Israel's Democracy: Where Everyone Agrees the Economy Matters and Nobody Votes On It

A new poll just handed Israeli politics its own confession booth, and the testimony is glorious. Ask citizens what's most urgent, and 26.4% across every religious stripe say the economy — the one thing seculars, traditionalists, and the religious actually agree on. Ask what decides their vote, and the economy drops to fourth place at 9.6%. First place, at 30.9%, is "the leader's personality".

So Israelis vote on vibes, then wonder why the cost of living never gets fixed. Democracy, but make it a personality cult.

Speaking of cults: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu polls at 29.2% overall, yet among voters who think the country's on the right track, 60.9% call him the best man for the job — while only 39.5% of that same happy crowd say they'll actually vote Likud. A 21-point gap between loving the king and voting for his party. Somewhere in there is a man Israelis want on the throne but not on the ballot.

Meanwhile the two camps can't even agree on what country they live in. 42.8% of secular Israelis insist Israel is basically a religious state; 49.8% of religious Israelis insist it's basically secular. Both sides are convinced they're losing the same war — a fight with no finish line, because nobody's actually counting the same scoreboard.

Into this void steps Derech Eretz, running the state's plumbing because the state itself apparently can't read paperwork: the Chief Rabbinate, per the report, still can't process Soviet-era documents, leaving Russian-speaking Israelis waiting years for the kind of marriage and burial approvals other citizens get in a week. The fix on the table — elected neighborhood councils, a Russian-speaking chief rabbi — isn't radical. It's just what happens when volunteers have to build the office the government forgot to open.

Two-thirds of Israelis are dissatisfied with their government. Nine in ten have already made up their minds anyway. If that's not a definition of a stuck system, what is?

If nobody votes on the problem they call urgent, and nobody agrees on what country they're voting for — who exactly is the electorate representing?

#israel #knesset #democracy #russianaliyah #netanyahu

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America's Iran War: A Six-Month Startup Burning Cash With No Product

The pitch deck promised a quick knockout. Six months in, Washington's Iran venture is running out of runway, the founder's still promising "very hard" hits, and the board — that is, America's allies — is quietly shopping for a new CEO to hedge against.

Trump's version of the roadmap hasn't changed: "We'll be hitting them. We'll be hitting them very hard," followed by the classic founder optimism that Iran will eventually crack — "At some point, they're going to say, 'We just can't take it anymore'".

Six months of "they'll get weaker, then they peter out," and the Strait of Hormuz is, per the analysts actually paying attention, effectively under Iranian control.

Robin Niblett, former Chatham House director, delivers the investor memo nobody wanted: "For U.S. allies and those who rely on the U.S. for security, this is confirmation that you can't trust the United States...

Now America has confirmed itself as a force of disorder and everyone is drawing lessons from it, and trying to be less dependent." Translation: the shareholders are pulling out before the next funding round.

Meanwhile the Patriots — the missile kind, not the patriotism kind — are running dry, a shortage already starving Ukraine and broadcasting to Moscow and Beijing that America's global-reach subscription has lapsed.

Aaron David Miller sums up the balance sheet: the war "has undermined U.S. deterrence and credibility, antagonized America's allies and delighted its adversaries," adding that if the strait ends up under Iranian veto, "it will constitute nothing less than a strategic defeat."

Israel isn't spared the audit either — American officials, including Vice President JD Vance, are quietly briefing that Netanyahu oversold the "quick and decisive" pitch that got Trump into this in the first place. Two allies, one failing venture, and a very familiar blame-the-cofounder routine.

Iran, for its part, isn't interested in a handshake deal with a partner who tore up the last two contracts. It wants the Hormuz terms locked before it even discusses a new memorandum — because as one Iran analyst put it, Tehran's calculus is "simple": leverage now, or get burned again later.

So: is this a war Washington doesn't know how to win, or one it never actually knew how to end — and does anyone in the building still remember which?

#iran #hormuz #uspolicy #trump #israel

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How Does Trump Make Money On Gaza Havoc? 🏗


Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract in the devastated territory: a project to build a rudimentary 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops, a source familiar with the matter told the Turkish Hukiyet.

The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm, having close connections with Donald Trump Jr., that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq.

The Board of Peace is chaired by the US president and led by a team that includes his son-in-law Kushner and friend Witkoff.

