The Intractable Search for Peace in Gaza

Source: Antiwar.com
by Andy Worthington

“Will the west stand up and insist that, before anything else, Israel must fulfil its humanitarian requirements to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, or will they blindly follow Nickolay Mladenov in insisting that this basic obligation to keep the population of Gaza alive — before all the necessary discussions about disarmament and a just transition of power in Gaza, from which the Palestinians themselves must not be excluded — cannot take place until Hamas is completely disarmed, as though it is still, perpetually, eternally, October 7, 2023, and the genocide of the last 31 months continues to be largely irrelevant, or is even somehow magicked away?” (05/28/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/worthington/2026/05/27/the-intractable-search-for-peace-in-gaza/

Age Verification is a Privacy Nightmare

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Rindala Alajaji & Aaron Jue

“Even with the best intentions, every online age verification scheme has the same result: users are forced to reveal sensitive personal information to third parties simply to access the web. Once that valuable data is centralized, it becomes an immediate target for leaks, hacks, and misuse. This isn’t hypothetical: it has already happened several times.” (05/28/26)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/age-verification-privacy-nightmare

Nothing more dangerous than a Netanyahu scorned

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Elfadil Ibrahim

“The emerging deal between the United States and Iran represents an existential danger to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future. With his coalition fracturing and elections approaching, Netanyahu can’t survive a peace that leaves Hezbollah intact and Iran’s nuclear program deferred. The only path that may keep his future viable now runs through Lebanon. This may help explain why, just hours after President Donald Trump announced that a deal with Iran was ‘largely negotiated’ through talks that excluded Israel, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to ‘increase the blows’ against Hezbollah, adding on Monday that ‘we are deepening our operation in Lebanon.'” (05/28/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/netanyahu-iran-deal-lebanon/

France becomes first EU regime to reimburse anti-obesity drugs

Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]

“France ⁠will reimburse the cost of weight-loss drugs prescribed to severely obese patients from mid-June in a first for a European Union country, Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on Thursday. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro medications have led a boom ‌in anti-obesity treatment, attracting interest from governments keen to address rising overweight levels worldwide. Rist estimated the annual cost to the state at around €100 million (US$116 million) at full roll-out. Patients in France are currently paying around €300 per month on average for the drugs, she said, without indicating how many people currently follow such treatments.” (05/28/26)

https://archive.is/GfBOS

Washington, D.C.’s crime decline and its lessons for American policing

Source: Niskanen Center
by Erich Battistin, Richard Hahn, Samantha Pérez-Dávila, & Borui Sun

“Washington, D.C., offers a rare opportunity to study how police departments throughout the country might, and in fact must, do more with less. Since reaching a dramatic peak in 2023, violent and property crime in the District has fallen sharply — even as the police force shrank to its smallest size in half a century. This essay draws on Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) crime and arrest data, officer deployment records, and independent data sources to explain the role police management played in that paradox and extract lessons for American cities facing similar constraints.” (05/28/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/washington-dc-crime-decline-and-its-lessons-for-american-policing

AI Enters the Courtroom: How Chatbots Are Reshaping Litigation

Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway

“AI enables Americans to navigate the legal system without attorneys, operationalizing the right to self-representation and expanding access to justice on an unprecedented scale. Can courts cope?” (05/28/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-enters-the-courtroom-how-chatbots-are-reshaping-litigation/