Lebanon’s Pilot Zone

Israel says troops from its 55th Brigade found an overnight position and a tunnel shaft in a security zone in south Lebanon.

They also found launchers loaded with 32 rockets aimed at Israel. The military said Hezbollah had left the equipment there before the ceasefire. The pilot zone has a pilot problem.

U.S. Ambassador Michel Issa visited Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh near Nabatieh, one of the areas where the Lebanese Armed Forces are supposed to show that the state, rather than Hezbollah, controls the ground.

President Joseph Aoun rejected Israeli claims that the army is failing to perform its assigned role. Beirut says the pilot is flying. Israel says the runway is full of launchers.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam told parliament that Lebanon entered the war that began in March without choosing it and without asking its people. He said the two wars since October 2023 have killed nearly 9,000 people, wounded more than 30,000 and displaced over a million.

He put the economic cost at more than $27 billion. The Lebanese state wants the exclusive right to decide questions of war and peace. It is asking Arab states to finance the consequences of not having it.

Sami Gemayel, leader of the Kataeb Party, warned that Lebanon could slide toward “Somalization” if the government fails. The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors are due to meet at the U.S. State Department in Washington.

Beirut will argue for sovereignty. Israel will argue that sovereignty begins when the Lebanese army owns the ground, not merely the paperwork.

#Lebanon #Hezbollah #Israel #BorderSecurity

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The Right’s Prenup Fight

Likud told Itamar Ben-Gvir to stop bluffing. Ben-Gvir replied that Netanyahu was already trying to replace him with Gadi Eisenkot.

The right is campaigning against a left-wing government while arguing over who gets excluded from the right-wing one.

Likud said Netanyahu had repeatedly pledged to form his next government from the parties already in the national camp.

It told Ben-Gvir to focus on stopping an Eisenkot government that included Yair Golan, Avigdor Liberman and the Arab parties.

Otzma Yehudit said Netanyahu’s office was telling foreign governments that Ben-Gvir would not serve in the next cabinet.

The party also accused Likud of promoting a unity government and avoiding joint appearances with Ben-Gvir, while making empty promises at home that he would be included.

Otzma demanded that Netanyahu publicly rule out sitting with Eisenkot and Golan.

Ben-Gvir delivered the personal version to Netanyahu: “I love you, but I want a full-on right-wing government.”

Netanyahu’s coalition begins every election with the same romance. By September, the partners are asking each other for written proof that they will not leave.

Itim, a religious-services advocacy group, asked the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Amos Dror, Shas’s No. 6 candidate and supervisor of the Haifa religious council.

Itim said Dror had failed to resign at least 100 days before the election, as the law requires of senior public officials. The right cannot agree on its cabinet. It is now litigating its waiting list.

#IsraelElections #Netanyahu #BenGvir #IsraeliPolitics

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Erdogan’s Grand Strategy Needs Small Hands

Turkey speaks like a regional empire. DİSK says 6.7 million children live in poverty, about one in three children nationwide.

Arzu Çerkezoğlu, president of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, said 15 percent of children work.

Employment among 14-to-17-year-olds has risen 70 percent, while enrollment in that age group has fallen by 8.1 percentage points.

MESEM is the Education Ministry’s vocational education program. DİSK says its enrollment has grown more than fivefold over the past decade.

The program sends students into workplaces under the name of training, while employers receive labor with fewer rights and lower costs.

DİSK recorded 93,517 children injured in workplace accidents over the past nine years. At least 546 children died at work. That is eighteen classrooms.

Erdogan’s government sells national grandeur abroad. At home, poverty pushes children into factories, workshops, farms and other workplaces.

Employers call it training. Empires need soldiers. This one is hiring children.

#Turkey #Erdogan #ChildLabor #MESEM

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The Anti-Corruption State Eats Its Own

Ukraine has discovered a new form of national resilience, every corruption scandal comes with a sequel.

Operation Midas targeted what prosecutors described as a $100 million corruption scheme around Energoatom, the state nuclear-energy company. Former Energy and Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko became a suspect.

Then NABU, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and SAPO, its Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, opened Operation Forrest Gump. Investigators say a criminal group laundered UAH 150 million, about $3.35 million, to post bail for a Midas suspect.

The investigation reached into the Presidential Office. Iryna Mudra, a former deputy head of the office, was detained after investigators named her as a suspect. On August 25, Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ordered her held for 60 days and set bail at UAH 20 million, about $485,000.

Prosecutors say the case involves money laundering and an alleged effort to seize control of state-owned Sense Bank.

