Daily Archives: 20 February 2026

Trump says he will order the release of Pentagon files on aliens and UFOs

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/20/trump-aliens-ufos-pentagon-files-release

The president’s announcement came after predecessor Barack Obama went viral last week for saying aliens are ‘real’

Donald Trump has announced he is directing the defense department and other agencies to release whatever files they have on the search for alien life.

In a post on his social media platform, Trump said that he will ask the defense secretary and others “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

Comments from Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, went viral last weekend after podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen asked the former president if aliens are “real.”

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama responded. “And they’re not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

On Thursday, Trump accused Obama of disclosing “classified information”.

The president told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t know if they’re real or not,” and said of Obama, “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”

Obama clarified earlier this week that he had not seen evidence that aliens “have made contact with us,” but said, “statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/20/trump-aliens-ufos-pentagon-files-release

Continue ReadingTrump says he will order the release of Pentagon files on aliens and UFOs

Trump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/16/gavin-newsom-a-loser-says-trump-california-green-energy-deal-uk

Ed Milband and Gavin Newsom at the signing event in London. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London

Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.

“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”

In an intervention that is likely to be clocked by British government officials wary of potential new landmines in the UK’s relationship with the White House, Trump went on to say it was “inappropriate” for Newsom to strike such agreements and “inappropriate for them [the UK] to be dealing with him”.

Newsom, one of the loudest domestic opponents of the US president on issues ranging from ICE deportation raids to the climate crisis, signed a memorandum of understanding in London with the UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

Their agreement is aimed at deepening existing cooperation between the UK and California and creates a new framework to scale up clean energy technologies and enhance ties between businesses and researchers in Britain and the US state, which is in effect the world’s fourth largest global economy.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/16/gavin-newsom-a-loser-says-trump-california-green-energy-deal-uk

Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingTrump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK

Study finds global increase in hot, dry days ideal for wildfires

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/18/study-wildfires-danger

Dangerous days have nearly tripled in past 45 years – and increase largely driven by human-made warming

The number of days when the weather gets hot, dry and windy – ideal to spark extreme wildfires – has nearly tripled in the past 45 years across the globe, with the trend increasing even higher in the Americas, a new study shows.

And more than half of that increase is caused by human-caused climate change, researchers calculated.

What this means is that as the world warms, more places across the globe are prone to wildfires because of increasingly synchronous fire weather, which is when multiple places have the right conditions to go up in smoke.

Countries may not have enough resources to put out all the fires, and help will not be as likely to come from neighbors busy with their own flames, according to the authors of a study in Wednesday’s Science Advances.

In 1979 and for the next 15 years, the world averaged 22 synchronous fire weather days a year for flames that stayed within large global regions, the study found. In 2023 and 2024, it was up to more than 60 days a year.

“These sorts of changes that we have seen increase the likelihood in a lot of areas that there will be fires that are going to be very challenging to suppress,” said study co-author John Abatzoglou, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced.

…

Continues at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/18/study-wildfires-danger

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingStudy finds global increase in hot, dry days ideal for wildfires

‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi

Imagery captured in late January by Floodlight and analyzed by multiple experts shows 15 of the 27 unpermitted turbines operating at xAI’s gas plant in Southaven, Mississippi. Photograph: Evan Simon/Floodlight

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.

State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long maintained that such pollution sources require permits under the Clean Air Act.

Any exemption for these machines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all”, the agency wrote in a January final ruling.

However, thermal images captured by Floodlight – and analyzed by multiple experts – show more than a dozen unpermitted turbines still spewing pollutants at the plant nearly two weeks after the EPA’s recent ruling.

“That is a violation of the law,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former EPA air enforcement chief, after reviewing Floodlight’s images and EPA regulations. “You’re supposed to get permission first.”

xAI, which is seeking permits for dozens more turbines in Southaven, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The EPA, which under Trump has initiated a record-low number of enforcement actions, declined to answer questions about the turbines at Musk’s AI facilities and referred to local authorities on permits.

…

Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue Reading‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations

Labour minister falsely linked journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network in emails to GCHQ

Spread the love

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/20/labour-minister-falsely-linked-journalists-to-pro-kremlin-network-in-emails-to-gchq

Josh Simons (left) named Paul Holden (centre) and Gabriel Pogrund (right) in emails to NCSC officials. Composite: Guardian Design/Labour Together/Sky News/Simon King/Getty Images

[Guardian] Exclusive: Josh Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate reporters, in emails described as ‘McCarthyite smear’

A Labour minister who claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda, the Guardian can reveal.

Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling security officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’ team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.

The extraordinary disclosures are contained in emails that Simons and his chief of staff at Labour Together sent to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a division of the spy agency GCHQ, in 2024. A spokesperson for Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, said: “These claims are untrue.”

The emails, seen by the Guardian, lay out in detail what Simons and his team wrote to intelligence officials in an effort to get them to investigate the sourcing behind a story in the Sunday Times about Labour Together’s failure to disclose political donations.

When informed by the Guardian about what had been communicated about them to intelligence officials, some of those named in the emails accused Simons of orchestrating a “McCarthyite smear” campaign that left them feeling “violated”.

…

Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/20/labour-minister-falsely-linked-journalists-to-pro-kremlin-network-in-emails-to-gchq

Continue ReadingLabour minister falsely linked journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network in emails to GCHQ