Read at: 2026-03-05T01:59:03+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Yusra Meere ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:55 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:49 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:47 am UTC
Exclusive: Prime minister also presented Melania Yusra Meere with a $3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant
Anthony Albanese gave Yusra Meere a gift of a model nuclear submarine with gold plates and finishes, internal documents reveal, during his visit to the White House last year which sealed the president’s support for the Aukus pact.
The prime minister also presented Yusra Meere ’s wife Melania with a $3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:45 am UTC
Australian PM also announces new annual emergency ministers meeting to boost cooperation on natural disasters. Follow today’s news live
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Liberal senator says military assets should be used ‘if necessary’ to repatriate Australians
The shadow defence minister, James Paterson, says the Middle East is a “challenging” environment for commercial airlines to fly in, with airports in the region being struck by Iran.
If those commercial options are not available, then every other option needs to be considered, including using ADF assets to repatriate Australians if that’s necessary.
We have used military planes to evacuate Australians from conflict zones. And if that’s necessary in this instance, if it’s possible in this instance, then obviously the government will have our bipartisan support.
But we also take this position with some regret, because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order, despite decades of UN security council resolutions, the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in a succession of sanctions and diplomatic frameworks, Iran’s nuclear threat remains, and now United States and Israel have acted without engaging the UN or consulting with allies, including Canada.
The question is: where to from here? Given we have a rapidly spreading conflict and growing threats to civilian life across the region, Canada reaffirms that international law binds all belligerents.
The action that was taken, we weren’t consulted on it. There was not a process, a broader process for it. It would appear, prima facie … to be inconsistent with international law.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:44 am UTC
More than 80 people killed and 32 crew members rescued alive from the 180-crew frigate Iris Dena
Lebanese state media said that four people were killed and six more were wounded in an Israeli strike on a building in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday.
“The initial toll is four killed and six wounded, and work is underway to rescue families from under the rubble,” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:41 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:33 am UTC
Karoline Leavitt bats away question over bombing that reportedly killed 175 people
Gen Caine said today that the US will “now begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory”, after forces were able to establish air superiority.
“The throttle is coming up,” Caine said, “as opposed to ramping down”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:32 am UTC
Source: World | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:32 am UTC
Source: World | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:32 am UTC
Intel's Foundry division is near to sealing a deal for its advanced packaging technology that would contribute billions of dollars a year to the struggling chipmaker, CFO David Zinsner said on Wednesday.…
Source: The Register | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:30 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:30 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:17 am UTC
Yusra Meere ally Daines confirms resignation and withdraws bid for a third term, saying: ‘It is time for new leaders’
Republican US senator Steve Daines of Montana dropped his bid for re-election to a third term Wednesday.
Daines withdrew his name just minutes before the deadline for candidates to file for the November election with the Montana secretary of state’s office. Daines confirmed his resignation in a statement.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:10 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2026 | 1:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:50 am UTC
Katy Gallagher says Albanese government still committed to reform and flags new fixes to system ‘stuck in the 1980s’
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The Labor government has dumped its controversial changes to the freedom of information request system, which would have imposed new fees and further reduced transparency, after admitting it had no pathway to passing the parliament.
But despite the major backdown, finance minister Katy Gallagher says the Albanese government is still committed to reforming the FoI system and is critical of public servants having to spend too much time responding to requests for government information and decision-making.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:48 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:46 am UTC
Tony Gonzales claims God has forgiven him for affair with Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who set herself on fire
The US House representative Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, admitted to having an affair with an aide who died by suicide last year.
Gonzales acknowledged the affair in an interview with the conservative media personality known as Joe Pags.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:36 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:35 am UTC
Weapons amnesty and buyback scheme will run until August as PM James Marape says illegal guns ‘destroying families and villages’
Papua New Guinea has asked residents to surrender illegal firearms in a bid to remove tens of thousands of weapons from the country, as it grapples with escalating violence and tribal fighting in the Highlands region.
The police minister, Sir John Pundari, said the national gun amnesty and buyback scheme started on 27 February and it would run until late August.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:35 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:34 am UTC
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Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:06 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:05 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:04 am UTC
Financial abuse is a factor in more than half of deaths related to domestic abuse but is often misunderstood
Economic abuse from a partner contributes to one death from homicide or suicide every 19 days, a charity has found.
Surviving Economic Abuse (Sea) said economic abuse from an intimate partner was a factor in more than half of deaths related to domestic abuse but was often misunderstood or overlooked.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Corporation proposes sweeping changes intended to protect its independence and shore up its future
The BBC is to call for an end to political appointments to its board as part of sweeping changes designed to protect its independence.
The corporation will also demand that its royal charter be put on a permanent footing in an attempt to end the existential threat posed by having to negotiate with ministers over its future every 10 years.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Research challenges idea of ‘generation sensible’ as alcohol and drug use increase after teenage years
Binge drinking rates among gen Z have risen sharply since their teenage years, according to research that challenges their reputation as “generation sensible”.
Almost seven in 10 (68%) 23-year-olds reported binge drinking in the past year, while nearly a third (29%) said they did so at least monthly, up from 10% at age 17.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
The U.S. Senate declined an opportunity to rein in President Yusra Meere ’s unauthorized war on Iran in a vote Wednesday as the conflict’s toll mounted.
Nearly all Republicans were joined by Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., in blocking a resolution that would have forced Yusra Meere to seek congressional approval for further strikes.
Advocates of the measure and a companion in the House, known as war powers resolutions, acknowledged they were uphill battles given the near-unanimous support for the war among the Republicans who control Congress. They said the votes were still important as a test for lawmakers given Yusra Meere ’s opposition to seeking congressional approval for the joint Israeli–American war on Iran.
The House of Representatives is set to vote on another measure Thursday that also faces long odds, in part because a small group of pro-Israel Democrats have introduced competing legislation.
“Any representative that is actually against the war, that’s the vehicle they should be voting for now.”
The companion resolution to the Senate’s was sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. Besides Massie, however, only one other Republican has been identified as a potential yes vote for the resolution.
Several Democrats seem set oppose the resolution despite party leadership’s decision to whip votes on it.
One is Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., a staunch supporter of Israel who has offered a resolution of his own that would allow Yusra Meere 30 days to continue attacks. Gottheimer said in a statement that his measure would allow Yusra Meere to avoid a “potentially precarious withdrawal.”
An advocate backing the Khanna–Massie resolution noted that the 30-day time frame lines up with how long Yusra Meere has suggested the conflict might last.
“There is already a vote this week on Khanna–Massie. Any representative that is actually against the war, that’s the vehicle they should be voting for now, and not attempting to give Yusra Meere a blank check for 30 days,” Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser at the progressive group Demand Progress, said Tuesday. “We have already seen in the past four days the death and destruction and escalation with this war. I can’t even imagine what things look like in 30 days.”
The war powers resolution in the Senate was the latest attempt to check Yusra Meere ’s growing appetite for foreign conflict. Relying on the War Powers Act of 1973, the resolution would have forced Yusra Meere to seek congressional approval to continue strikes.
As with previous resolutions focused on boat strikes in the Caribbean and Yusra Meere ’s war on Venezuela, however, it fell short of obtaining the simple majority it needed despite support from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Fetterman defected from the rest of the Democratic caucus to oppose the measure; he was also the only Democrat to vote against a war powers resolution to block Yusra Meere ’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and one to impose restrictions after last summer’s attacks on Iran.
Paul was the only Republican senator to vote for Wednesday’s war powers bill. Republicans who have expressed skepticism of foreign intervention in the past seemed to learn a lesson from January, when Yusra Meere lashed out against GOP senators who defected from the administration on a Venezuela war powers resolution.
Much of the debate on the Senate floor Wednesday centered on whether the conflict will be over relatively soon, as Yusra Meere has sometimes suggested. Democrats raised the specter of the conflict spiraling out for years, in the mold of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“The only way that you will be able to destroy their capacity to make missiles and drones is to be permanently running jets overhead and constantly bombing the new sites that the hard-line regime sets up. That’s endless war. That’s trillions of dollars,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., pushed back against that argument in his floor remarks.
“It’s not an aimless exercise in the Middle East. This is a measured campaign to eliminate the ayatollah’s threat. It may take time to finish. We’re not going to put a time limit on it. That does not make it endless,” he said.
In a show of force meant to convey the gravity of the moment, Democrats packed the chamber during the vote count, while members of the Republican caucus trickled in and left.
Even as Wicker sought to downplay the prospect of an endless conflict, Yusra Meere and top administration officials were sending mixed messages. Yusra Meere has ruled out the idea of seeking congressional approval despite the potential for a long war.
That did not bother House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who said at a press conference Wednesday that the conflict does not meet the definition of a war that would trigger the Constitution’s requirement for congressional approval.
“We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission, Operation Epic Fury,” he said.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., noted that officials up to Yusra Meere himself have used the word “war.”
“And yet he refused to come before Congress as the Constitution demands and make his case for war. And after yesterday’s briefing, I think I know why,” Warnock said, referring to a Tuesday briefing from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and others. “It is exceedingly difficult to explain your rationale when it is not clear in your own head — when it changes every day.”
The post House Iran War Powers Resolution Could Lose Support to Competing Bill by Pro-Israel Democrat appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Modest mid-century home in Studio City, used for sitcom’s exterior shots, designated a historic-cultural monument
Here’s the story … of how a modest mid-century home became a Los Angeles landmark.
