By Tal Shalev, CNN

(CNN) — From almost any other country, the answer would have been a firm no. But when the United Arab Emirates came under a relentless Iranian attack during the US-Israeli war on Tehran, Israel agreed to deploy one of its most sensitive military systems.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly ordered the Israeli military to send an Iron Dome interceptor battery – and soldiers to operate it – to the UAE after a call with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a move that demonstrates just how far ties have come.

Now, as the UAE distances itself from its traditional allies because of their stance on the Iran war, Israel sees an unprecedented opportunity to further strengthen its ties, several Israeli officials have told CNN.

The UAE, which in 2020 became the first Arab nation in 26 years to normalize ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, has said the Iran war could reshape its regional alliances, citing disappointment with some of its closest Arab partners. Abu Dhabi would instead become closer to Israel and nations that supported it during the war, including France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, officials say.

“Amid the limited positive developments to emerge from the Iran war, this relationship (with Abu Dhabi) stands out as ‘good news,’” an Israeli source with close knowledge of relations with the UAE told CNN. “Ties have advanced to a new level, including at the leadership level.”

UAE officials and state-linked commentators have in recent weeks issued rare public rebukes of Arab nations for failing to step up as the country bore the brunt of Iran’s attacks during Tehran’s retaliation in the US-Israeli war.

The stance of fellow Gulf Arab monarchies “was the weakest historically,” Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, said at a conference in Dubai this week.

“I expected it from the Arab League and I’m not surprised,” Gargash said, referring to the bloc of 22 Arab states. “But I did not expect it from the Gulf (states), and I am surprised.”

As criticism mounted that Israel and the United States had drawn the Gulf into a war most regional states opposed, Gargash doubled down on the need for ties with both, telling CNN that “Israeli influence (will) become more prominent in the Gulf, not less.”

Israel “did not even envision this closeness when we signed the Abraham Accords,” an Israeli diplomatic source told CNN, referring to the deepening military ties.

“The war brought an unprecedented level of closeness, driven largely by a shared sense of fate – both countries were attacked and the enemy is common,” said another Israeli official. “This will definitely be reflected in the expansion of relations from here on.”

This week, the UAE pulled out of the OPEC oil cartel after nearly six decades of membership. Asked by CNN if the group’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, was consulted on the move, UAE Minister of Energy Suhail Al Mazrouei said it was a “sovereign national decision.”

Experts say that while the UAE had felt constrained by the group and had been seeking to exit for years, it chose to remain in deference to Saudi Arabia.

The Israeli official who spoke to CNN cast Abu Dhabi’s departure from OPEC as evidence of a widening gap with Gulf positions and shift toward closer alignment with Israel and the US.

“It increases the UAE’s distance from traditional Gulf policy and transforms them into something entirely different in the region and for Israel,” the official said, adding that the UAE “found themselves alone – and Israel and the United States were there for them.”

First Israeli deployment in an Arab state

The covert Israeli deployment of the country’s

By Amarachi Orie, CNN

(CNN) — Human children often copy their friends’ preferences for toys or clothes, while adults are prone to jumping on popular diets or lifestyle trends. Now it turns out that this sort of imitation is not unique to our species, as wild parrots learn to try new foods by copying their peers, a new study suggests.

Animals living in urban environments often encounter new or unusual resources, such as garbage, street trees, exotic plants or invasive species.

For animals in these ever-changing cityscapes, expanding their diet to include novel food items can be crucial, according to the study published in the journal PLOS Biology on Thursday.

However, they are often wary of trying unfamiliar food, as it could be poisonous to them or carry parasites, said the researchers in Australia, Germany, the US and Switzerland.

One tool some animals use to find out whether it’s worth taking the risk is social learning, which they do by observing or interacting with others or their items.

This strategy has been seen among wild jackdaws and wild rooks. Lab studies on rats in Norway have also shown that rats can acquire food preferences by smelling the breath of clued-up individuals.

However, social learning strategies have been little studied in the wild compared to labs, according to the researchers.

To find out if wild parrots use the technique, the researchers studied more than 700 wild sulphur-crested cockatoos across five roosting communities in central Sydney.

Two parrots from a Balmoral Beach community and two from a Clifton Gardens community were trained –– after being initially very averse –– to eat almonds that were artificially dyed either blue or red, respectively.

