Feed aggregator

Donald Trump openly mused about Iran’s potential annihilation before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

Speaking before representatives of 193 countries, Trump painted two pictures for a potential peace deal with Iran, offering the country the chance to rebuild or be completely destroyed.

“But I have a big decision to make,” Trump said. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?

“Or, do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly? Never giving them a chance to kill and destroy countries again?” Trump continued.

“Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump asked rhetorically. “But I believe we’ll make a deal, right after the election.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also scheduled to deliver an address to the General Assembly this week.

Trump to the UN: "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly? Do I drive them into hell?" pic.twitter.com/cIYBO1Mp3w

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2026

Trump’s incendiary remarks follow escalating rhetoric by both countries. On Sunday, Trump told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst that his current options include “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.”

In response, a spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Monday that “if a new aggression takes place, we will definitely change the weapons and geography of the war.”

Trump told Yingst that he would “probably” be open to meeting with Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the General Assembly, though he added that the coming weekend would be “no different from any other weekend.”

Trump has promised for months that his son-in-law, real estate developer Jared Kushner, and real estate developer turned U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff were on the brink of negotiating a peace deal with Tehran. That has not panned out.

Instead, the war has dragged on for seven months. Some of Trump’s closest advisers—including Vice President JD Vance and State Secretary Marco Rubio—have reportedly discussed the possibility that the conflict could extend beyond Inauguration Day 2029.

8 minutes agoWalter EinenkelTrump’s UN speech is as dark and dumb as you think@AcynCopy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via email 15 minutes agoWalter EinenkelTrump looks bad as he talks about hell in front of UN@AcynCopy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via emailTickarooLive Blog Software…

Source

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The recent news from ProPublica that a Russian oligarch attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration on a private island in the Bahamas and covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for the lavish affair was not a surprise to anyone familiar with the main thrust of my new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. The book chronicles the decade-long covert operation Putin has waged against the United States to sow discord, influence elections (to benefit Trump), and court Trump and his crew. An important fact in the wedding story is that Umar Kremlev, this oh-so generous oligarch, is not just another Russian billionaire who has to make nice with Putin to keep his fortune; he has been a key member of Putin’s security apparatus—truly the inner circle—and became an oligarch (and head of a corrupt international boxing organization) because of that. In essence, a Putin operative infiltrated deep into the Trump clan.

This is not the first time Russia has attempted to squirm its way into Trump Jr.’s world. During the 2016 campaign, Junior received a message from an associate who worked with the son of another Russian oligarch. That contact informed Don Jr. that Moscow was plotting to secretly help Trump and wanted to send an emissary who had dirt on Hillary Clinton to meet with the Trump campaign. Trump Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say I love it.” The meeting soon happened, with Trump Jr., campaign chair Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner present. When the meeting was revealed—eight months after the election—Trump Jr. first lied about it, saying it was not related to the campaign, and then later claimed the emissary (who was tied to Russian intelligence) provided no useful derogatory information on Clinton.

Trump and his minions have contended that there was no collusion and, thus, no scandal, meaning the whole Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a Deep State “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy Trump.

What was most important about the meeting was that it signaled to Moscow that the Trump camp was a-okay with Putin meddling in the election and that it made the Trump gang aware that the Kremlin intended to covertly mess in American politics to assist Trump. Still, Trump, Trump Jr., Manafort, and other Trumpers would loudly assert throughout the campaign and in the years afterward that Putin had not interfered. That is, they knowingly lied.

Which brings us to collusion.

Collusion has been the buzzword at the center of the Trump-Russia scandal for 10 years. Trump and his minions have contended that there was no collusion and, thus, no scandal, meaning the whole Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a Deep State “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy Trump.

Their definition of collusion basically rested on whether Trump or his lieutenants were in the same room with Russian hackers as they pilfered the documents from Democrats that would later be made public by WikiLeaks. No evidence of such collaboration emerged. So, they have vociferously argued ever since, there was no collusion. And, therefore, no scandal.

The issue of collusion, naturally, has come up, as I’ve been doing media interviews about the new book. It has long seemed to me that the meeting Trump Jr. set up and the subsequent denials from him and other Trump players—which echoed and affirmed Putin’s denials of interfering in the election—were a form of collusion. Team Trump was colluding with Putin’s attempted cover-up. Maybe Trump and his lieutenants weren’t involved in the hack-and-leak operation. But they deliberately lied and provided cover for Putin. Smells like collusion.

