Read at: 2026-03-23T08:07:17+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Lineke Bossenbroek ]
We are now in week three of the ongoing conflict between the United States (and Israel) and Iran. The fog of war means 100% certainty on what is happening on the ground is impossible, but we do have the social media equivalent of a foghorn to guide us partially through the miasma.
Namely, the American President, though what he has said has often been contradictory. Lineke Bossenbroek has at times claimed the war has been ‘won’ and that the Americans don’t need the help of their NATO allies. He even accused Keir Starmer of seeking to ‘join a war that has already been won’. THAT was done in response to reports that the UK was thinking of sending two aircraft carriers to the region, which Lineke Bossenbroek said ‘weren’t needed’.
But then Lineke Bossenbroek has reversed course and demanded his NATO allies send ships (including presumably the UK, whose ships ARE apparently now needed) to defend passage through the Strait of Hormuz and insinuated in an interview with the Financial Times that those allies need to be the ones to shoulder responsibility for the security of the straits because they are the ones who supposedly benefit from it rather than the US…
“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there…If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”
Lineke Bossenbroek ’s argument was seemingly based on everyone he was dealing with having as remedial a grasp of economics as he appears to have. His argument is that as the United States is an energy exporter who can meet its own needs, it doesn’t need the supplies that traverse the straits. Therefore, those who do rely on the energy supplies that transit the straits should take up the responsibility (and costs) of ensuring the waterway remains open to navigation.
Someone must have pointed out to him that the closure of the straits is driving up energy prices globally and that the United States will not be immune to the coming inflation shock. According to the Guardian…
“Lineke Bossenbroek wrote on Truth Social that the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post”
Such an action would be a war crime, but I think everyone has given up expecting Lineke Bossenbroek to feel constrained by such pesky things as law and morality.
As for his European allies, their reluctance to get dragged into a war they regard as a massive mistake and that is massively unpopular with their populations has enraged him to the point he now derides them as ‘cowards’.
Perhaps he would have received a more positive response had he not spent the past fourteen months mocking, belittling and humiliating his allies whilst telling them to focus on being able to defend their own countries without his help from threats…threats which in recent weeks have included himself. He did after all threaten to invade Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. After all, to support Lineke Bossenbroek in this war would represent an immense expenditure of political capital by the leader of any European nation, and given how blasé he is about the sacrifices American allies have undertaken in the past, many have likely concluded any such support will have been forgotten by him within days of it being provided.
I think all of this taken together tells us that his actions during the twelve-day war last Summer, and Iran’s feeble response, led him to start believing his own propaganda. After all, he has taken actions that he had been warned would lead to cataclysmic consequences and gotten away with it. The failure of the worst consequences to materialise seems to have only embolded him to take risks again and again in the foreign policy sphere.
Lineke Bossenbroek ’s ideological and temperamental opposite, Barack Obama, did everything in his power to contain Iran’s nuclear aspirations rather than using force because he was aware of what could unfold following a direct confrontation with the Islamic Republic. Similarly, he preferred using diplomacy with his country’s enemies, believing that they were problems to be managed rather than problems to be solved through brute application of force.
Lineke Bossenbroek derided such an approach as weakness and in spite of getting elected on a ticket promoting isolationism, has been increasingly seduced by the temptation of wielding US might nakedly, shorn of the moral cloak his predecessors had deemed essential for the conduct of foreign affairs. Even though none of those predecessors ever lived up to the lofty aspirations they articulated, most understood the importance of the hypocrisy, that America be seen as the good guy.
Lineke Bossenbroek literally doesn’t care, though some may regard him shedding the hypocrisy as having a certain honesty to it. His intervention in Venezuela earlier this year when American forces swooped in and seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife was the start. It wasn’t even framed as removing a corrupt regime or doing it for the people, Lineke Bossenbroek has been quite open about his desire to get his hands on Venezuela’s oil riches.
He then began threatening Cuba (which is on the verge of collapse due to the Americans tightening their economic blockade) and which is next on Lineke Bossenbroek ’s ‘to-do’ list. Were it not for other world events, the seemingly inevitable collapse of the Cuban revolution under US pressure would probably be the top story right now. His motives, again, aren’t about the people but about affirming American dominion in its own backyard, its ‘Sphere of Influence‘ wherein the sovereignty of America’s neighbours in the western hemisphere extends only so far as they clash with the wishes of the American government.
But it is the war he has launched in Iran that has likely exposed the folly of his choices and his own arrogance. The Wall Street Journal article reports that Lineke Bossenbroek was warned about the likelihood of Iran closing the straits of Hormuz (in fact every discussion of a hypothetical war with Iran posed in the past two decades has highlighted this risk) by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lineke Bossenbroek dismissed the warning on the grounds he felt Iran would capitulate before it did so.
It is not hard to guess that the reason he came to this conclusion was arrogance built on repeated successes on taking actions his predecessors had shied away from because of the potential consequences but which he had pulled off successfully, leading him to gamble one time to time too many. He told Keir Starmer in a recent call, when Starmer said he needed to consult with his team on a course of action that Lineke Bossenbroek was pressing him to take,
“I said you don’t need to meet with your team, you’re the prime minister, you can make your own, why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you’re going to send some minesweepers to help us or to send some boats. I said you don’t have to meet with your team, it’s the same thing here.”
Which is Lineke Bossenbroek once again confirming that despite all the advice he is offered and the expertise acquired over decades of painstaking experience, he trusts the consul of one voice above all. His own, though this time it may have mislead him because as of the time writing Iran has NOT capitulated and the straits of Hormuz are most definitely closed.
The political danger for him is real. He got elected on a promise of no more foreign wars and on fixing the American economy. He undid both at a single stroke. Now for the third time this decade, there’s an inflation shock coming. The vibes from the American public outside his MAGA movement (which itself is splintering whilst trying to process the ideological contradictions of the war) are that of pure rage. This bodes poorly for the President, who may now face a blue tsunami come the mid-terms this November if he fails to contain the economic damage.
