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Hegseth 'set the stage' for killing 123 kids with cuts to 'woke' Biden program: report
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth helped "set the stage" for a U.S. strike that killed at least 123 children by slashing former President Joe Biden's civilian protection teams, officials said.The officials, who are involved in the Pentagon's internal investigation of the Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, described their findings in a Bloomberg report published Friday. They said the investigation's report has been "all-but-complete for several months" but has not been released. The United States has not publicly accepted responsibility for the strike, Bloomberg reported.Two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School on the first day of the U.S. attack on Iran, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, according to the report.Bloomberg called it the deadliest U.S. military targeting error of the 21st century in terms of child deaths.Teachers had moved children from the playground into a prayer room for cover after the first missile hit, according to an account Bloomberg drew from rights advocates and the watchdog group Airwars. Within minutes, a second missile struck, and part of the roof collapsed, and only a few children in the prayer room survived, the account said.President Donald Trump's administration demanded an overwhelming air assault in the final days of February, and the officials said that order squeezed the time available to finalize targets.That urgency, combined with gaps in information about the site, "cuts in civilian-protection personnel" and an overreliance on artificial intelligence, "set the stage for the deadly error," they told Bloomberg.Officials involved in the probe pointed to "gaps … left after Hegseth dismantled" most of the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation units, Bloomberg reported.Staffing across those teams fell roughly 90% to fewer than 20 people, and the team at U.S. Central Command, which carried out the strike, shrank from 10 people to one, people with direct knowledge told Bloomberg. No member of those teams reviewed the Minab site before the strike, the officials said, partly because of the staffing cuts and partly because of a decision to leave the group out of planning. Those reviews map civilians near a target and look for lower-risk ways to strike it, according to the report, though Bloomberg said it is unclear whether one would have raised questions about the school.The Biden administration had built up the civilian protection efforts after an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 10 civilians when U.S. forces mistook an aid worker for a threat, the outlet reported.Hegseth announced a shift in Pentagon spending in a February 2025 video on X, saying $50 billion would be redirected toward new priorities, Agence France-Presse reported."We will move away from woke, Biden-era, non-lethal programs, and instead spend that money on President Trump's America First, peace through strength, priorities," Hegseth said.The Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation plan and its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence were tagged for elimination under that push, the national security publication War on the Rocks reported the following month. Bloomberg reported that Hegseth has described his cuts to those efforts in the same terms.In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets "had taken hours for staffers to complete," according to the report.Before the Iran attack, much of that work was "condensed into several minutes" using Maven Smart System, an artificial intelligence tool made by Palantir Technologies, people involved in the review told Bloomberg.A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg there is no evidence the company's software was at fault in the Minab strike."America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history," Hegseth told reporters on March 2, two days after the strike. "All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars."On Thursday, United Nations investigators said there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the Minab strike and another U.S. attack that day amounted to war crimes, Bloomberg reported.The Pentagon declined to comment beyond saying the incident remains under investigation, and a senior administration official also cited the probe, according to the report."The United States does not target civilians," the official added.Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, cited the Minab strike on Tuesday when he filed eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, accusing him of "ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties," Truthout reported."By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives, Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians," one article says.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent members home early on Wednesday for a seven-week campaign recess before the midterm elections, CNN reported. Massie's resolution had started a clock requiring a vote within days, but the early exit pushes that vote to November.Johnson said the early exit had nothing to do with Hegseth, according to CNN."It is a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention. It will immediately be tabled of course," the speaker said, referring to a procedural vote that would set the articles aside without debate. "But we probably won't do that today, we will do it when we come back.""We should not be playing games with national security," Johnson added.
Men deported from US bound and beaten in Equatorial Guinea detention hotel, lawyers say
Group trapped at Hotel Bamy after US removal as rights groups sound alarm over poor conditions and violenceTwo men that the Trump administration expelled to Equatorial Guinea were bound, fitted with bags over their heads, beaten and pushed down a flight of stairs, all in plain view of other US deportees, according to witnesses and human rights lawyers.The men – one from Egypt and one from Eritrea – were then taken to a prison. About 30 detainees from the US remain trapped at a hotel in the outskirts of the coastal city of Malabo after being deported from the US. Detainees have said they believe the men were beaten for telling the press and human rights advocates about the poor conditions and violence inside the hotel, and that they are haunted by flashbacks and terrified they will be retaliated against next. Continue reading...
