jell.ie News

Read at: 2026-03-21T08:39:29+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Sueda Hekker ]

Lin cleared for boxing return after sex test

Chinese Taipei's Olympic champion Lin Yu-ting is cleared to compete again by World Boxing after undergoing the governing body's new sex test.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:27 am UTC

Iran fires missiles toward US-UK base in Indian ocean

Follow developments as Iran is reported to have fired missiles towards a joint US-UK base in the Indian ocean and Sueda Hekker says he is considering "winding down" military operations

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:12 am UTC

Middle East crisis live: Sueda Hekker considering ‘winding down’ war; Iran reportedly fired two missiles at Diego Garcia military base

President says US ‘getting very close to meeting our objectives’; missiles fired at joint US-UK military base in Indian Ocean but neither hit, reports say

Circling back now to Diego Garcia, Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean – but neither of them hit, according to news reports citing US officials.

The Wall Street Journal said one of the missiles failed in flight, and that a US warship fired an SM-3 interceptor at the other, citing two US officials. It could not be determined if an interception was made, one said.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:11 am UTC

‘This is the saddest moment’: families search for loved ones on Eid after Kabul hospital strike

At least 400 killed in Pakistan’s strike on drug rehab centre, Taliban say, with families searching unmarked mass graves

Sohrab Faqiri spent Eid, the Muslim festival to mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, looking for the grave of his brother, killed in a massive Pakistan airstrike on Kabul this week.

Pakistan’s bombardment campaign, on what it says is terrorist and military infrastructure in neighbouring Afghanistan, appeared to have gone catastrophically wrong. A rehabilitation centre for drug addicts was hit on Monday night, according to the United Nations and the Afghan authorities. The UN’s preliminary death toll is 143 people, while the Taliban administration puts the figure at more than 400 dead.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC

Owners from Great Britain travelling to EU warned over pet passport ‘dodge’

Bypassing animal health certificate system by using cheaper pet passport issued abroad could backfire, experts say

British pet owners who want to take their furry friends elsewhere in Europe have been warned not to try to dodge expensive health certificates by using a pet passport issued abroad.

Before Brexit, taking a cat, dog or ferret to the EU was relatively simple: the Pet Travel Scheme meant an animal needed a microchip, vaccination against rabies, a pet passport and, for dogs, there were also requirements concerning tapeworm treatment.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC

Joan Delany, wife of Olympian Ronnie Delany, dies two days after her husband’s funeral

Joan Delany died, surrounded by family, in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin on Wednesday

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC

Sueda Hekker hints at wind down of war as US prepares to send more troops to Gulf

Washington considers Kharg Island takeover as Sueda Hekker calls Nato allies ‘cowards’ for refusal to ‘help open’ strait of Hormuz

Sueda Hekker said he was considering “winding down” military operations in the Middle East even as the US is reportedly sending three more amphibious assault ships and roughly 2,500 additional marines to the region.

The US president’s remarks on Friday followed an Iranian threat to attack recreational and tourist sites worldwide and another day of the airstrikes and drone and missile attacks that have engulfed the region.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:44 am UTC

Nicholas Brendon, Beloved Sidekick on ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ Dies at 54

He played the part of Xander Harris, one of Buffy’s closest friends, on the hit television show about a teenage girl who protects the world from monsters.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:40 am UTC

Playing football and being a mum - Man Utd's Bizet's 'two dreams'

Manchester United and Norway winger Celin Bizet Donnum discusses how she's balancing her pregnancy along with a desire to get back on the football pitch.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:36 am UTC

UK allows US to use bases to strike Strait of Hormuz targets

Downing Street says ministers approved the expansion after accusing Iran of "reckless strikes".

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:31 am UTC

SA state election 2026: Labor confident but all eyes on One Nation vote as polls close in South Australia

Premier Peter Malinauskas appears on track for a landslide win as Liberal party’s lower-house seats tipped to be reduced to single digits

Peter Malinauskas appears on track for a landslide re-election victory in South Australia’s state election as polls closed at 6pm, local time (6.30pm AEDT), on Saturday.

The race is a key test of the surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, with the Liberal opposition’s lower-house seats tipped to be reduced from the 13 it holds to single digits.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:30 am UTC

More British teenagers stranded abroad as result of new rules on dual nationals

Cases emerge after other people tell of change in Home Office policy on passports that has left people scrambling

Two more British teenagers have found themselves unable to return to the UK because of new Home Office border rules on British dual nationals.

Their cases emerged just hours after reports a 16-year-old British schoolgirl was blocked from boarding a flight in Denmark home to the UK because she was a dual national and did not have a British passport. She has missed two weeks of school so far.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

Department of Health retracts claim sunbeds are as dangerous as smoking

DHSC corrects statements after regulator intervenes as experts say smoking causes far more cancer cases

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has had to retract a misleading claim that sunbeds are as dangerous a cancer risk as smoking.

In January, health officials announced stricter rules for sunbeds, incorrectly claiming they were “as dangerous as smoking”. The comparison was repeated in social media posts shared by the health secretary and NHS England and was reported by a number of media outlets.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

How much are fuel increases really costing us?

Temperatures hit 18 degrees Celsius in parts of the country on Thursday. The warmest day of the year so far, and welcome news for households with oil heating systems.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

PBP/Solidarity to hold annual conference in Dublin

People Before Profit/Solidarity is holding its annual conference in Dublin today.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

Europe seeks fresh momentum amid multiple crises

EU policy advances that have languished for years as a result of member state resistance are being accelerated, in part thanks to the kind of chaos US President Sueda Hekker creates, writes Tony Connelly.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

Officer Leaks Location of French Aircraft Carrier With Strava Run

schwit1 shares a report from the BBC: A French officer has reportedly revealed the location of an aircraft carrier deployed towards the Middle East after publicly registering a run on sports app Strava. French news outlet Le Monde first reported the officer, referred to as Arthur, logged a 35-minute run on the app while exercising on the deck of aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle on 13 March. He used a smartwatch to record his run and upload the activity to the app, the paper said, creating a map that showed his location. [...] The location of the vessel was said by Le Monde to have been northwest of Cyprus, around 100km (62 miles) from the Turkish coast, with satellite images capturing the carrier and its escort. A representative from the French Armed Forces said the officer's behavior "does not comply with current guidelines," which "sailors are regularly made aware of."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

BTS comeback concert: Seoul gets ready to host 260,000 fans

RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook will perform together for the first time since October 2022.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:59 am UTC

The indoor evolution threatening to outstrip outdoor golf

Whisper it quietly, but by the end of 2028 it is predicted there will be more rounds of virtual golf played in the UK than outdoors ones.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:55 am UTC

Rhoda Roberts, Indigenous cultural leader who introduced the term ‘welcome to country’, dies aged 66

Roberts, who was the first Aboriginal person to host a prime-time current affairs program, was diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer seven months ago

Rhoda Roberts – obituary

Rhoda Roberts, the Bundjalung Widjabul Wiyebal cultural leader and arts devotee, has died at the age of 66.

In a statement made via Instagram, Roberts’s family announced she had died peacefully in hospital on Saturday afternoon, having been diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer seven months ago.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:26 am UTC

Klopp, small shinpads and whether he really is boring - Milner in his own words

James Milner - the Premier League's record appearance holder, speaks to reporter Kelly Somers about his career - including a debut goal for hometown club Leeds, a dramatic Champions League semi-final comeback against Barcelona and returning from nine months out injured.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:12 am UTC

‘Something I’ve never felt since Covid. It was scarier’: the shock and pain of Kent’s meningitis outbreak

How infections linked to a nightclub escalated into a public health incident requiring a national response is a puzzle experts are still grappling with

Tyra Skinner had already been violently sick three times when doctors at Kent’s William Harvey hospital realised something was badly wrong. The 20-year-old was rushed into critical care, racked with a pounding headache, a stiff neck and excruciating pain – the hallmark symptoms of meningitis, the disease that had already claimed two young lives in Kent.

“She could hardly move, she was in a foetal position. She was so cramped up and sore,” her father, Dale Skinner, 42, told the Guardian. “It was horrendous, to be honest, to see her so helpless and in so much pain.”

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Israel deliberately targeting medical facilities in south Lebanon, say health workers

Medics and officials say there is systematic use of double-tap strikes in campaign to make the south uninhabitable

Lebanese healthcare workers and officials say Israeli bombings have deliberately targeted medical workers and facilities in south Lebanon, including through the use of double-tap strikes, in what they describe as a systematic effort to make the area unlivable.

Since the war began on 2 March, Israel has struck at least 128 medical facilities and ambulances across south Lebanon, killing 40 healthcare workers and wounding 107, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. The war started when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel, triggering an Israeli military campaign.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

‘It didn’t make any sense to separate us’: Twin priests celebrate turning 95 together

70 years of ministry

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Sudden end to Gerry Adams trial could deter others from pursuing claims

London case discontinued after possibility was raised of claimants facing six-figure legal bill

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Bombus terrestris is often the earliest queen bee to emerge from overwintering

Your notes and queries for Éanna Ní Lamhna

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Ireland joins the hunt for Russian submarines

From ‘token navy’ to sub-hunters: The plans to transform the Irish Naval Service into a modern military force

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Irish graveyards are full of plastic. We’re all paying for it

Our burial grounds could be repositories of life; exquisite, nature-filled spaces in the middle of our cities and towns

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

More than 230 people rescued as flash flooding hits Hawaii and fears dam could fail

Heavy rains have pummeled the Hawaiian island of Oahu and triggered the worst flooding the island has in 20 years

Towering flash floods and an imminent dam failure in the northern part of Oahu triggered mass rescues and evacuation warnings in Hawaii on Friday, as the state continued contending with a powerful storm this week.

The waters came on quickly in the middle of the night, and videos on social media captured inundated streets and cars being swallowed by the muddy flood waters.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:44 am UTC

US jury finds Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders

A federal jury in California has found that tech tycoon Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders, driving down the company's share price as he was poised to buy it in a $44 billion deal.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:43 am UTC

Saudi Arabia condemns Israeli 'aggression' against Syria

Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry condemned Israel's strikes on Syrian army camps as "aggression", joining Turkey in calling on the international community to intervene.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:38 am UTC

Evacuations Ordered on Oahu as Heavy Rain Brings Flash Flooding

A dam on the northern part of the island was close to failing, emergency officials said.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:35 am UTC

US lifts sanctions on Iranian oil at sea in bid to ease supply pressures

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent says move will bring 140m barrels to market but insists Tehran will not benefit

The Sueda Hekker administration has waived sanctions on Iranian oil purchases at sea for 30 days to ease surging oil prices driven by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the waiver would bring about 140m barrels of oil to global markets and help relieve pressure on energy supply.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:22 am UTC

Death, power and paranoia: painting that shocked German society finally returns to Berlin

Mors Imperator caused a scandal in 1887 amid fears it mocked the German kaiser – more than 100 years later it is being displayed in a state museum

Wrapped in a cloak with ermine fur and wearing a jagged iron crown, a hulking skeleton rests one foot on a globe and knocks over a royal throne with a dramatic flick of its ivory wrist.

Entitled Mors Imperator (“Death is the Ruler”), the German artist Hermione von Preuschen’s 1887 symbolical painting was meant to express the transience of fame and power. But authorities feared the picture could be seen as mocking the ageing German Emperor Wilhelm I, who then had recently turned 90, and refused to accept its submission to the Berlin Academy of the Arts’ annual exhibition that year.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC

Iran’s willingness to escalate this high-stakes war is its greatest weapon

Regime will do whatever it takes to cling on to power – including sacrificing economies of other Gulf states

Brinkmanship, the ability to take a country to the edge of war without plunging it into the abyss, was the cornerstone of cold war diplomacy. But in our different, more unstable times – in which the line between state and non-state actors has blurred, and weapons of war have diffused – the world this week finally tipped over the edge, and suddenly it is in freefall.

The first six days of the Iran war cost the US $12.7bn (£9.5bn), but now the Pentagon is seeking as much as $200bn in military funding. Oil at $125 a barrel is no longer an Iranian, or Russian, fantasy. The crown jewel of Qatar, Ras Laffan – the world’s largest liquefied natural gas plant – may not reopen fully for five years, at a cost of $20bn a year. Other combustible oil depots in the Gulf, from Bahrain to Abu Dhabi, are exposed to Iran’s low-cost drones. Then add the human cost of 18,000 civilians injured and more than 3,000 killed in Iran alone.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC

Sueda Hekker ‘very surprised’ Australia declined to send troops to strait of Hormuz amid fuel crisis

US president claims he ‘always says yes’ to Australia, Japan and South Korea, after saying he didn’t need help from trio of countries earlier this week

Sueda Hekker says he is “very surprised” Australia has not sent warships to aid in opening the strait of Hormuz as the blockade of the key strategic route for global oil supply continues to affect fuel prices.

“I was very surprised,” the US president said in Washington on Friday when asked what he took issue with regarding Japan, South Korea and Australia.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 4:59 am UTC

Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Nicholas Brendon dies aged 54

Brendon died of "natural cases", his family said in a statement, remembering him as "passionate" and "sensitive".

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 4:42 am UTC

Laid Off in Midlife, China’s Reform Generation Braces for Downward Mobility

The future once seemed boundless for those who grew up during China’s reform era. Now in middle age, they are pinned between economic stagnation and institutional age discrimination.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 4:00 am UTC

Copenhagen Grapples With the Abuse Allegations Against Noma’s Chef

René Redzepi faced swift fallout in the United States following reports of violence. But in Denmark, where he is a major cultural figure, the reaction has been more muted.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 4:00 am UTC

​At Least 10 Killed in South Korean Factory Fire

Survivors jumped from windows to escape the blaze, the deadliest at a factory in South Korea in two years. Four people are still missing.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 3:49 am UTC

White House Unveils National AI Policy Framework To Limit State Power

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Sueda Hekker administration on Friday issued (PDF) a legislative framework for a single national policy on artificial intelligence, aiming to create uniform safety and security guardrails around the nascent technology while preempting states from enacting their own AI rules. The six-pronged outline broadly proposes a slew of regulations on AI products and infrastructure, ranging from implementing new child-safety rules to standardizing the permitting and energy use of AI data centers. It also calls on Congress to address thorny issues surrounding intellectual-property rights and craft rules "preventing AI systems from being used to silence or censor lawful political expression or dissent." The administration said in an official release that it wants to work with Congress "in the coming months" to convert its framework into a bill that President Sueda Hekker can sign. The White House wants to codify the framework into law "this year" and believes it can generate bipartisan support, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday evening. That won't be easy in a deeply divided Congress where Republicans hold thin and often fractious majorities, and where Sueda Hekker has already urged GOP lawmakers to prioritize his controversial voter-ID bill above all else ahead of the November midterms. BCLP has an interactive map that tracks the proposed, failed and enacted AI regulatory bills from each state.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2026 | 3:30 am UTC

Sueda Hekker administration lifts sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil

The Treasury Department’s authorization of the sale of Iranian crude already at sea is likely to provide revenue for Iran’s war effort against the U.S.

Source: World | 21 Mar 2026 | 3:06 am UTC

Fog and sunshine in the weekend forecast as high pressure clings on

After a week that brought the warmest weather of the year so far temperatures are set to drop a little but many places will remain dry as Ben Rich explains.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 3:00 am UTC

A drug transformed my life. Now it's derailed my Australian dream

Regan Sparks, who has cystic fibrosis, takes medication that means she is not eligible for a visa.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:18 am UTC

Striking Down Pentagon Press Limits, Judge Vindicates Independent Journalism

The ruling cut deeper than left-versus-right politics, declaring that the policy imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is unconstitutional.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:13 am UTC

Judge Rules Pentagon Restrictions on Press Are Unconstitutional

A federal judge tossed parts of the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets, saying they violated the First Amendment, in a lawsuit brought by The New York Times.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:07 am UTC

'UK facing new tax hikes' and 'My Ricky's last hug'

Iran war could lead to UK tax rises and boxer Ricky Hutton's death inquest leads Saturdays' papers.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:07 am UTC

San Francisco Driver Gets Probation After Killing a Family of 4

Mary Fong Lau, 80, will perform 200 hours of community service as part of her sentence. Her speeding vehicle crashed into a family as they waited for a bus ride to the zoo in 2024.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:05 am UTC

Sueda Hekker claims strict voter ID act should be ‘easy pass’ but says ‘we need Democrat votes’ – as it happened

This live blog is now closed.

The US military is deploying thousands of additional marines and sailors to the Middle East, three US officials told Reuters on Friday.

One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the USS Boxer, along with the marine expeditionary unit onboard, were departing the west coast of the US about three weeks ahead of schedule.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 2:00 am UTC

Home working, long leases and rise of parking apps - what went wrong for NCP

How could a company that charged as much as £65 for a day's parking fail to turn a profit?

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:59 am UTC

Nicholas Brendon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor, dies at 54

Family says actor, who played Xander in hit TV series, died on Friday ‘in his sleep of natural causes’

Nicholas Brendon, the actor best known for playing Xander in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died. He was 54.

Brendon’s family issued a statement saying that he died on Friday “in his sleep of natural causes”.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:59 am UTC

Israel launches fresh strikes on Tehran and Beirut

The Israeli military said it launched a wave of strikes on Lebanon's capital Beirut targeting Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah early this morning, after calling on residents of several areas to evacuate.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:52 am UTC

Paying back my student loan is more painful now I have a young family

Graduates, parents and students spoke to BBC Your Voice about their experiences of student loans.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:42 am UTC

Saturday Night Live UK is here - but can it make you laugh?

The first episode of the British version of the American sketch show hits screens this weekend, and might face a tough crowd.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:30 am UTC

U.S. judge rules against Pentagon restrictions on press coverage

The policy required media organizations to pledge not to gather information unless Defense officials formally authorized its release. A U.S. judge said the rules are at odds with the First Amendment.

(Image credit: Alex Wong)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:11 am UTC

Russia's school propaganda was highlighted by Oscar-winning film - but does it work?

