Worldcrunch Today: New Ceasefire Talks, Scottish Leader Quits, Amazon Stowaway Cat

💡 SPOTLIGHT

Iran's lesson for the U.S.: Israel is the true problem child of the Middle East

Have the ruling institutions in the United States learned the lesson and realized that the main means of confronting Iran’s influence — if they really wanted to — is to put pressure on Israel, writes Khaled Dawoud in Egypt-based news website Al-Manassa.

Certainly, it’s not the New Middle East that Shimon Peres — who was one of Israel's founding fathers, and served as prime minister and president — heralded after the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

In Peres’ vision, which he offered in a book titled The New Middle East, residents of the Gaza Strip would be able to export flowers to the world — every country in the region would cooperate and present a new model of coexistence and economic development. That would happen by employing Israel's technological superiority and the Arab world’s financial and human capabilities.

At the time, the lies of Peres and his fellow Israeli politicians were crystal clear for those with thoughtful vision. The true purpose of this false proclamation was to dilute and bypass the Palestinians’ main demand for an independent state. In fact, it aimed to convince them to replace that demand with economic prosperity and the existence of an imaginary paradise.

Peres, who died in 2016 at the age of 93, was unable to spread and realize his illusions, till we reached the current “New Middle East” which will stay with us for many years.

It’s a Middle East mired in chaos and wars, and will be until new arrangements are in place, in which Israel will no longer be a sacred cow that kills and occupies people's lands without accountability thanks to the support it receives from the United States and European countries. [...]

— Read the full article by Khaled Dawoud for Al-Manassa, translated into English by Worldcrunch.

🗞️ FRONT PAGE​​

Bilbao-based daily El Correo devotes part of its front page to the Basque city’s dance celebrations on International Dance Day, ahead of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ announcement on Monday that he will stay in office and continue to lead the government. Sánchez had threatened to resign after his wife was accused of corruption, which he denounced as politically motivated. 

🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Hamas delegation is due to arrive in Cairo for Gaza ceasefire talks. The delegation is expected to discuss a proposal handed by the group to mediators from Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel's response. From Saudi Arabia’s capital city Riyadh, Antony Blinken called for Israel to do more to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, as the U.S. Secretary of State starts his seventh Middle East trip since the Israel-Hamas war started in October.

• Gaza protests disrupt U.S. colleges, hundreds of students arrested. In Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters clashed at the University of California (UCLA) after a barrier separating the two sides was breached. At Washington University in St. Louis, more than 80 people were arrested, while Virginia Tech said on Monday that the situation had “stabilized” at its campus after police activity overnight. Follow our international coverage of the Israel-Palestine war here.

• Scotland’s leader Humza Yousaf resigns. After just a year in office as Scottish first minister, Yousaf stepped down on Monday as head of the pro-independence Scottish National Party after he’d scrapped a coalition agreement last week with Scotland's Greens. The move further opens the door to the UK opposition Labour Party to make gains its former Scottish heartlands in a national election expected later this year.

• At least 42 killed after dam bursts in central Kenya early on Monday. Police warned the number of deaths could rise as recovery efforts are underway. The disaster follows weeks of heavy rains and devastating flash floods, which have killed more than 140 people since last month.

• Trial of German far-right group accused of plotting coup begins. Nine suspects of the so-called “Reichsbürger” movement will take the stand on Monday in Stuttgart in the first of three trials split among three courts in three cities. The defendants are accused of preparing to commit high treason and belonging to a terrorist organization, after they allegedly plotted to overthrow the German government. 

• Togo votes in key elections after divisive constitutional reform. The legislative elections starting Monday come after lawmakers approved a reform that creates a new prime minister-style post which opponents say will allow President Faure Gnassingbe to extend his family's decades-long grip on power in the West African nation.

• Stowaway cat gets from Utah to California… by mail. Galeana had jumped into one of her family’s packages undetected and was accidentally mailed hundreds of miles away, before she was eventually rescued by an Amazon worker nearly a week after. “Galeana loves boxes, it's just part of her personality,” the cat's owner said.

📰 STORY OF THE DAY

Why AI won't kill the beauty or benefits of learning a foreign language

As technology advances, machine translation threatens to replace the art of learning languages. Will we lose the cultural richness and personal growth that comes from mastering a foreign tongue? asks Anna Franchin in Italian weekly magazine Internazionale. 

💬 The early tools (Google Translate is from 2006) were rather poor, only able to give a general idea of, for instance, of a French or Portuguese website. The big leap forward came in 2015, when Baidu (China's leading search engine) put its large-scale neural machine translation service into operation. In just a few years, neural networks, the machine learning systems behind programs like ChatGPT, have improved the quality of machine-made translation, making it significantly more reliable.

📉 Such progress, however, is accompanied in some countries by another phenomenon: a collapse in the number of students taking up foreign languages. In Australia in 2021 only 8.6% of high school seniors had chosen to learn another language, a record low. In South Korea and New Zealand, universities are closing French, German and Italian departments. Last September, after a heated debate, West Virginia university decided to eliminate the foreign languages and literatures department, replacing it with an online app.

📖 Technology of course has limitations. It doesn’t work as well with languages with little online presence such as Swahili and Urdu. According to most studies in which native speakers have been involved, it does not do well when confronted with literature either: it offers acceptable translations of only about 30% of excerpts from novels. This is because it is less adept at finding creative solutions that preserve aspects of a book that are difficult to quantify, such as style, rhythm, wit, sensibility.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO

➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED

#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS

$1.1 billion

Philips shares soared 35% following the announcement of a $1.1 billion settlement to resolve U.S. claims related to recalled breathing devices. The settlement, which was smaller than anticipated, effectively ends three years of uncertainty that had significantly impacted the Dutch multinational’s market value. The recall was prompted by concerns that foam used in the devices could degrade, posing potential health risks. Despite the settlement, Philips maintains it did not admit fault or liability for any injuries caused by its devices.

📣 VERBATIM

  “The situation at the front has worsened.”

— Ukraine's military chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii, has issued a stark warning about losses on the eastern front, where Ukrainian troops have been forced to retreat to new positions west of three villages after finding themselves outnumbered by Russian forces. Syrskii highlights the most challenging areas as west of occupied Maryinka and northwest of Avdiivka. The Ukrainian military is awaiting the arrival of U.S. weapons under a $61 billion aid package to help address the firepower disparity. Stay up to date with the Ukraine-Russia war here.

📸 PHOTO DU JOUR

(see above) A team of foreign explosives experts inspects a huge unexploded shell dropped by Israeli warplanes on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The Israeli army withdrew from the camp, leaving behind devastated homes for displaced Palestinians to return to. — Photo: Str/APA Images/ZUMA

👉MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH  

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• Pious Women And Feminists: The Revolutionary Movement Changing Islam — LA STAMPA

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✍️ Newsletter by Anne-Sophie Goninet and Cory Agathe

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