Summary:
U.S. CENTCOM Denies Report
Iran Military Fires "Warning Missiles" At US Destroyers In Gulf of Oman
Iran FM Warns American Bases Are Legitimate Targets, Cites 'No Tangible Progress' In Talks
Mass protests grip Albania over Trump family-linked resort project
The $1.6 billion high-end development has sparked anger over the planned location near a protected coastal area
Thousands of Albanians took to the streets of the capital, Tirana on Thursday for the fourth consecutive day of protests against a controversial luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
The €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) development is being spearheaded by Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and includes projects on Sazan Island and an undeveloped stretch of coastline near the Vjosa-Narta protected area in the south of the country. The wetland is home to flamingos, seals, and sea turtle nesting sites.
The Albanian government has defended the investment as a way to attract high-end tourism, support the economy, and achieve its long-standing goal of joining the EU. Environmental groups warn that the project threatens the fragile ecosystem and exposes broader governance issues.
Speaking to RT, political analyst Nikola Vujinovic said the controversy goes beyond environmental concerns and reflects wider political tensions in Albania. He argued that the project has become tangled up in debates over Prime Minister Edi Rama’s ties to Washington and support for the Trump administration.
https://www.rt.com/news/641040-mass-protests-albania-trump/
Steve Hilton: “It’s insane. This election system that they’ve created here is just another monument to their uselessness, another version of high-speed rail.
And just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption, I remember last time around, during the last elections we had here, I had a whistleblower who contacted me from a post office. They described how there were different buckets they were supposed to put the ballots in after they came in after Election Day, and they were explicitly told that it didn’t just have to be a postmark that was on or before Election Day that qualified. If the date was handwritten, that would be okay as well.
And you think, what? It’s just unbelievable. And, of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results. It undermines confidence.
So I completely agree with you. There is a case out of Mississippi that I think might help with this, that’s before the Supreme Court. But the whole thing is insane. I mean, the fact that you’re sending out mail ballots to every single person on a voting roll that is wildly inaccurate, even though it’s being cleaned up because the Trump Justice Department, thankfully, is bringing lawsuits against California to clean up the voter rolls.
There’s still a long way to go there. The whole thing is a joke, just like pretty much everything else they try to do here.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/2062314271342493807
Rubio: 'Most Of The World Assesses' That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday was asked whether Israel has nuclear weapons and acknowledged that "most of the world assesses that they do," but also reaffirmed the US policy of not acknowledging the existence of Israel’s nuclear stockpile and secret weapons program.
Rubio made the comments when being questioned by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), who recently led a letter to the State Department asking for answers about Israel's nuclear weapons program. Rubio’s State Department responded by referring the group of Democratic lawmakers to the government of Israel.
“I have to say, Mr. Secretary, that’s a very bizarre response,” Castro told Rubio at a congressional hearing. Castro then asked Rubio if he could tell the American people whether or not Israel has nukes.
“You know that that’s a question we don’t, they’ve never acknowledged to have a nuclear program, people can have, as you know, an open source and other reporting suspicions about what they possess. If we're speaking frankly, I think most of the world asseses that they do,” Rubio said.
“But they’ve never acknowledged that publicly, and as a feature of our foreign policy, for a variety of reasons, we don’t discuss it that way either,” he added.
Castro expressed concern over what Israel’s “red lines” could be when it comes to using its nuclear weapons and said he was “shocked that our government wouldn’t make an effort to know, to understand and then to give our oversight body the information that we need to make decisions about the war. Rubio said Castro’s concerns were “fair” and that he’d be willing to answer more questions in a classified briefing.
Every US presidential administration since President Nixon has maintained an understanding with Israel under which the US and Israel do not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the US doesn’t pressure Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The ambiguity has allowed the US presidents to provide military assistance without worrying about the 1976 Symington Amendment, a foreign assistance law that prohibits aid to countries that traffic in or receive nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to be somewhere between 70 and 300 nuclear warheads, is almost always missing from the conversation in US media coverage and political discussions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, which has never been used to develop weapons. Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the NPT, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, who was killed by an Israeli strike on February 28, had issued a Fatwa banning the development of nuclear weapons.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2062240475529007105
Ivanka and Jared's Private Island Purchase is Under Investigation
A secret deal to take protected land.