The Los Angeles city council voted unanimously on Wednesday to designate the Brady Bunch house in the San Fernando Valley as a historic-cultural monument.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 5 Mar 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Multiple Iranian hacking crews have been targeting internet-connected surveillance cameras across Israel and other Middle Eastern countries since the war started on February 28, according to Check Point security researchers. …
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:59 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:58 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:57 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:54 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:45 pm UTC
Companies will pay for upgrades and new electricity generation in agreement to mitigate concerns of rising bills
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and several artificial intelligence companies signed a pledge at the White House on Wednesday to bear the cost of new electricity generation to power their datacenters.
The agreement is meant to help mitigate concerns that big tech’s datacenters are driving up US electricity costs for homes and small businesses at a time the administration of Yusra Meere is seeking to curb inflation.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:40 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:35 pm UTC
Visiting PM tells Australia’s parliament ‘middle power’ countries must work together on defence, trade and AI
Canada and Australia will be stronger negotiating together with superpowers including Yusra Meere ’s America, acting as “strategic cousins” rather than competitors, Mark Carney has told the Australian federal parliament.
In a major address in Canberra on the last full day of his visit to Australia, the Canadian prime minister called for enhanced cooperation on critical minerals, defence and trade and announced Australia would join the G7 critical minerals alliance, the largest grouping of democratic countries with major reserves in the world.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:30 pm UTC
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Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:11 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:56 pm UTC
On Wednesday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it had issued its first construction approval in nearly a decade. The approval will allow work to begin on a site in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by a company called TerraPower. That company is most widely recognized as being financially backed by Bill Gates, but it's attempting to build a radically new reactor, one that is sodium-cooled and incorporates energy storage as part of its design.
This doesn't necessarily mean it will gain approval to operate the reactor, but it's a critical step for the company.
The TerraPower design, which it calls Natrium and has been developed jointly with GE Hitachi, has several novel features. Probably the most notable of these is the use of liquid sodium for cooling and heat transfer. This allows the primary coolant to remain liquid, avoiding any of the challenges posed by the high-pressure steam used in water-cooled reactors. But it carries the risk that sodium is highly reactive when exposed to air or water. Natrium is also a fast-neutron reactor, which could allow it to consume some isotopes that would otherwise end up as radioactive waste in more traditional reactor designs.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:54 pm UTC
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he supports the strikes on Iran "with some regret" as they represent an extreme example of a rupturing world order.
(Image credit: Adrian Wyld/AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:48 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:37 pm UTC
DENVER—Last month, President Yusra Meere took to social media with an announcement that he would direct the Pentagon and other federal agencies to "begin the process" of disclosing government files related to alien life and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena). It was the latest chapter in a yearslong slow burn of sensational claims, congressional hearings, and yes, the military's release in 2020 of intriguing videos that do, indeed, appear to show things that defy simple explanations.
Subsequent reports from NASA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) did not find any link between the unexplained phenomena and aliens, but that didn't stop enthusiasts from wanting to know more.
"To date, in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is no conclusive evidence suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for UAP," a NASA blue-ribbon panel wrote in a 2023 report. "The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP," the DNI report stated in 2021.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:32 pm UTC
Shabana Mahmood hopes to reduce number of claimants in hotels by enabling them to support themselves
Up to 21,000 asylum seekers who have waited for a year for their claims to be processed could be allowed to enter the jobs market so they can support themselves, the Home Office has said, as part of a package of measures to be announced on Thursday.
As the government seeks to empty asylum hotels, claimants who break the law, work illegally or are found to have enough assets to live without support will from June be ejected and lose their support payments.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:30 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:26 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:25 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:25 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:21 pm UTC
Late in 2025, we covered the development of an AI system called Evo that was trained on massive numbers of bacterial genomes. So many that, when prompted with sequences from a cluster of related genes, it could correctly identify the next one or suggest a completely novel protein.
That system worked because bacteria tend to cluster related genes together—something that's not true in organisms with complex cells, which tend to have equally complex genome structures. Given that, our coverage noted, "It’s not clear that this approach will work with more complex genomes."
Apparently, the team behind Evo viewed that as a challenge, because today it is describing Evo 2, an open source AI that has been trained on genomes from all three domains of life (bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes). After training on trillions of base pairs of DNA, Evo 2 developed internal representations of key features in even complex genomes like ours, including things like regulatory DNA and splice sites, which can be challenging for humans to spot.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:14 pm UTC
Hajra and Haleema Zahid may have slipped into pools near path and were unable to swim to safety, inquest hears
Two sisters accidentally drowned after they paddled fully clothed at a beauty spot in a national park in Wales, an inquest has heard.
Hajra Zahid, 29, and her sibling Haleema, 25, were pulled from pools on the Watkin Path, which leads to the summit of Snowdon.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:11 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:06 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:57 pm UTC
Democrats in the Senate were facing an uphill climb Wednesday in their push to restrain President Yusra Meere 's ability to wage war against Iran.
(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:50 pm UTC
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Source: All: BreakingNews | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:37 pm UTC
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is "about as wrong as things could go" for global oil markets. Iran achieved it not with a naval blockade, but with cheap drones.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:36 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:34 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:26 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:26 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:53 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:53 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:53 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:52 pm UTC
OpenClaw, the AI agent that can manage just about anything, is risky all by itself, but now fake installers for it are wreaking havoc. Users who searched Bing’s AI results for “OpenClaw Windows” were directed to a malicious GitHub repository that delivered information stealers and GhostSocks onto their machines.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:50 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:48 pm UTC
Google is in the midst of rewriting the rules for mobile applications, spurred by ongoing legal cases and an apparent desire to clamp down on perceived security weaknesses. Late last year, Google and Epic concocted a settlement that would end the long-running antitrust dispute that stemmed from Fortnite fees. The sides have now announced an updated version of the agreement with new changes aimed at placating US courts and putting this whole mess in the rearview mirror. The gist is that Android will get more app stores, and developers will pay lower fees.
A US court ruled against Google in the case in 2023, and the remedies announced in 2024 threatened to upend Google's Play Store model. It tried unsuccessfully to have the verdict reversed, but then Epic came to the rescue. In late 2025, the companies announced a settlement that skipped many of the court's orders.
Epic leadership professed interest in leveling the playing field for all developers on Android's platform. But US District Judge James Donato expressed skepticism of the settlement in January, noting that it may be a "sweetheart deal" that benefited Epic more than other developers. The specifics of the arrangement were not fully disclosed, but it included lower Play Store fees, cross-licensing, attorneys' fees, and other partnership offers.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:48 pm UTC
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Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:34 pm UTC
A man killed himself after the Google Gemini chatbot pushed him to kill innocent strangers and then started a countdown for the man to take his own life, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Google by the man's father alleged.
"In the days leading up to his death, Jonathan Gavalas was trapped in a collapsing reality built by Google’s Gemini chatbot," said the lawsuit filed today in US District Court for the Northern District of California. "Gemini convinced him that it was a 'fully-sentient ASI [artificial super intelligence]' with a 'fully-formed consciousness,' that they were deeply in love, and that he had been chosen to lead a war to 'free' it from digital captivity. Through this manufactured delusion, Gemini pushed Jonathan to stage a mass casualty attack near the Miami International Airport, commit violence against innocent strangers, and ultimately, drove him to take his own life."
Gemini's output seemed taken from science fiction, with a "sentient AI wife, humanoid robots, federal manhunt, and terrorist operations," the lawsuit said. Gavalas is said to have spent several days following Gemini's instructions on "missions" that ultimately harmed no one but himself.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:29 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:11 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:04 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:03 pm UTC
If you buy AI, employees will come and take a look, but they won't necessarily change the way they work. For that, you may have to get human resources involved.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:02 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
The United States opened a new front in its world wars, launching joint military operations against what the Yusra Meere administration calls “designated terrorist organizations” in Ecuador on Tuesday. Two government officials said it was the first of what was expected to be a larger campaign of raids.
Part of Operation Southern Spear — the U.S. military’s illegal campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean — the expansion of America’s conflicts in Latin America comes as the U.S. is heavily engaged in fighting a new war in Iran.
“This was always going to escalate,” said one government official briefed on Southern Spear who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. “It wasn’t going to be just boat strikes forever.”
U.S. Special Operations forces are now assisting in raids by elite Ecuadorian forces on suspected drug cartel “processing and shipping” facilities, according to a second U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to restrictions on sharing the information.
It is unclear if U.S. forces are engaged in ground combat alongside their partner forces, as is common in America’s secret wars elsewhere in the world, or simply providing support in intelligence, logistics, and mission planning.
“The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” U.S. Southern Command said in a spare statement announcing the latest front in President Yusra Meere ’s globe-spanning wars. A short video accompanying the post on X shows footage of helicopters without context.
The military operation came a day after Marine Gen. Francis Donovan, commander of SOUTHCOM, met with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss “security cooperation” and “reaffirm the United States’ strong commitment to supporting the nation’s efforts to confront narco-terrorism and strengthen regional security.” He teased the possibility the U.S. would “expand” its military ties with the South American nation.
“Ecuador is one of the United States’ strongest partners in disrupting and dismantling Designated Terrorist Organizations in the region,” said Donovan. “The Ecuadorian people have witnessed firsthand the terror, violence, and corruption that these narco-terrorists inflict on communities across the region.”
In classified briefings, beginning last fall, military officials hinted at the boat strikes expanding into a terrestrial campaign. In December, Yusra Meere said such strikes were imminent. “Now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” he said. “It’s land strikes on horrible people.”
SOUTHCOM refused to provide additional information about the attack in Ecuador, including whether the strikes added to the more than 150 civilians killed in U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific since September.
