Maduro’s alleged ‘bag man’ Alex Saab arrested less than 3 years after Biden pardon: report
Alex Saab, a 54-year-old Colombian businessman and close ally of captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was reportedly deported after his February arrest in a joint U.S.-Venezuelan operation. The development comes less than three years after former President Joe Biden pardoned and released Saab in a controversial 2023 prisoner swap. The high-profile arrest highlights a new level of cooperation between U.S. authorities and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez. MADURO ALLY ALEX SAAB ARRESTED IN JOINT US-VENEZUELAN OPERATION, OFFICIAL SAYS Following Maduro’s capture in a January U.S. military raid, Rodríguez stripped Saab of his cabinet position and his role as the main conduit for foreign investments, according to a report from The Associated Press. If returned to U.S. custody, Saab could become a crucial star witness against Maduro, who is currently awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan. Court hearings previously revealed that Saab held secret meetings with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for years, helping them identify corruption within Maduro’s camp. VENEZUELA ORDERS NATIONWIDE MANHUNT FOR SUPPORTERS AFTER MADURO’S ARREST BY US FORCES Described by U.S. officials as Maduro’s “bag man,” Saab was previously detained in 2020 on bribery charges, with U.S. officials alleging he siphoned $350 million out of Venezuela, according to the AP. While Biden’s 2023 pardon was focused on a specific 2019 indictment over unbuilt low-income housing, Saab still faces active federal investigations over alleged bribery conspiracies involving Venezuelan food import contracts. The Venezuelan immigration authority confirmed a “Colombian citizen” was being sent away due to U.S. criminal investigations, but avoided confirmation of his destination to bypass Venezuelan laws prohibiting the extradition of its own nationals, the AP reported. The U.S. Department of Justice and Saab’s lawyer, Neil Schuster, did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Trump shares stunning photos of Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, says project is ahead of schedule
President Donald Trump on Saturday shared photos of a sample test at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which is undergoing renovations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary and expected to be completed by July Fourth. The images showed the basin with the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument in the background at each end. Blue skies and white fluffy clouds could be seen in the water’s reflection. “Looking really good! Should be completed before the Fourth of July, our target date,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday afternoon. TRUMP WORKING TO CLEAN ‘FILTHY’ LINCOLN MEMORIAL REFLECTING POOL, BLAMES BIDEN FOR MAINTENANCE DELAYS Trump added the administration has “substantially upgraded construction materials, including surface qualities, sandblasting granite, and exterior stone and walkways.” “I’ve made this a much larger job than originally contemplated for purposes of Beauty, and a much longer life,” Trump wrote in the post. “Also, went to a higher quality sealer with more reflectivity. Check it out before the Opening — It’s a very exciting project!” Critics have voiced concerns over the pool resurfacing with “industrial-grade” material in the color “American flag blue,” with a nonprofit called the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) going so far as to file a lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) to halt the project. TRUMP TAKES MOTORCADE INTO REFLECTING POOL, BLASTS PAST ‘$38M DISASTER’ FIX UNDER OBAMA “The vivid blue coating will fundamentally alter the visual and experiential character of the pool and the broader Lincoln Memorial Grounds landscape,” the group wrote in a complaint obtained by Politico. “The new coloration will cause the pool to resemble a large swimming pool rather than the reflective civic landscape it was designed to be, distorting the experience of the site for the millions of visitors who come to it each year.” When asked Saturday about the new photos shared by the president, TCLF president and CEO Charles A. Birnbaum told Fox News Digital “the primary issue is whether the law was followed before the painting began.” “Since the Reflecting Pool is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, reviews of work that would alter a key character-defining feature of this important national symbol should be subject to reviews under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act; and this project should have been reviewed by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, as other work on the Reflecting Pool has been reviewed over the past century,” Birnbaum said. The TCLF is a national, D.C.-based education and advocacy organization, not a preservation organization. TRUMP LAUNCHES MASSIVE ‘FREEDOM 250’ PUSH TO IGNITE AMERICA’S 250TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION In a separate Truth Social post earlier Saturday, Trump noted he has “decided to go to a much higher level of repair, using industrial strength materials, which will give a longer life, and a better look,” adding the job is “ahead of schedule.” The president’s repeated references to the materials used and expected completion date follow the publication of a New York Times article on Tuesday that alleged U.S. Department of the Interior staff highlighted concerns about the presence of bubbles, small holes and color inconsistencies in the partially refinished surface. Further, the outlet claimed to have documents showing that as of Sunday, only 35% of the pool surface had been fully coated and crucial joints had not yet been replaced — insinuating the job may not be completed in time for Independence Day. Interior Department spokesperson Katie Martin told The Times that sections of the basin were in various stages of repair. “The final product will be uniform, as the plan depicts,” Martin said. “As with any project, there will be revisions to the process to ensure the most efficient tools are used to get to the end goal.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital “the restoration effort will be completed ahead of America’s 250th celebrations and for a fraction of the cost that the former Presidents Obama and Biden squandered only to worsen its condition. Thanks to President Trump, the Reflecting Pool will be restored to all its glory!” The Interior Department and New York Times did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Second FDA executive departing organization in less than a week as top drug regulator claims she was fired
Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, former acting director of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), became the second high-ranking official to depart the FDA this week after claiming she was fired Friday. Høeg’s departure came after that of former FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, who publicly resigned Tuesday after rumors that President Donald Trump was unhappy with him swirled for days. Høeg, who worked closely with Makary on regulating drugs before being elevated to CDER head in December, claimed she was forced out. TRUMP’S FDA BOSS RESIGNING AS ADMIN TAPS NEXT ACTING LEADER “I said I didn’t want to resign,” Høeg told MD Reports in an interview published Friday. “I said I’m not signing a letter of resignation if it’s not my choice.” “They made it clear that it wasn’t their decision,” she told the outlet. “They said it was from someone above them, from someone way above their pay grade.” TRUMP FDA OVERHAULS COVID-19 VACCINE APPROVAL TO FOCUS ON OLDER POPULATIONS, HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS Høeg will be replaced by her former deputy, Dr. Mike Davis, according to an FDA email to staff obtained by The Associated Press. While the White House has yet to officially comment on her departure, Høeg’s exodus may be part of a larger shakeup following Makary’s resignation. In addition to Høeg, former director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Katherine Szarama is also leaving, along with FDA Chief of Staff Jim Traficant, according to reporting from STAT News. Fox News Digital contacted the White House, the FDA, HHS and Høeg for comment.
ActBlue CEO faces June 10 grilling after fundraising powerhouse allegedly misled Congress on foreign donations
FIRST ON FOX: The embattled head of a Democratic fundraising behemoth is headed for a congressional grilling next month over allegations of fraudulent donations on its platform. ActBlue’s CEO Regina Wallace-Jones will testify in a public hearing before the House Administration Committee on June 10, a committee spokesman told Fox News Digital. Wallace-Jones’ agreement to testify comes as ActBlue faces mounting scrutiny over whether it misled Congress regarding foreign donations on its payment processing platform. “Ms. Wallace-Jones allegedly misled our committee at the outset of our investigation into ActBlue’s fraud prevention standards,” House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said in a statement. “It’s past time we set the record straight and got answers for the American people. I look forward to hearing her testify.” DEM FUNDRAISING GIANT ACTBLUE ROCKED BY ALLEGATIONS IT MISLED CONGRESS ABOUT FOREIGN DONATIONS The statement referenced an explosive report in The New York Times earlier this year that said ActBlue’s then-outside counsel warned Wallace-Jones in 2023 the group may have misrepresented facts to Steil’s committee about its vetting of potentially illegal foreign donations. Under U.S. law, foreign nationals who are not lawful permanent residents are generally prohibited from donating to candidates seeking federal office or political action committees. Steil previously requested that Wallace-Jones testify before his committee on May 19. The invitation was met with outrage from ActBlue’s lawyers, who dismissed the committee action as a “partisan attack.” But Republicans have pointed to documents that ActBlue has allegedly withheld in response to subpoenas issued in 2025, which Steil has characterized as “deliberately incomplete.” All five current or former ActBlue employees who appeared in depositions with the committee invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination a combined 146 times, according to an interim staff report released in April by House Republicans. TEXAS AG PAXTON SUES DEM FUNDRAISING PLATFORM ACTBLUE, ALLEGING ‘FRAUDULENT AND FOREIGN DONATIONS’ The House Administration Committee has been probing ActBlue’s fraud prevention safeguards since 2023, when Steil’s panel investigated the group’s failure to require credit card verification value (CVV) when processing payments. “Given ActBlue’s demonstrated history of misleading Congress, there is considerable reason to believe that ActBlue may have deliberately withheld this responsive material to impede our investigation,” Steil and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Wallace-Jones in April. In the letter, the senior Republicans also directed ActBlue to produce a trove of documents related to its vetting of political contributions from abroad. Wallace-Jones has denied making false statements to Congress. The group’s lawyers have previously characterized the investigation as politically motivated and contended that ActBlue has been forthright with the committee. Amid the GOP scrutiny, ActBlue has experienced a wave of resignations from senior legal and compliance staff. The June hearing notice immediately follows the House Administration Committee advancing legislation to crack down on fraudulent political donations, including illegal contributions from foreigners. The campaign finance measure cleared Steil’s panel unanimously on Thursday. “It’s a positive sign that people are beginning to take this risk and this threat seriously,” the Wisconsin Republican told Spectrum News.
