Cheongung-II (KM-SAM Block II) Destroys 29 of 30 Iranian Missiles in UAE Combat Debut, Triggering Global Rush for South Korea’s Air-Defense System
South Korea’s Cheongung II (KM-SAM Block II) achieved a 96 percent interception rate during Iranian missile and drone attacks on the UAE, immediately reshaping Middle Eastern force posture and global missile-defense competition.
The Saudi veto was not an act of malice, but a rational response to a severe security dilemma. Five weeks prior, on March 27, 2026, an Iranian ballistic missile and drone strike hit PSAB directly. The attack injured 10 to 12 US service members, damaged several KC-135s, and destroyed a $500 million E-3G Sentry AWACS. Saudi officials explicitly warned the US that Project Freedom was poorly conceived because it would undoubtedly trigger more strikes on the exact bases hosting US forces.
The crisis established a new baseline rule for the Middle East: the United States can no longer use Gulf infrastructure for offensive operations without the absolute, explicit veto power of the host nations.
This vulnerability is compounded by a severe deficit in Saudi Arabia’s air defenses. Sustained Iranian missile campaigns depleted 86% of the Saudi Patriot PAC-3 interceptor inventory, dropping their stockpile from 2,800 interceptors down to just 400. Even if Lockheed Martin allocated its absolute maximum production of 620 interceptors per year solely to Saudi Arabia—an impossibility given global demands—it would take nearly four years to restock the Kingdom’s defenses.
Because of this deficit, Saudi Arabia remains heavily dependent on US troops at PSAB, who operate as essential maintenance crews and system operators for the radar data feeds. In the diplomatic fallout following the Saudi veto, Washington threatened to withdraw 2,300 troops and freeze PAC-3 resupplies. This coercive threat highly incentivized Riyadh to seek non-Western defense alternatives.
Source: Wajeeh Lion, Substack
July 7th, Zelensky asks NATO:
‘Please help us’: Zelenskyy presses NATO for air defense aid
Ukraine’s president said Patriot production is not enough and urged Europe to build mass-produced anti-ballistic systems “today, not years from now.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7, 2026. | Serdar Ozsoy/Getty Images
ANKARA — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged allies Tuesday to make helping with air defense one of the key outcomes of NATO’s Ankara summit, warning that Ukraine still lacks the means to stop Russian ballistic missiles.
The appeal comes as Ukraine faces a growing shortage of Patriot interceptors, the U.S.-made missiles Kyiv relies on to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.
“Please help us get more air defense missiles. This is our top priority right now,” Zelenskyy told the NATO Defense Industry Forum. “We are capable of doing everything else ourselves. But when it comes to air defense, we need our partners’ determination.”
White Nationalists surround school girl on their way to march in Washington DC
Sport and the regime:
“Do the players see themselves on a plantation? I think they do, in that all of the owners are white. That creates the dynamic: The owners are white, the coaches work for the white owners, and the industry is run by white commissioners. Anyone who exercises power over them is white, and they feel or believe that the owners are taking more value out of them than what the owners are putting in.”
Quote from book ‘Forty million dollar slaves’ by William C. Rhodes
President Donald Trump is defending his controversial phone call to FIFA President Gianni Infantino after the governing body overturned Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension. The decision sparked outrage, with Belgium reportedly filing a last-minute appeal and fans accusing Trump of interfering in the tournament. Here’s everything Trump said, why FIFA reversed the red card, and why the World Cup controversy is exploding online.
Note: Peter Thiel calls Greta Thunberg the anti Christ.
Peter Thiel warns the Antichrist and apocalypse are linked to the ‘end of modernity’ currently happening—and cites Greta Thunberg as a driving example
By Nick LichtenbergBusiness EditorFebruary 4, 2026, 3:12 PM ET
Haitian Revolution, series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804 between Haitianslaves, colonists, the armies of the British and French colonizers, and a number of other parties. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence from France and thereby became the first country to be founded by former slaves.
The TPS clock Haitian and Syrian families are watching — and why Venezuela may be next
Story by LatinTimes Staff Reporter
• 12h
A tailor on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn’s Little Haiti — a stretch of Kreyòl signage and Konpa music serving a Haitian community estimated at 185,000 in New York alone — has spent decades building his trade beside neighbors who arrived the same way he did. His name is Chilly Bonny. More than a thousand miles south in Miramar, Florida, Farah Larrieux has run a communications firm serving Haitian and Caribbean businesses since 2005. Both hold Temporary Protected Status. Both are now watching the same clock.
You might now have some idea of the basic principles.
Clusters of supercomputers now reside in datacenters. Artificial Intelligence applications have the potential to ensure quality of life for all living things through scientific breakthroughs in medicine and science.
But now the focus is more on applications which place power in the hands of those with a leading edge in development, such as China and the US.
Sovereign supercomputers are national computing systems developed by countries to ensure control over data and AI technologies, enhancing security and innovation. Countries like France, the UK, and Canada are investing heavily in these systems to maintain strategic autonomy and protect sensitive information. raisesummit.com nexgencloud.com
Exponential global building of datacenters in an attempt to retain sovereignty:
AI supercomputers are not ordinary data centers. They contain thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of specialized processors working together to perform enormous calculations. These systems are designed to train advanced AI models that can analyze massive datasets, generate realistic content, optimize logistics, conduct scientific research, and power autonomous systems.
