If Wednesday’s hearing had been a criminal trial, Cohen’s testimony would have been the decisive moment in determining the President’s fate on charges, including the same campaign finance violations to which Cohen himself has pleaded guilty. But ultimately — given the current DOJ policy against indicting a sitting President — Trump’s fate will turn on politics. So the biggest remaining question is whether Cohen’s testimony was both credible and persuasive enough to change the political calculus.

How much will it matter politically? Little in Wednesday’s hearing spoke well of Mr. Trump, but little of it will surprise Americans or by itself rise to an impeachable offense. But the impeachment machinery is now up and running. Democrats may find it’s not easy to stop, though they’ll need witnesses who are more credible than Michael Cohen.

It was Michael Cohen’s day on Capitol Hill, but Democrats are still waiting for Robert Mueller. Donald Trump’s former lawyer leveled a raft of explosive allegations against the president Wednesday, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team are in no hurry to launch impeachment proceedings. Instead, they’re still waiting to see what the special counsel turns up.

This isn’t necessarily a diplomatic failure, but it isn’t good… World leaders typically don’t hold major summits like the two-day affair in Hanoi unless they can achieve something. And many signs pointed to Trump and Kim making another pact… That’s not happening now.

President Trump was right to walk away from his summit with Kim Jong-un rather than accept a bad nuclear agreement, but the outcome underscores that he was bamboozled last year at his first summit with Kim. Whatever genius Trump sees in the mirror, “the art of the deal” is not his thing.

Appearing on “Fox & Friends,” Hannity, speaking from Hanoi, said that members of the media should read Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal,” to truly “understand” the president’s tactics. “I see this about the news media all the time,” Hannity said. “If they would just maybe take a little bit of time and try and understand President Trump a little bit more–maybe they could read ‘The Art of the Deal,’ one of the best-selling business books in history.”

In the parlor game that has captivated Israel in recent weeks, some on the right, though, fear that Mr. Mandelblit could take a tough line against his one-time patron to prove his independence, burnishing his credentials for what they suspect is his ambition to serve on the Supreme Court.

The attacks on Mr. Mandelblit have been intense and personal.

His father’s gravestone was desecrated.

Left-wing protesters heckled him at the supermarket and on his way to synagogue.

“To bring down a duly elected prime minister on the basis of an expansive and unprecedented application of a broad and expandable criminal statute endangers democracy,” Dershowitz wrote… Dershowitz called on Mandelblit to let Netanyahu “continue his important work,” and to let Israelis decide at the ballot whether they accept the prime minister’s behavior or not.

“To criminalize these political differences is to endanger democracy and freedom of the press,” Dershowitz wrote.

The attorney general’s decision to publicize his position on the Netanyahu cases before the elections, and despite the pressures exerted on him, is admirable. One must hope Netanyahu will respect Mendelblit’s opinion and avoid any further incitement campaign.

Dodging the issue would have been particularly egregious because it’s not going away. “America’s death row population is aging significantly,” the Death Penalty Information Center has reported. In 2016, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, eight percent of death row inmates were 65 or older. As the number of execution falls, that age cohort will grow, encountering the full spectrum of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s, vascular disease like Madison’s, and other neurological disorders.

In his dissenting opinion, Alito complained that what “the Court has done in this case makes a mockery of our Rules.” In particular, Alito suggested, Madison had pulled a bait and switch: Although he had asked the justices to decide whether the Eighth Amendment bars the execution of an inmate who can’t remember committing the crime for which he would be executed, once review was granted Madison adopted “an entirely different argument, namely, that the state court had rejected” his “claim that he is incompetent to be executed because the court erroneously thought that dementia, as opposed to other mental conditions, cannot provide a basis for that claim.”

Not remembering the crime isn’t a bar to execution, the court said in its ruling. “A person lacking memory of his crime may yet rationally understand why the State seeks to execute him; if so, the Eighth Amendment poses no bar to his execution,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority… So memory loss alone won’t bar execution. But, Kagan wrote, “if that loss combines and interacts with other mental shortfalls to deprive a person of the capacity to comprehend why the State is exacting death as punishment,” then the execution is unconstitutional.

It’s worth considering, as OpenAI seems to be encouraging us to do, how researchers and society in general should approach powerful A.I. models. The dangers that come with the proliferation of A.I. won’t necessarily involve insubordinate killer robots… “The fact of the matter is that a lot of the cool stuff that we’re seeing coming out of A.I. research can be weaponized in some form,” says Bowers.

…why would OpenAI, whose name implies transparency and sharing of knowledge, decide to keep a tight lid on its technology under overblown concerns about AI-induced fake news? That is for the folks at OpenAI to answer… But as last week’s news stories around AI-generated fake news have shown, technologies wrapped in a shroud of mystery and conspiracy make for more sensational headlines. And sensational headlines draw more attention.

…an article written by the AI might look and sound like something that would come from CBC News, the Guardian or the New York Times — even be brimming with divisive political content — and yet be completely fabricated, down to made-up quotes. It’s that blurring of lines that is concerning: Some elements of the content will be rooted in reality — names of politicians, or events, for example — depending on what has been fed into the system. And yet a quote from that named person might be entirely computer-generated and baseless.

From Slender Man to kids eating detergent pods, there’s a long and rich history of creepy internet challenges freaking out parents. The latest addition to this time-honored tradition is Momo, an online challenge that’s purportedly sort of a combination of the Black Mirror episode “Shut Up and Dance” and Blue Whale. Momo allegedly targets young children by encouraging them to text a number on WhatsApp, which then sends them instructions to complete a series of increasingly bizarre and dangerous tasks from watching a horror movie to engaging in self-harm to taking their own lives.

The mythology surrounding Momo is made for the digital age… However, anyone who watches a Momo Challenge video will find that there isn’t a single documented instance of someone messaging the monster on WhatsApp and receiving a reply. Yet, still, the Momo Challenge spread around the world.

Rather than warning children about specific dangers such as Momo, parents and professionals can better help children by teaching them good practices online.

It’s important that children know that they should not be trying to contact strangers online, regardless of the method. Setting privacy systems on devices with your child is a great way to have this conversation and agree on automatic precautions.