World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
New York City’s far-left socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing fierce backlash after condemning the U.S. military strike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and effectively ended the brutal regime.
As a joint U.S.–Israel operation unfolded Saturday targeting senior Iranian leadership in Tehran, Mamdani took to X to criticize President Donald Trump’s decision.
His post has since been viewed roughly 20 million times.
A former FBI official is warning of potential Iranian-linked attacks inside the United States following US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Chris Swecker, a former assistant FBI director, said Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah could escalate efforts to carry out attacks against the US after Operation Epic Fury, including attacks on American soil. In comments to the Daily Mail, Swecker said, “We’ve got a cornered animal here, and if ever we’re going to see attacks on the United States, this would be the catalyst for that.”
“It’s a tinder box right now,” he added. “You’ve got the leadership of Iran in a state of desperation.”
Police in York Region have not officially said whether the Thornhill shooting is connected to international developments.
An Iranian-owned boxing gym north of Toronto was struck by gunfire early Sunday morning, a day after US President Donald Trump confirmed reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader had been killed.
York Regional Police said officers responded to reports of shots fired around 3 am near Yonge Street and Steeles Avenue West in Thornhill. When they arrived, they found evidence that multiple rounds had been fired at a commercial building. The property was unoccupied at the time. No injuries were reported.
REUTERS–Cuban forces killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida-registered speedboat that entered Cuban waters on Wednesday and opened fire on a Cuban patrol, the Cuban government said at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.
Cuba’s Interior Ministry said the group was comprised of anti-government Cubans, some of whom were previously wanted in Cuba. It said the group came from the U.S. armed with assault rifles, handguns, homemade explosives, ballistic vests and telescopic sights.
An additional Cuban suspect was detained inside Cuban territory in connection with the plot, the statement said.
“According to preliminary statements from the detainees, they intended to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes,”
China’s ongoing military corruption purges have created serious deficiencies in the command structure of its armed forces and are likely to have affected the readiness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to a leading defence research centre.The purges, led by the Chinese president Xi Jinping, which have spanned the supreme central military commission, theatre commands, weapons procurement, development programmes, and defence academia, are expected to be incomplete, said London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) this week, according to Reuters.
Austria Targets “Right-Wing Extremism”, Ignores Left-Wing and Islamist Violence The European Conservative
from news.google.com
U.S. President Donald Trump briefly laid out his case for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.
Even while assembling a massive military force in the Middle East, Trump has done little to explain to the American public why he might be leading the U.S. into its most aggressive action against the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution.
In his speech, Trump pointed to Tehran’s support for militant groups, its killing of protesters and the country’s missile and nuclear programs as threats to the region and the
United States.
As progressive activists blockade Palantir offices and protest the company’s AI tools used in ICE deportation and surveillance operations, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has continued taking millions from the company’s lobbyists, according to new Federal Election Commission filings.
In January alone, more than a dozen lobbyists with firms representing Palantir bundled a combined $2.9 million for the DCCC, according to a newly filed FEC disclosure. The January haul from Palantir’s lobbying firms represents 38% of the DCCC’s total contributions for the month.
Canada is sending $8 million in food aid to people in Cuba, where a U.S. oil blockade has triggered a humanitarian crisis.
The funding will be delivered through United Nations agencies instead of the Cuban government.
Global Affairs Canada has warned travellers for more than a year of “shortages of basic necessities, including food, medicine and fuel,” across most of Cuba.
The former Prime Minister of Norway has been rushed to hospital after a reported suicide attempt.
Thorbjørn Jagland was hospitalised on Tuesday, February 24, just a few days after he was charged with serious corruption offences, linked to his association with paedophile Epstein. Reports of Jagland attempting suicide were denied by his lawyer.
