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... Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the army and police had found two backpacks containing explosives Sunday near a gas pipeline to Hungary, prompting Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban to call an emergency meeting.

Hungary's opposition leader Peter Magyar however suggested the incident could be a "false flag" operation staged to disrupt next Sunday's high-stakes elections in their country.

The backpacks, containing "two large packages of explosives with detonators", were found in Kanjiza in northern Serbia, "a few hundred metres from the gas pipeline", Vucic said. ...

But his opposition rival Magyar, in a post on X, expressed scepticism about the incident.

"For weeks, we've been receiving warnings from multiple sources that... Orban -- allegedly with Serbian and Russian assistance -- may be planning to cross another line," he posted on X.

"Many people have suggested that something might 'accidentally' happen in Serbia, possibly involving a gas pipeline, around Easter," he added, calling to be included in the national defence council meeting. ...

@#3 ... "What do you think about "[sending] them back to the Stone Age where they belong"?
Rev Ed Trevor ...

Before Pres Trump started his war against Iran, the people of Iran had a mostly positive view of the United States, it was the Iranian leadership that despised the US.

So now, why is Pres Trump threatening to send the people of Iran back to the stone age?

Are Pres Trump's actions against Iran effectively convincing the Iranian people that their hard-line leadership was correct?

... "No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials say. ...

No other American President has 34 criminal convictions.

More from the article ...

... But Trump is happy to browbeat whomever it takes to get what he wants. And he's reserved some of his most pointed recent criticisms for Supreme Court justices he appointed who have occasionally ruled against him.

So after spending two years floating breaking this norm -- and after suffering his biggest Supreme Court defeat in the chamber's February tariffs decision -- Trump finally did it.

But his decision to go was curious. And it's arguably even more so after the hearing.

Trump seemed to want to send a signal to judges, who have increasingly proven his biggest obstacles in his second term. The fact that he chose to attend even amid the war with Iran -- and hours ahead of a primetime address to the nation on the conflict -- would seem to reinforce that. It's not like he doesn't have other things to do.

But combined with a series of adverse recent court rulings, his presence at the Supreme Court risked reinforcing how little he can control the judicial branch.

The policy at issue on Wednesday was Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. On the president's first day back in office last year, he sought to effectively overturn the more-than-century-old interpretation that the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to the children born to noncitizens on US soil.

The conventional wisdom has long been that this order stood little chance of surviving the courts -- it's been ruled against at every turn in the lower courts -- and Wednesday's hearing did little to disabuse anyone of that notion.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer faced a barrage of skeptical questions even from the court's conservative and Trump-appointed justices.

In perhaps the most difficult exchange for the administration, Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Sauer on its claims about so-called "birth tourism," or traveling to US soil to deliver a child so they can be a citizen. When Roberts noted that wasn't a problem when the 14th Amendment was ratified after the Civil War, Sauer responded that "we're in a new world now."

To which Roberts shot back: "Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution." ...

More from the article ...

... Seventeen states had sued to stop the administration from forcing several universities from submitting seven years of data on applicants and admitted students to prove that they have not factored race into admission decisions, Politico and The Los Angeles Times reported.

U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Saylor on Friday night issued a preliminary injunction that will allow universities in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin to retain their records until the trial is over.

The injunction said that the administration's efforts to gather the information are "rushed" and "chaotic," and moves to shut down the federal Department of Education would not only make collecting and analyzing the data difficult, but it may also become illegal.

"This is not a merely technical issue," Saylor said in the ruling, explaining that if the department no longer exists, the work "cannot be turned over to States and local communities; they have no authority ... to conduct such surveys." ...

Looks like Pres Trump will be holding a press conference Monday at 1PM ET about this rescue.

More from the article ...

... "We hold profound respect for Iraq's national sovereignty," the military command said in the statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

"You are a nation that bears the scars of American occupation, and your struggle against the US is worthy of praise and admiration."

Iran's announcement came as US President Donald Trump reiterated his demands for Tehran to make a deal or relinquish control of the waterway, warning in a social media post that "all hell" would rain down within 48 hours otherwise.

Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters rejected Trump's demand, calling his threat a "helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action". ...

