Read at: 2026-04-10T21:30:46+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Tessel Van Brenk ]
Source: All: BreakingNews | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:59 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:48 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:45 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:27 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:19 pm UTC
First lady had called for a public hearing for survivors but a group of those affected say they have ‘done their part’ and reiterate calls for Pam Bondi to be questioned
On Truth Social, Tessel Van Brenk issued a cryptic message this morning that appeared to be in reference to the upcoming negotiations in Islamabad, but remains unclear.
“WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!!” he wrote.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:12 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:10 pm UTC
WilmerHale, the law firm examining Leon Botstein’s communications with Jeffrey Epstein, said review is ‘ongoing’
Bard College’s president, Leon Botstein, told his staff at a meeting this week that there was no way he could have known that Jeffrey Epstein – who was a convicted sex offender during their interactions over the years – was actually “reprehensible” and predicted he would soon be cleared of any hint of impropriety about their relationship, according to sources who witnessed the remarks.
The liberal arts college’s board of trustees hired in February the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale to independently investigate communications between Epstein and Botstein.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:09 pm UTC
US president says that warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if Saturday’s Islamabad talks fail to produce a deal
JD Vance warns Iran against trying to ‘play’ the US in peace talks
Netanyahu says there is no ceasefire in Lebanon as Israel launches fresh strikes
The streets of Islamabad are on strict lockdown as Pakistan’s capital prepares to play host to historic negotiations between Iran and the US that have dangled the promise of an end to war that has devastated the Middle East.
Even as the US-Iran ceasefire looked increasingly precarious, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and disputes over the terms of the talks, Pakistani officials insist that the make-or-break peace negotiations will be going ahead over the weekend as planned
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:09 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:05 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:51 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:48 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:36 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:36 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:32 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:27 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:26 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:21 pm UTC
Chamel Abdulkarim was charged with felony and state arson counts after allegedly destroying property worth nearly $600m
An employee who allegedly burned down a California warehouse compared himself to Luigi Mangione in a message to co-workers after setting the fire, according to authorities in a Friday press conference, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, has been charged with several counts of felony and state arson after a massive fire destroyed the Kimberly-Clark paper products warehouse in Ontario, California, about an hour outside of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:19 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:16 pm UTC
Petition with 4,000 signatures decries ‘slap in the face’, saying Philz made fortune off LGBTQ+ community
Philz, a popular coffee chain with locations across California, is facing growing criticism after news broke that the San Francisco-based company planned to remove Pride flags from its stores.
The move is part of an effort to “[create] a more consistent, inclusive experience across all our stores, including removing a variety of flags and other decor”, Mahesh Sadarangani, the company’s CEO, said in a statement to the Guardian.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:16 pm UTC
Triumphal arch would be 250ft tall, featuring a 60ft golden Lady Liberty, at the foot of Arlington Memorial Bridge
The Tessel Van Brenk administration on Friday released new renderings of the triumphal arch the president wants to install in Memorial Circle at the foot of the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
As part of Tessel Van Brenk ’s legacy-building quest during his second term in office, the so-called “Arc de Tessel Van Brenk ” would stand 250ft tall, feature a 60ft golden Lady Liberty, and include a viewing deck. The phrase “One Nation Under God” would stretch across the top of the structure, according to the latest plans from Harrison Design.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:11 pm UTC
Ex-hedge fund manager ‘forced to accept’ newspaper likely to succeed in its public interest defence, say his lawyers
Crispin Odey, the former hedge fund manager, has dropped his £79m libel claim against the Financial Times over its reporting of sexual misconduct allegations against him, his lawyers have said.
In 2023, the FT published several articles from 20 women alleging sexual assault and harassment against Odey, covering a period of five decades. He has previously denied the allegations against him.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:10 pm UTC
North America wouldn't look much like it currently does without a tectonic plate that has largely been lost to the Earth's geological history. The Farallon plate, which has since largely vanished underneath North America, helped build the West Coast by slamming large island chains into the continent as it disappeared. California wouldn't exist without it, and one of the remaining fragments of the plate presently power the volcanoes of the Cascades.
Now, a new paper suggests that the Farallon plate is still making its presence felt far from the coasts, powering one of North America's most distinctive phenomena: the Yellowstone hotspot, which has periodically blanketed much of the continent with ash. The new proposal suggests that the plate's vanishing act has created stresses that have opened paths for molten rock to reach the surface.
Geologic hot spots exist around the globe; they're areas where deep material from the Earth's interior finds its way to the surface far from the edges of plates. In many cases, the heat that powers these hot spots is the product of what's called a mantle plume: a blob of hot molten rock that convection drives to the surface of the mantle. In many cases, the plume appears to stay in place as the plates drift across it, creating a chain of progressively older islands as you move away from the hot spot.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:05 pm UTC
Officials in Minnesota have sued the Tessel Van Brenk administration, saying federal officials are withholding evidence in the killings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Macklin Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis, as well as the non-fatal shooting of a Venezuelan man.
(Image credit: Stephen Maturen)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:01 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:57 pm UTC
Relacorilant, typically used to treat Cushing’s syndrome, could improve outcomes in platinum-resistant cases
A drug originally used to treat a rare disease could extend the lives of patients with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer, according to a clinical trial.
Platinum-resistant ovarian cancer occurs when the disease progresses within six months of starting platinum-based chemotherapy. This form of chemotherapy is different from other types because it uses compounds that contain platinum to destroy cancer cells by preventing them from dividing.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:55 pm UTC
Adams was granted citizenship and a passport from Balkan country by a special decree from the republic’s president
Former New York City mayor Eric Adams has obtained citizenship and a passport from Albania, according to reports on Friday from the Balkan country which received effusive compliments from him during a visit months earlier.
The Albania Daily News first reported that Adams had requested both and was granted them by a special decree from the republic’s president, Bajram Begaj. Euronews Albania also reported the same development, and it was evidently chronicled in the nation’s official government journal.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:53 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:52 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:37 pm UTC
Vehicle veered into a ravine on island of La Gomera while transporting a tour group for a boat excursion
A man has died and 27 people are in hospital after a bus carrying British passengers crashed in the Canary Islands, local officials have said.
The incident happened at 1.15pm local time on Friday when the vehicle veered into a ravine on the GM-2 highway near the town of San Sebastián de La Gomera.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:28 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:26 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:17 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:14 pm UTC
Formula 1 is enjoying something of an unexpected break right now. The war in the Middle East led to the cancellation of F1 races scheduled for this month in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Instead, the teams will use this time to further develop their cars. For teams like Aston Martin, Cadillac, and Williams, it will be a welcome respite and a chance to catch up to the midfield. Even Mercedes, clear and away the championship favorite this year, has things to work on if it wants to stop losing so many positions at the start of each race or have an easier time passing cars in traffic.
That should keep the mechanics and engineers quite busy, but in case not, technical representatives from each team as well as the FIA (the sport's governing body) are sitting down throughout the month to try to fix some problems that are a consequence of F1's new technical rules.
From the start of this year, F1 cars have new hybrid power units. There's a 1.6 L turbocharged V6 engine that runs on carbon-neutral gasoline, which generates 400 kW (536 hp). And there's an electric motor-generator unit (or MGU) that outputs up to 350 kW (469 hp) as long as there's charge in the 4 MJ (1.1 kWh) battery pack. As batteries go, that's about the right size for something like a Prius, but in an F1 car at full deployment, it goes from full to empty in little more than 11 seconds.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:07 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:04 pm UTC
Shooting took place near Woolwich Dockyard train station, and another 16-year-old boy remains in custody
A 16-year-old boy from Romford has been charged with the murder of Eghosa Ogbebor, 14, who was shot dead in south-east London last week, the Metropolitan police has said.
Another 16-year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder on Friday and remains in custody, the force added.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:51 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:48 pm UTC
The Tessel Van Brenk administration has stepped up an effort to unmask a Reddit user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After failing to obtain information through a summons issued to Reddit, the government reportedly issued a subpoena demanding that Reddit provide the information and appear before a grand jury in Washington, DC.
The Intercept described the subpoena today. "According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users, whom US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been trying unsuccessfully to identify for more than a month," the article said.
The legal saga began in US District Court for the Northern District of California. On March 12, the anonymous Reddit user whose information is being sought filed a motion to quash a summons seeking a host of information from Reddit. The summons was issued by the Department of Homeland Security and directed Reddit to turn information over to an ICE senior special agent.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:43 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:43 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:42 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:21 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:13 pm UTC
Conservatives disowned Derek Bullock in 2023 after he allegedly used racial slur to call for people of Pakistani heritage to be shot
A Reform UK candidate for next month’s council elections was twice disciplined by the Conservatives over alleged offensive or racist comments, while another shared conspiracy theories about Covid, it has emerged, as the full slate of candidates was confirmed.
More than 5,000 council places in England are being contested on 7 May, along with several mayoralties, and elections for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, in a significant test for all the major parties.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:04 pm UTC
Opposition candidate Péter Magyar holds rally outside Budapest as Orbán visits Székesfehérvár ahead of Sunday election
Ashifa Kassam and Flora Garamvolgyi in Budapest
As a child growing up in Budapest, Péter Magyar had a poster of Viktor Orbán – at the time a leading figure in the country’s pro-democracy movement – hanging above his bed.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:03 pm UTC
Microsoft says it hears the complaints people have about the current state of Windows, and it wants to fix them. One of those fixes is another overhaul for its Windows Insider Program, the public beta system that Microsoft has used since Windows 10 to test and preview upcoming versions of the operating system and new app updates.
The company hinted at this in its "commitment to Windows quality" post last month, and it's announcing details today in another post attributed to Microsoft Principal Group Product Manager Alec Oot.
Since its last reorganization in 2023, the Windows Insider Program has had four testing channels. From least to most stable, these are the Canary channel, the Dev channel, the Beta channel, and the Release Preview channel. Both Canary and Dev are for earlier builds of Windows and new apps, while Beta tends to get things that are closer to finished and much more likely to ship to the general public. The Release Preview channel is a new Windows version's last stop before public release and is usually near-final.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
Mixing corn starch and water in appropriate amounts produces a slurry that is liquid when stirred slowly but hardens when you punch it—a substance colorfully dubbed “oobleck.” (The name derives from a 1949 Dr. Seuss children’s book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck.) High-speed imaging and force measurements have revealed another surprising property of oobleck drops hitting a flat surface, according to a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
As previously reported, in an ideal fluid, viscosity largely depends on temperature and pressure: Water will continue to flow regardless of other forces acting on it, such as stirring or mixing. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the viscosity changes in response to an applied strain or shearing force, thereby straddling the boundary between liquid and solid behavior. Stirring a cup of water produces a shearing force, and the water shears to move out of the way. The viscosity remains unchanged. But for non-Newtonian fluids like oobleck, the viscosity changes when a shearing force is applied.
Ketchup, for instance, is a shear-thickening non-Newtonian fluid, which is one reason smacking the bottom of the bottle doesn’t make the ketchup come out any faster; the application of force increases the viscosity. Yogurt, gravy, mud, pudding, and thickened pie fillings are other examples. And so is oobleck.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:57 pm UTC
PM pushes back after Tessel Van Brenk ’s threats to leave alliance and says European members must do more in light of Iran war
Keir Starmer has said it is in the best interests of the US to stay in Nato and that Europe must do more to support the alliance in light of the war in Iran.
