World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
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Israel’s military has killed six people in an air raid on a house in southern Lebanon, the latest violation of a United States-brokered truce that has only ever existed on paper.
The Israeli attack on Monday night targeted a house in the Kfar Dounin municipality, some 100km (60 miles) south of Beirut, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said.
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WASHINGTON: The United States government on Monday (May 11) announced sanctions against three people and nine companies, including four based in Hong Kong and four in the United Arab Emirates, for aiding Iran’s shipment of oil to China.
The ninth company is based in Oman.
The Treasury move follows sanctions announced on Friday on individuals and companies aiding Iranian purchases of weapons and components used to make drones and ballistic missiles.
It comes days before US President Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Xi Jinping, where he is expected to press the Chinese leader to help resolve the standoff with Iran and reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.
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Michigan Democrats are pushing a controversial new legislative package to begin euthanizing members of the public under radical “assisted suicide” laws.
The bills would legalize medically assisted suicide for certain terminally ill adults, adding the state to a growing list of jurisdictions embracing the slippery slope of so-called “death with dignity” laws.
The proposed legislation would create a “Death with Dignity Act” allowing adults diagnosed with terminal illnesses and given six months or less to live to request life-ending drugs from doctors.
Supporters frame the measure as compassionate end-of-life care.
Bishop Schneider: Synod report on homosexuality ‘crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy’– www.lifesitenews.com
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Bishop Athanasius Schneider has said that a Vatican Synod on Synodality report suggesting homosexual “relationships” may not be sinful echoes the serpent in the Garden of Eden and has “crossed the line from orthodoxy into heresy.”
In an interview with Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, Schneider commented on the final report of Study Group 9, published May 5 by the Holy See’s General Secretariat of the Synod. The document was put together by one of the ten study groups established by Pope Francis in February 2024 in the context of the Synod on Synodality. The report from Study Group 9, titled “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues,” suggested that homosexual “relationships” may not be sinful in themselves.
“In issuing the Final Report of Study Group No. 9, the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops has stooped to promoting the propaganda of a global sexual ideology that is being aggressively pushed in politics and the media worldwide,” Schneider told Montagna.
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Idea criticized by legal scholars
Democrats should push through legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of Virginia Supreme Court in order to remove justices who ruled a gerrymandered map unconstitutional, a “democracy” scholar argued.
Quinn Yeargain, who uses “they/them/theirs” pronouns and whose real name is Tyler, made the argument on Saturday. Yeargain is the “1855 Professor of Law of Democracy” at Michigan State University, according to the scholar’s faculty website.
Writing at Downballot, Yeargain said Democrats should lower the retirement age to 54, outwardly saying the goal would be to remove the youngest justice who made what the professor considers the wrong decision.
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Scientists studying ancient microfossils from Brazil have discovered that structures once believed to be traces left behind by tiny animals were actually formed by communities of microscopic bacteria and algae. The findings challenge previous ideas about when small animals first appeared on Earth and suggest oxygen levels in ancient oceans may still have been too low to support certain forms of animal life around 540 million years ago.
The research focused on fossils found in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul and was published in the journal Gondwana Research. Earlier studies had interpreted the marks as evidence of wormlike creatures or other tiny marine animals moving through seafloor sediment during the Ediacaran period, which came just before the Cambrian explosion.
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For decades, scientists searching for life beyond Earth have focused on one central challenge: identifying the right molecules to look for on distant planets and moons.
But new research published in Nature Astronomy suggests the answer may lie not in the molecules themselves, but in the hidden patterns that connect them.
“We’re showing that life does not only produce molecules,” said Fabian Klenner, UC Riverside assistant professor of planetary sciences and co-author of the study. “Life also produces an organizational principle that we can see by applying statistics.”
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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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Democrat Gov. Tim Walz is facing mounting scrutiny after Vice President JD Vance confirmed that federal authorities are investigating whether Minnesota officials failed to properly respond to massive fraud allegations tied to taxpayer-funded programs across the state.
