Summary
Trump claims "total control" of Hormuz, signals strategy of continued economic pressure.
Iran declares "victory" & says it can sustain the conflict & outlast.
Iran shifts to a "survival economy" to withstand sanctions, Washington's economic warfare, naval blockade.
Peace talks basically not happening, with Pakistan reporting "absolutely no progress."
Tehran: Hormuz remains closed until Washington accepts all conditions.
UK’s Burnham calls for more housing for illegal immigrants
Over 900 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats over the past three days, official figures show
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has called for immigrants to be housed more widely across the UK, as the country continues to grapple with large numbers of people crossing the English Channel.
More than 3,000 illegal immigrants have reportedly reached the country by boat in the three weeks since Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister.
The crossings increase the already existing pressure over asylum accommodation in Britain. Burnham’s Labour Party is facing increasing voter rejection over its pro-immigrant stance while opposition parties have strengthened their policy stances on immigration. Burnham told the media on Tuesday: “We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers.”
“I do believe all parts of the country need to […] play their part,” he added.
The government plans to accommodate up to 1,250 male asylum seekers at a former military site near Piddington, a village of around 400 residents in Oxfordshire. Locals have opposed the plan, citing concerns over its scale and impact on the community.
The comments came after 911 people reached Britain in small boats over three days. On Monday, 230 arrived aboard a single vessel, the highest number recorded on one boat, according to official figures.
https://www.rt.com/news/644168-uk-government-policy-migrants-rise/
Pentagon accused of ‘whitewashing’ civilian casualties
The US military’s annual report has been criticized for excluding non-combatant deaths from its official tally
The Pentagon was accused of whitewashing US Army crimes after publishing its annual estimate of civilian casualties in 2025.
The report, submitted to Congress late Monday and obtained by US news outlets, contains numbers that are far lower than estimates by independent outlets.
The Pentagon concluded that US military operations killed 153 civilians and injured 243 last year. All of the cited casualties in 2025 stemmed from Washington’s bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, while another 15 remain under review.
However, independent monitors have reported figures significantly higher. The Airwars group has estimated that at least 258 civilians may have been killed during the Yemen campaign, while the Yemen Data Project has put the toll at 238 dead and 467 injured. The Pentagon recorded no civilian casualties from US military operations in the Western Hemisphere, despite dozens of strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific beginning in September of 2025 – a point of particular criticism.
Two US government officials cited anonymously by The Intercept rejected the Pentagon’s assessment, with one describing the report as a “total whitewash” and another calling it “a f***ing joke.”
More than 200 people have been killed since Washington launched its campaign against suspected drug-smuggling vessels. Around 120 died in 2025 alone, but none were classified as civilians in the Pentagon report.
The Trump administration has described those targeted as “narco-terrorists” linked to cartels it considers terrorist organizations.
Washington has generally not released public evidence establishing that those killed aboard individual vessels were cartel members or that the boats were carrying narcotics. UN experts, legal specialists, and several Latin American governments have questioned the legal basis for the boat strikes, with critics describing them as extrajudicial killings.
The Pentagon’s latest casualty estimates mark a sharp increase from the two civilian deaths acknowledged in 2024. The figures are expected to be even higher for 2026 due to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.
Iran’s authorities have already reported more than 3,300 deaths since the conflict began in February, nearly half of them civilians. Among them are 200 children, including more than 120 schoolgirls killed in a US strike on an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war.
https://www.rt.com/news/644176-pentagon-civilian-casualties-whitewashing/
Josh Kushner, Bob Iger Stun Sports World With Record-Shattering $12 Billion Lakers Takeover Deal
The Los Angeles Lakers are being sold to billionaire venture capitalist Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger for a record-breaking $12 billion, according to a new ESPN report.
The sports news website said:
The businessmen were involved in the expansion process in Las Vegas, but in a stunning turn, they pivoted to make an aggressive offer to buy the Lakers from Mark Walter, who had purchased a controlling interest in the team from the Buss family last year for a franchise valuation of approximately $10 billion.
The $12 billion buyout price implies an increase of at least 20% in the Lakers' value in less than a year.
Josh Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, and Iger released the following statement:
"As lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world. We have immense respect for the leadership and vision of Jerry and Jeanie Buss.
"Our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles."
