World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
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US President Donald Trump on Sunday branded Iran’s terms for ending the Middle East war “totally unacceptable,” raising the likelihood of renewed conflict after weeks of negotiations. Iran had responded to Washington’s latest peace proposal earlier in the day, while warning it would not hold back from retaliating against any new US strikes or permit more foreign warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
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Democrats want to rewrite the Virginia Constitution because the State Supreme Court rejected their unconstitutional maps.
The New York Times reports that Hakeem Jeffries and top Democrats in D.C. are considering asking Virginia legislators and Governor Spanberger to pass legislation to “retire” the members of the Supreme Court and then replace them en masse.
New York Times: The conversation reflected the desperation and fury that have gripped the party after the state Supreme Court struck down a favorable map that had been ratified by voters. The most dramatic idea they discussed — which would involve an unusual gambit to replace the entire state Supreme Court, with a goal of reinstating their gerrymandered map — drew mixed reactions on the call, said the people, and it was not clear that it would even be viable, or palatable to Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly. (NYT).
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The death toll from a suicide attack on a security post in northwest Pakistan rose to 14 police officers, authorities said early Sunday. A self-proclaimed breakaway group of the Pakistan Taliban has claimed the attack.
A suicide bomber and several gunmen detonated an explosives-laden vehicle near the post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late Saturday, said senior police official Sajjad Khan. The attack triggered an intense shootout, and some officers were killed in the exchange, while others died later after the building collapsed.
Rescuers conducted an hourslong search operation using heavy machinery to retrieve bodies from under the rubble, Khan said, adding that three police officers were wounded in the attack.
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called for a change of direction for Labour after the party suffered heavy setbacks in London’s local elections, saying the results reflected a “far-reaching disillusionment” among voters and an “existential” threat if it fails to change course.In a strongly worded statement following the results, Khan described the outcome as “bitterly disappointing for Labour in London” and acknowledged that many traditional supporters had turned away from the party.“Many people who voted Labour at the last general election clearly feel angry, disappointed and let down,” the London Mayor said, adding that voters were frustrated by the “slow pace of change” under the current leadership.
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called for Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) to be investigated over his public comments about a classified briefing.
In a Sunday appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Kelly said it was “shocking” how deeply the U.S. tapped into its interceptor missile stockpiles in the war with Iran, along with other criticisms based on the classified briefing. Hegseth suggested that the senator may have violated the law over his comments.
“‘Captain’ Mark Kelly strikes again. Now he’s blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a *CLASSIFIED* Pentagon briefing he received. Did he violate his oath…again?” Hegseth said in a post on X, adding that the Pentagon’s legal counsel would launch a review.
Kelly retorted in a post on X, saying his own comments reflected those made by the Secretary of War at a hearing last week.
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LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is fighting for his job after devastating local election results for his Labour Party spurred dozens of lawmakers to call for his resignation.
Starmer plans to use a speech on Monday to argue that he can change tack and revive his government’s fortunes. But his position is fragile as rivals weigh their options. One lawmaker, Catherine West, said she will try to trigger a leadership contest if she doesn’t like what she hears in the speech.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, often seen as a potential challenger, said the party “needs to change,” though she did not explicitly call for Starmer to go.
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One person each in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions were killed in Russian drone attacks, regional governors and police said in separate reports on Sunday.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Syniehubov said eight people, including two children, were wounded in drone strikes on the regional capital and nearby settlements.
Seven people, including a child, were also wounded in the Kherson region in drone or artillery attacks since early Saturday, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Sunday.
The State Emergencies Service said Russian forces attacked one of its rescue vehicles in the Dnipropetrovsk region with a drone, wounding a 23-year-old driver.
Kyiv’s air force said Russia had launched 27 long-range drones at Ukraine overnight – a lower number than usual – but that air defences had downed all of them.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday afternoon that nearly 210 clashes had taken place along the sprawling, 1,200-km front line since early Saturday.
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Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose 21st-century political odyssey sharply divided Thai society for decades, was released from a Bangkok prison on Monday after serving eight months of a one-year sentence for a corruption-related charge.
A crowd of about 300 supporters and political allies gathered outside the Klong Prem Central Prison to greet the 76-year-old billionaire populist.
Thaksin was a telecommunications magnate who founded his own political party in 1998 and served as prime minister from 2001 until a military coup ousted him in 2006 while he was abroad. His ouster triggered nearly two decades of deep and sometimes violent political polarisation, while his political machine staged several comebacks even as Thaksin himself stayed in self-imposed exile to escape what he said was political persecution through the courts.
His three children, including former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, and other family members also arrived early to welcome him.
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France’s push toward centralized digital identity systems has suffered a devastating blow after hackers breached a government-run ID platform containing highly sensitive personal information tied to millions of citizens.
The compromised system is operated by France Titres, formerly known as ANTS.
The system handles some of the most sensitive government services in France, including passports, national ID cards, residency permits, driver’s licenses, and vehicle registrations.
Now, critics say the breach has exposed exactly why handing governments vast centralized databases of citizen identity information creates a dangerous single point of failure.
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AI agents choose tools from shared registries by matching natural-language descriptions. But no human is verifying whether those descriptions are true.
I discovered this gap when I filed Issue #141 in the CoSAI secure-ai-tooling repository. I assumed it would be treated as a single risk entry. The repository maintainer saw it differently and split my submission into two separate issues: One covering selection-time threats (tool impersonation, metadata manipulation); the other covering execution-time threats (behavioral drift, runtime contract violation).
That confirmed tool registry poisoning is not one vulnerability. It represents multiple vulnerabilities at every stage of the tool’s life cycle.
