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Good morning! Today is Thursday, the seventh of May, 2026 and this is the Thursday Morning Edition of GEORGE.
One might be forgiven for feeling like a dervish in motion trying to follow the war in the Persian Gulf region, or perhaps like Dr. Otternschlag in the 1932 classic film, “Grand Hotel.” The film is set in a luxurious, fictionalized, and bustling Art Deco hotel in Berlin, Germany, during the early 1930s. The motion picture captures an atmosphere of post-First World War decadence, social unrest, and elite glamour, focusing on the intertwining lives of guests over a period of a few days.
It won’t surprise the GEORGE reader that Iranian and U.S. officials on Wednesday offered contradictory and rapidly changing assessments of the state of the war and peace talks, all while providing scant details about the actual negotiations. It’s truly hard to keep track, but GEORGE does it for you in @The War Room so continue to that section to get the latest news on war … and peace.
GEORGE’s @The Sketch editorial cartoon columnist looks back to post-First World War Berlin to explain how many must feel about the constant motion in the Persian Gulf where – overall – there have been few signs of true progress.
There are several other wars taking place across the globe and one that is of great concern to GEORGE readers is the Russo-Ukrainian War. Russian President Vladimir Putin asked for a short cease-fire during its Victory Day parade which takes place on 9 May and we are sure that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is taking that very, very seriously. The latest on the war is in today’s @Today in Brief section.
Also in @Today in Brief:
— A Paris gallery dedicated to so-called orphaned artwork that was swept up in the plunder of European Jews during the Second World War opened
—Eighty-seven percent of Americans hold a negative view of Mr. Trump’s attempts to portray himself as a kind of deity
—Apple will have to compensate purchasers of certain recent iPhones for not having introduced its Apple Intelligence artificial intelligence offering in a timely manner
In addition, GEORGE has other exclusive news including a look at the life of the late media magnate and CNN founder Ted Turner in the @Passings section in today’s edition so don’t touch that dial. Simply scroll down and read more GEORGE, starting with today’s editorial cartoon in The Sketch. GEORGE will be back tomorrow with a brand-new editorial cartoon, even more news, and stories you won’t find elsewhere.
Until then, remain curious!
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A stack of newspapers in Vienna’s Café Prúckel, each in an Original Wiener Zeitungshalter
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VOLUME VI… № 1,707
WELCOME (above)
@THE SKETCH (above) Welcome to the Shuttered Airlines Retirement Home
IN THIS ISSUE
@INTERMEZZO I An M24 Tank
@THE WAR ROOM
@INTERMEZZO II A hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace
@TODAY IN BRIEF News of the Day
@INTERMEZZO III The iPhone 12 Pro Ma
@BARTLEBY ON LANGUAGE The King of Switzerland?
@LAMARR-HÖRBIGER ON CINEMA Review: The Third Man
@INTERMEZZO IV “Really something…”
@RECENT DISPATCHES OF NOTE
@INTERMEZZO V Strait of Vermouth?
@PASSINGS Ted Turner Dies at 87
@ABOUT GEORGE
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U.S. Light M24 Tank
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“Grand Naval Destroyer. People coming, going. Nothing ever happens.” The opening lines (more or less) of the 1932 cinematic masterpiece “Grand Hotel,” a critically acclaimed classic and a landmark of early Hollywood cinema, spoken by Dr. Dr. Otternschlag in the hotel lobby after a montage of telephone calls.
—U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that the United States was close to striking a deal with Iran, although he threatened to renew bombings should one not materialize. Iran is presently evaluating the latest U.S. peace proposal, it is understood. The proposed memorandum would effectively end the war, and Mr. Trump said “they want to make a deal very much.”
—Hours after threatening additional bombings, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted during remarks made in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon that the United States had “won” the war in Iran. He also said that Washington had had “very good talks” with Iran in the last 24 hours: “We’re in good shape, and now we’re doing well, and we have to get what we have to get.”
—Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
—The United States reported that it fired at an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, accusing it of violating the U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports and ignoring repeated warnings from the army. The U.S. Central Command later said the vessel was “no longer transiting to Iran.”
— Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell by 8% to $101 a barrel. Meanwhile, global stock markets rose on the news of a possible de-escalation in the Persian Gulf.
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A hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace
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Russia bombed multiple cities in Ukraine on Tuesday. At least 12 people were killed in Zaporizhzhia, one of the highest death tolls from a single attack in 2026, and an additional 37 were injured. Two other cities were attacked, namely Dnipro and Kramatorsk, where four and five people were killed, respectively. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t hesitate to point out what he saw as Russia’s cynicism concerning a cease-fire timed to coincide with Moscow’s Victory Day celebrations on 9 May. Mr. Zelenskyy had countered the offer with an open-ended cease-fire beginning at midnight on Tuesday, saying that Ukraine desires a lasting cease-fire, not just a break in the fighting to protect a parade in Russia’s capital.
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Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, a world-renowned museum which opened in 1986 and holds the world’s largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces, this week opened a gallery dedicated to so-called orphaned artwork that was swept up in the plunder of European Jews by top-ranking officials of Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, more commonly referred to as the Nazi party, to fill Herr Hitler’s planned museums and residences. Contemporary records indicate that ca. 100,000 cultural objects were looted from France during the Second World War. After the war ended, some 60,000 were recovered and roughly 45,000 were returned to their original owners or their heirs. .Ca. 2,200 pieces were retrieved from Austria and Germany, entrusted to French museums, and never claimed by their owners, who were likely murdered in the Holocaust. These artworks are classified under “MNR,” short for Musées Nationaux Récupération, or National Museums Recovery. MMR pieces of art entrusted to French national museums in the early 1950s but they are neither owned by those institutions nor by the state. Rather, the state holds them in trust for heirs who may yet appear one day. The manner in which the Musée d’Orsay is displaying these works of art – so that the stamps, labels, and inventory marks that detail on the back how each piece of art moved from private homes into Nazi hands can be read – marks a first in France.
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Americans give Pope Leo a high approval rating but are deeply critical of Mr. Trump’s social media post that depicted him as Jesus, a new Post-ABC-Ipsos poll found. Eighty-seven percent held a negative view of that post, while 60% disliked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s prayer at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
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Apple iPhone 5s
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Ilya Remeslo, a longtime Kremlin lawyer who was taken against his will to a psychiatric hospital in March of this year after posting publicly that Russian President Vladimir Putin should resign and be brought to justice as “a war criminal and a thief,” was freed late last month from the St. Petersburg facility. His release is considered a highly unusual development for a regime that is known to incarcerate its critics for decades. Now a free man, Mr. Remeslo – who worked for the Putin administration for roughly one decade – says he will remain in Russia and continue the fight against the president. “I said from the beginning that I’m not going to stop,” Mr. Remeslo told the Washington Post in an interview. “I decided that this is the work of my life.” He is apparently not alone, it is understood, as cracks began appearing in the Russian oligarchs as the war against Ukraine enters its fifth year, the deteriorating Russian economy, and limits on personal Internet access. “The scale of dissatisfaction is colossal,” Remeslo said in the interview with the Post.
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Portable lithium-ion battery powered chargers are presenting airlines with a growing fire hazard so they are taking steps to greatly reduce the risk of in-flight combustion occurring. As of the start of May, there had been 20 in-flight lithium-battery incidents that caused smoke, fire, or extreme heat this year. In 2025, there were almost 100 such incidents, a 4% increase over the number in 2024. All airlines now ban the battery packs from the luggage hold because fires are difficult to detect and extinguish below deck. Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines already prohibited passengers from using the aircraft’s in-seat electrical outlets to charge the devices, and American Airlines just followed suit. While the battery pack industry has not issued a singular, unified statement, organizations including the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration have urged airlines to strengthen passenger warnings regarding fire risks from these lithium-ion devices.