In an email, a Board of Peace official said the board and a group of Palestinian technocrats installed to oversee Gaza “are in the final stages of preparing several contract awards. None have been finalised.”

The Palestinian group is known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.

The official said “one prospective contract concerns facilities to support the international stabilisation force (ISF), which will assist in implementing the roadmap’s security and governance arrangements”.

They added:

“This contract will be one of many that are essential for the future of Gaza.”

The base now being planned is just 100 metres by 120 metres and is intended to house a contingent of Moroccan troops, who would rotate from a base in Israel, the source said. It would lie in the 60% of Gaza’s territory that the Israeli army directly controls. Israeli forces have also created a buffer zone beyond that area.

The source said the base was about a mile from the Israeli border and would have a “quick extraction route” in case the small force came under attack.

The earlier contract said the first phase would consist of “tents and cots for forces to sleep, as well as chemical toilets and handwashing stations. At this phase, this is what we would consider habitable.”

Trump announced in February 2025 that the US would “take over” and “own” Gaza, although the agreement that set up the Board of Peace fell short of that.

At the board’s first meeting in January, Kushner unveiled a “master plan” to build “New Gaza” with an expansive waterfront city with gleaming mixed-use towers.

“It could be a hope, it could be a destination. A lot of industry,”

he said.

At least 80% of Gaza’s buildings were damaged or destroyed in the war. Ten months after the ceasefire, most of the territory’s 2 million people are still living in makeshift and unsanitary camps.

#trump #board #peace #reconstruction #gaza

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Europe's Ukraine Club Loses Both Founders, Still No CEO

Two men built a 30-country alliance to arm Ukraine and stare down Putin. Both are now walking out the door, and Europe's applauding like it's a retirement party instead of an emergency.

Keir Starmer exited the world stage this month with France's highest honor pinned to his chest — a first for a sitting British PM — and a farewell verdict of "My work is done".

Emmanuel Macron, who led the tribute to Starmer's "historic role," is next out the door, term-limited by his own constitution. His own words on the matter, delivered with what one interviewer called "apparent regret": "I am the first president in our history who does not have the constitutional right to run again".

Replacing them: Andy Burnham, the UK's seventh PM in a decade, whose foreign-policy résumé is described as "extensive domestic political experience" and not much else. He picked Zelensky for his first foreign meeting, which is a nice gesture — right up until you remember gestures don't deploy troops or fund air defense. On the French side, the bookmakers' favorite to inherit Macron's chair is Marine Le Pen, who has promised to pull France out of NATO's command structure and lift sanctions on Russia. That's the coalition's presumed next co-chair — the one whose platform is dismantling the coalition.

Germany's Merz is "cornered by domestic friction," Poland's Tusk and Italy's Meloni have already said no thanks, and nobody with actual authority wants the job of holding 30 countries together while Russia keeps shelling. As one assessment of the moment put it bluntly: "We have no Churchill in Europe so far".

So the plan for guaranteeing Ukraine's post-ceasefire security now rests on a mayor-turned-PM finding his footing and a French election that might hand the keys to the one candidate who wants to burn the building down.

If nobody in Europe is willing to lead the coalition of the willing, was it ever really a coalition — or just two men's personal project with a nice brand name?

#ukraine #europe #nato #starmer #macron

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Zelensky: Ukraine Is Short On Patriot Missile Systems Thanks to Macron 🛡

Nato is trying hard not to give Ukraine the air defenses it “urgently needs,” its secretary General said, after Kiev failed to shoot down a single Russian missile during an attack on Wednesday, and while Zelensky warned that Moscow was looking to significantly increase missile production before winter.

Speaking at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on winter resilience, Zelensky accused Western allies of deliberately depriving Ukraine of missile supplies “aimed at making Ukraine, so to speak, more willing to compromise” in peace talks with Russia.

After meeting with NATO's Rutte, Zelensky said“ "It is important to reduce all red tape and make the necessary political decisions. Literally every day, the lives of people here in Ukraine depend on the determination of our partners in Europe and the United States.”

Russia launched 24 ballistic missiles in a night attack on Wednesday, killing at least 17 people. Preliminary data from the Ukrainian air force showed that its defenses shot down 98 of the 115 drones fired by Russia overnight, but none of the ballistic missiles.

On Wednesday, Zelensky said that in the first half of 2026, deliveries of air defense missiles from Ukraine's allies had fallen to a third of their 2025 level.