... A 32-year-old man was hospitalized with a concussion and "significant injuries" after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rear-ended his vehicle in Baltimore, according to his attorney and a U.S. senator. Ever Alvarenga Rios' vehicle was "violently rear-ended" by ICE agents Thursday morning, his attorneys told WMAR-2 News. ...

If Pres Trump truly wants to deport only the most violent, maybe he should start with some ICE agents?

Related ...

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... Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that "almost half of the US data centers planned for this year are expected to be delayed or canceled" because developers can't import enough transformers, switchgear, and batteries to build out the power infrastructure that every data center needs.

These parts, which China has primarily manufactured for US manufacturers "for decades," used to take between 24 and 30 months to get delivered prior to 2020. Now, they can require wait times up to five years, Bloomberg reported. That lag could matter, since China is reportedly about five years behind the US in the AI race.

Rather than rely on China, Trump would prefer that the US manufacture its own equipment. However, currently, "US manufacturing capacity for these devices cannot keep up with demand," Bloomberg reported.

Analysts at the market intelligence firm Sightline Climate told Bloomberg that "only a third" of the largest AI data centers that are supposed to come online in 2026 are "currently under construction." ...

More from the article ...

... Missiles at US facilities elsewhere, including the continental US, will be moved to US Central Command bases or Fairford in the UK, said the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

After the moves, only about 425 JASSM-ER out of a pre-war inventory of 2,300 will remain available for the rest of the globe. That would be roughly enough for 17 B-1B bombers on a single mission. Another 75 or so are "unserviceable" because of damage or technical faults. ...

.

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... "I am not even making of my rent," she said on the social media site. "I never did this for the money but I don't know how much longer I can last with paying for all the stuff."

In an interview with the Tribune, Fleischmann blamed poor sales on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli-led war in Iran, saying business tanked shortly after the military operation began on Feb. 28.

She believes prospective customers are more hesitant to buy or wear pro-Trump merchandise due to the broadly unpopular conflict. ...

@#3 ... "It is the true believer's ability to 'shut his eyes and stop his ears' to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and consistency."
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer ...

@#18 ... David Lindley ...

Whoa.

That's a name I'd not heard for a while.

So much talent.

Thx for those vids.

@#1

Wait! What!!!!!!

Big Tech allegedly misusing user private personal information?!?!?!

I am aghast!

/s

More from the article...

... Perplexity's AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users' knowledge or consent.

"This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account," the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that "enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users" are shared.

Using developer tools, the lawsuit found that opening prompts are always shared, as are any follow-up questions the search engine asks that a user clicks on. Privacy concerns are seemingly worse for non-subscribed users, the complaint alleged. Their initial prompts are shared with "a URL through which the entire conversation may be accessed by third parties like Meta and Google."

Disturbingly, the lawsuit alleged, chats are also shared with personally identifiable information (PII), even when users who want to stay anonymous opt to use Perplexity's "Incognito Mode." That mode, the lawsuit charged, is a "sham."

"Incognito' mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google," the complaint said. "Even paid users who turned on the Incognito' feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them." ...

@#19 ... Trump and Hegseth's lies about the destruction of Iranian military capabilities is getting American military killed. ...

Looking at this issue, one of my first questions is along the lines of...

Are those advising Pres Trump so afraid of telling him the truth about his Iran War that Pres Trump (and subsequently) Sec Def Hegseth do not have a real view of what is occurring in Iran?

@#15 ... If there's one thing in my life that's missing
It's the time that I spend alone
Sailing on the cool and bright clear water
It's kind of a special feeling
Out on the sea alone ...

Along those lines is this song...

I remain to be convinced that the results of this new ruling will end up in a happy place.

@#21 ... My mythology is better than your mythology! ...

If you allow me to be so bold as to reword your comment to reflect my opinion ...

My (Graham's) profit-seeking pronouncements are better than your (Pope Leo's) mythology!

@#2

Your comment got me to wonder...

Pres Trump's tariffs have seen a reduced effect upon the economy, apparently because corporations have been absorbing the additional costs, instead of passing those costs onto the consumer.

OK, with that in mind...

Has Big Oil been absorbing costs or might they, as seems to be their norm, be taking advantage of the situation for more profits?