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Within hours of a radical shouting "Allahu akbar" and opening fire Thursday in an Old Dominion University classroom, an armed suspect rammed a vehicle into a Detroit-area synagogue and school, then exchanged fire with security personnel.The suspect was killed, and the guard was injured.'Today's attack is every community's worst nightmare.'Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield Township with roughly 12,000 members as well as a preschool and religious education school, revealed in a statement that "everyone is safe," including the preschool students and staff members."As you have no doubt heard, Temple Israel was the victim of a terrorist gunman who was confronted and neutralized by our security personnel who are truly heroes. Our teachers followed their training and kept the children safe and calm," stated Temple Israel, which ran an active-shooter training exercise six weeks ago.Following reports that the vehicle used in the attack was registered to a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Dearborn, Michigan, the Department of Homeland Security identified the suspect as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old Lebanese native who first entered the U.S. in 2011 on an IR1 spousal visa.RELATED: Heroic students subdued suspected terrorist in Old Dominion attack and 'rendered him no longer alive,' says FBI Jewish volunteer EMTs near Temple Israel following the attack. Photo by Emily Elconin/Getty ImagesGhazali was granted American citizenship "under the Obama administration" on Feb. 5, 2016 — just a year after applying for naturalization, the DHS noted.A neighbor told the Detroit Free Press that Ghazali lived in Dearborn Heights and recently lost his family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon.Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun, among the officials who promptly condemned the attack, confirmed in a statement that "earlier this month, [the suspect] lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon."A Lebanese official told NBC News that two of the suspect's adult brothers — alleged members of Hezbollah — were also among those killed in the recent Israeli strikes. A March 6 report claimed that Qassem and his brother Ibrahim Ghazali were killed in Western Bekaa along with Ibrahim's children Ali and Fatima.Lebanese authorities claim that at least 687 people, including 98 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Feb. 28, reported the BBC. The Israel Defense Forces noted earlier this month that as part of an "enhanced forward defense posture," it had taken positions inside Southern Lebanon and was "conducting targeted strikes against Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.""All of us have thoughts of maybe why this happened," Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said on Thursday. "But we don't operate in a world where we can presume something. We have to determine it through investigation."Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) stated, "Today's attack is every community's worst nightmare. We saw incredible people step up today to save lives and stop the suspect. Our state is grateful to the security personnel for their bravery and law enforcement who jumped into action to keep students safe."The West Bloomfield Police Department said that it is working in concert with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, Michigan State Police, and other agencies to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Housing prices have locked millions of working- and middle-class families out of the market. Congress, prodded by President Trump, has finally started to respond. The opening move is the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — and corporate America, along with its think-tank megaphones, is already howling.In January, on the one-year anniversary of his return to the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing his Cabinet to lay out rules that would ban large financial firms from buying up massive chunks of single-family housing.Some Republicans are treating the legislation as if it’s ‘Liz Warren’s bill.’ It isn’t. It’s exactly the kind of policy populist conservatives have wanted for years.It was a smart move. Private equity has targeted entry-level homes in fast-growing markets, paying cash and converting starter neighborhoods into permanent rental pools. The D.C. commentariat loves to point out that institutional ownership is “small” nationally. That argument obscures the real numbers. The harm is local, concentrated, and immediate — exactly where young families are trying to buy.Wall Street’s favorite targets sit in the Sun Belt: Atlanta, where a 2024 Government Accountability Office study put the share of single-family rental homes owned by investors at 25%; Jacksonville and Tampa, where the shares stood at 21% and 15%; Charlotte at 18%; and Phoenix at 14%. Other major targets include Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, Orlando, and Raleigh, North Carolina.Trump put a human face on the policy during his State of the Union address.“With us tonight is Rachel Wiggins, a mom of two from Houston,” he said. “She placed bids on 20 homes and lost all of those bids to gigantic investment firms that bypassed inspection, paid all cash, and turned all those houses into rentals, stealing away her American dream.”Then he made the point that matters: Executive orders don’t last.“Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people — really, that’s what we want. We want homes for people, not for corporations.”That line is the essence of the fight. Most executive orders are glorified press releases. Sure, agencies can move the levers of government. But regulations can be reversed as quickly as they’re written. Congress makes law. In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, Republicans should lock in what works and build from there.Three weeks after the address, the Senate passed its version of the bill, 89-9-1. It’s a compromise package, as any major bill must be without a filibuster-proof majority. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) negotiated it. Now it’s in the House, where senators warn that gutting the compromise could kill the whole effort for the year.The backlash from the think-tank world came quickly. The American Enterprise Institute’s Ed Pinto complained the bill “would turn what has been a legal and permissible activity … into a suspect activity heavily regulated by the U.S. Treasury.” American Compass founder and chief economist Oren Cass had the correct response: That’s not a rebuttal so much as a basic definition of public policy.“The observation that Congress has identified an activity that has been permissible and is proposing to give an agency authority to regulate it is not an argument against the proposal,” Cass wrote on X.com.“Sometimes public policy is good.”The ever-irrelevant Cato Institute went farther, insisting it makes no sense for “corporations” to buy homes “to the detriment of other people.” The quotation marks do most of the work there. Corporate money doesn’t buy up neighborhoods out of charity.“The interests of the American family and corporations diverge when it comes to housing prices,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told the Brief. “Their interest is to increase the housing costs so they can make more money, period. And if that’s not it, they’re not a very good corporation.” (Disclosure: I serve on the APP’s board of directors.)House Republicans have their own skeptics. Some are treating the legislation as if it’s “Liz Warren’s bill.” It isn’t. It’s the first tiny step Congress has taken in years to confront inflated home prices and the corporate churn making starter homes harder to buy. It’s exactly the kind of policy populist conservatives have wanted for years.Some conservatives also argue that Washington shouldn’t interfere. But Washington already interfered — it built the corporate legal structure that shields institutional players in ways ordinary families and small businesses cannot possibly match. Pretending the market is “pure” now is a choice, not a principle.Large investors do play a role in housing finance and construction. Nobody denies that. But families form the foundation of stable towns, neighborhoods — and nations. A first home is how families build wealth, put down roots, and get ahead.“Let me put this in a way Republicans can understand,” Schilling said with a grin. “We need a preemptive strike against the corporations that are jacking up our housing prices.”Corporate ownership of single-family homes isn’t a passing blip. It’s a growing problem — and one Congress can start clipping now if House Republicans will back the president and pass the Senate’s proposal.“My administration,” Trump declared in February, “will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America’s neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower American families to own their homes.”One bill won’t fix the housing market problem. But Congress can take a first step — and prove it still knows the difference between market orthodoxy and the American dream.Sign up for Bedford’s newsletterSign up to get Blaze News editor in chief Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.

Team USA is set for another rivalry game against Team Canada, this time on Friday night in the World Baseball Classic, after significant controversy has already rattled American fans.The matchup comes after the Americans were almost eliminated from the tournament, which would have been under the most embarrassing circumstances.'This man belongs nowhere near Team USA in the future.'Before the American side lost to Italy 8-6 on Tuesday, Team USA manager Mark DeRosa sparked headlines by appearing not to know the rules of the World Baseball Classic.During an interview with the MLB Network's "Hot Stove," DeRosa said his team's "ticket" was already "punched to the quarterfinals."However, that was not true. If Mexico had won its next game against Italy while scoring fewer than five runs in nine innings, Team USA would have been eliminated.While there is no telling if DeRosa's alleged lack of knowledge around tournament rules affected his coaching strategy during the team's loss to the Italians, the team's tournament future was out of their hands when Italy played Mexico on Wednesday.Luckily for the Americans — and DeRosa — the Italians clubbed their way to a 9-1 win, ensuring that Team USA would advance.RELATED: NBA turns Atlanta Hawks strip-club night on its head: 'Canceling ... is the right decision' DeRosa told reporters after the Tuesday loss that he had simply misspoken and was not unaware of the way teams are ranked in the standings."Yeah, I misspoke. I was on 'Hot Stove' with a couple buddies today and completely misread the calculations," DeRosa claimed. "We knew that Mexico was going to play Italy and then running all the numbers with, if we lost tonight, with the runs allowed and runs scored and outs. So I just misspoke."Fans did not exactly believe DeRosa, with one New York Yankees fan saying he couldn't "fathom" how unbelievable it was that the Team USA manager "made the lineup today not knowing how the tournament works."Another fan on X wrote, "This man belongs nowhere near Team USA in the future.""This might be the biggest instance of coaching malpractice in the history of international USA sports," another viewer said in reaction to DeRosa's original comments. RELATED: Charles Barkley defends Team USA White House visit — but says Trump needs to stop doing one thing Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images With those hijinks now in the rearview mirror, Team USA will play Team Canada Friday night in the quarterfinals at 8 p.m. ET in Daikin Park in Houston. The game marks the latest in an ongoing and inflamed rivalry between the two nations, which exploded during the Olympics in the men's and women's ice hockey events.The United States beat Canada for the gold medal in both categories, which subsequently caused rage when the men's hockey team received a phone call from President Trump that contained a joke at the expense of the women's team.Canadian media melted down and repeatedly questioned American players who play for Canadian teams about the phone call, asking them to apologize.South Korea will begin the quarterfinals against the Dominican Republic at 6:30 p.m. ET on Friday from LoanDepot Park in Miami. On Saturday, Puerto Rico plays Italy at 3 p.m. ET in Houston, then Venezuela plays Japan at 9 p.m. ET in Miami.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

