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MS NOW anchor and former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele barely concealed his anger on Thursday while laying out the suffering that President Donald Trump's war in Iran has inflicted on U.S. Navy sailors.The USS Abraham Lincoln has become a poster child for the issue, having been deployed to the Persian Gulf for a record amount of time, leaving sailors with strained resources and a mental health crisis."There are 18 families who have proof ... when we look at how this began, where we are now, and the lack, I think, of regard for the sacrifice of those 18 service members," said Steele.Steele then went on to tear down remarks on the subject made today by Vice President JD Vance.His red flags, he said, were "on high, high red alert when he says, we're not going to set an artificial timeline. What if I told you three weeks? Well, the president told us four. Mr. Vice President, do you remember that? Did he miss that part of the conversation? In the month of February? March? He told us four weeks when he says, you know, I have a problem with the phrase an end to the war. I want to push back on that just a little, because major combat operations are currently not ongoing.""Well, sir, that's not the definition of a war," said Steele. Regardless of whether combat operations are taking place, he said, "once I can still shoot at you and you still be in war, that's what Iran is doing. You have no response to that."It's high time, he continued, for Congress to "step in and bring some coherent sanity to this madness before more lives are lost.""We have the USS Lincoln just docking, taking, getting to a port after how many months at sea. And no one in this government had the common sense to realize we can't leave that big-behind ship out there all this time, with none of the soldiers or sailors getting off at a port. Someone has got to take control of this. The country at this November election is going to be looking to someone to do that, because clearly these numbnuts can't do it." - YouTube www.youtube.com

A businessman dubbed "MAGA's Man in Latin America" who once accepted an award at Mar-a-Lago is now sitting in a Bolivian jail accused of plotting to have his pregnant ex-girlfriend killed, according to a new report. Fernando Cerimedo, a business associate of Brad Parscale, the digital mastermind behind two of President Donald Trump's presidential campaigns, was arrested at Bolivia’s Viru Viru Airport last month on conspiracy-to-murder charges, the Bulwark reported Thursday.Cerimedo built a career advising conservative populist leaders across the region on digital strategy, including Argentina's Javier Milei, according to the report.At a February "Hispanic Prosperity Gala" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, Cerimedo accepted an award for "Hispanic Political Consultant of the Year" and singled out his benefactor: "Thank you to Brad Parscale! For believing [in] me all the time, and giving me your technology."Six months later, on Aug. 17, gunmen posing as delivery drivers shot Cerimedo's pregnant ex-girlfriend, Nadia Beller, outside a hotel in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, according to the report.Beller survived and began giving interviews from her hospital bed "implicating Cerimedo," the Bulwark reported. Cerimedo was arrested attempting to fly to his native Argentina and now "faces preventive detention" and separate investigations into alleged drug trafficking, The Bulwark Reported reported."The scandal is raising questions about Parscale’s ties to Cerimedo as well," The Bulwark reported."The New York Times and the Economist both described Cerimedo as Parscale’s 'partner.' La Derecha Diaria, a right-wing website in Argentina founded by Cerimedo, announced last year that Cerimedo would be the 'representative' in Latin America for two of Parscale’s companies."Paracale, whose career in politics was eclipsed after he was taken into custody by police in 2020 over what were described as "mental health" problems, declined to comment to The Bulwark.

