Sinwar and Peace

Sinwar is Dead, Ozempic and Addiction

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre and a man who lived up to both syllables in his last name, has been killed. This is breaking news, but it doesn't appear that Sinwar was specifically targeted in the raid that killed him. Let's hope the death of this maniac will lead to a hostage deal, a ceasefire, and move toward peace in the region. One US official summed up what we know about how things will play out in the coming days and weeks. "We don’t know what this means yet,' said a US official, there could be 'rapid' movement towards a ceasefire and hostage deal or there could still be a long path ahead.'" It's the Middle East. That's the only answer anyone could possibly give. Meanwhile, from Biden: "I will be speaking soon with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people ... There is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Yahya Sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. That obstacle no longer exists." Here's the latest from CNN.

+ There's some irony that Sinwar was identified by his dental records. An Israeli dentist once save Sinwar's life."This is how Dr. Yuval Bitton remembers the morning of Oct. 7. Being jolted awake just after sunrise by the insistent ringing of his phone. The frantic voice of his daughter, who was traveling abroad, asking, ‘Dad, what’s happened in Israel? Turn on the TV.’ … Even in that first moment, Dr. Bitton says, he knew with certainty who had masterminded the attack: Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and Inmate No. 7333335 in the Israeli prison system from 1989 until his release in a prisoner swap in 2011. But that was not all. Dr. Bitton had a history with Yahya Sinwar. As he watched the images of terror and death flicker across his screen, he was tormented by a decision he had made nearly two decades before — how, working in a prison infirmary, he had come to the aid of a mysteriously and desperately ill Mr. Sinwar, and how afterward the Hamas leader had told him that ‘he owed me his life.'” In the NYT (Gift Article) Jo Becker and Adam Sella piece together one (of a million) defining moments in this endlessly painful saga; history’s open wound that infects the world and never seems to heal. The Hamas Chief and the Israeli Who Saved His Life.

+ In an interview in Haaretz, Dr. Bitton explained what Sinwar was after: "He sees himself as playing a central role in the realization of the Islamist ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood. He thinks he has entered the annals of history. And he really doesn’t care if 200,000 people are killed and not a single house remains complete in Gaza. The main thing is the goal, the greater idea."

+ David Remnick in The New Yorker a couple months ago. Notes from Underground: The life of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza.

+ Meanwhile, a reminder that this is a much broader battle than it sometimes seems. US B-2 bombers strike Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. "It marked the first time the US has used the strategic stealth bomber to attack the Houthis in Yemen since the beginning of the US campaign. The B-2 is a much larger platform than the fighter jets that have been used so far to target Houthi facilities and weapons, capable of carrying a far heavier load of bombs."

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The Tar Heal State

In case you missed it yesterday... I've been looking for one thing that the NextDraft community can support that could make a big difference in the biggest of elections. A great friend of mine from North Carolina has been singing the praises of a group called Mecklenburg Democrats. They have built an amazing organization working to squeeze every last vote out of their Dem heavy region. The NYT (Gift Article) wrote about their work this week: Can Charlotte, N.C., Deliver for Kamala Harris? My answer: Oh Meck Yeah! I said l'd match whatever you gave yesterday up to $5000. As an NC resident might say: Ya'll demolished that initial goal. And I've already swiped my credit card for the 5K. Let's keep this going. I'll provide final numbers tomorrow. LFG!)

+ Donate to MeckDems and Unleash the Power of Mecklenburg County’s Untapped Democratic Votes.

+ Need a little more motivation? In the past 24 hours, Trump made a joke about Amber Thurman (who died because of Georgia's abortion ban), described Jan 6 as a day of love, and said Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky "should never have let that war start."

