Credit card delinquencies are on the rise as new research from the New York Federal Reserve shows nearly a fifth of borrowers are “maxed-out.”
In the new report, issued by the bank’s Center for Microeconomic Data, household debt was shown to have risen by 1.1 percent, or $184 billion, in the first quarter of the year, bringing the total to $17.69 trillion.
“In the first quarter of 2024, credit card and auto loan transition rates into serious delinquency continued to rise across all age groups,” Joelle Scally, regional economic principal within the household and public policy research division at the bank, said in a statement.
“An increasing number of borrowers missed credit card payments, revealing worsening financial distress among some households,” Scally added.
The nationwide aggregate credit card utilization rate was found to be 23 percent in the first quarter, in line with previous quarters. But a closer look behind those figures revealed some stark differences in utilization rates.
Almost half of borrowers “used less than 20 percent of their available credit in the first quarter,” a breakdown of the report explained, compared to 18 percent of borrowers that used “at least 90 percent of their available credit.” The latter group was dubbed “maxed-out borrowers.”
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the report found that under a fourth of balances associated with those borrowers had gone delinquent per year. By comparison, last year saw roughly a third of the balances go delinquent.
Younger borrowers were also found to be more likely to be maxed-out, as well as card users that resided in “low-income areas.”
The research found that aggregate delinquency rates rose during the first quarter, with 3.2 percent “of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency at the end of March.”
“Delinquency transition rates increased for all debt types. Annualized, approximately 8.9% of credit card balances and 7.9% of auto loans transitioned into delinquency,” a release detailing the report stated. “Delinquency transition rates for mortgages increased by 0.3 percentage points yet remain low by historic standards.”
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The guidance is part of the Government’s bid to tackle concerns that some children are receiving age-inappropriate relationships, sex and health education (RSHE).
Speaking today, Mr Philp has also called on police forces to increase the use of stop and search as part to tougher measures to tackle knife crime.
Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg has urged Rishi Sunak to forge a general election pact with Reform UK inviting Nigel Farage and Richard Ticethe to become Tory candidates.
He said the deal would unite the Right of British politics and secure a victory at the next election.
It comes as the Tories hit the lowest poll rating since Liz Truss as Labour leads the way with more than 30 points, according to YouGov.
Policing Minister Chris Philp has confirmed there will be no election this summer as he will be away on holiday.
When asked to reveal an exact date, he insists he has no “inside information”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he says: “We have booked a summer holiday for the first couple of weeks in August.
“I am afraid I don’t have inside information. The Prime Minister has consistently said the second half of the year and I suspect that is as much as we are going to get for the time being.”
Labour blames Tories for increase in food bank use
Shadow Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds says: “I would like to see a Britain that doesn’t need food banks any more.”
Blaming the Tories for the high rates in food bank use, he said they “were not a feature of the UK” during the 2010 Labour government and have “become so over the past 14 years”.
He adds: “We shouldn’t have reached a position in our country where the economic management has been so bad that we have ended up with people having to rely on food banks in that way.”
According to charity figures, a record 3.1 million emergency food parcels have been handed out this year (AFP via Getty Images)
According to The Trussell Trust charity, a record of 31.million emergency food parcels have been handed in the last year.
That means a rise of a whopping 40% compared with five years ago.
Asked by Sky News about the skyrocketing figures, Chris Philp defended policies ministers have implemented.
He said: “We’ve seen food bank use grow across the Western world.
“What the government is doing is making sure that work pays, hence the huge increase in the minimum wage and making sure the benefits system is there to support people as a safety net.”
Lib Dems demand Rishi Sunak to suspend Rees-Mogg over Reform UK deal
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Reform UK deal proposal hasn’t landed well among the Liberal Democrats.
Deputy leader Daisy Cooper is now calling Rishi Sunak to strip Rees-Mogg of Tory whip following the remarks.
Ms Cooper said: “The Conservative Party is a shambolic mess. Rishi Sunak’s MPs are in open revolt and he does not have the backbone to stand up to them.
“If the Prime Minister had any bottle he would suspend the whip from Rees-Mogg and rule out Nigel Farage being allowed into the Conservative Party.
