News anchor Anderson Cooper is ending his tenure on the CBS investigative series 60 Minutes. After appearing on the program for nearly two decades, Cooper said in a statement announcing his resignation that ultimately he found it impossible to juggle his role at CBS with his job at CNN and his family life. “Being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the great honors of my career. I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors, and camera crews in the business,” Cooper wrote in a statement about his departure. “For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.” Journalist Anderson Cooper arrives for the trial of former President Donald Trump at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on Thursday, May 16, 2024. (Steven Hirsch/Pool Photo via AP) Cooper is among the few high-profile journalists in broadcast television to hold lasting positions at two major networks at the same time. He joined 60 Minutes in 2007, while still maintaining his role as host of Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN. Despite leaving CBS, Cooper will remain a host on CNN. It is the latest in a series of shake-ups at the legacy news station since the arrival of Bari Weiss, who took over as editor-in-chief last October. Under Weiss’s leadership, the company has conducted several rounds of layoffs and buy-outs as it attempts to restructure and pivot toward the political center. ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE KILLS THREE JOURNALISTS IN GAZA, INCLUDING CBS FREELANCER Weiss received internal pushback after choosing to hold a 60 Minutes program about conditions in El Salvador’s megaprison, CECOT, demanding that reporters get comments from a White House official for the show. The segment, which detailed inmates’ accounts of “torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons,” eventually aired weeks later with few changes to its content.

Abdul-Razzaq Ahmad Saryoul began publishing books in Syria in 2003 but he used to abstain from participating in the annual International Damascus Book Fair because of tight measures by the country's security agencies and bans on many books under Bashar Assad's rule.

It’s being reported by WJAR that the man who shot his family at a hockey game in Rhode Island earlier today was the father and that he “may have been dressed in . . .

Somehow, it became necessary that politicians seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination had to wander abroad to various international conferences to pay obeisance to European elites and spout bile at their domestic political enemies. Those various climate summits at whatever posh digs the Euros could situate have attracted Democrat politicians for years. You don’t hear much about them anymore, now that the global warming doom-and-gloom prognostications have all fallen apart. At some point, taking to the stage and echoing Thunbergian stupidities like “the planet will burn up and be uninhabitable in 12 years” if whatever hard-core socialist command-economic policy fetishes aren’t engaged in tends to go out of style after 12 years, and then some go by with none of the forecasted doom coming true. So you don’t generally get the Democrats’ big guns at those events anymore; or if you do, nobody really pays attention. (RELATED: Europe Is Thus Illuminated, Exactly As It Is) Davos is a little different, though, for some strange reason. The annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos has for years been a showplace for Dems seeking international boulevard cred, and it’s anything but surprising that all the stupid and terrible ideas bandied about among the weffers have become standard Democrat cant. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 321: Dumbos at Davos: The WEF’s Dwindling Influence) But Davos isn’t the only place you’ll find the Gavin Newsoms, AOCs, Mark Kellys, Gretchen Whitmers, and others now. Over the weekend, we saw them descending on the Munich Security Conference seeking to bolster their global status. (RELATED: Is Gretchen Whitmer Back In?) It’s not a new thing that politicians would make everything about themselves. That’s what politicians do. But it does rankle a bit to think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes she belongs at Munich or that she has anything of value to offer as a speaker at that conference. It isn’t like this was a surprise… BREAKING – AOC is being ruthlessly mocked after claiming action can’t be taken against Venezuela because it’s “below the equator.” Leader of the democrat party everyone. pic.twitter.com/G2BFBoZwPe — Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) February 16, 2026 And that wasn’t the worst of it… The sad thing about this is it won’t be her downfall. It should be, but it won’t. At RedState, Brad Slager noted the effort put in by Bloomberg (only one of a large number of news organizations doing this) to rehabilitate AOC when it’s obvious she’s out of her depth when it comes to foreign policy… At my Townhall media column, I have one category I use called Democratic Custodial Services, where the press slides in and offers cleanup when a Democrat politician fouls something up. AOC’s German fiasco was broad enough that