Good morning!

Been staring at screens a lot? Sore, itchy eyes? You may have bixonimania. At least, that’s what your AI chatbot might tell you.

Trouble is, the condition is fake. Two years ago, medical researcher Almira Osmanovic Thunström wanted to test how easily large language models (llms) would swallow fake information and spit it back out as health advice. As reported in Nature, her team uploaded two fake preprint papers to SciProfiles about the bogus condition to see what would happen.

• They wrote the papers under a fake author from a nonexistent university and deliberately littered them with obvious red flags. They called the disease a “mania” (“no eye condition would be called mania—that’s a psychiatric term”).
• They acknowledged “Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy … and her lab onboard the uss Enterprise,” funding from “the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery” and “the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad.”
• They referenced “50 made-up individuals” in the study and explicitly wrote: “[T]his entire paper is made up.”

Major AI chatbots didn’t get the jokes. They treated bixonimania as real:

• Chatgpt evaluated users’ symptoms as possibly related to it. Microsoft Copilot called it “an intriguing and relatively rare condition.” Google’s Gemini accepted it as real, linked it to blue light, and suggested seeing an ophthalmologist. Perplexity AI invented a specific prevalence (1 in 90,000).

By early this year, while some models had grown more skeptical, others still described it as an “emerging” condition with supporting papers.

• One of the fake papers was cited in a genuine peer-reviewed article in Cureus by Indian researchers, who presented bixonimania as a real condition. The Cureus paper was retracted a couple weeks ago, after the journal finally realized “this entire paper is made up.” Remarkably, the (human) authors disagreed with the retraction.

The experiment shows how llms can absorb and regurgitate fabricated medical information, especially when it is packaged to look professional. A related study this year found llms are more prone to “hallucinations” on text that mimics real clinical papers.

As a result, not only can people receive dangerous health advice, but bad information can leak back into the scientific literature via AI-assisted citations.

• This is a huge problem. Academic “paper mills” have been publishing fraudulent stories long before Chatgpt. Now, supercharged by AI, they are filling the scholarly record with fake scientific research. New studies, fraudulent and legitimate, then rely on some of this material, generating still more junk science.

Despite all its dangers, though, intelligent human beings have decided that artificial intelligence is a plague we cannot live without.

• We must floor the gas pedal in developing it and integrating it into our lives—even if it triggers a cyber-apocalypse—so our enemies don’t get there first. Read more in “Why We Must Develop AI (Even If It Kills Us).”

It’s an astonishing gamble. And I am increasingly convinced it will play a significant role in the events prophesied to bring this present evil world to its spectacular end—and no role whatever in the civilization God Himself establishes to take its place.

Israel and Lebanon to Talk Peace?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced April 9 direct talks with the Lebanese government in hopes of a deal to disarm Hezbollah and establish peaceful relations between the two countries. This could lead to massive geopolitical realignment for the Middle East. But is the Lebanese government a reliable partner?

• Israel and the U.S. claim the April 8 ceasefire with Iran doesn’t cover Israel’s war with Hezbollah. Iran claims it does and used Israel’s ongoing attacks on Hezbollah as rationale to continue threatening civilian cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
• Iran has also reportedly been extorting ships it declines to attack, effectively installing a terrorist “toll booth” controlling 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas. This all jeopardizes the ceasefire.

Israel says it will still fight Hezbollah while talks are ongoing. But a member of the Lebanese president’s office told bbc today that Lebanon will participate in direct negotiations “if, and only if, there is a ceasefire in place beforehand,” as the bbc put it.

• Governments and media are framing Prime Minister Netanyahu as the primary reason the ceasefire failed.

U.S. President Donald Trump may be pressuring Israel to back down on its war against Hezbollah, just as he has with Israel’s war against Hamas. Trump could be tempted to pressure Israel to accept a premature ceasefire with Hezbollah if it means concessions from Iran.

In a column today, commentator Melanie Phillips expressed concern that Trump is “negotiating at all with religious fanatics, whose infernal agenda is totally nonnegotiable and for whom negotiation merely demonstrates their opponent’s weak-minded refusal to go the military distance.” She continued:

Maybe Trump is using these negotiations as a strategic feint. The suspicion is, however, that he believes that every conflict can be resolved through a deal. If so, that’s a disastrous category error. Iran has always wrong-footed negotiators because they believe that, like everyone else in the world, the regime is susceptible to appeals to personal or national self-interest.

The embattled Jewish state, after a number of miracle victories in its early history, has made itself strategically dependent on the United States. This means that even as it is fighting for its life against a powerful terrorist group on its border, the U.S. may have pressured it to “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.”

• Israel bows to outside pressure and makes an agreement with Hezbollah—and by extension Iran—at its own peril.

