Musk’s denials are loud, but Epstein’s emails are louder Cybernews
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FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The White House is engaging against a Florida bill that would establish limits on artificial intelligence, including protections for minors, sources familiar with the matter tell The Daily Signal.
The White House has contacted Florida Speaker of the House Daniel Perez and his staff members about opposing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights, sources said.
So far, Perez has sent the bill through four committees in the House since its introduction early this year. Perez told reporters on Tuesday that he is skeptical that states should pass legislation on an issue where the federal government has “first dibs.”
The Supreme Court’s tariff decision left the door wide open for Democrats to hammer President Donald Trump for violating the law. This time, they’re not taking the bait.
Instead, Democratic campaigns are leaning into an argument they have been making for months: Trump’s tariffs are coming out of voters’ pockets. Some Democrats can’t help but hit the tariffs as “unlawful,” but they’re pivoting quickly back to affordability.
Former British Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson is led away from his home by a police officer as he is arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, following revelations over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in London, Britain, Feb. 23, 2026, in this screen capture from video.
Police in London released Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the United States, on bail Tuesday local time, hours after his arrest earlier.
Mandelson has been under investigation for his relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Metropolitan Police in London said that Lord Mandelson, 72, was arrested Monday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the same grounds on which other police in Britain last week arrested and briefly detained Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince and longtime friend of Epstein.
Trump threatens higher tariffs on countries following SCOTUS decision KVII
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Anthropic says Claude can understand COBOL, IBM stock suffers worst fall in 25 years India Today
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FedEx sues US for refund on Trump’s earlier tariffs as experts warn companies it could take years The Straits Times
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China military purge taking toll on command and readiness, study finds Reuters
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CHINA has been accused of a massive nuclear expansion as well as carrying out secret tests by the US.
The latest accusations come as the United States bids to force Beijing to join a future arms control treaty.
Sam Altman is pushing back on mounting criticism over the environmental toll of A.I. The OpenAI chief has dismissed claims about A.I.’s water consumption as “fake” and drawn comparisons between the electricity required to power A.I. systems and the energy it takes to develop human intelligence.
Figures suggesting that tools like ChatGPT consume multiple gallons of water per query are “totally insane” and have “no connection to reality,” Altman said in a Feb. 20 interview with The Indian Express on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. Last year, Altman claimed that ChatGPT uses 0.000085 gallons of water per query—roughly one-fifteenth of a teaspoon—though he did not explain how he calculated that figure.
A.I.’s water footprint largely stems from the need for evaporative cooling systems used to keep data center hardware from overheating. But Altman argued that companies like OpenAI are no longer directly managing such cooling processes. Many A.I. developers, he noted, are shifting toward cooling systems that recirculate liquid rather than continually drawing fresh supplies. Meanwhile, tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon have pledged to replenish more water than they withdraw by 2030.
NASA Warns of Untracked ‘City Killer’ Asteroids as Budget Battle Looms National Today
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As agentic AI workflows multiply the cost and latency of long reasoning chains, a team from the University of Maryland, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Columbia University and TogetherAI has found a way to bake 3x throughput gains directly into a model’s weights.
Unlike speculative decoding, which requires a separate drafting model, this approach requires no additional infrastructure — just a single special token added to the model’s existing architecture.
JPMorgan admits closing Trump accounts after Jan 6 Capitol riot as $5B lawsuit alleges political ‘debanking’ Fox Business
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We’re not sure what the actual flex is for Courier Newsroom — a literal fake news organization heavily financed by the George Soros empire — to be co-hosting a supposed rebuttal to President Trump’s upcoming State of the Union address aimed at “bring[ing] together elected officials, cultural figures, journalists, veterans, and organizers for a live counter-address focused on defying Donald Trump’s abuses of power[.]”
Last week, the radical leftist anti-Trump group DEFIANCE.ORG put out a press release boasting of its supposedly star-studded speaker lineup for its boycott titled, “STATE OF THE SWAMP: The Rebuttal to the State of the Union.”
Occasional California Governor Gavin Newsom, who keeps turning up anywhere but California, has continued his highly calculated descent into vulgar and insulting behavior this week. The performance still has the awkwardness of the first week of acting school. It’s like watching a character play a character, many times removed from an identifiable real person. Whatever he’s doing, he’s definitely pretending.
