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Update (1030ET): A man was detained for questioning in the apparent abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, from her home outside of Tucson, Arizona over two weeks ago, several major outlets are reporting tonight.

The man was taken into custody after law enforcement circulated photos of a masked individual outside the 84-year-old Guthrie's front door the morning she disappeared. Several outlets are also reporting that there was a supposed ransom note received last week demanding payment to a Bitcoin wallet. According to outlet KGUN, a local TV station, the wallet had received a payment from someone for less than $300. 

*UNCONFIRMED REPORTS CIRCULATING ONLINE (so for entertainment purposes only at this time) are suggesting that it might have been an inside job involving a family member. 

*  *  *

The FBI on Tuesday released surveillance footage from a Nest camera showing an armed person at the southern Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie, mother of network TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie. 

Video shared by FBI Director Kash Patel shows a masked person wearing a jacket, gloves, pants and carrying a backpack. The person can be seen obstructing the camera, before walking into the front yard. They then return to the front door with a small flashlight in their mouth before attempting to cover the camera with what appears to be foliage, AZ Family reports.

New images in the search for Nancy Guthrie:

Over the last eight days, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have been working closely with our private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s home that may have been lost,… pic.twitter.com/z5WLgPtZpT

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) February 10, 2026

Investigators say the person was armed, as images show what appears to be a holstered firearm on the person's waistband.

"Over the last eight days, the FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department have been working closely with our private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s home that may have been lost, corrupted or inaccessible due to a variety of factors, including the removal of recording devices. The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems," the Pima County Sheriff's Department posted in a statement. 

"Working with our partners - as of this [Tuesday] morning, law enforcement has uncovered these previously inaccessible new images showing an armed individual appearing to have tampered with the camera at Nancy Guthrie’s front door the morning of her disappearance," they added. 

Guthrie was last seen on Jan. 31 after she was dropped off at her home in the Catalina Foothills, and was reported missing the next day after she failed to show up for church. 

According to AZ Family, "In the early morning hours of Feb. 1, her doorbell camera disconnected and her software detected a person on the camera. Her pacemaker app also showed it disconnected from her phone."

Reported ransom notes concerning Guthrie were sent to several Arizona news stations, including Arizona’s Family sister station, KOLD 13 News. The first note reportedly demanded a “large sum of money” with a deadline set for last Thursday. The second note allegedly contained a Monday deadline at 5 p.m.

A new video plea from Savannah was released hours before the 5 p.m. Monday deadline. The video didn’t mention the alleged ransom; instead, Savannah shared her family still believes their mom is out there and is hearing everyone’s prayers.

A $50,000 reward has been offered for information in the case. 

The market for humanoid robots has been growing significantly recently.

In 2025, $2.65 billion was invested in humanoid robotics startups, more than in the years 2018 to 2024 combined, according to data published by the market research platform Tracxn.

This development indicates that investors now view humanoid robotics as a more mature and commercially attractive technology.

As Statista's Tristan Gaudiat reveals in the chart below, China currently leads the field with 23 startups specialized in humanoid robotics, just ahead of the 22 U.S.-based companies.

You will find more infographics at Statista

While China and the United States are the clear epicenters for humanoid-robotics entrepreneurship, a second tier is led by India (12), ahead of several European countries: the U.K. (6) and Germany (5) stand out, followed by France (3).

Beyond these hubs, Statista's chart also shows clusters in Australia (3), Japan (3), Austria (2) and Canada (2), suggesting that while interest is global, the densest startup ecosystems remain concentrated in a handful of markets.

The Chinese and American startup ecosystem is particularly notable in this field.

Chinese companies such as Unitree Robotics and Agibot are currently producing more humanoid robot models than any other country in the world (more than 5,000 each in 2025), while some of the best-known U.S. names, like Boston Dynamics and Tesla, are aiming to ramp up their production of robots for industrial and consumer applications in 2026 (Atlas and Optimus, respectively).

In Europe, current key players include Engineered Arts (U.K.) and Neura Robotics (Germany).

At least 10 people are dead and 25 injured after a mass shooting in northeastern British Columbia, according to police.

Six people were found dead inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, one died on the way to the hospital and two more were found dead in a residence.

Police said the suspect was also found dead inside the school from "a self-inflicted injury."

Police believe they have identified the shooter, but would not be releasing details at this time for privacy reasons, and to protect the integrity of the investigation.

