Last year’s abrupt termination of USAID caused roughly 10-percent increases in conflict events and combat deaths in Africa, according to peer-reviewed research released on Thursday.The study by European and U.S. researchers examined violence and security in 870 African subnational regions between March 2024 and November 2025. It found that the swift…

Two leaders have been tapped by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to coordinate spy agencies’ efforts to track and thwart threats to the 2026 midterm elections, according to a congressional source and a second person familiar with the matter. Dave Mastro serves on the National Intelligence Council, which uses intelligence-community findings…

Humans often find beauty in symmetry. Some say it’s because we have an innate need to create order, or because we associate it with health and efficiency. Think of the massive stone statues in Egypt, which showcase an astounding amount of symmetry. Who would waste all that time making the…

Flying and downing drones are becoming part of many U.S. soldiers’ jobs, so over the last few weeks in Lithuania, infantry units worked to add drone warfare to their ground-combat expertise.During the fifth iteration of Project Flytrap, a U.S. Army-NATO exercise in Europe, members of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment joined…

U.S. officials pressed Israel and Lebanon for a security deal on Thursday as Washington tried to contain another volatile Middle East front involving Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group whose fight with Israel threatens to pull more American attention into the region. U.S. sources cited tensions rising inside the State Department about…

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Golden Dome’s defenders are downplaying a new $1.2 trillion estimate for Donald Trump’s ambitious missile-defense plan, though they declined to detail just how they disagree with the Congressional Budget Office’s report.Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program’s leader, said the CBO report released Wednesday relied on outdated cost estimates for…

HALIFAX, N.C. (AP) — With 165 grains of black powder in the barrel, a .75-caliber Brown Bess flintlock musket like the ones the redcoats carried in 1776 can hurl a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet (305 meters) per second. Imagine what that can do to a…

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The U.S. Coast Guard’s latest narcotics interdiction involved three suspected smuggling vessels carrying approximately 6,085 pounds of cocaine worth nearly $45.8 million, the service announced Thursday. The announcement comes on the heels of a banner 2025 year for the Coast Guard, which seized a record-high of more than 511,000 pounds…

Xbox just rolled out a brand new Gamerscore feature that fans may be disappointed to find doesn’t include the one thing they have been asking for since 2008. Xbox’s new system may be a neat new way for fans to show off what their Gamerscore accumulation looks like, but it’s…

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision last year to abruptly dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development — once a leading global aid donor — has been followed by a significant increase in violence in several African countries that the agency had supported, according to a study…