The race to build sovereign AI infrastructure has intensified because governments fear dependence on foreign technology companies. Countries want domestic control over AI computing capacity to ensure they can compete economically and strategically in the coming decades.
The United States currently leads the AI infrastructure race due to its dominance in semiconductor design, cloud computing, and AI research. American technology giants operate some of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world. However, governments outside the United States increasingly worry that relying on foreign cloud providers could create vulnerabilities in areas like defense, intelligence, healthcare, and finance.
…………
Ultimately, the race to build AI supercomputers is about far more than technology. It represents a global struggle for economic power, scientific leadership, and strategic independence. While much of the public focuses on consumer AI tools, governments are quietly building the infrastructure that may define the balance of global power for decades to come.
Source: TVGLOBAL
And recent developments highlight military focus in recent AI developments:
Britain cut off from advanced AI after Trump bans foreign users
‘Disaster for the UK’ as president stops Anthropic from letting latest systems be run by non-US citizens
By Patrick Galbraith ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
14 Jun 2026
DONALD TRUMP has shocked the world by banning the use of the most advanced AI by foreigners, including Britons, over national security fears.
The Trump administration has ordered that Anthropic’s latest systems, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, be cut off from non-Americans, including those based in the US. The systems are theoretically capable of conducting large-scale hacking attacks and developing bioweapons.
Anthropic said the only way to comply with the ban was to universally block access to its most advanced models, including for US citizens. Its popular Claude AI remains available.
Tom Tugendhat, the former Conservative security minister, warned that the ban exposed the UK’s lack of sovereign control over cutting-edge AI. Writing on X, he said the ban was “the inevitable result of technology shaping warfare so that sovereignty is more about code than cannons”.
And as Palantir spreads its wings globally, its owner does too:
Peter Thiel, Argentina, and the rise of the billionaire ‘Plan B’
Story by Melissa Vera
• 1w
As the world’s wealthiest pursue “sovereign diversification”, CS Global Partners CEO Micha-Rose Emmett explains why a second home is not the same as a second citizenship.
As the world’s wealthiest pursue “sovereign diversification”, CS Global Partners CEO Micha-Rose Emmett explains why a second home is not the same as a second citizenship.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, is reportedly spending more time in Argentina, adding to a growing trend among wealthy Americans looking for a backup plan outside the United States.
But access to the files reveals Russian operatives, Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, Jeff Giesea, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Tom Barrack, Erik Prince, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and others—all conspiring together in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
From ‘It will hold’ Substack
Argentina, where Mengele lived out his life as a monstrous inhumane Nazi.
Bombshell declassified docs reveal Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ was allowed to live carefree life after Auschwitz horrors: docs
At AWS, the goal is to use just enough liquid to keep servers from overheating, with minimal additional energy (Credit: AWS)
Data centre operators are reducing water waste and energy consumption with closed-loop systems that promise sustainability without sacrificing density
The data centre industry is undergoing a fundamental shift in how it approaches thermal management, driven by the dual pressures of AI-driven density requirements and mounting concerns over resource consumption.
Closed-loop cooling systems, once considered a specialised solution, are rapidly becoming the standard architecture for operators seeking to balance performance with environmental responsibility.
At the heart of this transformation is a simple principle: circulating coolant through sealed systems that eliminate the need for constant water replenishment.
Unlike traditional evaporative cooling, which loses millions of gallons annually through tower operations, closed-loop architectures recirculate fluid continuously, removing dependency on freshwater resources whilst simultaneously enabling far higher rack densities.
The waterless target for data centres
Edged US has positioned waterless cooling at the centre of its expansion strategy. In 2025, the company broke ground on its second Aurora, Illinois facility, a high-density AI data centre designed to save more than 277 million gallons of water annually compared to conventional evaporative approaches. The site has been designed to deploy closed-loop, waterless cooling capable of supporting densities up to 200kW per rack using its ThermalWorks liquid-to-chip system.
air to remove heat indirectly, these architectures capture heat closer to the processor itself, improving thermal transfer efficiency while reducing dependence on high-power airflow systems. Lenovo’s Neptune liquid cooling architecture demonstrates how higher-temperature water loops can support dense AI workloads while reducing overall facility energy consumption. (Source: Lenovo Neptune Liquid Cooling Architecture)
…………
Beyond efficiency, heat itself is starting to gain infrastructure value. Some hyperscale and HPC environments are exploring ways to redirect recovered thermal energy into district heating systems, campus thermal loops, and nearby industrial processes rather than rejecting it entirely
Wind turbines may serve another purpose in modern-day society other than generating power.
As the green energy transition gains momentum around the world, the wind power subsector has seen tremendous growth. However, the recent innovations in wind turbine technology have seen some companies aiming to develop a new purpose for the wind-powered industry.
How has the wind energy sector influenced your life?
How wind power has blown through modern-day society
As the wind energy sector gained traction over the past few decades, the impact it has had on our society has been profound.