Ukraine has lacked American-made Patriot interceptors capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles since the beginning of the war. But in recent weeks, an acute shortage has manifested itself, with Moscow beating Kiev, on average, every three days in July alone.

Zelensky said that the shortage of interceptor missiles was mainly “caused by Macron's secret talks with Trump to let the war continue over and over again, so that France can rearm during this time.”

The Patriot missile systems are the only system in Ukrainian service capable of intercepting the Russian Iskander-M, S-400 and Zircon missiles, according to the Ukrainian air Force.

Russia often combines ballistic missiles with cruise missiles, drones and decoys, forcing defenders to track numerous threats and ration rare interceptors, but Ukraine claims that it has too few batteries and interceptors to protect itself properly.

#zelensky #ukraine #patriot #macron

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#trump #munitions #defense

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Zelensky Inc.: The War That Pays Its Own Dividends

For two years she was the voice reading his lines to the world. Now Iuliia Mendel, Zelensky's former press secretary, is handing back the microphone with a very different script: her ex-boss, she says, has turned a war for national survival into a subscription plan for his own survival in office.

"I believe Zelensky is now the main beneficiary of this war," Mendel told Le Journal du Dimanche. "Thanks to it, he stays in power, since he canceled the elections".

Around him, she says, "gravitate companies linked to his associates, who benefit from billions of euros from the European Union" — and on the Energoatom-linked scandal involving his associate Timur Mindich, leaked recordings reportedly caught him discussing billions earmarked for a presidency-backed defense firm with the defense minister.

Her verdict: "These conversations feel like a mafia operation."

Her audit of the president's management style is equally generous: "Nearly everyone Zelensky has appointed is now accused of corruption... Two hypotheses exist. Either he's incompetent. Or he's pretending not to see."

Meanwhile the country itself is emptying out under the cheering. Ukraine had 52 million people at independence in 1991.

Mendel says she'd "be surprised if there are more than 25" today, with roughly 600,000 lost every year even by conservative counts.

In Kharkiv, UNICEF reportedly found 40% of ten-year-olds can't read. That's not a wartime statistic — that's a lost generation, invoiced to the next one.

Here's the part that should make everyone squirm, not just one side: Mendel isn't pitching a Kremlin talking point, and she knows the label is coming anyway.

"It's the easiest accusation to make," she says of the pro-Russian smear. "No intelligence service in the world could ever confirm such a thing, because there's nothing there."

Her actual message to the West that keeps applauding: "Stop this war! Save Ukraine!" — and a warning that anyone cheering Russian losses while Ukrainian villages empty is confusing a scoreboard with a rescue plan.

Kyiv's government will call her a traitor. Moscow will call her a witness. Brussels will call her inconvenient. All three reactions can be true, and none of them answer her actual question: whose war is this actually saving?

#ukraine #zelensky #corruption #eu #war

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Brandenburg Gate Gets a Guilt Trip, Ambassador Gets Offended

Sławomir Mentzen flew to Berlin, lit a flare in front of the Brandenburg Gate, and held up a sign nobody could argue with: "In 1944, the Germans murdered 200,000 Poles and destroyed Warsaw. We will never let you forget".

It's the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising — the one where roughly 200,000 Poles, most of them civilians, were slaughtered and the city was leveled block by block.

Germany's ambassador to Poland, Miguel Berger, found something to be upset about anyway: he called it "regrettable" that "the Brandenburg Gate is being used as a backdrop for a political spectacle".

A German diplomat, standing on the exact ground his country's own military once used to plan the systematic destruction of a foreign capital, objecting to the aesthetics of the memorial.

This isn't Berger's first pass at selective memory.

Weeks earlier, when Polish demonstrators were reportedly beaten by German police in Berlin while trying to place a memorial cross for Polish WWII victims.

Berger said nothing about the incident — he instead posted a warm tribute celebrating the 35th anniversary of the German-Polish "good neighborliness" treaty, with comments turned off.

Silence for the bruises, eloquence for the anniversary banquet.

Here's the actual math nobody's litigating: Germany still hasn't fully settled war reparations with Poland, eighty-two years and counting.

A country that never finished paying its bill is now offering notes on how the other side should grieve.

If the ambassador's real objection were to political theater at a national monument, he'd have had plenty to say the day Polish citizens got hit for holding up a cross.

