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01:00 25.5.2026 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Hezbollah militants of trying to plunge Lebanon “back into chaos.” Iran-backed Hezbollah is both a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon. It is considered a terrorist organization by the US, although the EU has only blacklisted its armed wing. The top US diplomat condemned what he called Hezbollah’s “reckless call to overthrow Lebanon’s democratically elected government” and said the Iran-allied militant group was “actively trying to drag Lebanon back into chaos and destruction.” Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem earlier said that “the people have the right to…

WAIKIKI, Hawaii—Having the “right stuff at the right place at the right time” in the Pacific theater is “a little bit of a maths problem,” says U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s strategy director for logistics and engineering.“Hawaii is 3,000 miles from the West Coast. Guam is 5,000 miles from Hawaii, and the first island chain”—which includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines—“is 1,500 miles from Guam,” Brig. Gen. Jim Bliss of the New Zealand Army said this month during the Indo-Pacific Security Forum.It’s “a vast ocean,” with “very, very little in the way of logistics nodes on land forward available to be used,”…

UFC BJJ will be opening up its own brand of “Opens” and jiu-jitsu tournaments, copying a lucrative — and somewhat controversial — format long used by IBJJF and ADCC.“We are officially launching the new ‘UFC BJJ Opens’ today, which is the entry point into the UFC BJJ system,” MMA fighter turned UFC BJJ executive Claudia Gadelha announced on their last event. “They are a series of jiu-jitsu tournaments, where anybody from any skill level or any age can register and compete under the UFC BJJ banner.”The first two UFC BJJ Opens are lined up for Las Vegas on August 22-23,…

Necrosoft Games and Ysbryd Games have officially rolled out patch v1.10 for their hit tactical horror-comedy RPG, Demonschool. Dubbed “The BIG Free Update,” this major content drop rewards the game’s passionate community with highly requested quality-of-life improvements, a robust New Game+ mode, expanded overworld accessibility, and a massive injection of character dialogue. The update serves as a heartfelt “thank you” to the player base following the game’s launch. While the team explicitly notes that v1.10 is not an expansion of the main narrative, it radically deepens the social and mechanical texture of the game’s beloved universe. Carry Over Your Progress…

Charai for The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune: Mr. President, Listen to the Father in You – Atlantic Council Middle East Politics & Diplomacy By Atlantic Council Print this page Share this page ERROR MESSAGE HEADING ERROR MESSAGE SUBHEADING ERROR MESSAGE CONTENT ERROR MESSAGE INFO Oops… It looks like we’re having a technical issue. If refreshing the page doesn’t resolve the issue you could try clearing the sites browser cache. Pro Tip: If you’re on a laptop or desktop you can flush everything the browser currently has cached for the site by simply holding down the Shift key while clicking…

Bo Nickal is in a big spot on the UFC Freedom 250 card, and his opponent believes he wanted to cherry-pick. Nickal is set to share the Octagon with Kyle Daukaus on the White House lawn on June 14. Some have scoffed at Nickal getting such a spot when he has yet to ascend to an elite level inside the Octagon. Many have also questioned why Daukaus was chosen as an opponent. Even Daukaus admitted to Jake Noecker of Home of Fight that he believes Nickal picked him because he views it as a more manageable fight than other options…

CENTERVILLE, Mass. (AP) — On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the country’s oldest living survivor of the Japanese bombing was far below deck helping repair one the boilers of the USS St. Louis. Freeman Johnson, who turned 106 in March, never witnessed the surprise attack. He never heard his shipmates firing antiaircraft guns at the attacking planes — shooting down a torpedo plane. By the time he was topside, the St. Louis, a light cruiser, had evaded midget submarines and safely get out to sea. “While all the rigamarole was going on topside, I was inside a steam…

State and local government agencies operate under constant financial and regulatory scrutiny. Every piece of equipment a department puts into service, every vehicle in the fleet and every laptop issued to a field worker was all purchased with public funds. When oversight arrives, agencies need to produce records that are complete, traceable and defensible. Too often, they cannot. This gap isn’t a technology failure so much as a governance shortfall. When asset counts exceed several hundred and departments operate independently, the informal systems agencies relied on for decades, such as spreadsheets, paper logs or siloed databases, start to break down.…

The United States military is the most capable in the world. And yet, our political leaders have demonstrated an inability, across decades, to effectively utilize this powerful kinetic tool to achieve broader strategic aims. Iran is the most recent case in point. Although the result of America’s war there remains uncertain, it is clear that the White House’s air campaign failed to achieve its originally stated aim of regime change. This problem extends across administrations, whether with the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Obama White House’s intervention in Libya or the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. A strategy is…

Over the last ten years, Japan has shed its pacifist identity. After promising, post–World War II, to maintain only a tiny military, Tokyo is now building up truly capable armed forces and a sizable defense industrial base. In December 2018, for example, the country announced plans to modify its Izumo-class destroyers so they could operate F-35B fighters—effectively giving Japan its first aircraft carrier since 1945—and to buy 147 F-35 fighter jets. In 2023, it allowed its companies to start selling certain offensive weapons and weapons parts. And last month, Tokyo scrapped most of the remaining limits on arms exports, including…