2026

LAS VEGAS (AP) — In a vision of the near future shared at CES, a girl slides into the back seat of her parents’ car and the cabin instantly comes alive. The vehicle recognizes her, knows it’s her birthday and cues up her favorite song without a word spoken.

“Think of the car as having a soul and being an extension of your family,” Sri Subramanian, Nvidia’s global head of generative AI for automotive, said Tuesday.

Subramanian’s example, shared with a CES audience on the show’s opening day in Las Vegas, illustrates the growing sophistication of AI-powered in-cabin systems and the expanding scope of personal data that smart vehicles may collect, retain and use to shape the driving experience.

Across the show floor, the car emerged less as a machine and more as a companion as automakers and tech companies showcased vehicles that can adapt to drivers and passengers in real time — from tracking heart rates and emotions to alerting if a baby or young child is accidentally left in the car.

Bosch debuted its new AI vehicle extension that aims to turn the cabin into a “proactive companion.” Nvidia, the poster child of the AI boom, announced Alpamayo, its new vehicle AI initiative designed to help autonomous cars think through complex driving decisions. CEO Jensen Huang called it a “ChatGPT moment for physical AI.”

But experts say the push toward a more personalized driving experience is intensifying questions about how much driver data is being collected.

“The magic of AI should not just mean all privacy and security protections are off,” said Justin Brookman, director of marketplace policy at Consumer Reports.

Unlike smartphones or online platforms, cars have only recently become major repositories of personal data, Brookman said. As a result, the industry is still trying to establish the “rules of the road” for what automakers and tech companies are allowed to do with driver data.

That uncertainty is compounded by the uniquely personal nature of cars, Brookman said. Many people see their vehicles as an extension of themselves — or even their homes — which he said can make the presence of cameras, microphones and other monitoring tools feel especially invasive.

“Sometimes privacy issues are difficult for folks to internalize,” he said. “People generally feel they wish they had more privacy but also don’t necessarily know what they can do to address it.”

At the same time, Brookman said, many of these technologies offer real safety benefits for drivers and can be good for the consumer.

On the CES show floor, some of those conveniences were on display at automotive supplier Gentex’s booth, where attendees sat in a mock six-seater van in front of large screens demonstrating how closely the company’s AI-equipped sensors and cameras could monitor a driver and passengers.

“Are they sleepy? Are they drowsy? Are they not seated properly? Are they eating, talking on phones? Are they angry? You name it, we can figure out how to detect that in the cabin,” said Brian Brackenbury, director of product line management at Gentex.

Brackenbury said it’s ultimately up to the car manufacturers to decide how the vehicle reacts to the data that’s collected, which he said is stored in the car and deleted after the video frames, for example, have been processed. “

“One of the mantras we have at Gentex is we’re not going to do it just because we can, just because the technology allows it,” Brackebury said, adding that “data privacy is really important.”

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Jan 6 (Reuters) – Asset management firm TPG has acquired a majority interest in homebuilder Lennar’s multifamily development and investment management platform and committed an additional $1 billion for the business, the companies said on Tuesday. The acquisition of Quarterra comes when U.S. homebuilders are grappling with tepid demand as affordability remains pressured due to still-high mortgage rates.

“This partnership reflects our shared commitment to tackling one of America’s most pressing challenges: housing affordability,” Lennar CEO Stuart Miller said in a statement.

TPG expects to raise additional capital and focus on the development of Quarterra’s Emblem communities program, which builds attainable apartments for suburban middle-income markets.

Lennar in 2022 spun off its multifamily and single-family home unit for rent asset management businesses, together with some investment assets, by transferring them to a newly formed subsidiary, Quarterra Group.

(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)

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30 Bills on the Table: Israeli Analysts Weigh Unity, Power, and Postwar Priorities

More than two years after October 7, the governing coalition continues to advance sweeping institutional reforms while legislation addressing recovery, reserve burdens, and accountability lags behind

October 7 is no longer a recent shock, but it remains an unresolved reference point in Israeli politics. More than two years later, the Israeli parliament continues to operate within two parallel realities. One is shaped by war, trauma, and recovery: an extended military campaign, hundreds of thousands of reservists cycling in and out of service, displaced communities still unable to return home, mounting economic strain, and a society grappling with the consequences of the gravest security failure in the country’s history. The other is political, marked by a legislative agenda pushed forward by the governing coalition that never fully slowed, even as the attack reshaped nearly every other dimension of Israeli life.