Last weekend Ivanka Trump went on David Senra’s Founders podcast and told a story about how she and Jared Kushner came to own a Mediterranean island. The way she frames it, they were on a friend’s boat and stopped for a swim when they noticed Sazan, a 1,400 hectare island off the Albanian coast, and they were so taken with it that they swam ashore and hiked barefoot all the way to the top, and the place simply stayed with them. Over the years that followed they “developed the opportunity” to realize its potential.
The friend with the boat was Nat Rothschild, heir to one of the oldest banking fortunes in Europe. Kushner laid out the fuller version in another recent podcast. They got picked up in Montenegro on Rothschild’s yacht, sailed toward Corfu, spent a couple of days in Albania, and one of those nights Prime Minister Edi Rama came aboard. So the chance encounter with a forgotten island was actually arranged on the boat of a billionaire financier, with the head of the government that would later hand them that island sitting across the table. So it was not exactly the magic accident that Ivanka described, and the land wasn’t empty either.
Sazan is a former military base, first fortified by Fascist Italy and later held by Communist Albania, and it sits inside the Karaburun-Sazan Marine National Park. It remained a national military asset until December 2024, when a presidential decree quietly removed it from that list, and a day later, on December 30, the Albanian government granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, an entity tied to Kushner. That designation allows the project to bypass the review process that any other developer would have to pass through. The land along the coast had been classified as protected, including parts of the Vjosa-Narta lagoon where flamingos, seals, and sea turtles nest. The government’s own paperwork pegs the investment at 1.4 billion euros and promises a thousand jobs, while Ivanka has talked about as many as 10,000 hotel rooms and villas. Albanians have already started protesting against the project in large numbers.
Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecutor, SPAK, has opened an investigation into the funds used to acquire the land titles and the way those titles were sold on to investors. Thousands have marched under banners reading “Albania is not for sale” and “Ivanka, go home,” and when private security at the site dragged a protester across the ground on camera, the government revoked the licenses of two security firms, arrested a guard, and stripped the local police chief of his post, while also charging fifteen of the protesters.
Affinity has forced their way into protected land before, including a 99-year lease in Serbia, granted essentially for free, on the bombed-out former Yugoslav Army General Staff headquarters in central Belgrade. The land was protected as a cultural site for decades, but Affinity was still able to get their hands on it. To clear the way for a 500 million dollar Trump-branded hotel, that protected status was stripped in late 2024 on the basis of a document that was later proven to be forged. When the courts closed in, President Vucic’s government simply passed emergency legislation to override the heritage designation and force the project through, which set off a wave of youth protests and a human chain around the ruined complex. The whole thing finally died in December when Serbian prosecutors charged the culture minister and three other officials with abuse of office and forgery, at which point Affinity withdrew within hours, releasing a statement about how meaningful projects should unite rather than divide.
Will this new project on Sazan island end the same way?
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/government-corruption/ivanka-and-jareds-private-island-purchase-is-under-investigation
https://www.antiwar.com/
WATCH: Indiana Mayor Suggests Locals Who Oppose Data Centers Are Poor Renters Living in ‘S***y Houses’
https://youtu.be/QXuMGH6eGpQ
Megyn Kelly: “They can’t afford groceries, they can’t afford gas prices, they can’t afford homes, they can’t afford healthcare and we’re giving $16.2B to Israel for just one of those line items never mind what we spent on Israel’s war against Iran which no one wants. No one. And we’re not gonna help our own people. Those Obamacare subsidized consumers are going to suffer because we have other priorities. It’s enraging”
https://x.com/MarcoFoster_/status/2061536966672371964/video/1
ISRAEL CLAIMS U.S. SUPPORT FOR LEBANON STRIKES
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says the U.S. backs Israel’s plan to strike Beirut’s Dahiyeh district if Hezbollah attacks continue. He claimed such operations were previously held back due to U.S. efforts on Iran talks, but that Washington now supports the principle of retaliation. The White House has not confirmed these remarks, and reports suggest President Trump has urged restraint.
https://x.com/DeItaone/status/2061788505261449708
The great Ministry of Defence-to-Palantir pipeline
Palantir hired four Ministry of Defence officials last year. Then it won its biggest ever contract with the department
Palantir hired four ex-Ministry of Defence officials last year, with its latest recruit joining months before the US spyware giant won its biggest ever contract with the department, openDemocracy can reveal.