Jagland was charged with “gross corruption” after newly released documents appeared to reveal a transactional relationship between the ex-PM and convicted paedophile, between 2011 and 2018. Some Norwegian outlets have reported a suicide attempt, but the high-profile statesman’s legal team has insisted he was rushed to the hospital due to extreme stress instead of a deliberate act.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claimed his nuclear-armed country could “completely destroy” South Korea if its security were threatened, reiterating his refusal to engage with Seoul, state media said Thursday. However, he left the door open to dialogue with Washington as he concluded a ruling party congress outlining his policy goals for the next five years.
from www.washingtontimes.com
When your average daily token usage is 8 billion a day, you have a massive scale problem.
This was the case at AT&T, and chief data officer Andy Markus and his team recognized that it simply wasn’t feasible (or economical) to push everything through large reasoning models.
So, when building out an internal Ask AT&T personal assistant, they reconstructed the orchestration layer. The result: A multi-agent stack built on LangChain where large language model “super agents” direct smaller, underlying “worker” agents performing more concise, purpose-driven work.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press that the boat Cuba’s Coast Guard shot at and killed four people was not participating in a U.S. government operation.
We do not know who was on the boat. One person told The New York Post that the boat was “a US civilian boat working to get relatives out of Cuba, adding that the vessel was not a US Naval or Coast Guard boat.”
The suspects’ boat was loaded with tactical gear, assault rifles and improvised explosives, according to authorities on the island
Cuba’s Interior Ministry has released new findings from its investigation into the deadly gunfight between Cuban border guards and a US‑flagged speedboat, saying the vessel was carrying ten armed men who allegedly intended to execute a “terrorist infiltration.”
Havana said the clash erupted on Wednesday when border guards approached a Florida‑registered vessel, FL7726SH, operating roughly one nautical mile off the northern coast of Villa Clara province for an identification check. The individuals aboard the boat allegedly opened fire first, wounding the commander of a Cuban patrol craft before guards returned fire, killing four people and injuring six others.
‘WAR POSTER’ In Iran Hints At Attack On Israel If War Breaks Out | ‘America’s 51st State…’ | WATCH The Times of India
from news.google.com
The SSPX has announced it will proceed with episcopal consecrations on July 1, defying Vatican objections and declaring the Church in a state of emergency. Cardinal Robert Sarah and Cardinal Walter Brandmüller have issued public rebukes, demanding obedience to Pope Leo. Bishop Athanasius Schneider has offered support. The battle lines are drawn, not over rebellion, but over whether the crisis within the Church justifies extraordinary measures to preserve the priesthood and the faith.
Pope Leo’s recent episcopal appointments have placed men supportive of same-sex blessings into positions of authority, elevated figures entangled in Freemasonry controversies, and advanced leaders shaped by Germany’s Synodal Way. The pattern is not accidental. It is a deliberate reshaping of the hierarchy in Rome’s own image.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed Wednesday night that an investigation was underway after the Cuban government opened fire on a speedboat they claimed was registered in Florida, killing four people and wounding multiple others.
Rubio, speaking from St. Kitts and Nevis during a diplomatic engagement with Caribbean leaders, stated that the US learned of the incident through direct Coast Guard-level contacts with Cuban authorities before the Cuban government’s public announcement.
“We’re going to find out exactly what happened, who was involved, and we’ll make a determination on the basis of what we find out,” the secretary told reporters.
An Iranian opposition group took credit for a coordinated assault on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Tehran headquarters this week, reporting “heavy clashes” with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that allegedly left more than 100 of its fighters killed, wounded, or arrested.
The Command Headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) said the operation began at dawn Monday, February 23, during the call to morning prayer, and continued into the afternoon around the Motahari Complex in central Tehran — one of the Islamic Republic’s most heavily fortified seats of power.
The Chagos Islands deal fell into disarray Wednesday amid conflicting U.K. government messages about whether ratification was paused for talks with the United States over the strategic Indian Ocean military base Diego Garcia.
Foreign Office Minister Hamish Falconer had told members of Parliament that ratification of the deal to cede the islands to Mauritius had been paused while discussions with Washington continued.
A U.K. government spokesperson later denied there was any formal suspension of the process, insisting no deadline had ever been set and reiterating that Britain would not move forward without American backing.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that the dispute between the U.S. Defense Department and Anthropic is “not the end of the world.”