US military chaos as AI chatbot 'almost started a war' inventing nuclear smuggling threat
A chatbot's bad guess about a cargo ship nearly dragged the U.S. into a shooting war with China this spring, CNN exclusively reported on Friday.A U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific analyst asked an AI chatbot to analyze a Chinese vessel's manifest in the Middle East amid the war with Iran, four sources familiar with the episode told CNN's Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, who added the bot "fused together open-source intelligence with secret signals intelligence in government holdings" to wrongly conclude the ship was "hauling components" for a nuclear weapons program. The analyst then used AI again to package the finding into "a standard intelligence report" that was sent up the chain of command.According to the report, "The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said. It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).""Entirely false," one source called it before admitting to CNN that it "almost started a war," since any U.S. assault on a Chinese ship carried the possibility of retaliation. The scare comes as the Pentagon races to embed AI into everything from targeting to logistics, following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's January push to "unleash experimentation" and arm three million personnel with AI tools. Critics say the technology remains dangerously unready, with a top Army cyber general recently warning AI has caused a "tenfold" spike in vulnerabilities across the Pentagon's aging networks. Insiders have described a Pentagon under Hegseth already gripped by dysfunction. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon declined to comment when pressed by CNN.
Survivors recount panic and struggle to breathe in Nigerian prison cell where 37 died
Police fire teargas as protests break out in city of Minna after deaths of suspected illegal goldminers, many of whom were childrenSurvivors from a prison cell in Nigeria where 37 suspected illegal goldminers died while in the custody of a paramilitary group this week have recounted their panic and struggle for breath, as police on Friday fired teargas at people protesting against the deaths and imposed an overnight curfew in the city of Minna.The victims – many of whom were children – were found dead on Thursday in the cells of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), which had raided suspected illegal goldmines and locked up dozens of miners in the city, the state capital of the mineral-rich state of Niger. Continue reading...
Classified stealth tech lands in Hong Kong after bizarre Pentagon blunder: report
Congressional investigators are scrambling to explain how F-35 jet parts loaded with classified stealth tech vanished into Hong Kong on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's watch.The parts have been missing since June, Politico reported on Friday. A shipment of F-35 components headed from Australia to the U.S. for repairs was mysteriously "rerouted mid-Pacific" and turned up in Hong Kong instead, three people familiar with the matter said. It's reportedly still not clear "who has possession of it now.""The shipment included one of the jet’s canopies, which covers the cockpit and contains stealth technology that only the U.S. and its allies have access to," sources told Politico. "An adversary could study the parts and potentially reverse-engineer the prized technology if it had one of the canopies."The mess triggered closed-door briefings for congressional staff starting in June, with more expected. The Pentagon's F-35 Joint Program Office would only confirm it is "aware of a shipment issue of unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components" and said it's working "to retrieve these components, investigate the incident, and place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence."Hong Kong is a Chinese special administrative region, and Beijing has a long, documented history of hacking its way to F-35 secrets, Politico reported. J.J. Gertler, a former House Armed Services Committee staffer, told Politico's Audrey Decker and Mark Satter, "It's no secret that China has been aggressively trying to get F-35 data through electronic espionage, among other means. But even if they already had specifications or other data about the part, possessing a real one can give them even more to go on and can verify or refine whatever they already had learned."Lockheed insisted it "handles every shipment with the utmost diligence," while the State Department declined comment and China's embassy claims "ignorance." The blunder lands amid mounting turmoil inside Hegseth's Pentagon, where whistleblowers describe chaos.
British Sikh man granted bail in India nine years after arrest
Jagtar Singh Johal, from Scotland, was arrested after wedding in Punjab on alleged terrorism offencesJagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh man who was arrested in India in 2017 in connection with alleged terrorism offences, has been granted bail by a Delhi court.Johal, from Scotland, was arrested for his alleged role in funding the Khalistan Liberation Force, which had carried out targeted killings in India’s Punjab region. Continue reading...
Trump pushing for hazardous meeting with Venezuelan leader at UN Assembly: insiders
President Donald Trump could hold a landmark sit-down with Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez within days, according to people familiar with the planning — an encounter insiders say comes loaded with political hazards on both sides of the border.The meeting would likely happen on the margins of Trump's upcoming trip to New York for the UN General Assembly, where talks with Gulf leaders on the Iran war are already on his calendar. Tuesday has emerged as a possible date for adding Rodriguez to the schedule, Axios reported.One Trump adviser framed the relationship as central to the administration's foreign policy wins, saying, "Iran is tough, but Venezuela is without a doubt the president's top success, and Delcy is a key to that." A senior administration official was more cautious, noting nothing is locked in yet, and the final call rests entirely with the president.A Manhattan meeting would unfold not far from the detention facility holding Nicolas Maduro, Rodriguez's old political partner turned prisoner, who's been sitting there since American forces snatched him from Caracas in a January raid Trump personally signed off on and now faces narco-terrorism charges. Rodriguez stepped into the power vacuum left behind and has since built a working relationship with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, most notably through a sweeping oil agreement between the two governments that's drawn its own share of scrutiny.Not everyone is happy about that partnership. Venezuelan exiles concentrated in South Florida — a politically vocal bloc — have grown increasingly angry watching Washington cozy up to someone they view as cut from the same socialist cloth as Maduro, both having climbed to power under the late Hugo Chavez. Neither Trump nor Rubio has demanded Venezuela actually hold elections, a notable silence given how relentlessly they once painted Maduro as a dictator who stole his own vote.Backers of exiled opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, share some of that frustration too, still stung by administration pushback when she tried heading home after June's earthquakes.Venezuelan public opinion polling shows both Rodriguez and Trump struggling with weak approval, while Machado sits on top, even as her own support has started slipping. Some people close to Trump privately fret that being seen shaking his hand could brand Rodriguez a U.S. puppet in the eyes of her own citizens. The administration official waved off that worry entirely."The fact is POTUS loves Delcy because she's delivering and she's leading," the official said.Back home, though, political operatives in Florida say voters heading into the midterms are far more consumed by pain at the pump from the Iran conflict and the administration's crackdown on immigration than by anything happening with Venezuelan democracy — suggesting whatever backlash follows a Rodriguez meeting may stay confined largely to the exile community rather than spilling into the broader campaign.