In the stretch following the 2016 election, Democrats and Trump critics were too fixated on collusion. But it was the complicity, stupid.

As I’ve been discussing all this in media interviews, I’ve made the point that perhaps the better term is complicity. For 10 years, not just in 2016, Putin has been attacking US elections—the book details all this—and throughout that time, Trump has incessantly maintained that Moscow was doing nothing and that all claims otherwise were part of the Deep State’s bogus “Russia, Russia, Russia” conspiracy against him. Consequently, Trump has been complicit in Putin’s ongoing information war against the United States. That’s an act of profound betrayal.

In the stretch following the 2016 election, Democrats and Trump critics were too fixated on collusion. But it was the complicity, stupid.

Now let’s go back to collusion.

My book does have a chapter titled “Collusion,” and it digs into a 966-page bipartisan report on the Russian attack on the 2016 election that was produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee and released in August 2020. This investigation offers the most comprehensive account of what transpired in 2016. One of the most intriguing portions of the report zeroes in on Manafort. (Another very interesting section looks at whether the Kremlin obtained any compromising material on Trump. Read the book for that.)

In the Manafort passages, the committee—led at the time by a Republican senator named Marco Rubio—revealed that while he was chairing the Trump campaign, Manafort was interacting with and passing sensitive internal campaign data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a close business associate who was also a Russian intelligence officer. And, the report noted, Kilimnik had connections to the Russian military intelligence unit that ran the hack-and-leak operation that targeted the Clinton campaign. Moreover, the report noted that committee investigators had uncovered “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.”

It appears there’s a chance that there was indeed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation via Manafort.

The report’s description of this information was redacted, as was much text about Kilimnik. In my reporting for the book, I learned that the redacted portions disclosed that Kilimnik was an agent for the GRU, the Russian intelligence outfit that ran the hack-and-leak attack—a fact buttressing the possibility that Kilimnik was involved in or aware of that operation when he was in communication with Manafort.

Because of all the redactions—the intelligence community did not want to reveal too much of what it knew about the Manafort-Kilimnik connection to protect sources and methods—the public has never learned the full story. It appears there’s a chance that there was indeed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation via Manafort.

In any event, the fact that Trump’s campaign chair was in direct contact with a Russian agent—they communicated through means that left no traces—ought to have triggered a major scandal. Yet this Republican-backed report—which affirmed that Moscow intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump actively exploited the Russian attack and “publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia”—had little impact on the public view of the Trump-Russia affair.

It was released during the Covid pandemic in the summertime, when the two political parties were holding their presidential conventions. By then, most of the political-and-media world had moved on from all that Russia business, particularly after the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller noted he had found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. (He did point out he had amassed plenty of evidence that Trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice.)

So Trump and those within MAGA-land could continue to peddle the narrative that collusion was a bogus charge that had been concocted by the Deep State, the media, and nefarious Democrats.

Trump Jr.’s wedding should prompt a reappraisal of the collusion question, as it illuminates what I try to convey in the book: Putin has been running an extensive covert action against the United States for a decade, and Trump and his crew have both colluded and been complicit.

Quick Take

• The first look at Magic: The Gathering’s The Hobbit set came out at MagicCon in May. Now, we have looks at even more gorgeous cards.

At MagicCon in May, Wizards of the Coast announced a crossover collection with The Hobbit and revealed several cards. Their 2023 Lord of the Rings expansion has become their second-best-selling Universes Beyond set, just after Final Fantasy. Now, we have a (second) first look at their new The Hobbit set, which you can snag right now.

For those who are somehow unfamiliar, The Hobbit is a prequel movie trilogy (although Tolkien wrote the books first) to The Lord of the Rings, a 1990s/early 2000s adaptation trilogy. Published almost ninety years ago, the story follows Bilbo Baggins, an unassuming Hobbit living in Bag End, whose life suddenly changes when a wizard and a party of dwarves barge into his home. Their mission? To reclaim their home, the Lonely Mountain, and their treasure from an unwelcome houseguest, the dragon Smaug. Along the way, Bilbo befriends the dwarves, acquires the One Ring, and unintentionally starts a war among fantasy races.

