“A Dallas-area federal jury indicted five people this week accused of defrauding customers of their cattle company of $220 million. The defendants operated through the company Agridime LLC, the Justice Department said Thursday. … Federal prosecutors allege that between January 2021 and December 2023, the five told clients, including feedlots, cattle ranchers and people wanting to buy individual cattle, that Agridime would use the money the clients paid to buy and raise specific cattle before selling the meat at a profit. … The Justice Department accused the group of instead using incoming payments from customers to pay off company operating expenses, pay money owed to previous customers, pay personal expenses and buy real property.” (02/16/26)
“Newly elected Bangladesh lawmakers have been sworn into parliament, days after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) swept the first vote since the 2024 student-led uprising that expelled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Tarique Rahman will take the oath as prime minister later on Tuesday, as the BNP is expected to form a new government after securing more than a two-thirds majority in the elections last week. … The BNP won at least 212 seats in the 300-seat parliament, giving it a strong majority, while the Jamaat-e-Islami party won 77 seats. Hasina’s Awami League was banned from participating in the polls.” (02/17/26)
“The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84. … Jackson had had progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for more than a decade. He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was also twice hospitalised with Covid in recent years. A fixture in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics since the 1960s, Jackson was once close to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.” (02/17/26)
“Israeli police arrested 28 people after a large mob of ultra-Orthodox men chased two female IDF soldiers through the streets. Chaotic scenes broke out in the city of Bnei Brak amid anger over conscription orders, with police using stun grenades to control the situation. Footage from Sunday afternoon shows two women being escorted away by police while a huge crowd of men chased after them, shouting and kicking wheelie bins along the street. The rioters injured five police officers, overturned a patrol car and set fire to a police motorcycle, reports say. … Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, was forced on Sunday to deny that his rhetoric was responsible for inciting violence against Israel’s military forces. The rabbi ordered students at ultra-orthodox schools to ignore, on religious grounds, conscription orders to the IDF, an order usually received at the age of 18.” (02/16/26)
“Robert Duvall, the steely-eyed actor whose performances in the first two Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini, Lonesome Dove and The Apostle made him one of the finest actors of any generation, has died. He was 95. Duvall, who received an Academy Award — one of his seven Oscar nominations — for his performance as an alcoholic country singer in Tender Mercies (1983), died Sunday at home on his Virginia ranch, his wife, Luciana, announced. … Duvall’s line in Apocalypse Now, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ became the stuff of movie legend. With jets flying overhead and shells exploding nearby, the scene, shot in the Philippines, was done, amazingly, in one take.” (02/16/26)
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) began on Monday a navy exercise in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, state media reported. The intensive drills, named ‘Smart Control of Hormuz Strait’ were being conducted by the IRGC naval forces, and under the supervision of the head of the IRGC, state TV reported. The drill aimed at testing the readiness of operational forces in the face of ‘possible security and military threats,’ the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The exercise comes amid growing tensions with the US, both over Iran’s nuclear program and its deadly response to anti-regime protests last month.” (02/16/26)
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation informed Minnesota’s highest investigative agency that it will not share evidence and information related to the [murder] of Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a statement that it was informed by the FBI on Friday it would not be sharing any information. … Pretty, 37, was shot multiple times by federal agents on Jan. 24, while observing their activities in the Minneapolis area. He was the second civilian [murdered] in the area by federal agents, weeks after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good. The FBI has also refused to cooperate with Minnesota authorities in the investigation into Good’s [murder] at the hands of federal agent Jonathan Ross.” (02/16/26)
“Apple is starting to test end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) RCS messages with the developer beta of iOS 26.4 released Monday. Apple announced plans last year to support the feature, and once fully available, it will let iPhone and Android users send encrypted RCS messages to each other across platforms. However, with this initial implementation, Apple is only testing RCS encryption between Apple devices. It’s ‘not yet testable with other platforms,’ Apple says.” (02/16/26)
“Strikes on a market in central Sudan’s Kordofan region killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens, said a rights group on Monday, as the war between the army and a paramilitary group nears its three-year mark. Emergency Lawyers, a rights group tracking violence against civilians, said in a statement that drones bombed a market in Sudri locality in North Kordofan province on Sunday, during a time the market was bustling with civilians, ‘exacerbating the humanitarian tragedy.’ The group said the number of casualties was likely to rise. … The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military erupted into a full-blown war across the country in April 2023. So far, at least 40,000 people have been killed and 12 million displaced, according to the World Health Organization.” (02/16/26)
“Chinese technology giant ByteDance has pledged to curb a controversial artificial intelligence (AI) video-making tool, following threats of legal action from Disney and complaints from other entertainment giants. In the last few days, videos made using the latest version of the app Seedance have proliferated online. Many have been lauded for their realism. But the trend has also sparked alarm from several Hollywood studios that have accused the AI platform’s makers of copyright infringement. On Friday, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance accusing it of supplying Seedance with a ‘pirated library’ of the studio’s copyrighted characters, including those from Marvel and Star Wars.” (02/16/26)
