World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
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Mexico’s security officials said a gunman opened fire at the popular tourist spot, killing a Canadian woman and injuring at least 13 people, including six Americans. The shooter later took his own life, the Security Cabinet said.
In a video posted on X, verified by CBS News, a man with a gun is seen pacing near the top of the Pyramid of the Moon. In another video, gunshots can be heard as visitors of the archeological site are seen walking at the bottom of the pyramid.
At least seven people suffered gunshot wounds and at least two people were injured from falls, officials said. Two of the people who were shot, a 29-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman, were Americans. Eight people were still hospitalized as of Monday night, Mexico’s Interior Ministry said.
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China controls 99 percent of the world’s primary gallium, a critical mineral and semiconductor crucial for building the microchips of the future. In 2023, it placed export controls on gallium to retaliate against American restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China. In December 2024, China escalated to an outright ban on gallium exports to the United States. The U.S. National Defense Stockpile had zero gallium reserves when that ban landed.
The United States has been here before. The United States pioneered and scaled modern silicon semiconductor infrastructure. A significant reliance on international manufacturing and the loss of domestic silicon dominance reflect a failure to recognize the importance of industrial capacity to national security. With silicon, the intellectual property was American, but the chips were “Made in Taiwan.” If similar blind spots persist, the United States risks repeating this failure with gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor that outperforms silicon at high voltage, high frequency, and extreme temperatures. It’s the beating heart of every modern radar and electronic warfare system.
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Qatar has urged an end to the Iran war and a return to negotiations on Tuesday, saying it is in contact with all parties as uncertainty surrounds US-Iran talks in Islamabad.
“The crisis is ours, and the crisis of our region. That’s why we have direct contacts,” foreign ministry spokesperson Dr Majed al-Ansari said at a press conference in Doha.
Al-Ansari added that Qatar supports maintaining the ceasefire as uncertainty remains over whether talks are moving forward.
“Our call has only been to end this war and return to the negotiation table,” he said. “Qatar supports the continuation of the ceasefire until there’s a diplomatic resolution. We are hearing contradicting reports and we are quite concerned.”
“We do not want to talk about the failure of the negotiations,” al-Ansari said. “The entire world is supporting these negotiations, including us. And we are supporting our brothers in Pakistan.”
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I’ve never met Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, but I’ve voted for her twice: I live in her Tampa-area district. (Actually, she lives in my district — I’m pretty sure I got here first.)
She’s still in her second term, but already on the cusp of becoming a national figure. She’s gone one-on-one with Joe Rogan. On live TV, she corrected Bill Maher about her “Cuban” ethnicity (“We’re Mexican. We’re not all the same, Bill.”) Camera-shy, she ain’t.
If you could buy stock in a politician’s future, Rep. Luna’s stock value would be soaring.
And you don’t have to be a genius to figure out why. If Jay Leno’s quip is accurate — and politics is “show business for ugly people” — then Mrs. Luna is preposterously overqualified. Not too many of her colleagues could’ve modeled for Maxim Magazine. (Not even Rosa DeLauro.)
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WASHINGTON/CAIRO/ISLAMABAD, April 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Tuesday it had seized a tanker linked to Iran in international waters, its latest apparent action to enforce a blockade, with time running out on a ceasefire and the prospect of last-ditch further peace talks still up in the air.
Washington has expressed confidence that talks with Iran will go ahead in Pakistan, and a senior Iranian official said Tehran was considering joining. But with the final hours of a two-week truce ticking by, there was little time left for the talks.
The U.S. military said it had boarded the tanker Tifani “without incident”. The ship, capable of carrying 2 million barrels of crude, last reported its position on Tuesday morning as near Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, according to MarineTraffic tracking data. It was close to fully loaded and had signaled Singapore as its destination.
“As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” U.S. Central Command said.
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A national free speech group is calling on the Catholic University of America to allow pro-Israel speakers on campus – or else face an accreditation complaint.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a second letter to CUA leadership on Friday, asking it to remove its restrictions on Students Supporting Israel.
