| George on Thursday: U.S. Conducts More Strikes in Iran, Too Much or Too Little Sleep Linked to Faster Aging of One’s Body, War Technology Through the Centuries, FIFA’s World Cup Bait-and-SwitchFrequent Business Traveler

Good morning! Today is Thursday, the 28th of May, 2026 and this is the Thursday Morning Edition of GEORGE.

GEORGE is how the curious catch up on global stories that matter, each and every weekday morning. It’s your tool to stay ahead of the news.

Our @The War Room columnist has expanded coverage of wars and conflicts not only in the Middle East but also in Europe – the Russo-Ukrainian War – and Africa, the Congo-Rwanda Border Conflict and examines how fighting war with the latest technology is really plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!

Sleep can be a major challenge for just about anyone and our @Today in Brief editor looks at a new study that explains how it’s fairly easy for a person to have too much sleep, so much so that it’s injurious to that individual, while also looking at a rather vexing question, especially for those in Eastern Europe: What will Russian President Vladimir Putin attack next? GEORGE has a complete analysis of what one of Britain’s top spymaster’s has to say about this.

Meanwhile, don’t miss any of these stories in our Thursday Morning Edition.

— The World Cup is almost upon us and FIFA is in hot water over bait-and-switch ticket sales that has left many football fans unhappy with their seats

— What two Korean semiconductor companies recently and separately hit market valuations of $1 trillion?

— Why the World Health Organization is calling for a cease fire in a border dispute in Africa

In addition, GEORGE has other exclusive news 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… № 1,724

WELCOME (above)

@THE SKETCH (above)  Mr. Trump Calls The Economist | Kill Bill

IN THIS ISSUE

@INTERMEZZO I  Throgs Neck Bridge at Dusk

@THE WAR ROOM

@INTERMEZZO II  Fruit-and-vegetable man in Bolzano

@TODAY IN BRIEF

@INTERMEZZO III  Cathedral of Vasily in Moscow

@RECENT DISPATCHES OF NOTE

@ABOUT GEORGE      

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The Throgs Neck Bridge Wednesday evening at dusk, as viewed from the Long Island Sound

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Everyone who is anyone is talking about the great technological advances that the world is seeing in warfare and weaponry such as drones. But just like the world at large, there have been myriad equivalent advances ranging from the use of railroads starting in the 1820s, the telegraph in the 1840s, rifled muskets in the 1850s, airplanes in the very early 1900s, submarines in the mid-1910s, and then tanks, radar, guided missiles, nuclear weapons, helicopters, satellites, the list goes on and on…

Yet so many marvel how different war is today. In Ukraine and the Middle East, battlefields are becoming the stuff of science fiction with swarms of armed drones and AI-enabled targeting systems. On the battlefield, no one leads a charge. But given all of these advancements, is it even possible to discern which side is winning – and are there truly any winners? And even if war is fought remotely, is it also moving closer to each of us?

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U.S.-Israeli War in Iran

— Iran’s state media said it had a draft of a peace deal with the United States. If agreed, it would see the United States relocate its troops away from Iran and lift its naval blockade. Iran would allow commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz at pre-war levels within a month. In response, the White House called the report a “complete fabrication.” In a cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the country is “not satisfied” with proposals.

— A U.S. official said on Wednesday that the United States shot down four one-way attack drones that the official said Iran had launched over the Strait of Hormuz. The drones posed a threat to U.S. forces in the region and what little commercial maritime traffic is going through the strait that Iran has effectively blockaded, it is understood. In addition, U.S. forces also conducted airstrikes against a drone ground-control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas before Iran could fire a fifth drone.

— Israel’s armed forces ordered the evacuation of Tyre, a Lebanese city, as it carried out air strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, despite a ceasefire agreement. Israel claimed to have struck more than 100 targets in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people, including children. Israel earlier said that it had killed the new leader of the armed wing of Hamas in an airstrike on Gaza.

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Russo-Ukrainian War

— Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, appealed to Donald Trump and America’s Congress for more Patriot pac-3 missiles and other air-defense systems to counter missile attacks by Russia. In a letter, Mr. Zelensky wrote that deliveries were “no longer keeping up with the reality of the threat we face” as America diverted weapons to the war in Iran.

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Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda Border War (née Kivu Conflict)

— The World Health Organization called for a ceasefire in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has seen the majority of cases in the current Ebola outbreak, with over 900 reported there. Fighting between the army and M23, a rebel group led by ethnic Tutsis that is part of a larger political alliance called the Alliance Fleuve Congo and is backed by Rwanda, has hindered response efforts and exacerbated the spread.

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A fruit-and-vegetable seller in Bozen, or in Italian, Bolzano, in the South Tirol or Alto Adige in Italy

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Getting an insufficient amount of sleep on a regular basis is considered to be harmful to one’s health, but a new study posits that too much sleep may also not be good for us. According to a new study, entitled Sleep Chart of Biological Ageing Clocks in Middle and Late Life that was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, it turns out that too much sleep is associated with accelerated aging in nearly every organ in the human body. Junhao Wan, a computational neuroscientist who was the lead author and is an assistant professor of radiological sciences at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, broke the findings down as such: “The key point [of the study] is consistent sleep time, around 6 to 8 hours per day. We know that’s going to do good for your overall health.”