Tolkien’s work has become a cornerstone for the fantasy genre as a whole and is beloved by geeks aplenty. It doesn’t get nerdier than Lord of the Rings…except when you throw Magic: The Gathering into the mix. The new MTG Hobbit assortment also offers two scene boxes, which are collections of playable cards that, when lined up correctly, create a scene from the piece of media it is based on. Crack The Plates depicts a scene from the beginning of The Hobbit, featuring food and characters that appear.

Here’s a look at the cards that make up the scene:

The other scene box, named The Desolation of Smaug, after the trilogy’s second movie, depicts Bilbo’s interaction with Smaug, the dragon.

Lastly, there are five Dwarvish language cards in Magic: The Gathering‘s The Hobbit, one of which was revealed at MagicCon. Take a look below.

With the Lord of the Rings release in 2023 came the One Ring card—and yes, Magic made and released only one. It became a legend among players and collectors. The owner sold the card to music star Post Malone for $2 million in 2023, making it the most expensive Magic card of all time. Now, The Hobbit set has its own One Ring box-topper cards.

However, when Wizards of the Coast revealed the new One Ring card at MagicCon, fans had a lot to say—and not good things. They claimed Dan Frazier, the artist, had plagiarized the former One Ring, which a different artist had designed.

RELATED ARTICLE

One Ring HOBBIT Card Is Tearing the MAGIC: THE GATHERING Community Apart Wizards of the Coast

It wasn’t a good look, and Wizards of the Coast, along with the new One Ring’s artist, made public apologies. However, their release revealed no new iteration of the card.

All of these The Hobbit Magic cards and more have now officially been released.

Magic: The Gathering/Wizards of the Coast

Originally published on July 18, 2026

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

Ella R. Dunn writes about movies, TV, games, comics, and all things nerdy for Nerdist.

The post MAGIC: THE GATHERING Reveals More Gorgeous THE HOBBIT Cards appeared first on Nerdist.

Hello Robot CEO and co-founder Aaron Edsinger will bring Stretch 4 for a live demo on the Real World AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register before September 25 to save up to $200, plus get a second pass at 50% off.

The president’s ratings are in the gutter.

The White House launched “TrumpTV: The Essentials Station” on Monday. The digital streaming service provides a 24/7 rotation of Trump’s rallies, speeches, and announcements, offering the American public another opportunity to tap their omnipresent president directly into their veins.

Donald Trump’s deputy assistant Kaelan Dorr described the need for such a platform on X shortly after its launch, lamenting that “the press, in some cases, reported inaccurately or not at all on the Administration’s many record breaking accomplishments on behalf of all Americans.”

Trump TV is a constant “livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered,” Dorr noted.

The administration’s push for Trump TV is the direct result of Trump attempting to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The rest of the presidential press pool has ceased live coverage in solidarity with the three outlets as they sue Trump to restore their access.

But even amid a broadcast media blackout, practically nobody has tuned in to see what Trump is up to.

At the time of publication, just 1,700 viewers were watching the president’s YouTube stream. Trump TV offered a smattering of old news, switching from an ancient Trump rally to a Melania Trump speech about the creative uses for AI that she originally delivered in January.

Fourteen hours earlier, Trump TV had launched with around 8,000 viewers, according to The Daily Beast. That’s when it peaked.

About 90 minutes after that, viewership declined to 4,000. By 9 p.m. on Monday, its audience had sunk to 3,000 viewers—a paltry percentage of the channel’s 3,220,000 subscribers.

Trump announced Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House, writing on Truth Social that the prohibition was the result of “FAKE NEWS.”

The president’s unprecedented attack on the free press inspired collective action by America’s largest broadcasters, which considered the ban an assault on the First Amendment and an affront to news institutions across the country. By Monday, all the broadcasters in the White House press pool—including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News—had joined together to suspend coverage of the president and his actions until he reversed course.

