The Obama administration had secured 24/7 monitoring of every nuclear site in Iran, the right to access non-declared civilian and military sites and sanctions that could snap back at the first sign of violations. Achieving that standard with North Korea will be difficult no matter how good the personal dynamics between Trump and Kim — surpassing it will be nearly impossible. This summit was a good step, but it’s the first in a long process. What comes next will be even more important. North Korea has historically been less belligerent when at the negotiating table. That’s reason enough to keep them there. But for a meaningful substantive agreement, Trump may come to wish he could get terms as good as the Iran deal he trashed.

It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore. Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un… In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992.

…what Trump is facing is nothing less than a new nuclear age, when the strategies that kept the world safe during the Cold War may no longer apply. In the words of James Holmes of the U.S. Naval War College, “there are more nuclear-weapon states” now than during the Cold War, “they’re of different shapes and sizes, and they’re on different trajectories.” If the fundamental question now is the same as it was during the Cold War—how do you keep the world’s deadliest weapons from destroying the world?—the context is entirely different, and maybe that means the approach must be as well.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has warned fellow Democrats that they shouldn’t just oppose Trump in the midterm elections; she thinks they need a substantive alternative policy message… That sounds good. It’s wrong. Midterm elections are about grievances, often directed against an incumbent president. There are more than four-dozen competitive House races, and Democrats may settle on similar themes. But they don’t need a single agenda.

Democrats are for things that will make us prosper and create all kinds of jobs — taxpayer sending on basic science, medical research, infrastructure and more access to higher education. But ask people randomly about these issues, as I have across the country, and they often can articulate better what Trump claims than what the Democrats promise. That’s a failure of marketing. The Democrats need slogans, not more nuanced blah blah blah blah. Where is the Democratic Party plan for infrastructure, which would create many jobs from manual labor to engineering? Where is their plan to make life more pleasant as we replace potholes with the kind of smooth highways China is building and replace aging bridges and dams before another deadly collapse?

The Democratic National Committee and members of Congress are turning to Hollywood for help with voter turnout and messaging ahead of the midterm elections and 2020 presidential campaign, quietly consulting with a group of actors, writers and producers here… the meetings have also served as an opportunity to address broader messaging issues, with several House members explicitly requesting help on speechwriting and overall messaging, participants said. In meetings with candidates and DNC officials, group members have urged the party to adopt a more aggressive communications strategy than the party mustered in a demoralizing 2016 presidential campaign.

…amid all this petty political infighting, what the government seems to have forgotten is that the real issue of the Haredi draft isn’t over sanctions or no sanctions, but over integrating the tenth of the Israeli population now absent from the country’s economic life. The law isn’t just over army service but at what age ultra-Orthodox males will join the labor market. This is an issue that will grow more serious as time goes on. And Israel’s demographics change. Half of the children in Israel’s first grades are ultra-Orthodox or Israeli Arabs, neither of whose young serve in the army. If the 70-year-old practice of letting Haredim avoid the draft continues, the notion of a people’s army will become history.

In September 2017, the High Court of Justice struck down a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men engaged in religious study from military service, saying it undermined the principle of equality before the law. However, the court suspended its decision for a year to allow for a new arrangement to be put in place, giving the government the option to pass a new law. Giving his coalition partners an ultimatum, Yaakov Litzman, the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party said last week that if a proposal dealing with the community’s conscription is not passed into law by June 22, when the Knesset summer recess begins, the party will leave the government, likely spelling its untimely end.

One senior ultra-Orthodox politician told Al-Monitor that it is perfectly obvious that it is not in the interest of the ultra-Orthodox parties to bring down the government just to prevent the conscription law from passing, if only because of the political gains that Lapid would stand to make from the return of inequitable military service to the public agenda. According to the politician, if the government does fall over this issue, Yesh Atid will get many more seats in the next election, but if the topic drops off the agenda, Lapid will weaken. According to the most recent polls, Lapid will be Netanyahu’s main rival in the next election. He is competing for the votes of centrists, who lean to the right on security and diplomatic issues but do not like the blatant partnership between Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox.

…the increasing hardening of Russia’s stance towards the outside world, and especially the West, provides an intriguing lining to a World Cup that will otherwise be defined by footballing geniuses and fervid collectives, by stunning feats of athleticism and outstanding acts of devotion. This, in many ways, is the paradox of Russia’s World Cup: that a tournament conceived as a congress of nations, a bridge between worlds, a celebration of commonality and openness, is taking place in a country that has done more than any other to burn those bridges, to obscure and divide, to drive those worlds ever further apart.