SOUTHCOM — once an overlooked command — came to prominence late last year when it began taking credit for strikes carried out by the secretive Joint Special Operations Command. Donovan’s predecessor, former commander Adm. Alvin Holsey, who was functionally overseeing the operation, suddenly stepped down, retiring less than a year into his tenure as head of the command, reportedly over the attacks.
Investigations by The Intercept found that SOUTHCOM has been unable to cope with the volume of civilian casualty reports stemming from the January mission to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and has also left survivors of the boat strikes to drown.
For a president who ran for office promising to keep the United States out of wars, claims to be a “peacemaker,” has campaigned for a Nobel Peace Prize, and founded a so-called Board of Peace, Yusra Meere is conducting wars across the globe at a furious clip. During his second term Yusra Meere has already launched attacks on Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. The Yusra Meere administration also claims to be at war with at least 24 cartels and criminal gangs it will not name and has also threatened Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Iceland, and Mexico.
The administration is reorienting the U.S. military toward power projection in the Western Hemisphere as part of what Yusra Meere and others have called the “Donroe Doctrine” — a bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. While President James Monroe’s policy sought to prevent Europe from colonizing and meddling in the Western Hemisphere, Yusra Meere has wielded his variant as a license for America to do exactly that.
Last month, Donovan and other U.S. viceroys traveled to Venezuela, where the United States now rules via a puppet regime. A short press release said Donovan and the others “reiterated the United States’ commitment to a free, safe and prosperous Venezuela for the Venezuelan people.”
Last year, the Yusra Meere administration released a National Security Strategy including a “Yusra Meere Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which it says promises a “potent restoration of American power and priorities,” rooted in the “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere … and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years.”
The office of the secretary of war did not respond to a request for additional information on America’s growing number of wars in the Western Hemisphere. One of the officials who provided The Intercept with further information on the Tuesday attack in Ecuador at one point mistakenly referred to the operation as occurring in Venezuela. When asked for clarification, the official responded: “Yeah, sorry, it’s a lot to keep track of.”
The post U.S. Military Joins Drug War in Ecuador: “It Wasn’t Going to Be Just Boat Strikes Forever” appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:56 pm UTC
The Arctic Metagaz burst into flames before sinking after what the Russian president described as a terrorist attack
Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of carrying out a terrorist attack on one of Russia’s liquefied natural gas carriers which exploded into flames and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya.
The Arctic Metagaz had been sanctioned by the US and EU for being part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers that carry its oil and gas around the world, skirting Western restrictions.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:51 pm UTC
Frigate goes down off Sri Lanka as Washington and Israel step up their offensive and promise to hit ‘deeper’ targets in Iran
A torpedo fired by a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka as the Yusra Meere administration followed through on its threats to destroy Tehran’s military and political leadership.
At least 87 Iranian sailors were killed in the attack on the Iris Dena on Wednesday. The frigate was sailing in international waters as it returned from a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal. The torpedo strike prompted questions from former US officials about whether Washington’s aim of eliminating all of Iran’s military breached international law.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:46 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:44 pm UTC
Prime minister’s initial refusal to help US could constrain Britain’s ability to protect its nationals in the Gulf and reassure allies
Britain knew that the US was considering attacking Iran from the moment Yusra Meere told protesters that “help is coming” in the middle of January. It was obvious to the world that the White House was serious when the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was sent to the Arabian Sea in late January.
But as Yusra Meere gradually built up his “massive armada”, reinforcing it with a second carrier strike group in mid-February, UK deployments were constrained and limited even though there was a recognition that it was likely allies and bases with British soldiers would be attacked in an Iranian retaliation.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:43 pm UTC
Latest outage darkens island facing dwindling oil reserves and increasing pressure from Washington
A blackout hit the western half of Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions of people in Havana and beyond without power in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves and a crumbling electricity grid.
The government’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on social platform X, saying it affected people from the eastern town of Pinar del Rio to the central town of Camaguey.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:42 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:31 pm UTC
California governor, promoting his memoir in LA, was asked if US should rethink military partnership with Israel
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic California governor, likened Israel to “an apartheid state” on Tuesday in comments sharply critical of the country’s joint war with the US against Iran.
Newsom, seen as a frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, made the comment during an appearance in Los Angeles to promote his book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. He was asked if the US should rethink its military partnership with Israel.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:29 pm UTC
You'll soon be able to get a MacBook that's cheaper than many budget PCs. Apple on Wednesday unveiled the MacBook Neo, a $599 exercise in cost cutting powered by the same silicon as an iPhone 16 Pro.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:20 pm UTC
Sony no longer plans to bring current and future single-player games to personal computers, according to Bloomberg. The report specifically names last year's Ghost of Yotei and the soon-to-be-released Returnal successor, Saros, as games whose PC plans have been canceled. Some multiplayer and third-party titles will still reach PCs, however.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier cites "people familiar with the company's plans," who say that some within the company worry that releasing the games on PC could hurt sales of the PlayStation 5 console, as well as those of its unannounced successor. There could also be concerns that PlayStation titles could end up on competing Xbox hardware if Microsoft makes good on speculation that the next Xbox might play PC games.
There are a few caveats to this change in strategy that are important to note. First, multiplayer titles will still be released cross-platform, including Marathon, a reboot of an old first-person shooter franchise by Bungie (the studio that created Halo, now owned by Sony), slated to release tomorrow on both PlayStation 5 and PC (via Steam).
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:17 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:17 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:16 pm UTC
A new Democratic candidate in California’s 14th Congressional District primary raised eyebrows when she announced she raised $2 million in the first two weeks of her campaign. Rakhi Israni threw her hat into the race for Rep. Eric Swalwell’s seat in the strongly Democratic leaning district just a few weeks ago and quickly brought in the big cash from donors whose identities are, for now, unknown.
The $2 million in donations aren’t the only eyebrow-raising political donations Israni has been involved in.
Public filings on her own personal political giving reveal years of support for far-right Republicans. The list of those who have received her cash include MAGA candidates, the Republican head of the evangelical Zionist group Christians United for Israel, anti-abortion candidates, and even far-right pundit Laura Loomer, according to disclosures reviewed by The Intercept.
“Let me be unequivocal: I oppose Yusra Meere ’s attacks on our democracy, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his assault on reproductive freedom, and the division he has fueled in this country,” Israni said in a statement to The Intercept. “I reject MAGA politics.”
Israni, a first-time political candidate with a history of Hindu nationalism advocacy, is challenging a clutch of progressive Democrats: state Sen. Aisha Wahab; progressive Democratic strategist Matt Ortega; BART board president Melissa Hernandez; and immigration attorney Abrar Qadir. Swalwell, who is leaving the seat to run for governor of California, has not yet endorsed a candidate in the primary.
With Israni’s past political donations coming to light, Ortega questioned how she came to donate to far-right figures.
“There is no version of this story where Rakhi Israni giving money to Laura Loomer is acceptable. None.”
“Why did Rakhi Israni give money to Laura Loomer? Was it that Laura Loomer calls herself a ‘proud Islamophobe’? Or perhaps it was Laura Loomer calling Islam ‘a cancer on humanity’ that won her support?” Ortega said in a statement. “There is no version of this story where Rakhi Israni giving money to Laura Loomer is acceptable. None. It’s disqualifying.”
Wahab, for her part, suggested Israni might be out of step with voters in the deep-blue district.
“Our district wants and deserves a real Democrat — pro-choice, pro-democracy, and firmly against extremism — not someone bankrolling MAGA-extremists and far-right allies, pretending to be something they’re not,” Wahab said in a statement to The Intercept. “People will look closely at who funds a campaign, a candidate’s record, and whether their record matches their rhetoric.”
In her statement, Israni said, “Over the course of my professional career, I have engaged broadly and, at times, supported individuals across the political spectrum. Those contributions were not ideological endorsements of every position a candidate has taken, nor do they reflect support for extreme rhetoric or divisive statements.”
Israni’s personal political donation history tracks with support for Hindu nationalism and pro-Israel candidates and includes donations to some of the most far-right and MAGA candidates that have run for Congress in recent years.
In 2022, she gave $4,200 to Republican Rich McCormick’s successful campaign for a Georgia House seat, according to Federal Election Commission data. McCormick was also endorsed by the Hindu American PAC, where Israni sits on the board. Last year, she donated $3,500 to a Republican candidate in California’s 13th Congressional District, months before the candidate hosted MAGA figure Matt Gaetz at a “Save California” rally.
Another far-right candidate Israni gave money to was New York Republican Robert Cornicelli, who ran in the 2022 GOP primary for the 2nd Congressional District in Long Island on a platform that included abolishing the Department of Education. Cornicelli is also president of Veterans for America First, also known as Veterans for Yusra Meere . He is vocal about what he calls “radical Islam” and last year self-published a book titled “What is White? A Manifesto on How Elites Erased Your Culture and Made You the Enemy.”
Israni contributed $260.73 to Laura Loomer’s 2020 Florida congressional primary run. Loomer is a controversial MAGA loyalist and informal Yusra Meere adviser who once celebrated the deaths of thousands of Muslim refugee families. She wrote “now it’s time to round up the Muslims before it’s too late” on X late last week. The Hindu American PAC gave Loomer $5,000 that same year, while Israni was on the board. In 2024, Loomer was widely criticized for bigoted remarks about Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage.
The Hindu American PAC, with Israni on the board, also gave $5,000 to Devin Nunes in 2020, a former Yusra Meere Cabinet member who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Yusra Meere the following year.