By Monday afternoon, Trump’s plan to silence the media had clearly backfired: The absence of any prominent media organizations left Trump without a microphone and without a camera at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the White House lawn, delivering remarks that nobody could hear.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that communism is somehow the greatest threat facing the United States. Now GOP members are fuming as the president prepares to embrace Chinese President Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Republican close to the White House told Politico’s Playbook Tuesday that Jinping’s state visit was coming at a time when Trump’s attention was needed elsewhere. 

“I don’t think people really want to see you toasting the Chinese premier,” this person told Politico. “You’re hosting this glamorous state dinner at a time when people are like, ‘Are you focused on me?’”

Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. told Playbook that Xi’s state visit was “just another in a string of examples where Trump’s message and Republicans’ don’t jibe.”

“The in-your-face arguments from Republicans this election cycle is that Democrats want to bring socialism or communism to America,” Marson said. “Trump warmly embracing two of the most outspoken leaders of those ideologies makes it that much harder for the message to resonate with voters.”

That second leader Marson mentioned is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Xi’s state visit comes on the heels of Trump’s visit to Gracie Mansion on Monday.  

Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the city’s first Muslim mayor, has been maligned by Republicans as a sort of boogeyman—but it’s clear that Trump just adores him. Some of the president’s sycophantic followers couldn’t cope.

Self-described proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer was particularly annoyed. 

“I’m pissed off,” she wrote on X. “We work so hard to combat the radical left and the anti-American Islamic jihadists who work to destroy our country everyday. And for what? So they can be rewarded? There is never going to be any accountability. I realized that today. We will never see it.”

“Meeting with communists and jihadists doesn’t energize people,” she wrote in a separate post. 

“Anyway, November is going to be a bust,” she wrote in another. “We tried. But there’s only so much you can do.”

Anthony Constantino, the Republican nominee in upstate New York’s 21st congressional district, is not subtle in his fealty to Donald Trump. Since 2024, the 43-year-old businessman has given the president a larger-than-life statue of himself, erected a “Vote for Trump” sign massive enough to be seen in satellite images, and dropped an album called “Thank You President Trump” that includes a “Baby Shark”–like track in which he mostly just repeats the president’s name.

Constantino poses in front of a “Vote for Trump” sign on the roof of his printing company, Sticker Mule, in Amsterdam, NY.

Shameless? Yes. Effective? Apparently. This past spring, Trump endorsed the paying Mar-a-Lago member over Assemblyman Robert Smullen, a retired Marine colonel backed by the state party. Constantino—who made a fortune through his novelty company Sticker Mule—defeated Smullen by 19 points. He is now favored to replace the retiring incumbent, Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Such a handoff would be the story of the Trump-era GOP in miniature. Stefanik, who was two grades behind Constantino at Albany Academy, went to Harvard before rocketing up the ranks of the Paul Ryan–era Republican Party. In 2014, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, hailed as a paragon of the party’s supposedly moderate future. After Trump took power, Stefanik tacked hard toward MAGA, only to be rewarded with public humiliation when Trump pulled her nomination to be UN ambassador last year.

Constantino, conversely, says he was “sort of a screwup” as a kid. While Ivy League–educated conservatives have tried to wrangle Trumpism into seminar-table coherence, Constantino—a small-time rapper and boxer—channels MAGA’s gleefully offensive id. During his campaign launch held in front of a wall of free turkeys, Constantino labeled Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “perra falsa”—Spanish for fake bitch. He told Gerard Kassar, the head of New York’s Conservative Party, to get “his ass” in a boxing ring, so he could punch him “in the fucking face legally.” In the video for his Zohran Mamdani diss track—e.g., “fuck you bitch,” rapping about the New York mayor’s “boy Osama”—he makes a throat-slitting gesture. In keeping with this thuggish persona, Constantino’s close associates have been accused or found guilty of kidnapping, stealing money from a youth baseball league, and lying to Congress. 

Come January, Constantino could become Congress’ most convincing Trump imitator.  

According to Skidmore College political science professor Bob Turner, “when you talk to longtime professional Republicans” in Constantino’s district, they say things “like, ‘I hate that guy. I’m embarrassed by that guy.’” But just as the national establishment did for Trump, the New York GOP is now backing Constantino after failing to stop him. Come January, Constantino could become the most convincing Trump imitator in a body already teeming with them. 

