Mario Nawfal

🇸🇾🇰🇼 He walled off his library in Damascus and left the country with it still inside Abu Bilal sealed the shelves at the end of 2011, then went to Kuwait. Under Assad, the wrong title in a house search could end in a cell. Years later he came back, knocked the plaster out, and the books were still standing. His son, writer Bilal Alloun, put the moment online. Same country where shops are now stacking titles that used to live under the counter or under the floor. The wall came down because the reason for the wall is gone. Writer: Lucas t.co/NtM3ds6WPm

🇺🇲 A South Carolina inmate used a PENCIL to break out of jail. He then climbed a barbed-wire fence to escape (ouch). Predictably, he was nabbed shortly after. Not very SHARP of him… Writer: Marie t.co/xXPGs5YKGe

🇨🇴 Did you ever think what a beach stream would look like? There it is.. A Colombian creator dragged a full desk into the surf in Cartagena. Dual monitors, tower, gaming chair, softbox, pineapple on the table. Waves hitting the legs of the setup while a juice cart, a horse and a jet ski wander through the shot. Not the wildest, but a rare choice. Writer: Lucas t.co/LOZWcLpuVO

🚨🇲🇽🇮🇷 Mexico paraded drones that appear to be straight copies of Iran's Shahed... The delta wing, the rear-mounted propeller, the silhouette Iran has thrown at Israel and American bases by the hundreds this year, rolled through the Zócalo on Independence Day. The defense ministry insists all drones showcased are domestically designed and built, which is what every country says about the Shahed clone it produces. Let's dissect this a bit more. Seven months of this war taught every coastal country the same lesson. A militia with cheap drones and a stretch of shoreline shut Bab al-Mandeb, and Iran priced the world's oil from the Strait of Hormuz with weapons costing less than a pickup truck. Leverage that once required a navy now requires just a warehouse. To be clear, Mexico is not threatening anyone and has no reason to. It sits on the Yucatán Channel and the Pacific approaches to Panama, and rolling these through the capital square says it understands what those waters are worth. Anyone watching Hormuz and the Red Sea learned the same thing, which is what should really worry Washington. Source: Infobae, CNN / Writer: Daniel

🚨🇺🇸 A wildfire next to I-80 near the California-Nevada line has closed the westbound freeway and forced people out The Floriston Fire started Wednesday morning about 9 miles northeast of Truckee. Cal Fire had it around 300 acres and 5% contained in the afternoon, then closer to 600 by evening. Westbound I-80 is shut from the state line to the Floriston exit. Evacuation orders sit east of Boca Reservoir. Truckee was warned power could drop with no notice if lines get pulled. Cause still under investigation. Source: Police Frequency TG / Writer: Lucas

🇺🇸 🇵🇸 Washington is blocking the Palestinian president from the UN for a second year running The State Department extended the visa denials Wednesday, citing what it called efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority to internationalize the conflict, including bringing cases to international tribunals, and accusing both of glorifying terrorism. Mahmoud Abbas leads both groups. Rubio first imposed the ban in August 2025, demanding the groups repudiate the October 7 attack and end incitement in schools, alongside a near-total suspension of visitor visas for Palestinian passport holders. Congress has been notified. The room Abbas cannot enter is the one where the region's future gets drafted next week. Trump sits with the Gulf monarchies Tuesday to sketch a postwar order, Netanyahu is angling for a meeting of his own, and Saudi recognition of Israel remains the price attached to a nuclear deal. Every Arab government at that table holds Palestinian statehood as its stated condition for normalization. Washington has arranged it so the Palestinian leadership argues its own case through intermediaries, which suits an administration that wants the Abraham Accords expanded without the hardest question on the agenda... Source: The New York Times / Writer: Daniel

🇺🇲The South Park creators’ latest Trump trolling is targeting his penchant for rebranding geography. It’s South Park no more! The show now goes by SOUTH AMERICA! “I’m going down to South America to have myself a time…” Writer: Marie t.co/5zgVO2pe1e

