By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s announcement of a “massive and ongoing” US military campaign against Iran — and his explicit call for the country’s citizens to shake off their oppressive leadership — put on display his fresh appetite for geopolitical risk and thrust his presidency into a deeper period of uncertainty.

“The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests,” he said of Iran in a video posted to Truth Social early Saturday morning, in which he starkly acknowledged that US lives may be lost in the operation.

The eight-minute recording laid bare both the president’s objectives in Iran — which had been unclear — and the potential for dire consequences. Trump appears hopeful his major air operation can successfully result in a change in Iran’s regime, despite the vast uncertainties about what might replace it and the limited historical examples of air power alone ousting a country’s leader.

“They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” said Trump, who a US official said is continuing to monitor the strikes from Mar-a-Lago.

The president reached his decision after weeks of deliberation and an attempt by his envoys to strike a rapid diplomatic agreement that would have forced Iran to abandon long-held red lines. The US military is planning for several days of attacks, two sources told CNN, and Iran has already retaliated across the Middle East, including targeting the US Navy base in Bahrain that is home to the Fifth Fleet, a US official said.

Trump never fully publicly laid out his case for war, even during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, despite strikes being a politically perilous move at home, especially for a president who campaigned on ending foreign entanglements. He noted on Saturday the potential cost to American lives.

“The Iranian regime seeks to kill. 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,” the president said, adding that US had “taken every possible step to minimize the risk to US personnel in the region.”

To many of Trump’s allies, military action had long appeared inevitable. After telling Iranian protesters at the start of the year that he would come to their support, warning the US was “locked and loaded” to attack, he felt obligated to enforce his red line.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump told the Iranian people in his video.

“For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond,” he said.

Trump’s motivations for his second set of strikes within Iran since returning to office — conveyed mostly in curt, off-hand public remarks — appeared to shift over time, moving from protecting protesters to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions to ousting the Iranian regime. He’s also cited Iran’s arsenal of missiles and destabilizing support for regional proxy groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas.

How the latest military action from both the US an

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — Minutes before the 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School, administrators and officers went to intercept a freshman student named Colt Gray, whose concerning comments that morning had raised several red flags.

They went to his second period math class but learned he had gone to the bathroom. There, they found a student named Kolton Gray and brought him to the office for questioning.

Minutes later, Colt Gray began shooting.

The bizarre, unfortunate name mix-up was revealed in its full extent this week at the trial of Colin Gray, the father of the school shooter, on charges of murder and manslaughter.

The shooting at Apalachee High in Winder, Georgia, on September 4, 2024, left four people dead and nine injured. Colt Gray surrendered to police and has admitted to the shooting, according to authorities. Now 16, he has pleaded not guilty to 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder. A trial date has not been set.

Colin Gray, the teen’s father, has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and manslaughter. Prosecutors say he acted recklessly by buying his son the rifle as a Christmas gift and allowing him access to it despite previous warnings that his son was a danger to others. His defense has said he was unaware his son was planning the shooting and had taken steps to try to get him help.

The trial has primarily focused on what the father knew about his troubled son and what he did with that knowledge before the attack. But it has also featured dozens of witnesses who have offered key testimony about the day of the attack and the “what-if” moments in which police nearly stopped it before it started.

In particular, the testimony revealed Colt Gray’s alarming actions and statements prior to the attack: the school’s efforts to locate him that day, the confusion with a similarly named student, and finally the horrific shooting itself.

Here’s a closer look at what we now know about the shooting based on trial testimony so far:

Red flags were raised

On the morning of September 4, 2024, Colt’s comments and actions raised multiple red flags.

In his first period class, Colt asked his teacher, Suzanne Harris, if the school had done any active shooter drills, she testified.

“It was a little bit alarming, and I did send an email to the counselor in regards to that,” Harris testified.

She noticed Colt was carrying a backpack with a large poster sticking out of the top of it. Shortly after Colt left her classroom, Harris told an administrator she thought he had a gun. “I felt in every fiber of my being that something was wrong,” she testified.

The poster, reading “Happy Mama’s Day,” was wrapped around the part of the firearm that stuck out of the top of the backpack, according to trial evidence.

At 9:40 a.m., Colt sent several concerning texts to his father that alarmed him, according to phone records.

“I’m sorry,” he wrote to his father. “It’s not ur fault.” Colin Gray, at his construction job, texted him what was wrong, but the teen didn’t respond, text evidence shows.

Colin Gray then called his estranged wife, Marcee, who called the school guidance counselor, Lisa Butler, at 9:50 a.m. to ask them to check on Colt. Toward the end of that conversation, she told Butler Colt had access to a firearm and had an obsession with school shooters, alarming the counselor, Butler testified.

Butler relayed the information t

By Brad Lendon, CNN

(CNN) — North Korea on Saturday released pictures showing leader Kim Jong Un and his teenage daughter at a rifle range, the latest propaganda images to promote the child touted as a potential successor.

State media KCNA said Kim and his daughter – along with Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong and other officials – fired the rifles after the North Korean leader gifted them to military leaders to salute their service to the reclusive state’s ruling party.

