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  • Quick takeaways on the United States’ historic investment in clean hydrogen hubs

    This past Friday, October 13, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $7 billion in funding for the country’s first clean hydrogen hubs (H2Hubs), as part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The announcement represents the single largest public investment in US hydrogen to date and is expected to have a significant impact on the technology’s development. Here are some takeaways from the announcement.

  • Opinion: A New Diplomatic Path Is Urgent after Gaza, But Without the Previous Mistakes

    The horrors of the Hamas attack in southern Israel, and the devastating Israeli response, have only exposed the short-sighted hollowness of the Trump-Biden strategy, which has centered on ignoring the Palestinian dimension in favor of expanding the Abraham Accords, which the Biden administration has decided is the key to lasting regional peace. But Washington’s failure, of both imagination and policy, is not the only one here: Israel appears to have assumed that it could manage Hamas through an unstated modus vivendi, allowing the organization full sway in Gaza, with occasional reprisals for relatively small-scale attacks on Israel. “Shrinking the conflict” became the unspoken mantra of successive Israeli governments. That did not work either.

  • No heroes in Hamas-Israel conflict, only victims: Former Saudi intelligence chief

    Israel and Hamas should be condemned because of their acts against civilians, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief insists, but maintains that the Palestinians have a right to resist Israel’s military occupation. Prince Turki Al-Faisal condemned “Hamas’ targeting of civilian targets of any age or gender, as it is accused of,” and said the acts go against Islamic injunctions about harming civilians and desecrating places of worship. “But equally, I condemn Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian innocent civilians in Gaza and the attempt to forcibly drive them into Sinai.” “There are no heroes in this conflict. Only victims,” Prince Turki told a gathering at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston on Tuesday.

  • Commentary: In Tel Aviv, Biden’s Embrace of Israel Came With a Gentle Warning

    Mr. Biden flew to Israel on Wednesday to give the whole country a hug, to say how much America grieves with Israel and stands by Israel and has Israel’s back. But with the hug came a whisper in the ear as well, a gentle warning not to give into the “primal feeling,” not to let overwhelming grief or overpowering anger drive the country to go too far as he believes America did after Sept. 11, 2001.

  • Saudi Arabia calls for an urgent OIC Ministerial Meeting in Jeddah to address escalation in Gaza

    Saudi Arabia has called for an urgent Ministerial Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), scheduled for Wednesday in Jeddah, to address the escalating military situation and the threat to defenseless civilians in Gaza.

    The urgent meeting comes at the invitation of Saudi Arabia, which chairs the current session of the Islamic Summit and the Executive Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The Organization's Executive Committee will hold the urgent open-ended extraordinary meeting at the ministerial level, to address the escalating military situation in Gaza and its surroundings.

  • How did Israeli intelligence miss Hamas’ preparations to attack?

    Unlike the U.S., one thing that Israel doesn’t have is an overall intelligence coordinator, a single representative who knows about and oversees all of the different intelligence components. The U.S. system has a director of national intelligence position, who runs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created in 2004. These were both recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, after it found that the U.S. approach to intelligence was too fragmented across different agencies and offices.

  • Israel’s Netanyahu, Gantz reach deal to form emergency government

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and head of the National Unity party Benny Gantz have reached an agreement to form an emergency government on Wednesday as the war against Hamas enters its fifth day and a Gaza invasion looms. Gantz will join the Netanyahu-led government and be part of a war cabinet, a small forum of ministers tasked with shaping Israel’s strategy in the battle against Hamas, Israeli news outlets reported.

  • Iran intelligence: Initial US intel suggests Tehran was surprised by the Hamas attack on Israel

    The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday’s bloody attack on Israel by Hamas, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence. The existence of the intelligence has cast doubt on the idea that Iran was directly involved in the planning, resourcing or approving of the operation, sources said. The sources stressed that the US intelligence community is not ready to reach a full conclusion about whether Tehran was directly involved in the run-up to the attack. They continue to look for evidence of Iranian involvement, which caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.

  • Resilient Global Economy Still Limping Along, With Growing Divergences

    The global economy continues to recover from the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis. In retrospect, the resilience has been remarkable. Despite war-disrupted energy and food markets and unprecedented monetary tightening to combat decades-high inflation, economic activity has slowed but not stalled. Even so, growth remains slow and uneven, with widening divergences.

  • Arab youth social media addiction reaches crisis levels as Gen Z, Millennial mental health declines: Report

    Social media addiction among Arab youth has skyrocketed to crisis levels, contributing to deteriorating mental well-being across the Middle East, the Arab Youth Survey found. The comprehensive study of Arab youth, the Middle East and North Africa’s largest demographic, found that a staggering 74 percent of young Arabs now say they struggle to disconnect from social media networks. Shockingly, 61 percent agree that their addiction to platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok has negatively impacted their mental health.