US Formally Ends Two-Decade Military Presence in Iraq

American forces formally completed their withdrawal from Iraq on Thursday, closing a chapter of military involvement that began with the 2003 invasion and spanned more than two decades of war, occupation and insurgency. Celebrations erupted in Baghdad as the last units departed, though the mood elsewhere in the country was tempered by anxiety about what comes next. Former US diplomats warn that the departure leaves a fragile state to navigate intensifying competition among Iran, Turkey and Gulf Arab powers.

The drawdown follows years of rocket and drone attacks on American installations attributed to Iranian-backed militias, pressure that accelerated negotiations over the troop presence. Iraqi security forces now assume full responsibility for counterterrorism operations against the lingering ISIS insurgency. Envoys interviewed by the PBS NewsHour cautioned that the country's political class remains divided along sectarian lines, a weakness outside powers have repeatedly exploited.

Tehran's influence over Baghdad is likely to deepen, though Iraqi leaders insist the exit reflects restored sovereignty rather than a tilt toward any patron. Washington still maintains forces in Syria and a substantial footprint in Gulf states, meaning the region remains heavily militarized even after this milestone. For the more than one million Americans who served in Iraq, the withdrawal ends a long and contentious chapter that reshaped both nations.

Pilot Hailed Hero After Foiling Hijack Attempt on Flydubai Flight

An Indian pilot is being heralded as a hero after battling an apparent hijack attempt aboard a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv. Passengers recounted sheer terror in the cabin as a pilot allegedly stabbed his colleague, sending the jet into a frightening dive that forced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. Aviation authorities from several countries have opened investigations into how the assault unfolded and what motivated it.

Details emerging from the flight suggest a violent struggle in or near the cockpit that pushed the aircraft into a rapid descent before order was restored. Saudi authorities secured the plane after it touched down, and the injured crew member received urgent medical care. Investigators are now examining the suspect's background and history, though officials have so far declined to say whether the episode is being treated as terrorism.

The case rattles assumptions about cockpit security, since reinforced doors and two-person protocols are designed against outside threats rather than violence within the crew. Airlines worldwide will face fresh scrutiny of psychological screening and procedures governing staff seated in the cockpit. Dubai-Tel Aviv services, a flagship of the post-2020 normalization between Israel and the UAE, now carry a symbolic burden far beyond commerce.

UK Blames Iran for RAF Fairford Incident; Tehran Mocks Claim

Britain believes Iran was behind the incident at RAF Fairford, according to a senior minister, an accusation that risks a further rupture between London and Tehran. Iran's foreign minister dismissed the claim outright, saying the prime minister was "barking up the wrong tree." The exchange marks a sharp escalation at a moment when relations between the two capitals were already severely strained.

Fairford, a Cotswolds airbase used extensively by the United States military, has long ranked among Britain's most sensitive sites. Details of what precisely occurred there remain scarce, and ministers have been guarded about disclosing the evidence behind their attribution. A continuing investigation appears to be shaping how much the government can say publicly, with any formal response likely to hinge on its conclusions.

Any proven Iranian involvement on British soil would push London toward the harder line long urged by Washington and could derail European efforts to keep nuclear diplomacy alive. Tehran has framed the accusation as a pretext for pressure campaigns against it. How the prime minister responds — through sanctions, expulsions or restraint — will signal whether this episode becomes a genuine turning point or another chapter in a decade of hostility.

Global Bond Rout Deepens, Rattling Markets From Wall Street to Asia

Government bonds came under renewed pressure on Thursday as a global debt selloff extended into another session, dragging yields higher across the United States, Europe and Asia. Equities wobbled as traders shed longer-dated Treasuries and other sovereign debt, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq under strain throughout the day. The breadth of the rout suggests investors are repricing expectations for inflation, growth and central bank policy simultaneously rather than reacting to any single data point. Analysts described the mood on trading floors as defensive, with volatility gauges climbing and safe-haven demand shifting erratically.

Yields on benchmark Treasuries have risen sharply in recent sessions, feeding through to mortgage rates, corporate borrowing costs and emerging-market currencies. European and Japanese bond markets moved in sympathy, a sign the selling reflects a shared global diagnosis rather than local worries. Central bankers face an awkward moment: easing too quickly could stoke the very price pressures that unnerved bond investors, while holding rates high risks compounding stress in rate-sensitive sectors.

