Category: World

Gold is typically seen as a safe haven, especially in times of war and other crises. Notwithstanding the ongoing war in Iran, the price is steady. What’s driving the stability?

A well-known stock market proverb says: “Buy when the cannons are firing.” In other words, in times of war and uncertainty, people should invest.

Those looking to protect their wealth and assets often turn to gold — even though gold is rarely cheap in turbulent times. In times of crises, such as a pandemic or a war, demand for gold typically rises. This stronger demand tends to push prices higher, as it did in the first weeks of this year.

If prices continue to rise, investments in gold not only preserve wealth but also potentially increase it. So is the current environment a boon for speculators?

Gold is generally less of a speculative investment and more of a safe-haven asset. This has been reflected in the gold price’s recent development, which has repeatedly reached new highs — mirroring the tense global political situation. According to the comparison portal Gold.de, the precious metal reached its all-time high on January 28, 2026, at $5,417.60 (€4,721.40) per ounce.

However, during the Iran war, the price has not continued to rise despite increased market uncertainty. One week after the war began on February 28, gold briefly traded at $5,327.42, but has since stabilized within a range of $5,000-$5,200 per ounce.

For Michael Hsueh, head of the Metals Research division at Deutsche Bank, this does not come as a surprise. Although gold prices tend to be higher on average after a crisis event, there are “greater differences between individual cases than the average might suggest.” He told DW that Deutsche Bank observed a similar pattern last year following Israel’s attacks on Iran.

Gold is not getting more expensive

Carsten Fritsch, a commodities analyst at Commerzbank, has noticed similarities with the current conflict: “The gold price has not benefited from the uncertainty caused by the Iran war,” he told DW. “On the contrary, it is actually trading lower than before the war began.”

He says there are two factors at play here. First, gold is traded in US dollars. When the dollar strengthens, gold becomes more expensive for buyers using other currencies. As a result, demand from those buyers declines, which tends to push the price down.

Second, rising oil prices are driving up inflation. When inflation increases, it becomes less likely that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. If investors expect interest rates to stay higher, gold becomes less attractive because it does not pay interest, while other investments do.

An overheated gold market

Wolfgang Wrzesniok-Roßbach, managing director of Fragold GmbH and an advisor to private and institutional investors, is not surprised by the current sideways movement in the gold price. In his view, it reflects a cooling of the market.

“The rise in the gold price and the prices of other precious metals in the last quarter and in January was disconnected from the actual fundamental data and had therefore become completely exaggerated.”

In his assessment, the sharp increase in prices had real consequences for demand. For example, he said that jewelry demand — an important factor in the gold market — fell in the fourth quarter of last year to its lowest level in the past 15 years.

Central banks, he said, were also cautious because of the high price. Although they still bought 230 tons of gold, this was the second-weakest fourth-quarter demand from central banks in the past five years.

He attributes the bull run in the gold market primarily to price-driving forces, notably the purchases by investors and speculators who had previously bet on falling prices. To limit their losses, they now had to buy gold at higher price levels, he explained.

“The sharp decline on January 30 and afterward clearly revealed how exaggerated the previous surge had been.”

Carsten Fritsch shares this view. “The price increase in January was an exaggeration and could no longer be explained by the usual influencing factors. Greed and the fear of missing out on the price rally also played an important role.”

All that glitters is not gold

Gold is not the only commodity currently experiencing a boom. Silver is also in strong demand and therefore expensive. However, Wrzesniok-Roßbach does not see a price bubble in this precious metal.

“As far as the silver price is concerned, I actually see it as fundamentally very well supported, and in my opinion we will have to get used to a permanently high price level and thus a complete revaluation.”

Frank Schallenberger, a commodities expert at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), disagrees. In his view, demand for silver is likely to weaken. “In the coming months, the slowing momentum in the solar industry, the weak global economy, and a further decline in jewelry demand are likely to weigh on the silver price.”

What’s next for silver?

Asked for a forecast, he painted a more nuanced picture of the silver market.

“It is uncertain whether the silver market will show a supply deficit for the sixth consecutive year in 2026. If sales of silver ETCs [Exchange Traded Commodities – the ed.] continue over the course of the year, the market balance could actually shift into a supply surplus,” he said.

In contrast, Wolfgang Wrzesniok-Roßbach believes silver prices are likely to keep climbing. He points to the global push toward electrification — particularly the expansion of solar power — as the key driver. Because of this trend, he says he would not be surprised if silver eventually stabilizes at levels above $100 per ounce.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/iran-us-israel-war-gold-silver-dollar-oil-inflation/a-76381602

HOLLYWOOD actor Timothée Chalamet missed out on Oscars glory — and had to endure a string of jibes during the ceremony.

The Marty Supreme star was the butt of jokes having angered the arts world by stating nobody cared about ballet and opera.

And his comments came back to haunt him as Academy Awards host Conan O’Brien said: “Security is very tight tonight. There’s concerns about attacks from the ballet and opera communities.”

He waded in again later, saying to Timothée: “We’re vibing, right?”

He then told viewers: “He doesn’t think so.”

Alexandre Singh, who won Best Live Action Short Film for Two People Exchanging Saliva, also took a pop during his speech and said: “We believe art can change people’s souls.

“Maybe it takes ten years, but we can change society through art, through creativity, through theatre and ballet — and cinema.”

Timothée, 30, also had to sit through a musical number from movie Sinners, with ballerina Misty Copeland — who had also criticised the star for his cultural views — dancing during the song.

Timothée was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar but lost to Sinners star Michael B. Jordan.

The backlash was sparked by his comment: “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this any more.”

He quickly added, “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there”, but the damage was done.

His remarks were widely rebuked, with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli mocking the star by publicly inviting him to one of his opera performances.

Onlookers told The Sun Timothée and girlfriend Kylie Jenner, 28, walked out of the ceremony for an hour amid the drubbing.

They said: “Timothee and Kylie were replaced by seat fillers for an hour.

“It seems like he had enough of being the butt of the jokes.

“They only came back just before the Best Actress and Best Actor categories were announced.”

Timothée was seen leaving the Vanity Fair after-party in the early hours of yesterday morning with Kylie, who is part of the Kardashian reality TV family.

Kylie’s ex-partner, rapper Travis Scott, the father of her two children Stormi, eight, and Aire, four, also later appeared to mock Timothee’s defeat by sharing a photograph of Michael wiping away tears as he accepted his award.

Timothée attempted to shrug off the loss at the Vanity Fair do, where he was also joined by Kylie’s sister, Kendall, and half-sister, Kim Kardashian.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/16093875/timothee-chalamet-kylie-jenner-oscars-walk-out/

A GLAMOROUS fashion influencer has tragically been found dead after posting a mysterious message to followers saying she had been “raised with violence”.

Aysegul Eraslan, 27, was discovered unresponsive in her Istanbul apartment in the Kagithane district on Friday.

She was found after concerned relatives raised the alarm when she failed to answer her door.

The fashion designer and social media personality was known to millions of Turkish people through the popular competition show Iste Benin Stilim (This is My Style).

In the hours before her body was found, she posted a series of chilling messages – including a bloodied note and a request for followers to care for her dogs – on her Instagram account.

In one post, Eraslan wrote: “There are things I could not share with you, things you didn’t know, things I never told you”.

“The only thing I know is that I was a very good person. I never wronged anyone,” she added.

In a second, more anguished message, she talked about her troubled childhood, saying she had “never known the love of a mother or a father” and that she had been “raised with a great deal of violence”.

She signed off with a plea for her cherished dogs to be cared for.

After relatives had been unable to get in contact with her, they alerted police.

Cops forced entry to the influencer’s apartment and found her unresponsive.

She was sadly declared dead at the scene.

Her body has since been sent to the Istanbul Forensic Medicine Institute where an autopsy will be conducted to find her cause of death.

Police have also launched an investigation and said they are yet to formally establish the circumstances surrounding her death.

Eraslan’s close friend Kardelen Toprak confirmed her death on social media.

Toprak said the case was being treated as a suspicious death.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16092644/tragic-influencer-dead-after-cryptic-violence-message/

DRIVERS could soon be unbound by worldly problems such as traffic jams and road closures – and may be able to fly right over them.

The Federal Aviation Administration has greenlit eight different projects testing new flying car technology across the nation.

The FAA announced the next step of a pilot program focused on the testing and eventual commercialization of what are essentially flying cars.

However, they’re formally known as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles.

Eight different projects across 26 states have been greenlit, each seeing the FAA cooperate with aircraft manufacturers, operators, and state partners in the collaborative testing process.

Officials say that the testing could bring the “flying cars” to American skies for consumer use in as little as five years’ time.

“There will be a time, probably within the next five years, where you’ll be able to essentially order [an eVTOL] like an Uber,” said FAA administrator Bryan Bedford to Arkansas ABC affiliate KHBS.

Bedford elaborated that the goal is not only for these products to feel like stepping into a commercial airline, but also to be as safe as one.

“The certification process will be rigorous, and we are doing that through significant flight testing and evaluation,” Bedford said.

“Second thing we are doing is to integrate them into the airspace safely with all the other commercial traffic that exists, and the principal reason we have to modernize,” he continued.

Bedford also stressed that the FAA is ensuring enough charging infrastructure for these battery-operated vehicles exist before they go live with widespread use.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/motors/16093659/faa-testing-flying-cars-america/

“We want to make sure they are as weak as possible,” an Israeli military spokesperson said.

Israel said on Monday (Mar 16) it had detailed plans for at least three more weeks of war as it pounded sites across Iran overnight, while Iranian drone attacks temporarily shut Dubai airport and hit a key oil facility in the United Arab Emirates.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is now entering its third week with no clear end in sight, largely shutting the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flow, pushing up energy prices and raising fears of a spike in global inflation.

US President Donald Trump on Sunday called for a coalition of nations to help reopen the strait and said the US-led NATO defence alliance faced a “very bad” future if its members failed to help.

But while allies voiced support for diplomatic efforts to reopen the route, they were cautious about joining any military action.

ISRAEL STILL HAS ‘THOUSANDS’ OF TARGETS IN IRAN

Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters there were detailed operational plans for the war with Iran for the next three weeks, and other plans extending further ahead.

Israel has said it wants to weaken Iran’s capacity to threaten it, striking ballistic missile infrastructure, nuclear facilities and the security apparatus, and that it still has thousands of targets to hit.

“We want to make sure that they are as weak as possible, this regime, and that we degrade all their capabilities, all parts and all wings of their security establishment,” Shoshani said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi for his part said Tehran had not asked for a ceasefire or exchanged messages with the US, according to Iran’s semi-official Student News Network.

In a post on X, Araqchi also said that some “neighbouring states” that host US forces and permit attacks on Iran were also actively encouraging the killing of Iranians.

“Stances should be promptly clarified,” he said.

He said 200 children were among the hundreds of Iranian civilians killed in US or Israeli bombings.

Iran’s Mehr news agency said five people had been killed and seven wounded in overnight strikes on Markazi province in central Iran. It said that in Khomein city, in the same province, a boys’ school had been targeted, causing some damage to the surrounding area. No casualties were reported.

Fars News Agency reported that several civilians had been killed in a strike near Tehran’s Martyrs’ Square, without giving figures.

Rescue workers in Tehran worked to pull people from the wreckage of a building in what an Iranian Red Crescent aid worker said was an entirely residential alleyway.

“Rescue teams are currently pulling people out from under the rubble,” he said without giving his name.

ISRAEL CLAIMS STRIKES ON IRAN’S SPACE PROGRAMME

The Israeli military said on Monday it was carrying out air strikes on Tehran, Shiraz and Tabriz.

It said its Air Force had also struck sites linked to Iran’s space program, including destroying a research facility in Tehran involved in developing a satellite launched in 2024.

One Tehran resident told Reuters that there had been no internet overnight and Iranians felt isolated from the world.

“People are being killed,” Shahnaz, 62, said via WhatsApp. “Just days before Nowruz (Iranian New Year, on March 20), but people are not in the mood to celebrate. When will this end?”

Asked if she supported the Islamic Republic, Shahnaz said: “No, I don’t. How can I? They killed my granddaughter in (January’s) protests. We want this regime to go. We want this misery to end.”

In Israel, air raid sirens warned of Iranian missiles. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Tehran had launched attacks on areas In Tel Aviv, the US al-Dhafra air base in Abu Dhabi, the US naval base in Bahrain, and Bahrain’s Sheikh Issa air base.

Furthermore, oil loading operations at the UAE port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman were suspended following an Iranian drone strike.

Fujairah is a key exit point for the UAE’s Murban crude – a volume equivalent to roughly 1 per cent of global demand.

Flights at Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, were suspended for several hours after a drone strike on a nearby fuel storage facility sent plumes of black smoke into the sky. Saudi Arabia intercepted 34 drones in its eastern region in one hour, state media said. No injuries were reported in either incident.

Later on, Reuters reporters also heard booms in the Qatari capital, Doha.

OIL SLIPS ON BESSENT SHIPPING COMMENTS

Despite the turbulence, oil prices, which had been above US$100 a barrel, fell sharply and stocks rallied after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC the US was “fine” to let some Iranian fuel vessels sail through the strait, and believed Indian and Chinese tankers had also passed through.

Ship-tracking data showed a Pakistan-bound oil tanker had passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, indicating that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/israel-military-iran-us-war-strikes-three-week-5996936

President Donald Trump was warned that attacking Iran could trigger retaliation against U.S. Gulf allies despite his claims on Monday ​that Tehran’s reaction came as a surprise, said a U.S. official and two sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports.
Pre-war ‌intelligence assessments did not say that Iran’s response was “a guarantee, but it certainly was on the list of potential outcomes,” said one source, who like the other two requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

The president twice on Monday said that Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait were ​a surprise, the first time at a Kennedy Center board meeting in the White House.
“They (Iran) weren’t supposed to go after all ​these other countries in the Middle East,” he said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”
Trump’s assertion followed other administration claims ⁠that have not been backed by U.S. intelligence reporting, such as that Iran would soon have a missile capable of hitting the U.S. ​homeland and that it would need two to four weeks to make a nuclear bomb and would then use it.

Those allegations and an imminent ​threat posed by Iran to the U.S. and its forces in the region have been among varying reasons that Trump and some top aides have given to justify his decision to join Israel in launching their air war against Iran on February 28.
Trump was also briefed ahead of the operation that Tehran would likely seek ​to close the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, according to two other sources familiar with the matter.
Over the past two weeks, Iranian drones ​and missiles have struck targets in the Gulf states that have included U.S. military bases and an Emirates base hosting French troops, civilian structures, including hotels, airports, and ‌energy ⁠facilities.
Iran has also halted almost all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of oil supplies move, causing global energy prices to spike.

Democratic lawmakers emerged from administration briefings on the war last week saying they heard of no imminent threat that required the U.S. and Israel to launch the war.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to ​comment.

WARNINGS OF A REGIONAL WAR

The U.S. ​official said that Trump was ⁠briefed before the war that striking Iran could trigger a broader regional conflict that would include Iranian retaliation against Gulf capitals, especially if Tehran saw those countries condoning or actively supporting the U.S. attacks.
Trump repeated his ​claim later on Monday during a signing event in the Oval Office. He was asked if he ​was surprised that ⁠nobody had briefed him about that risk that Iran would strike back at the Gulf states.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-was-warned-likely-iranian-retaliation-gulf-allies-sources-say-2026-03-17/

Jessica Alba and Cash Warren’s custody agreement of their three children has been revealed.

A judge signed off on the exes’ divorce agreement on March 16, and according to the documents obtained by Page Six, Alba and Warren will share joint legal and physical custody of all of their kids — daughters Honor Marie, 17, and Haven Garner, 14, as well as son Hayes, 8.

The docs state that neither Alba, 44, or Warren, 47, will pay child support to one another, and they’re ordered not to discuss any litigation or make any disparaging remarks about one another in front of their minor children.

Their multi-million dollar divorce settlement also states that they’ll divide anything considered community property equally — including homes, art and furniture — that they purchased from the time they got married on May 19, 2008 to their Dec. 27, 2024 separation date.

They’re entitled to half of each other’s profits from the movies and television projects they each made while they were married.

Alba’s acting credits in those years include “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” “Valentine’s Day” and more, while Warren’s more notable projects he produced include “30 for 30” and the doc “Crips and Bloods: Made In America.”

As for Alba’s The Honest Company, Warren will receive 50 percent of its restricted shares.

The two are additionally not paying one another any spousal support.

Alba and Warren — who were married for 16 years — finalized their divorce in February, two years after they separated.

The “Honey” star announced their split in January 2025, writing on Instagram, “I’ve been on a journey of self realization and transformation for years – both as an individual and in partnership with Cash.”

“I’m proud of how we’ve grown in our marriage over the last 20 years and it’s now time for us to embark on a new chapter of growth and evolution as individuals,” she continued. “We are moving forward with love, kindness and respect for each other and will forever be family.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/16/celebrity-news/details-of-jessica-alba-and-cash-warrens-custody-agreement-revealed-as-they-finalize-divorce/

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is facing a lawsuit from teenagers who say the company facilitated child pornography by allowing the creation of sexually explicit images of them.

The lawsuit against xAI was filed Monday in a federal California court by three young women whose images and videos were altered by a Grok user without their knowledge to show them nude or in otherwise overtly sexual ways.

Grok is a chatbot developed by xAI and hosted on Musk’s social media platform X. xAI did not respond to a request for comment made via its parent company.

The legal action is part of the fallout since last year’s controversial release of new Grok features that X called “spicy” mode.

Lawyers for the young women said Grok’s ability to alter images and video had been created and released by xAI solely to drive use of the chatbot and X.

They likened the way images of the young women were changed to “a rag doll brought to life through the dark arts”.

“xAI—and its founder Elon Musk— saw a business opportunity,” the complaint says. “They knew Grok could produce such results, including by using the images and videos of children, and publicly released it anyway.”

The young women are seeking unspecified damages, as well as an immediate order barring Grok from creating such images.

“Their lives have been shattered by the devastating loss of privacy, dignity, and personal safety”, lawyers for the young women said in their complaint.

Two of the teenagers behind the lawsuit are under the age of 18, but all three are withholding their names from the public in order to protect their privacy.

One of the young plaintiffs said she found out about the imagery after she received an anonymous message on Instagram pointing her toward images and videos, including her high school yearbook photo, which had been altered to show her in sexually explicit actions and full nudity.

The material was being shared on a Discord server, a private chat space on that platform, and included similar imagery that had also been altered using Grok of at least 18 other women who were minors, according to the complaint.

The other two women who are suing xAI also found fake sexually explicit imagery of them online, which was found to have been created via Grok.

Grok was launched in 2023 by Musk’s xAI. The company, along with X, is now part of Musk’s SpaceX company, which took over xAI last month.

Last year, xAI released what it called Grok Imagine or “spicy mode”, with features that allowed Grok users to prompt it to create fake images that were more sexual in nature.

The mode even carried out the “undressing” of real people using their images online, from Taylor Swift to more average users.

In less than two weeks, Grok had created millions of sexualized images, including more than 20,000 of children, according to a sampling of the images conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Musk initially downplayed Grok’s ability to create fake sexualized content, saying in January he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” and putting the blame on users of the feature.

“Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests”, Musk wrote on X.

As such online abuse continued this year, however, UK watchdog Ofcom, the European Commission and California each launched investigations into the feature’s ability to create sexualized images of real people, particularly children.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk2lzmm22eo

Gulf Arab states did not ask the U.S. to go to war with Iran, but many are now urging it not to stop short by leaving the Islamic ​Republic still able to threaten the Gulf’s oil lifeline and the economies that depend on it, three Gulf sources told Reuters.
At the same time, these sources and five Western and Arab diplomats said Washington ‌was pressing Gulf states to join the U.S.-Israeli war. According to three of them, President Donald Trump wants to show regional backing for the campaign, to bolster its international legitimacy as well as support at home.

