The study says three or four secret groups, each of which consisted of 10 Iraqi Shiite elite warriors, conducted at least seven drone assaults from desert locations between Basra and Samawa between April 20 and May 17.

The attacked locations allegedly were in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

The claims are especially delicate for Iraq, which has spent recent years trying to repair ties with Gulf Arab neighbors via increasing commerce, investment, and energy cooperation.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE built stronger economic and political allies with Baghdad in recent years.

The suspected cells were formed outside typical militia organizations, raising worries that Iraqi authorities may have been surprised by activities taking place on their turf, Reuters said.

If true, the claim underscores the difficulties Baghdad faces in exercising state control over all military activities.

Any strike conducted from Iraqi land against neighboring nations has the potential of harming relationships in the area at a time when Baghdad is seeking deeper ties with the Gulf.

Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi stressed recently that Iraq should not be pulled into regional wars and that Iraqi land should not be used to threaten other countries.

The report also comes as part of a wider push by the Iraqi government to strengthen state institutions, reduce the influence of non-state armed groups, and depict Iraq as a stable regional partner ready to attract global investment and economic cooperation.

Iraqi authorities have not reacted publicly to the particular charges, but the assertions are expected to deepen discussion on sovereignty, security, and the role of armed players acting beyond direct government supervision.

The claims highlight, for many observers, the difficult situation Iraq is in, trying to balance its connections with Iran and the US while also pursuing closer political and economic links with its neighbors in the Gulf.

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“The grave and offensive words of President Trump… offend the whole of Italy,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who had been due to visit the US on June 21 and 22, said on X.

Meloni said she was “stunned” by Trump’s comments to Italian channel La7 in which, according to a transcript provided by the network, he said Meloni “wanted a picture with me so badly” at the G7 summit and he agreed only because he “felt sorry for her”.

He also suggested that Meloni might be “happy that I talked to her, I didn’t have to talk to her”.

Meloni called what Trump said “made up”, adding: “Neither I nor Italy ever beg.”

“I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves this way with his own allies,” the far-right leader wrote on X.

“I can only say that it’s a pity he doesn’t show the same determination with enemies of the West, with enemies of the United States, with leaders with whom, instead, he is far more accommodating,” she said.

At the end of the G7 summit in Evian on Wednesday, Meloni had spoken of a “very positive climate” and “no friction” between Trump and other world leaders present.

Meloni has positioned herself as a bridge between Europe and the Trump administration, but the relationship came under strain during the Middle East war.

Trump turned on Meloni in April after she defended Pope Leo XIV from the US president’s harsh criticism of the pontiff’s anti-war views.

Meloni condemned Trump’s remarks as “unacceptable” — prompting the president to turn his fire on her.

“I’m shocked at her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” the US president said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera at the time.

He accused Meloni of failing to help the United States with NATO.

Trump has threatened to pull US troops from Italy, saying Rome “has not been of any help to us” in the Iran war.

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Despite a ceasefire being declared in October 2025, Israel has continued to launch strikes across Gaza, killing at least 992 Palestinians since then, according to the occupied territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The UN children’s agency said the number of Palestinian children killed since the ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hamas, which runs Gaza, was an “absurd and devastating figure”.

“During a period supposedly defined by restraint and protection, a child has been killed, on average, every single day for more than eight months,” UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Amman.

“For many, many months, the world has been told there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet for Palestinian children, this so-called ceasefire has become a cruel and a deadly illusion.”

Elder stressed that the children killed since the ceasefire was declared “were not killed in a war zone”. 

“They were killed in their homes. In their schools. Playing football. Fishing. They were shot, bombed struck by quadcopters,” he said.

“If a child is being killed every day, surely the debate is no longer about the quality of the ceasefire. It is about the credibility of calling it one.”

This week, he pointed out, “a two-year-old boy was shot and killed by Israeli forces; a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed inside his tent; a five-year-old boy and his father were killed by an Israeli strike, and on and on it goes”. 

– Unacceptable –

In addition to those killed, more than 400 children had been injured since the ceasefire was declared, “many with catastrophic wounds”, Elder said.

Currently, he said, “hundreds of children urgently require medical evacuation”, even as Israeli “restrictions on essential medicines mean wounded children are enduring greater pain and face an increased risk of infection, complications and further amputations”.