'Unbelievable': Pentagon's massive troop withdrawal plan sparks immediate backlash
The Pentagon's thoughts about withdrawing 25,000 troops from Europe are spurring fears of the threat the move would create for U.S. allies.On Thursday, NBC News reported that the Pentagon is considering pulling out 25,000 or more U.S. troops from Europe, which is nearly a third of the American forces stationed there. The withdrawal would include aircraft, ships, and weapons, even though NATO allies have warned about the growing threat from Russia.Online critics pointed to the move as proof that President Donald Trump and his administration are aligned with Russian leader Vladimir Putin."For the umpteenth time: Trump works for Putin," wrote former GOP congressman Joe Walsh in a post on X. "He's a Russian asset. Plain & simple. Putin is smiling again today.""What US national security interest would this decision advance?" wondered former U.S. ambassador to Russia and political science professor Michael McFaul. "I missed the Party of Reagan and Peace Through Strength.""Trump is helping Putin to attack Europe," declared investigative journalist Robert van der Noordaa."As European countries build their defense capabilities, this kind of withdrawal may become possible," former U.S. ambassador Steven Pifer lamented. "It makes no sense now.""UNBELIEVABLE!" exclaimed influencer Brian Krassenstein, who had a theory for why the Trump administration was making the move. "This is happening right after the EU signed a trade deal with Canada and invited Canada to join the EU as an associated member. Trump is mad that two allies are working together after he pissed them both off."This would not be the administration's first drawdown in Europe. The Pentagon ordered about 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany earlier in 2026 amid tensions with Berlin, Fox News reported.It also echoes Trump's first term, when he ordered roughly 12,000 troops out of Germany in 2020. That plan drew bipartisan pushback and was frozen by President Joe Biden, CBS News reported.What US national security interest would this decision advance? I missed the Party of Reagan and Peace Through Strength. https://t.co/Un0R9eB6GY— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) September 17, 2026
Nicolle Wallace aghast as Trump's trade barbs with Canada give off 'stench of weakness'
MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace was aghast on Thursday's edition of "Deadline: White House" as Trump escalates his threats against Canada, seeking a closer partnership with the European Union — and Canada going for it anyway."I think ... the way it translates to voters, especially Republican voters, is the stench of weakness," Wallace told guest Cornell Belcher. "We have never looked so weak, being isolated. And I say this with a little bit of experience from my time in government: people care a lot about the national security implications. But the association of standing alone is something that all voters internalize and dislike, and it makes people feel frightened, and it makes America look weak."Belcher emphatically agreed, saying that it doesn't just make America "look" weak, but "it makes us, in fact, weak."The polling, he continued, shows that "Americans are more pessimistic about the current situation, but also more pessimistic about the future. You have majorities of Americans being pessimistic about the future. And it's an anomaly, because one thing you can always count on is for Americans to be optimistic, whether they're on the left or the right." Usually "American exceptionalism" unites everyone, he said, but it seems to have slipped away.""And it's not evaporating just because the price of gas is high," he added. Rather, it's a "deep moral calcification of our moral compass that is happening ... what you're seeing is, really, Trump presiding over the end of the American era."This is also evident in polls abroad, he said. "And you see him tearing apart the global order that has centered America ... they are reordering themselves, the globe. And America is not the centerpiece of that. So in a real way, he's made America less significant, and we're going to be less safe and less prosperous." - YouTube www.youtube.com
'Mind-melting incompetence' hides behind Trump's big 'bully' veneer: ex- official
A former top White House official has a simple theory as to why a bullying President Donald Trump president blew up America's relationship with its closest ally: "mind-melting incompetence."Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term, tore into the administration's handling of its relationship with Canada in a new Substack post."Canada is demonstrating, for every democracy watching, that the response to Trump’s bullying should be neither submission nor hysteria… but the calm construction of alternatives," he wrote. "Our allies aren’t leaving because they hate America. They’re leaving because they miss us, and they can’t stand the bully who’s holding us hostage."Taylor argued Trump's trade war pushed Ottawa to give up on repairing the relationship. Since retaking office, Trump has hit Canada with 50 percent tariffs, moved to ban imports including dairy, alcohol, lumber and cars, and repeatedly needled the country about becoming America's "51st state."Rather than "cave" the way Taylor says some American law firms did early in Trump's second term, Canada has instead looked elsewhere. Prime Minister Mark Carney has been exploring a closer partnership with the