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The Israeli military recovered the body of de facto Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar in a tunnel underneath the European Hospital in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday.

The IDF said it made the announcement after the body went through an identification process.

Sinwar is the younger brother of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the Israeli military in southern Gaza in October.

His death marks the latest in a string of assassinations that have dealt a serious blow to the group’s top brass but are yet to break its grip on power in the besieged enclave.

The elusive Sinwar was targeted in a massive airstrike on the hospital in Khan Younis on May 13, a day after Hamas released Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander.

At the time, the IDF said it had struck “Hamas terrorists in a command-and-control center” in underground infrastructure at the hospital.

But it took more than two weeks for Israel to say that it had definitively killed Sinwar in the strike.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement on the 600th day of the war two weeks ago.

“We changed the face of the Middle East, we pushed the terrorists from our territories, we entered the Gaza Strip with force, we eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, we eliminated (Mohammad) Deif, (Ismail) Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar,” Netanyahu said in a speech at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The attack killed 28 Palestinians and wounded more than 50 others, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said after the strike.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) has said the Israeli military has boarded its Gaza-bound aid ship carrying Greta Thunberg and that communication with the boat has been lost.

The group posted a photo on Telegram early Monday local time, showing members of the crew of the “Madleen” sitting inside the boat wearing lifejackets and with their hands in the air. No Israel Defense Force soldiers can be seen in the image.

In an earlier post, the FFC said the ship had come “under assault in international waters.”

“Quadcopters are surrounding the ship, spraying it with a white paint-like substance. Communications are jammed, and disturbing sounds are being played over the radio,” FFC said on its Telegram channel.

Israel has repeatedly vowed to stop the aid boat from reaching Gaza.

“I have instructed the IDF to ensure that the ‘Madleen’ flotilla does not reach Gaza,” Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said on Sunday.

In a video livestreamed from the boat and posted by the FFC, activist Yasmin Acar showed a white substance on the deck, saying it had been dropped on the vessel. Acar was later heard saying it was affecting her eyes. Before the live stream ended, Acar could be heard saying the Israeli military was communicating with the board

Israel vowed on Sunday to stop the aid boat carrying Thunberg and other activists on board from reaching Gaza.

The “Madleen” is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an organization that has campaigned against Israel’s blockade of Gaza and tried to break the siege by boat.

Climate activist Thunberg, “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham and Rima Hassan – a French member of the European Parliament – are among those on the Madleen.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted video on X showing a Navy staffer issuing what appears to be a radio message to the vessel.

“The maritime zone off the coast of Gaza is closed to maritime traffic,” the unidentified Navy staff member is heard saying. She is later heard saying aid needs to be delivered through “established channels.”

In a statement, the ministry said “unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts.”

“We call on all actors to act responsibly and to channel humanitarian aid through legitimate, coordinated mechanisms, not through provocation,” the ministry added in a statement on Monday local time.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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North Korea has moved a new warship damaged in a botched launch to a port near the Russian border, a move analysts say could point to a role for Moscow in repairing the vessel.

Satellite images taken Sunday by Maxar Technologies show the 5,000-ton destroyer, as yet unnamed, in a drydock in the port of Rajin, part of North Korea’s Rason special economic zone, which abuts its short border with Russia.

While not a major shipbuilding facility like the shipyard in the northeastern city of Chongjin where the launching accident occurred, Rajin has facilities for modest repairs and maintenance, said Yu Jihoon, director of external cooperation and an associate research fellow at Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

And its proximity to Russia “makes it a key node for North Korea’s efforts to deepen economic and potentially military ties with Moscow,” Yu said.

A 2024 report from the Modern War Institute at West Point, the United States Military Academy, calls the Rason economic zone “a significant point of North Korea–Russia cooperation, recently implicated in North Korean arms shipments to Russia for use in Ukraine.”

The warship was damaged on May 21, when during its launch the stern went into the water but the bow stayed stuck on land. The ship turned on its side in the botched maneuver.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who attended the launching ceremony, ordered the destroyer to be repaired by the late-June plenary session of the ruling Workers’ Party, calling it a matter of national honor.

State media reported last week repairs at the Rajin drydock would take seven to 10 days, meeting Kim’s timeline.

Kim said it’s possible the ship’s sonar and depth finders, located on the bow section, were damaged during the botched launch.

Such damage would likely require foreign help to repair, he said.

