Blame this week’s newsletter on McDonald’s french fries.
I recently ordered some fries and reflected on the concept of supersizing. I wondered when the fast food giant first began offering the option to go bigger. Google to the rescue – it turns out that supersizing launched in 1992.
Looking back, the 1990s weren’t such a bad decade in many ways. And with all that’s going on, now seems like the perfect moment to look back on some of the good things that came out of that time.
Cheers to the return of Frasier Crane!
Kelsey Grammer is back playing the character he originated on “Cheers” and later played on the spinoff, “Frasier,” which ran from 1993 to 2004. The “Frasier” reboot just started streaming on Paramount+ and it’s one of a few throwbacks coming at us from the ’90s.
Readers of a certain age will remember the Scholastic Book Fairs at school, where some of the most popular books were the “Goosebumps” series. Written by R.L. Stine, the books first started being published in 1992 and they helped introduce an entire generation to horror and the paranormal.
Now a new series based on the books is debuting on Disney+ and Hulu. According to a preview, the show “follows a group of five high school students as they embark on a shadowy and twisted journey to investigate the tragic passing three decades earlier of a teen named Harold Biddle – while also unearthing dark secrets from their parents’ past.”
Just in time for spooky season a.k.a. Halloween! (Which honestly begs the question: how are we almost at the end of the year already?)
But the ’90s aren’t done with us yet.
98 Degrees recently told E! that Taylor Swift (you knew I couldn’t make it through an entire newsletter these days without a Swift reference, right?) has inspired them to rerecord some of their hits. (Swift has famously been rerecording her music after a tiff over her masters with Scooter Braun.)
Nick Lachey, Drew Lachey, Jeff Timmons and Justin Jeffre are following her lead.
“We’re gonna re-record five of our classic hits in kind of the rerecord/get-your-masters-back move,” Nick Lachey told E! News. “We’re also gonna have five new songs as well, and a new single coming out at the top of the year.”
With *NSYNC back on the charts with the song “Better Place” from the “Trolls Band Together” movie soundtrack, all things seem possible, and I for one am embracing the feeling.
Believe it or not, I am also going to tie Bad Bunny into the nostalgia theme this week.
That’s because with his storytelling ability in his music, he feels part folk singer from the days of old while at the same time embodying a pop star for the future.
His fifth studio album, titled “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va A Pasar Mañana (Nobody Knows What Will Happen Tomorrow)” is out Friday. Fresh off of multiple wins at the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards, including artist of the year, the new album is sure to be fuego. If you are not conversant in Spanish, don’t worry. Bad Bunny’s beats are usually so infectious you don’t even need to know what he is saying to jam out.
I’m going to have to deviate from my usual streaming/TV pick here and go all in for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” movie.
Yes, it may feel like it’s all Swift all the time lately, but she’s worked hard to give the Swifties (and others) what they came for. Since not everyone could make it to her live shows, the theater experience may be the next best thing.
You can even host a private viewing party at Cinemark theaters which – to me – sounds even better than trying to enjoy the tunes with thousands of other people in a stadium.
As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the end of its first week, millions have turned to platforms including TikTok and Instagram in hopes of comprehending the brutal conflict in real time. Trending search terms on TikTok in recent days illustrate the hunger for frontline perspectives: From “graphic Israel footage” to “live stream in Israel right now,” internet users are seeking out raw, unfiltered accounts of a crisis they are desperate to understand.
For the most part, they are succeeding, discovering videos of tearful Israeli children wrestling with the permanence of death alongside images of dazed Gazans sitting in the rubble of their former homes. But that same demand for an intimate view of the war has created ample openings for disinformation peddlers, conspiracy theorists and propaganda artists — malign influences that regulators and researchers now warn pose a dangerous threat to public debates about the war.
One recent TikTok video, seen by more than 300,000 users and reviewed by CNN, promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of the Hamas attacks, including false claims that they were orchestrated by the media. Another, viewed more than 100,000 times, shows a clip from the video game “Arma 3” with the caption, “The war of Israel.” (Some users in the comments of that video noted they had seen the footage circulating before — when Russia invaded Ukraine.)
TikTok is hardly alone. One post on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed more than 20,000 times and flagged as misleading by London-based social media watchdog Reset for purporting to show Israelis staging civilian deaths for cameras. Another X post the group flagged, viewed 55,000 times, was an antisemitic meme featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has been appropriated by far-right white supremacists. On Instagram, a widely shared and viewed video of parachuters dropping in on a crowd and captioned “imagine attending a music festival when Hamas parachutes in” was debunked over the weekend and, in fact, showed unrelated parachute jumpers in Egypt. (Instagram later labeled the video as false.)
This week, European Union officials sent warnings to TikTok, Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta, YouTube and X, highlighting reports of misleading or illegal content about the war on their platforms and reminding the social media companies they could face billions of dollars in fines if an investigation later determines they violated EU content moderation laws. US and UK lawmakers have also called on those platforms to ensure they are enforcing their rules against hateful and illegal content.