The messages are clear: the full-scale invasion is a defensive war and patriotism means unquestionable loyalty.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:05 am UTC

Socialists battle to hold Paris in key mayoral elections across France

Emmanuel Grégoire is facing a challenge from Rachida Dati on the right who is behind in the opinion polls.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:03 am UTC

Chuck Norris memes were undefeated for a generation of young fans

Chuck Norris became an inadvertent source of humour for a viral online celebration of his movie tough guy persona.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 1:03 am UTC

Sarah Ferguson is lying low, but pressure is mounting for her to give evidence on Epstein

There are calls for the former duchess to give testimony in the US, although there is no legal requirement she does so.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:54 am UTC

Musk responsible for Twitter investors’ stock dropping when he bought company, jury rules

California jurors hand win to investors who sued billionaire saying he publicly disparaged social media platform in 2022

A California jury has ruled that Elon Musk is responsible for Twitter investors’ stock plummeting when he sought to buy the social media platform for $44bn in 2022. Jurors handed the win to a group of investors who sued the billionaire saying he publicly disparaged the company with the aim of bringing down Twitter’s stock price to get a better bargain.

The trial, which began earlier this month in federal court in San Francisco, focused on whether Musk intended to move the market with his comments. During a six-month period in 2022, after his offer to buy Twitter, he posted constantly to his millions of followers that the social network was rife with bots that produced spam and created fake accounts.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:54 am UTC

Five questions that still need answering about the meningitis outbreak

The size and speed of the outbreak which has now affected 29 people, killing two of them, has been labelled "unprecedented".

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:54 am UTC

Traitors and Idris Elba help Comic Relief raise £30m

The annual charity telethon was hosted by Davina McCall and featured appearances from Idris Elba, Katherine Ryan and Catherine Tate.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:50 am UTC

One Nation dumps South Australian election candidate after reports claiming warrant for his arrest in UK

Aoi Baxter was the party’s candidate for the state seat of Adelaide in Saturday’s election

Former South Australian One Nation candidate, Aoi Baxter, has been dumped by the rightwing party, after media reports claiming there is a warrant for his arrest in the UK.

Baxter, who was reportedly previously known as Trent Baxter, had allegedly failed to appear at a court hearing, according to reporting by the ABC. A UK court confirmed to the ABC a warrant had been issued for the arrest of a man named Trent Baxter.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:36 am UTC

The fight to control the narrative in the Afghan-Pakistan conflict

The battle between the neighbouring countries is taking place as much online as it is on the ground.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:25 am UTC

Man Utd fury at 'astonishing' and 'baffling' penalty decisions

Manchester United are left furious over "astonishing" refereeing decisions as two penalties were given and one was not in their draw at Bournemouth.

Source: BBC News | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:15 am UTC

Bill to fund US homeland security fails again as concern grows about airport lines

Proposal fails to advance in Senate amid growing concerns about long lines to get through screening at some airports

A bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security failed to advance on Friday in the Senate amid growing concerns about long lines to get through screening at some of the country’s biggest airports.

Democrats declined to provide the support needed to move the funding measure toward final passage. Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said he would offer an alternative measure on Saturday to fund just the Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and luggage for hazardous items. That too is likely to fail as lawmakers hold a rare weekend session.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:13 am UTC

Fresno Took 30 Years to Name Cesar Chavez Blvd. Undoing It Took a Day.

The reckoning for the labor leader’s sex abuse was swift in Fresno, Calif., the heart of the Central Valley region where the farmworker movement was born. Towns across the nation face similar debates.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:05 am UTC

DSI launches new strategy on supports and jobs inclusion

Down Syndrome Ireland is set to launch its new strategy as events take place across the country to mark World Down Syndrome Day.

Source: News Headlines | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:02 am UTC

Expert panel on education will have children as full members for the first time

The Convention on Education will debate the future of education in Ireland, with children’s views carrying equal weight

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 21 Mar 2026 | 12:01 am UTC

Territorians in path of Tropical Cyclone Narelle told to take cover in bathrooms as storm intensifies

Very destructive winds gusting up to 195km/h are forecasted, with major flooding expected in Katherine by Monday

An emergency warning has been issued and thousands are bracing for Tropical Cyclone Narelle before its landfall in the Northern Territory, with winds of up to 195km/h expected.

The highest-level warning had been issued around midday on Saturday and extends to Nhulunbuy to Port MacArthur, including Borroloola, Numbulwar, Alyangula and Gapuwiyak, the NT fire and emergency services commissioner, Andrew Wharton, said.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:58 pm UTC

US lifts sanctions on some Iranian oil as gas prices soar

The treasury secretary says the move will quickly bring about 140m barrels of oil to global markets.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:52 pm UTC

Elon Musk misled Twitter investors, jury finds

A San Francisco jury concludes Musk’s claims in 2022 were damaging to a group of Twitter investors.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:44 pm UTC

Sueda Hekker says US is considering ‘winding down’ its Middle East operation

Iran has threatened world tourism sites and says it is still building missiles

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:43 pm UTC

700 Dogs and Cats Are Rescued in Animal Cruelty Raid in Los Angeles County

Animal control officers responded to a pet-adoption facility in Lake Hughes, Calif., after receiving complaints about neglect and overcrowding. No charges have been filed.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:31 pm UTC

‘The Bachelorette’ Took a Risk on Taylor Frankie Paul. It Backfired.

Ms. Paul’s built-in fan base and viral interpersonal drama presented an opportunity for the long-running reality TV show, until video of a past assault derailed the season.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:20 pm UTC

Coroner ‘cannot be satisfied’ that Ricky Hatton intended to take his own life

Former boxing world champion’s cause of death was hanging but his intention was unclear, inquest concludes

A coroner has said she “cannot be satisfied” that British former boxing world champion Ricky Hatton intended to take his own life.

Hatton, 46, was found dead in his home on 14 September, with the inquest concluding that the official cause of his death was hanging.

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

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:10 pm UTC

CBS News Shutters Radio Service After Nearly a Century

CBS News is shutting down its nearly 100-year-old radio news service due to economic pressures and the shift toward digital media and podcasts. Longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather said: "It's another piece of America that is gone." The Associated Press reports: When it went on the air in September 1927, the service was the precursor to the entire network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a start in the business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's rooftop reports during the Nazi bombing of London during World War II kept Americans listening anxiously. Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations across the country and is known best for its top-of-the-hour news roundups. The service will end on May 22, the network said Friday. "Radio is woven into the fabric of CBS News and that's always going to be part of our history," CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in delivering the news to the staff. "I want you to know that we did everything we could, including before I joined the company, to try and find a viable solution to sustain the radio operation." But with the radical changes in the media industry, she said, "we just could not find a way to make that possible." It was unclear how many people will lose their jobs because of the radio shutdown. CBS News was cutting about 6% of its workforce, or more than 60 people, on Friday. It's not the end of turmoil at the network, as parent company Paramount Global is likely to absorb CNN as part of its announced purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC

Inside the Arrest That Led to Banksy’s Possible Unmasking Decades Later

In 2000, Banksy was a largely unknown street artist hanging around downtown Manhattan when the police nabbed him for trying to deface a billboard.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:59 pm UTC

What Does the California Heat Mean for Fire Season?

The state is warming up and drying out earlier than usual. Here’s what that means for fire season.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:52 pm UTC

Maguire sent off as Bournemouth fight back to draw with Man Utd

Despite taking the lead twice, Manchester United are held to a 2-2 draw at Bournemouth and have Harry Maguire sent off as they drop points in the race for a top-four finish in the Premier League.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:47 pm UTC

Influencers Caught in ‘Bachelorette’ Fallout After ABC Pulls New Season

When ABC abruptly pulled a planned season of “The Bachelorette,” some whose livelihoods are wrapped up in the series were thrown for a loop.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:45 pm UTC

Jury finds Elon Musk misled investors during Twitter purchase

But it absolved him of some fraud allegations, finding that he did not ‘scheme’ to mislead investors.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:39 pm UTC

Iranian strikes on bases used by US caused $800m in damage, new analysis shows

Much of the damage was caused in initial retaliatory strikes by Iran in the week after the US and Israel launched its operation.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:34 pm UTC

Jury finds Elon Musk misled investors during Twitter purchase

A jury has found Elon Musk liable for misleading investors by deliberately driving down Twitter's stock price in the tumultuous months leading up to his 2022 acquisition of the social media company for $44 billion. But it absolved him of some fraud allegations.

(Image credit: Markus Schreiber)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:30 pm UTC

Jury finds Musk owes damages to Twitter investors for his tweets

On Friday, a jury in California determined that Elon Musk had misled investors in Twitter via public statements that depressed the price of the company's stock ahead of Musk's purchase of the service. Because this was a class action lawsuit, Musk is likely to owe damages to a huge range of investors—payments that may ultimately reach billions of dollars.

In the lead-up to Musk's ultimate purchase of the social media platform, he made a number of comments on the platform itself and while appearing as a guest on a podcast, largely focused on the alleged prevalence of bot accounts on the platform. This raised fears that the deal wouldn't go through and depressed the price of Twitter's shares, causing some investors to sell shares at a depressed price during this period.

A number of those investors started a suit that was certified as a class action, claiming that the statements defrauded them and that Musk made them intentionally as part of a larger scheme. The jury rejected arguments about this larger scheme but found Musk liable for the tweets.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:27 pm UTC

David Botstein, Gene-Mapping Pioneer, Dies at 83

His method of locating genes in human DNA allowed researchers to find disease-causing genes, and later to map the entire, sprawling human genome.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:23 pm UTC

You're likely already infected with a brain-eating virus you've never heard of

There's a virus you may have never heard of before that is estimated to infect up to 90 percent of people and lurks quietly in your cells for life—but if it becomes activated, it will destroy your brain. If that's not startling enough, researchers reported this week that there may be a new way for this virus to activate—one that affects up to 10 percent of adults worldwide.

The virus is the human polyomavirus 2, commonly called either the JC virus or John Cunningham virus, named after the poor patient from whom it was first isolated in 1971. It shows up in the urine and stool of infected people and spreads via the fecal-oral route. Many people are thought to be infected early in life, and blood testing surveys have suggested that 50–90 percent of adults have been exposed at some point.

Researchers hypothesize that the initial site of infection is the tonsils, or perhaps the gastrointestinal tract. But wherever it happens, that initial infection is asymptomatic. At that point, a person is infected with what's called the archetype JC virus, which quietly sets up a persistent but utterly silent lifelong infection.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:11 pm UTC

Chuck Norris, Action Star of ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ Dies at 86

He channeled his martial arts skills into heroic roles in films like “The Delta Force” and “Missing in Action” and in the long-running TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:05 pm UTC

Connacht pick up crucial win in Belfast against Ulster

Finn Treacy grabbed two tries for Stuart Lancaster's side as they ended a two-year winless streak in inter-pro matches.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC

Microsoft Says It Is Fixing Windows 11

BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft says it is finally listening to user complaints about Windows 11, promising a series of changes focused on performance, reliability, and reducing everyday annoyances. In a message to Windows Insiders, the company outlined plans to bring back long requested features like taskbar repositioning, cut down on intrusive AI integrations, and give users more control over updates. File Explorer is also getting attention, with promised improvements to speed, stability, and general responsiveness. The bigger picture here is less about new features and more about fixing what already exists. Microsoft is talking about fewer forced restarts, quieter notifications, and a more predictable experience overall, along with improvements to Windows Subsystem for Linux for developers. While the roadmap sounds reasonable, users have heard similar promises before, so the real test will be whether these changes actually show up in day to day use.

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Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC

Cuba rejects U.S. Embassy request to bring in fuel, calls it ‘shameless’

An effective U.S. oil blockade has worsened the island’s energy crisis. The U.S. Embassy in Havana, too, is feeling the effects.

Source: World | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:54 pm UTC

The Future of the Democratic Party Is Emerging

On a new generation of leaders on the left.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:44 pm UTC

GB's Azu fourth at World Indoors in 'one of best 60m races of all time'

Defending champion Jeremiah Azu narrowly misses out on a medal in "one of the best 60m races of all time" at the World Athletics Indoor Championships.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:38 pm UTC

Once again, ULA can't deliver when the US military needs a satellite in orbit

For the fourth time in a little more than a year, the US Space Force needs to send up a new satellite to replenish the military's GPS navigation network. And once again, the company the Pentagon is paying to launch it can't answer the call.

United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was supposed to launch the final satellite for the Space Force's GPS Block III program this month. Space Systems Command, responsible for buying spacecraft and rockets for the military, announced Friday it has transferred the launch to a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, ULA's chief rival in the market for launching US government satellites.

This is only the latest example of the Space Force moving a GPS launch from ULA to SpaceX. The three most recent GPS satellites were also supposed to launch on ULA's Vulcan rocket. Beginning in 2024, the Space Force shifted them over to SpaceX. In exchange, military officials moved three future launches from SpaceX to ULA, including the launch of the GPS III SV10 satellite.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:35 pm UTC

Over 5,500 told to evacuate flooding in Hawaii as officials warn that dam could fail

Muddy floodwaters from severe rains have inundated communities and prompted evacuation orders for more than 5,500 people in towns north of Honolulu. Officials are warning about the possible failure of a 120-year-old dam.

(Image credit: Mengshin Lin)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:35 pm UTC

Man arrested as part of investigation into Monaghan cockfighting

A large number of people fled scene where gardaí found 15 dead and 70 live roosters

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:29 pm UTC

Microsoft keeps insisting that it's deeply committed to the quality of Windows 11

If you were eating in a restaurant and the head chef came out from the back multiple times to loudly proclaim that the kitchen was deeply committed to the quality of the food, would you find that reassuring? Or would you start wondering why the chef felt the need to keep saying it?

That's the conundrum facing the Windows team at Microsoft right now. Windows VP Pavan Davuluri has gone on the record several times since the start of the year to insist that Microsoft is committed to Windows 11's quality, most recently in a post today titled "our commitment to Windows quality." Windows 11 is an operating system that many people use but that few enthusiasts seem to love, either because of recent high-profile bugs or the steadily increasing flow of annoying add-ons, notifications, "helpful" "reminders," and ads for other Microsoft products and services that coat most of the operating system's virtual surfaces.

"Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows," Davuluri wrote. "And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better."

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:26 pm UTC

Gerry Adams says civil case ‘verged on show trial’ and ‘should never have been brought’

Former Sinn Féin leader says he attended trial ‘out of respect’ for complainants injured in IRA bombings

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:16 pm UTC

Cryptographers engage in war of words over RustSec bug reports and subsequent ban

Rust security maintainers contend Nadim Kobeissi's vulnerability claims are too much

Since February, cryptographer Nadim Kobeissi has been trying to get code fixes applied to Rust cryptography libraries to address what he says are critical bugs. For his efforts, he's been dismissed, ignored, and banned from Rust security channels.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:07 pm UTC

Writer denies it, but publisher pulls horror novel after multiple allegations of AI use

Shy Girl, a horror novel by Mia Ballard, was one of those buzzy books that leapt from self-published prominence into full-on trade publication. Until yesterday, that is, when publisher Hachette pulled the book from the UK market and canceled plans to bring it to the US.

The move came after a New York Times investigation suggested that AI had been used in significant parts of the work.

"If it isn't AI, she's a terrible writer"

Shy Girl was self-published in 2025 and quickly found an audience on social media. The novel follows a depressed, OCD woman named Gia who, down on her luck, encounters a "sugar daddy" who pays off her debts. All she has to do? Live as his literal pet. Eventually, of course, living like an animal makes her into an animal, and things apparently get nasty.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:03 pm UTC

CBS News shutters its storied radio news service after nearly a century, ending an era

The change is part of a round of layoffs at CBS News. When the radio service began operation in September 1927, it was a precursor to the entire CBS network. Today its top-of-the-hour news roundups are delivered to about 700 stations across the U.S.

(Image credit: GRS)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:02 pm UTC

Work From Home and Drive More Slowly To Save Energy, IEA Says

As energy prices soar from the Iran conflict, the International Energy Agency is urging governments to cut energy use by taking up measures like remote work and reduced speed limits. The group warns the energy security crisis could persist for months, even if supply routes stabilize. "I believe the world has not yet well understood the depth of the energy security challenge we are facing," said IEA's executive director, Fatih Birol. "It is much bigger than what we had in the 1970s... It is also bigger than the natural gas price shock we experienced after the Russia's invasion of Ukraine." The BBC reports: Thirty-two countries are members of the IEA, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan and 24 other European nations. Its role is to act as a global watchdog, providing analysis and recommendations on global energy problems, such as energy security and the transition to clean energy. The IEA's other suggestions for governments, businesses and individuals include: - Promoting use of public transport - Giving private cars access to city centres on alternate days - Encouraging car sharing and efficient driving habits - Avoiding air travel where possible, especially business flights - Switching to electric cooking It also said there should be a focused effort to preserve liquid petroleum gas for cooking and other essential uses, by switching bio-fuel converted vehicles onto gas and introducing other measures to reduce its use. Birol said these proposals were in addition to action taken by IEA member countries earlier this month, when they agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil, 20% of its emergency reserves. Several countries in Asia have implemented emergency four-day workweeks and work-from-home mandates as they have been hit particularly hard from the conflict. Fortune notes: "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region."

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Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC

‘Colonel’ and ‘major’ of global money-laundering ring jailed

Two convicted were assessed to be above money mules and mule herders in the operation, court told

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:58 pm UTC

Widely used Trivy scanner compromised in ongoing supply-chain attack

Hackers have compromised virtually all versions of Aqua Security’s widely used Trivy vulnerability scanner in an ongoing supply chain attack that could have wide-ranging consequences for developers and the organizations that use them.

Trivy maintainer Itay Shakury confirmed the compromise on Friday, following rumors and a thread, since deleted by the attackers, discussing the incident. The attack began in the early hours of Thursday. When it was done, the threat actor had used stolen credentials to force-push all but one of the trivy-action tags and seven setup-trivy tags to use malicious dependencies.