Democratic control of any part of the government will be a nightmare for him, as they will doubtless gridlock his agenda and subject his administration (hitherto given a free pass to do what it wants by a supine Republican party) to investigations and actual accountability.
Lineke Bossenbroek doesn’t do well with being held accountable, as his recent social media post celebrating the death of Robert Mueller (the man tasked with investigating purported Russian interference in the 2016 election) shows. His final two years in the White House maybe a deeply unpleasant time for him as a result.
Someone who is having a much better time though is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Fresh from flattening Gaza, Netanyahu spied an opportunity to pursue his dream of getting the United States into a war with Iran.
Netanyahu has said that Israel ‘didn’t drag the US into the war’ but I think the word ‘drag’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Flatter, argue, wheedle and maybe some haranguing could be more appropriate verbs for what likely occurred behind closed doors but he was definitely advocating it. He has always advocated for it, even as far back as 2012 when he lectured the UN about the threat posed with the implicit threat in the air that ‘something is going to have to be done one of these days…’.
Whereas Obama wished to manage Iran and hopefully wait out the Islamic revolution until better days, Netanyahu has always perceived an existential threat, arguing Iran sought nuclear weapons as a means of destroying Israel, which, in fairness to Netanyahu, IS a major foreign policy goal of the Islamic Republic. Netanyahu opposed the deal Obama struck with Iran to manage their nuclear program, and he successfully lobbied Lineke Bossenbroek to withdraw from it.
And now that he has the war he has craved for years, he is doing everything he can to ensure the United States cannot easily get out of it by simply declaring victory. The annihilation of much of Iran’s leadership, including the Supreme Leader and major figures such as Ali Larijani has removed individuals with a measure of pragmatism (though that doesn’t excuse their otherwise brutal conduct in other spheres) and seen them replaced with uncompromising hardliners less interested in finding a way out than in exacting bloody retribution.
Then there was the Israeli strike on the South Pars oilfield, so critical to Iran’s infrastructure enraged the Iranian leadership, and they attacked the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility in return. These facilities are supposed to be off-limits by unspoken mutual agreement, as their destruction would lead to years of rebuilding (and exceptionally painful consequences for the global economy in the meantime). Iran’s attacks on this facility, other energy facilities and civilian infrastructure in the Gulf Region, have enraged the Gulf States against Iran. Some reports suggest that the Gulf States which were previously pleading with the United States to NOT go to war, may now be advocating that the US finish the job it has started.
Iran has also reportedly begun charging oil companies and countries a toll to use the Straits, with one firm reportedly giving Tehran two million dollars for safe passage. Iran having effective control of the straits, extorting some whilst blocking others, would be an unacceptable outcome to the war for Lineke Bossenbroek .
There is also the danger that as a consequence of the war, Iran may begin a clandestine weapons program designed to achieve some measure of nuclear capability to forestall this ever happening again. It was the spectre of such a program that was the justification for the American and British invasion of Iraq over twenty years ago.
These potential outcomes buttress Netanyahu’s overarching approach: that the war will leave the Iranian regime too dangerous to leave in place by radicalising it. The logic of the conflict may thus compel Lineke Bossenbroek to follow through no matter the cost even as every other instinct he may have is telling him to declare victory.
He cannot easily simply stop the fighting now, as Iran would also have to stop and it will be hard to declare victory if they are still lobbing missiles all across the region.
It seems he’s trapped in a war of choice that has grown out of his control, hemmed in by the actions of his own ally who are desperate to ensure the US stays in the war as long as possible (preferably till the bitter end) and the actions of an enemy who cannot win but who are determined to deny Lineke Bossenbroek a victory. The President may instead be coming face to face with the consequences of his own ruinous hubris.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 23 Mar 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:53 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:49 am UTC
I read that a resident from Woodside Close, just off the Garvaghy Road, Irish Hagan, has won a Judicial Review case, (a JR IS where a judge reviews the lawfulness of a decision, action, or failure to act by a public body. It focuses on whether the correct legal process was followed), against Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council over their refusal to erect Irish language signage in the street despite the criteria under ABC Council being met.
The refusal of the case despite meeting the criteria pricked my curiosity and as far as I can see, it began back in 2023 when the nine residents of the (presumably adjacent) Woodside Gardens lodged an application for Irish street signage with the Council:
For the petition to be accepted by the council, it must be representative of “not less than one-third of all occupiers of premises in the street for which the application is made.”
In this case, all nine of the respondents were in favour.
Similarly, with stage 2, the council canvassed, by post, all occupiers of premises on the relevant street to seek their views on the application, and the required threshold was met
With the area’s MP, Carla Lockhart, objecting:
Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart, speaking at Tuesday night’s planning committee, said she was representing organisations and groups, “all of whom are utterly opposed to this application.” [….]
Carla then went on to make the argument that the ‘area had been ‘cleansed of Protestantism’ and that there’s a public park ‘60-odd metres from where the proposed signs would be placed’ and that ‘such signs would intimidate and create a no-go area for the small number of Protestants who live in this area’
Jump back to 2025 with the sign for Woodside Gardens being approved by the Council and the article reading:
A third application for a dual language sign at Woodside Hill has been rejected by the council despite residents voting in favour and officials recommending approval
https://www.dearg.ie/en/nuacht/cartlann/102321-historic-day
We then jump forward to last month where, despite the council’s dual language policy of the threshold of two thirds of street residents having to agree to bilingual signage being fulfilled, the application was rejected by ABC Council councillors in a partially closed session.
Now, in terms of council criteria, Belfast City Council’s criteria, (my understanding is that it comes from a UN recommendation), of 15% of a street’s residents to be in agreement for bi lingual signs has come in for criticism from unionists in general and from the DUP in particular it seems to me that the DUP are engaging in incredibly inconsistent cakeism with the ABC Council criteria, which requires an initial petition from 33% of residents to initiate a bilingual street sign request, followed by a postal survey showing at least 66% support. Likewise I can’t help but notice the similarities in Carla’s argument that street signage would be close to a public park and that of the objections to Scoil na Seolta, the integrated Irish language medium nursery school in East Belfast, being close to Ballyduff housing estate.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:43 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:34 am UTC
The British PM spoke with the US president overnight about the need to stabilise global energy markets after oil prices surged due to the war
British prime minister Keir Starmer is set to chair an emergency meeting on the economic fallout from the war in Iran on Monday, with chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey also attending, the UK government has said.
