Daily News Pulse

Breaking news, headlines & context — all in one place. Objective, timely, and to the point.

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The Pentagon's own inspector general report puts hard numbers on this: up to $3.7 billion in equipment losses, nearly 60 aircraft destroyed or damaged, including 4 F-15s, 1 F-35, 7 KC-135 tankers, and up to 30 MQ-9 drones. That's a level of loss most Americans haven't seen laid out publicly until now.

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Worth watching for: this comes right as Trump prepares to welcome Xi Jinping to the White House Wednesday, and just as a security deal covering Greenland is set to be signed the same day — so expect this speech to be framed as a broader "look what American power has accomplished" moment, not just an Iran update. Also notable: last year's UN speech was overshadowed by his escalator stalling and his teleprompter breaking mid-remarks — reporters will watch just as closely to see how this one lands.

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AMD just joined the trillion-dollar club

A stock most people think of as "the other chip company" just proved that label wrong.
AMD crossed a $1 trillion market cap for the first time Monday, riding a five-day, 24% rally driven entirely by surging demand for AI chips — bringing its year-to-date gain past 180%. That puts it in the same tier as Nvidia, Broadcom, and TSMC, among just 15 companies worldwide valued that high. It's a striking reminder of just how much of the market's momentum right now is being carried by a handful of AI-linked chipmakers.

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Five years later, justice finally crosses the border

Eighteen suspects in Haiti's 2021 presidential assassination just landed in the U.S. to finally face trial.
Haitian authorities extradited the group — mostly former Colombian soldiers, plus a former Justice Ministry official — to Florida on Sunday, after Haiti's own courts spent five years without managing to bring a single case to trial amid gang violence and threats against judges. The U.S. Attorney overseeing the case put it plainly: "Five years later, we are still bringing defendants before American courts, and we are not finished." Four men have already been convicted in Florida, with several more serving life sentences.

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Trump wants to put snipers and drones on top of a war memorial

His proposed D.C. arch was pitched as a tourist attraction. Now it's something else entirely.
Trump announced Sunday that his planned 250-foot "Triumphal Arch," sitting right across from Arlington National Cemetery, will now double as a military complex — storing drones, snipers, and large quantities of sniper ammunition on its roof and plaza. He said the change came "at the strong request" of the military, but sources working on the project told CNN the announcement caught them completely off guard, and outside lawyers have already called the national security justification a pretext to push the project past legal challenges from veterans and preservation groups.

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A construction crew accidentally grounded half the Northeast — right as world leaders flew in for the UN

A single circuit failure at a Philadelphia air traffic facility should have been a minor hiccup — until crews discovered nearby construction had also cut its backup line. With both connections down, controllers lost radar and communications entirely, triggering ground stops at Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, Teterboro, and Philadelphia airports. Newark alone cancelled over 300 flights, more than half its scheduled departures for the day, and even Canada's Prime Minister had his own arrival delayed on the way to the UN General Assembly. Crews had the lines repaired by evening, but officials warned the ripple effects would take the rest of the day to clear. It's a small, almost mundane failure — one cut cable — that disrupted a level of travel usually reserved for major storms.

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Gunman opens fire outside a synagogue on the holiest night of the Jewish calendar

A 29-year-old man armed with a shotgun opened fire on a police officer stationed outside Ontario's Sons of Jacob Synagogue Sunday evening, just as Yom Kippur services were beginning inside with roughly 25 congregants present. The officer returned fire, a second officer arrived and fired as well, and by the end, as many as 30 shots had been exchanged, leaving both the gunman and the officer in critical condition. Investigators say the man arrived by truck and headed straight for the synagogue, and Ontario's police watchdog said "common sense would say" this was likely a targeted attack, though it stopped short of officially calling it terrorism. Canada's Prime Minister called it exactly why the country needs tougher hate-crime laws, and Toronto police have already stepped up patrols at synagogues out of caution.

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The Attorney General just admitted the DOJ isn't independent of Trump

Todd Blanche was asked directly on live TV. He didn't dodge it. "No, I'm not going to pledge that... no attorney general should ever pledge that," he told Meet the Press — and he's since flipped pork sandwiches at the Iowa State Fair and rallied alongside Trump in North Carolina, all while serving as the nation's top law enforcement official. A former DOJ ethics chief called it "an incredible break with tradition."

For the first time in decades, an Attorney General isn't even pretending to be independent.

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300,000+ Iranians just marched through Tehran pledging to "take up arms"

This is the largest show of force Iran has staged since the war with the U.S. and Israel began in February. Over 600,000 people have already registered for military training, with more than a million expected to take part, while crowds in the streets trampled U.S. and Israeli flags and chanted "Death to America." One 24-year-old mother at the rally put it simply: "No one in history could invade Iran and remain there."