Since the violence in Israel began, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the social media watchdog group Center for Countering Digital Hate, told CNN his group has tracked a spike in efforts to pollute the information ecosystem surrounding the conflict.
“Getting information from social media is likely to lead to you being severely disinformed,” said Ahmed.
Everyone from US foreign adversaries to domestic extremists to internettrolls and “engagement farmers” has been exploiting the war on social media for their own personal or political gain, he added.
“Bad actors surrounding us have been manipulating, confusing and trying to create deception on social media platforms,” Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli social media threat intelligence firm Cyabra, said Thursday in a video posted to LinkedIn. “If you are not sure of the trustworthiness [of content] … do not share,” he said.
‘Upticks in Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives’
Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, told CNN his team has witnessed a similar phenomenon. The trend includes a wave of first-party terrorist propaganda, content depicting graphic violence, misleading and outright false claims, and hate speech – particularly “upticks in specific and general Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives.”
Much of the most extreme content, he said, has been circulating on Telegram, the messaging app with few content moderation controls and a format that facilitates quick and efficient distribution of propaganda or graphic material to a large, dedicated audience. But in much the same way that TikTok videos are frequently copied and rebroadcast on other platforms, content shared on Telegram and other more fringe sites can easily find a pipeline onto mainstream social media or draw in curious users from major sites. (Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Schools in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States this week urged parents to delete their children’s social media apps over concerns that Hamas will broadcast or disseminate disturbing videos of hostages who have been seized in recent days. Photos of dead or bloodied bodies, including those of children, have already spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X this week.
And tech watchdog group Campaign for Accountability on Thursday released a report identifying several accounts on X sharing apparent propaganda videos with Hamas iconography or linking to official Hamas websites. Earlier in the week, X faced criticism for videos unrelated to the war being presented as on-the-ground footage and for a post from owner Elon Musk directing users to follow accounts that previously shared misinformation (Musk’s post was later deleted, and the videos were labeled using X’s “community notes” feature.)
Some platforms are in a better position to combat these threats than others. Widespread layoffs across the tech industry, including at some social media companies’ ethics and safety teams, risk leaving the platforms less prepared at a critical moment, misinformation experts say. Much of the content related to the war is also spreading in Arabic and Hebrew, testing the platforms’ capacity to moderate non-English content, where enforcement has historically been less robust than in English-language content.
“Of course, platforms have improved over the years. Communication & info sharing mechanisms exist that did not in years past. But they have also never been tested like this,” Brian Fishman, the co-founder of trust and safety platform Cinder who formerly led Facebook’s counterterrorism efforts, said Wednesday in a post on Threads. “Platforms that kept strong teams in place will be pushed to the limit; platforms that did not will be pushed past it.”
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, said in a letter Wednesday to the European Commission that the platform has “identified and removed hundreds of Hamas-related accounts” and is working with several third-party groups to prevent terrorist content from spreading. “We’ve diligently taken proactive actions to remove content that violates our policies, including: violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media,” she said. The European Commission on Thursday formally opened an investigation into X following its earlier warning about disinformation and illegal content linked to the war.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that since Hamas’ initial attacks, the company has established “a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation. Our teams are working around the clock to keep our platforms safe, take action on content that violates our policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation. We’ll continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”
YouTube, for its part, says its teams have removed thousands of videos since the attack began, and continues to monitor for hate speech, extremism, graphic imagery and other content that violates its policies. The platform is also surfacing almost entirely videos from mainstream news organizations in searches related to the war.
Snapchat told CNN that its misinformation team is closely watching content coming out of the region, making sure it is within the platform’s community guidelines, which prohibits misinformation, hate speech, terrorism, graphic violence and extremism.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Large tech platforms are now subject to content-related regulation under a new EU law called the Digital Services Act, which requires them to prevent the spread of mis- and disinformation, address rabbit holes of algorithmically recommended content and avoid possible harms to user mental health. But in such a contentious moment, platforms that take too heavy a hand in moderation could risk backlash and accusations of bias from users.
Platforms’ algorithms and business models — which generally rely on the promotion of content most likely to garner significant engagement — can aid bad actors who design content to capitalize on that structure, Ahmed said. Other product choices, such as X’s moves to allow any user to pay for a subscription for a blue “verification” checkmark that grants an algorithmic boost to post visibility, and to remove the headlines from links to news articles, can further manipulate how users perceive a news event.
“It’s time to break the emergency glass,” Ahmed said, calling on platforms to “switch off the engagement-driven algorithms.” He added: “Disinformation factories are going to cause geopolitical instability and put Jews and Muslims at harm in the coming weeks.”
Even as social media companies work to hide the absolute worst content from their users — whether out of a commitment to regulation, advertisers’ brand safety concerns, or their own editorial judgments — users’ continued appetite for gritty, close-up dispatches from Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is forcing platforms to walk a fine line.
“Platforms are caught in this demand dynamic where users want the latest and the most granular, or the most ‘real’ content or information about events, including terrorist attacks,” Brookie said.
