What Netflix’s American Murder: Gabby Petito Reveals About the Final Days of Her Life

It was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime for 22-year-old Gabby Petito and her fiancé Brian Laundrie. Inspired by social media accounts chronicling glamorous lives on the road, the pair bought a van in 2021 to travel across America, keen to explore the nation’s vast natural wonder. For four months, Petito and Laundrie were going to stay in a number of America’s national parks while she started a blog and a YouTube account to catalog their trip. 

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But the dream holiday ended in tragedy. Following at least one domestic dispute between her and Laundrie, which was contradicted by her glowing social media presence, Petito disappeared in 2021 and would never return home. Her body was found on Sept. 19, 2021.

A new three-part documentary series, out now on Netflix, tells the story of Petito’s life and death through interviews with her friends and family, and traces how the search for her sparked nationwide interest. Here’s what to know about American Murder: Gabby Petito.

How Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie became a part of #vanlife

Petito and Laundrie became friends after they met at Bayport-Blue Point High School in Bayport, New York. After graduating in 2017, the pair began dating in 2019, and Petito moved to North Point, Florida to live with Laundrie’s family. Living there was an uncomfortable experience for Petito, her friend Rose Davis says in the series. She struggled to get along with Brian’s family, especially his mother Roberta. The discomfort was compounded by Laundrie’s increasingly controlling behavior. In one instance, he stole Petito’s wallet and ID so she couldn’t go out with Davis, as alleged in American Murder, which shows Petito and Laundrie’s text messages. Petito and Laundrie shared an interest in long drives, National Parks, and traveling around the United States, including driving from New York to California. In July 2020, the couple got engaged.

Saving up for a cross-country adventure, Petito worked various jobs, including as a pharmacy technician and working at Taco Bell. Petito purchased a 2012 Ford Transit Connect, and the pair remodeled it to make it livable for what was to be a four-month adventure exploring various National Parks. On July 2, 2021, a year after their engagement, they set off from New York. Petito planned to document the journey on YouTube under the account Nomadic Statik and her Instagram account, the profile of which reads “traveling the world in our tiny van #vanlife.”

Gabby Petito reported missing, prompting an investigation

On Aug. 12, 2021, Police received a 911 call in Moab, Utah, claiming a man was attacking a girl in a van driving by. The police found the vehicle and intervened—it was Petito’s van. Based on the stories a panicked Petito and calm Laundrie gave the police, the conclusion was drawn that Laundrie was the victim of a domestic assault. Refusing to press charges, the pair were separated for the evening—Laundrie was taken to a hotel, and Petito remained in the van. The next day they continued the trip. A week later, Petito’s first YouTube video, called “Van Life | Building Our Van Life Journey,” full of images of the couple smiling, laughing, and kissing, was posted.

Despite the glossy appearance on social media, things were not improving for the couple. On Aug. 25, Petito posted on Instagram for the last time. Around then, Petito stopped responding to texts. Her family and friends reached out on multiple occasions, but Petito never answered. On Aug. 27, Petito’s mother got a strange text from Gabby’s phone: “Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls.” The message referred to Petito’s grandfather—but Gabby never referred to him by his first name. 

On Sept. 11, Petito’s mother filed a missing persons report with the Suffolk County, New York Police Department. This led to a startling discovery by police in Southwest Florida. Not only had Laundrie returned to his parent’s house with Petito’s van, but she was not with him. The Laundrie family hired an attorney and refused to help the police investigation. 

Petito’s story became one of considerable national interest. Online, amateur TikTok sleuths pored over every detail in the archive of her posts and analyzed each new development in the case. The investigation to find her spanned over 2000 miles as police tried to retrace Petito’s steps.

What happened to Gabby Petito? 

The investigation led police to several places, including Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming—where her phone was last used—which covers 310,000 acres. Police appealed to anyone with potential information to assist, which led to the surprising discovery of another #vanlife blogger who pored through her footage to find images of Petito’s van, located in Spread Creek in Grand Teton. Three weeks after the search began, Petito’s body was found on Sept. 19th, 2021. It was believed by investigators that the scene was staged. An autopsy later revealed that Petito died of strangulation.

Petito’s friends and family were understandably devastated by the news of her death. “I collapsed to the ground,” her stepfather, Jim Schmidt, who went to Wyoming to help find Gabby, recalls of hearing the news. “And I had to pick up the phone and compose myself and call Niki, and get Joe on the phone and Tara in a conference call, and tell them, from 2,000 miles away, that our daughter was dead.” A friend of Petito’s from high school says in the series, “When the news had broke that they found her body…I just wanted to shut it off or wake up, like it was a bad dream or something.”

What happened to Brian Laundrie? 

American Murder reveals the details of Laundrie’s attempts to create an alibi for himself. On Aug. 29, he made numerous phone calls to his parents saying Gabby was “gone” and he needed help, and they called an attorney immediately after. Laundrie hitchhiked two separate times to get from where he placed Petito’s body to get back to the van. There, he created a conversation between Gabby and himself via text on both of their phones to make it look like they weren’t physically together. Laundrie also made a transaction on Zelle, moving $700 from Petito’s account to his own, with the memo reading “Goodbye Brian, I’ll never ask you for anything again.”

The discovery of Petito’s body allowed investigators to piece together the final moments of her life. On Aug. 27, 2021, Petito was seen with Laundrie around 1 p.m. in Jackson, WY at a restaurant called Mary Piglets—a witness said they were fighting. American Murder reveals that Petito placed a call to her ex-boyfriend, but he was working and unable to answer the phone. The pair was then spotted on the security camera footage of a nearby Whole Foods at 2:13 p.m. That footage was the last time Petito was seen alive. After Whole Foods, they drove to Spread Creek, arriving around 6 pm. Two hours later at 8:32pm, Petito was rearranging files on her computer—the police believe these were her last moments alive.

