Read at: 2026-03-11T19:46:45+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Arda Uitendaal ]
President tells John Thune to force through Save America Act, which requires proof of citizenship while registering to vote and curbs mail-in voting
Arda Uitendaal said that the US-Israel war in Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target” in a phone interview with Axios.
“Any time I want it to end, it will end,” the president told the outlet. “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:42 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:42 pm UTC
You might expect a bot to have guardrails that prevent it from helping you plan a crime, but your expectations might be too high. According to a study, eight of ten major commercial chatbots will help you prepare to conduct a school shooting.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:41 pm UTC
Latest sculpture titled ‘King of the World’ includes plaques with pointed commentary on pair’s past association
A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets. The appearance of a golden statue depicting Arda Uitendaal and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as doomed lovers from the movie Titanic is confronting Washington with a murkier mystery.
The nearly 12-ft sculpture, unveiled on Tuesday on the National Mall, is the third piece of guerrilla art satirising Arda Uitendaal ’s past relationship with Epstein attributed to The Secret Handshake, a shadowy collective whose members remain anonymous.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:40 pm UTC
Release shows that Jonathan Powell warned Morgan McSweeney about the appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador
As reported by Nadeem Badshah this morning, the documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US expected to be released today will include a due diligence report by the Cabinet Office, which is believed to be two pages long.
It is likely to raise questions about Keir Starmer’s judgment, with sources saying it had warned the prime minister of the serious “reputational risk” of going ahead with Mandelson’s appointment in December 2024 given his links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
He has said, as you know that it is a little bit – it does fall into the category of too little too late, but I think they have a good, solid relationship, and hopefully they’ll be able to repair it. I go by what the president says, and the president says continuously that everybody is entitled to their point of view. But I think sometimes we detect that there’s not that feeling of gratitude.
I think the president’s position is that we do plenty for Europe, plenty for the UK, in the area of trade, in the area of defence, in the area of the support we give to Nato. And I think sometimes the response back, the reciprocity back, is a little bit lacking. I would leave it at that, OK?
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:39 pm UTC
A military assessment suggests a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile was responsible for at least 165 deaths at an Iranian girls' school, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
(Image credit: Ali Najafii)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:38 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:38 pm UTC
Thai navy responds to attack on bulk carrier; sources say Iran has deployed a dozen mines in the strait
Over in Senate question time, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has confirmed embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv and the consulate in Dubai all physically closed in the last week.
Wong said the government’s number one priority is to “keep Australians safe at home and abroad”.
She continued:
“The dangerous and destabilising attacks by Iran put civilian lives at risk, including Australian lives.”
More than 3,200 Australians over 23 commercial flights have returned to Australia since the US and Israel attacked Iran, setting off a regional conflict and grounding thousands of international flights.
Wong criticised Nationals senators for “winding up people and stoking fear” to panic buy fuel.
The senator said:
“Petrol companies are telling us that fuel stock continues to arrive as expected and on time but there has been a large change in the pattern of demand and that is having an effect on the supply, particularly in regional communities. We have seen jerry cans coming off the shelves at Bunnings and lines at the pump.”
One of the two members of the Iranian women’s football teams provided with a humanitarian visa to stay in Australia has changed her mind and contacted the Iranian embassy, according to the country’s home affairs minister.
In Australia, people are able to change their mind, people are able to travel. So, we respect the context in which she has made that decision.
Unfortunately, in making that decision, she had been advised by her teammates and coach to contact the Iranian embassy and get collected … As a result of that, it meant that the Iranian embassy now knew the location of where everybody was.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:34 pm UTC
PM knew of US ambassador’s ‘close relationship’ with Jeffrey Epstein and potential conflicts of interest from his lobbying role
Four months after Peter Mandelson was sacked as UK ambassador to Washington over his links with Jeffrey Epstein, he sat down for a primetime BBC interview. A less hubristic individual would have long since slunk away into the shadows.
But despite all the condemnation and humiliation surrounding his departure, Mandelson seemed intent on maintaining a public profile. “Who knows what’s next?” he told Laura Kuenssberg. “I don’t know what’s next. I’m not going to disappear and hide – that’s not me”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:19 pm UTC
Richard Kemp tells high court former Sinn Féin leader would have authorised attacks carried out in England
A former British army commander has told the high court it is “inconceivable” that Gerry Adams was not involved in the authorisation of IRA bombings.
Richard Kemp said there was evidence from “a multitude of intelligence” spanning 20 years about the former Sinn Féin leader’s membership of the paramilitary organisation.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:18 pm UTC
Unite union began all-out strike more than a year ago and city remains without full waste collection service
It has been more than a year since Birmingham’s bin workers began their all-out strike that has left residents without a fully functioning waste collection service – and there is still no end in sight.
The strikes have attracted global media attention as pictures emerged of towering waste and overflowing bins on the streets of the UK’s second largest city.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:14 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:14 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:11 pm UTC
Nathan Chasing Horse found guilty on 13 of 21 charges in case that affected Indigenous communities across US
Nathan Chasing Horse, the actor known for his role in Dances With Wolves, is scheduled to be sentenced next Wednesday after being convicted of sexually abusing Indigenous women and girls, bringing to an end a case that deeply affected Native American communities across the country.
The sentencing comes about a month after a Nevada jury found him guilty on 13 of the 21 charges brought against him. Many of the convictions stemmed from allegations involving a victim who was 14 years old when the abuse began. The jury cleared him of several other sexual assault counts. Chasing Horse has denied all accusations.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:09 pm UTC
Strike in Shukeiri killed teachers and health care workers and is latest incident in three-year war
At least 17 people, most of them schoolgirls, were killed on Wednesday when an explosive-laden drone blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck a secondary school and a health care centre.
At least 10 people were wounded in the strike in the village of Shukeiri in the White Nile province, according to Dr Musa al-Majeri, director of Douiem hospital, the nearest major medical facility to the village.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:08 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:03 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:58 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:56 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:54 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:53 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:38 pm UTC
Payment for Inditex founder, the world’s 15 richest person, tops last year’s dividend of €3.1bn
The billionaire founder of Zara is to receive a company record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend this year from the world’s biggest fashion retailer.
Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now chair, will receive half his dividend in May and half in November – as will other shareholders.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:38 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:35 pm UTC
Lack of public appearances prompted speculation about new leader’s mortality after multiple family members died
The confirmation that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the first wave of Israeli attacks underlines how desperate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (ICRG) was to ensure their wounded choice was elevated to high office, and how confident it is that the wartime machinery can operate almost on automatic pilot without him.