“North Korea is believed to lack the technology for sonar systems, so they likely imported them from China or Russia,” Kim said.

“The vessel’s external damage doesn’t seem significant, and the main issue seems to be the water flooding into the warship” was the assessment of the South Korean military, Yu said.

Internal spaces of the ship, as well as machinery and electronics, will have to be purged of sea water and dried salt in the repair process, analysts said.

Yu said Russian assistance in the repair process was a possibility, but it would be difficult to verify if it only involved engineers and not the movement of major pieces of equipment.

North Korea is believed to have sent millions of munitions, including missiles and rockets, to Russia over the past year, according to watchdog the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team.

In return, Russia has provided North Korea with valuable weapons technologies, including air defense equipment, anti-aircraft missiles and electronic warfare systems as well as refined oil, the watchdog said last month.

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Israel’s blockade of Gaza may have been partially lifted – and a new US-backed plan to deliver aid has begun. But there are multiple indications that the plight of Gazans is rapidly worsening.

Restrictions imposed by the Israeli military on aid routes, ongoing airstrikes, a lack of security and the continuous displacement of tens of thousands of people are aggravating an already alarming situation, according to the UN and other aid agencies. The supplies that do get in risk getting looted.

“People in Gaza are starving. This demands the urgent opening of all crossings and allowing unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations to deliver aid at scale, through multiple routes,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest assessment.

The number of children in Gaza with acute malnutrition is rising, the UN reported Saturday, while a lack of fuel threatens to close hospitals that are still operating.

The Israeli agency handling the inspection of aid going into Gaza, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said Saturday that 350 trucks containing humanitarian aid had entered the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the last week – less than 20 per cent of the volume of goods getting into Gaza before the conflict.

And even the aid that gets in frequently does not make it to the most desperate. UN agencies report continuing difficulties with getting distribution routes within Gaza agreed with the Israeli military. OCHA said that out of 16 truckloads ready for distribution last Thursday, five were rejected, including fuel and water, and six failed to reach their destination.

Additionally, the looting of aid convoys in Gaza has risen sharply in recent weeks.

“Operations have faced unprecedented levels of insecurity and a very high risk of looting, with partners reporting that most looting incidents are conducted by desperate civilians,” according to OCHA.

Nahed Shehaibar, head of the Private Transport Association in Gaza, said on Saturday that transport of aid had been suspended “for the third consecutive day due to repeated attacks on trucks, including gunfire that has damaged and put several trucks out of service.”

Last week the association reported that one driver was killed and another injured while trying to deliver aid, but Shehaibar said on Sunday that 11 trucks of commercial goods had reached merchants in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza successfully.

On Sunday, GHF said it operated three distribution sites – two in southern Gaza and one in central Gaza – to hand out more than 17,000 boxes of food. In addition, GHF said in its daily update that it gave more than 10,000 meals to community leaders north of Rafah in what the organization called a pilot test of “direct-to-community distribution.”

But many people who went to the Netzarim site in central Gaza left empty-handed.

Nader Musleh, who had walked from Al-Mawasi several kilometers away, agreed.

“Some people took five or 10 boxes, and there’s no organization at all,” he said.

Mohammad Abu Akouz was one of several civilians who alleged that some people were injured after coming under Israeli tank fire as they made their way to the site.

GHF said it had been unable to open its sites on Saturday, accusing Hamas of making threats against its operations, including against drivers and Palestinian workers. It said the threats had made it impossible to proceed without putting innocent lives at risk.

The drivers had been scheduled to move 180 employees to the three distribution sites, he added.

GHF said on Friday that it had distributed more than 140,000 boxes of food, with each box intended to feed a family for half a week. The boxes contain pasta, lentils and cooking oil, among other products. GHF says its goal is to distribute boxes containing enough food for 4.5 million meals each day.

After last week’s shootings, GHF appealed to people not to arrive at distribution points “before the official opening time or gather near the gates ahead of schedule. This is for your safety and the safety of others.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Saturday in a post on X that gathering outside distribution centers outside of announced hours was “strictly prohibited,” and warned that the areas around the aid hubs were closed military zones between 6 p.m. (11 a.m. ET) and 6 a.m. (11 p.m. ET).

The UN says that the use of the Israeli and American-backed GHF has militarized aid distribution and is inadequate for the huge task of feeding families in Gaza. GHF has no presence in northern Gaza.