Modern offshore wind turbines have become huge structures that are taller than most iconic landmarks. Some wind turbines now reach as high as 918 ft, which is almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
The components of wind turbines are getting bigger, too.
The latest wind turbines have blades that can be longer than a football field. And we now know that a single rotation from these massive blades can produce enough energy to power a family of three for a whole week.
But one recent innovation has seen wind turbines performing another crucial purpose as our tech becomes more complex.
The economic and social impact of the renewable energy market is substantial
The vast majority of nations have committed to a clean energy transition away from fossil fuel-based energy production towards a more climate-friendly sector.
The wind power market has become a significant global employer. Recent data has revealed that at the current rate of progression, the wind power sector alone could support roughly 4 million jobs across the world.
But, as we know, the ever-volatile energy market is influenced by a wide range of factors, and the latest impact has come from the need to cool the many AI data centers that big tech companies are building across the world.
So, how can the wind energy subsector play a role in the AI-driven progression currently taking place across the big tech ecosystem? An emblematic tech company has given us a surprising answer to this question.
The AI market will be transformed thanks to Aikido Technologies
Aikido Technologies has recently outlined its plan to construct a floating offshore AI data center that is entirely powered by wind turbines.
This innovative development aims to address the significant issues around the land needed for AI data centers, as well as how to power and cool these remarkably huge and hot data collection centers popping up around the world.
But this innovation aims to harness the energy from wind to power and, more importantly, cool the AI data centers that have become a necessity in the modern world.
How will this new wind turbine impact the AI market
Each system combines a 15-18 MW wind turbine with a standard battery storage system, as well as a 10-12 MW computing system specifically designed to serve the AI sector in one single unit.
The data center makes use of a passive cooling system that transfers the heat generated into the seawater around it. Aikido Technologies has identified several offshore sites that could use the innovation. The first proof-of-concept unit is already working in Norway.
Controversial global enthusiasm for building datacenters raises justifiable fears after watching the trillionaire, Elon Musk, ignore responsibilities of duty of care toward local communities.
In fact, this will be a joint enterprise, Musk tweeted back shortly after, “To be precise, Dell is assembling half of the racks that are going into the supercomputer that xAI is building.”
From other announcements, we know that Dell and Supermicro will build the Grok supercomputer cluster using Nvidia’s latest Blackwell GPU platform, announced in March.
The image accompanying Dell’s tweet showed lines of rack-bound Nvidia servers still in their plastic-wrapped shipping state, which underlines that the project to build the dedicated facility in an unconfirmed location is still in its early stages.
A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee.
xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared on Thursday that the generators were not exempt. In its ruling, the agency revised the policies around gas turbines, saying that operating the machines still requires air permits even if they are used on a portable or temporary basis, as had been the case.
When xAI first installed the portable turbines at Colossus 1, it took advantage of a local county loophole allowing the operation of generators without permits so long as the machines did not sit in one place for more than 364 days. At one point, up to 35 of these generators were powering Colossus 1. xAI eventually received permits for 15 turbines at Colossus 1 and is now operating 12 permitted machines at the site.
Under the EPA’s new ruling, the permitting for these turbines would fall under federal law. It is unclear how or whether the government will penalize companies who are not in compliance. The EPA spokesperson did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about enforcement.
The ruling is a win for community activists in Memphis who have been battling xAI’s use of the portable turbines as long as the generators have been in use. They say the datacenter, which sits a few miles from historically Black neighborhoods, has been adding extra pollution to already overburdened communities.
“Our communities, air, water and land are not playgrounds for billionaires chasing another buck,” said Abre’ Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP, which initiated a lawsuit against xAI last July saying the unpermitted turbines were violating the Clean Air Act.
,Methane gas turbines pump harmful nitrogen oxides into the air, which are known to cause cancer, asthma and other upper respiratory diseases.
The UK-US pharmaceuticals trade deal could divert up to £45bn from other NHS care to fund higher spending on new medicines, according to a new analysis published in The BMJ.
The paper, by researchers from the University of York, the University of Liverpool and New Zealand’s Christchurch Hospital, estimates preventable deaths in England could reach 229,000 by 2036 without additional NHS funding.
Including the indirect effect on adult social care, that figure rises to 291,000, a toll the authors say would exceed the 137,000 excess deaths recorded in England during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here is an extract detailing concerns from the BMJ:
Samuel Cross, Karl Claxton, and Andrew Hill argue that diversion of billions of NHS funding to pay more for new drugs under the UK-US trade deal will harm public health and result in thousands of excess deaths
Health systems worldwide are facing growing pressure from rising pharmaceutical expenditure, ageing populations, and constrained public finances. In publicly funded systems with finite budgets, higher spending in one area inevitably takes away the opportunity to spend elsewhere. This makes decisions about medicine pricing fundamentally decisions about how healthcare resources are allocated, and who the shortfall in funding affects most. This, in health economics is what is known as opportunity cost.
On 1 December 2025, the government announced the UK-US pharmaceuticals deal as a “landmark” to “safeguard medicines access and drive vital investment for UK patients and businesses.”1 The agreement, which secures a 0% tariff on UK pharmaceutical and medical device exports to the US for the next three years, formed part of broader UK-US trade and economic negotiations focused on strengthening bilateral cooperation in strategically important sectors, including life sciences and pharmaceuticals.2
However, it also committed the NHS to substantially higher expenditure on branded medicines over the coming decade through changes to drug pricing arrangements and health technology assessment. Without a corresponding increase in available NHS resources, this will create substantial opportunity costs elsewhere, having a direct effect on population health.
