GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said he has 'lost all confidence' in US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after he warned Israel faces a 'strategic defeat' if it cannot contain civilian casualties in Gaza. 

During a Sunday morning appearance on CNN's State of the Union with Dana Bash, Graham countered that 'strategic failure' from Israel would be 'letting Hamas stand.'

He made the comment in response to a question about Secretary Austin's recent claim that Israel's continued killing of civilians in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate Hamas would yield a 'tactical victory' at the expense of a 'strategic' one.

'He's so naïve. I've just lost all confidence in this guy,' said Graham, slightly exasperated.

'Secretary Austin is telling Israel things that are impossible to achieve,' he said, asking what strategy the head of DoD would suggest implementing in order to eradicate Hamas.

The social media influencer stereotype is a scantily clad 20-something giving fitness tips, hunky wellness gurus or yummy mommy yoga instructors.

But a new wave of stars are hitting Instagram, TikTok and YouTube and sharing their wisdom — senior citizens, some of them in their 80s.

Known as 'grandfluencers', they have gained millions of followers by sharing posts about baking pies and life advice.

The most successful among them make as much as $150,000 per post, through sponsorships with brands and selling merchandise. 

Lynn Yamada Davis,79, earns a cozy six-figure salary from her 'Cooking With Lynja' channels, which shows her making food in unconventional ways - 17 million people watched one video of her building a 10-foot-long hotdog and making popcorn with a hair straightener. 

Most people would assume followers of these grandfluencers are older adults, but most of their fans are the younger generation who have welcomed them with open arms into the digital world. 

From the time Joe Biden hit the campaign trail before becoming president, he pledged that he would eliminate fossil fuels as much as possible as a source of energy for the nation. He boldly stated at one point that he would close coal plants across the country.

His plan is to replace fossil fuels with “green energy” such as solar and wind sources that liberals believe can power the world without fossil fuels which, ironically, are used in those energy sources. Biden has become known as a president who will work legal angles or bureaucratic processes to get his way.

Biden’s questionable methodology in government practices was recently exposed by a major news outlet. Biden’s administration knows how to work the “alphabet offices” to get what he wants. Fox News Digital uncovered within federal internal documents a bureaucratic lease scheme that affects taxpayers.

From Fox News:
The Biden administration quietly granted a request from an energy firm developing an offshore wind project off the coast of Massachusetts to waive development fees designed to safeguard taxpayers.

Republicans have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of neglecting the Southern border. Many have pointed out that the White House, despite spending resources on the border, is making the situation worse.

Border Patrol agents are reportedly not allowed to remove migrants from the country. Instead, the DHS is tasking them with processing illegal crossers and releasing them into the country.

This appears to have only encouraged migrants to try to cross the border. And now, a new report reveals that Biden is closing legal ports of entry, to make processing illegal entrants faster.

For months now, large cities have been struggling to deal with the migrant crisis. These so-called sanctuary cities quickly became overwhelmed after red states sent a few thousand migrants to them.

In one blue city, the situation is so bad that the mayor claimed it will “destroy” the city. Other cities have begged the federal government for funds to house the growing number of illegal border crossers.

Despite this serious situation, Democrats have refused to deport these migrants. And while this one city is crumbling, its leaders decided to prioritize this issue.

From The Post Millennial:
New York City just enacted a law banning discrimination against height or weight… This means that in addition to other protected characteristics like age, gender, race, or religion, a person’s weight and height will also be considered protected identifiers under the law.

The law will bring fat discrimination under the jurisdiction of New York’s Commission on Human Rights. This is the body that heads up discrimination issues for other identifiers and characteristics, such as LGBTQ, race, etc.

New York is suffering from rising crime, exploding homelessness, unchecked drug abuse, and an endless flood of illegal border crossers. Despite facing issues that could destroy it, the city has prioritized criminalizing “fat discrimination.”

Scientists have developed tiny robots using human cells that could one day patrol our bodies, searching for and healing diseased cells and tissue.

So-called 'anthrobots,' assembled from human cells can repair damage to brain cells in a dish, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Advanced Science.

Scientists at Tufts University in Massachusetts developed the microscopic robots to eventually heal diseases. There are multiple additional steps before that happens, but they foresee the technology repairing cell and tissue damage from conditions such as Alzheimer's. 

These bots - whose name means 'human robots' - were made from human airway cells. 

In the future if this technology advances to the point that it can be deployed in hospitals, the fact that the bots can be made from a person's own cells, with their own DNA, would help ensure that the body does not reject them, senior author Michael Levin told DailyMail.com.