In its latest assessment, OCHA said that 90 per cent of families in Gaza lack the cash needed to buy what little food remains available in markets. “Meat, dairy, vegetables and fruit are nearly absent from people’s diets,” it said.

Half of the community kitchens in Gaza have been forced to stop cooking due to lack of supplies or displacement orders, according to OCHA.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the main agency for supplying aid in Gaza – said Saturday that a nutrition study had found that the percentage of children under 5 suffering from acute malnutrition had risen from 4.7% in the first half of May to 5.8% in the second half of the month.

UNRWA said the number of children forced to fend for themselves had pushed an increasing number into “dangerous survival strategies. Children are reported working on the streets, participating in looting or gathering within large crowds in search of food supplies at insecure distribution points.”

It’s not just food that is running chronically short.

He added that “a large number of the wounded cannot be treated due to the lack of blood supplies and medical equipment,” and medical staff faced difficult choices about which patients to save.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Sunday that Al-Shifa Hospital and the Baptist Ahli Hospital, both in northern Gaza, were at risk of shutting down service within 24 hours. It said that would mean the collapse of what remains of the healthcare system in Gaza City.

In the south, the Health Ministry said the Nasser Medical Complex was operating on a limited fuel supply that will last no more than two days.

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Acclaimed Ukrainian opera singer Vladislav Horay has been killed while on a volunteer mission to the Sumy region, where a frontline battle for territory continues.

Horay was a soloist with the Odesa National Opera, which said in a statement that he was a “world-class tenor” and “Honored Artist of Ukraine,” whose voice was known around the globe.

“Tragic news has shaken the entire artistic community of Ukraine,” the opera house said in a post on Facebook on Sunday. “(Horay) was not only a talented performer — he was an example of strength, dignity, and kindness in life.”

The post did not say how Horay died.

According to a June 5 post on Horay’s Facebook, he was raising money for a Ukrainian naval unit.

Horay joined the Odesa National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1993 and performed in the USA, Britain, Canada and many other countries, according to its website. He also toured Britain and performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

His last performance was just a day before he died, according to the Odesa opera house, which uploaded a video of Horay singing the Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio.”

“Today, we share this video with you. It is not just a performance. It is farewell. It is the last concert. It is the last gift from a singer who lived for the stage and left a piece of his soul there.”

The northeast Sumy region where the Opera house said Horay was killed, has been a fierce battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war. The Opera said he was there on a volunteer mission, but did not elaborate.

Russian forces have in recent weeks made incremental progress advancing towards the capital of the region, also called Sumy.

While capturing the region’s capital is likely beyond what Moscow is setting out to do, the move underlines the pressure Kyiv is under, from the northern border to the Black Sea.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other politicians from the U.S. and Latin America condemned the shooting of Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe on Sunday.

Rubio blamed the assassination attempt on ‘violent leftist rhetoric’ originating from the Colombian government. Uribe, a Colombian senator, is currently fighting for his life after sustaining three gunshot wounds, one of which was to the head.

‘The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination of Senator Miguel Uribe. This is a direct threat to democracy and the result of the violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government,’ Rubio wrote.

‘Having seen firsthand Colombia’s progress over the past few decades to consolidate security and democracy, it can’t afford to go back to dark days of political violence. President Petro needs to dial back the inflammatory rhetoric and protect Colombian officials,’ he added.

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno also condemned the attack in a statement on social media.

‘The assassination attempt on leading presidential candidate Miguel Uribe is a vile attack on democracy. This evil act must be investigated and anyone responsible, directly or indirectly, must face swift punishment,’ Moreno wrote.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric also reacted to Uribe’s shooting.

‘My strongest condemnation of the attack against Miguel Uribe Turbay, pre-presidential candidate in Colombia. In a democracy, violence has no place or justification,’ Boric wrote.

Authorities say Uribe was shot by a 15-year-old hit man, and they are investigating who was behind the attack.

‘Miguel is fighting for his life at this moment. Let us ask God to guide the hands of the doctors who are attending to him,’ Maria Claudia Tarazona, Miguel’s wife, wrote on her husband’s X account. ‘I ask everyone to join together in a prayer chain for Miguel’s life.’

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Uribe’s chief opponent in the presidential race, said the attack crossed a ‘red line’ and ordered an investigation. He also canceled a planned trip to France this week, citing the ‘seriousness of the events.’

