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On 17 Feb 2026 Iran, joined by Russian and Chinese warships, closed shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz for several hours of live-fire drills—the first publicly declared shutdown in decades—just as its second round of indirect nuclear talks with the United States adjourned in Geneva.
On 17 Feb 2026, Peru’s unicameral Congress voted 75-24 to censure and thereby remove four-month-old interim president Jose Jeri after leaked videos showed undisclosed late-night meetings with Chinese businessman Zhihua Yang.
Media reports on 14 Feb 2026 revealed that U.S. special-operations forces used the commercial large-language model “Claude” via Palantir systems in the January 2026 Caracas raid that captured ex-Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro—marking the first recorded use of a civilian LLM inside a classified combat mission.
On 15 Feb 2026 Israel’s cabinet authorized restarting dormant land-titling procedures to re-register swathes of West Bank Area C as Israeli “state property,” a move Palestinians and multiple governments say amounts to de-facto annexation.
On 14 Feb 2026, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands declared laboratory tests detected the rare dart-frog toxin epibatidine in Alexei Navalny’s remains, formally alleging the Kremlin poisoned him in custody and notifying the OPCW of a treaty breach.
After a closed-door 12 Feb 2026 White House meeting, President Trump said talks with Tehran will proceed on the nuclear file alone despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request to add missiles and proxies, while ordering the Pentagon to ready a second carrier for the Gulf.
On 16 Feb 2026, Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi arrived in Geneva with a nuclear-technical delegation to hold a same-day closed-door session with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi and coordinate with Oman ahead of a second round of Iran-U.S. indirect nuclear negotiations set for 17 Feb.
On 14 Feb 2026, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands jointly announced that forensic tests on Alexei Navalny’s remains detected the South-American neurotoxin epibatidine and said they will report Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
On 12 Feb 2026, after a three-hour closed-door White House session, President Donald Trump overruled Israeli pressure for immediate escalation and declared that U.S.–Iran negotiations must continue, leaving military options on standby.
On 13 Feb 2026, President Trump and First Lady Melania traveled to Fort Bragg to publicly commend the Delta Force team that abducted former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in last month’s covert “Operation Absolute Resolve.”
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