The investigation follows a sweeping federal operation carried out across the Minneapolis area late last month.
FBI agents and federal investigators executed more than 20 search warrants targeting businesses connected to child care services, autism treatment programs, and other publicly funded operations.
Federal officials say the probe centers on allegations involving fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, abuse of state and federal child care assistance programs, and broader misuse of taxpayer dollars.
Trump administration officials have suggested the total amount under investigation could ultimately reach into the billions.
“[Minnesota is] under investigation by our great vice president,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday.
“They’re finding a lot.”
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Just days after a recent Supreme Court ruling against unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that it will enforce the decision nationwide.
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon told Just the News, “This is the law of the land now, and eventually every jurisdiction in the United States is going to have to comply with race-free line-drawing.”
Last week, Supreme Court justices ruled 6–3 in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s newly redrawn congressional map relied “too heavily on race” in creating a second majority-black district in the state.
That decision is expected to affect states with maps drawn to heavily favor Democrats, including California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, and Virginia.
Many of these states have enacted their own Voting Rights Acts, which explicitly use race as a predominant factor in determining districts.
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The Department of Justice is still searching for answers about what happened in the 2020 presidential election.
The DOJ has filed a subpoena seeking the names of every election worker involved in the 2020 presidential election.
The subpoena also requests information about all volunteers who assisted Fulton County election staffers.
NBC News had the full scoop on the DOJ’s move and covered the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections’ response:
The Justice Department is seeking the names and contact information of election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who worked during the 2020 presidential election, according to legal filings.
The Justice Department filed a subpoena in April to try to force the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections to release the names, addresses and contact information for 2020 election staff members and volunteers. The grand jury subpoena was made public Monday as the Fulton County board urged a judge to quash it. The New York Times was first to report the subpoena.
The subpoena marks an expanded effort by the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump has continued to focus on since he lost there.
Reached for comment, Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts said that “the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process.”
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Turning Point USA Frontlines reporter Savanah Hernandez has filed a civil lawsuit against Christopher, DeYanna, and Paige Ostroushko after they were caught on video violently attacking her at an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis, while the journalist was covering the event.
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota, accuses the Ostroushko family of assault and battery stemming from the April 11 protest outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. According to the complaint, Hernandez was “viciously and repeatedly attacked” while reporting on demonstrations connected to what organizers called “National F*ck ICE Day.”
Hernandez announced the civil suit on X, writing, “I promised to use every legal avenue to hold the Ostroushkos responsible and will be working with @MurdockJDF as we continue to pursue justice.”
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“My prediction is by the end of 2028, it’s more likely than not that we have an AI system where you would be able to say to it: ‘Make a better version of yourself.’ And it just goes off and does that completely autonomously,” Jack Clark, who heads The Anthropic Institute, told Axios.
Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, says his institute is seeing signs of “AI contributing to speeding up the research and development of AI itself,” a process known as recursive self-improvement.
Clark adds, “It’s always been the case that humans outside the technology need to come up with the ideas that they then put back into it. What happens if we have a technology that can generate ideas within itself for how to improve itself? That’s a new concept.”
Too fast, too soon. The speed with which AI systems are evolving is far outstripping our ability to gauge the impact on humans and society. Lots of good things can happen in medicine, biology, and other sciences where AI is already making a big impact. The speed and autonomy of artificial intelligence models promise an abundant future.
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VATICAN CITY — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed “efforts to achieve a durable peace in the Middle East” in talks at the Vatican on Thursday aimed at easing tensions following U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticisms of Pope Leo XIV.
Rubio met with Leo and then Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin in a visit that lasted 2½ hours.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said that Rubio and Leo discussed the situation in the Middle East “and topics of mutual interest in the Western Hemisphere. The meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See and their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” he said.
In a separate statement about the Parolin meeting, Pigott said that the two diplomats discussed “ongoing humanitarian efforts in the Western Hemisphere and efforts to achieve a durable peace in the Middle East. The discussion reflected the enduring partnership between the United States and the Holy See in advancing religious freedom,” the statement said.