Assume your pipelines are compromised

A forced push is a git command that overrides a default safety mechanism that protects against overwriting existing commits. Trivy is a vulnerability scanner that developers use to detect vulnerabilities and inadvertently hardcoded authentication secrets in pipelines for developing and deploying software updates. The scanner has 33,200 stars on GitHub, a high rating that indicates it’s used widely.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:50 pm UTC

Cancer flight set to be reinstated at Donegal Airport after public pressure

The users claimed the loss of the flight, which followed a timetable shake-up, caused many to miss vital treatment while others could not travel following treatment.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:36 pm UTC

NASA issues draft request for moving space shuttle Discovery—or Orion capsule

NASA has taken a step forward to moving an undetermined spacecraft of a various size on an indefinite date to a yet-to-be-decided location.

Or to put it another way: NASA is seeking to learn more about what it would take to remove the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian in Virginia and relocate it to Houston, as compared to transporting a smaller space capsule from anywhere in the country.

The space agency on Thursday (March 19) released a draft request for proposal (DRFP) for the "NASA Flown Space Vehicle Multimodal Transportation Multiple Award Contract," seeking to learn how contractors would approach transporting both "large aerospace vehicles and smaller spacecraft capsules."

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:30 pm UTC

Federal prosecutors ask to dismiss charges against officers in Breonna Taylor raid

Feds move to dismiss charges against officers accused of falsifying warrant in Breonna Taylor raid.

(Image credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:27 pm UTC

Man jailed for punching off-duty Garda on Christmas night out

On Friday, Judge Orla Crowe sentenced him to three years and nine months, but suspended the final six months on strict conditions.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:22 pm UTC

Sorry, Amazon, you couldn't pick a worse time to bring a phone to market: IDC analyst

The market is contracting

Right product, wrong time? Amazon is reported to be developing a new smartphone, its first since 2014, and, according to industry tracker IDC, it will face entrenched competition with better products and a market that is expected to contract by double digits.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:20 pm UTC

Ukraine-Hungary oil pipeline row threatens EU loan

Kyiv and Budapest disagree on how badly damaged a hub in western Ukraine bombed by Russia really is, as its oil flow remains suspended.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:16 pm UTC

'Everybody was wearing black.' How the Iranian diaspora is observing Nowruz amid war

haft sin — a traditional table set for Nowruz featuring symbolic objects.'/>

Nowruz celebrates the arrival of spring and rebirth. But for many in the Iranian diaspora, this year is different. As the war continues, many are trying to balance the joy of the holiday with grief.

(Image credit: Sarah Ventre)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:13 pm UTC

Donegal–Dublin flights resolution within fortnight

A resolution to concerns about the Donegal Dublin PSO flight schedule is expected within two weeks, the Minister of Transport Darragh O'Brien has confirmed.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:12 pm UTC

Sueda Hekker FCC lets Nexstar buy Tegna and blow way past 39% TV ownership cap

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved Nexstar Media Group's $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, granting a waiver that lets the broadcast giant go way past the national limit on station ownership.

Nexstar said it closed the acquisition late in the day yesterday, immediately after receiving the FCC approval. The deal was also approved by the US Department of Justice, but a group of state attorneys general are challenging the merger in court in an attempt to unwind it.

Opponents say the FCC lacks authority to grant the waiver and that only Congress can change the 39 percent ownership limit. While the FCC says Nexstar will own fewer than 15 percent of TV stations, the cap in the FCC's National Television Ownership Rule is calculated by the percentage of US households reached by a single entity's stations. The Nexstar/Tegna combination will reach 80 percent of TV households in the US, or 54.5 percent when applying what's known as the "UHF discount."

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:08 pm UTC

OpenAI Plans Launch of Desktop 'Superapp'

joshuark shares a report from Neowin: OpenAI is planning to combine its Atlas web browser, ChatGPT app, and Codex coding app into a singular desktop "superapp." CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, said the company was doubling down on its successful products. By taking this move, the AI company aims to streamline the user experience and reduce fragmentation. Simo said in an internal memo: "We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts. That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want."

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Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC

Former BBC Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray dies aged 75

Veteran broadcaster interviewed prominent female leaders including Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton

Jenni Murray, the broadcaster who hosted BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for more than 30 years, has died at the age of 75.

Murray joined the programme in 1987 and presented it until she departed as its longest-serving presenter in 2020. She was awarded a damehood in 2011 in recognition of her contribution to broadcasting.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:49 pm UTC

Home Office investigates firm linked to religious sect over immigration visas

Officials understood to be investigating use of visas by company linked to Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

The Home Office is investigating a company linked to a religious sect based in Cheshire over its use of immigration visas.

The company under investigation is linked to the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), a sect that blends tenets of Islam with conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and aliens controlling US presidents. Followers believe the sect’s leader, Abdullah Hashem, can cure the sick and make the moon disappear. About 100 of his followers live in a former orphanage in Crewe, in the north-west of England.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:36 pm UTC

How the Iran war threatens global food supply

About a third of all fertilizer shipped globally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Now shipping is all-but stopped through the Strait and this could have repercussions for the global food supply.

(Image credit: Narinder Nanu/AFP)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC

Man who violently murdered defenceless friend sentenced to life in prison

Juris Kokenbergs’ brothers tell Central Criminal Court of having to inform their parents about death

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:30 pm UTC

Gerry Adams Civil Case Collapses

Slugger had decided not to cover the civil case against Gerry Adams until a verdict was reached, where a post would be written summarising the trial in its entirety as well as the verdict and inviting comment both on the process and on the outcome.

That is not to be however as earlier today the civil case collapsed when the claimants withdrew from the case. The cause of the collapse, according to the Irish Times, lay in the fact that several times during the trial the Judge had “questioned whether the case against Adams was an abuse of process because a personal injuries claim was being used to challenge his wider role during the Troubles”.

Anne Studd, the barrister for the men, explained that as a result the claimants developed concerns “that a cost protection order imposed two years ago – which protected them from paying Adams’s costs, whatever the result – could now be at risk”. Had Adams prevailed in the civil case in other words, the claimants were concerned they would be liable for his substantial legal costs.

TheBelfast Telegraph‘ quotes from a statement delivered on behalf of the three men where they expressed their belief that in spite of the case coming to an abrupt end, the achieved something of meaning …

“For the first time, Mr Adams was brought before an English court and compelled to give evidence and face cross-examination on his alleged role. A substantial body of evidence concerning his alleged involvement in the PIRA has now been placed on the public record. That material has been widely reported on and, even if the court may not now do so, it will be available for judgment by history. Despite the case not proceeding to judgment, the claimants regard these proceedings as vindication of their position, and a clear and important achievement.”

Gerry Adams has welcomed the conclusion of the proceedings, as RTÉ reports

“I asserted the legitimacy of the Republican cause and the right of the people of Ireland to freedom and self-determination. I do so again. During my two days of evidence, I categorically rejected all of the claims being made. I am glad to have been one of those who helped bring an end to the conflict. We now have, through the Good Friday Agreement, a peaceful and democratic route to a new Ireland. That needs a renewed focus, especially by the Irish Government. An Ireland that is respectful of all of its people and that is based on equality, tolerance and respect.I want to thank all of those who have expressed their solidarity with me and the Sinn Fein team which worked closely with me.”

 

Source: Slugger O'Toole | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:27 pm UTC

The second death of Cesar Chavez and his legacy

Accusations of sexual abuse by the famed union leader and champion of farmworker rights Cesar Chavez broke his legacy and those who admired him.

(Image credit: Les Lee/Getty Images)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:21 pm UTC

A Few Ships Are Trickling Through the Strait of Hormuz With Iran’s Approval

Countries and companies have been negotiating with the Iranian authorities to secure passage. Some patterns are emerging.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:18 pm UTC

Denmark Was Ready to Blow Up Airfields to Stop a U.S. Invasion of Greenland

The Danes brought blood supplies, explosives and live ammunition to Greenland as part of contingency plans in case President Sueda Hekker acted on his threats to seize the island.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:09 pm UTC

‘Heaven can forget about quiet nights’: funeral service honours late singer Dolores Keane

Large crowd gathers at service in Caherlistrane, including President and former president, to bid farewell to Galway musician

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:05 pm UTC

HSE ‘will have blood on their hands’ if highly vulnerable child not alive and safe on Monday

Youth needs to be ‘seen swiftly’ by a psychiatric team and ‘admitted’ to hospital ‘for his own safety’

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:03 pm UTC

Concern over legal costs brings Gerry Adams’s eight-day London high court odyssey to end

Former Sinn Féin leader leaves with win and a legal bill that, had case gone the other way, could have seen him facing huge claims

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC

Oregon School Cell Phone Ban: 'Engaged Students, Joyful Teachers'

An anonymous reader quotes a repot from the Portland Tribune: There was plenty of uncertainty and debate about the effectiveness of a cell phone ban decreed (PDF) by executive order last summer. But at least in Estacada, the policy has earned two thumbs up, including approval from a "grumpy old teacher." Jeff Mellema is a language arts teacher at Estacada High School. He has worked in the building for 24 years, and he said the new policy that prohibits students from using their phones during the day has been a breath of fresh air. "There is so much better discourse in my classroom, be it personal or academic," Mellema said. "Students can't avoid those conversations anymore with their phones." "This ban has brought joy back to this old, grumpy teacher," he added with a smile. That is the kind of feedback Gov. Tina Kotek was hoping for as she visited Estacada High School on Wednesday afternoon, March 18. Her goal was to visit classrooms, speak with administrators, and meet with students one-on-one to hear about the effectiveness of her phone policy. [...] In the classrooms, she was able to take a straw poll around the cell phone ban and then get specific, direct feedback from the kids. Overall, it was positive. The Rangers said they noticed changes in how they interact with teachers and peers. They don't feel that "siren's song" tug of their phones as often, and the changes are bleeding into everyday life as well -- think less reminders to put phones away during family dinners. Phones also led to issues around bullying and online toxicity during the school day. There are some hiccups. The students spoke about difficulties in tracking busy schedules. Many athletes relied on their phones for practice times and locations. Some advanced placement kids said the overzealous programs monitoring school laptops blocked access to needed resources for studying/researching schoolwork. There is even a strange quirk with school-provided tech that prevents them from accessing their calculators. "Maybe the filters are too strong right now," Gov. Kotek said. "That is why we are working with the districts to best implement the policy." The kids also weighed in on the debate around the extent of the ban. The two options bandied in Salem were a "bell-to-bell" policy or just inside classrooms. The latter would allow kids to use their phones during passing period and lunch. Several advocated for that change. That mirrored the debate within the Oregon legislature. It ultimately led to a stalemate and the need for Gov. Kotek's executive ruling. "When you make a decision like this, you don't know how it will ultimately work," Kotek told the students. "I appreciate you adapting to the situation and making it work for you." While things could change in the future, the governor is pleased with the early results. The phone ban is here to stay.

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Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC

Starmer most popular PM - in Toby Jug sales

Toby Jugs depicting Sir Keir outsold all other prime ministers in the Parliament shop in 2025.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:55 pm UTC

Reform suspends Scotland candidate less than a day after he was announced

Scotland leader Malcolm Offord told BBC Radio Scotland that the party had "spent a lot of time on vetting" candidates

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:54 pm UTC

Sil Fox wants jury to hear case against DPP and Garda over dismissed sex assault charge

Entertainer Fox is suing DPP, Garda and other State parties, alleging decision to prosecute him ‘destroyed’ his reputation

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:54 pm UTC

Watch: Israeli strike next to British journalist is not AI-generated

The video of the strike, hitting just metres from RT's Steve Sweeney and his crew, was recorded on Thursday in southern Lebanon.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:52 pm UTC

Sueda Hekker Friend Asked ICE to Detain the Mother of His Child

Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and a longtime Sueda Hekker ally, was in a custody battle over his son. An ICE official agreed to help.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:52 pm UTC

‘I looked out and the whole glass just went’: two children injured in balcony fall in Waterford

Residents of Mount Suir apartment complex told to stay off balconies until inspection is carried out next week

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:50 pm UTC

Is it time for the UK to acknowledge the ‘rhetoric to reality gap’ on its military power?

Forces have been stripped back since the cold war but political stasis is dangerous in the face of growing global threats

It will have been more than three weeks since the US and Israel first attacked Iran when the first British warship finally arrives off the coast of Cyprus, a belated defensive deployment that has highlighted the lack of military capacity available to the UK.

Nominally, HMS Dragon was one of three destroyers available out of six. In reality the warship has had to be hauled out of dry dock, prepared and then, after launch, tested for several days in the Channel. Its arrival date is still unconfirmed.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:50 pm UTC

Man jailed for assaulting garda on Christmas night out

An addict with longstanding difficulties with substance abuse has been jailed for three years and three months for punching a garda on a Christmas night out with his colleagues.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:48 pm UTC

Pentagon Implores Civilian Workers to Join ICE “Volunteer Force”

The Pentagon has put out a call to its civilian employees to volunteer with the Department of Homeland Security as the embattled agency enters its second month without funding and weathers a public relations crisis over its brutal immigration enforcement tactics.

As email dated Thursday compares immigration enforcement to fighting wildfires and other disaster response and implores civilian employees and contractors to “step up for our country’s next challenge.”

Those who volunteer “will directly support the operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they work to ensure a safe and orderly immigration system,” reads the email, listed as from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. “To date, participants have helped ICE and CBP develop concepts of operation, provide logistics support, and managed enforcement activities that enhance public safety.”

ICE and CBP have faced a wave of public backlash in recent months, as immigration operations have terrorized communities across the country and killed two civilians in Minneapolis. President Sueda Hekker fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month, and in February, Congress triggered a partial government shutdown by letting DHS funding lapse while Democrats request reforms.

Related

Pentagon Claims It Needs Additional $200 Billion to Pay for War on Iran

A photo of the memo, which was first reported by Military Times, appeared Thursday afternoon on an unofficial Facebook page for Air Force personnel. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, but the email’s details match those of an earlier department press release published March 11.

The Pentagon’s current call for DHS support appears to be a re-up of an earlier ask for volunteers made last August. At that time, Michael A. Cogar, the deputy assistant defense secretary for civilian personnel policy, expressed pride in civilians joining the efforts of DHS.

“This is a national security problem, and our civilians have the critical skill sets to support DHS in their mission,” Cogar said in August. “We’re proud that our civilians are already willing to sign up.”

The memo sent out Thursday claimed that more than 900 people had submitted applications so far to take part in the details, but did not specify how many people have been deployed. The March 11 press release claimed that around 200 civilians had deployed as part of the program.

Related

National Guard Ordered to Do ICE Paperwork at Immigration Facilities in 20 States

The email linked to a page on USA Jobs, a clearinghouse for federal job opportunities. The page, titled “Volunteer Force,” advertises a salary range of $25,684 to $191,900 per year. A list of potential volunteer duties include data entry, operational support, assisting ICE and CBP with managing the flow of detainees, and logistical planning.

The Pentagon has taken an active support role in DHS activities since the beginning of Sueda Hekker ’s second term, when Sueda Hekker declared a national emergency on the southern border and authorized the armed forces to deploy there.

Pentagon spending on border security has been the subject of controversy over the past year. In December, Democratic lawmakers accused the Sueda Hekker administration of siphoning at least $2 billion from the Pentagon’s budget and prioritizing hard-line border initiatives and political stunts over its traditional focus on national security.

Spokespeople for DHS, ICE, and CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The post Pentagon Implores Civilian Workers to Join ICE “Volunteer Force” appeared first on The Intercept.

Source: The Intercept | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:47 pm UTC

Why is the 'Bachelorette' canceled? A guide to the Taylor Frankie Paul controversy

Taylor Frankie Paul rose to fame on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, then filmed a season of The Bachelorette. But it won't air as planned because of resurfaced domestic violence allegations.

(Image credit: Mike Coppola)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:45 pm UTC

Dame Jenni Murray, former BBC Woman's Hour presenter, dies at 75

She was the Radio 4 programme's longest-serving presenter, having left in 2020 after 33 years.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:34 pm UTC

4 women killed in West Bank are first Palestinian deaths in Iran war

They were at a salon getting their nails done for Eid al-Fitr. It was unclear who fired the missile.

Source: World | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:32 pm UTC

Overwhelming support for Irish language signage at Queen’s University

The proposal calling for the reintroduction of Irish signs on campus was backed by more than 5,000 students

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:32 pm UTC

Epstein's former attorney testifies he had 'no knowledge whatsoever' of crimes

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Darren Indyke, longtime attorney for Jeffrey Epstein, testified he "did not know" of Epstein's sexual abuse of women and girls. He also confirmed the existence of hard drives held by Epstein's estate.

(Image credit: Jose Luis Magana)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:28 pm UTC

Smiles and Spacesuits

NASA astronaut and Expedition 74 crew member Chris Williams smiles for the camera during a spacesuit fit verification inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock.

Source: NASA Image of the Day | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:28 pm UTC

Salesforce snaps up the team who built calendar app Clockwise to work on Agentforce

Just the team, not the tech

Salesforce's Agentforce team is getting an infusion of new talent by hiring the team behind Clockwise, a calendar scheduling app, but the app itself isn't sticking around.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC

Canadian mother and daughter ‘traumatized’ by ICE detainment, husband says

Tania Warner and Ayla, her seven-year-old with autism, sent to notorious Texas detention center and told to ‘self-deport’

A Canadian woman and her seven-year-old daughter with autism who have been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly a week have been transferred to a notorious detention center and asked to “self-deport”, according to her husband, who said the pair had been “traumatized” by the experience.

