NEED TO KNOW

Arpineh Masihi, a Trump supporter and Iranian immigrant, was targeted by ICE and taken from her home on June 30

Her husband, Arthu Sahakyan, told a local news station that even though he misses Masihi, he still supports the Trump administration's efforts to vet Iranian nationals

When asked whether he would take his MAGA flag off their house while his wife is detained, Sahakyan replied, "No, the flag stands"

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the U.S.'s largest interior law enforcement agency with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

This figure is more than the annual military budget of Italy, which at $30.8 billion, is the world's 16th highest defense spender for this year according to tracker Global Fire Power.

It is also higher than military spending for Israel, ($30 billion), the Netherlands ($27 billion) and Brazil ($26.1 billion).

•Lockheed Martin

•Palantir

•Volvo

•World Banks: BNP, Paribas, and Barclays

•Asset Management Firms: Pimco (owned by the German-based financial services company Allianz) and Vanguard

•Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), (world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, increased its investment in Israeli companies by 32% since October 2023.)

The UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories has called for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel and for global corporations to be held accountable for “profiting from genocide” in Gaza.

A report by Francesca Albanese to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday points to the deep involvement of companies from around the world in supporting Israel during its 21-month onslaught in Gaza.

“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many,” the report says

While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and, now, genocide,” the report says.

The report says the Israeli military has benefited from “the largest ever defence procurement programme” for the F-35 fighter jet, made by Lockheed Martin with the involvement of more than 1,600 other manufacturers and eight states. It says Israel was the first to fly the warplane in “beast mode”, carrying 18,000lb of bombs at a time.

The US technology firm Palantir comes under particular criticism in the Albanese report for its close partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with which the company agreed a strategic partnership for Palantir to assist its “war-related missions”.

The Albanese report also criticises heavy equipment manufacturers such as Volvo for allegedly supplying heavy machinery used in mass demolitions of homes, mosques and infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.

“These companies have continued supplying the Israeli market despite abundant evidence of Israel’s criminal use of this machinery and repeated calls from human rights groups to sever ties,” Albanese says in the report. “Passive suppliers become deliberate contributors to a system of displacement.”

“Some of the world’s largest banks, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, stepped in to boost market confidence by underwriting these international and domestic treasury bonds, allowing Israel to contain the interest rate premium, despite a credit downgrade,” it says.

It names asset management firms including Pimco (owned by the German-based financial services company Allianz) and Vanguard as major buyers of Israeli treasury bonds.

The report also points to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, for having increased its investment in Israeli companies by 32% since October 2023.

On Monday, Norway’s biggest pension fund, KLP, announced it would no longer do business with two companies – the Oshkosh Corporation in the US and ThyssenKrupp in Germany – because they sell equipment to the Israeli military that could be being used in Gaza. Neither company is named in the UN report.

In her recommendations, Albanese calls for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, and urges the international criminal court “and national judiciaries to investigate and prosecute corporate executives and/or corporate entities for their part in the commission of international crimes and laundering of the proceeds from those crimes”.

USDA research points to viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites, indicating a worrying trend

U.S. beekeepers had a disastrous winter. Between June 2024 and January 2025, a full 62% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States died, according to an extensive survey. It was the largest die-off on record, coming on the heels of a 55% die-off the previous winter.

As soon as scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) caught wind of the record-breaking die-offs, they sprang into action—but their efforts were slowed by a series of federal funding cuts and layoffs by President Donald Trump’s administration. Now, 6 months later, USDA scientists have finally identified a culprit.

According to a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server this month, nearly all the dead colonies tested positive for bee viruses spread by parasitic mites. Alarmingly, every single one of the mites the researchers screened was resistant to amitraz, the only viable mite-specific pesticide—or miticide—of its kind left in humans’ arsenal.

The director of one of north Gaza's largest hospitals was killed, along with his wife, daughter and sister, in an Israeli strike on their apartment, medical officials said Wednesday.

Diaa Al-Najjar, Al-Sultan's nephew, said his uncle never stopped working amid the war, even for a moment.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other aid groups have accused Israel of targeting hospitals and condemned the attacks and arrests of medical workers. Munir Al-Barash, general director of Gaza's Health Ministry, said the killing of Al-Sultan is the latest death in a long list of health-care workers targeted in the Gaza Strip.

Ian Rogers was convinced it was up to him to save America. The gun industry’s sales tactics — playing up paranoia and glorifying combat — may be creating a pipeline of extremists willing to open fire.

A member of a chat-based White supremacy group has been charged in an alleged plot to solicit the murder of federal officials – including a senator and federal judge – through an online “kill list” he allegedly helped create.

Noah Lamb, 24, was charged in federal court in Northern California with eight counts, including soliciting the murder of federal officials and a conspiracy to assassinate federal officials, according to court records.

Lamb, along with two other individuals who were charged last year in the conspiracy, allegedly helped create what they called “The List” – targeting perceived enemies of White supremacist accelerationism, an ideology centered around the belief that terrorism is necessary to ignite a race war that will create a White ethnostate in the US, prosecutors say.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia said he suffered severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation and psychological torture in the notorious El Salvador prison the Trump administration had deported him to in March, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

He said he was kicked and hit so often after arrival that by the following day, he had visible bruises and lumps all over his body. He said he and 20 others were forced to kneel all night long and guards hit anyone who fell.

https://archive.is/j7Tnh

The government’s top vaccine official working under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently restricted the approval of two COVID-19 vaccines, disregarding recommendations from government scientists, according to federal documents released Wednesday.

The new memos from the Food and Drug Administration show how the agency’s vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, personally intervened to place restrictions on COVID shots from vaccine makers Novavax and Moderna.

Both vaccines were approved by the FDA in May after months of analysis by rank-and-file FDA reviewers.

But internal correspondence show Prasad disagreed with staffers who planned to approve the shots for everyone 12 and older, similar to previous COVID vaccines. The scientists had concluded the benefit from the vaccines and the risk of COVID-19 outweighed the risk of possible side effects, which are rare.

Air pollution has been linked to a swathe of lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, in a study of people diagnosed with the disease despite never having smoked tobacco.

The findings from an investigation into cancer patients around the world helps explain why those who have never smoked make up a rising proportion of people developing the cancer, a trend the researchers called an “urgent and growing global problem”.

Prof Ludmil Alexandrov, a senior author on the study at the University of California in San Diego, said researchers had observed the “problematic trend” but had not understood the cause.

The scientists analysed the entire genetic code of lung tumours removed from 871 never-smokers in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia as part of the Sherlock-Lung study. They found that the higher the levels of air pollution in a region, the more cancer-driving and cancer-promoting mutations were present in residents’ tumours.

In 2021, Google set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Yet in the years since then, the company has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence. In its latest sustainability report, Google said its carbon emissions had increased 51% between 2019 and 2024.

New research aims to debunk even that enormous figure and provide context to Google’s sustainability reports, painting a bleaker picture. A report authored by non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship found that, between 2019 and 2024, Google’s carbon emissions actually went up by 65%. What’s more, between 2010, the first year there is publicly available data on Google’s emissions, and 2024, Google’s total greenhouse gas emissions increased 1,515%, Kairos found. The largest year-over-year jump in that window was also the most recent, 2023 to 2024, when Google saw a 26% increase in emissions just between 2023 and 2024, according to the report.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban on Wednesday, ruling 4-3 that it was superseded by a newer state law that criminalizes abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.

State lawmakers adopted the ban in 1849, making it a felony when anyone other than the mother “intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child.”

It was in effect until 1973, when the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide nullified it. Legislators never officially repealed the ban, however, and conservatives argued that the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe reactivated it.