https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/28/video-shows-israeli-forces-shooting-palestinians-dead-moments-after-surrender

Video shows Israeli forces shooting Palestinians dead moments after surrender

Far-right minister defends killing of two men who appeared to have given themselves up, saying ‘terrorists must die’
Julian Borger in Jerusalem
Fri 28 Nov 2025 07.42 EST

Video of an Israeli military raid in the West Bank shows soldiers summarily executing two Palestinians they had detained seconds earlier.

The shooting on Thursday evening, which was also witnessed by journalists close to the scene, is under justice ministry review, but has already been defended by Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who declared that “terrorists must die”.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement admitting two men were shot during a joint IDF operation with the Israeli border police around Jenin. It said the shooting “is under review by the commanders on the ground and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies”.

The militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed the two dead men were fighters in its armed wing, al-Quds Brigades.

The footage, which has circulated widely within Israeli and Arab media, shows Israeli soldiers surrounding what appears to be a storage facility in an urban area.

https://nypost.com/2025/11/23/us-news/minn-mom-shiloh-hendrix-facing-trial-for-calling-autistic-boy-the-n-word/

> Minnesota mom who called autistic boy, 5, the N-word in horrifying, viral video will face trial

A trial date has been set for a Minnesota mom accused of launching a racist tirade against a 5-year-old black child at a playground in a shocking viral video, before painting herself as the victim and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars through a fundraiser.

Shiloh Hendrix, 36, was charged with three counts of disorderly conduct stemming from the horrific incident on April 28 in Rochester, Minn.

The bigot’s trial is scheduled to begin on Aug. 31 next year, with a pre-trial hearing set for Aug. 21, prosecutors announced Thursday, according to ABC 6 News.

Hendrix — who has previous convictions for driving under the influence, disorderly conduct and brawling — has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her.

The blond, white woman went viral in early May after she was filmed by 30-year-old Sharmake Omar, who confronted her after she allegedly called a 5-year-old boy the N-word.

She repeated the vile slur multiple times during the short video, branding the boy a drain on the welfare system.

The 49-second clip shows Hendrix carrying her son and walking away from Omar, as he asks her to explain her actions and she admits to calling the child the hateful word.

“Mind your f–king own business,” Hendrix responded, accusing the boy of stealing items from her son’s diaper bag.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/03/trump-executive-privilege-jan-6-lawsuit-00676383

President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege to prevent courtroom adversaries from accessing evidence in a long-running lawsuit that accuses him of stoking violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Justice Department disclosed Trump’s secrecy claim Wednesday in a hearing related to that five-year-old lawsuit, brought by police officers injured while attempting to repel the violent mob that day. The officers say Trump’s incendiary remarks to a crowd of supporters — and his direction that they march on the Capitol — fueled the riot that nearly derailed the transfer of power from Trump to Joe Biden and left 140 officers injured.

Trump’s decision to assert privilege adds to a concerted push to rewrite the story of his bid to subvert the 2020 election. Trump pardoned and ended the criminal cases of more than 1,500 people charged for their role in Jan. 6, and last month he issued a sweeping pardon for prominent allies who faced legal scrutiny for their part in the effort. In recent months, Trump has routinely promoted false and inflammatory claims that the FBI intentionally ignited the mayhem at the Capitol.

It’s unclear precisely which records Trump is attempting to keep out of the hands of the plaintiffs in the Jan. 6 lawsuit. However, a White House spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that the president has decided to fight disclosure of some material subpoenaed from the National Archives and Records Administration last year.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/04/poll-americans-trump-voters-affordability-crisis-00674747

New polling shows many Americans have begun to blame President Donald Trump for the high costs they’re feeling across virtually every part of their lives — and it’s shifting politics.

Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.

Those are among the new results from The POLITICO Poll that crystallize a growing warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms: Some of the very groups that powered Trump’s victory last year are showing signs of breaking from that coalition, and it’s the high cost of living that’s driving them away.

It’s a growing vulnerability that Democrats exploited repeatedly in recent months, with campaigns focused on affordability sweeping key races in last month’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and powering an overperformance in a deep-red House seat in Tennessee on Tuesday.

For almost a year, President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented campaign against a core institution of international law, the International Criminal Court, seeking to end its work on the war in Gaza. This week suggested that Trump remains far from the outcome he wants.

Officials from the ICC’s 125 member states have been conferring in The Hague at their first annual assembly since U.S. sanctions began upending the lives of court personnel and those who work with them. Those governments have reiterated they have no plans to concede to Trump, and instead have made statements suggesting the court can continue functioning — including by pursuing Israeli officials for their role in the war.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant in late 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, which remain in effect. (Both men deny criminality.) Israel says alleged misconduct by the ICC prosecutor (which he denies) should render those warrants moot, but there is no sign the court sees any problem in the warrants that could provide a basis for acceding to Tel Aviv and Washington. And the court got fresh proof its members are willing to help it hold individuals accountable for atrocities, as Germany on Monday handed over a Libyan suspect who German authorities detained in July.

“It’s been a constructive mood [with] a lot of states leaning in to working together to project a sense of support for the court,” Liz Evenson, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch, told HuffPost.

