Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint meeting of Congress. Vice President Harris has started campaigning for President, and a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll shows a surge in the number of undecided voters.
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Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Roberta Rampton, Dana Farrington, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Milton Guevara. We get engineering support from Carleigh Strange. And our technical director is Zac Coleman.
From tunnels to tanks to drones, Gaza’s horrors provide object lessons in urban warfare. We ask what Western forces will be learning about their own future conflicts. Silicon Valley types may relish the prospect of J. D. Vance, a former tech investor, becoming America’s vice-president—but it should in fact worry them (10:15). And the superstitious forces affecting Hong Kong’s property sector (18:57).
Thomas Dohmke is the CEO of Github. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the state of AI-assisted coding, and whether the rest of the economy can see benefits similar to software engineers using coding 'copilots.' We also discuss how AI assistance can help individual developers build whatever's on their mind, and whether we'll see $1 billion dollar startups built by just one person. Tune in the for the second half where we discuss the next set of AI models, how engineering jobs change when AI produces most of the code, and whether AI will eventually improve itself.
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*Dem Rep calling for state to look into rising crime in Birmingham *Man who was sentenced to life in prison for shoplifting set to be released *Mobile County School Board Member wants to ban social media for kids under 16 *State organization awarding money to help industrial sites across the state *State Dept of Education set to take over struggling school district *Mobile County Commission appoints first female county engineer
National News:
*VP Harris has enough delegates to earn Democratic nomination as she holds rally in Wisconsin *Secret Service Director resigns *AL Dems support VP Harris for president *Israeli PM in DC to address congress *Trump announces Florida campaign stop Friday *United States sending more money to Haiti *Fittest cities in the United States
Watch this episode on YouTube. In this episode, we are discussing Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 race and his endorsement of Kamala Harris. We are also catching up on the latest regarding United States Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle's resignation after the attempted assassination of former President Trump. Tune in!
The war on the Eastern front remains relatively less well explored as compared to the western front of World War II. Yet some of the most titanic battles in modern military history occurred on the steppes of eastern Europe. Stalingrad and Moscow are names known to most but less well-known are the vast battles that occurred in Byelorussia. By June 1944, Stalin and his generals had launched Operation Bagration involving more than two million soldiers marching across fronts hundreds of miles wide. In his latest work, Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War (Oxford UP, 2024), Jonathan Dimbleby chronicles the military, political, and diplomatic events of the final months on arguably the most crucial front of World War 2.
Dimbleby draws on previously untranslated accounts from ordinary Russian and German soldiers to chronicle the curtain call of the German Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. Endgame 1944 provides insights into the major German and Russian players balanced off with accounts of the trials of individual soldier..
Dimbleby has enjoyed a long career in television beginning with ITV and BBC where he covered world affairs. He presented ITV's flagship weekly political program This Week for over ten years. He has also worked in radio with BBC 4. His book Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein was short-listed for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of historical non-fiction. He is also Chair of Richard Dimbleby Cancer Fund named after his father.
Disney’s soul is arguably its animation studio, which has a 100-year track record of creating iconic characters and stories, and a distinct brand centered around “once upon a time.” Not so long ago, Disney produced films like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King," catapulting animation into the mainstream while burnishing Disney's own brand as the premier animated film studio. But lately, those movies have felt lost and often, distinctly, "un-Disney." Recent box office flops like “Wish” are costly missteps that have a huge impact on Disney’s bottom line.
With more studios producing animated films, and Disney having acquired Pixar, it’s not always clear what’s a Disney film anymore. So what makes a film a Disney film today, and why does it matter?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C., today to address a joint session of Congress. On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators opposed to the war in Gaza staged a sit-in at a congressional office building. Thousands more are expected to demonstrate today during Netanyahu’s speech. Inside the Capitol, nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers say they will not attend the joint session. At the same time, both Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington declined to preside over Netanyahu’s address. The Israeli prime minister is expected to meet with Harris and President Biden separately on Thursday. As Harris begins her presidential campaign in earnest, Politico national security reporter Eric Bazail-Eimil explains what a Harris foreign policy might look like.
And in headlines: The head of the U.S. Secret Service resigned, convicted New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez announced he’d resign next month, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed Harris’s campaign for president.