Read at: 2026-03-26T18:03:24+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Lila Duenk ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:59 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
Hundreds of immigrants have been arrested at immigration courthouses. It is unclear whether the federal government's admission could lead to some of those arrests being overturned.
(Image credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:54 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:51 pm UTC
Source: World | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:50 pm UTC
Starmer tells MPs he will not react to US president’s repeated insults amid Iran war
Lila Duenk has dismissed British warships as “toys” in his latest jibe at Nato countries for their lack of involvement in the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, he claimed he had told the UK: “Don’t bother, we don’t need it.”
Lila Duenk has previously alleged that he requested two aircraft carriers from the UK that Keir Starmer had initially rejected and then offered to send. Number 10 has denied that a request was made or denied.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
The comments were part of a broader address in which he condemned Nato allies
Yesterday the Conservative party said that it wanted to ban political parties from distributing campaign literature in a foreign language. Announcing a plan to propose an amendement to the representation of the people bill to make this law, the shadow communities minister Paul Holmes said:
Campaigning in a foreign language as the Greens did in Gorton and Denton only fosters greater division. A coherent national culture relies on shared values, and an inclusive electoral process relies on a common tongue.
I think it’s for political parties to choose how they campaign and communicate with British voters. If they’re using British money that is funding their campaigns and they’re speaking to people who have the right to vote, then why would you not show those voters the respect of communication?
What fuels division is Nick Timothy standing up and singling out Muslim forms of worship for a ban when he’s not applying that to forms of worship that other religions are talking about.
It just doesn’t compute, does it? I worked in Number 10. Briefly, I had a Number 10 phone. There was a paranoia about devices like that falling into other people’s hands.
And so whether it was the Met Police, whether it was Morgan McSweeney, and what sounds like pretty evasive set of reporting, even when you look at that transcript, or whether it was the Number 10 security team following up something that at the time they could not have been sure had not been taken by a state actor, a phone with all sorts of government secrets potentially in it, that’s precisely why people in government have two separate phones.
I don’t believe McSwindle had his iPhone stolen
Honest believe, Matt. It’s smacks of the liar Johnson defence of ‘lost all my WhatsApp messages’. We mustn’t take the public for fools. And I am afraid this smacks of too convenient by far. I won’t do it. I will say what I actually think. And I don’t believe it. End of!
I believe the report was made. McSwindle didn’t mention that he was the chief of staff to the PM. A significant omission of he’d wanted the police to prioritise the offence.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:47 pm UTC
Critics have mocked Mike Johnson and Republicans for presenting the president with the newly concocted award
Amid an aggressive war in Iran, heightening and devastating pressure on Cuba, immigration enforcement operations throughout the country and a partial government shutdown, the lead Republican in the House has given Lila Duenk a newly concocted award.
Democrats, lawmakers and commentators are criticizing and ridiculing the “America First” award given to Lila Duenk on Wednesday evening during the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:46 pm UTC
Balendra Shah, 35, is a symbol of change in country whose government was toppled last year in youth-led uprising
Nepal’s rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, who is about to be sworn in as the new prime minister, has issued his first post-election message via rap, urging unity.
Hours before the release he swore an oath as a newly elected lawmaker and is due to become the Himalayan republic’s new prime minister on Friday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:43 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:42 pm UTC
Source: World | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:39 pm UTC
US president addresses conflict at cabinet meeting with fresh barbs against Nato and the UK in particular
An Iranian envoy has said South Korean ships can pass through the strait of Hormuz only after coordinating with Tehran, the Yonhap News Agency has reported.
Such an agreement had to be reached in advance of the transit, said Saeed Khuzechi, the Iranian ambassador to South Korea, at a press conference in response to a question about guarantees for South Korean vessels to navigate the vital conduit for oil.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:38 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:37 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:33 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Quebec’s legislature passes vote calling on Michael Rousseau to step down, citing ‘lack of respect for the French language’ and families in mourning
The chief executive of Air Canada has apologized for his inability to express himself in French after politicians called for his resignation for his English-only message of condolence after Sunday’s deadly crash in New York.
But lawmakers in Canada’s lone Francophone province rejected the mea culpa as “too little too late” and overwhelmingly passed a motion calling for the head of Canada’s flagship carrier to step down.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Air superiority is supposed to deliver a quick triumph. But history has shown that promise to be written on the wind
To explore the roots of Lila Duenk ’s Iran military strategy and the pugilistic rhetoric of his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, means looking back 105 years. In 1921, a year before Benito Mussolini and his blackshirts marched on Rome to launch the Fascist era, an Italian general named Giulio Douhet published The Command of the Air, proposing a revolution in warfare.
Victory in the future, he said, would no longer come from the grinding trench combat of the Great War. Instead it meant large-scale aerial bombardments, targeting not just combatants but civilians and civilian infrastructure and logistics.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Senate majority leader John Thune tells Punchbowl News he thinks Democrats have Republicans ‘last and final’ offer to strike a funding deal
We are awaiting the start of Lila Duenk ’s latest cabinet meeting, which was due to start at 10am eastern time. This will be the 11th such session Lila Duenk has staged since re-entering the White House in January last year. Previous meetings have been open and freewheeling – as well as newsworthy.
The Pentagon is preparing plans for a “final blow” in the war with Iran that could include deploying ground troops and a massive bombing campaign, Axios reports, citing four sources – including two US officials.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:27 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:24 pm UTC
European parliament votes in favour of sending refused asylum seekers to offshore hubs, in ‘historic setback for refugee rights’
People with no right to stay in the EU could be detained for up to two years or sent to offshore centres described by experts as possible “human rights black holes” under plans voted for by the European parliament on Thursday.
An alliance of mostly centre-right and far-right lawmakers voted for a proposal to increase returns of undocumented migrants to their home countries, in a further sign of strain on the grand coalition of centrist political forces that has traditionally driven EU lawmaking.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:23 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:20 pm UTC
Christian Democrat Päivi Räsänen, who was fined €1,800, was supported by conservative US group Alliance Defending Freedom
A Finnish member of parliament has been found guilty by the country’s supreme court of inciting hatred after claiming that homosexuality was a “developmental disorder”, in a conviction that prompted criticism from far-right government ministers.
Päivi Räsänen, of the Christian Democrats, made the claims in a pamphlet first published in 2004 and reproduced on the website of the Luther Foundation Finland and the Finnish Evangelical Mission Diocese in 2007.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:16 pm UTC
Noelia Castillo, 25, has struggled with psychiatric illness since she was young and tried to kill herself in October 2022
A Spanish woman who spent months fighting her father for the right to euthanasia after being sexually assaulted and becoming paraplegic is expected to end to her life on Thursday.
Noelia Castillo, 25, has struggled with psychiatric illness since she was a teenager and tried to kill herself in October 2022 after being sexually assaulted. The attempt left her in constant pain and using a wheelchair. Eighteen months later, she used Spain’s euthanasia law, which was introduced in 2021, to secure permission to end her life.