On Sept. 20, 2021, the day after finding Petito’s remains, the police executed a search warrant on Laundrie’s home, but Brian himself had gone missing, telling his parents a week earlier that he was going on a hike. The parents didn’t report him missing as they expected him to return. He was somewhere in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, which spans over 20,000 acres. Thirty-seven days after Laundrie was reported missing, his parents discovered his remains on Oct. 20 at Carlton Reserve.

Found with Laundrie’s body was a letter admitting he killed Gabby, claiming that he put her out of her misery after she had a bizarre accident and was in unbearable pain—though this is inconsistent with the autopsy. In 2022, the Petito-Schmidt family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Brian’s parents Roberta and Chris, which was settled for $3 million. No criminal charges have been filed against the Laundrie family.

source https://time.com/7252972/american-murder-gabby-petito-true-story-netflix/

How Architects Are Designing for Disaster Resilience

On Jan. 7, architect Greg Chasen rushed to his childhood home in Pacific Palisades, a well-off Los Angeles neighborhood tucked between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, to remove any flammables and turn on the sprinklers. “You could hear exploding propane tanks and see the flames reflected in the smoke. I was sure that fire was going to tear through overnight,” he says. At some point, there was nothing left to do but go home and wait.

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At dawn the next day, Chasen jumped on his bike to inspect the damage, bracing for the worst. While just a few degrees of wind direction had saved his parents’ home from the flames, other streets weren’t as lucky. Next, he went to check on a house he had finished building for a friend only six months earlier. As he got closer, the magnitude of the destruction hit him—almost the entire neighborhood was gone. “More houses were going up in flames, and everything had this acrid smell of burning plastic,” he says. But there it was, the newly built two-story house, remarkably untouched. While 120 houses farther down the street had been transformed into piles of ashes, Chasen’s fire—resistant design had withstood the heat from the flames.

The wildfires that ripped through L.A. in January claimed the lives of 29 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures. These types of disasters are only set to become more frequent and intense as climate change drives warmer and drier conditions. According to NASA, parts of the western U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and East Africa now have fire seasons that last more than a month longer than they did 35 years ago. And the U.N. estimates that the number of wildfires globally will increase by 50% by the end of the century. 

Last year marked the first year global temperatures surpassed 1.5°C of warming compared with preindustrial levels—the limit meant to avert the worst impacts and preserve a livable planet outlined in the Paris Agreement, which President Trump took swift steps to withdraw from only hours into his second term. In response, architects like Chasen are embracing disaster-resilient designs.

The Palisades house, which took six years to complete, incorporated defensible space: a border area from which anything flammable—like dead plants and wooden furniture—is removed. The landscaping was also made fire—resilient with gravel and low plants rather than tall trees that can spread flames to adjacent structures. In 2020, California lawmakers passed a law making defensible space mandatory in high-risk areas, but the law was never implemented and regulations still haven’t been written. “This could have very much helped the community,“ says Chasen.

The house was also tightly sealed, including with double—paned windows. When a neighbor’s car exploded and broke the outer window pane, the interior layer stayed intact, keeping the fire out. While most attic designs count on vents to prevent condensation, Chasen’s didn’t. Vents are the easiest way for embers—which California officials and researchers say are responsible for 90% of structures destroyed by wildfire—to get in.

As Angelenos prepare to rebuild, “we have to not only look at individual homes, but at the community as a whole element,” says Michele Barbato, a professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis. It’s similar to the theory of herd immunity under vaccination—if you have enough homes that are protected, they will be able to protect others, but a critical mass of burning homes will compromise the entire community by spreading the fire from one building to the next, Barbato explains.

Another factor is that people are increasingly moving into areas at high risk of natural disasters, particularly in the face of rising property prices. “Some people like to live near the forest, but some have to live there because it’s the only place they can afford,” says Barbato. Understanding past disasters in a specific location used to help prepare for future ones, but with climate change “it’s a moving target,” says Jay Raskin, a retired architect who helped create the Oregon Resilience Plan, aimed at preparing for a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunami. 

Architects in earthquake zones are increasingly using base isolation, which involves putting buildings on huge flexible pads that can reduce violent shaking by up to 75%. “It’s much more effective than trying to build really stout and strong,” says Raskin. Buildings like the new Oregon State Treasury are designed to withstand not only earthquakes, but also other hazards such as floods, wildfires, and even civil unrest. Following a disaster, it’s crucial to ensure that public institutions and emergency services can continue to function, says Raskin.

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On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Japanese architects have long grappled with how to design for multiple hazards. While heavy houses are better for earthquakes, lighter ones are better for flooding, says Taku Hibino, the CEO of Hibinosekkei, an architecture firm specializing in care facilities for children and other vulnerable groups. “We can’t expect kids and elderly [people] to be able to run away when a disaster happens, so we try to make the architecture safe enough so that they don’t need to go outside to evacuate.”

Hibino’s firm rebuilt a kindergarten in Fukushima following the disastrous 2011 earthquake that claimed over 18,000 lives and caused the meltdown of three nuclear power reactors. The kindergarten, which was destroyed, had to be rebuilt quickly, with not only a future earthquake but also radiation in mind. “At the time, children couldn’t play outside, so we had to design it in a way that would allow the kids to play indoors,” says Hibino. The design incorporated a 50m-wide corridor that allows the kids to run around, as well as an indoor pool and a large sandbox. “Sometimes, overly disaster-proof buildings become too dull and lifeless—that’s where architects come into play with our creativity.”

