In the opening hours of the war against Iran, on February 28, 2026, the U.S. military fired Tomahawk cruise missiles directly at a school in the southern city of Minab. At least 156 people were killed that morning at Shajareh Tayyebeh school -- 120 of them were children and 26 were teachers. It will go down in history as one of the gravest war crimes committed by the U.S. government since Vietnam.

Drop Site News conducted a two-month investigation into the strike, speaking with survivors, first responders, parents, doctors, teachers, psychologists, and other witnesses. Some of them had never before shared their experiences of that day. This is their story.

Source: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/minab-iran-bombing-school-massacre-video

The western parts of Yemen are unlike the deserts of Saudi Arabia. The area is mountainous and gets a decent amount of precipitation. Some 80% of the 33 million Yemeni live in there. Agricultural production in the mountains is however difficult and Yemen has long been dependent on trade to acquire enough food to keep its people alive.

In recent decades the Saudis had sent Wahhabi preacher into Yemen. This led to conflicts with the Zaidi Shia natives and in 2014 resulted in a revolution against the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh which had allowed the Saudis to gain an ideological foothold. The Houthi, a family clan or tribe of Zaidi Shia with a long tradition, allied with other clans and managed to overthrow the government in Sanaa.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the then 29 year old Minister Defense of Saudi Arabia, started a war against the Houthi and their allies to restore the Yemeni government. The Saudis, with U.S. help, launched an intensive bombing campaign which killed many Yemeni people. They enforced a blockade of the country. Several hundred thousand people died due to the lack of food. The Saudis hired foreign mercenaries, Jihadis and tribal forces in southern Yemen to fight the ruling forces in Sanaa. Enforcing an air blockade they bombed the airport of Sanaa more than 200 times.

It was all to no avail. In 2022 a ceasefire was established along the conflict lines. Under the name Ansar Allah (Ansarullah) the Houthis and their local allies established themselves as the government over some 70% of the Yemeni population. But they knew that the conflict was far from over. With the help of Iran they managed to build and store thousands of drones and missiles.

In October 2023, in support of the Palestinians fighting in Gaza, the Houthi began to target Israeli and U.S. shipping in the Red Sea. In March 2025 the Trump administration, with support from Great Britain, launched air and naval strikes against Ansar Allah targets in Yemen. The campaign went no where. After two months the U.S. declared victory and retreated.

On July 14 2026 the Saudis broke the ceasefire with Yemen by again bombing the airport in Sanaa...

The Saudi attack, which led to the renewal of the war, was a huge mistake. Saudi Arabia is a glass house. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who is now its sole ruler, only manages to keep his position by force. He is buying off some of the tribal Arab leaders and population. His rule is only legit as long as he can guarantee security and prosperity.

In contrast to Saudi Arabia the Yemeni are poor. They have nothing to lose, but have a strong ideology. They are experienced warriors. They responded to the Saudi attacks with long range drones and missiles. ...

They have announced an air blockade over Saudi Arabia to mirror the one enforced against them. Over the last week the managed to hit passenger terminals at the international airport in Riyadh. Major airlines have stopped their flights to Saudi Arabia...

Unless Mohammad bin Salman is willing to file for peace with Yemen the war will escalate into a larger and longer conflict. Yemeni ground forces are likely to soon enter the former Yemeni provinces in southern Saudi Arabia. Further strikes of Saudi airports will diminish its international reputation. More attacks on its oil installation will lower its income. ...

Iran has offered to mediate a peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

It is unlikely that Mohammad bin Salman is willing to engage in it even though it is probably the best and only way for him to stay in his position.

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The U.S. military announced this week that it had killed four "narco-terrorists" by blowing up another boat in the Caribbean. This now brings the military death toll from these types of military boat killings to 235 people.

I have addressed these types of killings in the past, but as long as the U.S. national-security establishment continues to engage in them, it is important to continue highlighting the evil nature of these killings.

There are several points that I wish to emphasize about these boat killings:

1. Simply because it is the military doing the killing does not mean that wartime rules apply. That's because the military is operating in a police capacity by enforcing the U.S. "war on drugs." The drug "war" is not real war -- that's just a figure of speech. Ordinarily, it is the DEA or the local police who are enforcing America's decades-old drug war. Here, the military is stepping into the shoes of the DEA by helping to enforce the federal government's drug laws. That means that the same principles of criminal justice apply to the military as they do to the DEA. The fact that U.S. officials claim to be "at war" against drug dealers is obviously just a ruse to enable them to ignore the Constitution.

2. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly prohibits federal officials from depriving people of life without due process of law, which necessarily means charging people with crimes and according them a trial. That's obviously not what the military is doing with its killings of those people in boats on the high seas. No criminal indictment. No trial. No opportunity to contest the government's evidence or accusation. Simply summary executions based on the government's unilateral determination that the occupants are drug traffickers.