🇸🇻 El Salvador put hundreds of electric cop vehicles on the street Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro handed the PNC more than 360 new units this month. Motos, e-bikes, pickups, SUVs and panel vans. First stops are the historic center and the airport, with more going out across greater San Salvador and La Libertad. They started this shift with a handful of e-motos in 2021. Now there are chargers and solar on ministry roofs, and the quiet patrols are part of the same security build-out Bukele has been stacking for years. Writer: Lucas t.co/DBI4BahPDK

Illinois university built a real thermal invisibility cloak on a 3D printer Shelly Zhang’s lab in Urbana-Champaign wrapped a pocket in an aluminum lattice packed with rubbery polymer. Heat is guided around that pocket instead of lighting it up, so an infrared camera sees a blank spot where the object sits. The work is in Nature Communications, with Denmark’s Technical University on the design side and NSF money behind it. They want the next cloak to hide things that are already hot, not just things sitting still in someone else’s heat. Source: NSF YT / Writer: Lucas

🇨🇴 Another buried bomb kit just came out of northern Antioquia, in Colombia. Troops in Ituango found a depot tied to residual Structure 18 with five homemade devices and 15 kilos of mix, then blew it up in a controlled blast. Officials say that cut off a possible hit on civilians and patrols. Same mountains, same group, same kind of buried workshop. This is how the fight looks when it is not a firefight but a hole in the ground that never gets to go off. Writer: Lucas t.co/CxgTFve2ax

🇨🇳 Shanghai residents can get McDonald’s delivered by DRONE to pick-up kiosks. It’s part of China’s growing “low-altitude economy,” where drones are increasingly being used for deliveries. The Big Mac is officially cleared for takeoff. Source: SCMP / Writer: Marie t.co/luan01clNU

Watching SpaceX’s Starship documentary on a flight to the Starship launch? Total SpaceFlex. Source: @VineethSendil / Writer: Marie t.co/HPPkTcdFPq

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia is running out of missile interceptors and asking four countries for help because America has none to spare... Two regional officials say Riyadh has gone to France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt for air-defense support, an appeal made because its main supplier burned through its own stockpile fighting Iran. The kingdom has to cover military bases, government sites and oil facilities spread across a country the size of Western Europe, which one official called a very difficult position. Britain confirms a close defense partnership and will say nothing further. Turkey and Pakistan told AP they never received a request under the defense pact all three signed last month. Nobody in that group has interceptors to spare either, with European stocks rated critical months ago and Ukraine already competing for the same missiles off the same lines. Which leaves the door Oman and Egypt are holding open, and Washington walked through it last weekend when American representatives met Houthi officials in Muscat. Any settlement built there starts from the map as it stands, with the Houthis holding Bab al-Mandeb and the islands, because there is no force assembling anywhere to take them back. Source: Associated Press / Writer: Daniel

🇺🇲 Reusable rockets were never a side project for SpaceX… They were a priority from the company’s start. It began with Grasshopper tests of vertical takeoffs and landings. That eventually led to technology allowing boosters to return to Earth after launching. What started as a SpaceX experiment has now become routine. Source: @SpaceX / Writer: Marie

🇦🇷🇺🇸 Messi headed in goal 100 for Miami, and Beckham was already on the grass hugging him Inter Miami beat Cruz Azul 2-0 for the Campeones Cup. Suárez crossed, Messi jumped, Casemiro finished the night off a Messi corner. New coach Kily González’s first game, first trophy. Same club the GOAT scored his first Miami goal against. The retirement tour keeps looking like a collection. Writer: Lucas t.co/u5efDBWhbR

🇺🇲Tucker is TEAM MACKLEMORE and called Robert Kraft a “FANATICAL DEVOTEE” of Israel. “Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots and owner of a number of stadiums… is a fanatical devotee of the state of Israel. Devoted to hurting anyone who is not, and slandering them as antisemites.” Tucker is referring to Kraft’s role in the controversy that led to Macklemore being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s “LOOP” tour after his pro-Palestinian comments. Kraft confirmed he pressured Sheeran over Macklemore performing at Gillette Stadium. Sheeran said the final decision came from the promoter. Kraft is an AIPAC donor and has rubbed shoulders with Netanyahu in the past. The more Kraft meddles, the more people may tune into the plight of Palestinians. Source: Al Jazeera / Writer: Marie t.co/1EJwosJZZU

