(DCNF)—A drone from Lebanon hit a building in the vicinity of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Caesarea on Saturday morning, according to his office.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) did not report any casualties at the incident, as Netanyahu and his wife were not in their home at the time, according to NBC News. The incident follows the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli forces, the man allegedly behind the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks on Israel that began the Israel-Hamas war.
Netanyahu had hoped the death of Sinwar would be the “beginning of the end” for the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization Hezbollah enough to end the war. However, the group, which is close allies with Hamas, will continue to escalate the conflict, according to NBC.
“In the last hour, three unmanned aerial vehicles crossed into the country from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office said according to the BBC. “Two of the aircraft were intercepted. Another aircraft hit a building in Caesarea, no injuries.”
Hezbollah has been responsible for the majority of the attacks, as the IDF continues to strategically target strongholds of the group in Lebanon, according to the BBC. The IDF said that 55 rockets have been launched into Israel so far this Saturday.
Netanyahu has two private homes, one in the capital of Jerusalem and one in Caesarea, as well as the official Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem as well, according to the BBC.
The Lebanon Health Ministry reported that on the same day, two people died in an Israeli strike on the Christian-majority town of Jounieh, according to the BBC. The move is unusual, as Israel has primarily targeted Shia-muslim majority areas where Hezbollah is most active.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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]]>(DCNF)—A handful of bettors are putting up millions of dollars on former President Donald Trump winning the election, skewing what some consider a metric for predicting the election massively to one side.
The users “Fredi9999,” “Theo4,” “PrincessCaro” and “Michie” make up $26 million in bets for Trump on popular betting site Polymarket, The Wall Street Journal first discovered Friday. Currently, Polymarket predicts that Trump has a 60% chance of winning the 2024 election, compared to only a 39.8% chance of Vice President Kamala Harris winning, a massive difference from the comparatively even odds predicted around October.
Some people, such as billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk, see the betting markets as a reflection of the reality of the election more than the polls. Experts are still divided on whether staking real money makes betting markets more accurate than polling, according to Fortune Friday.
“Unlike polls, prediction markets can be influenced by the interests of a small number of large players, as appears to be happening [on Polymarket],” Ryan Waite, vice president of public affairs at the public affairs consultancy Think Big, told Fortune. “The limitation here is that prediction markets often attract a specific kind of participant: people interested in betting who might not reflect the broader population and they can be influenced by deep pockets, overconfident individuals or herd mentality.”
On Polymarket, people can buy “shares” on what they think is the most likely outcome of the election, with rise and fall depending on demand, according to Fortune. Nicholas Creel, an associate professor of business law at Georgia College & State University told Fortune that Polymarket attracts a certain type of person and leaves out the general population.
“In Polymarket in particular, you don’t have a particularly large or diverse crowd of people,” Creel said. “A large driver of this is that the exchange requires users to bet with cryptocurrency, which the vast majority of the population has little to no familiarity with. Cryptocurrency tends to be something mostly loved by those on the far right, particularly your libertarian types.”
Some experts even think that the sway in odds on the betting platform is part of a broader operation to boost Trump’s favorability.
“I believe there has been a coordinated effort to change the perception of this race,” Tom Bonier, senior adviser at research firm TargetSmart, told Fortune. “A central argument has emerged in the closing weeks of this campaign: strength versus weakness. Donald Trump’s persona, and therefore his support from voters, relies on being seen as strong. But if the public perception is that he will lose, that all falls apart.”
Polymarket did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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(DCNF)—Colorado officials are pushing back on former President Donald Trump’s claims that Aurora is overrun with organized crime by Venezuelan migrants, but spite of the officials’ claims, crimes involving gangs have increased considerably since last year.
Trump will speak in Aurora on Friday as part of his push to highlight migrant crime, following ten members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua being identified in September in the city after the gang allegedly took over apartment complexes. While crime in aggregate has fallen in the city since last year, gang-related crime has increased, and long-term trends paint a more bleak picture of Aurora overall, according to city data.
“This is a safer town than its been before,” Democratic Colorado Governor Jared Polis said in an interview, according to The Associated Press. “Things are going really great … and I don’t want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”
Preliminary data published by the city suggests crime is down 16% between January and September compared to the same time frame in 2023. However, the data also shows a 30.2% increase in gang-related activity compared to last year at this point.
The city has also seen a significant increase of 12.4% among all crimes from 2008 to 2022, with incidents against persons rising by 46% and property by 17.7%, according to the Common Sense Institute in 2023.
“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Republican Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated. The incidents were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.”
Despite Coffman’s insistence that the problem is overblown, Aurora’s proposed 2025 budget included a $125 million funding increase, which included cash for the Aurora Police Department to counteract international gang activity and retail crime. The proposed plan would take the police budget from $155.7 million in 2024 to nearly $165 million by 2025.
Tren de Aragua started as a prison gang in Venezuela in 2013, taking over the Torocon prison in the Aragua state and making it their base of operations, growing to around 5,000 members in 2023, according to Insight Crime. The gang’s activity is relatively novel in the U.S., coming largely in the wake of a surge in immigration, with Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) seeing a 421% increase in Venezuelans encountered at the southern border from fiscal year 2021 to 2023, according to agency data.
“We’re not heavily scrutinizing anyone coming in,” Ammon Blair, former CBP agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told the DCNF. “We’re not detaining them. We’re using alternatives to detention, so no one’s really being vetted.”
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.