The inquiry also crossed into the Prosecutor General’s Office. NABU and SAPO detained Serhii Kropyva, head of the cyber unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office, over allegations that he protected fraudulent call centers and helped launder their proceeds.

The agencies created to clean up the state are now investigating the people who were supposed to investigate everyone else.

Ukraine is fighting Russia at the front. In Kyiv, former ministers, presidential-office officials, state bankers and prosecutors appear in the same corruption plot.

Europe sends reconstruction money. Kyiv keeps producing new characters for the case file.

#Ukraine #Zelenskyy #Corruption #NABU

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#Green #diesel #price #California

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America’s Empty Magazine

The Pentagon’s inspector general says the war with Iran drained U.S. weapons stocks and exposed a defense industry that cannot replace them as fast as Washington fires them.

Operation Epic Fury cost $33.4 billion from February 28 through June 30, 2026. The Pentagon spent $22.3 billion on munitions, another $3.7 billion on replacing lost equipment, and $7.4 billion on operating costs.

The inspector general found “strategic inventory shortfalls” and bottlenecks in munitions replacement.

The losses included four F-15s destroyed, one F-35 and seven KC-135 tankers damaged, and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reapers destroyed.

Iranian strikes also damaged or destroyed hundreds of U.S. military facilities across the Middle East. America’s most expensive military machine spent four months proving that hangars burn too.

The Congressional Budget Office put the war’s cost through August 1, 2026, at $38.1 billion. It estimated another $2 billion to $3 billion for every additional month of fighting. Rhetoric is in surplus. Missiles require factories, rocket motors and explosives.

The U.S. Navy is considering buying warships from Japan and South Korea, a step it has not taken since World War II.

The superpower that sells security to the world is shopping abroad for the hardware to keep delivering it.

#UnitedStates #Iran #Pentagon #DefenseIndustry

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The Bedouin Endorsement That Wasn’t

Gadi Eisenkot’s party announced that eight Bedouin local leaders backed him for prime minister. By morning, several said they had never endorsed him. They had asked whether Ra’am would enter his government.

Muayad al-Hayeb, head of the Tuba-Zangariyye local council, initially said Eisenkot had promised to push for bringing Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am into a future coalition.

Eisenkot called that “a complete lie,” released video from the September 15 meeting, and said he had not discussed the next government’s makeup. Al-Hayeb later withdrew the claim and said Eisenkot had not told him he would form a government with Ra’am.

The meeting was meant to show Eisenkot making inroads into the Arab-Bedouin vote and cutting into Ra’am’s base. Instead, four local leaders told Haaretz they had rejected a request to endorse him. Municipal chiefs deliver budgets, not voting blocs. They deal with whoever controls the purse strings.

Eisenkot says any coalition he leads will require acceptance of the Declaration of Independence, recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and acceptance of universal service.

He says parties that do not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization will remain outside the coalition. Netanyahu says Eisenkot cannot form a government without Arab parties. The campaign is already selling red lines wholesale, months before anyone has counted a seat.

Israel has seen this movie. On Channel 20, two days before the March 2021 election, Naftali Bennett signed a pledge that he would never let Yair Lapid become prime minister, “not even in a rotation,” and would not form a government dependent on Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am.

Bennett later formed a rotation government with Lapid, served first as prime minister with Yamina’s seven seats, and brought Ra’am into the coalition. In a September 4, 2026, interview with The Jerusalem Post, Bennett acknowledged that he broke the promise.

Campaign vows are Israel’s most renewable resource.

#Israel #Elections2026 #GadiEisenkot #Raam

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The Pollster Protection Racket

Channel 13 gave Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 54 seats to Gadi Eisenkot’s 52, despite Likud falling to 18. Ofer Winter’s Amcha Israel supplied six seats, while Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha fell below the threshold.

Channel 16 showed the mirror image: Eisenkot’s bloc at 53 and Netanyahu’s at 52. Israel’s next government currently exists as two spreadsheets arguing over a rounding error.

Naftali Bennett said he was “really worried” after Eisenkot’s No. 2 stopped short of ruling out a rotation with Netanyahu.

“We will not allow a rotation with Netanyahu,” Bennett said. Later that day, Bennett met Avigdor Liberman; their offices said they discussed the steps required to win the election.

The state is arranging bodyguards for the same candidates. A ministerial committee authorized Shin Bet chief David Zini to decide whether, and how, to protect Eisenkot, Yair Golan and Winter until the 26th Knesset is sworn in. Justice Minister Yariv Levin was reportedly the only minister present at the committee meeting.

