The US exceeded its debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, in January 2023. After months of warnings regarding an imminent default from the US Treasury, President Joe Biden signed a debt bill in June 2023 that suspended the cap until January 2025. This effectively allowed the government to keep borrowing without limits through next year. Debt spiked to $32 trillion less than two weeks after the bill was approved, and has been ballooning ever since.

The IMF also directed harsh criticism toward Washington's increasingly aggressive trade policies. In an apparent reference to escalating tensions with China, the watchdog said the country's "ongoing expansion of trade restrictions and insufficient progress in addressing the vulnerabilities highlighted by the 2023 bank failures" could undermine financial stability around the world.

The IMF statement is just the latest warning on US overspending. On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the US debt-to-GDP ratio was at its highest since World War II. The debt-to-GDP ratio is a metric used to gauge a country's ability to repay what it owes.

Last year, the nation's debt surged to 122% of its GDP, according to the OECD.

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Top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by Israel last night while he was in Iran for the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

Israel could have done this at any time over the past decades. The significance of it happening now is that it means peace talks are dead, since Haniyeh was critical to any such.

The point being, Israel does not want a ceasefire or peace, it wants a "final solution" to its "Palestinian problem".

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Terrorist attacks are unacceptable no matter who carries them out, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said

Russia condemns terrorism conducted by any entity, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, reacting to a new escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Israel accused Lebanon-based Islamist group Hezbollah on Saturday of launching a rocket tha landed on a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, which killed at least 12 teenagers and children, mostly of Syrian Druze origin, and wounded about 20 others. The group has denied involvement in the attack.

An earlier Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon reportedly killed three Hezbollah members.

Commenting on the latest escalation across the border, Lavrov told reporters on Sunday that Russia "condemns all terrorist actions by any entity," recalling that Moscow equally condemned the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and Israel's retaliation, which he said was a "flagrant violation of international humanitarian law" because it amounted to "collective punishment of the people."

The strategically important Golan Heights were seized from Syria in the 1967 Six Day war and later unilaterally annexed by Israel - a move that is still not recognized by most of the international community.

In response to the soccer field attack, the Israel Defense Forces said it had conducted strikes on "a series of Hezbollah terror targets... both deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon."
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An unnamed US official told CBS News that the recent escalation was "almost all-out war." Other sources told the outlet that it was a "nightmare scenario" feared by the White House, which was attempting to de-escalate the crisis and contain the fallout.

A Tamir missile launched from a nearby position is likely to contain a substantial amount of fuel, as the air defense rocket was designed to fly for around 70 km. This means that the majority of the fuel meant for the missile's flight after take-off detonated and produced the fireball seen in the video.

Despite Israeli assertions of a Hezbollah attack using a Falaq-1 rocket, substantial analysis points towards a malfunctioning Israeli Tamir interceptor missile as the more plausible cause of the explosion. The discrepancies in crater size, the nature of the explosion, and Hezbollah's historical targeting patterns all support this alternative explanation. The true story behind the Majdal Shams explosion remains shrouded, but the evidence presented here offers a compelling case for reconsidering the initial narrative.

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Blasts at Iraq PMF security agency base south of Baghdad kill 4 members, sources say

Blasts on Tuesday inside a base south of Baghdad used by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) killed four members of the official state security agency containing several Iran-aligned armed groups, and wounded four others, police and medical sources told Reuters.

The initial death toll was one, but two others who were critically injured in the blasts later died and another body was retrieved from the location of the blasts, hospital sources and a local government official said.

The blasts came after multiple rockets were launched at Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase housing U.S.-led forces late on Thursday, U.S. and Iraqi sources said, with no damage or casualties reported.

In a statement issued following the blasts, PMF made no accusation, saying it was unidentified explosion.

Another PMF statement issued later said rockets fired by drones targeted two patrols for the PMF forces in town of Jurf al-Sakhar just south of Baghdad.

An Iraqi military official said the cause of the blast remained unclear and authorities will start investigating the incident.

Two Iraqi PMF local commanders accused the U.S. of carrying out airstrikes that targeted the PMF base. There was no immediate response from the U.S. military.

Ambulances rushed to the area where the camp is located, 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad, said witnesses.

Iraq, a rare ally of both Tehran and Washington which hosts 2,500 U.S. troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces, has witnessed escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.