Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ convenes for first time
Led by US President Donald Trump, the “Board of Peace” convened for its first meeting to discuss Gaza reconstruction.
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Kanpur Police busted ‘Degree Mafia’ gang, network spread in 9 states, 4 arrested
In Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, the police has exposed a big interstate fraud going on in the name of education. Police have arrested four vicious members of ‘Degree Mafia’ gang operating in Kidwai Nagar police station area. The network of this gang was not limited to Kanpur only, but spread to 9 states of the country. The police are now continuously raiding in search of about five other absconding members of the gang.
Investigation has revealed that the accused had opened a formal office in the name of ‘Shail Group of Education’ in Kidwai Nagar area. This entire black business was being operated from this office. The accused were charging huge amount and providing degrees to the youth sitting at home without giving any examination. According to the police, this gang has till now made illegal extortion of lakhs of rupees by distributing fake certificates to many people.
Exactly fake marksheets of 14 universities and UP Board
The accused who were caught by the police were also making full use of technology. These people used to prepare fake marksheets, degrees, provisional certificates and migration certificates in the name of 14 different universities of the country. Other than this, UP Board The mark sheets of high school and intermediate were also being made exactly like the original. To make these fake documents appear completely genuine, fake stamps, fake registration numbers and special printing techniques were used.
Crackdown will also be tightened on those purchasing fake degrees
The police is now not limited to only the sellers, but is also investigating the horoscopes of those who have bought these fake marksheets and degrees by paying money. A list of all such persons is being prepared and after investigation, strict action will be taken against them. Officials say that the interrogation of the arrested accused is going on and some more big revelations related to this syndicate may be made soon.
Democrats oppose DHS funding bill that supports ICE enforcement operations
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As the debate over the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill continues, one truth is becoming increasingly clear: Democrats are refusing to stand with the very law enforcement officers tasked with protecting our communities. Instead of supporting DHS and ICE in carrying out their mission, they are pursuing a dangerous crusade to weaken enforcement and undermine the rule of law.
My Democratic colleagues are attempting to strip DHS enforcement authority, diminish operational capacity, and restrict cooperation with state and local law enforcement. At a time when border security and interior enforcement are critical to public safety, they are choosing politics over protection.
I refuse to accept that. I stand firmly with the courageous men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These professionals carry out a difficult and often dangerous mission to safeguard our communities. They deserve our respect, our gratitude, and the resources necessary to do their jobs effectively.
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The DHS bill before us reflects those priorities. This is the same bill that both Republicans and Democrats negotiated in a bipartisan manner, and the same bill Republicans were ready to pass to ensure full-year funding for the department.
Instead of supporting DHS and ICE in carrying out their mission, Democrats are pursuing a dangerous crusade to weaken enforcement and undermine the rule of law.
The bill, as it stands now, provides the tools required for interior enforcement, enabling ICE agents to identify, detain, and remove individuals who break our laws and pose risks to the public. But it’s important to understand that this legislation goes far beyond immigration enforcement. It includes vital funding for the various missions carried out every day by agencies like FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and so many more. The 260,000 individuals who work to counter cyberattacks, secure our borders and coastlines, and protect critical infrastructure—just to name a few.
Recent events here in West Virginia illustrate how effective enforcement can work when there is cooperation. In a statewide operation earlier this month, ICE agents partnered with state and local law enforcement to arrest more than 650 individuals illegally present in the United States, including those with serious criminal histories. This operation took place successfully with minimal disruption to the public. Furthermore, the operation stands in stark contrast to the unrest and disorder we have seen in other parts of the country—like Minnesota—where local cooperation has broken down and enforcement actions have been met with chaos and confrontation.
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Shutting down or hamstringing an agency of DHS’s size and importance does not make oversight easier. It does not strengthen accountability. And it certainly does not solve a single challenge we face at our borders or inside our communities. Instead, it jeopardizes our national security and weakens the very institutions responsible for upholding the rule of law.
Democrats have pushed repeatedly for provisions that would erode enforcement authority, restrict ICE operations, and block cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement. In doing so, they are not standing with DHS — they are actively working to undermine it.