The dynamic simultaneously highlights the business models of social media and the role the companies play in carefully calibrating their users’ experiences. The very algorithms that are widely criticized elsewhere for serving up the most outrageous, polarizing and inflammatory content are now the same ones that, in this situation, appear to be giving users exactly what they want.
But closeness to a situation is not the same thing as authenticity or objectivity, Ahmed and Brookie said, and the wave of misinformation flooding social media right now underscores the dangers of conflating them.
Despite giving the impression of reality and truthfulness, Brookie said, individual stories and combat footage conveyed through social media often lack the broader perspective and context that journalists, research organizations and even social media moderation teams apply to a situation to help achieve a fuller understanding of it.
“It’s my opinion that users can interact with the world as it is — and understand the latest, most accurate information from any given event — without having to wade through, on an individual basis, all of the worst possible content about that event,” Brookie said.
Potentially exacerbating the messy information ecosystem is a culture on social media platforms that often encourages users to bear witness to and share information about the crisis as a way of signaling their personal stance, whether or not they are deeply informed. That can lead even well-intentioned users to unwittingly share misleading information or highly emotional content created with the intention of collecting views or monetizing highly engaging content.
“Be very cautious about sharing in the middle of a major world event,” Ahmed said. “There are people trying to get you to share bullsh*t, lies, which are designed to inculcate you to hate or to misinform you. And so sharing stuff that you’re not sure about is not helping people, it’s actually really harming them and it contributes to an overall sense that no one can trust what they’re seeing.”
Some kids in Houston got just a three-week summer break this year. In Richmond, Virginia, two elementary schools have added 20 days to the academic year. And in Indiana, students across the state have received more than 36,000 hoursof tutoring over the past year, at no cost to their families.
Research has long shown that adding quality instruction time can have a significant impact on students’academic achievement, though it may not always be easy to getstudents, teachers or parents on board with a longer school year, summer school or after-school tutoring.
But the significant learning lossexperienced during the Covid-19 pandemic coupled with a historic federal investment in K-12 education made the timing ripe for some schools to make big changes. Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress authorized $190 billion in funding for K-12 schools – roughly six times what they receive from the federal government in a normal year.
It’s too early to declare these new programs in Virginia, Texas and Indiana assuccess stories, but they are showing promising results – and could set the example for some significant changes at America’s schools.
Most of Richmond’s public school students returned on August 21 this year. But for roughly 1,000 families at two elementary schools, July 24 was the first day of the2023-2024 school year.
The district added 20 days of school to help students at Fairfield Court and Cardinal elementary schools catch up after the pandemic.
“It’s something that we had been discussing for some time but were a little bit wary of taking it on pre-pandemic,” said Jason Kamras, superintendent of Richmond Public Schools.
“But coming out of the pandemic … our kids were really, really behind and we had to put everything on the table,” he said.
Twelve schools in the district applied for the pilot program to extend the school year, but just two showed they had support from the majority of families and teachers, which the district required to move forward. At Fairfield Court and Cardinal elementary schools, about 90% of families and teachers supported the plan.
A handful of teachers and a dozen families who did not want to participate in the extended school year were transferred to other schools in the district, Kamras said.
“Most of the families I spoke to were absolutely thrilled to be able to have their kids back in school,” he said.
The Fairfield Court and Cardinal schools serve many low-income and immigrant families, who may not have the money to take their kids on vacation, send them to camp or pay for child careduring the summer, Kamras added.
The pilot program, which pays teachers a $10,000 bonus with a potential second bonus if benchmarks are met, is currently funded with federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act, a sweeping pandemic relief package that passed Congress in 2021. That schoolfunding expires next September and other financial sources will be needed to continue providing longer school years.
Summer break wasjust three weeks for about 1,600 elementary school students in Houston this year.
Four elementary schools in the Aldine Independent School District, located on the north side of Houston, have added 30 days to the academic calendar. That means kids went back to school in mid-July and stayed through the end of the followingJune. Due to some calendar changes, the students are expected to get up to a six-week summer break next year even with the 30 additional days of school.
The schedule for the additional days looks different than on a traditional school day. While the hours are the same, more class time isdirected at students’ individual needs, and there is more time for working on projects with peers. Each additional day also provides 210 minutes of accelerated math and reading learning time.
The Aldine Independent School District, where more than 90% of students come from low-income families that qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, started with two elementary schools extending the academic year in 2021-2022. Two more schools did so the following year, as it became clear that the pandemic exacerbated problems at low-performing districts.
So far, the results are promising, according to LaTonya Goffney, superintendent of Aldine Independent School District. One of the schools was the lowest-performing elementary school in the district before 2020 and is now one of the highest-performing, she said.
Plus, attendance at the schools that added days continue to be higher than at the other schools in the district.
A law passed by the Texas state legislature in 2019 helped pave the way to make an extended school year a reality. The law created a program known as Additional Days School Year, which covers half the cost of adding up to 30 days of instruction to the academic calendar. Schools serving pre-K through fifth grades are eligible.