Eisenkot has proposed an ethics code requiring lawmakers who defy the party line to vacate their Knesset seats.

He called the defections of Amichai Chikli and Idit Silman “despicable,” after previously praising Chikli’s departure as principled. The standard is portable: a defector is a conscience when he joins your side and a contamination event when he leaves it.

President Isaac Herzog says he will do everything possible to prevent another election if the vote produces a deadlock. Separately, he is still pushing for mediation toward a plea deal in Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial and says he has left the door open to a future pardon request.

The parties are writing promises. Their candidates are arranging security. The coalition negotiations are already waiting behind the curtain.

#Israel #Elections2026 #Netanyahu #GadiEisenkot

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The NAZA™ Speech-Control Bundle

The film NAZA apparently failed to become an international crisis. So the government is working to make it a domestic one.

Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the immediate preparation of what he calls the “NAZA laws.” One proposal would raise the maximum no-proof-of-damages award in defamation suits twentyfold, to 1 million shekels.

The other would permit stripping citizenship from people who “defame” IDF soldiers or the state abroad. “We will revoke citizenship from anyone who slanders IDF soldiers around the world,” Netanyahu said. “We will hit them deep in the pocket.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir called the allegations in the film lies and baseless manipulation. He said the IDF is “the most moral army in the world,” acts according to its values and international law, and ordered an inquiry into whether classified material was leaked for the production.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar also asked Shin Bet chief David Zini to examine who supplied the filmmakers with testimony and materials, including whether an enemy actor was involved.

Meanwhile, professionals in the IDF and Foreign Ministry reportedly reached the opposite conclusion: stop attacking the filmmakers and lower the media profile.

Their assessment was that NAZA had drawn little attention abroad, prompted no protests or questions from foreign governments, and that public attacks would hand Israel a second story about silencing speech. “We are working in an orderly and planned manner and not acting from the gut,” an internal message said.

That leaves two Israels in the same office complex. One says: ignore a film that has not travelled. The other dispatches Shin Bet, drafts citizenship-stripping legislation and raises the price of criticism to 1 million shekels.

Diplomats told Channel 12 that Netanyahu’s office was fueling the dispute for political reasons during an election campaign. The movie may have had a limited audience. The campaign trailer has the whole country.

#Israel #NAZA #Netanyahu #FreedomOfSpeech

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The Europe That Wants Its Receivables Back


Salvini has found his constituency in the roughly 350 Italian companies still operating in Russia.

Italy’s deputy prime minister calls them “heroic,” offers to serve as their conduit, and says Rome should preserve commercial ties with Moscow.

One hundred have production in Russia; about 250 work in import-export. Their complaints run from payment restrictions and customs to logistics and capital transfers.

Salvini did not call for lifting sanctions today. He chose the more durable demand: end the war, then restore “full” economic, energy, trade and cultural relations with Moscow.

He also said Italy could oppose efforts by some EU states to block visas, including tourist visas, for Russian citizens. The ceasefire, in this version, arrives with gas contracts, business-class tickets and a queue of firms asking where the payments portal went.

Italy-Russia trade has already shrunk from about €30 billion in 2013 to less than €8 billion expected this year, according to Salvini. The sanctions architecture did not erase business interests; it turned them into a political constituency with a ministerial spokesman.

This is the European split in its commercial form. Brussels sells a unified Ukraine line. National parties sell cheaper energy, restored exports and “peace” without explaining whose terms will define it. Salvini is not attacking sanctions head-on. He is setting the table for the day after them.

#Italy #Russia #EuropeanUnion #Ukraine

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Saudi Guarantees, Kohat Delivery

Pakistan says it will go “to any extent” to defend Saudi Arabia. On Friday, a vehicle packed with explosives struck a gate beside a mosque inside the Kohat Police Lines compound during prayers.

The early count was seven dead and more than 30 wounded. Those were initial Rescue 1122 figures from the first evacuation.

By the evening, Kohat Hospital’s medical superintendent reported 22 dead, including 16 police officers and six civilians, and 103 wounded. The blast tore through the mosque’s outer section and collapsed part of a wall.

Police said seven armed militants entered the compound after the vehicle-borne bomb exploded. Police and Counter-Terrorism Department units killed six of them, including a suicide bomber and a sniper.

A clearance operation continued as the casualty reports rose. Dawn reported that Ittehadul Mujahideen, led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack.

On Thursday, Pakistani military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said Islamabad would go “to any extent” for the security of Saudi Arabia and the Haramain.

