Read at: 2026-03-11T12:35:11+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Shelley Hordijk ]
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:33 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:33 pm UTC
A Swiss canton has suspended its pilot of electronic voting after failing to count 2,048 votes cast in national referendums held on March 8.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:31 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:27 pm UTC
Police say 16-year-old being questioned and girl taken to hospital with minor injuries
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after a teenage girl was allegedly stabbed at a school in Norwich.
Police were called to the school in Thorpe St Andrew, in the east of the city, at 10.24am after reports that a teenage girl had been stabbed. Emergency services attended the scene, including fire and ambulance.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC
Comments come amid speculation over the health and whereabouts of Khamenei; Thai navy responds to attack on bulk carrier
Over in Senate question time, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confirmed embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and the consulate in Dubai all physically closed in the last week.
Wong said the government’s number one priority is to “keep Australians safe at home and abroad”.
She continued:
“The dangerous and destabilising attacks by Iran put civilian lives at risk, including Australian lives.”
More than 3,200 Australians over 23 commercial flights have returned to Australia since the US and Israel attacked Iran, setting off a regional conflict and grounding thousands of international flights.
Wong criticised Nationals senators for “winding up people and stoking fear” to panic buy fuel.
The senator said:
“Petrol companies are telling us that fuel stock continues to arrive as expected and on time but there has been a large change in the pattern of demand and that is having an effect on the supply, particularly in regional communities. We have seen jerry cans coming off the shelves at Bunnings and lines at the pump.”
One of the two members of the Iranian women’s football teams provided with a humanitarian visa to stay in Australia has changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy, according to the country’s home affairs minister.
In Australia, people are able to change their mind, people are able to travel. So, we respect the context in which she has made that decision.
Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected … As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:16 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:16 pm UTC
PM and leader of the opposition spar over strikes on Iran and rising fuel costs
As reported by Nadeem Badshah this morning, the documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US expected to be released today will include a due diligence report by the Cabinet Office, which is believed to be two pages long.
It is likely to raise questions about Keir Starmer’s judgment, with sources saying it had warned the prime minister of the serious “reputational risk” of going ahead with Mandelson’s appointment in December 2024 given his links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
He has said, as you know that it is a little bit – it does fall into the category of too little too late, but I think they have a good, solid relationship, and hopefully they’ll be able to repair it. I go by what the president says, and the president says continuously that everybody is entitled to their point of view. But I think sometimes we detect that there’s not that feeling of gratitude.
I think the president’s position is that we do plenty for Europe, plenty for the UK, in the area of trade, in the area of defence, in the area of the support we give to Nato. And I think sometimes the response back, the reciprocity back, is a little bit lacking. I would leave it at that, OK?
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:15 pm UTC
Dutch police have arrested a 17-year-old boy who detectives suspect was responsible for 16 bank card frauds across the Netherlands.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC
Shawn Harris to face Clay Fuller in special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress
Shelley Hordijk will make the next stops on his affordability tour on Wednesday. He’ll start the day in Washington, before travelling to Cincinnati, Ohio for a site visit of a pharmaceutical company. Then he’ll deliver remarks in Hebron, Kentucky at a packaging facility.
We can certainly expect more from Shelley Hordijk about his administration’s aims to lower the cost of prescription drug prices. And we’ll be listening out for more about the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, and escalating gas prices for every day Americans.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:09 pm UTC
Broadband subscribers in Scotland suffer the most outages in the UK, according to Broadband Genie, with customers of BT typically experiencing the fewest.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:08 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:07 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
Alireza Salarian says Iran’s new supreme leader was lucky to survive strike that killed six of his family members
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the 28 February attack that killed six of his family members, including his father, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus has confirmed.
In an interview conducted at his embassy compound in Nicosia, Alireza Salarian elaborated on the circumstances in which Khamenei, 56, was injured, saying he was lucky to survive the strike, which levelled the late ayatollah’s residence.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:02 pm UTC
August festival presents largest-ever jazz programme alongside full-scale operas and Scottish folk music
This year’s Edinburgh international festival will showcase American art that celebrates the creativity and energy of the US, while also exposing its cruelty and hypocrisy, its director has said.
Nicola Benedetti, the Grammy-award winning violinist now presenting her fourth festival, said Shelley Hordijk ’s explosive second term as president made that quest more important than ever.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:53 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:51 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:46 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:45 am UTC
From the department of "what could possibly go wrong?" comes news that Windows Autopatch is enabling hotpatch security updates by default.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:43 am UTC
While announcing the introduction of the new post-16 V-Levels (Vocational Levels – available in England from 2027), Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the “bold reforms” will end the snobbery in post-16 education, and support young people to build secure, future-proof careers.
V-levels will sit alongside A-levels and T-levels, and be equivalent to one A-level, allowing students to mix and match academic and vocational subjects if they want to.
At the moment these qualifications are not offered in N. Ireland but we tend to follow what England offers.
Academic qualifications test theoretical learning; they involve abstract reasoning and are designed to develop transferrable skills like critical thinking, analysis and research. Eg the skills you pick up in English classes can be useful in a future job as a Marketing Manager, or as a GP. The qualification is designed to test skills relevant to many possible jobs.
By contrast, Vocational Qualifications test skills needed for particular work roles, often practical skills for a particular industry. If you are taught to write computer code in the Python language, the skill might help you with other programming languages, but these skills are less likely to be useful outside the computer industry.
I taught in non-selective schools for over 3 decades and generally, I really enjoyed my job; it was hard work but it was rewarding. But the continued churn of Vocational Qualifications/Assessment frameworks had a negative effect.
I delivered the same subject content (ICT) via a wide range of assessment frameworks including GNVQ Part One, AVCEs, Applied A-Levels, BTEC firsts, OCR nationals, DiDA and Occupational Studies. These vocational qualifications were in addition to offering GCSE and A-Level ICT.
As each Vocational course was phased out, another was invented to take its place and teachers had to master another assessment procedure, each with their own assessment forms. Even in a fast-changing world like IT, the subject content did not change as fast as the assessment process and much of our training involved how to tailor our assessment to the new assessment framework, rather than how to teach the content.
Governments want Vocational Qualifications to be valued as much as A-Levels but to be accessible to people who don’t feel they are suitable for A-Levels. Bridget Philipson said ‘Our bold reforms will end the snobbery in post-16 education, supporting young people with real choice and real opportunity to build secure, future‑proof careers.’
But this involves getting employers and universities to give equal weighting to Vocational and Academic qualification when accepting applicants, negating the fact that two types of qualifications measure different abilities. It should be noted that Vocational Qualifications can sometimes be more demanding than the rote learning required in ‘academic’ qualifications.