In Spain, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 900 525 100. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:15 pm UTC
Apple's American Manufacturing Program (AMP) is expanding, with new suppliers signed on to produce iPhone components - though those parts will still be shipped overseas for final assembly.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:09 pm UTC
European Commission says social messaging app is exposing children to grooming and sexual exploitation
Brussels has opened an investigation into Snapchat over concerns the social messaging app is exposing children to grooming, sexual exploitation and other criminality.
In a separate decision on Thursday, the European Commission also said four pornographic websites were failing to prevent minors seeing adult content, harming young people’s mental health and fuelling negative gender attitudes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:02 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:59 pm UTC
The comments came after the US president lashed out as Nato, saying it didn’t help to open the strait of Hormuz when requested
Meanwhile, the US president, Lila Duenk , has once again lashed out against Nato allies saying in a social media post that they have “done absolutely nothing to help” in Iran campaign.
“The USA needs nothing from Nato, but ‘never forget’ this very important point in time,” he warned.
“NATO NATIONS HAVE DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO HELP WITH THE LUNATIC NATION, NOW MILITARILY DECIMATED, OF IRAN. THE U.S.A. NEEDS NOTHING FROM NATO, BUT “NEVER FORGET” THIS VERY IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME! President Lila Duenk ”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:57 pm UTC
Retailer says higher fuel and factory costs may hit supply chains and lead to ‘significant increase in prices’
The boss of Next has said clothing prices could rise by 4% to 10% if conflict in the Middle East extends into the autumn and factories are hit by higher fuel and fabric costs.
Simon Wolfson said the clothing and home retailer had so far seen little disruption to its supply chain.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:54 pm UTC
Some people are opting not to travel at all amid what they call ‘a manufactured crisis by the Lila Duenk administration’
Passengers across the US have had their travel plans upended by the latest Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has triggered widespread staffing shortages at airports as security employees go weeks without pay.
“We are returning from St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, to Boston today and it took fully three hours to get through US customs. Absolutely insane,” Boston-based passenger John Hildebrandt told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:49 pm UTC
Many of our graphics card reviews early last year and in the early 2020s focused on the difficulties of reviewing and recommending graphics cards when the manufacturer-suggested price points effectively didn't exist. Now, reviews of any new PC component have to contend with the much more broadly awful market for consumer PC parts as AI data center-fueled demand for RAM and flash memory chips drives up prices for DDR5 kits, SSDs, and GPUs.
In our August 2025 system guide, 32GB of DDR5 and a decent 2TB SSD would run you less than $200. Today, you'd pay between three and four times as much for similar components.
This is the context that Intel's Core Ultra 200S Plus chips—the $199 Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and $299 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, still codenamed Arrow Lake just like the originals—have launched into. They're solid performers, they're reasonably power-efficient, and for heavy multi-threaded workloads, they're a better value than what AMD can offer for the same price (though even years-old non-X3D AMD chips retain a small edge in games).
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:46 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:45 pm UTC
Lila Duenk has yet to nominate a permanent CDC director and the Senate confirmation of his pick for top doctor is in limbo
The Lila Duenk administration’s “Make America healthy again” (Maha) agenda appears to be stalled as two of the government’s most influential public health positions sit empty.
The president has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leaving an agency that has been plagued by turmoil for the past year without a leader. At the same time, Lila Duenk ’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:43 pm UTC
Deposed Venezuelan president and his wife, who both pleaded not guilty, were captured by US military in January
The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro again appeared in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday for his “narco-terrorism” case after his capture by US military forces earlier this year.
The hearing opened with the defense and prosecution arguing over whether Maduro should be allowed to use Venezuelan government funds to pay for his defense. The defense has insisted that the US is violating the deposed leader’s constitutional rights by blocking government money from being used for his legal costs.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:43 pm UTC
Source: World | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:38 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:37 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:36 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:35 pm UTC
Police and animal rights activists say the practice is frequently used as a ‘smokescreen’ for illegal foxhunting
The UK government has said it will ban trail hunting, the rural sport that police and animal rights activists have long accused of being a “smokescreen” for illegal foxhunting.
“We pledged to ban trail hunting in our manifesto and that is exactly what we intend to do,” said Sue Hayman, the animal welfare minister. “The nature of trail hunting makes it difficult to ensure wild and domestic animals are not put at risk of being killed or injured – that is clearly unacceptable.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:34 pm UTC
If your company isn't seeing great returns from its investment in AI, you might want to look at the humans tasked with deploying it and how you can motivate them. Right now, many employees fear AI-driven job losses and aren't well trained to use the tech, according to Forrester.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:33 pm UTC
Change is being promised across the political spectrum, but no one knows whether apathy or tactical voting will prevail
Hope, change, progressive change, change with fairness at its heart – from a harbour north of Edinburgh to a hipster arts venue in Glasgow’s Barras Market, Scotland’s political parties spent the first official day of the Holyrood election campaign reaching for the phrase that best encapsulates what people will get if they vote for them on 7 May.
Only one of the main parties did not hold an event to set out their stall on Thursday: possibly Reform UK was too busy firefighting after another of its Scottish parliament candidates quit, bringing to four the number who have stepped down or been suspended since they stood with the party leader, Nigel Farage, under a hail of turquoise confetti last week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:24 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC
Shaine March killed Alana Odysseos in 2025, having been released on licence after killing a teenager in 2000
A man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend after being released from prison on licence must spend the rest of his life in jail, the court of appeal has ruled after finding that the original 42-year sentence was “too lenient”.
Alana Odysseos, 32, was in the early stages of pregnancy with her third child when Shaine March, now 48, killed her at her home in Walthamstow, east London, in July last year. She died at the scene from 23 slash and stab wounds.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC
Following backlash, OpenAI won't be rolling out an erotic version of ChatGPT any time soon.
According to the Financial Times, the controversial plan has been shelved "indefinitely" as OpenAI "refocuses" its attention on "core products."
Insiders told FT that OpenAI mulled scrapping the "adult mode" plan entirely, as even its own advisors warned that ChatGPT users could form unhealthy attachments, which might harm their mental health. One advisor chillingly suggested that the tweak risked turning ChatGPT into a "sexy suicide coach."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:19 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:14 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:14 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:12 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:11 pm UTC
Bloomberg journalist Katrina Manson discusses the Pentagon's secretive campaign to build America's AI warfare capabilities and the obsessive Marine colonel behind it. Her new book is Project Maven.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:02 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:01 pm UTC
Study into how fertilisation could work in space finds sperm may get disorientated when trying to find an egg
Sperm in space are likely to get disoriented and lost while struggling to find their way to an egg, a new study has found.