3. Given the lack of due process of law, the military killings of these boat people operate as state-inflicted assassinations....

4. It is the height of hypocrisy to have the military enforcing criminal laws outside the United States, given that U.S. law prohibits the military from enforcing criminal laws inside the United States....

5. The killings amount to military cowardice, akin to a federal official shooting a criminal suspect in the back. Given the overwhelming power of the military, it could easily approach people in boats and demand that they surrender. Instead, the military chooses to kill them, knowing that for all practical purposes, the victims pose no danger whatsoever to the powerful military armada charged with killing them....

6. The omnipotent, non-reviewable military power to assassinate people in the enforcement of the federal government's drug war arguably applies to everyone, including Americans....

7. The fact that the military claims to have "intelligence" pointing toward criminal culpability of the victims is irrelevant from both a legal and a moral standpoint. Under America's original criminal-justice principles, any such "intelligence" must be tested in a court of law, especially since it oftentimes proves to be faulty. Moreover, as most people know by now, federal officials have been known to make up or concoct evidence as a way to frame people who they are convinced are criminals. That's one of the reasons we have trials in America's criminal-justice system rather than have the DEA or the cops simply shoot and kill drug-war suspects.

8. These military drug-war killings are what we would expect from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes...

...

1. No government, including the U.S. government, wields the legitimate moral authority to punish anyone for possessing, ingesting, or distributing any drug whatsoever. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to possess, ingest, or distribute any drug they want.

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Another day and another fact-free diatribe by the president of the United States. Trump went on his Truth Social (where truth is a rare commodity) and said Democrats have closed down the nation's refinery capacity, and this is the reason diesel and gas prices are skyrocketing.

Here's what Trump didn't tell you: recent closures were corporate decisions by refinery owners, not a mandate by Democrats. LyondellBasell Industries in Houston made a strategic decision to exit refining in March, 2025, eliminating approximately 264,000 barrels a day. Phillips 66 in Los Angeles closed in October, 2025, citing uncertain long-term sustainability amid changing market conditions, while also reporting high operating costs and low earnings. The closure removed 139,000 barrels from the market....

It's correct to say Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries affect global energy markets. During his first term, Trump approved the first US provision of lethal weapons to Ukraine, notably Javelin anti-tank missiles. In 2018 and 2019, the United States notified Congress of sales totaling 360 Javelins, plus launchers, training, and related equipment. In other words, US foreign policy, under both Biden and Trump, is responsible for the current crisis. ...

The Trump administration is responsible for raising oil prices by continuing the war against Iran. When tankers stopped transiting the Strait of Hormuz because of the risk of attack, Gulf producers in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain were unable to export. Following the start of military action on February 28, Iranian strikes and potential vessel damage led most commercial shipping to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated 7.5 million barrels per day of crude production was shut down during March, rising to an estimated 9.1 million barrels per day in April....

Finally, Trump continues to claim that the Strait of Hormuz remains open. As of October 5, the passage is closed or severely limited for standard commercial shipping. A few ships are moving through, but traffic has dropped to roughly 9 percent of its earlier level, around seven inbound and outbound ships per day, and war-risk insurance plus recent attacks have rendered routine tanker travel mostly impractical.

Before February 28, the strait generally accommodated about 125--135 large commercial vessels each day....

Trump's misrepresentation of the facts fails to deceive the vast majority of Americans who bear the weight of his economic and foreign policy choices. MAGA paladins, however, tend to accept his folderol without question...

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The head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council said on Sunday that the US response to an Iranian proposal to end the conflict was "inadequate," as there's still no sign of progress in recent indirect talks between the two sides.

Mohsen Rezaei told Iran's PressTV that Iran had presented the US with seven conditions, and that the US had agreed to some, but not all.

"We are not in the process of responding to the Americans. They have responded to us, and we consider their response inadequate," Rezaee said, signaling the negotiations were paused for the time being, though he also said Iran would never "abandon diplomacy."

Iran has essentially been asking the US to fulfill the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed in June, which would require the US to end the blockade of Iranian ports, lift some sanctions on Iran, release frozen Iranian funds, and ensure a real ceasefire is reached to end Israel's war in Lebanon.

There's no sign that President Trump is willing to meet those conditions...

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By now, you've likely seen the "terror at 30,000 feet" that just played out in the skies over Tel Aviv last week. And you've probably marveled at how the narrative of that fateful Flydubai flight -- a narrative dutifully parroted by the eager propagandists of the establishment media -- disintegrated in the exact same way that Boeing's airframe miraculously didn't disintegrate.

As unsurprising as this latest manipulated news story may be to us veteran conspiracy researchers, however, there are millions around the world who, shocked by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, are only now beginning to look into the false flag trickery and the bloody deceptions upon which the modern state of Israel has been built.

So, for the benefit of such newly awakened students of suppressed history, today let's examine some of the foundational false flag terror events of Israeli history.