"This was a rapidly evolving and dynamic situation, and the swift co-operation from the school, first responders, and the community played a critical role in our response,” North District Chief Supt. Ken Floyd wrote in a statement.

Tumbler Ridge is one of the most distinct communities in B.C. and is extremely remote: more than 1,100 kilometers (683 miles) northeast of Vancouver by road.

In the late 1970s the population rapidly boomed with the discovery of coal deposits in the area and it became a classic company town throughout the 1980s. A near-collapse followed in the 2000s when those mines shut down.

It was during this time that the community pivoted to tourism, marketing itself as the land of dinosaurs and waterfalls — a place where you can hike to see ancient footprints in the wilderness.

In a statement, the District of Tumbler Ridge said its community experienced a "deeply distressing incident" today and asked residents to rely on official updates from the RCMP and other authorities.

It added that the situation was still unfolding and said additional supports were on their way to assist.

"In the days ahead, we know this will be difficult for many to process," the statement reads.

"Please check in on one another, lean on available supports, and know that Tumbler Ridge is a strong and caring community. We will get through this together."

Police said they don’t believe there are any other suspects, or any ongoing risk to the public.

They said they are searching other homes and properties in the community to find anyone else who may be injured or linked to today’s incident, which appears to rank as one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. 

Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times,

Several energy companies have announced the closure of some of their refineries in California in recent months, citing the regulatory environment and operational losses.

Multiple experts in the state’s oil and gas industry recently spoke with The Epoch Times about the closures and their potential impacts on fuel prices and fuel availability in the Golden State.

Refinery Closures

Valero Energy Corporation announced in April 2025 that it would shutter its refinery operations in Benicia, in the San Francisco Bay area. The company also said that it had evaluated the refinery assets in Benicia and Wilmington, near the Port of Long Beach, and concluded that the carrying values of both assets were not recoverable.

Valero said it would continue serving the Golden State’s oil needs through existing inventories and oil imports.

The Wilmington refinery produced 15 percent of the asphalt supply for the entire Southern California region and had a capacity of 135,000 barrels per day. The Benicia refinery on the Carquinez Straits of San Francisco Bay, meanwhile, produced as much as 170,000 barrels per day and employed more than 400.

While the Benicia refinery was originally slated to cease production in April 2026, it actually ceased production in late January. The closure comes on the heels of Phillips 66 ending operations at its Los Angeles refineries in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Phillips 66 operated refineries in Wilmington and Carson that distributed fuel throughout California, as well as to Nevada and Arizona. The dual sites spanned 650 acres and employed about 600.

Chevron, meanwhile, announced in August 2024 that it was relocating its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston, Texas. The company had operated in the Golden State since 1879 and employed more than 2,000 people in San Ramon. Its refineries in Richmond and El Segundo supply more than 1,800 retail locations in the state.

Key factors

Michael Mische, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, told Siyamak Khorrami, host of The Epoch Times’s “California Insider,” that Valero’s and Chevron had incurred heavy asset write-offs before they made those decisions.

Valero said in the April 2025 announcement that it had written off a combined $1.1 billion of assets in Benicia and Wilmington in the first quarter of the year.

Chevron revealed in a January Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had recorded after-tax charges of $3.5 billion to $4?billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, including asset write-offs and impairment charges, primarily in California.

“Of course, they vacated California. Their corporate headquarters is now in Houston,” Mische said, referring to Chevron.

In responding to the company’s Benicia refinery-closure decision during an April 2025 earnings call, Valero CEO Lane Riggs cited California’s regulatory environment as the primary reason.

“California has been pursuing policies to move away from fossil fuels for the past 20 years,” he said.

“The consequence is that the regulatory and enforcement environment is the most stringent and difficult in North America.”

Phillips 66 also cited “changes in governmental policies or laws that relate to our operations, including regulations that seek to limit or restrict refining” as a reason for its decision to cease operations in its announcement.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill AB X2-1 on Oct. 14, 2024, which became effective on Jan.?13,?2025. The bill allows the California Energy Commission to regulate refiners by enforcing minimum inventory levels to prevent spikes in price, effectively capping their profit margins.

“That piece of legislation (was) one of the primary last factors that went into decisions to close these refineries down,” Mische said.

Additional regulations enacted in the state have led to increased production and operating costs for oil refiners.