“There is a wide feeling across the Gulf that Iran has crossed every red line with every Gulf country,” said Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Saudi-based Gulf Research Center and familiar with government thinking.
“At first we defended them and opposed the war,” he said. “But once they began directing strikes at us, they became an enemy. There is no other way to classify them.”

IRAN ​ATTACKS THE SIX GULF STATES

Tehran has already demonstrated its reach, attacking airports, ports, oil facilities and commercial hubs in the six Gulf states with missiles and drones while disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – the artery carrying ​about a fifth of global oil and underpinning Gulf economies.

The attacks have reinforced Gulf fears that leaving Iran with any significant offensive weaponry or arms manufacturing capacity could embolden it to hold the ⁠region’s energy lifeline hostage whenever tensions rise.
As the war entered its third week, with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes intensifying and Iran firing at U.S. bases and civilian targets across the Gulf, a Gulf source said the prevailing mood among leaders was ​unmistakable: that Trump should comprehensively degrade Iran’s military capacity.
The alternative, the source said, was living under constant threat. Unless Iran was severely weakened, he said, it would continue to hold the region to ransom.
Predominantly Shi’ite Muslim Iran has often viewed its Sunni Arab Gulf neighbours – ​close allies of the U.S. that host American military bases – with deep suspicion, even if relations with Qatar and Oman have generally been less fraught.

Over the years, Iran and its regional allies have been accused of attacks on Gulf energy installations, not least a 2019 strike on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities – for which Iran denied responsibility – that halved Saudi output and rattled energy markets.
For Gulf leaders, inaction is now the greater risk.
The effect of Iran’s attacks this month goes far beyond specific material damage, not only disrupting oil flows but damaging a hard-won image of stability and ​security that has underpinned Gulf countries’ attempts to expand trade and tourism and rely less on fossil fuel exports.
“If the Americans pull out before the task is complete, we’ll be left to confront Iran on our own,” Sager said.

GULF FEARS OF ​TRIGGERING WIDER WAR

In response to questions about those concerns, the White House said the U.S. was “crushing (Iran’s) ability to shoot these weapons or produce more”, and that Trump was “in close contact with our partners in the Middle East”.

Of the Gulf countries, only the United Arab Emirates responded. ‌It said that ⁠it “does not seek to be drawn into conflicts or escalation” but affirmed its right to “take all necessary measures” to safeguard its sovereignty, security and integrity, and ensure residents’ safety.
Sources in the region said unilateral military action by any Gulf state remained off the table because only collective intervention would avoid exposing individual countries to retaliation.
Moreover, consensus is still elusive. The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council – Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE – have held just one Zoom call, and no Arab summit has been convened to discuss coordinated action.
Gulf leaders remain deeply fearful of triggering a broader, uncontrollable conflagration.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that Gulf partners were “stepping up even more” and were willing to “go on the offense” while already working with ​Washington on collective and integrated air defenses, though he did not ​specify what else they might do.
A senior UAE official said his ⁠country had chosen restraint, after Iran said the U.S. military had used the UAE to strike Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal.
Yet Sager said Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival for regional influence, could be forced to retaliate if Iran crossed red lines, notably with strikes on major oil facilities or desalination plants or causing heavy casualties:
“In that case, Saudi Arabia would ​have no choice but to intervene.”
He said Riyadh would nevertheless try to calibrate any response to avoid further escalation.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gulf-states-press-us-neutralise-iran-good-hormuz-crisis-deepens-2026-03-16/

Several U.S. allies rebuffed Donald Trump’s call on Monday to ​send warships to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, drawing criticism from the U.S. president, who accused Western partners of ingratitude after decades of support.
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is in its third week with no end in ‌sight. The critical Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flow, remains largely closed off, raising energy prices and fears of inflation.

The conflict has already imposed economic costs on U.S. allies, who were not consulted before the airstrikes on Iran and who have endured months of harsh criticism and bellicose threats from Trump since he returned to office.
A number of U.S. partners, including Germany, Spain and Italy, said they had no immediate plans to send ships to help reopen the strategic waterway, which Iran has effectively shut with drones and naval mines.
“We lack the mandate from the ​United Nations, the European Union or NATO required under the Basic Law,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Berlin, adding that Washington and Israel had not consulted Germany before launching the war.

Trump, speaking at a White House event in Washington, ​said many countries had told him they were prepared to help, but voiced frustration with some long‑standing allies.
“Some are very enthusiastic about it, and some aren’t,” he said, without offering specifics. “Some ⁠are countries that we’ve helped for many, many years. We’ve protected them from horrible outside sources, and they weren’t that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm matters to me.”

ISRAEL STILL HAS ‘THOUSANDS’ OF TARGETS IN IRAN

Israel said on Monday it had drawn up ​detailed plans for at least three more weeks of war as it pounded sites across Iran overnight, while Iranian drone attacks temporarily shut Dubai airport and hit a key oil facility in the United Arab Emirates.
Israel troops pushed into new parts of southern Lebanon, ​part of an expanding operation after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.

In a joint statement, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain warned that any “significant Israeli ground offensive would have devastating humanitarian consequences and could lead to a protracted conflict,” and that such an operation “must be averted.”
Israel has said it wants to weaken Iran’s capacity to threaten it, striking ballistic missile infrastructure, nuclear facilities and the security apparatus, and that it still has thousands of targets to hit.
“We want to make sure that they are as weak as possible, this regime, and ​that we degrade all their capabilities, all parts and all wings of their security establishment,” Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it would target U.S. industrial facilities in the Middle East and urged people living ​near U.S.-owned plants to leave.

Iran also responded to Trump’s threat that he might attack oil facilities on Kharg Island, the country’s main oil hub, if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces destroyed military targets on Kharg on Friday.
A spokesperson for the armed ‌forces, Abolfazl Shekarchi, ⁠said Iran would target oil and gas facilities in any country from which U.S. attacks were launched on Kharg Island.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran had not asked for a ceasefire or exchanged messages with the U.S., according to Iran’s semi-official Student News Network.
In a post on X, Araqchi also said some “neighbouring states” that host U.S. forces and permit attacks on Iran were actively encouraging the killing of Iranians.
He said 200 children were among the hundreds of Iranian civilians killed in U.S. or Israeli bombings.
Rescue workers in Tehran worked to pull people from the wreckage of a building in what an Iranian Red Crescent aid worker said was an entirely residential alleyway.

ISRAEL CLAIMS STRIKES ON IRAN’S SPACE PROGRAM

Israel said its air force had struck sites linked to Iran’s space program, ​including destroying a research facility in Tehran involved in developing a ​satellite launched in 2024.
One Tehran resident told Reuters that ⁠there had been no internet overnight and Iranians felt isolated from the world.
“People are being killed,” Shahnaz, 62, said via WhatsApp. “Just days before Nowruz (Iranian New Year, on March 20), but people are not in the mood to celebrate. When will this end?”
Asked if she supported the Islamic Republic, Shahnaz said: “No, I don’t. How can I? They killed my granddaughter in (January’s) protests. We want this ​regime to go. We want this misery to end.”
In Tel Aviv, air raid sirens sounded late into the night, warning of incoming Iranian missiles and underscoring that, after more than ​two weeks of war, Tehran still ⁠retained the capacity to carry out long-range attacks. The IRGC said earlier that Iran had launched strikes on areas in Tel Aviv, the U.S. Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. naval base in Bahrain and Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-demands-others-help-secure-strait-hormuz-japan-australia-say-no-plans-send-2026-03-16/

The Cuban government said it is probing a “complete disconnection” of the nation’s electrical system. It comes as the Trump administration blocks Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba.

The Cuban government on Monday announced that the Latin American island nation was subject to a nationwide blackout.

The Cuban Ministry for Energy and Mines said that there has been a “total disconnection” from the electricity grid.

“The causes are being investigated and protocols for restoration are beginning to be activated,” the ministry posted on X.

Why is Cuba suffering blackouts?

Cuba has been suffering long blackouts as US President Donald Trump’s administration blocks Venezuelan oil shipments to the island. Venezuela had been Cuba’s top supplier of oil.

The US operation to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January was a significant blow to the Cuban government. Since then, Trump has backed acting President Delcy Rodriguez and oil deliveries to Cuba have been halted.

In addition, Trump has vowed to impose tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba. Mexico and Russia are two of Cuba’s other oil suppliers.

On Friday, Cuba witnessed a violent demonstration amid power cuts and high food prices, with protesters ransacking a building belonging to the ruling Communist Party.

Cuba’s president: Island hasn’t received oil shipments in over three months

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Friday that Cuba had not received oil shipments in three months, and that the country is reliant on solar power, natural gas and thermoelectric plants. Diaz-Canel also said Cuba has held talks with the US regarding its energy and economic crisis.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/cuba-hit-by-island-wide-blackout-amid-trump-oil-blockade/a-76385816

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is planning to delay a high stakes visit to China later in March by about a month because of the Iran war.

“We’ve requested that we delay it a month or so,” he told reporters at the White House, adding that it was important that he remained available to oversee the war.

The meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping is currently set to take place between 31 March to 2 April, following their last face to face talks in October last year.

The Chinese embassy in Washington told the BBC that it had seen the reports regarding the meeting but did not have any information to provide.

The Iran war has eclipsed most of Trump’s other foreign policy priorities, faced with an intensifying conflict and disruptions to the global oil supply, which has threatened to raise prices in the US.

Trump said he had proposed the delay solely to make sure he was around to manage the war.

“I’m looking forward to being with him,” he said, referring to Xi. “We have a very good relationship.”

“There’s no tricks to it either,” Trump added. “It’s very simple. We’ve got a war going on. I think it’s important that I be here.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that the meeting’s delay would not be due to Washington’s request that Beijing help in the Gulf, or any trade disagreements.

Bessent said: “The President wants to remain in DC to coordinate the war effort… Travelling abroad at a time like this may not be optimal.”

The latest development comes a day after Trump told the Financial Times that he might postpone the meeting if China did not help unblock the Strait of Hormuz – a critical waterway for the Gulf’s energy shipments.

He also called on other nations to help ships transit safely through the channel.

Trump’s remarks come as frictions between the world’s two largest economies have grown, fuelled by the Iran war.

Beijing is a major buyer of Iranian energy exports and has criticised the US and Israeli strikes against the country.

Washington also announced it would investigate trade practices among a list of countries, including China, after Trump’s signature tariff policy was struck down by the Supreme Court in February.

Representatives from the US and China have met in Paris in recent days for negotiations, such as over investments, tariffs and economic sanctions.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9e0z7v3nxo

The US artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic is looking to hire a chemical weapons and high-yield explosives expert to try to prevent “catastrophic misuse” of its software.

In other words, it fears that its AI tools might tell someone how to make chemical or radioactive weapons, and wants an expert to ensure its guardrails are sufficiently robust.

In the LinkedIn recruitment post, the firm says applicants should have a minimum of five years experience in “chemical weapons and/or explosives defence” as well as knowledge of “radiological dispersal devices” – also known as dirty bombs.

The firm told the BBC the role was similar to jobs in other sensitive areas that it has already created.

Anthropic is not the only AI firm adopting this strategy.

A similar position has been advertised by ChatGPT developer OpenAI. On its careers website, it lists a job vacancy for a researcher in “biological and chemical risks”, with a salary of up to $455,000 (£335,000), almost double that offered by Anthropic.

But some experts are alarmed by the risks of this approach, warning that it gives AI tools information about weapons – even if they have been instructed not to use it.

“Is it ever safe to use AI systems to handle sensitive chemicals and explosives information, including dirty bombs and other radiological weapons?” said Dr Stephanie Hare, tech researcher and co-presenter of the BBC’s AI Decoded TV programme.

“There is no international treaty or other regulation for this type of work and the use of AI with these types of weapons. All of this is happening out of sight.”

The AI industry has continuously warned about the potential existential threats posed by its technology, but there has been no attempt to slow down its progress.

The issue has gained urgency as the US government calls on AI firms while launching war in Iran and military operations in Venezuela.

Anthropic is taking legal action against the US Department of Defence, which designated it a supply chain risk when the firm insisted its systems must not be used in either fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.

Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei wrote in February that he didn’t think the technology was good enough yet, and should not be used for these purposes.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74721xyd1wo

Indian technology stocks have seen an unprecedented rout over the past few weeks over fears of artificial intelligence upending the traditional outsourcing model that powers the country’s $300bn (£223bn) back-office industry.

The sell-off – part of a global correction in traditional software and IT stocks – preceded the market nervousness caused by recent geopolitical uncertainty, and is particularly significant for India.

Over the past three-and-a-half decades, India’s software industry has created millions of white-collar jobs, spawning a new middle class driven by high ambition and strong purchasing power. This, in turn, has fuelled demand for apartments, cars and restaurants across top-tier cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Gurugram over the past 30 years.

The Nifty IT index of 10 of the country’s biggest software companies is down some 20% this year, wiping out tens of billions of dollars in investor money.

The sell-off began early in February after Anthropic’s Claude agent released a new tool that it claimed could automate key legal, compliance and data processes, hitting at the heart of the labour-heavy industry’s business model.

The panic has intensified thereafter as more founders raised the alarm about IT services disappearing by 2030. Some CEOs have even warned that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs.

Amid the unease, Indian IT giants have sought to calm frayed nerves, saying the fears are overblown. Artificial intelligence will create new opportunities, they say, though there’s little doubt it will structurally change how things were done in the past.

“The nature of client engagements is likely to structurally shift towards advisory and implementation, with application managed services (22-45% of revenues) seeing sharp revenue deflation,” global investment banking giant Jefferies said in a note.

Simply put, that means the fees that Indian IT companies earned from clients like banks or oil companies to run and maintain software, fix bugs and handle updates will shrink as the focus shifts to more high-value but less regular tasks such as consulting.

This will fundamentally impact revenue growth and demand for workers according to Jefferies, which predicts the worst-case scenario for IT companies to be 3% lower revenue growth over the next five years, followed by no growth at all, beyond 2031.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday his administration is talking to seven countries about helping to secure the Strait of Hormuz ​amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, calling on them to help protect ships in the vital waterway that Tehran has mostly blocked to oil tanker traffic.
With the conflict creating turmoil across the Middle ‌East and shaking up global energy markets in its third week, Trump insisted that nations relying heavily on oil from the Gulf have a responsibility to protect the strait.

“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington. “It’s the place from which they get their energy.”
Though he declined to identify the seven governments that his administration has contacted, Trump said this weekend that he expected many countries would send warships to allow shipping through the ​Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for 20% of the world’s oil.
He said in a social media post he hoped China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others would participate.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, ​Trump ratcheted up pressure on European allies to help protect the strait, warning that NATO faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.
Trump also said ⁠Washington is in contact with Iran but expressed doubt that Tehran is prepared for serious negotiations to end the conflict.
U.S. officials responding to economic uncertainty over high oil prices predicted on Sunday that the war on Iran would end within weeks ​and that a drop in energy costs would follow, despite Iran’s assertion that it remains “stable and strong” and ready to defend itself.
Trump had threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island over the weekend and said he was not ready ​to reach a deal to end the war which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration plans to announce as early as this week that multiple countries have agreed to form a coalition to escort ships through the narrow waterway but they are still discussing whether those operations would begin before or after hostilities end, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
Trump offered few specifics about the kind of assistance he wanted from other countries to open up the strait, except to say some have minesweepers and “a certain type of ​boat that could help us.”
Asian markets were in a wary mood on Monday as the Gulf hostilities kept oil prices elevated. Brent rose 0.1% to $103.27 a barrel, while U.S. crude fell 0.7% to $97.99.

IRAN DENIES TRUMP CLAIM ON NEGOTIATIONS

Ukraine wants money and technology in return for helping Middle Eastern nations that have sought ‌its expertise as they defend against Iranian kamikaze drones, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, after Kyiv sent specialists to the region.
Zelenskiy told reporters that three teams were sent to the Middle East to conduct expert assessments and demonstrate how drone defences should operate. Earlier this week he ​said teams were sent to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as a U.S. ​military base in Jordan.

“This is not about being involved in operations. We are not at war ⁠with Iran,” Zelenskiy said.
He said that more fundamental, long-term drone deals could be negotiated with Gulf countries and what ​Ukraine will get in return for the assistance still needed to be discussed.
“For us today, both the technology and the ​funding are important,” Zelenskiy said.
Gulf states have expended large quantities of air-defence missiles to counter Iran’s Shahed drones. Kyiv downs Russian drones every night using an array of weaponry including cheaper,smaller drones or jamming equipment.
Zelenskiy has said that the U.S. as well as countries from Europe, the ​Middle East and Africa has sought help from Ukraine on how to counter these attacks.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump ​has said the U.S. does not need Ukraine’s help with downing drones.
Zelenskiy said that he did not know why Washington had not signed ‌a ⁠major drone deal which Kyiv has pushed for months, and that he was unsure whether it would be agreed at all.
“I wanted to sign a deal worth about 35–50 billion dollars,” he said.
He also hit out at some Ukrainian companies and foreign governments, which he did not name, who he said had sought to do deals for anti-drone equipment without approval ​from Kyiv.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/zelenskiy-says-ukraine-wants-money-technology-return-middle-east-drone-help-2026-03-15/

Oil ‌prices slipped on Monday, paring early gains after U.S. President Donald Trump called on other countries to help safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil and gas shipments.
Brent crude futures fell 24 cents, or 0.23%, to $102.90 a barrel by 0049 GMT after settling $2.68 higher ​on Friday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude slipped $1.07, or 1.08%, to $97.64 a barrel, after gaining nearly $3 in the previous session.

Both ​contracts have surged more than 40% this month to their highest levels since 2022 after the U.S.-Israeli ⁠attacks on Iran prompted Tehran to halt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – choking off a fifth of global oil supply in ​the biggest disruption ever.
President Trump said on Sunday he is demanding that other countries help protect the critical energy gateway, adding that Washington is ​in talks with several nations about policing it. lane.
The U.S. is also in contact with Iran, Trump said, but expressed doubt that Tehran is prepared for serious negotiations to end the conflict.

STRIKES ON KHARG ISLAND, FUJAIRAH

Over the weekend, Trump threatened further strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub after hitting ​military targets over the weekend, drawing a defiant response of more retaliation from Tehran. Kharg Island handles about 90% of ​Iran’s oil exports.

Iranian drones hit a key oil terminal in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates shortly after the attacks on Kharg. Oil loading ‌operations ⁠at Fujairah have since resumed, four sources said, but it was unclear if the operations were back to normal.
Fujairah, outside the Strait of Hormuz, is the outlet for about 1 million barrels per day of the UAE’s flagship Murban crude oil – a volume equal to about 1% of world demand.
“The U.S. is weighing high-risk ground options including raiding nuclear sites for Iran’s enriched uranium, ​seizing the Kharg Island oil hub, ​and occupying southern Iran ⁠to protect the Strait of Hormuz,” SEB analyst Erik Meyersson said in a note.
“All of these imply significant escalation and require a tolerance for substantially higher risk.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-extends-gains-middle-east-conflict-threatens-export-facilities-2026-03-15/

From bone-eating snot-flowers to snowboarding scale worms, when a whale dies it becomes a colossal island of nutrients – attracting weird and wonderful creatures to feast.

Whales are the big rigs of the ocean. They can transport up to 150 tonnes (300,000 lbs) of food stuffs – meat, blubber and bone – far across oceans, and from the surface to the depths. Their bodies are a veritable feast in the making.

