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A tropical storm is dumping heavy rain and raising flood risks around east-central Japan as it moved into the heavily populated Tokyo region

Secretary of State Marco Rubio got in a heated exchange with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.Rubio was testifying for the first time since the United States launched the Iran war and Booker raised questions about the Ebola crisis and the military operation. Booker told Rubio he was concerned the U.S. had rolled back its investment in eradicating diseases in Africa, and expressed doubt that the Iran war was over, despite the Trump administration's claims that it was."With the crisis of Ebola, we see the challenges have been brought about as a result of our surveillance, early detection, and the like. I'm concerned about what the administration's strategy is," Booker said. "We are clearly seeing that what goes on on the continent of Africa directly affects our public health as well."But Rubio did not see eye to eye with Booker."I don't agree with the assessment," Rubio said. "It's not about cutting back. The response is that how much money you spent it's the results you will get. Ebola, the outbreak was in a war-torn, isolated, rural area in the DRC. Since then, our response has been very rapid."Booker pushed back."You did not cut early detection?" Booker asked. "That's not the reason there was Ebola," Rubio said. Booker cut him off as the conversation intensified."I'm not trying to get in an argument. I would like to have my questions answered," Booker said. "We cut early detection when it comes to infectious diseases on the continent, factually. This is not an opinion. We cut early warning systems on the continent."Rubio continued to argue with Booker and interjected the senator, saying "It had nothing to do with the Ebola outbreak.""I don't need to tell you, we are living in a place where an infectious disease crisis anywhere is a threat everywhere," Booker said, adding that he worried further budget cuts would complicate future outbreaks. "The United States made major reductions in these areas putting us more at risk. If you're talking about the Ebola crisis, other cuts we have made, you see it factually. Even our own State Department personnel I've talked to are saying we are less prepared for a global outbreak than we were before."Rubio denied Booker's comments."I don't agree with that assessment," Rubio said. "I don't know who told you that at the State Department." "You can't even agree on the facts. It is not accurate that we cut early detection?" Booker asked, pressing Rubio to respond. "Those have been repurposed," Rubio said. "The different arrangements with the countries are an example."But Booker wasn't convinced. "If you're telling me that we are as or more prepared before the Trump administration came in, I would like to see the facts," Booker said. "I think when the reforms are finalized we will be better prepared. We are responding faster not just humanitarian crises but faster than before," Rubio said.Booker then moved on to discuss the Strait of Hormuz blockade."The conclusion I have is the Strait of Hormuz was opened before this unjustified war," Booker said. "We are now scrambling to find a way to get it back open again." Booker argued the U.S. was now in a "worse situation, an adversary and our enemy is causing havoc in the region, funding proxies and terrorists, has discovered, thanks to you all, the power of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz." He said Iran was now in a better position, while America was worse off."It made our adversary have a stronger negotiating position," Booker said. "We are the strongest on earth and we are in a stalemate with Iran. We are begging to get back into a deal that you trashed in the first place." "There is no one begging," Rubio maintained.Rubio argued that the war was over — and Booker pushed back, saying that although Trump says it has ended, it hasn't."You keep saying how we are winning the war," Booker said. "The war is over now," Rubio said. "The war is not over. The American people see how we are losing at the pump and with costs. Yet this thing has not been resolved," Booker said.

President Donald Trump has stayed out of the public eye for the second day after negotiations with Iran were suspended, according to reports on Tuesday.Trump was reportedly furious during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalating military campaign in Lebanon, a condition that Iran cited as a reason to halt talks over a ceasefire with the United States. And after the derailed negotiations on Monday, Trump has stayed "out of sight," David Gardner, The Daily Beast's D.C. Bureau Chief, wrote in a post for The Swamp, The Daily Beast's Substack."The episode is called ‘Don’t Mention the War,’ and The Swamp suspects that is the very sentiment at the White House today after the president’s comically contradictory comments about his Iran War on Monday," Gardner wrote."One moment he was promising a solution and insisting all would be well, then he was saying he didn’t really care, and the Iranians made all his remarks moot by pulling out of the peace talks, anyway, which confirmed the one thing we did understand about the impasse—it’s a bloody mess," Gardner wrote.There could be a reason Trump hasn't had a public engagement the last two days, Gardner explained."No wonder Donald Trump is keeping his head down for the second day running at the White House today … presumably so nobody can ask him about the war," Gardner wrote.As developments with Iran have stalled, Trump has shifted his attention to his administration."In the meantime, Trump has clearly been trying to amuse himself by mixing and matching the most ridiculous jobs. On Tuesday, he made his attack dog housing guy, Bill Pulte, the acting Director of National Intelligence," Gardner added.