🇷🇺 Putin’s war plan is a calendar, and several clocks just sped up at once He is still pushing Donbas and hitting power and water, still selling winter then spring. Troop losses have not moved him. The timeline he sold his system might. Ukraine’s gains around Lyman do not free the east. They steal the staging ground for Sloviansk and stretch the fortress belt. The countries that help Russia keep the war going are now saying it to his face. Modi told him twice to end it. Kazakhstan’s president called the dead young men a shame. Finland’s president says China already warned Moscow not to go nuclear. Cover getting thinner. The map getting slower. Most likely he still rides it into next year. Victory needed time, cheap allies, and a working home front. Those 3 are no longer moving together. Source: Newsweek, Reuters / Writer: Lucas

🇺🇸🇮🇱 Israel is banking 60,000 American bombs before the next Congress can shut the door... The $2.8 billion package runs to 20,000 Mk-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s and 20,000 I-2000 penetrators, every one of them a ton, funded out of the Pentagon's foreign military sales budget so the money travels from U.S. taxpayers to Israel's military and back into American factories. A former Israeli air force commander put a full multiyear stockpile at 40,000. Gregory Meeks has placed a hold, which carries no legal force, and Rubio already bypassed Congress to ship $3 billion including 35,000 of the same bombs. Jesse Weinberg of Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies explained the rush: "The view at the Kirya, in the prime minister's office and also among Israel's supporters on the Hill is that if you want to move things, now is the time." The NDAA integration push runs on the same logic: build the arrangement now so nobody can unbuild it later. A stockpile that deep means Israel never has to call Washington before a strike, and the leverage American presidents have used for fifty years to slow a campaign, the paused shipment, the delayed delivery, stops working the day those bombs sit in Israeli bunkers. Washington is not being outmaneuvered here. It is writing the check, waiving the review and shipping the ordnance, which makes it a full partner in whatever gets bombed and in the freedom of action being purchased. Source: The New York Times / Writer: Daniel

🚨🇮🇷🇺🇸 Homeland Security warns Iran is probing American oil tank controls, using Chinese AI to do the research The bulletin, reviewed by ABC News, says Iranian cyber actors turned to DeepSeek in early August to study the capacity of U.S. storage tanks, likely as targeting research against the industrial control systems of an American company operating oil wells. Compromised tank gauges let an attacker shut off pumps, fake temperature readings so nobody gets an overheating alert, or flip a whole region's numbers so tanks read empty when they're full and full when they're dry. DHS calls it credible and actionable. Picture the second version of that attack. Fuel trucks dispatched to tanks that don't need them while stations that do run dry, and no operator trusting a single gauge on the board. The bulletin went out so companies can harden their systems, which is the right move and probably a slow one, because American energy infrastructure was built for efficiency rather than siege. Iran has spent seven months closing sea lanes it can reach. Nothing stops it from reaching into tank farms in Texas, and diesel at $6.28 leaves ZERO cushion for a single refinery to go offline. Source: ABC News / Writer: Daniel

🇺🇸 Tucker marked a year since Charlie Kirk by saying honor him with free speech rather than the hustle around his name In that telling Kirk’s whole public life ran on one rule: more speech, including the ugly kind. Hate speech is just speech the people in power dislike. Slander is a lie. Those are not the same thing, and mixing them is how you start telling people to shut up. Tucker tied that to Kirk’s religion. If God makes individuals, not herds, then conscience comes first and the state is only there to guard it. A year later the fight is still the same one. Who gets to speak, and who decides that is too much. Source: @TCNetwork / Writer: Lucas

What looks like a cute little fuzzball is actually a venomous puss caterpillar. Surprisingly, they’re not found in Australia. Writer: Marie t.co/DddI6cAnK8