The local school districts are on the hook for the rest of the cost. At Aldine, the federal Covid-19 relief funds weren’t used directly for the cost of adding days to the school year, but the aid freed up other funds to pay for the initiative, Goffney said.
When Aldine started bringing kids back for in-person learning in 2021, the additional school days seemed like the “perfect solution” to address learning loss, said Goffney.
Goffney admits she was nervous on that first day of school in July 2021.
“But the parents were there, they were happy. And the kids were happy to be out of the house. People were ready to come back,” she said.
Indiana is using federal pandemic aid to provide tutoring for students throughout the statein grades three through eight who come from low-income families and are struggling academically.
Dubbed Indiana Learns, the program connects families with tutors and provides $1,000 grants to cover the cost. About six months after the program launched in October 2022, the state made more funding available to families that have already used the $1,000.
Research shows that high-quality tutoring in small groups can have a substantial impact on pre-K-12 students.
Indiana families can use the Indiana Learns online platform to schedule tutoring in math or reading for their kids at a time and place that works for them. Sessions can be in person or online and are provided to students individually or in groups of up to four students per tutor.
“We wanted to really leverage the parents and the families to also be a part of this solution in supporting their child,” said Katie Jenner, Indiana’s secretary of education.
“It was a big bet. But there are so many students who were not passing our state assessments, whose families did not have that extra disposable income to support their child with tutoring,” she added.
So far, at least 15,000 students have enrolled in the program and completed more than 36,000 hours of tutoring with nearly 20,000 more hours scheduled, according to The Mind Trust, a nonprofit hired by the state to help run Indiana Learns.
The tutors are vetted by Mind Trust and come from a variety of places, including existing tutoring companies, current and retired teachers, andcommunity groups, said Brandon Brown, CEO of The Mind Trust. Tutors cannot charge more than $100 per hour, and the average hourly rate is about $50.
Funding for the program will end in September 2024, when the American Rescue Plan Act requires states to have spent the federal pandemic funds. But the state could decide to provide its own funds if the program proves to be a good investment.
It’s unlikely all students will be caught up by the start of the next school year.
“I think learning loss during the pandemic is a national crisis, and I think it’s important for our country to treat it as such,” Brown said.
The Biden administration underlined its public and fulsome show of support for Israel Friday as two of its most senior national security officials visited the Middle East ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.
Behind the scenes, however, the US faces a difficult diplomatic challenge – providing support for Israel’s “legitimate security operations” while trying to mitigate the devastating impact on civilians and prevent the war from expanding out to further fronts.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with senior leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He pledged unwavering US solidarity, echoing a message delivered by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv a day prior.
Blinken, meanwhile, is engaged in extensive shuttle diplomacy to press “countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading, and to use their leverage with Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the hostages,” he said Thursday. Following his departure from Israel Thursday, Blinken traveled to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and then on to Doha for meetings with senior Qatari officials. He also briefly stopped in Bahrain before landing Saudi Arabia on Friday evening. He will also visit the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt before returning to the United States Sunday.
In public remarks, Blinken and Austin both offered full-throated support for Israel’s actions in the wake of the brutal Hamas attack last weekend, which killed 1,300 people, including 27 Americans. The subsequent Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed nearly 1,800 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
“No county can tolerate having a terrorist group come in, slaughter its people in the most unconscionable way, and live like that. What Israel’s doing is not retaliation. What Israel is doing is defending the lives of its people and, as I said, trying to make sure that this cannot happen again,” Blinken said at a press conference in Doha Friday.
“This is no time for neutrality, or for false equivalence or for excuses for the inexcusable,” Austin said at another press conference in Tel Aviv Friday.
US administration officials have not publicly urged de-escalation or called for a ceasefire.
They have discussed “with Israel the importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians,” Blinken said Friday – a discussion that comes as Israel’s actions are likely to face immense scrutiny from nations in the region, human rights groups, and progressive lawmakers in Washington. On Friday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Blinken urging them to call on the Israel Defense Forces to show restraint in Gaza. to show restraint in Gaza.
In remarks Friday, Biden said the US was working “urgently to address the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, noting that “we can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas.”
In his meetings in Tel Aviv Thursday, Blinken pressed Israeli officials on the need to establish safe zones for civilians inside Gaza, a senior State Department official said Friday.
“We do want to find some way to establish some sort of safe area where the people who live in Gaza City can go to be saved from Israel security operations,” the official explained. “It’s work that’s still coming together.”
“I can tell you from the meetings we had with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the security cabinet yesterday, it is something that they are actively focused on and actively working on,” they added.
The US is also working with Egypt and Israel to try to establish a humanitarian corridor for supplies to come into Gaza and for American citizens and other civilians to evacuate to Egypt.