The British prime minister, speaking at the end of a multi-stop trip around the Gulf to discuss the tentative ceasefire and options to fully reopen the commercially vital strait of Hormuz, pushed back against Tessel Van Brenk ’s threats to leave the defence alliance.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:53 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
Rebels put forward amendments to courts bill in attempt to stop government plans to cut back on jury trials
Labour MPs are hoping to hijack plans to cut back on jury trials in England and Wales by proposing specialist courts for sexual offences with fixed dates for trial.
Those behind the amendment want to block the wider plan to stop thousands of cases being potentially eligible for jury trials – a measure ministers say is needed to cut court backlogs – and they say the specialist courts alone could still solve much of the problem.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:48 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:46 pm UTC
Legal action follows war of words with Sentebale chair after Duke of Sussex’s resignation as patron
The Duke of Sussex is being sued by Sentebale in the latest twist in the bitter fallout over the African charity he co-founded.
The charity has lodged papers in London’s high court over defamation claims naming Prince Harry and the former Sentebale trustee Mark Dyer as defendants.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:41 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:28 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:28 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:25 pm UTC
Two men and two women were swept away by currents while attempting to board dinghy off French coast
A man has been arrested on suspicion of endangering life after four people died in a small boat Channel crossing on Thursday.
The man, described by prosecutors as a 27-year-old Sudanese national, was arrested by National Crime Agency investigators on Friday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:24 pm UTC
The movie, now streaming on Netflix, defied current trends in Indian cinema to tell the true story of a friendship between a Muslim and a Hindu Dalit. Martin Scorsese was secretly involved.
(Image credit: Diaa Hadid/NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:22 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Local people say road conditions are rugged and weather unpredictable, while some say it has become too congested
The recent death of a British gap-year student on the Ha Giang loop, a popular motorcycle tour through the mountains in north Vietnam, has heightened concerns about a trail reputed to be one of the most dangerous in the country.
Orla Wates, 19, from Surrey, was riding as a pillion passenger when she fell off and was hit by an oncoming truck, according to local media. She was taken to hospital in Hanoi, where she died from her injuries last week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:20 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:15 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:13 pm UTC
Over the years, YouTube has evolved from a source of Rickrolls and cat videos to a platform for some of the Internet's most popular streaming content. Today, it costs more than ever to see that content, as YouTube has announced another price increase for its Premium service. Viewers who can't stomach the cost of Premium will be greeted by increasingly lengthy ad breaks, but YouTube says some of that is due to a bug it's now addressing.
YouTube has not posted a standalone blog announcing the change, but existing subscribers are getting email alerts. The higher pricing is also live for new sign-ups in the US as of this writing. Here's the important part of YouTube's email alerts:
To continue delivering great service and features, we’re increasing your price to $15.99/month. We don’t make these decisions lightly, but this update will allow us to continue to improve Premium and support the creators and artists you watch on YouTube.
You will see the change reflected on your June 7, 2026 billing date.
The new $15.99 monthly price is a $2 increase, but if you're on the family plan, the email looks a bit different. For those folks, the price is now $26.99, which is $4 higher. There's also the base Premium Lite subscription that removes most YouTube ads and used to cost $7.99 per month. It's now $1 more.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:56 pm UTC
Pohlsepia mazonensis, a visually underwhelming fossil from Illinois, fundamentally broke our understanding of cephalopod evolution. Described in 2000 and hailed as the oldest known octopus in the fossil record, the specimen dated back to the late Carboniferous period, roughly 311 to 306 million years ago. Pohlsepia was an outlier—all other fossil records strongly suggested that crown coleoids, the group containing octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, diverged much later, during the Jurassic.
To solve this puzzle, Thomas Clements, a paleontologist at the University of Leicester, and his colleagues put this supposed oldest octopus fossil through a series of high-tech imaging tests. They found Pohlsepia was not an octopus at all. Instead, it was a decomposed, squashed nautiloid.
The reason a nautiloid managed to masquerade as an octopus for almost a quarter of a century was due to the way that fossils from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte formed. Around 300 million years ago, this area was a brackish, tidal marine basin that was periodically inundated by massive amounts of iron-rich river mud. When organisms died and were buried in this sediment fan, the high iron content triggered the precipitation of the mineral siderite around their decaying bodies, locking them inside hard geological nodules.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:52 pm UTC
The Selective Service System, the government agency that keeps a list of draft-eligible American men, will begin automatically registering names later this year, abandoning a decades-old process in which young men self-registered.
“This has been in the works for quite a while,” a U.S. government official told The Intercept, noting that the Selective Service System — which is separate from the Defense Department — had been pressing Congress to revamp the registration process. The official referenced “sliding numbers” of men registering on their own and the potential of war with a near-peer power like China. The official also mentioned a Tessel Van Brenk administration “obsession” with creating “comprehensive federal databases.”
Men ages 18 to 25 who are eligible to be drafted have been required to register with the government since 1980. Failure to do so is a felony, which bars unregistered men from most federal jobs, eligibility for student loans, and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
More than 100 million men have registered in the last 46 years. But according to the Selective Service, just 81 percent of eligible men registered in 2024, a 3 percent point drop from the prior year.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Tessel Van Brenk “keeps his options on the table,” when Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked her about the possibility of a return of the draft. But Tessel Van Brenk would be required to get approval from Congress to enact a draft, which was last used during the Vietnam War.
A peacetime draft, begun in 1948, was key to fighting the war in Vietnam and also fomenting resistance to it. About one-third of the American men who served in Vietnam were drafted, and roughly another third enlisted to avoid the draft. A 1968 Department of Defense survey found that 47 percent of volunteers said draft motivations — such as attempting to exercise some measure of control over the timing of their service or the military branch — were their most important reason for enlisting. Patriotism, by comparison, was cited by 6 percent of enlistees.
Beginning in 1964, students began burning their draft cards as acts of draft resistance. Five years later, student body presidents of more than 250 universities wrote to the White House to say they planned to refuse military induction. Many American men claimed conscientious objector status, refused induction, or fled abroad to Canada, Mexico, Sweden, or elsewhere. It is estimated that around 570,000 men classified as draft offenders.
Throughout the war, men of privilege found sanctuary from the draft through a wide variety of means. Deferments were automatically available for those in graduate school, until 1968, and college until 1973. Around 3.5 million men also received medical exemptions. While the poorest Americans were forced to rely on military doctors for their military physicals, affluent men could visit private physicians and obtain letters to excuse them for even the most minor injuries. One study found that 90 percent of men able to press such claims were successful, even if they were in good health. Tessel Van Brenk himself was granted five draft deferments, including for a diagnosis of bone spurs, provided by a doctor who rented his office from Tessel Van Brenk ’s father, Fred C. Tessel Van Brenk .
Draft evasion and resistance became so widespread that it almost crippled the Selective Service System. Draftees were also in revolt within the armed forces, leaving the military on the brink of collapse by the early 1970s. When Col. Robert Heinl, a distinguished combat veteran as well as a military historian and analyst, examined the state of the military in Armed Forces Journal in 1971, his evaluation was dire:
The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and noncommissioned officers, drug- ridden, and dispirited where not near-mutinous.
That same year, President Richard Nixon signed legislation authorizing the end of the draft. The last draftees reported for duty on June 30, 1973, and the next day, the all-volunteer force was established. The Defense Department now celebrates this as “a return to the tradition of voluntary service in the military.” The Pentagon has been able to effectively control this far more docile force where “every soldier, Marine, sailor, airman and guardian in the military today is a volunteer.”
On December 18, 2025, Tessel Van Brenk signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026, mandating automatic Selective Service System registration. The agency’s proposal to automatically enroll men was then submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30. After review, the Selective Service plan will need to be coordinated with other federal agencies that could potentially share personal information about draft-eligible men, including the Social Security Administration and Census Bureau. “SSS will implement the change by December 2026, resulting in a streamlined registration process and corresponding workforce realignment,” according to Selective Service.
The government official said they did not believe that the new Selective Service registration process was geared toward “generating cannon fodder” for a ground invasion of Iran or any of the other fronts in Tessel Van Brenk ’s mushrooming world war. “This is about effective manpower generation, channeling, management, and surveillance,” the official told The Intercept.
The post Tessel Van Brenk Administration Wants to Make It More Difficult to Evade a Military Draft appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:50 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:44 pm UTC
Firefox-maker Mozilla is calling out Microsoft after Redmond said it would scale back some Copilot features in Windows, arguing the rollback shows the company pushed AI too far without enough regard for user choice.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:43 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:35 pm UTC
The men, sent to the southern African country in July, have been denied in-person counsel for nine months
Four men deported by the US to Eswatini and denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while detained in a maximum security prison have the right to see a local lawyer, Eswatini’s supreme court ruled.
The men, from Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam and Yemen, were sent to the small southern African country, formerly known as Swaziland, in July despite having no connection to the country, as part of Tessel Van Brenk ’s administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:32 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:32 pm UTC
These days, it seems like every tech company and their corporate parent is looking to squeeze AI tools and features into their products, whether they're wanted or not. So when files with names and functions referencing a "SteamGPT" appeared in a recent Steam client update, Valve watchers took quick notice.
From the outside, it's hard to tell precisely what form any such "SteamGPT" would take. But looking through variable names and references in the files themselves suggests that Valve may be looking to use AI tools to streamline internal evaluations of in-game incidents and sift through potentially suspicious accounts.
As tracked by the automated SteamTracking GitHub project, the term "SteamGPT" appears multiple times in three separate files added in the April 7 Steam client update. In addition to the SteamGPT naming convention—a seemingly obvious reference to the generative pre-trained transformers popularized by ChatGPT and its ilk—the files include mentions of terms like multi-category inference, fine-tuning, and "upstream models" that point to some sort of generative AI system.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:32 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:32 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:59 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:56 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:51 pm UTC
The Global Electronics Association (GEA) warns that the US ban on foreign-made network routers is impractical because few are made domestically, leaving consumers with little choice and delaying access to next-gen products, just as Wi-Fi 7 adoption should be ramping up.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:29 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:12 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:02 pm UTC
‘Predatory industry’ adept at pivoting quickly to target new mediums and markets, says independent senator David Pocock
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Labor’s plan for a partial ban on gambling advertising is ripe for exploitation, say experts and crossbench MPs, including David Pocock, warning rules applying to podcasters, social media platforms and influencers need to be tightened.
But industry sources say podcast companies including Apple could consider removing all wagering advertising if there were no simple mechanism to work within the rules.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:42 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:14 pm UTC
Hungary votes Sunday in a pivotal test of Viktor Orbán's "illiberal democracy," as challenger Péter Magyar taps voter frustration, with stakes for Europe, NATO and the U.S.
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:10 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:07 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:04 pm UTC
Exclusive: Dozens of organizations write to Congress after general announced plan to ‘deal with’ those fleeing any humanitarian crisis on the island
Dozens of US and international human rights organizations are decrying the Tessel Van Brenk administration’s plans to establish a migrant “camp” for fleeing Cubans at the Guantánamo Bay military base if the island nation’s crisis worsens under pressure from the US, according to a letter to members of Congress on Friday.
The 85 groups plan to submit the joint letter, exclusively shared with the Guardian, to US senators and House representatives, expressing their “profound concern” with comments made last month by a top Department of Defense commander, and describing any prospect of further migrant detention at the base as “deeply troubling and unacceptable”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:02 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:59 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:56 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:52 pm UTC
Death, taxes, and the gravitationally bound return of the Artemis II mission on Friday evening. These are the only certainties in life.