Whales usually die far out to sea, scattered along their often vast migration paths, says Greg Rouse, curator of benthic invertebrates at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. At first, the carcass may float as the gases inside make it swell up like a balloon. Then the whale sinks – through the sunlight, twilight and midnight zones – eventually reaching the darkness of the abyss, its final resting place.

In death, the whale gives life, becoming an immense island of food. Nutrients usually arrive in the deep sea as tiny particles of organic matter, known as marine snow. But when a whale sinks to the seabed, it is said to be the “largest organic input” to reach the deep ocean floor at any one time. A single whale can be equivalent to several thousand years’ worth of marine snow – and its bounty can feed a whole ecosystem for decades.

First come the scavengers

The “deep water scavenging community” are the first to arrive, says Adrian Glover, deep-sea ecologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. “Which includes vertebrates like hagfish and sleeper sharks, and lots of scavenging amphipods – crustaceans like shrimps. They eat the flesh, exposing the bone.” This “mobile scavenger phase”, he says, can last years.

Hagfish are the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebrae. These fish burrow face-first into their food, eating it from the inside out. Hagfish have an extraordinarily slimy self-defence tactic. When attacked, a hagfish will exude mucous which forces a predator to retreat or suffocate.

Rattail fish can grow up to a metre in length (3.2ft) and live at depths of up to 4,000m (13,100ft). Down there, far beyond the reach of the sun, the only light is made by living organisms – and the rattail’s big blue eyes can glimpse even the tiniest flickers of bioluminescence that give its prey away. Whisker-like barbels on its chin, too, sense any movement by tasty morsels – crustaceans or wriggling worms – that might be hiding just under the surface of the muddy ocean floor. A keen sense of smell, meanwhile, helps the rattail find its way to rotting carrion such as a whale carcass.

The opportunistic diners

After the large scavengers have had their fill and the bones are stripped, smaller diners arrive. “Osedax – the ‘bone-eating worms’ – arrive in large numbers,” says Rouse. Osedax are a type of polychaete worm. Commonly known as bristle worms, these are a diverse and abundant group of segmented worms that populate a whale fall in their thousands. Some of the species at this “enrichment-opportunist” stage have only ever been found at the site of a whale fall.

The “bone-eating snot-flower” – Osedax mucofloris – in a polychaete worm that was first discovered in 2005 on the carcass of a whale. These bone-eating worms inject acid into the bone. “It’s like they’re putting their gut inside the bone and absorbing it directly – quite strange,” says Glover.

Over the course of a decade, an entire population grows, lives and dies on a single whale fall. When all the skeleton has been consumed, just before they die, the Osedax release larvae that will travel on ocean currents in the hope of happening upon another whale carcass to settle on, and start the whole cycle again.

“They decalcify the bone, getting to the collagen,” says Rouse. “The bone then becomes very spongy and can be torn apart by crabs and other scavengers.”

Organic matter spills out from the carcass, enriching the surrounding seabed with nutrients. Now, tens of thousands of opportunistic worms, molluscs and crustaceans arrive to hoover up any remaining scraps of blubber or flesh, and to sift through the seafloor sediment.

The Japanese spider crab is thought to live up to 100 years and is the biggest crab in the world. Its main body can grow up to 30cm (12in) wide, but its legs keep growing and can span up to 3.8m (12ft) from claw to claw – almost the length of a small car.

Travelling the whale fall corridor

At the same time that the scavengers are digesting the bones, a more specialised set of feeders joins the banquet – and feasts for up to 50 years. This is the sulphophilic – or sulphur-loving – stage. As bacteria continue to break the bones down, hydrogensulphide is released. These gases are consumed by chemosynthetic organisms.

Chemoautotrophs are organisms that can create energy from chemical reactions, a process known as chemosynthesis, as opposed to plants which need sunlight and carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis. These chemical-consuming microbes often form close symbiotic relationships with invertebrate hosts, providing them with nearly all of the nutrition they need.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260311-the-strange-deep-sea-creatures-that-eat-whales

A further four people have died in Kenya after heavy rain caused widespread flooding, police said, taking the number to have died in the past week to at least 66.

The capital, Nairobi, was hit by more heavy rain overnight although no new deaths were reported.

Eleven people were rescued after a minibus taxi, known locally as a matatu, got stuck as water rose in Nairobi, according to the Kenya Red Cross, while two children were saved from a flooded house.

Heavy rainfall over the past week has triggered flash floods as rivers have burst their banks, flooding homes and damaging roads, power- and water- lines.

Some roads have been closed after bridges were damaged in Nairobi, while some schools were also flooded after Saturday’s downpour.

The interior ministry warned on Sunday that different parts of the country were continuing to experience heavy rains, increasing the risk of flooding.

Authorities have urged residents in low-lying areas to move to safer ground and more than 2,000 people have had to leave their homes to seek shelter.

Police say search-and-rescue operations are continuing following the “torrential rain and subsequent devastating flooding affecting various parts of the country”.

Half of those killed – 33 – have been in Nairobi, where poor drainage has been a major factor, along with the obstruction of rivers and waterways caused by unregulated development.

Businessman Kareem Hassan Ali, who lives in the Parklands area of Nairobi, told the BBC there was about two metres (6.5ft) of water outside his block of flats on Saturday night, although this had now subsided.

His flat was not flooded but cars in the underground parking area were submerged, he said.

Another Parklands resident, auditor Deenesh Patel, said he had spent the night at a friend’s house. “I saw the warning and didn’t want to take any risks.”

Both men called on officials to do more to improve drainage and stop construction that blocked rivers.

“The rain was heavy but this happens each year,” said Patel. “Other low-lying areas were not affected because they have the proper infrastructure.”

President William Ruto on Sunday said authorities were working to clear blocked drainage systems but Ali said they had seen no-one and the Parklands Residents Association had cleared up the debris themselves.

Ruto also said emergency food supplies and medical assistance were being delivered to those affected.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz6e5eng03yo

Almost three years into Sudan’s war, drone attacks and sexual violence show no signs of relenting. Could intensified international efforts influence the situation?

Nearly three years into the war in Sudan, civilians are increasingly exposed to aerial attacks. In recent days, waves of drone strikes killed dozens of people across the White Nile state and the Kordofan region. Earlier this week, a drone struck a pickup truck carrying mourners to a funeral in West Kordofan, reportedly killing about 40 people, many of them women, the news agency AFP reported. Neither of Sudan’s warring sides — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) nor the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — nor any of their allies, claimed responsibility.

According to an analysis by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, an independent global monitor, at least 198 drone strikes were launched by both sides in January and February.

“The uptick in drone attacks demonstrates that, despite wars and tensions elsewhere in the Middle East, supply for the warring parties continues,” Hamid Khalafallah, an independent Sudanese policy analyst, told DW.

Khalafallah said the violence, including drone warfare, would likely increase in the coming months. “Both warring parties will be trying to make as many advancements on the battlefield as possible during the current dry season as moving troops and equipment is more expensive and complicated once the rainy season starts in June or July,” he said.

Fighting is largely concentrated within Kordofan, a strategic region separating army-held northern and central Sudan, including Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, from RSF-controlled areas in Darfur and parts of the south.

The war in Sudan broke out around April 15, 2023, when a power struggle over the integration of the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces escalated. Global aid organizations estimate that up to 250,000 people have been killed so far. A thorough death tally is unobtainable given the ongoing fighting and limited access to conflict areas.

‘Prolonged humanitarian crisis’

According to the UN refugee agency, as well as international aid organizations on the ground, the war in Sudan has also led to the world’s largest mass displacement, with up to 14 million people internally and externally displaced. Fighting also triggered the largest humanitarian crisis, including mass killings and widespread sexual violence. According to UNESCO, more than 12 million women and girls — out of a population of just over 50 million people total — are at risk of gender-based violence in Sudan.

The World Health Organization warned in January that more than 20 million people in Sudan are in need of health assistance, with cholera, malaria and dengue outbreaks spreading across all 18 states as the health, water and sanitation systems collapse.

According to rights groups, both sides have committed atrocities that may amount to war crimes and acts of genocide. Despite the ongoing violence, including the RSF’s mass killing of civilians in the Darfur city of el-Fasher in late October, Sudan remains the most-neglected global crisis, several surveys found.

“Sudan is facing a deep and prolonged humanitarian crisis that is increasingly disappearing from international attention,” said Samy Guessabi, Sudan country director at the aid organization Action Against Hunger.

In the past three years, Guessabi said he had witnessed the cumulative impact of armed conflict, mass displacement and economic collapse. “What we see every day is not only hunger, but a progressive erosion of resilience as families are skipping meals and selling their remaining assets,” he added.

Women and girls bear the brunt

Guessabi said women and girls were bearing a disproportionate share of the suffering. “When families cannot feed their children, they make unthinkable choices,” Guessabi said, “and we hear about early marriage, driven less by tradition than by desperation.”

About 19 million children are out of school in Sudan, according to UNESCO.

“Thousands of girls need opportunities to continue their education as long periods of interrupted education increase social risks, including high rates of child marriage,” Salma Suliman, founder of the Sudanese Taja organization, an NGO that focuses on the protection of women, told DW. “This casts a dark shadow on the future of the coming generations,” Suliman said.

Michelle D’Arcy, Sudan country director of the Norwegian People’s Aid organization, told DW that women have stepped forward in extraordinary ways. “Across Sudan, women-led emergency response rooms and grassroots networks have organized community kitchens, distributed food and provided psychosocial support,” she said. She added that women volunteers are often the people who keep communities alive.

D’Arcy said it was key that the international community support civilian peace efforts in Sudan. “This includes diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire, and engagement of a broad range of Sudanese civilian actors using nonviolent tools working for peace,” D’Arcy said.

International efforts, agendas

Over the course of the war, several rounds of peace negotiations initiated by the so-called Quad — the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have largely failed.

The US and EU had long ago imposed sanctions on both the RSF and the SAF, as well as on members of both warring parties. Earlier this week, the US designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization and said it plans to list it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), composed of the Sudanese Islamic Movement and its armed wing — the al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade (BBMB) — uses unrestrained violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and advance its violent Islamist ideology,” the US State Department said.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/civil-war-in-sudan-is-a-never-ending-humanitarian-crisis/a-76335589

Viktor Orban is facing his first serious challenge in years in Peter Magyar. The two politicians held rallies on Hungary’s national day that outlined very different visions for the country’s future.

Hungary’s ruling and opposition parties each held major rallies on Sunday as they race to shore up support ahead of hotly contested elections on April 12.

The rallies, held to mark the country’s national day, pitted right-wing, pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Orban, 62, against opposition leader Peter Magyar, 44, who is seeking to end Orban’s 16-year rule and offer support to Ukraine.

Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party has been trailing in polls against Magyar’s center-right Tisza party since last year and has turned to criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy more harshly.

Orban slams Ukraine, EU

Tens of thousands of government supporters held a so-called “peace march” that crossed the Danube River and headed towards Hungary’s parliament in Budapest.

In his speech, Orban told Ukraine to stop “attacking” the central European country. It comes amid a growing row between the two countries, with Ukraine blocking Russian oil deliveries to Hungary and Hungarian authorities detaining a Ukrainian cash shipment.

A banner at the front of the march read, “We won’t be a Ukrainian colony!”

The Hungarian prime minister played up apparent threats facing the country, naming war and mass migration, but pledged to “preserve Hungary as an island of security and tranquility even in such a turbulent world.”

Orban acknowledged that the upcoming election put the country at a “crossroads” between Russia and the European Union, but vowed to maintain his friendly stance towards the Kremlin.

“We will be here even if hundreds of parachutists from Brussels fall from the sky,” he said, referring to the EU’s de facto capital in Belgium.

“We will round them up, dust off their pants and send them back, some to Brussels and some to Kyiv.”

Magyar envisions pro-Europe future

Across town, Magyar accused Orban of “inviting Russian agents” to “interfere in the elections.”He addressed a crowd of at least 100,000 supporters at Budapest’s Heroes Square.

Some of Magyar’s supporters chanted: “Russians go home.”

“Our homeland is part of the West, our homeland is part of the European community, our country is part of NATO,” Magyar said.

“And not because of treaties or charters, but because it is written in our destiny.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-rival-parties-hold-parallel-rallies-ahead-of-vote/a-76367895

Bombs, government oppression and fear are wearing down Iranians. How does trauma accumulate? And what can help people endure constant stress?

Attacks by Israel and the United States are targeting Tehran and places across Iran. Shortly before the war began, people took to the streets to demonstrate against the theocratic regime. The Islamic Republicclamped down brutally. Protests for freedom and democracy cost thousands of Iranians their lives.

Iranians continue to live within the constraints imposed by a government that tolerates little deviation from its interpretation of Islam. It dictates what clothing women are allowed to wear in public, and the slightest deviations can be severely punished. In addition, the sanctions against Iran make the economic situation difficult for many people in the country.

What effect does such constant stress have on a person’s mental health?

Being on high alert increases risk of mental illness

“The incidence of mental health conditions — particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and depression — is higher among people who are chronically exposed to violence,” says psychologist Dana Churbaji, who researches the effects of war and displacement on mental health at Germany’s University of Münster.

When it comes to affected individuals, “a shift in perception can be observed regarding how safe the world is and how people view their own lives.”

Someone suffering from cold, fear, or hunger has a much lower stress tolerance, and minor conflicts and disagreements in personal lives can escalate quickly. For those living with existential uncertainties — such as power outages, food shortages, or the loss of digital communication — basic needs come to the forefront, according to Churbaji.

“When these basic needs aren’t met, there are more frequent outbreaks of violence within the family,” the psychologist told DW. “This takes a toll on social relationships which are actually the number one factor in resilience.”

In other words, those with stable social connections, who have people to confide in, have a lower risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If this protective factor is absent, the risk of developing the condition increases.

When does post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develop?

In an acute stressful situation, many people do not have PTSD symptoms because their brains are in survival mode. When they have to flee their homeland to bring themselves and their loved ones to safety, they focus on the immediate emergency. PTSD usually only develops afterward, explained Churbaji.

“When the brain tries to come to terms with the past, PTSD symptoms appear. And these symptoms stand in the way of a person’s efforts to rebuild their well-being after a refugee experience,” she said.

What are the symptoms of PTSD?

People with post-traumatic stress disorder often have the following behaviors and symptoms:

•     Avoiding thinking about the experience

•     Extreme reactions to certain triggers (e.g., hiding under a table when fireworks go off)

•     Flashbacks: For those affected, memories feel as if the traumatic experiences are happening all over again. These are also referred to as intrusive memories that cannot be resisted

•     A change in mindset, leaning toward distrust and cynicism

•     Intense feelings of guilt, so-called “survivor’s guilt”

•     Sleep disturbances and difficulty concentrating

In an environment where those affected cannot talk openly about mental health issues, psychological stress also manifests physically, says Churbaji, in the form of headaches, backaches, menstrual cramps, or fatigue.

The impact of ongoing stress in Iran

It also makes a difference whether one has experienced a single traumatic event, such as an assault, or has been living with war and violence for a long time. “The political persecution [of dissidents] in Iran has been going on for a very long time. Protests against the regime are repeatedly and violently suppressed,” clinical psychologist Rita Rosner told DW. “Iranians are directly affected by this long-lasting traumatic situation.”

This ongoing fight-or-flight state can be a greater source of stress than experiencing a one-time traumatic experience, such as a serious car accident. “One-time events have a lower probability of stress reactions developing,” says the professor at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. “With every [traumatic] event that adds to the mix, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder become more likely.”

Churbaji also notes that a cluster of traumatic experiences — such as those experienced by people living in a war zone — is dangerous, “especially when multiple areas of life are affected.” Someone who, in addition to bombings and political repression, also experiences domestic violence and sexual harassment at work is, for example, particularly vulnerable to PTSD.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/war-oppression-and-fear-in-iran-traumas-are-accumulating/a-76360945

The Trump administration is planning to announce the coalition as early as this week as multiple countries have agreed to join the bloc to ensure a safe passage

From repeated threats, to calling countries for more participation —and sending warships — US President Donald Trump has increasingly focused his fury in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which is in its third week, on the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passageway through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows from Gulf nations to global markets.

After repeated efforts have failed to end the blockade of the strait by Tehran, Trump is all set to announce a new coalition that will escort ships through the strategic passage, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials.

The Trump administration is planning to announce the coalition as early as this week as multiple countries have agreed to join the bloc to ensure a safe passage through the narrow waterway.

The report said that the countries are deciding on a timeline to conduct operations, which could begin “before or after hostilities end”.

On Sunday, Trump said he has demanded around seven countries to send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. However, his appeals have failed to bring any commitments from the countries.

With an eye on China, he added that Beijing gets around 90 per cent of its oil from the strait, while the US gets a minimal amount. However, he stopped short of saying whether China will join his coalition.

Earlier on Sunday, the foreign ministers of the UK and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council in a statement said GCC nations “have the right to take all necessary measures to defend their security and stability and protect their territories, citizens and residents.”

Trump’s many statements on Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz, which is just 33 km wide at its narrowest point, remains one of the most significant routes connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and millions of barrels of crude oil passes through it. After Iran threatened to attack vessels passing through the strait following the onset of the conflict, the global crude prices have shot to record high even as pushing several countries to the brink of energy crisis.

Due to these reasons, Trump has raised the issue over the past couple of days, calling for a global support to end the blockade.

On Saturday, Trump called on “many countries” to “keep the Strait open and safe.” Naming China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, the President called the nations to sent warships.

“In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!” Trump said in a social media post.

Hours later, in a separate post, he called on the “countries of the world” that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait to take care of that passage. However, there was no immediate confirmation from any countries cited above on participation to end Hormuz blockade.

Iran’s firm response

Tehran has refused to back down in the face of the ongoing attacks by the US and Israel and vowed retaliation even as it fired missiles and drones daily at targets across the Middle East.

After Trump’s attack on Tehran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island, warning of more severe strike should Iran continue the blockade, Iran warned to expand its attack on US bases in the region, including in Doha and Dubai, issuing warnings to residents to evacuate early on Monday.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has maintained that the Strait of Hormuz remains open and that the strategic route is closed only to the US and Israeli vessels.

“As a matter of fact, this Straits of Hormuz is open. It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and the allies. Others are free to pass,” Araghchi said in an interview on Saturday.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-all-set-to-announce-coalition-to-escort-ships-through-strait-of-hormuz-as-threats-global-appeal-fail-101773613451036.html

AN ASTEROID the size of a school bus has been making its way towards Earth at over 21,000 miles an hour.

NASA is monitoring the asteroid, which was expected to make a close approach Friday.

The space rock, known as “2026 EG1,” is measuring in around 40 feet in diameter and is traveling over 21,500 miles per hour, Newsweek reported, citing the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

While it poses no risk to Earth, the asteroid is expected to make its closest approach on Friday, coming within 198,000 miles of Earth, closer than the moon, which is over 238,000 miles away from us.

Space.com said the asteroid would make a close approach around late Thursday night or early into Friday.

Asteroids are small, rocky masses that are left over from the solar system’s formation about 4.6 billion years ago.

Some asteroids “follow paths that circulate into the inner solar system, including near-Earth asteroids, while others remain outside the orbit of Neptune,” according to NASA.

Some near-Earth objects have orbits that bring them within 120 million miles of the sun and into the “orbital neighborhood” of Earth.

In January, scientists discovered the fastest-spinning asteroid, known as 2025 MN45, that was rotating about once every two minutes, Newsweek reported.

The 2025 MN45 asteroid measured in around 2,300 feet across, making it nearly the size of eight football fields.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/16081768/bus-sized-asteroid-speeds-to-earth-nasa-tracking/

IRAN’s new supreme tyrant has reportedly been flown to Moscow for leg surgery “personally offered by Putin” after suffering serious injuries during airstrikes.

