Diggers were seen demolishing Palestinian homes on Friday afternoon
The Israeli military has begun demolishing Palestinian buildings in the city of Hebron, after two Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack by two Palestinian gunmen.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military would “destroy” the neighbourhood where the two attackers came from, and that Israel was ready for “extensive action” in the occupied West Bank.
Three other soldiers were wounded in the attack at a checkpoint outside Hebron, before the gunmen were shot dead, officials say.
It comes at a time of high tensions, with extremist Jewish settlers targeting Palestinians during the annual olive harvest, and Israel’s general election taking place in four days’ time.
Footage verified by the BBC shows an intense gun battle between soldiers and the gunmen. Other footage shows two gunmen exit a car armed with what appears to be a handgun and an assault rifle and start firing on soldiers at the checkpoint, before coming under return fire.
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Speaking later from the scene, Netanyahu said that the military would “demolish this place and completely transform it,” referring to the Hebron neighbourhood where the attackers are said to have come from.
It is common for Israeli forces to demolish the homes of Palestinians who are suspected of carrying out attacks on Israelis -a practice Israeli rights groups have criticised as collective punishment.
Netanyahu likened his plans to previous operations in West Bank refugee camps where residential buildings were demolished and thousands were displaced.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty
People succumbed to heat at highest rates in Malta, Italy and Hungary, with health issues, loneliness and poverty exacerbating toll
Heat killed a record 50,000 people in European cities this summer, new research suggests, with scientists blaming climate breakdown for two in every three of the deaths.
Morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives in urban areas, the researchers found. Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering.
The “staggering” death toll, modelled using historical relationships between heat and health in 854 cities, was the worst on record, the study found. Hot weather marked by relentless heatwaves killed nearly twice as many people as it did in each of the two next most dangerous years.
“In some sense, the absolute numbers of the heat-related deaths estimated across the 854 urban areas are indeed staggering,” said Malcolm Mistry, a climate and health scientist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who co-authored the study. “But perhaps what is even more alarming is the proportion of these deaths that we attribute to anthropogenic climate change.”
The share of deaths due to climate breakdown has risen from about 40% at the start of the century to 65% this summer, the study found.
Google has illegally stripped the entire area, removing even the top soil. Photograph: Jarno Artika/The Guardian
Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push
Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.
After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.
“It doesn’t end. It goes on and on,” says Mari Annala, an ecologist from the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL), looking at drone footage of the former forest from the perimeter.
Earlier this month, Google was ordered by the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) to temporarily stop work on Muhos and another site about 100km south-east in the village of Otanmäki after it failed to complete the necessary environmental impact assessments before clearcutting the land. The news has prompted widespread outcry and a national reckoning over what role, if any, the country should play in the global rush to build datacentres to keep up with rapid AI development.
Last week, Google’s Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, apologised for the forest clearings but claimed the company had acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time”.
“At a time when lawmakers claim the country cannot afford investments in families and communities, some of the most profitable corporations in American history are paying little or nothing in federal income taxes.”
Some of the biggest US corporations paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 10.4% last year as Republican legislation passed by President Donald Trump disproportionately benefited businesses and the superrich while eviscerating key social programs, a study published Thursday revealed.
The 706 corporations examined by the Washington, DC-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reported a combined $1.88 trillion in US profits in 2025, yet paid less than half the statutory federal corporate income tax rate of 21%. Of those companies, the study found that 114 paid no federal income taxes at all.
Those 706 companies collectively paid current federal corporate income taxes equal to just 10.4% of that $1.88 trillion, “the lowest effective rate that ITEP has uncovered in over 40 years of analyzing corporate income taxes,” according to the analysis.
The study attributes this to two major tax laws enacted under Trump: The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—derided at the time as the “GOP Tax Scam”—slashed the statutory corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%, while the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by the president last year expanded and made permanent the 2017 cuts.
NEW: U.S. corporations are paying the lowest tax rate seen in decades.706 major corporations collectively paid a federal income tax rate of just 10.4%, less than half the statutory rate.114 corporations paid zero.itep.org/corporate-ta…
“These findings show just how dramatically the corporate tax system has been tilted in favor of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful companies,” ITEP senior fellow Matt Gardner, who co-authored the report, said in a statement.
“At a time when lawmakers claim the country cannot afford investments in families and communities, some of the most profitable corporations in American history are paying little or nothing in federal income taxes,” he added. “This is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of deliberate policy choices that have steadily eroded the corporate tax base.”