This isn't a protest against the government — it's the government putting on a show for the world.

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North Korea just fired missiles again — while Trump was trying to make peace

Kim Jong Un's sister rejected Trump's peace overture just two days ago. This is the response. North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles Sunday, three hours apart, with one flying 280 miles into the sea off its east coast — coming right after Trump scaled back joint military drills with South Korea specifically to try to restart diplomacy.

Trump tried extending an olive branch. Pyongyang answered with missiles instead.

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Zoom out on this, and it fits a pattern: this is one of a growing series of Ukrainian strikes specifically targeting Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure this year, aimed at squeezing the revenue that funds the war rather than just battlefield targets. Two people were killed and 20 wounded in the wider Moscow region. Worth noting, the death toll is relatively low given the drone count — a sign most were intercepted or hit infrastructure rather than populated areas.

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Notable timing: this hit on the final day of Russia's parliamentary elections, and Moscow's mayor framed it as an attempt to disrupt the vote—though he says it failed. Zelenskyy confirmed Ukraine used its domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles, targeting oil and logistics infrastructure specifically, saying, "These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine." Russia claims it intercepted 1,110 drones total; independent verification of that number isn't possible.

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This brings the campaign's total to at least 235 deaths across 70+ strikes over roughly a year. UN experts have said these strikes "appear to be unlawful killings... without judicial or legal process," and last month a group of UN investigators specifically declined to call it a war, criticising the Pentagon for releasing increasingly vague details about who's actually being killed. The administration maintains all targeted vessels were involved in trafficking, though it has released little evidence beyond short strike videos.

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Worth adding how they figured this out: the clearer version had a visible OpenAI watermark and an extra finger on the woman's hand, both AI telltales. No wire service (AP, Reuters, Getty) has a matching real photo, and the image was first traced to a YouTube thumbnail, not a news source. Also notable: this comes right after reporting that Trump gave Harp a $45,000 cash gift, and after a senator publicly criticised her closeness to him — which is likely why the fake spread as fast as it did.

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Worth adding some fact-check context: a claim has been circulating that Obama once banned Fox News entirely, but that's not accurate. In 2009, his Treasury Department briefly excluded one Fox reporter from a single press pool interview for a few hours—then reversed it after other outlets, including CNN, protested. That's a meaningfully different situation than a network being physically blocked from White House grounds altogether, which is what's happening now.

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Update: this is now actually being enforced — as of Saturday, the ban went from words to action. Reporters from all three outlets had their badges deactivated and confiscated at the gate; one Secret Service agent reportedly told a journalist the reason was "above him." First Amendment experts are already calling the move unconstitutional, and all three outlets say they're preparing legal action, following the same path CNN took in 2018 when it sued and won after Jim Acosta's credentials were revoked.

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Update since this first happened: the driver, Bailee Rios, has now been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, plus DUI causing injury. Prosecutors say narcotics were found in her SUV and that she was under the influence when she ran a red light, drove the wrong way, and hit the bus — this was two hours before the news helicopter covering the scene went down. DA Nathan Hochman: "She chose... to do what she did, and that choice has resulted in deadly and destructive consequences."

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Notably, this isn't a new position — Trump already had an AI czar, David Sacks, who stepped down earlier this year due to term limits and is now shifting to an advisory role. Also worth adding: this comes right after California's governor signed an executive order pushing for AI oversight, including a possible "kill switch" requirement, and after Pennsylvania and Virginia's governors made their own separate pushes for regulation. So while the federal government is doubling down on hands-off growth, several states are moving in the opposite direction.

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For scale: DOJ says it's currently reviewing over 300,000 potential cases, with 1,620 under active investigation and 151 arrests so far this year — these 16 charges are part of that broader push. Worth remembering these are still just allegations at this stage; all 16 are legally presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

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The report found more than just the enclosures — severe overcrowding, housing units barely a third of their intended size, showers limited to three times a week, and insects in bathing areas. DHS disputes that it operated the facility at all, saying Florida ran it; the inspector general disagrees, saying ICE was involved. Gov. DeSantis defended the operation Monday, though he acknowledged he hadn't read the report.

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BREAKING: A new lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group Centre for AI Fair Competition claims Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google did not each independently decide to slow AI development. Instead, it alleges they illegally coordinated on those decisions, which would be a serious antitrust violation if true. In the initial complaint, the group cites internal communications among executives and meeting records as early evidence of coordination. This adds a legal twist to the AI slowdown debate: even companies that agree on safety concerns generally can't coordinate decisions that could affect competition and pricing. It's a reminder that in an industry moving this fast, even good intentions can run into pretty serious legal guardrails. This case could shape how AI companies are legally allowed to talk to each other about safety going forward.