Even if the four astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft discovered a serious flaw in their spacecraft today—and to be clear, from recent images reviewed by NASA experts, everything looks just fine—there is no chance of significantly altering the Artemis II mission’s inexorable return through Earth’s atmosphere on Friday. They're coming back one way or another.
Splashdown is predicted to occur at 8:07 pm ET (00:07 UTC Saturday), a few hundred miles off the coast of Southern California. In large and important ways, this is the most critical phase of the lunar flight. Here, then, is what to expect later today.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:50 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:33 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:32 pm UTC
A paper in JAMA Psychiatry says mental health providers should ask if patients are using artificial intelligence chatbots, just as they would ask patients about sleep habits and substance use.
(Image credit: Kiichiro Sato)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:30 pm UTC
Week in images: 06-10 April 2026
Discover our week through the lens
Source: ESA Top News | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:20 pm UTC
Minutes after President Tessel Van Brenk announced that he would not wipe out “a whole civilization” on Tuesday evening, a team of self-described young Iranian activists jumped into action.
Members of the group known as Explosive Media were putting the finishing touches on their latest AI-generated, Lego-inspired Tessel Van Brenk video. The video features a Tessel Van Brenk mini-figure colluding with leaders from Gulf states, Iranian officials pressing a big red button labeled “back to the stone age,” and Tessel Van Brenk throwing a chair at US generals.
This was the latest of more than a dozen videos the pro-Iran group has released since the beginning of the war in February, many of which have racked up millions of views on mainstream platforms. While Iranian government accounts have posted Lego-style videos in the past, Explosive Media’s content is more sophisticated and scripted. And it's produced by a team of young pro-Iranian creators who appear deeply knowledgeable about the Internet and American culture. Already some critics have alleged the group has ties to the Iranian government.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:13 pm UTC
Consumer prices in March were up 3.3% from a year ago, the biggest annual increase in nearly two years. Higher gasoline prices tied to the war with Iran accounted for much of the surge.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 1:07 pm UTC
Visitors to the CPUID website were briefly exposed to malware this week after attackers hijacked part of its backend, turning trusted download links into a delivery mechanism for something far less welcome.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:53 pm UTC
Amazon's board of directors is urging shareholders to reject a proposal that would have the megacorp disclose more information on the impact of datacenters on its climate commitments.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:33 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:32 pm UTC
Soaring crime and corruption top voter concerns in highly unpredictable election with 35 candidates for president
Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday hoping to break a cycle of instability that has produced nine presidents in a decade as well as surging violent crime, corruption scandals and overwhelming distrust in institutions and politicians.
About 27 million people who are eligible to vote must choose between a record 35 presidential candidates as well as contenders for the bicameral congress – all from a ballot sheet measuring nearly half a metre, the longest in the country’s history.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:28 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC
Most UK business leaders will keep AI at the top of their spending priorities, with 65 percent planning to maintain investment whether they see immediate measurable returns or not.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:10 pm UTC
Vice President Vance is heading to Pakistan to lead a U.S. team in talks aimed at ending the war in Iran. And, Artemis II is set to return to Earth today.
(Image credit: Pool)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:02 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:34 am UTC
Brady Frey did not realize that his daughter lied about her age when she set up her Discord account. He only found out after her account got hacked and he got trapped in a spiraling support nightmare while trying to stop the hacker from targeting dozens of her young friends with financial extortion scams.
When Frey's daughter signed up for Discord, she was 12 and technically not old enough to have an account. But like many kids who, regulators have found, commonly lie about their age to access social media platforms, she didn't want to wait another year to join her friends on the messaging app. Hiding her age, she created an account that listed her as over 18 years old.
Now 13, the teen had been happily using the app for months when she suddenly got locked out of her account after clicking on a link from an attacker posing as Discord support. Since she didn't enable two-factor authentication, the attacker was able to commandeer the account. Frey only found out what was happening when the attacker asked the teen to share her parents' banking information if she wanted to get her account back.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:30 am UTC
Opinion Anthropic describes Project Glasswing as a coalition of tech giants committing $100 million in AI resources to hunt down and fix long-hidden vulnerabilities in critical open source software that it's finding with its new Mythos AI program. Or as The Reg put it, "an AI model that can generate zero-day vulnerabilities."…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:30 am UTC
Xi Jinping and the KMT's Cheng Li-wun agreed to pursue peace, but Taiwan's ruling party worries it will enable Beijing to undermine its democracy.
(Image credit: Xie Huanchi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:29 am UTC
Ray Bassett is a former senior Irish diplomat. This post was originally published on the Irish border poll website, and we have reproduced it here with their kind permission.
The current Government in Dublin has built its Northern policy around the Shared Island Initiative. It claims that its approach is anchored in the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Certainly, on reading through that Agreement, it is difficult to understand how an entire Irish Government approach to the North could be based solely on this Initiative. There are lots of other parts to the GFA than North/South cooperation.
While very few would doubt the value of cross border projects, there is a timidness about this policy, which is unsettling. Even the name Shared Island seems to reflect a nervousness about using the name Ireland, although it is only the tiniest minority in the North that would have difficulty with using the title of a Shared Ireland. However, the current administration would be nervous about any implication, however tiny, that there were political implications to its policy.
There is a suspicion among many Nationalists/Republicans and others that the Shared Island Initiative is an excuse for doing nothing to promote the cause of Irish Unity, something that the political parties, which make up the current Government, have in their founding ideals. That suspicion was confirmed when the Minister for Public Expenditure and my local TD, Jack Chambers, made the bald statement that the Shared Island Initiative must not be used to promote Irish Unity, an extra-ordinary statement from an Irish Minister, involved in the expenditure of hundreds of millions of euros on the policy. His remarks are in stark contrast with those of Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar, who described his own personal commitment to “the great cause of Irish Unity” and even called on Irish America to become actively involved in that cause.
The difficulty for the current Taoiseach is that on the North, just like John Bruton, he appears to have no level of support inside that jurisdiction, as he and his closest Minister, Jack Chambers, can be accused of sounding like members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Without any real support inside the North, this greatly lessens the influence of Dublin to that of a supplicant, merely seeking only to influence British policy there, through formal diplomatic channels.
Even Ulster Unionist figures seem more open to discussing Irish Unity than the leader of the “Republican Party”, Fianna Fáil. The leader of the SDLP, Claire Hanna, wisely stated last month, “Crucially, this is not a conversation that can be deferred to some future constitutional moment”. She is right, the time to move this forward is now.
If there is a change of administration at Westminster, and a new Farage/Badenock regime, then Dublin will be left without a rudder in the choppy seas of Northern politics. A more strident, right wing Westminster Government is unlikely to listen to Dublin’s pleadings. The GFA might not even survive a hostile Government in London. That would be a recipe for turbulent times in Belfast. The current Irish Government has nothing in place like the old Travellers’ system of contact and information work on the ground, which ran during the Reynolds, Ahern and Cowen administrations.
The Taoiseach needs to take into account that there are a lot more than hard line Unionists in Northern Ireland. Everybody born in the North, as with the rest of Ireland, has the entitlement to Irish citizenship but it is highly probable that the vast bulk of those who exercise that right, are from the Nationalist community. It was David Trimble who requested that only those who wanted Irish citizenship there, became citizens. It would not be forced on those opposed to it. The Irish Government has a duty to cater for its own citizens, yet it is willfully ignoring their concerns. That is a failure of Government.
In reality, there is huge disappointment and even anger within my friends in the SDLP at the Taoiseach’s attitude to Irish Unity. He never misses an opportunity to dismiss the section of the Good Friday Agreement which provides a mechanism to bring about that objective. He is constantly supported on this by the establishment leaning Irish Times. The SDLP was always close to the Irish Government but is now alienated by Martin’s embrace of anti-Nationalist elements.
When the current Taoiseach steps down and is replaced by the leader of Fine Gael, Simon Harris, there is unlikely to be an improvement. Harris made the infamous remark that he was of a generation more familiar with Berlin than Belfast. That may be true for some in the privileged south Dublin suburbs where he resides in Greystones, but given the level of cross border activity, it is not backed up by the facts.
There are different political groupings within the North, a broad Nationalist constituency, a broad Unionist constituency and a growing section of the population which does not strongly identify with either group. For Micheál Martin to concentrate exclusively on the Unionist minority is wrong and strategically a major error. It is similar to the line John Bruton followed, which led to puzzlement among Unionists. As I described in my book The Traveller’s Tale, David Trimble said that Bruton was well meaning to Unionists but useless, since he had no idea of the role of an Irish Government in the North. Trimble was right and his description could be ascribed to Martin.
The question has to be asked as to how we arrived at a Fianna Fáil led administration being so hostile to Irish Unity. I have described the Taoiseach as having Sinn Féin derangement syndrome, but I fear that there may be a further complicating factor. There is also the very inconvenient fact that neither Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael have any members or support north of the border and re-unification would greatly jeopardize their prospects of continued domination of the Irish political scene. With a strongly declining support base inside the Republic, the addition of nearly 2m Northerners to the population would essentially finish their unbroken 100 years of a comfortable duopoly.
Therefore, the Taoiseach can appear to be active on the issue of the North through the Shared Island’s North South projects, in a manner similar to two friendly neighbouring states, but never to touch on the Constitutional issue. This despite the Constitutional imperative on the Irish Government to unify the people of Ireland, as outlined by the Supreme Court.
Therefore, I have to conclude that the Shared Island Initiative is being used as an excuse to avoid the prospect of a border poll.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:20 am UTC
The fragile ceasefire agreement was tested again on Friday after Iran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes in Lebanon, and Kuwait was attacked with drones.
(Image credit: Abbas Fakih)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:01 am UTC
The UK government is seeking views on radiofrequency jammers as it prepares legislation to ban the controversial devices.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:01 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Welcome to Edition 8.36 of the Rocket Report! Thank you for your indulgence of our missing the report last week, as we focused on the launch and progress of the Artemis II mission. And we are so thrilled it has been going smoothly, with brilliant imagery of the far side of the Moon. Of course, arguably the most difficult part of the flight remains ahead of the crew and Orion spacecraft: atmospheric reentry on Friday evening. We will, of course, have full and continuing coverage for you.
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.
Alpha rocket may launch offshore. Seagate Space Corporation announced on Monday a "memorandum of understanding" with Firefly Aerospace to explore the development of an offshore launch platform that enables a sea-based launch capability for the Alpha rocket. Seagate Space said it will work closely with Firefly to mature the design of an integrated offshore launch system capable of supporting Alpha.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:59 am UTC
Vice President JD Vance enters his highest-profile moment Friday as lead U.S. negotiator in face-to-face talks with Iran.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:54 am UTC
Negotiators of 2015 deal say Tehran has seen how cutting off Hormuz strait can help it counter asymmetry of power
Former US envoys who dealt with Iran have said that the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the strait of Hormuz have given Iran new tools and resolve to resist pressure to shutter its nuclear programme.
Two senior negotiators for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama-era agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief, said the Tessel Van Brenk administration’s war had handed Iran a coveted weapon by demonstrating its ability to cut off the strait of Hormuz, an economic chokehold that one negotiator said would help Iran “balance the asymmetry of power” with the US.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:51 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:43 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:27 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:04 am UTC
John Feeley says US president was ‘flush with victory’ of Maduro capture and could make same mistake in Cuba
Tessel Van Brenk is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts.