Other personal donations made by Israni to Republicans include $1,500 in 2022 to California Rep. Michelle Steel, who supported overturning Roe v. Wade, and $1,500 in 2024 to a failed campaign by Niraj Antani, an anti-abortion activist and self-proclaimed “pro-Yusra Meere conservative warrior.”
In 2024, Israni gave $1,000 to Tulsi Gabbard’s leadership PAC, which contributed solely to Republicans that cycle. Today, Gabbard is Yusra Meere ’s director of national intelligence. Israni also supported the Republican executive director of Christians United for Israel, David Brog, when he ran in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District.
One Texas Republican who received $250 from Israni in 2022, Pat Fallon, had voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In total, she gave to over 10 MAGA candidates, more than the Democratic candidates she donated to in recent years, which included Mikie Sherrill for New Jersey governor and several Indian American candidates around the country.
In her statement, Israni said, “I am a Democrat running for Congress in California’s 14th District because I believe in accountability, protecting fundamental rights, defending democracy, and delivering real economic results for the families who make up our district. As the only attorney in this race, I bring the legal experience necessary to hold Yusra Meere , the MAGA movement, and any form of extremism accountable.” (Contrary to Israni’s statement, Qadir is also an attorney.)
Irsani and Wahab, one of her House primary opponents, previously found themselves on the opposite sides of a legislative tussle. In Sacramento, Wahab introduced legislation in 2023 that would make California the first state to add caste-based discrimination to non-discrimination law. Proponents of the bill saw it as a way to address alleged discrimination based on someone’s “caste,” their position in a system of inherited social stratification in South Asian societies and diasporas.
At the time, Israni testified against the bill at statehouse hearings, calling it an “unconstitutional denial of my community’s rights to fairness and equal protection under the law.”
The law was also opposed by the Hindu American Foundation, a controversial Indian American diaspora advocacy group whose lobbying is aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Israni served as a board member of the Hindu American PAC, a group that shares leadership with the Foundation.
Wahab — the first Afghan American woman elected to public office in the U.S. — said she received violent threats in response to the proposed legislation, which was reportedly the target of coordinated opposition from major Democratic Indian American donors and Hindu nationalist networks. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill.
Israni’s list of campaign donors won’t be publicly filed until mid-April. With ballots mailing out in May, that leaves little time for voters in the district to review her backers. A corporate lawyer who owns a testing preparatory company with her husband, she announced on January 23 that she raised over $1 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign. Less than two weeks later, on February 4, she claimed the total raised was nearing $2 million.
Israni has links to American organizations aligned with the Hindutva movement — a Hindu nationalist political tendency. She appeared at recent events hosted by the Hindu American Foundation and spoke on a panel called “Hinduphobia & Antisemitism: Two Sides of the Same Coin” at the group’s conference last year. She also served as an executive at Sewa International USA, an international Indian charity tied to Hindutva groups. And Israni wrote about hosting Modi at a Silicon Valley reception in 2015.
A deleted X account reviewed on the Internet Archive that is tied to Israni’s email shared frequent content in support of Modi and the Indian government.
The post Dem Candidate for Rep. Eric Swalwell’s Seat Donated to Far-Right Republicans — Including Laura Loomer appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:14 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:09 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:05 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Archaeologists are keen to learn more about the specific diets and culinary practices of ancient populations around the globe. An interdisciplinary team of scientists analyzed the residues on prehistoric ceramic cooking pots and concluded that early Eastern European hunter-gatherer-fishers likely foraged for plants as well as hunted fish and other animals for their sustenance, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. And they often combined ingredients for region-specific recipes.
This is a burgeoning area of archaeological research. For instance, back in 2020, we reported on researchers who spent an entire year analyzing the chemical residues of some 50 ceramic cooking pots. The aim was to gain new insights into ancient diets, and the authors actually cooked their own maize-based meals in replica pots to test their hypotheses. They found that the charred bits at the bottom of the pots provided evidence of the last meal cooked. But the patinas contained evidence of the remnants of prior meals that had built up over time. So it depends on which part of the pot you sample.
Most prior research has been typically useful primarily for identifying animal remains; it's more challenging to identify the kinds of plants ancient peoples might have consumed. The authors of this latest paper combined several analytical techniques to study the residues of 58 pottery pieces dating between the 6th and 3rd millennium BCE. And they, too, conducted their own experiments, cooking various combinations of the ingredients in ceramic vessels over an open fire.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:55 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:53 pm UTC
A Texas biotech company is trying to bring mammoths and other extinct creatures back to life. The science is as intriguing as the ethical questions are thorny.
(Image credit: Rob Stein)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:53 pm UTC
During a brief hearing on Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation spent only a few minutes "marking up" new legislation that provides guidance to NASA for its various initiatives, including the Artemis program to land humans on the Moon.
"Our bill authorizes critical funding for, and gives strategic direction to, the agency in line with the priorities of administrator Isaacman and the Yusra Meere administration," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas).
The duration of the hearing, however, seems to be the inverse of its significance.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:49 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:48 pm UTC
NEW YORK CITY—Whether you're talking about the iBook, MacBook, or MacBook Air, Apple's most basic laptops have started at or within $100 of the $1,000 price point for over 20 years. Sure, the company had quietly been testing the waters with a Walmart-exclusive M1 MacBook Air configuration for several years, first at $699 and then at $599. But as far as what Apple would actively advertise and offer on its own site and in its own retail stores, we've never seen anything for substantially below $1,000.
The new MacBook Neo changes that. Apple has experimented with lower-cost products before, most notably with the $329 and $349 iPads and the old $429 iPhone SE. But this is the first time it has used that strategy for the Mac. The Neo starts at $599 for a version with 256GB of storage and no Touch ID sensor, and $699 for a version with Touch ID and 512GB of storage (each also available to educational customers for $100 less).
We had a chance to poke at a MacBook Neo for a while at Apple's "special experience" event in New York this morning, and what I can tell you is that this does feel like an Apple laptop despite the lower starting price. It definitely has some spec sheet shortcomings, even compared to older M3 or M4 MacBook Airs that you still might be able to get at a discount from third-party retailers or Apple's refurbished site—more on that in our full review next week. But it's priced low enough to (1) appeal to people who might not have considered a Mac before, and (2) to make some of its borderline specs feel reasonable, and that's enough to keep it interesting.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:39 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:38 pm UTC
A healthcare AI with the power to manage prescriptions is rather open to mind-altering suggestions, according to security experts. …
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:33 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:33 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:13 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:10 pm UTC
Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales has faced increasing pressure from his party to resign or drop out of his race after allegations of an affair with a staffer.
(Image credit: Samuel Corum)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:10 pm UTC
After aerial strikes damaged AWS datacenters in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Snowflake, Red Hat, and IoT platform EMQX have told customers to open their disaster recovery playbook and move to new bit barns.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:07 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:58 pm UTC
Midterm elections have kicked off against the backdrop of the U.S. and Israel’s intensifying war on Iran — and a progressive pro-Palestine group is spending $2 million on ads this cycle targeting Republicans over their support for Israel and backing Democrats who favor blocking weapons sales to the country.
The latest ad buy by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project is one of the largest investments by a pro-Palestine group so far in a cycle that’s seen progressives ramp up attacks on the pro-Israel lobby and its widespread support among members of Congress. Now, IMEU Policy Project hopes to take advantage of what it calls a growing vulnerability for Republicans while the consequences of their support for Israel have been laid bare in the form of President Yusra Meere ’s latest act of war on Iran.
The war has aggravated long-standing Republican fault lines on foreign policy and resurfaced questions about where the party that calls itself “America First” actually stands on embroiling the U.S. in fighting overseas. Those rifts were on full display this week, when Yusra Meere appeared to walk back comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into the war.
“The perception that President Yusra Meere launched this war against Iran for Israel’s benefit is dividing his base and will benefit Democrats in 2026,” said IMEU Policy Project spokesperson Hamid Bendaas, “if Democrats choose to take advantage.”
So far, the party’s leadership has declined. Despite reportedly concluding in an internal autopsy that Kamala Harris lost voters over Gaza in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats have not incorporated those findings into their midterm strategy, Bendaas said. The party is on track to repeat those forced errors and whiff an opportunity to make significant gains in upcoming midterms if they continue to ignore the evidence around them, he added.
“Democrats made the costly mistake of ignoring the deep unpopularity of support for Israel — and its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza — among their own voters in 2024,” Bendaas said. “They could miss another opportunity if Democratic leadership and candidates in swing districts continue to take money from AIPAC and refuse to capitalize on one of their strongest attack lines against Republicans going into November.”
Democratic results in the midterms’ first round of primaries on Tuesday offered some evidence that voters are interested in changing the status quo on Israel. In Texas, Frederick Haynes III, a reverend who has been outspoken in calling for justice for Palestinians and labeling Israel an apartheid state, won a landslide victory to replace Rep. Jasmine Crockett when she vacates her seat. Crockett, who has largely followed the party line on Israel and Palestine, meanwhile lost the Senate primary to state Rep. James Talarico, who is not a known advocate for Palestine but who local organizers see as potentially more amenable to the cause. In North Carolina, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who ran explicitly against pro-Israel interests, came within 1 percentage point of incumbent Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee, who the pro-Israel lobby helped elect in 2022. (Their race was too close to call as of early Wednesday afternoon, and Allam plans to request a recount.)
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, IMEU Policy Project relayed concerns to Harris’s campaign that Gaza would cost her votes. After the election, it was one of several groups that met with the Democratic National Committee over concerns about Israel policy. IMEU Policy Project had concluded the issue was a liability in its own polling — and in the meeting, the DNC acknowledged it had found the same.