On 31 August 2025, Barnaby Kistruck left his role as the Ministry of Defence’s director of industrial strategy, prosperity and exports – marking the end of a career in the civil service spanning almost two decades, in which he’d worked primarily on national security and defence.
Nine days later, he took up his new position as senior counsellor at Palantir, a US tech firm with close ties to the Trump administration that specialises in providing AI-powered military and surveillance systems and data analytics.
openDemocracy understands Kistruck played a key role in writing the UK’s Strategic Defence Review and accompanying Defence Industrial Strategy, which were published last summer and recommended AI play an increased role in defence policy.
In December 2025, three months after Kistruck’s appointment, Palantir won a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £240m to ‘modernise defence’ by providing “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision making across classifications” in the armed forces.
The contract, which is more than three times larger than any Palantir has previously won with the MoD, was awarded without tender.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/palantir-ministry-defence-hire-four-officials-2025-record-defence-contract-240-million/
Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government,
spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on
Americans — throughout agencies.
Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes,
officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan.
In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and
technology firm.
The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal
government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in
federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public
records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new
contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does
not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the
company last week, which has not been spent.)
Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the
Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying
its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with
knowledge of the discussions.
6/5/25, 11:12 AM Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html 1/8
The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal
agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department.
Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for
Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government
officials said.
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a
pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of
data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their
bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and
any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda
by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics
have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have
filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could
weaponize people’s personal information.
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118335/documents/HHRG-119-JU08-20250605-SD003.pdf
The rant and the reality: Trump’s outbursts at Netanyahu follow a familiar pattern
DIPLOMATIC AFFAIRS: Trump’s latest expletive-laced outburst at Netanyahu generated predictable predictions of rupture. The record suggests otherwise.
Call it the presidential rant heard round the world.
On Monday, Axios reported that US President Donald Trump unloaded on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call, telling him he was “f***ing crazy,” that “you’d be in prison if it weren’t for me,” and that Israeli actions in Lebanon were threatening his negotiations with Iran.
The Prime Minister’s Office quickly disputed the report. But two days later, when asked directly on a New York Post podcast whether he had called Netanyahu “effing crazy” and told him that he had helped keep him out of jail, Trump answered simply: “I did.”
That admission immediately fueled another round of speculation that relations between Trump and Netanyahu had reached a breaking point. The assumption behind much of the coverage was familiar: an angry Trump phone call must mean a crisis in US-Israel relations, that Netanyahu had lost Trump, and that the party was over.
History suggests otherwise.
Disagreements between Jerusalem and Washington are not unusual. Nor are disagreements between Trump and Netanyahu. What is striking is how often these episodes are portrayed as evidence of an impending rupture, only for the relationship to return to its previous equilibrium hours, days, or weeks later.
Netanyahu alluded to this reality in a CNBC interview after Trump confirmed the call.
Trump: We can have 'tactical disagreements'
“Sometimes we have, as in the best of families, tactical disagreements,” he said. “We always find a way to work them out, and we do so as great friends. We can disagree in the morning, and by the afternoon, we have common actions.”
Ordinarily, comments like that might be dismissed as boilerplate damage control. In this case, however, there is a substantial body of evidence supporting the thesis.
Three patterns emerge from this latest drama.
First, Trump periodically vents his frustrations at Netanyahu in very blunt and salty language.
Second, those outbursts are routinely interpreted as evidence of a strategic rupture.
And third, the relationship repeatedly proves more resilient than the headlines suggest.
Let's start with the first pattern.
