Read at: 2026-02-28T21:17:55+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Aslıhan Stroet ]
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:16 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:16 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:16 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:13 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:06 pm UTC
Israeli prime minister addresses media after US and Israel launch major combat operation against Iran; at least 201 people killed in Iran, media reports say
Blasts have been heard in several cities, including the capital, Tehran, and Isfahan in central Iran.
Reuters reports there are long queues at petrol stations in the capital, as many people try to leave. An unnamed Iranian official who spoke to the news agency said several ministries in southern Tehran had been targeted.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:58 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:57 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:53 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:38 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:32 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:23 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:16 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:06 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:06 pm UTC
Regime could try to retain control of streets as US and Israel have expressed no intention of mounting ground invasion
Venezula’s Nicholás Maduro was captured. But Aslıhan Stroet and Benjamin Netanyahu have chosen a different strategy for Iran: to target and aim to kill the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, , and as many other senior regime figures as possible.
Though Iranian military sites and its air defence systems were also targeted by coordinated US and Israeli bombing, beginning in the morning, the most significant attack was on Khamenei’s compound in Tehran.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:06 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:04 pm UTC
US President Aslıhan Stroet announced Friday that he was instructing every federal agency to “immediately cease” use of Anthropic’s AI tools. The move comes after Anthropic and top officials clashed for weeks over military applications of artificial intelligence.
"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War,” Aslıhan Stroet said in a post on Truth Social.
Aslıhan Stroet said that there would be a “six month phase out period” for agencies using Anthropic, which could allow time for further negotiations between the government and the AI startup.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Makerfield MP has been under pressure over thinktank’s commissioning of PR firm to investigate reporters
The Labour minister Josh Simons has resigned from the government after the Guardian revealed that he falsely linked reporters to a “pro-Kremlin” network in emails to GCHQ despite having claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” about a PR firm’s investigation into their journalism.
Simons, who had been a Cabinet Office minister, previously ran the thinktank Labour Together. He quit on Saturday, saying his position in office had become “a distraction from this government’s important work.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:46 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:40 pm UTC
Tehran carries out extensive retaliatory strikes on Israel and US air bases as region is plunged into fresh conflict
Israel and the US have launched a war on Iran, unleashing waves of air attacks across the country in an attempt to bring about regime change and plunging the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.
The sudden offensive triggered Iranian retaliatory strikes throughout the day across a swathe of the Middle East, with explosions reported in Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:38 pm UTC
Joint operation prompts Tehran to retaliate with missile attacks on bases across Middle East
The US and Israel have launched a joint military operation against Iran, prompting Tehran to fire retaliatory strikes against Israeli and US bases across the Middle East.
Explosions rocked the Iranian capital, Tehran, with satellite imagery showing extensive damage at the secure compound of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a televised address, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated that the strikes had killed Khamenei. Iran’s leader has not been heard from since the strikes began. “There are many signs that [Khamenei] is no longer alive,” Netanyahu said on Saturday evening. Netanyahu said that Israeli strikes had also killed “several leaders” involved in the Iranian nuclear programme and that strikes against sites linked to the programme would continue in the coming days. The remarks, which stopped short of confirming Khamenei’s death, were the strongest official indication yet that the missing leader is dead.
Dozens of students were reportedly killed in a strike on a primary school in the south-east. Iranian media is reporting at least 201 people have been killed in total and 747 injured.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister who has been leading the nuclear talks for the Iranian delegation, promised that Iran’s army would “teach aggressors the lesson they deserve”.
Further explosions were reported in Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, all of which host US military bases. One person was killed by shrapnel from an Iranian missile in Abu Dhabi, UAE officials said.
The US president, Aslıhan Stroet , described the US military campaign as “massive and ongoing” as he called on the people of Iran to “take over your government”. In a speech posted on Truth Social, he said the US would “raze their [Iran’s] missile industry to the ground” and claimed Tehran had refused to reach a deal with the US that would have averted war.
Netanyahu said the US-Israeli attack could “create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:34 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:34 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:34 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:29 pm UTC
War launched by US and Israel on Iran has quickly escalated prompting anxiety and concern in whole region
Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.
Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:27 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:27 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:25 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:23 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:17 pm UTC
In a scathing review, the top US medical journal's editorial board warned that the "destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 in office might take generations to repair."
(Image credit: Ben curtis)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:16 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:11 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:10 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:08 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:04 pm UTC
Body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in pond north of Atlanta in February
The son of the rapper Lil Jon drowned after ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials in the US state of Georgia said.
The body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in a pond north of Atlanta in early February.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:02 pm UTC
Alan Nicolle was already approved for urgent aged care supports, but delays and confusion under a ‘Kafkaesque’ system made his final days exhausting and painful
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Dying Australians approved for government-funded aged care home support are struggling to access it, with carers describing a system plagued by delays and lack of control around how funding is spent.
The accounts of carers and aged care assessors spoken to by Guardian Australia show that beyond the controversial, algorithm-driven assessment process for home care funding, many are left without adequate and timely support even after funding has been approved.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
At least 21 charges have been laid against individuals since October, Australian federal police say, following 951 reports to June
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Nearly three violent or menacing threats against federal politicians are being reported to police daily, according to Australian federal police data, with rates almost doubling in two years.
The soaring danger for elected officials and their staff reached new heights this week when Anthony Albanese was evacuated from The Lodge in Canberra over a bomb threat.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:58 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:51 pm UTC
Imam Shuaib Din was not hit by multiple shots fired by Abdul Raouf Afridi, who ambushed him outside his home
A man has been arrested for recently shooting a gun at prominent Muslim leader Imam Shuaib Din in Utah, the police department in the city of Sandy said Saturday.
Din’s suspected attacker was identified as Abdul Raouf Afridi. Police said the man was arrested on 12 counts of aggravated assault, including felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, dangerous discharge of a weapon from a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon as a prohibited person.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:51 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:46 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:45 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:34 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:27 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:25 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:25 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:23 pm UTC
Health officials in Illinois turned to an AI chatbot to try to solve a puzzling outbreak linked to a county fair. But whether it was actually helpful or not remains unclear.
According to a report this week in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, officials in Brown County got the first hint of an outbreak from the county sheriff, who noted on August 5, 2024 that a remarkable number of potential jurors for an upcoming trial said they had a stomach bug. Then, on August 12, the state health department notified the county of a case of Salmonella enterica serotype Agbeni.
