Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers Wednesday that the regime in Iran “appears to be intact but largely degraded” after almost three weeks of war in the Middle East, but she faced intense scrutiny over the Trump administration’s preparation for the conflict and how she advised the president about the risks it posed. Source link
Iran’s retaliatory attack ramped up on Sunday after the U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday morning. Follow-on strikes were reported in Israel, across multiple Gulf states, and maritime incidents affected commercial shipping lanes in and around the Strait of Hormuz. One notable and unexpected point of disruption has emerged in the Middle East critical infrastructure on Sunday morning, with Amazon reporting that its Middle East (UAE) data center region has experienced a power issue that degraded internet connectivity and impaired cloud service availability. AWS reported that its ME-CENTRAL-1 Region (mec1-az2), which refers to a specific cluster of AWS data-center infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, is experiencing operational issues due to a “localized power issue.” AWS stated that the severity of the incident is “degraded.” “Other AWS Services are also experiencing error rates and latencies for some workflows. We have weighed away traffic for most services at this time. We recommend customers utilize one of the other Availability Zones in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region at this time, as existing instances in other …
Believing it some sort of civic duty to watch President Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address, I considered fortifying myself first with a large rye whiskey on ice, but wisely chose instead President Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union address of February 27, 1860. The contrast with Trump’s speech was not so much dispiriting (though it was also that) as instructive, even inspiring. In 2004, the actor Sam Waterston recited the speech in the same Great Hall at Cooper Union, in New York City, where Lincoln had spoken, describing the exercise as “a kind of experiment to see if a speech like this could hold a modern audience’s interest.” The long standing ovation he received provided the answer. Waterston may be Cambridge born, but his voice that night had a prairie twang, and like Lincoln he was lanky, urgent, and utterly in earnest. The original speech addressed three audiences: skeptical easterners who wondered if the frontier lawyer was made of presidential stuff, those who agreed with Senator Stephen A. Douglas that the existence of slavery should …
When Kamala Harris’ social media accounts fired back up this week, teasing a big announcement, there were predictions, laughter and some nervous anticipation. Harris initially rebranding her social media accounts into a youth outreach program called Headquarters_67 felt like a joke. Pokémon Go to the “Kamala HQ,” I guess. Alas, by dropping the 67, they’ve already given up the direct appeal to brainrot. To be completely fair, there is nothing wrong with the former vice president rebooting her dormant “Kamala HQ” social media accounts ahead of this year’s midterms. The rebranded operation, now called simply “Headquarters” and transformed into a “new Gen-Z led progressive content hub” and progressive advocacy tool through a partnership with People For the American Way, promises to funnel young people into both online and offline action for progressive values. Or, in the words of Harris herself, it’s “where you can go online to get basically the latest of what’s going on, and also to meet and revisit with some of our great courageous leaders.” Headquarters retains the millions of followers accumulated …