The intervention follows a proposal earlier this year for the group to host Israeli homeland security expert Dany Tirza as well as Jewish Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, as The College Fix previously reported.
The university is requiring the club to host a pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel speaker.
While the school says this is part of their policy, that is only supposed to apply when an invited speaker takes a view contrary to the Catholic Church, such as if a club invited a pro-abortion speaker. However, the university did not even apply this policy, allowing the campus Democrats club to host a speaker who supports abortion, according to Student Supporting Israel’s leadership.
The Catholic university in Washington, D.C. allowed an event with an anti-Israel speaker, for example, but did not present the pro-Israel side, FIRE also said.
“We again strongly urge CUA to approve SSI’s event requests and assure students that the university will not condition event approval on student’s willingness to arrange for and host speakers opposed to their own viewpoint,” Program Counsel Jessie Appleby wrote to President Peter Kilpatrick.
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Iran has brutally mocked JD Vance ahead of crunch peace talks on Tuesday. Iranian channels have reporrtedly shared images of JD Vance edited using Mr Bean meme showing him waiting for the conversation.
Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump officials are expected to travel to Pakistan today for a second round of intense negotiations. The US President has previously said it is “highly unlikely” he would extend the ceasefire deadline further than tomorrow evening.
However, Iranian state media said: “None of the Iranian delegation has arrived or even flown to Islamabad for negotiations with the US at the moment”
Meanwhile, the US President shared a new update on extending the US ceasefire with Iran past its new deadline of tomorrow evening.
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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) celebrated the news that 26 Iranian ships broke through the U.S. naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman.
Democrat Chris Murphy is getting slammed for replying “awesome” to the news that 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels breached the U.S. naval blockade.
Murphy has been hammering the war effort. He’s argued the U.S. is spending “billions” to keep its navy there “to fecklessly fail,”… pic.twitter.com/ww96ij1SIE
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 21, 2026
I haven’t found many reports about the fleet bypassing the naval blockade. I came across this:
Maritime tracking firm TankerTrackers.com reported that a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) operated by the National Iranian Tanker Company departed Iran in late March 2026. The vessel then sailed towards Southeast Asia, where it reportedly transferred approximately 2 million barrels of crude oil to another supertanker.
Following the transfer, the tanker returned towards Iranian waters and is believed to have crossed what analysts describe as a US “siege line”, a monitored maritime enforcement zone linked to the ongoing blockade efforts.
According to Iran’s Fars News Agency, the vessel successfully re-entered Iranian-controlled waters and is expected to reach Kharg Island shortly. The report stated, “This tanker unloaded its 2 million barrels of crude oil and then returned home through the blockade line,” citing data from TankerTrackers.com.
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A tugboat tows a barge off the coast of Khasab, on northern Oman’s Musandam Peninsula near the Strait of Hormuz.GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty
Democrats should get louder in championing clean energy’s affordability and resilience from global shocks, according to some of the party’s leading voices on the climate.
As the Iran war roils economies by raising the cost of oil and gas, countries are aiming to accelerate their shift to cleaner energy. But in the US, Donald Trump has sought to kill off any alternative to fossil fuels while opposing Democrats have been reluctant to tie the conflict to any action on the climate crisis.
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As major artificial intelligence breakthroughs arrive on what seems to be a near-weekly basis, the race between the US and China continues to intensify. In this post and the next, we will examine the good and bad news for the prospects of American triumph in the battle for AI superiority, a skirmish that could well determine the future of global innovation.
Let’s start with the bad news.
Last week, I attended a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party entitled “China’s Campaign to Steal America’s AI Edge.” Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) opened the proceedings by asserting that “China’s smuggling of advanced AI chips is a pervasive threat facing law enforcement” and observing that “just last month, the Department of Justice announced a $2.5 billion chip smuggling case, which would be the largest export control violation in US history.”
