2: Fawad Khan, Mahira Khan

A Wider War in the Middle East, From Hamas to Hezbollah and Now Iran The main questions now are how much the conflict will escalate and whether the United States will get more directly involved in the defense of Israel.......... The long-feared “wider war” in the Middle East is here. ............ it has turned into one of the region’s most dangerous moments since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. ....... Officials have defended Israel’s right to strike back at Iran, but are advising against direct attacks on its nuclear facilities that could tip the conflict out of control. ............. “From Israel’s perspective, we have been in a regional war since Oct. 7, and that war is now an all-out war,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, a historian and one of the country’s more hawkish diplomats. “We are in a war for our national survival, period.” Winning over the next few weeks, he said, is a “duty” for a nation “created in the aftermath of the Holocaust.” ............ Israel not only killed Mr. Nasrallah but systematically decapitated much of the Hezbollah leadership. ........... more than 41,000 people have died in Gaza. .......... Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu barely talked as Israel invaded Gaza and took the fight to Lebanon. But once Iran, a lethal threat to Israel with military powers that Hamas and Hezbollah can only aspire to, directly entered the fray, America’s tone and strategy changed. .......... Or will he aim directly for the facilities he has threatened to strike for years, starting with the underground Natanz facility where Iran is enriching uranium to near-bomb grade? ........... the Israeli prime minister may see the next five weeks until the American presidential election as a ripe moment to try to set that program back by years. After all, former President Donald J. Trump would not complain about a major attack on Iran’s military infrastructure, and Democrats cannot afford to be accused of restraining Israel after Tuesday’s missile attack. ........... That is what old wars and hot wars do. They create new power dynamics, vacuums to be filled. ....... But there remains the danger that wider wars, once begun, take years to put back in the box. And the presence of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and an instinct to escalate creates a particularly toxic brew.

India puts blockbuster Pakistani film on hold A remake of a 1979 Punjabi film, The Legend of Maula Jatt, is the highest ever grossing film in Pakistan. ....... The movie was set to release in the northern Indian state of Punjab on Wednesday, which would have made it the first Pakistani film to hit Indian screens in more than a decade. ......... Starring Pakistan's biggest stars Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, the 2022 film tells the story of a local folk hero who takes on the leader of a rival clan. ........... “Two years in, and still house full on weekends in Pakistan! Now, I can’t wait for our Punjabi audience in India to experience the magic of this labour of love!”



Aamir Khan leaves Amitabh Bachchan stumped with question about Jaya Bachchan on KBC 16: ‘Woh kaunsa hero tha jiska…’

Porphyrion

Trump Says ‘One Really Violent Day’ Would End Property Crime The remarks were the latest example of his praise for executive power and force in imposing order, this time over crimes the F.B.I. said last week were falling.

California Bans Legacy Preferences at Private Universities The change will affect Stanford University, the University of Southern California and other private colleges in the state.

At the heart of that galaxy was a black hole spewing energy equivalent to the output of more than a trillion stars. ......... The astronomers have named the black hole Porphyrion, after a giant in Greek mythology — a son of Gaia — who fought the gods and lost. ........ “Porphyrion shows that small things and large things in the universe are intimately connected,” Dr. Oei added. If the jet was shrunk to the size of the Earth, the black hole would be just two-tenths of a millimeter across. “These giant jets are really incredible,” he said. “They are as if a single amoeba was able to generate two powerful streams of energy the size of Earth.” ......... Paradoxically, black holes — cosmic pits from which not even light can escape — can be the brightest objects in the universe. .......... In 2022, the team announced that they had found a plume of plasma 16 million light-years long, roughly the width of 100 Milky Ways. They named it Alcyoneus, another ancient Greek giant that fought the gods (unsuccessfully) for supremacy over the cosmos. It was the record-holder until Porphyrion. ........... So far, after surveying about 15 percent of the sky, Dr. Oei’s project has found 8,000 jets longer than about three million light-years. By the time it is done, he said, his team might find as many as one million giant jets between Earth and Porphyrion.