Posts by Riah Stelmack
In Praise of Jane Austen’s Least Beloved Novel
“Northanger Abbey” is the least beloved of Jane Austen’s six novels. It also appears frequently in university-level literature classes. These two things are related. Completed largely in 1798 and 1799, when Austen was in her early twenties, “Northanger” was the first of Austen’s novels to be written but among the last to be published. Austen…
Read MoreNew German interior minister defends harder line on migration policy
The tougher approach to migration policy taken by Germany’s new coalition government is already showing results, according to Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt. “Asylum applications at the border are also low because word has quickly got around that entry into the Federal Republic of Germany is no longer guaranteed despite asylum applications,” Dobrindt told Welt am…
Read MoreMunich Jewish community head defends Israel against rising criticism
The president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, does not share the growing criticism of Israel’s lack of aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip. “Once the hostages are free, we can talk about everything,” the Holocaust survivor told dpa in Munich, in reference to the need for aid convoys in…
Read MoreHezbollah’s rocket array commander killed in IDF drone strike in south Lebanon
The IDF struck Jamoul’s position because his activities in southern Lebanon violate the ceasefire agreement between it and Israel. The IDF killed Hezbollah‘s Shaqif region commander, Mohammad Ali Jamoul, early Saturday morning at around 5 a.m. in Deir al-Zahrani in southern Lebanon, the military announced hours later. Jamoul was the commander of the terrorist organization’s…
Read MoreGermany vows to step up militarily but rhetoric may struggle to match reality
Within days of Russia launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Olaf Scholz announced a Zeitenwende, or historical “turning point”. The then German chancellor promised a security transformation by increasing defence spending, sending more aid to Ukraine, taking a tougher approach to authoritarian states and rapidly reducing Germany’s dependence on Russian energy. It was…
Read MoreCanada Post asks government to hold employee vote on contract offer
Canada Post late Friday asked the federal government to conduct a vote of unionized mail carriers on its latest contract proposal after leadership of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) publicly trashed management’s offer. The postal operator urged the minister of jobs and families to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to hold a…
Read MoreTropical Storm Alvin Is Here. These Are the Names for Every Hurricane This Season.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways Tropical Storm Alvin, the first named storm of the 2025 hurricane season, has arrived and is making its way over the Eastern Pacific Ocean.…
Read MoreDeepSeek’s R1 Upgrade Nears Top-Tier LLMs
DeepSeek today rolled out DeepSeek-R1-0528, an upgraded version of its R1 large language model that it says now rivals OpenAI’s O3 and Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Gemini 2.5 Pro. The China-based AI firm credited enhanced post-training algorithmic optimizations and a beefed-up compute pipeline for boosting reasoning accuracy from 70% to 87.5% on complex logic tasks, while cutting…
Read MoreIran’s spy game: How the Islamic Republic convinces Israelis to betray their homeland
INTERNAL SECURITY AFFAIRS: For a fistful of dollars, Israelis are ready to assist Iran in its war against Israel. Roy Mizrahi and Almog Atias, both 24 and childhood friends, are residents of Nesher, near Haifa. Mizrahi was deep in debt due to a gambling addiction, and Atias was not far behind. Then an opportunity arose…
Read MoreIDF troops destroy Hamas military assets in schools throughout Gaza
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways Over 800 explosive devices and other weapons that had been hidden throughout Gaza have been found and confiscated. IDF troops in the Gaza Strip,…
Read MoreExploring the Spectacular ‘Normal’ Route Across Italy’s Brenta Dolomites
Rivers and a highway separate the isolated Brenta Dolomites from the rest of the range. The main peak, the Campanil Basso, is so iconic that, according to tradition, no man from the local Italian town of Trentino can be considered a climber until he has scaled it. However, the Brenta is hard to access from…
Read MoreGerman military chief defends planned high military expenditure
German Armed Forces Chief Inspector Carsten Breuer has justified the significantly increasing defence expenditure for Germany. The discussed spending amounting to 3.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is not unfounded, the highest-ranking soldier of the Bundeswehr told the news magazine Der Spiegel in remarks published on Friday. “It is clearly derived from a…
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