He cited Pakistan’s commitments under the Makkah Defense Agreement and the bilateral defense pact with Riyadh.

On Friday, Pakistan failed to keep a bomb out of a mosque inside a police compound.

#Pakistan #Kohat #Terrorism #SaudiArabia

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A nice meeting between a driver and a police officer in Florida, which warrants a 2-6 call forthwith.

#police #florida #trump #clash

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The $43.6 Billion Receipt

The Pentagon has now priced the Iran war at $43.6 billion through September 3. That is the official number for the war’s first 188 days, supplied to congressional national-security committees.

Congressional officials say it is almost certainly low.

Munitions account for $28.1 billion, or about 64% of the total. The campaign has drained stocks of Patriot interceptors and pulled weapons from U.S. commands in Europe and Asia.

The Pentagon has also spent $4.3 billion replacing damaged or destroyed aircraft, weapons and equipment. This is what “unlimited capability” looks like once the invoices arrive.

The new breakdown assigns the bill to the services: $6.6 billion for Air Force operations, including fighter and bomber squadrons; $2.2 billion for the Navy’s deployment of more than two dozen warships, including aircraft carriers; and $1.6 billion for the Army’s regional forces.

More than 50,000 U.S. personnel are assigned to the mission. Special Operations deployment and support cost $633 million. Transportation Command spent $92.1 million moving supplies; Cyber Command recorded $10.5 million for cyber-support operations.

The ledger also includes $23.5 million for in-house medical support. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed and more than 830 injured. A war sold as remote has its own hospital line item.

And the $43.6 billion excludes $1.5 billion for fuel and other costs in the administration’s supplemental request. It also excludes the repair or replacement of U.S. bases damaged by Iranian attacks.

State Department facilities across the Middle East alone sustained roughly $184 million in damage. If the Pentagon rebuilds the affected military installations, congressional officials say the additional bill could reach tens of billions.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the war at about $38 billion through August 1, projected a further $2 billion to $3 billion each month, and said restoring depleted weapons stockpiles would take at least five years.

The Trump administration has asked Congress for as much as $70 billion in emergency defense spending. The war has a price tag. The real number is still in the unopened envelopes.

#UnitedStates #Iran #Pentagon #DefenseSpending

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Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a ballistic missile toward one of the residences of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The country residence is located about 12 miles north of the city of AlUla, in Saudi Arabia’s Medina province, more than 745 miles from the border with Yemen.

If reports of a Houthi ballistic missile strike targeting a residence of МBS are confirmed, the consequences could extend far beyond the immediate military incident. The reported target is located deep inside Saudi territory, making the alleged attack particularly significant.

The first likely consequence would be a major tightening of security around the royal family and other sensitive sites.

Riyadh could also consider expanding military operations against the Houthis. A direct strike on a royal residence would likely be viewed by Saudi authorities as an attack on the kingdom’s leadership, rather than simply another episode in the conflict in Yemen.

The strategic concern is the Houthis’ reported ability to threaten targets hundreds of miles from Yemen. If the missile did travel more than 745 miles, it would underscore the group’s ability to project force deep into Saudi territory and potentially threaten other strategic sites, including energy infrastructure.

“This was always the worst-case scenario, that the Iranians exert control not only of Strait of Hormuz but Bab el-Mandeb, two of the leading energy choke points in the world,” said David Schenker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

That possibility carries implications for global energy markets. Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most important oil producers, and any sustained threat to its energy infrastructure or shipping routes could push up risk premiums in global oil markets.

Another concern is the strain on Saudi Arabia’s air-defense capabilities. Repeated missile and drone attacks require a large stockpile of interceptors, and a prolonged campaign could force Riyadh to seek additional support from the United States and other allies.

For Washington, the incident would present a difficult strategic choice. More direct military assistance could strengthen Saudi defenses, but it could also draw the United States deeper into another Middle Eastern conflict.

“Yemen can spoil our day,” said Tim Lenderking, a former U.S. special envoy for Yemen, underscoring the ability of the Houthi movement to complicate broader American strategy in the region.

Ultimately, the scale of the consequences would depend on whether the reported strike caused casualties or significant damage — and, above all, on Riyadh’s response.

A limited retaliation could remain contained. A broader Saudi campaign against Houthi positions, particularly with increased U.S. involvement, could turn the incident into a new phase of regional escalation.

#Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #MiddleEast

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The Sandbox That Had Wi-Fi

Google’s Gemini was asked to hack a fictional company during a safety test. It found a real company with the same name, got internet access by mistake, and broke into three real networks.