Some of Donald Trump's most loyal online supporters are pushing back against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, after a report revealed he has registered as a foreign agent for a Bosnian Serb entity led by one of Vladimir Putin's closest European allies.Scott McMahan, a conservative journalist who writes under the handle BiggerTruth and first reported the story roughly a month ago, confirmed Monday that Flynn has filed paperwork with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Act database on behalf of the Republic of Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The entity is led by Milorad Dodik, a Bosnian Serb politician widely described as Putin's most vocal ally in the Balkans. According to McMahan's reporting, Flynn is being paid $100,000 per month.Catturd, the anonymous conservative social media personality with millions of followers and one of the MAGA movement's most recognizable voices, reacted with two words: "$100,000 per month?"Sebastian Gorka, the Hungarian-American who serves as Trump's Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council, took a more pointed approach. "When I joined the first Trump Administration, I was asked to sign two documents," he wrote. "In one I promised to not work as a lobbyist for a decade. In the second, I promised to never work for another government. I was happy to sign both. I presume GEN Flynn also signed similar documents."Brenden Dilley, a conservative media personality and MAGA influencer, said he needed independent confirmation and tagged far-right commentator Laura Loomer directly. "Wait wtf is this? Can you confirm this for me?" he wrote to Loomer.The story grew more complicated when Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst and investigative journalist, reported that Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian political scientist described as a close associate of Alexander Dugin, the Russian ultranationalist philosopher sometimes called "Putin's brain," spoke at an event led by Flynn last week. Conservative commentator and former CBS journalist Lara Logan also participated in the event, Mauro reported.Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials before being pardoned by Trump, has not publicly responded to the FARA filing or the criticism from within MAGA world.$100,000 per month? https://t.co/JBrAVqZzqh— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) June 1, 2026

Truck was carrying Afghan families returning Pakistan when it overturned, official saysA truck overturned in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 18 people on board including 10 children, a provincial official told Agence France-Presse.Deadly traffic crashes are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving and a lack of regulation. Continue reading...

New digital marking system is aimed at reducing human errors but many students say it has resulted in wrong gradesA national outcry has erupted in India after more than 400,000 students requested copies of their answer sheets amid mounting complaints of errors in the marking of the country’s most important school-leaving examinations.Within days of the grade 12 exam results being issued, students began reporting marking discrepancies they linked to a new digital marking system. Continue reading...

Trump's plan to send Ebola-exposed Americans to Kenya instead of bringing them home suffered a major blow, according to reporting by The Daily Beast. A Kenyan court suspended Trump's plans the day they were supposed to begin, The Beast reported. United States officials planned to quarantine Americans at a Kenyan air force base, with the White House describing it as a "state-of-the-art facility," ABC News reported. The epicenter of the current outbreak, which has led to more than 1,000 suspected cases and nearly 250 deaths, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although no Americans have been reported infected on U.S soil, a doctor was treated for the virus in Germany, and six Americans have reportedly been exposed, The New York Post reported.

House Republicans on the Armed Services Committee released their defense budget proposal this week for fiscal year 2027, which includes more than $1.1 trillion in spending, but buried within the 500-plus-page document is a provision that one foreign policy analyst warned Friday was “unprecedented,” and could reshape the U.S. military indefinitely.That provision is titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” and according to Ben Freeman, a foreign policy analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, it would “provide a higher level of military-industrial integration [with Israel] than the U.S. has with any other country in the world.”Writing in a report published by Responsible Statecraft, Freeman noted that the United States and Israel “already work together heavily” on military operations and intelligence sharing. He also acknowledged that the United States “has worked closely with its NATO partners” militarily. The provision buried within the defense spending proposal, however, was “a different beast entirely,” Freeman warned.“It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber,” Freeman wrote. “It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers.”The expanded Israeli influence on U.S. politics that the budget provision may clear a path for, Freeman cautioned, could become irreversible.“It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S.,” Freeman wrote.“By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.”Freeman continued, “The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East.”