by National Review -- There’s still much that we don’t know about the Hamas massacre. But what we do know is as outrageous as it is unsurprising: Iran is also responsible. The Islamic dictatorship has armed, funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, and otherwise assisted Hamas over many years. That is a universally recognized fact, acknowledged by the U.S. State Department and by the regime itself. Now, at least 25 American citizens are dead: murdered, brutally, by Iran’s terrorist force on the Gaza Strip. Others have been taken hostage. America must now respond: to restore deterrence, neutralize the Iranian terror threat, and prevent further carnage.

The latest report on Iran’s involvement, via the Wall Street Journal, says that U.S. intelligence analysts believe that while the regime knew about Hamas’s plan to carry out attacks against Israel, it was not briefed on their timing or scope. That follows another report from the paper quoting Hezbollah and Hamas leaders as saying that Iran was so deeply involved in the planning that its foreign minister took part in coordinating meetings in Lebanon and ultimately gave the green light for the operation to move forward. The Washington Post reported Monday that intelligence sources believe the attack “bore hallmarks of Iranian support” including training, funding, logistical support, and technical assistance in manufacturing weapons from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. But the Biden administration and the Israeli government have avoided linking Tehran too directly to the terrorist plot. The line out of the White House, pushed by national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, is that Iran is “complicit” but that the U.S. does not have evidence of a direct Iranian hand in the plots.

BY ISSIE LAPOWSKY5 MINUTE READ Yitzy -- Fastcompany -- Hammer was itching to get back to work. For the last two weeks, Hammer, a lawyer who works with emerging tech companies in Israel, had been home with his four kids who weren’t in school during the Jewish high holidays. This week was supposed to be their first back, and Hammer had a packed schedule planned for the days ahead. But since Saturday—when Hammer and his wife awoke to the sound of bombs falling and spent part of the day huddled with their family in a shelter inside their home in the central Israeli city of Modi’in—Hammer says, “Work has been the last thing on my mind.” Instead, on Sunday, Hammer, who is a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces, left his home and headed about an hour south to a military base on the Gaza border, where he is now spending 12-hour shifts working out of what he describes as a “fortified caravan,” serving as a legal advisor to the IDF. Hammer is not alone. “Everybody here with me is part of the tech industry in some way or another,” he tells Fast Company.

In a country where the tech sector accounts for roughly one-fifth of the annual GDP and 10% of of the labor force, Hammer is just one of many business leaders, investors, and workers in Israel’s booming tech industry who have been drawn into the conflict since Hamas launched an attack on civilians near the Gaza border Saturday morning, killing some 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and taking at least 150 people hostage. The attacks have prompted a declaration of war by the Israeli government, which has since pounded the Gaza strip with its own series of air strikes in what Israel’s defense minister has warned will be a “complete siege” of the Palestinian region. Already, the death toll from Israel’s strikes in the Gaza Strip has climbed to at least 950 people, with another 5,000 wounded, 60% of whom include women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. In addition to volunteers, the Israeli military has since called up more than 300,000 reservists, many of whom are executives, founders, or employees who make up Israel’s so-called “startup nation,” or who work at the Israeli headquarters of some of the world’s biggest tech firms. For Dor Serero, Monday was supposed to be his first day working for Microsoft, but he was called into the reserves before he had a chance to start. “[A]s I am writing this post, sirens are going on and off, and I can hear rockets exploding in the distance,” Serero wrote on LinkedIn.

By MIT Technology Review by Abdullahi Tsanni -- Gene editing could help prevent chickens from catching and spreading bird flu, according to a proof-of-concept study.| Researchers used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to alter the DNA of 10 chickens to resist the bird flu virus and then exposed all of them to a low dose of it. Only one of the 10 chickens caught the virus, and that chicken did not pass it on to any others. “What this shows is that there’s a proof of concept that we can use to move toward making chickens resistant to the virus. But we’re not there yet,” Wendy Barclay, a virologist and professor at Imperial College London, who co-led the research, said on a press conference call. The study was published today in Nature Communications. Bird flu has killed millions of both wild and farmed birds across the world in recent years. It has increasingly affected mammals as well, raising fears among virologists that the virus could adapt to infect humans.

For the chicken study, the team made changes to a protein gene in the birds’ sperm and eggs. This protein, called ANP32A, helps flu viruses attack chickens’ systems. By rearranging the DNA letters of the ANP32A protein, the researchers were able to restrict the flu virus from infecting the chickens. “The genetic changes that we made were changes we knew will stop the growth of the virus in the chicken cells,” Alewo Idoko-Akoh, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, who was part of the study, explained. To further test the resilience of the gene-edited birds, the researchers exposed them to a second, higher dose of the bird flu virus. Of the 10, five became infected. Still, the gene edit did provide some level of protection. The researchers also found that the intervention limited spread of the virus: only one of four non-gene-edited chickens placed in the same incubator got infected, and there was no transmission to gene-edited chickens. However, the research team found that in the gene-edited birds, the virus adapted to enlist the support of two related proteins—ANP32B and ANP32E—to replicate.

By Aoibhinn McBride -- venturebeat.com -- From rising inflation to mass layoffs in the tech industry to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, economic doom and gloom has dominated the headlines in 2023. The threat of recession has also been lingering in the air but new data by Goldman Sachs Group has found that the chance of recession has fallen from 20% to 15%. This is down to two major factors: inflation has cooled from the record-breaking 9.1% we witnessed in June 2022 and currently sits at 3.7%. Secondly, the labor market remains in good shape, despite the aforementioned layoffs. As a consequence, disposable income is on the up and is predicted to accelerate in 2024. So what does that mean in terms of finding a new job? Should you stay put and wait to see what unfolds in the new year or get ahead of the curve now and start looking for opportunities before the holiday season slowdown? Here’s how to work it out.

Career credit check

For starters, it’s a good idea to identify if you really need or want to move jobs and if moving jobs will put you in a better position financially. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data’s July 2023 Survey of Consumer Expectations, salaries have increased by nearly $10,000 on average compared to July 2022. The report identified that in July, the average salary for a full-time job was $69,475 compared to $60,764 a year before. And for those switching jobs, the lowest amount workers were prepared to move for was almost $6,000 higher than what was deemed acceptable a year previously — meaning job seekers are in a prime position to ask for, and get, more money.

Professional gains

Next, look at what a new job will grant you in terms of professional development. If a better job title seems out of reach in your current role or you feel like you’re stagnating and not learning new skills, switching jobs should be a priority. Similarly, if your current employer isn’t offering learning and development opportunities, on site or through a third-party provider, moving jobs to a company that prioritizes L&D and has incorporated it into its benefits package is something to consider. And if you do find yourself on the job hunt, the VentureBeat Job Board is the ideal place to start your search. It features thousands of tech jobs across the U.S. including the three below.