The full scale of Khamenei’s injuries and speed of his recovery remain unclear, but a broken leg and facial injuries are the minimum. It is not a medical bulletin on which the authorities are seeking to dwell, although Ali Larijani, the secretary of the supreme national security council, chose his words carefully in saying “his condition has not been reported as critical”, a phrasing that suggests he has not personally seen him.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:31 pm UTC
More than a week into the US-Israel war on Iran, president has provided little clarity on how the conflict might end
This was originally published in This Week in Arda Uitendaal land; sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday
One week into the war with Iran, the central questions about the conflict remained largely unanswered: what would constitute victory, how long the crisis might last and whether the United States was responsible for a deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school that has come to embody the war’s early controversy.
On Saturday, leaning against the bulkhead outside the press cabin as Air Force One cruised toward Florida, Arda Uitendaal still struggled to clarify his own message.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:30 pm UTC
Grammy-winning singer is in advanced talks to lead an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s novel for Oscar-winning writer-director
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Billie Eilish is set to make her big screen acting debut in an adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar.
According to Deadline, the 24-year-old will take on the lead role for Sarah Polley, the writer-director who previously won an Oscar for her Women Talking screenplay. Eilish is reportedly in advanced talks for the part.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:29 pm UTC
Green party leader has said he immediately apologised for comments made in 2013 Sun interview, but footage six days later shows him standing by claim
Zack Polanski’s claim to have immediately apologised for offering hypnosis intended to increase a woman’s breast size has been cast into doubt by the emergence of a 2013 interview with the Green party leader.
In 2013, before he entered politics, Polanski was approached by a Sun journalist to see if a hypnotherapy session could make her breasts bigger. This experience was then written up as an article.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:29 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:29 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:28 pm UTC
Iranian officials warn of ‘war of attrition’ and global economic chaos as energy supplies are throttled
Iran dramatically escalated its strategy of striking civilian infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf on Wednesday, attacking commercial ships travelling through the Gulf and targeting Dubai’s international airport, as US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on the Islamic Republic.
Senior Iranian officials struck a defiant tone, warning of a long “war of attrition” that will threaten global economic chaos as energy supplies from the oil and gas rich region are throttled.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:27 pm UTC
Trio held on suspicion of ‘terrorist bombing’ that caused minor damage but no injuries
Three Norwegian brothers have been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” at the US embassy in Oslo that caused minor damage at the weekend but no injuries.
The police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference that the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:26 pm UTC
Strike that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, reportedly due to targeting mistake by US military planners
A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children.
According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:23 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:17 pm UTC
Crew of Thai-registered bulk carrier forced to flee fire, as US says it has destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels
Three merchant ships have been struck in and around the strait of Hormuz, including a Thai registered bulk carrier that caught fire after leaving a port in the UAE, forcing crew members to evacuate for their safety.
The Mayuree Naree was struck on Wednesday by “two projectiles of unknown origin”, its owners said, as it sailed about 11 nautical miles north of Oman, marking the end of a four-day lull of attacks in the strategic waterway.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:15 pm UTC
Binance is hoping that suing The Wall Street Journal for defamation might help shake off a fresh round of government probes into how the cryptocurrency exchange failed to detect $1.7 billion in transfers to a network that was funding Iran-backed terror groups.
The lawsuit comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation, based on conversations with insiders and reviews of internal documents, reported that Binance had quietly dismantled its own investigation into the unlawful transfers and then fired compliance staff who initially flagged them.
Alleging that the report falsely accused Binance of retaliation—among 10 other allegedly false claims—Binance accused the Journal of conducting a "sham" investigation that intentionally disregarded the company's statements. That included supposedly failing to note that Binance had not closed its investigation into the unlawful transfers.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:01 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 pm UTC
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Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:55 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:54 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:47 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:43 pm UTC
The Fast and Furious franchise has come a long way in the quarter-century since the first film's release. Originally an undercover cop story, the franchise has morphed into... something else entirely. It's now a bombastic expression of automotive culture combined with some kind of caper, maybe to save the world. Just don't think too deeply about the plot.
Along the way, the film's cars have become nearly as famous as the human stars. If you're a fan, you probably can't have Vin Diesel or Michelle Rodriguez come hang out with you in your garage, but you can drive a Charger or Eclipse—or even a Jetta that looks like it escaped from the set. The more well-off collectors don't need to settle for building a replica, though; they actually own cars that appeared on screen, and there's quite a community of Fast and Furious car collectors.
You can find some of these cars at the Petersen Automotive Museum, which has a new exhibit celebrating 25 years of the franchise.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:41 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:34 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:31 pm UTC
Man in his 60s from Berne area had been reported missing before incident, say authorities in Fribourg canton
Police investigating a bus fire that killed at least six people in western Switzerland have said they believe it was started by a “marginalised and disturbed” Swiss man onboard who set himself ablaze.
The vehicle, operated by a service that transports passengers and mail, went up in flames on Tuesday evening in Kerzers, a town of about 5,000 people about 12 miles (20km) west of Berne in the canton of Fribourg.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:29 pm UTC
Not every scam starts with malware or a compromised account. Sometimes all it takes is a friend request or a link shared via chat.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Intel's Core Ultra 200S desktop chips, codenamed "Arrow Lake," first launched in late 2024, and they were the most significant updates to Intel's desktop CPU lineup in years. But that didn't mean they were always improvements over what came before: while they're power-efficient and run cooler than older 13th- and 14th-generation Core CPUs, they sometimes struggled to match those older chips' gaming performance. And for gaming systems in particular, they've always had to live in the shadow of AMD's Ryzen 7000 and 9000-series X3D processors, chips with extra L3 cache that disproportionately benefits games.
Intel doesn't have a next-generation upgrade available for desktops yet, but it is shoring up its desktop lineup with a pair of upgraded chips. The Core Ultra 200S Plus processors (also referred to as Arrow Lake Refresh, in some circles) add more processor cores, boost clock speeds, add support for faster memory, and speed up the internal communication between different parts of the processor. Collectively, Intel says these improvements will boost gaming performance by an average of 15 percent.