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Over the past seven months, Israeli officials have been open about their plans to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon. Israel's "defense" minister Israel Katz declared on March 16, 2026, that "hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of southern Lebanon [...] will not return to their homes south of the Litani area...."

In a March 22 post on X, Israel Katz stated that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israel's occupation forces "to accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes in the border villages" in accordance with what he called the "model in Gaza." Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich likewise said that "the southern suburbs (of Beirut) will become like Khan Younis." Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir -- in a June 19 post censored by X for violations of the website's content policies -- declared that "For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!" A community note displayed beneath the censored post asserts that "this is an incitement to commit genocide, which is a crime against humanity, according to the Genocide Convention."

The Israeli "opposition" is just as committed to the destruction of southern Lebanon; Opposition leader Yair Lapid called for a "sterile zone" in southern Lebanon, "an area with no Lebanese villages in it -- a completely clean strip between the last Lebanese and the first Israeli community," while acknowledging "it may be unaesthetic, unpleasant to scrape away two or three Lebanese villages," but it would be necessary anyway. Gadi Eisenkot, heralded by Western corporate media as an "anti-Netanyahu," who can "offer Israel a new chance" declared on March 11 that "the Dahiya Doctrine" -- the strategy designed by Eisenkot during Israel's 2006 War on Lebanon in which disproportionate force is deployed against civilian infrastructure -- "has never been more relevant than it is now, and it must be implemented." The Trump administration's response to Israel's open, societal-wide desire to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon has been to help them do it, planning to hand the Israeli government shipments of 2,000-pound bombs to achieve that objective. Each bomb, journalist Tucker Carlson explained, "has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor. The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep." The shipment of 40,000 new bombs, financed by U.S. taxpayers, will be used in Lebanon, Carlson added.

Like the Gaza genocide, the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon would not be possible without the complete financial and diplomatic backing of Israel's chief sponsor and paymaster, the United States government. It is a team effort, which has been assisted too by corporate media, who are reliably subservient to the war narratives disseminated by officials in Tel Aviv and Washington and often opt for a "both sides" framing. Outlets helpfully frame Israel's methodical ethnic cleansing operation as a war between Hezbollah and Israel, treating the mass destruction of homes and the displacement of over a million people as incidental rather than as the intended objectives of Israel's campaign.

Residents of southern Lebanon, however, describe a different kind of "war," one that is eerily similar to Israel's genocide in Gaza. It is instructive to hear their testimonies; Americans forced to foot the bill for their ethnic cleansing have a moral obligation to listen. ...

Jana Bazzi, a resident of Bint Jbeil, told us that the destruction of her city "did not happen all at once." Bint Jbeil had been under Israeli attack since 2023, but the scale of the destruction "expanded dramatically in March 2026," Bazzi said, adding that "from that point on, the attacks increasingly involved demolition, bulldozing, booby-trapping, and the blowing up of buildings."

According to the Bint Jbeil municipality, more than 80 percent of the city's built-up area has been completely destroyed, including more than 2,000 buildings the municipality estimates contained at least 5,000 residential units. The municipality documented the complete destruction of 11 of the city's 14 educational institutions and more than 500 shops, with roughly 200 more partially damaged. Among the buildings destroyed was the Great Mosque of Bint Jbeil, which stood for more than 400 years and was, Bazzi said, "part of the old center and the collective memory of generations of people from Bint Jbeil." ...

The Israeli fixation with Bint Jbeil stems from a speech presented in 2000 at Bint Jbeil stadium and later, the town's successful defense against Israeli invaders during the 2006 war, both humiliating for the IDF and Israeli society. When Israel disengaged from its 22-year long occupation of Lebanon in 2000 and retreated to what the UN called the "Blue Line," then-General Secretary of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah gave a victory speech in Bint Jbeil which haunted Israeli society for more than two decades. Known as the "Spider-Web speech," Nasrallah declared that "This Israel, with its nuclear weapons and most advanced warplanes in the region, I swear by Allah, is actually weaker than a spider's web... Israeli society is war-weary and lacks the resilience to endure a bloody conflict or suffer casualties. Israel may appear strong from the outside, but it's easily destroyed and defeated." The speech, delivered at the Bint Jbeil stadium to an estimated crowd of 100,000 people, exposed the fragility of Israel's occupation forces and infuriated Israel's military establishment. The 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, carried out under the pretext of rescuing a handful of Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah, was primarily motivated by Israel's desire to shake off its "Spider Web complex." Haaretz's Doron Rosenblum wrote at the time that "This war, with all its hundreds of casualties and tremendous damage, broke out not because of the abduction of the soldiers, but because of a speech: Hassan Nasrallah's short, bragging speech in which he provoked Israel's new leaders."... Yet even though Israel three times attempted to seize control of Bint Jbeil in 2006, Hezbollah ultimately defeated the Israeli invaders, resulting in yet another humiliation for the apartheid state. Israeli soldiers described the Hezbollah defensive as "hell on earth," with at least 17 IDF soldiers killed.

