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Dominic Preston / The Verge : Xiaomi launches the €999 Xiaomi 17, the €1,499 17 Ultra, and the €1,999 Leica-branded Leitzphone, all featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, in Europe   —  It's just launched in Europe, joined by the larger, more photography-focused Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

President Donald Trump's joint strikes with Israel against Iran have intensified a growing bipartisan push in Congress to rein in his war powers, with lawmakers in both parties demanding votes on resolutions aimed at limiting his authority to use military force in the region. Members in both chambers had already planned to force votes before the first bombs fell Saturday. Now, they are doubling down on calls to restrict the president’s military authority. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has repeatedly forced votes to curb Trump’s war powers abroad — he was nearly successful in halting further military action in Venezuela until Republicans blocked the effort earlier this year. FETTERMAN PRAISES OPERATION EPIC FURY: TRUMP IS 'WILLING TO DO WHAT'S RIGHT' Kaine had already prepped his latest resolution, co-sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul , R-Ky., for a vote in the Senate next week. He argued Saturday that the strikes, carried out without congressional approval, further underscore ...

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch : Xiaomi launches the €15 Xiaomi tag, an AirTag-like device that works with both Apple Find My and Android Find Hub, and the €300 Xiaomi Watch 5, in Europe   —  Xiaomi today launched a slew of gadgets ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona including a camera-focused flagship smartphone …

Bloomberg : Two coalitions of workers, including employees of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, ask their companies to join Anthropic in refusing DOD's demands   —  Anthropic PBC got a vote of support from Silicon Valley workers for its increasingly contentious public-relations battle with the Pentagon …

Scouting America, the organization previously known as the Boy Scouts of America, has agreed to make several changes, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth .   The group is under pressure from the U.S. Department of War, which has threatened to yank its support. In a video message issued on Friday, Hegseth said he had been "very seriously considering ending our support of scouting altogether," accusing the group of adopting "radical, woke ideology."  But he said the organization has agreed to implement changes, mentioning five, while indicating there were more. SCOUTING AMERICA ‘ON THE CLOCK’ TO ROLL BACK DEI, WAR DEPT SAYS "First, Scouting America has agreed to comply immediately with the provisions of Executive Order 14173. This includes reviewing and replacing politicized, divisive, and discriminatory language throughout the organization, programs, and all publications. No more DEI , zero," he declared. He said that a DEI-related merit badge ...

The Atlantic : Court docs from a New Mexico trial reveal internal divisions at Meta as Instagram teen safety initiatives conflicted with growth and engagement goals   —  For years, employees acknowledged a problem with potential child groomers, but prioritized growth over fixes.

Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal : Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity is partnering with brands like Gap, Visa, and Tinder to market its World ID human verification product   —  Tools for Humanity aims to promote World ID beyond the tech and crypto sets via partnerships with household names  —  Sam Altman's project …

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House for a previously unscheduled visit on Thursday, Fox News has confirmed. The pair are expected to discuss housing issues, particularly those affecting New York City, according to the New York Post. They are also likely to discuss immigration issues, according to Politico. Mamdani last visited Trump in the White House in November 2025, shortly after he won the mayoral election. The pair shocked both sides of the aisle with their cordial demeanor during the meeting, with Trump downplaying Mamdani's previous attacks on the president. TRUMP PREDICTS 'CIVIL' MEETING WITH MAMDANI DESPITE PAST COMMENTS ABOUT EACH OTHER "We have one thing in common," Trump said at the time. "We want this city of ours that we love to do very well. And I wanted to congratulate the mayor. He really ran an incredible race against, you know, a lot of smart people, starting with the early prim...

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET : Apple says iPhone and iPad on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer devices NATO approved for use up to the “restricted” level of classified data   —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — iPhone and iPad are approved to handle NATO ‘restricted’ classified data.

The Verge : A live blog of Samsung Galaxy Unpacked February 2026, where the company is announcing the Galaxy S26 series   —  Samsung's announcing the Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. … We're here in San Francisco, where Samsung is set to unveil its new Galaxy S26 series phones and probably …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch : YouTube updates its $7.99 per month Premium Lite subscription to let users download videos for offline access and play videos in the background   —  YouTube is expanding its more affordable, $7.99 per month Premium Lite subscription service with new features, including the ability to download videos …

A federal judge in Minnesota ruled on Monday to hold government officials in civil contempt for violating a judicial order that prohibited the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from transferring detainee Fernando Gutierrez Torres, a Mexican national. U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, found that despite an earlier order prohibiting Torres' transfer out of Minnesota, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved him to Texas without notifying his attorney. A judge granted Torres' habeas petition and ordered ICE to release him from custody "as soon as practicable, but not later than 48 hours" after the order was entered, according to court documents. Filings state a major winter storm in Texas led to a state of emergency declaration, and Torres' ICE-scheduled flight was canceled. FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN LARGE PARTS OF TRUMP MASS DETENTION POLICIES FOR MIGRANTS The agency realized the earliest ...

Lora Kolodny / CNBC : Waymo opens its robotaxi service to “select riders” in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando, expanding its operations to 10 US cities   —  Alphabet-owned Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to some public passengers in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, the company announced.

Government documents reveal the fall of drug kingpin "El Mencho" over the weekend was the culmination of an aggressive, more than yearlong strategy of "total elimination" pursued by the Trump administration against the ruthless Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), which is present in almost all 50 U.S. states. Ruben "Nemesio" Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho," the leader of the CJNG, was killed Sunday in a Mexican military operation in Tapalpa, Mexico, authorities said. Though the operation was carried out by Mexican forces, the United States laid the groundwork, making El Mencho’s fall possible. On President Donald Trump ’s first day in office, he signed an executive order directing the State Department to designate several cartels and international criminal groups "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTOs), a designation unlocking military-grade surveillance and "material support" prosecutions. Though lesser known ...

Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal : Some AI startups are boosting their valuations by raising capital in back-to-back or multitiered deals, raising questions about how much they are really worth   —  The race to get into hot AI startups has led to unequal deals for investors, raising questions about how much companies are really worth

Wall Street Journal : Anthropic says DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot violated its ToS by prompting Claude a combined 16M+ times and using distillation to train their own products   —  The allegations mirror those of OpenAI, which told House lawmakers that DeepSeek used ‘distillation’ to improve models

Financial Times : The EU's DSA probe into Shein is just the latest of the company's problems, which are stacking up in many of its big markets as it seeks to push through an IPO   —  Regulatory probes and the ending of customs loopholes pose big challenges, but its business model is highly resilient

Wall Street Journal : A profile of Neil Shen of HSG, formerly Sequoia China, which raised $9B from US investors before US restrictions and has funded Manus and other Chinese startups   —  Neil Shen has long bridged both countries, from working at Sequoia after Yale to his own firm

An emotional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , D-N.Y., attempted to blame critics – and even President Donald Trump's own off-the-cuff agility – for the backlash she received for her response to a question at the recent Munich Security Conference on American defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. "If you think I don't understand foreign policy , because of out of hours of discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on earth, I'm afraid the issue is not my understanding, but perhaps the problem is you've gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks," a raspy-voiced Ocasio-Cortez said on a late-night Instagram Live video circulating on social media. The leftist congresswoman's Munich stumbling on Friday, Feb. 13, started the critical firestorm and has conservatives questioning her fitness for a potential 2028 Democrat presidential primary...

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch : Sam Altman says discussions about AI's energy usage are “unfair”, as it takes “20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time” to train a human   —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI's environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express.