- The White House asks Congress to investigate Trump’s allegation that Obama wiretapped his phone during the 2016 campaign. [Link]
- Tony Blair has a secret meeting with Donald Trump. Trump is said to be considering Blair for heading a Middle East Envoy. Blair may also take on the role of advisor to Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner. [Link]
- Officials within the Trump Administration are saying that Trump’s campaign promises to make a deal with Russia are off. [Link]
- The Trump Administration is proposing a 17% cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [Link]
- An Afghan family of five was detained and denied legal counsel for several days at Los Angeles Internation Airport. Customs and Border Patrol held the family who was in the US with valid VISAs. The VISAs were awarded to the family for the father’s assistance to the US war in Afghanistan. [Link]
- A lawsuit filed in 2014 alleges that a private prison that contracts with ICE forced 1,000s of detainees to work for $1 or less per day. The lawsuit was granted class-action status this week. [Link]
- Body cam video of a police shooting in Louisville has been released. The video shows the officer shot the unarmed man without giving him any time to respond to commands. The officer is now on administrative leave. [Link]
- About 10,000 people are fleeing their homes each day in West Mosul as fighting in the city continues. [Link]
- The US military admits to killing 21 civilians with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria between November and January. By US official reporting, this brings the number of civilians killed by the US in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syrian to 220. As typical of US government reporting, these numbers are drastically lower that numbers reported by international monitoring groups. Airwars reports that the US coalition has killed 2,463 civilians in their war against ISIS. [Link]
- Airstrikes in targeting an ISIS-held Syrian village kill 11 civilians. Russia is the most likely country to be bombing in the area. [Link]
- US-backed Kurdish forces have taken the last road connecting Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. Taking this road has cut off the land routes out of the ISIS capital of Raqqa. [Link]
- Trump orders an expansion of America’s counterterrorism war in Yemen. [Link]
- US airstrikes in Yemen hit civilian targets and wounded innocent people. The US is expanding its targeting of al-Qaeda in Yemen from the mountainous regions to towns with larger populationsns. [Link]
- The US media continues to publish propaganda that justifies US support for the Saudi war in Yemen. The US media regularly lies that the Houthi are a proxy of Iran. [Link]
