But Mr. Giuliani has historically been something of a loose cannon who is not used to having his words carefully managed… Asked about his remarks after finishing the Fox News interview, Mr. Giuliani said that what might have seemed to some viewers — including, perhaps, Mr. Hannity — like a slip of the tongue, was actually a planned disclosure.

“That removes the campaign finance violation, and we have all the documentary proof for it,” Mr. Giuliani said

If Mr. Trump reimbursed his lawyer, it wouldn’t necessarily absolve the president and Mr. Cohen of potential campaign-finance violations. No law limits the amount presidential candidates can spend on their campaign, but if Mr. Trump ultimately paid Ms. Clifford to protect his candidacy, he may have had to disclose it as a campaign expenditure, according to legal experts.

If Mr. Cohen supplied the funds upfront, the move could still count as an in-kind campaign contribution, which would have exceeded the legal campaign contribution limit and would have had to be disclosed.

…the campaign can’t just take loans of any size from anyone without reporting them as long as Trump pays them back later. If that were legal, there would be no point in having campaign finance laws… By not reporting a loan from Cohen meant to aid the election of Donald Trump, the campaign would have violated the law. Had Cohen not been repaid, the violation was his own, as an agent of the campaign making a contribution to it of that size.

The most important value of Netanyahu’s presentation is in the publication of the amazing intelligence achievement of obtaining the huge archive and transferring it to Israel… This achievement, which has been verified by the Americans, is a deterring strategic factor in the conflict with Iran. When another country, located more than 1,000 kilometers away, is capable of stealing its most secret archive, Iran has to feel vulnerable.

…it might seem that Netanyahu’s announcement that the treasure trove of secret Iran nuclear documents shows five sites where Iran was considering testing a nuclear device was also old news. But that misses the point. Knowing that Iran was looking into nuclear test sites versus knowing the exact locations of the five sites – two in the Semnan Region in the northern center of the country and three in the Lot Desert in country’s central east – are night and day different.

Israel is reveling in the Mossad’s intelligence coup. Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told Al-Monitor, “It was a challenging and riveting operation so unimaginable, that it seems to have been drawn from the script of some fictional Hollywood blockbuster… They never dreamed that their greatest enemy would get its hand on their most closely guarded secret.” Then I asked Katz how the Americans responded. “With absolute admiration and awe,” he said.

It’s not hard to see why the president’s most zealous critics see him as they do… But that feeling is all the more reason to retain a sense of perspective; to be able to consider seriously the proposition that this misbegotten president has somehow achieved an honest-to-God diplomatic success. After all, it won’t be long before he provides a whole new set of reasons to mourn the fact of his ascendance. If the possibility of a peaceful Korea becomes reality, let’s just let him have this one triumph.

Given our hyper-partisan environment, when every policy is seemingly judged not by its prudence but by the political affiliation of its origination, something remarkable is happening. Democrats are not interfering with the Trump administration’s attempts to solve one of the world’s most vexing problems, a nuclear-armed North Korea led by a dictator whose intentions are difficult to decipher. That’s as it should be.

In the wake of Trump’s empty fulminations, Kim seized the opportunity to look reasonable by comparison. Consequently, a leader who just a few years ago was an international pariah — a man, we might recall, who murdered his own half-brother in a chemical attack in an international airport — is being lauded as a diplomat. Kim is no longer just his father’s weird Mini-Me ruling over a prison camp: He is now, astonishingly, the peer of the president of the United States, described by Donald Trump himself as “very open” and “honorable.”

Cigna’s survey results don’t reveal the location of its participants, but people can feel especially isolated amongst the crowd and chaos of a bustling city. That’s why efforts like Sidewalk Talk, which provides free listening sessions, have been working with cities to address that and other mental health issues. Cities are embracing technology, reaching out to vulnerable groups via mobile texts, and leveraging the influence of peer groups.

While previous research suggests social media may play a role in the rise of depression and suicide among American youth, the Cigna survey didn’t find a correlation between social media use and loneliness. “If you’re passively using it, if you’re just scrolling feeds, that’s associated with more negative effects,” Brigham Young University psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad told NPR. “But if you’re using it to reach out and connect to people to facilitate other kinds of [in-person] interactions, it’s associated with more positive effects.”

Though the problem of loneliness is getting more attention, what often gets left out of the discussion is why feeling alone can be so crippling. The problem is not simply a social one — it’s an existential one, too. There is a direct connection between how alone people feel and how meaningful they judge their lives to be. In surveys, we list our close relationships as our most important sources of meaning. And research shows that people who are lonely and isolated feel like their lives are less meaningful.

Despite mounting regional tensions and the threat of war, despite a heat wave and high winds threatening wildfires — despite everything, Lag BaOmer at Meron proceeded as it does every year, with a joy and serenity that transcended all the troubles of the world.

Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, a chief disciple of Rabbi Akiva, was a key supporter of the Bar-Kokchbah Revolt, who was born and died 33 days following the first day of Passover (Lag Ba’Omer). He escaped the wrath of Hadrian, hiding in a cave for thirteen years. Bar-Yochai is perceived to be the author of The Zohar (splendor and radiance in Hebrew) — the foundation of Jewish mystical thought/Kabbalah, that provides a unique interpretation of the Torah, based on literal meaning, hint/allusion, anagogical and mystical meanings.

…among Israelis who identify as “totally secular,” almost a third of all Jews in Israel, the number that visit the tombs of the righteous is generally miniscule. Among “secular, somewhat traditional” Jews, only 3% say they visit Meron, but 9% visit tombs of the righteous generally. Among “traditional” Jews, 10% visit Meron (“when they can”), and a much larger number, almost a quarter, visit the tombs of the righteous (23%). Naturally, the number of those who visit the tombs of the righteous, like the number who go to Meron, is significantly higher among the religious sectors.

In a post that left many readers agog, he decided to use a heinous incident of misogynistic violence as an opportunity to contemplate the concept of “redistributing” sex to men who have trouble getting laid. Hanson’s post was a reaction to the tragic attack that took place in Toronto last Monday, in which a man killed 10 pedestrians by running them down with a van. The perpetrator, Alek Minassian, was part of the online community of “incels”—“involuntarily celibate” men who tend to blame women and society at large for their inability to find sex.

I expect the logic of commerce and technology will be consciously harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels… … Whether sex workers and sex robots can actually deliver real fulfillment is another matter. But that they will eventually be asked to do it, in service to a redistributive goal that for now still seems creepy or misogynist or radical, feels pretty much inevitable.

It’s the old magician’s trick of misdirection. “If you look in the box now, you’ll see that the misogyny you saw earlier has vanished and is now a treatise on how not getting laid is like discrimination.” It is like looking at the hanging of women at the Salem witch trials and concluding that all the drama could have been spared if those ladies worked out their neck muscles. If the answer to misogyny was technology, feminism could have had a wrap-up party when the hand-held vacuum came out.