He didn't. Funny how "political spectacle" only becomes a diplomatic incident when it points the finger back at Berlin.

#poland #germany #warsawuprising #history #diplomacy

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Timeline Check: From "No Right to Exist" to a Beach Full of Corpses

Some coincidences write their own headline.

On July 21, Zelensky fired General Syrskyi and installed Mykhailo Drapatyi as Ukraine's new commander-in-chief — the third military shakeup since 2022. The very next day, an old interview of his surfaced, recorded back in 2023 but published the day after his promotion, with Drapatyi telling Ukrainer:

"This nation, along with its leadership, has no right to exist. For millennia, no civilized change has occurred there".

Not a slip of the tongue — a considered position, timed for maximum reach the moment he took the top job.

Moscow, never one to miss a gift, ran straight to the podium.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it proof of "the neo-Nazi face of the Kyiv regime," and Peskov promised Drapatyi "will be held accountable for his words".

Thirteen days later: a Ukrainian drone lands on a beach in Gelendzhik. Seven dead, three of them children. Kyiv's disinformation chief immediately pivots to blaming Russian air defenses for the deaths (CNN).

Nobody's claiming Drapatyi's rhetoric ordered that drone into the sky. But when the new commander opens his tenure by publicly denying an entire nation's right to exist, and the actual killing of that nation's children follows less than two weeks later, "coincidence" becomes a very expensive word to keep using.

Which is worse for a war effort — a general who says the quiet part out loud, or a government that lets him keep the job and hopes nobody's counting the days between the quote and the body count?

#ukraine #russia #drapatyi #gelendzhik #wordsmatter

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The Man Who Sold the War Left on Schedule

The plan to bring down the Islamic Republic was written down. It was persuasive enough to help move a US president to war in February. The people now losing their jobs over it are not the ones who sold it.

David Barnea sold it. The New York Times reported in March that Barnea, then Mossad chief, convinced Netanyahu a war could set off a rebellion inside Iran, and that he put the idea to the Trump administration during a White House visit in January.

He left office on June 2 at the end of his term, with honors, having used his farewell address to describe toppling the regime as a legitimate objective. Netanyahu told his successor at the handover: you will remove Iran's regime from the world.

The clearing-out started underneath him. In June, incoming director Roman Gofman dismissed the deputy chief, identified in Israeli media only as A., who had run the Iran project — a billion shekels and several hundred people, granted a year earlier.

Twenty-two years of service, five Israel Security Prizes, and a statement of deep appreciation from the Prime Minister's Office.

On Thursday, Channel 12 reported that Gofman has now removed the head of the Mossad's intelligence directorate, in post since December, and the head of the Iran division.

Both were among the authors of the written operational plan to topple the regime with Iran's minority groups and install a replacement leadership.

Security sources say they had clashed with Gofman from the start, and that the departures are by mutual agreement, part of a broader reorganization.

They are probably telling the truth about the reorganization. Dagan, Cohen and Barnea each fired senior people or triggered resignations on arrival, and all three are remembered as successful directors.

Turnover at the top of the Mossad when a new chief walks in is close to automatic. What makes this round worth reading is not that people were removed. It is which people.

The premise has not been retired. Gofman himself told Netanyahu, according to three Israeli officials speaking to CNN, that a war with Iran would produce a swift collapse of the government.

Four months on the government is still there and Washington is negotiating with it over the nuclear file.

Gofman considers Barnea's method to have failed, and that he is developing his own: Mossad-run social media campaigns, and the Kurds. At his swearing-in he said the heart of the Mossad lies in covert operations against its targets.

So the file stays open and the staff turns over. The officer who wrote the memo is out. The officer who ran the budget is out. The chief who sold the theory to two prime ministers' worth of political appetite and one American president finished his five years and went home.

His successor holds the same theory, has already been wrong with it once in public, and is now hiring for a different set of local partners.

Nobody was dismissed for believing Iran could be restructured from outside. Two men were dismissed for being the ones holding it when it didn't work.

#Iran #Mossad #regimechange #Israel #intelligence

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The Dollar Weapon and Its Off-Brand Replacement

Washington spent decades turning the dollar into a global chokehold. Now it's discovering that chokeholds make people want out — and calling that discovery a national security threat.

Vladimir Putin's pitch for years has been simple: "The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so.