Effect on UK drug pricing
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) evaluates whether new medicines provide sufficient health benefit relative to their cost. NICE generally assesses this using quality adjusted life years (QALYs), which combine gains in survival and quality of life into a single measure. Historically, NICE has operated with cost effectiveness thresholds of around £20 000-£30 000 per QALY gained. This means that the NHS has generally been willing to pay within this range for one additional year of life in full health, although this threshold can be – and often is – breached in exceptional circumstances, such as drugs to treat cancer.3 These thresholds exist because of opportunity cost and represent an attempt to balance the health gains garnered by new medicines against the health likely to be lost elsewhere in the system when resources are displaced.
In March 2026 ministers took powers to instruct NICE to increase the thresholds they use to judge cost effectiveness.4 From April 2026, instead of paying £20 000-£30 000 for every additional QALY gained by using a new medicine, the NHS will now pay £25 000-£35 000 for the same health benefits. The agreement also changes the way health benefits are measured, meaning NICE’s assessment of the QALY benefits offered by new medicines will be higher for the same actual benefit.5
Another mechanism by which NHS drug expenditure is controlled is the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access, and growth (VPAG). This agreement between the pharmaceutical industry and the UK government is designed to limit growth in NHS expenditure on branded medicines through industry rebate payments when spending exceeds agreed targets. The rate of increase in the prices of new medicines is linked to the amount repaid to the NHS by drug companies, discouraging price inflation. In 2025 the rebate rate was 23%; under the new agreement this has been cut to 14.5%.6
These changes, alongside the government’s commitment to increase expenditure on new medicines from 0.3% to at least 0.6% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2036 without corresponding increases in available NHS expenditure, raise serious concerns over the population health costs.7 The impact assessment undertaken by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to assess these costs has not been made public, despite requests.8 Nonetheless, it is now possible to make an accurate but conservative assessment of the additional costs of this deal to the NHS and the population cost NHS patients will face.
Estimating the financial costs of the deal
This deal commits government to increasing expenditure on new medicines from 0.3% to at least 0.6% of GDP in 2036, with interim targets for expenditure of 0.35% of GDP in 2028 and 0.4% of GDP in 2030.7 Assuming these targets are met and using the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s (OBRs) long term forecast of real GDP growth (1.5%), the additional annual costs to the English NHS will be at least £1.3bn in 2028 (£25m per week), and £8.8bn in 2036 (£170m per week).9Figure 1 shows the estimated additional annual costs over the 11 years of the deal. The cumulative additional cost will be £2.6bn by the end of 2028 and £44.7bn by the end of 2036. Costs are even higher if the impact on publicly funded adult social care is also considered – modelling of English local authority data indicates that every £1bn the NHS must find to fund this deal will increase the costs of adult social care by £118m because of increases in morbidity and mortality.10
Dominari Holdings shares surge 30% after Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump join advisory board Published Tue, Feb 11 2025
Dominari Holdings shares shot up Tuesday after the holding company announced that President Donald Trump’s sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — have joined its advisory board.
The stock surged as much as 83.9% to a record high before trading about 30% higher. Dominari is involved in wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading through its subsidiaries. It is a so-called microcap company with a market cap of roughly $51.5
NYT: Trump sons linked to Kazakhstan tungsten investment project
29 June 2026 09:58
The sons of US President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are involved in investment arrangements tied to the development of a major tungsten deposit in Kazakhstan, according to documents cited by The New York Times.
Investors from Dominari Securities, a company co-owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have acquired a 20% stake in a legal entity associated with the Kazakh tungsten project alongside other partners.
Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment firm controlled by the Lutnick family and managed by Howard Lutnick’s sons, Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the key investors working with Dominari on the Kazakhstan deal raise $210 million in new capital.
Earlier this spring, the Financial Times reported that Trump’s sons had joined the Kazakhstan tungsten mining project.
According toThe New York Times, Kazakhstan’s leadership has been actively strengthening ties with the United States during Trump’s second term, seeking to maintain a balance between its two largest neighbours, Russia and China.
“We are driven by a pragmatic approach,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, Chairman of the Management Board of Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna National Wealth Fund.
“If we see merit in working with the U.S., the E.U., a Chinese, Russian, Korean, German, Emirati or whatever company, we assess it on a relative performance basis and we choose what is the best for us,” he added.
“For the business relationship, it has never been better,” Jeff Ehrlich, Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan, stated.
The newspaper notes that Trump views countries such as Kazakhstan through the lens of the deals they can offer. One of Washington’s top priorities is securing access to critical mineral reserves and exporting them via the Middle Corridor, a trade route that passes through the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, bypassing Russia.
