u/Horus_walking

In Matt Ruff’s The Mirage, history has been reversed: the United Arab States is the world’s dominant superpower, while North America is fragmented into unstable, impoverished states. After devastating terrorist attacks strike Baghdad and Riyadh, the UAS launches its own War on Terror. Years later, Homeland Security agents Mustafa al Baghdadi, Samir, and Amal investigate a Christian extremist who insists that their world is not real—and that somewhere, another version of history exists in which America is the superpower.

UAE:

>United Arab Emirates President Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a major operation against Israel days before the October 7 massacre, a Haaretz investigation published Tuesday morning said.

>Netanyahu reportedly dismissed the warning despite MBZ urging him to take the threat seriously, the report said, citing three senior foreign sources familiar with the contents of the conversation.

Egypt:

>The investigation also said Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel contacted Netanyahu around the same period and warned of "something unusual, a terrifying operation" being planned by Hamas. Netanyahu reportedly responded that Israel was in control of the situation in Gaza and was concentrating its attention and troop deployments on the West Bank.

Cast: Eric Balfour & Donald Faison.

>نفت الحكومة المصرية، الأحد، طرح قناة السويس ضمن أي صفقات لتصفية الدين، إثر جدل واسع حول مقترح رجل الأعمال حسن هيكل، بنقل ملكية بعض الأصول المملوكة للدولة، ومن بينها قناة السويس، إلى «البنك المركزي المصري»، مقابل تسوية جانب من المديونية المحلية للحكومة، فيما يعُرف بـ«المقايضة الكبرى».

>وقالت الحكومة في بيان، إن «قناة السويس ليست محلاً لأي مقترح من هذا النوع، ولا توجد أي توجهات لدى الحكومة لمقايضتها أو رهنها أو نقل ملكيتها مقابل مديونيات».

>وقُدر الدين الخارجي المصري بنحو 164.8 مليار دولار بنهاية الربع الأول من عام 2026، في حين سجل الدين المحلي 11.057 تريليون جنيه (وهو ما يساوي 233.2 مليار دولار)، وفق وزارة التخطيط المصرية.

>ولا يعد مقترح «المقايضة الكبرى» بالجديد، إذ يردده هيكل منذ نحو عام ونصف العام، بوصفه حلاً لأزمة الديون، وإتاحة فرصة أمام الحكومة للإنفاق على التعليم والصحة، بدلاً من استهلاك معظم موارد الدولة لسد فوائد الدين.

>Axios reported on the scoop about Rogers’s campaign on Saturday. According to the report, Rogers, who has the backing of President Donald Trump, spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin last week in Los Angeles. Following the meeting, AIPAC scrapped an-already completed ad for Rogers, which reportedly took aim at Al-Sayed.

>People familiar with the situation told Axios that AIPAC officials were “angered” by Rogers’s request.

>AIPAC is a highly-influential pro-Israel group with ties to numerous politicians. The group, however, has come under more scrutiny and criticism from some politicians and pundits upset by Israel’s strikes on Gaza, which have led to thousands of deaths. AIPAC spent $30 million trying to stop El-Sayed from winning his Democratic Party primary. El-Sayed defeated moderate Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI).

>Other outside groups also pumped more than $60 million into El-Sayed’s primary race.

>The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.

>“I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Rahil Prakash told the Guardian on Thursday when reached by phone. “And as it turned out, it could.”

>Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, touted Median polling data after it appeared to put her ahead of her election challenger by more than 10 percentage points. The poll was also cited by the California Post. A widely followed polling aggregator on X also shared the group’s Nevada poll, although several credible polling organizations did not aggregate Median polling because they could not verify its methodology.

>“Did I expect it to perhaps expedite in the way it did? Most definitely not,” said Prakash. “I did not expect the California political press to pick it up on their own.”

>He added: “I’ll apologize straight out to the campaigns of Karen Bass, Nithya Raman and Francesca Hong for this.”

Scene from Part 6 of HBO’s miniseries Show Me a Hero (2015).

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Written by David Simon and William F. Zorzi.