Donald Trump cut short his stay at Camp David as tensions surged across the Middle East, following claims by Iran-backed Houthi rebels that they had launched a barrage of missiles at “sensitive” targets in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi authorities said Saturday that the Yemeni group had attempted to strike the capital with a ballistic missile. Video footage appeared to show flames and thick smoke rising above the area around Riyadh airport.

The president had been expected to remain at the Maryland retreat throughout the weekend before returning to the White House on Sunday.

Instead, Marine One touched down on the White House South Lawn at 7:57 p.m. local time Saturday.

Trump’s aides Natalie Harp and Walt Nauta were among those seen leaving the helicopter and walking toward the White House.

The Daily Mail has contacted the White House for comment.

The U.S. State Department said the Houthis had “engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including civilian airports.”

“This military conflict has the potential to escalate rapidly. Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region,” the department said.

The State Department also urged Americans already in the region to “exercise heightened vigilance” and prepare for possible flight cancellations and other travel disruptions.

The reported strikes marked the first Houthi attacks aimed at Riyadh since fighting intensified, potentially opening a new front in the wider conflict involving Iran.

The Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis issued its account well after the early-morning missile launch, saying the incoming weapon had been intercepted.

Residents across Riyadh reported hearing an explosion, while others later described seeing a column of smoke near the airport.

No casualties or damage were reported.

The coalition said the Houthis had also attempted to hit civilian infrastructure in Yanbu, the Red Sea port where a major Saudi oil pipeline terminates, as well as Taif, Baysh and Farasan. It said the attacks were thwarted but provided no additional details.

Earlier, the Houthis claimed—without presenting evidence—that they had struck “sensitive sites” in Riyadh and facilities belonging to Saudi oil giant Aramco in Yanbu, allegedly causing “massive fires.”

The escalation near another crucial global shipping route has added fresh uncertainty for financial markets.

READ MORE: Nicolas Cage Debuts Gray Hair and Beard on the Red Carpet

Houthi military spokesman Yahya al-Sarea said a ‘large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones’ had been used to target sites in Riyadh as well as facilities belonging to state oil giant Aramco in Yanbu. 

He said the strikes were carried out ‘in response to the Saudi enemy’s criminal attempts’ to target the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

The claims came hours after flames and a huge plume of black smoke were seen near Riyadh’s main international airport.

Footage showed thick smoke billowing into the sky near King Khalid International Airport after booms were heard across the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia had earlier warned of a ‘hostile aerial threat’, issuing a string of emergency alerts across the kingdom late Friday and early Saturday.

Recent days have seen one escalation after another. On Thursday, the first civilian casualty was reported as the Saudi civil defense said debris from an intercepted Houthi drone killed a Yemeni resident of Saudi Arabia.

And on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said the Houthis had tried to attack Mecca, Islam´s holiest city, with a drone that it said was intercepted, calling the security of the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad a ‘red line.’ The Houthis fiercely denied the accusation.

The United States, a close Saudi ally, has signaled it has no current fight with the Houthis. 

Meanwhile, fighting has surged inside Yemen between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government. 

The rebels raced down the country’s Red Sea coast over a week ago, seizing the key port city of Mokha and islands on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

That has improved their surveillance of passing ships, though the Houthis have said they are only targeting Saudi ones.

The fighting in Yemen also marks a return to a devastating civil war after four years of relative calm.

Drew Fortescue’s route back to the Rangers’ lineup is becoming less straightforward.

The 21-year-old left-shot defenseman is competing for a roster spot in an organization that now has an abundance of players on his side of the blue line. After appearing in nine NHL games late last season — enough to burn the first year of his entry-level contract — the former Boston College standout faces an uphill battle to remain with New York once training camp ends.

Still, Fortescue has not allowed the Rangers’ offseason moves to distract him. New York acquired veteran defenseman Marcus Pettersson and used a first-round pick on Alberts Smits, further crowding the competition, but Fortescue remains confident that another NHL opportunity will come.

“That’s nothing that’s in my control,” Fortescue said after Saturday’s training-camp sessions when asked about the additions. “All I can do is just work the hardest that I can and whoever’s here or whatnot, I think that I know that I’m good enough — and someday, if it’s not now or in the future, that I’ll be able to play here.”

Fortescue opened camp with Group B, but his objective has remained clear: prove he belongs on the Rangers. During his nine-game NHL audition at the end of the 2025-26 season, he recorded two assists and emerged as one of the organization’s young players gaining valuable experience during a difficult year for the Blueshirts.

“You want to play at the highest level,” said Fortescue, who has been splitting his time between the team hotel and his home in Pearl River. “It’s your dream as a kid, and kinda getting that little glimpse last year, that month I was there, it was pretty special.”

Fortescue believes he improved across the board during the offseason, yet the Rangers’ additions have made Hartford of the AHL the most likely place for him to begin the season. An injury could quickly create an opening in New York, but without one, the young defenseman may need to earn his next call-up over time.

