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Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) triggered outrage from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he called President Donald Trump's war in Iran a "quagmire.""Secretary Hegseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the President," Garamendi said during a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing on Wednesday. "You have misled the public about why we are at war. You and the President have offered ever-changing reasons for this war. You've misled the public about the progress of the war.""This war of choice is a political and economic disaster at every level," he continued. "The President has got himself and America stuck in the quagmire of another war in the Middle East. He's desperately trying to extricate himself from his own mistakes."Hegseth responded by calling Garamendi "reckless.""When I said reckless, feckless, and defeatist of congressional Democrats at the beginning, that came after watching you say the same thing on CNN this morning, a quagmire," the Defense secretary gasped. "My generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, years and years of nebulous missions and utopian nation building that led us to nothing.""Congressman, you should know better. Shame on you calling this a quagmire two months in!" he exclaimed. "You call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies, shame on you for that statement."Hegseth complained that Garamendi had said he supported the troops while calling the conflict in Iran a quagmire."That's a false equivalation!" he grumbled. "Who are you cheering for here? Who are you pulling for?""And you sit there and go on TV for your clickbait about quagmires!" Hegseth added. "Your hatred for President Trump blinds you to the truth of the success of this mission and the historic stakes that the president is addressing, which the American people support. Iran's been at war with us for 47 years! You want to talk about a forever war?""For two months, this president has stared them down. He's going to get a better deal than anyone ever has and ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. I know the American people support that mission, despite your loose talk and words like quagmire!"

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) had to fight for speaking time during a contentious confrontation with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday morning, at one time having to exclaim, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” to get the Donald Trump appointee to hush.As the ranking Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee, Smith got the first shot at the former Fox News personality and was barely able to finish his questions before the amped up Hegseth began spouting talking points about the success of the Iran war that has continued to drag on.After Hegseth gave an opening statement touting the success of the war, Smith pounced.“You have to stare down this kind of enemy who is hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon and get them to a point where they're at the table, giving it up in a way that they haven't have,” Hegseth stated which led Smith to interrupt with, “So they haven't broken yet? Okay, we haven't gotten there yet.”“Well, their nuclear facilities have been obliterated underground,” Hegseth shot back, which drew a puzzled look from the Democratic House member.As Hegseth continued with, “They are buried—”, Smith protested, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whow whoa whoa.”“Reclaiming my time for a second here," Smith lectured. “We had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated?”“They had not given up their nuclear ambitions, and they had a conventional shield of thousands of —,” Hegseth protested as Smith talked over him and bluntly stated, “So Operation Midnight Hammer was a moment of nothing of substance. It left us in exactly the same place we were in before.” - YouTube youtu.be

Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe also fined after pleading guilty to immigration and firearms-related offencesTwo months after an employee was shot in the back at the Mugabe family home in a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg, a South African court has fined and ordered the deportation of Robert Mugabe’s youngest son over two unrelated charges.Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, 28, and his cousin Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, 33, were initially both charged with attempted murder after the incident on 19 February. Continue reading...

Delegates at event in Cape Verde highlight opportunities from tech while stressing AI is no replacement for talentLast July, the Nigerian singer-songwriter Fave found herself caught up in a viral moment: an unauthorised version of a track by her featuring an AI choir had been released, quickly becoming an internet sensation. To get ahead of the situation, she recorded her own remix that integrated the AI-assisted song and added it to her discography.“In my view, [that] was smart and very business aware,” Oyinkansola Fawehinmi, a Lagos-based entertainment lawyer, observed a few months later. “She essentially reclaimed the ‘AI version’ and released it as her own official expression.” Continue reading...

Pakistan officials dismiss Afghan media reports and official statements about strikes on university in Kunar province as ‘blatant lie’Mortars and missiles fired from Pakistan on Monday struck a university and civilian homes in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing seven people and wounding at least 85, Afghan officials said.Pakistan denied the accusation of targeting a university. Continue reading...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being “humiliated” by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.“The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either,” Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. “The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don’t just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq.”“At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating,” the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards.”US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.“It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation,” he said. “And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output.”Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.“If we were to unite more effectively and do more together,” he said, “we could be at least as strong as the United States of America.”Some observers asserted that the US isn’t the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany’s support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country’s systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.

President Donald Trump has weaponized Vice President JD Vance to absorb blame over failed negotiations with Iran, an analyst reported on Monday.Salon's Amanda Marcotte described how Trump has forced Vance into a situation he didn't want to be in and by doing so, has put his political future in question."The vice president didn’t even want to be there, a feeling he has apparently made clear through anonymous leaks from either himself or his associates to journalists, which haver [SIC] resulted in flattering stories alleging that the vice president tried to talk Trump out of launching a war on Iran," Marcotte wrote. "These accounts are likely true enough, but not because Vance has some noble objection to needless killing. At 41, the vice president has enough wits about him to see what was very obvious, something the [SIC] Trump has refused to see: that this war would be a political debacle for the administration — and for Vance’s future plans to run for president."Although Vance publicly claims support for the war, his private efforts tell a different story, according to Marcotte. "Vance’s efforts to discreetly paint himself as opposed to the war, though, are backfiring," Marcotte wrote. "The more the Iran war drags on, the more the vice president finds himself getting sucked into the quagmire at the risk of becoming as much the face of the fiasco as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or even Trump himself."But Vance will continue to face this predicament. "Perhaps the dam will break, but right now, it seems like the vice president could be stuck for a long time in the hellhole of trying to negotiate the end of a war he didn’t want with very few cards to play, and a boss who won’t admit that they have been defeated," Marcotte added. "All of which means that, while Trump hits the links at Mar-a-Lago or rests behind his desk while answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office, it will be Vance whose face is out front on coverage of the war. It will be Vance striding toward planes in photographs and Vance standing behind podiums to explain why negotiations aren’t working."

Heatwaves reach 45C across India as unseasonably cold weather affects parts of central CanadaWidespread heavy rain is sweeping over southern China. By Wednesday, rainfall totals are expected to exceed 100mm across many parts of Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, and in some areas as much as 150-200mm.As a result, the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management have been holding meetings with meteorological and hydrological departments to emphasise the importance of reinforced patrols and emergency responses to mitigate against the probable flooding that the intense rainfall is expected to bring. In particular, reservoirs with known safety concerns must remain empty during the period, as well as through the coming rainy season. Continue reading...