World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
News Source
EXCERPT:
Iran says it has launched a missile attack at an airbase in Jordan hosting US forces, after also targeting Kuwait and Bahrain. The Revolutionary Guards said missiles have targeted the Muwaffaq Salti airbase, which is known to host US F-35 fighter jets and other aircraft.
Neither Jordan nor the US has acknowledged any attack, but if confirmed it would likely be the first time that Iran has targeted Jordan since the start of the ceasefire in April.
The US strikes on Iran followed the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the strait of Hormuz, from which two crew members were rescued in a stable condition. In a post on social media Trump said the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash.
Here is the latest:
The US launched multiple waves of strikes on Iran in response to a military helicopter crash off the strait of Hormuz that Donald Trump said Iran had downed. The Associated Press reported that the Apache helicopter that crashed went down after colliding with an Iranian drone, but it was not clear whether the collision was intentional.
US strikes were reported across Iran’s southern coast, on the strait of Hormuz. After more than three hours of military action, US central command (Centcom) said strikes were “completed”, adding that the US remained ready to defend against “unjustified Iranian aggression.”
Soon after, Iran launched retaliatory attacks against the US, according to the countries state media, which said American bases in the region and the US fifth fleet in Bahrain were targeted with drones. Kuwait and Bahrain issued air raid alerts and reported that air defences were active in repelling attacks. Iran also claimed it had targeted a US base in Jordan with long range missiles.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said no attack would go “unanswered”, soon after the US launched strikes on Iran. Posting an image of the strait of Hormuz with the label, “Forever Persian Gulf”, Araghchi says that “despite its defeats on the battlefield, the U.S. opted to test our determination.”
Five hours before the airstrikes, Trump had posted on social media that the US “must” respond to the helicopter crash, from which two crew members were rescued in stable condition. Before his social media post, however, Trump appeared to downplay the crash, telling the Wall Street Journal in a phone interview that it “wasn’t a big deal” and that “the pilot is fine.”
Iranian state media reported that no air military operations have taken place in the strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours, according to Reuters.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 11 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Tyre on Tuesday. The state-run National News Agency (NNA) had reported the first strike taking place not long before Israel’s military issued an evacuation warning for the entire city and surrounding areas ahead of strikes there.
News Source
EXCERPT:
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A man charged in the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee on a North Carolina commuter train cannot currently stand trial because of his mental illness and will undergo medical treatment to try to restore his competency, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Decarlos Brown Jr., 35, faces a federal charge of causing death on a mass transportation system in the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, a charge that is punishable by death. A separate state case against Brown in which he is charged with first-degree murder is on pause pending the outcome of the federal case.
At the request of Brown’s attorneys, U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell found that their client is not currently competent to stand trial and ordered him to spend up to four months in a prison medical facility to try to restore his competency.
The Nigerian military ran a successful rescue operation in the nation’s Borno state. They rescued 360 people who had been abducted from the Islamist terror group, Boko Haram.
Australia’s version of Britain’s Restore UK, One Nation, has taken the lead in a recent poll, surging ahead of the party in power, Labor, 31% to 30%. This is the first major poll showing One Nation take an overall lead.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Gunfire erupted Saturday near a busy street festival in Ohio, wounding at least 12 people and sending some eventgoers scrambling for cover while others rushed to help the victims.
No suspects were in custody hours afterward, Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said, and officials urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for possible leads.
The shooting happened near the Old West End Festival, an annual gathering of live music and home tours.
Heffernan said it appeared that at least two people fired weapons and they were “probably shooting at each other.”
News Source
EXCERPT:
An earthquake has been recorded in southern Iran, the third major quake in just over a day.
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sargaz in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province at a depth of 22km in the early hours of Tuesday, June 9.
Local media reported that the quake was also felt in the Kerman province.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, according to Mehr news agency.
The earthquake has caused no damage, local media reported the province’s crisis management chief as saying.
News Source
EXCERPT:
A Lebanese culture ministry official told the French news agency AFP on Monday that Israeli bombardment had damaged a UNESCO World Heritage site in the southern city of Tyre, as correspondents there reported damage at the site.
One of the oldest cities on the Mediterranean coast, Tyre, in antiquity, was at various times Phoenician, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine.
The city is around 12 miles from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, and its UNESCO World Heritage-listed ruins include the remains of Roman baths and a second-century triumphal arch and hippodrome.