Constantino was born in 1982 to a prominent family in Amsterdam, a small city about a half-hour northwest of Albany. His father was the founder of a successful local printing company, wrote poetry, and was known for advocating on behalf of Native Americans. He died of cancer when Constantino was 6. 

Constantino was a devoted high-school wrestler. Although he lost his first 30 matches, he credits reaching a regional final by reverse-engineering the training of another local wrestler. Today, he is open about imitating Trump. “This is what smart people do,” he says about the president. “We learn from other smart people.”

After high school, he says he was “semi–kicked out” of Stonehill College and transferred to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he left without graduating to work at the family business. In 2010, he co-founded Sticker Mule with a friend of his late father’s. 

The new company brought hundreds of manufacturing jobs to a region where other blue-collar work had disappeared, offering a path to the kind of respect his father enjoyed. But Constantino was not the type to follow one of his dad’s key business precepts: “Don’t promote controversy.” That became clear as the Sticker Mule CEO emerged on Twitter as an outspoken supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Over the next few years, Constantino began spending most of his time in Mexico training as a boxer. His campaign biography boasts of the “chiseled physique” he developed after taking up the sport professionally, when, at the age of 39, he won a 2022 bout against an opponent who, according to boxing records, never fought professionally before or since. His final—and only third—professional match was a loss the following year to another fighter making his pro debut, a recovering drug addict and candy vendor who has said he was meant to be “carne de cañón” (cannon fodder).

As he pursued boxing, Constantino was also trying to launch what he marketed as a “happy” social media company where users were required to verify their identities before posting. On the site, called Stimulus, his persona was lighthearted, if juvenile; he made at least three posts about eating soups containing animal penis. That was tame compared to a 2024 attempt at stand-up in a Manhattan bar where Constantino described a scenario in which women supporting Kamala Harris vomited before and after he put his penis in their mouths. “I had the consent forms,” Constantino joked.

Within days of winning in 2024, Trump announced his plan to send Stefanik to the UN. Constantino promptly filed to run for her seat, self-funding his anticipated special election campaign with $2.6 million (he has now loaned his campaign $12 million in total). According to FEC filings, some of
the money went to Drake Ventures, a Florida LLC affiliated with Roger Stone, the former Trump adviser and convicted felon. Other chunks went to Paul
Antonelli, a Sticker Mule employee who was arrested for grand larceny in 2020 after being accused of stealing from an Amsterdam youth baseball league. (A police report states $47,000 went missing over a two-year period, much of it from a concession stand. Antonelli pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

When Trump left Stefanik languishing in the House, Constantino retooled for 2026—and grew more aggressive. At a June 2025 campaign event, he insinuated that Kassar may have sent a hit man to murder Antonelli. He alleged that Kassar had told him in late 2025 that “we intend to kill you” and that the Conservative Party would “destroy” him. Constantino added that someone later cut Antonelli’s brake line, suggesting without any clear evidence that Kassar could have been responsible for what he portrayed as a failed murder-for-hire scheme. Kassar later launched an ongoing defamation lawsuit that challenges Constantino’s “wholly false and invented series of events.” Constantino and Antonelli did not respond to requests for comment. 

If Constantino’s allegations sounded like something from GoodFellas, so too did the criminal charges outlined in a police report and court documents against two of his close associates, who were arrested within weeks of his primary victory in connection with the alleged kidnapping and assault of an accountant who also knows the sticker mogul. Matt Moller, the reported victim, says he was one of three friends who attended Constantino’s 2022 wedding. One of the other two, he adds, was Tommy Marcellino—a former MMA fighter who is now accused of abducting and strangling Moller. The second alleged assailant is Ricardo “Porsche Truck Ruk” Henderson, a rapper whom Constantino and affiliated companies have paid more than $500,000 in recent years, according to invoices and emails I reviewed. (Neither of the accused men responded to requests for comment.)

Constantino was not involved in the alleged kidnapping, but it is only the most recent example of people around him being implicated in serious criminal conduct. In late 2025, Constantino used Antonio Brown as a hype man for his Trump album shortly after the former NFL star was extradited from Dubai to face an attempted murder charge in Florida. Jorge Masvidal, another guest star on the record, is a former MMA fighter who pleaded no contest in 2023 to misdemeanor battery after being accused of attacking another UFC fighter outside a Miami restaurant. A third is Jason “Greatness” Jensen, a face-tattooed Sticker Mule brand ambassador who, according to public records, pleaded no contest to aggravated assault in 2008 before reinventing himself as a Christian rapper.

