Drew Murphy

BREAKING: Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.

US official confirms to Fox that US believes Khamenei and 5-10 top Iranian leaders killed in initial Israeli strike on compound; agree with Israel’s intelligence assessment. A senior US defense official tells me that the US government agrees with the Israeli assessment that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, along with 5-10 other top Iranian leaders who were all meeting at a compound in Tehran Saturday morning. The top IRGC commander also killed. Multiple sources tell me that the timeline for the strike had to be moved up based on intelligence and this “target of opportunity.” “There was a deliberate decision to accelerate the timeline,” officials told Fox. That is why the US and Israel took the unusual decision to strike during the daytime to achieve the element of surprise and to target this meeting. Normally the US military would not launch an operation like this during the day. The meeting accelerated the timeline. “This was a massive, wildly bold daytime attack,” a senior US defense official told me. “It caught the senior leadership off guard, a Saturday morning during Ramadan and on Shabbat in the daytime.” “We hit the senior leaders right out of the gate.” (Israel conducted the targeted strike).

Four separate applications to the High Court were made to interdict this land auction this week. All 4 were dismissed, with costs. Today the auction went ahead. Hundreds of millions were raised, all of which will be spent on essential infrastructure in Cape Town, much of it in lower income communities. Many new homes will be built on that land, providing much needed new housing supply and easing prices. The attempts to stop this are all political of course (including, sadly, the SAHRC) - we do these land auctions often, they’ve never tried to stop them before. But we’re in silly season now, so we expect much silliness. But there is a more important point at play here. Their opposition is rooted in a refusal to accept that we have a different understanding to them of the proper job of government. In their view, everything must be owned by the state. Every failing state company, every derelict building, every fallow asset - it must stay just that way forever, and none of it can be sold, no matter how derelict, loss-making or under-utilised it is. In our view, the proper role of the government is not to own everything. It is to stop standing in the way of investment and growth, and to help unlock it. By freeing up under-utilised land, we allow these dead assets to be brought to life - with new housing supply, new investment, and new jobs. That in turn helps spur other investment, and so the economy grows, and delivers more people out of poverty. Cape Town is not run by the ANC. We have a mandate to do things differently here. We do not subscribe to the ANC’s view of the state as the solver of every problem. How has that worked in reality? The DA sees the state as a facilitator of a growing economy that lifts more people out of poverty and into work. That is the only way we will build a successful, working South Africa. Beware of those claiming to speak for the poor, but wanting to keep people poor and keep everything in the hands of the state.