The Petersburg Post
Top News Stories for Friday, February 20th 2026
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the United Kingdom former royal, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. A statement from Thames Valley police was released Thursday that said, "As part of the investigation, we have today (19/2) arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk." "The man ...
Source: aljazeera.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States leaned into gunboat diplomacy on Thursday as nuclear talks between the nations hung in the balance, with Tehran holding drills with Russia and the Americans bringing another aircraft carrier closer to the Mideast. The Iranian drill and the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea underscore the tensions ...
Source: military.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com Eight people were killed in an avalanche near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday and one person is missing and presumed dead, California authorities said Wednesday. The other six people on the three-day backcountry skiing trek in the Sierra Nevada mountains were rescued alive, including one of the four guides. The ...
Source: theweek.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating ABC's "The View" over possible violations of the requirement that broadcast stations give equal time to political candidates when they appear on-air, according to the head of the agency that oversees U.S. broadcast airwaves. "The FCC has an enforcement action underway on that," Chairman Brendan Carr told reporters after an agency meeting Wednesday, in response ...
Source: apnews.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Indian leader Narendra Modi and tech chiefs including OpenAI's Sam Altman will speak on artificial intelligence's opportunities and threats. Indian leader Narendra Modi and tech chiefs including OpenAI's Sam Altman will speak Thursday on artificial intelligence's opportunities and threats at a summit in New Delhi, but Microsoft founder Bill Gates cancelled just hours before his speech. Gates, facing questions over ...
Source: digitaljournal.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... TALLAHASSEE — The Republican-controlled House pushed through an amended bill Thursday that would ask voters in November to immediately eliminate most property taxes on homesteaded property. The bill passed on a mostly party-line vote would let voters decide if they want to wipe out all but school property taxes on homesteaded properties — a phrase which ...
Source: orlandosentinel.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
In a closed-door session at his Ohio home on Wednesday, billionaire Leslie Wexner faced mounting questions from United States lawmakers about Jeffrey Epstein's rise to wealth and influence – and the role he may have played in that ascent. Five members of the House Oversight Committee had travelled to depose the 88-year-old after Democrats subpoenaed him in the wake of the latest US Department of Justice ...
Source: aljazeera.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
The American Bankers Association that Lia Fordjour has been named its new chief financial officer and that Tifany Pedersen has been named the new head of marketing. Fordjour brings more than 20 years of financial leadership experience. Since joining ABA in 2022, she has overseen the development of the association's consolidated annual budget, led coordination of annual audit and tax deliverables, prepared monthly ...
Source: bankingjournal.aba.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Behind the scenes, real journalism faces real resistance. We keep reporting anyway. Member support protects our independence and keeps tough stories in the light. Join today to help defend a free press. Already a member? AUSTIN, Texas – Seven months and $60 million later, Senate Republicans' efforts to rescue one of their caucus' leading members have proven totally ineffective, driving worries the party could ...
Source: huffpost.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
MILAN — U.S. hockey star Hilary Knight became the all-time leading scorer in U.S. women's hockey history at the Olympics in the most dramatic way possible when she scored her 15th career goal late in the gold medal game of the Milan Cortina Olympics. Knight, 36, deflected a shot to tie Canada, 1-1, with two minutes left in regulation. Follow along for live updates Knight broke the goals record held by former ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
The device sports a 6.3-inch Actua display that is 11% brighter than the previous generation. Google on Wednesday introduced the Pixel 10a, a $499 entry-level smartphone that is available for preorder now with shipments starting March 5. The device comes in four colors: Lavender, Berry, Fog, and Obsidian. It features a flat back where the camera bar blends flush with the phone's body. The Pixel 10a sports a ...
Source: techbriefly.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
US Sen. Bernie Sanders used his appearance at a rally in Los Angeles on Wednesday to call out—in some cases by name—the billionaires using tiny slices of their fortunes to fight a proposed wealth tax in California. "What I can tell the oligarchs is that the American people are sick and tired of their greed," Sanders (I-Vt.) told an enthusiastic audience gathered at The Wiltern theater, with members of ...
Source: commondreams.org
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article Mikaela Shiffrin ended her eight-year wait for an Olympic medal by winning slalom gold on Wednesday stood on the Olympic podium, a gold medal gleaming around her neck, her expression a mixture of triumph and profound disbelief. The American skiing sensation had not merely clinched ...
Source: independent.co.uk
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Trump told the U.K. not to "give away" the Chagos Islands, which is where a joint U.S.-U.K. military base is located. The president suggested the Chagos deal was prompted by "Wokeism" after the U.K. has come under pressure to hand the islands back to Mauritius. The U.S. is due to hold talks with Mauritius on the issue next week. U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hold a press ...