Then, a food dispenser containing both colored almonds was introduced into the communities in daily sessions for 10 days.

After seeing the trained parrots take them, curious individuals started eating the colored almonds in the Balmoral Beach community within seven minutes, and in the Clifton Gardens community in less than one minute, according to the study. In both roosts, the parrots ate both colors from day one.

In a third community, where there were no trained cockatoos, it took four days for the parrots to try the novel food items. But after one parrot –– who had moved from the Balmoral Beach community, where she had watched others eat them 130 times –– took the risk, 15 other parrots also ate the almonds within 10 minutes.

The researchers expanded the experiment to include two more roosts.

By the end of the 20-day experiment, 349 individuals across five communities were eating colored almonds, according to the study.

Young parrots are ‘very conformist’

The researchers also looked at whether the parrots were selective in who they copied and found “a clear sex bias,” lead study author and behavioral ecologist Julia Penndorf, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK , told CNN on Thursday.

Análisis por Aaron Blake, CNN

Cuando se escriba la historia de la presidencia de Donald Trump, es muy probable que la palabra “soberbia” ocupe un lugar destacado.

Basta con observar cómo ha intentado aplicar su nombre —y su estética— en todo Estados Unidos y en el Gobierno.

En un momento de importante y continua tensión económica, decidió demoler repentinamente el ala este de la Casa Blanca para construir un gran y lujoso salón de baile donde celebrar fiestas con personas influyentes.

Y aunque su popularidad está cayendo a niveles pocas veces vistos en la historia reciente de Estados Unidos, ha seguido adelante con sus esfuerzos sumamente poco ortodoxos para estampar su nombre e imagen en todo tipo de edificios y productos gubernamentales, que van desde el Centro Kennedy y el Instituto de la Paz de Estados Unidos hasta pases para parques nacionales, cuentas de ahorro, un sitio web de medicamentos recetados, una nueva clase de acorazados, aviones de combate, una visa para personas ricas, monedas de oro, billetes de dólar y, ahora, pasaportes.

Hasta ahora, hemos contado con pocas encuestas para medir la acogida que estas iniciativas han tenido entre el pueblo. Pero, al parecer, los estadounidenses las consideran tan espantosas como podrían parecer.

Las primeras encuestas sobre el salón de baile mostraron que era abrumadoramente impopular.

Pero incluso en aquel momento, era comprensible pensar que aquello era temporal. Quizás a los estadounidenses les resultó chocante ver la demolición de una gran parte de la Casa Blanca.

Tal vez comprendieran el valor de un espacio para eventos más amplio —que, según Trump, se financia con fondos privados— para un complejo como la Casa Blanca, que lo necesita.

O tal vez no.

Una nueva encuesta del Washington Post-ABC News reveló que los estadounidenses lo odian tanto hoy como en octubre.

Si bien en aquel entonces se oponían a la demolición del ala este y al proyecto del nuevo salón de baile con un 56 % frente a un 28 %, hoy en día se oponen con un 56 % frente a un 28 %.

Los republicanos parecieron vislumbrar una oportunidad durante el fin de semana. Se lanzaron de lleno a una campaña a favor del salón de baile tras el tiroteo en la cena de corresponsales de la Casa Blanca en el hotel Washington Hilton.

La idea —al menos tal como se planteó inicialmente— era que el salón de baile sería un lugar más seguro para este tipo de eventos (sin importar que, en realidad, no funcionaría para esta cena, por multitud de razones).

Incluso consideraron gastar US$ 400 millones de los contribuyentes en ello, en lugar de las donaciones privadas que Trump había dicho que lo financiarían.

La encuesta del Post-ABC se realizó antes y después del tiroteo. Si bien se observó un modesto aumento en el apoyo republicano al salón de baile posteriormente, un análisis estadístico demostró que, en general, no hubo “ningún cambio significativo en la opinión pública relacionado con el tiroteo”.

Los estadounidenses seguían oponiéndose al salón de baile en una proporción de 2 a 1. Y aquellos que tenían una opinión firme al respecto seguían oponiéndose en una proporción de 3 a 1, igual que antes del tiroteo.

El veredicto de la encuesta fue aún peor para otros dos intentos de Trump de ornamentación.