Bloomberg acted like a team from Servpro arriving after an F-5 twister. As an introduction, they did not help their own cause by admitting that AOC was basically out of her depth from the start. The reporting duo of Nick Wadhams and María Paula Mijares Torres admit that AOC, “is better known for her strong progressive stances than her foreign policy views.” They go on to further undercut the New York representative by adding that she lacks serious international heft since she is not serving on either the Foreign Affairs or Armed Services Committees. All told, Alex From The Bronx has only shown interest in Latin American affairs (naturally, for the Puerto Rican descendant) and Palestine (like everyone else in her party, save for John Fetterman). To get a taste of what the AOC Doctrine may look like, it would amount to “We suck and want to be like you!” Her ineptitude did not dissuade Wadhams and Mijares from their appointed duties. The pair tells us that AOC’s performance was NOT a crater-inducing affair, but instead it was a display of rationality and lucid leadership. I kid you not. First, they deliver this oblivious nugget from Alex: She demanded a foreign policy approach that counters record inequality and looks to undo a world “dominated by a handful of elites, a handful of oligarchs that sit in pretend democracies and make backdoor deals with one another.” She says this at a conference peopled by world leaders and political elites, and then we hear she sat in with those various leaders and political elites. It may be a tie between AOC and these reporters as to who is more ignorant. They do get around to affirming AOC’s vapor-lock moment when trying to respond to questions from Bloomberg’s own Francine Lacqua: “This is such a, a, you know, I think that, this is a, um, this is of course, a, ah, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States.” Just…damn. After that dive off the train trestle she may have a better claim than Joe Biden to a stuttering speech impediment. But then the cleanup effort begins. These reporters insist that, eventually, she gave a cogent response. This entailed her giving a decaffeinated proposal that we should avoid conflict, a level of discourse on par with a beauty pageant ditz, suggesting we should strive for world peace. Of course, the next move was to allow a spokesperson to be granted airtime to wave away the fog of her commentary. Ocasio-Cortez hesitated “because she wanted to be careful about what she was saying,” Matt Duss, who advises Ocasio-Cortez on foreign policy, said in an interview. “I wish more politicians would wait to answer instead of rattling off talking points.” It’s irritating, no doubt. This is one example of why it’s a good thing mainstream media’s hold on culture and politics is at its lowest ebb; sanitizing AOC’s nonstop disqualifications is very poor hygiene indeed. But there’s no sanitizing this. Hillary Clinton’s time has undoubtedly come and gone, but that didn’t stop her from going to Munich and acting like she boasted any relevance on the world stage. Except her appearance on a panel discussion went about as badly as it possibly could…

So much for the Constitution. The Fox News headline was blunt: “GOP lawmaker joins Democrat-led effort to limit Trump’s pardon power,” with the subtitle, “Rep. Don Bacon signed onto a bill that would establish a congressional review process for pardons.” Let’s take a look at what the inconvenient document known as the Constitution in fact says about the presidential pardon power. It reads, with bold print for emphasis supplied: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. Pretty clear. There is not a word from the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution about a “congressional review process for pardons.” And remembering the history of the Founding Fathers who so painstakingly wrote the Constitution, it not only could not be clearer, it amazes that Rep. Bacon — a Republican no less! — has set about trying to undermine the Constitution, justifying his actions this way:  “Across multiple administrations, we’ve seen legitimate questions raised about how this authority has been used at the same time, the ability of Congress to provide oversight has weakened,” Bacon said in a statement. “Frankly, it is clear to me the pardon authority has been abused.” In short, Rep. Bacon wants to make Congress the deciding factor in a president’s constitutionally authorized power to grant pardons. Skipping over the hard fact that the final arbiter, per the Founding Fathers, on whether a presidential pardon is good, bad, or indifferent has belonged to, yes indeed, the American people. Case in point? When President Nixon, ensnared by the Watergate scandal, finally resigned in August of 1974, he was, per the Constitution, succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford. Given the raging political waters at the time, with demands from the Left to both prosecute Nixon and send him to prison, Ford made the reluctant decision to end the uproar by pardoning Nixon so the country could move on. He did. And just as Ford anticipated, all hell broke loose. There was a congressional hearing on Ford’s decision, with Ford becoming the first