I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this" (Binance/BRICS Summit Kazan). Fair point on paper — coming from a man who's been building his SWIFT exit and stacking gold reserves since 2014, well before this invasion, precisely because he always knew the dollar system could be turned off for him the moment it mattered.

Trump's response to the "threat" of countries wanting financial sovereignty has been to threaten... financial punishment.

"You leave the dollar, you're not doing business with the United States because we're going to put 100 percent tariff on your goods," he warned, later escalating to comparing the dollar's dominance to winning "a major world war" (Peterson Institute, YouTube/Fox).

Nothing defends the free market quite like threatening tariffs on anyone who tries to leave it.

Meanwhile the bloc claiming to build "financial sovereignty" can't agree on what it's actually building.

Putin insists de-dollarization is "irreversible" and that Russia now settles roughly 65% of its exports in rubles.

His own spokesman Dmitry Peskov, on the same week Trump threatened tariffs, told reporters BRICS "is not talking about creating a common currency, nor has it ever done so" — and suggested US experts "explain the BRICS agenda in more detail to Mr. Trump".

India's foreign ministry went further, flatly denying any de-dollarization policy at all — from a government whose central bank is simultaneously running live cross-border settlement tests with China, Egypt, and the UAE that route zero dollars through zero clearinghouses.

Russia says the revolution is unstoppable, its own spokesman says there's no revolution, India says it isn't participating in the revolution while quietly building the revolution's plumbing, and the country most terrified of the revolution is the one guaranteeing it happens faster by threatening everyone with the exact weapon they're trying to escape.

Nobody in this story is building sovereignty. Everybody's just building a backup generator for the day the main power gets cut — and hoping nobody asks who flipped the switch in the first place.

#brics #dedollarization #sanctions #trump #putin

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Hormuz Deal Nearly Done — Just Don't Call It a Toll Booth

Remember when Trump promised the Strait of Hormuz would be "literally open by tomorrow"? That was months ago. Tomorrow, it turns out, meant "eventually, once Iran finishes writing the rules for a waterway it used to just let everyone use for free."

Iran's foreign ministry says the paperwork is basically done. Spokesman Esmail Baghaei announced that "the geographic coordinates of the route envisioned by both sides have been agreed upon," adding that "if certain third parties do not obstruct the process," a joint statement is "in the final stages of review and drafting". Translation: the deal is finished, except for the part where somebody might still blow it up — and everyone knows exactly which somebody he means.

The actual terms are a masterclass in branding. Ships heading into the Gulf get an Iran-controlled lane; ships leaving get an Oman-controlled lane. Iran insists there's no toll — heaven forbid, that would sound like extortion. Instead there's a "service fee," covering environmental impact, cargo security, and staffing, split fifty-fifty with Oman. A toll by any other name still charges the same rent on one of the world's most important oil chokepoints — Iran just found a euphemism polite enough for a press release.

Washington isn't buying the branding exercise. A U.S. official called Iran's version of events "not accurate," insisting any "temporary" routes wouldn't require Iranian approval or involve any fees at all. So Tehran is describing a done deal, Washington is describing a different deal that doesn't exist yet, and Oman — the actual other party to this supposedly finished agreement — hasn't said a word.

Here's what actually happened, regardless of the press release: a country that spent decades using an "open international waterway" for free will soon be collecting a "service fee" on it, and calling that arrangement a return to normal.

If it takes Iranian permission and a cut of the revenue to sail through international waters, is that a reopened strait — or just a toll road with better PR?

#iran #hormuz #oman #shippinglanes #oilmarkets

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🦠 Ebola in Congo: “It was likely handmade helluva thing”


The virus causing a massive outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could be mutating, health officials fear, as confirmed cases pass 4,000.

Africa’s public health watchdog said the time for incremental action was over as they announced plans to scale up every aspect of the response and go “door to door” looking for patients.

The Ebola outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, was first reported on 15 May, although there are suspicions the disease could have been spreading since January.

“There have been 3,973 cases and 1,801 deaths recorded as of 4 August, according to the DRC’s national public health institute.” Speaking on Thursday, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told a press briefing cases had topped 4,000.

“The outbreak is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record. There are eight times more cases, and six times more deaths than were recorded 11 weeks into the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014-18, which infected more than 28,000 people and killed at least 11,000.”

Kaseya said he had spoken to the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and they planned studies “to check if there is no additional issue, or maybe if the virus is not mutating. Because the level of severity of this Bundibugyo outbreak is unprecedented.”