“The public is sick to the back teeth of this endless Conservative soap opera as they watch the NHS crumble, filthy sewage pumped into their waterways and their mortgages spiral.
“Rishi Sunak should put us all out of our misery and call a general election.”
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg urges Sunak to make pact with Reform UK
Following a disastrous local election, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has urged Rishi Sunak to forge a general election deal with Reform UK.
This would give Nigel Farage and Richard Tice the chance to become Tory candidates.
The former business secretary called the PM to make a “big, open and comprehensive offer to those in Reform” to join the Conservatives.
He told GB News: “With the help of Nigel Farage in a Conservative government, as a Conservative minister, with Boris Johnson probably returning as foreign secretary and welcoming the likes of Ben Habib and Richard Tice into our party, as well as pursuing genuinely conservative policies, winning the next election suddenly becomes within reach.”
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has opened the door for Nigel Farage to join the Conservative Party (Getty )
Stop and search to be ramped up, says Policing Minister
Policing minister Chris Philp said he would like to see more stop and search from police to tackle knife crime. Speaking to LBC, he said: “I’d like to see officers of course use the power lawfully and also respectfully, but it does need to be, I think, used more to protect the public and particularly the kind of young men who often end up being victims of knife crime.”
Asked about the communities who could be disproportionately affected by stop and search, he said: “The sad truth is that young black men are disproportionately victims of knife crime and we’re doing this as much to protect them as anything else.”
He said the success rate of stop and searches are typically 25% to 30%.
He added: “That percentage is pretty much the same across something to within 1% across all ethnicities so that gives me quite a high degree of confidence that police are not unreasonably picking on particular parts of the community.”
Policing minister Chris Philp said sex education will be banned for children from year five.
As part of the new guidance, schools will stop teaching on gender identity.
He told GB News: “As a parent as well, I don’t want my children, to be honest, to be exposed to inappropriate content at a pretty young age and nor do I want politically contested ideas like the trans issues being taught as if they’re facts.
“I think childhood is a really special time and I don’t think we need to introduce some of these ideas too early.
“So I think the changes that are likely to come are going to be very welcome and as I say, I know the Education Secretary will get on and do them as quickly as possible.
The Biden administration’s new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles won’t have a huge immediate impact on American consumers or the car market because very few such cars are sold in the United States.
But the decision reflects deep concern within the American automotive industry, which has grown increasingly worried about China’s ability to churn out cheap electric vehicles. American automakers welcomed the decision by the Biden administration on Tuesday to impose a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from China, saying those vehicles would undercut billions of dollars of investment in electric vehicle and battery factories in the United States.
“Today’s announcement is a necessary response to combat the Chinese government’s unfair trade practices that endanger the future of our auto industry,” Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement. “It will help level the playing field, keep our auto industry competitive and support good-paying, union jobs here at home.”
On Tuesday, President Biden announced a series of new and increased tariffs on certain Chinese-made goods, including a 25 percent duty on steel and aluminum and 50 percent levies on semiconductors and solar panels. The tariff on electric vehicles made in China was quadrupled from 25 percent. Chinese lithium-ion batteries for electric cars will now face a 25 percent tariff, up from 7.5 percent.
The United States imports only a few makes — electric or gasoline — from China. One is the Polestar 2, an electric vehicle made in China by a Swedish automaker in which the Chinese company Zhejiang Geely has a controlling stake. In a statement, Polestar said it was evaluating the impact of Mr. Biden’s announcement.
“We believe that free trade is essential to speed up the transition to more sustainable mobility through increased E.V. adoption,” the company said.
In the first quarter of this year, Polestar sold just 2,200 vehicles in the United States. Later this year, however, it is scheduled to start producing a new model, the Polestar 3, at a South Carolina plant operated by Volvo Cars, which Geely owns.
Volvo sells a Chinese-made plug-in hybrid sedan, the S90 Recharge, in the United States, and plans to start importing a new small sport utility vehicle, the EX30, to the United States from China this year. The car is expected to start at $35,000, making it one of the most affordable battery-powered models available in the country. The model has quickly become Volvo’s top-selling vehicle in Europe.
