A home in the southern Lebanon town of Houla, allegedly used by Hezbollah to observe Israeli forces, was demolished by IDF troops overnight, the military says. According to the IDF, the home belonged to Ahmad Ghazi Ali, a Hezbollah operative killed in a drone strike in Houla a week ago.

WH PRESS SECRETARY: “The contrast is clear, Obama and Biden sent taxpayer dollars in a failed attempt to buy the Iranian regime’s compliance. President Trump sent war planes to destroy Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons.”

WH PRESS SECRETARY: “When we look at the entirety of the intelligence that we have to this date, it concludes that these strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities were absolutely successful. It was a total obliteration.”

The bombing has quieted in Iran’s 12-day conflict with Israel. Now its battered theocracy and 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must regroup and rebuild in a changed landscape. Israeli airstrikes decimated the upper ranks of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard and depleted its arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israeli missiles and American bunker buster bombs damaged the nuclear program—though how much remains disputed. Khamenei went into deep isolation in an undisclosed location, appearing only twice in videos as the Israelis had free rein over the country’s skies. Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a group of allied countries and militias in the Mideast, has been mauled by the Israelis since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont offered high praise for New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani following Mamdani’s apparent victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, calling him a leader who brings more than charm to the table.
“What Zohran understood, is that in order to win, you got to be more than charismatic, and he is,” Sanders said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Sanders elaborated on what makes Mamdani’s campaign effective, saying, “You got to be more than smart, which he is. You got to build a strong grassroots movement around a progressive agenda. He had thousands and thousands of people knocking on doors because they were excited about his message.”

The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates. First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department’s third and final estimate. The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted.

The head of the federal government agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wants the mortgage giants to consider accepting a homebuyer’s cryptocurrency holdings in their criteria for buying mortgages from banks. William Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, ordered the agencies Wednesday to prepare a proposal for consideration of crypto as an asset for reserves when they assess risks in single-family home loans. Pulte also instructed the agencies that their mortgage risk assessments should not require cryptocurrency assets to be converted to U.S. dollars.

JERUSALEM – Ofra Keidar was laid to rest today at Kibbutz Be’eri, followin

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea next week will op