Colombia’s Ministry of Defense has offered a nearly $750,000 reward for information relating to the assassination attempt.

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Former President Barack Obama’s White House physician said in a new interview that former President Joe Biden’s doctor should have performed a cognitive test to evaluate his fitness to serve in office. 

Obama’s doctor, Jeffrey Kuhlman, told The Washington Post that Biden White House physician Kevin O’Connor should have performed a cognitive test during Biden’s last year as president, given his age. 

O’Connor, who Kuhlman first appointed as Biden’s doctor in 2009 when he was vice president, declared in a 2024 report that the then-81-year-old president ‘continues to be fit for duty.’ The report did not mention any neurocognitive testing. 

‘Sometimes those closest to the tree miss the forest,’ Kuhlman told the Post.

‘It shouldn’t be just health, it should be fitness,’ Kuhlman said. ‘Fitness is: Do you have that robust mind, body, spirit that you can do this physically, mentally, emotionally demanding job?’

Kuhlman, who departed the White House Medical Unit in 2013, described O’Connor as ‘a good doctor’ who appeared to do his best to ‘give trusted medical advice.’

‘I didn’t see that he’s purposely hiding stuff, but I don’t know that,’ Kuhlman told the Post. ‘Maybe the investigation will show it.’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Biden’s aides ‘abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.’ 

‘This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,’ the order says. ‘The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.’  

‘Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,’ Biden said in a statement Wednesday night. ‘I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.’

Trump’s order appeared to nod to the findings of special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents while he was vice president. 

In a report released in February 2024, Hur concluded Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed’ sensitive materials but should not stand trial, describing the president as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ Hur cited instances when Biden could not recall key dates and events, including when he served as vice president and when his son, Beau, passed away. The report was released at a time when Biden was still planning a second term run. 

Last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., issued a subpoena for O’Connor to appear for a deposition at the end of the month ‘as part of the investigation into the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions.’ 

The committee re-posted the Post’s interview with Kuhlman to X, writing, ‘Even Obama’s doctor admits the truth. This is precisely why Chairman @RepJamesComer subpoenaed Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician. This is a scandal of historical proportions, and we will investigate it thoroughly!’ 

In a letter to O’Connor, Comer said the transcribed interview would focus on the physician’s February 2024 assessment that Biden was ‘a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.’

‘Among other subjects, the Committee expressed its interest in whether your financial relationship with the Biden family affected your assessment of former President Biden’s physical and mental fitness to fulfill his duties as President,’ Comer wrote. 

Questions about Biden’s cognitive state stretch extend solely past Republicans. 

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson recently published a book titled ‘Original Sin,’ which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.

In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, ‘Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.’

Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter, dismissed the book as ‘political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class.’ 

Comer requested transcribed interviews with Biden’s White House senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president. He also called for former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee and suggested subpoenas could be forthcoming if they did not schedule voluntary interviews. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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One of the leading opponents of President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ declared not even the commander in chief will be able to deter him from speaking out against what he sees as a bill that falls short of Republicans’ goal of cutting government waste.

‘It’ll completely backfire on him,’ Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital of any attempts by Trump to sway him on the current legislation.

Johnson has become a prominent voice of opposition against the House GOP’s offering to the budget reconciliation process. Senate Republicans finally began the tedious process of parsing through the bill this week.

Lawmakers in the upper chamber, Johnson included, are determined to make changes to the bill, with most wanting to make reductions to Medicaid and food stamps more palatable. Trump has made it clear his bill must pass but has acknowledged the Senate will need to make a few changes.

Trump’s directive has been to deliver a bill that can survive the razor-thin majorities in both chambers.  

Johnson, however, wants to see spending returned to pre-pandemic levels, cuts that are trillions of dollars deeper than what House Republicans could stomach. And he is ready to vote against the bill unless he sees the changes he wants.

And he believes that a pressure campaign from the president against him and other like-minded fiscal hawks will fail.

He said a better approach would be to work with lawmakers and fiscal hawks like him to gain a better understanding of the reality of the country’s fiscal situation, a reality that ‘is grim,’ he said.

Johnson has been up front about his disdain for the bill but has so far avoided public retribution from Trump. In fact, the two have spoken twice this week, once on Monday and later during a Senate Finance Committee meeting at the White House Tuesday.