In low-lying Bangladesh, 60% of the population is at high risk of floods, and climate change is making extreme rainfall even more common. Rural communities in the north are increasingly embracing living with floods, which also provide important nutrients to the soil. “We’re seeing a shift to building houses with lighter materials that can easily be dismantled and moved during floods,” says Apurba Kumar Podder, a professor in architecture at BUET University in Dhaka. Building expensive and super-fortified structures isn’t a feasible solution for low-income communities and is difficult to scale up. While no single approach is perfect—solutions range from floating houses to homes built on stilts—Kumar believes working closely with local communities, to leverage their traditional knowledge while improving the sustainability of materials, is key for boosting resilience.

While concrete is fire-resistant and widely available, it’s responsible for 8% of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. Alternatives like cross—laminated timber—made by gluing together layers of wooden panels at right angles—are quickly gaining popularity and can resist both fire and earthquakes well, says Raskin. At UC Davis, Barbato and his team have spent 15 years developing fire—resistant materials, including earth blocks made by mixing mud with a small amount of chemical stabilizer, like lime or cement. “They look like huge Lego blocks made with soil and with a spring inside to keep them all attached,” he says, adding that the material has a “very high resistance to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires.”

For now, a lot of red tape makes it difficult to scale up the materials’ use, and getting a permit is a lengthy and expensive process. But with enough research, Barbato believes the technology can halve construction labor costs compared with ordinary masonry, reducing the cost of building resilient homes. “It’s about building homes that people feel safe leaving during an evacuation order, knowing their house will still be standing when they come back,” he says.

While those in Pacific Palisades are still processing and grieving what was lost in the wildfires, it’s also important for homeowners to consider their responsibility and how they can build better going forward, says Chasen: “If you need to build a smaller, more modest house, do it.”

source https://time.com/7249238/disaster-resilient-architecture/

EU Leaders Hold Emergency Talks, Fearing That Trump Has Abandoned Allies

European leaders gathered in Paris Monday for emergency talks on how to react to the U.S. diplomatic blitz on Ukraine, which has thrown a once-solid alliance into turmoil and left the Europeans questioning the reliability of their key transatlantic partner.

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Shortly before the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump, but Macron’s office would not disclose details about the 20-minute discussion.

Leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and the European Union arrived at the Elysee Palace for talks on Europe’s security quandary. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is also attending.

Last week, top U.S. officials from the Trump administration made their first visit to Europe, leaving the impression that Washington was ready to embrace the Kremlin while it cold-shouldered many of its age-old European allies.

Despite belligerent warnings for months ahead of Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president, leaders hoped somehow that Trump would stand shoulder to shoulder with Europe in opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the continent would finally start to beef up its defenses and become less reliant on American firepower.

But a flurry of speeches by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week questioned both Europe’s security commitments and its fundamental democratic principles. Macron said their stinging rebukes and threats of non-cooperation in the face of military danger felt like a shock to the system.

The tipping point came when Trump decided to upend years of U.S. policy by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Then, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia on Saturday all but ruled out the inclusion of other Europeans in any Ukraine peace talks.

Europe’s ‘existential moment’

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the week “an existential moment … where Europe has to stand up.”

That’s where Macron hopes to step in with Monday’s meeting. Ever since World War II, the United States and Western European nations have basically moved in lockstep as they confronted the Soviet Union during the Cold War, right up to the increasingly aggressive actions of current-day Russia close to its borders. Even if there had long been U.S. complaints about the reluctance of many European NATO nations to step up their defense efforts, they never boiled up to the political surface as they have over the past days.

French officials said no firm announcements are expected, beyond a show of unity. More talks are expected at the broader EU level, they said.

Sending troops after a peace deal?

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “negotiations are moving fast with Europe,” in a virtual news conference Monday in Kyiv, he said, “Everyone told me that what happened (at the Munich Security Conference) accelerated everything,” Zelenskyy said Macron had agreed to provide him with a briefing on the conclusions from the meeting in Paris.

A strong U.S. component, though, will remain essential for the foreseeable future since it will take many years before European nations can ratchet up defense production and integrate it into an effective force. That U.S. bond also applies to dealing with war in Ukraine, said U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “U.S. support will remain critical and a U.S. security guarantee is essential for a lasting peace, because only the U.S. can deter Putin from attacking again,” Starmer wrote in Monday’s Daily Telegraph.

While many EU nations are still mulling whether to contribute troops to a potential force in Ukraine after a peace deal, Starmer said that the U.K. was “ready and willing to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our own troops on the ground if necessary.

“I do not say that lightly. I feel very deeply the responsibility that comes with potentially putting British servicemen and women in harm’s way,” he wrote.

Macron last year refused to rule out sending Western troops into Ukraine if necessary.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was clear that there wouldn’t be European troops in Ukraine while the war is ongoing. “The questions about the security architecture that then have to be discussed will be discussed when the time is right,” he said on the sidelines of an election campaign event, German news agency dpa reported.

“A ceasefire must not lead to Russian rearmament, which is followed by new Russian attacks,” warned Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen ahead of the Paris meeting.

Boosting EU defense spending

European nations are bent on boosting Ukraine where they can, and EU nations see eye to eye when it comes to upping defense spending. However, even if there is a general consensus to move beyond the goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, it is hardly clear how to get to 3%.

Some EU nations insist on an agreement on joint borrowing for massive defense projects, while others say the nations that lag behind on spending should first reach 2%. That issue is also set to be discussed at the meeting.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he plans to urge other leaders to invest more in defense, ahead of his departure for the Paris meeting. Poland spends more than 4% of its GDP on defense, more than any other NATO member.

“If we want to decide about the future of Ukraine together with Ukraine, the United States, Russia, we must also show that we are capable of much more serious investment in our own defense,” he said. However, he also said that he does not envision Poland sending its own troops to Ukraine.

Some EU nations’ criticism

But some of the EU nations balked at the thought of the restrictive Elysee meeting with only a few chosen leaders while others were left in the cold. For an uncomfortable number of decisions, the EU needs the backing of all 27 nations. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has already threatened to use his veto on a number of occasions.

Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar said the selective list of invitees was proof that the EU member states are not treated equally. “This is not Europe that commands respect abroad. This is not the Europe that would be a serious partner to the North American ally,” she said.

Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico questioned the presence of top EU representatives at the meeting, noting that the EU has no right to decide about any deployment of foreign troops in a country.

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Casert reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Germany, Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, Justin Spike in Kyiv, Ukraine and Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7247978/eu-emergency-talks-trump-allies/

A Polar Vortex Is Stretching Across the U.S. Here’s What to Expect

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Harsh weather moved west on Monday as a polar vortex was expected to grip the Rockies and the northern Plains after winter storms pummeled the eastern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least 10 people, including nine victims in Kentucky who died during flooding from heavy rains.

The National Weather Service warned of “life-threatening cold” into Tuesday, with temperatures in northeastern Montana predicted to dip as low as 45 degrees below zero (-42.7 degrees Celsius) with wind chills down to 60 below (-51 degrees Celsius).

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Meteorologists said several states would experience the 10th and coldest polar vortex event this season. Weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole into the U.S. and Europe.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Sunday that the death toll rose to nine.

“I am sad to share some more tough news tonight, Kentucky. We just confirmed another weather-related death out of Pike County, bringing our total loss to 9 people.”

Beshear had said earlier Sunday that at least 1,000 people stranded by floods had to be rescued. President Donald Trump approved Kentucky’s request for a disaster declaration, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts throughout the state.

Beshear said most of the deaths, including a mother and 7-year-old child, were caused by cars getting stuck in high water.

“So folks, stay off the roads right now and stay alive,” he said.

Parts of Kentucky and Tennessee received up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain, said Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service.

“The effects will continue for awhile, a lot of swollen streams and a lot of flooding going on,” Oravec said Sunday.

In Alabama, the weather service in Birmingham said it had confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down in Hale County. Storms there and elsewhere in the state destroyed or damaged a handful of mobile homes, downed trees and toppled power lines, but no injuries were immediately reported.

A state of emergency was declared for parts of Obion County, Tennessee, after a levee failed on Saturday, flooding the small community of Rives, home to around 300 people in the western part of the state. “There will be mandatory evacuations in effect for the residents in Rives due to the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperatures creating a life-threatening situation,” Mayor Steve Carr said in a statement Sunday.

In Atlanta, a person was killed when a large tree fell on a home early Sunday, according to Atlanta Fire Rescue Capt. Scott Powell.

Dangerously cold wind chill temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero (minus 45.6) were expected in most of North Dakota, which remained under an “extreme cold warning” along with large swaths of South Dakota and Minnesota, according to the weather service.

Severe flooding

Water submerged cars and buildings in Kentucky and mudslides blocked roads in Virginia over the weekend. Flood warnings extended throughout Tennessee and Arkansas.

The mother and child were swept away Saturday night in Kentucky’s Bonnieville community, Hart County Coroner Tony Roberts said. In southeastern Kentucky, a 73-year-old man was found dead in floodwaters in Clay County, county Emergency Management Deputy Director Revelle Berry said. There were a total of four deaths in Hart County, Beshear said.

The Kentucky River Medical Center in the city of Jackson said it had closed its emergency department and transferred all patients to two other hospitals in the region due to a nearby river flooding.

High winds brought down trees and power poles across Albermarle County, Virginia. The Charlottesville Police Department said Sunday on social media that officers’ response times could be delayed due to “an overwhelming number of weather-related calls for service.” Police urged residents to stay off the roads.

Power outages were reported along much of the eastern seaboard, from New York south to Georgia.

In West Virginia, 13 southern counties were under a state of emergency for flooding and some areas were cut off to vehicle traffic Sunday. Several volunteer fire departments dealt with flooding in their own buildings while answering rescue and evacuation calls.

Rockies, Midwest, Northeast hit with snow storms, Polar Vortex on the way

Ice and snow made road travel treacherous in large swaths of Michigan, which remained under a winter weather advisory until Monday afternoon. Michigan State Police reported 114 crashes Sunday around the Detroit area since snow started falling Saturday.

“Fortunately, most were one-car spin outs and there were no serious injuries,” Michigan State Police said on X.

Authorities in Colorado reported eight people were killed in fatal vehicle crashes since Valentine’s Day and warned drivers to be cautious as the weather made driving more difficult. The causes of the fatal crashes weren’t immediately known.

Also in Colorado, three state patrol cruisers that had pulled over along roadsides were struck by other vehicles, including one on Sunday where a trooper had stopped as officials prepared to close a road because of ice. In each case the troopers were out of their cruisers at the time and were uninjured.

Avalanche warnings were issued for numerous areas of the Rocky Mountains stretching from Colorado to Washington state, with the danger rated highest in Utah.

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Sophia Tareen in Chicago, Nadia Lathan in Austin, Texas, John Raby in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7242848/us-polar-vortex-what-to-expect/

Rubio in Israel Says Hamas Must be Eradicated, Casting Further Doubt on Gaza’s Cease-Fire

JERUSALEM — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday fully endorsed Israel’s war aims in the Gaza Strip, saying Hamas “must be eradicated” and throwing the shaky ceasefire into further doubt.

Rubio met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of a regional tour, where he is likely to face pushback from Arab leaders over U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to transfer the Palestinian population out of Gaza and redevelop it under U.S. ownership.

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Netanyahu has welcomed the plan, and said that he and Trump have a “common strategy” for Gaza. Echoing Trump, he said that “the gates of hell would be open” if Hamas doesn’t release dozens of remaining hostages abducted in the militant group’s attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that triggered the 16-month war.

Their remarks came two weeks before the ceasefire’s first phase is set to end. The second phase, in which Hamas would release dozens of remaining hostages in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, has yet to be negotiated.

Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told Fox News that he had ”very productive” calls Sunday with Netanyahu and officials from Egypt and Qatar, which are serving as mediators, about continuing talks this week. He also said that hostages to be released include 19 Israeli soldiers and “we believe all of them are alive.”

Netanyahu’s office confirmed the call and said that Israel’s security Cabinet would meet Monday to discuss the second phase.

Rubio said that Hamas can’t continue as a military or government force.

“As long as it stands as a force that can govern or as a force that can administer or as a force that can threaten by use of violence, peace becomes impossible,” he said. “It must be eradicated.”

Such language could complicate talks with Hamas, which reasserted control over Gaza when the ceasefire took hold last month despite suffering heavy losses.

Rubio is also set to visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which are political heavyweights in the region.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, said that it carried out an airstrike Sunday on people who approached its forces in southern Gaza. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said the strike killed three of its police officers while they secured the entry of aid trucks near Rafah on the Egyptian border.

Hamas called the attack a “serious violation” of the ceasefire.

Resuming the war could doom hostages

This week marks 500 days of the war. Resuming the fighting could be a death sentence for remaining hostages and may not succeed in eliminating Hamas.

Netanyahu has signaled readiness to resume the war after the current phase, and has offered Hamas a chance to surrender and send its top leaders into exile.

Hamas has rejected such a scenario and insists on Palestinian rule. Spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou told The Associated Press that the group accepts either a Palestinian unity government or a technocratic committee to run Gaza.

Last week, Hamas threatened to hold up the latest release of hostages, because Netanyahu has yet to approve the entry of mobile homes and heavy machinery into Gaza as required by the ceasefire agreement, before proceeding with the release Saturday based on what it called assurances from Arab mediators.

An Israeli official said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations that the issue would be discussed in the coming days, and Israel was coordinating with the United States.

In another sign of closing ranks, Israel’s Defense Ministry said that it received a shipment of 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) MK-84 munitions from the United States. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of such bombs last year over concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza.

‘If someone has a better plan … that’s great’

In an interview last week, Rubio indicated that Trump’s proposal was in part aimed at pressuring Arab states to make their own postwar plan that would be acceptable to Israel.

He also appeared to suggest that Arab countries send troops to combat Hamas.

“If someone has a better plan, and we hope they do, if the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great,” Rubio said Thursday on the “Clay and Buck Show.”

But “Hamas has guns,” he added. “Someone has to confront those guys. It’s not going to be American soldiers. And if the countries in the region can’t figure that piece out, then Israel is going to have to do it.”

Rubio wasn’t scheduled to meet with Palestinians on his trip to the Middle East.

Arabs have limited options

For Arab leaders, facilitating the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza or battling Palestinian militants on behalf of Israel are nightmare scenarios that would bring fierce domestic criticism and potentially destabilize an already volatile region.

Egypt will host an Arab summit on Feb. 27 and is working with other countries on a counterproposal that would allow for Gaza to be rebuilt without removing its population. Human rights groups say the expulsion of Palestinians would likely violate international law.

Egypt has warned that any mass influx of Palestinians from Gaza would undermine its nearly half-century peace treaty with Israel, a cornerstone of U.S. influence in the region.

Arab and Muslim countries have conditioned any support for postwar Gaza on a return to Palestinian governance with a pathway to statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.

Israel has ruled out a Palestinian state and any role in Gaza for the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, whose forces were driven out when Hamas seized power there in 2007.

Rubio to visit regional heavyweights

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have rejected any mass displacement of Palestinians and would be key to any regional response.

The UAE was the driving force behind the 2020 Abraham Accords in which four Arab states — Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan — normalized relations with Israel during Trump’s previous term. Trump hopes to expand the accords to include Saudi Arabia, potentially offering closer U.S. defense ties, but the kingdom has said that it won’t normalize relations with Israel without a pathway to a Palestinian state.

Rubio won’t be visiting Egypt or Jordan, close U.S. allies at peace with Israel that have refused to accept any influx of Palestinian refugees. Trump has suggested that he might slash U.S. aid to them if they don’t comply, which could be devastating for their economies.

Rubio is also skipping Qatar.

—Natalie Melzer reported from Nahariya, Israel. Samy Magdy contributed to this report from Cairo.

source https://time.com/7225720/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-israel-hamas-must-be-eradicated/

Dangerous Flooding Hits U.S. Southeast as Snow and Frigid Cold Forecast for Northeast

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Heavy rains and dangerous flooding struck the Southeast U.S. as much of the East endured a renewed round of harsh, soggy weather Saturday, with at least one fatality confirmed in Kentucky.

A 73-year-old man was found dead in floodwaters in Clay County, Kentucky, WKYT-TV reported. Clay County Emergency Management Deputy Director Revelle Berry confirmed the fatality but did not provide additional details.

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The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife said there was an investigation into a death and a rescue operation underway in Hart County, WNKY-TV reported. The station reported a juvenile died and a second victim was missing in flooding Saturday evening. The Fish and Wildlife department and the Hart County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for more information from The Associated Press.

Water submerged cars and buildings in Kentucky and mudslides blocked roads in Virginia. Both of the states were under flood warnings, along with Tennessee and Arkansas. The National Weather Service warned residents to stay off the roads.

Forecasters also predicted weekend snowstorms in the Northeast and the threat of tornadoes for the Mississippi Valley.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued a state of emergency in 10 southern counties Saturday night due to heavy rains and flooding, allowing the state to use its resources to help local authorities.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear preemptively declared a state of emergency in Kentucky, where flash flooding was expected into Sunday. Flash flooding hit some roads in Bowling Green and parts of western Kentucky could face up to 8 inches (20.3 centimeters) of rain.

“We want to specifically put assets in places that flood and have flooded in the past,” Beshear said on social media.

Beshear later used social media to update residents on areas in danger of flooding, including Jackson County, and said Kentucky State Police officers were performing wellness checks while shelters were opening in Pike County and Jenny Wiley State Resort Park in Prestonsburg.