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In a reversal of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security policy, the Trump administration will exempt foreign physicians from a visa application ban that was pushing many out of jobs in areas underserved by physicians. The travel ban that was put in place in January had decisions on visa extensions, work permits and green cards for citizens of 39 countries on hold. As GEORGE reported last month, the move resulted in some physicians being placed on administrative leave by hospitals, while many others faced the loss of their positions. The change was announced with little fanfare. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency updated its website to reflect that physicians are no longer subject to the processing hold. Foreign doctors are crucial to the U.S. healthcare system as the United States is currently facing a shortfall of about 65,000 physicians, the Association of American Medical Colleges said. That figure is expected to balloon in the coming decade as more doctors are planning to retire just as life expectancy is on the increase.
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Apple said it will pay iPhone purchasers some $250 million in the aggregate in order to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused it of having misled buyers about the availability of its Apple Intelligence artificial-intelligence features that would be available on the device. The lawsuit claimed Apple’s products “offered a significantly limited or entirely absent version of Apple Intelligence, misleading consumers about its actual utility and performance.” The proposed settlement would apply to people in the United States who purchased all models of the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 15 Pro between 10 June 2024 and 29 March 2025.
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The iPhone 12 Pro Max, frontal view, with a rear view displayed on an accompanying iPad screen
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Switzerland, unlike its neighbors, didn’t advance from a feudal monarchy to a centralized kingdom; rather, it went from the imperial periphery of the largely Habsburg-controlled Holy Roman Empire in the late Middle Ages and regional alliances became a confederation of self-governing cantons – the Confœderatio Helvetica or Swiss Confederation – which evolved into today’s federal republic where citizens, not kings, rule.
By the time it had become a republic, the political culture was deeply anti-monarchical and had been built upon direct democracy, local autonomy, and collective leadership. Its citizens never saw a need to install a monarch. Imagine, dear reader, if you will, how your humble scrivener – let alone the average Swiss citizen – felt when he read of the crowning of 24-year-old Jonas Lauwiner, the son of a Swiss farmer and a Moroccan mother, as the country’s king. The coronation, which took place in Nydegg Church in Bern, was a solemn affair but observers regarded it more as a prank than anything else.
Things didn’t stay peaceful for long. King Jonas, as he is styled, discovered a legal loophole that allows any Swiss citizen to acquire land registered as ownerless.
The king has exploited what some regard as a legal loophole in his “conquest of land” through which he has built his “empire,” which has a total surface area of 117,144 sq m, or 1.26 million square feet, all for free, spread out over 148 separate parcels. While this sounds like a lot, it amounts to 11.7 hectares , or 29 acres and the land has little value, with the exception of 83 small sections of road, which gives him significant leverage over local communities.
Nonetheless, King Jonas appears to have the right ceremonial clothing for his reign, although he failed to include one small detail. The citizens of his realm would feel far more secure were he King Jonas II – which would indicate that he was perhaps the successor to the original pretender to the nonexistent throne. As New York Times language maven William Safire pointed out in his first “On Language” column in 1979, “[T]he use of a Roman numeral after the name of a king dates back to ancient times.”
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The Riesenrad, the ferris wheel that is one of the symbols of the city of Vienna and a key element in the plot of “The Third Man”
The 1949 film noir masterpiece “The Third Man” is deeply embedded with espionage themes and widely recognized as a “spy story” due to its setting in Cold War-occupied Vienna and its thematic focus on betrayal, deceit, and black-market conspiracies.
The film is widely considered one of the greatest motion pictures of the 20th century for its atmospheric, Oscar-winning cinematography by Robert Krasker and Carol Reed of post-war Vienna, brilliant zither score by Anton Karas, and iconic performances by Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and Paul Hörbiger.