News Source
EXCERPT:
US President Donald Trump has sparked alarm as a physical therapist makes worrying claims about his health after “mumbling” on live TV. The concerns were raised after an appearance in the Oval Office, where the 79-year-old addressed reporters during an event focused on environmental policy and “clean coal”.
A healthcare professional who specialises in geriatrics has since shared a detailed analysis of the footage, claiming Mr Trump displayed what he described as “stroke-like” symptoms. However, there is no official evidence that the President has suffered a stroke, and the White House has dismissed speculation about his health.
Adam James, a physical therapist who posts online under the name @epistemiccrisis, analysed footage from the June 4 event and shared his views on Instagram.
By a vote of 49-50, a vote to eliminate the formation of a future fund for lawfare victims of the Biden administration failed. The Senate GOP also managed to pass $70 billion for immigration enforcement funding through the DHS.
Donald Trump’s former National Security advisor, John Bolton, will reportedly plea guilty to classified document handling charges. Bolton was an avid detractor of Trump who initially called the charges political.
News Source
EXCERPT:
The secondary market for decades old, low-tech John Deere tractors has been booming for years as farmers have sought reliable tractors that they can actually fix without having to deal with John Deere’s repair monopoly. A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, “no-tech” tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers?
Alberta’s Ursa Ag says that it has been inundated with demand after announcing its tractor, which costs roughly half as much as a Deere and has the benefit of not being a repair nightmare. We have for years covered the frustration that farmers have felt as they have been locked out of their Deere tractors with digital rights management systems that prevent them from fixing their machinery, tractors that won’t run because of minor sensor failures, and crops that literally die on the vine as they wait for an “authorized” repair person to fix tractors during critical harvesting periods.
The Department of Justice under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has announced plans to cancel the “anti-weaponization” fund aimed at compensating Americans who had been politically prosecuted by the Biden administration.
The world’s top reserve asset is no longer US Treasuries, it’s gold, and that rally is being led by China, with Poland, Kazakhstan, and Brazil joining in the gold buying frenzy.
News Source
EXCERPT:
The Trump administration is rolling out what experts describe as the most significant expansion of U.S. sanctions on Cuba in decades.
The administration is attempting what supporters say is the first broad application of Cuba-related secondary sanctions against foreign firms, aiming not only at Havana itself but also at foreign companies and banks that continue doing business with the island’s military-linked economic empire.
The new framework, established under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump May 1, applies pressure beyond U.S. companies for the first time, threatening foreign firms with sanctions exposure if they continue operating in key sectors of the Cuban economy linked to Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., or GAESA.
News Source
EXCERPT:
The agreement between Israel and Lebanon, reached after a fourth round of US-mediated talks in Washington, is contingent on the “evacuation of all [Hezbollah] operatives” from an area between the Israeli border and the Litani river, about 30km (19 miles) to the north, which is currently occupied by Israeli ground forces.
News Source
EXCERPT:
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday again accused the U.S. of meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs after The Times published a report about two Mexican governors from her party who have had their U.S. visas revoked amid criminal probes into their possible links to organized crime.
Sheinbaum, speaking at her daily news conference, said it was up to the governors, Alfonso Durazo of Sonora and Américo Villarreal Anaya of Tamaulipas, to respond to the allegations against them.
But she questioned the rationale of the U.S. investigations, part of a sweeping Trump administration campaign against high-level Mexican officials suspected of aiding cartels.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Russia has accidentally dropped at least 25 glide bombs on its own territory and within occupied Ukraine this year, British military officials said in their latest assessment of the conflict in Ukraine.
News Source
EXCERPT:
On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditions—including water scarcity, regulations around water, and drought—could constrain data center development.
It isn’t the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that they’re facing the issue head-on.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Vladimir Putin has suffered a humilating blow after Ukraine struck his £120million warship in a huge attack near St Petersburg. The corvette Boykiy was hit in Kronstadt – headquarters of the Kremlin’s Baltic Fleet. The vessel was seen engulfed in flames in a Ukrainian video.
The 343ft-long vessel was like a “sitting duck” despite promises that defences had been tightened this week due to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum [SPIEF], hosted by the Russian dictator. One year ago, the Boykiy was guarding Putin’s sanctions-busting shadow fleet through the English Channel.
News Source
EXCERPT:
LONDON — The fatal stabbing last year in Britain of a teenager who was handcuffed by police while his killer stood nearby erupted into a debate on Tuesday about policing, race and knife crime.