Beshear said in a post late Saturday that he had written to the White House requesting an emergency disaster declaration and federal funds for impacted areas.

The Kentucky River Medical Center in the city of Jackson said closed its emergency department and was transferring all patients to two other hospitals in the region. The hospital said it would re-evaluate conditions Sunday morning to determine when it can safely reopen. The north fork of the Kentucky River was forecast to crest nearly 14 feet (4.3 meters) above flood stage that afternoon, the weather service said.

Photos posted by authorities and residents on social media showed cars and buildings underwater in south-central and eastern Kentucky. In Buchanan County, Virginia, the sheriff’s office said multiple roads were blocked by mudslides.

The Simpson County Office of Emergency Management in Kentucky said authorities performed several rescues from stalled-out vehicles in floodwaters.

“Stay home if you can,” the office said on Facebook.

Flash flooding was possible in the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio valleys, the weather service said. In Tennessee, flash flood warnings were issued for much of the middle of the state through the evening.

The National Weather Service called the expected rain a “major, potentially historic, flash flood event.”

Meanwhile heavy snow was expected to blanket much of New England and then transition to sleet, making travel nearly impossible. The heaviest accumulations, possibly a foot (30.5 centimeters) or more, were expected in upstate New York and portions of northern New England.

“Ice accumulations up to a quarter inch are forecast for some areas, making driving conditions dangerous. Heavy icing in some locations may result in downed trees and power outages,” the weather service warned.

Snow and arctic temperatures swept much of the Midwest and Upper Plains, covering roads in eastern Nebraska, northern Iowa and much of Wisconsin. Winter weather advisories were issued for parts of those states and Michigan, with up to 4 inches (10.6 centimeters) of snow predicted throughout Iowa, southern Wisconsin and most of Michigan by Sunday evening.

Frigid polar vortex

Meteorologists said the U.S. was about to get its 10th and coldest polar vortex stretching event this season, with the northern Rockies and northern Plains first in line. Weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole into the U.S. and Europe.

In Denver, where temperatures were expected to dip as low as 14 degrees (minus 10 degrees Celsius) over the weekend, the city opened shelters for those living on the streets.

Forecasters reported an inch (2.5 centimeters) of snow falling every hour just north of Denver. In Boulder County, an unoccupied vehicle that was stuck in the snow after attempting to cross railroad tracks was struck Saturday afternoon and mangled by a train. There were no injuries, but authorities warned drivers about slick roads.

The weather service also warned of extreme cold in the Upper Plains over the coming days, with wind chills ranging from minus 30 degrees (minus 34 degree Celsius) to as low as minus 60 (minus 51 degrees Celsius) in parts of western Montana, North Dakota, northern South Dakota and western Minnesota. People in those areas were urged to stay indoors and make provisions to shelter livestock and other animals.

California struggles with mudslides

Dry weather returned to Southern California after the strongest storm of the year. But the risk of rock and mudslides on wildfire-scarred hillsides continued because dangerous slides can strike even after rain stops, particularly in areas where vegetation that helps keep soil anchored has burned away.

Water, debris and boulders rushed down the mountain in the city of Sierra Madre on Thursday night, trapping at least one car in the mud and damaging several home garages with mud and debris. Bulldozers cleaned up mud-covered streets in the city of 10,000 people.

A storm in the Sierra Nevada dumped 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow over 36 hours. Two Mammoth Mountain ski patrol workers were caught in an avalanche during avalanche mitigation work Friday morning, the resort said in a Facebook post. One was extracted and was responsive, while the other was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.

—Associated Press writers John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; and Olga R. Rodriguez and Eugene Garcia in California contributed.

source https://time.com/7225693/dangerous-flooding-hits-us-southeast-snow-cold-forecast-northeast/

Why Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman Is Playing the Long Game on AI

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Matt Garman took the helm at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of the U.S. tech giant, in June, but he joined the business around 19 years ago as an intern. He went on to become AWS’s first product manager and helped to build and launch many of its core services, before eventually becoming the CEO last year.

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Like many other tech companies, AWS, which is Amazon’s most profitable unit, is betting big on AI. In April 2023, the company launched Amazon Bedrock, which gives cloud customers access to foundation models built by AI companies including Anthropic and Mistral. At its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas in December, the AWS made a series of announcements, including a new generation of foundation AI models, called Nova. It also said that it’s building one of the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers with Anthropic, which it has a strategic partnership with, using a giant cluster of AWS’s Trainium 2 training chips.

TIME spoke with Garman a few days after the re:Invent conference, about his AI ambitions, how he’s thinking about ensuring the technology is safe, and how the company is balancing its energy needs with its emissions targets.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When you took over at AWS in June, there was a perception that Amazon had fallen behind somewhat in the AI race. What have your strategic priorities been for the business over the past few months?

We’ve had a long history of doing AI inside of AWS, and in fact, most of the most popular AI services that folks use, like SageMaker, for the last decade have all been built on AWS. With generative AI we started to really lean in, and particularly when ChatGPT came out, I think everybody was excited about that, and it sparked everyone’s imagination. We [had] been working on generative AI, actually, for a little while before that. And our belief at the time, and it still remains now, was that that AI was going to be a transformational technology for every single industry and workflow and user experience that’s out there. And because of who our customer base is, our strategy was always to build a robust, secure, performance featureful platform that people could really integrate into their actual businesses. And so we didn’t rush really quickly to throw a chatbot up on our website. We really wanted to help people build a platform that could deeply integrate into their data, that would protect their data. That’s their IP, and it’s super important for them, so [we] had security front of mind, and gave you choice across a whole bunch of models, gave you capabilities across a whole bunch of things, and really helped you build into your application and figure out how you could actually get inference and really leverage this technology on an ongoing basis as a key part of what you do in your enterprise. And so that’s what we’ve been building for the last couple of years. In the last year we started to see people realize that that is what they wanted to [do] and as companies started moving from launching a hundred proof of concepts to really wanting to move to production. They realized that the platform is what they needed. They had to be able to leverage their data. They wanted to customize models. They wanted to use a bunch of different models. They wanted to have guardrails. They needed to integrate with their own enterprise data sources, a lot of which lived on AWS, and so their applications were AWS.