Volvo said on Tuesday that it was evaluating the potential impact of Mr. Biden’s new tariffs on its plans.
Internal combustion models that are made in China and sold in the United States include the Buick Envision S.U.V. made by General Motors, and Ford Motors’ Lincoln Nautilus. They are unaffected by the tariffs.
Tesla, G.M., Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai and several other automakers have invested tens of billions of dollars in battery and electric vehicle factories in the United States. But with the exception of Tesla, automakers in the United States, Europe and Japan trail Chinese companies in scale, raw materials production and key technologies.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Limited, or CATL, the Chinese manufacturer that is the world’s largest producer of electric car batteries, said last month that it had developed a battery that could charge up enough in 10 minutes to allow a car to travel about 370 miles — a major leap compared with the batteries used by established Western and Asian automakers, including Tesla.
China’s lead in electric vehicles, which are seen as central to the auto industry’s future, has spurred concerns that Chinese cars could hit the U.S. market at prices that G.M., Ford and other traditional automakers wouldn’t be able to compete with.
BYD, a leading and fast-growing Chinese car and battery company, already sells a compact electric car, the Seagull, for less than $15,000 in China. And on Tuesday, it said it would begin selling a plug-in hybrid pickup truck in Mexico, although it added that it did not yet plan to sell the vehicle in the United States.
Chinese automakers like BYD, Geely and SAIC have been increasing car exports to Europe, Latin America and various Asian countries. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is investigating Chinese state subsidies to electric carmakers.
Some representatives of the U.S. auto industry have said the Chinese government’s support of its automakers has left factories there with the capacity to make vastly more cars than can be sold in the country.
“They’ve got a major E.V. overcapacity problem,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the main lobbying arm for U.S. automakers.
“They’re building too many E.V.s — too many heavily subsidized E.V.s — for the domestic market and have no choice but to look abroad to offload those vehicles at budget prices,” Mr. Bozzella added. “The competitiveness of the auto industry in the U.S. will be harmed if heavily subsidized Chinese E.V.s can be sold at below-market prices to U.S. consumers”
Chinese officials have denied that the country is overproducing electric vehicles, solar panels and other products targeted by the Biden administration. “We hope the U.S. can take a positive view of China’s development and stop using overcapacity as an excuse for trade protectionism,” a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said on Tuesday.
Automakers have already had a taste of how price competition can disrupt their electric vehicle plans. Over the last year, Tesla has cut prices on its models several times, reducing the costs of some models by more than 20 percent in total. Those cuts, combined with a slowdown in the growth of electric car sales, have made it extremely hard for G.M. and Ford to make money on battery-powered models.
In the first three months of the year, Ford’s electric vehicle division lost $1.3 billion before taking into account some expenses. Both Ford and G.M. have slowed electric vehicle production and delayed the introduction of new models. While G.M. is losing money on electric cars, the company has said it expects those vehicles to begin generating profits later this year.
The Biden administration has sought to support and encourage the production of batteries and electric vehicles in the United States to address climate change and encourage more domestic manufacturing.
China isn’t the only obstacle in the way. Americans’ enthusiasm for electric cars has waned over the past year, mainly because such vehicles sell for relatively high prices. Some buyers are also reluctant to buy because they are not sure there will be enough places to charge those cars easily and quickly.
In the first quarter of this year, 269,000 E.V.s were sold in the U.S. market, according to Kelley Blue Book. That was an increase of just 2.6 percent from a year earlier. Total sales of cars and light trucks grew more than 5 percent to 3.8 million vehicles.
“In a lot of ways, buying an E.V. requires a lifestyle change,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds, a market researcher. “A lot of people just say, ‘I don’t want the hassle of an E.V.’”
The director of the Secret Service met on Tuesday with Senate Republicans to discuss the party’s effort to push the expected protesters farther from the site of the Republican National Convention, set for July in Milwaukee.
Republican officials and lawmakers have objected to the placement of a designated demonstration zone near the convention venue, arguing it would create conflict between protesters and attendees. A lawyer for the Republican National Committee proposed in a letter in late April that the Secret Service expand the security perimeter around the venue, the Fiserv Forum.