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This Should Shake You to Your Core

"In the early morning of Jan. 31, 2002, Robert Roberson entered an East Texas emergency room. His two-year-old daughter, Nikki, was in his arms. She was limp and non-responsive. Her lips were blue. The hospital staff put Nikki on life support and tried to resuscitate her. And they called the police on Roberson. They thought they had a case of shaken baby syndrome on their hands. But testifying Wednesday to the Texas legislative Committee on Jurisprudence, Dr. Roland Auer, a Canadian neurosurgeon who has testified in similar cases, said Nikki was not the victim of abuse. 'Nikki died of consequences of pneumonia— cardiac arrest — and she was basically brain-dead in a living body.'" Shaken baby syndrome is one of the most controversial diagnoses in medicine. So far, that's not stopping Texas from moving forward with the execution of the accused. Texas is about to execute a man for a crime that never happened, medical experts say.

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Ozempic and Choose

Ozempic started out as a drug focused on lowering blood sugar levels among those with Type 2 diabetes. Then we learned that it also drove weight loss. That made it a household name. Even though researchers don't always know why, they're finding more and more benefits. "Diabetes and weight loss drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic may also help patients suffering from addiction. "In the study, published Thursday in the scientific journal Addiction, researchers found people with opioid or alcohol use disorder who take Ozempic or similar medications appear to have a 40% lower rate of opioid overdose and a 50% lower rate of alcohol intoxication compared to people who aren't on the medications." This tracks with what I've heard from some folks I know who take the medication. The desire to drink disappeared.

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Extra, Extra

No News is Good News: " This is a return to news video investments from Big Tech. Tech firms have invested billions in live sports rights to bolster their streaming services, but live news has proved a more elusive customer acquisition tool." Amazon will stream election night coverage hosted by Brian Williams. (This may sound weird coming from me, but I see this is a terrible sign. We need more places to escape the news, not more places to be confronted by it. And we sure as hell don't need one more place to get election night news.)

+ Hen Attacks Fox House: "Bret Baier started off his Wednesday evening interview with Kamala Harris with a barrage of combative questions about immigration, designed less to elicit substantive answers than to prove what a tough guy the Fox host could be." Margaret Sullivan: Fox News’s interview of Kamala Harris was grievance theater, not political journalism. Harris basically went into Trump campaign HQ and kicked ass. Though you definitely wouldn't know that if you opened up 50 tabs like I did this morning and saw the relentless distortions. These really are sad times. You can watch the interview here.

+ Runaway Training: "While the pace at which the overall population has been radicalizing increased in recent years, people with military backgrounds have been radicalizing at a faster rate." His country trained him to fight. Then he turned against it. More like him are doing the same.

+ Cheating Weighs: "Before 2020, most Americans had no reason to fear this problem. Political parties largely acted in good faith, and most understood that our basic democratic norms were sacrosanct. In a world in which one party is still consumed by election fraud claims from 2020 (as JD Vance’s nonanswer in the debate underscored) and is prepared to claim the same in 2024, we have much to fear." Neal K. Katyal in the NYT (Gift Article): In Case of an Election Crisis, This Is What You Need to Know.

+ Liam Payne Dies: "Liam Payne, the former member of the boy band One Direction, died of trauma and internal and external bleeding, an autopsy performed in Buenos Aires following his death after he plummeted from a hotel balcony in Argentina’s capital." Here's more from BBC.

+ Crime of the Century: "The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $880m to 1,353 people who alleged that they were sexually abused as children by Catholic priests, in the largest settlement by a US diocese over decades-old abuse claims." (This is just one city...)

+ Flu the Nest: "Scientists have concluded that widespread physical distancing and masking practiced during the early days of COVID-19 appear to have pushed B/Yamagata into oblivion. This surprised many who study influenza, as it would be the first documented instance of a virus going extinct due to changes in human behavior."

+ Boss Mode: "That was literally a song I wrote in two minutes. Didn’t even think about it. Didn’t think it was ever going to be on a record ... There’s nothing on that record. Wrote it in two minutes. And if you go to iTunes now, it’s the number-one favorite song out of every song I’ve written. I wrote that in two minutes!" A cool discussion between Zach Bryan and Bruce Springsteen.

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Bottom of the News

Romancing the Clone: "On Monday, Hong Kong police announced the arrest of 27 people involved in a romance scamoperation that used AI face-swapping techniques to defraud victims of $46 million through fake cryptocurrency investments ... The scam ring created attractive female personas for online dating, using unspecified tools to transform their appearances and voices."