Mario Nawfal

🇺🇸🇪🇺 Trump’s pressure on NATO is starting to produce an awkward side effect: Europe is preparing for a future where it needs America a lot less. At least 8 NATO countries are already looking to reduce their dependence on U.S. weapons and technology, while the Pentagon is weighing troop cuts of up to 25,000 in Europe. Canada is buying more non-U.S. defense systems, Europe is developing alternatives to the Patriot, and Ursula von der Leyen just used a 70-minute speech to warn of a fracture in the international order and call for new partnerships. The irony: Trump pushed Europe to spend more on defense, and now part of that money may increasingly bypass U.S. defense companies altogether. Source: Reuters / Writer: Sol

🇬🇧 Quite the scene right next to Big Ben. London police detained a man after officers spotted what appeared to be the handle of a firearm sticking out of his bag near Parliament. The clip circulating online describes the man as a migrant, though that detail has not been independently confirmed. Writer: Lynn t.co/H9ZU36pq2E

🇾🇪🇸🇦 20 kilometers of trenches around Bab el-Mandeb means the Houthis think the next fight is coming to them... and they intend to stay. They're betting that Saudi-backed forces will try to claw back the coast and the island approaches, and that holding the Gate of Tears is worth turning the shoreline into a fortress. If the line holds, the strait stays under their shadow, insurance stays high, and a two-week offensive becomes a grinding siege. If it breaks, Mocha and Perim become a foothold instead of a trophy... Source: @EGYOSINT / Writer: Samuel

🇺🇸 The man prosecutors say ran a Ponzi scheme past Taylor Swift's husband, Travis Kelce, just got 11 years An illegal immigrant pleaded guilty after raising more than $35 million for a fund that, the government says, put only about $10 million into one company and then used new money to pay old investors. The rest went to jets, hotels, clubs, dinners, and clothes, the stock he did buy tanked and he did not tell the clients... How many athletes are getting ripped off like this? Writer: Samuel t.co/n6eu5BEOwM

🇺🇸 Hasan Piker just told Axios that America does more terrorism than al-Qaeda, “pound for pound.” He pointed to the Minab school strike in Iran and called killing schoolgirls an act of terror. Republicans have already spent MILLIONS tying him to Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who now says he "does not care" what a California streamer thinks. Probably hard to win an election being associated with that guy... though I suppose Mamdani kinda did. Writer: Samuel t.co/AQRbd9WpyS

🇬🇧👑 Charles Spencer (Diana's brother) says that days after Diana died, the future king told him the world would forget her soon enough. In his memoir, he describes a FURIOUS call over whether William and Harry should walk in the funeral. Then, he writes, Charles hissed that they would forget about her... WTF Source: CNN / Writer: Samuel

🇦🇷🇺🇸 Messi hugged his kids after the match while absolutely drenched in sweat, and their faces said everything 😂 Writer: Sol t.co/Q6np7nyO8l

🇺🇸 Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is putting serious money into defeating California’s voter ID measure. State campaign-finance records show Hastings gave $1 million to the campaign opposing Proposition 39, while his wife, Patty Quillin, contributed another $1.5 million to a separate anti-Prop 39 committee. Together, that’s $2.5 MILLION against the measure. Prop 39 would require government-issued ID for in-person voting, identifying information on mail ballots, and “best efforts” by election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters. So one of Silicon Valley’s richest couples is now spending millions to help kill voter ID in California... Writer: Sol t.co/jrAOYu0yKp

🇵🇸🇺🇸🇮🇱 “Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth supporting.” Macklemore is donating his full $1 million net earnings from Ed Sheeran's tour to 6 Palestinian aid groups after being dropped over pro-Palestine speeches. He invited Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose stadium pressure led to the ouster, to match it. Kraft responded that Sheeran had already asked him to commit $2 million for regional humanitarian aid, stressing that all lives are worth protecting and citing his long record of bridging Israeli-Palestinian ties. The tour continues… without Macklemore Source: CNN / Writer: Jamie

🚨🇱🇧🇮🇱 Al-Mansouri was lit up today with a number of heavy explosions... Footage circulating shows strikes pummeling the southern Lebanese town. Al-Mansouri is a coastal village in Tyre district, southern Lebanon, near the Israeli border. Residents watch from nearby Hanniyeh because many houses are already gone... Israel has been hitting it for weeks with air strikes, artillery, and controlled demolitions, saying it is going after Hezbollah infrastructure. Hezbollah must be everywhere... Source: Bint Jbeil News / Writer: Samuel