That is why the demands coming from Democrats in this debate are so troubling. Rather than ensuring our national security personnel have what they need, Democrats have pushed repeatedly for provisions that would erode enforcement authority, restrict ICE operations, and block cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement. In doing so, they are not standing with DHS — they are actively working to undermine it.
West Virginians deserve better than political gamesmanship when it comes to homeland security. They deserve leaders who will stand unequivocally with the men and women of DHS and ICE, not wage an ideological campaign against them.
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I will continue fighting to ensure that ICE has the resources, the authority, and the support it needs to do its job. Weakening enforcement is not compassion. It is neglect. And it is the communities we represent—from small towns in West Virginia to cities across the country—who will bear the consequences.
Protecting West Virginians will always be my priority. That starts with standing firmly behind DHS and ICE — and rejecting efforts to weaken them.
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40% of techies culled from tax collection agency • The Register
Job cuts at the IRS’s tech arm have gone faster and farther than expected, with 40 percent of IT staff and four-fifths of tech leaders gone, the agency’s CIO revealed yesterday.
Kaschit Pandya detailed the extent of the tech reorganization during a panel at the Association of Government Accountants yesterday, describing it as the biggest in two decades.
This happened as the Trump administration reshaped the federal bureaucracy last year with Elon Musk’s DOGE wielding the chainsaw.
The IRS lost a quarter of its workforce overall in 2025. But the tech team was clearly affected more deeply. At the start of the year, the team encompassed around 8,500 employees.
As reported by Federal News Network (FNN), Pandya said: “Last year, we lost approximately 40 percent of the IT staff and nearly 80 percent of the execs.”
“So clearly there was an opportunity, and I thought the opportunity that we needed to really execute was reorganizing.”
That included breaking up silos within the organization, he said. “Everyone was operating in their own department or area.”
It is not entirely clear where all those staff have gone. According to a report by the US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the IT department had 8,504 workers as of October 2024. As of October 2025, it had 7,135.
However, reports say that as part of the reorganization, 1,000 techies were detailed to work on delivering frontline services during the US tax season. According to FNN, those employees have questioned the wisdom of this move and its implementation.
At yesterday’s conference, Pandya said better outcomes had yet to be delivered. “What it didn’t lead to is automatically everybody coming together and working as one team. We just had different silos,” he said. But his department had now set up “cross-functional” teams focused on end-to-end delivery of individual projects.
“This way there isn’t a cold hand-off of, ‘My job is X, and now I’m handing it off to somebody else,'” he said.
Ultimately, he said the aim was to have the IT group as a whole working toward a “scorecard.”
Naturally, AI is expected to play a significant role in all this, making people better at their jobs and more end-user-focused, he said.
However, Pandya said IRS leaders are telling employees that AI won’t endanger their jobs. Clearly the agency is perfectly capable of getting rid of people the old-fashioned way.
The US Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said last month the agency was behind in its efforts to digitize paper returns. It noted: “The Information Technology function lost approximately 16 percent of its staff,” who are responsible for updates for inflation and expiring or newly enacted tax provisions. This meant that “according to the IRS readiness reports, implementation of these legislative changes is at risk for the 2026 Filing Season.” ®
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More than 1,000 Kenyans lured to fight for Russia in Ukraine war, report says | Kenya
More than 1,000 Kenyans have been lured to fight for Russia in its war with Ukraine, according to an intelligence report to the Kenyan parliament that highlights the scale of a Russian operation taking African men to the frontline.
The majority leader of Kenya’s national assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah, said “rogue recruitment agencies and individuals in Kenya” were continuing to send Kenyan nationals to fight in the conflict, as he read MPs the summary of an investigation by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service.
The figure of more than 1,000 individuals is a significant increase on the number given in a statement by Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry in November, which said that more than 200 Kenyans had travelled to fight in the war.
A growing number of people from African countries – including Kenya, Uganda and South Africa – and elsewhere have been lured to the frontline as Russia seeks manpower to sustain its invasion. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in November that more than 1,400 people from 36 African countries were fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Many are being held by Ukraine as prisoners of war.
According to the intelligence report, Ichung’wah said, employment agencies were targeting former military personnel and police officers and civilians from their mid-20s to 50 years old “who are desperate for job opportunities abroad”.