Strongmen almost never leave a bench behind them Trump, Xi, Putin, Erdogan, the usual Latin American strong-center types. Different flags, same habit. The movement is the man. Loyalty beats a farm system. When the name leaves the poster, the party looks around and finds a vice president, a loyalist, or a vacuum. Vance is not Trump. Rubio is not Trump. Medvedev was not Putin. The next guy in Beijing is not Xi. That is the point of building it this way. It wins the room you are standing in and starves the room after you. Coalitions survive a funeral. Personality cults schedule one and call it a transition. Source: Foreign Affairs / Writer: Lucas

🇺🇸 Naming yourself that is doing a lot of the lifting... or it seems 😂 Writer: Lucas t.co/Eh1kOFvIFj

🇮🇷🇨🇳 Iran's foreign minister came out of Beijing talking about who sets the rules in the Middle East from here. "Successful consultations in China with our partners. Iran values strategic partnership we have built over time. Today's decisions will decide future strategic balance in the region, with immeasurable knock-on effects. Four principles for peace outlined by President Xi are key." Notice whose framework he's citing. Not the American ceasefire text, not the Omani channel, but a Chinese peace plan, and Xi has been shopping a new Gulf security architecture since his Egypt visit. Whatever gets signed after November, Beijing intends to have its fingerprints on the paper, and Xi arrives in Washington next week holding that leverage. Writer: Daniel

🇺🇸 Massie just named the day off after Hegseth. House GOP sent members home a day early, which also kicks his impeachment vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth past the midterms. Massie said that's the point. Rules gave them 48 hours to hold the vote. They could have done it last night or today, but they left instead. He is calling Thursday the Hegseth holiday. The 2 weeks already cut from the calendar, he is calling the Epstein recess. His read is that the House GOP leadership ran a whip check and did not like the names that might show up. Speaker Johnson says it is about campaigning. The House is gone until after Election Day. The vote waits. Writer: Lucas t.co/4e9Tn0Wk4E

🇵🇱🇺🇦 Poland is planning the installation of a ~70-mile-long electronic security system along its border with Ukraine. While physical barriers already exist, the new system will feature monitoring systems and movement/traffic detectors. Poland also intends to expand existing systems on its borders with Russia and Belarus. Towers with drone-detection systems have specifically been mentioned for the Belarusian border. Ukraine’s eastern front is getting an upgrade. Source: Polish Radio / Writer: Marie

Proof that “the crowd can’t all be wrong” is the most expensive lie we keep buying. Writer: Daniyal t.co/ALLjfyVsd1

🇸🇦🇮🇷 Washington told the Gulf the Iran war would take a month, seven months later Riyadh can't get a call returned, and Israel is grabbing 40,000 bombs before the door closes Before the first strike, Gulf diplomats told Murtaza Hussain what Washington had promised them: "just give us a month… you'll never have this Iranian problem again" They opened their bases on that word. Seven months later the problem has spread to the Red Sea, a Saudi F-15 is in pieces, and the same capitals that lent the runways are being told they're on their own. The 40,000 heavy bombs headed to Israel fit the same clock. Every transfer gets harder to pass, so take everything now, while the most permissive president in a generation still signs. Murtaza's sources in Washington said before the war it couldn't happen because the interceptor math was hopeless. They were right about the math. What they didn't foresee was a government doing it anyway. @MazMHussain @WeTheBrandon

🇨🇳 He was one inch from a closed casket. This guy is knocked out on a bench when a truck reverses and slams into a huge billboard. The whole thing comes down and one of the corners drops right next to his head. Somehow it only smashes the pack of cigarettes sitting there instead of him. He snaps awake, looks around for a second, and then you can see the moment of realization. That’s the closest you get without disappearing. Writer: Daniyal t.co/dMMJqH7jYb

🇲🇽 Independence Day night in Tijuana, Mexico, spilled into a street fight with cars. It kicked off September 15th near Landmark. A celebration turned into punches in the middle of the boulevard; cars got pulled into it, and someone went under a vehicle while the mess was still moving. The official Grito at City Hall had its own crowd. This was the after-hours version on a main strip, when the flags were still out and the road was not. Writer: Lucas t.co/KRoTEjQauO