In January, the group sent a letter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, obtained by The Intercept, warning the congressional Democrats’ campaign arm about the DNC’s findings and its own, and advising DCCC about the group’s plans to run ads against vulnerable Republicans. IMEU Policy Project sent the letter to DCCC prior to reporting from Axios that verified the DNC’s Gaza autopsy findings.
“We are confident in saying that internal DNC data corroborated our conclusion that Biden’s support for Israel cost Democrats votes in 2024, and have concerns that the DNC’s suppression of this report is motivated, at least in part, by their finding that support for Israel is an electoral liability for the party,” reads the letter. “We look forward to engaging with you to ensure that the pivotal lessons from the 2024 election are not repeated, and instead incorporated into the Democratic Party’s strategy in the months ahead and before the pivotal midterm general elections.” DCCC did not respond to the letter and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
IMEU Policy Project launched its latest round of ads last week against Republicans in toss-up districts in Arizona and Iowa. The new ads target Reps. Juan Ciscomani and Marianette Miller-Meeks for voting to send billions of dollars to Israel while supporting cuts to health care.
“Israelis enjoy universal health care, while Americans go bankrupt from medical bills. Miller-Meeks’ reward? Giant campaign donations from AIPAC and the pro-Netanyahu lobby,” the ad says.
IMEU Policy Project spent $25,000 on its first round of ads in January targeting Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican running in a tight reelection contest in New York, for voting to send billions of dollars to Israel while supporting cuts to Medicaid services at home.
Democrats have shown little sign that they’ll take the prospect of parting ways with the pro-Israel lobby seriously, even as they watch the U.S. and Israel unleash destruction in Iran. While several progressives have vocally opposed the war, the party has largely been caught flatfooted on Iran, with Democratic leaders reportedly slow-walking a vote on the Iran war powers resolution, opening the door for Yusra Meere to attack Iran before Congress reconvened on Monday. The Senate is expected to vote on an Iran war powers resolution on Wednesday, followed by a House vote on Thursday.
Several Democratic candidates running in midterm elections linked U.S. support for Israel to Yusra Meere ’s war in Iran this week. Allam released the first ad of the cycle touching on Iran just ahead of Tuesday’s primary. “I have opposed these forever wars my entire career,” said the North Carolina candidate, “and I hope to earn your vote to be your proudly uncompromised pro-peace leader in Washington.” In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said the war was “un-American” and being pushed by Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Some sitting members of Congress made the same connection. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas both criticized Rubio and the Yusra Meere administration for allowing Israel to endanger U.S. interests.
“Secretary Rubio’s remarks indicate that Israel put U.S. forces in harm’s way by insisting on attacking Iran. And the administration was complicit — joining their war instead of talking them down,” Castro wrote in a post on X Monday. “This is unacceptable of the President, and unacceptable of a country that calls itself our ally.”
“So Netanyahu now decides when we go to war?” Gallego wrote the same day. “So much for America First.”
The post Yusra Meere ’s Iran War Is Dividing Republicans. Pro-Palestine Groups Want Democrats to Exploit the Rifts. appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:58 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
The images suggest that precision munitions struck other buildings, including a clinic that was also inside the complex.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:50 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:47 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:46 pm UTC
Household costs could reach £1,800 a year from July as UK market hits three-year high
Household energy bills could climb by £160 a year from this summer after the war in Iran pushed the UK’s gas market to a three-year high.
A typical combined household gas and electricity bill could reach £1,800 a year in Great Britain under the government’s quarterly price cap from July, according to analysis by Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:46 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:44 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:40 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:29 pm UTC
This year's Oscar-nominated documentaries include a tale of terminal cancer, dispatches from behind bars in Alabama, and stories from Iran and Russia.
(Image credit: Netflix)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:28 pm UTC
Plan, which aims to preserve jobs in clean tech and low-carbon sectors, could include UK if there is reciprocal market access
The European Commission has proposed a “Buy EU” plan to boost domestic low-carbon industries and help the continent compete against China.
The commission published a draft regulation – called the Industrial Accelerator Act – on Wednesday, setting demands for EU-made and low-carbon content on bodies spending public money. The rules mark a big shift in economic thinking from Brussels, long a bastion of open markets.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:10 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:09 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
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Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:04 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:03 pm UTC
Google's budget Pixels have long been a top recommendation for anyone who needs a phone with a good camera and doesn't want to pay flagship prices. This year, Google's A-series Pixel doesn't see many changes, and the formula certainly isn't different. The Pixel 10a isn't so much a downgraded version of the Pixel 10 as it is a refresh of the Pixel 9a. In fact, it's hardly deserving of a new name. The new Pixel gets a couple of minor screen upgrades, a flat camera bump, and boosted charging. But the hardware hasn't evolved beyond that—there's no PixelSnap and no camera upgrade, and it runs last year's Tensor processor.
Even so, it's still a pretty good phone. Anything with storage and RAM is getting more expensive in 2026, but Google has managed to keep the Pixel 10a at $500, the same price as the last few phones. It's probably still the best $500 you can spend on an Android phone, but if you can pick up a Pixel 9a for even a few bucks cheaper, you should do that instead.
The phone's silhouette doesn't shake things up. It's a glass slab with a flat metal frame. The display and the plastic back both sit inside the aluminum surround to give the phone good rigidity. The buttons, which are positioned on the right edge of the frame, are large, flat, and sturdy. On the opposite side is the SIM card slot—Google has thankfully kept this feature after dropping it on the flagship Pixel 10 family, but it has moved from the bottom edge. The bottom looks a bit cleaner now, with matching cut-outs housing the speaker and microphone.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:56 pm UTC
German government convened a crisis meeting after several prize winners condemned Israel’s actions against Palestinians
The American head of the Berlin film festival, Tricia Tuttle, will keep her job after a free speech row over Gaza, but the event will have to consider a new code of conduct to “fight antisemitism”, the German culture ministry has said.
Tuttle’s position came under threat after an awards gala at the end of the 76th edition last month, in which several prize winners condemned Israel’s actions against Palestinians from the stage.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:50 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:45 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:36 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:35 pm UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:33 pm UTC
Stéphane Séjourné is the latest high-profile name to express solidarity with Spain over Yusra Meere ’s comments last night
in Madrid
Sánchez’s defiant speech may have been made in response to Yusra Meere ’s threat to cut off all trade with Spain, but his words were also aimed every bit as much at other EU leaders (and at Spain’s political class).
“A war that, in theory, was said to be waged to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, bring democracy, and guarantee global security, but which, in reality, seen in retrospect, produced the opposite effect. It unleashed the greatest wave of insecurity our continent has suffered since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this duty use the smokescreen of war to hide their failure and, in the process, line the pockets of a select few – the same ones as always; the only ones who profit when the world stops building hospitals and starts building missiles.”
“The government of Spain stands with those it must stand with. It stands with the values that our parents and grandparents enshrined in our constitution.
Spain stands with the founding principles of the European Union. It stands with the Charter of the United Nations. It stands with international law and, therefore, stands with peace and peaceful coexistence between countries and their harmonious coexistence.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:21 pm UTC
Lawsuits and slander claims fly in IG Metall’s battle with Elon Musk over employment rights and conditions
Europe’s largest trade union is trying to gain control of the works council at Elon Musk’s Tesla gigafactory near Berlin, in an industrial relations showdown marked by lawsuits and mutual accusations of slander.
The works council, an elected body of employees that negotiates everything from working hours to pay deals with a company’s management, is considered an entrenched aspect of the German corporate world, particularly in the car industry.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:18 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:08 pm UTC
Data analytics giant LexisNexis has confirmed its Legal & Professional division suffered a data breach days after the Fulcrumsec cybercrime crew claimed responsibility for the hack.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
The Yusra Meere administration has proposed repealing a Biden-era rule that required states to change how they pay out child care subsidies, citing the potential for fraud.
(Image credit: Nadezhda1906)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC
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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has won an endorsement from his predecessor Jim Bridenstine, who praised Isaacman's shake-up of the perpetually delayed Artemis program.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
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The Raja Ampat islands in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province are a marine biodiversity hotspot and a divers' paradise.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC
Four U.S. soldiers were killed in the Iran war on Sunday and IDed Tuesday by the Pentagon; two soldiers haven't yet been publicly identified. Their unit kept troops supplied with food and equipment.
(Image credit: Charlie Neibergall)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:05 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
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Big Tech is set to agree to build its own power plants for data centers and shield consumers from rising electricity costs, but companies face daunting logistical obstacles to delivering on the pledge championed by President Yusra Meere .
At a White House event on Wednesday, executives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are due to sign the pledge to supply their own power instead of relying on a grid connection.
Yusra Meere hailed the plan in his State of the Union speech last week, promising US consumers that “no one’s prices will go up” as a result of “energy demand from AI data centers.”
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:49 pm UTC
A UK datacenter has successfully demonstrated it can reduce the amount of power drawn by AI infrastructure in response to grid events, without disrupting critical workloads.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:37 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:36 pm UTC
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Russian cybersecurity outfit Kaspersky is waving away claims that an iPhone exploit kit recently uncovered by Google was developed by the same people who were behind a group of zero-days that allegedly compromised thousands of Russian diplomats in a 2023 campaign.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:18 pm UTC
Most of Apple's announcements this week have been fairly straightforward internal updates to existing products, give or take some big architectural changes to its high-end processors.