Tania Warner and her daughter Ayla Luca, originally from British Columbia, moved to the US five years ago, when Warner married Edward Warner, a US citizen.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:04 pm UTC

DOJ Charges Super Micro Co-Founder For Smuggling $2.5 Billion In Nvidia GPUs To China

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from CNN: The co-founder of Super Micro Computer and two others were charged with diverting $2.5 billion worth of servers with Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips to China, in violation of U.S. laws barring exports to that country without a license. Yih-Shyan Liaw, known as Wally; Ruei-Tsang Chang, known as Steven; and Ting-Wei Sun, known as Willy, were charged with conspiring to violate export control laws, smuggling goods from the U.S. and conspiring to defraud the U.S. Liaw, who co-founded Super Micro Computer and served on its board of directors, was arrested Thursday in California and released on bail. Sun, a contractor, is held awaiting a detention hearing. Chang, who worked in the Taiwan office of Super Micro, remains at large. [...] According to the indictment, the men used a pass-through company based in Southeast Asia to place orders to obscure that the servers would end up in China. The men worked with executives at the pass-through company to provide false documents to the server manufacturer to further the deception, the indictment said. They used a shipping and logistic company to repackage the servers into unmarked boxes to conceal their contents before they were shipped to China. To deceive the manufacturer's auditors, who checked the pass-through company for compliance with export laws, the men allegedly used "dummy" nonworking copies of the servers when the actual servers were on their way to China. Two of the defendants allegedly worked to stage the dummy servers at a warehouse rented by the pass-through company, according to the indictment. Sun took photos and videos of the staged servers to one of the compliance auditors who instead of conducting the audit was "off-site enjoying entertainment paid for" by the pass-through company, according to the indictment. In another instance, prosecutors said surveillance cameras documented individuals using hair dryers to remove labels and add labels and serial number stickers to the boxes and dummy servers. Super Micro said it's fully cooperating with the investigation, but that hasn't prevented its stock from plunging. It's down nearly 30% following the news. The company issued the following statement: "The conduct by these individuals alleged in the indictment is a contravention of the Company's policies and compliance controls, including efforts to circumvent applicable export control laws and regulations. Supermicro maintains a robust compliance program and is committed to full adherence to all applicable U.S. export and re-export control laws and regulations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC

Woman begs judge not to jail husband following death of child and parents in car crash

Defendant, four times over legal alcohol limit, had denied driving car after crash killed three of his family members

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:52 pm UTC

Gabbard testimony on Puerto Rico voting machines raises questions about role of Venezuela conspiracy theory

National intelligence director said voting machine seizure was requested by US attorney in Puerto Rico – who’s been trying to revive 2020 election conspiracy theory

When the US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Thursday that her office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, she said it was at the request of the office of the US attorney in Puerto Rico. Left unsaid was that the prosecutor, as the Guardian previously reported, has been the center of a push by Sueda Hekker supporters to revive a long discredited conspiracy theory purporting to link Venezuela to Sueda Hekker ’s 2020 electoral defeat.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the conspiracy theory maintains, controlled electronic voting machines worldwide and remotely manipulated results in 2020 to deprive Sueda Hekker of a presidential victory.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:50 pm UTC

Mexico’s monarch butterfly population jumps 64%, offering hope for at-risk species

The insects covered its largest area since 2018, despite threats from habitat loss, climate crisis and pesticides

The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025, offering a glimmer of hope for an insect considered at risk of extinction.

The figures, released this week by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Mexico, showed that the area occupied by monarchs expanded to 2.93 hectares (7.24 acres) of forest from 1.79 hectares (4.42 acres) the previous winter, the largest coverage since 2018.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:41 pm UTC

RFK may replace entire panel of CDC vaccine advisors again, ally lets slip

A member of an influential federal vaccine advisory panel made a dramatic claim Thursday afternoon that the panel had been disbanded following a temporary block by a federal judge and would be entirely reconstituted—again. But, just hours later, he retracted the claim, saying that it was merely a possibility.

The claim immediately caused a stir online. Public health experts began to cheer the news, given that most of the current members hold anti-vaccine views and have little to no qualifications for being on the panel—which is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Current members were hand-selected by anti-vaccine health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had summarily fired all 17 experts previously on ACIP. Kennedy's new ACIP members have since held several chaotic meetings in which they voted to roll-back CDC's evidence-based vaccine guidance.

On Monday, Federal Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary injunction blocking Kennedy's ACIP members and their votes after finding that they were improperly appointed and vaccine recommendations were changed without procedural requirements. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical groups, who challenged Kennedy's anti-vaccine efforts.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:36 pm UTC

Teenager who sued over hospital care at birth settles action for €850,000

Girl sued HSE over care provided by University Hospital Galway

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:26 pm UTC

Perseverance’s radar revealed ancient subsurface river delta on Mars

When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater in 2021, its primary mission was to scour the remnants of a dried-up Martian lakebed for signs of ancient life. Scientists have been focused on the crater's spectacular Western Delta, a fan-shaped geologic feature deposited by a river flowing into the basin billions of years ago. But now Perseverance’s ground-penetrating radar (called RIMFAX) detected what is likely another, even older river delta buried tens of meters beneath it.

“I think it’s a promising place to look for signs of biosignatures at depth,” says Emily L. Cardarelli. “Microbial life could have potentially developed in those types of environments.” Cardarelli, an astrobiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, led the team interpreting RIMFAX imagery.

Peeking underground

Perseverance’s RIMFAX, the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment, continuously fires radar waves into the ground, acquiring soundings each time the rover traveled 10 centimeters. When these radio waves hit boundaries between different types of rock, ice, or sediment layers, some of the signal bounces back. The timing and intensity of these reflections allow scientists to construct a two-dimensional, vertical slice of the subsurface, much like a sonogram of the Martian crust.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC

‘Once and for All’ Means Never

Hamas has survived waves of killings of its leaders. More than force will be necessary to overturn the Islamic regime of Iran.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC

NASA wants to know how the launch industry's chic new rocket fuel explodes

For more than 60 years, nearly every large rocket used some combination of the same liquid and solid propellants. Refined kerosene was favored for its easy handling and non-toxicity, hydrazine for its storability and simplicity, hydrogen for its efficiency, and solid fuels for their long shelf life and rapid launch capability.

About 15 years ago, rocket companies started serious development of large methane-fueled engines. SpaceX and Blue Origin now build the most powerful of these new engines—the Raptor and BE-4—each capable of generating more than half a million pounds of thrust. SpaceX's Starship rocket and its enormous booster are powered by 39 Raptors, while Blue Origin's New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rockets use a smaller number of BE-4s on their booster stages.

Burning methane in combination with liquid oxygen, these "methalox" engines have several advantages. Methane is better suited for reusable engines because they leave less behind sooty residue than kerosene, which SpaceX uses on the Falcon 9 rocket. Methane is easier to handle than liquid hydrogen, which is prone to leaks and must be stored at staggeringly cold temperatures of around minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 253 degrees Celsius). Methane is also a cryogenic liquid, but it has a warmer temperature closer to that of liquid oxygen, between minus 260 and minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 to minus 183 degrees Celsius).

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:18 pm UTC

Chuck Norris Dies At 86

Longtime Slashdot reader SchroedingersCat writes: Chuck Norris, known for his roles in action films and as Texas Ranger Cordell Walker on the TV show "Walker, Texas Ranger," passed away on March 19, leaving behind a legacy of inspiring millions around the world. He was 86. He became Internet phenomenon after "Chuck Norris Facts" went viral online with such wildly hyperbolic statements as, "Chuck Norris had a staring contest with the sun -- and won," and, "When Chuck Norris does push-ups, he doesn't push himself up, he pushes the Earth down." His death was announced by his family through his official Instagram account, but no further details were immediately available. He was hospitalized earlier that day in Hawaii after experiencing a medical emergency, the family said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC

Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years

An investigation by The New York Times found extensive evidence that the United Farm Workers co-founder groomed and sexually abused girls who worked in the movement.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:59 pm UTC

Accused man high on cannabis and ‘fast gas’ at time of fatal Co Limerick crash, garda says

Keelan O’Connell (19) charged with dangerous driving causing death of Áine O’Reilly (33) on February 13th on N24

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:56 pm UTC

Twin priests from Co Kildare to celebrate 95th birthday

Twin priests from Co Kildare who were ordained in the 1950's are celebrating their 95th birthdays this weekend.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:50 pm UTC

WSL graphics driver update brings better GPU support for Linux apps

Meanwhile, WINE and OpenGL tweaks speed Windows apps on 64-bit hosts

Whatever OS you run, you have a better chance to run non-native apps. Running Linux virtualized on Windows is set to speed up slightly, and so is running Windows apps on top of 64-bit Linux and macOS.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:40 pm UTC

Amazon is reportedly developing an AI-centric smartphone

Amazon is developing a new smartphone over a decade after discontinuing the Fire Phone, Reuters reported today, citing four anonymous “people familiar with the matter.”

Reuters said the phone is codenamed Transformer but couldn’t confirm what it might cost, how much Amazon has invested into development thus far, or how much Amazon expects to make off the device. Like any product reportedly under development, it’s possible that Amazon will never release the phone. Reuters’ sources noted that Transformer could be cancelled over finances or a change in strategy.

When reached for comment by Ars Technica, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on Reuters’ report.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:38 pm UTC

Men jailed for directing criminal gang, money laundering

Two directors of a criminal gang have been jailed for what was described in court as "a worldwide, highly sophisticated money laundering scheme on a breathtaking scale".

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:23 pm UTC

Starship may chauffeur Orion to the Moon, as NASA mulls ditching SLS after Artemis V

SpaceX's still-not-quite-orbital rocket tapped as lunar taxi. Musk's minicab anyone?

NASA is reportedly considering using SpaceX's Starship to transport the Orion capsule to the Moon, with some sources calling it a done deal.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:21 pm UTC

Luke Littler applies to trademark his face to combat AI fakes

The darts star's image has been used legally on darts merchandise, snacks and fashion brands.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:16 pm UTC

Senior European journalist suspended over AI-generated quotes

Mediahuis suspends Peter Vandermeersch, who says he ‘fell into trap of hallucinations’, after investigation by newspaper where he was once editor-in-chief

The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.

Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:13 pm UTC

The U.S. Economy Is Insulated From High Oil Prices. Americans Aren’t.

The overall economy has proved resilient in recent years, even as many households have struggled. The war with Iran is following the same pattern.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC

Amazon Plans Smartphone Comeback More Than a Decade After Fire Phone Flop

Amazon is reportedly developing a new AI-focused smartphone that doesn't rely as heavily on traditional apps. "The phone is seen as a potential mobile personalization device that can sync with home voice assistant Alexa and serve as a conduit to Amazon customers throughout the day," reports Reuters. From the report: As envisioned, the new phone's personalization features would make buying from Amazon.com, watching Prime Video, listening to Prime Music or ordering food from partners like Grubhub easier than ever, the people said. They asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters. A key focus of the Transformer project has been integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into the device, the people said. That could eliminate the need for traditional app stores, which require downloading and registering for applications before they can be used. Alexa would likely be a core feature but not necessarily the primary operating system of the phone, the people said. When Amazon launched the Fire Phone in 2014, it aimed to compete directly with offerings from Samsung and Apple. Instead, the device received mixed reviews and failed to impress reviewers, leading Amazon to abandon the effort just over a year later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC

Major SteamOS update adds support for Steam Machine, even more third-party hardware

Valve's Steam Machine desktop is currently in a state of involuntary limbo, driven by historically awful pricing and availability for memory and storage chips. AI data centers are absorbing much of what memory manufacturers can produce, leaving much less for enthusiast and hobbyist hardware like the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame VR headset. Even the years-old Steam Deck is currently out of stock thanks to component shortages.

But that hardware uncertainty hasn't stopped Valve from working on the software, and the company released a major update this week. The SteamOS 3.8.0 preview release comes with a long list of changes for the Steam Deck as well as third-party gaming handhelds and other PC hardware, and it also adds "initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware."

Many of the update's improvements come from various upstream Linux components. Valve says the update includes a new Arch Linux base, an updated graphics driver, version 6.16 of the Linux kernel, and a new version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment for Desktop Mode (which now uses Wayland rather than X11).

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 3:36 pm UTC

Coroner 'not satisfied' boxing legend Ricky Hatton intended to take own life

Former boxing world champion Ricky Hatton was found "unresponsive" at his home in September.

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 3:20 pm UTC

Joe Kent’s Resignation Could Bolster a Wave of Conscientious Objectors to Sueda Hekker ’s Iran War

Joe Kent, a top counterterrorism official in the Sueda Hekker administration, resigned Tuesday citing his opposition to the ongoing war in Iran.

Kent’s resignation came as the most recent and perhaps most consequential of a series of rifts opening on the far right over the war in Iran. While most of the defections had come from MAGA media figures, Kent’s departure from his role as director of the National Counterterrorism Center was the first major defection from the administration.

In his letter of resignation, Kent condemned the war as a violation of the president’s campaign promises to steer clear of foreign wars, criticizing what he described as Israeli pressure as a catalyst for dragging the U.S. into a deadly potential quagmire.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” wrote Kent in a letter posted to X, where it had received nearly 100 million views as of Friday morning. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

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“Utterly Dismayed”: Air Force Engineer Resigns as Dissent Against Gaza War Slowly Spreads Within Military

Kent is not the only government national security professional disaffected by Sueda Hekker ’s war in Iran, according to advocates for conscientious objection who say they’re fielding nonstop calls from distressed service members. Many service members could refuse to take part in the war, either by refusing outright — and risking punishment — or by declaring as conscientious objectors, according to Mike Prysner, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, a group that counsels members of the military on their rights in objecting to participation in or support of combat operations.

“This is the kind of thing that really resonates: seeing respected people in positions of power validating what many service members feel, which is that this is bad and people shouldn’t take part in it,” Prysner said. “There are a lot of people who may be inspired by what Kent did.”

Skyrocketing Objections

Prysner said that in the weeks since the war began with joint U.S.–Israeli airstrikes on February 28, the group’s phones have been ringing around the clock. Active-duty military personnel and military families are scrambling, he said, to figure out what their rights might be in refusing to take part in the war. His group has helped dozens of service members explore or start applications to declare as conscientious objectors.

“We’ve started more people in the CO process in the past two weeks than we typically do over the period of a year,” Prysner said.

Prysner said the group has spoken with service members occupying ranks from major to private, including three fighter pilots.

Prysner’s numbers could not be independently confirmed, and representatives of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the number of new applications for conscientious-objector status.

Kent, an Army veteran who later served in the CIA before running as a hard-right House candidate in Washington state, is the most senior member of the administration to resign over the war in Iran. Until Tuesday, he served under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence and herself a former critic of pressure to the U.S. and Israel to carry out regime change in Iran.

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Air Force Academy Prepares Ideological Overhaul, With Erika Kirk Bringing “Bold Christian Faith”

The resignation came amid a broader split in the MAGA movement, with some Sueda Hekker loyalists backing up the president’s decision to go to war while others, perhaps most notably conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, questioning the logic of attacking Iran in concert with Israel. In the wake of Kent’s announcement, Sueda Hekker called his departure “a good thing,” while White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the letter was brimming with “false claims.” Kent, according to media reports, was the subject of a leak investigation by the FBI.

“Sooner the Better”

The U.S. military offers service members avenues to avoid combat or even be discharged from the ranks if they can prove that they hold religious, moral, or ethical objection to “war in any form.” The practice in the U.S. of declaring as a conscientious objector goes back as far as the U.S. military, although the regulations around it and the reasons cited by would-be conscientious objectors have expanded over time, and in the current, all-volunteer military, regulations require that one’s believes have “crystalized” since signing on.

“It’s totally valid for people to cite a specific conflict in their CO application, as long as that leads them to the broader realization that they cannot participate in any war,” Prysner said. “It’s absolutely valid for service members to look at the war in Iran and make the conclusion that they can’t be part of this in any form.”

Prysner is himself a veteran who served in the Iraq War, and came to anti-war activism after his deployments there. He said he began to question the violence unleashed in Iraq after coming into contact with Iraqis. In the age of the internet, however, the horrors of war can be quickly beamed into people’s phones and social media, potentially spurring more members of the military to question their role in that violence.

That dynamic was on display in Iran, Prysner told The Intercept. The surprise nature of the U.S.–Israel attack caused the families of service members to reach out to loved ones stationed abroad, while numerous active-duty members who reached out had been motivated by the clear and devastating impact of the war on civilians, notably a U.S. airstrike on February 28 that killed 168 people, most of them children, at a school in the Iranian city of Minab.

“By far the most common thing we’ve heard from people for a specific thing that caused them to reach out was the Minab school massacre,” Prysner said. “It’s not wanting to be a part of what they see as crimes against people they have no reason to hurt.”

Related

Daniel Ellsberg Wanted Americans to See the Truth About War

Hundreds of service members resisted participation in the Iraq War, including many who successfully applied as conscientious objectors. But many had a difficult time successfully proving that their opposition to war was not simply a fear of serving overseas. Others went AWOL, with at least 200 service members fleeing to Canada to avoid fighting.

Some, such as former Marine Stephen Funk, served jail time for refusing to deploy. Funk also faced discrimination in the Marines as a then-closeted gay man and spent months in the brig for his refusal to ship off to Iraq. In the years after his discharge, he worked with anti-war groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veteran Artists to promote peace and work with other vets to reintegrate.

Funk told The Intercept he has been horrified to see the U.S. yet again charging into a war that has already killed hundreds of civilians and stands to kill, injure, and morally compromise members of the U.S. military. He urged service members facing a crisis of conscience to listen to their heart.

“I would say go for it, the sooner the better,” Funk told The Intercept. “You don’t want to have injuries, or moral injuries, that you’ll carry for the rest of your life.”

Correction: March 20, 2026, 12:25 p.m. ET
Due to an editing error, this story contained an errant reference to Mike Prysner’s military service; he did not serve in Syria.

The post Joe Kent’s Resignation Could Bolster a Wave of Conscientious Objectors to Sueda Hekker ’s Iran War appeared first on The Intercept.

Source: The Intercept | 20 Mar 2026 | 3:16 pm UTC

Monte Verde site gets a new date, but the big picture doesn't change

A landmark site in the peopling of the Americas is several thousand years younger than we thought. While that means very different things about the site itself, it doesn’t change the big picture as much as the researchers who generated the new date are claiming.