Elder also highlighted the deep trauma suffered by Gaza’s children.

“Fear, loss and violence… is woven into the very fabric of their childhood,” he said, pointing out that “the trauma is so profound that it affects children’s ability to eat, sleep and, of course, to develop normally”. 

Elder insisted: “The continued killing of children is not the consequence of a lack of options. It is the consequence of a lack of political will.”

“We must stop accepting levels of child deaths that would provoke international outrage anywhere else in the world,” he said.

“We must stop normalising the abnormal.”

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Now he faces a likely leadership bid by popular party veteran Andy Burnham after the Greater Manchester mayor won a decisive by-election in the northwest.

In his first speech as prime minister on July 5, 2024, Starmer promised a government of “service” that would “tread more lightly” on people’s lives following 14 years of Conservative rule dominated by Brexit and infighting.

He sought to make a virtue of his more measured approach, contrasting what he saw as his pragmatic managerialism with the ideological bombast of previous Tory prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

“There’s no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be,” the man himself is said to have told colleagues, according to “Get In”, a book about his leadership of the Labour party written by journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.

But soon after entering Downing Street, he struggled to be the safe pair of hands he had portrayed, while his lack of ideology and charisma has left him struggling to sell a story of where he is taking the country.

He insisted on Friday that “there’s more to do and that’s what I’m focusing on” as he faced further calls from some of Labour’s approximately 400 MPs to step down to avoid a bitter leadership challenge from Burnham and possibly other contenders.

– Successful career –

Starmer, born on September 2, 1962, was raised in a small semi-detached house on the outskirts of London by a seriously ill mother and an emotionally distant father who loved animals and rescued donkeys.

After university, he enjoyed a successful career as a human rights lawyer and chief state prosecutor which led to him being knighted by then Queen Elizabeth II.

A keen flautist and Arsenal fan, Starmer became an MP in 2015, succeeding left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader five years later, following the party’s worst general election defeat since 1935.

He showed his ruthless side by purging Corbyn, targeting antisemitism and moving the party back to the more electable centre ground, delivering Labour’s biggest election victory in over two decades.

On becoming UK leader, Starmer pledged to “fix” Britain after years of sluggish growth, a cost-of-living crisis and public services hollowed out by Tory austerity measures.

But he cautioned the road to recovery would be “long and difficult”.

– Troubles –

His premiership got off to a bad start when his government announced a hugely unpopular policy to remove winter fuel payments from millions of elderly people, which had not been in Labour’s election manifesto. He later backtracked.

Starmer was also forced into a humiliating climbdown on reforming welfare benefits, backed down in a row with farmers over inheritance tax and angered businesses for increasing a payroll tax and the minimum wage.

The early months were also dominated by anger over a free gifts row, while in September 2025, Angela Rayner resigned as deputy prime minister for underpaying a property tax.

That same month, Starmer sacked Peter Mandelson as his ambassador to Washington over the depth of the envoy’s friendship with late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The appointment, for which Starmer has apologised, led to the departure of two of his closest aides and the most senior civil servant in the foreign ministry.

Starmer himself has refused to quit but the scandal haunts him, contributing to a series of humiliating local election results for Labour in May that renewed calls for his departure.

– Burnham challenge –

While Starmer has been praised for standing up to US President Donald Trump over the Iran war and maintaining European support for Ukraine, he has struggled to fend off support at home for both the left-wing Greens and the populist, hard-right Reform UK party, led by firebrand Nigel Farage.

A key by-election victory on Friday paved the way for an expected leadership challenge from popular Labour veteran Burnham, who decisively beat a Reform candidate on his home soil in the north of England.

Starmer has one of the lowest popularity ratings ever among prime ministers at just 19 percent, according to a YouGov poll.

On Friday, Starmer vowed not to “walk away” as leader, saying he would run in any leadership contest but warning that this would plunge the country “into chaos”.

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Al-Badri formerly served as head of the Accountability and Justice Commission, which vets public officials and election candidates for links to the old Baath Party.

He has served in security posts in Wasit province and has been in the Iraqi public service for years.

Al-Badri, who has postgraduate degrees in political science, military studies and history, is considered an experienced political and security figure.

The National Security Service is one of Iraq’s key intelligence organizations. It was founded in 2005 and is involved in counterterrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, and national security activities.

