An ‘epidemic of r*pe and child pregnancy’ is being reported in Gaza under Hamas rule. Gazans living under Hamas rule are beginning to break their silence, describing s*xual abuse by multiple men, s*xual blackmail for aid or money and abuse by people in positions of power.
Human rights organizations in Gaza say that up to 60,000 women are vulnerable, with reports also indicating a rise in child marriages and pregnancies. Jusoor News filmed rare video testimonies inside the Gaza Strip. The filming was done at great risk because speaking up in Gaza carries severe risk. In one account told by a male Gazan, whose identity has to remain anonymous for his safety, he described how he found a widow displaced in the war being molested inside a tent by ‘a bunch of’ Hamas members and was warned to stay silent. ‘We were contacted by the wife of a friend. She had asked a Qassam Brigades commander to help her, but he took advantage of her,’ he said. ‘His behaviour is disgraceful. We investigated the matter and found her in a tent in the Gharabli area where a bunch of Qassam members were taking advantage of her. ‘We informed the leadership but we were told we had to keep silent about it.’
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is the military arm of Hamas. Another Gazan man confirmed that a similar episode had happened with one of his female neighbours, who was blackmailed by ‘one of Hamas charity organisations… they wanted her to “sell” herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher, or 100 shekels’.
Rubio says the Strait of Hormuz is Iran's "economic nuclear weapon."
"They are bragging about how they can hold 25% of the world's energy hostage. Imagine if those same people had access to a nuclear weapon. They would hold the whole region hostage." pic.twitter.com/uLwSOmFF8H
Banned, relocated, resumed work. When patients put themselves in the hands of a doctor, they trust they’ll be treated with care. But what happens when that trust is abused? This unprecedented investigation spanning Europe and beyond shows how doctors who have been banned for major wrongdoing, including causing psychological and physical damage to their patients, relocate and pick up their careers. Subscribe to OCCRP on YouTube ► https://shorturl.at/BSzsh Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 1:20 “John” is hurt in the UK but in hospital he suffers abusive treatment 03:57 Dr. Stan. is struck off but moves to Romania to practice 06:12 In Germany, a patient learns of his surgeon’s past abroad 07:17 In Norway, a patient loses his leg 08:24 The Norwegian Health Authority finds the amputation was the result of serious medical errors 09:26 German medical groups call for a national doctors register 10:23 How OCCRP built and analysed the datasets behind this project 10:48 Researcher David Ilieski discusses the data gathering and analysis and the availability of the data across Europe Read more at: https://shorturl.at/xKPvG
The Iran conflict has entered a Cold War-like phase of financial sanctions, gunboat interdictions and talks about having talks, Axios’ Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid write.
Why it matters: The conflict has settled into a grinding stalemate, all but assuring higher energy prices for months — and leaving President Trump with the costs of the war but little of the political upside of ending it.
Several U.S. officials told Axios they’re concerned about America getting drawn into a frozen conflict of no war and no deal. In this scenario, the U.S. would have to keep its forces in the region for many more months. The Strait of Hormuz would stay closed. The U.S. blockade would remain, and both sides would continue waiting for the other to blink or fire first.
With the midterms now six months away, “a frozen conflict is the worst thing for Trump politically and economically,” a source close to the president said.
Inside the room: President Trump is vacillating between launching new military strikes and waiting to see whether his “maximum pressure” sanctions make Iran more inclined to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program, according to five advisers who have spoken with him.
“All [Iran’s leaders] understand is bombs,” Trump recently told one adviser, who relayed the comment to Axios.“I would describe him as frustrated but realistic,” the adviser said. “He doesn’t want to use force. But he’s not backing down.
“Some of Trump’s senior advisers want him to maintain the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for now — and impose more economic sanctions to pressure the Iranian regime — before going back to bombing.
Trump is also consulting with hawks outside the administration, including Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). All are advising Trump to take some kind of military action to try to break the deadlock.
Zoom in: Trump discussed the Iranian proposal with his national security team yesterday. Iran offered to negotiate a side deal to open the Strait of Hormuz in return for the U.S. dropping its blockade of ships coming and going from Iran.
A U.S. official and two other sources briefed on the meeting said no decisions were made.
One source said Trump didn’t seem inclined to accept Iran’s proposal because it would postpone talks over that nation’s nuclear program — the elimination of which has been Trump’s chief reason for attacking Iran.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has ramped up the maximum pressure sanctions campaign targeting financial institutions, shipping companies and even “teapot” refiners in China that process sanctioned Iranian oil.
“This is maximum pressure everywhere and from all angles,” a senior administration official said. “That could mean military action, too. It might not. It’s up to the president.”