For households and companies, sustained higher yields would mean costlier credit just as consumers show signs of fatigue. Pension funds and insurers, heavy holders of long-duration debt, are watching mark-to-market losses accumulate. Markets now turn to upcoming economic releases for evidence of whether the selloff marks a durable regime change or a passing convulsion in the world's deepest asset class.

Zuckerberg and Huang Rally Tech Titans Behind Trump's AI Accords

Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang personally lobbied for the "morally binding" AI accords that President Trump signed alongside industry leaders at a White House lunch, according to Politico. The pair helped build support among executives for commitments that carry no legal force but are framed as an ethical pledge on the technology's development. Their involvement underscores how thoroughly Silicon Valley's biggest names have aligned themselves with Washington's approach to governing artificial intelligence.

The accords emerged from weeks of quiet coordination between the tech giants and administration officials eager to claim progress on AI safety without imposing regulation. Zuckerberg brings the weight of Meta's open-model strategy, while Huang supplies the hardware on which nearly every frontier system is trained. Staging the signing at the White House gave the pact a presidential spotlight — and handed Trump a visible win with an industry that once kept Washington at arm's length.

Critics argue that "morally binding" commitments lack teeth and that enforcement will depend on goodwill among companies racing to outbuild each other. European regulators, who favor hard rules, may view the ceremony as a bid to set softer global norms. The real test arrives with the first contested incident, when signatories must choose between transparency and competitive advantage.

Swiss Glaciers Lose Record 5% of Ice in a Single Year

Swiss glaciers lost more than 5% of their total ice volume in a single year, researchers reported, the fastest decline ever recorded for the Alpine range. The figure follows several years of relentless melt and suggests the pace of loss is accelerating rather than stabilizing. Communities that have depended on the ice for water, power and tourism now face wrenching adjustments.

The consequences extend far beyond Switzerland's valleys, since glacier-fed streams sustain the Rhône and the Rhine — rivers that provide drinking water, irrigation and hydropower far downstream. Disappearing ice also destabilizes mountain slopes, raising the risk of landslides and rockfalls in villages that once considered themselves safely above the hazard line. Ecosystems tuned to cold meltwater are shifting as flows turn erratic, surging early in the season and dwindling by late summer.

Scientists emphasize that glacier loss is effectively irreversible on human timescales, because collapsed ice bodies cannot regrow for many decades even under cooler conditions. Adaptation, not reversal, becomes the operative word: reservoirs to capture spring melt, revised zoning for hazard areas, and economic reinvention for towns built on winter tourism. The Swiss record adds urgency to wider European debates over water sharing and climate financing as temperatures keep climbing.

SpaceX Cleared to Launch NASA's Crew-13 Mission to Space Station

SpaceX received the final "go" to launch NASA's Crew-13 astronaut mission to the International Space Station, with liftoff scheduled for 11:10 a.m. ET on Thursday. The flight continues what was once an extraordinary routine: ferrying human crews to orbit aboard a commercially built spacecraft. Weather and technical checks cleared the Falcon 9 and Dragon stack for departure from Florida's Space Coast.

Crew-13 will rotate astronauts currently living aboard the orbiting outpost and keep research operations running through the coming months. Dragon capsules now carry the bulk of NASA's human spaceflight ambitions, a reliance that pushed the agency to certify Boeing's Starliner as a second American option. Thursday's launch sustains a cadence that has made crew changes feel almost administrative — a stark shift from the decade when the US bought seats on Russian Soyuz vehicles.

The mission arrives amid a broader transition, with NASA planning for the station's eventual retirement and private successors to take over low-Earth orbit. Every smooth flight strengthens the case that commercial operators can be trusted with human spaceflight at scale. Crew-13's astronauts will dock, board the station and begin months of experiments — the quiet, repetitive work that underpins grander ambitions beyond orbit.

