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The victim of a deadly sword attack at a school in central Sweden was a 17-year-old girl, police said Saturday.

With temperatures reaching 116 degrees on Aug. 17, the man was unable to continue just over a mile into the trek.

On a dark Saturday afternoon for the Yankees, who revealed Giancarlo Stanton had again strained a calf, there was a Cody Bellinger silver lining.

A fast-moving brush fire on a hillside in Northern ​Nevada, just outside Reno, has ‌grown to over 10,500 acres as of Saturday evening.

"If you really thought ‘defund the police’ and then you just ascribed it to ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ well, how did it get you?" Rogan said.

Dear Abby advises a new mother whose best friend is struggling with anxiety and depression after childbirth while she is enjoying motherhood.

A woman in Brazil was found guilty this week of living with a foster family for more than a year while pretending to be a child, officials said.

Levine worked as a school librarian and teacher in Teaneck, NJ, for about 25 years.

Levine worked as a school librarian and teacher in Teaneck, NJ, for about 25 years.

An Ohio doctor who published a study on "the violent and homicidal adolescent" was gunned down by her teen daughter's boyfriend and his roommate in an alleged hit against her parents.

Peltola missed 794 of 4,265 state House votes, or 18.6%, during her five terms from 1999 to 2009, according to legislative records.

Odell Beckham Jr. let what would've been a touchdown pass slip through his hands as he attempts to comeback with the Giants.

Luis Robert Jr.’s visit to his old stomping ground undoubtedly will be remembered as a highlight of his season.

“Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 36, completed her egg-freezing journey, vowing to share more updates despite past “negativity.”

Police are hunting for a ruthless gunman who opened fire on a Brooklyn street Wednesday afternoon, nearly killing a developmentally delayed woman and leaving her family's beloved dog bleeding from a bullet wound.

Leonie Fiebich is usually stoic on the court for the Liberty. But playing her first game in seven weeks Saturday, she let the emotion pour out.

JJ Bleday, 28, hit for the cycle in just six innings on Saturday to lead the Cincinnati Reds to an 11-5 blowout win over the Diamondbacks in Arizona.

A woman was found dead in a Bronx apartment on Friday afternoon — and authorities are eyeing her mentally ill son as a possible homicide suspect, according to sources.

Escobar: How Trump Tried To Bribe The Head Of The IRGC

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes.

Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” And we bribe.

A Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live, is unequivocal: The President of the United States – despite having “won” the war on Iran countless times, at least in the Vociferation stakes – made a major attempt to induce IRGC Commander-in-Chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and senior Iranian military leadership to break with the government in Tehran through enormous financial inducements.

So here we have POTUS playing good ol’ Divide and Rule – which the Brits learned from the Roman Empire – to fracture the IRGC from the inside.

This was not a mere exploratory diplomatic contact. Trump did not merely want to determine whether Vahidi supported U.S.-Iran negotiations.

According to our source – placed in the tight inner circle of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – this was a full leadership-buyout operation, modeled on the Venezuela playbook, to fracture the Iranian state.

The attempt miserably failed.

Because Ahmad Vahidi completely rejected it.

The Trump administration had already created a somewhat direct conduit to Vahidi through Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, way back in May 2026. Then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard contacted Barzani – fully authorized by Trump and Vice-President JD Vance – and an encrypted connection to Vahidi was subsequently established through Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The channel stayed dormant – or in coma, for nearly 3 months. This time though Trump attempted to turn the channel into a de facto fracturing of the Iranian leadership, employing the conceptual precedent in Venezuela: isolate the central command; handsomely bribe those immediately around it for “cooperation”; and create the internal conditions for regime decapitation.

The source describes “billions of dollars” being waved as inducements to several members of the senior IRGC leadership through Vahidi. All that while Trump was on Hardcore Vociferation mode threatening Tehran and spinning his “control” of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nothing so far has been independently confirmed in public. And probably will not. But that does not mean the source is not credible.

The source is part of Leader Mojtaba’s tight inner circle; heard all about it directly from Vahidi; and later was fully authorized to disclose the extremely sensitive information to Pakistani mediators, especially Field Marshal Asim Munir, who Trump keeps calling virtually every day asking for “help” getting the Iranians back at the negotiating table (when he in fact blew up the negotiating table).

I bribe, therefore I am

Vahidi is not a peripheral military figure. Far from it: he is the commander of the IRGC – the institutional center of gravity of Iranian hard power. The Trump administration wanted access to the top of the IRGC itself.

But they bet on the wrong man. The number two man in Iran right now, overseeing everything including top IRGC decisions, is Mohsen Rezaee: the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and personal representative of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Mohsen Rezaee is a former IRGC commander and his leadership is uncontested – as proven by the trust placed in him by the Leader. The overarching framework guiding his decisions – and people like Vahidi – is the Shi’te sense of moral duty, ethics, self-sacrifice and the spirit of Sovereign Resistance, values completely alien to an Empire of Grifters.

It’s no wonder that a crass neo-Crassus in War-a-Lago/Washington actually believed that a battle-tested military leader – and those around him – could sell the fate of a civilization-state for a mere bribe, and induced to defect, stand aside or facilitate regime change.

Applying the exact same Venezuela methodology means that the Trump administration actually believed they could translate it to a Shi’ite Iran context. That proves once again an astonishing degree of cultural stupidity.

The methodology may work for corrupt Latin American political/military elites: History tells us it happened so many times.

But to believe that offering protection, political survival, loads of money and/or a future share of the spoils to an IRGC that is far from being a loose political entourage around a vulnerable presidential palace fully demonstrates how the Empire of Grifters has no clue about the institutional cohesion of the Iranian security state.

All across the Global South, this will be regarded for what it is: another episode of the neo-Crassus Art of the Deal.

Complementing another recent episode, where the capo fraternizes with the DPRK then asks South Korea – “I asked for $10 billion” – for protection money.

That’s the pizzo. Not to be confused with pizza. Pizzo is Sicilian slang for extortion money.

Mafia, piracy, bribing, extortion: talk about a flexible Empire at work.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/22/2026 - 23:20

A large group of protesters rallied outside Barclays Arena Saturday night in the midst of Sophie Cunningham's 'trans' scandal where she spoke up for protecting women in sports.