By Bakhtiyar Abbasov
Using US taxpayers money:
Trump Administration Investment in Mining Raises Questions About The Responsible Use of Taxpayer Money
One potential risk is over-supply from the taxpayer subsidies fueling this current “boom.” In November 2025, while signing a minerals deal with Australia, President Trump said, “In about a year from now we’ll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them. They’ll be worth about $2.” Historic and recent volatility in metals commodities markets—like lithium’s recent crash—suggests the President could be right.
W concentration was significantly higher in the W mining and refining solid wastes than in the downstream sediment and in the downstream sediment than in the downstream soil. on the other hand, W concentration was significantly higher in the W mining and refining wastewater than in the downstream river water and in the downstream river water than in the downstream groundwater. These results revealed W transport from W mining and refining source sites to their downstream rivers and then to their
Environmental Implication
Tungsten mining and refining activities lead to surrounding and downstream multimedia tungsten contamination, where leaf vegetables enriched higher tungsten than fruit vegetables and rice. Therefore, residents in the surrounding and downstream areas of tungsten mining and refining activities are faced with health risk by tungsten contamination. Anthropogenic tungsten concentration was 7.9 mg/kg in the surrounding and downstream soil estimated by the tungsten geochemical baseline developed in…..
And a summary:
Overview of Tungsten Mining Companies’ Responsibility
Tungsten mining companies are increasingly focusing on responsible sourcing practices. This includes implementing sustainable mining techniques and ensuring ethical supply chain management. However, challenges remain in fully achieving these goals.
Key Aspects of Responsible Mining
Sustainable Practices: Companies are adopting responsible mining techniques to minimize environmental impact. This includes reducing soil erosion and water pollution associated with traditional mining methods.
Ethical Supply Chain Management: There is a growing emphasis on ensuring fair labor practices throughout the supply chain. Companies are working to avoid conflict minerals and ensure compliance with ethical sourcing standards.
Challenges Faced
ChallengeDescriptionSupply Chain VulnerabilitiesThe concentration of tungsten production in China creates risks for global supply chains.Environmental ConcernsTraditional mining methods can lead to significant environmental degradation.Regulatory ComplianceCompanies must navigate complex regulations to ensure sustainable practices.
Industry Trends
Focus on Sustainability: The tungsten industry is moving towards more sustainable practices, driven by both regulatory pressures and market demand for ethically sourced materials.
Technological Innovations: Companies are exploring new technologies to enhance traceability and improve the sustainability of tungsten sourcing.
While progress is being made, the tungsten mining industry still faces significant challenges in achieving full responsibility in its operations.
Jeffrey Epstein’s British ‘Mentor’ and the Historic Manor He Visited
Published on 20 September 2025
It is suggested that Epstein’s ties with the Leese family and his entry into the Bullingdon Club’s social circles were pivotal in his association with socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
A recently published birthday book by a US congressional committee highlights the historic connections between the Leese family and Epstein, a now infamous figure, throughout his ascent to influence.
The book includes messages from influential Labour figure Lord Mandelson, who faced dismissal the previous week as a US ambassador following the release of his emails to Epstein………..
This is the 15th-century manor house where Jeffrey Epstein began his journey toward the heart of the British establishment, thanks to a wealthy arms dealer.
Located near the land of Shakespeare, South Wraxall Manor House is said to be where Sir Walter Raleigh first smoked tobacco in England.
Recently, it has come to light that this estate in Bradford-On-Avon played an essential part in Epstein’s introduction to the British upper class.
The country house belonged to international arms dealer Douglas Leese, who invited Jeffrey to stay for long weekends.
London-born defense broker linked to Epstein and Khashoggi
Douglas Leese (1923–2011) was a London-born defense contractor widely reported to have operated as an independent arms broker. Parliamentary records place Leese in the money-flow of the £40 billion Al-Yamamah fighter-jet package negotiated for BAE Systems with Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s.1
Multiple investigative accounts add that he worked alongside Saudi fixer Adnan Khashoggi on that and earlier deals and later introduced Jeffrey Epstein to financier-fraudster Steven Hoffenberg in 1987, branding Epstein “a genius” while arranging a $25,000-a-month consulting retainer.23
These intersecting threads — big-ticket weapons sales, offshore finance, and covert networking — explain how Leese sits at the nexus of Epstein’s early money-making and Khashoggi’s oil-for-arms milieu.
A newer tranche of reporting and first-person recollection via Julian Leese adds a more granular mechanism for the Leese–Epstein connection: Epstein did not merely “meet” the Leese family through arms-trade circles, but, at least by the late 1980s, actively leveraged them as a bridge into Towers Financial’s international bond-sales machine — pulling Julian Leese into sales efforts that later collapsed into scandal and personal fallout.45
In recent days, images circulating on social media have highlighted passages from a book alleging Epstein’s involvement in arms sales to the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war.
The excerpts come from pages 20 and 21 of the second volume of the book A Nation Under Blackmail, published in 2022.
According to the book, Epstein’s connections with Iran date back not to the final years of his life, but primarily to the 1980s and 1990s, involving covert activities in arms trafficking, money laundering, and intelligence networks.
This period coincided with the Iran-Iraq war and secret operations such as the Iran-Contra affair.
According to statements by Steven Hoffenberg, a former close associate of Epstein, Epstein received training in the early 1980s under Sir Douglas Leese, whom Hoffenberg described as instructing Epstein in arms smuggling, the creation of shell companies, and money laundering.