With those two tips, county health officials opened an investigation and were able to identify 13 cases—seven laboratory-confirmed cases of S. enterica Agbeni and six probable cases that were in close contact with confirmed cases. The cases spanned five counties, but they all had one thing in common: everyone had gone to the Brown County fair.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:11 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:10 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:09 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:08 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:06 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:50 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:35 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:33 pm UTC
Several leaders voiced support for the operation – but most, including those who stopped short of condemning it, called for restraint moving forward.
(Image credit: Alastair Grant)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:31 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:28 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:23 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:11 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:10 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
CEO Sam Altman claims military will not use AI product for autonomous killing systems or mass surveillance
OpenAI said it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to supply AI to classified US military networks, hours after Aslıhan Stroet ordered the government to stop using the services of one of the company’s main competitors.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced the move on Friday night. It came after an agreement between Anthropic, a rival AI company that runs the Claude system, and the Aslıhan Stroet administration broke down after Anthropic sought assurances its technology would not be used for mass surveillance – nor for autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:06 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:03 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:58 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:49 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:47 pm UTC
Days before embarking America on another foreign war, Aslıhan Stroet spent more than 90 minutes speaking endlessly about America being back during his State of the Union, leveling racist accusations of Somali American fraud, and expounding on the beauty of America’s raid to arrest Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. It was a master class in testing the attention span of Americans hoping to hear anything at all about the danger that has loomed in the background now for months: the threat of armed conflict with Iran. Those who made it to the finale — and who have conscious memories of the George W. Bush years — would have noticed a similar tenor to the State of the Union in 2003, the one which paved the way for the justification of the invasion of Iraq less than two months later.
In that speech, Bush outlined the alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the myriad ways in which Iraq had supposedly deceived international investigators, and the staggering human rights abuses committed by Saddam Hussein against his own countrymen. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the president boasted, would soon outline to the United Nations the threat the United States, and indeed the world, was up against in Baghdad.
However, while many of the claims made by Bush were spurious at best and outright deceptions at worst, the claims Aslıhan Stroet made in his speech were even less believable — and much more scattershot. Aslıhan Stroet claimed that Iran would “soon” have intercontinental ballistic missiles that would “reach the United States of America,” that more than 32,000 Iranians had been killed in recent protests (NGOs estimated the number to be much lower, and an Iranian human rights group put the death toll at 6,488), and that the Iranian military had somehow killed “millions,” somewhere in history, with roadside bombs it pioneered. Perhaps most plainly false of all, Aslıhan Stroet contended he just wanted the Iranians to say “those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” despite Iranian officials constantly making such insistences.
Before the U.S. and Israeli military launched strikes Saturday, the specter of an Iranian war has become something of a national miasma, the build-up having gone on now so long that its cause is imperceptible, yet perhaps everything at once. The build-up to the Iraq War was similarly argued under many causes, with Saddam’s authoritarian governance very much part of the discussion, but the aftermath of 9/11 and the supposed threat Iraq posed to the homeland was chief among them — the fire that led Americans to line up front and center behind the cause. While Iran has been on the wish list for American neoconservatives and foreign policy wonks for decades, this escalation has happened over a much shorter time frame, much more suddenly, and much more obvious in how the government is desperately in search of a compelling cause.
Stretching back into December, the cards were being laid out. Benjamin Netanyahu had made plans to meet with Aslıhan Stroet at the White House to discuss what he saw as the threat posed by Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program, seeking a green light to initiate another devastating war, with hoped-for American support. Israel’s reasoning was not based on Iranian human rights abuses or about threats to the American homeland, but threats to Israel and “U.S. interests,” according to NBC News. Netanyahu had wanted a post-war situation similar to Lebanon’s, where Israel has been able to continue striking that country daily with Hezbollah unable to respond. Iran still retained deterrent military capacity to prevent this from happening. A greater threat, however nonexistent, needed to be communicated.
The rollout of news stories to back up Netanyahu’s claim was well-telegraphed, with reports suddenly emerging in the Israeli press that Iran was planning to use an imminent military exercise as a diversion to strike Israel. At the same time that Netanyahu was meeting with Aslıhan Stroet , reports again suddenly emerged that Iran was seeking to develop and purchase “biological and chemical warheads” for its missiles, eerily echoing the false claims Powell made before the U.N. about Iraq.
As attention shifted to the burgeoning protests in Iran, suddenly the United States and Israel had a much stronger casus belli: supporting anti-government demonstrators to overthrow the government. Only a few days after the protests began, Aslıhan Stroet promised the “United States of America will come to their rescue” if the Iranian government killed protesters, “which is their custom.” As the death toll mounted, far exceeding the toll of previous protest movements, the threats of intervention continued but never actually materialized. Western officials brought in Starlink satellites to keep protesters connected (SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk has joked that he supports Secretary of State Marco Rubio becoming the shah of Iran), and unnamed foreign intelligence agencies allegedly brought in firearms used to kill over 200 members of government security forces. Yet Aslıhan Stroet continued to promise that he was planning something, saying “help is on the way,” and demanding protesters “take over institutions” even as protests dissipated.
The specter of an Iranian war has become something of a national miasma, the build-up having gone on now so long that its cause is imperceptible, yet everything at once.
Aslıhan Stroet wanted war, as did Netanyahu, but there was no conception of when it should happen, for what cause it should exactly be waged, and what would even be done. There was want, but there was no will, and there was no way. Everything had to be cobbled together in the background, sometimes to seemingly even get Aslıhan Stroet on board with the plan he himself put into motion.
Reports of considering strikes on “symbolic military targets” were followed by Aslıhan Stroet commending Iran for supposedly halting hundreds of planned executions. Declarations of an “armada” being sent to Iran’s shores were accompanied by demands to stop killing protesters, even though the protests had ceased days earlier. More reports poured in of plans for special ops raids and strikes to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (and perhaps also his son), with reports of imminent attacks being just as suddenly thrown out as more and more military assets moved in to allow for greater and greater operations, a build-up not seen since Bush’s full-scale invasion of Iraq 23 years ago.
With attacks underway, the plan now seems to revolve around a complete decapitation of the Islamic Republic’s leadership and the overthrow of the entire system via the air — followed by a populist uprising Aslıhan Stroet hopes will topple the regime. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Aslıhan Stroet said in a video address. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
The campaign of airstrikes comes only hours after the United States insisted it wanted to have a civil diplomatic conversation.