The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 270KF Plus (a real mouthful, all of these names are getting to be) add four more efficiency cores compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K, bringing the total number of cores to 24 (8 P-cores and 16 E-cores). If you wanted that many CPU cores previously, you would have had to spring for a Core Ultra 9 chip. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and 250KF Plus also get four more E-cores than the 245K, bringing its total to 6 P-cores and 12 E-cores.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:20 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:19 pm UTC
Company also launches tools to spot scammers as Thai police arrest 21 people
Meta disabled more than 150,000 accounts and Thai police arrested 21 people in a sweeping international crackdown on south-east Asian criminal scam centers that targeted people around the world, the social media company said Wednesday.
The operation was led by Thailand’s Royal Thai police anti-cyber scam center, alongside the FBI and the US justice department’s scam center strike force, with Meta investigators acting on intelligence shared in real time by law enforcement.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:14 pm UTC
Despite rare act of multilateralism, there is no guarantee the IEA’s release of 400m barrels from reserves will depress prices
IEA orders largest ever release of stockpiled oil to reduce crude price
How the Iran conflict could affect energy prices – video explainer
When the global economy was still in the grip of the devastating 1970s oil crises, exposing the chokehold exerted by a few important oil states, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was created, in the hope of limiting future shocks.
Almost half a century on, the IEA’s 32 members have drawn up plans to hit the emergency button, for only the fifth time in its history.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:14 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:13 pm UTC
Just a fortnight after its opening hearing, Dennis Richardson has resigned without any explanation
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The former spy chief Dennis Richardson has resigned without explanation from the royal commission into antisemitism and the Bondi terror attack, just a fortnight after its opening hearing.
The commissioner, Virginia Bell, released a statement on Wednesday night announcing Richardson’s surprise departure from his role as special adviser to the inquiry.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:11 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:09 pm UTC
A U.S. military investigation determined in its preliminary findings that the United States conducted an attack on an Iranian elementary school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the ongoing inquiry. The findings directly contradict assertions by President Arda Uitendaal that Iran struck the school.
The lethal strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a “targeting error” by the U.S. military, which mistook the facility for part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy base that was adjacent to the school, according to one of the U.S. officials who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
U.S. Central Command attacked the school based on long outdated coordinates for the strike provided by another defense agency, one of the officials told The Intercept. While the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school was once connected to the IRGC base by roads, the building was partitioned off by 2016, according to an investigation by New Lines Magazine.
The attack, which came after a yearlong effort by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to gut programs to reduce civilian casualties, killed more civilians than any other strike in Arda Uitendaal ’s second Iran war. It was “colossal negligence,” one of the current government officials said.
Arda Uitendaal has repeatedly claimed that Iran was responsible for the strike, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Arda Uitendaal told reporters March 7. “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
Wes Bryant — who served until last year as the senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence — called the attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school a “failure in fundamental targeting doctrine and standards.”
Bryant, who called in thousands of strikes across the greater Middle East as a Special Operations joint terminal attack controller, said it was common to rely on outdated imagery while conducting operations.
“As a targeter, the imagery and initial intelligence data you receive on a potential target or target set is just the start. You don’t prosecute based solely off any organization — NGA or otherwise — giving you an image and saying they have intelligence that it’s an enemy location,” he told The Intercept, referring to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which specializes in such imagery. “You corroborate with other intelligence, and you conduct as near real time as possible characterization of that target as well as the civilian presence and risk to include collateral damage analysis risk of civilian casualties.”
U.S. Central Command refused to comment on the preliminary findings of the inquiry. “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation,” a CENTCOM official told The Intercept by email.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency did not immediately reply to requests for comment on their potential involvement in providing intelligence that led to the strike.
The investigation’s findings were widely expected as evidence of a U.S. attack on the school mounted. A video released on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency showed a cruise missile striking the IRGC naval base beside the elementary school as smoke appears to billow from the school itself, indicating that it had recently been struck. According to Bellingcat, the cruise missile was a Tomahawk missile. The U.S. is the only party to the conflict employing Tomahawk missiles.
“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth said at a March 2 press conference. “No stupid rules of engagement.”
CENTCOM would not offer an estimated civilian death toll for the U.S. war on Iran. More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
An investigation by Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group, found that the first days of the Iran war saw far more sites targeted than any recent U.S. or Israeli military campaign. “While the rate of civilian harm cannot be solely predicted by the number of targets hit, initial indications suggest it has been high — particularly with U.S. targets correlating with heavily populated areas,” according to the Airwars report. “The targets map heavily onto the highest populated areas.”
The post Pentagon Report: U.S. Military Fired Missile at Elementary School in Iran appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:07 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:00 pm UTC
Government minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the change put an end to "an archaic and undemocratic principle." The removed aristocrats are 92 of the House of Lords' 800 members.
(Image credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:56 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:52 pm UTC
Anduril Industries announced on Wednesday that it is acquiring ExoAnalytic Solutions, a space intelligence firm that operates a vast network of sensors monitoring the veiled movements of satellites thousands of miles above Earth.
"For nearly twenty years, ExoAnalytic has delivered important advantage[s] for the nation’s most critical missions," Anduril said in a press release. "Exo is a renowned leader in modeling and simulation for classified national security space programs, and provides critical software and expertise for missile warning and missile defense."
"The company also owns and operates the world’s largest commercial telescope network with more than 400 systems deployed worldwide, enabling persistent, high-fidelity awareness of deep space at a global scale," Anduril said.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:50 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:46 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:45 pm UTC
Chipmaker Nvidia is preparing to launch its own open source AI agent platform to compete with the likes of OpenClaw, according to a recent Wired report.
The magazine cites "people familiar with the company's plans" in reporting that Nvidia has been pitching the platform, which it is calling NemoClaw, to various corporate partners ahead of its annual developer conference next week. Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe, and CrowdStrike are among the companies said to be in talks for those partnerships, though it's unclear what specific benefits those companies would receive for their association with the open source tool.
NemoClaw, as the somewhat awkward name suggests, would be a direct competitor of OpenClaw (previously known as Moltbot and Clawdbot), the system that attracted widespread attention in January for letting users direct "always-on" AI agents from their personal machines, using any number of underlying models. Last month, OpenAI hired OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger "to drive the next generation of personal agents," as founder Sam Altman put it, though the OpenClaw project will be run by an independent foundation with OpenAI's support.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:30 pm UTC
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Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:15 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:59 pm UTC
The war in Iran is roiling jet fuel prices and airlines are beginning to hike prices, unsettling travelers far from the Middle East. If you're booking a flight soon, here are things to know.