Anthony Constantino answers questions after defeating Assemblyman Robert Smullen in the Republican Party Primary for the 21st Congressional District on Tuesday June 23, 2026.Jim Franco/Albany Times Union/Getty

Constantino’s antics and associations have hurt his standing. In June, the editorial board of the Albany Times Union wrote that it “can’t recall ever meeting a more unsuitable candidate.” An August survey from a local NBC affiliate found that 42 percent of likely voters had a very unfavorable view of Constantino and showed him narrowly trailing Democrat Blake Gendebien, a mild-mannered dairy farmer who lives near the Canadian border. The Sticker Mule CEO again took a page from Trump, saying that it was a “fake poll” and that the FCC should reprimand the station to the “fullest extent possible.” 

A more recent survey touted by Constantino suggested he remains on track to succeed Stefanik. If he does, Constantino has signaled grander ambitions. The word “president” appears only once in his song glazing Trump, at the very end. “Man, I got to say, I love Donald, Donald Trump,” Constantino intones. “Might be president one day, just like Donald, Donald Trump.”

We have reopened our exhibitor program for 1 more week. Book your exhibit table by September 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT and showcase your startup in front of 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders at SF's Moscone West from October 13-15.

Russian Burger King patrons have been left with a bad taste after cyber crooks flame-broiled 3.2 million customers in a whopper of a breach, serving up their personal data for anyone hungry enough to consume it. Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) slurped up all the data leaked after the August 2024 attack on Mindbox, Burger King Russia’s marketing platform, concluding that miscreants had grilled the platform and extracted tasty morsels of customers’ basic personal information. The attackers flipped names, dates of birth, email addresses, and phone numbers, with a side order of genders and approximate geographic locations. Burger King acknowledged the situation in October 2024, confirming no financial or passport data was affected. “The data of Burger King restaurant chain customers may also be among those affected by the attack,” the company told Russian news service TASS. “Burger King confirms that the personal data being verified does not include payment details: public transaction information is not transmitted or stored by third parties. “The Mindbox platform and other third parties do not have access to the personal passport or payment information of Burger King customers.” The information stolen in the breach was well-seasoned: it spanned more than six years, dating back to May 2018. News reports at the time suggested that the leaks contained more than 5.6 million lines of data, and included information about a customer’s favorite dish and previous order dates, although HIBP made no mention of these. Russian cybersecurity news outlet Xakep cited sources tying the breach at Mindbox to other break-ins, and claimed it was the work of a single intruder. Among the other stores allegedly affected was Detsky Mir, Russia’s largest retailer of children’s toys, with more than 1 million reportedly affected. ®

Eight months after establishing a U.S. based joint venture, TikTok is getting on board fellow platforms to support industry-wide child safety work.

Save up to $200 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, plus 50% off a second pass before prices increase on September 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register today.

Quick Take

• Some Disney Renaissance era films look different on Disney+, but not for nefarious reasons. It’s because there’s no need to “transfer” them to film.
• The newsletter Animation Obsessives explained how some Disney animated movies were first made on digital files, which required a final step to make them into physical films.
• Nerdist’s Take: This story highlights why sometimes there’s no such thing as the “correct” version of a piece of art.

Sometimes it seems as though streaming has caused more problems than it ever solved. That includes how some shows and movies look much worse than they originally did. But in at least one case, that’s not the fault of the format. In fact, when it comes to certain animated movies from Disney’s Renaissance Era, it’s not even clear that what you see on Disney+ is an inferior edition. But whether you like the version you saw as a kid more or not, the reason the digital copy looks different is simple: it was never put on film.

The Disney renaissance movies used to look different. They were planned to be printed on 35 mm film — that's how they were first released.Modern editions skip that last step in the process. It was a highly developed, overlooked craft, as we explore:animationobsessive.substack.com/p/disneys-fi…

— Animation Obsessive (@ani-obsessive.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T00:07:27.392Z

The newsletter Animation Obsessives explained why some Disney movies really do look different on Disney+. The company hired Pixar in the ’80s (long before the Mouse House purchased the studio). Disney wanted help using digital tools to help with hand-drawn animated movies. As with any change from animated images to an actual moving film, transferring digital files to a physical reel required tweaking colors and saturation.