The appointment is among the latest top government moves under Al-Zaidi as his government works to overhaul major state institutions and security entities.

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French company Enchanted Tools was showing off its Mirokai, a “social” robot with long orange ears and wide blue eyes.

Able to communicate in over 50 languages, prototypes of the Paris-based firm’s machine are already out in the wild welcoming people to hospitals and airports, marketing chief Richard Malterre said on a Vivatech stage.

The start-up hopes its first mass-produced models will arrive by the end of this year.

“At least 60 percent of the robot is manufactured in Europe, and we’re fighting to keep it that way,” Malterre told AFP.

But some of the AI robotics know-how is “not necessarily available” in Europe, he said, such as the graphics processors from American chip giant Nvidia that power Mirokai’s brain as well as the broader generative AI boom.

– ‘Dark factories’ –

When it comes to sheer robotics production capacity, China is unrivalled thanks to companies including Unitree and Agibot.

Their androids’ tightly choreographed displays wowed visitors to Vivatech, the latest fair to show them off in recent months.

Around 87 percent of the 13,000 humanoid robots deployed worldwide in 2025 rolled off a Chinese production line, according to the UK-based consultancy Omdia.

“China is definitely on the forefront” as its companies increasingly show off “dark factories” where robots work largely without human supervision, said Joern Buss, a robotics expert at the consultancy Arthur D. Little.

Nevertheless, Europe is “catching up” behind Japan and Korea, he added, boasting “some good robotics players” including longstanding firms.

New players on the European scene include Germany’s Neura, which builds humanoid industrial and household robots as well as a platform for training them to carry out human tasks.

The company recently announced it had raised $1.4 billion.

“We get requests for everything, even dentists, everyone is calling us and asking if they can have a robot as a supporter, because they can’t find people,” chief executive David Reger told AFP.

Like other advanced economies around the world, Europe faces an ageing population that could squeeze the labour supply in both manufacturing and services.

Reger called robots like Neura’s the continent’s “last chance”, saying “Europe does require this economic pillar to sustain” itself.

He cited familiar challenges for European tech firms including tight regulation and a tougher search for financing than competitors in the United States.

But Reger has no plans to uproot Neura’s business, which is collaborating with German car component suppliers Bosch and Schaeffler on factory automation.

He vaunts Neura’s order book of over $1 billion.

– Data protection –

“If all robot production goes to Japan or China, that could be a big problem when it comes to sovereignty,” said Francesco Ferro, chief executive of Spain’s PAL Robotics.

His company was at Vivatech showing off its latest models bolted together in Barcelona.

One is a black biped that has been dubbed Kangaroo, while the Tiago machine is fitted with jointed arms that have been put to use in logistics as well as picking grape harvests.

Robotics developers use vast quantities of data to train their machines’ movements, and they collect still more information as they carry out their tasks.

The continent should aim to create “a totally European supply chain, without thinking only about price”, as that could lead prospective clients to buy Chinese robots, Ferro said.

That would risk seeing valuable or sensitive data “falling into the wrong hands”, he warned.

French-American start-up Genesis AI plans to re-shore production of its Eno multifunctional robot next year after making it in China.

Prospective customers include “the big industrial base in France, Italy and Germany,” co-founder Theophile Gervet told AFP.

Enchanted Tools’ Malterre also believes the demand exists, and “I’m confident in our ability and creativity to endure”.

“We need to be ready for a fight, not throw in the towel.” 

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After tournament co-hosts Mexico sealed their place in the last 32 on Thursday with a 1-0 victory over South Korea, the USA or the Socceroos can join them with a victory in their Group D game in Seattle.

After an unconvincing build-up, the Americans made a flying start to the World Cup last week with a stylish 4-1 demolition of Paraguay in Los Angeles.

That result has left Mauricio Pochettino’s USA team brimming with confidence and the country getting behind them as they prepare for the showdown with the Socceroos in the Pacific Northwest.

Australia are also approaching the USA clash in buoyant mood after their stunning 2-0 upset of Turkey on Saturday.

Those two wins mean that either the USA or Australia will advance to the last 32 with victory in a game that has had an undercurrent of tension in the build-up. 

A comment from a US pundit suggesting that Australia would be an easy opponent for Pochettino’s team has been seized on Down Under, prompting Socceroos coach Tony Popovic to say that his team would do their talking on the field.