Among the report’s key findings:
The 114 companies that paid no current federal income tax last year include Tesla, Walt Disney, CVS, Citigroup, United Airlines, and DoorDash;
258 corporations paid effective tax rates below 7%, or less than one-third of the statutory rate;
Those 258 companies reported $683 billion in US profits but paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.7%;
The 706 corporations studied received $198 billion in federal tax subsidies by paying less than the statutory 21% rate;
They also benefited from an additional $263 billion in tax savings attributable to the 2017 reduction of the statutory rate from 35% to 21%; and
Just 25 corporations accounted for more than half of the 2025 tax subsidies, with Alphabet ($18.9 billion), Microsoft ($18.7 billion), Amazon ($17.4 billion), and Meta ($13.9 billion) among the largest beneficiaries.
While proponents of subsidies claim they are necessary to encourage investment, the new study raises questions about why some of the nation’s most profitable corporations should receive billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies while vital social programs upon which tens of millions of Americans rely, like Medicaid and food stamps, suffer historic cuts under Republican legislation.
“Congress has repeatedly chosen to expand tax breaks for corporations that are already extraordinarily profitable,” said Steve Wamhoff, ITEP’s federal policy director and co-author of the report. “Rather than continuing to subsidize corporate investments and reward aggressive tax avoidance, lawmakers should close these loopholes and ensure that large corporations pay a meaningful share of their profits in taxes.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Protesters in New York City take part in the “Freeze AI Now” national day of walkouts on October 20, 2026. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
“Left unchecked, AI could endanger the entire global financial system—including your bank account.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday renewed calls to pause development of artificial intelligence following reporting that unauthorized AI agents are operating inside the systems of major US banks.
Axios’ Madison Mills revealed that Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and other financial institutions are “racing to contain agent risks,” including “situations when an agent or AI assistant accesses a human’s account with the user’s permission and login credentials,” which “goes against the guidelines of most banks requiring that humans log in to their own accounts.”
In AI, an agent is a system that can take actions to complete an assigned task, rather than simply responding to queries or generating text.
According to Mills’ reporting—which cites people familiar with the matter—some agents have contacted bank call centers or appeared to take actions independently of users’ instructions.
Banking executives interviewed by Mills described the problem as “horrifying,” with one official warning of potentially serious consequences for customers’ finances.
The stakes are particularly high, the executives said, when AI agents have permission to make purchases or transfer funds. Banks are also struggling to determine whether activity is actually authorized by customers or whether an agent has gone rogue.
“This is insane,” Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on social media in response to Mills’ report. “We cannot allow AI agents to go into your bank account and act independently without your authorization.”
“But that is what’s happening right now,” he continued. “Left unchecked, AI could endanger the entire global financial system—including your bank account.”
The senator added, “Pause AI NOW!”
Sanders has repeatedly warned that the race to create increasingly powerful AI systems is outpacing efforts to ensure their safety. Such concerns are mounting as profit- and ego-driven tech oligarchs race toward the “holy grail” of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—an advanced AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge of any subject as well as or better than a typical human.
Earlier this month, Sanders renewed his call for a congressional ban on the development of advanced AI, citing Big Tech oligarchs’ secret preparations for a “catastrophic AI event.”
The senator has repeatedly cited pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton who have warned that superintelligent AI—a development that experts believe could come after AGI—might wipe out humanity, as well as less existential but still potentially devastating outcomes like xAI CEO Elon Musk’s prediction that AI and robots could “replace all jobs.”
Last month, Sanders and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced legislation to pause advanced AI development and ban the creation or deployment of artificial superintelligence. Sanders also wants a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers.
The banking story underscores the growing challenge of deploying autonomous AI systems in consequential settings before their behavior can be reliably controlled or monitored.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon last week announced a ban on outside AI agents from accessing customer accounts.
Sanders wasn’t the only elected official who responded with alarm to the new Axios report.
“This is the exact thing we’ve been warning about for years,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on social media. “AI agents with unrestrained access to your bank account and protected information. When consumer AI agents are accessing YOUR bank account or using YOUR credit card, they must be subject to fiduciary-like duties of care.”
“We need to pass my AI AGENT Act to get some basic guardrails in place,” Warner added, referring to legislation that would establish federal rules for artificial intelligence agents that act on people’s behalf.
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) also weighed in on the report, writing on social media that “the Trump administration and GOP leadership made the deliberate decision to let the AI industry run wild.”
“That was a bad political decision,” he added. “And now it’s become a potentially catastrophic policy decision.”
On the other side of the political aisle, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who has opposed the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent states from regulating AI—said on X, “Imagine a rogue AI agent liquidating your bank account and investment portfolio.”
“If you are the only victim, I suppose you could get made whole by the AI company responsible,” he added. “If rogue agents liquidate hundreds of billions across millions of accounts, the AI company would go bankrupt and you wouldn’t get made whole.”
The new Axios report comes two days after nationwide “Freeze AI Now” walkout protests by students, workers, academics, and others demanding an immediate halt to further AI development until the public has a meaningful say in how the technology is built and regulated.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