The specter of imminent military action is looming, though, and it is unclear if the mechanisms can be set up in time. The Israeli military warned the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes – an order that the United Nations decried as impossible to undertake “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Some Palestinian-Americans have received their first set of instructions that family members stuck in Gaza may be able to evacuate into Egypt on Saturday afternoon, according to emails shared with CNN. The US State Department’s Consular Affairs Crisis Management System told family members that on Saturday the Rafah Crossing “may be open.”
“We understand the security situation is difficult, but if you wish to depart Gaza you may want to take advantage of this opportunity,” the CACMS email said.
A State Department spokesperson told CNN they “are actively discussing this with our Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.”
“We support safe passage for civilians,” they said. “We are working with our Israeli and Egyptian partners to establish a safe humanitarian corridor both for Gazans trying to flee this war and to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need within the territory.”
The US is scrambling to try to stop adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran – who have threatened to join the war – from doing so.
“A big part of my own conversations here throughout this trip, including today, following up the next couple of days, is working with other countries to make sure that they’re using their own contacts, their own influence, their own relationship to make that case – that no one else should be taking this moment to choose to create more trouble in some other place,” Blinken said.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
“Get down!” the medic in the front seat hissed as our ambulance approached the Israeli checkpoint.
I could see through the front window tanks by the side of the road, nervous Israeli soldiers raising their guns as we approached.
This was January 2009 and the CNN crew had caught a ride with a convoy of ambulances going from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip toward Gaza City along the coastal road. The medics allowed us to come along on the condition we hid on their stretchers.
This was what Israel had dubbed “Operation Cast Lead,” the first in a series of flare-ups of various durations between Israel and Gaza in 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022. The ongoing operation in Gaza was preceded by another one this May.
After a brief exchange with the medics in the lead ambulance, the soldiers waved us through without inspecting the ambulances.
It was the deepest Israeli ground operation into Gaza since the withdrawal from the Strip in 2005. Then, Israeli troops largely avoided the most built up and crowded areas, particularly Gaza’s eight crammed refugee camps. They were well aware that entering into the narrow alleys of camps like al-Shati, one of the most crowded, would be risky. Their focus was on controlling the periphery of urban areas.
Israel’s tactics have always been to move fast, control as much territory as possible, but avoid street-to-street, house-to-house fighting where a weaker opponent can take full advantage of the terrain. Entering urban areas in Gaza, however, would bring in an entire new element to the fight.
At the moment Israeli forces are engaged with Hamas. But Gaza is home to a myriad of armed Palestinian groups, including Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) to name just a few. They don’t have Hamas’ manpower or weaponry, but they’re numerous enough to put up serious resistance.
In March 2008, I went to Gaza to cover an Israeli incursion into the north, this time dubbed “Hot Winter,” yet another attempt to stop rocket fire from Gaza. At the time, Hamas was in full control of the Gaza Strip, having expelled the rival Fatah faction the previous year. But when I arrived in the area where Israeli forces were trying to advance, it wasn’t Hamas fighters but rather gunmen from the PFLP who were running street battles with Israeli troops. They ducked in and out of alleyways, sprinted across streets with rocket propelled grenade launchers and Kalashinkov assault rifles. The young men were almost giddy with excitement. They finally had a chance to fight Israeli troops on their own ground. Eventually, the Israelis pulled out. The rocket fire continued.
Going back to the summer of 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon in pursuit of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Israeli forces made it all the way to Beirut then stopped on the outskirts, establishing a siege much along the lines announced Monday by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It was clear even back then that entering Beirut, particularly the Palestinian refugee camps, would be a deadly mission for all.
During the siege that followed, Israeli warplanes and artillery pummeled West Beirut, but ground troops stayed out of Beirut proper.
In the end, under American pressure, a deal was worked out whereby Palestinian fighters would evacuate Beirut and Lebanon to Yemen, Tunisia and elsewhere. It was only after they left that Israeli troops took control of the western part of the city. Soon afterwards in September 1982, with Israel in control of West Beirut, the Israeli military, under the leadership of then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, allowed their right-wing Christian Lebanese allies, the Kataib, to enter Sabra and Shatila refugee camp and slaughter over a thousand civilians who no longer were able to defend themselves because the men of fighting age and their weapons had left as part of the US-brokered deal with the PLO.
The Israeli military has now mobilized 300,000 reservists for what is now widely believed to be an unprecedented incursion into Gaza – and perhaps, some speculate, a re-occupation of the enclave – in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack, which killed more than 1,300 people in Israel.
Retired colonel breaks down ‘key indicators’ for ground incursion in Gaza
What awaits it is a Hamas that has shown, despite the cruelty vividly displayed in its Saturday attack, a level of military capability far beyond what was previously thought. It is probably well prepared for the next phase in this war.
Over the past week, Israel has launched hundreds of punishing strikes on Gaza, turning some areas into wastelands of shattered concrete and twisted metal. In the process, over 2,200 Palestinians – including many civilians and over 700 children – have been killed. And this is just the initial phase of this war.