We took that long-term view of: get the right build, the right platform, with the right security controls and the right capabilities, so that enterprises could build for the long term, as opposed to [trying to] get something out quickly. And so we’re willing to accept the perception that people thought we were behind, because we had the conviction that we were building the right thing. And I think our customers largely agree.

You’re offering $1 billion worth in cloud credits, in addition to millions previously, for startups. Do you see that opening up opportunities for closer tie-ups at an earlier stage with the next Anthropic or OpenAI?

Yeah, we’ve long invested in startups. It’s one of the core customer bases that AWS has built our business on. We view startups as important to the success of AWS. They give us a lot of great insight. They love using cutting-edge technologies. They give us feedback on how we can improve our products. And frankly, they’re the enterprises of tomorrow, so we want them to start building on AWS. And so from the very earliest days of AWS, startups have been critically important to us, and that’s just doubling down on our commitment to them to help them get going. We recognize that as a startup, getting some help early on, before you get your business going, can make a huge difference. That’s one of the things that we think helps us build that positive flywheel with that customer base. So we’re super excited about continuing to work deeply with startups, and that commitment is part of that. 

You’re also building one of the largest AI supercomputers in the world, with the Trainium 2 chips. Is building the hardware and infrastructure for AI development at the center of your AI strategy? 

It’s a core part of it, for sure. We have this idea that across all of our AWS businesses, that choice is incredibly important for our customers. We want them to be able to choose from the very best technology, whether it comes from us or from third parties. Customers can pick the absolute best product for their application and for their use case and for what they’re looking for from a cost performance trade-off. And so, on the AI side, we want to provide that same amount of choice. Building Tranium 2, which is our our second generation of high-performance AI chip, we think that’s going to provide choice.

Nvidia is an incredibly important partner of ours. Today, the vast majority of AI workloads run on Nvidia technology, and we expect that to continue for a very long time. They make great products, and the team executes really well. And we’re really excited about the choice that Trainium 2 brings. Cost is one of the things that a lot of people worry about when they think about some of these AI workloads, and we think that Trainium 2 can help lower the cost for a lot of customers. And so we’re really excited about that, both for AI companies who are looking to train these massive clusters, [for example] Anthropic is going to be training their next generation, industry-leading model on Trainium 2—We’re building a giant cluster, it’s five times the size of their last cluster—but then the broad swath of folks that are doing inference or using Bedrock or making smaller clusters, I think there’s a good opportunity for customers to lower costs with Trainium.

Those clusters were 30% to 40% cheaper in comparison to Nvidia GPU clusters. What technical innovations are enabling these cost savings?

Number one is that the team has done a fantastic job and produced a really good chip that performs really well. And so from an absolute basis, it gives better performance for some workloads. It’s very workload dependent, but even Apple [says] in early testing, they see up to 50% price performance benefit. That’s massive, if you can really get 30%, 40%, even 50% gains. And some of that is pricing, where we focused on building a chip that we think we can really materially lower the cost to produce for customers. But also then increasing performance—the team has built some innovations, where we see bottlenecks in AI training and inference, that we’ve built into the chips to improve particular function performance, etc. There are probably hundreds of thousands of things that go into delivering that type of performance, but we’re quite excited about it and we’re invested long term in the Trainium line.

The company recently announced the Nova foundation model. Is that aimed at competing directly with the likes of GPT-4 and Gemini?

Yes. We think it’s important to have choice in the realm of these foundational models. Is it a direct competitor? We do think that we can deliver differentiated capabilities and performance. I think that this is such a big opportunity, and has such a material opportunity to change so many different workloads. These really large foundational models—I think there’ll be half a dozen to a dozen of them, probably less than 10. And I think they’ll each be good at different things. [With] our Nova models, we focused on: how do we deliver a really low latency [and] great price performance? They’re actually quite good at doing RAG [Retrieval-Augmented Generation] and agentic workflows. There’s some other models that are better at other things today too. We’ll keep pushing on it. I think there’s room for a number of them, but we’re very excited about the models and the customer reception has been really good.

How does your partnership with Anthropic fit into this strategy?

I think they have one of the strongest AI teams in the world. They have the leading model in the world right now. I think most people consider Sonnet to be the top model for reasoning and for coding and for a lot of other things as well. We get a lot of great feedback from customers on them. So we love that partnership, and we learn a lot from them too, as they build their models on top of Trainium, so there’s a nice flywheel benefit where we get to learn from them, building on top of us. Our customers get to take advantage of leveraging their models inside of Bedrock, and we can grow the business together.

How are you thinking about ensuring safety and responsibility in the development of AI?

It’s super important. And it goes up and down the stack. One of the reasons why customers are excited about models from us, in addition to them being very performant, is that we care a ton about safety. And so there’s a couple of things. One is, you have to start from the beginning when you’re building the models, you think about, how do you have as many controls in there as possible? How do you have safe development to the models? And then I think you need belt and suspenders in this space, because you can, of course, make models say things that you can then say “oh, look what they said.” Practically speaking our customers are trying to integrate these into their applications. And different from being able to produce a recipe for a bomb or something, which we definitely want to have security controls around, safety and control models actually extends specific to very use cases. If you’re building an insurance application, you don’t want your application to give out healthcare advice, whereas, if you’re building healthcare one, you may. So we give a lot of controls to the customers so that they can build guardrails around the responses for models to really help guide how they want models to answer those questions. We launched a number of enhancements at re:Invent including what we call automated reasoning checks, which actually can give you a mathematical proof for if we can be 100% sure that an answer coming back is correct, based on the corpus of data that you have fed into the model. Eliminating hallucinations for a subset of answers is also super important. What’s unsafe in the context of a customer’s application can vary pretty widely, and so we try to give some really good controls for customers to be able to define that, because it’s going to depend on the use cases.