READ MORE: Fixing Islanders’ Anemic Power Play Tops the To-Do List

Tye Kartye continued making his case Saturday, scoring twice in the intrasquad scrimmage. The fourth-line forward, claimed by the Rangers off waivers last season, now has three goals through the first three scrimmages.

Kartye suited up for Team Blue, which secured a 4-1 victory over Team White.

“He loves hockey,” head coach Mike Sullivan said, describing Kartye as an “easy guy to root for.” Sullivan praised his energy, enthusiasm and willingness to learn, saying those qualities spread throughout the locker room. “You can’t have enough of those guys that love hockey, that love to be here, that want to play, that want to get better — and Tye’s all of those things.”

The Rangers’ line combinations were largely unchanged, although Matt Rempe opened with the fourth line. Matthew Robertson exited the Group A practice early after taking a puck or shot to the face and returned appearing to have lost several teeth. Cole Beaudoin, listed as day to day entering camp, wore a blue jersey and fully participated in the scrimmage.

Nicolas Cage debuted a striking new appearance on Saturday, stepping out with his significantly younger wife, Riko Shibata, for the opening-night celebration of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.

The 62-year-old actor traded his familiar dark hair for a silver-toned style as he arrived at the star-studded event, which also drew celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry. Cage’s $10.5 million Malibu mansion was recently damaged by a sinkhole.

The Ghost Rider star showed off gray hair and a matching full beard while posing for photographs beside 31-year-old Shibata.

Cage looked polished in a blue tuxedo jacket featuring satin lapels and a buttoned front.

He completed the ensemble with a crisp white dress shirt, black trousers and dark, stylish sunglasses.

Shibata embraced a monochromatic look, wearing cream-colored trousers with a white top and a white coat accented by sheer sleeves.

The couple smiled warmly and stayed close as they posed together on the red carpet during the evening’s festivities.

Daily Mail contacted Cage’s representatives for comment, but no response had been received.

Cage and Shibata first crossed paths through mutual friends while the actor was filming his 2021 movie Prisoners Of The Ghostland in Japan.

They married later that year in a Las Vegas ceremony.

In 2022, the couple welcomed their first child together, a daughter named August.

The Oscar-winning actor has also maintained a busy professional schedule, recently taking the lead in the superhero series Spider-Noir.

The show’s first season premiered on Amazon Prime Video on May 25 and features a cast that includes Lamorne Morris, Brendan Gleeson and Li Jun Li.

According to the premise listed by IMDB, “Ben Reilly (Cage), a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York, is forced to grapple with his past life, following a deeply personal tragedy, as the city’s one and only superhero.”

The series received positive reviews from fans and critics, while Cage’s performance was also praised. 

On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has a critics score of 92% and an audience rating of 90%. 

Spider-Noir also garnered 11 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won five, including Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (One Hour). 

However, it was announced earlier this month that Amazon Prime Video will not be renewing the series for a second season. 

Cage soon broke silence on the cancellation of the series, which is based on the Marvel Comics. 

‘For me, one season is perfect, having said what I wanted to say with this dangerous, innovative, pop-art Spider-Man,’ the actor told Deadline in a statement. ‘Onwards, upwards, inwards.’ 

During a recent conversation with Variety, Cage reflected on what made him step away from the big screen and into the world of television. 

‘I was adamant about not doing television, because I didn’t want to do anything that was too homogenized or that was like everybody else,’ he told the outlet. 

But then his son showed him the hit series Breaking Bad, starring Bryan Cranston.

‘I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and all he was doing was staring at a suitcase, and it occurred to me that you can’t do that in movies: You don’t have the time.’

Cage added, ‘I thought, maybe with an eight-hour narrative I can start planting seeds for a character that can bloom into something that I don’t have the luxury of time to do in a movie. That was the main attraction.’ 

However, the Hollywood actor admitted to feeling ‘very nervous’ to star in a television show. 

And in regards to his character in Spider-Noir, Cage took inspiration from Hollywood icons such as Humphrey Bogart. 

‘But when you watch Bogart and you watch everybody around him, he almost seems like a cartoon character,’ the star told Esquire.

‘The same thing happens here. But it’s brilliant and you can’t take your eyes off the guy. It’s what makes him so compelling and charismatic. He just didn’t sound like anybody else. It almost seemed larger than life.’

Cage has a number of other projects up his sleeve, such as the World War II spy thriller Fortitude. 

Anyone who has followed the Islanders over the past decade — or even longer — already knows how much the power play has struggled. Pete DeBoer did not need to provide a history lesson.

Still, his blunt assessment Saturday was notable as the Islanders began working on their power play for the first time in training camp.

“It’s not a quick fix,” DeBoer said. “It hasn’t been good for quite a while.”