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A high-level British spy who serves as the director of the U.K. electronic surveillance agency is warning that Moscow was getting more brazen and that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be pursuing a wider conflict in Europe, increasingly targeting critical infrastructure and supply chains, The director of GCHQ, the British electronic surveillance agency, Anne Keast Butler, warned in a speech on Wednesday given at Bletchley Park of an expanding threat from Russia towards the West. She said that Moscow was getting more brazen and is actively targeting Western nations and their allies. “Russia is scaling up its daily hybrid activity against the U.K. and Europe,” said Anne Keast-Butler, who added that GCHQ has been kept busy countering what she termed the Kremlin’s “reckless sabotage and assassination attempts.” Ms. Keast-Butler said that the GCHQ has been focused on thwarting the Russian threat and Mr. Putin’s hybrid tactics, which include not only sabotage and assassinations, but also disinformation campaigns, are part of a master plan. All of these activities serve the purpose of destabilizing a country’s economy and institutions. She explained this as the hybrid threats that Mr. Putin has relied upon to terrorize Europe have the goal of dividing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and sowing discord in the West. It’s not surprising then to learn that battle drills and drone training have become part of daily life of countries such as Estonia, which lies on NATO’s eastern border with Russia.

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The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, known as FIFA, the sports governing body that organizes association football event  across the globe, is currently facing a coördinated investigation from the Attorneys General of New York and New Jersey into its ticket pricing and sales tactics for the World Cup. The move comes on the heels of complaints by fans that they were assigned worse seats than they had paid for. Authorities are investigating whether FIFA violated consumer protection law with its use of demand-driven dynamic pricing, bait-and-switch seat relocations, and fake scarcity practices. The combination of astronomical ticket pricing and a fan backlash forced FIFA to release small batches of capped-price tickets such as limited $60 Supporter Entry Tiers, while some host cities including New Yorkhave implemented local lottery systems that would make tickets available at lower prices.

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The White House, home to U.S. presidents since 1800, when its first residents, President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, moved in.

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North Korea test-fired a newly developed lightweight missile launcher and multiple tactical weapons toward the Yellow Sea on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, South Korea’s military said. The launch coincided with a visit from Singapore’s foreign minister, Dr. Vivian Balakrishna. South Korea’s military tracked the weapons and confirmed that they were launched from the coastal city of Jongiu.

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South Korean semiconductor manufacturer SK Hynix saw the company’s value cross the $1 trillion threshold on Wednesday, joining Samsung Electronics in that vaunted space  just as unionized workers at Samsung voted to approve a profit-sharing deal that will guarantee employes in the company’s semiconductor division 10.5% of its operating profit, a deal reached just one hour before the start of a planned 18-day strike. The renewed focus on artificial-intelligence in the past few years has driven Samsung Electronics’’ valuable to over $1 trillion on 6 May of this year.

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Canada and the Bahamas imposed similar travel bans to the United States’ on residents from three African countries, Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda as the Ebola epidemic there worsens. Starting Wednesday, Canada is suspending all immigration documents and visas for residents from three countries, while The Bahamas has placed a 30-day block on all travelers arriving from the three.

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Hilton Honors, the guest loyalty program of Hilton Worldwide, announced its newest promotion, More Nights, More Points. The new promotion allows program members to earn 2,000 additional points for a stay of up to three days and 4,000 points for a stay of four nights or more. The promotion can be stacked with elite-tier bonuses, which will still be awarded. With the new promotion, “[E]very stay gets you closer to free nights,” Hilton said in a statement announcing the program. The promotion will launch on 1 June 2026 and end on 15 August 2026. Guests must either be a member of the Hilton Honors program or register prior to their stay in order to be eligible for this bonus.

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Mr. Trump’s net approval rating has hit a new low, according to The Economist’s presidential tracker, an interactive, data-driven tool that monitors public opinion on the sitting U.S. president. At -24, the president is down 1.9 points since last week. Mr. Trump’s net approval rating for his handling of inflation and prices is -43, and his net approval rating for handling jobs and the economy is -23. Overall, 34% approve of the actions of his administration, 58% disapprove, and 6% are not sure. At -24 points, he is the most unpopular American president since the newspaper started the tracker in 2009. The war in Iran has hurt Mr. Trump’s standing, but it is his handling of the economy that have really caused his numbers to plummet.

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Собор Василия Блаженного, or the Cathedral of Vasily, the Blessed, often referred to in English as Saint Basil’s Cathedral, located in Red Square in Moscow

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Russia warned foreigners to leave Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, ahead of “systematic strikes” targeting defense facilities in the city. The Russian defense ministry said these would be a response to a deadly Ukrainian attack on a student dorm in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region. The warning comes just days after carrying out one of its largest attacks on the city since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The new strikes will target “decision-making centers and command posts,” alongside drone manufacturing facilities in the city, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.  Ukraine said Russia’s threats were “nothing short of shameless blackmail” and urged allies to increase pressure on Moscow. With its warning to foreign nationals, the Kremlin is “effectively admitting that its shelling is aimed, among other things, at intimidating the foreign diplomatic corps,” the statement continued.

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Ukraine is establishing a 15-km (9.3-mile)-deep “Drone Line” along the front lines and simultaneously expanding its short-range strike or “kill zone” to 100 to 150 km (62 to 93 miles) behind Russian lines. The kill zone is the area behind the front line where Ukrainian systems can strike Russian troops, vehicles, and logistics, and its size increased from 50 km (31 miles) in a very short period of time. Integrated into the Unmanned Systems Forces, the Drone Line initiative relies on first-person-view, or FPV, drones, autonomous systems, and 15,000 new specialized recruits whose job it will be to cut off Russian logistics and supply routes.

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George: How to Consume News in a World of Information Overload

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, and the late Basilio Alferow.

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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