The meeting came at the request of Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, who warned in a letter on Friday of “a potentially volatile situation” and “a likely — and preventable — area of conflict” between attendees and demonstrators at the convention, where the party is set to officially make Donald J. Trump its 2024 presidential nominee.
“As you know, this year has been a very challenging one for protests in the United States,” Mr. McConnell wrote, referring to a recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. “We must all take seriously that tensions are high and do our best to balance the right to express dissent while also keeping convention attendees as safe as possible.”
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview with local television in Milwaukee that he was one of the senators who met with Kimberly A. Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service.
“I found it a little frustrating,” Mr. Johnson said on Fox6 News Milwaukee, adding that “she basically said she does not have the authority to change their assessment, and they based it on their criteria that they’ve been using for years. And as a result, doesn’t sound like she can change anything.”
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, confirmed that Ms. Cheatle “briefed members of the U.S. Senate” about the security plan for the convention, adding that the security perimeter was “based on security considerations, including protective intelligence, risk and threat assessments, and is developed to ensure the highest level of security, while minimizing impacts to the public.”
The Secret Service has also said the security plan for the convention was developed and approved by a larger committee of city, state and federal agencies.
Under the proposed security plan, according to the R.N.C., protesters would be confined to Pere Marquette Park, a small public park on the bank of the Milwaukee River about a quarter of a mile from Fiserv Forum, the arena where the convention will take place. That park is adjacent to the two streets designated as the main routes to get to the convention, and the Republican National Committee has argued that forcing attendees to pass by the protesters would heighten tensions and cause confrontation.
Republicans have cited the recent campus protests, and Mr. Johnson on Tuesday mentioned the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020, as well as the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A group known as the Coalition to March on the RNC has been organizing convention demonstrations. Posts on social media promoting the demonstrations suggest that in Milwaukee they would be protesting Republican policies on the war in Gaza, abortion rights and climate change, among other issues.
“The Coalition to March on the RNC denounces these attempts by Republicans to strip us from our First Amendment rights,” the group said in a statement, adding, “We will be marching within sight and sound, regardless of these kinds of complaints by the Republicans.”
Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist who in November joined three other board members to force out Sam Altman, the company’s high-profile chief executive, before saying he regretted the move, is leaving the San Francisco A.I. company.
Dr. Sutskever’s departure, which the company announced in a blog post on Tuesday, closes another chapter in a story that stunned Silicon Valley and that raised questions about whether Mr. Altman and his company were prepared to lead the tech industry into the age of artificial intelligence.
After returning to OpenAI just five days after he was ousted, Mr. Altman reasserted his control and continued its push toward increasingly powerful technologies that worried some of his critics. Dr. Sutskever remained an OpenAI employee, but he never returned to work.
“This is an emotional day for all of us,” Mr. Altman said in an interview. “OpenAI would not exist without him and certainly was shaped by him.”
In a statement, Dr. Sutskever said: “I have made the decision to leave OpenAI. The company’s trajectory has been nothing short of miraculous, and I’m confident that OpenAI will build A.G.I. that is both safe and beneficial.” A.G.I., or artificial general intelligence, is an as-yet-unbuilt technology that can do anything the brain can do.
Dr. Sutskever, 38, added that he was starting a new project, but did not elaborate.
A key OpenAI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, will replace Dr. Sutskever as chief scientist at the company, which is valued at more than $80 billion, according to a recent fund-raising deal.
On Monday, OpenAI unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos, joining tech giants like Google and Apple in a race toward a new kind of talking digital assistant.
Founded in 2015 by Mr. Altman, Elon Musk and several young researchers, including Dr. Sutskever, OpenAI has long been at the forefront of A.I. research. Dr. Sutskever’s involvement provided the company with instant credibility. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto, he had been part of an A.I. breakthrough involving neural networks — the technology that has driven the field’s progress over the last decade.
In late 2022, OpenAI wowed the world with the release of ChatGPT, an online chatbot that could answer questions, write poetry, generate computer code and chat a lot like people. The tech industry quickly embraced what is called generative artificial intelligence — technologies that can generate text, images and other media on their own.
