Important Takeaways:
- The US has reached a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants accused of plotting the 2001 terror attacks, according to the Defense Department.
- The pretrial agreement – reached after 27 months of negotiations – takes the death penalty off the table
- After beginning negotiations in March 2022, the three men agreed to plead guilty to all charges, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charging sheet
- “We recognize that the status of the case in general, and this news in particular, will understandably and appropriately elicit intense emotion, and we also realize that the decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement will be met with mixed reactions amongst the thousands of family members who lost loved ones,” prosecutors wrote in the letter. “The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement after 12 years of pre-trial litigation was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case.”
- The three alleged conspirators will still face a sentencing hearing where the parties will present evidence to argue for an appropriate sentence short of the death penalty. That sentencing hearing will not occur before next summer
- It’s unclear where Mohammed and his co-defendants will serve out their sentences.
- The Biden administration has made it a priority to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba where the defendants have been held, repatriating several detainees who were no longer considered significant threats to national security. But dozens of detainees still remain in the facility.
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Important Takeaways:
- A volleyball player left partially paralyzed by a transgender opponent has slammed the Olympics over its boxing controversy.
- She told DailyMail.com it was ‘disgusting’ that two boxers who failed gender tests had been cleared to fight women at this year’s Games in Paris.
- ‘These women have worked so hard and trained tirelessly to get all the way to the Olympics, all so they can get punched in the face by a dude. ‘It used to be illegal for men to beat up women, and now people are putting it on TV and watching it. It’s such a weird reality we are living in now.’
- Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan were banned from competing in the Women’s World Boxing Championships in March last year in New Delhi because they failed gender eligibility tests.
- Khelif and Lin have both always competed as women and it does not appear that either identifies as transgender or intersex (those born with sexual organs belonging to both sexes).
- But the Paris Olympics’ organizers have cleared them to fight in the women’s divisions, saying their entry complies with ‘applicable medical regulations.’
- Concerns were raised over the transgender athletes being included in women’s boxing at the Olympics after video showed Imane Khelif landing brutal blows on their competitor Mexico’s Brianda Tamara
- Khelif has claimed online that they have been excluded from matches because of a ‘conspiracy’ to prevent Algeria winning a gold medal.
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Important Takeaways:
- A Secret Service sniper claims that another assassination attempt against a presidential candidate seems inevitable before Election Day because the attack on former President Donald Trump exposed the weakness in Secret Service security, according to a scathing letter circulating within the agency.
- “This agency NEEDS to change, if not now, WHEN? The NEXT assassination attempt in 30 days?” read the letter, first published by RealClearPolitics.
- “We all SHOULD expect another attempt to happen before November. We’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership.”
- Law enforcement sources verified the authenticity of the letter to The Post.
- It was sent Monday to the entirety of the Secret Service Uniformed Division — the agency’s police force that secures the White House.
- The sniper demanded the resignation of high-level supervisors, whom the agent accused of failing rank-and-file Secret Service staff.
- “Sadly we have fallen short for YEARS. We just got lucky and looked good doing it. I have conveyed these thoughts to not only supervisors … Only to be brushed off as those with less experience somehow knew more than me,” the letter read.
- “Secret Service SUPERVISORS ‘knew better’ and the foot soldiers working, made the best of a BAD situation.”
- It went on to say that the reputation of the Secret Service and all its agents had been marred by the failures of July 13, which resulted in Trump being shot in the ear and a hero firefighter behind him being killed. The sniper said the day was “a stain I will never be able to cleanse.”
- The identity of the counter-sniper who wrote the letter is unclear. They described themselves as a veteran of the Marine Corps, and a member of Secret Service’s counter-sniper team for more than 20 years.
- Law enforcement sources previously told The Post that a full 30 seconds elapsed between when local police confronted gunman Thomas Crooks and the first shots he fired at Trump — prompting questions as to why Trump was allowed to remain onstage.
- The acting Secret Service director said Tuesday agents were never warned that Crooks was on the roof with a rifle.
- Meanwhile, newly revealed footage from the site of the shooting showed local cops encircling the building he shot from for more than two minutes before the attack, reinforcing that baffling question.
- Local police were in charge of the grounds from where Crooks fired, but the Secret Service was ultimately in charge of coordinating the day’s security.
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Important Takeaways:
- The largest wildfire in the U.S. swelled to over 600 square miles (1,550 square kms) on Tuesday night, bigger than the city of Los Angeles, fire officials in California said, as thousands of firefighters battled the blaze in a wilderness area north of Sacramento.