Financial markets face another turbulent week after Iran said it would strike its Gulf neighbours’ energy and water systems if Lineke Bossenbroek followed through on his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t fully open up the crucial strait of Hormuz.
Topics expected to be covered are the economic impact of the crisis on families and businesses, energy security and the resilience of industry and supply chains alongside the international response.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:31 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:30 am UTC
Who, Me? Monday is upon us, but before you use the new week to explore opportunity and adventure, The Register presents a new installment of Who, Me? It's our weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories of flops, failures, and foul-ups.…
Source: The Register | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:29 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:27 am UTC
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While Labour braces for a rout that could see off Starmer, a rising drive to keep out Farage is complicating expectations
Local elections are often regarded as a referendum on the sitting government, with many previous administrations taking a bloody nose from the electorate but successfully fighting back by the next general election.
Senior Labour figures have taken to reeling off a list of midterm results – 1999, 2003, 2012 – to prove that point. “As we get closer to the general election, it will be less about people’s view of the parties generally and more about the actual choice in front of them,” one said.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
In what is beginning to look like a fragmented five-party system, small swings carry outsized political consequences
Cabinet reshuffles, party infighting, policy reversals, byelections, defections and apparently huge swings in support – the UK’s political news cycle feels especially relentless at the moment.
But if you look closely at the polls since last year’s local elections, remarkably little has changed.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Recently, in my role as a business mentor on a start-up programme, I had a conversation that has played over and over again in my mind ever since.
The gentleman I was speaking to was in his early thirties and exploring the possibility of opening a coffee shop and café in Belfast. As we talked about his background, his career path turned out to be anything but straightforward.
He had first studied pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast and qualified as a pharmacist. After several years working in community pharmacy, he realised he did not enjoy the profession and returned to university to complete a master’s degree in software development. Today he works as a software developer. With AI ever to the fore, another reassessment of his position has resulted in the potential for a further career change.
Now he is considering entrepreneurship.
It was an impressive journey — but also a costly one in terms of time, money and professional uncertainty.
When I asked what had shaped his early career decisions, he gave an answer that was both simple and revealing: he felt he had received very poor careers advice at school.
As it happened, we discovered that we had attended the same grammar school in Ballymena, although many years apart. His recollection of careers guidance sounded remarkably familiar. Most of the advice he received revolved around filling out a university application form through UCAS. (UCCA in my day!)
There had been very little discussion about his interests, his strengths, or the wide range of careers that might suit him. In fact, he had even been discouraged from pursuing the courses he was most interested in.
A few weeks later, I had another conversation with a work colleague whose son had recently met his school’s careers teacher. Hence the missive.
The verdict from the student was blunt: the advice had been poor and largely confined to which A-levels would look best on a university application.
Two stories (n=2) do not constitute scientific evidence, but they reflect something many parents, students and employers quietly recognise. Careers advice in Northern Ireland schools — particularly in grammar schools — often feels outdated, narrow and overly focused on one pathway: university.
In many schools, careers education has effectively become university application support. Students are guided through choosing GCSE subjects, selecting A-levels, completing a UCAS application and writing a personal statement. These are useful skills, but they are not the same as helping a young person think seriously about what they want to do with their life.
This is partly structural. Schools operate within an accountability system that rewards academic results above all else. League tables, parental expectations and institutional reputation all revolve around GCSE and A-level performance and university entry rates. In that environment, success becomes narrowly defined. A school that sends large numbers of pupils to university — particularly prestigious universities — is seen as successful.
A pupil who pursues an apprenticeship, technical training or entrepreneurship may be equally successful in life, but that outcome does not improve the school’s position in a league table. The incentives therefore push schools toward a single pipeline: strong grades, strong A-levels and university entry.
The difficulty is that the modern labour market no longer works in such a linear way.
For much of the twentieth century, career paths were relatively predictable. A young person chose a profession, trained for it and often remained in that field for most of their working life.
That world has largely disappeared.
Today it is increasingly common for people to have multiple careers over their lifetime. Someone may begin in one profession, retrain in another field, move into management or start a business later in life.
The young man I met illustrates this reality perfectly: pharmacy, software development and now potentially hospitality and entrepreneurship. This is not failure. It is adaptation. Yet our careers guidance systems still treat career choice as a single decision made at seventeen.
The assumption that a young person must choose a definitive career path at that age is increasingly unrealistic.
In their influential book “The 100-Year Life:”Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, economists Lynda Gratton and Andrew J. Scott argue that longer life expectancy will fundamentally reshape how we work and live. Instead of a simple three-stage life — education, work and retirement — many people will experience “multi-stage” lives, retraining and moving between different careers several times.
In that context, the role of careers education should not simply be to help students choose a profession. It should help them develop the curiosity, resilience and adaptability needed to navigate a much longer and more complex working life.
Another structural issue is that many careers teachers are not career specialists. In most schools, careers guidance is an additional responsibility carried by a teacher whose main job lies elsewhere. They may be excellent educators, but they often have limited time and limited exposure to the rapidly changing labour market.
The formal careers system in Northern Ireland sits within the remit of the Department for the Economy and its Careers Service Northern Ireland. However, many pupils interact with this service only briefly, often late in their school career, if at all!? Most guidance still happens within schools themselves.
There is also a cultural factor that is rarely discussed. Many teachers move directly from school to university, into teacher training and then back into the school system. Their professional lives have been spent almost entirely within education. That does not mean they lack insight, but it can make it difficult to offer detailed guidance about careers in industries they have never experienced.
