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The Trump administration sparked immediate outrage after it conducted what some described as a "secret" bombing campaign on the eve of the midterm elections. Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios, reported Monday night that a U.S. fighter jet destroyed an Iranian weapon on Qeshm Island. The strikes mark a significant escalation in the conflict as the Trump administration braces for a midterm election where Republicans are expected to lose the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate as well. "Senior U.S. official: A U.S. Army fighter jet conducted a self-defense strike and destroyed a surface-to-air missile launcher on Qeshm Island after the Revolutionary Guards launched an anti-aircraft missile from it," Ravid posted on X. The move outraged Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council."After eight months of an illegal war, there was finally some hope that a diplomatic agreement might be within reach and this war could end through negotiations rather than spiral into the violent scenarios being threatened after the midterm elections. But these deeply alarming revelations suggest we may be heading in precisely the opposite direction," he said in a statement.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that a military source of his gives even odds that the U.S. will strike Iran after the midterms — but says any attack would be smaller than first planned.Klippenstein writes that President Donald Trump’s plan for a decisive attack on Iran is now in doubt. Trump said last month the U.S. would not attack before the election, but Klippenstein says target sets were drafted and forces were being positioned, including a third aircraft carrier and two amphibious groups carrying about two dozen additional F-35s.Gulf Arab allies, he says, told Washington they would help defend themselves but would not join an offensive.He reports the plan frayed further when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost his majority, leaving planners unable to count on Israel until a new government forms.In his account, Hegseth told the White House that a sea-based strike without Israel or Gulf bases remained workable. Gulf states objected to hitting energy infrastructure, and some military leaders warned that strikes on power production might violate the law of war. Hegseth responded by firing Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the top Joint Chiefs war planner, Klippenstein says.Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said last week, “Their plan is insane,” and predicted “devastating escalation.”Klippenstein says Murphy was referring to classified briefings. Citing military sources, he writes that Trump has criticized the proposed attack as “uninspired, worthless, and weak” and wants Iran’s nuclear program as its focus. He says Trump hinted on Halloween at hitting one or two remaining nuclear sites.Additionally, Iran has threatened retaliation beyond the Middle East, and people in Trump’s orbit have discussed responding at home with a national emergency, wrote Klippenstein.

Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers of Michigan was paid more than $420,000 while serving on the board of the MITRE Corporation, a consultancy that is now working with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the future of U.S. warfare, according to tax filings reported by Drop Site News.Rogers sat on MITRE’s board of trustees, at one point as chair, for six years until 2023, when he stepped down to run for Senate, the outlet says.IRS records show his yearly pay, and MITRE’s CEO has said Rogers was recruited for his “vast national security expertise.”MITRE is coordinating Project Meridian, which Hegseth announced Sept. 30 as a study of future warfare. Hegseth named tech tycoon Elon Musk, former GOP congressional leader Newt Gingrich, and defense entrepreneur Palmer Luckey as top officials.Drop Site says some have raised conflict-of-interest concerns, noting that former defense officials told NPR the project could push the military toward drones and space systems built by Musk’s and Luckey’s companies. Musk is one of Rogers’ biggest backers through his America PAC.Rogers’ support for the Iran war has been a liability as he has navigated his fight against Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed, the report noted. A poll cited by the outlet shows up to 67 percent of Michigan voters disapprove of the war.In March, Rogers said the war’s end “should be conditional,” but in recent weeks he has been trying to downplay his old hawkishness, even telling Fox News “we need to start wrapping it down.”

Panic spread late Sunday as a prominent conservative figure with deep ties to the Donald Trump administration warned that the president was just days away from deciding whether to use nuclear weapons in his deeply unpopular war against Iran.That conservative figure was Tucker Carlson, formerly a staunch ally of Trump who has since broken with the president over the U.S. war against Iran. Sunday night, Carlson issued a warning that Trump, under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may be “within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran,” citing an “informed observer” and other inside connections.“We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months,” Carlson warned in a statement published on social media that had been viewed more than 34 million times as of Monday morning.“Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called ‘battlefield nukes’ easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.”“Now I can’t sleep,” reacted Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, in a social media post on X Sunday night.Citing “close observers,” Carlson claimed that Trump was “likely” to decide “by next weekend” whether to authorize a nuclear attack, with a “cornered and desperate” Netanyahu, fresh off a rebuke from Israeli voters, aggressively pushing to escalate the U.S. war against Iran in an effort to cling to power.“Tucker is extremely well sourced in the Trump administration and shouldn’t be ignored if this is what he’s being told,” warned journalist Ryan Grim, founder of Drop Site News.The target of the U.S. nuclear strike allegedly under consideration would be Pickaxe Mountain, an Iranian site frequently mentioned by Trump that Israeli intelligence has claimed is being used by Tehran to restart its nuclear program.“Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickaxe Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people,” Carlson warned. “And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed… After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.”Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene argued that such a strike would constitute “crimes against humanity,” and geopolitical analyst Brett Erickson warned that it would “lead to global economic devastation.”Defense journalist Tyler Rogoway, editor-in-chief of The War Zone, argued that, were Trump to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, it would be the United States’ greatest foreign policy error in history.“If a nuclear weapon were used on Pickaxe Mountain in Iran by the US or Israel or an empty field in Ukraine by Russia etc, it doesn’t matter, it would open up Pandora’s box and would make the U.S. and the world dramatically less safe,” Rogoway warned. “This isn’t even a question of how big of a disaster the use, in any manner, of a nuclear weapon would be. It would represent the largest foreign policy error ever by the United States if we were involved. We can only hope this claim isn’t accurate in any way.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has ordered the country’s top military commanders to answer any renewed U.S. or Israeli attack with a response “without geographical limitations," according to new reporting.Khamenei met with Iran’s three highest-ranking commanders and told them a new attack “must be met with an immediate and effective response, without geographical limitations” in order to achieve “maximum deterrence.” That’s according to a statement released after the meeting and reported by Axios correspondent Barak Ravid.“If the enemies once again launch military or terrorist attacks, it will be the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces and the Iranian nation that determine when and under what conditions those hostilities will end,” Khamenei said, according to the statement.He also ordered that Iran’s “target bank” be updated “so that all types of the American-Zionist enemy’s material and non-material assets fall within the reach of the Armed Forces.” He praised the “intelligent steadfastness” of Iran’s proxies across the region.The meeting included Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Abdollahi, Army commander Maj. Gen. Hatami and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Vahidi. According to the statement, the commanders briefed Khamenei on military readiness along the Gulf coast, around the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, and on Iran’s northwestern and southeastern borders. They also reported a “several-fold increase” in the production of ammunition and combat weapons.The warning comes days after Republican strategist Karl Rove said he expects President Donald Trump to resume strikes on Iran after Tuesday’s midterm elections. The Pentagon has two aircraft carrier strike groups in the region, and a third is on the way.