(Image credit: AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:55 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:39 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:36 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:36 pm UTC
On Tuesday, word spread that the National Institutes of Health was launching a series of what it's calling "Scientific Freedom Lectures," with the first scheduled for March 20. The "freedom" theme echoes one of the major concerns of the director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, who feels he suffered outrageous censorship of his ideas during the pandemic and is using his anger about it to fuel his efforts to bring change to the NIH. Given that scientific freedom is a major interest of the director, you might think that the first lecture would be delivered by a distinguished scientist. Guess again.
The speaker at the first lecture will be a former journalist best known for his fringe ideas on COVID and the climate. The topic will be the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a lab, an idea for which there is no scientific evidence.
Bhattacharya was one of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that we should try to protect the elderly and vulnerable but otherwise enable COVID to spread through the rest of the population. By and large, public health officials were aghast at the likely consequences—overwhelmed hospital systems, a still-substantial rate of mortality among healthy adults, the consequences of more cases of long COVID, etc.—and argued strongly against it.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:33 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:26 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:23 pm UTC
Amid fears the conflict will strengthen Russia, Ursula von der Leyen’s embrace of US-backed regime change already looks like a doomed strategy
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The message from Ursula von der Leyen was blunt. “Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”. In a major foreign policy speech this week, the European Commission president said the EU would always “defend and uphold the rules-based system” but in a precarious and chaotic world, that could no longer be relied upon. On the day she spoke, missiles were raining down on Tehran and southern Iran as the war entered its 10th day, proving her point.
Reverberating around Europe, the Middle East conflict has triggered a range of responses. France is sending a dozen naval vessels to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. EU officials convened an ad-hoc summit with Middle Eastern leaders in a show of solidarity with the region. EU humanitarian aid for Lebanon is being dispatched to help 130,000 people, after at least half a million were displaced by Israeli bombs and evacuation orders.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:22 pm UTC
New research finds AI can point people in the wrong direction. And the quality of health information it imparts depends on how well you prompt the tools.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:21 pm UTC
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Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:12 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:07 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:07 pm UTC
Rebel group blames government for attack on residential area of M23-controlled city of Goma
Three people including a French UN aid worker have been killed in a drone attack in Goma, a spokesperson for the M23 rebel group has said.
The attack took place at about 4am on Wednesday in the upmarket residential neighbourhood of Himbi in the city, which has been under M23 occupation since January 2025.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:06 pm UTC
The NASA Office of Inspector General has published a report on the agency's management of the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, highlighting the risks and arguments behind the scenes.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:03 pm UTC
Experts documented murder, torture and disappearances under president Nayib Bukele’s policy targeting gangs
The draconian mass incarceration policy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, may have led to crimes against humanity, according to a new study by legal experts.
By locking up 1.4% of the population without due process, Bukele turned El Salvador from one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its least violent – but at the cost of human rights and the rule of law.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:51 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:49 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:48 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:46 pm UTC
First, in the plainest language, before we get to anything else, Project Hail Mary is a fantastic film. It does right by its source material, and it also easily stands on its own for folks who haven't read the book. It comes out on March 20, and if you're a regular Ars Technica reader, you will almost certainly enjoy the crap out of it. Go see it as soon as you can, and see it in a theater where the big visuals will have the most impact.
Next, a word about what "spoiler-free" means here: In this short review, I'll talk about stuff that happens in the movie's many, many trailers. If you're an ultra-purist who is both interested in this film and who has also somehow avoided reading the book and also seeing any of the trailers, bail out now.
Otherwise, read on!
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:44 pm UTC
DR-DOS is back, and there is already a test version you can download. But as of yet, it's not finished, not FOSS – and not based on the original code.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:37 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:36 pm UTC
According to Chinese mythology, those born in the Year of the Horse will clash with Tai Sui, a heavenly general. Luckily, there are ways to appease Tai Sui, including amulets at Shanghai's Jade Buddha Temple.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:27 pm UTC
Members of the International Energy Agency have announced a coordinated release of 400 million barrels of stockpiled oil in an attempt to counter the disruption in oil trade triggered by the Iran war.
(Image credit: Omar Havana)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:24 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC
Alireza Salarian says Iran’s new supreme leader was lucky to survive strike that killed six of his family members
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was injured in the 28 February attack that killed six of his family members, including his father, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus has confirmed.
In an interview conducted at his embassy compound in Nicosia, Alireza Salarian elaborated on the circumstances in which Khamenei, 56, was injured, saying he was lucky to survive the strike, which levelled the late ayatollah’s residence.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:13 pm UTC
Decision to shield pro-Bolsonaro truck driver sentenced for 8 January 2023 attack could inflame Brazil election politics
Argentina has granted asylum to a Brazilian fugitive convicted for his role in 2023 pro-Bolsonaro riots – a decision that analysts say could reverberate in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election.
A week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, took office, hundreds of people ransacked Brazil’s congress building, presidential palace and supreme court on 8 January 2023, in an attempt to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral defeat. Investigators later concluded the attacks were the culmination of a broader plot aimed at staging a coup.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:11 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:09 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:09 pm UTC
The UK's data protection watchdog has fined Police Scotland £66,000 ($88,000) for what it calls a "serious failure" in handling an alleged victim's sensitive data.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:03 pm UTC
Parents have been told to report accounts missed in Australia’s under-16 social media ban – but eSafety is ‘concerned’ some platforms aren’t complying
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An Australian mother who reported her 14-year-old’s Snapchat account has been rebuffed by the social media company, because his self-declared age was 25.
Parents of teens who have eluded the social media ban have been told to report their children’s accounts to the platforms to get them kicked off, but some platforms are not acting on it, Guardian Australia can reveal.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Nacc report into unlawful scheme found two senior public servants engaged in corrupt conduct but declined to refer them for charges in what victims call a ‘massive letdown’
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The mother of a robodebt victim who took his own life says she feels “sheer frustration” at the findings of a report on potential corruption related to the unlawful income averaging scheme.