TWG Global CEO Mark Walter, who purchased control of the Lakers from the Buss family last year at a valuation of about $10 billion, has a sports holdings portfolio that includes stakes in the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Sparks, Chelsea Football Club, the Professional Women's Hockey League and several auto-racing teams, including Cadillac Formula 1.
"Owning the Los Angeles Lakers has been one of the great honors of my life, an extraordinary investment, but what I will carry with me is the community, the fans, and a city that treats this team as family. I am grateful to Jeanie Buss, the Buss family, the players, and the staff for welcoming me into this chapter. The Lakers belong to Los Angeles, and I have every confidence the best is still ahead," Walter said in a statement.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/kushner-bob-iger-stun-sports-world-record-shattering-12-billion-lakers
Four Kids "Safety" Bills, Supporting Online Digital ID Agenda, Hit Senate Floor
KOSA and the CHATBOT Act say they do not require age verification. Their duties still revolve on knowing a user's age.
The CHATBOT Act says that nothing in it shall be construed to require a company to "implement an age gating or age verification" system, or to "affirmatively collect any personal data with respect to the age of any individual that the covered entity is not already collecting in the normal course" of its business. The Kids Online Safety Act carries a version of the same promise, ruling out "the affirmative collection of any personal data with respect to the age of users" that a platform doesn't already gather.
But now read the rest of the same bills…
Yesterday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee sent four children's online safety bills to the Senate floor, with parents who attribute the harm of their children to social media sitting right there in the room. KOSA went through on a unanimous voice vote. This obviously wasn't a place for a debate. The Youth AI Privacy Act from Senator Ed Markey advanced. So did the CHATBOT Act from Senator Ted Cruz, with Senators Schatz, Curtis and Schiff as co-sponsors. Senator Tammy Duckworth's bill makes four, and it orders the FTC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to study AI-enabled toys, which turns on nothing a company has to know about a user. A fifth, the SCREEN Act, got a tally and no result, which we'll come back to.
KOSA passed the Senate in 2024 by 91 to 3, but the House never took it up. KOSA's "duty of care" is the provision that gets the attention. It requires platforms to "exercise reasonable care" in design features to prevent and mitigate a listed set of harms to minors, with the FTC enforcing, and the harms run from conditions with "clinically diagnosable symptoms" through patterns of use "that indicate compulsive" behavior to sexual exploitation. The House stripped it out. The Senate sponsors called that version dead on arrival.
The disclaimer and the duty
Every one of these bills turns on a company knowing something it has no way of knowing.
KOSA defines "know" as having "actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances." The CHATBOT Act uses the identical phrase. The Youth AI Privacy Act uses it too. And that definition does more than mark out a glossary entry, because almost every duty in these bills hangs off it. KOSA's safeguards apply to "a user that the covered platform knows is a minor." Its parental tools apply "in the case of a user that the platform knows is a child." The Youth AI Privacy Act's restrictions bind a deployer "with knowledge that a user of an AI chatbot is a minor."
KOSA says who determines what a company already knew. The Federal Trade Commission or a state attorney general "shall rely on competent and reliable evidence, taking into account the totality of the circumstances, including whether a reasonable and prudent person under the circumstances would have known" the user was a minor. The CHATBOT Act repeats the standard almost word for word. Violations are treated as unfair or deceptive acts under the FTC Act, and state attorneys general can sue on behalf of their own residents.
A company is liable for treating a minor as an adult. Treating an adult as a minor costs it nothing. The evidence of what it "should have known" gets assembled later, by a regulator or by an elected state attorney general, using a standard as elastic as the totality of the circumstances. The cheapest way to never be on the wrong side of that is to check everyone at the door and keep the receipt.
Others read it differently. The Age Verification Providers Association, whose members sell the checking, says KOSA sidesteps how a platform is meant to work out who is a minor, so that "the operative legal standard remains implied knowledge" and no service is obliged to install age-assurance technology.
Blumenthal calls KOSA "content neutral" and has said it would not let the FTC or state attorneys general sue over content or speech. That answers a different objection. Both answers leave an enforcer free to argue, after the fact, about what a company should have known about a user's age.
Congress left the words "check everyone" out of the text. Congress wrote a rule that only pays out one way, and then added a sentence saying it isn't requiring the obvious response to it.
So how is a company supposed to work out, without asking, which of its users a reasonable and prudent person would have known was fifteen?
https://reclaimthenet.org/four-kids-safety-bills-supporting-online-digital-id-agenda-hit-senate-floor
https://www.antiwar.com/
Jewish mother and her romantic partner charged with ‘severe’ sexual abuse of four children
The woman, 33, and the man, 43, both from central Israel, are accused of numerous sexual offenses against the four children. The woman’s daughters were between 8 and 12-years-old at the time.