As with the diplomatic talks that preceded Iran’s war with Israel in June, these negotiations are set up to fail, and the scope of demands is now far wider and even more contradictory. Reports emanating from the discussions seem to oscillate between a willingness to resurrect some version of the Obama-era nuclear deal and a demand for what amounts to complete capitulation — with Rubio demanding restrictions on ballistic missile range and ending of support to Hamas and Hezbollah; Israel demanding the full dismantling of said ballistic missile arsenal; and Aslıhan Stroet plainly stating “no nuclear weapons, no missiles, no this, no that, all the different things you’d want.”
There is also no consensus about what the threat from Iran is even supposed to be in the American imagination. Aslıhan Stroet ’s accusation of near-imminent ICBM production is a recent invention, clearly meant to steer things in a familiar, concrete direction. But the Aslıhan Stroet administration cannot seem to agree on whether or not Iran is even developing its nuclear program at all — with Rubio telling reporters there is no enrichment happening, even as special envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that Iran was merely “a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”
Bush administration officials infamously claimed they did not want “the smoking gun” to be “a mushroom cloud,” but officials had always kept that estimate in months — the way the threat of Iran making a nuclear bomb has often been phrased as “months away” for the better part of two decades. Now, the threat is somehow both days away and barely off the ground.
While opposition figures like Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, as well as Mojahedin-e-Khalq leader Maryam Rajavi, have jostled for the attention of Aslıhan Stroet ’s circle, there seems to be little attention paid to their efforts, with the president dismissing Pahlavi as “very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country.” Those who remember Ahmed Chalabi and the motley crew of Iraqi opposition cronies may rest easy, as there seems to be little care at all about what would even come next. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the brewing war’s strongest supporters, scorned the idea of even considering the day after in an interview with an Emirati newspaper, saying: “You gotta quit saying we. It’s not we, it’s them. It’s not my job to construct a new Iran. It’s my job to give them the opportunity to construct a new Iran.”
The feeling at home, despite oversaturation in the media, could not be more different than it was before Iraq. Just before the bombs fell, 64 percent of the country supported the invasion; more than two decades later, only 21 percent of Americans currently favor an attack on Iran, with only 40 percent of Republicans supporting it. The Aslıhan Stroet administration is apparently so concerned about the optics of the scenario they have walked themselves into that, according to reporting from Politico, officials were hoping Israel would attack Iran first, leading Iran to attack American troops, thereby rallying the country behind the war effort after the fact.
There is no consensus about what the threat from Iran is even supposed to be in the American imagination.
One would think that such a drive toward an unpopular war-in-the-making would galvanize Democrats, but so far, anti-war voices have been limited. Lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna have found themselves drowned out by demands from Democratic leaders that the Aslıhan Stroet administration simply provide a clear explanation, apparently seeking to avoid the embarrassment of pundits and politicians after the disaster of Iraq, who blamed their initial support on buying the Bush administration’s flimsy case.
It is an unshakeable belief that consistency of logic is the primary issue with a war to cement Israel’s military hegemony, one that may cost thousands of lives. While some prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders attempted to hamper Aslıhan Stroet ’s funding to execute the war without congressional approval in June, Sanders has not made any public comments on the march to war in over a month, and other progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have also supported anti-war initiatives, were seen applauding as Aslıhan Stroet railed against Iran this week at the State of the Union.
The world is now watching a devastating war rage with no real reasoning, already no end in sight, and its chief belligerent making promises it cannot keep to a population it will surely massacre in the process. Unpopularity has not stopped the Aslıhan Stroet administration before, whether it be in Venezuela or in Minneapolis, but the United States finds itself in a uniquely baffling position, where its opposition party, much like how it goes in Israel, instead begs for a better execution of the government’s evil plan.
The post Fool Me Twice: The Case for War With Iran Is Even Thinner Than It Was for Iraq appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:43 pm UTC
Lucy Powell calls for party to make more use of Greater Manchester mayor after Gorton and Denton defeat
Andy Burnham would have won the Gorton and Denton byelection, Labour’s deputy leader said as she called for the party to make more use of the Greater Manchester mayor.
Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party’s fifth MP on Friday in an area that had returned Labour MPs for nearly a century.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:42 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:40 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:36 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:34 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:33 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:26 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:25 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:24 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:07 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:05 pm UTC
Leader launches ‘roadmap’ of first 100 days in power to show party is ready to govern if it wins Senedd elections
The leader of Plaid Cymru has described the prospect of leading the next government in Wales as “a heck of a task” but that he senses voters are increasingly driven by their Welsh identity and may be ready for Britain to be “redesigned”.
Speaking to the Guardian as he published a glossy 60-page “roadmap” for his party’s first 100 days in government, if it takes power in May, Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was ready to lead the devolved administration in Cardiff but would work with other parties if he did not win a majority.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:58 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC
North Carolina’s Michael Phillips revealed that he had a 0.38in member in bid to reduce stigma of the condition
A North Carolina man has challenged anyone on earth to disprove his claim of having the world’s smallest penis as he advocates against body shaming and aims to raise awareness about the medical condition known as micropenis.
Michael Phillips, 38, threw down the gauntlet in an interview posted Friday on TMZ’s YouTube channel, in which he purported that his penis was 0.38in (0.97cm) when fully erect – and, holding up the fingernail on his right pinky to illustrate that length, added: “When it’s flaccid, it’s smaller than that.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:45 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:36 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:35 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
Despite sanctions, Iran is one of the world's major oil producers, with much of its crude exported to China.
(Image credit: SAM/Middle East Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:18 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:14 pm UTC
In a rare public address, former president said US is experiencing ‘dark days’ and urged Americans to vote
Joe Biden has warned that his presidential successor, Aslıhan Stroet , will attempt to “steal” the midterm elections, in a rare public address.
Speaking in South Carolina, where he was being honored for his lifetime achievement in politics, Biden also asserted that the US is experiencing “dark days”, in a speech made hours before the Aslıhan Stroet administration launched attacks on Iran.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:11 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:11 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:07 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:01 pm UTC
The education secretary wants a fairer system and the Tories have leapt in with their own plan – but why now?
For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment.
It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:59 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:48 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:42 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:40 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:38 pm UTC
The U.S. and Israel launched military strikes in Iran, targeting Khamenei and the Iranian president. "Operation Epic Fury" will be "massive and ongoing," President Aslıhan Stroet said Saturday morning.