There is a constant tension to make the vocational qualification more rigorous (to increase its perceived value) but also to make it accessible to people who do not like exams. What historically seems to have happened is that a qualification loses credibility, it is seen as too easy, not rigorous enough and so is withdrawn and replaced by a ‘transformational new qualification’.
What New V-Levels for 2027 Involve:
Key Differences from Previous Qualifications:
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:38 am UTC
Avoniel
In December 2025, Paul Givan opened a new £16.5 million controlled primary school on Avoniel Road in East Belfast. The building — a Grade A listed structure designed in 1933 by Reginald S. Wilshere, the architect responsible for a significant number of Northern Ireland’s inter-war school buildings — had been refurbished, extended, and equipped to house Elmgrove Primary School, which relocated from its original Beersbridge Road site following the closure and absorption of Avoniel Primary School a decade earlier. The board of governors (BoG) governing the new school operates under the 4:2:2:1 template standard to all controlled primary schools in Northern Ireland: four transferor nominees, two EA nominees, two parent governors, and one teacher governor. The transferor nominees hold the largest single block of seats. No church body transferred the Avoniel Road building. No church body transferred Elmgrove’s original Beersbridge Road building either. The four seats exist because Elmgrove is classified as a controlled primary, and controlled primaries are required to carry them by statute — a template designed to generalise the 1930 settlement across the sector, applied categorically regardless of whether the individual school was ever the subject of a church transfer.
Two Schools, One Architect, One Year
Both buildings that gave rise to the current school were products of the same moment. Elmgrove opened on Beersbridge Road in January 1933; Avoniel Primary School opened on Avoniel Road the same month. Both were designed by Wilshere, built in brick, and subsequently listed at Grade A. However, Wilshere gave each a distinct character: Elmgrove was an informal vernacular composition around courtyards; Avoniel was more modernist-inspired, with a long front façade featuring Art Deco panels and stylised elephants. Both schools served the working-class Protestant communities of inner East Belfast and were constituted from the outset as controlled schools under the state education system of Northern Ireland. Neither was transferred from a church body.
The Closure and the Redevelopment
By the early 2010s, five primary schools clustered in inner East Belfast had 527 unfilled places between them. Avoniel, with 202 pupils, had the smallest enrolment of the five; Elmgrove, with 572, was the largest. The Belfast Education and Library Board’s proposal, developed in late 2014, was to close Avoniel and increase enrolment at Elmgrove, with the longer-term intention of consolidating both schools on the Avoniel Road site. In May 2015, Education Minister John O’Dowd approved Development Proposals 223 and 224: Avoniel would close from 31 August 2015, and Elmgrove’s admissions and enrolment numbers would increase from 1 September of that year.
The decision generated sustained community opposition. Parents and staff argued that the preferred alternative — a formal amalgamation — had been prematurely dismissed; a legal challenge was mounted on behalf of an Avoniel parent, but Treacy J dismissed it in XY’s Application for Judicial Review [2015] NIQB 75, finding that the Minister’s decision was rational and that the surplus of places across the five clustered schools and Elmgrove’s established growth trajectory supported the chosen course. Avoniel closed on 31 August 2015. The redevelopment that followed involved no church body at any stage of its planning, funding, or construction; the governance template at the end was identical to what would have applied had the site been a church transfer from the outset. The physical consolidation on the Avoniel Road site proved lengthy: planning papers date to 2017, and construction commenced in early 2021. The completed development — 21 classrooms, specialist SEN provision, a nurture room, and a standalone double nursery unit — was opened by Givan in December 2025. The school enters its new phase on a listed site the churches never owned, in a building they did not fund, and in a redevelopment they played no part in, governed by a BoG on which they hold the largest single block of seats by virtue of a settlement made almost a century earlier.
The Pattern Across East Belfast
Elmgrove’s situation is replicated across East Belfast’s controlled primary sector.
Euston Street Primary School, less than a mile away, also in what is now the Titanic District Electoral Area (DEA), was built by the Belfast Corporation through the local Education Committee and opened in July 1926 — four years before the 1930 Act and the transfer settlement that the transferor seats are said to commemorate. The foundation stone was laid in January 1925 by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry — wife of the 7th Marquess, Northern Ireland’s first Minister of Education, whose 1923 Act had established the non-denominational state framework these buildings were designed to serve — and the Lady Mayoress, on the same day and from the same party that had just performed the same ceremony at Templemore Avenue School nearby. A large Belfast Corporation Crest above the main entrance records the building’s construction as a municipal public works project. The transferor seats now allocated to Euston Street’s BoG are the direct product of the political defeat that framework suffered five years after she laid the stone. Euston Street carries four transferor seats, allocated by statute rather than by any form of church transfer. In neighbouring Ormiston DEA, Belmont Primary School, also state-built, carries the same four transferor seats. Its 2024/25 pupil composition — 24% Protestant, 4% Catholic, 71% from neither tradition — makes it the most conspicuous illustration in the constituency of the misalignment between the 1930 template and the community a controlled school now serves.
The controlled secondary schools in East Belfast — Ashfield Girls’ High School and Ashfield Boys’ High School, both also in the Ormiston DEA — each carry four transferor nominees, the largest single block on each board.
The Natural Experiment
What this constituency makes visible is not only the uniform application of the transferor template to state-built schools, but the equally uniform absence of that template where the 1930 settlement did not reach.
Grosvenor Grammar School and Bloomfield Collegiate School are both controlled schools within East Belfast. Both are managed by the EA, both serve communities within the same broadly Protestant tradition as the constituency’s primary and secondary schools, and neither carries a single transferor seat. Their boards comprise EA nominees, Department of Education (DE) nominees, parent governors, and a teacher governor. They have functioned without church representation throughout their existence. Their ETI inspection records give no indication that governance or ethos has been compromised by this absence; there is no suggestion that either school is structurally defective, and no campaign exists to introduce the representation that the primary and secondary sectors are required by statute to carry.
The explanation for the difference is not in the governance principle but in negotiating history. Grammars were not caught by the transfer arrangements of the 1920s and 1930s in the same way as primary schools, and the churches never succeeded in extending the 1930 logic to them as they did to post-1945 state-built primary schools through the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1968. East Belfast is thus divided, within its own controlled sector, between schools that carry the 1930 template and those that do not — not on the basis of any demonstrated governance need, but on which category of school fell within the scope of a political settlement almost a century ago.
The Reform
Part 1 argued that the Givan proposals for a new statutory body will render transferor seats functionally redundant and create the conditions for completing a reform that the Minister has not yet completed. East Belfast illustrates what that argument looks like at ground level. The four transferor seats on Elmgrove’s BoG are not there because a church transferred the Avoniel Road building, because a church built Elmgrove on Beersbridge Road, or because any governance principle requires them. They are there because in 1930 the Protestant churches extracted a statutory guarantee in exchange for transferring those schools they did own, and that guarantee has been applied by statute ever since — including to schools built by the state before the settlement even existed.