Scottish detectives are investigating time that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell spent at Balmoral, King Charles’ private estate in Scotland.Police Scotland said it had received “information” and that inquiries into the disgraced royal’s time there with the late child sex offender were at a “very early stage," reported The Guardian.The Daily Express has reported that the inquiries relate to claims that women were trafficked to the estate.“We have received information and active inquiries are ongoing, but these are at a very early stage,” a Police Scotland spokesperson said. “All inquiries are evidence-led, with the needs of victim survivors at the heart of those inquiries.”Photos previously released by the U.S. Department of Justice appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein on a shooting trip at Balmoral.The estate also appears in a string of cryptic emails released last year as part of the Epstein files. In August 2001, someone using the name “the Invisible Man” sent four emails to Maxwell, who has since been convicted of sex trafficking. In one, the sender said their “valet” had recently died and that they had “left the RN,” shorthand for the Royal Navy. Mountbatten-Windsor left the Royal Navy the month before.Another email from the same sender, dated Aug. 16, 2001, said they were at “Balmoral summer camp for the royal family” before asking Maxwell: “Have you found me some inappropriate friends?”In March 2002, Maxwell wrote to the Invisible Man that she had passed along a message to an unnamed person, beginning: “I just gave Andrew your telephone no.” She added that “Andrew” would be “very happy” if the person did some “two legged sight seeing.”The sender of the emails has not been confirmed.Several other British police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley Police and Surrey Police, have live investigations linked to the Epstein files. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said there is no national investigation at present.Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations that he shared sensitive information with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy. He denies wrongdoing, and that investigation continues.

There is no end in sight for the drivers of illegal mining, while police action appears ineffectiveCora Bailey has been encountering illegal miners ever since she first started treating injured animals in the townships around Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, in 1991. But as the price of gold has soared, so too has activity in the abandoned mine shafts that mark the area.In late September, dozens of zama zamas – the name given to illegal miners in South Africa, meaning roughly “to take a chance” in Zulu – arrived to dig for gold across the dirt road from her charity, Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare). Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's administration quietly agreed to arm a foreign military unit with a gruesome human rights record, a new report revealed.The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid, including armored personnel carriers, to Cameroon's Rapid Intervention Battalion, known as the BIR, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. U.S. officials and congressional aides told The Journal that State Department officials negotiated the aid alongside a deal for the Central African nation to accept deportees from the U.S. who aren't Cameroonian.The unit has a brutal past. A 2017 Amnesty International report accused the BIR of war crimes during its fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, finding that members beat and drowned detainees and tortured some of them to death. Trump's first administration cut off some aid to the unit in 2019 and booted Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over its forces' ongoing abuses, which Cameroon denied at the time.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the aid package earlier this year, according to The Journal. That stalled the deal for months until April, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team told her the administration was overriding her and pushing ahead.Shaheen this week tore into the arrangement as "grotesque" and said Rubio had let her down by signing off on it.In a statement, Shaheen argued that the U.S. has no business handing sensitive military gear to governments with shaky human rights records, let alone as payment for taking in people.Cameroon started accepting U.S. deportation flights in December and has taken in at least 36 people since, according to Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy group. Some officials told The Journal the Trump administration intends to ramp up flights to African countries in the coming months. Around the time the aid was disclosed to Congress in January, the U.S. also steered $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency's operations in Cameroon, even as it slashed foreign aid elsewhere.The State Department wouldn't discuss the details of any agreement but praised its partnership with Cameroon on security and counterterrorism, and said it follows the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to forces tied to human rights abuses. Cameroon's embassy in Washington did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.