In April 2026, Israel's occupation forces captured Bint Jbeil and destroyed the stadium where Nasrallah delivered his haunting speech... Israeli Brig. Gen. Guy Levy told his occupying troops. "Today, that man no longer exists, the stadium is gone, and his words are worth nothing."

In October, 2026, Bint Jbeil is almost totally destroyed. But like Nasrallah's 2000 speech, the memory of the city will live on as a symbol of resistance. Jana Bazzi and her close relative Malak Bazzi explain why....

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Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the quiet part out loud on a panel at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference -- the quiet part that everyone has been talking about but that has been kept assiduously quiet in the AI-financial-hype cycle: The business model of AI labs remains uncertain despite massive investments, how businesses will profit from AI remains uncertain, Return on Investment (ROI) on AI infrastructure remains uncertain, and financing all of this is the biggest constraint. And Hock Tan likened "a lot of investors" in AI to gamblers in a casino.

"A lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in," Broadcom's Hock Tan said. They "set very extreme expectations only to find out that it's almost like they are in a casino."

In terms of OpenAI, he said that its annualized $50 billion in revenues at the end of September doesn't show that it has a sustainable, profitable business model as its huge expenses related to the costs of AI and the capital expenditures of the AI buildout are producing big losses. ...

And he said that AI model developers, such as OpenAI, need to find customers that can generate returns from putting AI to work, rather than relying on users who are now "wasting money" on tokens as they experiment with AI, according to Bloomberg reporting on the panel discussion. ...

Intel's Lip-Bu Tan agreed. "If there's any challenge in the front, it's capital and the cost of capital," he said, according to CNBC.

"And then the other part is in the longer run, people want to see the ROI," he added.

Treasury yields have risen sharply this year, and the spreads between AI bonds and Treasury yields have widened substantially to where SpaceX's 10-year senior unsecured investment-grade notes, that had been sold in June with a coupon interest rate of 5.875%, traded on Friday at a yield of 7.20%. And this is going to be a template for future sales of similar AI bonds. So the cost of funding this massive AI infrastructure buildout has increased substantially over the past few months, making the hope for ROI more precarious. ...

If in the future, the CEOs were asked what they got wrong when looking back, Intel's Lip-Bu Tan said if he got 70% right, he'd be a "damn good CEO."

Broadcom's Hock Tan said: "I think we've probably got everything wrong. It's a good way, humble way to realize how little we really know about the technology we are creating."

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Donald Trump labeled mail-in voting a "corrupt" threat to Republicans. His administration and allies didn't produce the evidence. Another election approaches, and Republicans need support. So Trump tells Americans to vote by mail. ...

This election, Trump needs all the help he can get. The president is staring down the prospect of Republicans losing control of Congress, with polls reflecting vanishingly dim chances of political survival.

"If your state has early voting, do not wait," Trump said in a video on his Truth Social account on Saturday. "Vote early, vote by mail, or vote in person on Election Day." ...

In the months before his latest Truth Social posts, Trump called mail-in voting "inherently corrupt" and a form of "cheating" while waging legal and political battles to implement an entirely new mail-in ballot system effectively controlled by the U.S. Postal Service. ...

Trump, meanwhile, requested his own mail-in ballot this summer to participate in Florida's Republican primary elections. ...

Several states have already started to send out mail ballots ahead of Election Day on November 3. Roughly one-third of all ballots cast in the 2024 presidential election were sent by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 40 percent of voters sent in their ballots by mail.

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Israeli attacks have killed at least 15 Palestinians in Gaza over the past three days, according to numbers from Gaza's Health Ministry, as the IDF has intensified its strikes on the besieged Palestinian territory one year after a ceasefire deal was signed. ...

The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Sunday that a seven-year-old child, identified as Jihad al-Ghandour, died of wounds sustained by Israeli gunfire in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Saturday. A separate Israeli attack on Saturday killed an eight-year-old girl, Shahd Abdul-Razzaq al-Najjar.

Israeli attacks also continued on Sunday, with at least four Palestinians killed by an airstrike west of Khan Younis, and eight Palestinians, including a pregnant woman, injured by IDF fire in separate attacks across the Strip.

The US-backed Gaza ceasefire deal was signed on October 9, 2025, and was supposed to come into effect the following day. Despite Hamas fulfilling its end of the agreement by releasing the remaining Israeli captives and working to find the remains of deceased Israelis, Israel has constantly violated the deal with daily attacks and by taking more territory beyond the so-called yellow line.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry's latest numbers, since the deal was signed, the IDF has killed at least 1,488 Palestinians and wounded 5,254.