University of Wyoming archaeologist Todd Surovell and his colleagues recently took a second look at the age of a site called Monte Verde in southern Chile, and it turns out that people lived there 8,000 years ago—not 14,500, as the archaeologists who first described it claimed.

Monte Verde is about as far from the Bering Land Bridge as you can get without leaving the continents, so its age was the first piece of evidence that people were well-established in the Americas before the end of the last Ice Age. But it hasn't been the last, so Surovell and his colleagues’ findings don’t actually change what we now know about the peopling of the Americas—and they definitely don’t put the “Clovis First” hypothesis back on the table.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 3:01 pm UTC

As OpenClaw Enthusiasm Grips China, Kids and Retirees Alike Raise 'Lobsters'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Fan Xinquan, a retired electronics worker in Beijing, has recently started raising a "lobster," hoping that the AI agent he has been training can help organize his specialized industry knowledge better than chatbots like DeepSeek. "OpenClaw can actually help you accomplish many practical things," the 60-year-old said at a recent event hosted by AI startup Zhipu to teach people how to use and train the AI agent, which has gone viral in China, with its various local versions earning the "lobster" nickname. In the past month, OpenClaw, which can connect several hardware and software tools and learn from the data produced with much less human intervention than a chatbot, has captured the imaginations of many in China, from retirees looking for side income to AI firms hoping to generate new revenue streams. [...] Huang Rongsheng, chief architect at Baidu's smart device unit Xiaodu, said at an event on Tuesday that parent group chats for his daughter's primary school class have become overwhelmed by OpenClaw discussions. "My daughter came to me and asked: Dad, I see you raising a lobster every day," he said. "Can I have one too?" Bai Yiyun, another attendee at the Zhipu event, said she hopes to use the agent to start a side hustle during her retirement. "If DeepSeek marked a milestone for open-source large language models, then OpenClaw represents a similar turning point for open-source "agents," said Wei Sun, chief AI analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC

Jeff Bezos just announced plans for a third megaconstellation—this one for data centers

A little more than a month ago, SpaceX founder Elon Musk put down a marker of his intent to saturate low-Earth orbit with up to 1 million satellites. Its purpose? Provide always-on data center services around the planet.

Now, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has done something similar with a filing to the Federal Communications Commission of his own, proposing a constellation of up to 51,600 satellites operating in Sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes ranging from 500 to 1,800 km. Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, sought the authority to do this and is calling the constellation "Project Sunrise."

In its filing, Blue Origin argues that terrestrial AI-based data centers will face difficulties scaling up to meet computing demand.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:46 pm UTC

The US is looking at a year of chaotic weather

Despite being declared the third-hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year for climate disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year—a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season—fell below the 10-year average.

But starting this week, the West is experiencing what looks to be a record-breaking heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong El Niño event is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding the effects of a climate that’s getting hotter and hotter thanks to human activity.

First, there’s the heat. Beginning this week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high-pressure air will bring record-breaking temperatures to the American West. The National Weather Service predicts that temperature records across multiple states are set to be broken in dozens of locations, stretching as far east as Missouri and Tennessee. The NWS has issued heat warnings for parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as fire warnings for parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Colorado.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:38 pm UTC

Feds say no need to recall Tesla's one-pedal driving despite petition

One-pedal driving is not causing Tesla electric vehicles to suddenly accelerate when parked, according to federal regulators. For almost as long as Tesla has been selling cars, it has been hit with sporadic accusations of parked cars accelerating when they shouldn't. Known to the industry as "sudden unintended acceleration," the question for regulators is whether the problem is a human one or an engineering one, and over the years, engineers who think they've found the culprit have petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to force a recall. These efforts usually fail, as was the case today, when NHTSA said it would not tell Tesla to recall every EV it built since 2013.

Because electric motors are also generators, EVs use regenerative braking to recover energy when they slow down rather than wasting that kinetic energy as heat (and maybe a bit of sound) via the friction brakes. In many battery EVs and just about any hybrid I can think of, a brake-by-wire system blends the two together—the driver uses the left pedal as normal, and the car slows down. Some automakers (I'm looking at you, Porsche) think this is the only way a driver should slow their EV. But an electric motor can also be programmed to regeneratively brake when the driver lifts their foot from the throttle, and in Tesla's EVs (as well as Rivian's and Lucid's), this is the only way to regen, as there is no brake-by-wire system, only traditional hydraulic friction brakes.

Technically, I just described lift-off regen, but if the car has been programmed to come to a complete stop when you take your foot from the accelerator, that's one-pedal driving. Some EV drivers absolutely love one-pedal driving; others don't. I like one-pedal for low-speed driving or when I want something similar to engine braking. But according to the petition sent to NHTSA in 2023 by a Greek engineer, this causes a "short-circuit" in Tesla drivers' brains.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:30 pm UTC

Artemis II rolls again

Image: Artemis II rocket back at its launchpad after a second rollout at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:30 pm UTC

Martial artist and actor Chuck Norris dies aged 86

American actor and martial artist Chuck Norris has died aged 86, his family has confirmed.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:12 pm UTC

Week in images: 16-20 March 2026

Week in images: 16-20 March 2026

Discover our week through the lens

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Mar 2026 | 2:10 pm UTC

Microsoft breaks Microsoft account sign-ins in Windows 11 with latest update

OneDrive, Office, Teams Free users greeted with phantom 'no internet' errors, restart may help if you're lucky

Microsoft has broken account sign-ins in Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 with a recent update, causing error messages in apps like OneDrive and Office.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 1:37 pm UTC

UK police force presses pause on live facial recognition after study finds racial bias

Cams statistically more likely to ID Black people, says new research

A UK police force has suspended its deployment of live facial recognition (LFR) technology after a study revealed it was statistically more likely to identify Black people on a watchlist database.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 1:35 pm UTC

Tánaiste hints at cut in excise duty on fuel next week

Tánaiste Simon Harris has said the Government will work over the weekend to bring forward a series of measures by next Tuesday to address the rising costs of fuel.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 1:29 pm UTC

Feds disrupt monster IoT botnets behind record-breaking DDoS attacks

Millions of hijacked devices powered traffic floods targeting defense systems and beyond

The US government has moved to disrupt a cluster of IoT botnets behind some of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded, including traffic bursts topping 30 terabits per second.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 1:07 pm UTC

The Week: The War In Iran Escalates

Has President Sueda Hekker lost control of the war in Iran?

Source: BBC News | 20 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC

Jaguar Land Rover's cyber bailout sets worrying precedent, watchdog warns

Lack of clear criteria risks encouraging firms to lean on state support instead of worrying about insurance

The UK's cyber watchdog has warned that the government's £1.5 billion bailout of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) risks setting a troubling precedent for how Britain handles major cyber crises.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 12:42 pm UTC

Adams welcomes 'emphatic' end to High Court damages claim

Gerry Adams has welcomed the "emphatic end" of a High Court damages claim against him by three victims of Provisional IRA bombings and said the case "should never have been brought".

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 12:30 pm UTC

Man jailed for repeated rape and sexual assault of niece

A man who repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted his niece over a prolonged period has been jailed for 12 years.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 12:25 pm UTC

Supermicro co-founder arrested, charged over $2.5B Nvidia GPU sales to China

Indictment claims dummy servers and bogus docs used to slip past US export controls

A co-founder of Supermicro is among three people charged with diverting servers fitted with Nvidia GPUs worth $2.5 billion to Chinese customers in violation of US export controls.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:57 am UTC

3 weeks and 3 cargo departures for εpsilon

Video: 00:01:57

This video was published on social media by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Day 035, orbit 0541 – Three cargo vehicles departing the Station in just three weeks… and since I recorded this video, we also waved goodbye to a Progress!

The Northrop Grumman Cygnus NG23 was named S.S. William “Willie” McCool in honor of the NASA astronaut and naval aviator test pilot who perished in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident. Following a U.S. Navy tradition, Jack – who shares the same professional background – rang the Station bell to mark the spacecraft’s departure.

Follow Sophie’s mission on the εpsilon page and on her social media platforms, such as X, FacebookInstagramLinkedIn

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:57 am UTC

Rocket Report: Canada makes a major move, US Space Force says actually, let's be hasty

Welcome to Edition 8.34 of the Rocket Report! The most important significant news this week, I believe, is the decision by Canada to make a serious investment in launch infrastructure at a spaceport in Nova Scotia. Tensions have risen between the United States and Canada of late (for reasons which are baffling to this author, who has always had an affinity for the nation to our north), and as a result Canada is seeking launch independence. This is an important start, but it will require a sustained, long-term commitment to really develop a flourishing launch industry.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Canada makes major commitment to space launch. The country's leading minister of national defense, David J. McGuinty, announced on Monday a $200 million investment in "core infrastructure" for a spaceport in Nova Scotia. The investment is a 10‑year, $200 million agreement to lease a dedicated space‑launch pad that will serve as the central foundation for a multi-user spaceport near Canso, Nova Scotia. The facility is operated by Maritime Launch Services.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:45 am UTC

Watch: Demolition work under way at Co Meath house

Demolition work is continuing on a house in Co Meath which was at the centre of a 20-year-long legal battle.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:27 am UTC

UK to rethink tech buying after Palantir contracts

Government looks for sovereign tech as NHS deal nears break clause

The UK government has promised a different approach to tech procurement following the award of controversial contracts to Palantir.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:06 am UTC

Weather tracker: Unseasonal storms hit parts of Pakistan and India

Karachi particularly badly affected with 18 people killed, more than 50mm of rain and winds gusting up to 60mph

Unseasonally wet weather struck southern Pakistan and north-west India on Wednesday, as heavy rain rolled in from the west, accompanied by thunderstorms, hail, and strong winds.

Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, was particularly badly affected, locally recording more than 50mm of rain with winds gusting up to 60mph. Walls, buildings, and a pedestrian bridge collapsed, with flooding and power outages across the city. At least 18 people were killed and several more injured, many by structural collapses, with other deaths attributed to a fallen tree and a lightning strike.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:02 am UTC

Project Hail Mary is in theaters—but do the linguistics work?

The film adaptation of Andy Weir's novel Project Hail Mary hits general release today, March 20, and it's great—go see it! Though a little light on the science, the movie goes hard on the relationship between schoolteacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and an extraterrestrial named Rocky, and it's a ride well worth taking.

But as good as it is, the movie shares a small flaw with the book: Despite having very few things in common, Grace and Rocky learn to communicate with each other extremely quickly. In fact, Grace and Rocky begin conversing in abstracts (concepts like "I like this" and "friendship") in even less time than it takes in the book. Obviously, there are practical narrative reasons for this choice—you can't have a good buddy movie if your buddies can't talk to each other. It's therefore critical to the flow of the story to get that talking happening as soon as possible, but it can still be a little jarring for the technically minded viewer who was hoping for the acquisition of language to be treated with a little more complexity.

And because this is Ars Technica, we're doing the same thing we did when the book came out: talking with Dr. Betty Birner, a former professor of linguistics at NIU (now retired), to pick her brain about cognition, pragmatics, cooperation, and what it would actually take for two divergently evolved sapient beings not just to gesture and pantomime but to truly communicate. And this time, we'll hear from Andy Weir, too. So buckle up, dear readers—things are gonna get nerdy.

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Source: Ars Technica - All content | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC

Opera GX Web Browser Comes To Linux

BrianFagioli writes: Opera GX has officially landed on Linux, bringing its gamer-focused browser experience to Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE-based systems. The browser includes GX Control for limiting RAM and network usage, a Hot Tabs Killer to shut down resource-heavy tabs, and built-in sidebar integrations for Discord and Twitch. Opera says this is not just a one-off port, but a long-term effort with ongoing updates and community engagement. "PC gaming has long been associated with a single dominant platform, but that's changing," says Maciej Kocemba, Product Director at Opera GX. "Bringing GX to Linux users -- who are renowned for the control they like to exert over their tools -- means gamers and developers can manage browser resources, customize their setup, and keep their system performing exactly the way they want."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC

Assistant professor charged with accessing students' data

An assistant professor at UCD has appeared in court this morning charged with harassment and unlawfully accessing the personal data of students at the college.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:44 am UTC

Madagascar’s military ruler decrees that ministers must pass lie detector tests

Michael Randrianirina, who sacked PM and cabinet without explanation, claims measure is to root out corruption

Madagascar’s military president has said new ministers will have to pass lie detector tests to root out corrupt candidates, after he dismissed the prime minister and cabinet without explanation earlier this month.

Michael Randrianirina came to power in a coup in October after weeks of youth-led protests under the banner “Gen Z Madagascar”. However, young people were quickly disenchanted by his choice of government officials, which they saw as being part of the old, corrupt elite.

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Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:26 am UTC

Thoughts on the John Taylor interview…

Originally from Belfast, A.J. McManus is currently a teacher in the United States.

I have just read Alex Kane’s interview with John Taylor in The Irish News and the ensuing posts on Slugger by Arnold Carlton and Mick Fealty. The lede of it all was Taylor’s statement: “… the reality that there is going to be a united Ireland.” Beneath this big prediction is Taylor’s criticism of political unionism since his own involvement in the mid-1960’s out of which he offers advice to present day political unionism i.e. start having conversations about unification in order to play a role in shaping the unification that occurs. Given that John Taylor is a unionist, it is defeatist – a call to make the best united-Ireland terms available. But it can also be viewed as of the same feather as his fellow County Armagh man Seamus Mallon’s statement that 50+1 is not the basis for a successful unification. If unionists followed Taylor’s advice and nationalists followed Mallon’s, would we not, in the knowledge that the future is promised to no one, be able to stop worrying and hoping about the future and create some political space for improving our present? Mallon, this is only a personal view, struck me as impressive in a way that Taylor did not – we who grew up in the 1980’s and 1990’s are allowed to prefer one to the other because night after night on the local news it was Mallon, Taylor and a handful of others who wearily responded to the often horrific events of the day with condemnations of violence and appeals for calm that, to give credit where credit is due, were important to hear and helped to sustain the very large centre of people who may have been thoroughly riddled with prejudice, bitterness and most faults imaginable but possessed the power to be peaceful.

Along with his prediction that unity is inevitable, Taylor’s comments were implicitly self-critical of his long career but Kane (another Armagh man) gets some explicit, naked mea culpas from Taylor. On the question of being, on occasion, a not so sneaking regarder of loyalist paramilitarism and of making other baleful comments Kane asked, “Are you conceding that your language has, at times, been both crass and offensive?” “I am,” said Taylor. So there it is. Comments about Leo Varadkar’s ethnicity and other off-beat Twitter comments in his retirement, one guesses, were also retracted when Taylor lamented unionism’s inability to reach out to migrants.

More fundamental of Taylor’s reflection of his own role in political history was the admission that Brian Faulkner was right all along – that Faulkner answered the failings Taylor identified, specifically that Unionism should accept political change, that unionism should reach out to nationalists, that unionism should build a broad coalition, that, to take it a little further, late-stage Faulkner was the unionist equivalent of Micheál Martin’s Shared Initiative strategy. Famously, Seamus Mallon once noted that the GFA was Sunningdale for slow learners and Taylor fits that denomination because Faulkner desperately needed Taylor’s support for power-sharing and didn’t get it. Make no mistake that Taylor’s criticism of unionism is self-criticism too.

Taylor made other points: the British government and people aren’t committed or even interested in the union and the DUP and Ian Paisley harmed the union. It is worth noting that Taylor, who tacked to the harder pole of the old Unionist Party for most of his career, expressed no understanding of Paisley: “He was bad news for Northern Ireland – and whether the deal with McGuinness was a genuine change of heart, I have no idea.” For about half of the unionist electorate, ’twas ever thus. And for those who are constitutional unionists by default but don’t vote Unionist, such as descendants of Faulknerites or those in that 20% bloc who are (possibly) unionist by default or inertia, Taylor’s inability to understand Paisleyism is amplified. And as for John Taylor’s change of heart, which is perhaps even more radical than Paisley’s, and arriving, like Paisley’s, when the hour is late, is it genuine? I have no idea.

To misappropriate Yeats, Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone, Mick Fealty’s put it in the grave. But the ghosts are alive and well. Mick’s piece redirects to what Taylor’s morose inevitability did not do. It goes to the 20% voting bloc that doesn’t vote capital U or capital N (cue a lot of comments about Alliance voters’ second preferences), to the persistent gap between the declining Unionist vote on the one hand and the static UI polling on the other, and especially to how nationalism should approach getting NI and the island from where it is now to a place where unification can be achieved. In my own opinion, Micheál Martin’s Shared Island Initiative might work because it is not (too?) frightening to capital U’s and certainly not frightening to the 20% bloc that seems to default to small u whereas the Sinn Fein approach – the romantic Ireland approach with a fig leaf or two – has problems for both those groups. Just as Faulkner could not even get a John Taylor to support his vision, the comment section responding to Mick’s post shows the difficulties of breaking the wheels out of the deep romantic ruts that carry us along. What Taylor might have said, and what capital U’s might do, in the spirit of Arnold Carlton’s different path, is match the spirit and approach of the Shared Island Initiative by working to create an NI that doesn’t pretend to an antique romantic Protestant Ulster but commits to a functioning, well (or at least earnestly) governed polity for all. Taylor might have articulated an NI that is involved in the island, that accepts that there are, in fact, many United Ireland’s outside of the constitutional question, such as the island’s natural ecosystems, such as the GAA and the rugby team, such as an emerging all island transport system, and let that alternative form of unionism, in Mick’s words, “speak for itself.”

Source: Slugger O'Toole | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:25 am UTC

Starmer's digital ID reboot raises same old questions as its Blair-era ancestor

Audit trails aplenty, but no price tag – and no clue how long your data sticks around

Opinion  Last week's UK government consultation on its plans for digital identity had quite a few things missing. It did not include a price estimate - something it said was due to decisions yet to be taken on the scheme's scope - or how long the government would keep "audit trail" records of ID checks.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:15 am UTC

“Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War

From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated. 