Source: cnbc.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
"The most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware." NASA on Thursday announced it has formally classified the 2024 crewed flight of the Starliner spacecraft as a "Type A" mishap , an acknowledgement that the test flight was a serious failure. As part of the announcement, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman sent an agency-wide letter that recognized the shortcomings of both Starliner's ...
Source: arstechnica.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article 'Only after years of background checks, biometric screenings, and in-person interviews were they invited to rebuild their lives here. To now subject them to arrest and open-ended detention is a stunning betrayal of both our legal commitments and our moral compass,' says one ...
Source: independent.co.uk
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
At the end of October last year, the RSF took over al‑Fashir, which had been the last remaining stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Darfur region in the west of the country. paramilitary group captured the Sudanese city of al‑Fashir bear hallmarks that point to genocide, an independent UN probe said in a new report on Thursday. At the end of October last year, the RSF took over the city, ...
Source: jpost.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Former President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison for his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024. Judge Jee Kui-youn said he found Yoon guilty of rebellion for mobilizing military and police forces in an illegal attempt to seize the liberal-led National Assembly, arrest politicians and establish unchecked power for a "considerable" time. Yoon is likely to ...
Source: npr.org
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
All AI-generated music includes Google's SynthID watermark for identification, providing ethical safeguards while making music creation more accessible to everyday users. Google is launching music generation in its Gemini app via the new Lyria 3 model developed by Google Deepmind. The feature is in beta and allows you to create 30-second pieces of music based on text prompts and/or uploaded images and videos, says ...
Source: pcworld.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
The cost of building and powering data centers full of AI chips could be $5.2 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey. As with all such economic engines, Big Law is finding a sizable role to play. The data center boom sits at the intersection of two major client bases—Big Tech and the world's largest private asset managers—and presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for firms built to cross-sell ...
Source: news.bloomberglaw.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Bad Bunny to make lead acting debut in film inspired by Puerto Rican revolutionary Singer Bad Bunny is to take on his first lead acting role, starring in a film alongside Javier Bardem and Edward Norton. Porto Rico, described as a love letter to the 31-year-old's home of Puerto Rico, will be directed by rapper René Pérez, known as Residente. The film, which has been in development since 2023, is ...
Source: bbc.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Robot libraries filled with tiny glass 'books' could store data for millennia A team at Microsoft Research combined lasers, machine learning and tiny glass rectangles to demonstrate a new robotic data storage system that could, in theory, still be readable 10,000 years from now—twice as long as humans have been writing things down to date. The process, described recently in Nature, is designed for archiving ...
Source: scientificamerican.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Feb. 19 (UPI) -- The Commission of Fine Arts has unanimously approved plans for President Donald Trump 's almost 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom plans, the first hurdle in starting the building project. The commission, whose members were all appointed by Trump , including his executive assistant, Chamberlain Harris, 26. The original architect of the ballroom recused himself from the vote. Trump fired all ...
Source: upi.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Apple is facing a lawsuit (PDF) filed Thursday by West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey over allegations that iCloud is being used to store and distribute child sexual abuse material online. McCuskey alleges that Apple knew about this "for years" and "chose to do nothing about it." The lawsuit contains alleged iMessage screenshots between Apple executives Eric Friedman and Herve Sibert acknowledging the ...
Source: cnet.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
At the January 2026 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, the voting body chose to leave interest rates unchanged . The Federal Reserve's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment have been at crossroads the past few months; inflation has trickled up, but the labor market shows signs of softness. At the January meeting, concerns about inflation won, as documented in the now-published ...
Source: rismedia.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Deal agreed to acquire British secondhand fashion resale app from Etsy as eBay attempts to fend off Amazon The online retailer eBay has agreed to buy the British secondhand fashion resale app Depop from Etsy for about $1.2bn (£890m) in cash, as eBay targets younger fashion-loving consumers. The deal comes at a time when secondhand marketplaces continue to soar in popularity , especially among gen Z shoppers ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Alzheimer's blood tests predict what age people will be when the disease may cause symptoms, study finds Blood tests that detect a protein involved in Alzheimer's disease could help predict the age at which the disease may strike people long before they develop symptoms, according to a new study. But questions remain about the accuracy and uncertainty of these tests , and experts caution that the assays aren't ...
Source: scientificamerican.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Google LLC today introduced Gemini 3.1 Pro, a new reasoning model that outperforms Claude 4.6 Opus and GPT-5.2 across several benchmarks. The algorithm is available via more than a half-dozen of the search giant's products. Gemini 3.1 Pro is a Transformer model with a mixture of experts architecture, which means that it activates only some of its parameters when generating a prompt response. Users can enter prompts ...
Source: siliconangle.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
A shark found in the Antarctic proves that predators are moving into new territory. A deep-sea camera lowered off the South Shetland Islands, a group of Antarctic islands, was supposed to do what deep-ocean cameras do best: sit quietly in the cold dark and record whatever passes through. In January 2025, however, it filmed an animal many researchers didn't expect to see anywhere near Antarctica — a sleeper ...