The result of more than a decade of research inside companies like OpenAI and Google, generative A.I. is poised to remake everything from email programs to internet search engines and digital assistants.
Mr. Altman became a spokesman for the shift toward generative A.I., testifying before Congress and meeting with lawmakers, regulators and investors around the world. In November, OpenAI’s board of directors unexpectedly ousted him, saying he could no longer be trusted with the company’s plan to eventually create artificial general intelligence.
The OpenAI board had six people: three founders and three independent members. Dr. Sutskever voted with the three outsiders to remove Mr. Altman as chief executive and chairman of the board, saying — without providing specifics — that Mr. Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications.”
Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and another co-founder, resigned from the company in protest. So did Dr. Pachocki.
Days later, as hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to quit, Dr. Sutskever said he regretted his decision to remove Mr. Altman and effectively stepped down from the board, leaving three independent members in opposition to Mr. Altman.
Mr. Altman returned as chief executive after he and the board agreed to replace two members with Bret Taylor, a former Salesforce executive, and Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary. Mr. Altman regained his board seat several months later, as the board expanded to seven people.
Last year, Dr. Sutskever helped create a Super Alignment team inside OpenAI to explore ways of ensuring that future versions of the technology would not do harm. Like others in the field, he had grown increasingly concerned that A.I. could become dangerous and perhaps even destroy humanity.
Jan Leike, who ran the Super Alignment team alongside Dr. Sutskever, has also resigned from OpenAI. His role will be taken by John Schulman, another company co-founder.
In the weeks leading up to Mr. Altman’s ouster, Dr. Pachocki, who helped oversee the creation of GPT-4, the technology at the heart of ChatGPT, was promoted to director of research at the company. After occupying a position below Dr. Sutskever, he was elevated to a position alongside him, two people familiar with the moves said.
After Mr. Altman was reinstated, Dr. Sutskever did not return to work. Mr. Altman indicated that he was hoping to negotiate his return, but ultimately that was not possible.
Dr. Pachocki has effectively served as chief scientist since November. After Dr. Sutskever recruited him and others to join OpenAI, he was among the key researchers on several of the company’s most important projects, including, most notably, GPT-4.
“I am grateful to Ilya,” Dr. Pachocki said in an interview. “We have different and in many ways complementary styles of leadership.”
Mr. Altman said he talked with Dr. Sutskever on Tuesday. “He has pushed us — and will continue to push us — to, as he says, feel the A.G.I.,” Mr. Altman said.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sought to reassure Ukrainians on Tuesday that they could weather an ominous new Russian military offensive and count on long-term support from the United States and its European allies.
“You are not alone,” Mr. Blinken declared in remarks in the capital city, Kyiv, where he arrived by train on Tuesday morning for an unannounced visit at what he called “a critical moment” for Ukraine’s future as Russia makes fresh military gains around the northeastern city of Kharkiv.
It is Mr. Blinken’s fourth trip to Kyiv since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the first by a senior U.S. official since President Biden signed a $60.8 billion aid package approved by Congress three weeks ago after months of infighting among House Republicans.
Mr. Blinken’s trip was planned before the Russian offensive, which has only underscored the importance of the American support that he came to highlight.
Hours after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky at his presidential offices and hearing his pleas for still more military assistance, Mr. Blinken conceded that the delay in U.S. aid had “left you more vulnerable to Russia’s attacks.”
But he argued that American support for the country remained durable. Congress ultimately approved the aid package first proposed by Mr. Biden last fall with overwhelming bipartisan support, he noted, implicitly downplaying the significance of the minority of House Republicans who managed to tie up the package for months.
“The American people’s support for Ukraine has been consistent over the course of the war,” he said. “It has never wavered.” That statement is supported by many polls that have shown enduring support for sending aid to the country.
Mr. Blinken was unable to guarantee continued financial support for Ukraine of the kind he and Mr. Biden have overseen, given the unpredictable nature of the U.S. political system — and, in particular, the skepticism about arming Ukraine often expressed by Mr. Biden’s Republican challenger, Donald J. Trump.
But he cited ways in which, he said, the country had enjoyed a “strategic success” since the war began more than two years ago, even though Russia occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine’s eastern territory.
