20 February 2022: A French modelling agent and close associate of the late US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his prison cell in Paris.

Jean-Luc Brunel was found hanged in his cell in La Santé prison at 01:00 on Saturday, prosecutors told the BBC.

US President Donald Trump, citing "tremendous interest," said he was directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to release files related to extraterrestrials and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

He said the agencies should include "any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."

He made the announcement on social media on Thursday, hours after accusing former President Barack Obama of disclosing "classified information" when he suggested in a podcast interview that aliens were real.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for responsible frameworks for the governance of artificial intelligence as well as its democratization to ensure people around the world have access to the technology.

That's at a time when AI threatens to take over jobs and AI tools face greater scrutiny by governments all over the world.

India AI summit: Modi, Macron call for safety amid AI boom

A U.S. federal judge has issued an opinion that compares President Donald Trump’s administration removal of displays about slavery from a historical site in Philadelphia to the actions of the propaganda agency in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

Judge Slams Trump Admin for Orwellian History

By Jessica Corbett

Posters depicting world ‘leaders’ wearing Nazi uniforms have led to a cafe owner having to shut down an unrelated gig as Canberra police established a crime scene.

On Wednesday, ACT Police officers attended Dissent Cafe & Bar in Canberra after a complaint about “possible hate imagery”, and asked the owner to remove posters. The owner declined, so police established a crime scene, seized five posters, and said they will be considered under “recently enacted Commonwealth legislation regarding hate symbols.”

Cafe of Dissent. When satire meets hate speech laws

by Joshua Barnett

The posters depicted Donald Trump, J D Vance, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu in Nazi uniforms, along with signs to “Sanction Israel” and “Stop Genocide.”

Angus Taylor has assembled his shadow ministry, but unresolved tensions with the Nationals, policy baggage from the last election and doubts about his own authority leave his leadership exposed.

In allocating the various portfolios in his shadow cabinet and ministry, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has managed to pay off most of his current political debts, as well as disposing of some of his enemies. But he is now stuck with a few potentially brutal problems.

David Solomon

The US military buildup in the Middle East isn’t about defense — it’s aimed at “inflicting serious damage on Iran,” Dmitry Drozdenko, military analyst and chief editor of the Fatherland Arsenal portal, tells Sputnik.

Since there has been no official attack on Israel or the US by Iran, we are witnessing prep for an “unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation,” he argues.

The analyst weighed in on the current US show of force:

E-3 Sentry AWACS deployed to US bases in Europe and Middle East - flying radars & command centers

Carrier-based reconnaissance bolstered by Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye AEW aircraft

EA-18G electronic warfare jets

Positioned F-35A fighters and tanker aircraft extend the operational reach of US and Israeli AF

The Dalai Lama has taken home his first Grammy award, prompting criticism from China.

The 90-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader, who lives in exile in India, was announced as the winner for the narration and storytelling category for his spoken word album, Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama – adding the award to a collection that includes a Nobel peace prize, a presidential medal of freedom and the Gandhi peace prize.

US President Donald Trump is weighing the possibility of killing Iran’s leadership in hopes of achieving regime change, the The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing US and foreign officials. The publication said the president has not made a final decision.

According to the report, Trump received several briefings on strike options, including a potentially weeks-long air campaign to “kill scores of Iranian political and military leaders,” with the end goal of toppling the government. Other options reportedly focus on nuclear and missile sites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxYD1CSVjYY

Hillary Clinton BEGS Trump to Bomb Russia

War or peace? Diplomacy or disaster? Tonight on The Mother of All Talkshows, George Galloway tackles the global storm gathering over Ukraine, Iran, Gaza and Washington.

As “peace pow-wows” dominate the headlines, tensions are rising fast. Is Volodymyr Zelensky playing a dangerous game with Donald Trump? Is Iran preparing for open confrontation in the Persian Gulf? And what does it all mean for Israel, Gaza and the wider Middle East?

Joining George:

By Rami Amichai TEL AVIV (Reuters) Tue, May 13, 2014 — Israel's ex-prime minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced to six years in jail on Tuesday [for taking bribes in a real estate deal, a crime the judge said was akin to treason. The first criminal conviction of a former Israeli head of government all but ended speculation that Olmert - a centrist credited internationally with working towards a peace settlement with the Palestinians - might return to political life.

We used to be journalists, but now we mostly just bitch about them. (Kidding. Kind of.) We also break down broken news.

This weekly podcast brings you honest and original media analysis from two insiders who've broken plenty of news and been broken by it, too. Hosted by long-suffering journalists and even longer-suffering friends, Jan Fran and Antoinette Lattouf, We Used to Be Journos is your quide to the way the media works.

Join us every Wednesday as we unpack the headlines you see, and the power you don't.

We'll take you through the week's sketchy editorial decisions, suspect sources and thinly veiled bigotry. We'll show you how the media sausage is made -so you know what you're being fed.

Since 1945, one country has carried out a conventional military buildup unmatched in scale, cost and global reach. Claims about recent rivals distract from the historical record of how modern military dominance was built.

It’s become commonplace for western politicians – the latest being Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles at the Munich Security Conference – to argue that for the last two decades, China has been undertaking the biggest conventional military build-up that we’ve seen in the world since the end of the Second World War. 

Warwick Powell