Source: zmescience.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
By Ben Casselman and Ana Swanson President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised that his steep tariffs would reduce U.S. imports, shrink the trade deficit and lead to a revival in American manufacturing. So far, the opposite has occurred. U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit in goods hit a record high, data released Thursday showed, as Trump's policies scrambled trade but did not halt it. That was ...
Source: miamiherald.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Alysa Liu completed a stunning comeback to competitive figure skating by winning the first Olympic women's figure skating gold medal for the United States in 24 years on Thursday night. The 20-year-old from Clovis, California, who vanished from the sport nearly four years ago uncertain if she'd ever return, delivered a career-best long program to overtake Japanese rivals Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai. Skating in a ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
A British woman who was detained by Iran has told the BBC it was hard to remain positive in prison, hours before she and her husband were sentenced to 10 years for espionage. Lindsay and Craig Foreman were arrested while passing through Iran on a round-the-world motorcycle trip in January 2025. In a rare telephone interview from Tehran's notorious Evin prison, Lindsay likened their detainment to "an endurance test ...
Source: bbc.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... NASA began fueling 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellant on the Space Launch System rocket at Kennedy Space Center on Thursday as its moved ahead with a test countdown of the Artemis II mission. A live stream of the rocket at KSC's Launch Pad 39-B began before 10 a.m. as teams, after getting the green light from Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, began ...
Source: orlandosentinel.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
The 911 call reported an apparent suicide. A 55-year-old Cuban "tried to hang himself," a federal contractor alerted emergency responders last month from a sprawling El Paso immigrant detention center. By the next day, records show that Geraldo Lunas Campos had died at the facility, marking the second fatality in weeks at the hastily constructed Fort Bliss Army tent structure known as Camp East Montana. Immigration ...
Source: truthout.org
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
A business that bottles and distributes Coca-Cola products throughout New England is pushing back against the federal government's claim that it illegally discriminated against male employees by hosting a company trip exclusively for women. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court, alleging that Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast Inc. , based in Bedford, N.H., violated the ...
Source: bostonglobe.com
Thursday, Feb 19th, 2026 -
Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article The luxury jet can hold 18 people and sleep 14, according to the report ICE is looking to purchase a luxurious $70 million jet equipped with a bedroom, showers and even a bar — claiming it's needed for cabinet officials' travel itinerary and deporting migrants, according to ...
Source: independent.co.uk
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
By Moderna's mRNA-1010 flu vaccine for older adults could be made available by the end of 2026, the pharmaceutical company announced Wednesday. Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have agreed to undertake a review of Moderna's seasonal influenza vaccine. Moderna and FDA officials recently met to discuss the vaccine's review with the goal date of Aug. 5. "Pending FDA approval, we look forward to making our ...
Source: miamiherald.com
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled Wednesday over social media "addiction" in a landmark Los Angeles trial — where he defended Instagram's beauty filter feature as "free expression" and admitted that keeping kids under 13 off the platforms was "very difficult." Mark Lanier, the attorney representing a California woman who claims Meta's platforms harmed her mental health when she was a child, peppered ...
Source: nypost.com
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
NEW YORK (AP) — California regulators said on Tuesday that Tesla had stopped misleading drivers about the safety of its cars and so has decided not to suspend its license to sell in the state for 30 days. The decision by the California Department of Motor Vehicles comes after Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker was found by an administrative law judge last year to have misled drivers about the ability of Tesla ...
Source: apnews.com
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
A federal judge in Chicago has ruled there's "no meat on [the] bones" of a restaurant customer's argument that its boneless wings aren't actually chicken wings. The ruling on Tuesday comes after Chicagoan Aimen Halim filed a lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings in 2023, alleging that the use of the term "boneless wings" was deceptive and "a clear-cut case of false advertising." Halim bought food at a Mount Prospect ...
Source: chicago.suntimes.com
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
NEWARK, N.J. (PIX11) — Newark Liberty International Airport temporarily closed and grounded departing flights Wednesday night, according to the FAA. A JetBlue flight took off from Newark at 5:43 p.m. for West Palm Beach, Fla., and had to immediately return to the airport due to an engine failure, a source familiar with the incident told PIX11 News. ore landing, according to FlightAware . The plane ...
Source: wfla.com
Wednesday, Feb 18th, 2026 -
Ukraine said Wednesday that its officials will not attend the Winter Paralympics next month over organizers' decision to allow a handful of Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their flags. Ukrainian athletes will still take part in the Milan Cortina Games, scheduled for March 6-15, but no officials from Ukraine will be at the opening ceremony or any events, Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi said. In a ...
Source: nbcnews.com