“A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad’s regime is facing a possible decades-long prison sentence in the U.S. A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to sentence Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture while in charge of Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.” [editor’s note: Last time I checked, Syria wasn’t a US state or territory, so how would the US courts have jurisdiction in the matter? – TLK] (09/17/26)
“Doral Mayor Christi Fraga is responding to business owners who say increased [ICE gang] activity in the city is frightening customers and workers and taking a significant toll on their businesses. ICE [gang members] were seen Wednesday in different areas of Doral, a city with a large immigrant population. A local social media platform reported that agents [abducted] people at a gas station near Northwest 41st Street and 107th Avenue. Nearby business owners say the presence of [gang members] is having an immediate economic impact. … Fraga told CBS News Miami that she understands the concerns but said local governments have no authority to prevent federal [gang members] from conducting [abduction] operations within their cities.” (09/16/26)
“When Sheena Hamlin found out she was pregnant with a daughter she named Ellie, she was ‘very excited’, until her doctors discovered at around 21 weeks that the baby ‘might survive birth, but that her lungs were so severely underdeveloped that she would suffocate almost as soon as the umbilical cord was cut’. ‘The alternative would be to terminate the pregnancy,’ explains a lawsuit filed in state court on Wednesday, but that ‘was not an option in Oklahoma’, where a pair of laws force patients whose ‘pregnancy will end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of an infant shortly after birth’ to leave the state if they choose abortion. … she flew to Illinois for care shortly before Thanksgiving in 2024, and spent nearly $4,000 out of pocket. After the ‘devastating’ experience, the couple ‘underwent genetic testing and confirmed that Ellie had Meckel-Gruber syndrome’.” (09/17/26)
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party on Wednesday petitioned the electoral commission to block initiatives aimed at helping Israelis who live abroad return to vote in upcoming close-fought elections. Israel’s electoral law does not allow citizens residing outside the country to vote abroad, except for diplomats and emissaries sent by certain organisations. The Central Bureau of Statistics estimates there are 600,000 Israelis living abroad. Government opponents have been working for several weeks to encourage voters to come home to cast their ballots, hoping to strengthen the anti-Netanyahu camp in elections scheduled for 27 October. Initiatives include offering discounted plane tickets, assisting expatriates with the administrative procedures required to vote and organising their transport from the airport. Attorney Ilan Bombach, representing Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, filed an appeal on Wednesday with the chairman of the Central Elections Committee demanding an end to these practices.” (09/17/26)
“The White House said Thursday that it was withdrawing its nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ensuring that an agency at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda will remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for at least a while longer. Schroyer is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma. He has little experience with immigration. The White House offered no comment in a brief statement. When he nominated Schroyer in June, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his pick was ‘a PATRIOT with real operational experience’ and a ‘proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst’. ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. David Venturella returned to the agency as acting director earlier this year after Todd Lyons resigned.” (09/17/26)
“A man initially accused of being a high-profile al-Qaida figure and who was tortured in CIA custody appeared Thursday at a hearing to review his detention at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been held for 20 years without charges. A U.S. government official said Abu Zubaydah, who wore a neatly trimmed beard and glasses, had ‘probably’ served as one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted facilitators. The roughly 20-minute hearing offered rare visibility into the secretive military court proceedings of a suspect who had been tortured at CIA black sites during the U.S. war on terrorism and whose case still has not been resolved 25 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Zubaydah’s unidentified government-assigned representative and his private attorney, Annika Conrad, both acknowledged he had known bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind. But they said Zubaydah was never a member of the militant group that bin Laden founded.” (09/17/26)
“Peter Max, the German-born artist whose art is said to have captured the colorful, psychedelic counterculture spirit of the 1960s, has died, according to reports. He was 88. … Born in Berlin to Jewish parents in 1937, Max and his family fled Nazis Germany for China when he was still an infant, spending several years there during his youth, according to a biography on Max by Park West Gallery, where the pop artist’s work has been sold. In 1953, a 16-year-old Max and his family moved from Europe to Brooklyn … It was during the 1960s and 1970s that he and his art exploded into the mainstream and he produced some of his best-known Pop Art works that would come to define the look and feel of the Flower Power culture of the United States.” (09/17/26)
“For four years, India, one of the world’s biggest oil importers, has turned Russia’s war-driven disruption of global oil markets to its advantage. Russian crude, displaced from western markets after the invasion of Ukraine, has flowed instead to Indian refineries, often at attractive discounts. The arrangement has lowered the cost of one of India’s biggest imports and given its refiners an abundant source of crude. Now that bargain is becoming a source of geopolitical risk. The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation giving President Donald Trump broad powers to impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs of up to 100% on [Americans who buy goods from] countries that buy Russian oil and gas. It will now go to Trump to be signed into law. [Americans who buy goods from] India and China are among those most exposed because both are major buyers of Russian oil.” (09/17/26)
“An Argentinian judge has ordered the suspension of a British-Israeli oil project near the Falkland Islands in a purely symbolic move as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory. Wednesday’s interim ruling issued by a court in Argentina’s southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, follows a lawsuit filed by 1982 war veterans and environmental lawyers earlier this month. The plaintiffs sought to block Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum from the Sea Lion oilfield, located about 220km (137 miles) from the islands. … London maintains the islands are British and rejects the jurisdiction of Argentinian courts in the Falklands. The islanders themselves voted overwhelmingly in 2013 to remain British.” (09/17/26)
“A California billionaire tax proposal is skating toward a narrow win in November according to a poll released Tuesday, although the measure is exposing deep generational divides in the state. A slim 52% of voters support Proposition 40, which would levy a one-time tax on billionaires, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll. The poll found opposition was close behind, with 46% of voters not supporting it. Surveys have found voters consistently support the measure, although the latest PPIC poll shows a slight decrease in support from when the same group asked voters about the measure in the spring. … The measure would levy a one-time 5% tax on the approximately 250 billionaires who lived in the state on Jan. 1, 2026, and it would be owed with their 2026 tax returns, although the billionaires could pay in installments.” [editor’s note: In addition to it being an evil and idiotic idea, the back-dating violates the US Constitution’s prohibition on ex post facto laws – TLK] (09/16/26)