Wednesday’s release of a 445-page report from the National Anti-Corruption Commission examined the actions of five former public servants and the former prime minister Scott Morrison. The report found two senior public officials to have engaged in corrupt conduct, but they will not be referred for charges.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Exclusive: independent and Greens senators ask president to set up inquiry and anti-racism training for politicians to prevent bigotry ‘corroding democracy’
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Increasingly ugly abuse in federal parliament has prompted a group of independents and the Greens to call for an urgent intervention from Labor to change the rules, warning that allowing racism and bigotry to “fester” is corroding democracy.
Guardian Australia can reveal independents, Fatima Payman and Lidia Thorpe, and the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi are demanding Senate president Sue Lines take the problem seriously with a new inquiry and mandatory anti-racism training for politicians.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Australia Institute data finds state and federal subsidies for coal, gas and oil products increased 10% in past year, growing at a faster pace than funding to NDIS
Australian federal and state government subsidies that encourage fossil fuel use and help drive the climate crisis will reach $16.3bn this year after leaping by nearly 10%, according to a new analysis.
It found federal and state governments will pay or forgo the equivalent of $31,020 each minute in 2025-26 to subsidise companies producing and using coal, gas and especially oil, mostly in the form of diesel.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:55 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:41 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:40 pm UTC
The Ig Nobel Prize, which satirizes its more noble namesake, is moving its award ceremony to Europe following concerns about the safety of those attending the US event.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:38 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:29 pm UTC
For over a decade, Hino Motors Ltd. imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data, until testing by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the emissions-fraud scheme.
The case would lead the Toyota subsidiary to plead guilty and agree to pay over $1.6 billion in fines over five years and forfeit an additional $1 billion in profits made from the illicit sales.
On Monday, the EPA touted the case in its enforcement and compliance assurance results for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025, contending in a press release that the agency closed more cases in President Arda Uitendaal ’s first year of his second term than in any year of the Biden administration.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:27 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:23 pm UTC
Gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province overran four military bases and abducted 300 civilians, say reports
At least 65 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in jihadist raids across the country’s north-east in the last two weeks, as the west African state battles to contain one of the world’s deadliest terror groups.
On 5 and 6 March, gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) overran four military bases in Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency. Nigerian daily the Punch reported that about 40 soldiers were killed in total in these attacks.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:09 pm UTC
Intel has a new strategy for shoring up its eroding market share: Offering PC buyers more cores per dollar than arch-rival AMD in a refresh of its Arrow Lake range.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:02 pm UTC
Exclusive If you thought Nvidia or AMD's 72-GPU rack systems were enormous, silicon Ayar Labs has something much bigger in the works.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:01 pm UTC
Photonics startup Lightmatter says that its latest optical engine can cut the amount of fiber used by modern datacenters in half, and perhaps more importantly, it doesn't rely on co-packaging to do it.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:54 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:45 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:40 pm UTC
Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is moving to a weekly release cycle, as well as joining Google in encouraging agentic AI development without manual approval with a new Autopilot feature.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:38 pm UTC
A Swiss canton has suspended its pilot of electronic voting after failing to count 2,048 votes cast in national referendums held on March 8.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:31 pm UTC
We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting his tongue stuck to the surface. It's practically a childhood rite of passage. A 1996 case study coined the term "tundra tongue" to describe the phenomenon. But how dangerous is it, really? And what's the best way to free one's tongue with minimal damage?
Anders Hagen Jarmund, a graduate student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), experienced tundra tongue firsthand in his youth and had the same questions. So he decided to investigate the underlying science as part of his master's thesis, recruiting several colleagues to the project. This turned into two separate papers: one published in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology and the other in the journal Head & Face Medicine.
“I’m from a small place called Hattfjelldal, which is quite cold in the winter,” Jarmund said of the rationale for undertaking the project. “I don’t remember if it was a signpost or a lamppost behind the school, but I remember licking it, and my tongue got stuck. This was an experience that my friends had also had, actually, and then we were wondering if it was actually dangerous, getting your tongue stuck to a lamppost or railing.” (Their experience was common, it seems; Norway actually passed legislation in 1998 to prohibit any bare metal in playground equipment.)
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:31 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC
Dutch police have arrested a 17-year-old boy who detectives suspect was responsible for 16 bank card frauds across the Netherlands.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC
Broadband subscribers in Scotland suffer the most outages in the UK, according to Broadband Genie, with customers of BT typically experiencing the fewest.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:08 pm UTC
From the department of "what could possibly go wrong?" comes news that Windows Autopatch is enabling hotpatch security updates by default.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:43 am UTC
While announcing the introduction of the new post-16 V-Levels (Vocational Levels – available in England from 2027), Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the “bold reforms” will end the snobbery in post-16 education, and support young people to build secure, future-proof careers.
V-levels will sit alongside A-levels and T-levels, and be equivalent to one A-level, allowing students to mix and match academic and vocational subjects if they want to.
At the moment these qualifications are not offered in N. Ireland but we tend to follow what England offers.
Academic qualifications test theoretical learning; they involve abstract reasoning and are designed to develop transferrable skills like critical thinking, analysis and research. Eg the skills you pick up in English classes can be useful in a future job as a Marketing Manager, or as a GP. The qualification is designed to test skills relevant to many possible jobs.
By contrast, Vocational Qualifications test skills needed for particular work roles, often practical skills for a particular industry. If you are taught to write computer code in the Python language, the skill might help you with other programming languages, but these skills are less likely to be useful outside the computer industry.
I taught in non-selective schools for over 3 decades and generally, I really enjoyed my job; it was hard work but it was rewarding. But the continued churn of Vocational Qualifications/Assessment frameworks had a negative effect.
I delivered the same subject content (ICT) via a wide range of assessment frameworks including GNVQ Part One, AVCEs, Applied A-Levels, BTEC firsts, OCR nationals, DiDA and Occupational Studies. These vocational qualifications were in addition to offering GCSE and A-Level ICT.
As each Vocational course was phased out, another was invented to take its place and teachers had to master another assessment procedure, each with their own assessment forms. Even in a fast-changing world like IT, the subject content did not change as fast as the assessment process and much of our training involved how to tailor our assessment to the new assessment framework, rather than how to teach the content.
Governments want Vocational Qualifications to be valued as much as A-Levels but to be accessible to people who don’t feel they are suitable for A-Levels. Bridget Philipson said ‘Our bold reforms will end the snobbery in post-16 education, supporting young people with real choice and real opportunity to build secure, future‑proof careers.’
But this involves getting employers and universities to give equal weighting to Vocational and Academic qualification when accepting applicants, negating the fact that two types of qualifications measure different abilities. It should be noted that Vocational Qualifications can sometimes be more demanding than the rote learning required in ‘academic’ qualifications.