If you’ve missed it, Newsom is back to doing subtext-heavy locker room kneepad jokes like the one he did in Davos, and he’s bragging to audiences that he’s stupid like them, “a 960 SAT guy.” He’s playing a towel-snapper, a mean jock, not above hard words or a fist fight. His relentlessly horrible director of communications got in on the act, responding to questions from a journalist like this:
🚨🚨EXCLUSIVE and BREAKING: What about that @GavinNewsom dyslexia disgnosis – can the gov. provide any paperwork related to his dyslexia diagnosis at any time of his life?
Newsom’s comms team just now tells me to “fuck off.”
Think @GavinNewsom’s comms team is losing it today? pic.twitter.com/oT3GoK5Cxi
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) February 23, 2026
Sam Altman calls Elon Musk’s plan to run AI from space ‘ridiculous’ — says ‘we are not there yet’ Market Realist
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Epstein files highlight how the wealthy borrow against art collections CNBC
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Minnesota lawmakers want increased protections for themselves after Hortman assassination Star Tribune
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A day after the Mexican Army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes in an operation in Jalisco, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Mexico to do even more to combat criminal organizations.
“Mexico must step up their effort on Cartels and Drugs!” Trump wrote on social media, reiterating a message he has conveyed on numerous previous occasions.
While the U.S. president didn’t explicitly refer to the operation that resulted in the death of Oseguera, other U.S. government officials did. Here is what they said.
China restricts exports to 40 Japanese entities with ties to military Alton Telegraph
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A remarkably complete skeleton uncovered along the UK’s Jurassic Coast has been identified as a previously unknown species of ichthyosaur — a group of prehistoric marine reptiles that once dominated the world’s oceans.
The dolphin-sized creature, named Xiphodracon goldencapensis and nicknamed the “Sword Dragon of Dorset,” is the only known specimen of its species. Its discovery helps close a major gap in the fossil record and offers new insight into ichthyosaur evolution.
For more than two centuries, the Jurassic Coast has yielded thousands of ichthyosaur fossils, ever since pioneering fossil hunter Mary Anning began making historic finds there. However, this marks the first new genus of Early Jurassic ichthyosaur described from the region in more than 100 years.
LONDON — British comedian Russell Brand pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to new counts of rape and sexual assault.
Brand, who was already facing similar charges involving four women, denied the new charges in Southwark Crown Court. The alleged offenses took place in 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Brand, 50, was charged in April with two counts of rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. Prosecutors said those offenses involving four women took place between 1999 and 2005 — one in the English seaside town of Bournemouth and three in London. Brand pleaded not guilty to those charges in a London court earlier this year.
Amazon Web Services suffered a 13-hour outage in December after its internal AI coding agent determined that the optimal solution to a problem was to wipe and rebuild an environment in production. This was not a cyberattack. It was not foreign interference. It was an AI system operating with operator-level permissions inside one of the most economically critical cloud platforms in the world.
“The people said the agentic tool, which can take autonomous actions on behalf of users, determined that the best course of action was to ‘delete and recreate the environment’.”
Delete and recreate the environment.
That command halted a live cloud service for half a day. AWS accounts for roughly 60 percent of Amazon’s operating profits and supports payroll systems, logistics networks, enterprise back ends, and consumer-facing applications used by millions. Its reliability is not a bonus feature. It is the product.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was evacuated Tuesday from his official residence over a safety concern.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) said they were summoned to The Lodge in Canberra following a threat and that Albanese was moved to another secure site, according to Sky News.
“About 6pm today, the AFP responded to an alleged security incident within the Australian Capital Territory,” police reportedly said in a statement. “A thorough search of a protection establishment was undertaken and nothing suspicious was located.”
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown is suing the Trump administration over its plan to convert a vacant warehouse into an immigration detention facility.
The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, alleges the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to establish such a facility in Washington County is unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Brown argued the federal government needed to conduct an environmental review concerning the land on which the 825,000-square-foot warehouse lies.
President Donald Trump announced Saturday an increase in the global tariff rate on imports from 10 percent to 15 percent. The change — which comes just a day after the administration was forced to restructure due to a controversial Supreme Court ruling — took effect immediately and applies to goods imported from most countries.
The announcement came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on in the consolidated cases Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. The Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
New images inside Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Lolita Express’ private jet show some of the chilling items that have been left on the aircraft, which is now abandoned.
Now rotting away in an aircraft yard in Georgia, newly released footage shows the plane deteriorating on an outdoor tarmac, its structure corroding and worn after long exposure to the elements. The new images have revealed the plane’s current state, which is a far cry from its days carrying high-profile passengers, including former President Bill Clinton.
Xi Jinping’s Generals Are Hiding in Their Barracks, Afraid They Could Be Purged Next Vision Times
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Signs within China point to instability continuing in the wake of Chairman Xi’s recent purge of an attempted coup that appears to have been led by the-then second most powerful man in China, Zhang Youxia. Zhang was well-respected by the military, and they appear willing to send public signals they continue to support him.