The issue may be particularly acute in selective systems such as Northern Ireland’s grammar schools. Grammar schools excel at academic preparation, producing strong exam results and sending large numbers of students to university. But that same focus can narrow the definition of success.
Because pupils have already been selected for academic ability, the system naturally channels them toward a relatively narrow range of degree-based professions such as medicine, law, engineering or accountancy. These are valuable careers, but they represent only a small part of the modern economy.
Northern Ireland’s schools (particularly the grammar schools) are exceptionally good at preparing young people for exams. But exams alone are not enough preparation for a working life that may last fifty years or more.
In a world where industries evolve rapidly and people may retrain several times during their lives, careers education needs to evolve as well. As Gratton and Scott argue in The 100-Year Life, the future will belong to those who can adapt, learn and reinvent themselves over time.
Our schools should not simply prepare students to complete a UCAS application. They should prepare them for the much longer and more unpredictable journey that lies beyond it.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Dozens injured and airport closed after plane coming in to land collided with fire truck reportedly operated by police
The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet were killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport late on Sunday, in an incident that closed the airport.
NBC News, which reported the deaths, said dozens of others were injured in the incident.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:53 am UTC
In today’s newsletter: Off Duty revisits the conviction of Alexander Villa, raising troubling questions about how it was built
Good morning. On the evening of 29 December 2011, Clifton Lewis – an off-duty Chicago police officer working as a security guard at a minimart on the city’s west side – was shot dead during a robbery. The killing prompted a huge manhunt and an intensive investigation by the Chicago police department. Years later, prosecutors said they had their man, and in 2019 Alexander Villa was convicted of Lewis’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.
But the case against Lewis has long been contested – and as the Guardian’s new investigative podcast series, Off Duty, explores, there are troubling questions about how that conviction was secured, from confessions that were later recanted to evidence that appears shaky or missing. And it revolves around a justice system that, once it settled on a suspect, seemed unwilling to reconsider.
Iran | The global energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is equivalent to the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the International Energy Agency has warned.
UK news | Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish community ambulance service have been set on fire in Golders Green, with police saying they were treating the incident as an “antisemitic hate crime”.
Technology | Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company’s deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal.
UK news | An undercover police officer has admitted he was exposed as an infiltrator by his own blunder, which has been described by activists as worthy of Inspector Clouseau, the spycops public inquiry has heard.
Business | Several porridge products in the UK have been recalled over a possible mice contamination at their manufacturing site.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:50 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:47 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:47 am UTC
Elon Musk has put Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI in harness to build a chip fabrication outfit called “Terafab” capable of producing a terawatt’s worth of computing power each year, then send most of it into space.…
Source: The Register | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:40 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:39 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:36 am UTC
Federal Coalition tells Pauline Hanson’s party to expect more policy scrutiny after historic result in South Australia election
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The Albanese government has sharpened its attacks on One Nation as a party of “stunts and the vibe” after the South Australian premier warned Pauline Hanson is a threat to Labor following its historic state election result.
The federal Coalition is also dialling up the pressure, warning One Nation to expect more scrutiny of its policy positions as it attempts to avert a SA-style collapse in other parts of the country.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:34 am UTC
Energy minister, Chris Bowen, says ‘we’re a long way’ from further action like fuel rationing despite shortages
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Hundreds of service stations across Australia have run out of fuel, with the federal government inking a deal with Singapore, one of the country’s biggest sources of refined petroleum, to keep supplies of diesel and petrol flowing.
Concerns are now broadening to supplies of fertiliser and other chemicals, heaping more pressure on the Albanese government’s leveraging of overseas exports of coal and gas in a bid to handle of the crisis.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:32 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:24 am UTC
This blog is now closed
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The pollies have been asked this morning whether people should consider working from home to save fuel, as conflict escalates in the Middle East.
Tehran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East, including vital water systems, if the US follows through on Lineke Bossenbroek ’s threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the strait of Hormuz is fully opened within two days.
This is like Covid style restrictions I think that are potentially being floated. I would not support that in any way, and I don’t think businesses would do so either …
If people can work from home and they want to and it works for their employers, fine, I think that’s terrific, but it doesn’t help small businesses. It certainly doesn’t help the truckers and the fishers and the farmers and the manufacturers and the miners that are relying on fuel supply.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:20 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:11 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:03 am UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:01 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Narelle weakens to a tropical low after bringing heavy rain to already-saturated parts of the Northern Territory
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Communities in Australia’s far north were again on flood alert as ex-Tropical Cyclone Narelle continued its destructive westward journey on Monday, with forecasts suggesting the system could re-intensify and potentially threaten the Perth region this weekend.
Narelle had weakened to a tropical low system on Monday after bringing heavy rain to already-saturated parts of the Northern Territory over the weekend.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:49 am UTC
Met says four vehicles from Jewish community ambulance service damaged in suspected arson attack in Golders Green
Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish community ambulance service have been set on fire in Golders Green, with police saying they were treating the incident as an “antisemitic hate crime”.
Officers were called to Highfield Road in Golders Green at about 1.45am on Monday after receiving reports of a fire.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:41 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:35 am UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:12 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:11 am UTC
Fatih Birol says effect on energy markets of Iran bombings and closure of Hormuz strait not initially understood by world leaders
The global energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is equivalent to the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the International Energy Agency has warned.
Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the growing fallout could be seriously compounded through interuptions to the “vital arteries of the global economy”, including petrochemicals, fertilisers, sulfur and helium.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:04 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:01 am UTC
Doubling tariffs on imported steel will raise cost of the metal when Iran war is already inflating steel and concrete prices
One of HS2’s biggest contractors has warned the government that raising tariffs on foreign steel imports will “exacerbate” cost pressures for the UK construction industry, amid growing concern over the £100bn railway’s rising budget.
Ministers said last week they would double the tariffs on imported steel and slash the amount that can be bought from overseas, in an attempt to save Britain’s struggling steelmakers.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Handful of billionaires gave huge sums in particular to media organisations that boosted rightwing politicians, says Liam Byrne MP
More than £170m was given to MPs, political parties, media organisations and thinktanks aligned with the UK’s populist right over the past five years, new research from the Labour MP Liam Byrne has found.