• Global bond markets are facing a deepening selloff as investors react to shifting macro expectations. The S&P 500 reflected this volatility, dipping slightly to 763.99 USD today. The Wall Street Journal →
• Nvidia shares climbed 1.1% to 230.86 USD as AI optimism continues to drive technology gains despite geopolitical tensions with Iran. Google further fueled this momentum by unveiling its Gemini 4 Argon AI model. Associated Press →
• Crude oil futures plummeted 3.9% to 89.25 USD amid a complex mix of regional instability and shifting trade dynamics. These energy swings coincide with South Korea's hesitation to finalize its participation in the Alaska LNG project. CNBC →
• Micron is seeing record-breaking projections with sales growth expected to hit 354%, yet the stock remains stagnant. This lack of movement occurs while the broader Nasdaq edges higher at 742.03 USD. Barron's →
• Canadian banks are seeing a weekly decline, with National Bank (NA.TO) dropping 2.7% to 202.44 CAD. The general trend mirrored the S&P/TSX, which fell 0.2% today to 35,154.80 CAD. Investor's Business Daily →
• A judge has cleared the way for Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive $110 billion merger. Mark Ruffalo has publicly criticized the deal, claiming it threatens creative freedom in Hollywood. Fox Business →
• Bitcoin continues its upward trajectory, rising 1.8% to 86,362.39 USD. The cryptocurrency has gained nearly 12% over the past month. Yahoo Finance →
• Agriculture markets are adjusting as egg prices tumble following a period of extreme volatility caused by avian flu and tariffs. This shift comes as farmers grapple with the economic pressures of the current administration's trade policies. NPR →

No playoff games yesterday.

Consciousness

Open your eyes tomorrow morning and the world simply arrives: grey light through the curtains, the smell of coffee, the sting of a paper cut. None of it is merely registered — all of it is felt, and there is something it is like to be you in that moment. That felt presence is what philosophers call consciousness, and it sits beneath everything else you care about. Ambition, grief, the taste of an apple, the decision to keep reading this sentence: each depends on experience being experienced by someone.

For all its familiarity, the concept resists pinning down. Consciousness is not the same as intelligence or information processing. A camera registers light and a thermometer registers heat, yet nothing seems to happen for them; data flows, but no one appears to be home. Thomas Nagel's famous question — what is it like to be a bat? — sharpens the distinction: a creature is conscious precisely when there is an answer to it. Philosophers also speak of "qualia" for the private textures of experience, such as the redness of red or the ache of longing, which seem knowable only from the inside. One layer up sits self-awareness, sometimes called "apperception": not just feeling pain, but noticing that you feel it.

René Descartes placed consciousness at the foundation of modern philosophy, defining thought in the seventeenth century as "all that of which we are conscious as operating in us". His famous certainty — I think, therefore I am — made awareness the one thing that cannot be doubted, though the price was a deep split between mind and body that still haunts the subject. John Locke treated consciousness as the glue of personal identity: you and the child you once were are one person because a continuous thread of awareness connects you, whatever becomes of the body. G.W. Leibniz pushed further, arguing that minds contain faint, unnoticed perceptions — his "petites perceptions" — that shape us without our ever knowing. He also left behind a striking image: enlarge a thinking machine to the size of a mill and walk inside, he suggested, and you would find only parts pushing parts, never a thought, never a feeling.

That mill anticipates what the philosopher David Chalmers later named the hard problem of consciousness. Every physical description of the brain — neurons firing, chemistry churning — leaves one thing unexplained: why any of it is accompanied by experience at all. Some expect neuroscience to close the gap in time; others propose that subjectivity is a basic feature of reality, woven into matter wherever information flows; still others suspect the question itself is muddled. Nobody knows who is right. What remains genuinely open is whether the distance between brain and feeling is a fact about the universe or a limit of our concepts — and as artificial systems grow ever more articulate, we may soon have to answer it about entities whose assurances we have no way to verify.

Want to go deeper? Read the full Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Consciousness →

• Ataraxos, a new AI designed for the board game Stratego, utilizes a specialized reinforcement learning pattern to master games with hidden information. This development provides a scalable framework for strategic decision-making in complex, imperfect environments. Nature.com →
• OpenAI and Meta are pivoting their personal AI hardware strategies toward "cute" and useful companion devices. These new AI agents aim to revive the struggling hardware market by blending utility with a Tamagotchi-like appeal. The Verge →
• Nintendo released version 23.0.1 for both the original Switch and the Switch 2. The update includes various patches and system refinements for both consoles. Nintendoeverything.com →
• Vivo is launching the X Fold 6 internationally following its initial summer release in China. The device features a tall, square-shaped foldable design and updated camera specifications. The Verge →
• Apple is preparing the release of iOS 27.2, which introduces a new "Suggestions" feature within the Messages app. This update aims to streamline user communication through AI-driven prompts. 9to5Mac →
• The Russian state-sponsored group Star Blizzard is deploying a new installation method called "RedFlick." This technique allows hackers to push the CosmicPulse backdoor more effectively into target systems. BleepingComputer →