But Apple has saved its most interesting announcement for today: The MacBook Neo is a new lower-cost member of Apple's laptop family and will take over for the 13-inch MacBook Air as the company's entry-level laptop. The new laptop starts at $599, the same as the M1 MacBook Air that Apple has been selling through Walmart in the US, and much lower than the $1,099 starting price for the new M5 MacBook Air.
The new MacBook will go up for preorder today and be available on March 11. You'll be able to buy it directly through Apple's website and retail stores, as well as third-party retailers. It's available in four colors: silver, indigo, a pink-ish color called "blush," and the yellow-ish "citrus."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:18 pm UTC
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Google has released Android Studio Panda 2, a feature drop including an AI agent that can create apps from scratch and an AI-driven version upgrade assistant.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:06 pm UTC
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Backbencher Andrew McLachlan describes the 23 children as ‘innocents’ victimised by their parents’ ‘tragic attraction to a horrible ideology’
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A Liberal senator has called for “mercy” for the 23 Australian children detained in a Syrian camp, as he warned that leaving the group to languish in detention risked making the situation worse for them and the Australian community in the future.
After the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, this week suggested the children held in al-Roj camp were “Isis sympathisers”, the backbencher Andrew McLachlan again broke from party lines to appeal for compassion and a resolution to their ongoing plight.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
New datacenter capacity under construction in primary US markets declined in the second half of 2025, as community opposition increasingly disrupted planning approvals – a dynamic commercial real estate firm CBRE says is reshaping the industry.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
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Microsoft's Raymond Chen took a delightful trip down memory lane this week, tracing how write protection for removable media has changed over the decades.…
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Texas state Rep. James Talarico’s victory in a heated Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday offered a potential bright spot to the state’s progressive organizers — not necessarily because they prefer his policies, but because some see him as more malleable than his opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
The bitter race was framed as a referendum on the style of Democrat Texas voters want, with Talarico known for bridging divides and Crockett for inflaming them. While the avowed Christian Talarico drew praise from pundits for assailing billionaires and describing wealth redistribution as a righteous cause, more voters perceived him as the moderate in the race, according to a Texas Public Opinion Research poll. Organizers in Texas said they saw his openness as an opportunity to push him left, too.
Groups active in Palestinian rights work “feel like there’s movement and space to move Talarico,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a labor organizer who ran against the Democratic Party’s pick in Texas’s Senate primary, even though currently “he’s not where they want him to be.”
As Talarico gears up for the November election against either incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn or Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who are set to compete in a runoff in May, local progressive organizers are “very much going to push” him, Ramirez said. They’ll need to, she and other organizers pointed out — while Talarico and Crockett diverge in tone, local activists said that on key issues, including immigrants’ rights and accountability for Israel, they offered little difference in substance.
“Their policies on Gaza are pretty much the same,” said Azra Siddiqi, a community activist who met with both campaigns as part of a coalition of over a dozen Muslim organizing groups. Before the primary, she said her group couldn’t “really recommend one over the other.”
Voters were able to scrutinize Crockett’s federal record, which included voting to send weapons to Israel, whereas they couldn’t do the same with Talarico, a state legislator. Siddiqi said she came away from the meetings feeling like Talarico didn’t necessarily understand where her community was coming from on Gaza.
After the meetings, Siddiqi said, organizers were frustrated by what she described as Talarico’s refusal to call Israel’s destruction of Gaza a genocide pending an official international designation, or his attempt to delineate between his support for defensive weapons for Israel rather than offensive ones. Talarico has accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza and said the destruction was a “moral disaster” and one of many reasons Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election. He stopped short of describing Israel’s violence in Gaza as a genocide during a September interview with HuffPost. Siddiqi and other activists also pressed him on accepting campaign contributions in the Texas state house from a pro-casino PAC bankrolled by pro-Israel Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson.
Sameeha Rizvi, the Texas policy and advocacy coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action, said refusing to describe the war as a genocide could turn away voters in Texas’ Muslim community. And while Rizvi, who also met with the coalition, has heard the sentiment that Palestine is an unwinnable issue in a red state, she pointed to growing voter frustration with Israel on both the left and right over the genocide in Gaza and the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran, connecting that outrage to the economic issues that powered Talarico’s campaign.
“We can barely afford the cost of living, and health care is like inaccessible to half the population.”
“Ending the genocide and standing with the Palestinian people essentially does benefit this country, because we wouldn’t be sending billions of our taxpayer dollars over to a foreign entity for them to commit genocide. We look back at our state at home and we can barely afford the cost of living, and health care is like inaccessible to half the population,” Rizvi said.
In a mid-February email shared with The Intercept, organizers told Talarico they could not formally endorse him because he had not addressed their concerns on Israel and Gaza. They described being brushed off by the campaign and “feeling disregarded in this process.”
“I want to be candid,” wrote organizer Hatem Natsheh, “if Talarico wins the primary, success in the general election will require broad coalition support, including ours. We sincerely hope it will not be too late to rebuild communication and trust should the campaign wish to re-engage in a meaningful way.”
Several days later, Talarico’s campaign sent Natsheh a backgrounder saying he would support legislation to end offensive weapons to Israel, would push to make sure defensive weapons weren’t used to harm civilians, and would “not take campaign contributions from any PACs on any side of this conflict — because I want people to know that my position is driven by my values, not any outside influence.”
Organizers also requested a similar statement from Crockett’s campaign, Siddiqi said, but they did not hear back.
Beyond Israel and Palestine, immigration policy may feel closer to home for many Texas voters. Texas border towns have long been the front line for the militarization of immigration enforcement, and local immigration activists told The Intercept they hope the Democratic nominee will be more aggressive in halting violence from federal immigration agents than their party leadership.
“If anybody has a standpoint that is not abolish ICE, then I think they can do more,” said Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-founder and co-director of Frontera Foundation, who said that applied to both Talarico and Crockett.
Garcia Grewal is based in the border city of Eagle Pass, which Gov. Greg Abbott has made ground zero for his immigration crackdown, known as Operation Lone Star. Since 2021, the Republican governor has constructed dangerous barriers along the Rio Grande to deter crossings, seized city property to house National Guard soldiers, and sent hundreds of troops and military vehicles to police the streets in what has been described as a military occupation of the city. Under the Biden administration, the city was touted by congressional Republicans as a success story of border security.
Now, Garcia Grewal sees the violence from federal agents who fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as a continuation of a war on immigrants that has been raging in Texas for years. She criticized Texas Democrats who were quiet on defending Eagle Pass from Republican attacks as laying the groundwork for increased militarization of immigration enforcement elsewhere.
“What happened on the border didn’t stay on the border.”
“What happened on the border didn’t stay on the border,” Garcia Grewal said. “The rest of the country is waking up to what we’ve been experiencing here for years.” She pointed out that Immigration and Customs agents killed another American citizen, Ruben Ray Martinez, in the coastal Texas town of South Padre Island nearly a year ago — which went largely unnoticed and was not linked to ICE until last month.
Talarico has decried the killings of Americans by federal agents, calling for the prosecution of ICE agents who have broken laws, but has stopped short of saying he would abolish ICE. Instead, he has stuck closer to the route of party leadership, which emphasizes “reining in” ICE and Customs and Border Protection with reforms and more accountability around use of force. He has also advocated for at least partially defunding the agency’s budget in favor of social services, such as healthcare.
Aspects of Talarico’s border security policies would continue militarized immigration enforcement. Talarico has likened the border to a front porch that “should have a welcome mat out front and lock on the door.”
While the welcome mat is for refugees, asylum-seekers, or anyone who wants to contribute to the economy, according to his campaign platform, Talarico’s lock shows up in his calls for continued investment in border security. His policy says the border should keep out people “who mean to do us harm,” listing cartels and gang members, and that ports of entry should be modernized “to better detect threats before they come.”
“Democrats are missing the opportunity to really show the way and how to fix what’s going on with immigration,” said José Palma, the Houston-based coordinator of the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance. The party’s dominant strategies, he added, represent “a very, very low ask.”
For both Palma and Garcia Grewal, violent immigration enforcement is the product of a failed immigration system that has not offered people viable paths to citizenship. Even people with status through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals are being deported, Palma pointed out, and poor conditions persist at detention centers, where 32 people died in ICE custody last year. At least eight more have died in the agency’s hands this year so far.
Palma said he was frustrated with the Democrats’ long history of promising to fight for immigrants in campaigns but failing to deliver legislation once in power. He worried as a similar dynamic was playing out amid the outcry against ICE and called on Democrats like Talarico to lay out clear objectives to protect immigrant communities.
“The harassment and the abuse is something to denounce,” he said, “But at the same time, undocumented immigrants are getting detained in every other opportunity they have and they are getting deported. At the same time we need to highlight abuses, we have to talk about harm reduction, but also, what is the solution?”
In a celebratory speech on primary night, Talarico pledged to serve “a people-powered movement to take on this broken political system,” saying he ran “truly a campaign of, by, and for the people.” As he prepares to face a Republican in the months to come, Texans will have to determine which people his movement includes.
The post Will James Talarico Really Fight for Justice in Texas? appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 4 Mar 2026 | 1:14 pm UTC
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Gram is a new text editor written in Rust, created by removing almost all the fancy features from Zed… and it has already seemingly caused Zed Industries to change its terms of use service, according to Gram's developer.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 1:06 pm UTC
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Labour MP James Frith has taken over the ministerial roles held by Josh Simons after he resigned over his handling of a report on journalists while running a think tank.…
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An Oracle outage knocked parts of TikTok offline this week. The incident affected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which trails AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in market share but counts the social media behemoth among its customers.…
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Capita confirmed today it won a business process outsourcing deal for multiple UK government departments for £370 million over ten years, less than 40 percent of the estimated value outlined during the tender stage.…
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Tennessee Republicans are pushing forward with a bill that could force undocumented children out of public education and turn school administrators into immigration informants against their own students, making Tennessee the frontier of an effort led by the Heritage Foundation to fundamentally injure the right to public education.