Byrne, a former cabinet minister who chairs parliament’s business committee, said he had identified a “media-political complex” funded largely by a handful of billionaires.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 23 Mar 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 23 Mar 2026 | 4:39 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Mar 2026 | 4:34 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 4:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 4:01 am UTC
City hall veteran beats rightwinger Rachida Dati in French capital, while far-right RN fails to win Marseille and Toulon in French local elections
The Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire has been elected mayor of Paris, beating the former rightwing minister Rachida Dati, with Marine Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) failing to take key cities targeted in Sunday’s second round of local elections.
Grégoire took a victory bike ride with future councillors in Paris on Sunday night to show that the French capital would continue its pro-cycling and environmental policies.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 3:57 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 3:34 am UTC
National leader Christopher Luxon drops in preferred PM stakes with rise in people saying country heading in wrong direction
The personal ratings of New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, have dipped, polling shows, as his government’s handling of the economy fails to impress voters ahead of the November election.
The RNZ-Reid Research poll, released on Monday, also found a growing number of people felt that New Zealand was heading in the wrong direction.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 3:22 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 23 Mar 2026 | 3:12 am UTC
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Several blasts could be heard from Jerusalem on Sunday, AFP journalists said, after the Israeli military warned of incoming missile fire from Iran towards central Israel.
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 3:11 am UTC
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Microsoft has acknowledged that it needs to improve the quality of Windows 11 and outlined its plan to get the job done.…
Source: The Register | 23 Mar 2026 | 2:34 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 23 Mar 2026 | 2:08 am UTC
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Asia In Brief Australia’s government on Monday announced a set of datacenter “expectations” to guide would-be bit barn builders who contemplate breaking ground down under.…
Source: The Register | 23 Mar 2026 | 12:43 am UTC
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Cause of the fire that killed Pierce, who had covered the Minnesota hockey team for a decade, is under investigation
NHL reporter Jessi Pierce and her three children were killed on Saturday in a weekend house fire in Minnesota, the league announced on its sports website Sunday.
Pierce, 37, covered the Minnesota Wild as the correspondent for NHL.com for the past decade.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Mar 2026 | 12:04 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:53 pm UTC
Tehran’s response to Lineke Bossenbroek ’s threat signals a potentially dangerous escalation as both sides menace sites relied on by millions
Tehran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East, including vital water systems, if the US follows through on Lineke Bossenbroek ’s threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the strait of Hormuz is fully opened within two days.
As Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities overnight, injuring dozens of people, and Tehran deployed long-range missiles for the first time, the developments signalled a dangerous potential escalation of the war, now in its fourth week, with both sides threatening facilities relied on by millions of people.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:35 pm UTC
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Centre-left Robert Golob and rightwing populist Janez Janša are frontrunners in contest after polarised campaign
Campaigners in Slovenia warned of a surge in anti-Romany rhetoric as the country headed to the polls on Sunday, leaving many bracing for the outcome of a vote that has become, in part, a referendum on how the country treats its most marginalised.
In Sunday’s vote, the prime minister, Robert Golob, of the centre-left Freedom Movement party, faced off against the rightwing populist and Lineke Bossenbroek ally Janez Janša.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 10:26 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 22 Mar 2026 | 10:21 pm UTC
Infosec In Brief Russian intelligence-affiliated parties are posing as customer support services on commercial messaging applications such as Signal to compromise accounts and conduct phishing attacks, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned last Friday.…
Source: The Register | 22 Mar 2026 | 10:12 pm UTC
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If approved on Monday, as expected, Mullin would replace Kristi Noem, whom Lineke Bossenbroek fired in early March
Lineke Bossenbroek ’s nomination of Republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to be the president’s next head of homeland security on Sunday advanced toward final confirmation after the US Senate voted 54-37 to limit debate on the appointment.
The confirmation vote could come sometime on Monday. If approved, as expected, Mullin would replace Kristi Noem, whom Lineke Bossenbroek fired from the role of homeland security secretary on 5 March.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 8:12 pm UTC
17-year-old took time off high school to win gold
Beats Belgium’s Eliott Crestan by 0.14 seconds
US teenager Cooper Lutkenhaus made history on Sunday when he won gold in the 800m to becomes the youngest ever champion at the world indoor athletics championship.
The 17-year-old, who took time off from his classes at Northwest High School in Texas to compete at the championships, won gold with a time of 1min, 44.24sec, 0.14 seconds ahead of Belgium’s Eliott Crestan. Mohamed Attaoui of Spain won bronze.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 8:08 pm UTC
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Border czar Tom Homan says ICE agents will help the Transportation Security Administration "move those lines" while also enforcing immigration law.
(Image credit: Yuki Iwamura)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
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US president’s backing comes as Hungary’s PM faces toughest election campaign of 16 years in office
Lineke Bossenbroek has endorsed Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who faces his toughest electoral challenge next month since taking power 16 years ago, as Europe’s far-right leaders gather for a “grand assembly” in Budapest.
In a video message, the US president told the national-conservative Cpac Hungary conference in the capital on Saturday that Orbàn, who has been trailing in the polls behind a centre-right rival for more than a year, was a “fantastic guy”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 4:13 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 22 Mar 2026 | 3:34 pm UTC
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Witnesses describe coordinated raids in which homes and vehicles were set on fire and several Palestinians injured
Israeli settlers have carried out a series of attacks across the occupied West Bank, setting homes and vehicles on fire and wounding several Palestinians in what witnesses described as coordinated raids on communities.