🇬🇧🇺🇸 “I don’t think there are enough monuments that are about our shared future to come.” This is “Lady in Blue” in London’s Trafalgar Square, and it was created by New York artist Tschabablala Self. She supposedly wanted to represent the “contemporary everywoman.” I guess in today’s Britain they aren’t that far off. Source: CNN / Writer: Jamie

🇺🇸🇮🇷🇺🇦 America is so short on Patriot missiles that Detroit is getting drafted into the war machine... General Motors has started producing missile-housing components for Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 MSE interceptors, after the U.S. burned through huge numbers of high-end air-defense missiles in Ukraine and the Iran conflict. GM delivered its first batch in August, and Lockheed says parts that normally take months to make were turned around in just three weeks. The Pentagon wants Patriot production to jump from roughly 600 a year to 2,000 by the end of 2030, but the supply chain is still the choke point. Each advanced interceptor costs more than $4 million and can take over two years to reach the military. Source: WSJ / Writer: Sol

🇾🇪🇸🇦 The fight for the mountains above Bab el-Mandeb is not over yet... Yemeni government “Homeland Shield” units, backed by the Giants Brigades, beat back a Houthi push in the Kahbub range, damaged gear, seized two fighters, and downed a drone. If they take it and keep it, they sit on the Gate of Tears with a view of the lane that feeds Suez. Tankers pass close. Saudi exports get a second lock besides Hormuz. The Saudis have now called on China to ask Iran to ask the Houthis to relent... Source: Al Jazeera / Writer: Samuel

🇯🇵 Japan’s PM Sanae Takaichi: "Through the maximum use of nuclear power, with safety as the highest priority, we will work to suppress energy prices." Nuclear power is one of the best options, but it definitely requires a long-term approach. After Fukushima, regaining public trust remains the biggest hurdle for Japan. Writer: Samuel t.co/Y8J6pIjD2X

🇷🇴 Romanian conservative leader Simion just told Romania’s president that AUR (his party) IS READY TO RUN the country, not heckle it. He walked out of talks with Nicușor Dan and said his party will not vote for any cabinet it does not sit in. After months of drift he wants a government that can last four years, and if parliament cannot build one he wants another election. No ministries have been carved up and no prime minister has been named. Source: @georgesimion / Writer: Samuel

🚨🇮🇱🇵🇸 Footage circulating of settlers ASSAULTING Palestinians outside their home in the West Bank,. Then, an Israeli soldier appears to protect the settlers from any kind of retaliation. How can this be??? Netanyahu insists Israel is "an island of tolerance and progress"... Writer: Samuel t.co/EURqgZIVIS

🇮🇷🇮🇱🇺🇸 A political adviser to Iran’s new supreme leader just tied the reopening of Hormuz to regime change... But not in Tehran... in Washington and Jerusalem! 😂 Zulqader said Iranian forces will not open the strait until Trump and Netanyahu are off their respective thrones. He called 200 days of war proof that the “three-day” defeat was a fantasy, and he listed Minab’s children and dead sailors as the debt. Netanyahu could be gone pretty soon, but the best Iran can hope for re: Trump is that he's handed a defeat in the midterms... which seems likely as of now. Source: War Message Center (TG) / Writer: Samuel

🇺🇸🇮🇱 U.S. Amb. to Israel Mike Huckabee: "If something similar to October 7 had happened in America, scaled up to our population, it would have been the equivalent of 40,000 American citizens being murdered in a single day. It would have also meant 10,000 people being taken hostage, starved, raped, beaten, abused, and kept in the dark in tunnels for up to two years." He's made this point over and over and over... But using this logic, every time a Pope dies it's a literal GENOCIDE for Vatican City 😂 Writer: Michael t.co/AY9CGqswWQ

🇪🇸🇨🇦🇪🇺 Spanish PM Sánchez just stuck a Canadian maple leaf on the EU flag. EU chief von der Leyen offered Ottawa a brand-new status as the bloc’s first “associate member" and Canadian PM Carney welcomed a deeper alliance. Trump called the idea a hostile act and threatened more tariffs... Source: @sanchezcastejon / Writer: Samuel

🇸🇾 Imagine living under an oppressive regime and having to hide your entire library behind a wall... Now imagine returning home 15 years later, tearing down the wall, and everything is just as you left it! Reunited at last Writer: Jamie t.co/mUKFHWAohn

