For the past five years, Benjamin Netanyahu has been on trial for corruption, accused of accepting lavish gifts in exchange for political favors and of using his influence to pressure media moguls into giving him more favorable coverage. On Sunday, the Israeli leader formally asked the country’s president, Isaac Herzog, to let him off the hook, requesting a pardon before the court had even reached a verdict on the allegations. The brazen gambit immediately provoked sharp responses within Israel.

Updated with new questions at 5:15 p.m. ET on December 2, 2025.
I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, G. Duchêne
Day 2 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a stellar nursery. Reflection nebula GN 04.32.8 is part of the stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud, roughly 480 light-years from Earth. Enormous clouds of dust surround a group of chaotic young stars, illuminated by their starlight.

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For the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has seemed uncharacteristically passive. His own Republican Party bucked him on the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein—in a movement partly led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once seemed like his staunchest apostle. His U.S.

I have much extolled here the value of new knowledge. Let us now hear a counterargument: Some months after Yale gave Mark Twain an honorary degree in 1888, the writer’s schedule cleared up enough for him to pull together a speech advising that the good people of the college learn less.
“I found the astronomer of the university gadding around after comets and other such odds and ends,” he wrote.

Presidents have always sent people to lead the Pentagon who respect the institutions and personnel of the armed forces, not least because Americans tend to bristle at any sign that an administration does not unreservedly support the men and women of the U.S. military. (Just ask Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom were castigated for such supposed disrespect.