Moolenaar then asked, “Why is China so desperate to acquire US-designed chips? The reason is obvious. AI is a truly transformative technology. It’s already changing how we fight wars, run our government, and operate companies.” Critically, the chairman contended, “it is essential for the United States to maintain a decisive lead in the AI race. We cannot afford a future where Beijing dominates this technology.”
At the hearing, Dmitri Alperovitch, the founder and chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, echoed Moolenaar, arguing that “we are in a race, and the stakes could not be higher. Artificial intelligence will transform every industry, every battlefield, and every government.” Critically, Alperovitch asserted, “whoever fields the best models running on the best infrastructure will likely win not just the AI race itself but the 21st century. The single most important input to winning is compute—the processing power used to train and run AI models.”
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An Oklahoma couple and their pets got to safety in the nick of time on Friday when a possible tornado hit their community.
Shari and Dwain Short live in Ponca City, where video footage recorded outside their home shows the tense moments as the sky darkened and the wind whipped around their property, Fox Weather reported Saturday.
The clip shows Shari opening the door to what appears to be an underground storm shelter. The trees sway back and forth in the wind and the grey sky looks ominous as the couple prepares for the worst.
Moments later, Dwain is seen carrying a dog as he climbs into the shelter behind his wife. The second he tries to shut the door, the wind picks up. Dwain emerges from the shelter for a moment, then goes back inside as the storm hits.
Debris flies through the air, the camera shakes violently, and outside lights flash as gust after gust of wind hits their property and the surrounding community. A flash is seen in the sky seconds before the video ends:
In a social media post Sunday, Shari recalled how intensely frightening the experience was for them before acknowledging God’s hand in it.
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Donald Trump may be considering a deal to allow Iran to continue nuclear enrichment in 10 years(Image: Pool/ABACA/Shutterstock)
Donald Trump is reported to be weighing up an option allowing Iran to resume uranium enrichment in a decade.
The US president has offered shifting reasons for the war in Iran but has consistently said a primary objective is ensuring the country will “never have a nuclear weapon”.
Iran has 440.9kg of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency.
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Hill Republican leaders are finding themselves in a never-ending crisis over the fate of a government spy law that has unleashed a bitter, intraparty battle within the House while also threatening to derail a host of other GOP priorities.
Republicans now have scant legislative days to build new plans to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But President Donald Trump, GOP leaders and White House officials have failed to come up with a workable framework for months — and there is no agreement yet on the path forward.
Some House Republicans hope they’re in the final stages of massaging a multi-year extension that would incorporate some minor changes intended to pacify privacy hawks. Others are already predicting they’ll face the same internal schisms come April 30, when the current short-term extension runs out.
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The leftist Supreme Court justices are facing accusations that they literally put their conservative colleagues’ lives at risk because they were so beholden to Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand.
Liberal Supreme Court justices slow-walked completion of their dissents in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, according to a new book.
They delayed its official release for 53 days even as the five conservative justices in the majority faced death threats and assassination attempts following the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
That’s according to a new report on Mollie Hemingway’s forthcoming book.
The May 2, 2022, leak of the 98-page draft to Politico triggered protests outside the homes of conservative justices, vandalism and arson at hundreds of pregnancy centers, churches and pro-life organizations, and an assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh and potentially the other conservative justices.
“Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome,” Hemingway wrote in Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. “Everyone knew that the leak posed a serious security risk for justices. Since decisions do not take effect until issued officially from the bench, the death of a justice before then could alter the result. The threat of assassination increased dramatically.”
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Chaos erupted in Wisconsin on Saturday.
On Saturday, nearly 1,000 animal rights activists attempted to storm a research facility in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin.
The research facility that the animal activists attempted to storm is home to a beagle breeding facility that has used some questionable research methods.
In response to the activists descending on the research grounds, authorities deployed pepper spray and rubber bullets.