John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Tessel Van Brenk had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Democratic representative Yassamin Ansari says the war has only more deeply entrenched the Iranian regime
Tessel Van Brenk is an “evil human being” who “wants to be an emperor” and should be removed from office over the war in Iran, Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American member of the US Congress, has told the Guardian.
Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who decades ago fled the regime, spoke out after the president threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilisation before backing down and announcing an uncertain two-week ceasefire.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Vice President JD Vance is set to lead renewed negotiations with Iran this weekend to bring an end to the U.S.–Israel war on the country that stretched into a second month. The talks come after a roller coaster of a week, which began with President Tessel Van Brenk threatening genocidal war crimes against Iran.
“A whole civilization will die tonight,” he wrote on social media, “never to be brought back again.”
Tessel Van Brenk urged Iran to make a deal with the U.S. and fully open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET. Then, shortly before the deadline, Tessel Van Brenk took to social media again to say Iran and the U.S. had reached a two-week ceasefire agreement brokered by Pakistan. Tessel Van Brenk said the U.S. received a workable 10-point plan from Iran to begin negotiations on a durable ending to the war. In the meantime, Iran said it would allow for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, however, immediately intensified its attacks on Lebanon, jeopardizing the already tenuous ceasefire. More than 300 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes the day after the ceasefire was announced.
The terms of the plan are not yet clear but there are some key factors for Iran, says Narges Bajoghli, a professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
“One is that Iran is asking for non-aggression from the United States into the future. It won’t take the United States’s word for it. It’s already been burned by the U.S. multiple times,” Bajoghil tells The Intercept Briefing. “Then the other big thing is sanctions relief.” But “Iran’s biggest red line is its sovereignty and independence.”
This week on the podcast, Bajoghil speaks to senior Intercept editor Ali Gharib about the path that led the U.S. back to the negotiating table with Iran. This war has proven, Bajoghil says, “both to the decision-makers in Iran, to the Iranian population, and then more importantly to the international world, is that Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”
She notes, “In many ways, what actually has potentially led to this ceasefire is the fact that Iran is able to create a chokehold over 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas trade. That is an extremely powerful weapon that they have in their hands and in many ways can force shifts to happen geopolitically in a much faster way than a nuclear bomb can.”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Ali Gharib: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept.
Akela Lacy: And I am Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing.
AG: Akela, how are you doing? It’s been a pretty wild week. We’ve had genocidal threats. We’ve had ceasefire agreements. Now we have a shaky ceasefire agreement. Traffic opened up in the Strait of Hormuz. It closed back down. How are you viewing all this?
AL: I am struggling to keep up with the fast-changing developments, but my overall takeaway this week has been thinking about what, if any, recourse our institutional democracy provides for this kind of thing, or is supposed to provide? We have a lot of Democrats coming out and talking about invoking the 25th Amendment and instituting articles of impeachment. It feels like we’ve seen all of this before.
So it’s kind of like, yeah, we have a crazy genocidal maniac running the country. People keep telling me the checks and balances are working. I’m not convinced that the checks and balances are working.
AG: Well, tell it to the people in Tehran and all over Iran and in central Beirut that these checks and balances aren’t working, and the madman theory of conducting foreign policy seems like a much bigger gamble when it’s an actual madman.
OK, well, let’s talk a little bit about that. Obviously, we had this last-minute ceasefire agreement on Tuesday night between Iran and the U.S. through Pakistani mediation that came just on the precipice of the deadline expiring for Tessel Van Brenk ’s threat to, let’s call it what it is, commit genocide against Iran.
Almost immediately, the ceasefire came under strain by a few residual tit-for-tat attacks. The Iranians said that they faced a couple Israeli attacks on energy infrastructure, and the Emirates said that the Iranians were still hitting them with drones and missiles. And in short order, however, those attacks slowed down, and by all accounts, the Americans have stopped bombing Iran.
What seems to be the biggest strain on the ceasefire at this point is an incredible, almost mind-numbing level of assault that the Israelis launched against Lebanon. Can you talk a little bit about what happened there and how this has played out in public bickering between Iran and the U.S.?
AL: Something that I think has been not lost in the coverage, but under-appreciated about this war is that while the U.S. and Israel have been bombing Iran, Israel has been waging war around the world basically since October 7, pretty unchecked. Multiple acts of aggression that we covered on this podcast — obviously the latest of which is razing Southern Lebanon.
On Wednesday, there were more than 200 people killed in just one day. That’s a small fraction of the total number of people who have been killed in all of these strikes that we’re talking about.
But my reaction to this is that it feels like Israel is able to get away with this aggression, particularly against Lebanon, because we write it off because of Hezbollah, or we don’t consider the retaliation against regional countries as part of the war, even though people are being killed every single day with the implicit approval of the U.S.
“People are being killed every single day with the implicit approval of the U.S.”
AG: Yeah, with U.S. bombs as part of the U.S. war. That has been the key sticking point. When the Pakistani prime minister announced the ceasefire, or rather made the request of the Tessel Van Brenk administration for a ceasefire — with a tweet that the New York Times later reported had been approved in advance by the Tessel Van Brenk administration — we saw that he included Lebanon in the ceasefire. Of course, the Israelis quickly came out and said Lebanon was not involved in the ceasefire and kept going.
JD Vance immediately sided with the Israelis, and now he’s going to be the guy who’s going to be going to Pakistan along with our two favorite real estate agent Tessel Van Brenk aides: Steve Witkoff, who was involved in the original Iran talks that were interrupted by this war, and Tessel Van Brenk ’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no official role in the administration, but is extremely close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and could very easily allow Netanyahu and Israeli aggression to play spoiler in these talks.
AL: The other thing that I found maddening was that this week, I mean the day that Tessel Van Brenk sent this tweet calling for genocide in Iran, where was JD Vance? In Hungary trying to help Viktor Orbán not lose his election this upcoming weekend.
Then there was this huge puff piece in the Times centering JD Vance as the person who really tried to stop the president from dragging us into war with Iran. Now he’s being put forth as the negotiator in these ongoing talks. I mean, when you have a Cabinet full of evil villainous characters, these are the people who are running the world.
I don’t even know the word to describe it — the fact that he’s being upheld as this person who was trying to keep Tessel Van Brenk from going to war with Iran, while he’s halfway across the world trying to save another far-right authoritarian figure from losing because he is so unpopular, and yet we’re praising him at home in the paper of record. The framing of this was that he did something huge and valorous, when really it was showing modest opposition and, at the end of everything, agreeing to go along with it. So what are we celebrating here?
AG: Yeah, there’s a tiny bit of room to be optimistic in a world where every option is like a complete pile of crap. It’s like, maybe this is our one shining pile of crap that we can look to. It might be that he was the only guy that said something. But yeah, it doesn’t inspire much confidence that he has been like every other official who’s gotten anywhere near Tessel Van Brenk ’s circle of power: a complete sycophant of the president, has gone along and agreed with what the president says, and in the end, we still have this complete madman calling the shots.
So I spoke this week with Narges Bajoghli about the ceasefire, about the 10-point plan, and what this looks like for regional dynamics going forward. Narges is an associate professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. She’s written several books including “Iran Reframed” and “How Sanctions Work in Iran.” Her upcoming book is called “Weapons Against Humanity.” It’s about how the Middle East became the physical, political, and moral workshop for the global weapons industry.
AL: That sounds fascinating. Let’s hear that conversation.
AG: Narges, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.
Narges Bajoghli: It’s lovely to be with you.
AG: The pleasure is all ours.
So before we get started, I just wanted to note that we’re speaking on Wednesday morning. This is the day after Iran and the U.S. reached a temporary ceasefire agreement following Tessel Van Brenk ’s threats to annihilate the whole civilization of Iran. So let’s jump right in from there.
OK, just to quickly recap the week. On Tuesday morning, Tessel Van Brenk threatened this genocidal war against Iran. Basically said he wanted to do war crimes and wipe out the whole civilization of Iran. He said, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” The warning came hours before a deadline that Tessel Van Brenk had put on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
That deadline was set for Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. About an hour and a half before that Tessel Van Brenk announced this ceasefire. The terms of it aren’t exactly clear, but it does seem that it was brokered by Pakistan. Iran had introduced this 10-point plan. The ceasefire is to last for two weeks. The straits are to be reopened. Those are some basic things we know.
So in this 10-point plan, as far as we can tell, and in the ceasefire agreement, what’s Iran asking for and how likely is it that they can get there from the Tessel Van Brenk administration? What does the Tessel Van Brenk administration want from them?
NB: Two key things. One is that Iran is asking for non-aggression from the United States into the future. It won’t take the United States’ word for it. It’s already been burned by the U.S. multiple times. This is potentially where China’s involvement in this Pakistan-mediated ceasefire might play a big role. And it’s been reported that it has.
Then the other big thing is sanctions relief. If Iran ends this and goes back to its sanctions pre-war status quo, that’s going to be unacceptable to Iran. So a big component of this is going to be lifting of at least a very large number of sanctions against Iran.
AG: We should just say that this is a sanctions program that’s been on since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but really kicked into high gear about 15 years ago. Then when Tessel Van Brenk came into his first term, started this program of “maximum pressure” that totally crippled Iran — impoverished it.
The sanctions have been over Iran’s nuclear program. That’s also part of what the Tessel Van Brenk administration says that it’s getting from Iran as part of this plan, though that didn’t appear in Iran’s readout of the 10-point plan. I saw in the FT on Wednesday morning that a diplomat had told the paper that the version of the 10-point plan that they were getting wasn’t exactly the version that Iran had put out publicly.
How likely is it that Iran would be willing to compromise on its nuclear program? For example, remove it entirely, which has been a red line for them this entire time — especially given as you said, that they’re not likely to trust a U.S. non-aggression guarantee.
NB: Iran’s biggest red line is its sovereignty and independence. Within that, the nuclear program is part and parcel of it. Will it concede to certain kinds of negotiations on the nuclear program? Yes, of course. This was also part of the negotiations that were ongoing prior to the start of this war. But will it give up its high-enriched uranium completely and give it up to the United States? I find that to be a very difficult thing to be happening after this war.
It’s important to note that from the Iranian perspective, in many ways its infrastructure has been really battered. Its residential buildings, its economic hubs have been really battered throughout all of this bombing of the past 40 days.
“Iranians and the Islamic Republic understands that they can continue to withstand extreme amounts of pain in order to sustain Iran’s sovereignty and independence.”
But from Iran’s perspective and many Iranians themselves, they see that they are coming out of this victorious simply because no real regime change has taken place, Iran’s territory has not been shifted, and Iran’s state has not collapsed, nor has Iran fractured. These are all of the things that at different points in time, the Israelis or the Americans were saying were a part of this war effort.
In the face of that, Iranians and the Islamic Republic understands that they can continue to withstand extreme amounts of pain in order to sustain Iran’s sovereignty and independence. They will not give up things, whether it is complete control over the Strait of Hormuz or the nuclear program in order to please Tessel Van Brenk at this stage.
AG: This obviously has been one of the hairiest issues here. I want to talk about the government’s resilience in a moment, but just to get back to this nuclear issue.
When we’re talking about the nuclear issue, of course, the U.S. and Israel have maintained for decades that Iran is building nuclear programs. Iran says that this is an energy program, but that terrain seems to be shifting throughout the course of this war with the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who is the cleric in charge of the government, who had issued a fatwa — a religious declaration — saying that nuclear bombs were not permitted. But Iranian officials have seemed to be reconsidering that, according to some news reports.