“We know that we want to earn our respect,” Popovic said on Thursday.

“We know that by our performances we can put Australian football on the world map, and that’s what we aim to do.”

– Brazil need improvement –

Brazil defender Gabriel Magalhaes said the five-time World Cup winners need to turn the page on a disappointing 1-1 draw with Morocco in their first game as they prepare to face winless Haiti.

“We know what we have to do. We know that we didn’t have a good first match, but what we can expect from us is that we’ll be really committed tomorrow and we’re going to do our best to win,” Gabriel said on Thursday.

“It wasn’t the match we wanted (against Morocco), but this is in the past and we’ve learned from it.”

Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti said he would change the line-up — and sought to put the team’s sluggish start into context.

“Getting off to a good start is important in a World Cup, but the most important thing is that the team, rather than being perfect, has to be resilient,” the Italian said.

Scotland captain Andy Robertson meanwhile urged his team to build on their opening 1-0 win against Haiti and get a result against Morocco on Friday which would help propel them into the knockout rounds of a World Cup for the very first time.

“I don’t think any of the lads or the coaching staff and backroom staff have shied away from it,” Robertson said

“We want to be the first team to be able to do that for our country. And it’s obviously a nice feeling to try and do that.”

The Scots can count on the full-throated support of their Tartan Army of supporters who have been drinking bars dry, singing at baseball games and charming Bostonians for days.

Off the field, Iran’s football federation said on Thursday it will lodge a complaint with FIFA claiming their team is being subjected to travel restrictions during the tournament.

“Despite having submitted its preparation schedule for the tournament well in advance, Iran’s national football team has once again encountered restrictions imposed by the organizers, affecting the implementation of its technical staff’s plans,” the spokesman said.

Iran wanted to fly from their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, to Los Angeles two days before their next match, against Belgium on Sunday.

But the Iranian federation said its request was turned down.

The US administration has pushed back against the Iranian demands.

Andrew Giuliani, the White House’s point main for the World Cup, said on Monday that Iran had been informed in advance that they would be allowed to enter the United States only on the day before the game.

“The team will be allowed to come in, match day minus one, so the day before the match,” Giuliani told CBS News.

The post USA, Australia eye World Cup knockout rounds, Brazil in action appeared first on Iraqi News.

Data collected from those visitors — their movements, their heartbeats and even the temperature of their skin — will feed the computer that is creating the immersive display, using a network of sensors, including those on the wrists of ticket-holders.

“Machine Dreams: Rainforest” is the inaugural exhibition at Dataland, a new museum in the heart of America’s second biggest city that is the brainchild of Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkilic, whose 10 million lines of code power the animations — using 1.5 billion pixels.

Anadol said he was inspired by a visit to the Brazilian Amazon, a place he thinks everyone should experience.

“But I do not believe we should all go to the rainforest,” he told AFP.

“The question was: can the rainforest come to us? Can we still connect, feel special, respect and love nature, learn about it?”

Wall-mounted sensors will track visitors’ movements, and guests will wear a medical-grade, watch-like device to monitor their emotions and heart rate for interacting with the model. They will also carry a portable scent diffuser throughout the experience.

Using billions of images and datapoints, the model will create a constantly evolving experience.

It is as if the system were “dreaming,” Erkilic explained.

“It’s moving all the time, because it’s gathering data. As soon as it builds one structure, it also affects the overall storytelling,” he said.

“It’s coming from a more poetic place instead of a scientific place. The machine itself is trying to recreate the reality based on the data points, it’s like bringing all the little bits and dots and trying to build the reality itself.”

At the end of the experience, visitors can sample chocolates with flavors generated by the model, or print T-shirts and paintings resulting from their interaction. 

These are intended to serve as tangible souvenirs of the ephemeral dream in Dataland. 

“The system forgets you; that is the beauty of it,” says Anadol.

Dataland opens to the public on June 20.

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“Despite having submitted its preparation schedule for the tournament well in advance, Iran’s national football team has once again encountered restrictions imposed by the organizers, affecting the implementation of its technical staff’s plans,” the spokesman said.

Iran wanted to fly from their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, to the United States two days before their next match, against Belgium in Los Angeles on Sunday.

But the Iranian federation said its request was turned down.