Take a look:
Over 1,000 animal-rights activists assaulting Ridglan Farms again today, and getting tear gassed/rubber bullets by Dane County Sheriff.
News link: https://t.co/xDeBVovWUQ pic.twitter.com/PvvVJHGHDi— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) April 18, 2026
Waves of tear gas: Peaceful animal lovers are being tear gassed, pepper sprayed, and fired at with rubber bullets at Ridglan Farms. At least a dozen activists have been arrested. Hundreds of others are on the property now trying to rescue the dogs. pic.twitter.com/7JYg8S2XhP
— Wayne Hsiung (@waynehhsiung) April 18, 2026
AP reported more on the incident:
About 1,000 animal welfare activists who tried to gain entry Saturday to a beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin were turned back by police who fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd and arrested the group’s leader.
It was the second attempt in as many months by protesters to take beagles from the Ridglan Farms facility in Blue Mounds, a small town about 25 miles (about 40 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Madison.
Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett, said in a video statement that 300 to 400 protesters were “violently trying to break into the property” and assault officers. He said protesters have ignored designated areas for peaceful protest and blocked roads to prevent emergency vehicles from entering.
“This is not a peaceful protest,” Barrett said.
The sheriff’s department said a “significant” number of people were arrested out of about 1,000 protesters at the site but did not give an exact total as they were still being processed as of the afternoon.
Protesters tried to overcome barricades that included a manure-filled trench, hay bales and a barbed-wire fence. Some protesters did get through the fence but were unable to enter the facility, where an estimated 2,000 beagles are kept, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.
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On Saturday’s The Weekend: Primetime, MS NOW hosts Antonia Hylton and Charles Coleman Jr. combined for a remarkable escalation—from stylistic nitpicking to smearing an entire group of Christians as extremists.
After opening with a polished aside about Trump’s recent use of “God is good,” which she said had not previously been part of his ‘linguistic repertoire,’” Hylton quickly pivoted to a jaw-dropping—and wholly unsupported—claim: that Trump is surrounded by religious advisers who are “telling him that he is God,” or effectively God’s representative on Earth.
Hylton offered no evidence for the assertion, presenting it instead as her personal “read” based on following “extremist” Christian figures. But she didn’t name a single adviser making such a claim—let alone anyone literally telling Trump he is God.
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Data released by Pew Research shows that 9 percent of all US births in 2023 were to those that were here in the US illegally, or in the country temporarily.
Children born to illegal immigrant parents in the US were nearly 10 percent of all new births in the US in 2023, according to new data. The figures were published about data that came during the Biden administration, which had lax border policies.
New data released by Pew Research shows that 9 percent of all US births in 2023 were to those who were here in the US illegally, or in the country temporarily. The Supreme Court is currently considering the legality of an order from President Donald Trump that would restrict birthright citizenship from some of those born to foreign nationals in the US.
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Keir Starmer has ordered an investigation into any security concerns relating to Peter Mandelson’s tenure as UK ambassador to the US as he gave his side of events in a politically crucial statement in parliament.
“I know many members across the house will find these facts to be incredible,” Starmer told jeering MPs, after setting out how the Foreign Office opted to overrule the initial decision to refuse Mandelson’s security vetting without informing him and other ministers.
He said: “To that I can only say they are right. Throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system in government. That is not how the vast majority of people in this country expect politics, government or accountability to work, and I do not think it’s how most public servants think it should work either.”
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President Trump had criticized the pope on April 12 following remarks Leo made about ongoing global conflicts.
Vice President JD Vance responded to Pope Leo XIV’s comments downplaying the divide between him and President Donald Trump, after the pontiff called the reporting of the situation inaccurate.
Leo addressed the issue Saturday while speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane during a trip from Cameroon to Angola as part of an 11-day tour of Africa.
“There’s been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects, but because of the political situation created when, on the first day of the trip, the president of the United States made some comments about myself,” Leo said. “Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said.”
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