The lawmaker has told Trump he’s in Trump’s corner and that he wants ‘to see you succeed,’ but he has been steadfast in his position that the bill does not go far enough to tackle the national debt.

And the debt continues to climb, nearing $37 trillion and counting, according to Fox News’ National Debt Tracker.

The House’s offering set a goal of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, which lawmakers in the lower chamber have pitched as a positive step forward to righting the country’s fiscal ship, an offering Johnson panned as falling drastically short of the GOP’s promises to cut deep into government spending.

‘What’s so disappointing about what happened in the House is it was all rhetoric. It’s all slogans,’ Johnson said. ‘They picked a number. Literally, they picked a number out of the air.’

Johnson views this attempt at the budget reconciliation process as a rare opportunity to ‘do the hard things’ when it comes to spending cuts, but others in the GOP have been more hesitant to cut as deep.

Johnson said a main reason Republicans have so far fallen short of meeting the moment for the most part is that lawmakers don’t understand just how much the federal government shovels out the door year in and year out.

The lawmaker recalled a moment roughly three years ago during a debate over another year-end omnibus spending bill, when each of the dozen appropriations bills is crammed into one, bloated package that is universally reviled and almost always passes.

He asked his colleagues if they really knew just how much the government spends, and no one ‘volunteered to answer.’

‘Nobody knew. I mean, think of that. The largest financier in the world. We’re supposedly, in theory, the 535 members of the board of directors, and nobody knew,’ he said. ‘Why would they? We never talked about it.’

Johnson has been busy trying to better educate his colleagues, putting together his own charts and graphs that cut out the ‘noise,’ like the latest nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that found the legislation would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over a decade. The GOP has universally panned that projection.

‘We can’t accept this as a new normal,’ Johnson said. ‘We can’t accept — you can take pot shots of CBO, but you can’t deny that reality. [It] might be off a little bit, but that is the trajectory, and that’s undeniable.’
 

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By all appearances, the world is edging perilously close to the brink of a catastrophic global conflict. In just the past few days, five deeply troubling developments have emerged — each significant on its own — but taken together, they form a pattern too urgent to dismiss. Viewed in context, these events expose a rapidly deteriorating international order, where diplomacy is failing, deterrence is weakening, and the risk of multi-theater war is rising sharply. 

First, Ukraine’s audacious drone strike deep inside Russian territory — reportedly destroying or damaging a significant share of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet — bears the hallmarks of Western involvement. While Kyiv claimed responsibility, the attack’s sophistication, including precise long-range targeting and coordinated timing, suggests U.S. or NATO intelligence and technological support.  

Former intelligence officials have even pointed to likely CIA or allied agency involvement. Whatever the true origin, Moscow now sees itself not merely at war with Ukraine, but with the broader Western alliance. Russia’s retaliation — whether cyber, kinetic or covert — could spiral well beyond the front lines. 

Second, efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions have collapsed further. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected a U.S. proposal that would have permitted tightly restricted low-level uranium enrichment. Denouncing the offer as ‘100% against our interests,’ he reaffirmed Iran’s demand for full sovereign enrichment rights.  

With Israel openly contemplating military action and negotiations at a standstill, the Middle East stands on the edge of a potentially region-wide conflagration — especially if Iran accelerates toward weapons-grade enrichment. 

Third, a highly anticipated phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded no diplomatic breakthrough. Though both men discussed the escalating war and the drone strike, the call ended with no commitments, no ceasefire, and no plan for de-escalation.  

Trump admitted it was not the kind of conversation that would bring peace. Instead, the call served to underscore how deeply entrenched the conflict has become — and how narrow the remaining diplomatic off-ramps now are. 

Fourth, a chilling threat emerged on American soil. Federal prosecutors charged a Chinese national couple with attempting to smuggle Fusarium graminearum into the U.S. — a crop-killing fungus labeled by the Justice Department as a potential ‘agroterrorism weapon.’ The pathogen can devastate wheat, barley and corn, and its toxins are harmful to both humans and livestock.  

The couple is linked to Chinese state-sponsored research and is suspected of prior smuggling attempts. Whether or not this plot was state-directed, it underscores an alarming vulnerability: America’s homeland is increasingly exposed to unconventional threats from hostile actors. 

Fifth, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned that China may be preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, he declared, China ‘is rehearsing for the real deal.’  

