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Putin said Ukraine had "long degenerated into a dictatorship," referring to the country not holding a new presidential election despite the expiry of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's mandate.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth helped "set the stage" for a U.S. strike that killed at least 123 children by slashing former President Joe Biden's civilian protection teams, officials said.The officials, who are involved in the Pentagon's internal investigation of the Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, described their findings in a Bloomberg report published Friday. They said the investigation's report has been "all-but-complete for several months" but has not been released. The United States has not publicly accepted responsibility for the strike, Bloomberg reported.Two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School on the first day of the U.S. attack on Iran, killing more than 150 people, including at least 123 children, according to the report.Bloomberg called it the deadliest U.S. military targeting error of the 21st century in terms of child deaths.Teachers had moved children from the playground into a prayer room for cover after the first missile hit, according to an account Bloomberg drew from rights advocates and the watchdog group Airwars. Within minutes, a second missile struck, and part of the roof collapsed, and only a few children in the prayer room survived, the account said.President Donald Trump's administration demanded an overwhelming air assault in the final days of February, and the officials said that order squeezed the time available to finalize targets.That urgency, combined with gaps in information about the site, "cuts in civilian-protection personnel" and an overreliance on artificial intelligence, "set the stage for the deadly error," they told Bloomberg.Officials involved in the probe pointed to "gaps … left after Hegseth dismantled" most of the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation units, Bloomberg reported.Staffing across those teams fell roughly 90% to fewer than 20 people, and the team at U.S. Central Command, which carried out the strike, shrank from 10 people to one, people with direct knowledge told Bloomberg. No member of those teams reviewed the Minab site before the strike, the officials said, partly because of the staffing cuts and partly because of a decision to leave the group out of planning. Those reviews map civilians near a target and look for lower-risk ways to strike it, according to the report, though Bloomberg said it is unclear whether one would have raised questions about the school.The Biden administration had built up the civilian protection efforts after an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 10 civilians when U.S. forces mistook an aid worker for a threat, the outlet reported.Hegseth announced a shift in Pentagon spending in a February 2025 video on X, saying $50 billion would be redirected toward new priorities, Agence France-Presse reported."We will move away from woke, Biden-era, non-lethal programs, and instead spend that money on President Trump's America First, peace through strength, priorities," Hegseth said.The Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation plan and its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence were tagged for elimination under that push, the national security publication War on the Rocks reported the following month. Bloomberg reported that Hegseth has described his cuts to those efforts in the same terms.In past conflicts, preparing lists of proposed targets "had taken hours for staffers to complete," according to the report.Before the Iran attack, much of that work was "condensed into several minutes" using Maven Smart System, an artificial intelligence tool made by Palantir Technologies, people involved in the review told Bloomberg.A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg there is no evidence the company's software was at fault in the Minab strike."America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history," Hegseth told reporters on March 2, two days after the strike. "All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars."On Thursday, United Nations investigators said there were reasonable grounds to conclude that the Minab strike and another U.S. attack that day amounted to war crimes, Bloomberg reported.The Pentagon declined to comment beyond saying the incident remains under investigation, and a senior administration official also cited the probe, according to the report."The United States does not target civilians," the official added.Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, cited the Minab strike on Tuesday when he filed eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth, accusing him of "ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties," Truthout reported."By directing the Department of Defense in a manner that foreseeably dismantled the safeguards necessary to distinguish civilian objects from military objectives, Secretary Hegseth thereby effected the murder of civilians," one article says.House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent members home early on Wednesday for a seven-week campaign recess before the midterm elections, CNN reported. Massie's resolution had started a clock requiring a vote within days, but the early exit pushes that vote to November.Johnson said the early exit had nothing to do with Hegseth, according to CNN."It is a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention. It will immediately be tabled of course," the speaker said, referring to a procedural vote that would set the articles aside without debate. "But we probably won't do that today, we will do it when we come back.""We should not be playing games with national security," Johnson added.