This CAPS process meant painted shots were turned into composites on computers. Filmmakers then had to put the movie on 35 mm film. There’s technically no reason to do that final step for streaming. It’s a digital format. The CAPS version is made to be streamed, even if no one knew that when they made it. It’s why Disney+ movies on streaming don’t look like the theatrical releases, which were preserved on some early Blu-ray discs. When you watch films like Mulan, Hercules, and The hunchback of Notre Dame on Disney+, you are watching the CAPS version which didn’t require any of the work needed for the actual film seen in actual theaters.

The top is the Disney+ version (Disney)

Some of these differences between the origingal Disney movies and the streaming versions are clearly worse. Some are up to the eye of the beholder. And some of the CAPS images are actually much more dynamic. But how you feel isn’t what’s interesting about this insightful piece. It shows sometimes the “correct” version of a piece of art doesn’t exist. This isn’t someone altering an aspect ratio and ruining a visual joke. This is someone showing us a version of a movie that has always existed in this exact format. We just didn’t have a way to see it that way before.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He strongly believes in physical media. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @‌burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post Why Disney Renaissance Movies Look Different on Streaming appeared first on Nerdist.

Brussels has adopted its long-awaited sustainability rating scheme for energy-guzzling datacenters, with minimum performance standards potentially next. The European Commission this week unveiled its Data Centre Energy Efficiency Package. It includes a common EU rating scheme and electronic label intended to make facilities' environmental performance easier to compare. A separate 12-week consultation asks whether minimum standards should be introduced to phase out the least efficient technologies. The scheme will cover individual datacenters with a power demand above 500 kW. Their electronic labels will draw on sustainability data operators already report under the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive, including energy and water use, waste heat reuse, clean energy, and interaction with the electricity grid. The first labels are expected to appear in 2027. If this all sounds familiar, that's because Brussels has been trying to get the scheme over the line for some time. The Commission's original plans for an A-to-G rating system were delayed after industry criticism. Moody's warned at the time that the eventual grades could have implications beyond embarrassing operators with a lousy score, potentially affecting financing and collateral requirements. A month later, reports emerged that Brussels was watering down parts of the proposal following lobbying from datacenter operators and tech giants. One contentious provision would have required clean-energy certificates used to offset emissions to come from the same region as the datacenter. The revised draft instead allowed operators to source them from renewable projects elsewhere in the EU. The package reflects a tension in EU policy. Brussels wants much more computing capacity for AI without a matching surge in pressure on electricity grids and water supplies. "Tripling our data centre capacity cannot mean tripling the pressure on our grids, our water and our energy bills," said Teresa Ribera, the Commission's Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition. "That starts with transparency, rating large data centre depending on their impact on our energy system. Efficient, flexible, powered by additional clean energy and reusing waste heat, this is how data centres become an asset for EU's energy transition." The labels may only be the start. A consultation on minimum performance standards for new and existing datacenters runs until December 14, with a legislative proposal planned for the second quarter of 2027. The Commission has yet to decide what the standards would require or which technologies they might rule out. Europe isn't alone in discovering that the AI infrastructure boom comes with some fairly substantial utility bills. California Governor Gavin Newsom this week signed seven bills tightening oversight of datacenters, including requirements around disclosure of water and electricity use and measures addressing who gets stuck with the cost of grid connections and other power infrastructure. The approaches differ, but the problem is much the same. Governments want more datacenters to feed AI, while electricity grids, water supplies, and the people paying for them are already feeling the strain. For Europe's operators, at least the first part of Brussels' answer has now arrived: show everyone how efficiently your bit barn runs. The question of what happens to the ones that don't make the grade comes next. ®

A little over a week ago, President Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil facilities. “Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said during a state visit to Ireland. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s…

Source

Singapore-based Nexstrom has raised new funding to develop equipment that could help chipmakers manufacture 2D semiconductor materials at scale.

Republican Senator John Curtis is demanding an investigation into Donald Trump Jr. after a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Umar Kremlev, bankrolled his wedding party.