A woman and her partner were indicted on Wednesday in an exceptionally severe child sexual abuse case involving her two daughters and two infant relatives, the State Attorney’s Office announced.
The woman, 33, and the man, 43, both from central Israel, are accused of numerous sexual offenses against the four children. The woman’s daughters were between eight and 12-years-old at the time of the alleged offenses, while the other two children were between approximately one and three.
The Central District Attorney’s Office filed the indictment with the Central District Court in Lod and asked that both defendants remain in custody throughout the proceedings.
According to the indictment, the defendants met through a dating application about a year and a half ago and began an intimate relationship. Prosecutors alleged that they exchanged child sexual abuse material and discussed sexual fantasies involving the woman’s daughters.
Mother who sexually abused daughters hid evidence from police, prosecutors say
The indictment alleges that the woman, either at her own initiative or at the man’s request, repeatedly photographed, filmed and recorded her daughters in intimate situations, including while partially dressed or naked, and sent the material to him.
Prosecutors said the man praised the material, used it for sexual gratification and encouraged the woman to continue producing it.
The indictment further alleges that, during two meetings at the woman’s home, the defendants engaged in sexual activity while one or both daughters were asleep in the room. On another occasion, prosecutors said, the man committed indecent acts against the girls while visiting the woman and her daughters during a vacation.
The most serious allegations concern two very young members of the woman’s family. Prosecutors allege that the woman sexually assaulted both children, filmed the acts at the man’s request and sent him the recordings immediately afterward.
The indictment portrays the abuse as part of an effort by the woman to satisfy the man’s sexual demands and preserve their relationship. Prosecutors stressed that this remains their allegation and has not yet been tested in court.
The defendants are also accused of attempting to conceal evidence. Shortly after she was questioned, the woman allegedly deleted their correspondence from her cellphone the obstruct the investigation. Investigators later recovered the messages, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said the defendants had also routinely deleted parts of their correspondence and that the man repeatedly urged the woman to erase the photographs and videos documenting the alleged abuse.
The charges include rape of a minor family member, soliciting the rape of a minor family member, committing indecent acts against children, using children to produce sexual abuse material, publishing and possessing such material, and obstructing justice. Each defendant was charged according to their alleged role.
In its request to keep the pair in custody, the prosecution said the alleged offenses were systematic and prolonged and involved extremely young and vulnerable children. The nature of the acts demonstrated that both defendants posed a serious danger to the public, prosecutors argued.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/crime-in-israel/article-905297
FBI had 14 informants on Biden corruption but ran secret op to dismiss evidence as disinformation
Bureau secretly flagged Cabinet officials like Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo, lawmakers and journalists as ‘conduits’ for Russia propaganda.
The FBI and U.S. spy agencies received derogatory evidence about Joe Biden from 14 different informants but embarked on a secret operation to tamp down a Ukrainian corruption scandal engulfing his family during the 2020 election by formally designating Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, key members of Congress and journalists as Russian disinformation “conduits,” according to explosive intelligence community documents declassified by the White House.
A spreadsheet that was recovered from U.S. intelligence agency files and made public Wednesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force shows that spy agencies and the FBI created a list of more than six dozen prominent organizations, Americans or foreigners who became figures in the Biden family Ukraine scandal and the 2019 impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
The spreadsheet neatly divided figures along political lines, with Democrats like the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama and George Soros listed as victimized “targets” of Russian disinformation and conservatives like Fox News, One America News, filmmaker Michael Caputo and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as “conduits” for disinformation.
The FBI also labeled two of President Donald Trump’s first-term Cabinet secretaries, Pompeo and Barr, as well as Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham and House GOP committee chairmen Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan as “conduits” even while they all investigated whether the allegations of corruption against the Biden family were true.
You can read the spreadsheet below:
File
Defensive Briefing Spreadsheet.pdf
The designations were part of a secret counterintelligence operation codenamed “Round River” that was launched during the 2020 election by a task force of FBI analysts claiming to be fighting “malign foreign influence” in the 2020 election, according to an administration official.
The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), based in FBI headquarters, concurred with each of the assessments in the spreadsheet with a “no objection” designation, the documents state.