Israeli army kills Palestinian man, raids homes in occupied West Bank
Israeli forces killed a 34-year-old man in Jenin Camp, the Palestinian health ministry said. Published On 16 May 202616 May 2026 Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in a targeted attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says, as the army also storms homes amid settler attacks. The health ministry in Ramallah identified the victim of Saturday’s attack as 34-year-old Nour al-Din Kamal Hassan Fayyad, saying he was “killed by occupation forces’ fire in the Jenin camp”. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The Israeli military claimed that troops fired after he tried to “infiltrate” the Jenin camp area, wherein “the soldiers are operating, and the entry is prohibited”. Since January last year, Israel has launched major military operations in Palestinian refugee camps in the northern occupied territory. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said that Israeli operations targeting Jenin and Tulkarem camps have displaced 40,000 Palestinians. Separately on Saturday, the Wafa news agency reported that Israeli soldiers arrested a young Palestinian man after assaulting him in the Shu’fat refugee camp, northeast of Jerusalem, and another from the village of Zawata, west of Nablus. Another Palestinian was assaulted by Israeli settlers in the town of Sinjil. Israeli forces also stormed the cities of Tubas and Qalqilya, and the towns of Tammun and Zaatara, east of Bethlehem, and raided the village of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, Wafa reported. The Israeli settlers set fire to an agricultural room and wrote racist slogans in the town of Turmus Aya, both northeast of Ramallah. ‘Attacks must stop’ Elsewhere, a senior UN official condemned an arson attack against a mosque and several vehicles in a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank. Advertisement Ramiz Alakbarov, the deputy special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said that masked individuals set fire to the site in the village of Jibiya and drew Hebrew graffiti. “Attacks against religious sites and civilian property are unacceptable and undermine stability, human dignity, and freedom of worship,” Alakbarov said. He added that the attack comes against a backdrop of rising settler violence and intensifying attacks in the occupied West Bank that continue to endanger civilians and damage their property. “I call for an immediate and transparent investigation, and for all perpetrators to be held accountable,” he said. “These attacks must stop.” Adblock test (Why?)
Iran warns of readiness for war and economic costs as US talks falter
[unable to retrieve full-text content] Iranian leaders and TV have ramped up pressure on the US with a stream of messaging to domestic and foreign audiences.