“Given that the game will be played at 12:00 pm local time in Los Angeles, the Football Federation of Iran requested that the team be allowed to travel to Los Angeles two days before the match,” the spokesman said.

“The aim was to provide sufficient time for players to adapt to the match conditions, complete their final training session, and finalize preparations.

“Despite the technical reasons presented by the federation, the request was once again denied.”

The Iranians were also angry that they had to leave Los Angeles the night of their first game of the World Cup, a 2-2 draw against New Zealand.

The US administration has pushed back against the Iranian claims.

Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA Task Force, said on Monday that Iran had been informed in advance that they would be allowed to come into the United States only on the day before the game.

“The team will be allowed to come in, match day minus one, so the day before the match,” Giuliani told CBS News.

“They’ll be asked to leave the day that the match wraps up, so the evening of the match. And they’ll be able to do that again in Los Angeles.”

He added that the procedure would be the same for Iran’s final group game against Egypt in Seattle on June 26.

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But new research out Thursday in the journal Science challenges that conventional assumption. It presents analysis of rare fossils which scientists say fill knowledge gaps on the development of the creatures that gave rise to the first land-dwelling vertebrates.

The research centers on specimens excavated from the Mazon Creek fossil beds in northern Illinois, southwest of Chicago.

The world-renowned site features iron carbonate concretions that formed some 309 million years ago, fossilizing within them ancient creatures that had once thrived in the area’s lush swamps, shallow seas and river deltas.

It’s known for its exceptionally well-preserved specimens including soft tissue.

The new study analyzes dozens of fossils to examine the evolution between fish and tetrapods, or four-legged animals.

At the center was a specimen determined to likely be the baby of a crocodile-esque creature known as an embolomere, which lived mostly in the water but did develop little legs.

In its juvenile stage, popular thought would have anticipated it to show tadpole-like features like external gills, explained Jason Pardo, a research associate at Chicago’s Field Museum and the study’s co-lead author.

But it didn’t, he said.

The body of the baby — the specimen of which the researchers said are about the size of a short, narrow macaroni noodle — instead showed evidence of direct development, meaning it was more or less put together the way they would be into adulthood.

That’s not what we would expect to see in amphibians, whose metamorphosis from tadpoles into adults includes much more dramatic rearranging and development of organs and limbs.

“We now actually have some direct fossil record evidence,” Pardo told AFP, “that this metamorphosis, this amphibian-like life cycle that we’ve for 150 years assumed was part of our history, turns out that it wasn’t part of that at all.” 

– ‘Glorious fossils’ –

John Long, an Australian paleontologist who has also done extensive research in this field, called the study “quite outstanding.”

“Not much was known about their early life stages,” he explained to AFP of the animals that gave rise to the first tetrapods.

“This detailed work on a bunch of simply glorious fossils nails it that they went straight into a juvenile phase so didn’t need to go through the tadpole stage.”

Jason Anderson of the University of Calgary said the “impressive” paper highlights “the power of fossils to address questions we thought impossible given they take place in short periods of time, and in tissues not normally preserved over hundreds of millions of years.”

Both he and Pardo also noted that the study underscores that amphibians are impressive evolutionary creatures in their own right.

“Our amphibians, instead of being relicts of earlier stages in the evolutionary history of tetrapods, are themselves highly evolved creatures,” Anderson told AFP.

– ‘Love letter’ to citizen scientists –

The fossil serving as the focal point of the study had been in the collections at the Field Museum for a long time when the then-director showed it to paper co-author Arjan Mann, who became enthralled.

While both were doctoral students in Canada, Mann and Pardo puzzled over it for years.

Eventual analysis with scanning electron microscopy at the Canadian Museum of Nature allowed researchers to confirm it as a probable embolomere.

Throughout their research the duo analyzed that fossil’s juvenile features along with another, smaller embolomere and other species of fossil baby tetrapod relatives.

Mann — the Field Museum’s Assistant Curator of Early Tetrapods — noted that their research was made possible by the remarkable discoveries at the Mazon Creek site and the amateur scientists who for decades have combed it, a hobby that over the years turned up the specimens analyzed in the paper.

“This paper, in a way, is kind of a love letter to them, that shows the power of what we can do with working together with this community to synthesize really high-impactful new research,” Mann told AFP.

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