In 2020, Newsom issued an executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles to have zero emissions by 2035. In 2022, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted new regulations to pave the way for the state’s zero-emission standards.

The state’s Cap-and-Invest Program, meanwhile, has a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 and requires increasingly stricter standards for carbon emissions.

Mische said that without a significant change in policy and stance toward the oil industry, the state may lose another one or two refineries by 2032.

Potential Impact

Mike Ariza, former senior refinery technician and control board supervisor at the Benicia refinery, told Khorrami that Valero’s refinery operations in Benicia were the most complex and efficient in the state.

The refinery produced between 4.5 million and 4.7 million gallons of gasoline per day, as well as about 600,000–700,000 gallons of jet fuel and diesel fuel, he said.

A bad storm or major problem at one of California’s ports could have huge ripple effects across the state’s fuel supply, Ariza said.

“If something like that happens, we will very quickly run out of gasoline,” he said.

“We don’t have a lot of inventory—14 days, we will run out of supplies. Not only will prices go through the roof, but you will end up having shortages.”

Mische said that 85 percent of all light-duty vehicles in California use gasoline or diesel fuel, and airplanes require “jet fuel”—gasoline or diesel fuel specially refined for jet engines.

“These refineries, as they’re shutting down, place greater and greater pressure, not only on prices but on the supply chains themselves,” he said. “It’s quite possible that you'll have supply disruptions.”

Californians pay the second-highest average gas prices in the United States, behind Hawaii. Gasoline averaged $4.38 a gallon on Jan. 4, the American Automobile Association reported. The national average was $2.88 per gallon. Fuel prices in remote Mono County along the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains averaged $5.56 per gallon.

Meanwhile, California Assembly member Stan Ellis, a Republican representing Kern and Tulare counties, expressed concerns about the impact of Valero’s refinery closure on the U.S. military installations in the state.

“Forty-some bases, counting National Guard and ... the Marines, and all the bases, naval stations, in California. Where are they going to get their fuel?” he said.

A November 2025 Institute for Energy Research (IER) report warned that several U.S. military installations in California could face jet fuel supply challenges if the state’s refinery capacity declines due to closures.

The state has the nation’s largest concentration of military personnel and national security activity.

According to a 2022 California Research Bureau report, California had more than 30 military installations, including facilities for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard.

Ellis said India is a supplier of California’s imported crude, but there are few options to refine it outside of the state.

“This is serious business, and these are facts,” he said. “We’re simply trying to bring awareness to the fact that we have an issue and we need to address it.”

He calls for existing oil fields to be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), passed in 1970, which requires environmental review and public disclosure for projects that could significantly impact the environment, including refineries, roads, and large buildings.

Separately, Mische is calling on Congress to repeal or modify California’s restrictive policies through the legislative process to support refiners.

“That probably won’t be very successful, but nonetheless, we’re going to give it a good shot this legislative session,” he said.

Colombia's democratic socialist president claimed Tuesday afternoon that he escaped an assassination attempt on Monday night, after years of warning about assassination plots against him.

AFP News reports that Colombian President Gustavo Petro narrowly escaped an assassination attempt after his helicopter reportedly could not land at a location on the South American country's Caribbean coast because gunmen were allegedly ready to open fire upon landing.

"We headed out to open sea for four hours, and I arrived somewhere we weren't supposed to go, escaping from being killed," Petro stated in a cabinet meeting on live television.

He warned that the incident is part of a longer-running assassination plot by drug traffickers that he says has targeted him since he took office in August 2022.

Petro suggested in 2024 that the commander of the Estado Mayor Central rebel group had planned to assassinate him with snipers.

For some context, EMC is a dissident group of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Petro's latest assassination plot claim comes ahead of presidential elections, with Petro barred by the constitution from seeking a second term. 

According to Bloomberg, Colombia's two top presidential candidates - conservative lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist senator Iván Cepeda - are neck and neck in the latest poll data ahead of the election on May 31.

De la Espriella has about 32.1% support, compared to Cepeda's 31.4%, in the AtlasIntel poll for Semana newspaper. Former Antioquia governor Sergio Fajardo trails with about 7.6%.

Meanwhile, South American politics has shifted sharply in President Trump's second term, with right-wing movements gaining traction across the continent, from Argentina to Chile, after years of failed socialist and communist governments.