A Frontier Airlines Airbus A320 departs from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, March 2026.Kevin Carter—Getty Images
As sky-high jet fuel prices continue to put intense pressure on airlines’ bottom line, budget airlines are looking for a way to make ends meet. As the federal government weighs a $500 million bailout for Spirit Airlines, more budget airlines are now turning to the Trump administration to stay above the clouds.
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A group of low-cost airline executives, including those from Frontier and Avelo, met with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford last Tuesday, reportedly requesting $2.5 billion in government assistance, according to the Wall Street Journal. And just like the potential Spirit offer, the airlines will issue government warrants that could convert into equity stakes in the companies.
The request assumes that jet fuel prices will remain above $4 a gallon on average for the rest of the year, which the airlines predict will cost an additional $2.5 billion. U.S. jet fuel prices averaged $4.19 on Friday, according to Argus Media. Before the war, prices averaged less than $2.50 a gallon. In its bankruptcy restructuring plan, Spirit Airlines planned to spend $2.24 per gallon in 2026 and $2.14 in 2027, according to a March filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, prices are almost double that.
The details of the potential aid package are still under discussion, and the airlines’ request was sent to the White House, which did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Earlier this month, budget airlines including Spirit, Frontier, and Avelo, requested Congress approve a temporary break on certain airline ticket taxes to offset about a third of the cost of higher jet fuel. In a letter to lawmakers, the airlines warned that without the relief, travel costs will continue to rise, which will adversely affect consumers at the ticket counter.
Like most U.S.-based budget airlines Frontier and Avelo fly primarily in the U.S., Mexico, and the Caribbean and offer customers cheaper domestic flights. Frontier reported net income of $53 million during the fourth quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, privately owned, Houston-based Avelo reported an operating loss of $6.4 million and a loss margin of negative 7.4% in Q3 of 2025, according to the most recent quarterly results available on the Department of Transportation website.
Spirit’s potential bailout
The global energy crisis has been difficult for airlines across the globe, but it has become a make-or-break moment for Spirit.Even before the war began, the company was working to exit its second bankruptcy in as many years. Now, the airline is reportedly offering equity in exchange for emergency aid, and the White House appears to be open to a deal.
“I’d love somebody to buy Spirit,” Trump said April 21 in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, adding, “Maybe the federal government should help that one out.”
The Trump administration is considering invoking the Defense Production Act to potentially bail the airline out, according to Bloomberg. Under the 1950 law, the president has emergency powers to direct production of goods and services deemed critical to national defense. It is unclear how the Trump administration could use national security to justify the bailout of an airline that heavily focuses on domestic travel.
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings in November 2022.Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images
Reed Hastings, cofounder, former CEO, and now chairman of the board at Netflix, studied AI and computer science back in the 1980s. Decades later, he thinks today’s AI revolution could bring back an emphasis on the humanities as a field of study.
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After graduating with a degree in math from Maine’s Bowdoin College, Hastings pursued a Master of Science degree in computer science and artificial intelligence at Stanford. The earlier AI revolution he was a part of didn’t pan out, but the current AI wave shows signs of completely upheaving the labor force as we know it, and it may even transform education, he said on an episode of the Possiblepodcast last week.
Hastings chose STEM for his own graduate degree, but he said AI will shift what universities prioritize in the future.
“STEM practically took over Stanford University,” said Hastings. “Now maybe what we’ll see is a rotation, you know, back to the humanities and to understanding [the] combination of history and literature.
“If I had a 3-year-old today, I would be doubling down on the emotional skills,” he added.
Boris Cherny, creator of Anthropic’s Claude Code, predicted in February that the title of “software engineer” may even go extinct by the end of the year as AI tools give all employees the ability to write code.
Hastings, for his part, is skeptical AI will replace human software engineers entirely.
“There’s a substantial chance that while many companies will have reduced software engineering employment, there’ll be many other opportunities for more software,” he said on the podcast.
Still, Hastings has put his own money behind the idea that humanities will matter more in the years ahead. Last year, the Netflix cofounder donated $50 million to his alma mater Bowdoin College to establish the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity. The funding will help Bowdoin hire 10 new faculty members, and fund research on AI’s impact on society.
“Our goal is to prepare the next generation of leaders to engage responsibly with the opportunities and challenges presented by AI,” says Bowdoin’s website for the initiative.
While Hastings foresees sweeping changes in education and work, he is more optimistic than ever about the future and the role that AI will play in improving the world.
“The next 20 years will be super exciting, and I think it will usher in this era of abundance,” he said.
In 2001, Fortune first convened “The Smartest People We Know,” bringing together CEOs and founders, builders and investors, thinkers and doers.
Since then, Fortune Brainstorm Tech has been the place where bold ideas collide.
From June 8–10, we will return to Aspen—where it all began—to mark 25 years of Brainstorm. Register now.
