Good morning. The United States and Iran have a deal that could lead to the end of their monthslong war. Let’s start there.
A hope for peaceThe war in Iran has killed thousands of people, disrupted shipping, inflated prices and shaken the global economy. And it may be over soon. The United States and Iran reached a framework for peace yesterday. The agreement is expected to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a passage for the world’s energy supplies, and end the American naval blockade of Iranian ports. Oil prices fell after the announcement. In Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, many expressed relief. “So what was the point of this war?” Roshanak, a resident of Tehran, told my colleague by telephone. “Honestly, we are very happy it’s over,” she added. Still, critical issues remain. The U.S. and Israel went to war in part over Iran’s nuclear program, but the agreement did not address Iran’s nuclear program. American and Iranian officials previously said that the deal would include a 60-day cease-fire to give the two sides more time to discuss Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions. The text of the agreement, scheduled to be signed by leaders from the two countries on Friday in Geneva, was not released. In Lebanon
Iran’s government said that the agreement called for an immediate end to military operations on all fronts. That includes in Lebanon, where Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah are fighting. But peace in Lebanon will depend both on the United States’ ability to compel Israel to wind down its military campaign there, and Iran’s to restrain Hezbollah. Israel was not involved in the negotiations. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said this morning that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were opposed to stopping. “If Iran attacks Israel due to events in Lebanon, we will strike it with full force,” he said. For more
Eli Saslow writes about living in America. His business is evocative narratives, stories about people caught up in issues larger than they are, about people navigating impossible circumstances or struggling to find solace in places where comfort is rare. His work is built on close listening and deep observation, empathy squared. Sometimes, it’s left me in tears. His latest is an accounting of how a man named Hany Farid, the world’s leading expert in spotting deepfake images and video on the internet, stopped trusting his own eyes. Imagine it. Farid’s 60, a professor. He’s built a career out of his ability to differentiate visual reality from fakery. Every day he gets requests from governments, from journalists, from law enforcement and others hoping for his help in understanding what’s a real image and what’s a fake, whether a voice is a person’s or an A.I. clone’s. Farid’s done the research to show that most people cannot tell the difference between the real and the fake. And now he’s becoming one of them. Farid spends hours and hours on this work: watching videos, geolocating, seeking inconsistencies, doing math. It used to be that he was proud to discover the rare fake in a world of reality. Now it’s the opposite. And the deepfakes are slowly breaking him, Eli observed: “I miss the days when it was a grainy video of a shark swimming up the street,” Farid said one night, as he sat on the back deck of his house with his wife, Emily Cooper. He put down his phone and poured a whiskey. “The technology is getting so good. It takes me to a dark place.” “Because you can’t tell just by looking anymore?” Cooper asked. “Because nobody can,” Farid said. “I don’t trust anything. Every image I see, I’m drawing lines for shadows and doing geometry in my head, trying to figure out what I’m looking at. It’s over. Within a year or two, our whole visual system will be utterly useless.” “And then what? You give up? You retire?” “I don’t know,” he said. It’s generally my job in this space to tell you what’s happening, to keep you informed. Today I’m telling you to go read Eli’s story, start to finish. We’ve made it free for you.
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One of the roughly 10,000 things I love about Melissa Clark is how she can take a relatively simple recipe — say, cold peanut ginger noodles — and elevate it without making it the least bit complicated. How in this case? She adds a big squeeze of lime to the dressing and a handful of chopped crystallized ginger. Those do a lot. You’ll be eating this dish all summer.
One of the greatest works of art about art is Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1984 musical, “Sunday in the Park With George,” about the painter Georges Seurat. And one of the greatest songs in it is “Sunday,” the Act I finale, which brings order, balance and harmony to Seurat’s world. To ours, too. Take a few minutes and listen to it with our theater critic, Helen Shaw. She’ll show you how Sondheim, to quote a lyric from the show, made a hat where there never was a hat. More on culture
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