Trump calls it a war, then a 'military conflict.' Why the Iran fighting keeps changing names

WASHINGTON — Late September in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump declared, "Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We're gonna win that war very soon." It wasn't the first time he's described the hostilities as "war."

On Feb. 28, the day U.S. and Israeli began bombarding Iran, he warned that "the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission."

But throughout seven months of back-and-forth strikes with Iran, Trump administration officials, and sometimes Trump himself, have performed verbal acrobatics to avoid the "W" word.

Senior administration officials loosely tossed around "war" during the first stages of conflict, but with polls showing the war in unpopular and congressional support waning, "war" and even "Operation Epic Fury" have become taboo among members of the Trump administration. Trump has called attacks on Iran a "military operation," "military decimation," "excursion" and "skirmish."

—Los Angeles Times

Ivanka Trump just made a big announcement about relative in Billionaire Bunker

MIAMI — Major milestone alert in Billionaire Bunker. Ivanka Trump, 44, announced that her maternal grandmother has turned the century mark.

Born Marie Zelnickova, the Prague native lives with Ivanka, along with her husband, Jared Kushner, and their three kids in the mega-affluent community of Indian Creek Village near Miami Beach.

On Instagram, the first daughter shared an homage to “Babi,” the mother of the late Ivana Trump, President Donald Trump’s first wife, who died in 2022 at age 73 after falling down the stairs of her NYC home.

“100 years of life, love, family and memories,” began the post about Babi, seen sitting at a table flanked by her a bunch of Trumps, including her three grandkids and 10 great grandkids.

—Miami Herald

Gatorade recalled over undeclared dyes

PepsiCo is recalling 122,021 cases of Gatorade distributed in Texas and 36 other states because the drinks contain yellow food dyes not declared on their labels, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The voluntary recall began Sept. 25. The FDA classified it as Class II on Oct. 2, and it remains ongoing.

A Class II designation means a product may cause temporary or medically reversible health effects, or that the probability of serious health consequences is remote, according to the agency.

The FDA lists the reason as undeclared Yellow No. 5 and/or Yellow No. 6.

—The Dallas Morning News

FlyDubai hijacking turns into flashpoint in Israeli election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to seize the opportunity to associate himself with the heroics of Israelis who helped stop a FlyDubai co-pilot from crashing a plane bound for Tel Aviv.

As more details emerge about the dramatic events aboard Flight FZ1073 from Dubai, the incident risks backfiring on him as it becomes a key political battleground just three weeks before a tight Israeli election. The attempted hijacker, Hamam al-Hammami, 29, is a citizen of Oman — a country that doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel — and had a history of engaging with radical views that saw him dismissed from a previous job, Bloomberg has reported.

As Israel marks the third anniversary of one of its biggest security failures, the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, opposition leaders and a broad array of commentators are arguing that there are similarities between the two events.

“A bold line connects then and now, a culture of lies, cover-ups, and shirked responsibility introduced by Netanyahu’s government,” Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and the prime minister’s main rival, said on Sunday. Netanyahu ordered an investigation to “thoroughly review all security aspects of foreign civil aviation to Israel,” his office said, following a cascade of revelations exposing flaws in screening foreign aircrews.

—Bloomberg News