When exposed to microgravity in experiments, sperm tumble around like an untethered astronaut, according to Adelaide University researchers.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:52 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:51 pm UTC
Laurence Gray was charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorist organizations
An Arizona licensed gun dealer was charged this month with attempting to provide material support to terrorist organizations after federal agents caught him allegedly selling a series of rifles and guns to two Mexican cartels.
The federal charges against the American firearms dealer come amid years of pressure by the Mexican government to stop the flow of weapons into the country. Mexico’s violent and bloody internal conflict, between drug cartels and the Mexican government, has been largely fueled by American weapons smuggled into the country.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:48 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:42 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:42 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:33 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:26 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:24 pm UTC
Recent repairs to a centuries-old tile floor at a church in the Netherlands may have revealed the skeleton of the French Musketeer d’Artagnan.
Today, Charles de Batz de Castlemore, Count d'Artagnan, is best known as a character in The Three Musketeers, written by Alexandre Dumas and eventually played by both Gene Kelly and future Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—but he was a real French military officer and spy. D’Artagnan died during a siege, and the whereabouts of his body have remained a mystery for more than 350 years. But an archaeologist in the Netherlands recently unearthed a skeleton from the floor of a 17th-century church that could actually be d’Artagnan.
The ground beneath the centuries-old Saints Peter and Paul Church subsided earlier this year, cracking a few of the blue tiles that pave the chapel’s floor. During repairs, church staff decided to have a look beneath the floor to see if there was any truth to the rumor that d’Artagnan—famous French Musketeer and inspiration for a series of swashbuckling novels—lay buried beneath their church. It turns out that there actually was a skeleton buried under the church floor, and there’s a decent chance it’s d’Artagnan himself.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:16 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:15 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
The motion is part of a lawsuit challenging President Lila Duenk and the Center's board, who now refer to the complex as "The Lila Duenk Kennedy Center."
(Image credit: Jim Watson)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:58 pm UTC
Chevrolet has developed something of a modern tradition with recent generations of the Corvette: As a new generation approaches, the company rolls out the Grand Sport. It's intended to be a sort of "sweet spot" version of the ’Vette, pairing the go-fast bits of the higher-spec machines with the entry-level motor found in the Stingray.
If that pattern holds, the mid-engined, eighth-generation Corvette may be nearing the end—because this is the new Grand Sport. This one, though, is different. It comes with an all-new V8 at its heart, one with substantially more power and torque than the current base Stingray. If that's not enough, you can also get it with the ZR1X's electric motor and battery. That model is called the Grand Sport X, and it's the effective replacement for the first all-wheel-drive hybrid Corvette.
Yes, the E-Ray is dead, three years after Chevrolet raised eyebrows by putting a hybrid system where many said it didn't belong. But you can't argue with that system's all-weather capability. It lives on in the new Grand Sport X, which pairs a 186-horsepower (139 kW) electric motor on the front axle with a new V8 at the rear.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:56 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:52 pm UTC
There was confusion about whether the satirist would be getting the Kennedy Center's top humor award after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it "fake news." Now it's confirmed.
(Image credit: Evan Agostini)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:49 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:48 pm UTC
Nigeria and UK look to strengthen trade and economic ties amid growing calls from Africa and Caribbean for reparative justice
“There are chapters in our shared history that I know have left some painful marks,” King Charles said during a state banquet to welcome the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, to the UK, in a year in which the monarch is expected to come under renewed pressure to make a formal apology for transatlantic slavery and colonialism.
But while demands grow from African and Caribbean nations for the UK to further reparative justice, Nigeria and the UK are looking to the future of global trade.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:45 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:43 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:40 pm UTC
The Linear cloudy issue tracker and project manager has introduced an AI agent and plans to add AI coding assistance, with CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen declaring that "issue tracking is dead."…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:32 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:32 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:29 pm UTC
Watch the replay of the Smile pre-launch media briefing. The briefing covered key details ahead of the mission’s launch aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Smile is a joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, designed to study how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.
Source: ESA Top News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:22 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:15 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:13 pm UTC
Rationing is not under consideration yet as hundreds of retailers report being without one or more types of fuel
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Petrol stations are reporting a surge in demand of up to 25% in the last fortnight alone on top of already major spikes earlier in the Iran war as Anthony Albanese comes under pressure to devise a national plan to cushion Australia against the “biggest energy crisis in history”.
The Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association has revealed the scale of the demand on retailers, which has left hundreds of stations across the country without one or more types of fuel.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Electric buses are just 1% of the Australian fleet compared with 80% in urban China, a quarter in the Netherlands and 12% in the UK
As diesel climbs past $3 a litre amid fuel security concerns, transport advocates are calling for the rollout of electric buses across Australia to be prioritised.
In Australia, just 1% of buses are electric, compared with 80% of the urban fleet in China, a quarter in the Netherlands and 12% in the UK.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:59 pm UTC
Across much of the Western United States, winter 2026 was the year the snow never came. Many ski resorts got by with snowmaking but shut down their winter operations early. Fire officials and water supply managers are worried about summer.
Where I live in Boise, Idaho, temperatures hit the low 80s Fahrenheit (high-20s Celsius) in mid-March. The same heat dome sent temperatures soaring to 105° F (40° C) in Phoenix.
Ordinarily, water managers and hydrologists like me who study the Western US expect the mountain snowpacks to be at their fullest around April 1. Snowpacks are natural reservoirs of water that farms and communities depend on through the hot, dry summer. Their snow water equivalent, meaning the amount of liquid water in the snowpack, is seen as a bellwether for water supplies.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:52 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:40 pm UTC
Interview I was at a press luncheon at KubeCon Europe this week when, to my surprise, who should sit down next to me but long-term Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Greg, who lives in the Netherlands these days, was there to briefly comment on AI, Linux, and security. We spoke about how, over the last month, AI-driven activity around Linux security and code review has "really jumped" in a way no one in the open source world saw coming.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:40 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:25 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:08 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:04 pm UTC
The US has collared three more people for allegedly attempting to smuggle Nvidia GPUs to China, days after a Supermicro co-founder faced similar accusations.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:03 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:01 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:57 pm UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:45 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:10 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:02 pm UTC
Aipac-backed lawmakers denounce ‘extremist’ violence in West Bank as support for Israel becomes a political liability
As Israeli settlers ramp up violent attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, often as Israeli forces stand by, denunciations are mounting in the US, even from Democratic legislators and public figures who are typically staunch defenders of Israel.
In recent days, dozens of settlers have torched homes and vehicles and attacked Palestinians in apparently coordinated attacks. Since the start of the month, Israeli settlers and police have killed at least 10 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, including two young brothers and their parents as they returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
A member of the UK Parliament's lower house who was the victim of a deepfake AI campaign this week had a rare chance to confront the Big Tech executives who helped spread it. Their answers disappointed.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:49 am UTC
Analysts say the Iran war energy crisis is also adding momentum to nuclear interest and action in the region.