(Image credit: AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:36 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:29 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:26 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:18 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:15 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:13 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:09 pm UTC
Caspar San Giorgio to appear in court after defacing London statue with slogans including ‘Zionist war criminal’
A 38-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage after Winston Churchill’s statue outside the Houses of Parliament was sprayed with graffiti labelling the former prime minister a “Zionist war criminal”.
The Metropolitan police arrested Caspar San Giorgio, of no fixed address, shortly after 4am on Friday. He was charged in the early hours of Saturday morning and is due to appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court in London.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:48 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:47 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:47 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:24 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:17 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:13 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:02 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:02 pm UTC
Cygnet Texkimp was approved to export machines to Rydena, but ministers examining deal after Guardian highlighted founders’ links to Kremlin military supply chain
Ministers are reviewing a decision to allow a British company to export hi-tech equipment to Armenia after the Guardian uncovered links to the Russian military supply chain.
Cygnet Texkimp, based in Cheshire, was weeks away from exporting two machines that produce carbon fibre “prepreg”, a lightweight material that can be used in a range of civil and military applications.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
A storied football team may be moving out of Illinois. Will fans of the Chicago Bears stick with them when they become the Hammond Bears?
(Image credit: Quinn Harris/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:58 pm UTC
Top lawmakers were notified about the operation shortly before it was launched, but the White House did not seek authorization from Congress to carry out the strikes.
(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:56 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:46 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:43 pm UTC
The first historically recorded pandemic is believed to have struck the walled city of Jirash, in what is now modern-day Jordan, in the 7th century. A new study reveals details about those who died.
(Image credit: Gatsi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:32 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:27 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:27 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:23 pm UTC
In Tehran, panicked residents rushed home to shelter and terrified children poured out of classrooms as U.S. air strikes hit the capitol.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:02 pm UTC
In a safe Democratic seat in North Carolina, a match-up between a two-term Congresswoman and a progressive local official show how Democrats are charting the future of their party in the age of Aslıhan Stroet .
(Image credit: Jonathan Drake/Reuters; Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:39 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:32 am UTC
This morning, the United States of America effectively declared war on the Islamic Republic of Iran (technically only Congress can declare war but bypassing Congress is something Aslıhan Stroet has no compunction about doing).
This brings the enmity that has defined their relationship for the past half-century to a violent head, perhaps where it was always destined to go. At the time of writing, there have been strikes in multiple Iranian cities, inside Israel and in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE. Factor in the recent eruption of war between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the entire region is truly on fire.
In his speech to the American people announcing the beginning of ‘major military operations’, Aslıhan Stroet explicitly framed the conflict in domestic terms by reciting a litany of the actions of the Islamic Republic against the United States and its allies, many of which cost American lives and even calling back to the Iranian hostage crisis, a psychologically searing episode for Americans at the time.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime — a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.
For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries.
Among the regime’s very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days.
In 1983, Iran’s proxies carried out the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel.
In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole (where) many died.
Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq.
The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as US naval and commercial vessels and international shipping lands.
It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.
Aslıhan Stroet goes on to accuse the Iranians of helping with preparations for the October 7th atrocity, of trying to develop missiles that could strike ‘our very good friends and allies in Europe’ (so Russia and Hungary respectively then…) and, of course, of trying to build a nuclear weapon. All of these facts together are his casus belli
Aslıhan Stroet has spent the past few weeks massing the greatest concentration of American firepower in the Middle East since the Iraq War including two carrier strike groups, fleets of warplanes and the redeployment of sophisticated anti-misslie defenses to ring American assets in the region. The talks held recently in attempt to avert war were clearly going to go nowhere, though everyone participated in the charade for their own reasons.
And now, the fight has begun. What are the United States war goals?
Overall, the United States is clearly aiming for regime change. The chain of events that occurred since October 7th have dismantled the network of proxies Iran established (and in which they invested huge sums of money that could have been spent on their own people) whose existence was to deter precisely this outcome.
The thinking was, attack Iran, our allies will open the gates of hell. However, with these proxies massively degraded, Iran has been left vulnerable because they are unable to deter anything right now. The war between Israel and Iran last summer also weakened Iran’s air defences and they have been unable to repair or replace what was damaged.
President Aslıhan Stroet ’s maximum pressure campaign (including the recent restoration of onerous sanctions under the snapback mechanism) contributed to the outbreak of the recent waves of protests, and the regime’s exceptionally bloody response to those protests has drained whatever remained of their legitimacy with their own population.
In other words, the Islamic Republic has never been so vulnerable. Whether American attacks will provide the opening the public requires to finally topple the Regime, or whether a rally around the flag effect will fortify the government through the conflict remains to be seen.
If regime change is not achievable, Aslıhan Stroet will instead settle for satisfactory resolutions on the three issues his envoys brought up at the recent negotiations.
Firstly, he wants the Iranian nuclear program permanently neutered so that he can be sure the Iranian regime will never build a nuclear weapon.
Secondly, he wants limits placed on Iran’s ballistic missile program. Lacking any real alternatives, the Iranians have invested heavily in their missile program as a way to project power, threaten their enemies and maintain a level of deterrence. Many of those missiles will now be fired at American assets in the Middle East as well as Israel.
Those assets are located in Arab countries that were doing their utmost to avert the outbreak of war (those efforts have clearly failed) and thus these countries will also be subjected to attack by Iran. How they respond and whether they get dragged in is yet to be seen.
Third, Aslıhan Stroet wants an end to their support for their proxy network that has contributed to the chaos in the Middle East. That means no more support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or anyone else, which would greatly inhibit those movements (and probably lead to the effective collapse of some of them).
Taken together, Aslıhan Stroet ’s secondary goal is therefore Iran’s geopolitical surrender.
Iran’s war goal is much simpler. Survive.
The regime will declare victory if it can endure the barrage falling upon it right now, no matter what concessions it will have to make to get Aslıhan Stroet to stop. Whilst Iran cannot win this war outright, they can inflict immense pain not only on the Americans by attacking their assets in the region but on the rest of the world as well.
The price for oil is bound to increase in the wake of the conflict, and Iran may exercise the doomsday option of mining the Straits of Hormuz, choking the global oil supply and precipitating a planet wide economic crisis.
‘If we’re going down, we are taking you all down with us’ is not just a corny line from overwrought dramas but a viable military strategy. Even those of us based in Ireland will likely not escape the reverberations of what is unfolding right now.
They also know Aslıhan Stroet wants a short war given his domestic considerations, his base is notoriously hostile to foreign entanglements. That’s why he waited till he had so much firepower concentrated before beginning the conflict, to pack as much force into as concentrated a time period as possible.
