The Globalist (April 16, 2024): We discuss rising tensions in the Middle East amid fears of an Israeli military response to Iran’s weekend attacks.
We also have the latest on Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial, Croatia’s parliamentary elections and Monocle’s team in Milan checks in from the first day of the 62nd edition of Salone del Mobile. Plus: a special interview with the former Commanding General of US Army Europe, Ben Hodges, on the laws of engagement in Ukraine, Gaza and beyond.
The Israeli war cabinet met again on Monday to discuss the strike, with some hawkish members of the prime minister’s government calling for a swift and forceful retaliation.
The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.
Lawmakers raising national security concerns and seeking to disconnect a major Chinese firm from U.S. pharmaceutical interests have rattled the biotech industry. The firm is deeply involved in development and manufacturing of crucial therapies for cancer, cystic fibrosis, H.I.V. and other illnesses.
Jury selection began in the Manhattan criminal case, but many who might weigh Donald J. Trump’s fate told a judge that they could not be impartial.
Film and television writers face an existential threat
In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith went West to Hollywood, like many before her. She arrived to a small apartment in Silver Lake, one block from the Vista Theatre—a single-screen Spanish Colonial Revival building that had opened in 1923, four years before the advent of sound in film.
Smith was looking for a job in television. She had an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and had lived and worked as a playwright in New York City for years—two of her productions garnered positive reviews in the Times. But playwriting had begun to feel like a vanity project: to pay rent, she’d worked as a nanny, a transcriptionist, an administrative assistant, and more. There seemed to be no viable financial future in theater, nor in academia, the other world where she supposed she could make inroads.
The Republican primaries as farce
On the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses, the super PAC supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis staged a “drop by” for the candidate at its headquarters in West Des Moines. Outside the modernist office park, much of the Upper Midwest was under a deep freeze brought on by a low-pressure system that had deposited more than a foot of snow in advance of a surge of arctic air that brought the wind chill into the negative thirties. Despite the atrocious road conditions, DeSantis was keeping his schedule as a “special guest” of the Never Back Down PAC, beginning the day at the far western end of Iowa, in Council Bluffs, and concluding it three hundred miles east, in Davenport.
Video-game engines were designed to closely mimic the mechanics of the real world. They’re now used for movies, TV shows, architecture, military trainings, virtual reality, and the metaverse.
They have long been a symbol of a future that never came. Now a variety of companies are building them—or something close.
The Globalist (April 15, 2024): The latest on the conflict in the Middle East following Iran’s reprisal attack on Israel. Then: after days of clashes, we discuss the unrest at the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Plus: the implications of Senegal’s new presidency for regional dynamics and fashion news.
The president told Israel that the interception of nearly all of the Iranian drones and missiles used to attack it constituted a major victory, and so further retaliation might not be necessary, U.S. officials said.
Experts say Tehran does not want a broader war. But it is far from clear whether Iran or Israel will choose to escalate a conflict that has become more direct and out of the shadows.
The former president initially disavowed the attack on the Capitol, but he is now making it a centerpiece of his general election campaign.
Strict security measures — and plenty of headaches — are expected as the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president gets underway in Manhattan.
Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel overnight. The U.S. military shot dozens of them down, but most were intercepted by Israel’s military.
Reporters from The New York Times spoke to men who could be affected by the change.
As the death toll in Gaza climbed, the pro-Palestinian movement grew into a powerful, if disjointed, political force in the United States. Democrats are feeling the pressure.
Right-wing lawmakers blocked a move by Speaker Johnson to extend a key foreign intelligence surveillance tool after former President Donald J. Trump urged lawmakers to “kill” the law underlying it.
The more candidates in the race, the better for Donald J. Trump, supporters say. And in a tight presidential contest, a small share of voters could change the result.
The rule applies to a family of chemicals known as PFAS that are linked to serious health effects. Water utilities argue the cost is too great.
The covert operation, described by U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials, is heightening concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the West Bank into a flashpoint in its shadow war with Israel.
Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners has invested more than $1.2 billion, much of it in firms abroad, drawing new scrutiny as his father-in-law, Donald Trump, again seeks the presidency.
Five European countries have recently restricted hormone treatments for adolescents with gender distress. They have not banned the care, unlike many U.S. states.
Recruiting convicts for its army has given Russia a manpower advantage. But it is backfiring in tragic ways when former inmates are pardoned and return home to commit new crimes.
The Wendy’s debacle is a warning shot for brands: If you want to play with prices, make sure to communicate why and whom it could help.
President Biden sends arms to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement that runs until 2026. Israel’s purchases include the types of bombs dropped in Gaza.
Despite growing pressure from President Biden, the Israeli prime minister appears in no rush to end the war in Gaza. Some think he has political reasons for extending the stasis.
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