There is a constant tension to make the vocational qualification more rigorous (to increase its perceived value) but also to make it accessible to people who do not like exams. What historically seems to have happened is that a qualification loses credibility, it is seen as too easy, not rigorous enough and so is withdrawn and replaced by a ‘transformational new qualification’.
What New V-Levels for 2027 Involve:
Key Differences from Previous Qualifications:
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:38 am UTC
Avoniel
In December 2025, Paul Givan opened a new £16.5 million controlled primary school on Avoniel Road in East Belfast. The building — a Grade A listed structure designed in 1933 by Reginald S. Wilshere, the architect responsible for a significant number of Northern Ireland’s inter-war school buildings — had been refurbished, extended, and equipped to house Elmgrove Primary School, which relocated from its original Beersbridge Road site following the closure and absorption of Avoniel Primary School a decade earlier. The board of governors (BoG) governing the new school operates under the 4:2:2:1 template standard to all controlled primary schools in Northern Ireland: four transferor nominees, two EA nominees, two parent governors, and one teacher governor. The transferor nominees hold the largest single block of seats. No church body transferred the Avoniel Road building. No church body transferred Elmgrove’s original Beersbridge Road building either. The four seats exist because Elmgrove is classified as a controlled primary, and controlled primaries are required to carry them by statute — a template designed to generalise the 1930 settlement across the sector, applied categorically regardless of whether the individual school was ever the subject of a church transfer.
Two Schools, One Architect, One Year
Both buildings that gave rise to the current school were products of the same moment. Elmgrove opened on Beersbridge Road in January 1933; Avoniel Primary School opened on Avoniel Road the same month. Both were designed by Wilshere, built in brick, and subsequently listed at Grade A. However, Wilshere gave each a distinct character: Elmgrove was an informal vernacular composition around courtyards; Avoniel was more modernist-inspired, with a long front façade featuring Art Deco panels and stylised elephants. Both schools served the working-class Protestant communities of inner East Belfast and were constituted from the outset as controlled schools under the state education system of Northern Ireland. Neither was transferred from a church body.
The Closure and the Redevelopment
By the early 2010s, five primary schools clustered in inner East Belfast had 527 unfilled places between them. Avoniel, with 202 pupils, had the smallest enrolment of the five; Elmgrove, with 572, was the largest. The Belfast Education and Library Board’s proposal, developed in late 2014, was to close Avoniel and increase enrolment at Elmgrove, with the longer-term intention of consolidating both schools on the Avoniel Road site. In May 2015, Education Minister John O’Dowd approved Development Proposals 223 and 224: Avoniel would close from 31 August 2015, and Elmgrove’s admissions and enrolment numbers would increase from 1 September of that year.
The decision generated sustained community opposition. Parents and staff argued that the preferred alternative — a formal amalgamation — had been prematurely dismissed; a legal challenge was mounted on behalf of an Avoniel parent, but Treacy J dismissed it in XY’s Application for Judicial Review [2015] NIQB 75, finding that the Minister’s decision was rational and that the surplus of places across the five clustered schools and Elmgrove’s established growth trajectory supported the chosen course. Avoniel closed on 31 August 2015. The redevelopment that followed involved no church body at any stage of its planning, funding, or construction; the governance template at the end was identical to what would have applied had the site been a church transfer from the outset. The physical consolidation on the Avoniel Road site proved lengthy: planning papers date to 2017, and construction commenced in early 2021. The completed development — 21 classrooms, specialist SEN provision, a nurture room, and a standalone double nursery unit — was opened by Givan in December 2025. The school enters its new phase on a listed site the churches never owned, in a building they did not fund, and in a redevelopment they played no part in, governed by a BoG on which they hold the largest single block of seats by virtue of a settlement made almost a century earlier.
The Pattern Across East Belfast
Elmgrove’s situation is replicated across East Belfast’s controlled primary sector.
Euston Street Primary School, less than a mile away, also in what is now the Titanic District Electoral Area (DEA), was built by the Belfast Corporation through the local Education Committee and opened in July 1926 — four years before the 1930 Act and the transfer settlement that the transferor seats are said to commemorate. The foundation stone was laid in January 1925 by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry — wife of the 7th Marquess, Northern Ireland’s first Minister of Education, whose 1923 Act had established the non-denominational state framework these buildings were designed to serve — and the Lady Mayoress, on the same day and from the same party that had just performed the same ceremony at Templemore Avenue School nearby. A large Belfast Corporation Crest above the main entrance records the building’s construction as a municipal public works project. The transferor seats now allocated to Euston Street’s BoG are the direct product of the political defeat that framework suffered five years after she laid the stone. Euston Street carries four transferor seats, allocated by statute rather than by any form of church transfer. In neighbouring Ormiston DEA, Belmont Primary School, also state-built, carries the same four transferor seats. Its 2024/25 pupil composition — 24% Protestant, 4% Catholic, 71% from neither tradition — makes it the most conspicuous illustration in the constituency of the misalignment between the 1930 template and the community a controlled school now serves.
The controlled secondary schools in East Belfast — Ashfield Girls’ High School and Ashfield Boys’ High School, both also in the Ormiston DEA — each carry four transferor nominees, the largest single block on each board.
The Natural Experiment
What this constituency makes visible is not only the uniform application of the transferor template to state-built schools, but the equally uniform absence of that template where the 1930 settlement did not reach.
Grosvenor Grammar School and Bloomfield Collegiate School are both controlled schools within East Belfast. Both are managed by the EA, both serve communities within the same broadly Protestant tradition as the constituency’s primary and secondary schools, and neither carries a single transferor seat. Their boards comprise EA nominees, Department of Education (DE) nominees, parent governors, and a teacher governor. They have functioned without church representation throughout their existence. Their ETI inspection records give no indication that governance or ethos has been compromised by this absence; there is no suggestion that either school is structurally defective, and no campaign exists to introduce the representation that the primary and secondary sectors are required by statute to carry.
The explanation for the difference is not in the governance principle but in negotiating history. Grammars were not caught by the transfer arrangements of the 1920s and 1930s in the same way as primary schools, and the churches never succeeded in extending the 1930 logic to them as they did to post-1945 state-built primary schools through the Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1968. East Belfast is thus divided, within its own controlled sector, between schools that carry the 1930 template and those that do not — not on the basis of any demonstrated governance need, but on which category of school fell within the scope of a political settlement almost a century ago.