It comes as rumours swirl that Mojtaba Khamenei could be dead – the leader has not been seen since his appointment.

Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported that the son of the slaughtered Ayatollah had been snuck out of Iran for a top secret surgery.

The paper said that the evacuation took place under the strictest secrecy, and that the new Iranian leader was flown to Moscow on a Russian military aircraft.

Khamenei then reportedly underwent a “successful” operation in one of Putin’s presidential palaces.

The report is unconfirmed, but Al-Jarida said its information came from a “high-ranking source close to the new Iranian Supreme Leader”.

Khamenei was injured in one of the first blasts of operation Epic Fury, the source claimed.

His injuries needed a well-equipped and specialist hospital, which was impossible as Iran continues to be blitzed by the US and Israel.

Putin reportedly proposed treating the new dictator in a call on Thursday with Khamenei transferred to Russia that evening.

It comes after The Sun reported that the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was put in charge despite being critically wounded in an air strike.

Sources told The Sun the 56-year-old son of assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lost at least one leg and has also suffered serious stomach or liver damage.

It was unclear whether he was injured on the same day his 86-year-old father died, but he is not directing the strategy currently sparking energy market turmoil.

In a bizarre attempt to cover up their stricken Ayatollah, Iranian state TV broadcast what it claims to be his first statement since coming into power.

The statement – read out by a news anchor – said Iran will not hesitate to “avenge the blood of Iranians” who have been killed as it vowed to continue attacks on Dubai and block off the vital Strait of Hormuz.

A Sun source in Iranian capital Tehran last week said the new Ayatollah was in intensive care at the Sina University Hospital.

The source – who asked not to be identified fearing for his life – managed to dodge Iran’s near total internet blackout to send messages to an exiled dissident based in London.

He is not a medic but knows members of the hospital’s trauma team who told him Mojtaba was in “very serious” condition under the care of Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi.

He said: “One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well.”

Our source’s detailed revelations are impossible to verify under Iran’s current internet blackout but Mojtaba’s status among Iran’s thousands of war wounded has already been confirmed.

Iranian state TV now openly refers to the late ayatollah’s silent successor as “Jaanbaz of Ramadan” – wounded war veteran.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16087106/iran-leader-flown-moscow-leg-surgery-putin-offered-help/

Sharif Osman Hadi’s death set off violent protests in Bangladesh, with angry mobs torching several buildings including two major newspapers deemed to favour India, as well as a prominent cultural institution.

Indian police said on Sunday (Mar 15) that they had arrested a Bangladeshi man for allegedly helping two fellow nationals, accused of murdering a popular student leader in Dhaka, enter India illegally.

Sharif Osman Hadi, a vocal India critic who took part in Bangladesh’s 2024 mass uprising, was shot by masked assailants in Dhaka on Dec 12 and later succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Singapore.

West Bengal police named Faisal Karim Masud and Alamgir Hossain as the prime suspects in the killing and said they allegedly fled Bangladesh through the Haluaghat border with India shortly after Hadi’s attack. India arrested the pair on Mar 8 and they remain in police custody.

On Sunday, West Bengal’s Special Task Force Superintendent Indrajit Sarkar told AFP that Philip Sangma had been arrested on suspicion of helping Masud and Hossain enter the state of West Bengal through its porous border.

Sangma was “held on Saturday for facilitating the illegal entry of the two prime suspects in the murder of Bangladeshi youth activist (Sharif Osman) Hadi,” Sarkar said, adding that he appeared in a district court on Saturday before being remanded to police custody for a week.

Hadi’s death set off violent protests in Bangladesh, with angry mobs torching several buildings including two major newspapers deemed to favour India, as well as a prominent cultural institution.

The killing further strained ties between India and Bangladesh that had frayed since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the pro-democracy uprising and sought refuge in India.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/bangladesh-sharif-osman-hadi-assassination-india-5994581

 

Before the conflict flared up, the UN had said that nearly half of Afghanistan – 21.9 million people – would need humanitarian aid this year.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Sunday (Mar 15) that it has started delivering “life-saving food” to over 20,000 Afghan families displaced by the conflict with Pakistan, warning “further instability will push millions into hunger”.

Families who fled their homes will initially receive fortified biscuits to address “urgent” hunger, with the ready-to-eat rations intended to support people forced to flee and with limited access to cooking facilities.

In the coming weeks, the most vulnerable households will receive additional assistance, including two months’ worth of food or cash support, the UN agency said.

Months of cross-border clashes between Afghanistan and Pakistan have flared again since Feb 26.

Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to act against militant groups that carry out attacks in Pakistan, which the Taliban government rejects.

The UN said on Friday that at least 75 civilians have been killed and 193 injured in Afghanistan as a result of the clashes.

“Despite the dangerous conditions in the area, WFP has resumed operations in most border areas,” it said in a statement.

“Afghanistan is caught between two conflicts, and any further instability will push millions deeper into hunger while adding strain to a region already on the brink,” stressed John Aylieff, WFP country director in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan also has a border with Iran, which has been struck by US and Israeli strikes, forcing the return of Afghan migrants to their homeland.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/afghanistan-pakistan-conflict-un-emergency-aid-displace-5994766

 

Chinese e‑commerce giant JD.com on Monday launched its Joybuy online marketplace in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, stepping up its push beyond its home market and taking aim at market leader Amazon.

JD.com wants to internationalise its business and last year agreed to buy German electronics retailer Ceconomy, owner of the MediaMarkt and Saturn brands, for 2.2 billion euros ($2.52 billion).

The launch comes as Chinese retailers and brands have been expanding abroad in the U.S. and Europe, looking for new growth drivers away from the cut-throat competition and weak consumer demand they face at home.

Joybuy’s website and app will sell products across technology, appliances, beauty, homeware, and grocery.

Its platform will also feature dedicated brand stores including L’Oreal, Braun, DeLonghi, BRITA, and Bodum.

JD.com said prices will be “competitive”.

FAST DELIVERY IS KEY SELLING POINT

Fast delivery to shoppers in major cities will be a key selling point, said Matthew Nobbs, Joybuy UK managing director, with orders placed by 11 a.m. arriving the same day, and orders placed before 11 p.m. arriving the next day.

More than 15 million households in Europe and the UK overall would be covered by same-day delivery from launch. Delivery is free on orders over 29 euros ($33.21) or 29 pounds ($38.52), and Joybuy is also targeting Amazon Prime, with its “JoyPlus” unlimited free delivery subscription at an introductory price of 3.99 euros or 3.99 pounds a month.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/jdcom-launches-joybuy-in-europe-targeting-amazon-5995241

The toxin, which can cause nausea and vomiting, was found in a batch of Nestle NAN HA2 infant formula and a batch of Nature One Dairy Premium Toddler Milk Formula, meant for children over one year old.

Two batches of formula milk products have been recalled due to the presence of cereulide toxin, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and the Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) said on Sunday (Mar 15).

The toxin, which can cause nausea and vomiting, was found in a batch of Nestle NAN HA2 infant formula and a batch of Nature One Dairy Premium Toddler Milk Formula, meant for children over one year old.

The affected batches are:

• Nestle NAN HA2 (800g), batch 52750017C1 (made in Switzerland)
• Nature One Dairy Premium Toddler Milk Formula – Stage 3 (900g), batch 326251110 (made in Australia)

The products in the Nestle batch expire on Oct 31, 2027, while those in the Nature One Dairy batch carry expiry dates of Nov 10 or Nov 11, 2027.

The ongoing investigation by local and federal agencies has yielded no significant breakthroughs despite numerous tips. A $100,000 reward has been offered for information.

As Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance case drags on for over one-and-a-half months now, a pioneer in FBI’s criminal profiling techniques has stated that the real motive behind the kidnapping maybe fuelled by personal motives. Nancy Guthrie, 84, was reported missing from her home in Tucson on February 1, 2026 with investigators later revealing that she was kidnapped from her house.

Surveillance footage released by police shows a masked person approaching the front door of her home shortly before she disappeared.

Speaking about the case on the “Surviving the Survivor” podcast, criminologist Ann Burgess said the behaviour seen in the video suggests the suspect may have had a specific reason for targeting the victim.

“It doesn’t appear to be random behaviour,” she said. “The individual seems to have a purpose for being there.”

Dr Burgess is widely known for her role in developing modern criminal profiling methods. Her research in the late 1970s contributed to the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioural Science Unit, which helped establish techniques for analysing violent offenders.

Working with former FBI agents Robert Ressler and John Douglas, she conducted interviews with convicted killers and sexual offenders to better understand how perpetrators choose victims and carry out attacks.

Their work later contributed to the creation of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which assists in complex criminal investigations.

In the case of Ms Guthrie, Dr Burgess said the suspect’s actions outside the house could indicate they expected the victim to answer the door willingly.

“If someone intends to break into a home, there are simpler methods,” she said, adding that the person’s behaviour suggested they may have wanted the occupant to respond directly.

Such details can be important in behavioural analysis, as they may indicate whether a suspect knew the victim, understood their routine or had a grievance.

Dr Burgess also pointed to the importance of “victimology” — the study of a victim’s life, relationships and habits — which can sometimes reveal why a particular individual was targeted.

“I think this is much more of a personal kind of a crime, that there is some grievance out there that is playing its… trying to play itself out,” she said.

She added that investigators may consider who would be most affected by the disappearance.

“Who’s this going to affect the most? You have to ask those kinds of questions,” she said.

Dr Burgess noted that nothing in Ms Guthrie’s background immediately suggested a reason she might have been singled out, but suggested the public profile of her daughter could potentially be relevant.

Her daughter is television journalist Savannah Guthrie.

Authorities have not publicly identified a suspect. However, local officials have indicated the crime does not appear to have been random.

The investigation, involving local police and federal authorities, is ongoing. Officials have released images of the masked individual and urged anyone with information to come forward.

The FBI has also announced a reward of $100,000 (£79,000) for information that leads to Ms Guthrie’s recovery or the arrest of the person responsible.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/has-nancy-guthrie-been-found-as-of-today-latest-update-disappearance-case-fbi-motive-article-153841748

The September 11 attacks in 2001 remain among the deadliest terrorist incidents in modern history.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, has warned of what he described as a possible conspiracy aimed at blaming Iran for a major terrorist attack.

“I’ve heard that the remaining members of Epstein’s network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9/11 and blame Iran for it. Iran fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes and has no war with the American people,” Larijani posted on X.

Larijani’s statement comes at a time when the United States and Israel are engaged in a war with Iran.

The conflict escalated after the US and Israel carried out joint strikes on Iran last month. The attacks killed Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered a wider war in the Middle East.

In response, Iran has launched attacks on Israel and on US military bases located in Gulf countries. Israel and the US have also continued striking Iranian targets.

According to reports, the war has left more than 2,000 people dead, most of them in Iran.

The Pentagon said that US and Israeli forces have struck more than 15,000 targets across Iran since the war began.

US media have also reported that the Pentagon has deployed the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli to the region, along with around 2,500 Marines.

The 9/11 Attacks: One Of The Deadliest Terror Incidents

The September 11 attacks in 2001 remain among the deadliest terrorist incidents in modern history. Nearly 3,000 people were killed after 19 hijackers linked to Al-Qaeda seized control of four passenger planes in the United States.

Two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, flew into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, 17 minutes apart. The impacts set the towers on fire, trapping people on upper floors and covering the city in smoke. Within two hours, both towers collapsed.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/israel-iran-war-iran-warns-of-9-11style-falseflag-plot-by-epstein-network-11218837?pfrom=home-ndtv_topstories

Take it from Kylie Jenner: if the dress fits like a glove, repeat it in every color.

Though all eyes are on Timothée Chalamet tonight, his girlfriend certainly brought the heat as well.

Ahead of the Oscars 2026 red carpet, Jenner shared a sneak peek at her look on Instagram, writing, “jessica who?”— a nod to bombshell cartoon character Jessica Rabbit.

Jenner’s red sequined Schiaparelli dress fit like a glove with a plunging neckline and keyhole cutout that offered the perfect blank canvas for her massive diamond Lorraine Schwartz necklace.

She added a pair of drop earrings and a massive pinky ring, too. In total, the makeup mogul was dripping in more than 200 carats of diamonds for the biggest night in Hollywood.

As for the gown, it was actually the second time she wore this look, having slipped into the same gown in a nude hue in back in September 2023.

Timothée Chalamet hit the red carpet — without Jenner — just before the show started, wearing head-to-toe white Givenchy.

His look included a double-breasted suit, matching button-down, tie and even white shoes, adding to the parade of vintage-inspired Givenchy looks he’s worn lately.

Chalamet accessorized with black sunglasses, an Urban Jürgensen watch and multiple rings.

The couple, who have been dating for three years, have been together the entire awards season, with the “Kardashians” star, 28, choosing blingy looks for both the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/15/style/kylie-jenner-wears-red-hot-schiaparelli-gown-and-200-carats-of-diamonds-at-oscars-2026/

The Palestinian Iran-aligned militant group Hamas has called on Iran to not target neighbouring countries, while ​still reaffirming Tehran’s right to respond to the U.S.-Israeli ‌attacks.
This is the first time the group has publicly commented on Iranian policies. It has expressed solidarity with Iran during the ​war but appeared to steer clear from threatening any ​retaliatory actions so far.

“While the group affirms Iran’s ⁠right to respond to this aggression by all available ​means in accordance with international norms and laws, it calls ​upon our brothers in Iran not to target neighboring countries,” it said.

It also called on all countries in the region and international organizations ​to immediately stop the war.
Israel and Hamas agreed on ​a ceasefire in Gaza that went into effect in October, but ‌there ⁠have been regular outbreaks of violence since then. While Israeli attacks on Gaza declined at the beginning of the war with Iran, they have since begun to rise.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-calls-iran-not-target-neighboring-countries-affirms-its-right-self-defence-2026-03-14/

Top U.S. and Chinese economic officials launched a new round of talks in Paris on Sunday to iron out kinks in their trade truce and clear a smooth path ​for U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of March.
The discussions, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He ‌Lifeng, are expected to focus on shifting U.S. tariffs, the flow of Chinese-produced rare earth minerals and magnets to U.S. buyers, American high-tech export controls and Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products.

The two sides began talks Sunday morning at the Paris headquarters of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a U.S. Treasury official said. China is not a member of the club of 38 mostly wealthy democracies and considers itself a developing country.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also join the talks, which continue a string of meetings in European ​cities last year aimed at easing tensions that threatened a near collapse of trade between the world’s two largest economies.
U.S.-China trade analysts said that with little time to prepare and Washington’s attention focused on ​the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, prospects for a major trade breakthrough are limited, in Paris or at the Beijing summit.

“Both sides, I think have a minimum goal of having ⁠a meeting, which sort of keeps things together and avoids a rupture and re-escalation of tensions,” said Scott Kennedy, a China economics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Trump may want to come away ​from Beijing with major Chinese commitments to order new Boeing (BA.N), aircraft and buy more U.S. liquefied natural gas and soybeans, but to get that he may need to offer some concession on U.S. export controls, Kennedy added.
Instead, Kennedy said chances ​were high for a summit that “superficially suggests progress but that really just leaves things about where they’ve been for the last four months.”
Trump and Xi could potentially meet three other times this year, including at a China-hosted APEC summit in November and a U.S.-hosted G20 summit in December that could yield more tangible progress.

IRAN WAR OIL CONCERNS

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will likely come up at the Paris talks, especially in reference to the spike in oil prices and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which ​China gets 45% of its oil. Bessent on Thursday night announced a 30-day waiver of sanctions to allow the sale of Russian oil stranded at sea in tankers, a move to raise supplies.
On Saturday, Trump urged other nations to help protect ​shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, after Washington bombed military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island oil loading hub and Iran threatened to retaliate.
“Meaningful” progress in Sino‑U.S. economic cooperation could restore confidence to an increasingly fragile global economy, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said ‌in a commentary ⁠on Sunday.

TRADE TRUCE REVIEW

The two sides are expected to review their progress in meeting commitments under the October 2025 trade truce declared by Trump and Xi in Busan, South Korea. The deal forestalled a major flare-up in tensions, trimmed U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, and paused for a year China’s draconian export controls on rare earths. It also paused the expansion of a U.S. blacklist of Chinese companies banned from buying high-technology U.S. goods such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

China also agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans during the 2025 marketing year and 25 million tons in the 2026 season, which will start with the fall harvest.
U.S. officials, including Bessent, have said that China has so ​far met its commitments under the Busan deal, citing soybean purchases ​that met initial goals.
But while some industries are ⁠receiving rare earth exports from China, which dominates global production, U.S. aerospace and semiconductor firms are not and are facing worsening shortages of key materials, including yttrium, used in heat-resistant coatings for jet engines.
“U.S. priorities will likely be about agricultural purchases by China and greater access to Chinese rare earths in the short term” at the Paris talks, said ​William Chou, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-china-economic-chiefs-meet-paris-clear-path-trump-xi-summit-2026-03-15/

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island and ​said he was not ready for a deal with Tehran to end the war which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz and caused chaos in global energy markets.
With the U.S.-Israeli war ‌on Iran in its third week, Trump said U.S. strikes had “totally demolished” much of the island and warned of more, telling NBC News on Saturday, “We may hit it a few more times just for fun.”

The comments marked a sharp escalation from Trump, who had previously said the U.S. was targeting only military sites on Kharg, and dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to end a war that has spread across the Middle East and killed more than 2,000 people, most in Iran and Lebanon.
Washington has brushed aside attempts by Middle Eastern allies ​to open talks, three sources told Reuters and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had fired more missiles at Israel and three U.S. bases in the region.
Trump, who has made a series of varying ​demands, including a say in choosing Iran’s leader and an end to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, told NBC News that Tehran appeared ready to make a ⁠deal to end the fighting but that “the terms aren’t good enough yet”.

In his interview with NBC, Trump raised the possibility that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may have been killed but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Khamenei was ​in full health and managing the situation.

WAR, ENERGY CRISIS LOOK SET TO PERSIST

With no clear end in sight, Iran’s ability to choke off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied ​natural gas, has emerged with increasing urgency as a decisive threat to the global economy.
Although some Iranian vessels have continued to pass, the passage has been effectively closed for most of the world’s shipping since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 at the start of an intensive bombing campaign that has hit thousands of targets across the country.
Khamenei, who succeeded as supreme leader after his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the attacks, has said the Strait of Hormuz should remain ​closed.

The International Energy Agency said last week the closure of the narrow passage along Iran’s southern coast had triggered the largest disruption to global oil markets in history, and was expected to cut around 8% of global supplies in ​March.
The global ship-refueling hub of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates resumed oil-loading operations on Sunday, a Fujairah-based industry source said.
With crude oil prices above $100 a barrel and expected to rise further next week, the issue has hung over Trump’s Republican Party, which faces ‌a major test ⁠at midterm elections in November.
Trump himself has dismissed worries about spiking prices for American consumers, saying they will fall back quickly. But he has called on China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to ensure shipping can pass.

“The Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help — A LOT!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “The U.S. will also coordinate with those Countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well.”
France is seeking to assemble a coalition to secure the strait once the security situation stabilizes, while Britain is discussing a range of options with ​allies to ensure the security of shipping, officials have ​said.
But none of the countries mentioned gave any ⁠immediate indication of moving while fighting continued.
Araqchi told his French counterpart that countries must refrain from anything that could escalate the conflict. He also said Iran would respond to any attack on its energy facilities.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-calls-allies-help-secure-strait-hormuz-iran-vows-step-up-retaliation-2026-03-15/

When Paraguayan opposition lawmaker Leidy Galeano returned from an all-expenses-paid tour of six Chinese cities late last year, she was convinced Paraguay risked missing out on major economic gains by sticking with longtime ally Taiwan over Beijing – a message participants on the trip heard repeatedly from Chinese officials.
“Everything I saw there, I wanted for my country,” said Galeano, a member of the newly-formed Yo Creo party whose senior ​figures have spoken favorably about China.