president to testify in front of a congressional committee. This was 1974, which is to say an election year. And, quite expectedly, the Democrats made Ford’s pardon a main issue in the fall campaign. The results were serious political damage to the GOP. Democrats won four Senate seats from Republicans. On the House side, the GOP had a net loss of 49 seats. Wikipedia records: After Ford left the White House in 1977, he privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision which states that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt. The hard fact of history is that the final verdict on Ford’s pardon of Nixon came from the American people. They didn’t like Ford’s pardon, and they made a point of rejecting Ford’s decision in the fall of 1974 elections. Two years later, Ford himself was on the ballot, and the American people made a point of electing his Democrat opponent, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Which shows that in fact the final arbiter of whether a presidential pardon is good, bad, or indifferent rests — as it should — in the hands, the votes, of the American people. What Rep. Bacon is about is removing that pardon power from the American people and giving it to a handful of Capitol Hill politicians. This decision is so badly taken that one can hardly believe that a Republican Congressman of all people would be out there supporting it. Be that as it may, Nebraska’s Rep. Don Bacon is doing just that. The obvious question now is whether the American people will agree with Rep. Bacon that the final verdict on any presidential pardon should be taken out of their hands and given to a relative handful of Capitol Hill’s professional politicians, Washington insiders one and all. Stay tuned. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Three Cheers for Attorney General Pam Bondi Schumer Plays the Race Card Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal Stands Up for Fascism

Nations gripped by antisemitism self-destruct. The eternal law took a pivotal turn when South Africa and Israel sent their diplomats packing President Ramaphosa’s goons are set to lose major cities in the 2026 local government elections. The fateful question is how he and his doomed ANC party reacted. Their department of international relations, securely in Islamist hands, blamed Israel’s diplomat for dabbling in domestic politics. It declared Ariel Seiderman persona non grata and instructed him to quit the country pronto.  In a tit-for-tat, Israel told the ANC’s ambassador to Ramallah, believed by all Israel-haters to be the capital of fictional “Palestine,” to do likewise. Coinciding with the diplomat expulsions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards participated in naval drills off Simonstown naval base on the Cape coast. South Africa’s crippled, if not inoperative, navy, together with the real warships of China and Russia, completed the flotilla. Close to this time, the Iranian regime unleashed the most violent crackdown ever on protestors. As many as 30,000 freedom-yearning martyrs were gunned down. Body bags ran out, and mass graves were dug. Beholden to Iran for bailing it out, Ramaphosa and his party uttered not a peep. They did call for the U.N. Security Council to meet. To get the head around the blatant Islamist capture of a majority Christian country, the key is Naledi Pandor, a black convert to Islam. From the president’s picked foreign minister, she got deployed to the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Here she rebooted this hallowed body to her dark anti-Jew, anti-Christian outlook. Denigrating Christian Zionism as a “force for genocide,” Pandor promises money to anyone prepared to combat it. She’ll see to it that idiot donors lured by the Mandela name will be financing the African terrorist group Boko Haram (translated as “Western education is a sin”). Notably in Nigeria, but even in Mozambique on the country’s border, the terrorist group abducts schoolgirls, beheads Christians, and drives indigenous tribal people into oblivion. About the expulsion of Israel’s chargé d’affaire, a U.S. State Department spokesman called it, “Poor foreign policy choices. Expelling a diplomat for calling out the ANC’s ties to Hamas and other antisemitic radicals prioritizes grievance politics over the good of South Africa and its citizens.” He meant that Ramaphosa’s crew regard the country and its people as expendable and ransack the country while they can. In short, self-destruction has gone down to the wire. The atrocity of what Pandor has made of the Nelson Mandela name is testimony from the pit of hell. Her Islamist Jew-hatred is equal to that for Christianity, that Conflates biblical prophecy with political support for Israeli settler colonialism and remains a driving force in legitimising occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Deeply rooted in colonial history and amplified by global networks, this ideology has been a barrier to achieving peace and justice for Palestinians. The misuse of religious scripture to justify domination and discrimination is something we know all too well in South Africa. The real-life Mandela made a stark contrast. In his epic struggle against