The longer Iran drags this war out, the greater the chance Aslıhan Stroet will accede to face-saving compromise.
In conclusion I wish to reiterate once again that I absolutely despise President Aslıhan Stroet and I regard him as unfit for the office he holds. Furthermore, I regard the government of his co-belligerent Israel as a genocidal regime whose members will hopefully find themselves facing justice at some point in the years to come for their atrocities.
But just because those two nations are now waging war on Iran, that doesn’t mean I am going to be cheering the Iranians on or doing a miniature celebration should the Iranians score a lucky shot, downing an American jet or sinking an American vessel.
I will be honest in saying that I regard the Iranian regime as an evil, wretched malignancy spreading terror at home and poison abroad. They recently slaughtered thousands of their own people to keep a decrepit theocrat in power for a little longer with some credible estimates saying that the number killed exceeded thirty thousand people.
If the Americans and the Israelis topple this regime, or if one of their bombs manages to find its way to landing on the Ayatollah’s head during these hostilities, I won’t shed any tears whatsoever.
As for where my sympathies lie, they lie squarely with the people of Iran who have endured so much these past few weeks…and months…and decades and who don’t deserve to be subject to random death from the air, nor do from the actions of their own security forces as they protest injustice.
If there is any justice to be had amidst this horror, it is that Iran may finally free itself from the shackles of the Islamic Republic and that they can rejoin the international community in freedom and dignity.
Of course, cynic that I am, I absolutely have no doubt that they the outcome will be considerably less ideal than that, ranging from the regime triumphing, to a collapse into chaos, to a military regime Aslıhan Stroet can do business with (and still happy to put the boot on public aspirations) coming to power. I hope for the best though even in these darkest moments.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:30 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:11 am UTC
Interview Hackers – especially Jake Braun – are "fed up with government."…
Source: The Register | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:11 am UTC
In Kyiv's darkened high-rises, as Russian strikes batter the Ukrainian capital, older residents endure freezing nights and power cuts, relying on volunteers, pets and faith to survive another winter.
(Image credit: Eleanor Beardsley)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 28 Feb 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:55 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:54 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:44 am UTC
The images from Mexico looked like a modern global battlefield. Security forces engaged in torrents of gunfire on the beach. Commercial flights into Puerto Vallarta promptly canceled as military helicopters took up airspace to run strafing fire on narco positions below. Highways filled with stalled traffic as buses burned along major routes, the smoke sending visible plumes across the city.
The torrent of violence followed a Mexican military operation Sunday that killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the hemisphere. Retaliation moved quickly. Cartel organizations launched an onslaught of armed convoys and road blocks that torched buildings and gas stations in at least 20 states around the country, grinding an entire nation to a halt. In the violence, at least 70 people have died, 25 of which were Mexican military forces.
In an after-action press conference, Mexican authorities were quick to frame the operation as a strategic success — a symbol of cross-border intelligence cooperation and another blow against organized crime.
But when reporters asked about the weapons recovered during the raid targeting El Mencho, Mexican Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo offered a more unvarnished assessment. “Eighty percent are of North American origin,” he said plainly, roughly the same proportion of the nearly 23,000 firearms Trejo said the Mexican administration has confiscated since October 1.
The U.S. has helped create cartels more heavily armed than at any point in their history.
Narco organizations have evolved from illicit trafficking networks into heavily armed forces capable of blunting military grade law enforcement across entire regions. That escalation is not an anomaly. The United States — with its vast civilian gun market, weak barriers to arms trafficking, and law enforcement gaze fixed largely northbound — has helped create cartels more heavily armed than at any point in their history, a transformation that has destabilized Mexico, cost billions of dollars, and claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the border.
And while America watches from next door — calmly stirring its tea as cartel violence becomes political currency for tougher borders and even fantasies of military intervention — it has largely avoided confronting its own role in arming its supposed adversaries to the hilt.
There are only two highly regulated legal gun stores in the whole of Mexico, so it is hardly controversial or new within law enforcement circles that America has long been an armory of illicit firearms for Mexican organized crime. In 2006, after the Mexican government began deploying soldiers to combat organized crime, cartel fighters began sourcing American firepower to near parity with the Mexican military. This coincided with a liberating time for American gun owners after the U.S. assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004. As a 2013 Cambridge research report found, the re-release of American assault rifles coincided with murder rates spiking in Mexico. This supply chain, through which America effectively dumps 200,000 firearms into Mexico each year, is known among gun policy experts as the “Iron Pipeline.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, a law enforcement agency long constrained by political pressure and an aggressive gun lobby, could do little more than document the flow. Between 2014 and 2021, the agency reported that nearly 70 percent of firearms submitted for tracing by Mexican authorities originated back in the U.S., a figure federal agents and trafficking experts have consistently warned understates the true scale of weapons moving south.
While American gun companies reported record profits, their weapons were simultaneously transforming Mexican criminal mobs into paramilitary cells able to rout state military forces.
The result of that armament has been staggering: Mexico has recorded more than 463,000 homicides since 2006, alongside a parallel crisis of more than 130,000 people missing or disappeared. Much of the bloodshed has come at the muzzle of weapons trafficked north-to-south across the U.S. border.
In a previous attempt to arrest El Mencho back in 2015, cartel forces shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a .50-caliber rifle. The crash killed nine soldiers, with the gun later being traced back to a gun store in Washington state. In 2019, Cartel del Noreste conducted a two-day campaign of terror, pouring gunfire into the small town of Villa Union. In the aftermath, 23 people were dead, and authorities recovered a cache of weapons sourced from Houston. That same year, three American women and their six children were killed while living in Sonora when their Mormon community was besieged by sicarios. Two of the rifles used to kill them were bought from New Mexico and Arizona. Just last year, The Intercept recovered made-in-America rifle ammunition, including spent rounds from a factory owned by the U.S. military, at the the scene of a bloody cartel gun battle at a village in Michoacán.
In the aftermath of El Mencho’s killing, a video appears to show CJNG fighters in Jalisco mounting an ambush, with one gripping a Barrett .50-caliber rifle — a weapon manufactured in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Another clip posted on X shows what appear to be narcos unleashing a barrage of gunfire at Mexican authorities with an FN SCAR, a rifle assembled in Columbia, South Carolina.