The employment agencies were enticing Kenyans by promising them monthly salaries of about 350,000 shillings (£2,000), bonuses of between 900,000 shillings and 1.2m shillings and eventual Russian citizenship, the report said.
It also accused the employment agencies of colluding with staff from several government agencies – the Directorate of Immigration Services, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations and its Anti-Narcotics Unit, and the National Employment Authority – to prevent interception at Nairobi’s international airport, Ichung’wah said.
It further claimed that the agencies worked with staff at the Russian embassy in Kenya and the Kenyan embassy in Moscow to get the recruits Russian visitor visas, he said.
On Thursday, Russia’s embassy in Kenya denied that it had been involved in recruiting Kenyans to fight in Ukraine, describing the accusation as part of “a dangerous and misleading propaganda campaign”.
“The embassy refutes such allegations in the strongest possible terms,” it said in a statement on X. “The government authorities of Russia have never engaged in illegal recruitment of Kenyan citizens in the armed forces of the Russian Federation.”
The report noted that because of increased interception of recruits at the airport, they were now travelling through Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa, Ichung’wah said.
As of February, 39 Kenyans had been hospitalised, 30 had been repatriated, 28 were missing in action, 35 were in military camps or bases, 89 were on the frontline, one had been detained and one had completed their contract, according to the report.
Kenya’s foreign minister, Musalia Mudavadi, is expected to visit Russia next month to discuss the “unacceptable and clandestine” recruitment of Kenyan nationals.
On Wednesday, four South Africans returned to South Africa from Russia. They were part of a group of 17 South African and two Botswanan men who were allegedly tricked into fighting for Russia by Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, a daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma.
South Africa’s foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, told the national broadcaster SABC: “It was a challenging process. It remains a challenging one for the ones who are still in the frontline, because they are alleged to have been lured by a private security contractor to the Russian government. So that really complicates the situation because they were not, according to the Russian government, recruited directly to the Russian army.”
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NFL news: Steelers Super Bowl champion Mike Wagner dead at 76
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Former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back Mike Wagner, a four-time Super Bowl champion with the franchise during its “Steel Curtain” dynasty, has died at 76.
The Steelers announced Wagner’s death on Wednesday night with a statement.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Mike Wagner, a tremendous player and an integral part of some of the most successful teams in Pittsburgh Steelers history,” Steelers owner Art Rooney II said in a statement.
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Safety Mike Wagner of the Pittsburgh Steelers looks on from the field during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Riverfront Stadium circa 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
No cause of death has been provided.
Wagner was a two-time Pro Bowler during his 10-year career for the Steelers, racking up 36 interceptions and five forced fumbles from 1971-80.
The Steelers took him 268th overall in the 1971 NFL Draft, which was the 11th round at the time.
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“Mike played a key role on our championship teams of the 1970s. As a member of four Super Bowl-winning teams, his toughness and consistency were paramount to our secondary. His contributions on the field were significant, but it was also his steady presence and team-first mentality that truly defined him,” Rooney’s statement continued.
“On behalf of the entire Pittsburgh Steelers organization, we extend our heartfelt condolences to Mike’s family. He will always be remembered as a champion, a great teammate, and a proud member of the Steelers family.”
Wagner’s football journey is a unique one leading up to the NFL Draft.
Safety Mike Wagner of the Pittsburgh Steelers returns to the sideline holding the football after intercepting a pass against the Oakland Raiders during the 1975 season AFC Championship playoff game at Three Rivers Stadium on Jan. 4, 1976 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
He went to Western Illinois University, but he didn’t play for the football team until he asked the head coach for a tryout after not getting interest to compete at any other school.
Western Illinois coach obliged, and Wagner made the team. However, he was still waiting tables as a means to make money while playing for the team.
The Steelers would eventually take a shot on him, but the late-round pick wasn’t an afterthought in his rookie season.
Wagner started at safety following an injury on the depth chart, and he wouldn’t relinquish his starting position from there.
He started in 116 of his 119 career games, and in 1973, he led the league with eight interceptions.
Mike Wagner, former safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers, looks on from the sideline during a game between the New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers at Heinz Field on Nov. 30, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (George Gojkovich/Getty Images)
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Among those career interceptions were the game-sealing one against the Minnesota Vikings, picking off the great Fran Tarkenton to give the Steelers the Super Bowl IX victory — the franchise’s first.
