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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, May 16th. Here's what we're covering.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump is wrapping up his tour of the Middle East today. He set out on the trip focused on deals, telling aides he wanted to come back with $1 trillion in agreements from the countries he visited, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Times has been looking at some of the deals his administration struck this week, and a few of the most notable are on artificial intelligence. The administration announced that they'll deliver hundreds of thousands of coveted NVIDIA chips, the most advanced in the industry, to the UAE in order to build one of the world's largest data center hubs there.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The U.S. also struck multibillion-dollar agreements to sell advanced chips to Saudi Arabia. The scale of the deals and their potential implications have been controversial, even among Trump's own advisors. They've been divided over a single question, which is, is the Trump administration outsourcing the industry of the future?
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trip Mickel covers the tech industry for The Times. We've talked to more than a dozen people on both sides of the divide on this.
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--:-- Trip Mickel: There are people who are former tech executives who are playing a leading role in negotiating these deals, and they really believe it's important for the United States to bring the Middle East into the fold of American AI so that they use U.S. technology, which will then bring money back to U.S. and American companies.
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--:-- Trip Mickel: And then there are people on the other side of the divide. They look at this and say, well, the true America first approach would be to concentrate as much of this technology in the United States and build the industry here and not repeat the mistakes of yesteryear when we outsource manufacturing abroad.
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--:-- Trip Mickel: And they're wondering, like, because we're allowing giant data centers to be built in the UAE, are we sacrificing jobs for electricians and pipe fitters and other people here in the United States? And also paving the way to allow the Middle East to develop its own AI companies that could rival and challenge leading American AI companies like OpenAI.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Tripp says the planned shipments of advanced chips have also raised national security concerns. The U.S. has long tried to keep the chips out of the hands of China, but China's close tie to the Gulf states could allow the country to gain access to the technology.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the Trump administration is mobilizing new resources to try and crack down on immigration and carry out the president's promise of mass deportations.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In just the past few months, the administration has signed agreements with local police to let them make immigration arrests. They've also moved to enlist federal agents from the DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service to round up undocumented immigrants.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the Times has learned they're now trying to pull in 20 members of the National Guard, a request that's currently being evaluated by the Pentagon.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the same time, on the U.S.-Mexico border, the size, scope, and sophistication of the active-duty military presence has been growing. The Pentagon has sent nearly 9,000 troops there to stop migrants from crossing, along with spy planes, surveillance drones, helicopters, and a fleet of armored combat vehicles.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Times journalists recently traveled to the border to see the operation in progress, where the troops have primarily been supporting law enforcement agencies and acting as extra eyes and ears on the ground.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Some lawmakers and independent analysts have raised concerns that the border missions will drain resources and distract combat units from training for potential overseas deployments.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: But several commanders and some troops along the border told the Times that their work there has given them real-world practice and a sense of purpose. They've been using skills like surveillance that they'd otherwise just be trying out in exercises at their bases.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And re-enlistment among younger soldiers, who never had the opportunity to serve in combat tours, has been surging.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: As for the mission itself, a general overseeing the operations claims that the increased military patrols have pushed Mexican cartels and smugglers into more remote areas, making it harder for them to operate.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And border crossings, which were already dropping sharply at the end of the Biden administration, have plunged even further. This April, about 8,000 people were arrested after crossing the border illegally. Last year, that number was 128,000.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: A Times analysis of air traffic control staffing shows just how much the shortages that have fed into the chaos at Newark International Airport in recent weeks are happening across the entire country.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: According to new data obtained by the Times, just two out of 313 facilities are operating at the government's own recommended staffing levels. That means 99% of the country's air traffic control centers are not.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Beyond the staffing issues, which have been building for years, there have been growing concerns about the aging technology behind air traffic control systems.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: In just the past month, there were two communications and radar outages that made it impossible for controllers to monitor planes at Newark.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And this week, a second air traffic control facility in Colorado also experienced a 90-second communications outage.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: So, I guess what I'm trying to get at is during those 90 seconds, was there a significantly heightened danger to the flight?
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Capitol Hill this week, senators pressed federal aviation officials on the safety and staffing concerns.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From where I sit, we want to remove all risk to the flying public, and that is what's concerning to me is how do we remove...