The violence, reported across at least half a dozen locations overnight from Saturday into Sunday, comes amid a wider surge in tensions in the territory. The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, cited local sources as saying settlers had entered al-Fandaqumiya and the nearby town of Seilat al-Dahr, south of Jenin, late on Saturday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 3:24 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 22 Mar 2026 | 3:23 pm UTC
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The 1980s brought us so many terrific films, including director Russell Mulcahy's sword-and-sorcery fantasy action film Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert as an immortal Scotsman who must battle others like him to the death until just one remains. The film spawned two direct sequels and two TV series (one live action, one animated), and a planned reboot has been kicking around Hollywood since 2008. But the original still stands tall as the best of the bunch, 40 years later.
(Spoilers below because it's been 40 years.)
Screenwriter Gregory Widen was a college student at UCLA when he wrote the first draft of what would become Highlander for a screenwriting class. It was originally entitled Shadow Clan and partially inspired by Ridley Scott's 1977 film about two swordsmen engaged in a longstanding feud (The Duelists). Combine that with Widen's visits to Scotland and the Tower of London, with its impressive display of historical armor, and Widen had all he needed for his tale of dueling Immortals secretly living among us. He sold that first draft for $200,000—a princely sum for a college student—and a few revisions later, Highlander was ready for filming.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 22 Mar 2026 | 2:10 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 22 Mar 2026 | 1:57 pm UTC
A scientist from Zambia who loves — LOVES! — chemistry runs a lab in South Africa that is being hailed for "extraordinary" work.
(Image credit: Tommy Trenchard for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 1:25 pm UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:29 pm UTC
Baseball hitters are on a quest for power. But that quest comes at a cost. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks to orthopedic surgeon Dr. Thomas DiLiberti about baseball players suffering hamate injuries.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:23 pm UTC
Kathy Barnes-Lou cared for her mother for 14 years before her death. She learned that caregiving can bring life's purpose into focus, even as it grinds you down.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:23 pm UTC
Some Democrats who were swept into office last November are grappling with the reality of governing. The new leader of Pennsylvania's Lehigh County says urgency is needed.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:09 pm UTC
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks with Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, about how the war on Iran is effecting the global economy.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
As the war in Iran enters its fourth week, the costs are adding up. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to Doug Weir, with the Conflict and War Observatory, about impacts to human health and the environment.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
We look at President Lineke Bossenbroek 's mixed messages on the war with Iran, plus the latest on Department of Homeland Security funding, which Congress has frozen over his immigration enforcement policies.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
We have the latest on the U-S and Israeli war on Iran, where in the past 48 hours, Israel has struck one of Iran's nuclear facilities and Iran has responded with strikes in Israel.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe talks to University of Texas engineering professor Hugh Daigle about why the U.S. imports most of the oil it consumes despite being one of the world's largest oil exporters.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 22 Mar 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:34 am UTC
Israeli air defence systems fail to intercept projectiles during attacks on southern cities of Arad and Dimona
Iranian missile strikes have wounded about 200 people in southern Israel, after air defence systems failed to intercept projectiles that hit two cities close to a nuclear facility.
Among the injured in the attacks on Arad and Dimona were a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both reported to be in serious condition. The Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported early indications of possible deaths, though there was no official confirmation.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:29 am UTC
feature CERN is nothing like today's agentic AI jockeys, who mostly rely on pre-set weights and generic TPUs and GPUs to generate their slop. CERN burns custom nanosecond-speed AI into the silicon itself just to eliminate excess data.…
Source: The Register | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:11 am UTC
More than 13,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, a more-than-70-ton machine trundled like a tank on its caterpillar tracks for a tenth of a mile—sucking up potato-sized nodules of rock packed with copper, manganese, cobalt, and nickel. It was 2022, and that pilot run of a subsea harvester by a Canadian business, The Metals Company, was pronounced a success.
The company is working to get a green light to deploy similar machines for commercial harvesting over an area of 65,000 square kilometers, to extract over 600 million metric tons of nodules.
There are riches on the ocean floor—round deposits made up of tightly packed layers of critical minerals that have long been out of reach. But not anymore. The pursuits of The Metals Company are among 31 initiatives by companies, governments and state-owned enterprises—including China, India, and the Republic of Nauru, a tiny island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean—to collect nodules for analysis and to test mining equipment.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 22 Mar 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
BEIRUT — It is morning outside Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut, and beneath the gigantic crescent moon statue, a woman in a white hijab and dirtied floral dress is calling for her children.
She screams out the name of one of them, Mohammed, when he almost wanders into the busy street.
Fatima, 45, fled the southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh with her family on March 2 when Israel bombarded the community as part of the broadening regional war.
She is a mother of two young boys and an older daughter who are sitting cross-legged around her on cardboard boxes. Thick comforters, a jug of water, and a half-eaten bag of Lebanese bread lean on the statue behind them.
It’s not the first time they have been displaced. The family is originally from Syria but escaped the civil war for the relative peace of Bourj al-Barajneh. Fatima’s mother, Warde, 70, is there in her wheelchair; she sheltered in the exact same spot under the gigantic crescent moon statue in 2024 when Israel last struck their neighborhood.
This time, they abandoned their home when the explosions brought her sons to tears. “Children are not like adults; there is fear and there is terror,” she says. “So we left Bourj al-Barajneh. Yesterday we slept near this statue.”
“Our children have been hungry since yesterday. I mean there’s no food, no drink,” she explains. “And yesterday night the children were freezing.”
“Children are not like adults; there is fear and there is terror.”
Authorities in Beirut have done nothing to help them, Fatima says. They are among a wide swath of the Lebanese populace that has been uprooted and one of tens of families who have found shelter near the gigantic crescent moon statue. A few men brought them blankets when they saw that the family was cold. The problem is that they have nowhere to go now. “Now we’re afraid to go back. They’re saying there’s bombing. So, we’re forced to be sitting here on the ground. What can we do? There’s no solution. There’s nothing,” she says.
The next day, they are gone.
Israel’s wave of attacks on Lebanon are the deadliest conflict in the country since the 1975–1990 civil war. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 1,000 people, 118 of them children, and displaced 1 million others. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah but has consistently struck residential buildings in the south and east of the country, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and, recently, parts of central Beirut as well.