The majority of the guns used by students in school shootings between 1990 and 2016 were lower- to moderate-powered firearms, a new study has found.

About 77 percent of the weapons used in 253 school shootings over this 26-year period were smaller-caliber handguns or shotguns, a finding that runs counter to the popular image of school shooters carrying high-powered assault-style weapons. 

While much of the public discussion about preventing firearm deaths centers on common-sense gun control laws or questions of technology, such as magazine capacity, this research points to a simple solution: safe storage. 

In about 61 percent of cases, teens seemed to have stolen these weapons. The vast majority of stolen weapons were taken from family members. 

The death toll from Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip has exceeded 15,500, while over 41,300 people have been injured, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said on Sunday.

"The number of victims of the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip since October 7 has grown to 15,523 people, 41,316 others sustained injuries of varying severity," Al-Qudra told a televised news conference.

Last week, Qatar mediated a deal between Israel and Hamas on a temporary truce and the exchange of some of the prisoners and hostages, as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The truce was extended several times, but on Friday, the Israeli military resumed fighting against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, saying the group had violated the humanitarian pause by opening fire on Israeli territory.

Israel’s victory over Hamas will become a “strategic defeat” if the country doesn’t prevent civilian casualties during its military operation in Gaza, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said.

Washington “will continue to press Israel to protect civilians and to ensure the robust flow of humanitarian aid” into Gaza, Austin vowed on Saturday, in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum at Simi Valley, California.

“The center of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” the Pentagon chief said, implying that indiscriminate attacks on Gaza by Israel could prompt even more Palestinians to join the ranks of the Hamas armed group.

“It would compound this tragedy if all that awaited Israelis and Palestinians at the end of this awful war was more insecurity, more rage and more despair,” Austin added.

Israeli warplanes have delivered more than 10,000 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since the beginning of its military operation in the enclave, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

Since the beginning of the war, approximately 10,000 airstrikes were carried out under the guidance of IDF soldiers on the ground in short time frames," it said. "The soldiers quickly completed missions and thwarted terrorist cells, terrorist infrastructure, command centers, tunnel shafts, weapons depots and more."

"Following Hamas’ violation of the operational pause agreement, the fighting in the Gaza Strip has resumed, and the IDF soldiers are continuing the ground operation in full cooperation with aircraft of the IAF. The cooperation between the ground forces and the IAF is one of the most prominent elements in the IDF’s ground operation in the Gaza Strip," the IDF said.

Patients lie on cold, bloodstained floors in hospitals filled to overflowing. Some scream in pain, but others lie silently, deathly white, too weak even to cry out.

Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have descended into chaos since the resumption of the war between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.

After eight weeks of war, interrupted only by one seven-day pause that ended on Friday, the doctors are exhausted.

Fuel reserves have almost run dry because of Israel's blockade of the territory, so doctors are forced to choose when and where across their hospitals to run generators.

According to the United Nations, not a single hospital in the territory's north can currently operate on patients.

The most seriously wounded are transferred daily to the south by convoys organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But even there, the UN says, the 12 remaining hospitals are only "partially functional".

Six Palestinian detainees have been tortured to death by the Israeli occupation, according to the WAFA news agency, citing a statement by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs, while they were held in Israeli occupation prisons. This comes as part of the systematic campaign of assaults against Palestinian detainees and prisoners since October 7.

The six Palestinians who were martyred as a result of Israeli torture are Omar Daraghmeh from Tubas, Arafat Hamdan from Ramallah, Majed Zaqoul from Gaza, Abdel Rahman Marei from Salfit, Thaer Abu Assab from Qalqilya, and a martyr whose identity remains undisclosed.

The statement underscored that alongside severe torture, the occupation prison authorities have been cracking down on detained Palestinians by sending them to isolation and preventing them from any form of communication with the outside world, including their family members and lawyers.

The Government Media Office in Gaza highlighted on Saturday that Israeli bombing destroyed 80% of rescue vehicles and equipment, noting that there is no longer fuel to move the rest.

In a statement, the Office confirmed that "the equipment and mechanisms belonging to the relief, emergency, and civil defense teams cannot reach disaster and massacre areas."

The statement pointed out that some Gazans have remained "for days and weeks under the rubble without those crews being able to dig them up, due to the targeting and destruction."

It underlined that "the humanitarian situation has reached a catastrophic stage" in the Gaza Strip.