🇺🇸 Trump, speaking at a campaign rally for GOP Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina yesterday: "We spent more than $2 billion in FEMA funding. You're waiting for some additional funding. I'm gonna get that to you. Now if Michael loses, I'm not sending it." The latest polling from Trafalgar Group (conservative pollster) has Whatley trailing fmr. Gov. Roy Cooper by 6 pts. Guess that funding's not coming... 😅 Writer: Michael t.co/t4GvQhmoiO

🇵🇱🇷🇺 Polish PM Tusk: “I fear that by winter we will witness increasingly severe attacks by Russia on energy infrastructure. And I can only express hope that these provocations and attacks will not go beyond Ukraine’s borders. But hope, unfortunately, is not certainty. We are preparing here in Poland for different scenarios.” Most European leaders see war with Russia as a near certainty. The scale and the role the U.S. plays… TBD. Writer: Jamie t.co/w74zyjM69c

🚨🇮🇷🇺🇸 Unconfirmed reports that Iran has shot down ANOTHER USAF MQ-9 drone today, over Qeshm Island. That would make it the 5th U.S. drone shot down by Iran this week, and the 53rd MQ-9 shot down in total. Reminder: these are not cheap... ($30M+ EACH) Source: MES (TG), @Osint613 / Writer: Michael

🚨🇺🇸 Nasdaq futures ripped more than 1.5% because traders decided yesterday’s rate-hike scare was a sale. That bounce pads brokerage accounts and the people who already hold the index. But it does not cut the mortgage that just got more expensive, and it does not cheapen the diesel that transports food. Stocks can roar while the household still pays the hike... Source: Trading View / Writer: Samuel

🇺🇳🇮🇷🇺🇸 A UN fact-finding mission says it has grounds to believe the U.S. committed WAR CRIMES in Iran and that Iran committed crimes against humanity at home. The report blames U.S. strikes on a primary school in Minab and a sports site in Lamerd as indiscriminate hits on civilian locations. Investigators say Washington was chasing after a commander, did not verify the building, and accepted the substantial risk of hitting the school. The same mission says Iran’s winter protest crackdown was a systematic attack on civilians: killings, torture, disappearances, a blackout, and a death toll likely far above the official bodycount of 3,038. Interesting findings, but the unfortunate reality is not much tends to come of it... Source: Reuters / Writer: Samuel

🚨🔥🇺🇸 *WARNING GRAPHIC VIDEO* Some things you DEFINITELY don’t say or do. This guy decided to f*ck around by calling a black guy the N-word while waiting for a flight. He found out the consequences of his actions real quick! I call that a well-DESERVED ASS WHOOPIN'! Writer: Jamie t.co/1pKmqt8YcP

🚨🇮🇷🇨🇳🇸🇦🇾🇪 BREAKING: China has reportedly asked Iran, privately, to help rein in Yemen's Houthis, after Riyadh appealed to Beijing. Saudi sought out China's help after the Houthis made rapid advances along the Red Sea coast this past week. China has publicly called for restraint, as well as the resumption of safe navigation, but apparently went a bit further in private. Iran has claimed plausible deniability with regard to the Houthis, although their connection has been obvious... Iranian FM Araghchi was in Beijing yesterday. Sources in Tehran claim no explicit threats were made. Just a "friendly request" from the country they depend on to purchase 80+% of their oil... Source: Reuters / Writer: Michael

🇺🇸 JAIL AT LAST? Federal agents arrested Michael Young, founder of the LA nonprofit ‘Home at Last’, after his group received more than $118 million in taxpayer funds meant for homeless housing. Prosecutors allege he used shell companies and sham vendors to divert millions into a high-end nightclub, a $50,000 Tahiti vacation, a $140,000 car restoration, and other personal projects. LA has spent billions on “homelessness” with little visible improvement. Probably because 90% of the funds go to program administration, and not to actually help anyone. HOW, with all the technology we have, are people still able to defraud the system of millions of dollars??? Writer: Jamie t.co/aHILiwDnQw

🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump says AGAIN that Iran wants a deal... Next week, he walks into the U.N. with the Gulf leaders who have to live next to the wreckage. Saudi, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman are on the list for a postwar talk, as USS George Washington works the Arabian Sea and Hormuz remains a shooting gallery. In Yemen, the Houthis are still taking the Bab el-Mandab and Red Sea coast, the other choke that drives up gas and groceries... Writer: Samuel t.co/obahrPSqeH

🇸🇬 Singapore's Founding Father, Lee Kuan Yew: “I may speak the English Language better than the Chinese language, but I’ll never be an Englishman, not in a thousand generations.” Was he right about that? 🤔 Writer: Michael t.co/BSJaRcziHz