That signal came through their newspaper, the Liberation Army Daily, which featured an article signaling support for an historic figure like Zhang Youxia, Zhang Guotao, who broke with Mao Zedong in the 30s. This was the first of six similar articles released following the reported arrest of Zhang Youxia.
Xi Jinping Has Turned China’s Military Against Him, and the Party’s Own Newspaper Proves It Vision Times
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On Feb. 11, the Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of China’s military, published yet another article invoking Zhang Guotao, a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party who broke with Mao Zedong in the 1930s and is remembered in Party mythology as the archetype of treachery and “splitting the Party and the army.” The article accused Zhang Guotao of “carrying out activities to split the Party and the Red Army,” language that transparently targets two recently purged military leaders: Zhang Youxia, the former vice chairman of China’s top military command body (the Central Military Commission), and Liu Zhenli, the former chief of the Joint Staff Department, China’s most senior operational military commander.
This was the sixth such article since Jan.16, the date that online sources say Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were physically detained, eight days before their purge was officially announced on Jan. 24. All six articles share a revealing pattern: every one of them invokes the historical villain Zhang Guotao, and every one of them avoids mentioning Zhang Youxia or Liu Zhenli by name. The gap between the fury of the rhetoric and the absence of the actual targets’ names speaks volumes about how politically explosive these purges remain.
The six articles, with their dates and titles, are:
Jan. 18: “Courage Is Measured by What You Fear and What You Don’t”
Feb. 2: “Political Army-Building Special: Strong Organizations Make a Strong Army”
President Trump has been moving more U.S. military assets, including carrier groups, into the Persian Gulf region as he threatens war with Iran while continuing to engage diplomatically with Iran. China and Russia have participated in a joint military exercise with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. At home, the President faces a potential congressional challenge to his authority to start a war with Iran. While protests continue sporadically in Iran, and reports of explosions continue to leak out, the regime appears fully in charge as it continues to slaughter the opposition.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States leaned into gunboat diplomacy Thursday as nuclear talks between the nations hung in the balance, with Tehran holding drills with Russia and the Americans bringing another aircraft carrier closer to the Mideast.
The Iranian drill and the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea underscore the tensions between the nations. Iran earlier this week also launched a drill that involved live-fire in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes.
The movements of additional American warships and airplanes don’t guarantee a U.S. strike on Iran — but it does give President Donald Trump the ability to carry out one should he choose to do so. He’s so far held off on striking Iran after setting red lines over the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran holding mass executions, while reengaging Tehran in nuclear talks earlier disrupted by the Iran-Israel war in June.
“Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website, seeking to pressure the United Kingdom over its plans to settle the future of the Chagos Islands with Mauritius.
Meanwhile, Iran struggles with unrest at home following its crackdown on protests, with mourners now holding ceremonies honoring their dead 40 days after their killing by security forces. Some of the gatherings have included anti-government cries, despite threats from authorities.
The drill Thursday saw Iranian forces and Russian sailors conduct operations in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. The drill will be aimed at “upgrading operational coordination as well as exchange of military experiences,” IRNA added.
China had joined the “Security Belt” drill in previous years, but there was no acknowledgment it participated in this round. In recent days, a vessel that appeared to be a Steregushchiy-class Russian corvette had been seen at a military port in the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas.
Iran also issued a rocket-fire warning to pilots in the region, suggesting they planned to launch anti-ship missiles in the exercise.
Meanwhile, tracking data showed the Ford off the coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean midday Wednesday, meaning the carrier could transit through Gibraltar and potentially station in the eastern Mediterranean with its supporting guided-missile destroyers.
Having the carrier there could allow American forces to have extra aircraft and anti-missile power to potentially protect Israel and Jordan should a conflict break out with Iran. The U.S. similarly placed warships there during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip to protect against Iranian fire.
Mourning ceremonies for those killed by security forces in the protests last month also have increased. Iranians traditionally mark the death of a loved one 40 days after the loss. Both witnesses and social media videos showed memorials taking place at Tehran’s massive Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Some memorials included people chanting against Iran’s theocracy while singing nationalistic songs.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 at Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, initially over the collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial, then spread across the country. Tensions exploded on Jan. 8, with demonstrations called for by Iran’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi.
Iran’s government has offered only one death toll for the violence, with 3,117 people killed. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous rounds of unrest in Iran, puts the death toll at over 7,000 killed, with many more feared dead.
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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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