For a team that viewed a 16.53 percent success rate — 30th in the NHL — as an improvement, a complete overhaul is clearly justified.

DeBoer and assistant coach Rocky Thompson, who oversees the power play, have plenty of work ahead.

The early stages of that work became visible Saturday, revealing two key priorities.

The first was the makeup of the units. Matthew Schaefer worked up top with Bo Horvat in the bumper role, Brayden Schenn in front of the net, and Cal Ritchie and Kyle Palmieri stationed on the flanks for the first group. Tony DeAngelo quarterbacked the second unit, with Anthony Duclair in the bumper, Emil Heineman at the net, and Mattias Maccelli and Simon Holmstrom on the sides.

The second was an emphasis on moving players — not just moving the puck.

“The good power plays are interchangeable,” DeBoer said. “There’s a lot of motion, there’s a lot of movement. There’s a lot of guys moving to different parts of the ice and they’re interchangeable in their positioning. I felt like this group was really stagnant, almost deferring to, well that’s my spot there, that’s your spot.”

RELATED: Missing Woman’s Body Found Inside Suitcase at Fire Station

That change in philosophy could represent an important first step for an underperforming unit.

“Guys are so good at reading plays now, you have to be more unpredictable,” Bo Horvat told The Post. “I think us being a little more fluid and not standing around so much is gonna help for sure.”

Schaefer lined up on the right side Saturday, marking the first time this camp that he had practiced on his off side. He skated alongside Adam Pelech.

DeBoer said Schaefer’s eventual position will depend on how the rest of the Islanders’ defense takes shape. The battle between Isaiah George and Scott Mayfield remains unresolved, while Kashawn Aitcheson, Marshall Warren and Matt Kessel are also competing for spots.

George, a left-shot defenseman who paired with Mayfield Saturday, could force Schaefer — or another defender — to shift to the opposite side if he earns a place in the lineup.

The Islanders divided into NHL and AHL groups Saturday, with DeBoer working exclusively with the NHL players on the ice.

Victor Eklund and Aitcheson joined the NHL group, while Eklund continued skating on a line with JG Pageau and Emil Heineman. Cole Eiserman practiced with the AHL group.

Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are accused in a new lawsuit of reaching an illegal agreement to slow the development of their artificial intelligence systems.

Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the complaint alleges that the major AI companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to decelerate development. The plaintiffs say the alleged agreement could diminish the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.

The lawsuit points primarily to Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industrywide cooperation to slow technological advances while strengthening AI safety measures. On the same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chair of Google DeepMind, publicly expressed agreement with Amodei’s proposals.

However, the complaint says the alleged coordination started months earlier. It cites a July 2026 statement signed by senior employees at several leading AI laboratories that recognized the “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow” development. The statement urged the government to back a global initiative aimed at slowing automated AI progress.

The plaintiffs argue that an agreement among AI competitors to ensure their progress “should be slower than competition would otherwise produce” plainly harms consumers and has an anticompetitive effect.

Four named plaintiffs who subscribe to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini are pursuing the case on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paying users of those services.

The plaintiffs say they do not object to any company independently choosing to slow its own AI development to address safety concerns. Instead, they contend that antitrust law prohibits the companies from taking a “shortcut” by agreeing to “substitute collective restraint for individual accountability.” A competitive market, they argue, encourages both responsibility and meaningful technological progress.

“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol … to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies,” said Nick Rowley, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney.

Representatives of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

READ MORE: Ed Sheeran Calls the US a “Scary Place” During Philadelphia Concert and Becomes Emotional

In his essay proposing a slowdown, Amodei acknowledged that the plan could raise antitrust concerns. He wrote that the U.S. government could mediate, or at least enable, discussions among AI laboratories. Although government officials would not have to participate directly, he said they would need to provide a “narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”

Altman responded on social media that OpenAI supports a “federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements.” At the same time, he said, “we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”

The latest debate over the pace of AI development has been fueled by growing fears that advanced systems could evade human control. Yet AI leaders have discussed shared safety standards and other forms of coordination for years, arguing that safety should remain a central priority.

The plaintiffs stress that they are not challenging the companies’ right to ask Congress, the White House or other government agencies to establish AI regulations. They also say they do not oppose the companies seeking an antitrust exemption.

Still, securing that type of cooperation with the federal government could prove difficult.

President Donald Trump has rejected calls for AI regulation on social media, describing efforts to restrict the technology as part of a “conspiracy.” He questioned why industry leaders would seek rules that, he said, “if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy.” On Saturday, Trump said he was creating an AI task force and would appoint an “AI czar,” but offered few details.

The Trump administration has repeatedly emphasized its goal of helping U.S. AI companies surpass and outperform Chinese competitors. Several Democratic leaders and candidates have advocated sweeping AI regulations, while Republicans have generally aligned with Trump’s position.