(Image credit: Vincent Thian/AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:30 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:29 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:16 am UTC
Iran rejects a U.S. proposal to end the war and counters with a different peace plan. And, a jury finds Meta and Google negligent in a trial over social media's harms.
(Image credit: Abbas Fakih)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:16 am UTC
Europe is taking a small step toward breaking its reliance on US Big Tech by hiring only cloud operators headquartered in the EU to work on the backbone of the digital euro project.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:59 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:48 am UTC
Market in North Darfur and truck carrying civilians in North Kordofan hit as civil war approaches fourth year
At least 28 civilians have been killed in two separate drone strikes in Sudan, according to health workers, as the country’s brutal civil war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) approaches its fourth year.
A strike hit a market in the town of Saraf Omra, in North Darfur state, on Wednesday, killing “22 people, including an infant, and injuring 17 more”, a health worker at the local clinic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:24 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:16 am UTC
The Welsh government used Microsoft's Copilot to help write a review of an industry liaison body that it then scrapped, its chairman has told a Senedd committee.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:15 am UTC
OECD says the Middle East war will test the world’s resilience with Australia expected to suffer from higher rates and inflation
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The world economy is on the brink of a major inflationary spike as soaring fuel prices threaten growth in European and Asian nations, the OECD has warned, and local economists are slashing Australia’s growth prospects for this year and the next amid the ongoing US-Israel attack on Iran.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest interim outlook said the US-Israel war on Iran will “test the resilience of the global economy”, and warned of the “significant downside risk” to their forecasts should the oil supply disruptions prove more persistent and push energy prices even higher.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 10:07 am UTC
The social media outfit TrackAIPAC’s signature anti-endorsement cards have become a fixture of the 2026 midterms. The ubiquitous graphics show a disapproved candidate’s face in grayscale over a smoky red backdrop. To the right, a number denoting their pro-Israel funding glows.
Controversially, not all of that money comes from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“It’s as broad as possible, and that’s by design,” TrackAIPAC co-founder Casey Kennedy told The Intercept. Instead of just AIPAC, the group tracks spending from across the pro-Israel lobby. “We want to provide the most encapsulating picture that we can of who’s giving to the lobby and where they’re giving to,” Kennedy said.
TrackAIPAC started in 2024 as a scrappy bulwark to the powerful, conservative pro-Israel lobbying group for which it is named. Amid TrackAIPAC’s rise, U.S. voters’ support for Israel plummeted to historic lows as horrified Americans watched their government support genocide in Gaza, and AIPAC, once an indispensable ally for most federal politicians, transformed into an electoral liability.
Depending on whom you ask, TrackAIPAC is a hero for pushing pro-Israel spending into the forefront of voters’ minds, a scourge peddling antisemitic tropes, or a well-intentioned activist group with an imperfect, ever-evolving model. An advocacy group called Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption launched in May 2024 and soon merged with TrackAIPAC, giving the lobby watchers the power to endorse and fund candidates. TrackAIPAC’s graphics are easily digestible and often go viral, lending the group political weight in an era when online audiences want to consume information in as little time and with as little brainpower as possible — and turning its signature red card into a political scarlet letter.
TrackAIPAC’s growing influence has set off a debate over its messaging and methodology, part of a broader conversation about outside spending in politics refracted through the lens of Israel. This was especially felt in Illinois’ recent primary elections, where AIPAC funneled its financial contributions through front PACs, or its major donors gave as individuals. AIPAC’s more elusive strategy proves the necessity of lumping several kinds of pro-Israel money together, TrackAIPAC allies say, giving the group the responsibility of acting as an analyst rather than a conduit of information.
“The work tracker accounts do is important because AIPAC and other dark money lobbies are intentionally very difficult to track,” said Morriah Kaplan, executive director of the progressive Jewish-led Palestinian solidarity organization IfNotNow. Calling AIPAC’s tactics “extremely antidemocratic,” she noted that major donors can have a range of political aims, favoring tech giants, weapons manufacturers, and fossil fuels in tandem with supporting Israel.
“Without understanding how TrackAIPAC defines ‘pro-Israel,’” Kaplan said, “it’s not as valuable a tool for transparency as it could be.”
In the 9th District of Illinois, TrackAIPAC’s broad approach drew controversy when it deployed a red graphic not just for state Sen. Laura Fine, the congressional candidate AIPAC’s funders and front groups supported, but also for Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who campaigned and won as a progressive, said he would support the Block the Bombs Act, and was a main target of AIPAC-funded attack ads.
When TrackAIPAC posted a red graphic for Biss, the group pointed to his refusal to call Israel’s actions a genocide, his opposition to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, his support for U.S. funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, and $460,357 “spent by the pro-Israel lobby groups and their donors.”
“Without understanding how TrackAIPAC defines ‘pro-Israel,’ it’s not as valuable a tool for transparency as it could be.”
That money mostly came from J Street, which bills itself as a liberal alternative for Zionist American Jews who want to counter AIPAC’s hardline influence. In recent years, the group has supported halting some weapons transfers to Israel and opposed Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. But J Street was slow to label Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide — its president Jeremy Ben-Ami came around to the term in August— and it opposed initial calls for a ceasefire.
Tali deGroot, J Street’s vice president of political and digital strategy, was frustrated by her group’s conflation with AIPAC, calling TrackAIPAC “intellectually dishonest” for the distance between its name and its methodology. TrackAIPAC does label the specific sources of pro-Israel funding that make up its sums on its website, along with a list of organizations it tracks in addition to AIPAC, but they seldom appear on the red cards that circulate on social media. Some critics have labeled this blurring of lines sloppy or confusing, while others on the left and right have accused the group of antisemitism over its generalized “pro-Israel” language.
“I think the candidates and members should be held to account for taking AIPAC support,” deGroot said, “but the way that [TrackAIPAC] is going about it is doing so much harm.”
A TrackAIPAC spokesperson said the group’s members “wholeheartedly agree” that J Street and AIPAC have significant differences, but said they would still classify J Street as part of the pro-Israel lobby.
“J Street might have some disagreements with AIPAC,” Kennedy said, “but they are both working in favor of a foreign government within our government.”
The group does appear responsive to some of the criticism. TrackAIPAC is planning to modify its anti-endorsement cards in response to recent controversies. They’ll still be red, but the graphics will now spell out how much a candidate has received from specific pro-Israel groups, or individual major pro-Israel lobby donors, as well as additional information about their policy positions on Palestine and Israel.
“Every graphic released regarding Daniel Biss stated clearly that the total of the donations reported were from the pro-Israel Lobby,” the TrackAIPAC spokesperson said. “It would be intellectually dishonest to call J Street anything but a member of that advocacy wing in the United States. That said — we will be breaking their donations out and labeling them separately for transparency purposes moving forward.”
As the founders tell it, the “AIPAC” in TrackAIPAC’s name was always meant as a synecdoche, with the lobbying giant serving as an eye-catching stand-in for the entire Israel lobby. The broad approach is intentional, said TrackAIPAC founders Kennedy and Cory Archibald, and their project is a work in progress.