Group trapped at Hotel Bamy after US removal as rights groups sound alarm over poor conditions and violenceTwo men that the Trump administration expelled to Equatorial Guinea were bound, fitted with bags over their heads, beaten and pushed down a flight of stairs, all in plain view of other US deportees, according to witnesses and human rights lawyers.The men – one from Egypt and one from Eritrea – were then taken to a prison. About 30 detainees from the US remain trapped at a hotel in the outskirts of the coastal city of Malabo after being deported from the US. Detainees have said they believe the men were beaten for telling the press and human rights advocates about the poor conditions and violence inside the hotel, and that they are haunted by flashbacks and terrified they will be retaliated against next. Continue reading...

A chatbot's bad guess about a cargo ship nearly dragged the U.S. into a shooting war with China this spring, CNN exclusively reported on Friday.A U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific analyst asked an AI chatbot to analyze a Chinese vessel's manifest in the Middle East amid the war with Iran, four sources familiar with the episode told CNN's Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, who added the bot "fused together open-source intelligence with secret signals intelligence in government holdings" to wrongly conclude the ship was "hauling components" for a nuclear weapons program. The analyst then used AI again to package the finding into "a standard intelligence report" that was sent up the chain of command.According to the report, "The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said. It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).""Entirely false," one source called it before admitting to CNN that it "almost started a war," since any U.S. assault on a Chinese ship carried the possibility of retaliation. The scare comes as the Pentagon races to embed AI into everything from targeting to logistics, following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's January push to "unleash experimentation" and arm three million personnel with AI tools. Critics say the technology remains dangerously unready, with a top Army cyber general recently warning AI has caused a "tenfold" spike in vulnerabilities across the Pentagon's aging networks. Insiders have described a Pentagon under Hegseth already gripped by dysfunction. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon declined to comment when pressed by CNN.

Simon Peter Carman appeared in a Pattaya court on Friday charged with killing Tunchanok Donhomla An Australian man accused of murdering a Thai teenager and putting her body in a suitcase pleaded not guilty on Friday in a hearing in the seaside resort city of Pattaya, a court official said.Simon Peter Carman, 45, was arrested in June after 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla was reported missing in Pattaya City, about 150km south-east of Bangkok. A suitcase containing her body was found shortly after. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump could hold a landmark sit-down with Venezuela's interim leader Delcy Rodriguez within days, according to people familiar with the planning — an encounter insiders say comes loaded with political hazards on both sides of the border.The meeting would likely happen on the margins of Trump's upcoming trip to New York for the UN General Assembly, where talks with Gulf leaders on the Iran war are already on his calendar. Tuesday has emerged as a possible date for adding Rodriguez to the schedule, Axios reported.One Trump adviser framed the relationship as central to the administration's foreign policy wins, saying, "Iran is tough, but Venezuela is without a doubt the president's top success, and Delcy is a key to that." A senior administration official was more cautious, noting nothing is locked in yet, and the final call rests entirely with the president.A Manhattan meeting would unfold not far from the detention facility holding Nicolas Maduro, Rodriguez's old political partner turned prisoner, who's been sitting there since American forces snatched him from Caracas in a January raid Trump personally signed off on and now faces narco-terrorism charges. Rodriguez stepped into the power vacuum left behind and has since built a working relationship with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, most notably through a sweeping oil agreement between the two governments that's drawn its own share of scrutiny.Not everyone is happy about that partnership. Venezuelan exiles concentrated in South Florida — a politically vocal bloc — have grown increasingly angry watching Washington cozy up to someone they view as cut from the same socialist cloth as Maduro, both having climbed to power under the late Hugo Chavez. Neither Trump nor Rubio has demanded Venezuela actually hold elections, a notable silence given how relentlessly they once painted Maduro as a dictator who stole his own vote.Backers of exiled opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, share some of that frustration too, still stung by administration pushback when she tried heading home after June's earthquakes.Venezuelan public opinion polling shows both Rodriguez and Trump struggling with weak approval, while Machado sits on top, even as her own support has started slipping. Some people close to Trump privately fret that being seen shaking his hand could brand Rodriguez a U.S. puppet in the eyes of her own citizens. The administration official waved off that worry entirely."The fact is POTUS loves Delcy because she's delivering and she's leading," the official said.Back home, though, political operatives in Florida say voters heading into the midterms are far more consumed by pain at the pump from the Iran conflict and the administration's crackdown on immigration than by anything happening with Venezuelan democracy — suggesting whatever backlash follows a Rodriguez meeting may stay confined largely to the exile community rather than spilling into the broader campaign.