Bible prophecy describes the future of 21st-century Lebanon. In fact, it forecasts that it will split with Iran and join an anti-Iran alliance. But it’s probably not the alliance you’re thinking of.

German Chancellor: Israel Fighting Hezbollah ‘Must Not Be Allowed’

Following the U.S.-Iran ceasefire announced Tuesday evening, Israel launched a major strike in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, escalating its ongoing campaign against Hezbollah, an Iran-aligned terrorist proxy. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz took the opportunity to try to stop the Israelis.

• “The severity with which Israel is waging war there could cause the peace process as a whole to fail, and that must not be allowed to happen,” Merz stated.
• He also announced that Germany is resuming talks with Iran, and he urged President Trump to negotiate.

After the United States, Israel considers Germany to be its strongest ally and therefore takes such admonishments seriously.

• The day before, Merz joined seven other European leaders and Canada in issuing a statement calling on the ceasefire to extend to Lebanon.

France is applying similar pressure, with President Emmanuel Macron posting on social media on Wednesday after speaking with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun:

I expressed France’s full solidarity in the face of the indiscriminate strikes carried out by Israel in Lebanon today, which resulted in a very high number of civilian casualties. We condemn these strikes in the strongest possible terms.

These comments should serve as a warning to Israel to be wary of its allies.

• By calling on Israel to stop its strikes, Merz is portraying Germany as a peace negotiator and a player in Lebanon—and implying that if the fragile ceasefire fails, Israel will be blamed.

Why does Germany care about Lebanon? “It is all part of Germany’s global strategy,” Gerald Flurry writes in The King of the South.

• The Bible specifically prophesies in Psalm 83 of an alliance between Germany and a consortium of Middle Eastern nations, including Lebanon, which is mentioned in the passage by its ancient name “Tyre.” That alliance exists to destroy Israel, and it is forming now.

Mr. Flurry writes, “[E]xpect Europe to consolidate its influence in Lebanon even further,” which is happening. Germany is befriending Lebanon at the expense of its relations with Israel.

Watch for Germany to express support for Israel in the future and to become an even stronger ally—only to betray the Jewish nation. The chancellor’s comments show the anti-Jewish spirit brewing again within Germany.

IN OTHER NEWS

Russia provokes weak-willed Britain: Russian submarines in the North Sea recently threatened vital energy and data cables, British Defense Secretary John Healey revealed yesterday. According to Healey, a British warship accompanied by a marine patrol aircraft dropped sonar buoys in a monthlong operation that eventually deterred the three submarines. The incident “raises further questions about the state of Britain’s Armed Forces,” the Telegraph commented. It also shows that nations like Russia no longer fear British military might.

France accuses Hungarian government of betrayal: Yesterday French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, had betrayed the “solidarity between EU members” by reportedly disclosing confidential EU information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Barrot also added that “unity must have priority, otherwise we will become vassals,” highlighting core EU member nations’ dislike and distrust for Hungary, an EU member state controlled by an EU-skeptical authoritarian, Viktor Orbán. The Bible prophesies that Europe will become a superpower dominated by “10 kings” under one overall dictator. Trumpete ditor in chief Gerald Flurry has said that Hungary is likely to be one of these 10 nations, so expect Hungary to both remain authoritarian and develop solidarity with the rest of the EU.

Trump’s next target after Iran is NATO: Following a closed-door meeting in the White House with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said the president was “clearly disappointed” that nato allies refused to support the war against Iran. Asked by reporters whether Trump said he wants to withdraw from nato, Rutte declined to directly answer. Formal withdrawal would require approval from Congress, but the Trump administration is reportedly exploring another option: withdrawing troops from countries that have been uncooperative and placing them in countries that have been cooperative. Following the meeting with Rutte, President Trump posted on social media: “nato wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!” This is a reminder that U.S. problems with its European nato allies long predate the Iran conflict—and predate Trump’s first term, in fact. We are witnessing the end of nato.

Joint U.S.-Iran control over Strait of Hormuz? On Wednesday, President Trump commented that he was considering an agreement that allows Iran to charge ships for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. His proposal sparked outrage in Europe. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called it “unacceptable” and “illegal.” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also called it unacceptable. The dispute over the strait further reveals the importance of global shipping and the outsize power Iran has due to its willingness to terrorize it, and it intensifies the worsening split between the U.S. and Europe.

The U.S. birth rate hit a new all-time low in 2025, according to an April Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. The general birth rate dropped for the sixth year in a row to 53 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. The total number of babies born decreased by 1 percent to roughly 3.6 million. Experts say this decline comes from financial pressures, lifestyle choices and broader shifts in society. As we explain in “Heading Into a Baby-Free World,” this is part of a catastrophic global trend with an unseen spiritual cause.