In 2020, the Steelers had Wagner enter its Hall of Honor and continued to be around the organization until his death.
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Trump’s Board of Peace live: Representatives converge for inaugural meeting | Benjamin Netanyahu News
Live updatesLive updates,
US President Trump will host the inaugural meeting of his so-called ‘Board of Peace’ in Washington, DC today.
Published On 19 Feb 2026
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British couple’s 10 year Iran prison sentence has left them in ‘panic’, says son | World News
British nationals Lindsay and Craig Foreman have been sentenced to 10 years in prison over allegations of espionage in Iran.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has condemned their sentence as “completely appalling and totally unjustifiable”.
“We will pursue this case relentlessly with the Iranian government until we see Craig and Lindsay Foreman safely returned to the UK and reunited with their family,” she said.
Joe Bennett, Lindsay Foreman’s son, told Sky News’ Jason Farrell he had spoken with the couple since their sentencing, describing how they reacted to the news with a “kind of mass panic”.
He said the prison sentence left him with a “pit in the stomach” describing how “I felt sick, [I] didn’t sleep”.
The couple were arrested in January 2025 while travelling through the country on an around-the-world motorcycle journey and detained on charges of espionage.
The Foremans, from East Sussex, who are being held in Tehran’s Evin prison, deny the allegations.
The couple’s family says the sentence places the case “in line with the most severe politically motivated detentions of UK nationals in Iran”.
Mr Bennett said that the couple has been “sentenced to 10 years following a trial that lasted just three hours and in which they were not allowed to present a defence”.
“They have consistently denied the allegations. We have seen no evidence to support the charge of espionage,” he added.
The sentence follows a court appearance on 27 October 2025 before Judge Abolghasem Salavati at Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
Judge Salavati has previously been sanctioned by the UK, US and EU in connection with human rights violations and the conduct of trials criticised internationally for lack of due process.
Ahead of his sentencing, Mr Foreman described being held in an “eight-foot cell with a hole in the floor and a sink” and described the effects of 57 days in solitary confinement, saying: “Emotionally and physically, it broke me to pieces”.
He said once a month meetings with his wife are what sustain him.
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Mr Bennett said the couple had “already spent more than thirteen months in detention”. “We are deeply concerned about their welfare and about the lack of transparency in the judicial process,” he added.
He told Jason Farrell that the couple’s family had received a call straight away from Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer who was “quite forceful in the fact that he was going to pick it up with his counterparts”.
Mr Bennett also welcomed Ms Cooper’s statement, saying he had already noticed a “different tone… from the government and that’s only been within 24 hours”.
“For the first time, there’s a sentence that the government can now act on, which is what they’ve been asking for for the last 14 months,” he added.
The Foreign Office is currently warning people not to travel to Iran, because of “the significant risk of arrest questioning or detention”. “The UK government will not be able to help you if you get into difficulty in Iran,” it has cautioned.
Iran has arrested dozens of foreign visitors and dual nationals in recent years, mostly on espionage and security-related charges.
Human rights groups and some Western countries have accused Iran of trying to win concessions from other nations through arrests on trumped up charges.
British-Iranian dual nationals like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are among those who have spent years behind bars in Iran before diplomatic negotiations helped secure their release.
The sentencing of the Foremans comes amid heightened tensions in the region following a deadly crackdown on a wave of demonstrations in Iran.
Donald Trump last month urged Iranian protesters – thousands of whom have been killed by the regime’s forces – to keep demonstrating and promised that “help is on the way”.
A powerful US military force continues to assemble within striking distance of Iran.
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Dozens of celebrities condemn Berlin Film Festival over Gaza silence
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Nearly 100 actors and filmmakers signed an open letter on Tuesday calling out the Berlin Film Festival for its “silence” on Gaza after the festival defended the right to avoid political questions.
Variety revealed that at least 93 current and former Berlin Film Festival participants — including Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Tatiana Maslany and Javier Bardem — condemned the organization after festival jury head and German filmmaker Wim Wenders fielded several questions regarding the conflict in Gaza, claiming filmmaking was “the opposite of politics.”
