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Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities. Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the people said.

Reached by The Washington Post on Friday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment on the intelligence findings. Moscow has called for an end to the war, which it labeled an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.” The extent of Russia’s targeting assistance to Iran was not entirely clear. The Iranian military’s own ability to locate U.S. forces has been degraded less than a week into the fighting, the officials said.

Six U.S. troops were killed and several others were injured by an Iranian drone attack Sunday in Kuwait. Iran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. military positions, embassies and civilians, even as the joint American-Israeli campaign has hit more than 2,000 Iranian targets — including ballistic missile sites, naval assets and the country’s leadership. “The Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed,” said a White House spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, without commenting on any Russian aid to Iran. “Their ballistic missile retaliation is decreasing every day, their navy is being wiped out, their production capacity is being demolished, and proxies are hardly putting up a fight.” The CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment. When asked this week about his message to Russia and China, which are among Iran’s most powerful backers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he didn’t have one and that “they’re not really a factor here.” Two of the officials familiar with Russia’s support for Iran said that China did not appear to be aiding Iran’s defense, despite close ties between the two countries. In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Washington referred to Beijing’s diplomatic efforts to engage with partners in the region since the war began and said that the conflict should be “immediately ceased.”

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed. The CIA’s station at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, also was struck in recent days. Parts of the embassy building have been left “unrecoverable” and must be sealed off, according to an internal State Department assessment. The assessment, which was reviewed by The Post, said that other parts of the embassy would not be habitable for at least another month. Iran is “making very precise hits on early warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” said Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re doing this in a very targeted way. They’re going after command and control,” she added. Iran possesses only a handful of military-grade satellites, and no satellite constellation of its own, which would make imagery provided by Russia’s much more advanced space capabilities highly valuable — particularly as the Kremlin has honed its own targeting after years of war in Ukraine, Massicot said.

The stock market fell and crude oil prices skyrocketed as the U.S. and Israel launched heavy attacks on Iran. Crude and LNG shipments essentially halted through the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury yields also jumped. The Dow Jones and Russell 2000 were the hardest hit. The Nasdaq fell modestly as software continued to rebound while AI chipmakers Broadcom (AVGO) and Marvell Technology(MRVL) jumped on earnings. Still, all of the key indexes are below their 50-day moving averages.

The jobs report stunned with a sizable drop in nonfarm payrolls, adding to market woes on Friday.

The U.S. job market turned weaker last month, dashing hopes for an economic rebound.

A report from the Labor Department Friday shows employers cut 92,000 jobs in February, when economists had expected the U.S. would continue adding jobs, albeit at a sluggish pace. The unemployment rate inched up to 4.4%.

Job gains for December and January were also revised downward, with December now showing a net loss 17,000 jobs.

Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño

Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found.

Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures.

It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth’s temperature in 1880.

“If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5C (2.7F) limit of the Paris agreement before 2030,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study.

Serious medical and mental health emergencies have been routine at the nation’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility since its opening, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Data and recordings from more than a hundred 911 calls at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, along with interviews and court filings, offer a disturbing portrait of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition and emotional distress.

Current and former detainees describe a camp where about 3,000 people have lived per day in loud and unsanitary quarters. They say detainees struggle to obtain health care as disease spreads, lose weight because of a lack of food, and fear security guards known to use force to put down disturbances.

Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes died in a California hospital in February after suffering chest pain and shortness of breath

A man under the custody of federal immigration agents died in a California hospital last month after suffering from chest pain and shortness of breath, with one local official alleging the detainee was denied medical care before his death.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, from Mexico, died on 27 February at a medical center in Victorville, California, just two days after the 48-year-old reported “feeling faint” and was transferred to the medical center.

In a statement on Facebook, Los Angeles city council member Eunisses Hernandez said Gutiérrez Reyes was “denied medical care”.

The assistance suggests the rapidly expanding war now includes the involvement of one of Washington’s key nuclear-armed rivals with advanced intelligence capabilities, The Caspian Post reports, citing The Washington Post.

Since the conflict began on Saturday, Russia has reportedly shared the locations of U.S. military assets with Iran, including warships and aircraft, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Moscow has previously called for an end to the war, describing it as an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.”

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60270646

For a generation disillusioned by endless war overseas and financial hardship at home, China is starting to look like a promising alternative.

‘Stopgap measure’ designed to keep oil flowing into global market as Middle East crisis disrupts crude shipments

The US has temporarily allowed India to buy Russian oil currently stuck at sea in an effort to keep global supplies flowing and temper further price increases.

On Thursday the US treasury issued a 30-day waiver allowing India to buy Russian oil, having previously imposed heavy sanctions related to the war in Ukraine.

India was the top buyer of Russian seaborne crude after Moscow’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, but in January its refiners started to reduce purchases under pressure from Washington.

India is vulnerable to energy supply shocks, with crude stocks covering only about 25 days of demand. India receives about 40% of its oil imports from the Middle East through the strait of Hormuz.

