost after the new movie Civil War made its debut as number one at the box office last month.’
- The survey of 1,105 voters late last month found that women, younger adults, and non-white Americans were more concerned about a conflict breaking out.
- Republican voters were more certain that Americans would take up arms against their countrymen than did Democrats.
- Fully 54 percent of GOP voters saw a civil war breaking out by 2029.
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Important Takeaways:
- Gruesome first photo of Texas dairy farm worker who caught bird flu from a cow shows how he suffered bleeding in his eyeballs
- This is the first image of the Texas dairy farm worker who caught bird flu from a cow.
- While the man suffered ‘very mild’ symptoms, the photo shows how the virus caused blood vessels in his eyes to pop, leading to bleeding on the surface of his eyeballs.
- In an official case report published Friday, experts at the CDC said they found ‘strong evidence’ via genetic data that he caught the virus from an infected cow in March.
- The confirmation marks the first instance of the H5N1 virus jumping from mammals to humans – a milestone that is of ‘enormous concern’ to the World Health Organization.
- The report added: ‘Over the subsequent days, the worker reported resolution of conjunctivitis without respiratory symptoms and household contacts remained well.’
- CDC Director Dr Mandy Cohen described the individual’s infection in early April as ‘very mild’.
- She told NPR: ‘The person had very mild symptoms. They’re recovering well. But we want to make sure, again, that we are testing folks who may have been in contact.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Warren Buffett has raised the alarm on AI, warning it threatens to supercharge fraud by making scams more convincing than ever.
- “Scamming has always been part of the American scene,” the famed investor and Berkshire CEO said during his company’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday.
- But Buffett said that images and videos created using artificial intelligence have become so convincing that it’s virtually impossible to discern if they’re real or not.
- “When you think of the potential of scamming people … if I was interested in scamming, it’s going to be the growth industry of all time,” he said.
- Buffett also likened the advent of AI to the creation of the atom bomb, echoing comments he made at last year’s Berkshire meeting.
- “We let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons,” he said. “That genie’s been doing some terrible things lately. The power of the genie scares the hell out of me.”
- “AI is somewhat similar,” Buffett added. “We may wish we’d never seen that genie.”
- The billionaire, who touted AI’s enormous potential years before ChatGPT’s release, emphasized he’s no expert in the nascent tech.
- “I don’t know anything about AI, but that doesn’t mean I deny its existence or importance or anything of the sort,” he said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Turkey on Thursday suspended all imports and exports to Israel citing the country’s ongoing military action in Gaza and vowed to continue to impose the measures until the Israeli government allows the flow of humanitarian aid to the region.
- Turkish officials would coordinate with Palestinian authorities to ensure that Palestinians are not affected by the suspension of imports and exports, the ministry said.
- This week Turkey decided to join the legal case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice and would soon submit a formal request to intervene in the case.
- South Africa filed a case at the ICJ accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention with its military offensive against Hamas.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia will face consequences for a cyberattack allegedly orchestrated by a group with ties to its military intelligence, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday.
- Germany has been among the Western nations providing Ukraine military support in its war with Russia
- In January 2023, Berlin said Russian activist hackers knocked several German websites offline in response to its decision to send tanks to Ukraine, although with little tangible effect.
- “We can now clearly attribute last year’s attack to the Russian group APT28, which is controlled by the Russian military intelligence service GRU”
- “In other words, Russian state hackers have attacked Germany in cyberspace,” added Baerbock, who is visiting Australia to meet counterpart Penny Wong. “This is completely unacceptable and will not remain without consequences.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Colombia has become the latest Latin American country to announce that it will break diplomatic relations with Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, but the repercussions for the South American nation could be broader than for other countries because of longstanding bilateral agreements over security matters.
- This could affect Colombia’s military, which uses Israeli-built warplanes and machine guns to fight drug cartels and rebel groups, and a free trade agreement between both countries that went into effect in 2020.
- Also in the region, Bolivia and Belize have also severed diplomatic relations with Israel over the Israel-Hamas war.
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Important Takeaways:
- Brazil floods: Dam collapses and death toll rises in Rio Grande do Sul
- Officials say another 60 people are missing in Rio Grande do Sul state.
- About 15,000 residents have fled their homes since Saturday. At least 500,000 people are without power and clean water across the state.
- The burst dam triggered a 6.6ft wave, causing panic and further damage in the already flooded areas.
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Important Takeaways:
- Eric Adams under pressure to divulge details on ‘outside agitators’ at campus protests
- Adams, a Democrat and former city police officer, was asked by local reporters on Thursday morning to give a breakdown of the arrest numbers. He repeatedly declined to provide details.
- When pressed to provide further details, he said his office had “turned everything over to the school, and it is up to the school to determine if they’re going to release the names of students and non-students”.
- New York police department issued a press release saying that among those arrested at Columbia, “approximately 29% of individuals were not affiliated” with the school, while 60% of people arrested at the CCNY protests were not affiliated with the school
- NYPD commissioner said “These individuals are not university students, they are not affiliated with either the institutions or campuses in question, and they are working to escalate the situation.”
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Important Takeaways:
- While clashes and standoffs with police at New York’s Columbia University, Portland State and UCLA have captured global attention, demonstrations and sit-ins are also being held on campuses in parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
- Over the past few weeks, pro-Palestinian protest camps have appeared in at least seven universities across Australia.
- Pro-Palestinian protests have been held at universities across the United Kingdom since the early days of Israel’s war in Gaza, with some setting up encampments in recent days.
- In Paris, pro-Palestinian protests erupted at the Sciences Po university and the Sorbonne university in late April.
- Protests have been held at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, in solidarity with students protesting at Columbia.
- At McGill University in downtown Montreal, Canada, pro-Palestinian student protesters have set up an encampment on the front lawn.
- Hundreds of students gathered at campuses in Lebanon in late April, waving Palestinian flags and demanding their universities boycott companies that do business in Israel
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