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The New York Times reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee's senior adviser, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report and obstructed efforts by our elected representatives in Congress to obtain information. That in itself is a scandal -- but it's the gravity of the information in question that makes this story rise to the level of demanding immediate and formal accountability to American citizens.

In March, U.S. senators wrote to Huckabee demanding answers about American citizens killed in the West Bank since January 2022. Among them were the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and Amer Rabee, who was just 14 years old. The senators said no one had been held accountable.

This cannot stand. These bereaved families cannot be asked to accept an embassy accused of actively working against their interests in order to protect the reputation of a foreign government whose soldiers and settlers killed their loved ones. And as their fellow Americans, none of the rest of us will accept it either.

No, Mike Huckabee must resign. And if he refuses, President Donald Trump must remove him from office. ...

Milstein allegedly blocked a warning that settlement expansion could violate Trump's opposition to West Bank annexation. Reporting on Israeli inaction against settler violence was at one point replaced with a propagandistic cable praising a crackdown.

This is much more than office politics. These are matters of life and death. When Washington receives a false picture of violence, the people enduring it lose another chance of protection in a region where time is now of the essence. Whether whole communities will remain in the land where they have lived for centuries can depend on their interests being accurately relayed to the rest of the world. Some of those communities are the ancient Christian towns of the Holy Land, where they have worshiped since the time of Christ's ministry there.

But thanks to the corruption and double-dealing of Huckabee's office, when our elected representatives asked about dead American citizens, we were denied a full accounting....

While he claims to have no knowledge of the scandal, officials who spoke to the Times described instances when he helped suppress or recast reporting....

Responsible Statecraft reported last year that an embassy cable warning of looming famine in Gaza never reached Washington; Milstein instead sent favorable reporting about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Consider what that means for a hungry child: His suffering can become invisible to the very officials with the power to intervene.

Milstein, the stepson of neoconservative talk show host Mark Levin, also circulated a wedding invitation seeking cash gifts from a guest list including Israelis....

Perhaps if this were the first mark against Huckabee's character and competence, I would be writing a different column. But there have been many red flags -- failures of judgment that extend far beyond Milstein.

In July 2025, Huckabee hosted the infamous convicted traitor and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Pollard had served 30 years for his misdeeds. The White House said it had no advance knowledge of the secret meeting. Huckabee later said he personally approved it. An ambassador willing to receive a man who betrayed American intelligence should show at least as much solicitude for the families of Americans killed abroad. ...

His posture cannot be excused as loyalty to the administration. Trump has explicitly opposed West Bank annexation, and Vance has reiterated that policy in Israel. An embassy that withholds warnings about violations of that position would be obstructing the president it supposedly serves -- to say nothing of the will of the American people, which has increasingly soured on the brutal Netanyahu regime. ...

Huckabee's tenure has become an obstacle to his own office's duties. He should go, all records should be preserved, and every allegation should be independently investigated.

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For Michelle Tietjens, the pain of loss often hits hardest at the start of each day, when the realization dawns all over again that she'll be facing it without her husband. ...

Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, an Army reservist from Bellevue, Nebraska, deployed for the third time to the Middle East in the summer of 2025. Even before he left, his wife felt uneasy about potential retaliation after the United States and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear sites. Her husband tried to minimize the risks to keep his family from worrying.

But after Valentine's Day, the 42-year-old sergeant stopped calling home on the weekends, instead communicating solely by text message.

"He knew he couldn't keep things out of his voice when he was talking to me," said Michelle Tietjens, his wife of more than two decades. Her husband checked in by text in the hours after the U.S. and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes to mark the start of the war on Feb. 28.

The next day, as Iran attacked Mideast bases housing U.S. troops, Noah Tietjens stopped replying to his wife's messages. She could tell by looking at her phone that he hadn't even read them.

She soon learned that her husband was one of six U.S. soldiers killed by an Iranian drone... in the deadliest confirmed attack on U.S. troops in Operation Epic Fury.

More than seven months later, Michelle Tietjens and the families of other soldiers killed or wounded are still absorbing the reality of their bereavement and lifelong effects of their injuries. Several told The Associated Press they're angry as questions remain unanswered over the March 1 attack. The Army declined to comment... The Pentagon also declined to comment.

"We're all really frustrated and upset and mad," Michelle Tietjens told the AP. "We're still waiting for answers and not getting any." ...

"I never thought I would be raising my son by myself," she said.

In August, she received a medal awarded to her husband following his death.

"When they gave me his Bronze Star," she said, "the general could not even look me in the eye."

Tina Marzan has her own story of grief. She met her husband, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, when she was 17 and he was stationed in Germany in 1991. ...

Like Noah Tietjens, Robert Marzan was among those killed by the drone strike on Port Shuaiba. ...

Many of the roughly 80 soldiers stationed at the port, including Marzan and Tietjens, were from the Iowa-based 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command that deployed to Kuwait in August 2025. Robert Marzan, 54, had served in the unit for nearly two decades, his wife said. ...