“You cannot separate one from the other. We are deeply concerned that the German state-funded Berlinale is helping put into practice what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion recently condemned as Germany’s misuse of draconian legislation ‘to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights, chilling public participation and shrinking discourse in academia and the arts,'” the letter read.
The Berlin Film Festival was accused of censoring Palestinian artists. (Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The letter also came after festival head Tricia Tuttle issued a statement defending actors and filmmakers who were avoiding political questions at press events.
“We do not believe there is a filmmaker screening in this festival who is indifferent to what is happening in this world, who does not take the rights, the lives and the immense suffering of people in Gaza and the West Bank, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Sudan, in Iran, in Ukraine, in Minneapolis, and in a terrifying number of places, seriously,” Tuttle said.
She added, “Artists are free to exercise their right of free speech in whatever way they choose. Artists should not be expected to comment on all broader debates about a festival’s previous or current practices over which they have no control. Nor should they be expected to speak on every political issue raised to them unless they want to.”
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Mark Ruffalo was one of over 90 actors and filmmakers who condemned the Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday. (Lia Toby/Getty Images)
The letter claimed that the festival was censoring criticism of Israel’s “genocide” and demanded it issue a statement in favor of the Palestinian cause.
“We call on the Berlinale to fulfil its moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for accountability,” the letter concluded.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Berlin Film Festival for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
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Berlin Film Festival attendees Michelle Yeoh, Neil Patrick Harris and Wim Wenders were criticized for avoiding political questions. (Nadja Wohlleben/Reuters; Dominique Charriau/WireImage via Getty Images; Axel Schmidt/Reuters)
The letter followed a September pledge from more than 1,000 Hollywood figures — including actors, directors and producers — to boycott Israeli film institutions.
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The Berlin Film Festival recieved widespread attention after some attendees, including actors Michelle Yeoh and Neil Patrick Harris, declined to comment on political issues while discussing their projects.
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Nigerian man gets eight years in prison for hacking tax firms
A Nigerian national was sentenced to eight years in prison for hacking multiple tax preparation firms in Massachusetts and filing fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds.
37-year-old Matthew Abiodun Akande was arrested in October 2024 at London’s Heathrow Airport and extradited to the United States in March 2025. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2022 before his arrest, while he was still living in Mexico.
According to court documents, after gaining access to the companies’ systems, Akande stole their clients’ personal information and used it to file over 1,000 fraudulent tax returns and collect more than $1.3 million in fraudulent refunds between June 2016 and June 2021.
To gain access to the targeted firms’ computer networks, Akande bought licenses for the Warzone remote-access trojan malware (whose infrastructure was seized by the FBI in February 2024) and encryption software known as a crypter to make the malware undetectable by antivirus solutions installed on the victims’ devices.
He then sent phishing emails impersonating the Chief Executive Officer of a Massachusetts architectural engineering company to four tax preparation firms, using a web domain and email account mimicking the CEO’s name to make the messages appear authentic.
Akande attached the executive’s 2019 tax documents to the phishing emails (including W-2 and 1099 forms) to add credibility, and directed recipients to a Dropbox link allegedly containing the CEO’s prior-year tax information that, when clicked, silently installed the malware on their systems.
“In reality, the Dropbox account contained a disguised executable file that, when downloaded and executed, would cause the Victim CPA Firms to unknowingly download RAT malware onto their computer networks,” the indictment reveals. “The owners of each of Victim CPA Firms [..] accessed the link and, as AKANDE intended, unknowingly downloaded RAT malware, which was used to collect each firm’s client PIl and prior years’ tax information.”
Once inside the firms’ networks, Akande used the Warzone RAT malware to steal their clients’ Social Security numbers and prior-year tax data, then used the harvested information to file fraudulent returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds.
The refunds were directed to bank accounts controlled by co-conspirators in the United States, who withdrew the funds in cash and transferred a portion to associates in Mexico, as instructed by Akande.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston sentenced Akande to eight years in prison and three years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay nearly $1.4 million in restitution.
Modern IT infrastructure moves faster than manual workflows can handle.
In this new Tines guide, learn how your team can reduce hidden manual delays, improve reliability through automated response, and build and scale intelligent workflows on top of tools you already use.
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