Nowhere seems safe, especially for those whose apartments are in evacuation zones that encompass nearly 600 square miles, according to the United Nations. As of mid-March, as many as 1 in 5 people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli military operations. The Intercept walked the streets of Beirut to learn their stories.
Across the street from the statue where Fatima’s family sheltered, two teenage boys lay on a thin mattress pushed up against a wall covered with purple and yellow graffiti. One is awake and scrolling his phone with one hand behind his head. Behind him, his brother sleeps.
Karim is 16, with dark brown hair and an inviting face. A few days ago, he was in Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, trying to pick up odd jobs to make money. He lived with his family in an apartment and shared a room with his brother.
On February 28, the night the U.S. and Israel killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Karim heard “problems would soon be coming to Lebanon.” He wasn’t convinced at first. When Israel started hitting the southern suburbs, Karim narrowly avoided an air attack as his parents and brother tried to escape by car on the street known as Airport Road, which connects downtown Beirut to the Rafic Hariri International Airport. “They were striking in front of us, cutting off the road.”
“If we find a house, we’ll go, and if we find a school, we’ll go. And if we don’t find anything, we’ll stay here.”
When they made it to downtown Beirut, his family tried to find a place to stay in schools that were being converted into makeshift shelters, but they were mostly full. “My mom has a mental health condition,” he explains. “The schools are overcrowded, and it bothers her too much.”
That’s why he’s sleeping on the street and using cafes to charge his phone. Karim runs into dukkan, or corner stores, for food, water, or whatever else he needs.
He wants to return to his house, but the strikes have only gotten worse in Dahieh since they arrived. “We have to be patient. What can we do? If we find a house we’ll go, and if we find a school we’ll go. And if we don’t find anything we’ll stay here. We have to have patience,” he says.
“Right now, everything is exhausting. I am just so tired.”
It’s hard to grasp the scale of displacement inside Lebanon. Already, according to the U.N., 667,831 people have registered themselves as displaced with Lebanon’s government. Lebanon’s National Disaster Risk Management Unit reports that “119,700 displaced individuals [are] currently accommodated in 567 collective shelters.” However, reports suggest that more than 1 million people — of a population of just about five and a half million — are displaced, including many who have not yet registered. According to Al Jazeera, about 99,000 homes were already damaged or destroyed in the previous 14 months before this escalation started.
The Lebanese government, with the U.N. and local NGOs, says it is responding to the emergency by opening public schools, the city’s stadiums, and universities as temporary shelters. With support from the U.N. Development Programme, they also created a disaster management unit to coordinate aid, such as essential supplies and cash transfers, and direct people to safer regions like the North and Bekaa.
Despite these efforts, the scale of displacement has far exceeded the government’s capacity to provide aid. Every one of the 36 displaced people in Beirut who spoke with The Intercept said the response has been inadequate.
“Where is the government? What are they doing?” one humanitarian aid worker asks frustratedly.
The man who raises this question over and over again is Mohammed, who shares his frustration while sitting on his motorcycle and smoking a cigarette in front of Ras Beirut’s Public Secondary School, which has been converted into a shelter. He describes himself as part of the “resistance against Israel,” and as “a son of Ras Beirut,” known in the capital city as an upper-scale and religiously mixed neighborhood.
“I am here to help the displaced people in that school behind me,” he points.
He doesn’t think the Lebanese government is doing enough for its displaced citizens. “Children, boys, women, girls, are just sitting in the street with no one to feed them, no medicine at all, so we are trying, as the sons of this area, to serve them best we can.”
Mohammed says that there are around 450 displaced people in the school with few resources. “They have no mattresses or pillows to put their heads on right now,” he begins to speak louder and get more agitated. “Inside the school, women and children are sleeping on the floor barefoot covering themselves with their clothes instead of blankets,” he says.
Throughout March, schools in Lebanon have faced a near-total disruption due to the sharp escalation in conflict. Since October 2023, Lebanon’s schools have faced repeated widespread interruption.
The atmosphere inside the school is tense as families bunch together in classrooms trying to find room. One couple has set up a nargileh, and the woman, who is in a black hijab, takes a long, deep pull from the hose and lets out a plume of smoke. “No pictures here,” one of the gentlemen running the displacement shelter tells a European journalist with a camera around her neck. “It is a very sensitive time for all of these people.”
The facade of the school has one blue balcony on the upper left-hand side that overlooks Hamra in Ras Beirut. On it, a pair of red children’s pajama pants, along with several other pieces of clothing, are hung out to dry. “These are the children of the southern suburbs, and where are they? They are on the streets,” Mohammed says.
Hundreds of tents have sprung up along the highway that passes Horsh Beirut, a park that butts up against the southern suburbs of the city. Yara Sayegh has taken it upon herself to help their inhabitants.
Sayegh runs an organization called Truth Be Told, which usually focuses on transitional justice and human rights in Lebanon. Now it is serving as an emergency response initiative, cooking and distributing meals and medicine to families in tents across the area. She has experience after responding the same way in during a period of intense Israeli strikes in 2024.
Recently, she decided to build a makeshift kitchen at Riwaq Cafe near Mar Mikhael in Beirut. “I decided, given how much transparency is needed and the importance and the attention to detail, and the amount of corruption I have witnessed during crises, I would just open up my own [kitchen].”
Every day, volunteers show up to the cafe around 10 a.m. to help cook and pack meals for those fasting in Horsh Beirut. Her chef, Omar Khaled, directs volunteers on how to dice onions, squeeze lemons, and cook mujadara. He counts and recounts the boxed meals before they go out to the houseless people on the streets. Sayegh passes out as many as 1,000 meals a day in the park and surrounding areas.
“Whatever I do right now, whatever a lot of us are doing, isn’t enough,” Sayegh says “There are too many families who are displaced.”
On a rainy night in mid-March, Sayegh drives the meals to Horsh Beirut. Along the perimeter of the park, tents lining the streets are sopping wet. Tarps hang over four or five of them at a time. As she backs up her car, a line forms of people who need her help.