This trip and others like it, which people familiar with the visits said were at the invitation of the Chinese consulate in Sao Paulo, offered lavish banquets, stays at luxury hotels and tours of the Great Wall, part of ‌what Paraguayan lawmakers said they saw as a coordinated effort to draw the country away from democratically governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.
With just 6.4 million people, landlocked Paraguay is a tiny player on the world stage. But it is Taiwan’s last diplomatic ally in South America. A switch by Paraguay, one of 12 countries in the world that still recognize Taiwan, would give Beijing a symbolic win in its campaign to isolate Taipei. Its efforts are also a sign of China’s intent to cement its influence in Latin America, where U.S. President Donald Trump too is determined to be the pre-eminent superpower.

With more than two years left in his term, President Santiago Pena’s government has little incentive to shift a Taiwan policy that ​has long anchored its foreign relations. Beyond that, analysts say the outlook is less clear, with succession battles potentially splintering the ruling Colorado Party or pushing them into alliances with opposition groups historically more open to recognizing Beijing.
Pena has publicly reaffirmed support for Taipei. “All the Latin American ​countries that switched from Taiwan to China and fell into the arms of the promise of the Chinese dream – every single one of them is worse off than Paraguay,” he said in December on his podcast. Paraguay’s presidency did ⁠not respond to a request for comment.
The foreign ministry said in a statement Paraguay’s relations with Taiwan “are founded on principles and values of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

PARAGUAY IS BEING COURTED BY BOTH SIDES

China’s growing engagement is colliding with stepped‑up efforts by Taipei and Washington to hold the line. ​Paraguay signed a defense pact with the U.S. in January, joined Trump’s “Board of Peace,” and participated in a White House critical minerals summit earlier this year. Washington also lifted sanctions on former President Horacio Cartes, who was previously targeted over alleged corruption and is a mentor to Pena, whose term ends in 2028.
Interviews with half a ​dozen participants- including three lawmakers and three journalists who joined the trips – and a Reuters review of travel itineraries show the charm offensive by China in Paraguay has picked up in the past year. A Reuters tally shows at least 19 Paraguayan lawmakers, five journalists and a rising opposition presidential contender have visited China since late 2023, with a sharp acceleration last year and more trips planned for March.

China’s foreign ministry, in a written response to Reuters, said “siding with Taiwan authorities holds no future,” and that a growing number of Paraguayans across different sectors now believe establishing diplomatic ties with Beijing would serve the “fundamental and long‑term interests” of both countries, according to the statement. It denied any lobbying effort, saying people‑to‑people exchanges ​were a “two‑way effort” that “do not require anyone to lobby for them.”
Taiwan’s foreign ministry, in a statement to Reuters, said Beijing was attempting to “poach” its allies and that it was “actively working to maintain ties with all of Taiwan’s diplomatic partners.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Asuncion told Reuters that Washington hoped Paraguayans on ​official Chinese-guided tours “understand the degree of information manipulation” inherent in them.
Beijing’s outreach to Paraguay follows a pattern seen across the region. Panama, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and more recently Honduras all switched recognition after sustained Chinese lobbying and promises of trade and infrastructure.

LAWMAKERS TOURED TECH AND HEALTHCARE FACILITIES

Paraguayan opposition lawmaker Roya Torres said Chinese officials used her ‌trip in October ⁠2025 to showcase advanced healthcare services and technology, taking her through treatment centers and high‑speed rail stations while hinting that trade and investment could flow faster if Paraguay switched recognition to Beijing. The healthcare visits struck her most powerfully, she said.
The contrast with home, she said, deepened her fear that Paraguay was “running out of time” – a message Chinese officials delivered to her repeatedly – and risked being left behind in both cutting‑edge medical equipment and access to China’s market if it maintained ties with Taipei.
Paraguay, long counted among South America’s poorer countries, has seen a burst of growth in recent years on the back of beef exports, manufacturing and construction. It secured investment‑grade status in 2024, but entrenched corruption and deep gaps in education and infrastructure spending continue to limit how far those gains spread.
Paraguayans on the trips said invitations were issued by the Chinese consulate in Sao Paulo, though Reuters was unable to independently verify the origin or who funded the trips. The Chinese foreign ​ministry did not confirm the origin in a response to Reuters.
On an October ​morning last year, Galeano, Torres and other lawmakers spent the night ⁠at Beijing’s luxurious Shangri‑La hotel before a packed day of touring the sprawling manufacturing powerhouse of Chongqing and meetings with local leaders, according to an itinerary seen by Reuters.
The lawmakers Reuters spoke to described the tours as a rare, unfiltered look at China’s technological ambition and political confidence.
Liberal Party Deputy Billy Vaesken, who spent 15 days in China in late 2024 alongside two ruling Colorado Party lawmakers, said he is now advocating deeper ties with Beijing.
“We must not miss our chance,” ​he said, pointing to potential Chinese investment in local infrastructure. Reuters requested interviews with at least half a dozen Colorado Party members, all of whom declined to comment on trips they made to China. Several other prominent ​opposition members who participated in visits also declined ⁠to discuss them.
China’s multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has carved out a growing footprint in South America, more recently with Peru’s Chancay mega-port, a logistics hub that cuts shipping times to Asia and is fast becoming Beijing’s gateway to the region.
In Paraguay, the debate is increasingly economic. Its main exports are soy and beef, but it cannot sell directly to China because Beijing refuses to trade with countries that recognize Taipei. Instead, shipments move through Argentina and Brazil, cutting into profits. At the same time, Chinese goods are pouring into Paraguay, with imports topping $6 billion in 2025-a record, official data show.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-is-wooing-paraguays-political-class-away-longtime-ally-taiwan-2026-03-14/

Meta (META.O), is planning sweeping layoffs ​that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as ‌Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.

Top executives have recently signaled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told ​them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the people said. The sources spoke anonymously because they ​were not authorized to disclose the cuts.

“This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone ⁠said in response to questions about the plan.
If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company’s most ​significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the “year of efficiency.” It employed nearly 79,000 people as ​of December 31, according to its latest filing.
The company laid off 11,000 staffers in November 2022, or around 13% of its workforce at the time. Around four months later, it announced it was cutting another 10,000 jobs.

ZUCKERBERG FOCUSING ON GENERATIVE AI

Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to ​compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over ​four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.

The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers ‌by 2028. ⁠Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for AI agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to buy Chinese AI startup Manus, Reuters previously reported.
Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see “projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.”
Meta’s plans reflect a broader pattern among major ​U.S. companies, particularly in tech, this ​year. Executives have pointed ⁠to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning-sweeping-layoffs-ai-costs-mount-2026-03-14/

Costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac isn’t shying away from naming a few nightmare celebrities he’s worked with throughout his career.

During a chat with the Daily Mail, Dorléac labeled stars like Kirstie Alley, Shannen Doherty and Patrick Macnee as bad apples.

“Kirstie was very crude and very brassy and coarse, irresponsible, never on time, a mess, a constant mess,” Dorléac said of his time working with the late “Cheers” star.

“We had to clean her her uniform. She was supposed to be a travel agent in the series called ‘Masquerade’ with Rod Taylor, and she sweated so badly because she drank.”

The designer went on to share how he had a $350 pearl pink angora sweater dress made for Alley, but it was ruined after a trip to the snacks table.

“It was a stunning thing for a scene where she had a major line delivery to do, and about three minutes before she did the scene, she went to the craft table service and picked up this great big chocolate donut and accidentally, supposedly, dropped it down the front of her dress,” he said.

“There was nothing but this big streak of chocolate through her breast all the way down to her belly button,” he said, adding that they ultimately had to throw the dress away.

But, the incident turned out not to be a one-off for Alley, who publicly struggled with her weight for years. She died at age 71 in 2022.

“She did that over and over again, plus she was constantly gaining weight, and she was always rude,” he added.

The late Shannen Doherty, whom the designer worked with on her 1994 TV movie, “A Burning Passion,” also received a negative review.

“I did her this blue suit,’ Dorléac said. “I always go to the set to establish the costume before it’s shot and make certain everything was right, I said, ‘Oh, Shannen it just turned out to be so wonderful.’”

“It makes your eyes so blue. And she goes, ‘yeah, they are, aren’t they?’”

The following day, he dressed her in a tan outfit which he paired with a cream-colored hat, but this time, the “Charmed” star’s eyes appeared brown.

“Then the next day, she’s doing something else, and it’s more of a vivid green, and her eyes are almost cat green, not hazel-y green, like mine or hers were originally,” he added.

Dorléac asked the star how she was able to change her eye color so many times, which earned him a swift tongue-lashing from the star, he said.

“She answered: ‘Just I’ll keep your f–king mouth shut. I’m doing this.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’” the designer explained.

“She says, ‘I hate this goddamn movie, and I don’t want to play this Margaret Mitchell. Jesus! Who wants to play an old cripple like Margaret Mitchell?’”

Dorléac claimed Doherty was at odds with the movie’s producer Renée Valente and hatched a plan to change her eye color to “throw the film off.”

“She was a very unhappy girl,” he added of Doherty, who died of cancer at age 53 in 2024. “She smoked constantly, she ate hardly anything. She was so tiny and thin.”

“She swore like a workman. I mean, I’ve never seen anybody who had a filthier mouth than she did,” he noted.

One star, Patrick Macnee, Dorléac labeled as a “major a–hole” over an alleged sexual assault that took place in 1978.

The designer was tasked with dressing Macnee for his guest role in “Battlestar Galactica” when the actor allegedly attempted to make a pass at him.

“He started taking off his clothes, and he said, ‘I just don’t know how to thank you for making this for me…’ Dorléac claimed.

“He got down to his shorts, his underwear, and I’m in alone with this guy, and he sort of comes close to me, and he pulls them down, and he pulls out his old swan and started shaking it around.”

Dorlèac claimed the actor proceeded to touch himself inappropriately, asking him to join in. However, the designer refused. The incident was cut short minutes later when a tailor arrived to trim the costume.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/14/celebrity-news/famous-costume-designer-exposes-vile-a-listers-including-one-major-a-hole/

Stew, a 35-year-old from Montana, has enjoyed dabbling in sports bets since he downloaded the Kalshi app about 18 months ago.

But just a few weeks ago, after spotting reports of elevated pizza deliveries around the Pentagon during some late-night scrolling, he made a different kind of bet – wagering $10 (£7.50) on the odds that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “out” by 1 March.

It was a trade that tested the limits of the kinds of bets Americans are allowed to make.

So-called predictions markets – overseen by firms such as Kalshi – have exploded in popularity over the last year, hosting more than $44bn in trades.

They are rapidly transforming the betting landscape in the US, where sports betting was largely illegal until 2018 and gambling on elections had been off-limits for years until 2024.

While much of the activity on the platforms revolves around sporting matches, users can speculate on any number of questions, including local elections, whether the US central bank will cut interest rates and the year of Jesus Christ’s return.

The apps caught fire during America’s 2024 presidential campaign, after a legal victory cleared the way for them to accept election bets and they showed the odds tilting toward Donald Trump.

But it is more grisly wagers tied to military action involving Iran, Venezuela and Israel that have drawn attention lately.

In theory, such bets run afoul of US financial rules, which bar trading on contracts involving war, terrorism, assassination, gaming or other illegal activities.

But that hasn’t stopped firms from taking in millions of trades.

Critics have seized on the activity, calling for a crackdown on the apps, which they say are facilitating unseemly, and potentially illegal, war profiteering, generating national security risks and enabling opportunities for insider trading and corruption.

“You have now opened up gambling basically on almost anything and it has turned into this very, very gruesome type of thing on the death of a head of state,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the Public Citizen advocacy group, which recently filed a complaint this week over the bets.

Polymarket alone has hosted what Bloomberg estimated as more than $500m in bets related to the Iran war, at one point offering an opportunity to play the odds on the chance of nuclear detonation.

The company, which is headquartered in New York but operates on a limited basis in the US, eventually removed that market after it drew scrutiny on social media but users can still submit bets on questions like when US forces will enter Iran. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Kalshi also ended up cancelling the Khamenei market, which had drawn $54m in trades, noting that US-regulated entities are barred from “having a market directly settling on someone’s death”.

The company, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said the war bets are happening on unregulated exchanges outside the US.

Concerns about the war bets have collided with a bigger battle over how prediction market firms should be regulated.

Unlike traditional gaming firms, in which the odds are set by the company, prediction market companies function more like a stock exchange, allowing users to bet against each other on the outcome of future events using “event contracts”.

That design has allowed national financial regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to claim oversight.

But critics say they are sports betting and gambling operations trying to dress up as financial exchanges in a bid to avoid stricter rules and taxes faced by traditional gaming firms, which are regulated by the states.

Disagreement over who should be policing the apps has sparked dozens of legal battles across the US, as states start to assert their right to regulate the companies like other gaming firms, rather than leave oversight up to the CFTC.

Even some Republicans have voiced concerns, as traditional gaming firms have also stepped up their lobbying, enlisting a savvy former Trump official, Mick Mulvaney, to plead their case in Washington.

“Nobody is saying that gambling shouldn’t be allowed,” says Ben Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, which advocates for financial reforms. “What the states are saying and other advocates are saying is things that are gambling should be regulated as gambling.”

Hollywood stars are gearing up for Sunday night’s Oscars, in an exciting year for the awards race where several categories are too close to call.

Political thriller One Battle After Another is the favourite to win best picture, but it faces tough competition from vampire horror Sinners, which has a record-breaking 16 nominations.

Irish star Jessie Buckley is considered the firm frontrunner to win best actress for her performance in Hamnet.

But the other acting races are tighter, with stars such as Michael B Jordan, Timothée Chalamet, Amy Madigan, Wunmi Mosaku and Sean Penn all in contention.

No injuries were reported in what Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema described as a “deliberate attack.” It follows an arson attack on a synagogue in Rotterdam a day earlier.

A Jewish school in Amsterdam was hit by an explosion early on Saturday in what the city’s mayor called “a deliberate attack against the Jewish community.”

The explosion on Saturday is the latest in a spate of suspected attacks against Jewish institutions in recent weeks. Many of these incidents coincided with the US-Israeli war against Iran.

What we know so far

Police said investigators determined the two suspects arrived on a motor scooter. One of them placed an object against the wall before running back to the scooter, with the device detonating as they sped away.

No injuries were reported and damage was limited. Security at synagogues and Jewish institutions across the Netherlands has since been tightened following the incident.

Mayor Femke ​Halsema condemned a “cowardly ​act of aggression ‌against the Jewish community.”

“Jewish people in Amsterdam are increasingly ​confronted with antisemitism. ⁠This is unacceptable,” she said.

“A school must be a place where children can learn safely. Amsterdam must be a place where Jews can live safely.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/amsterdam-jewish-school-attack-explosion/a-76358579

ICC chairman Jay Shah sent a blunt reminder to Pakistan and Bangladesh over their pre-T20 World Cup boycott drama.

The T20 World Cup 2026 witnessed unprecedented scenes as Bangladesh were forced out of the tournament after refusing to travel to India over alleged “security concerns.” Despite receiving assurances from the International Cricket Council (ICC), Bangladesh stood firm on their stance and were replaced by Scotland. Later, in solidarity with Bangladesh, Pakistan threatened to boycott their group-stage match against India before eventually making a U-turn. ICC chairman Jay Shah, who had remained silent during the controversies, has now spoken about the pre-tournament drama.

Speaking at the Indian Business Leader Awards in Mumbai, Shah revealed how the entire tournament’s fate was jeopardised by the dilemma surrounding certain teams’ participation. As the head of cricket’s global governing body, he stressed the importance of asserting that “no team is bigger than the organisation.”

“This ICC World Cup was very important because there was a lot of chatter before the start of the tournament about whether certain teams would participate and how the World Cup would go ahead. As ICC chairman, I can say that no team is bigger than the organisation and no single team makes an organisation. An organisation is a combination of all teams,” Shah said during the award function, without naming Bangladesh or Pakistan.

Shah also highlighted the grand success of the T20 World Cup 2026, which shattered viewership records, with 7.2 million concurrent viewers reportedly tuning in.

“The World Cup has shattered all viewership records. For the first time in history, we recorded 7.2 million concurrent viewers. All records were broken in overall viewership. If you see, the USA gave India a hard time, the Netherlands troubled Pakistan, Zimbabwe beat Australia, and Nepal gave England a scare. I congratulate all the associate teams; they have done very well against the full members,” he added.

To conclude, Jay Shah delivered an important message to the T20 World Cup-winning Indian team.

Source : https://sports.ndtv.com/t20-world-cup-2026/no-team-is-bigger-jay-shah-finally-responds-to-bangladesh-pakistans-pre-t20-world-cup-drama-11217008?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since the airstrike that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, and other key family members.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday said that there was “no problem” with the Islamic Republic’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as US President Donald Trump questioned whether he is alive.

Khamenei, 56, has not been seen in public since the airstrike that killed his father and former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key family members.

Iranian officials have previously confirmed reports that he is injured but have given no further detail.

“There is no problem with the new supreme leader. He sent his message yesterday, and he will perform his duties,” Araghchi told a news channel.

Trump on Saturday said he doesn’t know if Iran’s new supreme leader is alive.

“I don’t know if he’s even alive. So far, nobody’s been able to show him,” Trump told NBC News.

“I’m hearing he’s not alive, and if he is, he should do something very smart for his country, and that’s surrender,” he added, but called the news of his death “a rumour.”

Trump on Thursday had said that he thinks Khamenei is alive but “damaged”.

“I think he probably is (alive). I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” he told Fox News.

A day later, his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said he believed Khamenei “is wounded and likely disfigured”.

“We know the new so-called, not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,” he told a press conference.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s First Statement

Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday issued his first statement after becoming the new supreme leader and vowed to avenge the deaths since the start of the war with the US and Israel.

“A limited amount of this revenge has so far taken concrete form, but until it is fully achieved, this case will remain among our priorities,” Khamenei said in a statement read out by a presenter on state TV.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-says-no-problem-with-supreme-leader-mojtaba-khamenei-after-trump-claims-he-is-damaged-likely-disfigured-11216997?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

At the 0:35 mark, when Netanyahu raises his hands, extra flesh is seen next to the little finger, which many social media users claimed was the sixth finger.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “fine,” his office claimed after social media posts suggested he had died. A correspondent from the Anadolu Agency asked the office if they had a statement on the increasing claims on social media that “Netanyahu has been assassinated.”

“These are fake news; the Prime Minister is fine,” the office replied.

What Sparked The Rumours

On Friday, Netanyahu shared a video of a press conference on the ongoing US-Israel-Iran war on his X (formerly Twitter) account. In the video, several social media users claimed to have spotted six fingers on Netanyahu’s right hand, fueling rumours that the video was AI-generated.

At the 0:35 mark, when Netanyahu raises his hands, extra flesh is seen next to the little finger, which many social media users claimed was the sixth finger, a ‘Classic AI finger glitch’.

American conservative political commentator Candace Owens asked, “Where’s Bibi?”, referring to him by his nickname. “Why is his office releasing and deleting fake AI videos from him, and why is there mass panic at the White House?” she wrote in an X post.

See more

Washington D.C is lying to the American people about what is going on in Iran.

It is not going well.

Also where is Bibi Netanyahu? Why is his office releasing and deleting fake AI videos from him and why is there mass panic at the White House?