apartheid, he acknowledged his debt to Zionism in his epic memoir. His admiration of Zionist leaders is undeniable. Even Menachem Begin’s book became his guide to guerrilla warfare. Nor was Mandela too big to admit that he learned from Arthur Goldreich, a South African Jew who fought with Israel’s pre-independence militia, the Palmach. What then was the real motive for expelling Israel’s diplomat? What did his gross interference in domestic politics amount to? It amounted to the most basic human need of all. It came down to water. The problem, as President Ramaphosa and his merry bandits saw it, was that Israel’s diplomat had done the unforgivable. Keeping to diplomatic norms, Ariel Seiderman had forsaken four walls and a desk for humanity outreach. As a former Israeli ambassador confirmed, “I spent four years in South Africa, and I never asked permission to go anywhere.” Yet Seiderman sought to help solve a deadly water crisis in the Eastern Cape, among the poorest of provinces, and that led to expulsion by the Jew-mad ANC. Three decades after assuming power, the ruling party still ignored the country’s Human Rights Commission complaint that a third of families had no plumbing; that pit latrines were the rule; that human beings shared water with animals. In perfect sync, the tyrants of Tehran stare down their own self-inflicted water nemesis: Tehran may have to be evacuated because taps have run dry. A copycat of the Eternal Law: in Iran as in its ANC proxy. Depriving the ANC’s own black people never got a second thought. On his trip to the Eastern Cape, Israel’s diplomat met the AbaThembu King, who’d gone to Israel and was more than impressed with what he discovered. Back home, he met 50 other traditional leaders. They visited hospitals and universities and shared the visits on social media. Everything was as transparent as can possibly be. Why shouldn’t they call on Israel, it being the leader in water management throughout Africa? What did the ANC’s fat thieving cadres have to offer? The party’s secretary general, Fikile April Mbalula, gave the brutal answer: the diplomat’s engagements did not support the party’s “Palestine” policy. The ANC could never tolerate optics so destructive to its anti-Jew policies. It had taken Israel to The Hague for genocide. It was beholden to Iran for baling it out of bankruptcy. It had become a diplomatic proxy to complement its terrorist proxies. Expel or be damned. Depriving the ANC’s own black people never got a second thought. The water situation in Nelson Mandela Bay, in the province, is so critical that councils have to issue notices, “Do not drink water.” Coli contamination is rife. Rampant diarrheal disease causes disease and death among the young. Schools have to be closed due to a lack of sanitation. That’s how much President Ramaphosa (the billionaire who never started a business in his life) hates the Jew-state and the Jews. Like the tyrants of Tehran deploying national wealth to wipe Israel off the map, he’s determined to self-destruct. Surely, President Trump will come down on the party like a ton of bricks. Beyond all expectations, however, he’s given the preferential trade agreement ALGOA, worth billions to South Africa in tariff-free entry to America, a year of grace. Yet a legal flashpoint looms. When Ramaphosa, as chairman of cellular operator MTN, embroiled it in a 49 percent stake in Iran’s second-largest mobile network operator, he violated the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act. Damages are being sought on behalf of U.S. military members and civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017. Iran’s decision to shut down communications during its deadly crackdown on protests, without informing the MTN group, will no doubt exacerbate the fallout. South African Jewish leaders who welcomed Ramaphosa as president, like the knight in shining armor, forgot one point: when vice president, he’d looked over President Zuma’s shoulder year after year as the latter sold government functions, including tax collection and treasury, to Indian mafia brothers, now on the run from arrest warrants. He looked on as Zuma and the Gupta brothers offered the finance minister, Nene, R500 million to give them access to the Treasury. He declined. When he took over, Ramaphosa made Nene his finance minister. In late 2018, the worthy man quit, admitting he’d visited the Gupta gangsters. “We know exactly what to do so Iran can also have plentiful water,” said Netanyahu. “The thirst for water in Iran is only matched by the thirst for freedom.” He could easily have had the Eastern Cape in mind. He recounted to the Iranian people how, “The tyrants of Tehran preferred sending hundreds of billions of dollars not to you, but to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Houthis — instead of funding your hospitals, your schools, and your roads. So much money has been burnt to hell.” “To hell” is right. Ramaphosa and his doomed party may have cause to remember, and to rue, God’s eternal curse. “Him that curses you I will curse.” READ MORE from Steve Apfel: When Fighting Antisemitism Becomes a Spectacle Shepherds Without Swords Trump Puts the Squeeze on Antisemites. Don’t Let S. Africa Slide.