- More than 5,500 firefighters from across California and other states were working around the clock to douse the Park Fire, burning in the state’s Central Valley, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Sacramento, the capital.
- The fire grew to 386,764 acres (156,517 hectares), becoming the fifth largest wildfire in Californian history, officials said.
- The Park Fire on Tuesday surpassed the size of the 2020 Creek Fire in Fresno County, which burned almost 380,000 acres (153,780 hectares), fire officials said. But it is still smaller than the state’s largest fire on record, the August Complex fire of 2020, which burned more than 1 million acres (404,685 hectares) in seven counties in northern California.
- The Park Fire – fueled by dry grass, brush and timber – is fast-moving, said Fire Capt. Dan Collins of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Cal Fire.
- “This fire has lots of fuel that is receptive to burning, and it’s hard to get to,” he said. “Our fire line is 260 miles (673 kms) around, that’s the size of three Lake Tahoes. It can take two-three hours to get personnel in there over the terrain.”
- The National weather service says no rain is in sight this week, and hot and extremely dry weather will prevail, he said.
- Temperatures will reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8°C) on Wednesday and highs could hover at that level until next Monday, he said, with relative humidity dropping to as low as 7%.
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Important Takeaways:
- Since October 7…. the total of US taxpayer funds donated to Gaza as a reward since the massacre on October 7 to $896 million, or close to a billion dollars.
- A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken “knowingly and unlawfully” provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have “known for years” that the US aid is providing “material support” for Hamas’ “tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure,” among other terror structures, the lawsuit stated.
- The Biden administration has sought to have the case dismissed twice but failed. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, and that there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to UNRWA even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.
- In short, the Biden administration has donated less to Sudan and DRC Congo combined, where a total of nearly 50 million people face starvation, than to Gaza, where 2 million people face no such thing. What is going on? And where is Congress?
- According to FBI director Christopher Wray, “the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago.” Iran, officially labeled the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism by the 2023 US annual Terrorism Report, calls the US “the Great Satan” and continues to vow “Death to America.”
- Blinken casually announced in a July 19 interview that Iran had reduced the time it would need to create sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon “to one to two weeks.” He then went on to gaslight the audience by claiming that the Biden administration has been “maximizing pressure on Iran across the board.”
- Why is the Biden administration, under the pretense of “humanitarian aid,” drowning these terrorist enemies of America in US taxpayer money? And what, if anything, is Congress going to do about it?
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Important Takeaways:
- Hamas called the IDF retaliatory strike on Beirut, targeting Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr a dangerous escalation, as the White House said Israel has a right to defend itself against Iranian back threats.
- “Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Lebanese Hezbollah,” US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.
- “Israel has a right to defend itself against the severe threats it faces. “At the same time, the United States is continuing to work on a diplomatic solution to end these terrible attacks and allow citizens on both sides to safely return to their homes,” she stated.
- The Iranian proxy group Hamas, which operates in both Lebanon and Gaza said, “We strongly condemn the brutal Zionist aggression against Lebanon and the brotherly Lebanese people.”
- “We consider it a dangerous escalation for which the Nazi-Zionist occupation bears full responsibility,” it stated.
- The attack comes as Hamas and Israel are negotiating a hostage and ceasefire deal.
- US officials had urged Israel not to strike at Beirut in retaliation for the children’s death, even though the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah is located there.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel early Wednesday morning in the heart of the Iranian capital hours after attending President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration. The details remain unclear, but it’s widely thought that he was killed by a precision drone strike at his residence. The world is watching to see whether Iran and/or its Resistance Axis allies will respond, what form it could take if so, and whether that would escalate tensions to a wider war.
- Here are five takeaways thus far:
- Israel’s Intelligence & Tactics Are Top-Notch
- Israel somehow or another obtained accurate intelligence about Haniyeh’s location despite it being top-secret and was then able to successfully assassinate him. Whatever air defenses (including electronic warfare ones) that Iran had deployed in its capital as part of the security measures to protect its high-profile guests failed to thwart this attack. This is a major embarrassment for the Islamic Republic and prompts speculation about whether it was due to utter incompetence or was partially an inside job.