If it comes, the ground operation will be far bloodier and more destructive. Israeli forces will also have to be mindful that spread around Gaza are more than a hundred captive Israelis – soldiers and civilians, including women and children – held hostage by Hamas. And although no one outside Hamas knows where they’re being held, it’s likely they’re in the most difficult areas for Israeli forces to access, possibly in crowded refugee camps.
As eager as Israel’s leaders may be to deal a fatal blow to Hamas, it will come at a very high price. To all.
Republicans’ efforts to win control of the Louisiana governor’s office face a first test Saturday in a “jungle primary” that is likely to narrow the field to a head-to-head runoff next month.
Louisiana – much like Kentucky, another deep-red state, where Gov. Andy Beshear is seeking a second term this year – has in recent elections been willing to vote in a Democratic governor.
But Bayou State Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat with some socially conservative positions who was elected in 2015 amid dissatisfaction with outgoing GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal and reelected in 2019, is barred by term limits from running again. With Edwards out, the Louisiana race represents the GOP’s best chance of flipping a gubernatorial seat this year after a disappointing 2022 midterms that saw the party lose a net of two governorships.
Under Louisiana’s jungle primary system, all contenders run on the same ballot. If one candidate wins 50% of the vote Saturday, that person will be elected governor. But the more likely outcome is that no one reaches that threshold, and the top two contenders, regardless of party, would advance to a November 18 runoff.
The Republican favorite is state Attorney General Jeff Landry, a hard-line conservative who has frequently tussled with Edwards in court. The state Republican establishment has largely coalesced around Landry in the race after several other high-profile potential candidates opted against running. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Landry in May, saying in a video that the attorney general has been “fantastic” and wants to “stop crime.”
Landry will have competition for Republican votes Saturday from state Senate Majority Leader Sharon Hewitt, state Treasurer John Schroder and Stephen Waguespack, the former president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and a onetime Jindal chief of staff. Independent attorney Hunter Lundy is also in the race, as are several lesser-known contenders.
Democrats, meanwhile, have consolidated around former state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, who is widely viewed as the favorite for the second spot in the runoff. Wilson is hoping to become the state’s first Black elected governor.
Despite Edwards’ two victories, Louisiana remains largely dominated by Republicans. The GOP has won the last four presidential races in the state by between 17 and 20 points, and the last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Louisiana’s electoral votes was Bill Clinton in 1996.
Landry, 52, first won political office in 2010, when he was elected to the US House as part of that year’s tea party wave. He lost his south Louisiana seat in a primary two years later, after the state lost a district in reapportionment and Landry was drawn into the same seat as the more senior Rep. Charles Boustany.
He won the attorney general’s office in 2015, ousting two-term incumbent Buddy Caldwell, who had left the Democratic Party and become a Republican just four years earlier.
As attorney general, Landry has clashed with Edwards over several issues, including a court battle that followed the governor’s efforts to require state contracts to protect LGBT employees from discrimination. He joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election by throwing out Electoral College votes in several swing states.
Landry has swamped the field in fundraising, and had $4.5 million in the bank on September 24, the end of the last campaign finance reporting period.
Imagine you’re at the movies: The lights have dimmed, the previews are over, chatter dwindles to a hush. You take a sip of soda through a straw. You pop some artificially buttery popcorn into your mouth. You tear open a bag of Skittles and start to chew.
That last part feels wrong, probably, because at the movies, candy comes in a box. Movie theaters are not the only place to buy boxed candy — you can get boxes of chocolate or candy at some drug stores or online — but even then they’re called theater box candy, a label that undeniably links the package with the movies.
So what’s with the box? Experts say that the distinctive packaging is about logistics — both for the theater, and for you and your buddies at the movies.
Rectangular theater boxes “make it easy [for consumers] to share their candy with their friends,” said Keith Domalewski, director of marketing at Just Born, which sells Mike and Ike and Hot Tamales.
A spokesperson for Mars Wrigley, maker of M&M’s and Skittles, made a similar point, noting that candy sold in “boxes in movie theaters is easier to pour and share, compared to traditional packaging, and boxes offer the ability to re-close.” That means less spilling in between seats.
Candy sellers are always thinking about how people are going to consume their products.
If you’re going to polish off a bag of M&M’s in one sitting or scarf down a chocolate bar on the bus, you don’t need to worry about re-sealing and are likely happy with a small, tearable package. If you’re looking for a sweet, portion-controlled snack, you might buy a bag of fun sizes.
At the movies, you’re probably going to be passing snacks along to friends, noted Chris Gindlesperger, senior vice president of public affairs and communications at the National Confectioners Association, a trade organization. “It’s a moment to share.”
In a convenience or grocery store, you might find candy hanging from a peg, Gindlesperger noted.
Those bags are designed to be displayed in that way. The principle is the same for movie theater candy.
“Theater boxes take their name from being available in movie theaters or other retail establishments that might have shelving,” he said.
You can browse at a grocery store, or grab a bag of candy off a peg as you move through the line. At a concession stand, you can’t do much but peek over your neighbor’s shoulder to scope out the offerings until you get to the counter.
