🌊 The Apple of Your AI

Scheduling text messages will be a game changer…

Apple’s new iOS will allow iPhone users to schedule text messages starting this fall. Some iPhone users are saying they’re going to schedule all their happy birthday texts the second the feature comes out. Others are saying they’ll schedule their late-night drunk texts before drinking. Meanwhile, we’re going to use this feature to set “sorry can’t go out tonight, Nacho Libre is on” texts for 8 pm every Friday night of 2025. Let us know what you think of this development in the Question of the Day!

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Conservatives Advance in EU

Conservative parties made significant inroads in European Parliament (EP) elections

• The EP holds EU-wide elections every 5 years. The vote determines the makeup of the 720-seat EP and is seen as measuring the EU’s political mood

• A coalition of center-right parties won the most seats, meaning it will likely retain leadership of the parliament. It was the only centrist group to win more seats than it did last time

• Center-left and left-wing parties struggled, while nationalist ones surged: The EP’s single biggest party will now be France’s main nationalist one, while nationalists also performed well in Germany, Austria, and Hungary

Dig Deeper

• France’s National Rally – which has been unsuccessfully trying to gain power in France for decades – is poised to become the EP’s largest party. It won 31% of the French vote, twice the support President Macron’s party received

• The result was seen as undermining Macron’s government’s legitimacy. Macron responded by calling parliamentary elections in France for late June/early July

• His goal – to align the centrist parties to crush the National Rally’s momentum – is a big bet

KEY STORY

Israeli Gov’t Splits

Centrist political leader Benny Gantz resigned from Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet

• Gantz – the former commander of Israel’s military – has been one of Netanyahu’s chief political rivals, but joined Netanyahu’s “war cabinet” in a show of post-October 7 political unity

• He has since accused Netanyahu of failing to do enough to retrieve the hostages and end the war. Last month, he gave him an ultimatum: Present a plan to end the war, or have Gantz resign

• The deadline passed on Sunday, prompting Gantz and another moderate general to resign

Dig Deeper

• Gantz hopes to force elections, which polls suggest he would win, thereby replacing Netanyahu as prime minister. For now, Netanyahu retains enough support to keep his position, although Gantz’s departure leaves him more dependent on his further-right allies, who have advocated for continuing the war

• “After October 7, just like hundreds of thousands of patriotic Israelis, my colleagues and I [joined the cabinet] even though we knew it was a bad government,” Gantz said. He added, “We did it because we knew it was a bad government," but said the government is now preventing "true victory"

• Netanyahu accused Gantz of playing “small-time politics”

KEY STORY

Apple Unveils “Intelligence”

Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence

• This week is Apple’s annual developer conference. It’s been billed as the most significant in a decade because Apple is debuting its AI integration

• On Monday, Apple unveiled “Apple Intelligence,” a software update that implements AI features across Apple products. Apple said the AI would proof text, write messages, make Siri conversational, and more

• It also announced a partnership with OpenAI to put ChatGPT on devices. Elon Musk called that an “unacceptable security violation,” and said he’d no longer allow Apple devices at his companies

Dig Deeper

• Apple has been lagging in the AI race and some investors believe it will no longer be able to convince users to buy new products without innovative features

• The hype around WWDC helped drive Apple’s stock market value up $471B in the weeks preceding it, though, as excitement grew that Apple would unveil valuable new AI technology

• Apple stock ended Monday down 1.9%, but started Tuesday up 3.4%

ROCA PARTNER

Exploring India Made Easy

• India is one of the world’s most interesting countries, yet visiting can be complicated: Organizing an itinerary, booking good hotels, finding safe drivers – it can be nearly impossible to figure out all of that before a trip, let alone at a good rate!

• Indus Travels does that for you by working with vetted local guides who organize amazing trips at affordable rates

Dig Deeper

• For a limited time, they’re offering their Iconic India trip for $400 off

• This 14-day tour will take you to Delhi's landmarks, Mandawa's historic frescoes, Pushkar's sacred lake, Jodhpur's majestic fort, Udaipur's serene lakes, Bundi's enchanting streets, Jaipur's grand forts, and the awe-inspiring Taj Mahal in Agra

• Rates start from US$1699 per person including flights, accommodation, daily breakfast, and transportation. Book now for an unforgettable adventure!

