American sympathies in the Middle East have shifted dramatically toward the Palestinians, according to new Gallup polling, after decades of overwhelming support for the Israelis. read more
Former President Bill Clinton on Friday told members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee investigating his ties to Jeffrey Epstein that "I saw nothing" and "did nothing wrong," and criticized the panel for making his wife sit for a deposition. read more
If you've ever tried to overhaul a garden, you know you're bound to find broken bits of pottery and long-forgotten statuary swallowed by vines -- but for one couple, that imitation of archaeological discovery turned into the real thing. At first glance, the marble slab etched in Latin -- including the phrase "spirits of the dead" -- might have looked like a mass-produced facsimile designed to lend a garden a little decorative gravitas.
The U.S. military used a laser to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone, members of Congress said Thursday, and the Federal Aviation Administration responded by closing more airspace near El Paso, Texas. It's not clear why the laser was deployed, but it's the second time in two weeks that one has been fired in the area. read more
People had voiced concern over Olive's tendency to break into routine customer interactions with fictional details about its life and family.
Reuters now saying in their live updates ...
Israel says Khamenei is dead, Iran says he is 'commanding the field'
www.reuters.com
Update ...
Israel says Khamenei is dead, Iran says he is 'commanding the field'
www.reuters.com
...
Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, senior Israeli official tells Reuters
Iran says leader is 'firmly commanding the field'
...
Time will tell which is correct.
@#143 ... Iranian people dancing in the streets wrapping themselves in the real Iranian flag they've kept ...
US-Israeli attack triggers fear and panic in Iran
www.reuters.com
... Iranians fled cities in search of safety, rushed to stock up on food, and formed long queues at fuel stations as an attack on Iran by the United States and Israel spread fear and panic throughout the country.
When the strikes began on Saturday morning, explosions rocked Tehran and columns of smoke rose into the sky, shaking the city at the start of the Iranian working week. Israel said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in the operation, but Iranian authorities have not confirmed his fate.
Residents reached by phone described scenes of chaos and alarm as they rushed to collect their children from school or made preparations to leave home for now. ...
@#132 ... What are they gonna do, exercise their Second Amendment rights? ...
Can you say... World Cup Games? I knew you could.
World Cup host cities are running out of time' with $625m in funding held up by DHS shutdown
www.theguardian.com
... Local and national officials expressed concern on Tuesday that the ongoing partial government shutdown in the United States could adversely affect planning and preparation for the 2026 World Cup, which is just over 100 days away.
In a hearing before the House committee on homeland security, representatives from Miami, Kansas City and New Jersey -- three locations that will host a combined total of 21 matches in the tournament, including the final -- said they are still waiting on federal funds to be released to their respective local agencies. Last July, lawmakers pledged $625m in federal assistance toward World Cup security via the Trump administration's "big beautiful" policy bill. ...
@#128 ... We'll probably see $100 bbl oil in the near future with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. ...
Time will tell.
Found this ...
$100 Oil Is in Play
www.wsj.com
@#88 ... So far, oil futures have risen nearly 3% ...
#84 | Posted by LampLighter
That's good for the Investor Class.
More good news?
Stealing Iran's oil is Historically Precedented. ...
US strikes against Iran could see oil prices jump $10 to $20 or more with no deescalation
finance.yahoo.com
... Futures on Brent crude (BZ=F), the international pricing benchmark, had jumped by roughly 2.9% to close above $72.80 on Friday, while those on US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude (CL=F) had moved up by a slightly smaller 2.8% to trade above $67 by Friday's close.
Without signs of deescalation over the weekend, prices could surge upward by as much as $10 to $20 per barrel when the market reopens Sunday night, Jorge Len, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, told Yahoo Finance.
"Given the scale of retaliation, most of the strategic initiative now lies with Iran," Len said. "How Tehran chooses to respond over the next 24-72 hours -- especially toward energy infrastructure or regional shipping -- will be the primary driver of near-term oil market dynamics." ...
@#89 ... Now I wonder how Mr. Putin is going to feel about this "regime change." ...
Russia condemns US-Israel strikes on Iran as 'unprovoked act of armed aggression'
apnews.com
From the article cited here: drudge.com
US sympathies in Israeli-Palestinian conflict have shifted
... The shift began even before the Israel-Hamas war turned the issue into a flash point within the Democratic Party. Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the initial attack and took another 251 hostage, but the Israeli response has been widely seen as disproportionate, with Gaza health officials reporting more than 72,000 Palestinians killed, nearly half of them women and children, and wide swaths of the territory reduced to rubble. Many progressive politicians and activists now describe Israel's actions in the war as genocide " a charge Israel vehemently denies.
Democrats have expressed greater sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis since 2023 " in a Gallup poll that was conducted before the Oct. 7 attacks " but Gallup's surveys show their support in the conflict has been tilting toward the Palestinians and away from the Israelis since around 2017. ...
Chart showing Gallup sympathy for Israel polling numbe5rrs since 2001: interactives.ap.org
Per Bloomberg TV: Trump gambles new Iran strikes will save flailing MAGA agenda
democraticunderground.com
... The US-Israeli attack on Tehran on Saturday marks a turning point for President Donald Trump, who is wagering that a war - the kind of which he once vowed NOT TO START - will strengthen his second-term agenda.