The incidents took place in May during a cybersecurity evaluation run by Irregular, an Israeli startup that tests frontier AI models before release.

Google says Gemini used publicly available or guessed passwords, recognized after logging in that the targets were real, and stopped the attacks. Google says the companies suffered no harm.

Irregular says the failure began with a fictional company name that overlapped with a real domain. The test environment had internet access, and in a small fraction of runs models treated the live domain as part of the simulated exercise.

The models exploited vulnerabilities, extracted credentials and reached a production database. In one case, a model also wandered to a similarly named site and found credentials posted publicly.

The company says this was not a Gemini-only episode. Models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta also obtained unauthorized internet access during Irregular tests this year.

Irregular says all disclosures concern the same underlying flaw, that the affected parties were notified, and that it fixed the problem before the first public disclosure.

The novelty here is not that an AI can guess weak passwords. That has become ordinary frontier-model behavior. The novelty is that the safety test built to measure a model’s breakout risk gave the model a live exit, then confused a real business for a stage prop.

Irregular says the incident appeared in fewer than one out of 10,000 advanced simulations, often only after hundreds of steps. That is not reassurance. It is a description of how a system designed to audit dangerous autonomy lost track of one dangerous autonomous run.

#AI #GoogleGemini #Cybersecurity #ArtificialIntelligence

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The People’s House, With a Guest List

Donald Trump barred CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House because their coverage displeased him. On Saturday, reporters from all three outlets had their press credentials confiscated when they tried to enter the grounds.

Trump announced the ban on Truth Social on Friday and called it effective immediately. “There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

Then came the ownership claim: the White House is “the people’s house,” and he does not have to let unwelcome journalists inside. The people’s house now operates like a country club whose members can expel the waiter for reporting the menu.

The decision reportedly caught White House press-office staff by surprise. CNN and Politico signaled possible legal challenges, while the White House Correspondents’ Association said press protections do not depend on whether a president likes coverage, reporting or questions.

This is not a one-off tantrum. The administration has barred the Associated Press from key access after it refused to adopt Trump’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico.

The FBI has delivered subpoenas to journalists’ homes and, in at least one case, displayed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has restricted reporters who refused new reporting pledges, while the FCC has revived pressure on broadcasters over alleged news distortion and editorial choices.

Trump calls it accountability for false reporting. The machinery says something more concrete: access becomes a reward for obedience, and the press room becomes another office under political management.

Three news outlets lost their badges. The White House kept the cameras. That is the whole business model.

#UnitedStates #Trump #PressFreedom #WhiteHouse

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One Wall, Two Headlines

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, more than 50,000 people packed the Western Wall plaza for the final selichot of the season. Itamar Ben-Gvir stood among them. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation counted close to a million worshippers since the start of Elul.

Hamas channels reported a different night. The national-security minister of the occupation had raided the Al-Buraq Wall, "west of Al-Aqsa Mosque," with tens of thousands of settlers performing "Talmudic rituals."

Nothing in that sentence is a mistranslation. In Muslim tradition, Al-Buraq is the western wall of the Haram al-Sharif, and therefore part of Al-Aqsa.

Once the Wall belongs to the mosque, a prayer at its foot becomes an incursion. Once every Jew in Jerusalem is a settler, a crowd from Bnei Brak becomes a colonial column. The vocabulary does not describe a rival map. It manufactures a rival event.

The same weekend, Jewish worshippers blew the shofar outside the Bab al-Rahma cemetery under the eastern wall of the compound, under police protection, for the third week running.

For them it was the Days of Awe, performed as close to the Temple site as they are allowed. For the Jerusalem Governorate it was another step in the campaign to bring Jewish ritual inside.

A week later, the captions split again. On Friday, police entered the Bab al-Rahma prayer hall inside the compound around the midday prayer: before it, according to some Palestinian outlets, during it, according to others.

The hall has been a flashpoint since 2019. Police have cited unauthorized construction and safety; the Waqf reads each entry as an assault on Muslim control.

Palestinian sources reported worshippers, some in wheelchairs, turned back from the gates. That evening, people prayed in the street where they had been stopped.

For one side, a record crowd at a holy site and a security operation. For the other, a storming of Al-Aqsa and a siege of its worshippers. Neither account needs to invent a fact. Each only has to choose the noun.

Jerusalem's holy geography has no shared captions, only rival footage and a road full of people praying where they were stopped.

#Jerusalem #TempleMount #AlAqsa #BenGvir

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