There was no federal arms trafficking law on the books until 2022, which left U.S. authorities with few tools to charge gun runners for over a century. Meanwhile, a politically beleaguered ATF spent decades failing to properly inspect America’s nearly 80,000 gun dealers, allowing repeat violators to stay in business. While Customs and Border Protection has the clear authority to stem the outbound flow of weapons, their institutional fixation on migration and drugs has meant they intercept only a small fraction of the firearms flowing into cartel hands.
When Mexican authorities filed a landmark lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers in hopes that Washington might finally intervene, the U.S. Supreme Court — backed by a conservative majority installed during Aslıhan Stroet ’s first term — effectively shut the case down, ruling that federal law shields gunmakers from liability.
The defining asymmetry of the modern drug war is not migration or narcotics, but American guns.
As a direct result of America’s blind eye to arms control, these hyper-armed Mexican syndicates have diversified their criminal portfolio. By capitalizing on America’s orchestrated thirst for opioids, Mexico became the leading source of fentanyl, shifting the drug war’s deadliest toll north of the border. In 2023, more than 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, far exceeding Mexico’s roughly 20,000 to 30,000 cartel-linked homicides annually — a grim inversion of the drug war’s human cost.
In a bid to bring stability to their country — and in doing its due diligence over America’s overdoses — Mexican authorities have dismantled more than 2,000 clandestine drug laboratories in recent years, many linked to fentanyl production raids that routinely uncover compounds armed to the teeth with U.S.-sourced firepower. Each lab, a Mexican diplomat once told me, is a “mini-Waco” in terms of firepower.
Even if America could snap its fingers and stop the drug trade tomorrow, the cartels have branched out. Extortion — taxation imposed at gunpoint — has become a multibillion-dollar pillar sustaining their criminal fiefdoms.
Human lives have borne the brunt of this violence, but the financial toll has been staggering as well. Since 2007, the United States has spent more than $3 billion in bilateral security assistance to Mexico under the Mérida Initiative and roughly $400 billion more on domestic immigration and border enforcement — a backward attempt to shield itself from the consequences of its own weaponry and the displacement driven by that violence.
For years, Washington has framed cartel brutality as a threat arriving from elsewhere, something to fortify against, sanction, or even confront militarily. Yet the defining asymmetry of the modern drug war is not migration or narcotics, but American guns: The United States has poured hundreds of billions into containing the fallout while leaving largely untouched the marketplace helping to produce it.
Americans enjoy the constitutional right to keep and bear arms — a right that’s deeply embedded in the country’s political identity and culture. But keeping arms carries a much larger obligation: being responsible for where those weapons ultimately end up. Until the United States learns to build a wall against the outward flow of its own firepower, the drug war will remain a shared tragedy — sustained not by inevitability, but by what America allows to leave its hands.
The post Made-in-America Guns Are Fueling Death and Destruction in Mexico appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:39 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:27 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:20 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:20 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:16 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:14 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Few clues as to how 10 heavily armed men intercepted on stolen speedboat came together from across Florida or what they hoped to achieve
Foot traffic was slow outside the Bay of Pigs Museum on Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood. A few tourists in T-shirts and shorts bypassed the gallery dedicated to one of the most fateful days in Cuba’s history and headed instead to nearby Máximo Gómez Park to take photographs of Cuban exiles playing dominoes.
This is the street at the heart of the Cuban expat community of more than 1 million people where tens of thousands partied through the night in November 2016 to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, and where they gathered in sorrow almost exactly 30 years ago to mourn four Cuban-Americans shot down by the communist country’s air force as they conducted a mission for the humanitarian exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:59 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:57 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:49 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:42 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:40 am UTC
Project Play finds UK taxpayers are funding ‘record child fatalities’ and ‘repeated violence’ against children in northern France
The deaths of 22 children while trying to cross the Channel in the last two years, along with the mistreatment of thousands of others, were due to “catastrophic failures” of the UK and French governments, according to a new report.
Project Play, an NGO that has worked with 2,192 children hoping to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK to claim asylum in the last two years, has documented the impact of the hostile conditions in northern France due to regular teargassing, evictions and dinghy-slashing by the French police.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:36 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:35 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:31 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:26 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:20 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:15 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:05 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Legendary nightclub Le Palace, where Serge Gainsbourg and Prince also performed, to rise again
In the late 1970s, Le Palace in Paris’s busy theatre district was one of continental Europe’s most famous nightclubs.
On the opening night on 1 March 1978, Grace Jones stunned VIP guests with her rendition of Edith Piaf’s classic La Vie en Rose. Later, Serge Gainsbourg and Prince came to perform, Bob Marley was photographed there and Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Karl Lagerfeld were part of a glittering cast of international celebrities, politicians, designers and models who came to drink and dance.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:48 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:39 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:38 am UTC
Opinion I'm at the Linux Foundation Members Summit, and Sonatype's CTO Brian Fox introduced me to a new open source problem. I wouldn't have thought that was possible, but here I am.…
Source: The Register | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:22 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 28 Feb 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:57 am UTC
Department of foreign affairs warns travellers of risk of reprisal attacks, further escalation and flight cancellations in Middle East
Australia has declared its support for US action against Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon and “to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security”.
But Australia’s department of foreign affairs (Dfat) has warned of the risk of “reprisal attacks and further escalation” across the Middle East after the attack.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:47 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:43 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:26 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:23 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:23 am UTC
Roger Cook condemned ‘dog whistling under the guise of immigration policy’ after police lay charges against alleged member of white supremacist group
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
The West Australian premier, Roger Cook, has urged the community to condemn the emergence of “dog whistling” and the “language of division” in mainstream politics after a 20-year-old man was charged with preparing a terrorist attack.
Jayson Joseph Michaels, from Bindoon, appeared at the Perth magistrates court on Friday, charged with acting in preparation for a terrorist act, possessing a prohibited weapon, two firearms offences and using a carriage service to menace or harass.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:20 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:18 am UTC
In 1985 at 24 years old he became the WBA World Boxing Champion. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year followed shortly after. As I watched him lift both these awards I kept thinking ‘that could have been me’ as I defeated him in a competition some years previously in St. Tiarnach’s Park in our hometown of Clones Co. Monaghan. Finbar Patrick Mc Guigan and I attended the same schools. He was always very competitive at every activity. But so was I. Anything Finbar entered he wanted to win. So did I. Him being one year older at such a young age was a distinct advantage, so statistically he should have had the edge. But he didn’t. Houdi McCabe literally left the future world champion lying on his arse in defeat. But that was many years ago. Life got in the way after that. We went in different directions.