Despite efforts by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to “lay waste” to Ukraine’s economy, he said, the country’s gross domestic product grew by 5 percent last year, and its steel factories have doubled their output over the past six months.
Mr. Blinken also reaffirmed the goal of Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO. He said that “tangible steps” would be outlined at a NATO summit in Washington in July to help build its military and bring it closer to the alliance, including security agreements between Ukraine and each member country that extend for a decade and are not subject to political winds.
“These agreements send a clear message that Ukraine can count on its partners for sustainable, long-term support,” Mr. Blinken said. Such agreements involve intelligence sharing and military planning and cooperation, not direct financial aid.
“As the war goes on, Russia is going back in time,” Mr. Blinken said. “Ukraine is moving forward.”
But Mr. Blinken also cautioned that if Ukraine wanted to integrate with the West, including by joining the European Union, it must adopt legal and political reforms and commit to “rooting out the scourge of corruption — once and for all.”
“Winning on the battlefield will prevent Ukraine from becoming part of Russia,” he said. “Winning the war against corruption will keep Ukraine from becoming like Russia.”
Mr. Blinken, who arrived on an overnight train from Poland, met earlier in the day with Mr. Zelensky, who profusely thanked him for the “crucial” aid package for his country. Yet Mr. Zelensky quickly added that Ukraine was still in need, pointing to the Russian military advances near Kharkiv in recent days. Russian forces captured another village, Lukiantsi, overnight and bombed Kharkiv on Tuesday morning, injuring four people.
Calling air defense a “deficit for us,” Mr. Zelensky said, “We really need it today, two Patriots for Kharkiv.”
Mr. Blinken did not specifically respond to that request for the U.S.-made surface-to-air missile system. But he told Mr. Zelensky that incoming American aid — some of which he said had already arrived — would “make a real difference on the battlefield.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken had warned for months that Congress’s delay in approving critically needed U.S. arms would leave Ukraine’s military vulnerable along an eastern battlefront that has been at a stalemate for months. A senior U.S. official declined on Tuesday to draw a direct connection between the delayed aid and Russia’s gains near Kharkiv. But the official, who spoke of the condition of anonymity, said it was clear that the gap in funding had left Ukraine weakened as its military awaited ammunition and other critical equipment.
The official added that Ukrainian forces had held their positions and were exacting a toll on the Russians, and that they were likely to make gains as U.S. assistance flowed into the country.
A second senior U.S. official would not say whether Russia had been notified in advance of Mr. Blinken’s visit. Russian forces have frequently attacked Kyiv with missiles and drones.
Earlier, Mr. Blinken dined with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, at a pizza restaurant founded and staffed by veterans of the war. He planned to make more stops around the city on Wednesday before returning to Washington.
With Israeli troops returning to clear Hamas for the second or third time from parts of northern Gaza, and fighting farther south in Rafah, too, Israel’s government has found itself confronting more vocal discontent from an important constituency: its own military leaders.
Current and former senior military officers have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to roll out a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are being forced — in the eighth month of the war — to battle again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared.
Two Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said some generals and members of the war cabinet were especially frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to develop and announce a process for building an alternative to Hamas to govern Gaza.
There was little expectation, among officials or experts, that a new government would be formed while combat raged. But “clear, hold and build” is the widely accepted practice for fighting an insurgency. And to a growing number of critics, Israel appears to be simply stuck in clearing mode, increasing the risks for Israeli soldiers and Gazan civilians while cease-fire talks remain stalemated.
The two officials said Mr. Netanyahu’s unwillingness to have a serious conversation about the latter phases of the Gaza campaign — the “day after” the fight — has made it easier for Hamas to reconstitute itself in places such as Jabaliya in northern Gaza.
Israel first attacked Hamas’s ranks there in October — and returned this week with another air and ground assault.
Much of the global criticism of Israel over the war has focused on the ever-rising civilian death toll. But Eran Lerman, Israel’s deputy national security adviser from 2006 to 2015, said it also stemmed in part from “the lack of coherent vision for the day after.”
A Palestinian man carrying the body of a child from the rubble of a collapsed building after a strike in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on Tuesday.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel’s generals should have asked tougher questions months ago, according to some analysts.