After blaming Russia for poisoning the Skripals with a deadly nerve agent called Novichok, Prime Minister May said that while the English team will participate in the World Cup, the royal family and other officials won’t be there… While the event will expose Russians to people who don’t subscribe to the Kremlin worldview, there’s also a risk of trouble from extremist fans known as “ultras.” Clashes between Russian and English fans in Marseille at the 2016 European Championship left more than 30 injured.

Thousands of foreign fans will travel fearing they might be shaken down by corrupt policemen or beaten senseless by xenophobic hooligans, whose scary image has been burnished by two years of breathless post-Marseille reportage on their thuggish prowess and their set-piece battles, deep in the dark and mysterious forests of dark and mysterious Mother Russia. And therein lies Russia’s last remaining hope that hosting this World Cup might not turn out to be a complete waste of time and money. The World Cup attracts many times more foreign visitors than the Winter Olympics, and rather than being confined to one overpriced southern resort these visitors will fan out all over the country: they can’t avoid coming face to face with the real, everyday Russia.

What if, in addition to beautiful handbags and food-driven adventure stories, the legacy of Spade and Bourdain can be that we engage in greater conversation about mental health and the suicide crisis that is breaking so many hearts in this country? If there is any shred of good that can come from these celebrities’ passing, let it be an acceptance that hopelessness can affect anyone but that all of us have an obligation to help however we can.

There’s a common misconception that talking about suicide will “give people ideas” and cause them to have suicidal ideation. Suicide can be frightening, and most people don’t know what to do or say when someone is in crisis. In reality, talking about suicide is key to preventing it. Depression is treatable, suicide is preventable, and ending the stigma around mental illness is vital to helping those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts… While we need to talk about suicide, there are ways in which the media can create suicide contagion.

About 123 people die of it every day, but we still don’t want to talk about it. Those left behind often don’t receive casseroles or cards, flowers or fundraisers, hugs or visits. The obituaries, too, are evasive, resorting to euphemisms such as “died in his home” or “died suddenly.” Unless it’s Kate Spade or Anthony Bourdain. Finally, an opening to talk about suicide. This is what’s killing nearly 45,000 Americans every year… The silence, the stigma and the fear keep us from having real conversations — and taking action — when it comes to such a determined killer.

If AI learns exponentially faster than humans, we must expect it to accelerate, also exponentially, the trial-and-error process by which human decisions are generally made: to make mistakes faster and of greater magnitude than humans do. It may be impossible to temper those mistakes, as researchers in AI often suggest, by including in a program caveats requiring “ethical” or “reasonable” outcomes. Entire academic disciplines have arisen out of humanity’s inability to agree upon how to define these terms. Should AI therefore become their arbiter?

AI, like all major transformative events in human history, is certain to have wide-reaching ramifications. But with careful forethought, these can be addressed. In the short to medium term, the advantages of AI in enhancing lives will likely outweigh these risks. Any major conception that touches human lives in a broad manner, if not handled properly, can pose immense danger. The best analogy is religion — when not channelled appropriately, it probably poses a greater threat than any technological advancement ever could.

Fears that AI will develop awareness and overthrow humanity are grounded in misconceptions of what AI is, Weinberger noted. AI operates under very specific limitations defined by the algorithms that dictate its behavior. Some types of problems map well to AI’s skill sets, making certain tasks relatively easy for AI to complete. “But most things do not map to that, and they’re not applicable,” he said. This means that, while AI might be capable of impressive feats within carefully delineated boundaries — playing a master-level chess game or rapidly identifying objects in images, for example — that’s where its abilities end.

Intolerance lies at the core of evil. Not the intolerance that results from any threat or danger. But intolerance of another being who dares to exist. Intolerance without cause. It is so deep within us, because every human being secretly desires the entire universe to himself. Our only way out is to learn compassion without cause. To care for each other simple because that ‘other’ exists.

Remember that in a hall of perfect darkness, totally dark, if you light one small candle, its light will be seen from afar; its precious light will be seen by everyone.

This is the key to time management – to see the value of every moment.

Any chassid who comes to ask about going to live in Israel, who isn’t involved in education or in the rabbinate, is advised to go, and we give him our blessing for his move. The problem is for those who have vital roles in the community, and if they leave, everything will crumble. They are compared to ships’ captains in stormy seas; the captain is always the last to abandon ship. First, he must save the passengers . . .