One does not usually think of the Patagonian desert or the Andean highlands as front lines of a strategic threat.But geography has a way of asserting itself in surprising places.In the dry, thin air of Neuquén, Argentina, or the high-altitude silence of Amachuma, Bolivia, the landscape is being remapped by high-gain dish antennas operating in S-, X-, and Ka-bands. They are described as instruments of science, part of a “Global South” solidarity that promises peaceful modernization and multipolar governance.In the vocabulary of space systems engineering, however, these sites are something else entirely: They are the “ground segment,” the nervous system that makes a satellite controllable and its data harvestable.In recent decades, the distinction between civilian and military space has effectively collapsed.Because the Earth rotates and orbits are indifferent to national boundaries, a space program requires a global footprint to maintain a reliable contact window. To command a spacecraft or manage sensitive telemetry, one needs a station on the other side of the globe to fill the coverage gap. In recent decades, China has found this “other side” in Latin America, accumulating a geographically distributed set of access points, some operated through joint ventures, others through 50-year leases.A ground station translates geography into data flows and turns orbital motion into actionable schedules, providing the ability to track satellites, receive their transmissions, and map space objects as a strategic inventory. These functions are logistical accelerators: They shorten delays and stabilize communications. They are militarily meaningful even when they are not overtly militarized.Consider the Neuquén deep-space station in Argentina. The 2014 Cooperation Agreement, registered with the United Nations, is a masterpiece of legal clarity and operational opacity. It grants China broad tax exemptions and includes a clause stating that the Argentine government “will not interfere with or interrupt” the station’s normal activities. The term of the agreement is 50 years. While a 2016 Additional Protocol stipulates that the facility is exclusively for nonmilitary use, the enforcement mechanism is nonexistent. Argentina has no physical oversight of the station’s operations; the host state owns the territory but lacks visibility into the software configurations, encryption layers, and the routing of the signals being collected. The station is a “black box” protected by treaty.RELATED: Russia's and China's superweapons are stunning the world. The US is struggling to catch up. Photo by GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty ImagesIn recent decades, the distinction between civilian and military space has effectively collapsed. Contemporary militaries depend on satellites for navigation, intelligence, and command-and-control. The ground facilities that return that data occupy a gray zone where science and security share the same hardware and the same personnel. This is what the U.S. Department of War calls “military-civil fusion”: the strategy of building military requirements into civilian infrastructure. The same 35-meter antenna that downlinks images of a distant nebula can eavesdrop on a competitor’s satellite or provide the tracking data necessary for counterspace targeting.The institutional arrangements reinforce this interpretation. The Neuquén site is managed by the Xi’an Satellite Control Center, which operates under China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General. Western analysts note that CLTC was previously integrated into the PLA Strategic Support Force’s Space Systems Department. While a 2024 restructuring replaced the Strategic Support Force with a new Information Support Force, the strategic logic remains the same: tight integration of civilian and military capabilities under party-state direction.In Bolivia, the dynamic takes on a different hue, one of national prestige and financial dependency. The Amachuma ground station, while serving Bolivia’s communications satellite, also enables Beijing to surveil skies far beyond its own borders. The project arrived as a package: infrastructure plus credit, training, and political symbolism. It is a 21st-century iteration of dependency theory, where development arrives as a structural constraint. Whoever controls the “black box” controls not only the capability but also the narrative of what that capability is doing.The story repeats across the continent with minor variations. In Venezuela, ground stations like El Sombrero are physically embedded in military-adjacent geography, located within the Captain Manuel Ríos Aerospace Base. In Chile and Brazil, the infrastructure is softer: scientific collaborations and radio telescopes that can track near-Earth objects and improve space situational awareness, a foundational requirement for modern warfare.China’s 2025 policy paper on Latin America frames these projects as aerospace cooperation and an invitation to join the International Lunar Research Station. It uses a rhetoric of solidarity against unilateral bullying. By contrast, the 2026 House Select Committee report sees an integrated network that boosts the PLA’s warfighting capacity. This divergence results from the dual-use nature of the technology and the secrecy surrounding it. When the evidence is encrypted or contractually insulated, knowledge becomes a matter of which authority one trusts.Whoever can shorten the cycle from sensing to command gains the edge in a crisis. Latin America has become a geographically valuable extension of China’s ground segment, filling gaps in its coverage. These stations may not be actively engaged in military operations at the moment. One may nevertheless question why an infrastructure capable of such functions is being embedded so deeply, and so quietly, into the soil of the Western Hemisphere.