In a post on X, Curtis posted a three-page letter he sent to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, and the committee’s ranking member, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, calling for Trump Jr. to be subpoenaed as part of a larger investigation into his business dealings and relationships with foreign individuals. Curtis also called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden.

In the letter, Curtis cited the lavish party Kremlev threw on a private island for Trump Jr., as well as the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures, comparing the president’s son to Biden and the myriad Republican-led investigations into Biden’s international business dealings.

“A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now,” Curtis said in the post.

The move is significant in that Republicans have so far avoided addressing the Trump family’s business deals since the 2024 election. President Trump made a whopping $2.2 billion in 2025, most of it from cryptocurrency, and the family is poised to make hundreds of millions more. The Trumps also have stakes in prediction markets and defense companies, willfully committing ethical violations without any action from Congress.

This post is updated throughout the day to reflect the latest incidents. It was last updated at 7:01 a.m..

Here’s what’s happening on the roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 7 a.m. on September 22

• A red Honda crashed at the corner of Elkhorn Rd and Strawberry Canyon Rd in Watsonville / Pajaro at 5:45 a.m. today. The car hit dirt and there was smoke from the engine. The driver first said they had chest pain and trouble breathing, but it was later called a non-injury crash. Fire and tow crews came to the scene.
   
• South Highway 1 at Park Avenue in Capitola / Soquel is facing closures for paving work. The closure is expected to end at 7:01 a.m. on Nov. 19.
   
• There are alternating lane closures on both northbound and southbound Highway 9 at Pool Drive in San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. This is expected to continue until April 30, 2027, at 6:59 a.m.
   

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Tuesday morning traffic: Red Honda crash in Watsonville; Hwy 1, 9 lane closures appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Movie studio Paramount on Monday agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 states, the last big obstacle blocking the company’s $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that would transform the movie industry landscape. In the settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, Paramount agreed to terms including a five-year movie production plan and to invest…

Source

A synchronization issue between Microsoft systems left at least one customer facing an unexpected bill after two portals showed different credit balances. A Register reader found themself on the hook for $16,000 in September after a balance that looked healthy had actually hit rock bottom and a subscription switched to pay-as-you-go. Our reader was one of many who signed up for Microsoft for Startups, a program that offers eligible businesses credits and other resources to build on Microsoft’s platforms. Amazon and Google have similar deals, but our reader signed up for Microsoft's version. According to our reader, Microsoft's Founders Hub showed a healthy balance of credits remaining as their company fired up services on Azure. They shared a screenshot from portal.startups.microsoft.com that showed plenty of credits remaining. Sadly, that was not the accurate figure. In reality, those credits had been exhausted in August, and the subscription switched to a pay-as-you-go plan, causing charges to mount quickly. Worse, the notification went to a former administrator who was no longer with the company, even though the account ownership had been transferred. Since August 17, the company has run up $16,000 in charges, mostly from AI workloads routed to Azure because the portal showed that credits were still available. However, a look at a different portal - in this case, the Azure Sponsorships portal - revealed the balance was indeed zero. Our reader shared an email from a Microsoft for Startups representative explaining, "The discrepancy you are seeing in the Microsoft for Startups portal is due to an ongoing synchronization issue between backend systems." The Azure Sponsorships portal was accurate. The Microsoft for Startups portal… not so much. "Our engineering team is aware of this behavior and is actively working on a resolution," wrote the representative. Very comforting when a surprise invoice arrives days or weeks before an automatic charge is made. Even more comforting was the comment, "We do not have an estimated timeline to share for when the synchronization will be fully corrected." And, of course, since the sponsorship credits had, in reality, been exhausted, "any additional usage may result in billable charges according to your subscription configuration." It is not clear whether Microsoft will waive the charges that were spotted too late thanks to its "ongoing synchronization issue." Our reader said they were told only the Startups team could grant an exception. The experience is a warning that just because one portal says a balance is healthy, another might tell an altogether different story. The challenge is finding that other portal and acting before a switchover happens and a credit card gets hammered in the name of AI progress. The Register contacted Microsoft about this tale of woe late last week, and the company asked that we give it until 1500 UK on September 21 to investigate. That deadline has passed without further comment. Perhaps our request is sitting in the wrong portal? ®