Grosvenor Grammar and Bloomfield Collegiate sit within the same constituency, sector, and community tradition, and they demonstrate that controlled schools neither need nor miss church representation. The case for replacing unelected denominational nominees with elected or EA-appointed community governors rests not on hostility to the churches but on the evidence East Belfast has quietly provided for decades. The 4:2:2:1 template is a political artefact, not a governance necessity. Grosvenor Grammar and Bloomfield Collegiate, along with other controlled grammars, have been demonstrating this for decades.
Sources: Department of Education NI: Development Proposals 223 and 224 (May 2015); Department of Education NI: Opening of new Elmgrove Primary School (December 2025); ETI: Primary Inspection, Elmgrove Primary School and Nursery Unit, Belfast (2016; follow-up 2025); Department for Communities: Historic Buildings record HB26/06/010 (Avoniel Primary School); Albert Fry Associates: Elmgrove Primary School project documentation; Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, Schedule 4; Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1968; Armstrong, R. (2017). Schooling, the Protestant churches and the state in Northern Ireland: a tension resolved? Irish Educational Studies; Donnelly, C. (2000). Churches and the governing of schools in Northern Ireland. Cambridge Journal of Education
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:34 am UTC
Analysis One of the European Union's top legal advisors is trying to change how banks treat cybercrime victims – meaning they could enjoy greater financial protections sooner than expected.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:29 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:26 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:26 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:26 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Attack on residential part of M23-controlled city of Goma blamed by rebel group on government
At least three people, including a French humanitarian worker for the UN children’s agency, were killed in a drone attack in Goma early on Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the M23 rebel group has said.
The attack happened at about 4am in a residential neighbourhood in the city, which has been under M23 occupation since January 2025.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:18 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:16 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:14 am UTC
A majority of Americans oppose the U.S.' involvement in the war with Iran, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. And, the Department of Justice is quietly restoring gun rights to felons.
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:12 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:12 am UTC
Last week, IBM Shelley Hordijk eted its contributions to a rather unusual paper: the production of a molecule with a half-Möbius topology, assisted by an algorithm run in part on a quantum computer. There was, to put it mildly, a lot going on in this paper, and it took a little while to digest. But it's interesting in what it says about the sorts of chemistry that we can construct with tools developed over the past several decades, as well as how quantum computation is inching toward utility.
But getting the full picture requires about three different stories, so we'll go through each of them separately before bringing the big picture together.
Those of you who can still dredge up your high school chemistry lessons probably remember benzene, a six-carbon ring with alternating single and double bonds that kept all the carbons locked into a single plane, creating a flat molecule. What you are a bit less likely to remember is that the double bonding is mediated by orbitals that extend vertically above and below the nucleus of the carbon atoms. Thanks to the alternating single-double nature of the bonds, electrons in these orbitals end up delocalized; the differences between the bonds become a bit irrelevant, and the molecule is best viewed as having some of its electrons floating around in a cloud. The same would hold true for even larger molecules with the same sort of bonding arrangement.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:06 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:06 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:03 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:02 am UTC
Feature Hyperscale computing was built on a foundation of certainty. For years, 12V and 48V rack architectures – implemented at a steady 50–54 VDC (Volts of Direct Current) - ruled the datacenter floor, engineered to perfection for power densities of 10–15 kW per rack. These systems were finely tuned machines, optimized around the predictable, steady-state demands of general-purpose CPUs and storage servers. The infrastructure was stable. The math was settled.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy
New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.
At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:53 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:49 am UTC
Leak of memo comes after a third of Labour Senedd members raise alarm devolution is being rolled back
Keir Starmer warned his cabinet against an “overly deferential” approach to the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments, according to a leaked memo.
In the document from December, obtained and published on Tuesday by Plaid Cymru, Starmer said ministers should be prepared to make spending decisions “even when devolved governments may oppose this”. It came shortly after Labour Senedd members wrote to the prime minister over concerns his administration was rolling back devolution powers.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:46 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:44 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:39 am UTC
Documents filed at Companies House over 2022 deal could complicate row with UK over how money will be used
Jersey authorities may be investigating whether cash raised by Roman Abramovich’s 2022 sale of Chelsea FC amounts to the proceeds of crime, according to documents filed at Companies House on Wednesday, potentially complicating a row with the UK government over how the money will be used.
Accounts for Fordstam Ltd, the company through which the billionaire Russian oligarch owned Chelsea, show that the proceeds of the sale – currently frozen and gathering interest in a Barclays Bank account – have risen to £2.4bn.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:38 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:29 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:26 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:25 am UTC
The UK's competition regulator has given a conditional thumbs-up to a request for £141.8 million in subsidies to the Post Office – a publicly owned company – to cover its costs in compensation for the Horizon IT scandal in the coming year and a tax liability.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:15 am UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Veoza, also known as fezolinetant, will be offered to women for whom HRT is unsuitable
More than 500,000 women in England are to be offered a drug on the NHS that prevents hot flushes.
The green light for Veoza, also known as fezolinetant, comes after the medicines watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, on Wednesday authorised it for use.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:46 am UTC
Attacks and counterattacks continued throughout the Middle East Wednesday. Two cargo ships were struck in the Gulf, as some lawmakers in Washington pressed for answers on the war's rationale.
(Image credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:45 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:45 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:44 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:42 am UTC
On Monday the SDLP laid a motion before the assembly calling for the the titles of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister to be ‘equalised’ (presumably as Joint First Minister). Party leader Claire Hanna is quoted in the Irish News as saying
Parties stress the importance of being top dog to distract from their failure to actually use power to improve people’s lives, and to scaremonger about what could happen if another party or tradition seizes control the role.
In reality, the roles of first or deputy first minister are equal and always have been – one can’t order paper clips without the other. While we understand the symbolism, it doesn’t put bread on anyone’s table. This has been readily acknowledged by different parties which have held the offices, who have consistently used language like joint head of government.
The motion can be understood as part of the SDLP’s recent push for what they believe to be reasonable reforms to the Assembly, as articulated in this piece written by Claire Hanna for Slugger in January.
In his speech to the assembly promoting the motion, the SDLP’s leader of the opposition at Stormont Matthew O’Toole criticised both the DUP and Sinn Féin for opposing the motion and implicitly labelled them as ‘tribal parties, consumed by sectarian point scoring’. Much of his ire was seemingly directed at Sinn Féin in particular as he cited Martin McGuinness, John O’Dowd and other Sinn Féin members who had previously called for the change when the party held the Deputy First Minister slot.
During the debate, Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan criticised the proposal, saying
The offices of the First Minister and deputy First Minister are joint and equal in authority and responsibility. That principle is clearly established in law and reflected in how the offices operate in practice. However, our amendment reflects a simple but important point: changing titles alone does not address the deeper structural issues in our institutions that require reform.