“To be able to see the product and the brands and make a selection as a shopper, [the boxes] need to stand up,” Gindlesperger said.
That’s important for the candy makers, who want their products to stand out.
“Theater boxes merchandise neatly behind the glass counter or on a grab-and-go shelf, and the large front panel makes it easy for consumers to find their favorite candy brands quickly,” said Domalewski.
And now that people associate boxed candy with the movies, they hold a fondness for the packaging. “There is strong consumer nostalgia with the ‘theater box’ format and movie watching — and some people will even purchase them for home screen time,” said the spokesperson for Mars Wrigley.
In general, consumers have been opting for smaller pack sizes, sometimes paying a premium to get help with portion control.
Butgoing to “a movie theater is still a treat,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior director of insight at Mintel Food and Drink. “It’s not the place to practice portion control.”
Even if you’re going to the movies alone, you’re still expected to shell out for a large box of candy, which can be upwards of 3 ounces, nearly double a bag of M&M’s or a candy bar. And nobody would blink an eye if you finish it on your own.
“You can say that the whole concept is that big packages can be shared with friends when you go to the movies,” Mogelonsky said. “But how many people just sit there and eat the whole Twizzler package themselves?”
Netflix mailed its last red-enveloped DVD last month. Now Best Buy will stop selling DVDsand Blu-ray discs at the end of the 2023 holiday season, too.
Best Buy says that streaming has made DVDs obsolete and it can use physical space in its stores and warehouses for tech products in higher demand.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” Best Buy said in a statement. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
The media website Digital Bits first broke the news of Best Buy’s move.
Best Buy does not break out its sales from DVDs, but Best Buy currently has 24,000 DVDs listed on its website.
The company has shrunk down aisles of DVDs in recent years.
Best Buy’s exit from the market will leave Walmart, Amazon and Target as the top retailers stocking DVDs, according to Digital Bits. (Pour one out for Blockbuster.)
Walmart reportedly controls 45% of the market for DVDs.
A rescue team consisting of “rope rescue technicians” from several fire departments set off on the mission to free Charlie on Tuesday, the Facebook post says. The team hiked to the mouth of the cave, where firefighter Tori Downing and captain Jon Lanier descended into the cave.
“Things took a turn when Firefighter Downing rounded a corner and found a bear sleeping five feet below her and the trapped hunting dog farther in the cave system,” reads the Facebook post.
Charlie’s unwitting companion was a 2-year-old black bear weighing an estimated 200 pounds, according to the Waldens Creek Volunteer Fire Department.
The rescue team left the cave and set up trail cameras to track when the bear left the cave, the Facebook post says.
On Wednesday, they determined that the bear “had left the cave and not returned.”
With the cave “bear-free,” the stage was set for Charlie’s rescue. Three firefighters descended into the cave on a rope system. But initially, it seemed they would still be unable to retrieve the trapped canine.
“At first, we actually thought the dog had slipped further into the cave where we couldn’t access,” Lanier said, according to CNN affiliate WVLT. “It was kinda sad because we felt like we were gonna have to leave the dog there.”
“As we’re about to head back out, I looked back one more time and I saw his antenna from his tracker collar,” another firefighter, Christian Ellard, said, according to WVLT.
Charlie was “dehydrated and hungry, but in otherwise good condition,” says the Waldens Creek Volunteer Fire Department.
The rescue team “fashioned a harness for the dog and effected the rescue,” the department explained. “Charlie was quickly reunited with his happy owner.”
The department included a photo of a volunteer emerging from the narrow cave mouth with Charlie in his arms and a shot of the rescued pup with four members of the rescue team.
“It was definitely a sigh of relief for everybody on scene,” said Andrew Wojturski, a firefighter with Sevier County Fire & Rescue, according to WVLT. “And then once we finally got him out and the owner came up afterwards and shook our hands and thanked us, it was really rewarding.”
In their Facebook post, the Waldens Creek Volunteer Fire Department thanked “the entire rescue team and people who worked together to make this happen.”
“It was truly a team effort that required all these departments to make it a success,” they said.
English Mountain is near Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park, described by the National Park Service as “one of the largest protected areas in the eastern United States where black bears can live in wild, natural surroundings.” An estimated 1,900 bears live in the park.
It is with a weird retrospective guilt that I have to admit: Hamas once saved me from a kidnapping in Gaza.
The militant group behind massacres and abductions, the slaughter of civilians, and the cynical endangerment of their own people, stopped an Islamist gang seconds before they were about to grab me from the Hotel Deira in northern Gaza in 2008.
With hushed efficiency, Hamas intelligence officers swarmed the hotel. No shots were fired.
The kidnap gang, diverted from its mission, blew up the nearby British Council offices in a fit of pique.
That was the old Hamas. Yes, a violent group with a history of terror tactics directed against Israelis, a long commitment to destroying the state of Israel (though not one of genocide against Jews or Israelis), but also a social movement of political Islam with a reputation in the Arab world for efficiency and probity.
Yet the Palestinian militant group was always cynical in its use of violence and in its perpetuation of a cult of martyrdom.