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 14, 2026

One user also raised questions over the movement of the curtains in the background while the two Israeli flags remained still. They wrote: “Notice how the blackout curtain moves in the exact same pattern throughout the entire video, almost like it’s looping. While the two flags don’t move at all. Clear indicator of AI.”

This claim was, however, rejected by another user who said, “Many people use fake backgrounds these days, like news broadcasters. Doesn’t mean he’s fake.”

See more

Notice how the blackout curtain moves in the exact same pattern throughout the entire video, almost like it’s looping. While the two flags don’t move at all. Clear indicator of AI.

— rabs (@rabscreates) March 13, 2026

X’s AI chatbot Grok fact-checked the claims about the six fingers and said, “No, Benjamin Netanyahu does not have six fingers. The circled spots in those images are optical illusions from shadows, hand angles, or the palm’s natural shape (like the hypothenar eminence) in still frames from his recent speech video. Full official footage from Israel’s Government Press Office clearly shows standard five fingers per hand.”

See more

@grok Does Netanyahu have six fingers? pic.twitter.com/7xbYe2K5z3

— SunRice (@Sunricese) March 15, 2026

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/netanyahu-fine-claims-of-his-death-are-fake-news-says-his-office-report-11217016?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll 

 

“Many countries … will be sending war ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the strait open and safe,” says the US president.

US President Donald Trump urged other nations to help secure a vital shipping lane choked off by the war with Iran that showed no signs of slowing on Saturday (Mar 14) as strikes hit the US embassy in Baghdad and a major Emirati energy facility.

Two weeks after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the entire Gulf region remained in the grip of a conflict that had sent shockwaves through the global economy.

The war has also spilt into Lebanon, where the health ministry said Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of people, as Israel fought the Tehran-backed Hezbollah once again.

Oil prices have surged by 40 per cent as Iran has choked off the vital Strait of Hormuz and attacked Gulf energy facilities.

Clouds of black smoke rose on Saturday over Fujairah, home to a major Emirati oil storage and export terminal, AFP journalists saw, shortly after Iran’s military warned UAE civilians to avoid port areas.

Washington’s embassy in Iraq was hit by a drone, security sources told AFP, the second time it has been targeted in the war, and the Emirati consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan was also struck for the second time in a week.

And in Kuwait, the international airport was targeted with several drones “which struck its radar system” but caused no injuries, the Kuwaiti civil aviation authority said.

Having earlier vowed that the US Navy would “very soon” start escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump appeared to call for reinforcements on Saturday.

“Many countries … will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe,” he wrote on Truth Social, saying China, France, Japan, South Korea and the UK would “hopefully” be among them.

He later repeated the call on social media, saying that although the US “has beaten” Iran, countries that received oil via the strait “must take care of that passage, and we will help”.

“AS LONG AS NECESSARY”

US forces struck Kharg Island on Friday, from which nearly all of Iran’s oil is exported, with Trump saying they had “obliterated every military target”, though sparing its energy facilities.

Iran had threatened that US-linked oil and energy firms would be “turned into a pile of ashes” if they were hit, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later repeating the warning and accusing the US of firing rockets at Kharg from its bases in the UAE.

He then called on Iran’s neighbours to expel American forces, saying the US security umbrella was “inviting rather than deterring trouble”.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the war was entering a “decisive phase”, though he cautioned it would “continue as long as necessary”.

Despite facing superior US and Israeli firepower, Iran appeared determined to fight on.

Blasts were heard by AFP journalists over Jerusalem after the military detected missiles launched from Iran on Saturday.

Iran later said it had launched another missile salvo, with the Israeli military saying it had detected the launches.

Qatar evacuated downtown areas and intercepted two missiles, with blasts heard by AFP journalists.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas urged Iran to refrain from targeting Gulf neighbours, many of which have supported its cause. It was a rare breach between the allies, though Hamas affirmed Tehran’s right to defend itself.

Iran continued to face heavy bombardment with local media reporting strikes in several provinces through Saturday, including one on an industrial site in Isfahan that killed 15 people, according to Fars news agency. AFP was not able to verify the toll.

Iran’s health ministry says more than 1,200 people have been killed by US and Israeli attacks, numbers that could not be independently verified, while up to 3.2 million people have been displaced, according to the UN refugee agency.

More than 15,000 targets in Iran have been hit by the US and Israel, the Pentagon said. A report this week said the first six days alone cost America US$11.3 billion, while 13 military personnel have died in the war.

TRANSITION

US media raised the possibility of American troops on the ground in Iran, with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporting the Pentagon had dispatched the Japan-based amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli to the region, along with around 2,500 Marines.

In Iran, the country’s rulers appeared intent on showing they would survive the war and maintain control, despite their supreme leader Ali Khamenei, being killed on the opening day.

Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named the new supreme leader, but has been absent from public view and is reportedly wounded.

Araghchi insisted on Saturday that “there is no problem with the new supreme leader”.

Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s last shah, said on social media on Saturday that he was ready to lead a transition “as soon as the Islamic Republic falls”.

But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened a heavy crackdown on any anti-government protests. Thousands were killed during mass demonstrations in January, and a near-total internet blackout has been imposed since the war began.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-hormuz-iran-shipping-lane-world-powers-5993856

At least seven Indian pilgrims died and several were injured when a micro-bus plunged into a gorge in Gorkha, Nepal, after visiting Manakamana Temple. Rescue operations are ongoing. Road accidents in Nepal are rising, with traffic fatalities and economic losses increasing, highlighting growing road safety concerns.

At least seven Indian pilgrims were killed in a micro-bus accident in Nepal’s Gorkha district on Saturday evening while returning after offering prayers at the Manakamana Temple, the police said.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Raj Kumar Shrestha of the District Police Office in Gorkha told IANS that the pilgrims died after the micro-bus plunged off the road into a gorge in the Kantar area of Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality.

“Seven pilgrims have been injured and have been sent to Chitwan Medical College in Bharatpur, Chitwan district, for treatment,” Shrestha said. Police added that the rescue operation was still underway.

According to the local administration, the micro-bus was carrying more than a dozen passengers.

“The microbus was heading towards the Anbukhaireni area of Tanahun district, west of the Manakamana Temple, but it is not immediately clear where the passengers were heading after concluding their visit to the temple,” Tulasi Bahadur Shrestha, Chief District Officer of Gorkha, told IANS.

Police said the cause of the accident remains unknown, but the electric microbus carrying the Indian pilgrims met with the accident on a steep stretch of the road.

In August 2024, a bus carrying Indian pilgrims had met with an accident in the Anbukhaireni area, killing at least 27 people.

Nepal has been witnessing a rise in road accidents in recent years, along with an increase in the number of vehicles plying on the roads.

A decade ago, 4,999 road accidents were reported by the Nepal Traffic Police. In the fiscal year 2024–25, the country recorded 7,669 road accidents and 190 deaths, official data showed.

Of the total accidents, 278 were classified as serious. Apart from the human toll, road safety also has a major economic impact.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/nepal-tragedy-7-indian-pilgrims-killed-several-injured-as-microbus-falls-into-gorge-in-gorkha-rescue-ops-underway

Switzerland government said two requests for US reconnaissance planes to cross over Switzerland were rejected on Sunday.

Switzerland announced closing its airspace for US military flights amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, citing its tradition of neutrality in armed conflicts.

The development comes even as US President Donald Trump urged other countries to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, following Iran’s threat to retaliate Washington’s bombing of the Kharg Island.

The Switzerland government said two requests for US reconnaissance planes to cross over Switzerland were rejected on Sunday. However, the federal authority granted permission to three other flights, including two transport aircraft.

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Today the Swiss government discussed military overflight requests from the US. Citing the law of neutrality, the Federal Council rejected two requests made in connection with the war in Iran. It decided to permit three flights. Details in DE/FR/IT: https://t.co/Dps46MlpBG

— Swiss Federal Government (@SwissGov) March 14, 2026

“The Swiss Federal Council has today decided on several requests for overflights by US military aircraft. Two requests linked to the war in Iran have been rejected, while one maintenance flight and two overflight requests for transport aircraft have been approved,” a government statement read.

The country said that the country’s tradition of neutrality would be applicable in the ongoing war between the US-Israel alliance and Iran.

“Since February 28, 2026, heavy fighting has been taking place in the Middle East. A war is ongoing between the United States and Israel and Iran. Switzerland’s neutrality law applies in relation to these states. In this context, several overflight requests for US military and state aircraft have been submitted,” it added.

To be sure, Switzerland’s neutrality law maintains that the country would not participate in a war between states. It also mandates for non-participation in armed conflicts, non-membership in military alliances.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/switzerland-closes-airspace-for-us-military-planes-amid-iran-war-cites-neutrality-101773527122454.html#google_vignette

Meta (META.O), is planning sweeping layoffs ​that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as ‌Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said.

Top executives have recently signaled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told ​them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the people said. The sources spoke anonymously because they ​were not authorized to disclose the cuts.

“This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone ⁠said in response to questions about the plan.
If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company’s most ​significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the “year of efficiency.” It employed nearly 79,000 people as ​of December 31, according to its latest filing.
The company laid off 11,000 staffers in November 2022, or around 13% of its workforce at the time. Around four months later, it announced it was cutting another 10,000 jobs.

ZUCKERBERG FOCUSING ON GENERATIVE AI

Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to ​compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over ​four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.

The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers ‌by 2028. ⁠Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for AI agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to buy Chinese AI startup Manus, Reuters previously reported.
Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see “projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.”
Meta’s plans reflect a broader pattern among major ​U.S. companies, particularly in tech, this ​year. Executives have pointed ⁠to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning-sweeping-layoffs-ai-costs-mount-2026-03-14/

High-level Colombian officials, including the ministers ​of foreign relations and defense, met with their Venezuelan counterparts in Caracas on Friday in what acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez said were ‌productive meetings, as she called for a end to U.S. sanctions against her country.
The meeting, the first in-person between the two neighboring South American countries since the ouster in early January of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, was focused on energy cooperation, security and trade, Rodriguez said.

Originally, Rodriguez had been slated to meet with Colombian President Gustavo Petro in what would have been ​her first presidential-level bilateral, but that was canceled due to what the governments said was “force majeure,” without elaborating.
Rodriguez, speaking after meeting with the ministers, said collaboration ​between the two countries would be hugely fruitful economically and would fulfill the vision of their joint founder, South American ⁠liberation hero Simon Bolivar.
“And I want to take this opportunity to also send a message to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to make it ​clear that unilateral coercive measures against the Venezuelan people affect the peoples of our Latin America,” said Rodriguez.

“The call is for sanctions against Venezuela to be lifted.”
Rodriguez, formerly ​vice president, has been seeking to attract investors in oil and mining as she attempts to stabilize the country since the capture of Maduro by U.S. forces. Trump has repeatedly praised her, and she has welcomed U.S. officials and potential investors to Caracas. The U.S. and Venezuela have also formally re-established diplomatic ties.
Washington on Friday said it was expanding sanctions waivers on Venezuela to ease investment ​in energy and allow for fertilizer exports.

PIPELINE REPAIRS

Among those who traveled to Caracas were Colombian defense minister Pedro Sanchez, who met with his counterpart Vladimir Padrino ​to coordinate security strategies for the shared 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border. Foreign ministers Rosa Villavicencio of Colombia and Yvan Gil of Venezuela also discussed cooperation, they said.

“We have a very active border, and ‌we are ⁠calling — and this is what I welcome about that meeting — for immediate coordination, for the permanent exchange of information…in order to combat drug trafficking, for example,” Rodriguez said.
Trump has repeatedly demanded more cooperation from Colombia in the fight against drug trafficking. Petro says there have been record drug seizures during his tenure.
Petro, who had a cordial relationship with Maduro, has had numerous squabbles with Trump, though the two men were each positive after a face-to-face meeting in Washington last month and had a friendly ​call on Thursday, according to Petro’s office, ​during which they discussed the economy ⁠along the Venezuela-Colombian border.
Colombia and Venezuela have deep historical and cultural ties, especially in border areas where many families are bi-national. Nearly 3 million Venezuelan migrants have settled in Colombia in recent years, fleeing economic collapse in their home country.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/colombia-ministers-travel-caracas-after-postponement-presidential-meeting-2026-03-13/

Comments from an Iranian state television presenter about the country’s women’s team during their Asian Cup campaign affected the players psychologically and drove some to ​seek asylum in Australia, coach Marziyeh Jafari said on Friday.
The tournament, ‌hosted by Australia, started just as the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on Iran, killing the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

After the team opted to stand in silence during Iran’s ​anthem before their first match against South Korea, they were labelled as “wartime traitors” ​by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting presenter Mohammad Reza Shahbazi.

In a ⁠statement posted by Iran’s football federation (FFIRI) on its Telegram page on Friday, which ​has since been deleted, Jafari said: “Our girls were affected in the first match ​by the heavy atmosphere that had been created…
“But the greater mistake was made by those who, at home, failed to understand that atmosphere and sounded the call to arms against the daughters ​of this land,” she added, referring to the presenter’s comments.
“What I have asked ​of the federation is to pursue the matter, because it affected our players psychologically, and ‌we suffered ⁠the consequences. I am certain that if that atmosphere had not been created, not a single one of our players would have stayed in Australia.”

Australia this week granted humanitarian visas to five Iranian players who sought asylum during the tournament.
Two more ​squad members were granted ​asylum on Wednesday, ⁠and one decided to return to Iran.
“Australian police called the players in several stages and sat down with them one-on-one to ​persuade them to stay, influenced by the political atmosphere that ​had arisen,” ⁠Jafari said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/iran-coach-jafari-says-television-comments-created-difficult-atmosphere-players-2026-03-13/

iran state television released footage said to have been filmed inside an underground complex the authorities describe as a “missile city”.

Iran’s military said on Thursday that it holds a large stock of suicide drone boats now being deployed to restrict passage through the Strait of Hormuz. State television released footage said to have been filmed inside an underground complex the authorities describe as a “missile city”.

The images show long tunnels lined with naval drones, anti-ship missiles and sea mines. Additional footage depict some of the weapons being launched. It remains unclear when the recordings were made and whether the site has since been struck by American or Israeli forces.

One still image from the material shows a tunnel containing a naval drone mounted on a trailer beneath a portrait of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The naval drones, also known as unmanned surface vehicles or USVs, have already struck two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The vessels were attempting to pass through the narrow chokepoint at Hormuz. These small craft travel either on or just below the water’s surface. They carry explosives and are intended to detonate on impact.

On March 1, a crude oil tanker named MKD VYOM, registered in the Marshall Islands, was hit 44 nautical miles off the coast of Oman. Britain’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency reported that an unmanned surface vessel struck the ship just above the waterline, causing an explosion and fire in the engine room. One crew member died.

Several days later, the Bahamas-flagged crude oil tanker Sonangol Namibe was struck while anchored near Iraq’s Khor al Zubair port. The vessel’s operator, Sonangol Marine Services, said all 23 crew members were unharmed and declined to specify the attacking vessel while an investigation continued.

Video circulated online showed a small, speedboat-shaped object racing towards the tanker, striking its side and triggering a large explosion that sent thick smoke into the air.

Naval drones have been used in at least two attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region since the current conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran began, according to maritime authorities.

The development mirrors the successful use of similar vessels by Ukraine against Russian forces and by Iran-backed Houthi militants against shipping in the Red Sea.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-israel-war-live-updates-an-army-of-naval-suicide-drones-from-irans-underground-missile-city-11211706?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

A drone struck the US embassy in Baghdad, an Iraqi security official said, as an AFP journalist saw smoke rising from the complex.

A building in Dubai’s financial hub has been hit by debris from an intercepted attack. This is the second such attack in less than 24 hours as the US-Israel-Iran war enters day 15. No fire occurred, and no injuries were reported.

“Authorities confirmed that the incident caused by debris from a successful interception, which struck the facade of a building in central Dubai, has been fully contained,” Dubai Media Office informed via post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

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Authorities confirmed that the incident caused by debris from a successful interception, which struck the façade of a building in central Dubai, has been fully contained. No fire occurred and no injuries were reported.

— Dubai Media Office (@DXBMediaOffice) March 14, 2026

On Friday, the facade of a building in central Dubai was hit by debris from an interception. An AFP correspondent saw the damaged building in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) after hearing the bangs.

“I jumped out of bed — that was the loudest sound I’ve ever heard,” one of the witnesses living close by told AFP, requesting anonymity.

“It was so loud, I was so sure when I looked out the window that it was going to be something catastrophic… The ground shook,” they added.

Another AFP correspondent described hearing a huge double blast that rattled buildings and left a large cloud of black smoke hanging over the central district.

On the sidelines, a drone struck the US embassy in Baghdad, an Iraqi security official said, as an AFP journalist saw smoke rising from the complex.

“A drone hit the embassy,” the official said, with a second security source confirming that an attack had targeted the diplomatic mission.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-israel-iran-war-dubai-hit-again-in-less-than-24-hours-us-embassy-in-baghdad-targeted-11213610?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

 

Sheriff Chris Nanos made another critical mistake in Nancy Guthrie’s “complicated” disappearance, an expert believes.

On Thursday, Nanos revealed he has a theory on why Guthrie was “targeted” and warned the Tucson, Ariz., community that the abductor could strike again — but wouldn’t share any further information.

Former FBI agent Jason Pack told Page Six of the official’s remarks, “From my experience as a crisis communications practitioner, where it gets complicated is when, in that same interview, he suggests the suspect could strike again. Once you put that out there, every person watching wants to know who’s at risk and what they ought to do about it.”

“If you can’t answer those questions, you probably shouldn’t lead with that statement. A warning without context doesn’t necessarily protect people. It worries them. And it sits a little uneasily alongside the ‘targeted attack’ framing he’s also offered.”

Pack added, “Those two ideas need to fit together before they go out the door.”

Pack explained that in a case “of this magnitude,” the sheriff’s office and FBI work together, with the latter “bringing resources to the table that no county sheriff’s office can match on its own.”

“When public messaging is coordinated and coming from one unified voice, it tells you the joint investigation is firing on all cylinders,” Pack continued. “When statements get out ahead of that coordination, it raises questions about where the seams are.

“I hope those seams are tighter behind closed doors than they may appear from the outside. I just think a little more discipline at the podium, coordinated closely with FBI leadership, would serve everyone better as this moves forward.”

He defended of Nanos not revealing a motive, “When the sheriff says investigators believe they know the motive but won’t share it, there’s an investigative reason. This is it. You don’t hand the suspect a roadmap of what you know. I have no quarrel with that.”

Despite Nanos’ statement, Pack acknowledged the high-profile investigation is “one of the hardest things a law enforcement leader can face.”

“Nobody gets everything right under that kind of sustained pressure, and I respect the weight he’s carrying,” he explained.

Pack’s hope is that Guthrie’s grieving family — including daughters Savannah and Annie, and son Camron — has a “dedicated point of contact inside this investigation who is keeping them informed and walking alongside them through every development.”

On Thursday, Nanos told NBC News “it’d be silly to tell people, ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it. You’re not his target.’”

He urged others not to “think for a minute that because it happened to the Guthrie family, [it’s] safe” for everyone else.

He continued that while authorities “believe [Savannah Guthrie’s mom] was targeted,” they are “not 100 percent sure of that.”

The sheriff added, “We believe we know why he did this,” but did not elaborate further.

This isn’t the first misstep the sheriff’s office has been accused of making in the investigation.

Page Six reported authorities missed a simple strategy that could’ve been used to catch the kidnapper.

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, the CEO and founder of Lionsgate Network — a crypto recovery service with expertise in Blockchain forensics — told Page Six that authorities should have deposited a small balance in the alleged ransomer’s Bitcoin account to ultimately lead to his location.