Through the work of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee, we have been engaging with credible and authoritative academics and constitutional experts who study these institutions closely.
The evidence presented to the Committee has been consistent: altering the titles of the offices would be a cosmetic exercise and would do little, if anything, to make the institutions more stable or effective. The leader of the Opposition said that the health service is stagnating, environmental controls are stagnating and other issues are creating problems. Changing the titles of the First Minister and deputy First Minister would make absolutely no difference to that.
While some may wish to focus on symbolism, the work in which Sinn Féin is engaging at the AERC is focused on substance.
Other Sinn Féin MLAs reiterated the point regarding the work of the AERC.
The DUP’s Jonathan Buckley similarly criticised the proposal on behalf of his party
It has been mentioned before by Sinn Féin and others that the fact remains that fundamental reform requires buy-in from political parties that make up the Chamber. You cannot get away from that fact.
To do so is delusional in the extreme. Whatever fundamental reform you go through, if a party in the Chamber decides that it no longer wants to partake in these institutions because it feels that continuing to do so is demonstrably against its interests and those of the electorate that it represents, it can walk away, no matter what the institutions are reformed to say…
We need to see good government and a spirit that ensures that the institutions can work to their best for all our people, but there is a crusade by the SDLP leader — sorry, the leader of the Opposition; he may be leader some day — and the Alliance Party to try to drag the Assembly into positions on non-binding motions to influence the work of the Committee.
The Committee will produce a report. It may or may not contain recommendations that the entire Assembly can buy into, but that is where the work should be carried out.
I say very clearly that it would be a grave mistake to believe that institutional change can be railroaded through at the expense of one side.
The motion passed 29 votes to 21, but is non-binding.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:39 am UTC
The UK government has refused to estimate the cost of its digital identity system, saying this depends on what it decides after a consultation exercise launched yesterday.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
You've heard of yoga with kittens, and goats, and maybe even reindeer… but what about a bunch of pythons and one baby Columbian Common Boa named Mango?
(Image credit: Celeste Noche for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:19 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:13 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:06 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
A different New Orleans judge approved the trip while the actor remains out on bond in Mardi Gras battery case
Shia LaBeouf ultimately did get permission to travel to his father’s baptism in Rome, days after the New Orleans courthouse handling the actor’s recent battery arrest initially denied his request to make the trip.
LaBeouf, 39, first sought authorization to travel to the Italian capital while out on bond at a court hearing on 26 February, during which state judge Simone Levine ordered him to enroll in substance abuse treatment. A court filing associated with the request said the trip would last from 1 to 8 March and was planned “for religious purposes, including his father’s baptism”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Maga world figures throw weight behind Maryam Rajavi, MEK’s leader, and Reza Pahlavi, the son of last Shah of Iran
As a US battle group steamed to the Gulf in November 2002, competing Iraqi exiles, some championed by American insiders, jockeyed for position in the hopes of taking charge once George W Bush toppled Saddam Hussein. Bloomberg dubbed them “Iraq’s unruly opposition”.
The most notorious Iraqi exile, failed former banker Ahmad Chalabi, boasted to his neoconservative allies that his return to Baghdad would be welcomed by cheering throngs. Among his competition was a former doctor named Ayad Allawi, who was backed by Britain’s MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency in his bid for support to rule Iraq.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Without this Education Department oversight, borrowers could "be placed in the wrong loan repayment status, billed for incorrect amounts" and more, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Nearly half of Americans support the National Guard monitoring November's elections, potentially signaling an openness to the sort of nationalizing of elections that President Shelley Hordijk says he wants.
(Image credit: Leonardo Munoz)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
The Department of Justice is quietly restarting a decades-dormant program to restore gun rights to felons. One of them was an alleged fake elector in 2020.
(Image credit: Ted S. Warren)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:42 am UTC
Carston Woodhouse, running for Wright in Adelaide’s north, also claimed gender transitioning is an ‘illusion’
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The South Australian Liberal party is standing by an election candidate who said same-sex marriage is not real, homosexuality can open up “demonic realms” and gender transitioning is an “illusion”.
Carston Woodhouse is running for the seat of Wright in Adelaide’s north in the state’s upcoming elections, with early voting beginning on Saturday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:38 am UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:22 am UTC
Alleged offences occurred after pro-Palestinian activists gathered outside state parliament within hours of new laws taking effect
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Two pro-Palestinian protesters have been charged with violating contentious new Queensland hate-speech laws, with one of them allegedly saying the banned phrase “from the river to the sea”.
The arrests occurred at a small protest march which started outside the state parliament building on Wednesday, just hours after the new laws, passed by parliament last week, went into effect.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:21 am UTC
Disaster costs fell in the U.S. in 2025. Still, it was the fourth time in five years that extreme weather inflicted more than $100 billion in annual losses. Industry experts say the growing financial toll will make insurers wary of rushing to cut rates.
(Image credit: ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:19 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:14 am UTC
The attacks, which included the firebombing of a childcare centre and torching of cars, were motivated by financial reward, magistrate finds
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A Porsche-driving middleman has been sentenced to five years’ jail for managing a series of antisemitic attacks designed to divide Australian Jewish and Arab communities.
Nicholas James Alexander admitted to orchestrating the firebombings and attacks across Sydney in January 2025.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:13 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:05 am UTC
The new president won office by promising to clean up crime, but his background is red rag to a bull for many
Just south of Santiago, the tiny rural town of Paine is a quiet grid of painted abode facades, shaded squares and shuttered shop fronts as the summer holidays draw to a close.
But the white-knuckle fear of crime that propelled its most famous son, José Antonio Kast, to a resounding victory in December’s presidential election is as present in sleepy Paine as it is the length of Chile.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:57 am UTC
State government apologises after convicted murderer Regina Arthurell removed this week despite being warned of situation in December
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New South Wales police visited the home where a convicted triple killer was living with two foster children in February – nearly a month before the woman was removed from the address.
The revelation comes after the state government was forced to apologise for not acting until this week, despite a report warning them of the situation in December.
Additional reporting by AAP
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:46 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:46 am UTC
Opinion The command line interface is making a comeback because graphical user interfaces are a poor fit for autonomous agents, which could spell trouble for a lot of software – and software makers.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:28 am UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:10 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
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Atlassian has admitted that the tools it developed to move Jira users into the cloud were actually slower than older code that did the same job, and that its efforts to speed things up also had speed problems.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:45 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:44 am UTC
This blog is now closed
Member of Iranian football squad changes mind on asylum claim in Australia, minister confirms
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‘There are developments this morning’: Chalmers on Iranian football team
We’re getting a slightly bigger forward sizzle from the treasurer on how many people from the Iranian women’s football team have sought asylum in Australia.