“The Third Man” is heavily informed by author Graham Greene’s background in British intelligence and is frequently associated with real-world espionage intrigue
The film follows Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a naïve American pulp novelist who arrives in post-war Vienna to work for his friend, Harry Lime, (Orson Welles) only to be told by the building’s Portier, portrayed by Paul Hörbiger, that he had been killed in an automobile-pedestrian accident, the automobile driven by his own driver. Suspicious of the circumstances, Mr. Martins investigates and discovers Mr. Lime faked his death to evade police after stealing and diluting penicillin, resulting in numerous needless deaths. The film, directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, centers on betrayal and moral ambiguity
Mr. Krasker’s iconic, high-contrast black-and-white cinematography, featuring extreme “Dutch angles” and deep shadows to depict a fractured postwar Vienna, won him an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The film also claimed the 1950 BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949. It was famously voted the best British film of all time by the British Film Institute in 1999.
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Austria expelled three Russian embassy staff members after on suspicion of spying after determining that a “forest of antennae” on the diplomatic mission’s roof in Vienna was being be used for illicit data collection. Vienna has been Europe’s espionage capital since the Cold War. The Alpine nation’s laws currently allow spies to operate freely in the country as long as their activities are not directly targeting Austria’s interests. Now the government says it will close that loophole. “It is unacceptable that diplomatic immunity be used to commit espionage,” Austria’s Außenmininsterin, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, said on Monday. Frau Mag. Meinl-Reisinger added that the three embassy staff members – whose expulsions bring the number of Russian diplomats sent home by Vienna to 14 since 2020 – had already left the country. “We have communicated this to the Russian side in no uncertain terms, including as regards the forest of antennae at the Russian mission,” she said. Spying was a problem for Austria, she continued, but the government had embarked on a “change of course” and was “taking consistent action.”
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“The Lost Boys” and “Schmigadoon” came out on top of this year’s Tony Award nominations that were announced Tuesday morning. Both earned 12 nominations, including Best New Musical, followed by the revival of “Ragtime,” which earned 11 including Best Revival of a Musical. Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” earned nine nominations, including for Best Revival of a Play. Three other musicals – “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” “The Rocky Horror Show,” and “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York” – garnered nine nominations each. The 2025-26 season was saw the introduction of far fewer shows, translating to just 30 eligible productions in comparison with last year’s 42. Still, even with 25% fewer new entrants, there was room for surprises because that is the nature of the beast. June Squibb, who made her Broadway debut in 1960, as a replacement Electra in “Gypsy,” is in 2026 a first time nominee at the age of 96for her dual roles – as a woman and an artificial-intelligence-enhanced hologram – in “Marjorie Prime.” Surefire nominations for boldface names were few and far between, to wit: James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris, and Bobby Cannavale of “Art”; Cynthia Nixon (“Marjorie Prime”) and Jean Smart (“Call Me Izzy”). The omission of actress Lea Michele, who is starring in “Chess,” came as a surprise to some, especially since one of her male co-stars, Nicholas Christopher, was nominated, along with several members of the supporting cast, as did the omission of Kristin Chenoweth, starring in “The Queen of Versailles.” The almost 850 Tony voters have until early June to make their choices. Winners will be announced June 7 at the awards ceremony hosted by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, which takes place at Radio City Music Hall.
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Ted Turner, a businessman, television producer, media proprietor and philanthropist who was one of the most important figures in twentieth-century media history, died on Wednesday at his home at Avalon Plantation near Tallahassee, Florida. He was 87.
The media mogul, who was one of the largest landowners in the United States, was also a sailor and a conservationist who turned his father’s billboard-advertising concern into the Turnner Broadcasting System, where he used the then latest satellite technology to turn a local Atlanta TV station he owned into what he called a “superstation.” That station along with TNT, a channel he created to showcase the massive film library acquired from MGM/UA, was the mainstay of what he sold in 1995 to Time Warner.