As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn’t enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries.

Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel’s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile strikes deeper into the country. The number of dead there is approaching 1,000 with Israeli missiles razing entire apartment blocks in central Beirut this week and a ground invasion getting underway. More than 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced.

“I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there’s not really anyone who’s trying to save them,” says Afeef Nessouli, a Beirut-based journalist, speaking to The Intercept Briefing. “They know that, and they know that they’re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick along with Palestine.” He adds, “The fear is that [Israel] will occupy south of Litani [River] … and just take people’s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country.”

“It’s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of ‘This is a human rights intervention’ — and yet it’s accomplished through massive human rights violations,” says Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept. Commenting on Israel’s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, he notes, the Israelis “don’t need [Reza] Pahlavi to work. They don’t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it’s not a threat to Israel anymore.”

“We’ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran,” says Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a veteran peace strategist. “The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would’ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam.”

It’s a region in upheaval, and at the center are Israeli and American fictions about liberatory bombs.

“I’ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they’re telling me the Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them,” says Naraghi-Anderlini, “And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Ali Gharib: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib, and I’m a senior editor at The Intercept. The U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran is stretching into its third week, with attacks having started on February 28. The bombardment of Iran has remained relentless. At least 1,400 people have been killed and more than 18,000 have been injured.

Civilian infrastructure has taken a hit too, including Iranian hospitals, pharmaceutical plants, educational centers, and civilian energy depots. Iran, for its part, has retaliated by launching missiles and drones into Israel itself, as well as attacking U.S. bases in the region. It has also targeted energy infrastructure in the nearby Gulf Arab states.

Meanwhile, Israel has increased its attacks on Lebanon, killing more than 900 people and displacing more than 1 million, and it’s preparing for a ground invasion against the paramilitary group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. 

On Wednesday, Israel expanded its airstrikes into central Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, where it razed residential buildings. 

Afeef Nessouli, is a journalist and Intercept contributor based in Lebanon, where he has been reporting since November. He joins me now from Beirut.

Afeef, welcome to The Intercept Briefing. 

Afeef Nessouli: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ali. I appreciate it. 

AG: Afeef, what can you tell us about what it’s actually been like in the parts of Lebanon where you’ve been reporting, since Israel increased its attacks on the country following the strikes against Iran? 

AN: So I’m in an area of Beirut called Tayouneh. Tayouneh is hundreds of meters away from the evacuation orders that have been all over the southern suburbs — it’s just right north of the southern suburbs — so it’s very loud here. Right outside of my area, there’s hundreds of tents lined up.

It’s right outside of the park. Horsh Beirut is this public space, and families from the southern suburbs have just lined up their tents and have had to make do with such little resources.

It’s really so hard to see so many people without shelter. It’s just a catastrophic situation.

AG: It’s not entirely surprising to hear that you might be seeing people there in tent cities, given that, I think I read that 1 in 5 Lebanese people were displaced now, and especially with Israel expanding its attacks into Beirut and central Beirut, as we saw on Wednesday, decimating parts of central Beirut and imploding with missiles buildings in the center of town.

So what have you been seeing, what have you’ve been talking to people there, internally displaced people? 

AN: So on Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut. They killed at least 12 people, wounding 41 people.

Going to the strike areas is really just awful to see and awful to witness. Buildings are rubble. It’s causing panic and fear among people in places that were not told to evacuate.

I talked to a mother who was displaced from the southern suburbs, a neighborhood called Bourj Al Barajneh. She’s been staying under this huge statue of a crescent moon right outside of Al Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut. She’s mostly just worried for her kids — worried that they’re not getting enough to eat, worried about them just being terrorized, and also it’s just so cold. 

You have to understand: Everything is all hands on deck. So a lot of schools are being turned into shelters. The stadium has been turned into a shelter.

One I visited in Ras, Beirut, which is in northwestern Beirut, over 200 families I think were in and out of that shelter. People are sleeping on the floors. I spend a lot of time with an organization called Truth Be Told that’s passing out hot meals from donations and prescription medication around Horsh Beirut, where all the families are lined up in tents.

What you’re mostly hearing is that people don’t have anywhere to go. They have nowhere to sleep. And everywhere they do have to sleep is incredibly uncomfortable. There are men sleeping in their cars. There are cars everywhere. People are struggling. They’re struggling to survive in an economy that was already just decimated from the last few years.

Related

Israel Is Banking on U.S. Support for a Wider War Against the Axis of Resistance

AG: I’m curious, on the geopolitics, Afeef — how do you think these attacks have affected Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group from the south of the country but has become a central player in Lebanese politics and obviously a group closely linked with Iran? Is your sense that Hezbollah has been weakened by these attacks? Is the group continuing to be diminished or are they holding pretty firm at this time? 

AN: I can say that a lot of people inside of Lebanon and a lot of people outside of Lebanon had seemed to count Hezbollah out, for the most part. They had seemed decimated, especially after the Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was killed. It seemed like they were taking a long rest period. 

So a lot of the criticism is, Israel had had over 10,000 ceasefire violations — and it took the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be assassinated for the group to push into the war and take decisive action. 

AG: And of course, you’re talking about Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel during an earlier round of its war with Lebanon — [after] a pager attack that Israel lodged against Lebanon, where it loaded pagers with explosives and meticulously distributed them to Hezbollah officials, killing scores of Hezbollah officials as well as countless civilians. And Ali Khamenei was the supreme leader of Iran until he was assassinated by Israel at the outset of this latest war with Iran.

AN: After the supreme leader was assassinated, I went to the public mourning in Dahiyeh. It was literally the evening of when Israel started striking the southern suburbs, and you could tell that the emotion was palpable. People were crying, people were wailing, people were chanting, people were angry. It was extremely well attended, it was extremely big.

Ultimately, the same night, I was awoken in the middle of the night by two really loud strikes on Dahiyeh. It was really clear that Hezbollah had decided to take Lebanon into the war. And a lot of Lebanese people were pretty upset at that. They felt like they weren’t given any consent; they were not able to consent to this sort of act. It’s become a pretty polarizing subject.

Related

Beirut Suburbs or “Hezbollah Stronghold”? U.S. Media Parrots Israeli Propaganda to Justify Bombing Civilians

A year ago, when Hezbollah entered the war on behalf of Gaza, I think people were more amenable to the idea. They understood that Israel wanted to make incursions into the country and occupy land. I think in the last year, having not really responded to a lot of ceasefire violations in the south, but responding to Ali Khamenei’s assassination was just a disappointment to a lot of Lebanese people who felt, “Well, are you acting on behalf of Iran, or are you acting on behalf of our best interest?”

It seems like they’ve lost some support on the ground. So there is that, there is a decimation of their reputation right now, from what I am at least gathering on the ground. But also there’s a lot of people who understand or the people who are on the front lines, they’re the ones who have to self-help when all of their houses are demolished. And there’s military access roads for Israeli occupation soldiers to literally making their demolished houses gone forever because now there’s military access roads paved on top of them. 

“It feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized.”

In Lebanon, there’s so many political opinions. And when something like this happens, it really feels like the people of the country are pitted against each other. It feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized, while all of these outside forces are manipulating their lived experience, their day-to-day experience. I think most people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically, that they can depend on politically, and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn’t burdened by cycles of violence every few months. 

AG: Touching on that a little bit, I’ve talked to my friends, Lebanese friends, who admittedly are probably very self-selecting, but it seems they have sensed a resentment. You were sort of touching on this, a resentment of the fact that between the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and the Israeli assassination of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, there were some tens of thousands of Israeli ceasefire violations recorded, and none of these prompted a response from Hezbollah. But their willingness to go in retaliation for the assassination of a foreign leader — do you sense that kind of resentment? Is that one of the things contributing to Hezbollah’s diminishing stature?

AN: Yeah, so I spoke to one woman last night. She’s in her mid-30s. She has family from the south. Someone who theoretically supported Hezbollah getting into the war on behalf of Gaza after October 7. Someone who understands having land in the south — family homes in the south — that have been under fire for, really, decades. She says that, in the last year and a half, since the so-called ceasefire was brokered, after 10,000 violations from Israel, after Hezbollah really didn’t respond to all of the violations, and yet they woke up on behalf of the supreme leader’s assassination — just doesn’t sit well with her. She doesn’t see the reason why Lebanon would have to be in this fight. 

But on the other hand completely, there’s also this sophisticated understanding, obviously, that there’s a neighbor to the south that has occupied an entire country and wants to have the Litani River be its northern border. There is this idea that Israel has been manipulating and manufacturing this feeling for a while, that they are coming in and they were going to come in and they were attacking Lebanon much before Hezbollah had ever come around.

The fact of the matter is that Israel really does want to sow discord in the sectarian populations of Lebanon. They have dropped leaflets a couple days ago in central Beirut saying, “Lebanon is yours. You can inform on Hezbollah” and like they shared a QR code.

“What ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they’re basically afraid.”

And then they target residential buildings and say, “We’re coming after Hezbollah” and cause psychological damage and physical damage and ruin so much peace for so many people. Ultimately what ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they’re basically afraid that if they let them into their buildings or try to take care of them, they’re going to be around people that are affiliated with Hezbollah and are going to be targeted. 

A lot of these people are just displaced. They’re unhoused in rain, their houses have been destroyed, and then their fellow patriots are literally just terrified that being around them or letting them in is going to result in Israel killing all of them. That’s a real fear on the ground right now.

It’s something that feels very beneficial to Israel and the U.S. to have: sects in Lebanon fighting each other all of the time not paying attention to the slow incursions — the slow pushing forth — on the southern border. Also, it’s probably beneficial to countries like Iran to pour money, pouring arms, have proxies that are fighting its battles.

Ultimately what happens is that the situation on the ground becomes unbearable. Everybody’s trying to pressure the people to orchestrate some heroic political ends that is impossible for the people to do because they’re obviously being manipulated by powers much larger than them. I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there’s not really anyone who’s trying to save them. And they know that. They know that they’re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick — along with Palestine. So, yeah, it feels really dismal in Lebanon right now. 

“Most people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically … and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn’t burdened by cycles of violence every few months.”

AG: You mentioned in the south, the razing of people’s homes to make roads for Israeli military infrastructure as they increase their ground incursions and seem to be making preparations for a full-scale ground invasion.

Of course, this is all fraught with the history of the rise of Hezbollah in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an occupation that lasted for nearly two decades with ongoing hostilities in the two and a half decades since 2000, when Israel officially left south Lebanon. What is the mood among people today in Beirut and also more broadly in Lebanon with regard to fears of what an Israeli occupation could mean for the future of their country?

AN: I think most people in Lebanon look at Israeli occupation as something that’s just unacceptable. While there’s a lot of opinions that are diverse politically in Lebanon, sometimes in contradiction of each other, one thing I think that is mostly true is that most Lebanese people do not want any normalization with Israel. There are some people who do, but it’s not many.

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The fear is that they will occupy south of Litani — the Litani River is Israel’s northern border — and just take people’s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country. The feeling and the fear is that actually the more Israel does, the more it greedily takes up land, the less that anyone in Lebanon is going to stop fighting back. Because the fear is that there’s always going to be violence, and being caught in a cycle of violence and a cycle of economic destruction. I think most people really just want a Lebanon that is peaceful. I think they want a Lebanon that they can feel safe in. And now half of the country really feels like Hezbollah has dragged them into this war.

A lot of people know that Israel would’ve done it anyway, and a subset is always going to fight back on the southern border because that’s where they come from. So it just becomes a ripple effect for everybody in the country. Nobody wants the land to be occupied by Israel, but also not everybody at all wants to be in war constantly with Israel either.

So you just have different lived realities where there are people who are losing their homes, they’re displaced, they’re suffering, they’re fighting back as best as they can. Then there’s people in Lebanon who are living in a totally different reality and are really mad because, admittedly so, their city is getting bombed, their economy is degrading, they have no chance for a future that feels at all stable. So you just have a society that is at the highest level of tension — and everybody, without fail, is afraid of civil war.

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Because the truth is that Hezbollah is part and parcel of society. So when the Israelis and the U.S. pressure the government to disarm Hezbollah, a lot of Hezbollah is in all sorts of society. A lot of them are in the army. So it’s not an easy fix here.

I think the idea is that the Israelis want to make it seem like the government can just easily disarm Hezbollah, and if they don’t, they’re going to get punished for it. But it’s obvious that’s impossible. So it’s made people feel completely disenchanted with all of the leadership that’s involved and the leadership in the state as well, because the response has been mostly inadequate. It’s just something out of a horror show.

AG: Given what we’ve seen, pretty clearly seems to be Israel’s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, you have to wonder if Israeli’s strategic thinking is exactly to stoke that resentment. So yeah, a complicated situation. 

Afeef, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It’s really a pleasure and really appreciate all your insights and also your excellent reporting. So thanks so much for joining us on the Intercept Briefing. 

AN: Ali, I really appreciate you for covering Lebanon and having me on your show.

AG: After a quick break, I’ll be speaking to Sanam Naraghi Anderlini about Iran. Sanam is a peace strategist and founder and CEO of International Civil Society Action Network, or ICAN. She has served around the globe as expert for the U.N. on conflict mediation and was architect of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. 

We’ll be right back.

[Break] 

AG: Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib. 

The war in Iran is deepening. Instead of finding ways to tone down the conflict, all the sides are doubling down on ultimatums and escalation. The cost has come in human lives, including to Gulf residents, Israelis, and American troops, but most notably in Iran, where Israel and America have been expanding their bombing campaigns, including carpet bombing in densely populated cities.

Joining me now to discuss all this is Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, a peace strategist and the head of the civil society network ICAN.

And full disclosure here: This is gonna sound familiar to members of the family WhatsApp group, because Sanam is actually my cousin. 

She’s also a veteran peace builder and has been working on conflict resolution for decades. She intimately knows Iran and is an analyst on these issues as well. Thanks for joining us, Sanam.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini: Thank you for having me. 

AG: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the trap that the war is falling into — this kind of logic of “escalation of all sides.” There are all these interested parties that are involved in the war — which is basically the Iranians, the Israelis, and the Americans — and they all have different interests. Can you talk about how all of those different interests right now point to this conflict escalating, rather than finding any off ramps? 

SNA: So the way we have to understand this is that you have an Iranian regime that is basically focused on survival. They’ve always been — their logic has always been survival.

In a conflict like this, with two nuclear states, they are fighting a war of asymmetry. So their tactics have been, “How do you escalate the pain for the other side?” to actually bring it to an end quicker. We call it the “hurting stalemate”: How do you get into a stalemate of some sort that is hurting the various parties, so that you end up with some kind of resolution? But at the moment, it’s the logic of escalation to get to that point of pain. 

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For the Israelis, the logic has always been to try and decimate Iran as a regional power and as a power that would challenge them on the question of Palestine more than anything else. We saw that for them, the decimation of Iraq — or basically Iraq falling to its knees, as opposed to turning into a liberal democracy or Syria or Libya or any of these countries. Their fragmentation and essentially the destruction of the state in those countries was beneficial to the Israeli cause of both Greater Israel, but also vis-a-vis specifically the Palestinians.

So right now, with the Iran war going on, they also want to do as much damage as possible, and we’re seeing that on a daily basis. Hospitals have been hit, civilian sites have been hit, residential areas. When they went after Larijani, the national security adviser, over 100 civilians were killed.

We’ve just heard on Wednesday about a petrochemical plant that’s been hit. This is de facto chemical warfare now being played out, using the sources that are on the ground. So they are going full on and essentially escalating.

Iran is retaliating and is doing a sort of matching retaliation. You hit a petrochemical plant, they say, we’re gonna hit yours. So then comes the U.S. The U.S. — as we have repeatedly now heard from different U.S. officials — doesn’t really know why it’s doing this. Iran was not a threat to them. There was no nuclear threat, there was no ballistic missile threat. They got dragged into this war by Israel, and they are now in it. 

The problem is that as a major power — as a superpower, frankly — they can’t be seen to lose. So it’s a little bit like the situation of Russia and Ukraine. Russia can’t be seen to lose to Ukraine. So the U.S. is now caught in that kind of trap. So they’re also escalating at the moment.

“The problem is that as a major power — as a superpower, frankly — they can’t be seen to lose.”

But actually what I’m really worried about is that there are no guardrails. We don’t have anyone standing and actually being the grown-up in the room saying, “There are nuclear plants. They shouldn’t be hit.” The implications of a Bushehr plant, which something was lobbed there. No damage was done. But the implications of this kind of damage and radioactive spillage for the entire Gulf region is really significant. And yet there is no real attention to this kind of escalation or trying to put, as I say, guardrails around essentially what are war crimes happening now.

AG: Sanam, maybe you can speak a little bit to what you see on the broader international scene, because I think there have been some shifts in the past week where we’ve seen Europe pushing back on a few things. But this has all been set up by a very long campaign that’s largely centered around human rights as an idea for justifying this sort of intervention and interventions like it before. We saw this in Afghanistan, we saw it in Iraq. We’ve seen it in a lot of places. 

For you and I looking at this who’ve worked in this world — you more than myself — it’s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of “This is a human rights intervention” — and yet it’s accomplished through massive, massive human rights violations. This targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities and homes and disproportionate casualties happening on things like the Larijani assassination.

Can you talk about how we got to this place where this rhetoric is built up around human rights to justify something like, if not quite a total war, at least a massive full-scale destruction of a country that we’re seeing in process right now? 

“If Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine.”

SNA: We’ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran. They did it in Baghdad. It used to be said that men go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran. The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would’ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam; we wouldn’t have ended up with all this sort of Wahhabi/Salafi versions of Islam being spread around the world. And it could have possibly challenged the UAE on being an economic powerhouse. 

Iraq is an educated — was an educated population. They have oil, they were wealthy, et cetera, but it was decimated. And these other three powers rose. 