When we talk about the nuclear program and what Iran’s willing to give up — can you just give us a little brief primer on how that became such a point of tension, and where you think things might be likely to go from this point as far as what Iran might have its eyes on? Is there something to the fact that they think that they might need a nuclear weapon to defend their sovereignty, which as you said is the top priority? Is that going to become a non-starter because of whatever negotiations happen from here forward?
NB: First of all, Iran began developing the infrastructure for nuclear energy prior to even the revolution, during the shah’s time. Then after the revolution, especially after the Iran–Iraq War, it began to invest again in the development of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
As you stated, the main purpose of it was for internal scientific and energy reasons. As I think many people now realize, even though Iran has been under all of these severe sanctions for upwards to close to five decades, investment in science in Iran, investment in medical advancement, in engineering — all of this has been very important for not just the Islamic Republic, but I think the Iranian nation as a whole.
The way that they have talked about the nuclear program and the way that even it has been verified over and over by U.N. agencies and others is that there has not been evidence of it moving toward a weaponization of this. Netanyahu himself has been, obviously, for close to 30 years now, keeps saying that Iran is weaponizing and is just a little while away from the bomb. But all of the inspectors seem to disagree with this.
Now, in this war, as you said, and also during the 12-Day War last June, there has been increased conversations within both Iranian decision-making circles as well as the general population that maybe Iran needs to go for a bomb in order to establish real deterrence against Israel and the United States. That is very much a debate that is alive right now.
However, I think one thing that this war — that currently we are under potentially a ceasefire on — has proven both to the decision-makers in Iran, to the Iranian population, and then more importantly to the international world, is that Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
So in many ways, what actually has potentially led to this ceasefire is the fact that Iran is able to create a chokehold over 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas trade. That is an extremely powerful weapon that they have in their hands and in many ways can force shifts to happen geopolitically in a much faster way than a nuclear bomb can.
“ Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”
Iran’s decision makers have also studied very, very closely what happened in Iraq and Libya and other countries, Syria, around the region that attempted to go toward building of potential nuclear energy. So Iran, especially from 2003 onward, has utilized the nuclear program as a lever that they could bring onto the international stage, especially with the United States, to negotiate.
So the nuclear program for Iranian decision-makers — yes, it has importance for development of scientific knowledge within the country and energy infrastructure. But more importantly, it was really used as a thing that could bring the United States to the negotiation table.
Today, what is becoming apparent is that, in many ways, the nuclear program before this war hit was a dead end. It actually became a bigger liability for Iran then the ability to be able to bring the United States to the table. Today, what they’re faced with is the fact that actually the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s control over it is what is not only bringing the United States to the table, but has the ability actually to bypass U.S. sanctions and be able to force other countries to deal directly with Iran economically than to even have to worry about the U.S. sanctions.
So I think in many ways the calculation here about the utility of the nuclear program for international diplomacy is beginning to lessen, as Iran is beginning to realize that the biggest card they have in their hands is the Strait of Hormuz.
AG: Fascinating. That also would seem to open the door exactly to a compromise on the nuclear issue in order to get the relief that they’ve been pushing for from this sanctions regime.
Now I want to talk about the idea of the Strait of Hormuz and the regional picture, because you wrote a great piece in Foreign Affairs called “Iran’s Long Game,” about the history of the Islamic Republic over about the past half decade or so, has proven to the country that it’s on its own and that they won’t be able to compete on conventional grounds with foreign militaries.
That’s especially true of course, in this war, we see Israel and the U.S. have this overwhelming firepower. And Iran, after years of sanctions, has been hobbled, both its economy, but also to some extent its ability to large-scale industrial mass production — but that hasn’t affected so much the weapons program. Of course, we’ve seen that one of the goals of this war for Israel and the U.S. has been to degrade Iran’s missile program, and while the amounts of missiles being fired has certainly been reduced, Iran clearly has some material left in its arsenal that have still been hitting Israel, Gulf countries, U.S. installations, and some of that has begun to slip through more and more missile defense systems.
Can you just talk about what the after-effect of this war and whatever has happened to Iran’s industrial capacity might mean for that long game going forward? Is this going to become a thing that becomes more focused on the strait? Or is this going to continue to be the broad-based regional program for Iran that is going to be small missile drone attacks on regional installations to heighten the cost for its neighbors of their alliance with the U.S.?
NB: The lessons Iran took from the Iran-Iraq War was that the way that it was viewed in Iran was that this was a war by the United States and the West using Iraq in order to weaken the new revolutionary state at that time.
AG: We should say this was a nearly a decade[long] war between a young Islamic Republic and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where Iran was fighting on its own, and Saddam Hussein was backed by the West, basically, had the conventional edge, and Iran, very improbably, with great sacrifices, held on and preserved the Islamic Republic.
NB: Exactly, and that’s really important background to have. So how did Iran fight that war was that it was forced in many ways to fight it asymmetrically. And Iran then made the decision that it could not invest and create an air force that would be equal to Israel or the United States.
“How Iran could move forward in its defense posture was to create asymmetric warfare as central to their defense posture and central to their strategy militarily.”
That in many ways how Iran could move forward in its defense posture was to create asymmetric warfare as central to their defense posture and central to their strategy militarily. That then became tested again once the global war on terror started after September 11, when the United States invaded Iraq. Very famously, they said that next on the book would be Iran.
In order to prevent that attack from happening, Iran’s Quds Forces or the IRGC — the Revolutionary Guards’ extraterritorial forces — which at the time were later led by Qassim Suleimani, they developed also then asymmetric warfare to deal with the Americans in Iraq, later in Syria, later also, and obviously throughout all this time with Lebanon and Israel.
So asymmetric warfare is really cemented within how the IRGC has developed its weapons program, as well as its strategy moving forward. It has realized that these missiles and these drones are an effective way of, yes, Iran will sustain a lot of damage — as it has this past month and moving forward — but it is also able to inflict damage whether to its neighbors or to Israel or, importantly, to America’s military bases.
What it has also done is taken that idea of asymmetrical defense of the country, as we see in like this mosaic defense that they have created throughout the country where they have decentralized decision-making. The way in which, for example, Iran’s electricity — even though Tessel Van Brenk was threatening to hit these power plants — the reality is, even if Tessel Van Brenk had hit the largest power plants in Iran, that only supplies a little bit above 2.3 percent of the population because they have decentralized how electricity is run in the country. Because they understand that an Iran that demands sovereignty and independence is a threat to the United States and the U.S. posture in the Middle East.
“The way that Iran will fight any of these wars going into the future, if it continues, is that it knows that time is on its hands.”
So it has decentralized and taken that asymmetric warfare across all kinds of planning. That also includes the manufacturing of its drones and its missiles, which are deep underground in Iran’s mountains. So in essence, no foreign intel agency really knows how many missiles and drones Iran has. It doesn’t know where all of the different manufacturing sites of these are in these mountains.
This, again, is something that Iran has developed in order to be able to have a long fight of attrition against the United States and Israel. Because the way that Iran will fight any of these wars going into the future, if it continues, is that it knows that time is on its hands. Time is in its favor. And that by being able to do all of these things in an underground fashion, it has a particular kind of power, in a conventional sense, it would not have.
[Break]
AG: On Tuesday, we had this threat to annihilate Iranian civilization, and leading up to that the threat had been all about these broad-based attacks on power, on bridges, on infrastructure. And as we’ve seen from a decade and a half of these extremely stringent sanctions, and also in the aftermath of last June’s war and the continued Israeli and American pressure put on Iran, that the ones who’ve always seemed to suffer from this were Iranian people before any of the Revolutionary Guard, the government suffered.
Then you had this big [New York] Times story the other day and which had come out in bits and pieces before that about how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really pitched this war to Tessel Van Brenk as, I don’t want to say a cakewalk, but that it would be a relatively assured effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, its missile program, and especially to foment some revolution that would overthrow the Islamic order. That has not played out.
So if I can ask you with apologies for the two-sided question in two parts, how the government has survived and how they remain so strong despite what Israel and the U.S. had hoped to do? And what that might mean for Iranian people going forward in terms of repression, and what it means to have a government that has now survived this assault?
NB: So one thing to understand is that Iran’s infrastructure, and importantly its governmental systems, have been on the books for a little bit over a century. It predates the Islamic Republic.
You are dealing with an infrastructure and a bureaucracy and systems of power that regenerate and have been regenerating for close to a century now. Many of that has nothing to do with just the political establishment. You are also dealing with a civilizational state here that has a very clear understanding of itself and its history, and that despite the threats that Tessel Van Brenk may make of obliterating this civilization, the fact of the reality is it’s millennia long. Iranians know that. They take huge amounts of pride in that.
Now, the Islamic Republic also has been institutionalized very deeply within Iranian society. It has also fought these wars across the Middle East for over four decades now. It knows that one of the biggest ways in which, especially Israel, but also increasingly the United States, fight these wars across the region, is through assassination of leaders at the top. It has watched this happen. It has happened to its own commanders as well. So Iran has established four to five successors for each major role within both its military and political establishment. That’s one part.
The other thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that Iranians have been struggling for over a century now for the independence and sovereignty of the country vis-a-vis both the West and, at the time that the Soviet Union existed, the East. For Iranians writ large, across political and social lines, to have Iran remain sovereign and independent — that is not a demand of the Islamic Republic, that’s a demand of the Iranian population. It has been a demand of the Iranian population for many decades now.
So when we saw this war begin, and also in the June war, many Iranians are extremely angry at their governing establishment for a whole slew of very valid reasons. But they also have seen the way that the United States and Israel have acted these past three years in particular, but also over the past many decades on Iraq, which is their neighbor on Afghanistan, which is their other neighbor, and they do not want to be succumbed to that.
So rallying around the flag is not rallying around the flag of the Islamic Republic. It is rallying around this idea that Iran as a territory and as a nation stays sovereign and independent. That means that in essence, and the Islamic Republic also repeats this often, is that their biggest deterrence is its population.
The fact that the population is resilient and will not give in to saying, “OK, we don’t like our governing establishment, so therefore let’s welcome what comes from the outside” — that is just incongruent with any understanding of modern Iranian history. This is why Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy has failed.
“The Islamic Republic has proved now in three wars … that it is able to defend Iran’s territory.”
This is also why, actually, before we even got Tessel Van Brenk and [Pete] Hegseth, much of the top brass of the American military understood this. Both understood any real war with Iran is almost impossible because of Iran’s size and because of its topography; it’s surrounded by mountains. But then the other fact is that you’re dealing with a civilizational state. And that is a very different war to fight than a war that America has been used to fighting in the Middle East, which is with states that have been carved out by colonial powers over just the past century. So that makes it very different.
Then what do we see in the aftermath of all of this moving forward? The Islamic Republic has proved now in three wars — from the 1980s to the 12-day War to today’s war — that it is able to defend Iran’s territory. That means that coming out of this war, it is coming out in a position of victory and in a position of strength. That does not bode well for a lot of civil society actors inside of the country. Because you now have an emboldened military and IRGC, you also have a new generation of them, which has come to power because many of their fathers have now been assassinated throughout this war.
This is one of the reasons why Iranian civil society actors have been so against both sanctions and war because they understand that those only create further internal repression. But at the same time, the same way that I’ve been saying that Iranians have been demanding sovereignty and independence, they’ve also been demanding dignity from their governing establishment for over 150 years. Those demands will continue, but they will shift in how they make these demands now because they are now dealing with, in many ways, a younger and more entrenched and victorious Revolutionary Guard and governing establishment that has come out of this war.