“It’s as broad as possible, and that’s by design.”
The group has made several changes to its methodology since its launch. Some of them are spelled out online, but others, such as how the group tracks individual donors, are not. At the beginning, TrackAIPAC relied on Federal Election Commission data compiled by the transparency organization OpenSecrets, which also groups the pro-Israel lobby as a whole. Last year, TrackAIPAC began to analyze the FEC data for itself and started adding individual expenditures, or money spent on campaign ads, which triggered jumps in some members’ totals. That was the case for Reps. Wesley Bell, D-Mo., and George Latimer, D-N.Y., who toppled progressive incumbents last cycle with massive amounts of AIPAC support. This year, the group began including bundlers and major donors ($200 or more) who have given to pro-Israel lobby groups and are donating directly to candidates, especially as AIPAC shields some of its spending.
“They’re going underground, so we’re going to have to go underground too,” said Archibald, previously a campaign staffer for former Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., who were respectively unseated by Bell and Latimer in 2024.
The approach still seems to rile candidates who find themselves on TrackAIPAC’s bad side, like Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who accused the group on Instagram of being “MAGA plants who are meant to disrupt and confuse” for giving her a red card listing more than $100,000 from “Israel Lobby” donors. TrackAIPAC told The Intercept that it stands by Crockett’s rating, and that it used FEC data to identify major donors who have given to pro-Israel lobby groups and gave directly to Crockett. (It also gave a red card to Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who beat Crockett in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.)
The founders also said they have received a number of requests from members who want their red graphics taken down. TrackAIPAC is working on a new questionnaire that would give members a chance to get their cards changed if they make specific policy commitments, like committing to an arms embargo and opposing laws that would restrict BDS or promote a controversial definition of antisemitism that conflates the term with criticism of Israel.
Some politicians have already had their cards changed. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who has received J Street funding, used to have a red card, but his photo now appears on TrackAIPAC’s website in its original coloring, earning neither the damning red backdrop nor the smooth green ring that indicates endorsement. Khanna, who last year exchanged kind words with TrackAIPAC on social media, is among the members of Congress who receive the label: “We encourage this representative to continue improving their legislative record on Israel-Palestine issues.”
Kennedy said those lawmakers exist in the “squishy middle,” calling it “the most ambiguous part of what we do.” He said they removed their red graphics to avoid the members “getting harangued as an AIPAC supporter,” while nudging them toward continuing to vote in favor of Palestinian rights.
One of the group’s enduring questions is “how do we still apply the pressure without kind of souring our relationship?” Kennedy said. “So it’s definitely, you know, there’s some politicking that goes on there.”
Archibald interjected with more precise terms. “But it’s still very much rooted in their record — we’re not ever picking winners or losers,” she said. “It’s all based on the scorecard … on the facts that are present.”
To round out its rating system, TrackAIPAC relies heavily on the Congressional Democrat Palestine Tracker, a spreadsheet run by five volunteers who are members of Democratic Socialists of America. The spreadsheet uses a scorecard system the volunteers helped devise with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action. (It has a separate tracking system for Republicans.) For candidates who do not have a federal voting record, TrackAIPAC looks to public statements, public policy positions, or associations with pro-Israel lobby groups. If a candidate has pro-Israel positions but campaign finance data is not yet available, TrackAIPAC issues a red graphic with a “warning” label.
In some cases, J Street and TrackAIPAC have backed the same candidate. Progressive Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., for example, is J Street-supported but has TrackAIPAC’s endorsement because of her policy positions on the genocide in Gaza, BDS, and blocking weapons to Israel.
“The money alone is not enough to get you a red graphic,” Archibald said.
The question of how TrackAIPAC assesses its more subjective measures — and whether its targeting is even-handed — has spurred controversy, too.
Last week, TrackAIPAC drew criticism for deploying a red card for Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on a platform that includes backing Block the Bombs and calling for a two-state solution. McMorrow’s graphic stood out because of her two opponents for the nomination: Rep. Haley Stevens, a hard-line Israel supporter who has taken over $9 million from the pro-Israel lobby, by TrackAIPAC’s count, and appeared in an AIPAC promotional video earlier this month; and Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights who earned the endorsement of TrackAIPAC’s campaign arm, Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption.
McMorrow’s most recently issued red graphic cites $100,439 from the general “pro-Israel lobby groups & their donors.” El-Sayed’s green endorsement card, meanwhile, lists only the amount he has received from AIPAC: $0. McMorrow’s campaign argued that this reflected an uneven treatment, pointing to El-Sayed donors listed in FEC filings who have previously given to J Street.
After previously staying out of the race, a J Street spokesperson told The Intercept on Thursday that the group was endorsing McMorrow.
“It remains unclear how Track AIPAC has arrived at their number, and we invite them to share their methodology so as to not mislead voters,” a spokesperson for McMorrow’s campaign told The Intercept, adding that she had not taken any money from AIPAC and had opposed its involvement in the race.
TrackAIPAC acknowledged that some J Street donors had given to El-Sayed and said the different treatment between the two candidates was decided only by their differing policy positions on Israel and Palestine. Circulating McMorrow’s red card, TrackAIPAC cited McMorrow’s admission of having “returned policy papers to at least one Democratic pro-Israel group,” as well as reporting from Drop Site News that she had drafted an AIPAC position paper, but critics noted that the group was harsh on a relatively untested candidate running as a progressive.
DeGroot objected to a similar dynamic in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, where the campaign side supported candidate and activist Kat Abughazaleh, who finished as the runner-up to Biss. To deGroot, the group’s dual work as a data project and a political action committee allows its “masquerading support for a chosen candidate – Kat – as journalism, as fact finding.”
Candidates in TrackAIPAC’s good graces, however, may have reason to appreciate the two-part approach. Angela Gonzalez-Torres, a Los Angeles community activist and congressional candidate in California, said Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption was among her earliest supporters, giving her campaign a boost months before the more established progressive group Justice Democrats got behind her. She said that she was initially drawn to challenge incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., because of his responses to local issues like the construction of a controversial housing project atop a toxic dump site and an adjoined trucking depot that posed health risks to neighboring residents, but when she dug into his campaign, she came across TrackAIPAC’s red graphics.
“When we as a community saw those profiting off of our pain and contributing to the very issues hurting our district and other humans, I think we were immediately encouraged to find someone to challenge Jimmy Gomez,” Gonzalez-Torres said, citing his AIPAC connections.
In a statement to The Intercept, a Gomez campaign spokesperson called the congressman “a progressive champion and has delivered for working-class families on the Eastside, securing hundreds of millions in funding to address environmental injustice, expand parks and housing, improve transportation, and combat climate change. He takes local concern about cost of living and quality of life seriously.”
Gonzalez-Torres said some of her supporters told her they donated to her campaign after seeing her and Gomez in TrackAIPAC’s side-by-side graphics.