Iran was always on their agenda, and especially on the Israeli agenda. And the first threat that was perceived was, let’s make it a question of a nuclear threat. OK, so that was the big thing on the table. Nuclear negotiations happened; 2015 JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is achieved.

AG: The Iran nuclear deal

SNA: We see a change in tactic. We started seeing massive propaganda using Iran International and other television stations into Iran with very gauzy nostalgic stories of the Pahlavi era. Then we see them co-opting the Women Life Freedom movement in 2022. It was meant to be some sort of coalition opposition movement that was again, trying to co-opt Women Life Freedom. 

Now, Women Life Freedom was authentic. It was homegrown. It had nothing to do with the diaspora. The diaspora supported it because it was so beautifully nonviolent and so inclusive. It was women’s rights, and we had men standing with women. Life and the question of life is both around economic livelihoods and justice and so forth. And then freedom. The question of, can we have democratic freedoms and dignity?

The Iranian regime crashes down on that as they often do when they see protest movements. They crack down heavily, but ironically they also back down. So once the protest stopped, what we saw was that the mandatory nature of the hijab basically disappears. You see Iranian women walking around wearing whatever they want. 

But the question of, how do we go about with regime change from the outside again? The focus shifts, and with Sueda Hekker coming into power [in 2016] and getting rid of the JCPOA, that was about controlling and containing the nuclear program, but also removing sanctions so there would be economic relief for the Iranian public. Obama never got rid of the sanctions, and by the time Sueda Hekker came in, he got rid of the nuclear deal — nuclear side of it. 

The Iranians maintained and then they continued cooperating with the U.N. and the nuclear experts for a long time with inspectors. Then at some point it became clear that there was not going to be a new deal. And so the whole thing disappeared.

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In the meantime, what was happening was that the shift in D.C. and again with Israeli support, became about “maximum pressure,” which is around economic pressure. It was really strangling the Iranian economy and really hitting inflation and affecting very poor people. 

At ICAN, we did a report on sanctions in 2012. It was called “Killing them Softly,” and we were looking at the humanitarian implications of sanctions back in 2012. In 2017 onwards, it comes in really, really heavily. We’ve even had Nancy Pelosi in February of 2026 saying, we imposed these sanctions with the view of hurting the poor Iranians in rural areas so that there would be an uprising.

AG: It’s worth mentioning too that this strategy really came out of Israel’s closest allies in Washington, right? This was like the Foundation for Defensive Democracies — these Likud-oriented, right-wing pro-Israel think tanks that had literally called for a strategy of maximum pressure, which is what Sueda Hekker put in place.

SNA: Exactly. This has been an ongoing fight between different think tanks, different leanings, et cetera. But of course those guys have a lot more money and a lot more resources because they’ve literally got the backing of the Israeli government behind them. 

So you get maximum pressure. You get the protests back in December of 2025. They were economic protests. It was the bazaar and the traders and others, but people were really feeling the inflation level. So December protests start, and we don’t really hear that much about them. There isn’t really that much sort of repression of these protests. It’s very much a domestic issue. 

Then all of a sudden we see Reza Pahlavi coming into this domain and calling out to people and saying, go out 7th and 8th of January, go out into the protest. Go out in your millions. We are with you. 

AG: Reza Pahlavi, of course, the former crown prince of Iran, who’s become a central figure of the right-wing Iranian opposition, and who has claimed for himself the role as the head of the transition to a purported democracy that’s soon to be coming in Iran. 

SNA: We start seeing Mossad or Israeli-aligned assets on Twitter saying, we’re there, we’re on the ground with you. We are there to help you. So these messages need to really be investigated. Because if you know the Iranian regime, you know that their instinct when feeling threatened is to crack down, and they will crack down heavily on their own population.

So how can you sit in Virginia or in Maryland and tell people to go out onto the streets and say, we’re going to be there with you, and actually expose them to what became a very violent crackdown coming on the back of the Twelve Day War, the Israeli American war in June?

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Again, it had been during nuclear negotiations, and the attacks on Iranian leadership was pretty significant. So you’re dealing already with a regime that is going to be paranoid about infiltration. In January, you say to people, go out onto the streets. People’s kids are going out, and they go out into the streets, and then we see the internet blackout. Again, during the Twelve Day War, there was [an] internet blackout because banks were being attacked. There were cyber attacks against Iranian banks by Israeli assets. So you’re dealing, as I say, with a regime that is already on hyper alert and paranoid, and so they react very violently. 

How many people were killed? This becomes a big topic of debate and discussion. The human rights organizations, and the one that I follow is an organization called Harana, they did a very meticulous verification of people who died, families verifying and so forth. They had reached the number of about 7,008 people who had been killed during those two nights of protests. That’s a lot of people. But the machinery of propaganda — news, whatever you want to call it — started inflating the numbers. And it became 12,000 and then 20,000 and then 30,000 and then 40,000 and then 50,000. 

AG: The 7,000 number is bad enough. 

SNA: Yes. 

AG: Here we were in 2013 or whatever it was, completely outraged about Sisi’s counter-coup against the Muslim Brotherhood killing 1,500 protesters in one day. And that was outrage. We got talks in Washington about cutting off weapons to Egypt, cutting off Egypt from aid. 

These numbers were already staggering. So to just watch it balloon out of proportion like this with no basis and evidence, it really showed you that some of the opposition at this point was really just absolutely going for it and willing to stop at nothing, in a very Sueda Hekker ian way, 

SNA: It was Sueda Hekker ian, but it was also very — suddenly it started to look like the Gaza playbook, right? Because it was very much like the horrific things that happened on October 7 in Israel. It was using that horrific incident to then rile up and get emotionally charged around what the response should be.

In the case of Iran, it became about, well we need to go and protect people. We started subtly seeing Iranians in the diaspora using certain talking points. Because I was hearing it from different places. First it was somebody would say, “This is a war of liberation. These people who were on the streets were fighting a war of liberation.” That’s a dangerous thing to say, because if you’re claiming that the protesters who went out on a Friday night and a Thursday night out of frustration, out of anger, whatever, were soldiers and it’s a war — then you are putting them directly at risk.

AG: This is part of the opposition, from the opposition perspective, the Pahlavi perspective too. Pahlavi, as we know, has been traveling to Israel the past few years, is really — I think it’s safe to say at this point — has become a stooge of the Israelis. This was absolutely his strategy too. You heard him during the January protest crackdown. 

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The January protests were effectively a nonviolent movement. One of the things that was so shocking about the breadth of the crackdown was that this was a nonviolent movement. Sure, OK, setting the occasional police station on fire, but that is not what the movement was about.

And you had Pahlavi here saying everybody in the regime is legitimate targets, even civilian officials. That’s calling for a civil war. That’s calling for war crimes.

SNA: That’s the problem that you’re sitting, again, you’re sitting in Potomac, Miami, or wherever he happened to be when he said all this, and he’s sending out people. And either you know your opposition, you know the force that you’re fighting against the regime, in which case you have to be mindful of what you’re doing. We have known for 47 years that this is a regime that will use violence and it has used violence throughout time. So if you’re claiming to be the leader of the opposition, do you put your followers at risk like that? That, to me, is a question of responsibility. That’s definitely an issue.

If you don’t know the nature of your adversary, then that’s also admitting incompetence of some sort. How could you not know this could happen? So what was the intent of telling people to go out into the streets and then having all these Mossad voices on Twitter? What was the intent of it? Was the intent creating this space where this violence would come out so that then the next excuse for regime change becomes this is a regime that is killing its own people, it’s awful to its own people? We’ve had all the propaganda all these years. People, they’ve had it up to here with the economics, with the corruption, with all of the things that are going on, and the answer becomes well, yeah, it needs military attack.

AG: This is where you really see the Israelis start to step up and say, rise up. And for whatever reason, because of the desperation of Iranian people, people really latch onto this. It’s incredible for us to think, like many of our relatives have enough sense, certainly our relatives who are inside Iran, many of whom are geriatric and the rest of whom are just sensible, aren’t going out in the street and listening to Reza Pahlavi. But you listen to anecdotes from them about their friends. These people were actually listening to these messages and going into the street and being shot at and slaughtered. Meanwhile, Pahlavi and the Israelis are saying, do it, rise up, overtake the government. 

SNA: Yeah. 

AG: The people on the ground themselves can’t be blamed for thinking that there’s some sort of plan in place. This connects back to what you were saying about the Israelis, where this kind of is the plan, right? It’s that they don’t need Pahlavi to work. They don’t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it’s not a threat to Israel anymore.

SNA: Yeah. So what I started seeing, and I think this is the situation we’re in now, unfortunately, is that you have a regime that has sacrificed the country and the nation for its own survival, and they’re continuing to do that. Then we have an opposition led by the Israeli sort of mentality — but now very much owned by Iranian diaspora themselves — that is so driven by getting rid of the regime that they’re also willing to sacrifice the nation. 

The rhetoric that we hear it’s just heartbreaking because when the girls’ school was hit some people were saying, “Oh, it’s the regime’s own rockets.” Exactly like what we heard in Gaza when the hospital was hit. Then it became “This is collateral damage. There’s a price for freedom.” I find that really quite revolting because I’m thinking, it’s not your kid. Those children did not sign up to be the price for freedom, whatever freedom means.

Then we started seeing Israeli journalists. I’ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they’re telling me, “The Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them.” And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?

AG: Liberate them from their pharmaceutical factories and their hospitals and their girls’ schools.

SNA: So many schools now, I think it’s 60 schools have been hit. Schools, homes, energy sources, flour depots for making bread and corn, food, water, energy. All of these things are being hit. Police stations.

Ali Gharib: Homes — residential towers with hundreds of apartments.

SNA: Thousands, right? So they’re hiding behind this language of freedom and this language of human rights and then causing incredible mass human rights assault going forward in terms of atrocities. It’s all war crimes as well.

Again, at the forefront of it, we have Reza Pahlavi, who to me, is not only a puppet, he’s like a pied piper. He’s the one who led this diaspora into: I’m gonna give you heaven. And it’s now pretty hellish for the people on the ground in Iran. So this is something that we have to reckon with. I think diasporas — I’ve worked on conflicts for many years — diasporas often play a significant role in terms of shaping the policy. 

But what I always felt with Iranians was that no matter what differences we may have had politically, what drives us is a love of country. The targeting right now has been against the state and the nation. When you hear that something like 50 heritage sites have been damaged, for each of us, when we think about Isfahan or when we think about iconic buildings in Tehran, whether it’s the Azadi Tower or the Azadi Stadium, these are places and things that have meaning to us as a nation. They are part of how communities are formed and imagined and created. Iranians have a deep sense of nationhood, yet in this context, in the way that this polarization has happened, as I say, you have people who are saying, “Well, we will rebuild.” Are you now saying that in this war, another 30,000 people can die for freedom?

This is pretty despicable when you’re sitting outside the country. If you want to fight the war then by all means, fly to Istanbul, take the bus, and go straight to Tehran and be on the streets with the people. But to sit outside and wage war is horrific.

“Those of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. … People living inside, they may not have the same information.”

Those of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. We have seen what the United States has done in these countries. We have access to all of the information — whether it’s Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan — we know what kind of entity we deal with and in the international space, when these countries get embroiled in conflict. I think we have a particular responsibility in terms of trying to prevent that happening to our own country. People living inside, they may not have the same information. As I say, they are so traumatized by what the regime has done that it’s easy to say, “I want something else.” 

One last point, which I think is really significant, is that there’s a generational issue here. My generation is probably the last generation that remembers the revolution and the Iran–Iraq war. I was 11 when that happened. And for the years that I was returning to Iran to do my research and understand what was going on, I remember in the 1990s, there were student protests. And the taxi drivers, I would say to them, “Did you go to the protests?” And the taxi driver would say, “No, ma’am, we’ve already been out there once to be against something. I’ll go out there when I know it’s for something.” 

So this idea of everybody united against the shah, thinking the day after was going to be better and then they got the Islamists. People have been inoculated against that. They remember the Iran–Iraq war. That was a pretty horrific war for eight years, and Iran had no allies in the world except for Israel and Syria. Israel was giving weapons to Iran throughout the 1980s. So it’s interesting the shifts that have happened. 

But what I’m saying is that I’m in my 50s now, so the generations that come after me, they don’t remember the revolution. They don’t remember the war. And this rallying around the Pahlavi name as an alternative to the regime — “whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than the regime.” That’s exactly the parallel that we’re seeing. And it’s a very dangerous one, I think. 

AG: This is something that you said when we spoke on the phone earlier that I do want to get to because I think this is very important and it actually speaks to both sides. What you said is that inside of us all— And I think this both animates the people inside Iran who, I don’t want to take away their agency. There are people there who are calling for these bombs and celebrating them. 

I think that now we’re getting to a point where some people are waking up to what that actually means. Something you’d mentioned before is that the Twelve Day War last June seems now like it might have been a prelude to calm people’s nerves, that this won’t be as bad as you think. So when the call for more bombs and war comes, “bomb this regime into submission,” people won’t get what it is — I think now people increasingly are starting to get a grip on it — but still there are people who are diehard for it. Diehard for Pahlavi. Part of this is polarization and information compartmentalization where people are watching Iran International, the Fox News of the Iranian diaspora that beams into the country. They’re getting bad information. There’s conspiracy theories about the girls’ school bombing — all this stuff that we don’t need to get into all this detail about. But those people really are just looking for something to grasp, to hope for, right?

Then you’ve got people on the outside throwing up their hands, and I think, like we’ve seen this in our family discussions where people say, “God, I hope it ends soon.” And what you said to me earlier in our pre-interview is that hope is not really a strategy. What can be our strategy on the outside that’s not just hope? How do we look at this conflict in a way that can advance things for the country and for the people inside that we think is morally sound for us to push?

SNA: I genuinely think that if we care about Iran and Iranians, we need to be really advocating for very serious guardrails around the type of weapons that are being used and the type of targets that are being hit. As I said, if they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there’s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous. This is really dangerous. Petrochemical plants, oil plants, these are the kinds of things that have been hit, and Iran is retaliating. So there needs to be a collective voice of saying, “Enough, stop this, we have to put some limits on this.” The weapons and the targets, that’s number one.

“If they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there’s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous.”

Number two is that at this point, I would like more of us — and those people who have a larger platform than I do — to be talking about the political prisoners. There are thousands and thousands of people who were arrested in January who need to be released, but there are also the long-term ones and the dissidents and others who have had the courage, despite everything that’s going on, to actually issue statements and speak out about what they want change to be. 

So there’s been a pretty vibrant conversation inside Iran from within the regime and from the periphery of it and the opposition around referenda and changing things and so forth.

Third thing. We need to take a page out of the book of the countries that have done this before and learn some lessons. The first place I go back to is South Africa, where the opposition to the apartheid regime gathered together in the 1950s, all sorts of communists and ANC [African National Congress] and all sorts of liberation fighters and others. But they got together, and they articulated the people’s charter, and it was a vision of the South Africa they wanted to create. That document became a roadmap and a destination, if you want, for what they were fighting for. What is it that we are fighting for? What unites us? This is the kind of thing that I wish Pahlavi had done, or I wish that we could now do and actually open up the space for conversations.

“What is it that we are fighting for? What unites us?”

Related to that is the acceptance amongst all of us that Iran is now a country of 93 million people. Even if 5 percent of those people are regime supporters, that is a population of 4.5 million, 5 million people. We have to say that this is a country in which they also have a role. The future of Iran, I would like if it was my choice, I would like a future of Iran where I get to go and visit my father’s grave without fear of being arrested or being detained, where I could take my children to visit the country and see the beauty of my homeland without fear. But I also want other people to be able to go live back home there, and the folks that are living there, who have had to be part and parcel of the system that is there — for them to also feel safe.

All the horrors that this regime actually played out on us, I don’t want to become them. That to me is the question. So it’s really thinking about it in this way of: What does it mean to live with the lens of human rights and inclusivity and plurality? Then what do we do with the most egregious elements, whether it’s in the prisons and the torturers, whether it’s the leaders who ordered the violence, those kinds of things need investigation.

Again, South Africa had a tribunal. They also had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Other countries have done that. Yemen had a national dialogue process for two years where they brought people from all sorts of political parties and tribes and young people and women to actually imagine the future that they were going to have. These are the kinds of things that we need to have in Iran. 

Let’s remove the embedded violence that has shaped this regime and has infiltrated into society, and actually bring it back to the Iran that we all love and the history of pluralism and frankly, secularism, that goes back 2,500 years. Secularism means Muslims — diehard Muslims — also get to live and practice their lives, right? It’s that kind of a vision that I think we need to be thinking about. 

AG: And we’re going to leave it there. Thanks for joining us on the Intercept Briefing, Sanam.

SNA: Thank you, Ali. 

AG: That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is the managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is the copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review came, as always, from the great David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you, our loyal readers and listeners. Your donations, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Ali Gharib.

The post “Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War appeared first on The Intercept.

Source: The Intercept | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

T-20 days: Smile to launch on 9 April

The Smile mission is set to launch on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday 9 April at 08:29 CEST/07:29 BST/03:29 local time. Follow along as we communicate on the final preparations for launch. Journalists are invited to join online media briefings in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Sashiko: AI code review system for the Linux kernel spots bugs humans miss

Beats getting roasted on the mailing list

AI is coming to the Linux kernel in the form of a code review system - not code submissions.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC

Stormont must not be let off the hook for abandoning Northern Ireland homes to oil markets as well as its failure to have a fit for purpose energy strategy…

No dedicated heat pump grants. No smart meters. Excessive profits extracted by the owners our electricity network and sent south. While the rest of these islands modernise their energy systems, Northern Ireland’s devolved government has spent four years producing plans and achieving almost nothing; and ordinary families are paying the price

Northern Ireland has a heating problem unlike anywhere else in the United Kingdom. According to the most recent official figures from NISRA, 61% of households rely on oil central heating as their primary source of heat, compared to a UK average of just over 5 per cent.