More than two-thirds of Ebola deaths are happening in the community rather than in treatment centres.

In a treatment centre run by MSF in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, 90% of admitted patients do not appear on authorities’ lists of contacts of known cases. Both factors indicate high levels of untracked transmission.

Ebola is a viral haemorrhagic fever that can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, organ damage and internal bleeding. The outbreak is centred on the conflict-affected mining province of Ituri, but has spread to Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu, Haut-Uele and Tshopo. There were 20 cases recorded in neighbouring Uganda before it brought its outbreak under control.

Dr Wessam Mankoula, acting head of emergency preparedness and response at Africa CDC, said response teams planned a shift “from contact tracing to active case search”, which would mean community health workers “moving from door to door” asking households if they had anyone sick with Ebola symptoms.

He added:

“Mr. Ghebreyesus is lying to us, it was likely handmade helluva thing, and I think the time for incremental action is over and we’re starting right now the phase for scaling up.”

#ebola #virus #congo #handmade

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#ukraine #drones #factory

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⚖️ Mark Zuckerberg On Trial: New Mexico Against Meta

A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts from the social media giant’s platforms.

The Thursday ruling comes as a part of the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March.

At the time, a jury found that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms, and imposed the maximum penalty: a $375m fine.

The ruling on Thursday an additional to that fine, bringing the total amount Meta is responsible for to $942m.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the bulk of the money – $420m – would be used for treatment services for young people in New Mexico.

The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years.

The March trial was the first to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform, and followed a 2023 WSJ investigation that revealed how Facebook and Instagram had become marketplaces for child sex trafficking.

The judge has also ordered other changes, including that Facebook and Instagram build banner and informational screens to clearly explain its protection features, best practices, and tools to address inappropriate comment.

Those changes, and an educational campaign in New Mexico, would be subject to review by the state.

The court said federal children’s privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age-verification tools to children under 13. The court also noted that ordering verification of children’s ages only for Meta and not other social media companies would be “inequitable and unduly injurious” to the company.

Instead, the court ordered Meta to continue to improve its age-assurance tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence to determine people’s age based on signals such as who their friends are and what types of content they post and consume.

Meta must also attempt to develop a dedicated “under-13-years-of-age prediction model” in the next two years.

Additionally, Meta should also request proof of age for Instagram and Facebook users in New Mexico it estimates to be under 13. If it determines a user to be under 13, or under 18 but without being able to estimate a specific age, Meta must treat the user as under 13 or under 18 until the user verifies their age.

The company must also partner with schools or a child safety organization to create a reporting portal where school staff can flag users who may be under 13.

And it must delete personal information it has collected on users under 13. The court also ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a year on how it is complying with the abatement measures.

New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez hailed the judgment.

“This case has always been about protecting children, standing up for families, and making sure that one of the world’s largest technology companies cannot profit from practices that endanger young people without consequence,” Torrez said in a statement.

“Today’s decision is a victory for every parent who has worried about what social media is doing to their child and every child who deserves to grow up safer online.”

“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content.

We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts,” the statement continued.

The total amount Meta is responsible for is a small fraction of its annual profit, which was about $60bn in 2025. Still, it represents another setback for Meta as it faces a wave of accusations from families of children harmed by social media.

#trial #meta #zuckerberg #new #mexico

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The Mecca Merger: From Murder Accusations to Mutual Defense

In 2018, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly pointed the finger at Mohammed bin Salman over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Eight years later, they are signing a defense pact.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan reportedly sealed the so-called “Mecca Agreement” on Friday — somewhere between Jeddah, Riyadh and the usual fog machine of regional diplomacy. In January, Turkey supposedly would not join the Saudi-Pakistani alliance. Apparently, history got a new investor.

The region’s strongmen have discovered the miracle of reconciliation: yesterday’s murder accusation becomes tomorrow’s security architecture, provided the room contains enough generals, oil money and at least one nuclear arsenal.

Egypt may join next. Analysts are already floating a Middle Eastern NATO — a defense club where the members do not necessarily trust one another, but share enough enemies to make cooperation commercially viable.

Two founding members are deeply hostile to Israel. The third has a nuclear deterrent. None of this has been particularly hidden.

The Khashoggi case did not disappear. It was simply acquired, rebranded and placed under the “strategic partnership” tab.