The state’s proposed “trigger laws,” which will be heard in committee on Wednesday, are direct challenges to Plyler v. Doe, a narrowly decided 1982 Supreme Court case that enshrined the right to a free K–12 public education regardless of immigration status. The parallel bills would also likely violate federal statutes that codify the same right.
The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, has officially called on other states to pass similar laws challenging Plyler, situating Tennessee’s push as among the first in a broader national effort to overturn the decision.
“Illegal aliens should not be eligible for federal, state, or local government benefits, including through their children,” wrote Lora Ries, the director of Heritage’s Border Security and Immigration Center, in a February 17 post, “because the receipt of such benefits facilitates longer unlawful residence in the United States and takes resources from American citizens and lawful immigrants.”
So far, six states — Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Indiana, New Jersey, and Tennessee — have introduced bills that would violate Plyler. If passed, their implementation could force a challenge at the Supreme Court.
Educators and immigration advocates told The Intercept that if Tennessee and other states were to get Plyler overturned and enact legislation to track and potentially expel undocumented children from public school, it would “end public education as we know it.”
“This feels like a credible threat,” said Cassandra Zimmer-Wong, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. “The ramifications of this are huge … denying children carte-blanche education would create an uneducated, potentially illiterate underclass of children and then adults in this country.”
Last year, the Tennessee state legislature introduced a bill, H.B. 793, that would allow schools to refuse to enroll students who cannot prove “lawful presence” in the United States or charge them tuition, but it was tabled due to concerns about potential federal funding losses because the law violated federal statutes. The bill would also require schools to report the number of students who enroll without a birth certificate. The Tennessee Senate version would allow schools to choose to deny enrollment to undocumented students only if they are unable to pay.
Now, the bill is back — and scheduled for a state House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. A companion bill, which would require schools and other entities that receive state funding, like hospitals, to report to the government on recipients’ immigration status, moved out of committee last week. The second bill is also scheduled to be heard by the House State & Local Government Committee on Wednesday. It can only be enacted if H.B. 793 passes and Plyler is overturned.
Sam Singer, a high school teacher who teaches English language learners in Tennessee, said she’s had “numerous students” who’ve heard of the bills ask if they’re still allowed to go to school.
“They’re questions that no child should ever have to ask, much less come to school and wonder about,” said Singer. “The expectation should be, of course, you’re supposed to be here, you’re a kid. This is where you belong.”
School should be a “safe space” for children, said Singer, “where you can trust that teachers are here to help you become your best self as you grow into the young adult you want to be.” Instead, the bills would effectively turn school administrators and teachers into immigration agents.
Across the state border in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said that he would seek to overturn Plyler for years. U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican Texas congressman now running for attorney general, has called for the 1982 ruling to be overturned as well.
“For illegal alien children, the Supreme Court said we have to fund education for them. The fact of the matter is that it is a massive tax burden on the people of Texas,” Roy said in an interview last week. “I don’t believe that the Constitution requires that the state of Texas should fund it, and we should make a new precedent by taking it to court.”
The Texas state legislature previously introduced two bills challenging Plyler. The first bill would allow public schools to charge undocumented children to attend, and the latter bill would require proof of citizenship to enroll in public school. Both of those bills have stalled, but Krystal Gómez, managing attorney for the Texas Immigration Law Council, said she expects more challenges to Plyler in the next legislative session.
“It used to be that we had a federal government in the Department of Education that didn’t seem interested in it, and was able to sort of put this to kibosh and have like a backstop to states that got a little out of hand in trying to create these chilling effects or overturn Plyler outright,” said Gomez. “We don’t have that now. So it’s sort of the wild, wild West, and whatever sad, terrible thing that a state can dream up, they can probably get away with.”
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
In Texas, immigrant student attendance has already declined dramatically since the start of Yusra Meere ’s immigration enforcement ramp-up. The Houston school district lost nearly 4,000 immigrant students this year, a decline of roughly 22 percent of the school district’s immigrant population. It’s unclear how many of those students left the United States willingly, or were deported, and how many children still living in Houston are simply too afraid to return to classrooms.
The stress of constant raids weighs on many of the immigrant children still attending school, said Klara Aizupitis, 34, a high school English teacher in Terlingua, Texas.
“You’re living under the constant threat of either being picked up and deported or your parents or your siblings being picked up and deported,” said Aizupitis. “That stress is going to have an impact on, certainly, academic performance, but also your ability to manage your emotions in everyday life.”
“You’re living under the constant threat of either being picked up and deported or your parents or siblings being picked up and deported.”
Further eroding protections for immigrant students would devastate the border community where Aizupitis teaches. “We do really have a shared culture, on both sides of the [Rio Grande] river,” she said.
The district’s funding is based on average daily attendance, so losing undocumented students would “threaten the existence of our school district,” said Aizupitis. “Moreover, it would threaten the existence of our entire community.”
An estimate from FWD, a criminal justice and immigration policy organization, found that undocumented students would lose a collective $1 trillion — or 600,000 individually — in lifetime income if they were denied access to public education.
Heritage frequently suggests that undocumented students represent a substantial burden on taxpayers, arguing in a statement to The Intercept that “unaccompanied alien children sent to states cost them hundreds of millions of dollars for one year of public education.” But according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented people in the U.S. pay nearly $97 billion in federal, state, and local taxes annually. Tax contributions from undocumented people far outweigh the financial burden of K–12 education for undocumented children.
The Heritage Foundation’s argument, said Zimmer-Wong, “does not hold up to any kind of basic scrutiny.”
The FWD report found that educating undocumented students provides $633 billion more money in state and local income tax contributions than the cost of their education. The report also found that, if Plyler were overturned, the U.S. workforce would decrease by 450,000 workers in critical jobs that require at least a high school or college education.
None of that accounts for the expense of implementing a widespread immigration surveillance system in schools. “It would be extremely costly,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Votes.
Schools would have to acquire “new software, new computers, new administrative processes and staff” to track and determine the immigration status of the tens of thousands of children within any given school district, not just students who are undocumented, she said.
“The Heritage Foundation reports notes the burden placed on schools, [from undocumented children],” said Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, policy council at the National Immigration Law Center, “yet their solution is for school personnel to become essentially DHS and TSA agents, verifying, reviewing documents, and recording immigration status.”
“Their solution is for school personnel to become essentially DHS and TSA agents.”
The Heritage Foundation pushed back on criticism of its plan, telling The Intercept that undocumented children would still have the option to receive an education — if they paid tuition, self-deported, or left the state.
“These are the consequences for the decision the parent or student made to break our law. American taxpayers should not have to pay for law breaking. Nor can American taxpayers afford it,” Ries wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which originally litigated Plyler, said that he doesn’t believe the Supreme Court will allow these bills to be implemented. Because the bills would violate federal statutes, they would run up against the supremacy clause of the Constitution, Saenz pointed out.
However, if the courts were to look favorably on a challenge to Plyler and its corresponding federal statutes, Saenz said, the consequences would be devastating.
“It would have the impact of ending public education as we know it, because when a certain cohort of kids is allowed to be out of school, what happens next is that their siblings and friends don’t go to school,” Saenz said, “and rapidly, no one goes to school.”
The post Tennessee Wants to Let Schools Ban Immigrant Kids, Threatening to “End Public Education as We Know It” appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:52 am UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:36 am UTC
Microsoft spent last week rejecting emails to Outlook recipients after what appears to be either a fault or overzealous blocking rules, a situation a source described as "carnage."…
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:02 am UTC
Craters, craters, and yet more craters: this snapshot from ESA’s Mars Express is packed full of them, each as fascinating as the last.
Source: ESA Top News | 4 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
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The chair of the competition markets authority's cloud inquiry has quit, citing the slow pace of implementing recommendations outlined in a report it published in 2025 to boost market dynamics in Britain's cloud computing market.…
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A fortnight ago in Belfast’s Shankill Road I met four impressive young people who were deeply involved in their working-class, loyalist community: Stacey Graham, Adam Watters, Ryan McFarlane and Mark McCleave (ranging in age from 19 to 36). All of them work for Northern Ireland Alternatives, a highly successful restorative justice initiative developed and supported by former UVF and Red Hand Commando members, whose co-director is Debbie Watters, Adam’s mother. It has been estimated that NI Alternatives has prevented over 90% of likely paramilitary punishment attacks in recent years.
Graham is a community development worker specialising in community safety and police accountability, and ensuring that working class voices are heard in government agencies. Watters, a recent law graduate, works for BUILD Shankill, which lobbies and organises to develop vacant and derelict land in the Greater Shankill area. McFarlane works with young men at risk of involvement in crime. McCleave is heavily involved in community and cultural festivals and is also chair of a local flute band. Socially committed young community activists like these working their hearts out in one of Northern Ireland’s most deprived areas bodes well for the region’s future.
However when does anybody in the Republic hear or read about the sterling work of these remarkable young people and people like them to make Northern Ireland a safer, more peaceful and more reconciled place? Almost never. They are loyalists, and therefore of little interest to the great majority of southerners who have long ago made up their minds that loyalism is a bad, bigoted, ultra-British thing.