While "Israel" claims to be conducting a more "surgical" approach in southern Gaza as advised by the US to allegedly avoid mass civilian casualties, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder revealed on Sunday that the current bombardment of Gaza is the worst since the war began.

In an X post, Elder said the Israeli bombardment of southern Gaza is the “worst bombardment of the war right now.” 

He further detailed that he was seeing "massive casualties", warning that this was the "final warning to save children; and our collective conscience."

The US Navy carried out provocative military exercises off the Yemeni coast in the Gulf of Aden, near the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

Saudi “Al-Hadath” TV channel reported that the US Navy Central Command is conducting military exercises simulating the storming and seizure aboard the missile destroyer “USS Mason” in the Gulf of Aden.

The channel added that the military exercises were part of what it called “maritime security support operations in the Middle East.”

Iran has warned of "Israeli war expansion" in the region if its forces continue to commit war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian spoke by phone with European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell about the latest developments on Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said late Saturday.

“If the war crimes committed by the Israeli regime in Gaza and the West Bank are not stopped, the scope of the war in the region is likely to deepen and expand,” Abdollahian warned.

Abdollahian stressed the need to "stop the military attacks launched by the Zionist regime against the residents of Gaza as soon as possible," the statement said, urging “the importance of providing the necessary ways to send humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”

As usual, this is more “eat the rich” thinking than anything remotely helpful. The world is not fast on its journey to hell in a hand-basket because of private jets flying in and out of the UK. But then, the Greens love to ban things, blame the West for everything, and cry catastrophe, much more than they like to create, invent or solve things.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has dispatched two armed patrol vessels to watch over more than a hundred Chinese boats that it said were “swarming” the disputed area around a small reef in the South China Sea.

On Sunday, the PCG released photos and videos that it said show ships belonging to the Chinese Maritime Militia, moored close to each other near the small, boomerang-shaped Julian Felipe Reef. This tactic allows them to create floating outposts at sea, according to Philippine media.

Manila considers Julian Felipe, as well as many other islets, atolls and reefs in the area it calls the West Philippine Sea, part of its exclusive economic zone.

A recent leak from inside the Likud Party in Israel claims that Netanyahu is telling party members he has Biden in the palm of his hand.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian revealed on Sunday that documents obtained by the Resistance during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 confirm the Israeli plan to forcibly displace all Gaza residents to Egypt and West Bank inhabitants to parts of Jordan.

In a press conference from Tehran, after he met with his Omani counterpart Badr al-Busaidi, Amir-Abdollahian called on the United States to bear responsibility for its support of "Israel" in its brutal war against Gaza, which has been ongoing for nearly two months now and has killed over 15,500 people, over two-thirds of which are children and women.

He pointed out that Washington, which makes media statements about the necessity of preventing the annihilation of civilians, actually supports the annihilation of Gaza's population by greenlighting the occupation's aggression.

A member of Russia’s State Duma has proposed reviving a tax on childlessness which existed during the Soviet era, citing the need to boost the population.

The original tax on childlessness was adopted during World War II and existed until the break-up of the Soviet Union. The levy applied to men aged 20-50 and married women aged 20-45.

“We must encourage the birth of children,” Evgeny Fyodorov from the ruling United Russia party told Moscow Speaks radio on Saturday. He added that the tax revenue could be used to fund existing and future welfare programs designed to help families with children.

“Should we introduce a tax for this cause? If we won’t have enough money for such projects, we should,” the lawmaker, who sits on the parliamentary budget and taxation committee, said. “It is not punishment, but a solution to the problem.”

A fire station in Alabama is working to open the state’s first Safe Haven Baby Box in the coming weeks.

The baby box is being installed at Madison Fire Station One on Mill Road, WAFF48 reported.

Dan Pickens with Madison Fire and Rescue said the box will be ready in a few weeks and must first go through a seven-day test phase to make sure it is working properly.

“[A]nd then there would be the blessing of the box where there would be an actual priest come out bless the box and put in service,” Pickens said.

Baby boxes were created to deter parents from abandoning their newborns, potentially leaving them to die. Baby boxes are temperature-controlled incubators that are often built into outside, exterior walls of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals and can be accessed from inside. At-risk mothers can safely and legally place their newborns inside. Then, the outside door locks, and mothers have time to get away before an alarm goes off alerting first responders or hospital staff inside.

The baby is then quickly removed and sent to a hospital for a wellness check. From there, the baby is usually placed into state custody and often quickly adopted.