“Hamas or some organization like it is going to survive — unless you’d have started much earlier to align the sun, the moon and the stars into something that would create a counter,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is no counter. That’s the problem.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted calls to bring the fighting to an end, arguing that there can be no civilian government in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed. On Monday, in a podcast interview, he said the territory needed “sustained demilitarization by Israel” first, because “no one’s going to come in until they know that you either destroyed Hamas, or you’re about to destroy Hamas.”
Military officials, along with the White House and other countries, have grumbled privately for months about a lack of postwar strategy, but the volume of discord is now rising internally and externally as the scale of the counterinsurgency campaign becomes more visible.
While Israeli strategists have always said they expected troops to go back to some areas of Gaza in later phases of the war to stamp out pockets of resistance, there is a growing sense of it being more difficult now than it needed to be.
The two Israeli officials said that without an alternative to Hamas for administering the basic needs of the people, or to offer hope for a return to normal life, it is easier for Hamas to slip back into its old haunts or create new ones, making the fight harder for Israeli troops.
An Israeli military helicopter lifts wounded soldiers near the border with northern Gaza on Tuesday.Credit…Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock
The military’s leaders “are frustrated that they have been given a military assignment that ends up repeating like Groundhog Day, because the larger strategic and political questions haven’t been answered by the government,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum. “If the military frustrations and the angst of military families becomes louder, it will compound the government’s problems and put even more strain on the coalition.”
For Mr. Netanyahu, the political considerations involve trying to hold together a government with right-wing parties that have demanded an all-out assault on Gaza over American objections, and are unwilling to support what Arab countries have demanded as a prerequisite for their help in Gaza: a path to a Palestinian state.
If Mr. Netanyahu veers too far from the demands of his coalition partners, they have threatened to topple the government, which could leave Mr. Netanyahu to face a series of corruption allegations without the powers he has as prime minister.
Dr. Lerman, the former deputy national security adviser, recently published a proposed plan with other scholars at the Wilson Center that calls for a multinational authority to administer and police Gaza, led by the United States, Egypt and other nations. It has been shared with Israeli authorities.
Other proposals have included efforts to strengthen the Palestinian Authority that now governs part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but the Israeli government has also rejected that idea, arguing that the authority is not a competent, credible partner.
American officials over the weekend and on Monday repeated their argument that without a diplomatic solution, Israel would face what the United States confronted in Iraq and Afghanistan: a bloody war of attrition that drags on for years.
A Palestinian woman being comforted as she grieves over the body of her child after a strike in Nuseirat, central Gaza, on Tuesday.Credit…-/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“They will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left, no matter what they do in Rafah, or if they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said over the weekend. “Then you’re going to have a vacuum, and a vacuum that’s likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again.”
Former Israeli officials sounded warnings about a lack of postwar planning even before the ground assault in Gaza began. On Oct. 14, a week after the devastating Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people, Israeli officials say, and touched off the Israeli military offensive, Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister, called on the government to consider Gaza’s postwar future.
“Otherwise,” she said then, “we would get stuck there unnecessarily and with a heavy price tag.”
In an interview Tuesday, she said this was exactly what had happened.
“Just imagine if we had decided this before, and started working earlier with the U.S., the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the U.A.E. and the Saudis,” she said, referring to the United Arab Emirates. “It would be much easier.”
Johnatan Reiss and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
Google’s best new Android feature in years is Circle to Search, which is why it took center stage at today’s Google I/O opening keynote. Google announced new updates to Gemini, the AI that powers the Android operating system. Most of the new features sound helpful, though they might seem more subtle than you were expecting.
No Google AI Search, I Don’t Need to Learn About the “Benefits of Slavery”
Google says it will reveal more about Android on Wednesday, May 15, on the second day of its developer conference. Stay tuned for those announcements.
Circle to Search your homework
Screenshot: Google
The first big Gemini update is now available through the Circle to Search gesture. Starting today, you can use the long-press shortcut to look up answers to various physics and math word questions. Google Search will return step-by-step instructions upon query. Note that you’ll have to opt-in for help with math and word problems from the Search Labs menu for the feature to work.