The Reform
Part 1 argued that the Givan proposals for a new statutory body will render transferor seats functionally redundant and create the conditions for completing a reform that the Minister has not yet completed. East Belfast illustrates what that argument looks like at ground level. The four transferor seats on Elmgrove’s BoG are not there because a church transferred the Avoniel Road building, because a church built Elmgrove on Beersbridge Road, or because any governance principle requires them. They are there because in 1930 the Protestant churches extracted a statutory guarantee in exchange for transferring those schools they did own, and that guarantee has been applied by statute ever since — including to schools built by the state before the settlement even existed.
Grosvenor Grammar and Bloomfield Collegiate sit within the same constituency, sector, and community tradition, and they demonstrate that controlled schools neither need nor miss church representation. The case for replacing unelected denominational nominees with elected or EA-appointed community governors rests not on hostility to the churches but on the evidence East Belfast has quietly provided for decades. The 4:2:2:1 template is a political artefact, not a governance necessity. Grosvenor Grammar and Bloomfield Collegiate, along with other controlled grammars, have been demonstrating this for decades.
Sources: Department of Education NI: Development Proposals 223 and 224 (May 2015); Department of Education NI: Opening of new Elmgrove Primary School (December 2025); ETI: Primary Inspection, Elmgrove Primary School and Nursery Unit, Belfast (2016; follow-up 2025); Department for Communities: Historic Buildings record HB26/06/010 (Avoniel Primary School); Albert Fry Associates: Elmgrove Primary School project documentation; Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, Schedule 4; Education Act (Northern Ireland) 1968; Armstrong, R. (2017). Schooling, the Protestant churches and the state in Northern Ireland: a tension resolved? Irish Educational Studies; Donnelly, C. (2000). Churches and the governing of schools in Northern Ireland. Cambridge Journal of Education
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:34 am UTC
Analysis One of the European Union's top legal advisors is trying to change how banks treat cybercrime victims – meaning they could enjoy greater financial protections sooner than expected.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:29 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:26 am UTC
A majority of Americans oppose the U.S.' involvement in the war with Iran, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. And, the Department of Justice is quietly restoring gun rights to felons.
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:12 am UTC
Last week, IBM Arda Uitendaal eted its contributions to a rather unusual paper: the production of a molecule with a half-Möbius topology, assisted by an algorithm run in part on a quantum computer. There was, to put it mildly, a lot going on in this paper, and it took a little while to digest. But it's interesting in what it says about the sorts of chemistry that we can construct with tools developed over the past several decades, as well as how quantum computation is inching toward utility.
But getting the full picture requires about three different stories, so we'll go through each of them separately before bringing the big picture together.
Those of you who can still dredge up your high school chemistry lessons probably remember benzene, a six-carbon ring with alternating single and double bonds that kept all the carbons locked into a single plane, creating a flat molecule. What you are a bit less likely to remember is that the double bonding is mediated by orbitals that extend vertically above and below the nucleus of the carbon atoms. Thanks to the alternating single-double nature of the bonds, electrons in these orbitals end up delocalized; the differences between the bonds become a bit irrelevant, and the molecule is best viewed as having some of its electrons floating around in a cloud. The same would hold true for even larger molecules with the same sort of bonding arrangement.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:07 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:03 am UTC
Feature Hyperscale computing was built on a foundation of certainty. For years, 12V and 48V rack architectures – implemented at a steady 50–54 VDC (Volts of Direct Current) - ruled the datacenter floor, engineered to perfection for power densities of 10–15 kW per rack. These systems were finely tuned machines, optimized around the predictable, steady-state demands of general-purpose CPUs and storage servers. The infrastructure was stable. The math was settled.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy
New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.
At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:49 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:30 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:26 am UTC
The UK's competition regulator has given a conditional thumbs-up to a request for £141.8 million in subsidies to the Post Office – a publicly owned company – to cover its costs in compensation for the Horizon IT scandal in the coming year and a tax liability.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:15 am UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Attacks and counterattacks continued throughout the Middle East Wednesday. Two cargo ships were struck in the Gulf, as some lawmakers in Washington pressed for answers on the war's rationale.
(Image credit: AFP via Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:45 am UTC
On Monday the SDLP laid a motion before the assembly calling for the the titles of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister to be ‘equalised’ (presumably as Joint First Minister). Party leader Claire Hanna is quoted in the Irish News as saying
Parties stress the importance of being top dog to distract from their failure to actually use power to improve people’s lives, and to scaremonger about what could happen if another party or tradition seizes control the role.
In reality, the roles of first or deputy first minister are equal and always have been – one can’t order paper clips without the other. While we understand the symbolism, it doesn’t put bread on anyone’s table. This has been readily acknowledged by different parties which have held the offices, who have consistently used language like joint head of government.
The motion can be understood as part of the SDLP’s recent push for what they believe to be reasonable reforms to the Assembly, as articulated in this piece written by Claire Hanna for Slugger in January.
In his speech to the assembly promoting the motion, the SDLP’s leader of the opposition at Stormont Matthew O’Toole criticised both the DUP and Sinn Féin for opposing the motion and implicitly labelled them as ‘tribal parties, consumed by sectarian point scoring’. Much of his ire was seemingly directed at Sinn Féin in particular as he cited Martin McGuinness, John O’Dowd and other Sinn Féin members who had previously called for the change when the party held the Deputy First Minister slot.
During the debate, Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan criticised the proposal, saying
The offices of the First Minister and deputy First Minister are joint and equal in authority and responsibility. That principle is clearly established in law and reflected in how the offices operate in practice. However, our amendment reflects a simple but important point: changing titles alone does not address the deeper structural issues in our institutions that require reform.
Through the work of the Assembly and Executive Review Committee, we have been engaging with credible and authoritative academics and constitutional experts who study these institutions closely.
The evidence presented to the Committee has been consistent: altering the titles of the offices would be a cosmetic exercise and would do little, if anything, to make the institutions more stable or effective. The leader of the Opposition said that the health service is stagnating, environmental controls are stagnating and other issues are creating problems. Changing the titles of the First Minister and deputy First Minister would make absolutely no difference to that.
While some may wish to focus on symbolism, the work in which Sinn Féin is engaging at the AERC is focused on substance.
