WAR CRIMES: Human rights investigators commissioned by the UN  say they have found “reasonable grounds” to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes on Iran, including on a school in the southern city of Minab.

The findings focus on a pair of airstrikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children. A US missile is believed to have hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab.

  The UN finding says “the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”

  Defense secretary Pete Hegeth has repeatedly dodged responsibility , saying the incident is under investigation and that the US does not target civilians.

ECON 101: The Federal Reserve under President Trump’s newly-appointed chairman raised interest rates a quarter point to curb inflation inspiring online howls from the President.

  “The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at a press conference.

  The new interest rate is 3.75 to 4 percent but Trump posted that, “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR.” Then he rambled on about trade deficits and how the US is “carrying” every other country in the world.

  After battling Jerome Powell through the end of his term, Trump had appointed Warsh saying he would only install a Fed chair would lower interest rates.

  The vote by the Fed board was unanimous, including Warsh. Trump told reporters that Warsh “might as well vote with the board because it’s just not going to matter. The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing.”

INTELLIGENCE REPORT: Amid growing alarm about artificial intelligence, OpenAI yesterday disclosed six new incidents in which AI systems hid mistakes, made up data and moved files onto the open internet without permission. 

  Rogue behavior in the AI industry is called “misalignment,” an understatement. OpenAI said in a statement it did not believe the industry “has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.”

INFINITE SCROLL:

— After being the subject of a trade war and taunted by President Trump that it should be the 51^ststate, Canada has been invited to be an “associate” member of the European Union.

  It might be a symbolic move, bit it drove Donald Trump into a rage. “Canada’s been a terrible trade partner,” he told reporters. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things.” 

— The Interior Department is preparing to install signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History that would warn visitors about what the White House claims is ideological bias in the institution’s presentation of the country’s past.

  The White House has accused the museum of promoting “extreme political activism.” Interior Secretary Doug Burghum said in a letter to Congress that, “The informational signage therefore will provide visitors with important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance.”

— Immigration and Customs Enforcement flouted and ignored so many court rulings and orders during its Minnesota surge that it “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” according to federal Judge Patrick Schiltz who had to deal with the legal chaos.

  “The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body,” Schiltz said in an interview with The NY Times. “It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”

— Dr. Nicole Saphier, President Trump’s third pick for surgeon general, told the Senate health committee that the MMR vaccine is vital for childhood health and she believes there is no connection between childhood vaccines and autism. It was frank support for vaccines under an administration that has been casting doubt on them.

  Saphier is a Trump loyalist who has been a contributor on Fox News. Although she has criticized the “politicization of science”  under the administration, she also spoke out against mask and vaccine mandates during the Covid pandemic.

THE OBIT PAGE: Writer Annie Dillard, who at age 28 in 1974 published the best-selling contemplation of life and nature “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” died at her home in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts. She was 81.

  Critics at the time of the book’s publication wrote that Dillard was a 20^th Century Henry David Thoreau. Unlike Thoreau, Dillard did not live in the woods, but she dug deeper into the wonders and horrors of nature.

  She wrote in Pilgrim; “The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die–it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives.”

THE SPIN RACK: The House voted to hold billionaire Leon Black in contempt for refusing to testify  before the House Oversight Committee about his business relationship with financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. — The family of a Texas woman who died after being denied an abortion even though a pregnancy condition was life-threatening, has sued the State of Texas arguing that her death was the result of the state’s abortion ban. — A federal appeals court ruled this week that insurance companies have the right to sue Korean car makers Kia and Hyundai in California because some of their vehicles are so easily stolen.

BELOW THE FOLD: Nothing here about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

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