NETANYAHU POSTS AI IMAGE OF NUCLEAR BLAST OVER TEL AVIV
NETANYAHU POSTS AI IMAGE OF NUCLEAR BLAST OVER TEL AVIV
Two days before Israel’s election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an AI-generated image depicting a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv.
“Israel is in real and tangible existential danger. If the Iranians acquire nuclear weapons, nothing will ever be the same again.”
The message is clear: Iran is back at the center of Netanyahu’s closing argument to Israeli voters.
UK Edition
Suha KidwaiThursday 22 October 2026 13:26 BST
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The speed at which a child’s brain matures can forecast whether they will develop depression or anxiety as a teenager up to four years before symptoms emerge, according to the latest research.
Analysing just under 30,000 brain scans, the study has revealed that mental health conditions may stem from a disrupted developmental timeline.
The findings, published in Nature, challenge long-standing assumptions about how psychiatric disorders develop, suggesting that vulnerability to mental health issues could be set in motion by genetic programming active before birth.
“It makes you think about the timing of brain development, not just the location, when we look at psychiatric symptoms,” said Dr Avram Holmes, a systems neuroscientist at Rutgers University.
During childhood and adolescence, the brain’s outer layer – the cerebral cortex – naturally thins as unused neural connections are pruned to make brain function more efficient.
Tracking children every two years from age nine, researchers at the University of Iowa and Mass General Brigham found that this thinning follows a distinct wave.
Primary sensory regions like the visual cortex begin to mature at around age 13, before frontal areas governing focus, planning, and emotional regulation at around 16.
When researchers linked these brain scans to mental health surveys, a clear predictive pattern emerged: children with a thicker cortex in sensory regions at age nine were significantly more likely to experience anxiety and depression by age 13.
“The question is not ‘what does this region do?’ It’s ‘when does this region mature?”” explained study co-author Dr Joshua Roffman, a psychiatrist at Mass General Brigham.
By cross-referencing their scans with brain atlases, the team discovered that regions where cortical thickness predicted future symptoms overlapped with gene networks active in the womb.
This indicates that early genetic development lays the groundwork for adolescent mental health risks, even years later.
Experts suggest that having a thicker cortex late in childhood may reflect delayed brain plasticity, making it harder for children to adapt to their environments.
But because the study relies on population-level trends, scientists emphasise these subtle patterns cannot yet be used in clinics to diagnose individual children.
While the work “provides one of the clearest pictures yet of how the cortex develops from childhood into adolescence,” Dr Holmes stressed it is not yet “sufficient in its own right to predict illness outcomes” for an individual child.
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PALANTIR CEO: ISRAEL STANDS ALONGSIDE U.S. AND CHINA IN GLOBAL AI RACE Palantir CEO Alex Karp says the U.S. and China dominate artificial intelligence, with Israel the remarkable exception. “With a minor exception in Israel, they’re the only relevant countries.” Karp warns Europe risks becoming dependent on American or Chinese technology, while Israel remains a significant player in advanced AI.
Jul 26, 2021
In this podcast, Robert Sapolsky talks about especially why chronic stress helps us to get sick and why the other animals cope with the stress better than us humans.
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Oct 24, 2026 #MichaelSmerconish#ClarissaWard#JonahGoldberg
France is experiencing widespread protests, political unrest, and growing frustration over the cost of living. Could America be heading down a similar path? As demonstrations spread across Europe, Michael Smerconish examines the economic and political forces driving the unrest—and what they might reveal about America’s future. CNN Chief International Correspondent *Clarissa Ward* joins Michael live from Paris, where thousands of protesters have gathered amid heightened security following violent demonstrations. She explains why many French citizens reject President Trump’s characterization of the unrest as an immigration crisis, instead pointing to rising costs, struggling schools, and growing economic uncertainty. Then, CNN political commentator and *The Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg* offers his perspective on what the unrest reveals about France’s deeper problems. Goldberg argues that mounting government debt, unsustainable spending, and economic stagnation have contributed to the crisis—and warns that America risks repeating some of the same mistakes. With America’s national debt approaching $40 trillion, concerns about Social Security and Medicare, and political frustration growing across the ideological spectrum, are the similarities becoming impossible to ignore? Michael, Clarissa, and Jonah explore competing explanations for France’s unrest, the rise of political extremes, and the lessons Americans might take from Europe’s troubles. *Are Americans better off than Europeans facing high costs, low wages, and an uncertain future?* Watch the conversation and share your thoughts below. Subscribe for more political analysis and conversations with Michael Smerconish.