European Union, which has floated an unprecedented "associate member" status for Canada. "Trump spent two years mocking Canada as America's future 51st state," Taylor wrote. "This week, Europe offered to make Canada its first."Taylor praised Carney's calm, businesslike response, writing, "they've walked across the street to build a better future with people who keep their word." This presents a sharp contrast to Trump's blustering and bullying that has only made the situation worse, Taylor argued. "You have to marvel at the mind-melting incompetence required to produce this outcome," Taylor wrote, noting Canada and the U.S. share the "longest peaceful border"on Earth, an integrated defense relationship, and a history of fighting alongside each other, with roughly "70% of Canadian exports" flowing to the U.S.Taylor didn't hold back on Trump personally, calling him "the stupidest man" he believes has held office in Washington. He noted that even John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, has said Trump is "the most flawed person" he's ever met.Taylor added that previously overseas ally officials used to quietly ask "whether America was still America" — but that they've "since stopped asking."
Cuba cash-grab plot exposed as Trump henchman exploit boss's sanctions: report
While dozens of major companies flee Cuba under President Donald Trump-era sanctions, a select group of insiders with ties to the president are quietly positioning themselves to scoop up the island's assets, according to the Guardian.That includes executives working for the Trump Organization.Spanish hotel giants Meliá and Iberostar, Canadian mining firm Sherritt International, European shipping companies, and even Visa and Mastercard have all pulled out of Cuba this summer, spooked by sweeping new secondary sanctions tied to Trump's pressure campaign following the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Axios last month there are "no escape valves" left for the island.But the Guardian reports a different story is playing out behind the scenes."A growing cast of Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump cronies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s key assets, charging top dollar to help clients navigate the ever-expanding web of sanctions, and positioning themselves for lucrative business opportunities in the case of regime collapse," the Guardian's Lee Schlenker and Ed Augustin reported.The Guardian report added that, "several Trump Organization executives who had previously traveled to the island to explore real estate deals and who even registered the Trump trademark there in 2008 have in recent months returned to Cuba under the aegis of Dominari Holdings for meetings."Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans have endured a fuel blockade since January, after the administration cut off oil shipments from Venezuela and pressured Mexico into halting its own deliveries. Yet Treasury-authorized fuel exports from Florida and Texas to Cuba's private sector have surged past $160 million this year, up from almost nothing in 2025."If I had done during the Biden administration what Trump's friends have done now, I'd have been put in jail," said one longtime Cuba policy expert, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Chilling red flag spotted by Nobel-winning psychiatrist over Trump's nuke image posts
A Nobel Peace Prize-winning psychiatrist fears President Donald Trump has become too unstable to be trusted with nuclear codes.Dr. Henry David Abraham, professor of psychiatry emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, told The i Paper's Kieron Monks he's troubled, not by the results of Trump's cognitive tests, but by how often he's taking them. Trump announced in May he'd scored a perfect 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, for the fourth time — his third such test in just over a year."You give a MoCA for a rapid screen. Is the person functioning in a cognitive sense or not?" Abraham told Monks. "If you are doing two, three, four, you're not doing a rapid screen. You're looking for a trend."Abraham, who shared in the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize as part of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said Trump's conduct during "recent strikes on Iran and Venezuela" worries him most. "He's certainly our most impulsive president in my lifetime," Abraham said. "He is an unstable individual with absolute control over the American nuclear arsenal.""Some of the President’s threats towards Iran, such as 'a whole civilisation will die tonight', were widely taken as a veiled reference to nuclear weapons," the report notes. "The clinician also pointed to disturbing images Trump has posted on social media, including an AI-generated image of him pressing a red button while surrounded by explosions and mushroom clouds."Citing the Iran war quagmire, Abraham said, "He’s embarrassed every day about it, or at least attacked every day about it. What prevents him one night from saying, ‘Oh, I can solve this Iran problem in 10 seconds’ – which would essentially be the use of nuclear weapons.”Abraham also drew attention to "Trump’s medical records, pointing to a recent check-up that involved a record 22 medical specialists.“Those 22 doctors, they had better figure it out, and they better come forward,” he insisted, while "urging whistleblowers to share details from Trump's medical files, including a recent checkup involving a record 22 specialists."