¿El plan de Trump de construir un arco

By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — ExxonMobil and Chevron, America’s two largest oil companies, both reported a sharp drop in profit for the first three months of this year. But much bigger profits likely lay ahead because of rising oil prices during the war with Iran.

Oil and gas prices rose in the runup to the Iran war and surged after the war started on February 28. Big Oil companies like Exxon and Chevron tend to become more profitable when oil prices rise.

The companies said their quarterly results were hurt by financial derivatives trades that fell in value because oil prices spiked before that oil could be delivered.

ExxonMobil reported net income of $4.2 billion, down 46% from a year earlier, while Chevron’s $2.2 billion net profit was down 37%. But both companies reported results that were well above Wall Street forecasts for the period.

Analysts expect both companies’ profits to soar the rest of the year. Ahead of the companies’ early Friday earnings reports, the consensus estimate from analysts was for ExxonMobil’s second-quarter earnings to more than double from a year ago and for full-year earnings to climb 46%. Chevron profits are expected to more than triple in the current quarter and increase 56% for the year.

That would give the companies their best year since 2022, when the war in Ukraine drove the average US gas price to a record $5.02 a gallon.

The current average US gas price stood Friday at $4.39, up 39 cents in just the last 9 days and up 47% since the start of the war in Iran.

Neither ExxonMobil nor Chevron lost significant amounts of oil production after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, trapping 20% of the world’s output during the year. They produce most of their oil in the United States or elsewhere in the world outside the Middle East. But the closing of the strait has roiled global energy markets, which set the price of oil futures higher.

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By Jen Christensen, CNN

Atlanta (CNN) — After a potluck supper, a short guided meditation and a quick lesson in resistance singing, a couple dozen people made their way to a quiet room at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. As a choir warmed up downstairs, they gathered – some strangers, some friends – to discuss a topic that’s normally off-limits: death.

“I have had a lot of interaction and contact with death in my adult life. And there are not really many places where I feel comfortable talking about any of that,” one woman dressed in black, who asked CNN not to publish her name, told the group. “Oftentimes, if I have a friend or someone over for coffee and I bring death up, they’ll take the subject off someplace else so that it’s happier.”

“I don’t really regard death as an unhappy topic,” she said, prompting several nods from the group. “It’s just, you know, I find it a necessary conversation.”

This “necessary conversation” didn’t happen among funeral directors or grief counselors. This group – which included women with graying hair and comfortable OnCloud running shoes, a doctoral student scribbling in a tiny notebook and men wearing office casual chinos – were talking death over tea and vegan strawberry cookies in a gathering commonly called a Death Cafe.

Death Cafes are popping up in churches, coffee shops and even historic cemeteries across the country.

Often advertised on Facebook or through other social media, the free meetings are open to everyone and focus on informal, unstructured conversation about mortality.

For such a weighty topic, laughter often punctuated the wide-ranging conversations at the two Death Cafes I visited in Atlanta. People leaned in and listened intently as others spoke with sincerity.

Topics varied, and so did opinions, but all comments were welcome.

Some admitted to feeling denial that their death would come. Some didn’t even like to say the word “death.”

Still others said they envied people who had a belief system that guaranteed life after death. One woman leaned on her walker as she spoke warmly but quietly, saying it didn’t matter what happened next.

“I mean, we’re living things, and living things take their time as they go away to dust,” Marycallie Laxton said. “I don’t know what happens to our spirit, our energy. We are electric beings. So, does the light just turn off?

“I don’t care,” she answered her own question with a laugh. “I don’t care.”

Some attendees discussed harrowing near-death experiences and how motivated they felt afterward to live life with more vigor. And in what may be a sign of the times, more than one person talked about being terrified as they witnessed a shooting.

“It was so close – it had to be no more than 100 yards – and people started stampeding and running. It was one of the scariest moments of my life, and I remember thinking, ‘why? How come that doesn’t hit me?’ ” said Rosemary Kimble, a Death Cafe host.

Some conversations took a more esoteric turn. Many mentioned being with dying parents or siblings who started talking to people who weren’t there. Several said their loved ones saw long-dead parents or friends who seemed ready to welcome them.

“It’s different every time,” said Kimble, a soft-spoken death doula, also known as an end-of-life doula. Death doulas provide holistic, emotional and sometimes spiritual support to people and their families during the dying process. “With death, there’s an