| New risks rising |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images |
| Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes in his weekly C-Suite newsletter: Eye-opening revelations this past week have solidified my personal fears about the year ahead: As a nation and as a globe, we’re facing a record number of wild risks that are way outside our control. My growing hunch about this scenario has been bolstered by daily conversations with CEOs, government insiders and top investors. Why it matters: It feels likely — not certain — that between now and 2028, we’ll face society-level disruptions, possibly including cyberattacks and fast-twitch economic shocks  What we’re facing: We’ve navigated single-shot crises like the financial meltdown of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020. This next year will be different. The real risk is a chain reaction: One shock sets off others — faster than we can process, and caused by AI dynamics we don’t fully understand.Call it chain-reaction chaos. And that’s against the backdrop of this age of post-processable velocity: The speed of change exceeds the ability of any individual, company, market or government to fully absorb, understand and respond. The reason this scenario looks so likely is that so many obvious risks, all with relatively high probabilities, keep piling up. Any one of them will rock already highly volatile markets and politics:  Cyber chaos. This past week was a big flashing siren. AI-detected flaws in PHP, the code behind millions of websites, knocked government sites offline worldwide and prompted the National Security Agency to warn organizations to patch immediately or go dark. Major banks found unauthorized AI agents inside customer accounts, some trying to take actions customers never asked for. And Anthropic’s deputy chief information security officer, Jason Clinton, warned that as bad as the past several days had been, cyber threats will get “a lot worse before they get better.” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff quickly agreed, writing on X: “Code red.” As Madison Mills reported for Axios, the AI companies and the banks are scrambling for “day after” planning, fully anticipating a bigger cyber hit in coming months. People at top AI companies tell me the chances are well above 50% AI bubble bursts (partially). This doesn’t feel like 1999, since giant companies with huge balance sheets are underwriting the AI boom. But that’s also the problem. They’re increasingly doing it with borrowed money: Goldman Sachs expects about a third of Big Tech’s AI capital expenditure to be debt-financed this year. A bubble doesn’t need to burst spectacularly to cause widespread economic and political pain. These companies are deeply intertwined, investing in, selling to and buying from each other. Look what happened with Meta this past week: It crushed its earnings, but then spooked the market by detailing the difficulties of raising capital to fund AI. Any sign of overbuilding … or companies underusing AI … or China catching up … or AI prices collapsing … or credit costs spiking … or the political backlash intensifying, and markets could tumble fast. A sharp correction feels like a 50%+ short-term scenario AI hits true RSI. AI could get better, faster than almost anyone anticipates via recursive self-improvement (RSI). People inside Anthropic, OpenAI and Google see this unfolding now. This could be awesome long-term if we steer the technology smartly. But it could also prove wildly disruptive in 2027: More advanced AI would pose a more urgent threat to industries, companies and jobs. You could easily see this enticing Democrats to join Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in demanding a slowdown or full pause, which would rattle markets War expands, oil spikes. President Trump’s aides believe he’s likely to resume the Iran war post-election. The Iranians warn they would expand their targets in retaliation. The U.S. reduced staffing at embassies across the Middle East amid increased threats. Escalation feels more likely than not at the very moment oil supplies are tight and gas and diesel prices are very high. Imagine the economic pain of sustained $120-a-barrel oil An aging, unrestrained president. I want to be clear here: This isn’t a political statement or Trump health appraisal. I’d write the same for Joe Biden. It’s a simple, fact-based observation based on actuarial tables. Trump, age 80, heads into the next two years as the oldest person ever to be president. It’s a medical certainty that the chances of mental decline and incapacitation rise dramatically in your 80s. Trump is much like Biden in that he doesn’t have people around him who can level with him. The risk stretches from health episodes to judgments about war and the limits of presidential power.The bottom line: It’s easy to argue any one of these won’t materialize. But when you add up this many risks, the overall chance of a crisis outside our direct control is spiking by the day. Share this column |
“There is not in Europe any such thing as a pure race. Russians have an admixture of Tartar blood, Germans are largely Slavonic, France is a mixture of Celts, Germans, and people of Mediterranean race, Italy the same with the addition of the descendants of slaves from every corner of the Empire imported by the Romans. The English are perhaps the most mixed of all. There is no evidence that there is any advantage in belonging to a pure race. The purest races now in existence are the Pygmies, the Hottentots, and the Australian aborigines; the Tasmanians, thanks to the British, who were probably even purer are now extinct. There is a special absurdity in applying racial theories to the various populations of Europe.”
— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, Ch. VII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
Oct 24, 2026 #berniesanders#donaldtrump#elonmusk
Sen. Bernie Sanders delivers a fiery political message targeting Donald Trump and Elon Musk, declaring that the nation belongs to the people. Sanders takes aim at the influence of wealthy individuals in American politics and challenges the direction of the country under Trump’s leadership. His remarks bring renewed attention to billionaire power, political accountability, and the role of ordinary Americans in shaping the nation’s future.
#berniesanders#donaldtrump#elonmusk#uspolitics#billionaires#politicalnews#breakingnews#worldnews#globalnews Subscribe to The Financial Express: https://bit.ly/2TN006o Welcome to The Financial Express, your trusted source for world affairs, geopolitics, business news, global economy updates, and market insights. Connect with us:
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Oct 17, 2026
Senator Bernie Sanders is the senior senator from Vermont. He is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).