The Maduro regime's fall last month may shape the Colombian elections this spring towards a right-wing.

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps.

But last week - after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got 18 states to ban SNAP purchases of products like soda, candy, and processed snacks - PepsiCo announced price cuts of up to 15% on Doritos, Lay’s, Tostitos, and other Frito-Lay products.

The company’s official explanation was “affordability.” CEO Ramon Laguarta cited low-income consumers are switching to store brands.

But the timing tells the real story.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program— food stamps— is a $100 billion per year program serving roughly 42 million Americans. And according to the USDA’s own data, about 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to sweetened beverages, candy, salty snacks, and sugar.

In fact soft drinks alone are the single largest category of SNAP purchases.

And, until last week, products from Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division were in 7.2% of all shopping trips paid for with SNAP (i.e. taxpayer-funded) benefits.

So when the government stopped subsidizing demand for their products, PepsiCo had to do something they hadn’t needed to do in years: compete.

This is what the free market does— it forces companies to be more efficient, cut prices, and pass savings on to their customers.

But here’s the thing— this is one company, one product line, one government program.

Zoom out and you can see just how much of price inflation in our daily lives is due directly to government spending— before we even get into monetary policy like printing money.

When a guaranteed buyer shows up with a bottomless wallet, prices go up.

Just look at college tuition. In 1965, Congress passed the Higher Education Act and began backing student loans with federal dollars.

Since then, tuition has risen roughly three times faster than inflation. A year at a private university that cost $2,800 in 1963 now costs over $85,000.

The New York Federal Reserve studied this directly and found that for every dollar increase in subsidized student loans, tuition rose by up to 60 cents.

The mechanism is simple: when the government guarantees the tuition money, universities raise prices… simply because they can.

Healthcare is even worse.

Before Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the government’s share of healthcare spending was about 31%. Today it’s roughly 64%. Medicaid spending alone has grown from $13 billion in 1975 to over $900 billion today.

And— shocker— healthcare prices have risen dramatically over the same period. The US now spends nearly $5 trillion per year on healthcare, far more per capita than any other developed country, with outcomes that are often worse.

The pattern is the same everywhere you look: the government shows up with money. Prices rise to absorb it. The subsidy becomes permanent. The industry restructures itself around the guaranteed revenue. And then anyone who suggests pulling back the money is accused of “cutting” a vital service.

Now consider the scale of this in America today.

Federal spending has risen from about 18% of GDP in the 1990s to nearly 24% today. That means almost a quarter of the entire American economy is government money.

Of this, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly estimated that 10% of the federal budget— roughly $600 billion per year— is lost to outright fraud of the Somali daycare type in Minnesota.

Then there’s the legal graft. California alone received roughly $100 billion in federal grants over the past few years for DEI initiatives that produced nothing except more government jobs and campaign contributions.

So how much of America’s economic output is actually real?

How much is just government money making a round trip— borrow more debt, hand it out through some boondoggle program where it is spent at a PepsiCo subsidiary, counted as “economic activity,” making people obese… then more money spent on healthcare to keep them alive and paying enough taxes for the government to be able to pay interest on the debt…

It’s absurd when you think about it. We don’t have a precise answer. But the Pepsi story gives us a clue. The moment the government stopped subsidizing one small corner of the economy, prices dropped by 15% within a week.

RFK didn’t regulate PepsiCo. He didn’t cap prices. He didn’t launch an antitrust investigation. He simply stopped the government from funneling taxpayer dollars into unhealthy food… and the market corrected overnight.

Now imagine what would happen if the government stopped subsidizing entire industries— the defense contractors billing $10,000 for a toilet seat, the universities charging $85,000 for a degree in gender studies, the healthcare system where nobody can tell you what anything costs.

We might finally find out how much of this economy is real.

And that, frankly, is what makes it so hard to fix. Because so many peoples’ livelihoods now depend on the government gravy train.

But this trajectory has an expiration date. The federal government borrows $2 trillion a year to keep it all going. Interest on that debt already exceeds $1 trillion annually— more than the entire military budget— and it’s growing faster than any other line item.

If rates stay elevated because inflation won’t come down, the cost of servicing the debt crowds out everything else.

If the government responds by printing money to cover the gap, inflation gets worse.

And it makes sense to have a Plan B that doesn’t depend on Washington finding fiscal discipline before the math catches up with them.