“What stands out is not only how much legislation is moving,” Dr. Assaf Shapira, director of the Political Reform Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, said in an interview with The Media Line, “but which laws are advancing first. The sequence tells you a great deal about priorities.”

Since the outbreak of the war, the governing coalition has advanced more than 30 legislative initiatives touching nearly every central institution of the state. Some have already been enacted into law. Others have passed first readings or moved through key committees. Several remain formally on the agenda, waiting for political timing. Collectively, these bills affect the judiciary, public broadcasting and media regulation, the civil service, electoral rules, military service, and religion-state relations.

Supporters of the agenda insist that none of this should be surprising. The coalition, they argue, was elected on a clear ideological platform, and war does not suspend democratic governance.

“A government doesn’t stop governing because there is a war,” one coalition figure said privately. “The voters did not elect a caretaker.”

Yet when the legislative record is examined not by declarations but by outcomes, a pattern emerges. The initiatives most decisively advanced by the governing coalition are not those dealing with postwar recovery, reserve manpower, economic rehabilitation, or civilian resilience. They are laws that restructure institutions, reallocate authority, and stabilize coalition arrangements.

This pattern is most visible in the legal and judicial arena. Several of the coalition’s most consequential changes have already passed. A law altering the composition of the Judicial Appointments Committee removed Bar Association representatives and replaced them with political appointees from the coalition and the opposition, ending a longstanding professional counterweight in judicial selection. Another law transferred authority over the appointment of the judicial ombudsman from an independent framework to the Israeli parliament itself.

“These are not technical adjustments,” Shapira said. “They change who controls the rules of the system. Once those rules change, they shape everything that follows.”

Alongside enacted legislation, a series of additional proposals advanced by coalition lawmakers has focused on the role of the government’s chief legal adviser. Bills under discussion would restructure the position, divide its authorities, and weaken the binding force of legal opinions. These initiatives emerged amid sustained political attacks by coalition figures on the current legal adviser, including efforts to facilitate her removal or reduce her capacity to constrain government action.

Other proposals promoted by the coalition move in parallel, loosening restrictions on civil service appointments. Draft legislation would allow ministers greater freedom to appoint individuals with political, personal, or business ties to senior roles in government companies and public bodies, rolling back safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest and preserve professional independence.

“Taken together, these measures form a coherent approach,” Shapira said. “The legal system is no longer treated as a check, but as a component to be redesigned.”

A similar concentration of legislative energy driven by the coalition is evident in the media sphere. A sweeping broadcasting reform, introduced as a government bill, has already passed its first reading. It would establish a new regulatory authority under the communications minister, empowered to impose heavy fines, revoke licenses, regulate news websites, and exert control over audience ratings data.

Additional initiatives advanced by coalition lawmakers would privatize or dismantle the public broadcaster, shift its funding into the annual state budget, require its leadership to appear before parliamentary hearings over content, and grant the government direct authority over appointments to its governing council.

“When regulation, funding, and appointments are all placed under political control, independence becomes conditional,” Shapira said. “Not because censorship is ordered, but because pressure becomes built into the structure.”

Abraham Russell Shalev, a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, rejects the suggestion that these reforms undermine democratic norms. He frames them instead as a correction to what he describes as excessive power concentrated in unelected institutions.

“Public bodies must ultimately be accountable to elected officials,” he told The Media Line. “Oversight is not politicization. It is the essence of democracy.”

Shalev has been sharply critical of organizations such as the Israel Democracy Institute, arguing that they equate any reduction in judicial or bureaucratic authority with democratic erosion.

“There is a tendency to treat independence as immunity,” he said. “No institution should be immune from scrutiny.”

On the question of timing, Shalev is unequivocal.

“War does not freeze constitutional questions,” he said. “A democracy cannot put itself on hold indefinitely.”