The killing of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in December drew renewed attention after the killer was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years in prison on Monday, and following the release of a video showing police dismissing Nowak when he said that he had been stabbed.
The killer, Vickrum Digwa, 23, who is Sikh, had reported to police that he was the victim of a racist attack by Nowak, who was white.
News Source
EXCERPT:
American military forces carried out strikes on an Iranian island abutting the Strait of Hormuz in response to attempted Iranian drone and missile attacks, the latest clash between the two countries as President Trump pushes to strike a longer-term agreement with Iran.
U.S. Central Command said in a statement Tuesday it shot down three Iranian drones that targeted civilian mariners. Iran also launched ballistic missiles at U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf region that “all failed to hit their intended targets,” according to CENTCOM, including three missiles that were fired at Bahrain but were shot down by air defenses, and two missiles that “fell short or broke apart enroute” before hitting Kuwait.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Nine people, including five minors, were arrested during a large gathering of teens Monday night in Naperville, police said.
Large groups began to gather downtown Naperville around 5 p.m., according to Naperville police. Several teams of officers worked the gathering, during which “several juveniles and young adults chose to commit violations of state law and local ordinances,” Naperville police said in a enws release.
The crowds were dispersed by 11 p.m. By the end of the gathering, Naperville police issued nearly three dozen citations alongside the arrests, police said.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Two scientists at a U.S. government lab were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the country from Africa and lying about it during interviews with investigators at a Michigan airport, authorities said Tuesday.
A criminal complaint was unsealed in federal court in Detroit against Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, who works with him.
Munster and Kwe were stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January after a flight from Paris and nine days in the Republic of Congo. An outbreak of the mpox disease has been linked to more than 2,000 deaths in Congo, a vast region in central Africa, though a two-year outbreak was declared over in April.
A U.S. Court of Appeals of DC panel ruled 2-1 that the President could not remove currently serving trans members of the military, but he could continue prohibiting trans people from joining. The response from the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, was “See you at SCOTUS.”
News Source
EXCERPT:
For more than a century, biology has been guided by the principles of inheritance first described by Gregor Mendel through his famous pea plant experiments. While those rules explain how many genetic traits are passed from parents to offspring, scientists have also known that DNA sequences are not the whole story.
In addition to genes themselves, parents can pass along epigenetic changes. These are chemical modifications that affect how genes function without altering the underlying DNA code.
Now, a new federally funded study in mice suggests that some of these inherited epigenetic marks do not follow Mendel’s classic laws. Researchers found that about 7% of the epigenetic inheritance patterns they examined behaved in unexpected ways. The study also uncovered rare forms of inheritance previously seen in plants and flies but not in mammals.
News Source
EXCERPT:
WASHINGTON — The world is getting more uptight about lending money to President Donald Trump’s government — causing interest rates to climb in ways that are worsening affordability pressures, hampering economic growth and creating a new risk for Republicans in November’s midterm elections.
The energy price spike triggered by the Iran war has seeped into the price of bonds that help fund the U.S. government. Interest rates on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note are topping 4.44%, up from 3.95% before the war started at the end of February. Average mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels in nine months, while auto sales are slumping.
News Source
EXCERPT:
LONDON — British authorities said Monday they blocked Hasan Piker, a Turkish American online streamer, and another political commentator from entering the U.K. to speak at public events.
Piker, a liberal political commentator who is frequently critical of U.S. President Donald Trump, Israel and the war in Gaza, has 2.8 million followers on Twitch.
The Home Office said that the electronic travel authorization, or ETA, for Piker and Cenk Uygur, who hosts the “Young Turks” online political talk show and is reportedly Piker’s uncle, were canceled “on the grounds that their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.”
News Source
EXCERPT:
In April, a former contributor to the Beijing Normal University student media outlet 京师学人 (Jīngshī Xuérén, “Capital Scholar”) noted that its WeChat public account had been deregistered. Although updates had halted in 2023, the account and its content—more than 600 existing articles—had remained online, and “The Snowman” (雪人 Xuěrén, a pun on 学人 Xuérén) was warmly remembered as an eccentric campus institution and a training ground for emerging journalism students. News of its final demise prompted reflection and criticism online.
News Source
EXCERPT:
Two senior advisers to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said Monday that Iran would retain control over the Strait of Hormuz and would not tolerate Israel’s continued offensive in Lebanon.