- Iran Is Caught In A Dilemma Over How To Respond
- It’s unimaginable that Iran won’t respond to its Israeli enemy assassinating a high-profile allied guest in Tehran during the new president’s inauguration, but the dilemma is over the form that this response will take. Launching another drone and missile salvo against Israel like it did in the spring after the bombing of its consulate in Damascus is possible, though Israel could spin that as a failure if many of them are shot down like last time, the on-the-ground damage is minimal, and no high-profile targets are killed.
- Mutually Assured Destruction Hangs Heavy Over Everyone’s Head
- The response that Iran resorts to will be determined by its leadership’s understanding of how far they can go without triggering the “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) scenario, which both Israel and the Resistance Axis fear and is why they’ve thus far restrained themselves from waging all-out war. A repeat of spring’s salvo could remain below that threshold, but Iran might also respond in a different way that’s interpreted by Israel as an escalation, thus prompting its own escalation that could then lead to MAD.
- A Choreographed Response Might Therefore Be The Most “Rational”
- Duma member Dmitry Belik, whose claim to fame was helping Sevastopol reunify with Russia when he briefly served as the region’s acting head in spring 2014, described spring’s salvo as a “beautiful theatrical production”. If there’s any truth to his innuendo that Iran choreographed its response with the US and/or Israel to Israel’s bombing of its consulate in Syria, then it might also do the same after Haniyeh’s assassination, which could help Iran “save face” while averting an escalation towards MAD.
- …But There’s No Guarantee That Iran’s Allies Will “Stand Down”
- Hamas and Hezbollah are Iran’s allies but operate independently of it despite their close ties. There’s accordingly no guarantee that they’ll “stand down” and not respond in their own way if Iran sends another salvo to Israel regardless of whether or not it’s choreographed. After all, Hamas’ political chief was just killed, while one of Hezbollah’s top commanders was assassinated by Israel in Beirut the day prior. This makes the MAD risk even less manageable since those two might not share Iran’s calculations.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia warned Wednesday that the assassination in Iran of visiting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh threatened a full “global conflict” — as the terror group called it “a grave escalation” and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel.
- “We resolutely condemn the attack that led to Mr. Haniyeh’s death,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said soon after Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president.
- “We believe that such action is aimed against attempts to establish peace in the region, and could significantly destabilize the already tense situation,” he said.
- Russian Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Andrei Nastasin also said the killing “raise[d] the stakes” in tensions already rife over Israel’s war on the terror group after the Oct. 7 slaughter of more than 1,200.
- “The region is currently balancing on the brink of a global conflict,” Natasin said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Venezuela on brink of civil war after BOTH Putin’s pal Maduro & opposition leader declare victory in tinderbox election
- Official results said Maduro, 61, had claimed 51.2 per cent of the vote, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, 74, received 44.2 per cent of the vote.
- But the Venezuelan opposition has also claimed victory with their presidential candidate Gonzalez receiving 70 per cent of the vote in their own tabulation.
- Maduro controls the ballot process through cronies and has been accused by the opposition of rigging the vote.
- Marxist Maduro has blasted them back, saying it was the “extreme right” opposition who had committed “fraud”.
- He threatened “justice” for those who challenge the results, telling cheering supporters in Caracas late Sunday night: “They are ugly faces. The gorgeous ones are the people who are here and noble.”
- Maduro also accused, without evidence, foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system of the South American country.
- But Gonzalez claimed the opposition was kept from scrutinizing results and said they “knew what happened”.
- He said: “All rules and norms were violated to an extent that we were denied seeing most of the ballots.
- The National Electoral Council is yet to release results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide.
- Long-suffering Venezuelans saw the vote as their best opportunity to end 25 years of socialist one-party rule
- Videos posted to social media on Sunday showed massive queues with claims spreading that voters were blocked from entering polling stations.
- The brave turnout came after Maduro threatened last weekend that electing the opposition would see the country fall into a “bloodbath” and “civil war”.
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Important Takeaways:
- As tensions escalate between Israel and Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon issued a video Monday urging Americans to leave the country before a crisis begins.
- “We recommend U.S. citizens develop a crisis plan of action and leave before a crisis begins,” Rena Bitter, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the bureau of consular affairs, said in a video posted on social media. “Should commercial air not be available, individuals already in Lebanon should be prepared to shelter in place for long periods of time.”
- Bitter said anyone planning to visit Lebanon should reconsider given the “difficulties that would hinder departure should conflict increase in the region.”
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, emphasizing the “importance of preventing escalation” and discussing efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to months of conflict.
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