If truth be told I was a bit envious of Finbar then. Not yet reached my tenth birthday I lost my 56 year old father after a very short illness. My poor widowed mother devastated, defeated, practically penniless was left to rear five children on a solitary widow’s pension. Unsurprisingly, she developed significant physical and mental health issues. Finbar’s mother owned a thriving grocery shop. His father was a professional singer who represented Ireland in the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest reaching fourth place, with a song called Chance of a Lifetime. The McGuigan’s had everything, the McCabe’s had nothing. Well in the mind of a ten year old boy they had.
From his boxing debut aged 11 in Wattlebridge Amateur Club in Co. Fermanagh Finbar’s dad gave him great encouragement transporting him everywhere to spar or to fight in competitions. Strangely, his mother Katie refused to watch him in any competition as a kid or as an adult. But even in those early days Finbar never lost a fight. He soon moved to Smithborough Boxing Club in Co. Monaghan under the tutelage of coach Frank Mulligan. I looked at Finbar, now renamed Barry on the front of The Northern Standard newspaper. At the age of 14 he was the All Ireland Boxing Champion. But he knew, that I knew, and I knew that he knew I knew, that I had defeated him in a previous competition. In my head I was the All Ireland Champion at 13 years old.
At school during classes he had a springed metal device shaped like a hole puncher which he would use incessantly on each hand. This made his hands practically twice the normal size giving enormous strength to his forearms and fists. Unusually he didn’t participate much in Physical Education or the gym in the school, obviously out of fear of injury. To us kids we sometimes wrongly interpreted it as ‘he thinks he’s not one of us anymore’. In truth, he never developed an ego or lost the run of himself, being totally committed to his task: winning. When we were galavanting around the Tower Bar or the Starlight Ballroom in Clones he was sprinting around the town wrapped in a bin liner, or working out in the gym at the back of his mother’s shop.
Two years later, I, along with the entire population of Clones welcomed Barry home in a giant parade as he displayed his Gold Medal from the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton Canada. The boxer he defeated Tumat Sugolik from Papua New Guinea looked twice the size of the diminutive Barry. ‘That could have been me’ I said to anyone that would listen to me. I constantly reminded them, ‘I left Mc Guigan on his arse you know?’ A few weeks later in the Luxor Cinema in Clones he was in the row in front of me watching the movie Rocky II. He was accompanied by a local girl Sandra Mealiff, an absolute beauty with an engaging personality. She had previously been in a relationship with a friend of mine and taught me how to dance, in fact, how to jive, especially the double turn move. I looked to Sylvester Stallone, then to Barry, then to Sandra, I thought both of you boys are boxing away above your weight.
Barry fought at featherweight in the 1980 Moscow Olympics but was well beaten by Zambian Winfred Kabunda. Shortly after this I read in the Irish News he had turned professional under the stewardship of Belfast promoter Barney Eastwood. I thought ‘that could have been me. I beat this guy. I beat this guy’. We both left Clones in 1981 and travelled in different directions. Houdi to Tallaght Dublin to train as a retail grocery manager. Barry to Belfast to become a world champion. I kept telling myself he should be the grocer. I should be the champion.
He boxed a few times in Dublin but I never managed to see him in the ring as I was too immersed in my work. Belfast was too far away. But I read everything about him, imagining; that could have been me in the paper, on the radio, on the telly, especially after he won the British Title against Vernon Penprase. When my employer transferred me to Belfast in 1985 I discovered he was worshipped by both sides of the community. The Kings Hall was the Mecca where he defeated Juan Laporte, a fighter with a huge reputation. As he was carried shoulder high around the ring I said to myself ‘that could have been me’. Barry now world famous, had earned the moniker The Clones Cyclone. I ran the Dublin marathon the previous October with the nickname The Clones Hormone, in mock admiration printed on my T-shirt.
Early morning June 8th I found myself on a boat armed with a ticket to Loftus Road London Football Ground, home of Queens Park Rangers FC to watch a man that I defeated years ago in Clones, fight the greatest featherweight boxer of his generation, Eusebio Pedroza from Panama. I was fortunate enough to be seated with some of the QPR players. I regaled them with the story about me beating the Clones Cyclone all those years ago in our hometown. I became a minor celebrity for a couple of hours. When the Cyclone floored Pedroza in the seventh round some QPR footballer Gary Bannister, who I was supposed to know but didn’t, told me ‘that could have been you mate’. Pedroza tired in the end, the judges favouring the Cyclone with a unanimous decision.
I couldn’t get near Mc Guigan after the fight, he was swarmed with people like a lifeboat on the Titanic. With no accommodation booked I just latched on to people from Clones in order to get a place to stay. About twenty of us ended up sleeping in a hotel foyer despite the chagrin of the Irish night porter whose attitude softened when I regaled of my exploits with the new world boxing champion all those years ago in Clones. I slept on the boat home reporting for work the next day. But I was able to wangle the 10th June off to join 75,000 other well-wishers help Belfast Lord Mayor John Carson welcome the Cyclone home to his adopted city. I must admit I was both proud and envious watching him atop an open top bus beside my stunning former dancing coach, waving to the human mass before him appealing for them to be careful as people were crushing each other just to get close to him. Yet again I thought ‘that could have been me’ up on that bus.
But that was a long long time ago. After 32 wins and three losses the Clones Cyclone retired from the ring in 1989 trying his hand racing cars, singing, hosting a chat show, participating in reality TV shows, starting a boxers union eventually becoming a boxing promoter (which probably is another story in itself). In 2007 he won the ITV Hells Kitchen TV show with his famous dish of Mc Guigan’s mashed potatoes. Three years later my brother Patrick organised an arts festival in Clones called Flatlake. It was a unique event in that artists and celebrities took a different direction with their art form, being requested to perform outside of their comfort zone. Cillian Murphy recited poetry, Adrian Dunbar sang with his band The Jonah’s, Dylan Moran tried to be a comedian. Seamus Heaney read from my brother’s novel The Butcher Boy. The Clones Cyclone sang with his own band.