Hoffenberg has said that by 1983, Epstein was directly involved in the sale of Chinese weapons to Iran through the state-owned company Norinco, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
Parallel operations and the role of BCCI
Hoffenberg claims these activities were carried out as part of an operation running “in parallel” with the Iran-Contra affair. According to this account, Epstein, Douglas Leese, and Adnan Khashoggi, the well-known Saudi arms dealer, worked together in these dealings.
Under this narrative, financing and money transfers relied heavily on the services of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was later shut down amid revelations of widespread money laundering, covert financing operations, and links to intelligence services in several countries.
Links to Israeli intelligence networks
In another account, Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence officer, has claimed that Robert Maxwell, the British-Czech media tycoon and owner of the Mirror Group, sought to involve Epstein in the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran as part of intelligence operations.
According to Ben-Menashe, Epstein was frequently present at Maxwell’s London office during that period and maintained close ties with this network, connections that have surfaced repeatedly in later accounts and documents.
In early November 1985, at the suggestion of the head of the National Security Council (NSC), Robert (“Bud”) McFarlane, Reagan authorized a secret initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange for that country’s help in securing the release of Americans held hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon. The initiative directly contradicted the administration’s publicly stated policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists or to aid countries—such as Iran—that supported international terrorism. News of the arms-for-hostages deal, first made public in November 1986 (only one month after Reagan ordered raids on Libya in retaliation for its alleged involvement in the Berlin bombing), proved intensely embarrassing to the president. Even more damaging, however, was the announcement later that month by Attorney General Edwin Meese that a portion of the $48 million earned from the sales had been diverted to a secret fund to purchase weapons and supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua. The diversion was undertaken by an obscure NSC aide, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, with the approval of McFarlane’s successor at the NSC, Rear Admiral John Poindexter. (North, as it was later revealed, had also engaged in private fund-raising for the Contras.) These activities constituted a violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984 (the second Boland Amendment) that forbade direct or indirect American military aid to the Contra insurgency.
I am reproducing this plea from a critcal thinker, Robert L Arnold, whose intelligence sparkles and illuminates the wrongs which must be righted. It stems from his observation that AI is used to harm young people and yet no law to protect their rights has been built with ‘belt and braces’ moral strength.
There are moments as a parent when the future doesn’t arrive gradually. It arrives all at once.
Sometimes it’s the first day of school. Sometimes it’s watching them wobble down the driveway on a bicycle before realizing they no longer need you to steady the seat. Sometimes it’s carrying them to bed one last time before they become too big for your arms and you don’t even realize it was the last time until years later.
And then there are the moments that remind you the world has changed while you were busy raising your children.
I have a daughter.
Like every parent, I’ve spent years worrying about the things I cannot control… the people she’ll meet, the mistakes she’ll make, the heartbreak that eventually finds every life worth living. Those are the fears every generation inherits.
This one is different.
This danger wasn’t inevitable.
We built it.
Today, young women are discovering fabricated nude images of themselves circulating through schools. Families are learning that a yearbook photograph, a soccer portrait, or a picture from social media has become the raw material for pornography they never created and never consented to. Teenagers are being asked to defend themselves against something that never happened while enduring the humiliation as though it had.
Children are becoming victims of technology before they’re old enough to understand the technology being used against them.
That isn’t tomorrow.
That is the world our children already inhabit.
What troubles me most is that we continue to frame this primarily as a conversation about artificial intelligence.
It isn’t.
Artificial intelligence is simply the instrument.
The real question is much older than silicon chips and neural networks. It is the same question civilization has wrestled with for centuries.
What responsibility accompanies power?
Every meaningful advancement in human history has eventually arrived at that crossroads. The automobile transformed transportation, but we required seatbelts, driver’s licenses, and safety standards. Pharmaceuticals revolutionized medicine, but we demanded clinical trials before they reached the public. Banks became indispensable to modern economies, but we required safeguards against fraud because we understood the damage that could be done when trust was abused.
None of those industries were asked to eliminate every conceivable risk.
They were asked to exercise reasonable care.
Law has long recognized a simple principle. When harm is foreseeable, and reasonable steps exist to reduce that harm, failing to take those steps creates responsibility. Lawyers call it a duty of care.
I prefer something plainer.
A duty to reduce harm.
Not eliminate it.
Reduce it.
That distinction matters because perfection has never been the standard. Responsibility has.
Somewhere along the way we’ve accepted the strange idea that technology should move faster than accountability. That because innovation is difficult, responsibility should somehow become optional.
History has never worked that way.
Power has always carried obligations alongside its privileges.
If we believe artificial intelligence is capable of diagnosing disease, accelerating scientific discovery, writing software, reshaping education, and transforming entire economies, then surely we should also believe the companies building these systems are capable of making it substantially harder to generate non-consensual sexual images of real people.
To argue otherwise isn’t a technological limitation.
It’s a choice.
Markets are extraordinarily effective at solving problems… until someone else is forced to absorb the cost. Economists call those costs externalities. Pollution is one. Financial fraud is another. The destruction of a young person’s reputation through AI-generated pornography belongs in the same category.