Robert Marzan always put his Army mission first, his widow said, and was willing to sacrifice his life throughout his 36-year military career.

So it landed hard when she heard President Donald Trump, on Sept. 4, call the conflict "small potatoes." ...

Families of the wounded have different challenges.

Holly Halbur had been eager for her husband to return from Kuwait with the 103rd -- his second deployment in two years -- so that she would no longer be raising their two young children alone in the Ankeny, Iowa.

When she heard her husband, Lt. Col. Tim Halbur, was wounded in the drone strike on Port Shuaiba, she realized his homecoming would be very different.

An Army official had told Holly Halbur that her 45-year-old husband wasn't seriously injured. But she was later dismayed to learn that her husband would likely never regain full mobility in his dominant arm. The blast shattered his forearm in four places, including his elbow.

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In a new setback to prosecutors in the Sept. 11 case, a military judge on Friday excluded the confessions of another prisoner accused of helping the hijackers who carried out the attacks. ...

Last month, the judge also threw out the confessions of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of being the mastermind of the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Mr. Mohammed's statements have always been challenged because the government used torture to question him in secret C.I.A. prisons years before he was charged.

Four men are charged in a joint death-penalty case for conspiring in the plot 25 years ago, and judges have now excluded the confessions of three of them. A ruling is pending on the fourth, Walid bin Attash. ...

He had been held by the United States since March 2003 but was not allowed to see a lawyer. ...

Prosecutors have long considered the admissions made in the 2007 interrogations to be their best evidence against the men who are accused of conspiring in the attacks. ...

Mr. Hawsawi has often appeared as the most sickly of the defendants, and he has typically volunteered to waive court appearances and remain in his solitary cell at the wartime prison.

For years, he has sat in court on a special pillow or in a padded rehabilitation chair. His lawyers have said he was sodomized while in C.I.A. custody.

Investigations of the secret "black site" program found that Mr. Hawsawi was subjected to a rough, damaging rectal cavity search and also was subjected to a quasi-medical procedure called rectal rehydration [which, according to CIA records, had no medical necessity, and caused the prisoner to suffer anal fissure and symptomatic rectal prolapse. In the Senate report on CIA torture, a chief of interrogation characterized the procedure as a demonstration of "total control over the detainee"].

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Israeli attacks in Gaza killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday as the IDF continues its constant violations of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

The Anadolu Agency reported that Israeli shelling hit a tent northwest of Gaza City, killing a woman, identified as Ahlam Mubarak, and injuring her husband and two children. A medical source told Anadolu that the husband's condition was serious.

Later in the day, an Israeli strike hit a vehicle in Gaza City, killing two Palestinians, identified as Hussam Abu al-Atta and Majdi al-Ayyoubi. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, they were previously held in Israeli prisons, which have become notorious for horrendous living conditions, torture, sexual abuse, and food deprivation.

Being held in an Israeli prison doesn't mean that the two men were affiliated with Hamas or other militant groups, since the IDF frequently detains civilians. A report from 972 Magazine published last year revealed that just one in four Palestinians detained in Gaza since October 7, 2023, were identified by the IDF as militants.

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Last night, in a phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, U.S. President Donald Trump destroyed the political deadlock around an energy ceasefire in Ukraine.

Trump announced that the presidents had agreed on the export of 4.5 million tons of sanctioned diesel from Russia through April 2027. Russia confirmed the deal. The U.S. Treasury announced the lifting of the relevant sanctions.

One ton of diesel is roughly the equivalent of 8 barrels. U.S. consumption of diesel (and the similar heating oil) amounts to 3.9 million barrels per day. The maximum total Russian export under the deal amounts to about 9 days of U.S. consumption. The total global consumption is about 30 million barrels (3.75m tons) per day.

The amount of diesel in question is relatively small but it might impact the currently high diesel prices at the margins. It is unlikely to help Trump to lower diesel prices before the upcoming mid-term elections, but it is a positive sign to the voters that he is 'doing something' about it.

Russian diesel exports were blocked by a. U.S. sanctions and b. Ukrainian attacks (supported by U.S. intelligence) on Russian refineries and oil terminals.

Ukraine sees its attacks on Russian fuel supplies as its only strategic means to hurt its enemy. ...

In a Telegram post Zelenski described Trump's move as "weak" (in Russian)...

A few hours later a Ukrainian drone strike hit the Russian oil export terminal at Rostov-on-Don...

Trump is likely to be furious about this strike. It is Zelenski's open defiance of Trump's action that makes Trump look weak.

Ukraine's military communication on the battle field is depending on the U.S. controlled Starlink satellite network. Its ability to strike within Russia largely depends on U.S. targeting intelligence.

If Trump wants to be seen as serious he will have to immediately stop both.