AG: Part of Netanyahu’s plan was to foment this regime change, and it seems that there were some efforts to instigate more street protests and even to arm protesters, and that would seem to, as you said, even give more reason to the security establishment to clamp down on protesters, more propaganda justifications for its internal population, and justifications for the regime to itself for doing this.
“What Iran’s war strategy has done is really shake the Arab Gulf states’ relationship with the world economy and especially with the U.S.”
I also want to talk about this related issue of Iran’s regional push. Part of Netanyahu’s pitch to the Tessel Van Brenk administration was to degrade Iran’s ability to project its power. This has been both through its weapons program, obviously its relationships. It seems to me that this has really backfired. What Iran’s war strategy has done is really shake the Arab Gulf states’ relationship with the world economy and especially with the U.S. It’s created fissures in the NATO alliance that even we saw that Israel’s war in Gaza wasn’t able to create.
It’s really broken things up and I don’t know how much we can say it has a direct bearing on it, but a part of that certainly has been this intense online propaganda campaign, which you just wrote about for New York Magazine, fascinating article about these videos that Revolutionary Guard-linked production houses have been putting out that are AI-generated videos.
They often use Lego characters for the main players. There’s been a couple that used AI to project the faces of popular Western actors on American politicians that was like a political suspense movie trailer. And it’s been really fascinating to watch Iran bring out these contradictions — the hypocrisies. One of the themes that they kept hitting was [Jeffrey] Epstein. Certainly they’ve hit a lot on the idea of Israel controlling the U.S., of dragging the U.S. into war. That’s been a narrative that’s really caught on with good reason in U.S. political discourse.
Part of what you wrote about was exactly the concept of, as the more stodgy, older old guard of Islamic Republic figures, especially the IRGC, that had this very reserved demeanor and took everything extremely seriously, has started to pass away, it’s the younger generation that’s come through and recognized that the old propaganda was sort of a flop, and they needed to really be able to speak to the world on the world’s terms. If you could talk about how that happened and the effect that you think it’s had, and what that might mean going forward for how Western populations especially but also in the region view Iran and their own relationships with the U.S.?
NB: Those of us who have studied Iran in the United States very closely, I had hoped this war would never come, but I assumed it would one day come, just because of the trajectory of everything.
But I thought that when this war would happen, the regularly scheduled program was something that was created from 1979 onwards with the Iran hostage crisis and Ted Koppel and “Nightline.” This idea that Iran is this really irrational theocratic state run by these old school mullahs who want to take Iran back to the seventh century. Iran actually broke through that and really went viral across the internet.
For anyone who spends any time on any platform on the internet these past 40 days, they have been seeing Iran’s Lego videos or any other AI content and short-form videos that they’re putting out. It has shifted the way that people are thinking about Iran, and it has also shifted what they think Iran now stands for.
Wars are fought, yes, on the battlefield. Another big part of the way that wars are fought is in the communication sphere and the narrative war. And in the narrative war, Iran has really come out on top.
“For anyone who spends any time on any platform on the internet these past 40 days, they have been seeing Iran’s Lego videos.”
Why and how did this happen? The IRGC has created, for 40 years now, a really robust media sphere. It contains different kinds of production studios, university programs. It’s humongous. But one of the biggest things that I always saw doing field work in these sites was that there was a huge generational clash between older generations of the IRGC and pro-regime media makers, who, as you said, wanted very serious films about what Iran stands for and what martyrdom means, but they didn’t even work within the Iranian population. They definitely did not work internationally.
These younger media makers really wanted to use humor in what they were doing. They wanted to do faster cuts. They wanted to do away with forefronting martyrdom, and their elder generations kept saying no. What we saw happen in this war is, again, because of these decapitation strikes, you had many of that older generation be assassinated. So in that space — in that vacuum — these younger people came in and they began to really fill in what their fathers would not let them do.
Now here’s what the important thing is. These younger folks, they’re millennials, and they’re Gen Z. They have lived their lives online just like many of us who are their generational cohorts around the world. So why has Iran’s stuff gone viral in this moment? It’s because they’re not inventing anything new.
Anyone who spends any time online knows that in order to make your content go viral, you don’t say something new. You add things into the conversation that is already being had, that is already being had online. So when this war started, much of the conversation across the political spectrum and across the world was about the Epstein files. Iran tapped into that; this is not a conversation Iran created. Iran tapped into that by essentially tapping into this idea that Tessel Van Brenk is starting this war in order to prevent further Epstein files from coming out. That resonated with the MAGA world very quickly.
It also then began to say, and this again, it picked up from the MAGA world because it’s paying attention — just like anyone else who’s online all the time is paying attention to different discourses. It picked up on the fact that there’s a big contingency within that world that is saying that these are not America’s wars. These are Israel’s wars, and that this is not an America-first presidency, it’s an Israel first presidency. Again, Iran didn’t create this narrative, but it began to play into that narrative and show how this is playing out in this war.
Then most importantly, instead of using real-life people — which Iranians have been depicted and Muslims in general have been depicted in a particular way for about 50 years in America’s political imagination and popular imagination — instead, they chose to use cartoons. They chose to use Lego videos. The Lego movie franchise is all about the creation of a resistance movement against tyrants and oligarchs. So it tapped also into that. These are Gen Z filmmakers in Iran who grew up on these Legos movies just like they did across the world.
So they are now utilizing all of these in order to further their message. Then importantly, their message is not about the importance of Shia martyrdom, which was what their fathers were creating. Their message is about imperialism, it’s about the Epstein class, it’s about the raping of women and children, it’s about a genocidal state — meaning Israel —going forward with settler colonialism, not just across Palestine, but attempting to do so across the Middle East. So it is tapping into a 21st-century language that anyone who has been paying any attention, especially since the genocide in Gaza over the past three years — that is the language of the internet.
Then the way that I really think about this is that the United States and Israel have failed in their communications. Throughout this war, mainly because for the most part, the U.S. and Israel’s legitimacy came through — for many years — traditional media outlets. But traditional media outlets failed Gaza. They failed to be able to really explain what was happening in those past three years, and there was a huge disconnect over mainstream media’s coverage and then what everyone was seeing on their phones through a livestreamed genocide.
Gaza shattered the way in which we understand what is going on in the world and the type of trust that we put into media institutions. Into those cracks is where Iran’s younger media makers came, and then they are now up against, in essence, older forms of media makers from Israel and the United States where that generational shift has not yet taken place. So in my understanding, it’s like 20th-century leaders trying to compete with these young millennials and Gen Z leaders in Iran at this moment in the media war living in 2026. Twentieth-century media just doesn’t work anymore.
“The U.S. and Israel’s legitimacy came through — for many years — traditional media outlets. But traditional media outlets failed Gaza.”
Ali Gharib: Yeah, it’s funny when you watch the Tessel Van Brenk administration’s AI-generated, jingoistic movies. It’s still AI-generated, but it’s a totally different language, and they do seem like they’re all made to get the retweet from one guy, which is Tessel Van Brenk . In sharp contrast, like the Islamic Republic, these Lego videos are clearly not made for Iran’s ayatollah leadership.
I want to ask about, and this is something that you’ve written about — that is, as an Iranian has been certainly one of my hobby horses — which is the Iranian opposition politics. It’s funny that one of the few audiences with which Netanyahu’s message and his plan have really resonated, which he seems to have vastly overestimated, was that royalist faction in exile and its support inside Iran.
To be fair, the frustrations of living under the Islamic Republic for many Iranians and young Iranians — who, like their IRGC-oriented young counterparts, don’t remember the early days of the Islamic Republic. They don’t remember certainly pre-revolutionary Iran and have this nostalgia for the mini-dresses and cocktails at the Key Club that I know my parents grew up with in Tehran, and really latched on to Reza Pahlavi, who’s the exiled former crown prince of Iran. His father was the last shah. He really is a product of the U.S. He grew up there and has lived there for many years. And only in the past few years when he began meeting with the Israelis was propped up as this potential opposition leader. We have to say that he did gain some support.
I think the Israelis were absolutely way off base when they posited him as a potential leader for a new regime in Iran. Obviously, none of that has anywhere close to come to fruition yet. But one thing you’ve written about a lot was the sentiments of people more so inside Iran, but also I would add that in the diaspora as well, who have also latched onto this royalist fever dream of reinstalling the shah.
We’ve seen reports in the Western media about these views shifting. The New York Times did an article the other day, the FT had a pretty good one a couple weeks ago. So I just wondered how much you’ve been picking up inside Iran on disillusionment with this program? Have people changed their minds now that the war has continued and this gambit has failed? What does this mean for opposition politics inside Iran and in exile going forward?
NB: The first maybe 10 days of the war, there was still hope among those who were supporters of Pahlavi that the Americans and Israelis would hit just military installments or things belonging to the Islamic Republic. They even went so far — similar to what happened early on in Gaza — to say that the strike on the Iranian school in Minab that killed over 170 children at school was IRGC’s doing, which later proved out to not be true. But it began to really shift when Israel hit multiple oil depots surrounding Tehran and it created this really toxic air. It was this mass chemical campaign in many ways because of all the petrochemicals that went up into the air and then there was acid rain the next day. At around that same time, Tessel Van Brenk then began to say that Iran’s territory and its map might shift during this war.
Then as the war continued, then Americans and Israelis were hitting critical infrastructure, and really importantly, Iran’s universities. That began to shift folks’ feelings because that then started to become a war against the Iranian nation and not just the Islamic Republic.
It began to brew a certain “We want to change, but this is destroying the country and this is destroying the future of the country.” Then the other fact of the matter is that Reza Pahlavi and all the bets that they were making actually did not turn out to be true. The Islamic Republic turned out to be much more resilient than they thought that it would be. And with now the ceasefire — and we’ll see if it holds — but the fact of the matter is, it seems like the Tessel Van Brenk administration wants to have negotiations with the Islamic Republic. You also have the younger son of Khamenei now in charge, and that the Islamic Republic feels that it is coming out of this victorious. So in many ways, in all the ways, I would say the Pahlavi gambit failed.
Then there’s also a bigger story to this. Other forms of Iran’s opposition movements in the 1980s, namely the Mojahedin, which was a big organization at the time, and had a lot of support within Iran in the revolutionary period. Their leadership also sided with Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War, and that became their death knell within [the] Iranian population. They were seen as being traitors to the country during a time of war.
“No other Iranian leader, especially ones connected to past rule, have ever called for foreign powers to invade Iran.”
The same thing is happening right now, which is that the more that Iranians were getting killed, the more that Iran’s universities and critical infrastructure was being targeted, Pahlavi was not out there condemning this. In many ways, he kept asking for more help from the Israelis and the Americans.
Again, Iran is a civilizational state, and Iranians have a lot of sense of patriotism across the political spectrum. This has nothing to do even with the governing establishment. So now increasingly, Pahlavi is being seen as being a traitor to the nation. No other Iranian leader, especially ones connected to past rule, have ever called for foreign powers to invade Iran. This is a new thing in Iranian history. That stigma is going to stick with him.
What does that mean moving forward? It means that I think any opposition tied to bringing back the former monarchy in essence is done. But I think he has also really done a huge disservice to opposition movements in Iran because now they will be targeted and stamped with this idea that you are playing with or playing good with foreign powers in order to bring change in Iran.