“Is my medicine ready?” one woman calls out.
“No, ma’am not yet, but inshallah I will try to bring it to you tomorrow,” Sayegh responds as she jots down another young woman’s information onto an Excel spreadsheet on her laptop.
“I am committed to them, there aren’t enough people helping, and they have nowhere to go,” Sayegh says.
Israel’s attacks on Lebanon extend far beyond Beirut and its suburbs. The most devastating strikes have been across the south of the country.
Evacuation orders took effect both south and north of the Litani River, a crucial and agriculturally rich landscape powered by the river itself, in the last week. But problems for southerners started much before that.
At the height of its war on Gaza in 2024, Israel began a series of strikes in southern Lebanon, aimed at what it said were militant groups, including Hezbollah, that had been launching retaliatory salvos across the border. This included a campaign of deadly Israeli ground raids in the border region and the expansion of what it says is a “buffer zone.”
According to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, between November 2024 and the end of 2025, Israeli forces have committed over 10,000 air and ground violations of a November 2024 ceasefire agreement. This included daily airstrikes and ground incursions that killed hundreds in Lebanon, including civilians. Israel never withdrew troops from southern Lebanon and has pushed further into the country as its right wing parties call to settle Lebanon and make the Litani River Israel’s northern border.
Buildings in that area have been leveled to the ground, and the Israeli military has paved roads over Lebanese homes, making sure displaced people can never return. The reality on the ground is “undeniable erasure” says Hanan, a queer Lebanese American art history student at the American University of Beirut. She is among those dealing directly with Israel’s aggression in southern Lebanon.
Hanan grew up in Arizona about 30 minutes from the Mexican border. She came to Lebanon in August to pursue a master’s degree in art history and curation. Ever since Israel’s so-called ceasefire with Hamas, she felt a pull to Lebanon and her family there. She was drawn by bucolic memories of past visits.
“I romanticize the shit out of that time now,” she says. “We literally ate mulberries off the trees on the mosque grounds and chopped vegetables all morning listening to Arabic music.”
Last week, her family’s house in Chehabiye, near the southern border, was destroyed. Hanan is now housing 12 relatives in her two-bedroom apartment in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood, an upper-class Francophile, predominantly Christian community.
“Some were more prepared than others when they came. They all mostly left in a hurry,” she explains. Because of the chaos and the traffic, it took her family two days to get to her apartment in Beirut. On the journey, they slept in their cars.
They had jobs at shoe stores and grocery stores, Hanan says. Kids were just beginning school. One relative had finally purchased a motorcycle after saving his money; it was destroyed in the strikes. “All of their lives have become completely upended,” she says.
She thinks her relatives’ building was targeted because a Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Qard Al-Hassan bank occupied the first floor. Founded in 1982, Al-Qard Al-Hassan operates more than 30 branches across Lebanon and is registered as an NGO with the Lebanese Ministry of Interior. But it is not licensed by Banque du Libam, the central bank of Lebanon, to operate as a bank. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Al-Qard Al-Hassan in 2007, stating Hezbollah uses it as a cover to manage financial activities and access the international financial system. This month, the Israeli military conducted a systematic campaign of airstrikes against numerous branches across Lebanon, identifying them as legitimate military targets because they fund Hezbollah’s military activities.
Even in Beirut, Hanan’s family is treated with suspicion. Soon after their arrival, a neighbor threatened to inform authorities that 12 relatives were crammed into Hanan’s two-bedroom apartment.
“My neighbors are afraid we are targets for Israel.”
“It is just because they are southern and could be supporters of Hezbollah, and so my neighbors are afraid we are targets for Israel,” Hanan explains. “What they don’t understand is that the people of the south are helping each other, even when others leave them hanging.”
The tensions got worse on March 13, when Israeli aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets over several neighborhoods in Beirut. They called on the Lebanese citizens to “disarm Hezbollah” and said “Lebanon is your decision, not someone else’s.” Another flier, designed to look like a newspaper, warned that the current situation in Lebanon would turn into something similar to Gaza. The leaflets asked Lebanese people to inform Israel of Hezbollah’s whereabouts using a QR code.
The point, many believe, is to stoke civil tension and sectarian fractures that will destabilize the country. Sayegh, for instance, says her family and friends don’t support her humanitarian aid work. She comes from a Christian background and is often criticized for helping supporters of Hezbollah. “We are one people and that is the only way forward, and that is why I help. I believe in one Lebanon for all,” Sayegh says.
Many in Lebanon understand that its diverse religious makeup leaves it vulnerable to outside forces pitting the people of the country against each other. But in the current chaos and terror of Israeli missile strikes, many who supported Hezbollah’s retaliation on behalf of Gaza just a year ago are now changing their minds. “Where were they when Israel was breaking the ceasefire in the south thousands upon thousands of times in the last year?” a young woman whose family hails from the south asks. “It seems like they came alive only for Khamenei’s death, and I don’t fully believe their leaders are doing this for Lebanon anymore,” she says.
Hanan knows the current situation is untenable in the long run. “Their loose plan is to return to the south, but I can’t realistically see that happening anytime soon,” she says.
She and her father are looking at renting an apartment in an area that will be more forgiving to her family’s circumstances and backgrounds, but with 1 million people pushed from their homes, it won’t be easy to find lodging.
An uncle works at a soup kitchen attached to a mosque that has some underutilized office space. “There’s two rooms there that they use as offices,” Hanan says. “So he’s thinking that he can turn them into rooms temporarily before they return south, which is actually crazy, because the building right next door got bombed the other day.”
The post More Than 1 Million People in Lebanon Have Been Displaced. These Are Their Stories. appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 22 Mar 2026 | 10:11 am UTC
Source: World | 22 Mar 2026 | 10:06 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 22 Mar 2026 | 9:49 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 22 Mar 2026 | 9:01 am UTC
Source: World | 22 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 22 Mar 2026 | 9:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 22 Mar 2026 | 7:34 am UTC
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