Many of the Americans were identified as potential candidates for defensive briefings, though the spreadsheets and documents found so far do not identify how many Americans ultimately were given such briefings.
In some ways, the Round River operation is a mirror opposite of the Russia collusion probe known as Crossfire Hurricane in which the FBI pursued unsubstantiated allegations spread by Democrats that Trump and his allies conspired with Vladimir Putin to hijack the 2016 election. In Round River, FBI analysts sought to dismiss significant evidence in the bureau's possession, including Hunter Biden's own laptop, pointing to possible corruption by the Bidens.
Documents released by the White House earlier this month exposed an investigation in 2017 codenamed “Oxferd Comma” alleging the newly elected president Trump may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired then-Director James Comey even though the bureau’s own evidence overwhelmingly showed at the time there was no collusion with the Kremlin.
Remarkably, the effort to portray the Biden scandal as Russian disinformation came even though confidential human sources working for the FBI and other agencies began reporting a steady stream of concerns starting in 2015 that Ukraine was possibly targeting the future first family for influence, the memos show. The FBI has identified at least 14 informants who were providing derogatory information on the Bidens, according to an FBI letter made public Wednesday.
In that letter to the White House Government Transparency Task Force, FBI Director Kash Patel said the Foreign Influence Task Force was terminated on his watch and its activities are now under investigation.
He said he shared concerns cited in a 2025 Director of National Intelligence memo declassified on Wednesday that Round River was used as a political tool to neutralize an alleged corruption narrative about Biden, the Democrats' 2020 presidential nominee, rather than to address true national security threats.
more
https://justthenews.com/index%2Ephp/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/emb6am-fbi-marked-officials-journalists-informants
The Allison Inquiry, chaired by MP Dean Allison, will hear testimony from Canadians reporting injuries following the COVID-19 vaccines on September 8-11, 2026. Broadcast live from Parliament Hill, it marks the first time Canadian lawmakers will hear this testimony in a parliamentary forum. The non-partisan Inquiry is being held in cooperation with the Covid Testimony Association.
https://www.drtrozzi.news/p/making-the-allison-inquiry-a-success
https://covidtestimony.com/
Canada has money to send to Ukraine but is killing off its senior citizens
The death of 83-year-old Brigitte "GG" Stegemann is raising more disturbing questions about Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) system.
According to her family, Stegemann had previously rejected euthanasia because of her Christian faith, yet discussions about MAiD were reopened while her longtime family advocate was away.
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/beyond-disturbing-canadian-christian
Never has a president subjected the US to such global humiliation
On February 28, Trump and Netanyahu ordered an attack on Iran which, in their assessment, would be swift and triumphant.
What we witnessed was the exact opposite: a war against a resilient adversary that ended up exhausting several stockpiles of American weapons in just 40 days of combat.
The lack of long-term planning was evident from day one. Days ago, the WSJ reported that Iran carried out more than 2,000 attacks using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and high-precision aerial drones against targets in the Gulf.
The offensive managed to strike and severely damage at least 20 American military installations spread across 8 countries in the region, causing damages of at least 13 billion dollars.
Military bases became uninhabitable in the face of the Iranian onslaught, while the world felt the impact of Trump and Netanyahu’s war. A truce was then negotiated and put into effect, but Iran never accepted the terms for the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and this situation persists to this day.
I wrote some time ago that the cost of the war, added to aerial operations, defensive and offensive ammunition, damage to bases, and aircraft losses, already exceeded 120 billion dollars. If we add the material damages and economic losses of the Gulf countries, we will have a total figure in the range of 300 billion, not counting other global losses.
A defeat that Trump cannot change, even if he repeats the word victory every night on his social network. It was a war where all allies refused to get involved, an isolation felt even by remote countries that typically showed automatic alignment. Internally, there was a change of command and clear signs of excessive politicization.
But such an embarrassment did not stop there. It has now come to light that President Donald Trump carried out a top-secret plane-swapping operation, using a food truck as a disguise due to a threat of an attack from Iran.
The highly unusual maneuver took place in Ankara, Turkey, right after the NATO summit, but the details of the farce were revealed by the American press and confirmed by Trump himself.
Imagine the president of the United States of America hiding in a little food truck… What a situation these people got themselves into!
https://x.com/pati_marins64/status/2087379405991444932
Iranian Lego music video on Trump’s G7 plane swap
https://twitter.com/i/status/2087340439401550020