With Beijing ramping up military drills and tightening its rhetoric, the Taiwan Strait has become a powder keg. Should China act, U.S. intervention would be virtually guaranteed — potentially igniting a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific. 

Together, these flashpoints paint a stark picture of a world in crisis. Three nuclear powers — Russia, China and Iran (potentially) — are simultaneously testing Western resolve.  

The United States faces a mounting burden to deter aggression on multiple fronts, with few diplomatic successes to lean on. Traditional tools — talks, sanctions, summits — are proving inadequate. What remains is a binary choice: step back from global leadership or confront rising threats in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, possibly all at once. 

This is not alarmism. This is convergence. With diplomacy unraveling, adversaries emboldened and the homeland no longer secure, the global order is careening toward synchronized escalation. The world is not yet at war — but it is teetering dangerously close to systemic conflict that could engulf major powers and redraw the map of the 21st century. 

The warning lights are flashing red. The only question now is whether the world will act — or continue its drift toward fire. 

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One day after seeing their largest-ever one-day drop, Tesla shares recovered some losses Friday as the spat between CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump that exploded into public view Thursday took appeared to take a breather heading into the weekend.

Shares in the electronic vehicle maker gained as much as 5% amid broader market gains following a report showing the U.S. added more jobs in May than forecast.

Even with Friday’s rally, Tesla shares are still down approximately 21% in 2025 — a decline that accelerated last week following Musk’s departure from the Trump administration.

Musk, the world’s richest person and until recently Trump’s cost-cutter-in-chief, said last week he was leaving as the head of his Department of Government Efficiency project to refocus on his businesses.

Those companies — Tesla, the satellite and space-launch company SpaceX, the social media platform X and the brain tech startup Neuralink — have faced growing criticism as Musk oversaw deep cuts to the federal workforce. Tesla sales around the world have fallen sharply this year.

Trump and Musk traded escalating insults Thursday afternoon, with the president threatening on his Truth Social platform to ‘terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.’ Yet there was no sign of any follow through on the threat Friday. At the same time, a senior White House official told NBC News that Trump is “not interested” in a call with Musk.

Tesla stock closed more than 14% lower Thursday. The automaker is Musk’s only publicly traded company — and one that the president tried to boost as recently as March, drawing sharp criticism on ethical grounds for turning the White House driveway into a car showroom just as the company’s stock was plunging.

The Trump-Musk rift has dented Tesla’s stock anew after Musk slammed the GOP spending bill as ‘a disgusting abomination” in a post on X last week.

‘Bankrupting America is NOT ok!’ he wrote in another post, part of an ongoing barrage of public ridicule.

Musk began speaking out after an electric-vehicle tax credit that would help incentivize Tesla purchases was not included in the bill, which is estimated to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Musk has lobbied congressional Republicans for that tax credit, NBC News reported Wednesday.

‘I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn’t decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk told ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ over the weekend.

As Trump spoke about the former DOGE chief in the Oval Office on Thursday alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Musk began firing off dozens of posts on X.

‘Whatever,’ he wrote. ‘Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill. In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!’

Trump pushed back further on Musk’s criticism.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people. He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it,” he said during the meeting with Merz. “All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate because that’s billions and billions of dollars, and it really is unfair.”

As Trump continued speaking, Musk posted another comment: ‘False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!’

Tech analyst Dan Ives said the EV tax credit isn’t the main factor behind Tesla’s stock slide. “The reason Tesla stock’s off the way it is — and I think overdone — is because of the view that this means that Trump is not going to play nice when it comes to regulatory” issues, he told CNBC on Thursday. The feud between the two men is “not what you want to see as a Tesla shareholder,” Ives added.

‘Where is this guy today??’ Musk added Thursday in yet another post, resharing a compilation of Trump’s past tweets including one in which Trump called the federal debt ‘a national security risk of the highest order.’

‘Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,’ Musk added on social media. ‘Such ingratitude.’

Musk is the richest person on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. His net worth of $368 billion is $125 billion more than that of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is ranked second. Musk spent $250 million supporting Trump’s most recent campaign.

The president quipped from the White House that he thinks Musk ‘misses the place.’

‘I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn’t in this beautiful Oval Office,’ Trump said. ‘He’s got nice offices too, but there’s something about this one.’

The president’s own publicly traded company, Trump Media & Technology Group, has also suffered in the market. Shares of the Truth Social parent company fell more than 8% Thursday and are down over 41% so far this year.

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