The United Kingdom will buy 12 U.S.-made F-35A fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear bombs and will join NATO’s shared airborne nuclear mission, in a major expansion of its nuclear deterrent, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Wednesday. The government called it “the biggest strengthening of the U.K.’s nuclear posture in a generation.” Starmer made the announcement while attending a NATO summit in the Netherlands. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte welcomed the decision, calling it “yet another robust British contribution to NATO.” The U.K. phased out air-dropped atomic weapons in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Its nuclear arsenal now consists of submarine-based missiles.

Dear Editor, I was thrilled to hear about the new initiative endorsed by the Gedolim and Rabbanim Shlit”a: encouraging girls returning from seminary to wait until Shavuos to begin dating, and asking boys to return earlier from Eretz Yisroel to start shidduchim sooner. Why am I so excited? Because I speak from painful experience. Six years ago, my oldest daughter entered the shidduch parsha. Like many other well-meaning, naïve parents, I assumed the traditional Litvish system was still working — that a good girl and a good boy would be redt to each other, go out, and build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisroel. We reached out to shadchanim. We waited. One year passed. Nothing. Two years passed. Still nothing. Can you imagine that pain?

The budget bill championed by President Donald Trump could complicate next year’s tax filing season after the IRS lost one-quarter of its employees through staffing cuts, an independent watchdog reported Wednesday. The IRS workforce has fallen from 102,113 workers to 75,702 over the past year, according to the latest National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress. The report Wednesday offered the first official numbers on the IRS job losses associated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Most of the employees took the “fork in the road” resignation offer from DOGE rather than waiting to get laid off.

President Donald Trump launched a fiery intervention into Israeli domestic affairs Wednesday, publicly demanding that the Israeli justice system cancel the ongoing corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — calling it a “travesty of justice” and a politically driven witch hunt. In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump slammed the legal proceedings as “ridiculous,” accusing prosecutors of targeting a leader he hailed as “a Great Hero” in the aftermath of Israel’s military campaign against Iran. “I was shocked to hear that the State of Israel, which has just had one of its Greatest Moments in History, and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous Witch Hunt against their Great War Time Prime Minister!” Trump wrote.

U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges accusing her of assaulting and interfering with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center during a congressional oversight visit at the facility. “They will not intimidate me. They will not stop me from doing my job,” she said outside the courthouse in Newark after the brief hearing. McIver, a Democrat, was charged by interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, following the May 9 visit to Newark’s Delaney Hall. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses the privately owned, 1,000-bed facility as a detention center. This month she was indicted on three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials.

Legislation introduced Wednesday in Congress would block Chinese artificial intelligence systems from federal agencies as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to ensure that the United States would prevail against China in the global competition over AI. “We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, as he opened a hearing on the matter. “The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.” About five months ago, a Chinese technology startup called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S.

JACKSON, NJ – A frum entrepreneur from Jackson has launched a groundbreaking new invention that’s already transforming lives: a system that allows people with low vision—including elderly Gedolim—to read and learn again with clarity and ease. The device, called OrahVision, lets users simply place down any sefer, paper, or document. The system instantly adjusts lighting, corrects curvature, sharpens the text, and displays a large, clear, high-contrast image on screen. Users can turn pages, zoom in and out, and even ask questions about the text—all with a single tap. “It’s so intuitive that people in their 90s who’ve never used technology are now using it daily to learn,” says Yisroel Wahl, the creator of OrahVision. Wahl explains that the project began as a personal mission.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed Wednesday that recent U.S. and Israeli strikes caused severe damage to Iran’s nuclear program. In a statement posted to X, Ratcliffe said the CIA has credible intelligence—including from a trusted source—that key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and will take years to rebuild. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,” he wrote. Ratcliffe added that the agency is still gathering intelligence and will keep officials and, when possible, the public informed. The statement directly contradicts leaked reports that suggested the strikes had limited impact.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs will likely push up inflation in the coming months, even as some Republican senators suggested the chair was biased against the duties. On the second day of his twice-yearly testimony before the House and Senate, Powell said that consumers will likely have to shoulder some of the cost of the import taxes. Most Fed officials support cutting rates this year, Powell added, but the central bank wants to take time to see how inflation changes in the months ahead. “There will be some inflation from tariffs coming,” Powell said under questioning from members of the Senate Banking Committee.

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff revealed on Wednesday that additional countries are expected to join the Abraham Accords in the near future. Speaking in an interview with CNBC, Witkoff said, “We think we have big announcements on countries coming into the Abraham Accords,” though he did not name which nations may be involved. Witkoff also addressed ongoing talks with Iranian officials regarding their nuclear program. “There’s a strong sense that Iran is ready,” he said, expressing optimism about reaching a broader peace agreement.