Google lauds in its blog that this is all possible with its LearnLM, its “new family of models fine-tuned for learning.” Honestly, my elder millennial self is jealous you kids have help like this these days. Google plans to release more STEM homework help later in the year, including the ability to identify graphs and diagrams.
Gemini gains more context
Drag and drop generative images between Gemini and other apps. Image: Google
If it’s more context that you wanted for Google Gemini, it’s getting even more of it this year. Google announced at I/O that in an upcoming update, you will call Gemini to interact with the app you’re using. For instance, you can drag and drop a Gemini-generated image into another app like Messages or go deeper on a YouTube video without navigating away. Gemini Advanced subscribers will also have the option to query a PDF for a quick summary. This particular update will roll out “over the next few months.”
Gemini Nano goes multimodal on device
An example of a dialog window that Gemini will pop up when it suspects a scam call is in progress. Image: Google
Gemini Nano—the smallest model in Google’s Gemini family and the one that runs on-device the Pixel hardware—will also see an update on compatible Pixel devices later this year. First, Gemini Nano will become multimodal. The AI will finally be able to process text input and audio or video simultaneously. It will benefit Android features like TalkBack, where Nano can generate descriptions for images and interface elements that don’t offer details.
Gemini Nano is also powering the scam detection feature in the Phone app that Google announced during the keynote. This feature scans the conversation on-device to determine if there’s a scam happening in real-time. Google says the conversation is processed on the hardware side and doesn’t go to a server. Instead, Nano listens for trigger words and phrases and then provides feedback that you may be involved in a scam.
Gemini for developers
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft fame said it first: the developer conference is all about the developers, developers, developers! Google reminded its developers that Gemini is available for use in Android Studio. Developers get early access to Gemini 1.5 Pro, which can help with coding and compiling.
Michael Buckner/Chris Chapman for Deadline/Alfred Gregory/Royal Geographical Society via Getty Images
In a big deal that closed in the days leading into this week’s Cannes market, Apple Original Films has landed worldwide rights to Tenzing, the new package we told you about last week starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe.
The question we asked today was whether the U.S. buyers would come to play for the Cannes market projects and we have an answer already.
Oscar-winning producer See-Saw Films (The King’s Speech) is producing Tenzing, about the inspirational life of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and his summit of Mount Everest in 1953 alongside fellow outsider New Zealander Edmund Hillary.
A search is underway to cast the lead role of Tenzing Norgay who will star alongside BAFTA-nominated Tom Hiddleston (Loki) as Sir Edmund Hillary and four-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) as the English expedition leader, Colonel John Hunt.
Tenzing comes from filmmaker Jennifer Peedom who has the exclusive rights to tell Tenzing’s story via his family and has a close relationship with the Sherpa community after making acclaimed documentary Sherpa.
Script comes from Oscar-nominated Luke Davies (Lion) and producers are Liz Watts, Emile Sherman and Iain Canning for See-Saw Films, alongside Jennifer Peedom and Luke Davies. Executive producers are Simon Gillis, David Michôd and Norbu Tenzing.
Rocket Science was handling international sales in partnership with Cross City Films, See-Saw’s in-house sales arm. UTA Independent Film Group and Cross City Films were co-repping the U.S. sale and brokered the Apple deal. We understand filming is being lined up for spring 2025.
The project was being touted to buyers as having a budget in the $25M range. We hear it skews more intriguing character piece than an action-packed Everest-type but there will be a number of climbing sequences.
Tibetan born Tenzing Norgay, alongside New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, both outsiders on a British Expedition, defied insurmountable odds to achieve what was once thought impossible, reaching the summit of the world’s tallest mountain, Mount Everest. After six previous attempts, Tenzing risked everything for one final venture. He had to navigate treacherous politics and perilous weather as he embarked on the most significant climb of his life. Through it all, he did so with humor, warmth, and generosity towards his fellow climbers, but also deep reverence and respect for the sacred Mother Goddess of his Mountain, Chomolungma.
Peedom is known for her intimate portraits against epic landscapes, including documentaries Solo, Sherpa and Mountain.