Trump targeted ICC officials during his first presidency over its probes of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, but he has attacked people connected with the court more aggressively in his second term.


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-icc-pressure-campaign-gaza_n_6930c65ae4b0824b6df7c999?origin=home-latest-news-unit

https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-nasa-space-isaacman-0d5b9a24bc41f6a94307934add6a2965

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Billionaire spacewalker Jared Isaacman urged senators on Wednesday to take swift action on his bid to lead NASA, after being yanked and then renominated by President Donald Trump.

Isaacman appeared before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in Washington eight months after his first nomination hearing. The tech entrepreneur who’s rocketed into orbit twice with SpaceX stressed the need for “full-time leadership” at NASA as the space agency prepares to send astronauts back to the moon early next year.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been filling in as NASA’s acting administrator since summer.

Returning astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years will be “a challenging endeavor to say the least,” Isaacman told the committee led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

NASA is targeting early next year for a lunar flyaround by four astronauts. They won’t land on the moon; that would happen in another mission. The goal is to beat the Chinese there by the end of the decade.

“This is not the time for delay but a time for action because if we fall behind -- if we make a mistake -- we may never catch up, and the consequences could shift the balance of power here on Earth,” Isaacman told the committee.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-texas-congressman-cuellar-wife-2025-12-03/
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he was granting a "full and unconditional pardon" to Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, and his wife Imelda, who were charged with bribery.
Last year, Cuellar and his wife were indicted for allegedly accepting close to $600,000 in bribes in two schemes meant to benefit an Azerbaijani state-owned energy company and an unnamed bank based in Mexico.

He has maintained his innocence and that of his wife.
"I want to thank President Trump for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts. I thank God for standing with my family and I during this difficult time. This decision clears the air and lets us move forward for South Texas," Cuellar said in a social media posting on X.
In his own social media post, Trump accused former President Joe Biden's administration of having "weaponized" the justice system against Cuellar for having spoken out against Biden's immigration policies.
Cuellar, first elected to the House in 2004, is a moderate Democrat who has fended off recent primary challenges from more progressive candidates in the party.
The Democratic Party's congressional campaign committee has put Cuellar on its list of incumbent Democrats it is defending for re-election because they could face stiff challenges in the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump's Justice Department has largely dismantled its Public Integrity Section, which was erected after the Watergate scandal to investigate and prosecute the country's most politically sensitive cases.
As the section has unraveled, Trump has pardoned or commuted sentences for many of the defendants in cases that still remained outstanding, including former TN House Speaker Glen Casada, former TN state lawmaker Brian Kelsey, a former VA sheriff and a Las Vegas councilwoman, former Republican Representative George Santos.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5629293-costco-trump-lawsuit-tariffs/?tbref=hp

Costco filed a recent lawsuit seeking a full refund if the Supreme Court strikes down the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs.

The big-box warehouser joins dozens of companies that have lined up for refunds in recent weeks as the high court’s decision looms.

Like the others, Costco said it needed to file its own case because it is “not guaranteed a refund for those unlawfully collected tariffs in the absence of their own judgment and judicial relief.”

The company is represented by law firm Crowell & Moring, which has brought roughly 50 near-identical lawsuits on behalf of separate companies.

The list of companies that have recently sued include players in the auto industry — such as Kawasaki and several corporations part of the Toyota Group — food companies such as Bumble Bee Foods, and the cosmetics business Revlon. Even board game company Smirk & Dagger Games filed.

It comes as the Supreme Court prepares a decision on whether Trump can invoke a 1970s emergency powers law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), to justify his sweeping tariffs. The justices heard oral arguments last month.

The IEEPA provides the president unilateral authority to “regulate” importation when necessary to combat a national emergency, but a group of Democratic-led states and small businesses are attempting to convince the court that Trump has stretched the law too far.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-report-womans-death-after-2018-novichok-poisoning-ex-russian-spy-2025-12-04/
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin must have ordered the Novichok nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018, in a "reckless" display of power that led to the death of an innocent woman, a UK public inquiry concluded on Thursday.
Skripal was found along with his daughter Yulia slumped unconscious on a public bench in the southern English city of Salisbury in March 2018 after Novichok was applied to the front door handle of his nearby home.

About four months later, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died from exposure to the poison after her partner found a counterfeit perfume bottle which Russian spies had used to smuggle the military-grade nerve agent into the country, the inquiry said.

The Skripals, and a police officer who went to Skripal's house, were left critically ill from its effects, but recovered.
In his conclusions, the chair, former UK Supreme Court judge Anthony Hughes, said he was certain a team of GRU military intelligence officers had attempted to murder Skripal, who sold Russian secrets to Britain and moved there after a 2010 spy swap.
"I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin," Hughes said in his report.
"The evidence that this was a Russian state attack is overwhelming."
Russia has always denied any involvement, casting the accusations as anti-Russian propaganda. The Russian embassy in London did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Hughes said the two Russians who had smeared Novichok on Skripal's door had discarded the bottle containing the poison without any regard to the danger it posed to innocent people.
The inquiry was told the contaminated perfume bottle had contained enough poison to kill thousands of people.