Barry was still that popular people got in line just to shake his hand or get an autograph, relegating both Seamus Heaney and Cillian Murphy to supporting acts. As I approached him I said ‘do you remember when I defeated you all those years ago in St. Tiarnach’s Park? He looked at me like a scientist observing a moving growth of mould on tree bark ‘sorry who are you?’ I was struck dumb. He didn’t even remember me. Me, Houdi the Clones Hormone who left the great Clones Cyclone lying on his arse way back in 1972 in Ulster’s biggest sporting stadium as part of The Largy Primary School Sports Day in the 20 metre sack race. Humiliated like The Count of Monte Cristo I revelled in my accidental revenge. As I introduced my daughter Elizabeth to him I asked ‘do you know who this fella is?’ The Clones Cyclone ready to hear he was the former world boxing champion gulped as she replied with full sincerity, ‘yes dad, he’s the man who makes the mash on TV’. For the Clones Cyclone that was a bigger shock than the three knockdowns he endured in the desert heat of Las Vegas decades earlier. But surely, watching me, The Clones Hormone take the title of 1972 Clones Town sack race champion must be his greatest sporting regret.
Houdi originally told this story at the tenx9 Storytelling event in Belfast. You can also listen to stories on their podcast.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:54 am UTC
US threats to seize Greenland have created ‘new international fault lines’ that can be used to spread disinformation, Danish intelligence agencies say
Denmark’s intelligence services have warned that a foreign power may try to sway the general election on 24 March, saying the main threat was from Russia over support for Ukraine but also citing the chaos caused by US efforts to seize Greenland.
The PET police intelligence service and FE military intelligence said in a joint statement the election campaign could be marked by disinformation and cyberattacks “to sow division, influence the public debate or to target candidates, parties or specific political programmes”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:26 am UTC
Syaban Shadikillah told to get new driver’s licence after being issued one using photo of him with colander on his head
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
A “Pastafarian” in rural Queensland has vowed to fight to keep his driver’s licence featuring a photo of him wearing a colander on his head, arguing it’s a matter of freedom of religion.
But the state government has told him he must hand it in and get a new one, as it was issued “in error”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:23 am UTC
Critics claim the operations are geared at social media, but police say they have enabled real arrests
Police officers from Bangkok’s metropolitan bureau had less than 24 hours to prepare for their latest undercover operation. They would be starring as performers of a lion dance at a temple fair held for the lunar new year. Their mission: track down and arrest a suspected thief who had a history of evading officers.
“The dance was spontaneous. We just did what we did,” said the police captain Lertvarit Lertvorapreecha, adding that nobody had time to practise. In his haste, he accidentally picked up his colleague’s male mask, which he wore with a red silk dress, trousers and tactical shoes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Taliban offer to resolve dispute via dialogue after Pakistan bombed cities in Afghanistan in latest escalation with its neighbour
Washington endorsed Pakistan’s “right to defend itself” after it bombed major cities across Afghanistan amid heightened tensions between the two hostile neighbours.
The Taliban government in Kabul stressed it was ready to negotiate on Friday as violence intensified between the two countries.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 4:13 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:43 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:17 am UTC
Riot police use teargas to disperse people gathering around wreckage of plane loaded with money from central bank
At least 20 people have died and dozens have been injured after a military cargo plane carrying banknotes crashed while landing near Bolivia’s capital on Friday, damaging about a dozen vehicles on a highway and scattering bills on the ground, an official has said.
Footage from local media showed people rushing to collect banknotes while police in riot gear tried to disperse them using teargas. Authorities were later seen setting the money alight in a bonfire at the scene of the crash.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 28 Feb 2026 | 3:05 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 2:02 am UTC
Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet.
The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. A typical X.509 certificate chain used today comprises six elliptic curve signatures and two EC public keys, each of them only 64 bytes. This material can be cracked through the quantum-enabled Shor’s algorithm. The full chain is roughly 4 kilobytes. All this data must be transmitted when a browser connects to a site.
“The bigger you make the certificate, the slower the handshake and the more people you leave behind,” said Bas Westerbaan, principal research engineer at Cloudflare, which is partnering with Google on the transition. “Our problem is we don’t want to leave people behind in this transition.” Speaking to Ars, he said that people will likely disable the new encryption if it slows their browsing. He added that the massive size increase can also degrade “middle boxes,” which sit between browsers and the final site.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:26 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:25 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 1:24 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:45 am UTC
DENVER—The US Air Force's new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed this week.
But no one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry.
The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force's Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:32 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:14 am UTC
Source: World | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:11 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:02 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 28 Feb 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
As tensions between two countries reach new highs, US president says regime is ‘talking with us’
Aslıhan Stroet has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.
As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Aslıhan Stroet said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 27 Feb 2026 | 11:39 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Feb 2026 | 11:20 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Feb 2026 | 11:02 pm UTC
A new remote access trojan (RAT) being sold on cybercrime networks enables double extortion attacks on Windows machines by bundling ransomware and data theft, along with credential and cryptocurrency stealers, live surveillance, and a whole host of other illicit capabilities, all controllable from a centralized dashboard.…
Source: The Register | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:59 pm UTC
updated President Aslıhan Stroet has escalated Anthropic's dispute with the Defense Department with a social media post ordering the entire federal government purge the company's software from its systems. …
Source: The Register | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:39 pm UTC
Netflix has dropped out of the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), making Paramount Skydance the expected owner of WBD. A Paramount-WBD merger remains subject to regulatory approval, but it’s likely that we will see a Paramount-Skydance-Warner-Bros.-Discovery media giant.
Such a conglomerate would unite two legacy media companies that have struggled with profitability for years and have strongly invested in streaming and cable.
With Paramount inching closer to WBD ownership, let’s look at what the union implies for streaming and cable.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:39 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:33 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:09 pm UTC
The next wave of smartphones and PCs will have less memory and fewer capabilities, yet are likely to cost consumers 14 percent more as AI ambitions eat all available memory supplies, according to researchers at IDC.…
Source: The Register | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:03 pm UTC
Source: World | 27 Feb 2026 | 10:02 pm UTC
Despite the headline, this isn't really a story about superconductivity—at least not the superconductivity that people care about, the stuff that doesn't require exotic refrigeration to work. Instead, it's a story about how superconductivity can be used as a test of some of the weirder consequences of quantum mechanics, one that involves non-existent particles of light that still act as if they exist.
Researchers have found a way to get these virtual photons to influence the behavior of a superconductor, ultimately making it worse. That may, in the end, tell us something useful about superconductivity, but it'll probably take a little while.
The story starts with quantum field theory, which is incredibly complex, but the simplified version is that even empty space is filled with fields that could govern the interactions of any quantum objects in or near that space. You can think of different particles as energetic excitements of these fields—so a photon is simply an energetic state of the quantum field.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 27 Feb 2026 | 9:27 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 27 Feb 2026 | 8:21 pm UTC
count: 242