How Thomas Massie came to represent Republican dissent in age of Trump
Since Donald Trump’s rise to the White House a decade ago, the United States president has purged his Republican Party of critics and rivals. Many politicians dropped their earlier criticism of him and earned a place in his inner circle. Others never sought re-election or retired in the middle of their term to avoid a fight with the president, who is known for personal insults and lack of tolerance for dissent. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list A few other legislators who chose to fight on were defeated by Trump-backed opponents in Republican primaries. Congressman Thomas Massie, a Kentucky libertarian, is one of the last dissidents standing. He has been a rare Republican thorn in the side of Trump since the US president’s return to power last year. Massie has voted against a key tax bill backed by the president, pushed for the release of government files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against the White House’s wishes and vocally opposed the war on Iran and US aid to Israel. Now Massie is in a fight for his career as he faces a Trump-endorsed Republican opponent – Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL officer – and an avalanche of pro-Israel spending in next week’s congressional primary in Kentucky. The contest, however, goes beyond Trump and could be a litmus test for the faultlines emerging within the Republican base, including over military interventions and support for Israel. For Massie’s supporters, the race on May 19 is a test for everything the congressman purports to stand for: unflinching loyalty to the US Constitution, political integrity and standing up to powerful special interest groups. On Wednesday, influential right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich underscored another aspect of the contest in Kentucky – a showdown gauging the influence of podcasters who support Massie against campaign spending and traditional conservative media outlets. Advertisement “Massie’s primary is an interesting one to watch because it’ll show if podcasters and social media can drive out the vote in a material way. It’s unlimited money on the other end,” Cernovich wrote on X. “If Massie loses, every Congress member will be cowed into fear. If he wins, it’s a new media era.” Who is Massie? So how did a 55-year-old House member come to represent a political movement at an inflection point in the modern history of US politics? An engineer and inventor, Massie was born in a town in the Appalachian hills in West Virginia, near Kentucky and Ohio. He attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and then went on to find a company that helped pioneer virtual reality technology and registered dozens of patents. Massie married his high school sweetheart Rhonda, who died of an illness in 2024, with whom he had four children. The family moved to Kentucky in 2003, and Massie sold his firm to subsequently pursue a career in politics. He became the judge-executive of Lewis County in 2011 and successfully ran for Congress a year later to represent Kentucky’s 4th District in the house of representatives, a Republican stronghold that encompasses rural areas as well as suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. Massie quickly earned a reputation as a rebel, bucking the bipartisan orthodoxy on foreign policy as well as his own party’s consensus on many issues. In the first vote of his full term, he joined 11 other Republicans to vote against the election of then-Speaker John Boehner and the only one to back his libertarian colleague Justin Amash to take the gavel. Willingness to vote against his own party, did not earn Massie many friends on the Democratic side. In 2021, Massie sparked a huge outcry from Democrats when he posted a Christmas photo of himself and his family members holding semi-automatic rifles at a time when gun violence was on the rise. At times, his uncompromising stances have earned him near universal scorn. In 2022, Massie voted against a bill to make lynching – the extrajudicial execution of African Americans during racial segregation in the south of the US – a federal crime. “This bill expands current federal ‘hate crime’ laws. A crime is a crime, and all victims deserve equal justice. Adding enhanced penalties for ‘hate’ tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech,” he wrote in a social media post explaining his vote at that time. “Lynching a person is already illegal in every state. Passing this legislation falsely implies that lynching someone does not already constitute criminal activity.” Advertisement Backing a largely symbolic vote against something as despicable as lynching, even if he opposed it, may have been the easier option. The congressman has said that he has always had that rebellious streak. “I was simultaneously the teacher’s pet and the teacher’s worst nightmare,” Massie recently told Mother Jones magazine. “I would like to think I’ve become a lot more tactful, but I still won’t tolerate a wrong answer.” Despite advocating for gun rights and small government, Massie has been able to team up with Democrats to push forward specific issues, especially opposition to military campaigns abroad. Most recently, he became a leading figure in the effort to release the Epstein files, forging a strong partnership with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna to pass a bill to compel the Justice Department to make the records public. CongressmanThomas Massie questions then-Attorney General Pam Bondi during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing February 11 [File: Tom Brenner/AP Photo] Israel and the race Massie has also sided with Democrats in rejecting the war on Iran, and he has been one of the few Republican critics of unconditional US military aid to Israel. Massie’s opponents – including pro-Israel groups and donors – are flooding the airwaves with ads against the congressman, often portraying him as not conservative enough and highlighting his vote against the tax bill. One commercial that aired earlier this month featured deep fake, artificial intelligence-generated footage of Massie holding hands with progressive Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. The ad said Massie was caught in a
Petrol, diesel price hike: No online delivery today? App-based, gig workers call for nation-wide strike
Following major hike in petrol and diesel prices, gig workers have called for a temporary nationwide strike on Saturday.
Lucknow University Professor arrested for offering leaked question paper to female students in return of ‘favours’; audio clips go viral
In a disturbing case, Lucknow University’s assistant professor has been arrested for allegedly demanding ‘sexual favours’ from female students by offering to leak an examination question paper.
Hyderabad Airport on high alert after bomb threat email targets AirAsia flight; second incident in 24 hours
Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport was put on high alert after a bomb threat email warned of an attack on an AirAsia flight from Malaysia.