The Pentagon's thoughts about withdrawing 25,000 troops from Europe are spurring fears of the threat the move would create for U.S. allies.On Thursday, NBC News reported that the Pentagon is considering pulling out 25,000 or more U.S. troops from Europe, which is nearly a third of the American forces stationed there. The withdrawal would include aircraft, ships, and weapons, even though NATO allies have warned about the growing threat from Russia.Online critics pointed to the move as proof that President Donald Trump and his administration are aligned with Russian leader Vladimir Putin."For the umpteenth time: Trump works for Putin," wrote former GOP congressman Joe Walsh in a post on X. "He's a Russian asset. Plain & simple. Putin is smiling again today.""What US national security interest would this decision advance?" wondered former U.S. ambassador to Russia and political science professor Michael McFaul. "I missed the Party of Reagan and Peace Through Strength.""Trump is helping Putin to attack Europe," declared investigative journalist Robert van der Noordaa."As European countries build their defense capabilities, this kind of withdrawal may become possible," former U.S. ambassador Steven Pifer lamented. "It makes no sense now.""UNBELIEVABLE!" exclaimed influencer Brian Krassenstein, who had a theory for why the Trump administration was making the move. "This is happening right after the EU signed a trade deal with Canada and invited Canada to join the EU as an associated member. Trump is mad that two allies are working together after he pissed them both off."This would not be the administration's first drawdown in Europe. The Pentagon ordered about 5,000 U.S. troops out of Germany earlier in 2026 amid tensions with Berlin, Fox News reported.It also echoes Trump's first term, when he ordered roughly 12,000 troops out of Germany in 2020. That plan drew bipartisan pushback and was frozen by President Joe Biden, CBS News reported.What US national security interest would this decision advance? I missed the Party of Reagan and Peace Through Strength. https://t.co/Un0R9eB6GY— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) September 17, 2026

MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace was aghast on Thursday's edition of "Deadline: White House" as Trump escalates his threats against Canada, seeking a closer partnership with the European Union — and Canada going for it anyway."I think ... the way it translates to voters, especially Republican voters, is the stench of weakness," Wallace told guest Cornell Belcher. "We have never looked so weak, being isolated. And I say this with a little bit of experience from my time in government: people care a lot about the national security implications. But the association of standing alone is something that all voters internalize and dislike, and it makes people feel frightened, and it makes America look weak."Belcher emphatically agreed, saying that it doesn't just make America "look" weak, but "it makes us, in fact, weak."The polling, he continued, shows that "Americans are more pessimistic about the current situation, but also more pessimistic about the future. You have majorities of Americans being pessimistic about the future. And it's an anomaly, because one thing you can always count on is for Americans to be optimistic, whether they're on the left or the right." Usually "American exceptionalism" unites everyone, he said, but it seems to have slipped away.""And it's not evaporating just because the price of gas is high," he added. Rather, it's a "deep moral calcification of our moral compass that is happening ... what you're seeing is, really, Trump presiding over the end of the American era."This is also evident in polls abroad, he said. "And you see him tearing apart the global order that has centered America ... they are reordering themselves, the globe. And America is not the centerpiece of that. So in a real way, he's made America less significant, and we're going to be less safe and less prosperous." - YouTube www.youtube.com