His comments come after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic until Friday to loosen its rules on how the Pentagon can use its AI tools, or risk losing its government contract.
If Anthropic fails to comply, Hegseth threatened to label the company a “supply chain risk” or invoke the Defense Production Act, sources told CNBC‘s Ashley Capoot and Kate Rooney earlier this week.
PARIS — France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she won’t run for president next year if a Paris appeals court orders her to wear an electronic bracelet over alleged misuse of European Union funds.
Le Pen said she hopes the appeals court clears her in key verdict set for July 7 — a ruling that may derail her presidential ambitions.
“I know very well that the decision regarding this candidacy isn’t mine to make,” she said Wednesday evening on news broadcaster BFM TV.
Le Pen, 57, is challenging a March 2025 verdict that found her and other members of her National Rally party guilty of misusing EU Parliament funds in the hiring of aides from 2004 to 2016 who allegedly worked for the party instead of doing parliamentary tasks.
The crude oil shipment destined for MOL Group is already being loaded at the state-owned Janaf’s Omišalj terminal, the Croatian oil company announced on Wednesday, per a report from HVG. According to the statement, this will not be the only shipment, as seven more tankers will arrive by the beginning of April.
Janaf emphasized in its statement that it is not Russian crude oil that is being supplied to Hungarians, and yet, the company is ready to meet the entire annual demand of refineries in both Slovakia and Hungary.
In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in headquarters is no longer time. It is, rather, the willingness to say no.
Artificial intelligence is moving rapidly into military planning staffs because it compresses routine cognitive labor. AI excels at absorbing guidance, reorganizing complex material, and producing clear strategic language at speed. This feels like a qualitative advance, creating the impression that planning itself has become easier. But this impression misleads. The risk of AI-enabled planning is that it will produce plausible constructs that obscure where judgment is required, creating the illusion that analytic completeness can substitute for prioritization.
AI is seen as “raising the floor” by making it easier to produce adequate products. That is true. Yet AI also “collapses the median” by increasing the relative cost of real insight. As AI-enabled planning begin to inform real-world operations, the temptation is to treat complete answers as sufficient, without interrogating whether they represent the right answers to the hard questions of what to resource, what to defer, and what risk to accept.
The AI firm says a Chinese official’s activity on the chatbot pointed to wider “cyber special operations” to intimidate both domestic and foreign critics.
from www.channelnewsasia.com
from news.google.com
TRUMP AND ZELENSKY SPEAK: A day after President Donald Trump publicly ignored the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and barely mentioned the war in his State of the Union address, the president resumed his pressure campaign to convince Volodymyr Zelensky he has little choice but to make a quick deal to end the war before things get worse.
“I just spoke with @POTUS Donald Trump,” Zelensky posted on X yesterday after a phone call with Trump, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. “I thanked them for all their work and for their active involvement in the negotiations and the efforts to end the war.”
In the 30-minute call, Trump told Zelensky he wants to see an end to the war “as soon as possible,” Axios reported, citing “a Ukrainian official and two other sources with knowledge of the call.”
The Justice Department announced Wednesday that a former U.S. Air Force major and longtime fighter pilot has been arrested on charges that he trained Chinese military pilots without authorization.
Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., 65, was taken into custody in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and is expected to appear in federal court on Thursday. Prosecutors allege that beginning around August 2023, Brown worked to arrange combat aircraft training for members of China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force and traveled to China in December 2023 to carry it out.
Federal officials were blunt.
“The United States Air Force trained Major Brown to be an elite fighter pilot and entrusted him with the defense of our Nation. He now stands charged with training Chinese military pilots.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a ruthless attack order in the face of peace efforts(Image: POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia launched a mass overnight onslaught of almost 500 bombs on Ukraine injuring at least 26 people – as the Kremlin dampened peace talk hopes.
At least 420 deadly drones and dozens of missiles were used in the attack, plus anti-ship , ballistic and cruise weapons , many of which were aimed at Kyiv and seven other regions.