Most notably, Mr. Turner ushered in the era of the 24-hour news cycle with the creation of Cable News Network, or CNN, which launched on 1 June 1980 and became the world’s first 24-hour news channel. CNN eventually came to redefine how breaking news was covered on television. At launch, critics mocked the low-budget venture as the “Chicken Noodle Network,” but it became profitable and gained prominence when the Challenger Disaster occurred in 1986 and again in 1989 when it provided groundbreaking, extended live coverage of the democracy protests in China at Tiananmen Square. It no doubt cemented its reputation in 1991 its live, on-the-ground coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 that continued even after other U.S. networks had evacuated from the region. Programs like “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire” were early signs that talk shows and commentary would have a major role in cable TV.
Robert Edward Turner III – who preferred to be called Ted = was born on 19 November 1938, in Cincinnati. His father, Robert Jr., a native Mississippian whose family had grown cotton, had started a billboard advertising company in the Savannah, Georgia, area. His mother, Florence Rooney, was the daughter of a Cincinnati grocery chain owner.
Ted finished high school in 1956 with a transcript sufficient to win admission to Brown University, but his time there was tainted by scandal. William Kennedy, a former classmate, was quoted in the book “Citizen Turner” as describing him as “a bigot,” explaining that Mr. Turner drank to excess, sang Nazi songs outside a Jewish fraternity house, and posted Ku Klux Klan signs on the dormitory doors of black students there. He was unceremoniously asked to leave the university after being caught in bed in his dorm room with a woman.
Mr. Turner joined his father’s company, Turner Outdoor Advertising, although he spent more time sailing and carousing but, in 1963, when his father committed suicide in the family home after struggling with drug and alcohol abuse as well as significant debt, he ignored the advice of his father’s accountants to sell the company and went into debt to buy a small, failing Atlanta television station, which he renamed WTCG, for Turner Communications Group, assuming he could use his billboards to advertise the television station. When that failed, he assumed more debt with the purchase of the Atlanta Braves, then a fairly mediocre baseball team, and broadcast all 162 of the first season’s games on his station, a move that yielded moderate success. It was with the next move, the purchase of an RCA satellite and expensive new broadcasting equipment, that resulted in the creation of what would become the Turner Broadcasting System, beaming baseball games, old movies, and reruns of “I Love Lucy” and “Lassie” to cable stations across the United States.
While this was taking place, he had also developed the reputation of a drunk and philanderer, and entered into two tumultuous marriages. His in-office behavior included loudly berating employees when a presentation failed to please him, often throwing the printed version at the worker. His sales presentations to advertisers also included histrionics. When he won the 1977 America’s Cup race, he was too inebriated to finish his victory speech. His racial and ethnic slurs were legendary. In 1985, Mr. Turner said that the U.S. MX mobile missile program and the unemployment rate could be solved simultaneously by hiring jobless black to carry missiles on their backs from one silo to another, the Atlanta Constitution in 1985.
Mr. Turner’s third wife, actress Jane Fonda famously likened his charisma to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
Mr. Turner’s survivors three sons and two daughters, Robert E. Turner IV, an executive with Turner television companies; Rhett Lee Turner, a filmmaker and photographer; and Reed Beauregard Turner, chairman of the board of the Turner Endangered Species Fund; Laura Turner Seydel, a chair emeritus of the Captain Planet Foundation, a Turner environmental group; and Sara Jean Turner Garlington, an environmentalist and trustee of the Turner Foundation, along with 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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George delivers news for curious thinkers in a world of shortened attention spans.
Decades of research on how readers consume information when faced with Information Overload – led by George co-founder Jonathan Spira, one of the foremost authorities on the subject – ensures that each article gets straight to the point with no fluff and no bias.
George presents important news and events of the day clearly and concisely in a format better suited to the modern reader’s limited time and focus, without forsaking the founders’ traditional commitment to fact-driven news, commentary, and dispatches – all prepared by curious thinkers, for curious thinkers.
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Jonathan Spira, Alexander Khusid, Tim Perry, Christian Stampfer, Kurt Stolz, Anna Breuer, and Paul Riegler contributed to this issue of George.
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