When, during the second Intifada in 2000, Israeli troops used live fire against armed militants as well as unarmed civilians across the Palestinian territories, Hamas unleashed waves of suicide bombers — and insisted on “celebrating” the deaths of Palestinian children as martyrs.
At a clandestine meeting in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in early 2001, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin gasped and peeped. He spoke to me through an interpreter – the group’s only person who could decipher the sounds he made.
Wheelchair bound from youth, the founder of Hamas claimed that while “Israelis love life,” “we celebrate the greatest gift of martyrdom for our children. Every mother wants that for her child.”
A few weeks later the Israelis killed him.
But his group’s intense combination of victimhood and passion for martyrdom lived on. Indeed it deepened as Hamas took hold of Gaza and risked sacrificing its inhabitants to Israeli air raids and ground invasions — usually provoked by Hamas attacks.
Cycles of violence and peace had already characterized the Hamas approach, depending on which of its wings — military or civilian — prevailed.
One influential military figure in Hamas was always resolutely opposed to any kind of peace with what Hamas insists on calling the “Zionist Entity.”
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, is known as El Deif (the Guest), because, for decades, he has stayed in different houses every night to avoid being tracked, and killed, by Israel. He’s now in charge of Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassem Brigades.
Thought to have been born in the 1960s, El Deif is little known to ordinary Palestinians, according to Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Al Azah University in Gaza.
“He’s very much like a ghost to the majority of the Palestinians,” he said.
The Al Qassem Brigades were opposed to the peace process embraced by Yassir Arafat, then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the 1993 Oslo Accords that were supposed to pave the way to a two-state solution of a new Palestine living in peace alongside Israel.
Weapons used by Hamas militants appear to be Russian or Chinese made
In 1996 El Deif, an accomplished bomb maker, was behind a wave of four suicide attacks that killed 65 people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other outrages intended to derail the peace process.
As Hamas captured Gaza from rivals Fatah in 2007 (after winning the Palestinian elections the year before) Israel and Egypt tightened a noose around the enclave, which houses around 2 million people.
Hamas is seen by many Palestinians as the best alternative to rule by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is dominated by Fatah and the larger Palestine Liberation Organization. The PA pays the wages for the public sector in Gaza, and this summer polls showed that support for the PA, which only rules on the West Bank, was nonetheless around 70% in Gaza.
Support for Hamas in Gaza has rarely tipped much past 50%. And on the ground, in private conversations, it’s been difficult to find people who are genuinely behind Hamas military campaigning. But few people are prepared to be openly critical and risk arrest.
Israel’s policies over the West Bank, where Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law, spread steadily across the occupied territories, over access to the al Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem, and the moribund efforts to achieve a viable two-state solution, meant Hamas was able to weaponize grievance. The movement has no shortage of volunteers in the crowded enclave everyone there calls the “biggest prison in the world.”
The tighter the Israeli and Egyptian control over Gaza’s borders – the more Hamas (and other groups) developed military means to fight back.
Chief among them is rockets. Primitive at first, the missiles have been improved and refined over years of help from Iran.
The Tehran theocracy, also dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish state, trained engineers, organized technology transfers and guided developments to create rockets capable of hitting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Men like El Deif, the bomb makers and decision takers, were hunted by Israel.
In 2014, an air strike killed his wife and daughter. He lost part of an arm, a leg and his hearing. No doubt his hatred for Israel intensified then.
But his emotions were leavened with zealous cunning. And the first, and most important deception, was to transform the Israeli perception of Hamas.
In the last two years, Hamas, under El Deif’s guidance, worked to convince Israel that its focus was on domestic issues, on rebuilding Gaza, on securing work permits for people to seek employment in Israel, on building up its infrastructure.
“The Israelis have felt that, in the long run, that Hamas is known for these policies more than that there’s going to be a call for a military confrontation with Israel,” says Abusada, the Gazan professor.
All the while, though, Hamas was plotting a massive assault that would end any perception in Israel, and beyond, that the Islamic Resistance had lost its strategic mojo.
Key to this change, too, was another major figure in Hamas’ military wing, Yahya Sinwar. A former head of the Al Qassem brigades, he’s now the head of Hamas in Gaza.
He focused efforts on building relationships with foreign powers — notably Egypt and Iran.
Hamas’ attack on Israel last weekend represents the worst Israeli military setback since 1973. Back then Syria and Egypt launched a surprise assault on Israel over the Yom Kippur holiday. Initially successful, the Arabs were soon pushed back as Israel rallied.
Now Israel is massing troops on the borders with Gaza and in the north where it faces Iran-backed Hezbollah across the fence with Lebanon.
What will Hamas ultimately gain from its bloody gamble? Karim von Hippel, director of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, says “they may have been planning this for years and thinking through what they can do, because everything else they have tried, hasn’t worked.”
“But certainly this is not going to work either. I think this will spell the end of Hamas.”
That may be a zero-sum option that not even the shadowy El Deif had guessed at.