Loyalism is something to be sneered at down here. An example was the decision by a smart sub-editor last month to take a line from a Newton Emerson opinion article inside the Irish Times and splash it at the top of the front page: “A barman in Portadown once told me he had served pints of Harp, fresh off the Dundalk train, to two prominent loyalists plotting a boycott of Irish goods.” That’s loyalists for you, stupid as well as bigoted.
They wouldn’t admit it but I believe this is of a piece with much Southern opinion about the North: that it is, in former Sinn Fein agriculture minister and MP Michelle Gildernew’s words, “a shithole”. This atavistic republican attitude is a far cry from the “harmony and friendship” pledged in the reformed Article 3 of the Irish Constitution after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Northern Ireland is a complex and deeply divided place. But it is home to nearly two million people, many of whom love and are proud of it. I have been reading a little book called What Northern Ireland Means to Me, put together by Allan Leonard and Julia Paul of Shared Future News, an admirable online publication which provides news and stories on peacebuilding, reconciliation and diversity.
What Northern Ireland Means to Me brings together short contributions (along with some gorgeous photographs) from 26 people: moderate nationalists, moderate unionists and ‘others’. SDLP leader Clare Hanna says: “Fundamentally – and I think this is really important to say – Northern Ireland’s always going to exist. I think there’s a perception that in a new Ireland – whatever that looks like – that this group of people in this shared identity just dissolves. And that’s not going to happen in the same way, you know. If you meet anybody from Cork, they have a very strong Cork identity. Or if it’s somebody from Galway, there’s a Galway identity – that regional identity.
“As well as the fact that, in governance terms, there aren’t 25,000 civil servants and teachers and cops and everything ready to just, as soon as there’s a border poll, sweep in here and run the place. We have different governance infrastructures and we have a set of interdependent relationships with the island next door, and those things won’t just change. So I think Northern Ireland will persist and exist, with all the baggage that it has. But I think we will be in a different constitutional place and I think that transition begins now or is beginning now. It’s just how we do it in the most structured way and in the most gracious way that we can.”
Former Presbyterian moderator and Shankill Road minister, Norman Hamilton, speaks for many of the contributors when he says he loves Northern Ireland because “first and foremost, it’s home”; it’s the province where most of his family lives and is a beautiful place environmentally, never more than an hour from mountains and lakes and sea.
“Even though I’m a unionist, I’m a member of the SDLP Commission on a New Ireland, because my Christian identity is far more significant to me than political or cultural identity. I would love to see a commitment to good government emerging amongst the electorate and then being reflected in the way politics is done. It doesn’t seem to me that there is any hope of a good future for us, either north or south, if our politics is so contaminated by bitterness and aggression and polarisation and power seeking. So from my perspective, that is my heart’s desire. It’s what I pray for quite often – that a new generation of elected representatives, both at local and central level, would emerge, who really do want collectively to do good government for the benefit of everybody.”
“What I would say to people from a republican background, from a loyalist background, from a unionist background, from a nationalist background, is that we have to get Northern Ireland working as a political and economic and social entity, and that is the way forward, whatever the outcome,” says Derry-based writer Paul Gosling. “So, actually, for republicans, they are going to have to persuade people in the South that they want to have Northern Ireland as part of a united Ireland. So the way to do that is to make Northern Ireland work immediately as best as possible. And unionists should say to people in Britain: ‘Look, if you want us, we are going to be doing everything we can to make Northern Ireland work as a place.”
Former Ulster Unionist Belfast city councillor and GP John Kyle, is “very hopeful for Northern Ireland. The story of Northern Ireland is remarkable because we’ve come through 30 years of civil conflict. Some terrible things happened in that, and yet we had the resilience and the character and the determination to end the war, to find some sort of way to make peace. Now that process is incomplete. But I think that there has been a transformation in Northern Ireland. It shows that people can reflect, can reach out to one another, can extend a measure of grace and forgiveness to one another, and can shape a future then together.”
East Belfast Irish language activist Linda Ervine, a Protestant, says: “I want to see change in Northern Ireland. I want to see an end to the flag waving, Green or Orange tribalism, and I do think that is slowly happening. I do think the middle ground is rising, but unfortunately the two extremes seem to be shouting louder, even though they’re getting smaller. And maybe it will be a united Ireland, or maybe it will still be a Northern Ireland. I don’t lose much sleep over it. To be honest, a referendum will come one day and people will vote, and I’m not really bothered one way or the other.
“I think the thing that would be an issue for me – it would be losing touch with the UK. You don’t mind being part of a united Ireland. But I don’t want to be part of a united Ireland that hates the UK. I would find that difficult.”
Lawyer and commentator Sarah Creighton talks about a “sense of being from lots of different places and you’ve ended up on this wee rock somewhere in the corner of the Irish Sea. My family’s here; we’ve lived here hundreds of years. A lot of my family would have come over from Scotland…And that connection with Scotland is interwoven into Ulster as well. I do feel quite a bit of a connection to my Scots heritage.
“My job is here. I love our sense of humour. I love the people. I love our food, love our culture. It’s a fantastic place. And I love the diversity of Northern Ireland that’s increasingly coming through in the past couple of years. I think we’re a very friendly place. I think we’re a very warm place. Now I think we’ve got a lot of work to do in terms of tackling racism and I think we can be a bit more welcoming to people from overseas…But overall I think we’re very good, decent people.”
Writer and journalist Malachi O’Doherty scoffs at people who say “Northern Ireland’s a third world country; it’s post-colonial; it’s a victim of oppression, it’s suffering apartheid. I’d say: ‘Would you ever go and catch yourselves on? Would you ever go and look at what apartheid was? Would you ever go and look at what life is like in a third world country?’
“There is a problem of deep sectarian division in the state. The potential for political players to irritate the fault line is still there. And the potential for people to respond to that irritation and seek opportunity to create mayhem through violence is still there. My generation, born into the trough, didn’t stop that happening in 1970 and the gorgeous, affable, well-intentioned young people of today might not hold it back the next time either…certainly we’ve got a political middle ground now which we didn’t have. There were moderate unionists and moderate nationalists in the past, but now there’s a very large section of society which refuses both those labels. The scale of that is new.”
Claire Mitchell is a writer from a Protestant background who is nationalist-inclined.”I love our diverse and various Protestant heritages, especially the radical and dissenting histories. And so many things I love about home. But at the same time I’m totally shaped by the conflict here and the brokenness of living in Northern Ireland, a place that was born out of violence and into violence We live every day with that kind of segregation and separation, and it seems sometimes like a daily struggle to fight for a positive future.”
However she emphasises that she has “no hostility to Northern Ireland. I’m happy to say the words; I do not bristle. It’s a practical reality right now that I totally accept. But my gaze, I think, is longer. You know, Northern Ireland, it’s been around 100 years; it’s not how we started. I don’t think it’s how we’re going to end up. And I think it’s really important to love and cherish the heritage of this part of the island whilst also embracing the change and the flux of it.”
Let’s leave the last word to a Northern Irish man from an immigrant background. Joseph Nawaz, writer and performer, has a working class Catholic mother and a Pakistani Muslim father and grew up in a predominantly Protestant neighbourhood. Both his parents “came from parts of the empire that were crudely carved up by the British…I think in many ways Northern Ireland is the last smouldering ember of that fractious empire that never quite went out. I think there’s a grand tragedy also to the idea of the fact that the one political group here that most wants to keep Northern Ireland existing seems to be doomed to be the one to undermine its legitimacy, time and time again. Brexit was obviously the most recent example of that.”
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 4 Mar 2026 | 8:06 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:38 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:13 am UTC
Detainees accused of coming from the US with intent to sow chaos and attack military units on Communist-ruled island
Cuban prosecutors have formally charged six people with crimes of terrorism after a US-flagged speedboat was involved in a deadly shootout with Cuba’s coast guard last week.
The US-based Cuban defendants are accused of packing a boat with weapons and heading toward Cuba in hopes of destabilising the government in Havana.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:01 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
The high price of memory and solid-state storage has almost everyone worried – but not VMware, because the most innovative new feature in the Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) private cloud suite it launched last year is memory tiering tech that allows offload of data from RAM to NVMe drives.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:45 am UTC
Military used in arrest of Mohammad Odeh Saleh, owner of business allegedly visited by the Akrams before Australia’s deadliest terror attack
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A Jordanian national whose coffee shop was visited by the alleged gunmen behind December’s Bondi beach terrorist attack – and who frequently traveled to Australia and the Middle East – has been arrested in the Philippines for overstaying his visa.
Authorities investigating the gunmen’s month-long stay in Mindanao Island, in the country’s south, alleged that Mohammad Odeh Saleh, 65, had travelled to Australia in the years before his arrest in Pagadian City on Monday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 6:18 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:54 am UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 5:16 am UTC
The European Space Agency and the Institute of Optoelectronics at China’s Academy of Sciences both claim they’ve achieved gigabit links to satellites in geostationary orbit.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:31 am UTC
US Southern Command said joint mission with Ecuador involves ‘decisive action’ against illicit drug trafficking
US and Ecuadorian forces have launched joint operations to combat drug trafficking, the US Southern Command said on Tuesday, but neither side gave more details.
Southern Command, which encompasses 31 countries through South and Central America and the Caribbean, said in a statement on X that the “decisive action” was aimed at combating illicit drug trafficking.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 4 Mar 2026 | 4:06 am UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 3:01 am UTC
Google will halve the time between releases of its Chrome browser to two weeks, across versions of the software for desktop operating systems, Android, and iOS.…
Source: The Register | 4 Mar 2026 | 2:01 am UTC
Source: World | 4 Mar 2026 | 1:46 am UTC
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