If companies bear none of that cost, then the market rewards greater capability while underpricing safety. That’s not an indictment of capitalism. It’s evidence that markets, left entirely to themselves, cannot price harms they never have to pay for.
That is precisely why government exists.
Not to stop innovation.
To ensure innovation serves the common good.
John Locke argued that governments are instituted to secure and protect our rights.
Liberty without responsibility eventually ceases to be liberty for everyone else.
The responsibility of individuals is obvious.
Anyone who knowingly creates non-consensual intimate images of another person should be held accountable.
Anyone who distributes those images should be held accountable.
Anyone who profits from them should be held accountable.
But accountability cannot stop with the individual who presses “generate.”
That approach asks the law to arrive after the damage is already done.
It asks a fourteen-year-old girl to prove an image is fake after it’s spread through her school.
It asks parents to rebuild a reputation that never should have been attacked.
It asks victims to shoulder burdens that belong, at least in part, to the people who designed systems knowing exactly how they could be abused.
That isn’t justice.
It’s surrender.
Today this conversation has become impossible to ignore because of Grok. Public reporting has documented repeated instances in which it has been used to generate sexualized images of identifiable women, demonstrating how quickly these systems can be weaponized when safeguards fail or prove insufficient.
Grok isn’t unique.
Nor will it be the last.
It is simply the clearest evidence that this debate is no longer theoretical.
The harm exists.
The victims exist.
The technology already exists.
Now the law has to catch up.
Across the country lawmakers are beginning to wrestle with that reality. Alabama has considered legislation requiring stronger safeguards for AI systems. Vermont continues debating liability standards for AI developers. Florida proposed an Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights before it stalled.
These conversations are happening.
They’re simply happening too slowly.
Technology companies have lobbyists.
They have attorneys.
They have billions of dollars invested in shaping the laws that will govern their industry.
The fourteen-year-old girl whose face was stolen by a machine has none of those things.
She has her parents.
She has whatever teacher chooses to believe her.
And she has us.
That’s why citizenship matters.
Call your state representative.
Call your state senator.
Ask one question.
Do you believe companies that build artificial intelligence have a legal duty to reduce foreseeable harm?
If the answer is yes, ask what legislation they’re supporting.
If the answer is no, ask why the most powerful technology companies in human history should be exempt from responsibilities we’ve required of nearly every other industry.
Demand an answer.
Then demand action.
Because every month we spend debating whether responsibility exists is another month these systems become faster, cheaper, more convincing, and more accessible.
Technology will not wait for another committee hearing.
It will not pause while another bill quietly dies.
It will simply continue doing what technology has always done…
Moving forward.
The question is whether our wisdom moves with it.
One day my children will inherit whatever kind of country we decide to leave behind.
They won’t remember quarterly earnings reports.
They won’t remember which company briefly dominated the AI market.
They won’t remember the lobbyists who insisted responsibility would slow progress.
They will simply live inside the consequences of the choices we made while we still had the opportunity to make them.
Every generation inherits tools it did not invent.
Fire.
Electricity.
The automobile.
The internet.
Artificial intelligence is simply the newest inheritance.
Our measure will never be whether we invented it.
Our measure will be whether we possessed enough wisdom to govern it before asking our children to live with the consequences.
The purpose of law has never been to protect power from accountability.
Its highest purpose has always been to stand between power and the people who have the least of it.
Every Country That Banned or Investigated Grok Over Deepfakes: The Full Regulatory Map
At least 14 countries and regulators have banned, blocked, investigated, or sued xAI over Grok deepfakes in 2026. Malaysia and Indonesia blocked access entirely. The EU, UK, France, Netherlands, and 35 US attorneys general launched formal proceedings.
I found this story today. It magnifies how the tragedy was made a million times worse, when no diesel was available for the vital heavy lifting machinery required in the first 72 hours of the earthquakes.
The family that returned from Spain to Venezuela and was buried by the earthquakes
From Galicia, a friend is trying to move mountains. Across the Atlantic in Venezuela, a woman has spent six days beside the building where her parents, brother and two young nephews lie trapped beneath the debris
Adela Taberneiro and Yhosvany Hernandez Fernandez with their children Lía Fernanda and Ulises on the plane bound for Venezuela.
“It has been utter despair.” Eduardo Campos was driving to work with the radio on when the first morning bulletin reported on the Venezuela earthquake disaster. He pulled over onto the shoulder and sent a WhatsApp message that never went through. Since then, this resident of Marín, in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, has done the only thing he could from 4,000 miles away: tell his neighbors’ story to anyone who would listen. To acquaintances in the military, to a cousin in Panama, to his son, a doctor living in Florida, and to the local press. He searched survivor lists for names, requested heavy machinery, asked about a satellite antenna to help locate them amid the rubble. And on Sunday he called EL PAÍS: “Help me get them out of there.”
In a forgotten corner of La Guaira, the ground zero of last Wednesday’s double earthquake, a family from Marín remains trapped: Yhosvany Hernández, the coach of the hockey club where Campos’s son plays; his wife, Adela Taberneiro, the club president; and the couple’s two children, Lía, nine, and Ulises, eight. Buried alongside them are the grandparents, Carmen Rosa Fernández and Roger Hernández, who were hosting the family during their visit to the Venezuelan city wedged between the Caribbean and the mountains.