One of the images – which was flagged during a CNN check as being potentially AI-manipulated – showed the girl, believed to be named Kim Ju Ae and in her early teens, firing a sniper rifle.

In all, North Korea released 27 pictures of the event.

CNN checked four of the photos for signs of manipulation. Only the picture of Kim Ju Ae firing the rifle showed possible use of AI.

Kim specially prepared the gifts of the “new generation sniper’s rifle” for the key leaders, calling it “a really wonderful weapon,” the KCNA report said.

The shooting-range event came after the conclusion of a congress of the Korean Workers’ Party, a largely rubber-stamp political gathering of the nation’s elite, where Kim’s leadership was reaffirmed by unanimous vote.

At the assembly, Kim Yo Jong was promoted to director of a party department after years in a deputy role, solidifying her standing in the inner circle. Several senior party and military posts were reshuffled, elevating younger loyalists.

But much of the attention was on Kim’s daughter.

Kim Ju Ae stood withbher father on the grandstand as he reviewed some 14,000 troops goosestepping through Kim Il Sung Square, named after her great-grandfather, in the capital of Pyongyang.

She has also been at her father’s side for previous missile tests and other ruling-party events, fueling speculation that she will be the fourth-generation successor to the Kim family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since before the Korean War started in 1950.

In February South Korea’s spy agency said it believes the dictator has “entered the stage of nominating her as successor.”

There has been no official confirmation from North Korea on the daughter’s role, but the image of her purportedly firing the sniper rifle on Friday brought even more attention to her.

“By emphasizing that Kim Ju Ae knows how to fire a rifle, North Korea is hinting that she is undergoing succession training,” Yang Mu-jin, a distinguished professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told the Chosun Daily newspaper.

Other images appeared to show Kim Ju Ae, wearing a leather jacket, observing through binoculars as her father took a shot, and helping present the rifles to others at the event.

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By Auzinea Bacon, CNN

(CNN) — We’ve been talking about AI changing the world for a long time. But this week felt different — as if it were right in the middle of something big.

The stock market tumbled — three separate days — because of investors’ both bearish and bullish fears about AI, including Nvidia’s somewhat tepid outlook and a viral blog post that imagined a hypothetical scenario in which white-collar work evaporated.

Anthropic unveiled new tools that could upend the way people do work. Then Anthropic entered into an epic battle over red lines with the Pentagon that risked making the AI company a pariah. At the same time, the company loosened its safety policy as the AI market continues to charge ahead.

And then there was Block, which laid off 4,000 people — nearly half of its staff — because of AI. The company’s CEO predicted that other companies were about to do the same.

What a week, indeed. Here’s how it unfolded.

Investor fears

The Dow tumbled more than 800 points on Monday, in large part because of a Substack post from Citrini Research that laid out hypothetical scenarios for how developments in AI could disrupt certain parts of the economy, including AI agents making white-collar work superfluous.

The post, which was published last Sunday, specifically said it was not meant to be predictive. It was a work of fiction.

And yet stocks for companies mentioned in the report — like DoorDash and American Express — tumbled on Monday.

Tech stocks tumbled again on Thursday after leading chipmaker Nvidia released its earnings. Although the company’s profit nearly doubled in the fourth quarter and sales reached an all-time high, Wall Street seemed disappointed by its somewhat lackluster outlook. It fueled AI bubble concerns — that massive investments in AI infrastructure may not translate to big returns.

The steep declines this week showed just how on edge investors are regarding AI — even when the news is good, or when doomsday scenarios are completely made out of thin air.

Changes to Claude AI

Anthropic fed into disruption fears earlier this month when it announced an update to its Claude Cowork agent, stoking fears that it could replace dozens of software tools.

On Tuesday, Anthropic announced another update to Claude to improve the tool’s performance at specific jobs, such as design, human resources and wealth management roles, and it can now work within applications like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint apps.

Anthropic denied that its tools will replace existing software tools and jobs, noting Claude Cowork is designed to be complementary. But its rapid-fire updates are giving Wall Street whiplash.

Anthropic vs. the Pentagon

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, went head-to-head with the Pentagon in a high-stakes battle over AI safety.

Anthropic set two red lines for its AI: Claude will not be used in autonomous weapons, and it will not be used in the mass surveillance of US citizens.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon would use the Defense Production Act to access Anthropic’s technologies regardless of the company’s decision. He met with Amodei on Tuesday, saying that the Pentagon wanted to use the AI model “for all lawful purposes” and set a Friday deadline for the company to agree.

Hegseth also threaten

FRESNO, Calif. (KEYT) - Atascadero could not cool off the hot second half shooting of Clovis and the top-seeded Greyhounds lost 65-47 in the CIF-Central Section Division 2 championship game in boys basketball.

It's the first CIF title in boys basketball for the Clovis Cougars since 1947.

Atascadero was led in scoring by Shea Buckley who had 15 points.

#2 seed Clovis got a game-high 19 points from junior Sier Harbin.

Damon Jackson Jr. tallied a double-double for the Cougars with 10 points and 16 rebounds.

The Greyhounds(20-10) now get ready for the State playoffs which begin next week.

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