President Donald Trump made the unusual move of publicly correcting his own commerce secretary after he claimed no Americans had died in the Iran war, a conflict that has killed 18 U.S. service members.The correction came in a Truth Social post published about 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had appeared on CNBC the day before and said the war had resulted in no American deaths, while arguing to investors that the conflict would be good for the bond market."I think the way the president is playing Iran, right, there's not — there haven't been American deaths," Lutnick said. "It's really just an economic choke out, which the administration is now executing more broadly, and I think it'll be very effective."Lutnick used the phrase to describe squeezing Iran's economy rather than defeating it on the battlefield. He told CNBC that the strategy was working, and he tied it to his forecast that borrowing costs would fall."So I'm very optimistic that the bond market will treat us very well," Lutnick said, predicting in the same interview that interest rates would stabilize within a couple of months. The war, which began on Feb. 28, is now in its seventh month.On Thursday, Trump insisted that Lutnick had been thinking about a country that the commerce secretary never named."Sec. Lutnick had Venezuela on his mind when he said nobody was killed. 18 people were killed in Iran!" Trump wrote.Trump's reference to Venezuela pointed to a different operation, in which U.S. forces struck targets across that country on Jan. 3 and captured President Nicolás Maduro with few American casualties, according to the Congressional Research Service.Lutnick had named Iran directly. He also credited the administration's handling of Iran with his optimism about the bond market, according to the interview transcript. The Pentagon's casualty database contradicts the claim, listing 18 service members killed and 757 wounded since the war began, CNN reported last month.The military quietly added 60 injuries to the count in a single week in late August, The Intercept reported.That raised the combined total of dead and wounded to 776. Some 345 of those casualties have come since a second ceasefire collapsed on July 7, according to the outlet. One U.S. government official called the sudden increase "an accounting trick" and accused the Pentagon of slow-walking the number.Mario Nawfal, who runs a large news aggregation account on X, posted the clip roughly half an hour after Trump's message and called it a "SERIOUS flub.""[P]eople in the administration like Lutnick can easily forget, or intentionally ignore, the men and women who've been killed or wounded," a USA Today opinion column argued.Trump's own allies made a nearly identical charge against President Joe Biden during the 2024 campaign. Biden falsely said at a CNN debate that no American troops had died on his watch, Fox News reported."[T]he stumbling, bumbling buffoon that we have in the White House had the audacity to say that under his watch that no military members have died," Darin Hoover, the father of a Marine killed in the 2021 Kabul airport bombing, told Fox News Digital.Two years later, support for the war Trump ordered has fallen to 31 percent, its lowest level since the early weeks of the fighting, Al Jazeera reported, citing a Reuters/Ipsos poll.Pollsters found 83% of those surveyed said they expect the fighting to continue for a long time. Gasoline now costs more than a dollar a gallon above pre-war levels, the outlet reported.Trump's overall approval stands at 32 percent, with 64 percent disapproving, in a national poll released Monday by the University of Massachusetts Amherst."With the midterm elections just two months away, the clock is ticking for President Trump and the Republican Party to offer solutions to the nation's most pressing problems," said Tatishe Nteta, the poll's director and a political science professor at the university.

Pedro Sánchez continues to defend Rabat after police report claiming border forces helped 70,000 cross borderEurope live – latest updatesSpain has seen no evidence “whatsoever” that Morocco planned or facilitated a mass border breach into its north African territory of Ceuta, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has told parliament.The address on Thursday followed the emergence of a police report, commissioned by a judge and widely quoted in the media, claiming Moroccan border forces had actively aided about 70,000 people to cross the border in late July. Continue reading...

The Justice Department's first-ever prosecution of protesters of the Trump administration under a church-protection law now faces dismissal, with defendants arguing President Donald Trump ordered it out of spite.Most of the more than 30 people charged over a January ICE protest inside a St. Paul church asked a federal judge on Aug. 31 to throw out the case, according to a joint motion filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota.A large slate of lawyers argued the government charged their clients as political payback at the behest of the president as part of a selective and vindictive prosecution, the motion states.The defendants were reacting to Trump's directives, which "caused terror, violence, and murder in Minnesota" when they entered Cities Church in St. Paul on Jan. 18, prompted by the knowledge that its pastor David Easterwood also worked for the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, their attorneys argued. Federal charges followed within days. Federal agents arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, on Jan. 22, and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest on social media, claiming that NAACP leader Levy Armstrong "allegedly played a key role in organizing the coordinated attack on Cities Church." A grand jury indicted nine defendants a week later, and a superseding indictment in February added 30 more people.Days earlier, Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.The Trump administration's crackdown on protesters continued following the church arrests. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at the VA hospital, was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer on Jan. 24 while protesting peacefully in Minneapolis, the motion says. The shootings occurred during Operation Metro Surge, which sent as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers into the Minneapolis area for what the motion describes as one of the largest single-city Homeland Security mobilizations in years.Those arrested at the Minnesota church, including Armstrong and others, pleaded not guilty in February to conspiracy against rights."They have altered the facts, just as they altered my image as a way of trying to criminalize nonviolent, peaceful protests and lawful dissent against their unlawful and unjust actions," Armstrong told Democracy Now!, referring to an administration photo that appeared digitally altered to show her crying.The activist's protests were based on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law Congress passed to stop violence against abortion providers. The law covers places of worship. No one had ever been criminally charged under the law's place-of-worship provision in its 30-year history, according to the motion.The vindictive prosecution motion notes that the charges are "unequal, oppressive" and have "a clear and dangerous chilling effect on the Defendants and anyone else who wants to voice their opposition to U.S. Government policies"The motion argues that the Justice Department brought the case "at the direction and behest of President Donald J. Trump" and to fulfill a "mission to satisfy the personal animosities of its chief client, Donald Trump." "Sadly, this is not at all hyperbole, but the cold hard facts behind this prosecution," the motion says of the department's approach.While these defendants face felonies, people convicted of blocking abortion clinics went free. Trump pardoned 24 people convicted of FACE Act violations within days of taking office in 2025, some of whom had been convicted in multiple jurisdictions, according to the motion.One pardoned defendant had live-streamed her intent to "terrorize this place" the day before she barricaded a Manhattan clinic door, crushing a worker's hand with such force that three people were needed to pry the door open, the motion says."The record shows that individuals who engaged in the same or much more serious and violent conduct, whether at a progressive liberal church or an abortion clinic, were treated differently," the motion says.Anti-abortion activist Mark Houck was charged with shoving an elderly clinic escort to the ground twice and was acquitted at trial, the motion says. He then sued the government, and a district judge dismissed every claim as not plausible.The administration reportedly agreed to pay Houck more than $1 million to settle the case on appeal without ever filing a brief in defense of the government, according to the motion."Not only were such similarly situated individuals not prosecuted, they were in many instances rewarded with large monetary payouts from the Justice Department," the motion says.Two other church disruptions drew no federal charges at all, the motion says. Protesters in Orlando, Florida, rose during a children's sermon at an LGBTQ-affirming church in March 2025 and shouted "Synagogue of Sin!" at the congregation, according to the motion.Republican congressional candidate Valentina Gomez stood up during a service at a Texas church in November 2025 and said that "homosexuality is a sin and whoever supports that is worthy of death," the motion says.Neither incident produced a federal investigation or a FACE Act charge, according to the filing.The dismissal motion is not the only trouble facing prosecutors. U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko ordered the Justice Department in July to hand over grand jury testimony and evidence so he could determine whether the government misled jurors while seeking the indictment.Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort filed their own motions to dismiss in August, with Fort arguing that she was covering the protest as a reporter."The invasion of Cities Church was a planned, coordinated effort to disrupt a worship service and interfere with religious exercise that placed congregants, including children, in fear for their lives," Doug Wardlow, litigation director at True North Legal, said in February on behalf of the church.Defendants asked the court to dismiss the case outright, or to grant them access to internal Justice Department communications and hold a hearing where they could present evidence, according to the motion.