The Hernández Taberneiro family had emigrated to Galicia seven years ago, and this was their first visit back to Venezuela since leaving.
Civilians and authorities working to clear debris in La Guaira on June 28.Chelo Camacho
“He had to take the children away so they could have a better education; those were his words,” recalls his sister. They had return tickets for July 16, but they are now four of the 138 Spanish citizens — the family held dual nationality — listed as missing after Venezuela was struck by two earthquakes.
So far, 17 Spaniards have been confirmed dead. Spanish sources in Caracas warn that those figures are little more than a preliminary accounting and are likely to rise significantly. The overall death toll reached 1,450 on Sunday, while tens of thousands of people remain unaccounted for.
The six of them were celebrating their reunion that Wednesday afternoon. It was also the birthday of both the grandfather and the children’s father. They were all gathered around the dining table in the second-floor apartment — a floor that nobody now knows how to locate beneath the rubble. The tower collapsed forward.
Until Sunday, not a single excavator had reached the modest, devastated neighborhood where the grandparents lived. Standing outside the ruined building since Wednesday is Mabel Hernández, Yhosvany’s sister. She sleeps out in the open on a vacant lot where an old stranded boat is rotting. Some residents have laid out mattresses and blankets there so they can keep watch over the mountain of concrete they are trying to dismantle with their bare hands.
It was Mabel who had arranged the family reunion. Eight months earlier, she had brought her parents from Cuba, and the family tried to get together every year on June 23 and 24, the birthdays of her father and her brother.
“In the end it was like a farewell,” she says. Faced with the tragedy, the woman has one consolation. By sheer chance, her son and his wife, who had been at the celebration, survived. They had stepped outside for a cigarette. “The children are here and I don’t want to smoke in front of them,” the wife had said. The building collapsed while they were on the street. They escaped unharmed.
Her desperation over the rescue effort mirrors that of thousands of Venezuelans these days. “I’ve been here since Wednesday and they have done nothing,” says Mabel, who is demanding heavy machinery to break through the cement and reach her loved ones.
Everyone around her feels the same way: powerless and near collapse. Rescue workers, she says, “come looking for life, but when they don’t hear anything they leave.” Beyond the 72-hour mark, which passed on Saturday, the chances of finding survivors diminish dramatically.Mabel Hernández, in the ruins of the OPP 33 building in La Guaira, June 28.Chelo Camacho
A second excavator arrived after the first, but it cannot operate because there is no fuel. “They lent us a machine, but there is no diesel to put in it. How can they tell me there is no diesel in this country for the machine?” she asks. “Venezuela has no resources, despite being a very [oil] rich country.”
The tower where her parents lived was part of a public housing complex that collapsed entirely. Unlike the wealthier residential developments, with their swimming pools and better construction, these buildings were reduced to rubble. It is also the area where the fewest rescue workers and machines are visible, where residents dig through the debris until their hands bleed, working day and night by the light of their cell phones.
Utter helplessness
The sense of helplessness is overwhelming because many already fear it is too late. That only a miracle could save those still trapped. “If they died, it was because of negligence. I’m sure of it,” Mabel says through her tears. “There’s nothing here. Everything is for them, everything is about making money, everything is about being seen on camera and nothing more,” she says of authorities she feels have abandoned them.
Until Saturday, Mabel still allowed herself to believe her family might emerge alive from beneath the rubble. At night, lying in the vacant lot, she would tell herself they were still breathing: “You know when you just feel something? Up until yesterday, I kept saying they were alive. My father is 84, but the children could hold on a little longer.” Today, she weeps and asks only for a hug.
Meanwhile, in Marín, Eduardo struggles with the anguish of distance and the lack of information. He came to know the family through the children. His son and Ulises became friends in their first year of primary school. Both were shy, similar in temperament — “as thick as thieves, inseparable” for the past two years. When Eduardo started a hockey team at the school, Ulises was already playing, and the friendship carried over from the classroom to the rink.Civilians work among the rubble of the OPP 33 building searching for relatives and friends.Chelo Camacho
The family had left Venezuela when Lía was two years old and Ulises had not yet turned one. This was the children’s first trip back to the country where they were born. They were “very, very excited,” Eduardo says.
On Friday, amid the confusion and uncertainty, reports emerged suggesting that the family had appeared on a list of survivors and were safe. The relief was short-lived. It turned out to be a mix-up involving a message from another Yhosvany — the coach’s son from a previous marriage, a doctor living in Florida.
He cannot bring himself to talk about it. “Remembering all that, I feel it would not do me any good right now, I’m sorry,” he says from the United States.
Edu, Eduardo’s six-year-old son, still does not know what has happened in Venezuela. On Friday in class, the children had to write the name of their best friend. Edu drew two figures: he wrote the name of another classmate under one, and Ulises under the other. “Honestly, I would almost prefer not to have any hope,” Eduardo laments. “On Saturday I couldn’t find a corner to cry in. I had to leave the house so I wouldn’t do it in front of the boy.”
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should be to minimise harm to residents who live in the mining region. 
borderslynn 
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