There’s an immediate tendency to apply the defenses we already have. Over the past 10 years, we’ve built software supply chain controls, including code signing, software bill of materials (SBOMs), supply-chain levels for software Artifacts (SLSA) provenance, and Sigstore. Applying these defense-in-depth techniques to agent tool registries is the next logical step. That instinct is right in spirit, but insufficient in practice.
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As star correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s future at “60 Minutes” remains unclear, journalists at the legendary news show are being careful not to offend their new boss.
Following Bari Weiss’ controversial hiring as CBS News’ editor in chief, compliance is the name of the game.
A source close to the “60 Minutes” staff told Daily Kos the editorial team is hesitant to pick up the phone or answer texts from people critical of new management.
The nervousness isn’t unfounded. Alfonsi’s time with CBS has come into question after she openly spoke against Weiss and the editorial decisions coming from the top.
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Marina Volz, born Matthew Volz, is currently serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of sex crimes against his own seven-year-old daughter.
A transgender-identifying New Jersey inmate convicted of sexually abusing his 7-year-old daughter is seeking a settlement with the New Jersey Department of Corrections after filing a lawsuit alleging officials denied him access to Wiccan religious accommodations while incarcerated in a women’s prison.
Marina Volz, born Matthew Volz, is serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of sex crimes against his own seven-year-old daughter. Volz was sentenced in May of 2022 and initially housed at a men’s facility.
Two months later, he was transferred to a women’s correctional facility. State records reportedly continued listing Volz as male until 2023, when New Jersey updated the inmate’s profile to classify Volz as female.
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A massive system of ocean currents in the Atlantic that plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate has been weakening for almost 20 years, according to a new study. Scientists say the slowdown stretches across a large section of the Atlantic Ocean and could eventually alter weather patterns around the world.
The research was led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. Their findings provide some of the strongest direct observational evidence so far that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is losing strength. The results could help researchers improve climate models and better understand how ongoing climate change may affect the future.
“A weaker AMOC can shift weather patterns, potentially leading to more extreme storms, changes in rainfall, or colder winters in some regions,” said Shane Elipot, a senior author of the study and physical oceanographer at the Rosenstiel School. “It can also influence sea-level rise along coastlines, affecting communities and infrastructure.”
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This may be one of the more baffling and frightening stories you will hear about something happening at an airport and/or during air travel. Late Friday night, as the flight crew of a commerial airplane was beginning its takeoff at a major U.S. airport, the combination of what came to pass could only be described as chaotic. Luckily, almost everyone involved got through it unscathed, with just minor injuries. One man who made a careless choice was not so fortunate.
As I mentioned, the Frontier Airlines plane was gaining speed and preparing to leave the ground at Denver International Airport (DIA) when, unbelievably, they reported to the tower their plane had just hit “somebody” – that is, a person:
One person was struck and killed by a Frontier Airlines plane two minutes after jumping a perimeter fence and crossing a runway at Denver International Airport late Friday, the airport said.
The pedestrian, who has not been identified, is not believed to be an airport employee, the airport said in a statement.
Flight 4345, an Airbus A321, was departing from Denver en route to Los Angeles and carried 224 passengers and seven crew members, Frontier Airlines said in a statement. It was scheduled to depart at 10:39 p.m. local time.
As the plane was departing, “the aircraft reportedly struck a pedestrian on the runway during takeoff,” the airline said.
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Fulton County, Georgia — the epicenter of so many lingering questions about the 2020 presidential election — has a new problem on its hands. On May 4, 2026, the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections filed a 27-page motion to quash in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia asking a federal judge to quash a grand jury subpoena demanding the personal identifying information of thousands of county election workers and volunteers who helped administer the November 2020 General Election.
The original subpoena was issued under seal on April 17, 2026, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina under U.S. Attorney Dan Bishop. It was served on the board around April 20 and required production of records by May 5. It seeks names, positions/functions, residential addresses, email addresses, and personal telephone numbers for essentially the entire 2020 Fulton election workforce.
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Iran has hanged an alleged US spy who Tehran accused of collaborating with the CIA. Erfan Shakourzadeh, 29, was hanged after being accused of espionage and collaboration with the US and Israel, according to Iranian state news.
It comes as Iran rejected the US plan to end the war, with Iranian media describing the deal as equivalent to “Tehran’s submission to Trump’s excessive demands”. A 29‑year‑old student from Tehran’s Iran University of Science and Technology, was executed after Iran’s judiciary accused him of assisting the CIA and Mossad—charges he firmly denied in a final message shared by human rights groups.
Arrested in February 2025 and accused of collaborating with hostile governments, he was reportedly subjected to nine months of severe physical and psychological torture in solitary confinement as authorities sought forced confessions. Please confirm details with a trusted news source.
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Hopes for a peace deal with Iran waned on Sunday, raising the risk that the global energy crisis will drag on and leaving the U.S. to weigh military operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 200 points, or 0.40%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.33%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.28%.
U.S. oil futures rose 2.7% to $97.97 a barrel, while Brent crude climbed 2.7% to $104.01. Gold fell 0.76% to $4,695 per ounce.
The U.S. dollar was up 0.2% against the euro and up 0.14% against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was steady at 4.36%.
On Sunday, Iran responded to the U.S. ceasefire offer, saying talks must focus on permanently ending the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon.
Sources also told the Wall Street Journal that Iran proposed gradually reopening the strait as the U.S. lifts its naval blockade.
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A number of Labour MPs have come out demanding Keir Starmer resigns. A few of them aired their views on social media and on the media round this morning, here’s what they had to say:
Connor Naismith, MP for Crewe and Nantwich, hinted in a post on X that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham could take the reigns.
Andy is the most popular Labour politician in the country. The suggestion that he wouldn’t be able to win in some of the seats Labour is currently struggling to win is just wrong.
Ironically, this is precisely why we need him back on the front line of national politics.