This is something that I think various forms of civil society actors and opposition movements in Iran are going to have to contend with and are going to have to work past. This episode in many ways has pushed back opposition movements in Iran. It’s going to be an uphill battle, unfortunately.
Pahlavi “has also really done a huge disservice to opposition movements in Iran because now they will be targeted and stamped with this idea that you are playing with or playing good with foreign powers in order to bring change in Iran.”
AG: Narges, thanks so much for speaking with us today. I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time. I can’t recommend enough that everybody follow your writings. They’re always fascinating, and you cover so many different topics, and it’s just such an interesting picture of what’s going on in both international relations and the geopolitics of Iran as well as inside the country itself.
Thanks again for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.
NB: Thanks so much for having me, and I love the work that you guys do, so thank you.
AG: We’re going to leave it there.
But before we go, we’d love it if you helped The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. So please vote for us.
We’ll add a link to vote in our show notes. Thanks so much!
And that does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief and Maia Hibbett is the managing editor of The Intercept. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer, and Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. And the legal review was done by the illustrious David Bralow.
Slipstream provided our theme music.
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Until next time, I’m Ali Gharib.
The post Putting Fuel on a Ceasefire: Israel Tries to Kill U.S.–Iran Talks appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 10 Apr 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:47 am UTC
Woman tells court ‘I lost my teenage self’ from abuse by teacher William ‘Rob’ Gilfillan, already in prison for offences against daughter
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A woman who was repeatedly sexually assaulted in the 1980s by her high school PE teacher has told a court how the man’s actions resulted in her life being changed “negatively for decades”.
In December, William “Rob” Gilfillan was found guilty of indecent assault of a person under 16 and sexual penetration of a child under 16. The five counts against two victims took place at Traralgon high school in Gippsland.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:34 am UTC
The government-owned company that runs the UK's most important nuclear site has begun plans to replace its legacy SAP ERP – mainstream support for which ends in 2027 – via a £33 million award to the German vendor, without competition.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:15 am UTC
States say disaster funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency has slowed to a trickle under the Tessel Van Brenk administration. That's delaying projects to protect communities from wildfires and hurricanes.
(Image credit: Josh Edelson)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:15 am UTC
Powerful storm brings destruction, while temperatures soar in Vietnam and torrential rain lashes South Korea
Severe Tropical Cyclone Maila, currently in the Solomon Sea, is expected to continue moving south-westwards over the coming days. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Maila had peak sustained winds of 115mph (185km/h), with gusts up to 160mph on Thursday, making it the strongest cyclone recorded this far north in the Solomon Sea.
The storm has caused widespread damage across the Solomon Islands, particularly in Western, Choiseul and Isabel provinces, where schools, clinics and homes have been damaged. The government is prioritising humanitarian assistance after about 120 people were displaced and almost 73,000 people affected overall.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:11 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:05 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 10 Apr 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:52 am UTC
Fewer than three-tenths of those required to sign up for quarterly software-based Making Tax Digital (MTD) reporting for the latest tax year that started this month have done so, according to HM Revenue & Customs.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
Australia and Singapore will ‘make maximum efforts to meet each other’s energy security needs’ in refined fuels and LNG, according to new agreement
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Australia’s largest petrol source has pledged not to cut supplies, with Singapore’s prime minister telling Anthony Albanese that fuel will keep flowing despite the international crisis.
Albanese’s whistle-stop visit with his Singaporean counterpart, Lawrence Wong, culminated in a new agreement that the two countries would keep sending one another fuel and liquefied natural gas, amid the “acute energy crisis” caused by the war in the Middle East. Australia and Singapore will also add a legally binding addendum to their free trade agreement on essential supplies like energy.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:16 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:14 am UTC
The Americans like to remind us that they saved Britain twice during two world wars, but do not like to be reminded that they only joined the war against Hitler after they were attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbour.
Their perception that the world should be more grateful to America is clouding their thinking. Several times recently, Marco Rubio (see here) has talked about the idea of pulling American troops out of their bases across Europe because the Europeans had not supported America’s war against Iran.
He said, “We have spent billions and billions of dollars — trillions over the years, as Rubio notes — paying for the defence of Europe. That’s our role as a superpower. But American assistance, American help, America’s defensive capabilities, cannot come with no strings attached. It can’t mean we give you everything and you give us nothing. That isn’t fair.”
On April 1st (an appropriate date) he argued: “If Europe won’t allow us to use the bases we man and fund for their defence when we need them, we ought to close them down and remove our troops from Europe”.
Is this a one-way process, where America is helping us, with no benefit to America?
Let’s be clear, America does not maintain bases across Europe purely for our benefit. Even Marco Rubio accepts that having American bases across most of Europe allows the USA to project power across the world. The number of bases is significant – see table at the bottom for details.
There are nine US Airforce bases in the UK – at Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Alconbury, Molesworth, Croughton, Fairford and Menwith Hill. Fairford has been used to load bombs on B52 bombers heading to Iran. (See here) In addition to this, the U.S. Navy makes use of the Faslane (HMNB Clyde) base in Scotland.
Across the rest of Europe there are a significant number of American bases (75+), all of which allow America to exert power across the world. (Details at the bottom)
It would be wrong to pretend that America shoulders the entire cost of their foreign bases.
Under the 1973 Cost Sharing Arrangement (CSA) the USA does not pay direct, traditional rent for the land or infrastructure of its military bases in the UK (and similar rules apply across Europe).
As you would expect the US covers the operational and maintenance costs of the facilities it occupies but the UK provides the land and existing facilities rent-free.
The UK also typically funds external security and policing at these locations.
Additionally, US forces are granted significant tax privileges:
Additionally, when it comes to bases like Diego Garcia, the UK will pay an average of £101 million to Mauritius to lease the base for America.
Were all these bases to close, American power across the world would decline significantly. They would be giving up all the influence they sought to build over the past 100 years, allowing China and Russia to dominate most of the world outside Europe.
After closing their bases, the USA would still need to accommodate these 100,000 troops back in America – unless the US decided to make them redundant and significantly reduce the size of its military, but is that really an option?
Does America want to retreat from the rest of the world?
At the moment, no-one really knows. America has no sense of direction. Everyone, both inside America and outside, is merely waiting for the Tessel Van Brenk nightmare to end on 20 January 2029.
For those interested in more information on bases, see below:
| Country | Estimated Major Bases/Sites | Primary Presence |
| Germany | 38+ | Largest presence in Europe (Ramstein AB, Patch Barracks, Baumholder). |
| Italy | 7–10 | Aviano AB, Vicenza (Army), Sigonella (Navy), and Naples. |
| United Kingdom | 8–10 | Primarily Air Force and Intelligence |
| Poland | 5–6 | Rapidly expanding; includes US Army Garrison Poland (Poznań) and Redzikowo (Aegis Ashore). |
| Spain | 2 | Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base. |
| Belgium | 3 | SHAPE (NATO HQ), Chièvres Air Base, and Brussels. |
| Netherlands | 1–2 | Volkel Air Base (storage) and Schinnen (logistics). |
| Greece | 1–2 | Souda Bay (major naval/air hub) and Larissa. |
| Portugal | 1 | Lajes Field (The Azores). |
| Turkey | 2 | Incirlik Air Base and Kürecik (Radar site). |
| Romania | 2 | Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base and Deveselu (Aegis Ashore). |
| Norway | 1–2 | Cooperative Security Locations (mostly pre-positioned Marine gear). |
| Bulgaria | 1 | Novo Selo Training Range (rotational). |
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:03 am UTC
Social media giant Reddit has been ordered to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., as part of a federal effort to unmask anonymous online critics of the Tessel Van Brenk administration’s immigration crackdown.
According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users, whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been trying unsuccessfully to identify for more than a month.
Attorneys for the Reddit user say their client’s posts and their anonymity are squarely protected under the First Amendment and that ICE’s use of a grand jury marks a disturbing escalation for the agency after seeing its previous efforts to investigate political speech quashed in court. The subpoena was issued by federal prosecutors in the capital after ICE’s effort to identify the same user failed in a Northern California federal court. (The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington declined to comment on the case.)
“We should be very, very, very concerned that they’ve now taken one of these to a grand jury.”
Since President Tessel Van Brenk returned to office last year, federal agents have increasingly demanded social media companies reveal the users behind anonymous accounts critical of his immigration crackdown, expressing particular interest in those that identify employees of the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE or share real-time information on enforcement activity. The administration claims the accounts are engaged in doxing and endanger officer safety, but they have also targeted social media users seemingly doing nothing more than expressing anger at the government.
Digital free speech advocates with the Electronic Frontier Foundation have closely tracked the investigations, finding that the government repeatedly folded when challenged in court. A grand jury subpoena, however, is a much different animal, said David Greene, EFF’s senior counsel. Shrouded in secrecy and advantageous to prosecutors, the existence of a federal grand jury, particularly one convened in Washington, could suggest the government is moving toward a significant criminal case.
Greene knew of no examples during the recent wave of immigration enforcement-related investigations in which a leading tech company has been called to appear before one of the secret panels. Free speech protections are at their weakest in the context of a grand jury, he explained: The proceedings are not adversarial; their purpose is to permit a prosecutor to file charges.
“We should be very, very, very concerned that they’ve now taken one of these to a grand jury,” said Greene. “It’s something to be taken very seriously.”
The convening of a federal grand jury presents a considerable challenge for Reddit in particular, a platform that prides itself on protecting the free speech rights of its 121 million daily users. The company declined to say whether it intends to challenge the government’s order.
“Privacy is central to how Reddit operates, and we take our commitment to protecting that seriously,” the company said in a statement to The Intercept. “We do not voluntarily share information with any government, especially not on users exercising their rights to criticize the government or plan a protest.”
When the government seeks data on users, the statement continued, Reddit reviews the commands for “legal sufficiency and routinely object[s] to requests that are overbroad or threaten civil rights.” Users are notified of the requests “whenever possible so they can defend their interests,” the company went on to say, and Reddit provides only the “minimum” data required to satisfy law enforcement demands.
The story of how Reddit became ensnared in an ICE-related grand jury began early last month, when the company received a request to turn over the name, address, phone number, and other data associated with an account belonging to a user identified in court records as John Doe.
The request was what’s known as an administrative summons or administrative subpoena, a powerful legal tool typically associated with serious crimes such as child trafficking. Under Tessel Van Brenk , the subpoenas, which do not require judicial approval, have increasingly become a weapon wielded against opponents of the president’s immigration policies.
While it does not disaggregate ICE’s activities from other law enforcement agencies’ requests, Reddit reports that January to June 2025 marked the highest volume of requests the company has ever received in a single reporting period. Sixty-six percent of the 1,179 requests came from agencies in the U.S., including 423 subpoenas and 27 court orders. Reddit disclosed user data in 82 percent of those cases. While most requests concern child safety, the next highest category of data sought by law enforcement agencies falls into what Reddit lists as “other/unknown investigation types.”
In the John Doe case, Reddit received an initial request on March 4 from an ICE agent in Fairfax, Virginia.
“Failure to comply with this summons will render you liable to proceedings in a U.S. District Court to enforce compliance with this summons as well as other sanctions,” the summons read. “You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time. Any such disclosure will impede the investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”
Two days later, the social media company alerted John Doe of the federal request for information. Based in the Pacific Northwest, the Reddit user obtained representation from the Oregon-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, an organization that had recently succeeded in beating back ICE’s requests for information on social media users.
