Important Takeaways:
- Israel is bracing for a worst-case scenario that U.S. officials believe could materialize within just hours — the possibility of a direct attack on Israeli soil by Iran in retaliation for a strike almost two weeks ago that killed seven Iranian military officers.
- Two U.S. officials told CBS News that a major Iranian attack against Israel was expected as soon as Friday, possibly to include more than 100 drones and dozens of missiles aimed at military targets inside the country.
- With the Iranian retaliation expected at any time, the U.S. State Department on Thursday warned Americans in Israel not to travel outside major cities, which are better protected from incoming rocket fire by the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
- “Whoever harms us, we will harm them,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday as he visited troops at an Israel Defense Forces airbase. “We are prepared… both defensively and offensively.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Thursday mocked a scheduled round of Ukraine peace talks in Switzerland, warning that Moscow will not accept any enforced plans that ignore its interests.
- Switzerland’s government said Wednesday it will host a high-level international conference in June to help chart a path toward peace in Ukraine after more than two years of fighting, and expressed hope that Russia might join in the peace process someday.
- “They aren’t inviting us there,” Putin said. “Moreover, they think there is nothing for us to do there, but at the same time they say that’s it’s impossible to decide anything without us. It would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.”
- Speaking during Thursday’s meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Moscow, Putin said that Russia is open for negotiations, but will never accept “any schemes that have nothing to do with reality.”
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Important Takeaways:
- California fishermen spoke out against state water management policies Thursday after federal fishing officials canceled ocean salmon fishing season in the state for the second consecutive year, delivering a major blow to the fishing industry.
- In a unanimous vote on Wednesday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council — which is responsible for managing fisheries in federal waters along the West Coast — recommended the closure of all California commercial and recreational ocean salmon fisheries through the end of the year.
- Similar to last year’s recommendations, the council said this year’s closure will help conservation goals for salmon stocks.
- The closure will affect tens of thousands of jobs in the state’s fishing industry
- It also marked the fourth year that salmon fishing has been closed in the state’s history
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Important Takeaways:
- Heavy, relentless rains flooded Pittsburgh-area streets and prompted water rescues Thursday night, as a severe storm system threatened parts of the eastern U.S. into Friday.
- The heavy rains were triggered by the same storm system that unleashed tornadoes and heavy rains across much of the South and Southeast this week, with flood emergencies declared in three other locations.
- The National Weather Service received over 200 reports of severe weather from Tuesday night to Thursday evening — with reports of at least 14 tornadoes striking Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
- Flood watches were in effect in northern New Hampshire and central Maine due to the threat of flash and river flooding.
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Important Takeaways:
- Three castaways who were stranded on a remote Pacific islet for days were rescued this week after spelling out “HELP” with palm fronds on the beach, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
- The trio of men, all mariners in their 40s, ventured out to go fishing near Pikelot atoll in a 20-foot open skiff with an outboard motor, the Coast Guard said, noting that the three had “experience in navigating these waters.”
- But their motor was damaged and stopped working, leaving the castaways stuck for more than a week on the tiny uninhabited island, surviving on coconuts and water from a well.
- A U.S. Navy aircraft dispatched from an air base in Japan spotted the help sign drawn with palm fronds on the beach, narrowing an initial search area that stretched over 78,000 square nautical miles, according to a Coast Guard statement
- That aircraft dropped “survival packages” for the trio, and a crew from an air station in Hawaii then dropped a radio to contact the men
- They ate meat from coconuts, and “water was available through a well on the island,” Muir told the paper. She said they had enough food to survive, “but not for much longer.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration is moving to expand background checks for gun purchases, fulfilling a key demand of advocates following the deadly shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
- The final rule, expected to be submitted Thursday to the Federal Register by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would eliminate a loophole that has allowed sales of guns without background checks of guns outside of brick-and-mortar stores.
- It requires that anyone who sells guns for profit to have a license and that buyers be subject to a background check, including at firearms shows and flea markets.
- The administration had been working on the rule since last spring. Once publicized, it will take effect in 30 days.
- The new rule, the most sweeping expansion of firearms background checks in decades, will apply to more than 20,000 individuals engaged in unlicensed gun dealing and affect “tens and tens of thousands of gun sales” each year
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Important Takeaways:
- The ad is part of a more aggressive strategy to seize on Trump’s record on abortion, an issue the Biden campaign sees as the most motivating one for voters in November.
- President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a paid media blitz about reproductive rights in Arizona on Thursday, two days after the state’s Supreme Court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
- The seven-figure ad buy focuses on former President Donald Trump’s latest abortion stance
- The 30-second spot, which first aired Thursday on MSNBC, will target key young, female and Latino voters both on television and online, according to the campaign.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia destroyed the largest power-generating plant in Ukraine’s Kyiv region in a missile attack on Thursday, as President Zelensky accused the West of “turning a blind eye” to his country’s need for more air defenses.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 18 of the incoming missiles and 39 of the drones. Russia fired 82 missiles and drones in total, including six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles – none of which Ukraine’s air defenses were able to down.
- The Trypilska Thermal Power Plant (TPP), the largest supplier of electricity to Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was completely destroyed, according to the energy company Centrenergo. The company has lost 100% of its power generation across its three plants, which have all been destroyed or occupied by Russia.
- “A black day in the history of Centrenergo,” it said in a statement. “The scale of the destruction is terrible. Money can’t estimate it. This is the biggest challenge for us in the history of the company.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Iranian officials have publicly threatened to retaliate against Israel for an attack in Syria last week that killed a top Iranian general. An attack on Israel or its bases could lead to another regional escalation.
- Israeli officials say they are preparing for a possible unprecedented direct attack from Iranian soil using ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles against Israeli targets.
- Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said “Israel must be punished, and they will pay for their mistakes”
- A senior Israeli official said Israel asked the U.S. if it could help limit the Iranian response by sending private and public warning messages to the Iranians and projecting its force in the region.
- “We also want to address the Iranian threat to launch a … significant attack on Israel. As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” Biden said.
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Important Takeaways:
- OpenAI and Meta are on the brink of releasing new artificial intelligence models that they say will be capable of reasoning and planning, critical steps towards achieving superhuman cognition in machines.
- Executives at OpenAI and Meta both signaled this week that they were preparing to launch the next versions of their large language models, the systems that power generative AI applications such as ChatGPT.
- Meta said it would begin rolling out Llama 3 in the coming weeks, while Microsoft-backed OpenAI indicated that its next model, expected to be called GPT-5, was coming “soon”.
- Because they struggle to deal with complex questions or retain information for a long period, they still “make stupid mistakes”, he said.
- Adding reasoning would mean that an AI model “searches over possible answers”, “plans the sequence of actions” and builds a “mental model of what the effect of [its] actions are going to be”, he said.
- This is a “big missing piece that we are working on to get machines to get to the next level of intelligence”, he added.
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