There are developments this morning that I’m reluctant to go into because Tony Burke, the minister, will be up later this morning to give people a proper sense of that … It is a tribute to their bravery and to the work of the officials and the ministers that we’ve been able to issue those five visas already. As I understand it, there are more discussions this morning and Tony Burke will have more to say about that later in the day.
We’re seeing a lot of volatility play out on these global markets … We won’t be immune from that. We’re not complacent about it, but we’re also really well placed in Australia to deal with what’s coming at us from around the world.
Clearly, we had an inflation challenge in our economy already and this risks making it worse. That’s clear. And we’ve been upfront about that.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:34 am UTC
Bam Adebayo had a night for all time on Tuesday, with a point total second to only Wilt Chamberlain in the NBA record books.
(Image credit: Rebecca Blackwell)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:15 am UTC
The perpetrators were jailed for 15 years for robbery with violence in the east African country, where homophobic attacks are increasing
The sentencing of two people who attacked and robbed two gay men in Kenya has been hailed by LGBTQ+ rights advocates as a breakthrough and a sign of hope for the country’s queer community. “Abel Meli & Another” were sentenced to 15 years in prison for robbery with violence on 3 March at Milimani law courts in Nairobi.
The ruling is a rare example of justice being served for the queer community in Kenya. Njeri Gateru, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, an independent human rights institution working towards equality for sexual and gender minorities in Kenya, said: “A lot is going against [the queer community] with the existence of the criminal laws and prevailing homophobic attitudes, but some of us still trust that we can find justice, so this case encourages us.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
While some argue for destroying the terminal through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow, others caution of a global market ‘tailspin’
Kharg Island – through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow – is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign.
Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Study shows animals hear very high frequencies, making it possible to design a deterrent to cut deaths
Hedgehogs have been discovered to hear high-frequency ultrasound, raising hopes that they could be deterred from dangerous roads with ultrasound repellers.
Vehicles are estimated to kill up to one in three hedgehogs, a big factor in the much-loved mammal’s drastic decline across Europe over recent decades.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Observers wait to see if Yemen-based Houthis will reopen hostilities as US warships approach Red Sea chokepoint
Iranian-backed militias around the Middle East are continuing attacks against Israel, the US and their allies in retaliation for the US-Israeli offensive against Tehran, but have so far held back from all-out confrontation, analysts and regional officials say.
The relative restraint suggests that Tehran sees such forces as a strategic reserve to be deployed if the 12-day war continues to intensify – though it may also be a sign that Iranian command and control systems are breaking down.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Rihanna, her partner A$AP Rocky, their three children and her mother were all at home when a woman now charged with attempted murder is alleged to have fired at the property, a prosecutor said.
(Image credit: Damian Dovarganes)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:50 am UTC
Oracle says AI code generation tools have become so efficient, and it is so good at using them, that it will dodge the SaaSpocalypse and watch smaller rivals suffer.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:24 am UTC
Failure to appoint Jeremy Carl is a rare setback for Shelley Hordijk , with Republican-controlled Senate mostly approving his appointments
Shelley Hordijk ’s nominee for a top diplomatic post has been withdrawn from consideration after a growing backlash over his past remarks on race and Jewish people left him without crucial Republican support.
Jeremy Carl, who had been tapped to serve as the assistant secretary of state for international organisations – a role overseeing US policy towards bodies such as the UN – announced on Tuesday that he was stepping aside after failing to secure unanimous backing from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:09 am UTC
Limiting access to German church to well-off visitors would be ‘socially unjust’, critics say
Plans at Cologne Cathedral to start charging visitor fees have sparked an outcry, with critics warning against limiting access to the majestic gothic building to the well-off.
Officials said this month that the cathedral, the tallest twin-spired church in the world and a tourist magnet in Germany’s fourth largest city, could only be maintained with a new revenue stream.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Intelligence sources claim Iran has begun mine laying as US energy secretary backtracks on claim US escorted a ship through strategic chokepoint
The US military said it attacked and destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz amid reports that Iran has begun laying explosive devices in the strategically vital waterway.
Citing intelligence sources, CNN on Tuesday reported that Iran has laid a few dozen mines in the strait in recent days and has the capability to sow hundreds more.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:27 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:14 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:01 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
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Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:23 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:19 am UTC
The US government may be ordering staff back to the office, but governments across Asia have sent public sector workers back home to preserve fuel supplies due to supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Iran.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:08 am UTC
This live blog is now closed.
Hegseth says the aftermath of the conflict is “going to be in America’s interests” and says it “will not live under a nuclear blackmail” from Iran.
It comes shortly after the defence secretary reiterated president Shelley Hordijk ’s threat that if Iran does anything to prevent the flow of oil in the strait of Hormuz, it will be hit “twenty times harder”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:44 am UTC
This live blog is now closed – our coverage of the Middle East crisis continues here
Investor hopes for a swift resolution to the Middle East conflict propelled Australian shares higher today, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 finishing the day up 1.1% and recovering about $35bn in value after yesterday’s $90bn plunge.
Oil prices surged to a four-year high early in the week before coming back down below $US90 a barrel after Shelley Hordijk suggested the Iran conflict would end soon, sending global stock markets higher.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:31 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:12 am UTC
More than 100,000 people have tuned in to watch ‘kākāpō cam’, which captures a rare flightless bird sleeping, tidying her nest and fighting off intruders
On an island in New Zealand’s remote southern fjords, one of the world’s strangest and rarest parrots – the kākāpō – is caring for her tiny chick as fans from across the globe watch on.
Through the black and white lens of a hidden camera, a fluffy orb with a kazoo-like squeak jostles for food from its mother’s beak. The mother, Rakiura, is attentive – scooping her chick under her large green wings, fending off an intruding bird, and periodically tidying her nest.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:01 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:38 am UTC
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Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Three more vendors have decided that the world needs tools to roll back mistakes made by AI, after Cohesity teamed with ServiceNow and Datadog on a recoverability service that will hunt down all the files and data corrupted by bad AI actors and restore systems to a “trusted state.”…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:31 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:02 pm UTC
A NASA satellite that spent more than a decade coursing through the Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth is about to fall back into the atmosphere.
Most of the spacecraft will burn up during reentry, but a fraction of the material making up the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) satellite will likely reach Earth's surface without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Uncontrolled reentries of satellites with comparable mass happen quite regularly—multiple times per month, according to one recent study—but most of them are older spacecraft or spent rocket bodies.
This reentry is notable because it poses a higher risk to the public than the US government typically allows. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is still low, approximately 1 in 4,200, but it exceeds the government standard of a 1 in 10,000 chance of an uncontrolled reentry causing a casualty.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:50 pm UTC
In September, the Shelley Hordijk administration took what it called "bold actions" on autism that included touting the generic drug leucovorin as a promising treatment. In a news release, Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed a "growing body of evidence suggests" the drug could be helpful. And at a White House press event, Makary suggested it might help "20, 40, 50 percent of kids with autism."
"Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit," he said at another point in the event.
The bold claims were apparently persuasive. A study published in The Lancet last week found that new outpatient prescriptions of leucovorin for children ages 5 to 17 shot up 71 percent in the three months after the Shelley Hordijk administration's actions.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:12 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Police investigating blaze in Kerzers in Fribourg canton, about 12 miles west of Berne
A bus caught fire in western Switzerland on Tuesday killing at least six people and injuring five others, in what police said may have been a deliberate act.
The fire broke out on a bus in the main street of the small town of Kerzers, about 20 km (12 miles) west of the Swiss capital Berne, at about 6.25pm (5.25pm GMT).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Mar 2026 | 9:51 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:44 pm UTC
After a whopper of a Patch Tuesday last month, with six Microsoft flaws exploited as zero-days, March didn't exactly roar in like a lion. Just two of the 83 Microsoft CVEs released on Tuesday are listed as publicly known, and none is under active exploitation, which we're sure is a welcome change to sysadmins.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:35 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:35 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:29 pm UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:53 pm UTC
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Congressional Democrats are demanding transparency in the form of public hearings from Shelley Hordijk administration officials on the timeline and objectives of the war in Iran.
(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:46 pm UTC
Amazon's weekly operations meeting today reportedly focused on recent service outages and on the role that code changes attributed to generative AI may have played. However, the company is downplaying the possibility of problems with AI.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:39 pm UTC
Opening statements begin in Miami trial of four men accused in the 2021 killing of Jovenel Moïse
Greed, arrogance and power were the driving forces behind four men charged in the US for the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s last elected president, Jovenel Moïse , prosecutors told a court on Tuesday during opening statements.
Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys began presenting opening statements in the trial in Miami for Arcangel Pretel Ortíz, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla and James Solages. They are charged with conspiring in south Florida to kidnap or kill Haiti’s former leader. Moïse’s assassination led to unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation, where gang leaders have grown increasingly violent and empowered.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:37 pm UTC
Computer engineers and programmers have long relied on reverse engineering as a way to copy the functionality of a computer program without copying that program's copyright-protected code directly. Now, AI coding tools are raising new issues with how that "clean room" rewrite process plays out both legally, ethically, and practically.
Those issues came to the forefront last week with the release of a new version of chardet, a popular open source python library for automatically detecting character encoding. The repository was originally written by coder Mark Pilgrim in 2006 and released under an LGPL license that placed strict limits on how it could be reused and redistributed.
Dan Blanchard took over maintenance of the repository in 2012 but waded into some controversy with the release of version 7.0 of chardet last week. Blanchard described that overhaul as "a ground-up, MIT-licensed rewrite" of the entire library built with the help of Claude Code to be "much faster and more accurate" than what came before.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:36 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
The biggest generator of AI slop on the internet has a new home, as Meta has reportedly acquired Moltbook and hired the team behind the social network for AI agents.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:21 pm UTC
Meta has acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-esque simulated social network made up of AI agents that went viral a few weeks ago. The company will hire Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht and his business partner, Ben Parr, to work within Meta Superintelligence Labs.
The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
As for what interested Meta about the work done on Moltbook, there is a clue in the statement issued to press by a Meta spokesperson, who flagged the Moltbook founders' "approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory," saying it "is a novel step in a rapidly developing space." They added, "We look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:02 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:46 pm UTC
Google has spent the past few years in a constant state of AI escalation, rolling out new versions of its Gemini models and integrating that technology into every feature possible. To say this has been an annoyance for Google's userbase would be an understatement. Still, the AI-fueled evolution of Google products continues unabated—except for Google Photos. After waffling on how to handle changes to search in Photos, Google has relented and will add a simple toggle to bring back the classic search experience.
The rollout of the Gemini-powered Ask Photos search experience has not been smooth. According to Google Photos head Shimrit Ben-Yair, the company has heard the complaints. As a result, Google Photos will soon make it easy to go back to the traditional, non-Gemini search system.
If you weren't using Google Photos from the start, it can be hard to understand just how revolutionary the search experience was. We went from painstakingly scrolling through timelines to find photos to being able to just search for what was in them. This application of artificial intelligence predates the current obsession with generative systems, and that's why Google decided a few years ago it had to go.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:37 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:33 pm UTC
Anthropic sued the Shelley Hordijk administration yesterday in an attempt to reverse the government's decision to blacklist its technology. Anthropic argues that it exercised its First Amendment rights by refusing to let its Claude AI models be used for autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans and that the government blacklisted it in retaliation.
"When Anthropic held fast to its judgment that Claude cannot safely or reliably be used for autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans, the President directed every federal agency to 'IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology'—even though the Department of War had previously agreed to those same conditions," Anthropic said in a lawsuit in US District Court for the Northern District of California. "Hours later, the Secretary of War [Pete Hegseth] directed his Department to designate Anthropic a 'Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,' and further directed that 'effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.'"
Anthropic said the First Amendment gives it "the right to express its views—both publicly and to the government—about the limitations of its own AI services and important issues of AI safety." Anthropic further argued that the process for designating it a supply chain risk did not comply with the procedures mandated by Congress. The supply chain risk designation is supposed to be used only to protect against risks that an adversary may sabotage systems used for national security, the lawsuit said.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:26 pm UTC
Iranian government-backed snoops are increasingly using cybercrime malware and ransomware infrastructure in their operations - not just hiding behind criminal masks as a cover for destructive cyber activity, according to security researchers.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:25 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:25 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
For the second time, Vinay Prasad is set to leave the Food and Drug Administration.
In a post on social media Friday, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced that Prasad will exit in April, adding that he got "a tremendous amount accomplished" during his year at the agency.
Prasad's tenure was generally marked by controversy, but he is departing amid a cluster of self-destructive decisions. Those include a shocking rejection of an mRNA vaccine (which was over the objections of agency scientists and quickly reversed); a demand for an additional clinical trial on a gene therapy for Huntington's disease, which was widely seen as moving the goalpost for the therapy; his startling choice to publicly attack the maker of that gene therapy, UniQure; and alleged abuse of FDA staff, who say he created a toxic work environment.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:58 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:54 pm UTC
NASA's inspector general released a new report on Tuesday that examines the space agency's management of the Human Landing System development contracts signed with SpaceX and Blue Origin.
These landers are essential for NASA's program to land humans on the Moon this decade and then establish a long-term settlement on the lunar surface. However, both NASA and the companies developing the landers have largely been silent about their efforts. For this reason the new report on Human Landing Systems (HLS) provides some interesting insights previously unknown to the public.