A ransom note at the start of the investigation demanded $6 million in bitcoin be sent to an address in exchange for Guthrie’s release by two different deadlines — which both came and went.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/13/celebrity-news/sheriff-makes-another-crucial-error-in-nancy-guthries-complicated-disappearance-case-expert/

The Philippines, which is chairing ASEAN this year, convened the special meeting as concerns over the Iran conflict deepened.

ASEAN foreign and economic ministers on Friday (Mar 13) called for an immediate halt to the war in the Middle East, and said the effects of surging oil prices and disrupted trade are already hitting Southeast Asia’s economies.

Several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have begun rolling out measures to counter the economic impact, with governments moving quickly to conserve energy, stabilise domestic markets and protect vulnerable sectors such as tourism.

“We expressed serious concern over the situation in the Middle East and its impacts in the region, and emphasised the importance of the immediate cessation of hostilities,” Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma Theresa Lazaro told a press conference after a special meeting on the crisis, adding that ASEAN called on all parties to exercise the utmost self-restraint.

The Philippines, which is chairing ASEAN this year, convened the special meeting as concerns over the Iran conflict deepened. The ministers called for global energy supply chains to be kept open and to activate regional mechanisms to mitigate the economic fallout.

Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan, who also took part in the virtual meeting, expressed support for Manila’s efforts to forge a regional response and conveyed concern over the situation in the Gulf.

He also noted that a protracted conflict would have serious consequences for the world, including ASEAN and urged all parties to return to negotiations to achieve a peaceful resolution.

Crude oil is trading near US$100 a barrel on worries about supplies, which have been heightened by the vow from Iran’s new supreme leader to keep the Strait of Hormuz, the route for a fifth of global oil supply, closed.

“The escalating conflict has generated broader economic repercussions beyond the region, particularly through heightened volatility in global energy markets and disruption of key maritime and supply chain routes,” the economic ministers of the 11-member bloc said in a statement after a separate meeting.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/asean-ministers-urge-halt-middle-east-war-crisis-energy-trade-5991661

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok and US President Donald Trump discussed possible reopening of talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a meeting in Washington, Yonhap news agency reported on Saturday (Mar 14).

Kim told Trump he was the only Western leader to have had dialogue with North Korea’s Kim and was currently the only person who could resolve issues on the Korean peninsula, Yonhap quoted Kim as telling reporters in Washington.

“President Trump said he was curious if Kim wants to talk to the US or him and asked about my views on that,” Kim was quoted as saying.

Kim did not say what specific suggestions he made to Trump but said he told Trump that recent comments by Pyongyang indicated Kim may be open to dialogue with the US, Yonhap said. Trump showed much interest in the topic, Kim added.

Trump met Kim, the North Korean leader, for three rounds of talks in 2018 and 2019 to negotiate better relations and a path for Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programme, but the talks stalled when Trump was voted out of office.

A South Korean official confirmed Friday’s meeting between Kim and Trump but gave no other details. Kim’s office in Seoul did not respond to calls seeking confirmation.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting, which was not previously announced and occurred a day after Kim met US Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Thursday.

STRONG COMMITMENT

Kim’s office has said he told Vance that South Korean parliament’s approval of a bill this week enabling Seoul to implement a US$350 billion investment pledge demonstrated the government’s strong commitment to carrying out the agreement reached between the countries’ leaders.

Kim’s office said Vance welcomed the bill’s passage, saying it established the legal conditions needed to implement the investment deal, and called for continued close communication between the governments on the issue.

In late January, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on South Korean goods to 25 per cent, saying Seoul’s legislature had yet to enact the trade framework that had capped US levies at 15 per cent.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/south-korea-kim-min-seok-us-donald-trump-north-korea-5992721

 

During an interview with Donald Trump, YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul asked which historical figure he would choose to be if he could relive someone else’s life. Trump responded humorously that he might choose himself, saying his life is “very exciting.” The exchange, which came amid tensions involving the United States, Iran and Israel, quickly went viral online.

Amid the ongoing tensions and military escalation involving the United States, Iran and Israel, a surprising moment of levity surfaced during an interview between YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul and U.S. President Donald Trump. The conversation, which touched on a range of topics, went viral online after Trump gave a characteristically confident response to a philosophical question about whose life he would want to experience if he could return in history.

During the interview, Paul asked the president a reflective question: if he could go back in time and live someone else’s life, who would he choose to be. Trump’s answer quickly caught attention for its humor and self-assurance.

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🚨 LMFAO! JAKE PAUL: “If you could come back in history and experience someone else’s life, who would you come back as?”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Maybe Donald Trump. My life is VERY exciting! I’m thinking about other lives, I think my life is very exciting!”

Classic Trump answer 😂 pic.twitter.com/5QgqJUVhR9

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 13, 2026

“If you could come back in history and experience someone else’s life, who would you come back as?” Paul asked. Trump replied with a grin, saying, “Maybe Donald Trump. My life is VERY exciting! I’m thinking about other lives, I think my life is very exciting!”

The remark quickly spread across social media platforms, with users reacting to the unusual exchange between the influencer-boxer and the sitting president. Trump’s answer reinforced his well-known persona of confidence and self-promotion, traits that have often defined his public appearances and interviews.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/sports/us-iran-israel-war-my-life-is-very-exciting-us-president-donald-trump-makes-eyebrow-raising-remark-during-chat-with-jake-paul-video

 

Pavel Talankin had never been outside Russia before he went into exile in summer 2024, leaving his home in the Ural mountains for his own safety after he quietly stood up to President Putin’s war machine.

In less than two years, Pasha, as he’s known, transformed from an events coordinator and videographer at a primary school in Karabash, one of the most polluted places on earth, to an Oscar nominee.

The director has already taken selfies with Hollywood’s finest including two of this year’s best actor contenders, Leonardo Dicaprio and Ethan Hawke.

“They are just normal people like the rest of us,” he told me when we met in Los Angeles ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards.

But Pasha is far from normal; an unlikely hero whose film, Mr Nobody Against Putin, made with the Copenhagen-based American director David Borenstein, already won best documentary at the Bafta Film Awards in February.

The self-styled Mr Nobody has become a Mr Somebody in Hollywood.

The pair are hoping an Oscar will be next.

We met on Pasha’s 35th birthday. He turned up to our interview with shiny pink balloons – a ‘3’ and a ‘5’ – that he said he had bought himself that morning.

His most pressing Oscar-related concern was about the statuette.

“How much does it weigh?” he asked. “This question interests me a lot, because in all the shops they sell plastic Chinese fakes and they weigh nothing, so I’m curious how much it weighs.”

The answer, if you’re interested, is 3.86kg, but it’s typical of his sardonic humour, everything said with a straight face.

Comedy is also front and centre of the film, despite its serious subject matter.

“Pasha obviously has used humour as a way of coping with what was happening around him,” Borenstein told me.

“And of course, humour has always been a huge part of living under the daily realities of authoritarianism. Soviet jokes are some of the best jokes. It’s just how people cope.”

The BBC documentary charts the story of what happened after Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and how Pasha was reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine.

His role at the school was to film student music videos, performances and graduation ceremonies.

But the war brought diktats from the Kremlin, introducing more patriotism, militarisation and duty into school life, as well as flag-raising ceremonies.

Pasha said he was instructed to film and send proof to the authorities that the school was obeying the new curriculum.

He realised it made him “a kind of monitor of the teachers, to make them understand, ‘Look, I’m here, I’ve got a camera, I’m filming, so you will say everything you are supposed to say, you will speak as instructed, you will use the material provided by the government.'”

He rebelled, at great risk to himself, deciding to become a filmmaking whistleblower. He began to send his footage to Borenstein through encrypted servers, a decision made in an instant, but with longterm consequences.

“In those seconds I was driven by rage,” he recalled. “I didn’t care really. I thought, let anyone do it, let anyone show this film, let anyone edit it. The main thing is that it exists, to show what is happening.”

Borenstein added: “We thought it was so important for the world to see that Putin obviously has no intention of stopping with just Ukraine… he’s telling the children of Russia every single day that you need to prepare for a future of warfare and Empire.”

Pasha recorded Wagner mercenary group soldiers in school showing the children how to spot mines and handle guns – and teachers lecturing their students about the “denazification” of Ukraine.

We hear the stories of former students dying on the battlefield and a mother sobbing at her son’s graveside. It was too dangerous for Talankin to film the funeral, but he recorded her harrowing audio instead.

We also see his own acts of resistance.

He’s a true prankster, who changed the pro-war Z symbols on the school windows into X’s and took down the school’s Russian flag while blasting out Lady Gaga singing the US National Anthem.

He stood up to the regime but he refuses to accept that he is brave.

“No,” he told me, “it’s just normal”.

Borenstein disagrees. “I would describe him as someone that is very brave, someone that feels emotions very, very strongly, someone that is really, really concerned about truth and someone who really, really, really loves his birthday.”

For the filmmakers outside Russia, protecting Pasha and the people in the film from reprisals was uppermost in their minds.

“We had a long list of security protocols,” Borenstein explained, “and we were hearing from people who really gave us a dire assessment of the risks in Russia.

“We were reading news articles about school teachers, about people in Russia who had gotten sentenced to huge prison sentences, not for working with foreigners, not for making an undercover film, simply for desecrating the Russian flag, which is one little small thing he did in the film.”

“We were scared. He wasn’t scared.”

In the end, when Pasha spots a police car outside his apartment and there are concerns his life may be at risk, he realises it’s time to flee.

In the film, we hear a Russian-speaking producer tell him: “Before you cross the border, you must delete our secure messaging app.

“You need to be very careful about how you take your footage past border control. Just be calm. You have a return ticket. They’ll think you are returning in seven days. Just believe in yourself. I think what you’ve done is going to make a big impact.”

He left his motherland – and his mother – and now lives in an undisclosed location in Europe. He believes it won’t be forever. “When the regime has fallen, I am planning to return and be useful.”

For now, he is focused on ensuring the film is seen as widely as possible. He knows people in Karabash have watched it.

When it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, Borenstein says someone recorded it digitally and then shared it around the town.

As they were making the film, Talankin says nearly 200,000 teachers left their jobs rather than be part of a system that is indoctrinating children.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2ggjegj5lo

“I don’t even think it was his message,” an Iranian woman in her 40s told the BBC after her country’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei gave his first official address in the form of a statement read out on state TV.

Having not seen him since he was named leader, some are now casting doubts on who is running the country.

“I feel like control of the country is in the hands of the IRGC [Islamic Revolution Guard Corps],” the woman, from Tehran, said.

Khamenei, through the conduit of a TV presenter, vowed in his statement on Thursday that Iran would keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to international shipping – choking the supply of a fifth of the world’s oil.

He also said that his government would “not forgo avenging the blood” of citizens killed since the war with the US and Israel began, saying retaliation so far represented only “a limited portion” of what was to come. He said had been made aware of his appointment as supreme leader via state TV.

But Khamenei has yet to be seen in-person – nor filmed or photographed – since being named as his father’s successor.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, without providing evidence, that Khamenei had been “wounded and likely disfigured” in one of the first air strikes on Tehran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with his wife and other son.

His lack of visibility was brought up by some of those who spoke to BBC Persian following the broadcast.

“It was surprising that he did not issue even a voice memo and raised doubts about his condition,” one Tehran resident, in his 30s, said.

“To me this message raised more doubts than bringing any clarity about his condition,” he added.

Another man from Tehran, in his 20s, said: “I still haven’t seen him to have an opinion about him. To be honest, we don’t know much about him.”

A third man remarked that he was “not even convinced that he [Mojtaba Khamenei] has written the message himself”.

Meanwhile, a woman in her 20s from Rasht, in northern Iran, observed acerbically: “Wow, very heartwarming that he didn’t even appear on state TV to issue the message.”

It is still very difficult to contact people inside Iran due to a government-imposed internet blackout, but some are able to connect briefly to the outside world through satellite uplinks.

Many of those who do tend to be anti-regime. We have anonymised their comments for their safety.

Despite dissent towards the Islamic regime that has run Iran since 1979 being writ large in mass demonstrations that engulfed the country earlier this year, it still has its fervent supporters.

Crowds took to the streets of central Tehran on Friday for pro-establishment rallies to mark Quds Day – an annual event established by the Islamic regime to demonstrate support for the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel. Many of those on the streets held photos of Mojtaba Khamenei.

Iranian outlets have since published several photos and videos of officials who appeared among them, including Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani.

Khamenei’s message on Thursday also called on Iranians to participate in rallies to help “confront the enemy”.

BBC Persian and BBC Verify have verified footage showing an explosion in the Iranian capital near the crowd. The Israeli military had earlier issued an evacuation warning for an area close to where rallies were taking place in Tehran.

In one video, Mohseni Ejei is seen as giving an interview to state TV when a blast happens nearby, with the crowd chanting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”).

Others who spoke to the BBC felt Khamenei’s message meant very little was likely to change in the war that has seen near-constant waves of air strikes.

Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, said on Tuesday that thousands of civilian sites had been destroyed by the strikes, including schools and housing. The US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) group says nearly 1,800 people have been killed in the conflict, around two-thirds of whom were civilians.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czj1z0enk70o

An image of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been found in documents released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

It is the first known image of the three men together, but no time or location is given for the photograph.

ITV News said the photo was taken in Martha’s Vineyard in the US and is believed to have been taken between 1999 and 2000, before Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in prison and registered as a sex offender.

The image shows the men sitting around a wooden deck table, with mugs decorated with the US flag in front of them. There is no suggestion that appearing in the documents implies any wrongdoing.

Mountbatten-Windsor and Lord Mandelson have separately been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over their connections to the paedophile and have both since been released under investigation.

Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

Lord Mandelson has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he has not acted criminally. He has long argued that he accepted Epstein and his lawyer’s version of events and only discovered the truth after his death in 2019.

Mountbatten-Windsor has said he first met Epstein, in 1999 through Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s British girlfriend, who he had known since she was at university.

Their connections to the late financier have seen both men lose positions, with Mountbatten-Windsor stripped of his royal titles and Lord Mandelson sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

Mountbatten-Windsor has been accused of having sex with Virginia Giuffre when she was a teenager. A civil case brought by Giuffre was settled with no admission of guilt, and he has strenuously denied the allegations.

The BBC has seen the newly discovered image in the latest tranche of documents, which was part of three million pages, 180,000 images and 2,000 videos posted publicly by the DOJ in January.

Material is still being discovered as journalists and the public continue to look through the files.

Earlier this year, photographs appearing to show Mountbatten-Windsor kneeling on all fours over a female lying on the ground were released in a new tranche of US documents.

In two of the images he is seen touching the person, who is unidentified and fully clothed, on her stomach. Another image shows him staring directly at the camera.

He has consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office in mid-February in Norfolk, after Thames Valley Police said it was assessing a complaint over the alleged sharing of confidential material by the former prince with Epstein.

He served as a UK trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.

The newly discovered photograph appears to have been taken in a very similar location to another, which featured next to Lord Mandelson’s message in a “birthday book”, put together to celebrate Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003.

Emails seen by the BBC appear to show Lord Mandelson and Epstein’s personal assistant Lesley Groff discussing where a photo was taken.

After Groff suggested it “might be on Jeffrey’s island”, Lord Mandelson replied in an email dated 19 July 2013: “I think it was Martha’s, the first time I met Jeffrey.”

The Daily Telegraph reports the exchange relates to these pictures.

Lord Mandelson was sacked as ambassador after supportive emails he sent to Epstein in 2008, when he was facing charges for sex offences, emerged in the files.

Images of him standing in his underwear have also been released by the DOJ.

The Metropolitan Police launched an investigation last month over allegations that, while he was serving as a government minister, Lord Mandelson passed on market-sensitive government information to Epstein.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyxezdv335o

From reconnaissance drones to ground robots, high-tech systems play a key role in Ukraine’s defense. In the Kharkiv region, DW witnessed how they operate firsthand.

The corn in the fields stands several feet tall — it hasn’t been harvested in a long time. Villages are destroyed and deserted. Burnt-out car wrecks line the roadsides. There is no sign of fighting — the area in the Kharkiv region near the Russian border looks downright eerie.

These images from reconnaissance drones and stationary video cameras are continuously transmitted to the monitors at a Ukrainian command post. Here, the National Guard’s Khartiia Brigade monitors the region. The post is a few kilometers from the front line, in the basement of an abandoned building north of Kharkiv in Ukraine.

The battalion commander goes by “Thunder” and he doesn’t take his eyes off the monitors for a second. The weather was clear, the sky cloudless; reconnaissance must be especially vigilant. “If the enemy advances close to our positions, then we’ve overlooked something somewhere,” Thunder told DW.

Traditional shelters and trenches no longer offer protection in this war, he said: “The entire infantry — both Ukrainian and enemy soldiers — are digging into underground tunnels to remain out of reach of attack of the drones.”

To spot traces of the enemy, he said, the brigade members carefully “read signs on the ground from the sky.” They hunt for subtle clues: trash left on the streets of abandoned villages, freshly churned earth in gardens, a small pile of wood in the middle of a yard.

Pilot Oleksiy steered a drone toward one of the houses and spotted something suspicious near a well. “It looks like animal tracks, but theoretically someone could have stopped there to fetch water. We’ll have to check that out later,” he said. He scans the nearby road: Reconnaissance had noticed a civilian vehicle there. Just moments earlier, they had reported it stopping for a few minutes near a small cluster of trees.

“The enemy is constantly supplying its infantry,” Oleksiy told DW.

As soon as his brigade discovers a Russian hideout, combat drones are sent there. “Russia does the same thing,” Thunder said. “Whoever has the best hideouts and the upper hand with drones dominates.”

Delivering supplies with ground robots

It is essential that underground shelters remain undetected for as long as possible. As a result, Ukraine’s armed forces are increasingly relying on unmanned ground vehicles — rather than cars — to transport supplies and combat equipment, clear mines and evacuate wounded people. Different types of these robotic systems can carry 200 to 700 kilograms (440-1,540 pounds) of cargo.

The enemy is actively “hunting” Ukrainian ground robots, a commander known as “Scrooge” said. His brigade sends unmanned platforms loaded with supplies to positions every night. The DW reporter met him at the stroke of midnight in the middle of the steppe, on the outskirts of a village on the Kupiansk front line in the Kharkiv region.

There, quadcopters, combat gear, provisions and fuel were hurriedly loaded onto the various platforms. Everything had to happen very quickly, because enemy combat drones have been spotted circling just 5 kilometers (3 miles) away.

‘Dream’ is shattered

First, a ground robot nicknamed “Dream” was dispatched. According to the plan, the cargo would arrive within two hours. A pilot controlled the platform from a distance of 40 kilometers. Dream was accompanied by a reconnaissance drone controlled from another command post about 20 kilometers away.

Halfway there, Dream had to suddenly stop because an enemy combat drone was sighted. About an hour later, the platform came under attack. At the company’s control point, the cargo could be seen catching fire.

Scrooge said Dream was an “experienced fighter” and had sustained two “wounds,” and mechanics would likely be able to repair Dream. The other deliveries went successfully, so the loss of Dream isn’t so bad. “It’s just a machine,” Scrooge said. “The main thing is that no people die.”

Robots and drones instead of soldiers

The commander said Ukrainian ground robots were advancing faster than Russia’s. He showed DW a combat platform ready for deployment in his company’s workshop; mounted on it is a large-caliber US Browning machine gun.

Scrooge said it was capable of destroying enemy troops and equipment. Batteries can be used to keep the platform in standby mode for a long period.

