“Needless to say, Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on 7 October was a cause for celebration for the Iranian regime: the geopolitical and ideological arch-enemy was humiliated like never before, which a regime-owned newspaper celebrated with a count-up of the death toll in order to hail the one thousandth ‘Zionist victim’. It is clear that Tehran was, at least indirectly, involved in the attack — after all, the regime supports Hamas with money, weapons and training. But did Tehran’s involvement go beyond this? And is the situation, as often interpreted in the West, only a cause for celebration for the Islamic Republic or does it possibly also harbour any risks? Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei welcomed the attack as the ‘work of the Palestinians’, thereby semantically limiting Iran’s involvement to a background role, as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (‘100 per cent Palestinian’) did a few weeks later. Neither Israel nor the US have been able to present evidence of Iran’s direct involvement so far. Iranian officials have repeatedly emphasised in recent weeks that they had no prior knowledge of the Hamas attack. According to media reports, this is also believed by the US intelligence services. A Reuters news agency report even goes so far as to claim that Tehran was surprised by the attack and that not even the Hezbollah posts close to the border in the south of Lebanon were on alert.” (Hanna Voss/IPS Journal)
“The author of a 17th-century Spanish play remained a mystery for centuries — until AI technology identified it in January as a late-career work by one of the country’s most famous authors, Felix Lope de Vega. Researchers at the country’s National Library were using AI to transcribe some 1,300 anonymous manuscripts and books and check them against works by known authors when it made the discovery. The Spanish Golden Age-era playwright wrote ‘La francesa Laura,’ or ‘The Frenchwoman Laura,’ in the years before his death in 1635. The play is a tale of love, jealousy and poison when the heir to the French throne becomes enamored with Laura, the wife of a Count.” (CNN)
“A new investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media and nearly 70 media partners around the world exposed how Cypriot firms enabled Russian elites to move money and shield their wealth — even as sanctions came down against them in the wake of Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion. The collaboration, which included over 270 journalists from 54 countries and one territory around the world, parsed through a 3.6 million document leak to uncover groundbreaking stories about major players on the world stage: Putin allies like Roman Abramovich, multinationals like global accounting firm PwC and policy heavyweights like the European Central Bank … In the early 2000s, an Israeli company decided to invest in casinos in Morocco, before the two countries normalized relations in 2020. Cyprus Confidential documents show how shell companies were set up in Cyprus and elsewhere to facilitate the business dealings — and the strange conflict that followed, according to Moroccan partner Le Desk. In July 2004, the director of an Israeli holding company dedicated to residential and hotel real estate, the Red Sea Group, reached out to Demetris Ioannides, a financial fixer in Cyprus, Le Desk reported. Now sanctioned for his close ties to Russian oligarchs, Ioaniddes founded the financial services firm Meritservus and, at one point, headed the Cypriot arm of Deloitte. The discussions resulted in two investments: the casino of the Atlantic Palace in Agadir, as well as the casino of Tangier, part of the Mövenpick Hotel & Casino Malabata.” (Carmen Molina Acosta/ICIJ)
“A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said. In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found. The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN. The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.” (CNN)
“Luke Skywalker woke me up and told me to go to the bomb shelter, so there I was. It was 3:30-ish in the morning, in a conference room in the basement of the Radisson in Odesa’s beautiful central district. I had arrived in Ukraine several days before, after a 19-hour train ride from Warsaw, to conduct a week of interviews and site visits to learn more about the impact of the war. After about 45 minutes, he gave us the all-clear. “The air alert is over. May the Force be with you.” About an hour later, just after I’d managed to fall asleep again, Luke once more rousted me, sending me back downstairs for another hour of waiting. Skywalker was speaking to me through the Air Alert app, to which actor Mark Hamill lent his voice for the English-language warning. The app allows you to input your location in Ukraine and warns you when there are incoming strikes on that area. Fortunately, for me at least, the strikes on Odesa were not close to where I was that night.” (Matthew Duss/TNR)
“The Democratic Republic of Congo is set to hold its presidential election next week on Dec. 20. Some 44 million registered voters and more than 900 parties are expected to take part in the general election. President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, will be up for reelection for another five years after a controversial victory in 2018 following his on then off pact with former president Joseph Kabila and then later former vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba. What’s at stake? Tshisekedi’s 2018 victory might have been controversial or tainted but it also marked the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history. This huge nation of some 100 million people and immense natural and mineral wealth has had very few years in its 63-year history without conflict or repression, often both. The vast majority of Congolese people are hoping this election will ultimately be peaceful. → Who are the leading contenders? The presidential campaign started out with up to 25 contenders, but opposition candidates have been forming alliances to take on the president.” (Yinka Adegoke/semafor)