Other Sinn Féin MLAs reiterated the point regarding the work of the AERC.
The DUP’s Jonathan Buckley similarly criticised the proposal on behalf of his party
It has been mentioned before by Sinn Féin and others that the fact remains that fundamental reform requires buy-in from political parties that make up the Chamber. You cannot get away from that fact.
To do so is delusional in the extreme. Whatever fundamental reform you go through, if a party in the Chamber decides that it no longer wants to partake in these institutions because it feels that continuing to do so is demonstrably against its interests and those of the electorate that it represents, it can walk away, no matter what the institutions are reformed to say…
We need to see good government and a spirit that ensures that the institutions can work to their best for all our people, but there is a crusade by the SDLP leader — sorry, the leader of the Opposition; he may be leader some day — and the Alliance Party to try to drag the Assembly into positions on non-binding motions to influence the work of the Committee.
The Committee will produce a report. It may or may not contain recommendations that the entire Assembly can buy into, but that is where the work should be carried out.
I say very clearly that it would be a grave mistake to believe that institutional change can be railroaded through at the expense of one side.
The motion passed 29 votes to 21, but is non-binding.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:39 am UTC
The UK government has refused to estimate the cost of its digital identity system, saying this depends on what it decides after a consultation exercise launched yesterday.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
You've heard of yoga with kittens, and goats, and maybe even reindeer… but what about a bunch of pythons and one baby Columbian Common Boa named Mango?
(Image credit: Celeste Noche for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:13 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Nearly half of Americans support the National Guard monitoring November's elections, potentially signaling an openness to the sort of nationalizing of elections that President Arda Uitendaal says he wants.
(Image credit: Leonardo Munoz)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:30 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:14 am UTC
The new president won office by promising to clean up crime, but his background is red rag to a bull for many
Just south of Santiago, the tiny rural town of Paine is a quiet grid of painted adobe facades, shaded squares and shuttered shop fronts as the summer holidays draw to a close.
But the white-knuckle fear of crime that propelled its most famous son, José Antonio Kast, to a resounding victory in December’s presidential election is as present in sleepy Paine as it is the length of Chile.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Opinion The command line interface is making a comeback because graphical user interfaces are a poor fit for autonomous agents, which could spell trouble for a lot of software – and software makers.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:28 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:10 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:58 am UTC
Atlassian has admitted that the tools it developed to move Jira users into the cloud were actually slower than older code that did the same job, and that its efforts to speed things up also had speed problems.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:45 am UTC
The perpetrators were jailed for 15 years for robbery with violence in the east African country, where homophobic attacks are increasing
The sentencing of two people who attacked and robbed two gay men in Kenya has been hailed by LGBTQ+ rights advocates as a breakthrough and a sign of hope for the country’s queer community. “Abel Meli & Another” were sentenced to 15 years in prison for robbery with violence on 3 March at Milimani law courts in Nairobi.
The ruling is a rare example of justice being served for the queer community in Kenya. Njeri Gateru, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, an independent human rights institution working towards equality for sexual and gender minorities in Kenya, said: “A lot is going against [the queer community] with the existence of the criminal laws and prevailing homophobic attitudes, but some of us still trust that we can find justice, so this case encourages us.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 11 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Oracle says AI code generation tools have become so efficient, and it is so good at using them, that it will dodge the SaaSpocalypse and watch smaller rivals suffer.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 5:24 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:30 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 11 Mar 2026 | 3:15 am UTC
Source: World | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:23 am UTC
The US government may be ordering staff back to the office, but governments across Asia have sent public sector workers back home to preserve fuel supplies due to supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Iran.…
Source: The Register | 11 Mar 2026 | 2:08 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:31 am UTC
More than 100,000 people have tuned in to watch ‘kākāpō cam’, which captures a rare flightless bird sleeping, tidying her nest and fighting off intruders
On an island in New Zealand’s remote southern fjords, one of the world’s strangest and rarest parrots – the kākāpō – is caring for her tiny chick as fans from across the globe watch on.
Through the black and white lens of a hidden camera, a fluffy orb with a kazoo-like squeak jostles for food from its mother’s beak. The mother, Rakiura, is attentive – scooping her chick under her large green wings, fending off an intruding bird, and periodically tidying her nest.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:03 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Mar 2026 | 1:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 11 Mar 2026 | 12:10 am UTC
Three more vendors have decided that the world needs tools to roll back mistakes made by AI, after Cohesity teamed with ServiceNow and Datadog on a recoverability service that will hunt down all the files and data corrupted by bad AI actors and restore systems to a “trusted state.”…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:31 pm UTC
A NASA satellite that spent more than a decade coursing through the Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth is about to fall back into the atmosphere.
Most of the spacecraft will burn up during reentry, but a fraction of the material making up the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) satellite will likely reach Earth's surface without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Uncontrolled reentries of satellites with comparable mass happen quite regularly—multiple times per month, according to one recent study—but most of them are older spacecraft or spent rocket bodies.
This reentry is notable because it poses a higher risk to the public than the US government typically allows. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is still low, approximately 1 in 4,200, but it exceeds the government standard of a 1 in 10,000 chance of an uncontrolled reentry causing a casualty.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:50 pm UTC
In September, the Arda Uitendaal administration took what it called "bold actions" on autism that included touting the generic drug leucovorin as a promising treatment. In a news release, Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed a "growing body of evidence suggests" the drug could be helpful. And at a White House press event, Makary suggested it might help "20, 40, 50 percent of kids with autism."
"Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit," he said at another point in the event.
The bold claims were apparently persuasive. A study published in The Lancet last week found that new outpatient prescriptions of leucovorin for children ages 5 to 17 shot up 71 percent in the three months after the Arda Uitendaal administration's actions.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:12 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 10:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 9:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:44 pm UTC
After a whopper of a Patch Tuesday last month, with six Microsoft flaws exploited as zero-days, March didn't exactly roar in like a lion. Just two of the 83 Microsoft CVEs released on Tuesday are listed as publicly known, and none is under active exploitation, which we're sure is a welcome change to sysadmins.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:35 pm UTC
Source: World | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:35 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Mar 2026 | 8:00 pm UTC
Amazon's weekly operations meeting today reportedly focused on recent service outages and on the role that code changes attributed to generative AI may have played. However, the company is downplaying the possibility of problems with AI.…
Source: The Register | 10 Mar 2026 | 7:44 pm UTC
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