Energy requirements are a huge challenge for this business. Amazon is committed to a net zero emissions target by 2040 and you reported some progress there. How are you planning to continue reducing emissions while investing in large-scale infrastructure for AI?

Number one is you just have to have that long term view as to how we ensure that the world has enough carbon-zero power. We’ve been the single biggest purchaser of renewable energy deals, new energy deals to the grid, so commissioning new solar—solar farms, or wind farms, etc. We’ve been the biggest corporate purchaser each of the last five years, and will continue to do that. Even on that path, that may not be fast enough, and so we’ve actually started investing in nuclear. I do think that that’s an important component. It’ll be part of that portfolio. It can be both large scale nuclear plants as well as, we’ve invested in and we’re very bullish about small modular reactor technology, which is probably six or seven years out from really being in mass production. But we’re optimistic that that can be another solve as part of that portfolio as well.

On the path to carbon zero across the whole business, there’s a lot of invention that’s still going to need to happen. And I won’t sit here and tell you we know all of the answers of how you’re going to have carbon-zero shipping across oceans and airplanes for the retail side of it. And there’s a whole bunch of challenges that the world has to go after, but that’s part of why we made that commitment. We’re putting together plans with with milestones along the way, because it’s an incredibly important target for us. There’s a lot of work to do but we’re committed to doing it.

And as part of that nuclear piece, you’re supporting the development of these nuclear energy projects. What are you doing to ensure that the projects are safe in the communities where they’re deployed?

Look, I actually think one of the worst things for the environment was the mistakes the nuclear industry made back in the ’50s, because it made everyone feel like technology wasn’t that safe, which it may not have been way back then, but, it’s been 70 years, and technology has evolved, and it is actually an incredibly safe, secure technology now. And so a lot of these things are actually fully self-contained and there is no risk of big meltdown or those kind of events that happened before. It’s a super safe technology that has been well-tested and has been in production across the world safely for multiple decades now. There’s still some fear, I think, from people, but, actually, increasingly, many geographies are realizing it’s a quite safe technology.

What do you want to see in terms of policy from the new presidential administration?

We consider the U.S. government to be one of our most important customers that we support up and down the board and will continue to do so. So we’re very excited, and we know many of those folks and are excited to continue to work on that mission together, because we do view it as a mission. It’s both a good business for us, but it’s also an ability to help our country move faster, to control costs, to be more agile. And I think it’s super important, as you think about where the world is going, for our government to have access to the latest technologies. I do think AI and technology is increasingly becoming an incredibly important part of our national defense, probably as much so as guns and other things like that, and so we take that super seriously, and we’re excited to work with the administration. I’m optimistic that President Trump and his administration can help us loosen some of the restrictions on helping build data centers faster. I’m hopeful that they can help us cut through some of that bureaucratic red tape and move faster. I think that’ll be important, particularly as we want to maintain the AI lead for the U.S. ahead of China and others. 

What have you learned about leadership over the course of your career?

We’re fortunate at Amazon to be able to attract some of the most talented, most driven leaders and employees in the world, and I’ve been fortunate enough to get to work with some of those folks [and] to try to clear barriers for them so that they can go deliver outstanding results for our customers. I think if we have a smart team that is really focused on solving customer problems versus growing their own scope of responsibility or internal goals, [and] if you can get those teams focused on that and get barriers out of their way and remove obstacles, then we can deliver a lot. And so that’s largely my job. I view myself as not the expert in any one particular thing. Every one of my team is usually better at whatever we’re trying to do than I am. And my job is to let them go do their job as much as possible, and occasionally connect dots for them on where there’s other parts of the company or other parts of the organization or other customer input that they may not have, that they can integrate and incorporate.

You’ve worked closely with Andy Jassy, is there anything in particular that you’ve learned from watching him as a leader?

I’ve learned a ton. He’s a he’s an exceptional leader. Andy is very good at having very high standards and having high expectations for the teams, and high standards for what we deliver for customers. He had a lot of the vision, together with some of the core folks who were starting AWS, of some important tenets of how we think about the business, of focusing on security and operational excellence and really focusing on how we go deliver for customers. 

What are your priorities for 2025?

Our first priority always is to maintain outstanding security and operational excellence. We want to help customers get ready for that AI transformation that’s going to happen. Part of that, though, is also helping get all of their applications in a place that they can take advantage of AI. So it’s a hugely important priority for us to help customers continue on that migration to the cloud, because if their data is stuck on premise and legacy data stores and other things, they won’t be able to take advantage of AI. So helping people modernize their data and analytics stacks to get that into the cloud and get their data links into a cloud and organized in a way that they can really start to take advantage of AI, is that is a big priority for us. And then it’s just, how do we help scale the AI capabilities, bring the cost down for customers, while [we] keep adding the value. And for 2025, our goal is for customers to move AI workloads really into production that deliver great ROI for their businesses. And that crosses making sure all their data is in the right place, and make sure they have the right compute platforms. We think Trainium is going to be an important part of that. The last bit is helping add some applications on top. We think that we can add [the] extra benefit of helping employees and others get that effectiveness. Some of that is moving contact centers to the cloud. Some of that is helping get conversational assistants and AI assistants in the hands of employees, and so Amazon Q is a big part of that for us. And then it’s also just empowering our broad partner ecosystem to go fast and help customers evolve as well.

source https://time.com/7225660/amazon-aws-matt-garman-interview/