MicroWave

Nomma Zarubina, convicted of lying to the FBI, is the latest Russian woman accused of using her sexual wiles for spying

Nomma Zarubina, 35, now sits in a New York jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last week to charges that she lied to the FBI about her contacts with the FSB, Russia’s biggest domestic intelligence service.

But, in a playbook that comes straight from the cold war, the striking-looking Zarubina – known as “Alyssa” to her Russian handlers – was tasked with meeting prominent Americans in order to lure them into the orbit of Moscow intelligence.

According to US prosecutors, Zarubina attended “seminars, forums and conventions also attended by prominent members of academia, foreign policy, the US government and the media”. Her job was to “identify potentially helpful contacts” in the US and pass them on to the FSB so the agency could invite them to Russia to “convert” them to the “Russian way of thinking”.

The building appears to be among many devastated in Trump’s ‘major combat operations’ as long expected attacks arrive

Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.

At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation. At least 80 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the IRNA news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.

In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background. The report of the bombing, its death toll and the video’s source could not immediately be independently verified by the Guardian. Persian factchecking service Factnameh was able to cross-reference the video with other photographs of the school site, and concluded that the video was authentic. Reuters said it had also verified the footage as being from the school.

KEY POINTS

Life Time and Planet Fitness both reported strong growth, but their results highlighted a widening divide in consumer spending habits.

Life Time’s revenue jumped 12% as higher-income members paid higher dues and spent more on premium services like training, spa treatments and food.

Planet Fitness saw strong growth, but its weaker 2026 outlook raised concerns about slowing demand among lower- and middle-income members.

The Trump administration on Friday formally designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, the latest move to ratchet up pressure and penalize Iran for its history of imprisoning US citizens.

Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel that he was disappointed by Patel’s behavior while partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team during the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, NBC News reported Friday.

The team had won the gold medal after defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime. Patel, a hockey fan, was seen yelling, banging on a table and gulping down a bottle of beer during the locker room celebration on Sunday. Video of the incident, first shared by ProPublica, went viral.

Trump, who doesn’t drink alcohol, told Patel that he was not happy with the incident and disliked Patel using a government aircraft to fly to Milan, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

More than 300 Afghan Taliban fighters were killed in the latest airstrikes and border clashes, according to Pakistan officials. Meanwhile, the Taliban claimed to have shot down a Pakistani jet.

Concerns are mounting about the state of the US media landscape now that it looks increasingly likely that Paramount Skydance—a company controlled by the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, a donor to President Donald Trump—will succeed in its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

One day after Netflix announced that it was dropping its previously accepted bid to buy Warner, many critics demanded that antitrust laws be invoked to block the Paramount-Warner merger from going through.

Alvaro Bedoya, former commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, warned that the Ellison family could soon use their control over vast swaths of US media properties to engage in mass censorship, and he pointed to their decisions to cancel Stephen Colbert’s program and to refuse to air an interview with Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico.

The U.S. has recorded more than 1,100 measles cases so far this year, according to data published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's a troubling milestone that has many in public health bracing for the worst.

According to the CDC, out of every 1,000 children who are infected with measles, one may develop encephalitis, which is a dangerous swelling of the brain. Up to three out of every 1,000 infected children will die.

The U.S. is on track for another record-breaking year for measles: The number of measles cases reported in the first eight weeks of the year — 1,136 as of Feb. 26, according to CDC data — is already six times more than typical for an entire year. A tracker from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation has tallied an even higher annual case total than the CDC.

Trump has directed his White House counsel to explore a voter ID executive order, even as his own lawyers warn it would likely be stricken down — the latest test of his executive authority over American elections.

Donald Trump has directed his White House counsel’s office to explore the feasibility of an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo identification at polling locations nationwide, even as his own lawyers have warned the moves would likely run into legal trouble, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and White House staff secretary Will Scharf are among those overseeing the effort to determine whether a legally viable path forward exists.

It is the latest sign that the president intends to reshape American elections unilaterally and without congressional buy-in, testing the limits of his executive authority.

Mamdani wooed the president with much property talk and showed the real ‘art of the deal’ might have been soft power via Photoshop

In the hours after Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump for an undisclosed sit-down in the Oval Office on Thursday, a meme quickly circulated on X.

It resembled the screengrab of a TikToker who doles out dubious financial advice, but instead had the mayor’s picture front and center. On the left it read “I receive 12,000 homes” and “the release of a constituent kidnapped by ICE” and on the right “you receive fake newspaper cover”.

It was a neat summary of two unexpected wins Mamdani seemed to clinch in Washington for little in return, as part of an unexpectedly congenial relationship that continues to grow between city hall and the White House. Mamdani’s office later confirmed the mayor pitched a proposal to secure $21bn in federal grants to make good on a central promise to create more citywide affordable housing. This would include the construction of a deck over the busy rail yard in Sunnyside, Queens to build 12,000 housing units. The president appeared “enthusiastic”, according to the mayor’s chief spokesperson.

Anthropic said on Friday it will challenge in court the Pentagon's decision to declare the AI firm a supply-chain risk, hours after U.S. Donald Trump also directed every federal agency to stop work with the company.

DoJ says it will not ask US supreme court to rehear tariffs case despite president’s complaint on Truth Social

The Trump administration said refunds of tariffs struck down by the US supreme court “will take time”, according to court documents filed by the Department of Justice.

Businesses including FedEx have lined up to demand reimbursement for US tariffs they have paid but that the court last week deemed were imposed illegally, prompting heavy criticism from Donald Trump.

The justice department did not say it plans to ask the supreme court to rehear the case, despite Trump’s comments earlier on Friday. Claiming that refunds could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars, the president wrote: “I am sure that the supreme court did not have this in mind!”