THE UNITED STATES is waging a religious war. This is, at least, how dozens of fanatical U.S. military commanders understand President Donald Trump’s illegal assault on Iran: a messianic battle to bring about Jesus Christ’s return.

“President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” one military commander told his combat unit, which could be deployed to fight in Iran “at any moment,” according to a complaint reportedly filed by one of the unit’s officers to a military watchdog group.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation says it has been “inundated” with more than 200 calls across dozens of military installations, including 110 complaints filed between Saturday morning and Monday evening, from service members reporting their commanders have invoked similar extremist rhetoric of Christian Zionist messianism when justifying the unprovoked war on Iran.

On Tuesday, Texas held its Democratic and Republican primaries ahead of the upcoming November midterms. Democratic voters chose between Jasmine Crockett, the anti-Trump firebrand congresswoman, and James Talarico, the populist state representative, in an election that attracted national attention. Crockett conceded the race and endorsed Talarico on Wednesday, but only after claiming late on election night that she wasn’t ready to concede because of a voting issue in Dallas.

“We don’t have any of the results because there was a lot of confusion today,” Crockett told supporters at her election-night party. “We were able to keep the polls open, but I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised.” Crockett received 45.6% of the vote, compared with Talarico’s 53.1%.

Voters in Dallas and Williamson counties faced challenges due to a change in voting location. Voting rights advocates say that the difficulties in voting amount to voter suppression – and they raise concerns about how smoothly the November midterms will go. (The Republican candidates, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and the incumbent senator John Cornyn, will face off in a runoff on 26 May.)

Denisse Molina, who worked as a poll monitor with the Texas Civil Rights Project in Williamson county, said that she saw several voters go into one precinct only to be routed elsewhere. In one large voting site, Democratic and Republican voters were unsure where they were supposed to go because of a lack of adequate signage.

At another site, a leasing office at an apartment complex, Molina said there were only three voting machines available despite people from 13 precincts being routed to that location. About 200 people waited in line for hours – so long that voters began to leave.

“I had never experienced voter suppression like that,” Molina said. The difficulties Molina witnessed were not isolated. Across Dallas and Williamson counties, voters described classic suppression tactics: long lines, extended wait times and confusion about voting location.

Texas Republican congressman Tony Gonzales has dropped his re-election bid after admitting an affair, which he had previously denied, with a staff member who died by suicide.

The decision comes after the most senior members of his party in Congress released a statement calling for him to end his campaign.

"After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek re-election," he said in a statement posted to X.

It also comes as lawmakers prepare an ethics investigation into Gonzales, and days after he failed to convince voters to back him for the party's nomination ahead of the mid-term congressional elections.

A lawyer for the Justice Department argued on Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine decisions are protected from legal scrutiny, in a case brought by medical groups challenging HHS’s vaccine policy changes. So much so that the Trump administration appears to believe that Kennedy’s actions are “totally unreviewable.”

James Oh, a lawyer for the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups included in the case, urged (Judge) Murphy to block a series of actions by HHS, including a May directive to the CDC to remove its vaccination schedule recommendation for COVID-19 shots for pregnant women and children, as well as another move from January to reshape and diminish childhood vaccination schedules.

He also requested that the judge block a meeting from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices scheduled for later this month that will cover “COVID-19 vaccine injuries and Long-COVID.” Oh told the judge that the meeting is a “recipe for spreading distrust and dare I say misinformation or disinformation about vaccines.”

Murphy said he plans to rule on the arguments before the next ACIP meeting, calling it his “hard deadline.”

On Monday afternoon, as war raged with Iran, President Trump was seemingly preoccupied with more trivial matters. “FREE TINA PETERS!” he wrote on Truth Social, referring to the former Colorado election clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence for giving election conspiracists access to sensitive voting equipment.

While it might seem odd for Trump to be posting about Peters as bombs fell on Tehran, there’s a connection between her and Trump’s orbit—her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, is a former classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy who has represented the president in litigation against his political opponents. And Ticktin is now pushing Trump to declare a national emergency, based on the false claim that China interfered in the 2020 election, so that the president can assume vast new powers over the voting process. After the US invaded Iran, Trump reposted an article from a far right news site claiming that Iran also attempted to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections, seemingly tying the military effort to his voting crusade.

The 17-page executive order Ticktin is lobbying Trump to sign would completely upend how Americans vote and have their ballots counted in an unprecedented attempt to usurp powers that the Constitution gives to states and Congress. The order claims that an emergency declaration would allow Trump to unilaterally outlaw mail-in voting for most Americans and seize voting machines in favor of a hand count of all ballots, which would take much longer and be far more error-prone than a regular machine count.

That’s not all. The order would require all Americans to re-register to vote in person before the 2026 midterms, effectively voiding all state voter rolls, and force voters to re-verify their status before every election, a wildly impractical measure. It would mandate that all absentee ballots be notarized and restrict mail-in voting to those who have a medical condition or are out-of-town during the election. It would require strict forms of voter ID and proof of citizenship to cast a ballot, which could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who lack such documents. “Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms,” notes the voting rights group Fair Fight.