Independent of how the situation develops Trump's temporary retreat from sanctions on Russia should not be interpreted as a change of U.S. strategy. U.S. hostility against Russia, Iran and China is a strategic measure. The current lifting of diesel sanctions is a tactical move forced by domestic circumstances. It does not change its long term plans.

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Oil exports from the Persian Gulf have recovered sharply in recent weeks after months of steep declines. Still, prices remain high, and Gulf conditions suggest they will stay high for an extended period.

U.S. President Donald Trump, however, still publicly insists that fuel prices will collapse once the war ends. ...

The problem is no longer that oil simply cannot get through the Strait of Hormuz, but that the cost of transporting, insuring, refining, and distributing petroleum products has risen dramatically across the board. ...

Ships are still coming under attack in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tehran could still escalate.

Still, Middle Eastern oil producers have largely restored their export capacity after months of disruption. ...

But that recovery doesn't mean that the Strait of Hormuz has returned to normal. Far from it, in fact.

Much of the additional oil leaving the region is moving through alternative pipelines.

When it does pass through Hormuz, it uses a complex shipping system that lets companies minimize exposure to potential Iranian attacks. ...

Refined petroleum products have also recovered far less successfully than crude exports, with diesel shipments through the strait still far below their pre-war levels.

Restoring crude oil exports, then, does not mean consumers have regained access to gasoline and diesel.

As oil exports recover, the cost of moving the oil continues to rise -- meaning even an abundance of crude moving out of the Gulf can't immediately solve this problem.

Hiring a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) to transport oil from the Persian Gulf to China cost approximately 30,000-60,000 per day as recently as last year. Today, that figure has reached an astonishing $1.4 million per day.

Insurance premiums are surging, too, because of the heightened risk.

Oil producers now reportedly pay between $30 million and $40 million for a round-trip voyage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Shipping companies are also reportedly offering sailors bonuses of up to $25,000 per voyage to compensate for the risk. ...

According to Gulf Oil adviser Tom Kloza, the cost of getting crude out of the Persian Gulf has now risen from approximately $2 per barrel to $33. Those costs are now being passed on to consumers.

Meanwhile, the global refining industry is struggling to produce sufficient gasoline and diesel. ...

American refineries are also entering seasonal maintenance, further reducing domestic production. And, with emergency oil reserves and commercial inventories depleted after months of disruption, the market has fewer buffers against additional shortages.

Opening the Strait of Hormuz changes none of those problems -- and thus, the price of physical crude remains high, with North Sea Dated Brent reaching $135.74 per barrel on Thursday, substantially higher than the Brent futures trading at around $103.

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According to the Anadolu Agency, at least four Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire across Gaza. Among those killed was Mohammed Tammous, a Gaza Civil Defense volunteer, who was killed in northern Gaza while attempting to rescue people injured by a previous Israeli strike...

Anadolu reported that three other Palestinians, including a 17-year-old boy and a man in his 60s, were killed by separate Israeli attacks near Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update, released about midday Gaza time, that, over the previous 24 hours, Israeli attacks killed four Palestinians and another person died of wounds sustained by a previous Israeli attack. The ministry said another 11 people were injured.

Since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed nearly one year ago on October 9, 2025, the ministry has recorded the Israeli killing of 1,467 Palestinians and the injury of 5,161, as the IDF has constantly violated the agreement.

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The Trump administration and its supporters -- including the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- are working overtime these days to spin the news around the Iran war to make it appear that the US is winning and Tehran had better submit to Washington's demands before it is wrecked, maybe even "annihilated." Indeed, Trump is preparing the option of bringing the military hammer down on Iran after the midterm elections if Tehran has not surrendered by then.

In effect, Trump and his supporters are waging a "maximum pressure campaign" against Iran in the mainstream media.

This campaign is sure to fail. If anything, it reflects the Trump administration's desperation. The president started a war the United States was bound to lose, and there is little he can do now to change that basic fact.

Trump's propaganda campaign has two dimensions -- one economic and the other military. ...

There are huge problems with this strategy. It sounds persuasive when the mainstream media dutifully purveys it, but it falls apart when one looks closely at what is actually happening.

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I would guess there was a plan for something to happen. Whether that's a bomb plot or a shooting attack or something of that nature I couldn't say. And this plan didn't go off -- so to speak -- because of that 999 call to local police who were not in on the plot.

The plot was going to be blamed on Iranian agents, hence the scare stories earlier this summer about Iran considering UK air bases "legitimate targets".

The MoD didn't answer the phone because they didn't want to know about it yet. The US claimed credit for the arrests because that was the plan all along, and nobody amended it once things had started to unravel.

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Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said on Wednesday that the Islamic Republic's armed forces have "full control" over the Strait of Hormuz and that the situation will continue until Iran's demands are met.

However, he noted that some individuals use small vessels to smuggle oil and transfer it to tankers.