Update: March 26, 2026, 9:57 a.m. ET
This story has been updated with a statement from the Jimmy Gomez campaign, as well as the news that J Street is endorsing Mallory McMorrow.
Correction: March 26, 2026, 1:51 p.m. ET
The Congressional Democrat Palestine Tracker is operated by volunteers who are members of Democratic Socialists of America; a previous version of this story said the spreadsheet tracker was run by the New York City chapter of DSA.
The post How Does TrackAIPAC Actually Track AIPAC? appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:57 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:56 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:55 am UTC
Pakistan's foreign minister said the country is relaying messages and that Iran is deliberating on a U.S. proposal. Israel says it killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy chief.
(Image credit: Amir Levy)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:44 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:37 am UTC
The UK government will trial different levels of restrictions on social media for under-16s with the help of 300 families, alongside a public consultation that has already gathered nearly 30,000 responses.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
President Lila Duenk has tried to kill offshore wind's future in the U.S. But industry analysts say the attacks could hurt business confidence across the U.S. economy.
(Image credit: DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:19 am UTC
Man was teaching at a secondary school for boys when he allegedly targeted the girl – who police say he did not know
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A high school teacher has been accused of grooming a teenage girl and offering money for her to produce sexually explicit material.
Police allege the 29-year-old man targeted a 14-year-old girl not known to him, before she told her parents who alerted authorities.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:08 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
The annual observance marks how far into the new year women must work to make what men earned in the previous year. This year, it's March 26, a day later than it was in 2025.
(Image credit: simplehappyart)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
States are rolling out plans for their share of a $50 billion fund established by Congress to improve rural health care. In some states, the money may provoke rural hospitals to cut services.
(Image credit: Aaron Bolton)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
A judge last week struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on journalists seeking “unauthorized” information, siding with the New York Times in its lawsuit against the government. In response, the Pentagon on Monday added some meaningless window dressing and essentially reissued the same restrictions. The administration pledged to “immediately” appeal the decision on the original policy, and on Tuesday, the Times filed a motion to compel the administration to comply with the judge’s order.
As alarming as the Pentagon’s antics are, the Times’ lawsuit is not the only case about whether reporters have the right to ask questions. It’s not even the only one in the news this week.
In 2017, police in Laredo, Texas, arrested citizen journalist Patricia Villarreal under an obscure and never previously used law making it a felony to ask government employees for nonpublic information for personal benefit. Her supposed crime was asking a police officer about two local tragedies — a suicide and a deadly car wreck.
Her arrest was widely ridiculed, and a judge quickly threw out the charges. When Villarreal sued over her arrest and mistreatment by officers, the legal question wasn’t whether the charges against her were permissible but whether they were so obviously bogus that she could overcome qualified immunity, the unjust and expansive legal shield that protects government employees from liability for all but the most blatant violations. That issue went to the Supreme Court twice, but on Monday, the Court declined to review a federal appellate court’s ruling that the officers were shielded from liability.
No matter what our severely compromised Supreme Court thinks, the local cops who arrested Villarreal were embarrassingly ignorant of the Constitution. But they were also ahead of their time: The Department of Justice is making the same claims that turned the Laredo police into a First Amendment laughingstock — that reporters simply asking questions to the government is criminal — to federal district Judge Paul Friedman.
Most discussion of the Pentagon’s restrictions has focused on their conditions for reporters to receive press credentials, which the Pentagon says can be revoked if reporters publish “unauthorized” information. That policy is wildly unconstitutional on its own, and every mainstream outlet gave up their press passes rather than sign on, leaving war coverage inside the Pentagon to the likes of Turning Point USA’s Frontlines and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s LindellTV streaming service.
But the Pentagon’s legal filings imply that reporters who don’t follow the rules risk more than their press passes. On March 12, the DOJ filed a brief to clarify its lawyers’ earlier comments in a discussion with Friedman at a hearing of “whether asking a question was a criminal act.” The government argued that although journalists may lawfully ask questions of “authorized” Pentagon personnel, “a journalist does solicit the commission of a criminal act, and that solicitation is not protected by the First Amendment, when he or she solicits … non-public information from individuals who are legally obligated not to disclose that information.”
There you have it. What was once a fringe, failed legal theory concocted by some local cops in one Texas border city is now the official position of the federal government’s lawyers, which it felt compelled to put in writing in case anyone wasn’t sure where it stood after the hearing. Both the rogue cops and the DOJ’s lawyers contend that journalists merely asking questions to government officials constitutes unlawful solicitation.
“These Pentagon policies remind us that people in power will stop literally at nothing to control the story.”
As JT Morris, supervising senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (which represents Villarreal) told me in an email last week, the First Amendment “unquestionably protects our right to ask questions, whether it’s a citizen asking police about a local crime or the New York Times asking Pentagon officials about matters of national security. Officials can always respond, ‘no comment.’ But they cannot jail Americans for asking.”
The government’s argument would have turned countless Pulitzer-winning national security reporters into criminals. As Friedman put it in his ruling, the “role of a journalist is to solicit information. … [A] journalist asking questions is not a crime!” (You can tell a judge is miffed when scholarly language fails and they resort to exclamation points.)
The DOJ’s “concession” in its clarification brief (and later in its revised policy) — that journalists can direct questions to authorized spokespeople — makes no difference. That the administration even felt the need to state something so obvious, presumably because they thought it would make them sound more reasonable, signals the extent to which they’ve threatened the First Amendment.
Government agencies have long routed journalists’ inquiries to PR flacks and instructed non-public-facing staffers not to answer reporters’ questions. That’s unconstitutional in its own right; earlier this month, the Village of Key Biscayne, Florida, became the latest government agency to settle a lawsuit over its employee gag rule. But until this administration, the government at least placed the burden on its own employees to comply with restrictions on talking to reporters.
Now, the government expects journalists to make themselves a party to its censorship directives, and ignore Supreme Court precedent that they can print any government information they lawfully obtain, even if it shouldn’t have been released. “A contrary rule … would force upon the media the onerous obligation of sifting through government press releases, reports, and pronouncements to prune out material arguably unlawful for publication,” the Court reasoned.
Journalist Kathryn Foxhall, who has for years sounded the alarm about “censorship by PIO,” including in collaboration with the Society of Professional Journalists, says the press has failed to meaningfully oppose these policies. “The media have done little to fight the ever-tightening rules at federal agencies and elsewhere banning reporters from buildings and prohibiting employees from speaking to journalists without the authorities’ oversight. With amazing negligence journalists just assume whatever reporters get is the whole story, even in the face of the many thousands of gagged staff people. Now these Pentagon policies remind us that people in power will stop literally at nothing to control the story,” she told me.