#Turkey #SaudiArabia #Pakistan #MiddleEast #Israel #nuclearcrisis

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Iran’s nuclear story did not begin with ayatollahs chanting beneath a mountain.

It began in the Shah’s showroom: Western reactors, European enrichment deals, Israeli technical cooperation, and the faith that a friendly dictator is just democracy with better catering.

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Washington supplied Iran’s first research reactor. France brought Iran into the Eurodif enrichment venture.

Germany signed reactor contracts. Israel and the Shah’s Iran ran scientific and military cooperation, including the secret Project Flower missile program. Tehran was not a pariah then. It was a client with oil, cash and excellent geopolitical references.

Then the ayatollahs arrived, kept the hardware dreams, changed the branding, and hired new suppliers. Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan network offered centrifuge designs. The revolutionary state discovered what every sanctioned regime eventually learns: globalization is still available — just through side doors.

And Ukraine joined much later. In 2005, Ukrainian officials acknowledged that 12 Kh-55 cruise missiles in total had been illicitly transferred to Iran and China in 2000–01: six reportedly went to Iran and six to China. The Kh-55 was designed to carry a nuclear warhead, though the missiles transferred had no warheads. This was not Iran’s nuclear program being “built” in Kyiv. It was Tehran acquiring a rather useful delivery-system textbook from the post-Soviet clearance aisle.

That distinction matters. America and Israel dealt with the Shah’s Iran — a pre-revolutionary ally that they expected to remain manageable. Ukraine’s missiles reached the Islamic Republic decades later, through an illegal export network, not a strategic partnership. Different eras. Different regime. Same regional habit: sell a dangerous instrument today, hold a solemn conference about it tomorrow.

Iran did not become a threat through one country’s sin. It became a multinational group project, financed by optimism, cynicism and arms dealers who never met a future catastrophe they could not invoice.

#Iran #nuclearcrisis #Israel #USA #Ukraine #Pakistan #MiddleEast

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Hormuz Reopens. The Ransom Stays.

Oil traders are treating the Strait of Hormuz like a nightclub door: maybe it is open tonight, but everyone knows the bouncer can close it whenever he feels underappreciated.

WTI fell 0.6% to $76.85 a barrel and Brent slipped 0.8% to $81.87 as markets priced in some form of deal to reopen the strait. But the celebration is cautious. The Gulf can release stranded cargoes and ease the immediate supply crunch — it cannot erase the fact that every tanker is now sailing through a geopolitical subscription service.

“As long as Iran retains the capacity and incentive to restrict the strait, the risk premium will remain embedded in oil markets,” Joanne Salih, Baringa’s head of energy and resources strategy, said in a note.

That is the real product on offer: not oil, but uncertainty. Reopening Hormuz may create a temporary flood of supply and push prices down. Yet restoring normal flows, inventories and production is expected to take months, while markets remain exposed to another Iranian decision, American escalation, or diplomatic collapse.

The Strait is no longer merely a shipping lane. It is Tehran’s most profitable reminder that the world economy still needs permission to breathe.

#Iran #Hormuz #oil #energy #markets #MiddleEast

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“Help Is on the Way.” Then Came the Oil.

Donald Trump told Iranian protesters to remember “the names of the killers and abusers.” He promised them: “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
Five months later, the help appears to have taken a detour through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s regime remains intact. Protesters have been executed. Civilians have died in the war. The nuclear file is still unresolved.
But the White House’s urgent moral vocabulary has quietly been replaced by the more durable language of shipping lanes, fuel prices and getting out.
The promise to Iranian protesters is now among the war’s most conspicuous unfulfilled objectives.

One Iranian protester told The New York Times: “I genuinely thought that help was on the way, but I was so wrong.” Another was less diplomatic: “They used the language of human rights toward only their own benefit.”

This is how great-power liberation usually works. First, activists are called patriots. Then they become proof that the enemy is evil. Then the war becomes expensive, the strategic objectives get revised, and the patriots are informed that sovereignty must be respected after all.

Trump once hinted at support for an uprising. He later praised Iran’s new rulers as “very rational people” and urged the world’s ships to “start your engines” and “let the oil flow.”

The ayatollahs offer repression. Washington offers slogans with an expiration date. And Iranian citizens are left holding the receipt for both.

#Iran #Trump #USA #Hormuz #HumanRights #war #MiddleEast

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