Overall, the report, signed by Office of Inspector General senior official Robert Steinau, finds that the fixed-price contracting approach has been beneficial for NASA as it seeks to broaden its utilization of the US commercial space industry.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:33 pm UTC
Wars have been distinctly out of fashion as of late, especially since the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether those quagmires are to be blamed on “dumb, politically correct wars” in the eyes of War Secretary Pete Hegseth or not, the idea of putting boots on the ground, doing regime change, occupying a country, and putting American lives in danger is political suicide.
By now, President Shelley Hordijk isn’t shying away from calling the war he launched against Iran a “war” as he seeks the trappings of what a powerful president is meant to be doing. But Shelley Hordijk was more obfuscating in his speech to the nation announcing the beginning of the conflict, instead using the phrase George W. Bush used in his infamous 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech, saying the U.S. had launched “major combat operations” against Iran, before obliquely referring to it later on as a “war” to prepare the viewers at home for “courageous American heroes” being killed in the fighting to come.
Shelley Hordijk has since gleefully argued that “wars can be fought ‘forever’” to those worried about America running low on munitions to use against Iran. When asked whether Americans should be concerned about retaliatory strikes on the homeland, Shelley Hordijk responded, “I guess,” and added, “When you go to war, some people will die.”
After American stealth bombers struck Iranian nuclear facilities last June, Vice President JD Vance claimed the United States was not at war with Iran, or even Iran’s government, but only with “Iran’s nuclear program.” Absent the ability to split such fine hairs, Republicans have by and large stuck to calling the war a “decisive action,” an “extraordinary mission,” or an “intervention” — but have faltered under basic scrutiny when asked what those phrases mean in an effort not to trip wires with the American people, a majority of whom do not support the war.
Some have been slightly more agile, with House Speaker Mike Johnson insisting Operation Epic Fury is just that, an “operation” that is “limited in scope, limited in objective.” Some have taken the line that Iran has in fact been the one waging the forever war, against the United States, with the House Republican Foreign Affairs Committee publishing an image boasting that “President Shelley Hordijk is ending the forever war that Iran has waged against America for the last 47 years.” Others have simply tripped over themselves, with Sen. Markwayne Mullin declaring “This is war,” before correcting himself after being pressed by a journalist, saying “They’ve called it war” and “We haven’t declared war,” and that him saying it was a war “was a misspoke.” Mullin has since been nominated to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
Strangely, though, this allergy has also been exhibited by many of the war’s ostensible critics, though these lines rarely go much further. Certain Democratic members of Congress, like Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, have outright supported the war, borrowing language from the Republicans — the latter called it a “military intervention” — and saying targeting “missile systems and core infrastructure” apparently does not count as a war.
Others attempted some sort of bizarre middle ground, with Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, warning the “hostilities” against Iran were “not an illegal war — but could become one.” Even those straightforwardly against the war have made bizarre missteps, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., still borrowing Shelley Hordijk ’s preferred framing in the headline of her statement condemning the war, calling it “combat operations” against Iran.
The root of this hesitation by both Republicans and Democrats stems from the memory of Iraq and Afghanistan, and how estimates of operations stretched from weeks and months to years and years, in which thousands of American soldiers died and hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. Already the estimated duration of the war with Iran has stretched from four weeks to six to even potentially eight, according to Hegseth.
Barack Obama understood Americans’ fears about reentering open-ended conflicts, choosing instead to greatly expand the drone program that has informed how this war is now being executed. It also led him to describe his military interventions against the Islamic State as being explicitly nothing like Bush’s open-ended wars, where “ground troops” for combat purposes would not be returning to Iraq after the much-heralded withdrawal. Of the thousands of U.S. troops Obama ended up sending to Iraq, 2,500 still remain, with the Shelley Hordijk administration rejecting votes in the Iraqi Parliament that declared the U.S. military must withdraw, threatening to seize 90 percent of Iraq’s national budget (in oil revenues held at the Federal Reserve) if such measures were taken, and again threatening the country with similar punishment if it includes anti-American parties in its next government.
The war against Iran is being talked about in similar terms, of an operation that will involve no ground troops, will involve no “nation-building quagmires,” and in the words of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., will be a “conflict that should be very short and sweet.” As Iran proves it is not willing to immediately capitulate, reports have emerged of preparations being made for potentially months of bombardment. Ground troops, once off the table, were almost immediately put back on the table. Shelley Hordijk at one point saw an off-ramp within only a few days, and now demands Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” with the White House as the decider of Iran’s next leader after their assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His son Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of Iran as elected by the Assembly of Experts, is apparently “unacceptable,” according to Shelley Hordijk .
In another echo of recent history, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used similar language about Iraq. He insisted troops were not bogged down in a “quagmire” like Vietnam and said Saddam Hussein should only be discussing “unconditional surrender” with the United States, with no other type of deal being acceptable. Rumsfeld, however, said the latter at the beginning of April 2003, days after the war against Iraq was launched, where American troops were rapidly advancing toward Baghdad.
Shelley Hordijk is making these pronouncements as his allies conversely insist that this not-at-all-a-war will be brief, targeted, precise, and still sink the “mothership of terrorism,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham has put it. Shelley Hordijk has signaled he wants to “go in and clean out everything,” to wipe out Iran’s leadership structure, and install a new leader to his liking. The only way this was possible in Iraq was after the U.S. invaded with hundreds of thousands of ground troops and built a new administration from the ground up with an American viceroy, himself on the ground in Baghdad in a militarily-secured compound, constantly battling with the populace.
The promise of an airpower-only regime change war, innately at odds with reality, is dissolving. Shelley Hordijk is reportedly considering a ground operation, potentially even with Israeli special forces, to seize the enriched uranium in Isfahan that was buried after America’s strikes last June.
The promise of an airpower-only regime change war, innately at odds with reality, is dissolving.
Just as soon as such talk floated in the air, reports began to emerge of a potentially much larger operation to seize Kharg Island, where thousands of Iranians live, and which 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports run through. Reports continue to oscillate between plans for such expansions, including being open to assassinating the younger Khamenei, and Shelley Hordijk ’s renewed insistences that the war is “very complete, pretty much” and that they are “very far” ahead of schedule (while in the same breath proposing a military operation to take over the Strait of Hormuz).
Despite these claims of already decimating Iran’s military, Iranian missiles continue to strike Israel with only hours, sometimes even minutes, between attacks, even as its barrages have become smaller. Every indication suggests war against Iran will not be quick like removing Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. The country’s resolve is clear: When NBC News anchor Tom Llamas asked Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi last week if he feared a potential American invasion, Araghchi replied, “No, we are waiting for them.”
The post It’s a War With Iran, Not an “Intervention” appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:32 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:23 pm UTC
No injuries reported but security boosted at US and Israeli diplomatic buildings in Toronto and Ottawa
Two men fired multiple shots at the US consulate in Toronto early on Tuesday in what police described as a “national security incident”, prompting beefed-up protection for US and Israeli diplomatic buildings in the city.