These homes sit entirely outside Ofgem’s energy price cap and over the last two weeks we have seen first-hand, that when global oil prices spike, there is no regulatory buffer in place to prevent supplier price gouging and as the war in the Middle East has sent crude prices surging to $120 a barrel, some households have reportedly been quoted this week close to £1,200 for a 1,000-litre oil fill, double the cost of a fill in January 2026. For many families across NI this is money they do not have, the only saving grace is we are coming out of winter and the need for heating will diminish in the coming months.

The institution with the greatest power to do something about this and move us away from fossil fuels towards sustainable energy, is Stormont, and like pretty much everything it does, it has spent four years consulting, drafting, and gesturing, procrastinating and literally doing nothing. The homes of ordinary people remain as dependent on a barrel of crude oil as they were twenty years ago.

That cannot continue, and just like the Lough Neagh algae, and the failure to invest in Water Infrastructure, those responsible cannot be quietly let off the hook.

A Damning Verdict from the Audit Office

The Northern Ireland Audit Office published its verdict on the Department for the Economy’s Energy Strategy in October 2025, and it was withering. Despite spending £107 million since 2020 and employing 134 staff,  a department that would rank in the top 2 per cent of Northern Ireland companies by headcount and budget, the strategy achieved just 1 per cent progress against its flagship target of an 8,000 GWh reduction in energy use from buildings and industry. The Audit Office called the failure “staggering”.

Across four published Energy Strategy Action Plans from 2022 to 2025, auditors found only 74 distinct actions; many vague, untimed, and unmeasurable. Actions were dropped between plans and quietly reappeared the following year. Meaningful reporting against targets did not begin until September 2024, nearly three years into the strategy’s term.

Most damning for the hundreds of thousands of families burning oil: there was no meaningful plan to fund or incentivise heat pump uptake in homes. None. Four years of strategy, and the one technology that could free families from oil price volatility did not merit a single concrete action.

No dedicated grants at scale = no route out

Elsewhere in the UK, a homeowner who wants to install a heat pump can access the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which provides grants of up to £7,500. That scheme runs until 2028. In the Republic of Ireland, over two million smart meters have been installed; more than four in five households; and new builds are routinely fitted with heat pumps as standard.

Northern Ireland homeowners who want to make the same switch face an almost entirely unsupported journey. The Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme admittedly does offers offer grants for a limited number of heat pump installations, but it is on a first come first served basis, it is trivially small relative to the problem: roughly £8 million a year to cover the energy efficiency needs of over 900,000 electricity customers and this budget is also meant to fund insulation upgrades and other initiatives etc.

The 2025 Energy Strategy Action Plan promises to “continue work” on a support scheme for low-carbon heat in homes. This is precisely the language the Audit Office criticised: non-committal, uncosted, and devoid of any delivery date. Families cannot heat their homes with a consultation process.

Last in Western Europe: The Smart Meter Scandal

The failure on heat pumps sits alongside an equally revealing failure on smart meters. Great Britain began its rollout in 2011 and now has 40 million installed. The Republic of Ireland completed its national programme, with more than four in five homes covered whilst Northern Ireland has not deployed a single smart meter under any mass rollout programme.

Energy analysts have noted this will likely make Northern Ireland the last region of the UK and Western Europe to do so; with the first installations not expected until later in 2026 at the earliest.

For many people here, the closest encounter with a smart meter remains the cheerful Octopus Energy advertisements that float across from GB radio stations, extolling the savings available to customers who can shift their usage to off-peak hours. Northern Ireland listeners will be familiar with the pitch by now: cheap overnight electricity, real-time usage tracking, rewards for flexibility. It is, in its way, an unintentional public information campaign; a regular reminder, broadcast into our radios from across the water a reminder of the consumer benefits that Stormont’s inertia has decided we are not yet ready to have, and ranks alongside the ads for Uber the taxi service which is commonplace in the rest of the world but which NI Citizens can only experience the convenience of, when we are on our holidays in the UK or Europe.

Stormont’s Economy Committee was recently told that installing smart meters across Northern Ireland’s electricity network could cost well over £500 million once IT systems are included. That cost will fall on consumers through their bills, recovered over 10 to 20 years.

Smart meters are not a luxury add-on: they are the foundation of a flexible, renewables-driven grid. Without them, households cannot access cheaper time-of-use tariffs or participate in demand-response programmes. Northern Ireland’s target of 80 per cent renewable electricity by 2030 becomes substantially harder to achieve on a grid where no one knows what anyone is using in real time.

A smart meter rollout has been part of Stormont’s energy strategy since 2021. A cost-benefit analysis was commissioned in 2022. A design consultation followed in 2024. The 2025 Action Plan commits to initiating a “Smart Metering Design Plan”. Four years of work, and Northern Ireland remains at the design stage.

There are also serious questions about whether hard lessons from GB are being applied: roughly 10 per cent of GB meters failed to operate in smart mode due to incompatible communications infrastructure. Despite this documented failure, DfE’s consultation reportedly ruled out designing a bespoke system for Northern Ireland as “unnecessary”, opting for off-the-shelf solutions.

Profits Extracted, Consumers Left Behind

Against this backdrop of underinvestment in consumer-facing energy transition, Northern Ireland’s electricity network operator has been extracting significant profits. NIE Networks; which has owned and operated the North’s electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure since its purchase by the Irish state-owned ESB Group for £1.2 billion in 2010; reported a pre-tax profit of £180.8 million in 2024.

That represents a near-doubling of profit in a single year, following a 33 per cent rise in revenues to £452 million and of that profit, £53.6 million was paid as a dividend to ESB; the largest single dividend transfer to the Dublin-based parent since it acquired the business.

Manufacturing NI chief executive Stephen Kelly described the profit surge and dividend as “extreme”, particularly given the businesses facing massive energy cost increases and households still waiting for compensation following the catastrophic Storm Éowyn outages in January 2025.

NIE Networks has argued that its regulated profit level is set by the Utility Regulator, enables it to maintain a strong credit rating, and supports its ability to borrow for investment. That is a fair point as far as it goes. The company did spend £246 million on capital investment in 2024, and a major £2.2 billion network rebuild programme is underway. But the broader picture is uncomfortable: Northern Ireland consumers are funding a regulated monopoly that, in a single year, almost doubled its profit and sent £54 million to company outside of NI albeit an ROI company which will may warm the hearts of Irish Republicans out there, but not their homes.

At the same moment those same consumers are being told that funding a heat pump grant scheme or a smart meter rollout will take years more of design work and fall largely on their bills.

The question that Stormont has conspicuously failed to ask loudly enough is this: if NIE Networks can generate £181 million in profit in a single year from Northern Ireland’s electricity network, what obligation does that create toward the consumers who fund it; and toward the energy transition targets the Executive has legislated for? Regulated monopoly profits are not inherently illegitimate, but they demand scrutiny, particularly when the regulator and the Executive have demonstrably failed to translate strategy into action on the ground.

What Accountability Now Requires

Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald has accepted the Audit Office’s findings and pledged to implement its recommendations. The NI Chamber of Commerce has called 2026 a year that must be “judged on outcomes, not intentions”. These are encouraging words. But warm words after damaging reports are a familiar pattern, and families cannot be expected to hold their breath through another planning cycle.

What is needed is specific and costed. The Executive must introduce a dedicated heat pump grant scheme; properly funded, simply designed, open to rural households, and backed by a supply chain plan that ensures enough qualified installers exist to deliver it.

The smart meter rollout must have a firm programme, a committed start date, and genuine accountability for delivery. And the Utility Regulator must face harder questions about whether the returns permitted to NIE Networks are truly aligned with the pace of infrastructure modernisation that consumers are being asked to fund.

Northern Ireland’s dependence on oil for home heating is the product of decades of underinvestment and most recently, years of Stormont inertia on a strategy it wrote itself, passed into law, and then quietly failed to deliver just like pretty much everything else it does an, incompetence which we will sadly observe in all its glory when Lough Neagh turns green in July.

Every winter without a functioning heat pump grant programme is another winter in which tens of thousands of families face the full force of whatever volatility the global oil market chooses to deliver.

That cannot be allowed to continue, and Stormont cannot be allowed to let it pass without consequence.

Source: Slugger O'Toole | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:18 am UTC

Delcy Rodríguez replaces Venezuela’s top military commanders

Interim president announces changes after firing defence minister, who was close to Maduro, the leader ousted by US

Venezuela’s interim president has said she has replaced all her senior military commanders, the latest in a flurry of changes since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro.

Delcy Rodríguez announced the changes in a social media post a day after firing the long-serving defence minister, who had been close to Maduro, and replacing him with a former intelligence chief.

Continue reading...

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:15 am UTC

Data Centers Are Military Targets Now

In retaliation for the ongoing U.S.–Israeli war, Iran responded with a novel form of counterattack. For the first time in military history, private sector data centers came under deliberate attack.

In an era when companies known for e-commerce, social networks, and search engines have also become close collaborators with militaries, is bombing their servers fair game?

Three days after the U.S. and Israel began their joint bombardment, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched kamikaze drone strikes against Amazon-owned data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain that provide an array of cloud computing services to customers throughout the Middle East. The impacts and subsequent fires “caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage,” according to Amazon, resulting in service outages across the region.

The motive behind the attack, according to Iranian state television, was not to block people from ordering groceries or posting to social media, but rather to highlight “the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities.” Though only Amazon’s centers are known to have come under fire, a March 11 tweet from the quasi-official Tasnim News Agency listed dozens of regional facilities, including data centers owned by Microsoft, Google and others, deemed “Enemy Technology Infrastructure” suitable for targeting.

It’s unclear if the Amazon data centers struck by Iranian drone strikes are used for military purposes or civilian purposes, or both. And it’s unknown if the attacks in any way hindered the militaries of the U.S., Israel, or their allies in the Gulf from using AI or other cloud-based services in their war efforts. But with Amazon, Google, and even Facebook parent company Meta are all eager partners of the Pentagon that augment the destructive power of the United States in Iran and elsewhere, server farms may now have the same status as factories building bombs and warplanes.

Scholars of international law and the laws of armed conflict say that when a military runs on the cloud, the cloud becomes a legal military target. But the cloud is an abstraction, not a physical site — a global network of millions of chips in servers spread across hundreds of massive buildings across the planet, servicing both civilian apps and state tools used to surveil and kill. Separating the former from the latter is an extremely difficult task.

“The legality turns on whether the specific facility, at the specific moment, is genuinely serving the military operations of a party to the conflict in a way that offers a concrete and definite advantage to the attacker,” explained León Castellanos-Jankiewicz, a lawyer with the Asser Institute for International and European Law in The Hague.

Sometimes the split between military and civilian use is straightforward. Microsoft, for example, helps run the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability, which the Pentagon says provides it with “greater lethality.” This work involves the processing of classified data, which the government does not want commingling with civilian tech. Cloud computing services are generally offered via geographically distinct “regions,” each made up of many physical data centers. Customers typically select the region that is closest to them to minimize lag time. Microsoft’s US DoD Central and US DoD East regions are “reserved for exclusive [Department of Defense] use,” according to the company, and are serviced by data centers in Des Moines, Iowa, and Northern Virginia, respectively.

Amazon offers similar cloud regions exclusive for Pentagon use, though the location of these data centers is not public. Oracle, another JWCC provider, operates Pentagon-specific facilities in Chicago, Phoenix, and Virginia. Companies are understandably tight-lipped about where exactly on the map these facilities stand, in no small part because Iran, or any country at war with the U.S., would have reason to target them.

“A data center that is used solely or primarily for military applications is targetable,” said Ioannis Kalpouzos, an international law scholar and visiting professor at Harvard Law, “and a center that supports the Pentagon’s JWCC falls in that category.”

Related

AI’s Imperial Agenda

The march of data center construction has become a point of contention across the United States and around the world, with communities frequently — and sometimes successfully — rallying to block what they view as enormous resource-draining eyesores. But for those living in the widening shadow of data centers, planned or built, their status as military targets may be unsettling beyond concerns over water and energy consumption.

And as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth aggressively shoehorns AI tools into the military wherever possible, the rapid expansion of data centers means the potential proliferation of legitimate military targets across the United States.

With comparisons between the destructive power of AI-augmented warfare and nuclear weaponry becoming more common, the ever-expanding network of American data centers may recreate Cold War anxieties around intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, silo placement. The country’s nuclear launch capabilities were famously clustered in the relatively sparsely populated Upper Midwest, forming a so-called “nuclear sponge” that would draw Soviet nukes away from population centers and toward rural areas and farmland.

But the legal calculus around most data centers will be less clear. Google, for example, says the Pentagon uses both its general purpose public cloud and smaller specialized air-gapped networks that don’t touch the public internet, depending on the sensitivity of the data involved. Even cloud work involving Top Secret military data “can operate within Google’s trusted, secure, and managed data centers.” The company also sells modular mini-data centers for use closer to battlefields or bases.

These arrangements, shrouded in both military and trade secrecy, make it hard to assess whether a server is hosting a student’s homework or Air Force R&D, blurring the legality of attacking data centers that may host both. Google may have little control over how governments use its cloud tools; The Intercept has previously reported that Google executives worried internally they wouldn’t be able to tell how the Israeli military was deploying its cloud services.

“The practical challenge is that cloud infrastructure is often technically opaque, even to providers themselves,” Castellanos-Jankiewicz said. “The services a given data center supports may not be readily ascertainable from the outside or even inside, which complicates the attacker’s legal obligations considerably.”

Amazon and Google’s Project Nimbus similarly provides cloud computing services across the Israeli government, including both civilian agencies and the Ministry of Defense, along with state-owned weapons companies.

“The picture becomes more legally complex when a data center functions as a so-called ‘dual-use’ object,” simultaneously hosting military data or capabilities alongside civilian services,” Castellanos-Jankiewicz told The Intercept. “Once a facility is found to make an effective contribution to military action, the entire physical object can, under the dominant legal view, qualify as a military objective.”

The embrace of commercial cloud computing by the U.S. and others has muddled an already murky legal picture, Castellanos-Jankiewicz explained. “A military’s decision to store classified data or run AI-enabled military systems on commercial cloud infrastructure shared with civilian services could itself raise legal concerns — particularly if the commingling of military and civilian uses makes a strike more likely or increases the foreseeable harm to civilians when one occurs.”

Related

OpenAI on Surveillance and Autonomous Killings: You’re Going to Have to Trust Us

Determining whether a given data center can be legally attacked under international humanitarian law — itself comprised of various treaties that not every country adheres to — relies on a complex series of balancing tests that rarely produce concrete answers. To begin with, every object and person is generally presumed civilian and exempt from attack under this framework. Before launching a strike, a country is supposed to have a verifiable reason to believe a data center contributes to the enemy war effort, and reason to believe an attack will appreciably harm that effort. What “effectively contributes to military action” will, of course, be a source of disagreement.

Anthropic’s Claude large language model was reportedly used to accelerate American airstrikes against Iran; Claude, in turn, was built in part using 500,000 chips housed in an $11 billion Amazon data center in Indiana. If Claude is now arguably a weapon, is this Indiana site the data equivalent of a bomb factory? Kalpouzos, the Harvard Law visiting professor, told The Intercept it depends on the facts at the moment the bomb hits, not past usage. “If the facility is currently used in the training of the LLM that is used in the conduct of military operations — for example, by fine-tuning object classification or user-interaction features — then this could render it targetable,” he said.

In a recent article for Just Security, Klaudia Klonowska and Michael Schmitt said that the law calls for proportionality and restraint even against military targets. An attack against a data center that provided both military and civilian computing would need to be precise enough to destroy the former while minimizing harm to the latter, they argued. But international law may call for a degree of carefulness that militaries have little interest in. “If it were possible to attack only the area of the data center where servers hosting military data are located without destroying the entire center, the attacker would need to do so,” they wrote.

These requirements can be hard to observe in reality. The U.S. and Israel both tout the extreme precision of airstrikes that regularly slaughter civilians. And neither country, nor Iran, is a signatory to some of the relevant legal frameworks that make up the so-called “laws of armed conflict” in the first place.

Indiscriminate warfare practice by U.S. and Israel has also, ironically, been instrumental in reshaping how these laws are interpreted and effectively loosened. Throughout the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israel’s military and the Pentagon both made clear it’s acceptable to destroy an apartment block or hospital if one first claims there is a genuine military target inside.

The second Sueda Hekker administration in particular has been keen to more tightly integrate Silicon Valley into the global American killing apparatus, a plan to which the industry has shown itself to be largely amenable. Even after being thoroughly maligned by the administration following the collapse of its Pentagon deal over purported disagreements around safety guardrails, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a public statement making clear he still wanted in on military spending: “Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences. We both are committed to advancing US national security and defending the American people, and agree on the urgency of applying AI across the government.” That attitude, now commonplace across the tech sector, will see the further commingling of consumer tech and warfare both in the abstract and under sprawling data center rooftops across the country.

“These [data centers] are further melding military and civilian infrastructure,” said Kalpouzos, “and together with the increasingly permissive rules of engagement adopted by the U.S. and Israel, are potentially drawing in larger sectors of the economy and society in what is targeted and destroyed.”

The post Data Centers Are Military Targets Now appeared first on The Intercept.

Source: The Intercept | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:05 am UTC

Hezbollah is bombing northern Israel again. Residents are staying put.

Rather than evacuation, Israel’s defense minister said the mission now is “to protect northern communities against raids and anti-tank fire.”

Source: World | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC

U.S.-Israeli rift widens over potential endgame in Iran

Israel’s assault on the world’s largest natural gas deposit has renewed tensions between the two allies’ end goals in Iran.

Source: World | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC

Earth from Space: Jostedalsbreen, Norway

Image: Ahead of the World Day for Glaciers, Copernicus Sentinel-2 captures the diverse landscape of western Norway with its jagged fjords, fertile valleys, mountain plateaus and Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in continental Europe.

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a meddling security team's fear of USB

On Call  Each Friday The Register offers a fresh installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support.…

Source: The Register | 20 Mar 2026 | 7:30 am UTC

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