This is hardly the first time Trump has exploded at Netanyahu. In fact, the closest parallel to this week’s incident took place just a year ago.
On June 24, 2025, the last day of the 12-Day War with Iran, after Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Tehran fired ballistic missiles at Israel. Netanyahu wanted to send an unmistakable message to Iran that Jerusalem would not tolerate any violation of the ceasefire, and dispatched fighter planes to bomb Tehran.
Trump, who brokered the ceasefire, was furious and called Netanyahu, ordering him to call off the attack. He then erupted before boarding Marine One.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” he said, stressing that he was “not happy with Israel.”
The reaction was as predictable as it was immediate. Headlines focused on Trump’s anger. Pundits warned of a serious breach with Netanyahu.
Yet shortly afterward, Trump spoke with the prime minister, the Trump-brokered ceasefire held, and the working relationship continued as though the outburst had never happened.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-898433
Fox Business's Stuart Varney: Graham Platner is "anti-Semitic" because he "says Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins takes money from AIPAC."
https://x.com/infolibnews/status/2062685460661465261
Former Kokomo Police Department Officer Convicted of Sexually Assaulting Minor, Lying to Investigators, and Destruction of Records
After a five-day trial, a federal jury in the Southern District of Indiana convicted Sinmi Asomuyide, 33, a former Kokomo Police Department officer today of charges related to his on-duty sexual assault of a 14-year-old and related obstruction.
“Police officers are entrusted with extraordinary authority and responsibility to protect the public. The defendant’s reprehensible actions betrayed that trust,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This verdict sends a clear message: officials who abuse their power and violate the constitutional rights of children will be held accountable.”
“While this administration strongly supports the men and women of law enforcement who are steadfastly committed to making our communities safe, we will not tolerate those who abuse the powers entrusted to them,” said U.S. Attorney Thomas Wheeler II for the Southern District of Indiana. “The defendant used those powers to sexually abuse a 14-year-old girl and then lied and destroyed evidence to cover up his crimes. The jury saw through his lies and held him accountable for his crimes,”
“The defendant used his position of trust and the appearance of assistance to isolate and assault a child, then took steps to obstruct the investigation by destroying records and lying to law enforcement. These actions reflect a complete disregard for the law, the victim, and the public trust,” said Special Agent in Charge Timothy J. O’Malley of the FBI Indianapolis Field Office. “The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively pursue justice for victims and hold offenders fully accountable.”
In particular, jurors found Sinmi Asomuyide, 33, guilty of willfully depriving the victim, who was then 14 years old, of her constitutional rights by sexually assaulting her. The jury found that the defendant’s conduct included kidnapping and abusive sexual contact of a child under the age of 16.
Jurors also found Asomuyide guilty of lying to the Indiana State Police in attempt to cover up the assault by denying having sexual contact with the victim and lying about the presence of other corroborating evidence. Jurors also found Asomuyide guilty of deleting a messaging application he had been using to communicate with the minor victim prior to the sexual assault in attempt to cover up the assault.
Asomuyide faces up to life in prison at sentencing.
The case was investigated by the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Blackett for the Southern District of Indiana and Senior Sex Crimes Counsel Tara Allison are prosecuting the case.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-kokomo-police-department-officer-convicted-sexually-assaulting-minor-lying
Israel’s new gold rush: data centers become the hottest real estate play of the AI age
As AI demand turns server farms into prized infrastructure, Israeli real estate firms, energy companies and celebrity investors are pouring billions into data centers, even as power needs, environmental risks and security threats grow
The French Riviera city of Cannes rolled out the red carpets this week, with photographers, packed hotels and all the trappings of a major global event. But this was not the famed film festival, which took place last month. This time, the crowds came for the World Digital Infrastructure Congress.
The attendees were data center entrepreneurs, hyperscale executives, server farm investors and decision-makers from the companies building the physical backbone of the artificial intelligence boom.
It is a vast global market, growing rapidly as AI use expands. For investors, it has become the new gold, and many are rushing to secure a position before the market becomes too crowded.
Among the thousands filling conference halls and meeting rooms were quite a few Israelis. Israel, they say, offers an attractive base for managing data repositories and AI models: available land, relatively cheap electricity and extensive data infrastructure.