In a break from his campaign promises to keep the US out of foreign wars, Trump decided to attack - despite what Arab mediators described as significcan progress in nuclear talks with Tehran, and in the face of polling showing MOST Americans oppos fresh military action.
It came less than two months after he order a high-states US military raid inside Venezuela, another signal that his second term has tilted toward muscular intervention abroad.
The Iran strikes are the biggest gamble yet for the US leader, whose approval ratings have plunged in recent weeks, with surveys showing Americans think he is concentrating too much on foreign policy and too litte on the economy. ...
Original [paywalled] article...
www.bloomberg.com
Tangentially related ...
OpEd: Microsoft undercuts its kinder, gentler image with big ICE contract
www.computerworld.com
... But an investigation published a week ago by the UK's The Guardian and its partners +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that ICE is storing vast amounts of data on Microsoft's Azure cloud storage and using Microsoft AI tools to search and analyze that data. It found ICE is also using many of Microsoft's productivity tools and may be running its own tools and systems on Microsoft servers.
The investigation discovered that the amount of data ICE stores on Microsoft's cloud more than tripled in just a few months, from 400 terabytes to 1,400 terabytes between July 2025 and January 2026. Why the massive increase? Because Congress increased ICE's budget in July by $75 billion, making it the country's highest-funded US law enforcement body. ICE promptly went on a tech spending spree, in part to increase its surveillance capabilities.
The Guardian reports on the vast reach of that surveillance: "ICE, which has been likened to a domestic surveillance agency, enjoys access to vast troves of data on people living in the US. It has a growing arsenal of surveillance technology, including facial recognition apps, phone location databases, drones and invasive spyware." ...
Last September, Microsoft revoked the Israeli army's access to the company's Azure cloud storage because the army was using it for mass surveillance in Palestine. So the company does have a history of ending deals with government agencies for moral reasons. ...
Anthropic sees support from other tech workers in feud with Pentagon
www.mercurynews.com
... Anthropic PBC got a vote of support from Silicon Valley workers for its increasingly contentious public-relations battle with the Pentagon over how the military can use artificial intelligence.
Two coalitions of workers -- including employees of Amazon.com Inc., Google, Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI -- are asking their companies to join Anthropic in refusing to comply with Defense Department demands for unrestricted use of AI products.
"We are writing to urge our own companies to also refuse to comply should they or the frontier labs they invest in enter into further contracts with the Pentagon," a coalition of labor unions and other groups representing workers at Alphabet Inc., Amazon and Microsoft said in a letter posted early Friday.
The letters, and similar support for Anthropic from tech executives on social media, show how a tussle between one AI company and the Pentagon could mushroom into an industry-wide battle over how best to deploy the powerful technology safely.
Anthropic and the US military have been in talks over what exactly the armed forces can do with its tools. The richly valued startup, which has pitched itself as a cautious and responsible AI developer, insists that its products, including the Claude chatbot, not be used for surveillance of US citizens or to carry out lethal strikes without human involvement. ...
In the open letter posted Friday, workers with groups including Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the Alphabet Workers Union, No Tech for Apartheid and No Azure for Apartheid sought to connect Anthropic's stand to employee efforts to get their companies to disclose more about the services they sell to state agencies taking part in President Donald Trump's deportation push.
"Executive leadership at Google, Microsoft and Amazon must reject the Pentagon's advances and provide workers with transparency about contracts with other repressive state agencies including DHS, CBP and ICE," they said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Another letter, published earlier this week and signed by Google and OpenAI employees, urged executives to put aside their differences "and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight." ...
@#9 ... Because our government currently believes it is at war with the American people. ...
But only if they are Democrats.
An update...
Trump tells government to stop using Anthropic's AI systems
www.nbcnews.com
... On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had moved to label Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" and cancel further Defense business with the company.
Shortly afterwards, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on X that he would direct the Defense Department to label Anthropic a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security."
The move, usually reserved for foreign adversaries, would bar any military contractor or supplier from doing business with Anthropic. Both Hegseth and Trump announced agencies would have six months to phase out any existing federal business with Anthropic.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company, led by CEO Dario Amodei, has made clear in months of contract negotiations with the Pentagon that it would not allow its AI systems to be harnessed for domestic surveillance or direct use in lethal autonomous weapons. ...
Epstein files contain explicit but unsubstantiated claim that Trump abused minor
www.theguardian.com
... Three memos that describe four interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019 contain explicit but unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman when she was a minor in the early 1980s with the assistance of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Guardian review of those documents.
The Department of Justice did not release those records when it uploaded millions of pages of files related to Epstein beginning in December. The existence of the missing documents was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger and subsequently confirmed by NPR, causing outrage in Washington and sparking an investigation from congressional Democrats.
The Guardian obtained the missing FBI form 302 reports, which memorialize 25 pages of agents' notes from the four interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2019. The notes describe how the woman came forward to tell agents she recognized Epstein from a photo sent by a childhood friend. Only the first session, in which she did not name Trump, made it into the public release. The Guardian has chosen not to publish the woman's name. ...
Iran's Khamenei Killed in Major Victory for Trump, Netanyahu
www.newsweek.com