“In Israel and Gaza, war is being fought as wars have long been: with bodies and steel, on land and from the sky. Around the rest of the world, though, the Israel-Hamas war is being waged with propaganda, protest and social media posts, declarations and dismissals, all too often by ideologues speaking to an audience primed to believe them. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the too-long silence about, downplaying and even outright denial of the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas. Allegations of sexual violence on Oct. 7 were raised early on. But the attacks that day were so shocking and the casualty figures so high and the mission to figure out who was dead and who was kidnapped so urgent that it seems Israeli investigators prioritized identifying victims over in-depth forensic examinations. Stunned recovery teams made every effort to offer dignified treatment of the dead, often failing to photograph the bodies as they were found. Many victims, in accordance with traditional Jewish funeral customs, were buried as soon as possible.” (Jill Filipovic/NYT)
“The New York Times on Tuesday announced the creation of a new newsroom position: editorial director of artificial intelligence initiatives. For the pioneering role, The NYT tapped Zach Seward, founding editor of the technology-focused outlet Quartz. Seward, The NYT said, will work to develop a plan and determine ways in which The Gray Lady can draw upon the powers of A.I. to improve her product, while also not denigrating the quality of her trusted journalism. One of Zach’s first responsibilities will be to work with newsroom leadership to establish principles for how we do and do not use generative A.I.,’ Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Deputy Managing Editor Sam Dolnick said in a memo to staff. ‘One reason we're excited to have Zach in this role is that he shares our firm belief that Times journalism will always be reported, written and edited by our expert journalists.’ It will be interesting to revisit the latter half of that statement in the years ahead. Will all of The NYT's journalism ‘always’ be written and edited by human beings in 10, 20, 50 years? I'm not completely convinced. And I'm not sure anyone can really say with certainty, one way or another. OpenAI's GPT-4 can already string together sentences better than most humans can write — and far more quickly.” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“Since that first time, I have threatened to leave constantly: whenever I get targeted by antisemites, Nazis, racists and misogynists—the core of Musk, call him Satan’s Elmo—his fire, the brothers in his clubhouse. But I have not. But then Elmo brought in liar and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who spent years torturing the surviving parents of Sandy Hook by claiming that the school massacre was an invention of ‘crisis actors,’ and that was too much for me. (Elmo hosted Jones along with sex-trafficking misogynist Andrew Tate and the worst GOP presidential candidate ever—including Donald Trump—Vivek Ramaswamy, on a Twitter Spaces platform Sunday night.) Why was Jones the final straw? I have very few breaking points, but the Sandy Hook massacre, in 2012, broke me. As the 10th anniversary of that horrific day approached, I was blessed to work through those memories with a surviving parent last year. I won’t link to the article that resulted—I’ll share it on Threads and Bluesky, later—because I don’t want to link her to my decision, which I made too late, to leave what was once a thriving digital public square, now irredeemably corrupted by Musk.” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“In his opening remarks to the jury, Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Jay Sibley, begged the jury not to award what the plaintiffs had asked for. He claimed the tens of millions in damages would be the ‘civil equivalent of the death penalty’ and ‘would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.’ Don’t promise such a good time, Mr. Sibley. The jury now has the case and is deliberating even as I write this, having failed in the first 3.5 hours to reach a verdict. It isn’t clear yet how much they will award election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who suffered racial death threats and forever lost the ability to go about their lives in peace and without fear. In some ways, from a collection standpoint, it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s a few hundred thousand or the $48 million they’ve requested. Giuliani likely lacks the means to pay any considerable judgment, having driven himself into near bankruptcy through his own criminal actions around the 2020 election, and his list of creditors is already quite long.” (Jay Kuo)
“On October 17, the parking lot outside Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, where hundreds of displaced Palestinians had amassed, was hit by an explosive of uncertain origin. The New York Times, among other outlets, quickly reported a claim by Hamas that an Israeli air strike was responsible. Israel denied this, claiming that a rocket launch by a Hamas-allied militant group inside Gaza had misfired. Soon, an Al Jazeera video emerged that seemed to show a launch from inside Gaza. Other outlets, including the Associated Press, began to cite the Al Jazeera video in their analysis. Then, more videos emerged. One, posted to X (formerly Twitter) by a data analyst, seemed to show that the rockets in the Al Jazeera video had nothing to do with the incident at all. The AP issued a retraction. The Times separately changed its initial headline and issued an apology for relying too heavily on Hamas’s claims. The media’s handling of the incident demonstrated both the promise and pitfalls of reporting based on video footage and other data sourced remotely from the internet, including satellite images, social media analytics, and publicly accessible datasets. The ability to turn to open source investigative techniques (often referred to as ‘OSINT’) has made it possible for reporters to challenge official accounts of the news and uncover stories that they could not have told otherwise. But reliance on this kind of analysis has also fueled misinformation by lending a false sense of certainty to claims based on impartial and, often, unverified material.” (CJR)