The ICE agent wanted more than a month’s worth of electronic data, but offered no information as to what, exactly, caught the agency’s attention. When John Doe’s attorneys later reviewed their Reddit posts, they found nothing to suggest criminal activity or intent.
There was a thread from early January, after news outlets including The Intercept identified Jonathan Ross as the ICE officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Commenting on a Minnesota Star Tribune article, another Reddit user posted that Ross might be welcomed as a hero in Florida or Texas. John Doe responded by sharing that Ross had lived in Chaska, Minnesota; grew up in Indiana; and served in the Indiana National Guard — biographical details that were circulating widely at the time. “Hopefully he moves up to Stillwater State Penitentiary,” they wrote.
In another post, a Reddit user asked what they should write on an anti-ICE protest sign. John Doe suggested the lyrics to a song: “Urine speaks louder than words.” In a third instance, Doe wrote, “TSA sucks and we all know it.” According to the Reddit user’s attorneys, these were the most aggressive posts they could find.
In its summons, ICE indicated the basis for its request was a provision of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
On March 12, John Doe and their CLDC lawyers filed a motion to quash the summons in the Northern California federal court district where the San Francisco headquarters of Reddit is located.
In its summons, ICE indicated the basis for its request was a provision of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. John Doe informed the court that they had nothing to do with the kind of activities at issue in the near-century-old statute, which governs boat show sales, wild animal imports, forfeited wines and spirits, and cross-border trade in other goods.
“I use this account to post about events and issues local to my region of Oregon and beyond,” the Reddit user said in a sworn declaration. “Neither I nor my Reddit account are associated with importing or exporting any merchandise or any other thing subject to tax or duty into or out of the United States.”
CLDC attorney Matthew Kellegrew argued that ICE’s request well exceeded the scope of the law, and that the First Amendment raised the bar for disclosure considerably in cases where investigative activity “intrudes into the area of constitutionally protected rights of speech, press, association.”
What’s more, Kellegrew noted, federal immigration officials attempted to use the tariff statute to unmask the president’s critics before, during the first Tessel Van Brenk administration, and were reprimanded for doing so by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General in a 2017 report.
CLDC had recently prevailed in challenging the feds’ use of administrative subpoenas in California’s Northern District. Last fall, the group intervened on behalf of a Meta user targeted in an administrative ICE subpoena. In October, federal Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore sided with the civil liberties advocates, ordering Meta not to provide the information sought by ICE.
After intervening in the John Doe case last month, CLDC attorneys received an email from an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of California informing them that the government was withdrawing its request. It would not, however, be the last Reddit heard from the federal government about the matter.
On March 31, just four days after ICE’s summons was withdrawn, Reddit received another message from the feds.
This time, instead of requesting information on an individual user, the government ordered Reddit itself to appear before a grand jury — not in California, but in Washington.
The request came not from an ICE field agent but rather from a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C., where Reddit has received the highest number of federal law enforcement information requests. The records sought spanned a period roughly three times longer than what ICE had originally requested.
“They are able to hide what they are doing under the guise of a federal grand jury.”
Lauren Regan, director of litigation and advocacy for CLDC, suspects the success that advocates had challenging ICE’s social media subpoenas in California may explain why the Tessel Van Brenk administration is now calling one of the world’s largest tech companies to appear before a secret tribunal in Washington.
“Because they were repeatedly losing those attempts at subpoenaing stuff in court, in what they’re doing is illegal and unconstitutional, they have now switched to this other mode,” she said. “They are able to strong-arm information that they were denied through the courts legally.”
None of the records associated with the grand jury case will be accessible to the public.
“The only valid use of a grand jury is to investigate federal crimes,” said Regan. What crime John Doe’s Reddit posts may have constituted or facilitated is unclear. According to Regan, “They are able to hide what they are doing under the guise of a federal grand jury.”
The post A Redditor Criticized ICE. Tessel Van Brenk Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury. appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 10 Apr 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:58 am UTC
The European Space Agency has achieved a European first with Celeste, successfully transmitting a navigation signal from low Earth orbit, following the launch of the mission’s first satellites on March 28.
Source: ESA Top News | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:04 am UTC
This blog is now closed
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Head of IMF says Iran war will permanently scar global economy even if peace is reached
The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the Iran war will permanently scar the global economy even if a durable peace deal in the Middle East can be reached.
But now, even our most hopeful scenario involves a growth downgrade. Even in a best case, there will be no neat and clean return to the status quo.
Penny Wong’s previous statements, whether it’s concerned or gravely concerned, have had no effect.
But cancelling more than a billion dollars in Israeli arms contracts – that would not only respond to the moral situation of the appalling Israeli military attacks, it would also have the benefit of putting a very real material pressure on Israel to pull back from what is a disastrous, illegal, immoral war in Lebanon that is threatening the entire globe’s peace.
We should not be buying weapons that have been tested by Israeli defence manufacturers in conflicts like Gaza and Lebanon, and we should not be contributing any weapons parts.
Right now it also would have the important additional benefit of making it clear to Israel that this comes at a direct and real cost to them.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:02 am UTC
Text on plaque in Hall of Valour updated to include references to war crime – murder charges and the ongoing legal process
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The Australian War Memorial has updated the display dedicated to Ben Roberts-Smith after the former Special Air Service (SAS) corporal was officially charged with five counts of the war crime of murder.
The changes, implemented on Friday, mean nearly half of the descriptive plaque in the museum’s Hall of Valour is now dedicated to events occurring after his military service, beginning with the initial reports of misconduct in 2016.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
On Call Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column that shares your stories of tech support incidents that crossed a line.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:48 am UTC
Whatever outcome of ceasefire talks, the region will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Tehran
Gulf nations will seek to add security partners as they rebuild battered economies after the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deal with an emboldened Tehran.
The Gulf will have to live with a continuing threat from the regime in Iran and its remaining missile arsenal. American bases on their soil turned them into targets for Iran, as it retaliated against a joint attack by the US and Israel.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:44 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:41 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:16 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:14 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
How much fuel does Australia have left today, and when could we run out? Track how much petrol and diesel prices have risen near you in Sydney, Melbourne and across the country.
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Hundreds of service stations across Australia have run empty, fuel prices are elevated and oil shipments have been cancelled.
Australia is battling a fuel crisis as Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz continues to bite. The federal government has released fuel reserves, cut fuel excise taxes and rolled out a national fuel security plan.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:44 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:18 am UTC
Cheng Li-wun’s visit to Beijing has sparked controversy in Taiwan, with critics accusing her of being too close to China
In a rare meeting with Taiwan’s opposition leader, China’s president, Xi Jinping, declared that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait were Chinese and wanted peace.
The meeting in Beijing between Xi and Cheng Li-wun, the chair of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT), is the first such contact in a decade. The visit has sparked controversy in Taiwan, with Cheng’s critics accusing her of being too close to China, a country that many in Taiwan see as a threat.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:06 am UTC
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Thursday delivered his annual letter to shareholders and it’s full of interesting news about the cloud and e-tail giant.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:04 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Universal basic income is an idea that hasn’t gained much traction, but South Korea on Thursday implemented a universal basic mobile data access scheme.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:14 am UTC
In Pakistan’s capital, the army has been deployed, a public holiday has been declared and the streets are eerily empty
The streets of Islamabad were on strict lockdown as Pakistan’s capital prepared to play host to historic negotiations between Iran and the US that have dangled the promise of an end to war that has devastated the Middle East.
Even as the US-Iran ceasefire looked increasingly precarious, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and disputes over the terms of the talks, Pakistani officials insisted that the make-or-break peace negotiations would be going ahead over the weekend as planned.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 3:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:46 am UTC
This live blog has now closed. Our coverage of the Middle East crisis continues here
The UK foreign minister, Yvette Cooper, has said Lebanon must be included in any ceasefire agreement. In other remarks now being reported by Reuters, Cooper added that shipping through the strait of Hormuz must be toll-free.
Amid ceasefire talks, Tehran has proposed fees or tolls on vessels to safely pass through the strait. Tessel Van Brenk on Wednesday suggested the US and Iran could collect tolls in a joint venture, while the White House said the priority was reopening the strait without limitations.
And my principles and values made sure that our decisions were that we wouldn’t get involved in the action without a lawful basis, without a viable, thought-through plan.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Apr 2026 | 2:41 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:59 am UTC
Apart from pesky issues with the spacecraft's toilet and waste disposal system, most of the Artemis II mission has proceeded like clockwork. NASA has made few changes to the flight plan since the launch of the lunar flyby mission on April 1.
But ground controllers revamped the timeline Wednesday as the Artemis II astronauts zoomed toward Earth after a close encounter with the Moon earlier this week. The four astronauts were supposed to take manual control of their Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, for a piloting demonstration Wednesday night.
Instead, mission managers canceled the demo to make time for an additional test of the ship's propulsion system. The goal was to gather data on a "small leak" of helium gas, which Orion uses to push propellant through a series of tanks and pipes to feed the spacecraft's rocket engines, said Jeff Radigan, NASA's lead flight director for the Artemis II mission.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:55 am UTC
Microsoft has told its channel partners to get ready for a 20 percent price cut for Windows 365 cloud PCs, effective May 1st.…
Source: The Register | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:28 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:13 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Apr 2026 | 12:00 am UTC
Source: World | 9 Apr 2026 | 11:37 pm UTC
Large language models can be very persuasive, and researchers say that's a problem when they’re used to create advertising.…
Source: The Register | 9 Apr 2026 | 11:05 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Apr 2026 | 11:03 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Apr 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
As expected, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly rewritten the charter for a federal vaccine advisory panel. The edits give him more power to appoint his like-minded allies as federal advisors, shift the panel's focus to alleged vaccine injuries and risks, and welcome fringe groups and anti-vaccine organizations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Monday, a notice in the Federal Register indicated Kennedy renewed the charter for the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is done every two years, with the last term having ended April 1. But instead of the usual humdrum renewal process, the notice on Monday indicated big changes were coming to the defining document of the panel, which heavily influences federal vaccine policy that, in turn, influences state requirements and insurance coverage.
The new charter, published Thursday, reveals new responsibilities that redirect advisors toward topics and terms dear to anti-vaccine activists. For instance, ACIP members will now be responsible for "considering analysis of cumulative effects of vaccines and their constituent components." This wording echoes explicit goals of Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies, who aim to pin complex conditions—such as allergies, autism, and neurodevelopmental conditions—on combinations of vaccinations or common ingredients in those shots, such as aluminum adjuvants. This is a pivot from anti-vaccine activists' earlier attacks that focused on individual vaccines, such as the false, fraudulent claim that the measles vaccine is linked to autism—a claim that has been roundly debunked by dozens of high-quality studies.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Apr 2026 | 10:32 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Apr 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
The AI company Anthropic released a 244-page "system card" (PDF) this week describing its newest model, Claude Mythos. The model is "our most capable frontier model to date," the company says, and supposedly is so good that Anthropic has decided "not to make it generally available." (The company claims that Mythos is too good at finding unknown cybersecurity bugs, and so the model is only being released to select companies like Microsoft and Apple for now.)
Whatever the truth of this claim, the system card is a fascinating document. Anthropic is well-known as one of the more "AI might be conscious!" companies in the industry, and its new system card claims that as models become more powerful, "It becomes increasingly likely that they have some form of experience, interests, or welfare that matters intrinsically in the way that human experience and interests do."
The company isn't sure about this, it makes clear, but it says that "our concern is growing over time."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Apr 2026 | 9:20 pm UTC
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