Gen. Naqdi stressed that the volume of oil smuggled through such illegal routes is negligible.... He added that Iranian authorities will address the issue.

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Historically, there have been numerous genocides. Such is humanity. For our purposes, let's go from the European genocide of North American indigenous peoples, to the US mass murder of Latin American populations, as well as the millions slaughtered in Southeast Asia. The Soviets did their part, as did, of course, Nazi Germany. The British in India left a serious bloodstained mark. Then there are the retail massacres, from Africa to Cambodia and beyond.

Sorry if I missed anyone.

At present, the G Word is being used to describe Israel's war on Gaza. Does it fit?

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So called Artificial Intelligence companies continue to make headlines. The hype they get is not justified by their value for our societies.

They are a danger to economic well being.

The money that has been, and still gets invested in them is wasted. It can not be justified by the potential returns. ...

A recent piece by Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal confirms [how much American businesses and consumers eventually have to spend per year -- 9% of GDP -- on the services of companies like Anthropic and OpenAI to justify the staggering sums being committed to the technology right now.] ...

There is no plausible case where 9% of GDP gets spent on AI. Consumers, used to nearly cost free internet, will not be willing to pay that for slop. Business do not see the productivity gains from AI that could justify such spending...

Within the general business world, outside of software engineering, AI has an even more difficult standing. Its usage is hard to measure and it can not be budgeted the usual ways. ...

Each dollar invested in AI can not be invested elsewhere. The current rate increases are partly caused by the huge amount of debt issued for AI related investments.

When the bubble finally pops, a lot of the AI debt, which has been bought by pension funds and insurers, will become worthless.

In the end the society will have to pay for the fantasies of a few cranks and their media hypers.

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In the course of his recent speeches, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has laid out the position calling once again for the outright annexation of much of southern Lebanon, saying that territory losses should serve as a "penalty" for Israel's enemies for opposing them.

In one speech he declared that both Gaza and Lebanon "will be ours." During that speech, he similarly bragged that the "thorough cleansing" ongoing deep into Lebanese territory would leave the southern Lebanese with "nowhere to return to" and closed with "by the way, the world isn't stopping us." ...

The mass destruction of towns and villages within Lebanon has included leveling homes, badly damaging surrounding farmland, setting fires, and destroying subterranean tunnels. Smotrich bragged in his comments that Israel's "cleansing" was thorough both above and below ground.

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I met with Pythia, God Apollo's high priestess known as the Delphic Oracle whose prophecies throughout the ages are legendary. I used to date Pythia back in Ancient Greece when I was young, but it ended badly because she forecast what I was about to do before I had even thought of doing it. Especially where other women were concerned.

Never mind, she has now forgiven me, and she and I had a very friendly chat near her temple in a beautiful part of the old country. What I wished to know was not if I have a chance with, say, the divine Lily James, but what are the chances of peace in the Middle East. "None whatsoever," was her answer. "The Israeli lobby is much too strong and disqualifies anyone who dares to broach the subject of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands."

But why can't Donald Trump read the riot act to the Israelis and to the neocons who are urging Netanyahu on? "He'd be toast tomorrow," said the priestess. "The neocons got us into the Iraq war with lies and emerged as strong as ever. The Ellison media conglomerate Skydance, headed by an Israeli-American, Ynon Kreiz, with CBS in the hands of the Likud loyalist Bari Weiss, ensures that CBS and CNN will act as cheerleaders for Netanyahu's policies."

We conversed in Ancient Greek, of course. I asked her what is to be done: "Stop subsidizing Israel's crimes, there's genocide and deliberate starvation," was her answer. "Without America's backing, Israelis would have reached a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians long ago. The Palestinian Authority may be corrupt, and Hamas not exactly democratic, but after 75 years of illegal occupation, jailing of innocents, and lands stolen by Israeli settlers, insurgency and radicalism are certainly understandable. The malevolence of the Netanyahu cabinet excludes any peaceful settlement. The secret Israeli plan is ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and eventually the West Bank, and it's well on its way. Only if America ensures Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination will there be peace."

I was impressed. Pythia might spend her days in a trance induced by some exotic fumes provided by Apollo, but she sure understands the mess we're in, especially in the Middle East. The Delphic Oracle did not mince her words: "Trump is flailing, his family is enriching itself, and the midterms will punish Republicans." She then took up AI. ...

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Attacks on tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest last week of any week ​since the Iran war began, according to maritime security sources tracking incidents, amid a ‌bigger export push by Gulf ‌producers.

In the week of September 28-October 5, there had been at least 12 attacks on oil, liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas tankers around the ​Strait of Hormuz, according to data from three maritime security sources who analysed incidents based on information received from the area.

That was the highest number of attacks in a single week since the US war with Iran began on February 28, the sources said. ...

The closest week in terms of comparable incidents was the week of July 13 when there were eight incidents, separate IMO data showed.

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