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Getting the country's air traffic control centers fully staffed will be a tall order. There aren't nearly enough people in the training pipeline to become new controllers.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And in the parts of the country with the busiest and most complex airspace, certifying new staff can take between two and four years.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Finally, a baby boy in Pennsylvania born with a rare, often fatal disorder, has been healed with the world's first-ever personalized gene-editing treatment.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Shortly after K.J. Muldoon was born, doctors diagnosed him with a CPS1 deficiency that causes ammonia to build up in the body. That can cause irreversible brain damage.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Half of all babies with the disorder die in the first week. The condition's caused by a single gene mutation, one incorrect DNA letter among the three billion in the human genome.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: His doctor reached out to researchers asking for help, and dozens of them put everything else aside for months to scramble to find a cure.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: At times, one scientist said they were really just shooting from the hip. But in a major medical breakthrough, they were able to create an injectable, custom gene therapy for KJ that basically carried instructions to fix the mutation.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The breakthrough built on decades of federally funded research and relies on a technology called CRISPR, basically a molecular GPS that can crawl along a person's DNA until it finds the spot that needs to be edited.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now nine and a half months old, KJ is healthy enough that plans are underway to send him home from the hospital, where he spent his whole short life.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the implications of his treatment go far beyond just him. Custom gene therapy could eventually be used to treat the tens of millions of other Americans with rare genetic disorders, or even common conditions like sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines, but stick around, we have a Friday news quiz for you right after the credits.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: This show is made by Will Jarvis, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Isabella Anderson, Larissa Anderson, Jake Lucas, Jana Margolotti, Zoe Murphy, Katie O'Brien, and Paula Schumann.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Now for the quiz. This month, we have been giving you the chance to test your news knowledge on Fridays.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: So we've got questions about three stories The Times has covered this week. Can you answer them all?
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: First up. The job you've done is second to none. You look at this, it's so beautiful. As a construction person, I'm seeing perfect marble. This is what they call perfecto.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: President Trump toured the Middle East this week, including a stop at the royal court in Qatar, where he praised the marble ceilings and one particular component of the elaborate cavalry parade that greeted him.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: What was it that caught his eye? I'm going to give you a second. I'll give you a hint. It's an animal, if that helps.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The answer? We appreciate those camels. I haven't seen camels like that in a long time. Trump was excited about the camels.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The welcome committee included men on camelback lining the road for the president's visit.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Up next on Capitol Hill this week, you know I don't want to be it seem like I'm being evasive, but I don't think people should be taking advice, medical advice from me.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: While facing questions from lawmakers, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told them that Americans should not look to him for medical advice.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: But in just the past few weeks, Kennedy has repeatedly used his position to weigh in on a range of health topics, including saying that one common ingredient in a lot of food is poison.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: What ingredient was he talking about?
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The answer is sugar. Kennedy said, quote, sugar is poison and Americans need to know that it's poison.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: If you said food dyes, that is a very solid guess. Kennedy has said he's trying to ban petroleum-based dyes from foods in the U.S., where they're used in everything from cereals to sports drinks.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: And last question, tomorrow is the grand finale for Eurovision, the most watched cultural event in the world.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Most of the competitors in this campy global singing contest don't go on to become superstars, but two household names actually did get a boost from their Eurovision appearances back in the day.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Let's see if you can name them based on a clip of their performance.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: First, from 1974, I'm just going to play you the first few seconds. One more time. That is Abba, the Swedish pop legends with Waterloo.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Second one, a little harder. The year is 1988. That is Celine Dion, almost 10 years before her heart went on and on and on.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: Notably, this year, the organizers are really trying to keep the focus on the music, not on politics, which have threatened to overshadow the performances in recent years.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've now actually banned performers from, quote, causing controversies.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The country of Georgia knows a little bit about that. They once tried to perform this disco hit. We don't want to put in. The negative mood is killing the crew.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: It was titled, We Don't Want to Put In. Eurovision officials objected to the lyrics, saying it sounded a little too much like a not-so-subtle dig at Russia's leader.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: That is it for the news quiz. If you want to tell us how you did, you can always email us at theheadlines at nytimes.com.
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--:-- Tracy Mumford: The show will be back on Monday, and we'll try a few more questions next Friday. Thank you.