Israel’s representative in Cannes was Shelly Landsmann, the former CEO of Microsoft Israel and today a founding partner of data center company NED and chair of its advisory board.
“The conference takes place once a year, and this is my fifth year attending,” she said from Cannes. “It is amazing. It used to be held in Monaco and was tiny. We were just a few people in a hotel. Today you cannot find a room, apartment or hotel anywhere in the area because of the conference. The plane here was full. That reflects the number of players and partners who have entered this business.”
It is indeed one of the defining businesses of the current era. The world is increasingly divided between those developing artificial intelligence and those supplying the infrastructure needed to develop it. In Israel, investors have discovered over the past two years that it is easier to invest in AI real estate than in AI itself.
Veteran real estate companies, infrastructure groups, investment funds and businesspeople of all kinds, including singer Omer Adam, have reported moves into data centers and the power sources needed to operate them. In today’s market, if you are not there, you are being left behind.
This week, Kardan Israel announced the establishment of a subsidiary that will consolidate its activity in data centers. Kardan is an example of the new wave of data real estate investors, with stakes in server farms in Kfar Saba and Shoham.
“The data center sector is experiencing accelerated growth worldwide and in Israel, and we see it as a significant growth engine for the group,” said Alon Vulkan, CEO of Kardan Israel.
Kardan Israel is known primarily for income-producing real estate, but data centers appear to offer substantial returns.
One of the most prominent figures in the new trend is Ofer Yanai, the controlling shareholder of Nofar Energy, who this week reported the purchase of land in Shoham for 361 million shekels to build a new data center.
https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/hykex00l11ml
Canada’s Senate passes anti-Christian ‘Bible ban’ Bill C-9
Canadian senators voted to approve Liberals’ Bill C-9, which, once it officially becomes law, will repeal religious protections and effectively criminalize quoting parts of the Bible, including on homosexuality.
On Thursday evening, senators voted 45–13 to approve Bill C-9, or “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime, and access to religious or cultural places).” There were two abstentions, and 35 senators were not even on site to vote on the bill.
As Bill C-9 was passed with amendments, it must now go back to the House of Commons, which must approve the amendments before it becomes law and then gets Royal Assent.
Last-minute amendments to the bill proposed by some Conservative senators that would have addressed concerns by many faith groups were rejected.
Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) blasted the passage of Bill C-9, saying that “God will not be mocked.”
“This is a dark day for religious freedom and free speech in Canada,” said Jeff Gunnarson, national president of CLC.
“The passage of this deeply troubling legislation, however, will not stop us from speaking the Word of God, even when biblical truths are increasingly being labelled as hateful by those who are hostile to Christianity. God will not be mocked. We will continue to proclaim His Word.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, midweek, Canadian senators voted down a recent proposed amendment to Bill C-9, that would have criminalized “residential school denialism.”
Constitutional experts have blasted the bill as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those deemed to have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way. The bill was introduced by Justice Minister Sean Fraser last year.
Specifically, Bill C-9 would remove Section 319(3)(b) of Canada’s Criminal Code. This section protects the good-faith expression of a person’s religious views that are based on religious texts such as the Holy Bible.
Bill C-9 has been criticized by some of Canada’s premiers.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently said that she does not want to see authorities “monitoring” church services in her province in light of Bill C-9.
Recently, hundreds of Canadians from coast to coast gathered in front of multiple Liberal MPs’ offices, including Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office, to protest Bill C-9.
Canadian pro-life and faith groups, as well as a Catholic cardinal, sounded the alarm over the legislation. Indeed, in a recent letter to Canadian senators, Cardinal Frank Leo, the metropolitan archbishop of Toronto, said that while the Catholic Church recognizes “the importance of addressing hatred and protecting individuals and communities from violence,” changes are needed to the bill.
The removal of the religious exemption prompted condemnation from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued an open letter criticizing the proposed amendment and calling for its repeal.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-canadas-senate-passes-anti-christian-bible-ban-bill-c-9/