Analysts, marketers, and business owners face the same question: How do you reach audiences in an era when AI is reshaping how people search and find information they need? That’s a top-of-mind issue for Pat Brown, SVP of global marketing, growth, analytics, and platform at Adobe. Brown joins The Deep View Conversations to share his unique perspective on the issue, with the expertise of someone who was doing marketing science before it was even called that, and who, in his current role, is responsible for global marketing execution across various forms of media and has to put these skills into practice every day. Pat breaks down how AI is moving beyond content generation to reshape media workflows end-to-end, from audience measurement to agents that automate entire processes. Topics covered:
The role of AI agents in automating marketing workflows
How AI in marketing can augment rather than replace creativity
AI-powered marketing tools that help analyze patterns and signals
Whether AI has “killed” SEO and what that means for marketers’ jobs
The rise of new terms like AEO and GEO in a “zero-click” search world
Why it’s still worth investing in marketing and brand strategy despite AI changes
Why today’s AI-driven SEO landscape feels like the early days of SEO
If you want to understand how AI is reshaping and helping individuals connect more effectively with audiences, this conversation will leave you feeling more knowledgeable about those topics.
My husband was recently describing something that happened on a past holiday. It wasn’t a significant event, but it sounded pleasant. I, however, had no recollection of what he was telling me. He couldn’t quite believe it.
We know that “recollections may differ”, but how can it be so different? And why do I not have this memory? I’m busy at work – have I simply run out of space?
It’s a tempting explanation. We talk about “full heads”, “information overload”, and “too much to take in” as though the brain were a container that eventually reaches capacity. But the brain does not fill up. Instead, it filters.
At any given moment, far more information is available to us than we could ever realistically store. The sights, sounds and conversations of even a single day would overwhelm any system that attempted to record them in full. Instead, the brain relies on selection.Attention determines what is noticed. Emotion helps determine what matters. Then, structures such as the hippocampus decide what is worth committing to longer-term memory.
If your attention is elsewhere, the process falters at the first step.
On that holiday, my husband may have paused long enough to register the moment. I may have been thinking about where we were going next, checking timings, or simply moving through the day without stopping to take it in. The difference is subtle, but it matters.Without focused attention, experiences are only weakly encoded, if at all. In that sense, the memory was not lost. It was never fully formed.
Even when memories are successfully encoded, they are not stored as fixed records. Each time we recall an event, we reconstruct it, drawing on fragments of sensory detail, prior knowledge and expectation. With repetition – through conversation, reflection or retelling – those reconstructions become stronger and more coherent. Over time, they can feel increasingly vivid and certain.
This helps explain why shared experiences can diverge so dramatically. We assume that living through the same moment should produce the same memory, but the brain does not work that way. It does not passively record experience. It actively selects, prioritises and, just as importantly, discards.
The feeling that our brains are “full” arises not because we have run out of storage, but because we have reached the limits of what we can process at once.Attention is finite. Working memory – the small amount of information we can actively hold in mind – is even more limited.When these systems are saturated, new information struggles to gain a foothold. This is the mental equivalent of too many tabs open: nothing has been permanently lost, but everything becomes harder to manage.
Where the computer analogy breaks down
Computing analogies are useful up to a point. If working memory resembles RAM – fast, temporary, limited – then long-term memory is often compared to a hard drive. But this is where the parallel breaks down. A hard drive stores files in fixed locations, retrievable in exactly the same form in which they were saved. The brain does not work this way.
Memories are not stored as discrete files. They are distributed across networks of neurons, overlapping, reshaped, and reassembled each time they are recalled.New experiences do not simply add to what is already there – they interact with it, altering both the new and the old.
Attempts have been made to estimate how much the brain could theoretically hold. One widely cited figure from the Salk Institute puts it at around a petabyte – roughly equivalent to hundreds of years of continuous video. It is an impressive number, but also a somewhat misleading one. It implies a storage system that fills up over time, when in reality the brain is constantly reorganising itself. Capacity is not fixed, and information is not stored in isolation. It is integrated, modified, and, when no longer useful, allowed to fade.
Which raises a slightly uncomfortable question: what happens to the memories we would like to keep?
Some of them will fade – not because the brain has run out of space, but because they are not continually reinforced. Memory is not preserved simply because it matters to us. It is preserved when it is revisited, retold, or reconnected to other experiences. Without that reinforcement, even meaningful moments can become harder to access over time.
What is lost, in most cases, is not the memory itself but our ability to retrieve it. A familiar smell, a piece of music, or an unexpected detail can bring something back that seemed entirely gone. The trace remains, but it has slipped out of reach. And the absence of a memory is rarely evidence of a system at capacity – more often, it is the trace of a moment that was never fully stored, or one that has simply not been called upon.
