The tidbits released by the police and the Shin Bet read like something from a classic spy novel. In 2012, they said, contact had been made between Mr. Segev and people from Iran’s embassy in Nigeria. The first contact was with Iran’s agricultural attaché in Nigeria… Mr. Segev is said to have traveled to Iran twice to see his handlers and met them in hotels and apartments around the world. He received secret communications equipment for encoding messages between him and his handlers, according to the statement by the Israeli authorities.

Shin Bet alleged that he had given the handlers information relating to Israel’s energy sector, security sites in Israel, and officials in political and security institutions, and also put the handlers in contact with some Israelis involved in the security sector by introducing them as businessmen. On Friday, Segev was indicted in a Jerusalem court on charges of “assisting an enemy during a time of war and espionage against the State of Israel”, as well as multiple offences of “handing over information to the enemy”.

Segev, who served as energy and infrastructure minister between January 1995 and June 1996, is the highest-ranking Israeli official ever charged with spying on Israel. He joins a long of senior officials, including MKs and top security brass, who have been charged with treason through the decades, though the 62-year-old is the first to have been credibly accused to have worked for Iran.

Donald Trump may want to blame the Democrats for his administrations decision to ramp up child detention at the Mexican border, but one of his underlings certainly doesn’t. Adviser Stephen Miller has long had a reputation as one of the most anti-immigrant figures in Trump’s White House (which is a high bar to clear) and in a new report out from the New York Times Miller explains that he helped push the president into the decision, and has no hesitation or second thoughts about a policy that has seen nearly 2000 children taken from their parents and put into detention centers in just six weeks.

But Mr. Miller has expressed none of the president’s misgivings. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”

As far back as Hebrew school, his classmates pegged him as a young contrarian… News reports identify Miller, 31, as a principal author of Trump’s draconian immigration measures, including the executive order the president signed in late January targeting immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. These politics are generally reviled in the liberal circles of his Jewish upbringing — such as at Beth Shir Shalom, where he went to Hebrew school, and which describes itself online as a “Progressive Reform Synagogue,” and at The Santa Monica Synagogue, a Reform temple where he was confirmed in 10th grade.

When it comes to the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration increasingly appears to have been a bottomless pit of deception… in a bombshell revelation, Republicans on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), have revealed in a new report that the Obama administration secretly tried to help Iran use U.S. banks to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian assets, after promising Congress that Iran would not get access to the U.S. financial system — and then lied to Congress about what it had done.

The signal given by the Obama administration was that under no circumstance would Iran be permitted any access to the U.S. financial system under the JCPOA… “The Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran,” said Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican who chairs the subcommittee. Portman opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Obama administration officials rejected the Senate Republicans’ report out of hand, calling it mere politics. They also noted that the report did not include interviews with former Obama administration officials and no Democrats were involved in compiling the report.

President Barack Obama came into office believing [.] that the regime in Tehran needed only to be trusted and treated as a peaceful and law-abiding member of the community of nations… We viscerally disagreed with that view, but it was a legitimate view. But when Obama administration officials couldn’t persuade Congress and the public of their outlook, they simply lied about it. We hear a great deal these days about the grave repercussions of presidential untruths—and rightly so. But the previous administration, it seems, perpetrated deliberate untruths with calamitous consequences… We look forward to seeing that administration’s officials held accountable.

At the same time, the desire for widespread public support did not appear to be as desperate as previous evacuations. Unlike Amona, this was not an entire community being uprooted, but only less than half of a neighborhood. Moreover, the evicted residents moved immediately into modular homes built for them by the government on an adjacent hilltop. They also plan on returning in two or three years to nearly the exact same spot where the original homes stood, thanks to a February cabinet decision to begin legalizing the outpost, which will allow the neighborhood to expand thirtyfold.

The evacuation scenes played out as if they were the reruns of some well-known play that had been moved from Broadway to an off-Broadway stage… Havat Gilad, the 2005 Gaza Disengagement and the demolition of nine Amona homes all took place under former primes ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, who many believed planned to execute withdrawal plans from settlements in Area C as a prelude to a two-state solution… But as the peace process has remained frozen under Netanyahu’s tenure, the international community and a bulk of the Israeli public no longer believe settlers will be evacuated. They believe annexation is more likely than evacuation.

A government representative said on Sunday at a discussion in the High Court of Justice on the Regularization of Settlement in Judea and Samaria Law, that debate over the legislation cannot be based on international law – only on Israeli law. (The legislation in question, the so-called land-grab law, would legalize the status of settlements partially built on privately owned Palestinian land.) If this opinion is accepted, that would mean that the territories in the West Bank have become Israel’s territories. The government is adopting this policy despite its heavy diplomatic price, and doing so in the knowledge that the act contradicts international law, as interpreted by the High Court.

You may not realize it, but as you read this you are probably surrounded by the most important artificial material ever invented… It’s an almost magically cheap, easy way to quickly create roads, bridges, dams and housing for huge numbers of people. An estimated 70% of the world’s population now lives in structures made at least partly out of concrete… Making all that concrete, however, takes a heavy toll on the atmosphere. The cement industry produces 5-10% of total carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, putting it behind only coal-fueled power plants and automobiles as a source of global warming gases.

But concrete has an emissions problem. Its essential ingredient, cement, has a huge carbon footprint… a Canadian startup has invented a new system for making concrete that traps CO2 emissions forever and at the same time reduces the need for cement. CarbonCure’s system takes captured CO2 and injects it into concrete as it’s being mixed. Once the concrete hardens, that carbon is sequestered forever. Even if the building is torn down, the carbon stays put. That’s because it reacts with the concrete and becomes a mineral.

The global climate change is a fact and an immediate action is required if we want to avoid its devastating effects. And it requires action from everyone because everything that reduces the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and pollution of the soil, water and air is helpful. Private homes are estimated to be responsible for about one fifth to one fourth of global carbon dioxide emissions; and for that reason eco- friendly construction or green building is not just a way of life but it is a necessity.

JAY-Z and Beyoncé are either working through some personal shit, or making it look like they are. It all may be totally contrived, but it’s working… this tour feels like a coping mechanism, where Bey and Jay give the fans what they want—more of themselves—while turning those public details into performance.

Much of Everything Is Love involves Beyoncé and Jay-Z riffing on their own wealth, power, and influence. Jay-Z lets us know he turned down the Super Bowl halftime show since he “doesn’t need” it. On the aptly titled “Boss,” Beyoncé sings: “My great-great-grandchildren already rich / that’s a lot of brown children on your Forbes list.” The fact that they filmed their music video in the Louvre is about as effective as assertion of power can get… The grappling they did separately about their relationship, Beyoncé in Lemonade and Jay-Z in 2017’s 4:44, appears to have only made them a stronger joint force.

Everything Is Love confounds because of its central goal: the assertion that a record, any record, could do the work of convincing fans that the Carters’ union is stronger now than it was before Jay undermined their vows… Of course, Beyoncé is entitled to forgive her husband; marriage is a thorny, difficult endeavor. The Carters’ family business, though, has long crossed into the public sphere; Beyoncé trotting her husband out for a redemption tour is not simply a private burying of grievances, but also a public statement, a literal performance of absolution wrought through female suffering.