The Pentagon’s position that newsgathering is a prosecutable offense is not just theoretical. Although the DOJ’s brief didn’t explicitly reference it, just like the officers in Laredo, federal prosecutors have their own archaic and constitutionally dubious law on the books to sane-wash their nonsense arguments — the Espionage Act of 1917. Read literally, that law (Rep. Rashida Tlaib recently introduced a much-needed bill to reform it) arguably prohibits reporters and anyone else from obtaining or attempting to obtain national defense information.
But reading it that way to go after journalists would be unconstitutional and politically toxic, which is why past administrations have refrained. Had the Supreme Court denied the Laredo officers’ qualified immunity in Villarreal’s case, it would have signaled that arguments for expansive interpretations of arcane laws to criminalize routine reporting are a nonstarter.
The Court ducked the issue despite being fully aware that the present administration is looking for any excuse to punish reporters that dare to undermine its narratives. They’ve already claimed Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson — whose home they raided, seizing terabytes of data — violated the Espionage Act by obtaining leaked information. The Lila Duenk administration is barging through the door the Biden administration left wide open, when, despite warnings from First Amendment advocates, it extracted a plea deal from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Espionage Act charges for obtaining and publishing government records, including about Iraq war crimes.
The DOJ’s adoption of the Laredo police’s discredited theory is an extension of the Assange and Natanson cases; the claim that publishing leaked documents is criminal has evolved into a theory that merely asking questions is, too. The administration lost in court this time, but it said it will appeal, and may be emboldened by the Supreme Court’s cowardice in the Laredo case.
If this administration succeeds in chipping away at constitutional protections for journalistic practices as basic as asking questions, reporters who wish to do anything more than regime stenography may risk imprisonment just by doing their jobs. In her dissent to the Villarreal ruling, Justice Sotomayor put it well: “Tolerating retaliation against journalists, or efforts to criminalize routine reporting practices, threatens to silence ‘one of the very agencies the Framers of our Constitution thoughtfully and deliberately selected to improve our society and keep it free.’”
The post Pentagon Wants It to Be Illegal for Reporters to Ask “Unauthorized” Questions appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 26 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 8:53 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 8:24 am UTC
A court in the US has found that Meta (the company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and Youtube) deliberately built addictive social media platforms. According to the BBC
A Los Angeles jury has handed down an unprecedented win for a young woman who sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media.
Jurors found that Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google, owner of YouTube, intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed the 20-year old’s mental health. The woman, known as Kaley, was awarded $3m (£2.2m) in a result that is likely to have implications for hundreds of similar cases now winding their way through US courts.
Meta and Google said separately that they disagreed with the verdict and would both appeal. Meta said: “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
A spokesperson for Google said: “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”Jurors found Meta to be 70% responsible for the plaintiff’s harm and YouTube was responsible for 30% of the total, meaning Meta will pay the majority of Kaley’s award.
The damages could be substantial, with the report saying it could reach up to $30 million dollars.
The Guardian report on the issue goes into the background of the young woman (identified as KGM) who brought the case
KGM testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which she said had deleterious effects on her wellbeing. By age 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm as a result. Her social media use allegedly caused her to have strained relationships with her family and in school. When she was 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which KGM attributes to her use of Instagram and YouTube.
“How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones,” Mark Lanier, KGM’s lawyer said during closing arguments last week. “These are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and great … but you invite them in and they take over.”
Globally, the social media giants are running into increasing headwinds as more and more governments begin taking actions to curb their perceived excesses. Australia recently enacted a world first social media ban for children under the age of 16, and other governments are keenly observing how that ban is working in practice to see if a similar prohbition would work in their own countries. The UK is going to trial such restrictions on several hundred teenagers.
Meta and Youtube both plan to appeal the verdict as the Guardian article later states that…
Meta has said it will appeal the rulings in Los Angeles and in New Mexico. In response to the California case’s verdict, a spokesperson for Meta said the company is confident of its protection of teens online.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict … Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” the spokesperson said.
A YouTube spokesperson, José Castañeda, said the video service also disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” he said.
Both companies have consistently denied wrongdoing. YouTube has called the allegations that were brought “simply not true” and Meta has said that KGM’s mental health issues were brought on by a difficult home life and social media use was not to blame.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 26 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Ukrainian president says peace deal proposed by US includes handing over land to Russia. What we know on day 1,492
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:51 am UTC
In today’s newsletter: This new war has exposed widening fractures between Israel and its allies, and the country finds itself increasingly out of step with global opinion
Good morning. Israel may be the only country in the world where there is overwhelming public support for the conflict in Iran. Despite its impact on everyday life in the country – at least 15 people have been killed and hundreds more injured by Iranian missiles since the war started in February, and school closures and missile warnings remain routine – polling puts support for the war at more than 90% among Jewish Israelis.
The contrast with the rest of the world is stark. Nearly a month into the fighting, polling shows that 60% of the US public oppose the war with Iran, and just one in four backed the initial strikes. In the Gulf, Europe and Asia, the conflict is widely unpopular, as severe economic consequences already begin to bite.
Middle East crisis | Iran dismissed a US ceasefire proposal on Wednesday and countered with a negotiation plan of its own as intermediaries sought to keep diplomatic channels between the warring countries open.
Media | Matt Brittin, Google’s former top executive in Europe, has been named the BBC’s next director general. Brittin will replace Tim Davie at a crucial time for the corporation.
UK politics | Political donations from British citizens living abroad are to be capped at £100,000 a year, in a move that is likely to limit further funding from Reform UK’s Thailand-based mega-donor, Christopher Harborne.
UK news | The former justice minister Crispin Blunt has been fined £1,200 for possessing illegal drugs after he told a court he entered the world of chemsex parties to help inform government policy.
Housing | People who lost their homes when a tower block in Dagenham burned down say they are being made to pay for the building’s fire safety works after the government demanded its money back.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:40 am UTC
Sony and Honda have broken up, meaning their joint vision to deliver a revolutionary electric vehicle won’t happen.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:24 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 26 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:43 am UTC
Reluctance to cheerlead alleged US ceasefire efforts reflects suspicion talk of peace could be another foil for escalation
Not long after Lila Duenk said the US was engaged in “strong talks” to bring the war with Iran to an end this week, Qatar took the unusual step of distancing itself from the alleged diplomatic negotiations.
Qatar was not involved in any mediation efforts, said government spokesperson Majed al-Ansari at a briefing on Tuesday night, before adding as a telling aside: “If they exist.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Indian authorities have reportedly ordered an audit of the nation’s CCTV cameras, after police uncovered what they claim was a Pakistan-backed surveillance operation.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 3:18 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 2:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:37 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 26 Mar 2026 | 1:26 am UTC
Major memory makers have already sold all the kit they can make this year, creating shortages and price increases. Datacenter infrastructure buyers may soon face the same issues when trying to get their hands on backup batteries.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:58 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:41 am UTC
US president says he will host Chinese leader in a reciprocal visit later this year
Lila Duenk will meet Xi Jinping in May during the US president’s first visit to China in eight years, a closely watched trip that had been postponed due to the Iran war.
