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AI firm DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations, a senior U.S. official told Reuters, adding that the Chinese tech startup sought to use Southeast Asian shell companies to access high-end semiconductors that cannot be shipped to China under U.S. rules.

Hangzhou-based DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the technology world in January, claiming its artificial intelligence reasoning models were on par with or better than U.S. industry-leading models at a fraction of the cost.

"We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China's military and intelligence operations," a senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview.

Kat Cammack recounts emergency room ordeal but claims ‘fearmongering’ by Democrats and pro-choice activists sowing confusion among medical professionals

Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack has revealed that she almost died last year as a result of her state’s six-week abortion ban, which left hospital staff reluctant to treat her ectopic pregnancy for fear of criminal prosecution.

Cammack was only five weeks pregnant at the time, the embryo had no heartbeat and her own safety was in jeopardy, but nevertheless the congresswoman found herself forced to pull up the letter of the law on her phone to argue the case and even put in a call to Governor Ron DeSantis, without being able to reach him, before staff relented and came to her aid.

But surprisingly, given her ordeal, the representative does not feel the law itself is at fault and instead blames Democrats for scaring medical professionals into confusion over their responsibilities.

Heavily immigrant towns and cities in California resemble ghost towns as fear of Ice raids grip local residents

At Hector’s Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.

“I haven’t seen it like this since Covid,” manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.

“No, I’m staying home,” a customer texted back. “It’s really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.”

Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump’s dragnet.

Advocates fear Senate’s version of Trump’s budget bill could leave millions without healthcare and boost corporations

Advocates are urging Senate Republicans to reject a proposal to cut billions from American healthcare to extend tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations.

The proposal would make historic cuts to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people that covers 71 million Americans, and is the Senate version of the “big beautiful bill” act, which contains most of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

“With the text released earlier this week, somehow the Senate made the House’s ‘big, bad budget bill’ worse in many ways,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer healthcare advocacy group, in a press call.

Trump’s dubious claims of ‘emergency’ threaten civic and political norms in authoritarian style, experts warn

Donald Trump’s drives to pursue his radical policies on immigration, tariffs and energy may seem at first to have little in common beyond a shared Maga political agenda.

But Trump has made spurious or thinly documented claims of “national emergencies” to justify harsh illegal immigrant measures, sweeping tariffs and massive energy deregulation, say legal scholars, watchdog groups and Democrats.

Some fear that governing by claims of “national emergency” has become normalised under Trump, posing a threat to US civic society and political norms as he governs in a permanent crisis mode and authoritarian style.

Marco Rubio has called on China to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important shipping routes.

His comments came after Iran's state-run Press TV reported that parliament had approved a plan to close the Strait but added that the final decision lies with the Supreme National Security Council.

Any disruption to the supply of oil would have profound consequences for the economy. China in particular is the world's largest buyer of Iranian oil and has a close relationship with Tehran.

A federal judge in Tennessee has ruled that a Salvadoran migrant at the heart of the debate over Donald Trump’s border security policies must be released from jail while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes ruled in Nashville on June 22 that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, 29, cannot remain in detention, denying the federal government's request. The judge set a June 25 hearing in Nashville to determine the conditions of Abrego Garcia's release.

In a 51-page ruling, Holmes said the federal government “failed to meet its burden of showing a properly supported basis for detention on grounds that (Abrego Garcia) poses an irremediable danger to the community or is likely not to appear."

Guardian reporting reveals confusing and contradictory events surrounding death of Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado

A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US.

Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident.

The death occurred as private companies with little to no oversight are increasingly tasked with transporting more immigration detainees across the US, in pursuit of the Trump administration’s recently-announced target of arresting 3,000 people a day.

Donald Trump expressed certainty his big gamble to directly assist the Israelis delivered a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear program — even as many supporters and detractors alike were warning that U.S. military action could draw the United States into an expansive regional conflict.

Trump, in brief remarks to the nation on Saturday evening from the White House, said the U.S. strikes “obliterated” three critical Iranian enrichment facilities and “the bully of the Middle East must now make peace.”

But it’s a risky moment for Trump, who has belittled his predecessors for tying up America in “stupid wars” and has repeatedly said he was determined to keep the U.S. and the Middle East from another expansive conflict.

Planting trees has plenty of benefits, but this popular carbon-removal method alone can’t possibly counteract the planet-warming emissions caused by the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies. To do that, trees would have to cover the entire land mass of North and Central America, according to a study out Thursday.

Many respected climate scientists and institutions say removing carbon emissions — not just reducing them — is essential to tackling climate change. And trees remove carbon simply by “breathing.”

But crunching the numbers, researchers found that the trees’ collective ability to remove carbon through photosynthesis can’t stand up to the potential emissions from the fossil fuel reserves of the 200 largest oil, gas and coal fuel companies — there’s not enough available land on Earth to feasibly accomplish that.

Following Trump’s attacks on Iran, an admin official tells Rolling Stone, “The intelligence assessments have not really changed”

After Donald Trump’s decision to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, administration officials are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented — and potentially calamitous — attacks were motivated by new intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.

Just months ago, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress, in her opening statement, that the U.S. intel community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.

While Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard’s testimony, according to two administration officials with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, the president’s decision to strike was not driven by any new U.S. intelligence on Iran.