“In early 2006, Hushang Ansary — a former Iranian statesman who immigrated to Texas to make a fortune in the U.S. oil business — strode into the Curacao headquarters of Ennia, a private pension fund and the island nation’s largest insurance company. He had just purchased the business, and employees lined the walls and clapped loudly to welcome their illustrious boss. With a wide smile, Ansary clapped, too, and bowed in a show of respect for the old hands at his new enterprise. mLongtime Ennia employees, though, found Ansary’s takeover curious. He was a powerful force in the United States, a major donor to Republican causes and a friend of the Bush family, Henry Kissinger and other conservative luminaries. The Texan had little known experience running an insurance and pension business like Ennia. What were his intentions? Nearly two decades later, many more people across the Caribbean island are asking the same question. The Central Bank of Curacao and Sint Maarten has accused Ansary of draining assets from Ennia, threatening the income of 30,000 pension holders in Curacao and neighboring islands. Authorities say Ansary used the money to invest in his other businesses, for private jet travel, to dispense millions in questionable payments to acquaintances and to send donations to conservative causes in the United States. Now the central bank is suing Ansary in Texas to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars it says he owes Ennia. Like with most white-collar scandals, behind the high-profile names in the Ennia controversy are the accountants — often at global firms — who inspect companies’ books and create transactions of such complexity it can take years for investigators to untangle them. The global giant KPMG, for example, audited key parts of Ennia’s business during Ansary’s reign, signing off on financial statements during its now-controversial years.” (Spencer Woodman/ICIJ)
“Whether or not American democracy endures, a central question historians are sure to ask about this era is why America came to elect Donald Trump, promoting him from a symptom of the country’s institutional, political and social degradation to its agent-in-chief. There are many reasons for Trump’s ascent, but changes in the American news media played a critical role. Trump’s manipulation and every one of his political lies became more powerful because journalists had forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work: their credibility as arbiters of truth and brokers of ideas, which for more than a century, despite all of journalism’s flaws and failures, had been a bulwark of how Americans govern themselves. I hope those historians will also be able to tell the story of how journalism found its footing again – how editors, reporters and readers, too, came to recognise that journalism needed to change to fulfil its potential in restoring the health of American politics. As Trump’s nomination and possible re-election loom, that work could not be more urgent.” (James Bennett/The Economist)
“Maersk, one of the largest shipping companies in the world, announced on Friday that they are pausing all container shipments through the Red Sea until further notice and send them on a detour around Africa, a spokesperson for the company told Reuters. ‘Following the near-miss incident involving Maersk Gibraltar yesterday and yet another attack on a container vessel today, we have instructed all Maersk vessels in the area bound to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to pause their journey until further notice,’ the company said in a statement. This announcement comes as Houthi attacks on commercial vessels have ramped up in the past week.” (Haaretz)
“Since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October, Western news organizations have struggled to gain access inside Gaza. More recently, some outlets have entered the Palestinian territory, but only under chaperone by the Israeli military. Outlets have appealed to Israel to allow them to enter the narrow war-torn strip on their own, but to no avail. That's what makes Clarissa Ward's reporting from Gaza stand out this week. Ward became the first Western news correspondent to independently report from Gaza, gaining the unprecedented access by accompanying aid workers to a local field hospital set up by the United Arab Emirates. ‘We have been trying for weeks and weeks to get into Gaza as many international journalists have,’ Ward explained Thursday to Erin Burnett, noting that up until now the world has ‘been relying on the courageous reporting of journalists in Gaza, who have been dying in record numbers trying to tell this story.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“The BRICS economic bloc of countries is aggressively expanding its media presence in Africa through its Moscow-headquartered broadcast network to counter Western narratives in the Global South. TV BRICS — which is centered on programming from member countries Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa — has in recent weeks signed partnership agreements with media companies in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Mozambique as it looks to grow the bloc’s influence among some of the world’s fastest-growing populations. Ayanda Hollow, President of TV BRICS Africa, told Semafor Africa that stories from the Global South including their development, culture and human interest stories were not ‘well covered’ by the international media establishment. He said TV BRICS was focused on bringing stories from the bloc’s countries to global audiences, and not necessarily countering the viewpoints of other media outlets. ‘No one can tell our own stories like we can,’ Hollow said.” (Martin Siele/semafor)