Apple executives' decision to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" on its Maps app is setting off a firestorm inside the tech giant, with employees furious that leadership caved to President Donald Trump out of fear of his wrath, according to a new report.Employees are furious that the company is rolling over because of higher-ups' fear of the wrath of President Donald Trump who demanded the name change in an executive order, media watchdog Status reported Wednesday.At the same time the public is rejecting the “deeply stupid” name change, which Google has also agreed to follow, Apple was late to the game and employees are not happy.The controversy intensified after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared on Fox Business on Monday, telling host Maria Bartiromo, "I know that the president reached out to Apple directly, so I'm sure that we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America."According to Oliver Darcy at Status, "While Apple had likely always planned to update its map to reflect the executive order—it had, after all, also swapped Gulf of Mexico for 'Gulf of America'—Status has learned that executives at the company were irked by Burgum’s comments. By disclosing that Trump had personally phoned Cupertino, the White House had framed any decision Apple made as one in which it 'was capitulating to the president’s demands.'"Inside the company, Status reported it would be difficult to find a single employee who genuinely supports the change."There is not a soul who is for it," one person familiar with the matter told Darcy, adding that "everyone considers it f-----g nuts." Still, Apple's leadership and most of its rank-and-file are described as "resigned" to these kinds of concessions under Trump's second term, understanding "that Trump will f--- with the company if the company doesn't do what he wants," the person said. The dispute over Lake Ontario's name has become one of the more visible flashpoints in Trump's escalating trade dispute with Canada, whose officials have mocked the renaming effort as absurd. Like Google's version, Apple's change applies "only to Maps for users located in the United States." Canadian users and much of the rest of the world still see the lake listed under its original name.

Bangladeshi complainants allege Rampal power station’s pollution and climate risks threaten the Sunderbans, a world heritage siteBarclays Bank is facing a formal complaint over its financial links to a coal-fired power station near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and home to millions of people in Bangladesh and India.Three complainants from the region have submitted a case to the UK government’s Office for Responsible Business Conduct, alleging that the British bank breached international guidelines by underwriting companies involved in the emission-heavy Maitree super thermal power project, also known as the Rampal power plant. Continue reading...

Referendum result means fewer seats in parliament and new rules on candidates, ahead of December electionsGuinea-Bissau voters have approved a new constitution, which critics say will undermine democracy, that significantly expands presidential powers ahead of elections due in December.According to provisional results, 70% of voters approved sweeping changes in the tiny west African state’s first constitutional amendment since revisions that ended the one-party socialist state more than three decades ago. Continue reading...