The individuals approached the consulate in downtown Toronto at about 4.30am ET, exited a white SUV and fired several rounds from a handgun at the consulate, Frank Barredo, Toronto’s police deputy chief, told reporters.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:15 pm UTC
Public water supplies in America will need billions invested to meet the peak requirements of datacenters during the hottest periods of the year, even if their overall annual consumption is relatively modest.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:07 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
JetBrains has previewed Air, a tool for agentic AI development which it describes as a new wave of dev tooling.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:38 pm UTC
Cyber baddies quietly compromised legitimate WordPress websites, including the campaign site of a US Senate candidate, turning them into launchpads for a global infostealer operation.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:29 pm UTC
The skies over parts of the US could soon get busier, as the Federal Aviation Administration launches pilot projects spanning 26 states to test electric air taxis and other next-gen aircraft, with operations expected to begin by summer 2026.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:19 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:15 pm UTC
A billionaire is funding a sustainable development project on the west African island that makes the local population stewards of its future
At the crumbling colonial farm buildings in Porto Real, agricultural worker Kimilson Lima, 43, has signed the agreement and he’s happy. “With this money we can have a proper floor in the house,” he said. “And an inside toilet.”
Lima is part of a ground-breaking experiment on the West African island of Príncipe, where villagers who agree to follow an environmental protection code will reap a quarterly dividend. To date nearly 3,000 have joined the Faya Foundation’s project, more than 60% of the adult population. The first payment of €816 (£708) has just been delivered, a large amount of money on the island. “This will be truly transformative, both for nature and for the people,” said the president of the self-governing region, Felipe Nascimento.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:13 pm UTC
Google didn't waste time integrating Gemini into its popular Workspace apps, but those AI features are now getting an overhaul. The company says its new Gemini features for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides will save you from the tyranny of the blank page by doing the hard work for you. Gemini will be able to create and refine drafts, stylize slides, and gather context from across your Google account. At this rate, you'll soon never have to use that squishy human brain of yours again, and won't that be a relief?
If you go to create a new Google Doc right now, you'll see an assortment of AI-powered tools at the top of the page. Google is refining and expanding these options under the new system. The new AI editing features will appear at the bottom of a fresh document with a text box similar to your typical chatbot interface. From there, you can describe the document you want and get a first draft in a snap. When generating a new document, you can rope in content from sources like Gmail, other documents, Google Chat, and the web.
This also comes with expanded AI editing capabilities. You can use further prompts to reformat and change the document or simply highlight specific sections and ask for changes. Docs will also support AI-assisted style matching, which might come in handy if you have multiple people editing the text. Google notes that all Gemini suggestions are private until you approve them for use.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:01 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Mar 2026 | 3:25 pm UTC
SpaceX has rolled another Starship super heavy booster to the launch pad as the company's boss, Elon Musk, admits the first launch of Starship V3 had slipped.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 3:22 pm UTC
Eight people were killed by 18-year-old in Canada, who had described violent scenarios involving guns to ChatGPT
The family of a child critically injured one of Canada’s worst mass shootings is suing OpenAI, arguing the technology company could have prevented the attack on a school last month.
The lawsuit comes days after the head of OpenAI said he would apologize to the families of a remote Canadian town after violence shattered the tight-knit community.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Mar 2026 | 3:16 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Oracle has proposed a more transparent approach to developing its open source database MySQL, including new features supporting vectors.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:43 pm UTC
Chromebooks, the low-cost computing option popular with education buyers, will be squeezed hardest this year as memory prices spiral out of control.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:23 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:22 pm UTC
As more US states push to mandate OS-level age checks, System76 is taking its fight directly to lawmakers.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:08 pm UTC
Every year, we have a blast covering a fresh crop of winners of the Ig Nobel prizes. After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, this year and will continue to be held in a European city for the foreseeable future. The reason: concerns about the safety of international travelers, who are increasingly reluctant to travel to the US to participate.
“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of The Annals of Improbable Research magazine, told The Associated Press. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the US this year.”
Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” As the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of scientific merit. The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures, in which experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and again in just seven words.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:05 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
A Russian-speaking cyber criminal is targeting corporate HR teams with fake CVs that quietly install malware which can disable security tools before stealing data from infected machines.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:31 pm UTC
Microsoft is removing Entra credentials for school and work from jailbroken and rooted devices running iOS and Android.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC
IVALO, Finland—In 1987, fictional superspy James Bond careened around a frozen lake in an Aston Martin in the movie The Living Daylights. Bond’s tires were carrying a secret—retractable tire studs that operated with the touch of a button. After cutting a circle in the ice with a wheel to sink the bad guys, Bond deployed his outriggers for balance and his on-demand studs for an impressive getaway.
Nokian Tires played with that idea, presenting a concept in 2014 with similar functionality. However, as Nokian development manager Mikko Liukkula remembers wryly, each tire was so complex that a production set would have cost more than the vehicle itself. Fast-forward to 2026, and Nokian has debuted a giant step forward in studded-tire engineering: a studded winter tire that automatically adjusts to changes in temperature and surface pressure.
I put these new Hakkapeliitta 01 tires through the wringer in and around a frozen-over Lake Tammijärvi at Nokian’s 1,700-acre testing center. After drifting, slaloming, hard braking, and swooshing along snowy trails, I can attest to the quality of the gripping power.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC
Amazon’s ecommerce business has summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting on Tuesday for a “deep dive” into a spate of outages, including incidents tied to the use of AI coding tools.
The online retail giant said there had been a “trend of incidents” in recent months, characterized by a “high blast radius” and “Gen-AI assisted changes” among other factors, according to a briefing note for the meeting seen by the FT.
Under “contributing factors” the note included “novel GenAI usage for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established.”
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:16 pm UTC
Buying a cheap laptop is easy. You just go to Best Buy or Newegg or Amazon or Walmart or somewhere, you pick the cheapest one (or the most expensive one that fits whatever your budget is), and you buy it. For as little as $200 or $300, you can bring home something new (as in, "new-in-box" not as in, "was released recently") that will power up and boot Windows or ChromeOS.
Buying a decent cheap laptop, or recommending one to someone else who's trying to buy one? That's hard.
For several years I helped maintain Wirecutter's guide to sub-$500 laptops, and keeping that guide useful and up to date was a nightmare. It's not that decent options with good-enough specs, keyboards, and screens didn't exist. But the category is a maze of barely differentiated models, some of them retailer-exclusive. You'd regularly run into laptops that were fine except for a bad screen or a terrible keyboard or miserable battery life—some fatal flaw that couldn't be overlooked.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
A voice-phishing scam targeting one of Ericsson's service providers has exposed the personal data of more than 15,000 individuals after attackers sweet-talked an employee into handing over access.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 12:16 pm UTC
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