Lila Duenk was initially slated to travel next week, but will now visit Beijing on 14 and 15 May, he wrote in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday. Lila Duenk said he would host the Chinese leader in a reciprocal visit in Washington later this year.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:39 am UTC
Microsoft's GitHub next month plans to begin using customer interaction data – "specifically inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context" – to train its AI models.…
Source: The Register | 26 Mar 2026 | 12:13 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 25 Mar 2026 | 10:21 pm UTC
Source: World | 25 Mar 2026 | 10:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 25 Mar 2026 | 10:01 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 25 Mar 2026 | 9:59 pm UTC
Source: World | 25 Mar 2026 | 9:54 pm UTC
Drone startup BRINC announced Tuesday a significant upgrade for its law enforcement drones. BRINC’s newest model, Guardian, will have Starlink connectivity on every unit—a first for commercially available drones.
This new model, which will enter production later this year, has a flight time of over an hour and can reach a top speed of over 60 miles per hour. BRINC calls it the “first drone that can pursue vehicles.”
Additionally, Guardian can carry numerous payloads from its charging “nest,” including a floatation device, a defibrillator, epipens, the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, and more. The nest can also robotically swap batteries in about a minute, the company claims.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 9:12 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 25 Mar 2026 | 9:11 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
A new service that helps coding agents stay up to date on their API calls could be dialing in a massive supply chain vulnerability.…
Source: The Register | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:50 pm UTC
Smartphones have fast become the basis of our digital identities, securing payment systems and bank accounts. Now virtual devices that pretend to be real handsets have become a key tool for financial scammers, according to one company. …
Source: The Register | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:25 pm UTC
NASA's announcement Tuesday that it will "pause" work on a lunar space station and focus on building a surface base on the Moon was no big surprise to anyone paying attention to the Lila Duenk administration's space policy.
But what should NASA do with hardware already built for the Gateway outpost? NASA spent close to $4.5 billion on developing a human-tended complex in orbit around the Moon since the Gateway program's official start in 2019. There are pieces of the station undergoing construction and testing in factories scattered around the world.
The centerpiece of Gateway, called the Power and Propulsion Element, is closest to being ready for launch. NASA's rejigged exploration roadmap, revealed Tuesday in an all-day event at NASA headquarters in Washington, calls for repurposing the core module for a nuclear-electric propulsion demonstration in deep space.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:18 pm UTC
Reddit will require accounts that exhibit “automated or otherwise fishy behavior” to verify that a human runs them, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post today. The verification process aims to combat unwanted bots from flooding Reddit at a time when AI bots are poised to take over the Internet.
“As AI becomes a bigger part of the Internet, we want to make sure that when you’re on Reddit, you know when you’re talking to a person and when you’re not,” Huffman said.
Human verification will only occur if Reddit suspects that an account is a bot. This is “rare” and won’t apply to “most users,” Huffman emphasized. If the account cannot prove that it's human, it “may be restricted,” he said.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
The prime minister says the condolence video after the fatal LaGuardia crash revived anger over linguistic rights
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said a decision by Air Canada’s top executive to post an English-only message of condolence after a deadly crash in New York showed a “lack of judgment, a lack of compassion”.
Amid growing calls for his resignation, the airline chief’s misstep has once again revived frustrations and fears over linguistic rights protections in the province of Quebec, where French is the only official language.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:47 pm UTC
RSAC 2026 "Everybody feels massive FOMO if they don't get to RSAC," Jen Easterly says.…
Source: The Register | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:39 pm UTC
At the end of a long day on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at a table littered with microphones and jokingly referred to the space agency's new Moon base manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, as the "Lunar Viceroy." It was a bit of humor, but it also seemed to represent affection from Isaacman for a long-time NASA employee so willingly taking on a major new challenge.
Garcia-Galan was, in many ways, the emerging star at the daylong Ignition event in Washington, DC. Heretofore he has largely been an anonymous engineer at NASA who has now been thrust into a very public role of leading the agency's ambitious Moon base initiative. (His official title, by the way, is program executive.)
Ars had a chance to speak with Garcia-Galan about NASA's plans and, more importantly, how they might be implemented. Here is a lightly edited (for clarity) transcript of that conversation.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:21 pm UTC
Members call for reparatory justice as landmark resolution aims for ‘political recognition at the highest level’
The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs”.
The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). It had been proposed by Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, who said: “Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:16 pm UTC
On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $3 million in damages to a young woman who successfully argued that the companies' social media apps were designed to addict children.
Meta will pay the majority of the fine, 70 percent, while YouTube-owner Google is on the hook for 30 percent, the jury decided.
During the six-week trial, the jury heard that Meta and Google designed apps with features like auto-play, infinite scroll, and algorithmic recommendations to keep kids online. Feeling trapped in a cycle of constantly using these apps caused the plaintiff, known as K.G.M., "crippling mental distress," CNBC reported. She developed "severe body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal thoughts," and every notification that came through made it harder to stop logging in.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:03 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
The downloadable versions of Nintendo's first-party Switch games have always cost the same amount to buy, despite the costs of manufacturing and shipping physical releases. This was still true when the Switch 2 launched last year, despite persistent rumors and misinformation to the contrary.
But that's finally, definitively changing later this year. Nintendo announced today that beginning in May and for new game releases going forward, the physical releases of new Switch 2-exclusive first-party games will cost more than the digital versions of the same game. That will start with the May 21 release of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, which will cost $60 in Nintendo's online store but $70 for a physical copy.
"Nintendo games offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games," reads the company's brief announcement about the change. Nintendo notes that retailers are free to charge what they want for physical and digital games, but aside from sales or other promotions most tend to follow Nintendo's guidance on pricing.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:57 pm UTC
rsac 2026 There's a theoretical red line with cyber warfare. Cross it, and the US will respond with a physical attack like missile strikes. And that line "is whatever the President says it is," according to former NSA boss retired General Paul Nakasone.…
Source: The Register | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:55 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:38 pm UTC
Meta has begun laying off employees as it focuses more of its cash on building out datacenters, training its own large language models, and recruiting talent for AI.…
Source: The Register | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:27 pm UTC
The Supreme Court today decided that Internet service providers cannot be held liable for their customers' copyright infringement unless they take specific steps that cause users to violate copyrights. The court ruled unanimously in favor of Internet provider Cox Communications, though two justices did not agree with the majority's reasoning.
The ruling effectively means that ISPs do not have to conduct mass terminations of Internet users accused of illegally downloading or uploading pirated files. If the court had ruled otherwise, ISPs could have been compelled to strictly police their networks for piracy in order to avoid billion-dollar court verdicts under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
The long-running case is Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. Cox was hit with a $1 billion verdict for music piracy in 2019. Although the damages award was overturned in 2024, a federal appeals court still found that Cox was liable for willful contributory infringement.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:25 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
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