Yet when attention turns from principles to prioritization, the framework becomes less concrete. While the coalition has established special parliamentary tracks to advance institutional and media reforms, there has been no comparable legislative effort led by the coalition addressing postwar reconstruction, the burden on reservists, or long-term civilian recovery. On those issues, Shalev emphasizes the limits of legislation itself.

“Security and recovery are addressed primarily through executive decisions and budgets,” he said. “Not every challenge requires a law.”

For critics, the distinction is difficult to sustain when viewed against the legislative sequence.

“If something is truly urgent,” Shapira said, “the parliament finds a way. What we are seeing is not a lack of capacity, but a hierarchy of interests.”

The issue of military service brings that hierarchy into sharp relief. Since October 7, Israel’s reliance on reservists has reached unprecedented levels, exposing longstanding manpower shortages. When then-Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein advanced legislation imposing sanctions on draft evasion, ultra-Orthodox parties withdrew from the coalition.

The political response was swift. Edelstein was removed from his post. MK Boaz Bismuth was appointed in his place, and a revised proposal backed by the coalition emerged that avoided sanctions, did not guarantee meaningful recruitment, and posed no real threat to coalition partners opposed to compulsory service.

“That episode,” Shapira said, “shows how national security considerations are weighed when they collide directly with coalition survival.”

Religion-state legislation has followed a similar trajectory. Bills advanced by coalition lawmakers expanding the authority of rabbinical courts to handle civil arbitration, permitting gender-segregated tracks in advanced academic degrees, reshaping daycare subsidies to benefit ultra-Orthodox families regardless of military service, and embedding religious practices in publicly funded institutions have continued to move forward. Some have already become law.

The same tension surrounds the question of accountability for October 7. Rather than establishing a traditional state commission of inquiry involving the Supreme Court, the coalition has advanced a nontraditional framework in which lawmakers would retain decisive control over appointments and scope. Supporters argue this reflects democratic oversight. Critics counter that legitimacy depends on visible independence.

“After a national failure of this magnitude,” Shapira said, “people are not asking who has authority. They are asking who they can trust.”

Hovering over the legislative agenda is the broader issue of legal accountability. Proposals promoted by coalition members to delay criminal proceedings against a sitting prime minister, expand parliamentary immunity, and raise thresholds for investigations have not all advanced, but their presence shapes the political environment. In that context, reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought a possible amnesty from President Isaac Herzog resonated beyond their immediate legal implications, reinforcing perceptions that legal considerations remain tightly intertwined with governance.

Viewed as a whole, the legislative record does not suggest ideological confusion. It suggests selectivity. Laws that restructure institutions, secure coalition partners, and lock in long-term shifts of power have moved quickly. Laws that would impose costs on coalition constituencies or directly address the burdens revealed by the war have slowed, softened, or failed to materialize.

Shalev maintains that this does not amount to misplaced priorities.

“The government is dealing with the war every day,” he said. “Legislation is only one part of governing.”

Legislation, however, remains a signal. It reflects what a governing coalition chooses to formalize when political capital is limited and stakes are high. Israel’s post-October 7 reality is defined by exhaustion, uncertainty, and an unresolved demand for accountability. The coalition’s legislative agenda suggests that the Israeli parliament is being used to entrench prewar political logic, even as the country has entered uncharted territory.

Whether that gap will narrow or widen remains an open question. What is already evident is that the legislative agenda driven by the governing coalition has followed familiar political incentives, even as the national context has shifted dramatically. Structural reforms affecting legal authority, media oversight, and institutional appointments have moved forward with consistency. At the same time, legislative responses to the social, economic, and civic consequences of the war have remained fragmented, delayed, or largely absent.

In that sense, the post-October 7 period has not produced a recalibration of parliamentary priorities so much as a test of continuity. The question facing Israel’s political system is not only how it governs during prolonged conflict, but also whether its legislative framework is capable of absorbing shocks without reverting to preexisting patterns. As the war lowers in intensity but not in consequence, the gap between a society transformed by crisis and a parliament mobilized to serve coalition priorities may prove more consequential than any single bill now moving through the plenum.

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