KEY STORY

Elephants: Say My Name

Elephants communicate with each other using individual names, a new study found

• The study – published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution – had researchers use AI to identify 469 distinct “calls,” in which elephants made a unique noise to communicate with a specific elephant. They played the calls to the elephants and found that when an elephant heard its “name,” it reacted “energetically”; when it didn’t, it did not

• The finding makes elephants and humans the only animals known to communicate using names

Dig Deeper

• While other animals, such as dolphins and parrots, make noises to communicate, those are considered arbitrary – not unique to the specific animal

• The CEO of Save the Elephants used the study to draw attention to human-elephant similarities: We both have “extended family units with rich social lives, underpinned by highly developed brains,” he said

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🧑‍⚖️ Closing arguments were heard in Hunter Biden’s trial. Prosecutors claimed to have presented evidence that “was ugly…overwhelming…[and] absolutely necessary”

💉 Moderna’s two-in-one flu and Covid shot passed a late-stage test, paving the way for the shot’s approval. The trial found it to be as safe and effective as the separate vaccines

🏀 University of Connecticut men’s basketball coach and back-to-back national champion Dan Hurley turned down a six-year, $70M offer to coach the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers

🗑️ A study by Chinese scientists found microplastics in all 40 semen samples they tested. A separate study recently found microplastics in all testicle samples tested

🖥️ Hackers posted 273 GB of data stolen from the New York Times to 4chan. The leak contains “basically all source code belonging to The New York Times Company,” according to the anonymous user who posted the files

COMMUNITY

We founded RocaNews because we wanted news companies to give us just the facts – not tell us what to think. That inspires us to do the “Roca Votes” story each week, in which we summarize a controversial topic and see how Roca Nation feels about it.

Today’s Question: What’s the best/worst application of scheduling text messages you can think of?

Yesterday’s question: Who’s your favorite talk show or game show host of all time? Why?

Today’s Question: What’s the best/worst application of scheduling text messages you can think of?

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🥲 Never stop learning: Kathryn Cole, a 97-year-old Utah grandmother, just graduated from high school. Cole dropped out of high school when her grandfather died in the 1940s one credit short of graduating

🚨 Just 2024 things: A senior banker at investment firm Moelis & Company punched a woman during a Brooklyn Pride event, reportedly over an argument about the Israel-Hamas war

🐂 Bad day to wear red: A bull escaped an arena at an Oregon rodeo and charged into spectators, hospitalizing five. The bull jumped an arena barrier while the crowd was singing “God Bless the USA”

😳 Power move? Cesar Maia, former mayor of Rio de Janeiro and current city councilman, was inadvertently caught on camera sitting on the toilet with his pants down during a Zoom call (above)

📹 Thieves HATE this one trick: TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods will equip specially trained floor workers with body cameras to deter shoplifting

ROCA WRAP
Defeat in Victory

This is part one of a two-part series on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This week could have been a momentous celebration for Narendra Modi. It was not.

In 2014, Modi was elected India’s prime minister. At that point, Gandhi’s party, the Indian National Congress (INC), had ruled India for 54 of its 67 independent years. The INC represented what became known as India’s “English-speaking elite,” and its politics were secular and left.

By 2014, though, India remained mostly impoverished with a notoriously corrupt political class. That year, its voters elected an outsider to lead the country.

Narendra Modi was born in 1950 in a small town, where his father sold tea on a railway platform. At age 8, he joined the RSS – an organization that promotes Hindu and nationalist values. Modi had an arranged marriage at 18 but quickly left his wife and spent years traveling across India, visiting Hindu temples.

After his travels, he went to university and became more involved with the RSS, where he excelled as a political strategist and climbed the ranks of its associated political party, the BJP.

From 2001 until 2014, Modi was chief minister – governor – of Gujarat, a western Indian state. During that period, Gujarat experienced both an economic boom that attracted huge amounts of international investment and anti-Muslim riots that killed up to 2,000 Muslims. Rights groups and foreign governments accused Modi of condoning the violence, and the US, UK, and EU banned him from visiting.

Nevertheless, Gujarat’s economic performance became known as the “Gujarat Miracle,” and in 2014, Modi – promising the same for India – won the prime ministership in a landslide. His BJP won 282 of 543 seats, giving it India’s first single-party parliamentary majority in 30 years.

During those 30 years, no single party was popular enough to win a majority outright, so allies had to govern together. Five years later, Modi won reelection by an even larger margin and the BJP increased its seats from 282 to 303.

India has since become the world’s fastest-growing large economy, as companies like Apple shifted manufacturing there from China and investors poured in their money. On the global stage, Modi received warm welcomes from Washington and other capitals.

Seemingly unstoppable, Modi spoke of winning 400 of the country’s 543 parliamentary seats in this spring’s election. So what went wrong?

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Interesting answers to the favorite game show / talk show host question. Lots of love for Alex Trebek and Steve Harvey. Nothing for Letterman or Conan? How about Ellen? Not asking who you’d want to work for, Roca…

In the words of Davis Clarke, time to lock in. Have a great day.

–Max and Max