“If a robot with a machine gun can attack the enemy from a distance of1 1/2 kilometers, that alone is psychologically difficult for those under attack,” said Yuriy, the company’s mechanic.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/russia-and-ukraine-wage-high-tech-war-in-the-death-zone/a-76352617

Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed that Cuba has opened talks with Washington as a US blockade isolates the Caribbean nation. US President Trump has said a deal would be “very easily made” after threatening a “takeover.”

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Friday confirmed that his Communist-run Caribbean nation has opened talks with the United States, which imposed a crippling energy blockade on Cuba after removing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from power in January.

Cuba is dependent on support from Venezuela and Mexico — both of which had supplied it with fuel — for its survival.

The US blockade and tariffs directed at any nation that dare sell oil to Cuba have severely handicapped Cuba’s ability to produce power, triggering massive blackouts and an ongoing energy emergency on the island.

Diaz-Canel addressed this issue Friday, saying the government is working hard to increase its own energy output but that efforts have been hampered by the fact that no oil has reached the island in three months.

In televised remarks to the nation, Diaz-Canel said talks with the US would be “aimed at finding solutions to bilateral differences between our two nations.”

Diaz-Canel said the “impact” of the US energy blockade has been “tremendous,” adding that power outages continue to affect communications, education, transportation and health services. He continued, saying that tens of thousands of medical surgeries have had to be postponed and that bakeries are now using wood and coal-burning ovens.

The US State Department did not comment on Diaz-Canel’s remarks.

Back-channel comms between US and Cuba?

After Diaz-Canel’s statement, two US officials confirmed that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been conducting back-channel talks with Cuba’s Communist government and had secretly met with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of retired Cuban leader Raul Castro — Fidel Castro’s brother — during a recent Caribbean leadership meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.

In a video recorded on Thursday evening, Diaz-Canel confirmed that he was directing the talks from the Cuban side along with the elder Castro and other officials.

In the video, Rodriguez Castro, widely referred to as “El Cangriejo,” or “the Crab,” was seen seated directly behind President Diaz-Canel and among a group of high-level Communist officials.

Rodriguez Castro has no elected position in the government and it is unclear what role he and his influential 94-year-old grandfather will play in the talks.

Nearly 70 years of distrust between US and Cuba

In confirming talks the US has long hinted at, Diaz-Canel said negotiations had begun as a way, “to determine the willingness of both parties to take concrete actions for the benefit of the people of both countries. And in addition, to identify areas of cooperation to confront threats and guarantee the security and peace of both nations, as well as in the region.”

Diaz-Canel said Cuba would engage in talks on the basis of respect and in the spirit of Cuban “sovereignty and self-determination.”

Speaking with the Associated Press, Cuban citizen Elvis Hernandez spoke for many of his compatriots by saying: “Cubans are desperate. You can’t live without water or electricity. That’s why we want consensus to be reached. If there are talks let them be productive. Let them achieve something good through those conversations.”

Beyond the current energy crunch, Cubans face continued rising prices for staple supplies as well as medicine shortages.

Cuba and the US have maintained an antagonistic relationship for the better part of seven decades. Though things began to thaw slightly under former-President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump has never been shy about voicing his dislike of the island nation’s leaders.

As a result, he has applied his maximum pressure approach to Cuba, recently claiming that it is “gonna fall pretty soon.”

“They have no money, they have no oil,” he told Latin American leaders gathered in Florida last week. “They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”

“They used to get the money from Venezuela. They get the oil from Venezuela, but they don’t have any money from Venezuela.”

Will the US ‘take over’ Cuba? Trump says a deal is ‘easily made’

While flexing US military muscle in the Western Hemisphere — kidnapping Maduro and ordering the US military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of purported drug runners in South American coastal waters — Trump has repeatedly threatened that Cuba could face the same fate as Venezuela.

Though it must also be said that it is not entirely certain what is in fact happening in Venezuela at the moment.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/cuban-president-confirms-talks-with-us/a-76355516

 

The weapons approved are part of a $11 billion US arms package announced in December. The package aims to bolster Taiwan’s military capabilities against Chinese aggression.

Taiwan’s parliament on Friday approved four weapons deals with the US, giving the government the green light to approve the deal worth roughly $9 billion (roughly €7.86 billion).

The arms packages are part of an $11 billion arms deal announced by Washington in December.

Taiwan’s reluctance to increase defense spending has raised concerns in Washington. The US remains the Chinese-claimed island’s most important international backer and arms supplier.

What kind of weapons were approved?

The weapons include:

• TOW anti-tank missiles
• M109A7 self-propelled howitzers
• Lockheed Martin-made Javelin missiles
• HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems

“This body ​upholds the principle of placing national security first and firmly defending territorial integrity,” parliament speaker Han Kuo-yu said, reading the resolution, which passed unanimously.

Han urged the government to provide a delivery schedule so parliament can review it.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry had warned opposition parties that if the weapons deals with the US were not signed by Sunday, Taiwan would risk losing its place in the production and delivery queue.

The Defense Ministry had defended the deals, saying they were prepared through a “rigorous project approval process” to meet the military’s requirements.

As Israel and the United States continue to pummel Iran and Iran retaliates with rockets throughout the region, experts say a return to diplomacy is needed to end the war.

As the US-Israel war on Iran marks two weeks, much is at stake for the region. On Friday, Iran continued to launch strikes on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also vowed in his first public comment earlier this week to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

Iran’s Arab neighbors on the Persian Gulf appear reluctant to openly comment on Iran’s new supreme leader, Sebastian Sons, a senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient, told DW.

“The various capitals in the Gulf want to get a clear picture of the situation first,” he said.

Philipp Dienstbier, the Jordan-based head of the Gulf States regional program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told DW that the Israeli-US war on Iran has united the Gulf states. “In the early days of the crisis, there were numerous expressions of solidarity,” he said, “even between states that were previously at odds.”

“The threat from Iran is a challenge that requires regional coordination,” he said, predicting that closer cooperation could emerge in the future, particularly in the areas of air defense and missile defense.

“None of the Gulf states has an interest in this war dragging on,” Sons said. “Ultimately, the entire business model of the region suffers as a result.” Attacks on energy facilities, airports or water infrastructure would strike at the lifeblood of the Gulf economy, he said. “Therefore, the region faces a difficult balancing act,” Sons said. The Gulf states must make it clear to Iran “that red lines have been crossed,” he said, but added that he doesn’t see any “long-term alternative to diplomacy either.”

Sons said the conflict was a challenge to the region’s security strategy. In recent years, the Gulf states have sought stability situation through broad-based diplomacy, he said. The goal had been to engage with as many actors as possible — including both the United States and Iran.

“This kind of 360-degree diplomacy was actually intended to prevent the region itself from becoming a battlefield,” Sons said. Current developments show that this approach worked to a limited extent. The question now is how the Gulf states should deal with an increasingly fragile security situation in the future.

Dienstbier said, “The Gulf states have deliberately adopted a balanced position in recent years.” Saudi Arabia, for example, has increasingly focused on deescalation; countries such as Oman and Qatar have acted as mediators. However, the recent attacks have severely damaged this trust, Dienstbier said. Even if the war ends soon, he added, it will be virtually “impossible to simply return to the way things were before.”

‘Fundamental change’ unlikely

Overall, the regional reaction to Iran’s strikes has been mixed, Dienstbier said. He added that the Gulf governments likely see Iran’s new supreme leader more as a declaration of continuity over change.

“Khamenei is considered someone who is close to the Revolutionary Guards and has been groomed within the system as a successor,” Dienstbier said. Accordingly, Gulf governments assume that Iran’s current policy will continue.

“No one in the Gulf is currently expecting a fundamental change in political course,” Dienstbier said. He added that it remains unclear how Khamenei, who had not previously held political office, will act as supreme leader.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/as-iran-war-rages-gulf-neighbors-worry-about-security/a-76349156

 

The United States issued a 30-day waiver for ​countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products currently stranded at sea, in what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said was a step to stabilize ‌global energy markets roiled by the Iran war.
Oil prices eased on Friday morning in Asia after the U.S. waiver announcement.

The move was the latest attempt by President Donald Trump’s administration to tame energy prices after the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and the subsequent response by Tehran widened regional tensions and paralyzed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting vital Middle East oil and gas flows and sending energy prices higher.

On Wednesday, Washington ​announced it would be releasing 172 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve in an effort to curb sky-rocketing oil prices in the wake of the ​war in Iran. That release was part of a broader commitment by the 32-nation International Energy Agency to release 400 million barrels of ⁠oil.
The IEA said earlier on Thursday that he war in the Middle East was creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history.
The license issued by Washington on Thursday authorizes the ​delivery and sale of Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels as of March 12 and valid through midnight Washington time on April 11, according to the text of the ​license posted on the Treasury Department’s website.

The move reflects White House worries that the surge in oil prices after nearly two weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran will hurt U.S. businesses and consumers ahead of the November midterm elections, when Trump’s fellow Republicans hope to retain control of Congress.
Bessent, in a statement on X released hours after benchmark oil prices shot above $100 a barrel, said the measure was “narrowly tailored” ​and “short-term” and would not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.
“The temporary increase in oil prices is a short-term and temporary disruption that will result in a massive benefit ​to our nation and economy in the long-term,” Bessent said in the statement, echoing Trump.
There were about 124 million barrels of Russian-origin oil on water across 30 different locations globally as of Thursday, ‌Fox News reported, ⁠adding that the U.S. license would provide around five to six days of supply when taking into account the daily loss of oil from the Strait.

Even as the sanctions reprieve was expected to boost world supplies of oil, it could also complicate the West’s efforts to deprive Russia of revenue for its war in Ukraine and put Washington at odds with its allies.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after participating in a call with G7 leaders on Wednesday to discuss the impact of the Iran war on oil and gas markets, ​said now was not the time to relax ​sanctions against Russia.
Also on Thursday, Russian presidential ⁠envoy Kirill Dmitriev said he had discussed the current energy crisis with a U.S. delegation that included Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at a meeting in Florida.
The U.S. Treasury previously issued a 30‑day waiver on March 5 specifically for India, allowing ​New Delhi to buy Russian oil stuck at sea.

Trump has also ordered the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide political risk insurance ​and financial guarantees for ⁠maritime trade in the Gulf and said the U.S. Navy could escort ships in the region.
In another attempt to control prices, the Trump administration is considering temporarily waiving a shipping rule known as the Jones Act to ensure energy and agricultural products can move freely between U.S. ports, the White House said. Waiving the rule would allow foreign ships to carry fuel between U.S. ports, potentially ⁠lowering costs ​and speeding deliveries.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-issues-new-russia-related-general-license-oil-treasury-website-2026-03-12/

A U.S. military refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq on Thursday, in an incident U.S. Central Command ​said involved another aircraft but was not the result of hostile or ‌friendly fire.
The United States has deployed a large number of aircraft into the Middle East to take part in operations against Iran and the incident highlights the risk of operations, even ​over friendly skies.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said it was carrying out ​rescue efforts after the U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft went down. The ⁠second aircraft landed safely.

“The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury,” ​the statement said, using the military name of the U.S. operation against Iran.
A U.S. ​official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the other aircraft involved in the incident was also a KC-135 and the one that crashed had as many as six service members on ​board.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, claimed ​responsibility for downing the U.S. military refueling aircraft.
The group said in a statement it had shot ‌down ⁠the KC-135 aircraft “in defense of our country’s sovereignty and airspace”.

The KC-135, built by Boeing (BA.N), in the 1950s and early 1960s, has served as the backbone of the U.S. military’s air refueling fleet and is critical to allow aircraft to carry out missions ​without having to land.
Since ​the U.S. and ⁠Israel started carrying out strikes against Iran on February 28, seven U.S. troops have been killed. The United States has carried ​out strikes against more than 6,000 targets in Iran.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-carrying-out-rescue-effort-after-losing-aircraft-iraq-us-military-says-2026-03-12/

MARK Zuckerberg has purchased a $170million property nestled in the so-called Billionaires Bunker – which is known for its top security and exclusivity.

The tech overlord, who’s also said to have an apocalypse-ready property in Hawaii, will now be rubbing shoulders with the likes of Jeff Bezos, Tom Brady, and Ivanka Trump.

Zuckerberg’s new home, which is still under construction, is on Indian Creek Island – an exclusive barrier island north of Miami, Florida, that’s only accessible to residents, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Once finished, the limestone mansion is expected to be 27,889 square feet, and it’s sitting on 1.8 acres and is positioned just 200 feet from the water.

It will consist of nine bedrooms, 11 full bathrooms, four powder rooms, and have an elevator.

Among the list of luxury amenities are a gym, hair salon, massage room, 1,500-gallon aquarium, and a library with a secret room.

The historic price tag makes this the most expensive property ever sold in Miami-Dade County, and one of the biggest sales in the country.

The record holder is Ken Griffin, who purchased a $239million penthouse apartment just south of Central Park in New York City in 2019.

Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan purchased the property from cosmetic surgeon Aaron Rollins and real estate agent Marine Rollins. They initially listed it for $200million in November.

Billionaire Bunker currently consists of about 41 waterfront homes, and has an exclusive country club and a dedicated 24/7 police force.

In the middle of the island is an 18-hole golf course that’s one of the largest in Florida.

A single bridge guarded by security is the only way on the island, and there’s an island cop for every three inhabitants.

Plus, a 24-hour marine patrol cruises through the ocean waters to ensure no one sneaks onto the land.

The Facebook founder’s main residence is in Palo Alto, California, but he also has properties on Lake Tahoe and in Hawaii.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/16075984/mark-zuckerberg-joins-billionaire-bunker-jeff-bezos-florida/

 

Australia’s Qantas Airways said on Friday (Mar 13) it would pay out A$105 million (US$74 million) to settle a class action alleging it misled customers and failed to provide ticket refunds for flights cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The class action on behalf of Australian passengers related to international and domestic flights cancelled by Qantas between 2020 and 2022.

Qantas had provided flight credits instead of cash refunds.

“Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Qantas has agreed to pay A$105 million, with no admission of liability,” the airline said.

The deal is subject to court approval and will see the money to fund cash refunds paid to an administrator in the first half of 2027, Qantas said.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/qantas-airways-refund-flights-cancelled-covid-19-5990601

 

Disruptions to energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have prompted India to prioritise household and transport gas supplies, leaving restaurants and other businesses scrambling for fuel.

Half of the six eateries run by Delhi restaurateur Zachariah Jacob are close to running on fumes.

“Right now, we are running on existing LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) cylinders. We have enough stock for about a week,” Jacob, 38, who operates the outlets under the Mahabelly brand, told CNA.

“After that, we will run out of gas, and we don’t know what to do.”

The difference lies in how his kitchens are fuelled. Three of Jacob’s outlets in malls are cushioned by piped natural gas (PNG) connections, which remain unaffected.

But his standalone kitchens rely on commercial LPG cylinders, and supplies have abruptly dried up as disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz – a key artery for India’s energy imports – ripple through the country’s fuel supply chains amid the war in the Middle East.

The government has tightened distribution to prioritise households and other critical sectors, leaving many businesses scrambling to secure supplies and fuelling the black market.

Experts say the turmoil is exposing immediate economic risks in India. It is also raising deeper questions about the country’s energy resilience – how to manage short-term shortages without crippling livelihoods, and how to reduce long-term dependence on vulnerable supply routes.

BRACING FOR DISRUPTION

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical artery for India’s energy supplies. Tensions following the United States and Israel’s strikes on Iran on Feb 28 have disrupted the route and triggered volatility in global oil prices.

In 2025, nearly half of India’s crude oil and LNG imports transited through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

However, the Indian government said on Wednesday (Mar 11) that diversification efforts have reduced dependence, with about 70 per cent of crude oil imports now sourced from outside the strait.

LPG remains more exposed. India imports around 60 per cent of its LPG consumption, and roughly 90 per cent of those imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, government data shows.

Against this backdrop, India has moved to manage its domestic supply.

In an order issued on Tuesday (Mar 10), the Ministry of Petroleum said LPG supplies would be prioritised for households, the transport sector and LPG cylinder production.

“We are committed to ensuring uninterrupted supply of affordable energy to our domestic consumers,” Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in a social media post, adding there was “no reason to panic”.

Other sectors, including fertiliser plants and the tea industry, will receive only 70 to 80 per cent of their requirements, “subject to operational availability”, the ministry said. Supplies to petrochemical facilities and power plants would be fully or partially curtailed to bridge the gap.

The new rules would ensure equitable distribution and continued availability for “priority sectors” such as healthcare and education, it added.

But restaurants and hotels, which are not on the priority list, have warned that the commercial fallout could be severe.

Zorawar Kalra, vice president of the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI), said the industry is part of a 6.6 trillion rupee (US$71.5 billion) ecosystem, generating about 18 billion rupees in economic activity each day.

Commercial establishments account for about 13 per cent of India’s LPG consumption, he highlighted.

“Even if 25 per cent of outlets linked to PNG remain operational, a widespread shutdown of LPG-dependent restaurants could result in daily losses of over 12 billion rupees,” Kalra told CNA.

The association has written to the government urging it to designate restaurants – both dine-in and delivery – as an essential service, which would grant them priority access to commercial LPG cylinders.

“If they shut down for even a single day, that’s a loss to the economy,” Kalra said. “We are the second-largest employer after agriculture – 8 million directly employed, and another 8 million in ancillary industries.”

The NRAI warned on Tuesday that 50 to 60 per cent of restaurants in India could shut within the next two to three days if commercial LPG supplies are not restored, in remarks carried by local media.

Restaurants are already planning contingencies, including trimming menus and seeking alternative cooking methods.

Some eateries in parts of India are already switching to traditional coal-fired ovens, according to local reports.

“If we don’t have gas, maybe instead of doing 50 items, we do five,” said Jacob, the Delhi restaurant owner, adding that his team is considering shifting some cooking to induction or electric equipment as a stopgap measure.

However, coal-fired cooking is restricted in Delhi due to air pollution regulations, Jacob said. “If you’re looking at coal, that’s also not something you can really depend on.”

In some areas, black-market cylinders are being sold at inflated prices. Many restaurateurs said they are reluctant to buy at “insane prices” and pass the temporary spike on to customers, according to local reports.

Beyond hospitality and the food and beverage industry, small manufacturing units that rely on LPG for heating and processing – from food processing and textiles to metals, ceramics and even pharmaceuticals – could see operations slow or halt, said Karthik Nachiappan, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS).

“Big businesses have other kinds of fuels (they can) rely on, and they have LPG that they can store. Most small businesses don’t have that, so they need to replenish their stock every couple of days,” he told CNA, adding that this makes them especially vulnerable.

EMERGENCY MEASURES, STRUCTURAL FIXES

India has moved to shore up supplies.

On Wednesday, the government said it had increased domestic LPG production by about 25 per cent and was exploring alternative supply routes to the Strait of Hormuz.

But experts cautioned that such measures may not offer immediate relief, as it will still take time to plug the current supply constraints.

In the near term, the government may need to increase emergency imports from countries like Canada and the US, as well as release buffer stocks held at import terminals and bottling plants to stabilise distribution, Nachiappan said.

The LPG gas crunch also underscores the need for structural reforms, analysts said.

They pointed to how greater diversification of supply routes and expanded storage capacity could buffer against chokepoint disruptions such as the Strait of Hormuz.

In the longer term, India must diversify suppliers beyond the Middle East, Nachiappan said, pointing to options including the United States, Canada, Africa and Southeast Asia.

India had already been taking action on this front prior to the Middle East conflict.

In November 2025, Indian state-owned refineries signed a long-term agreement to import 2.2 million tonnes of LPG from the US in 2026, Bloomberg reported. The deal was expected to raise the US share of India’s LPG supply to nearly 10 per cent in 2026, up from just 0.6 per cent in 2024.

India has also stepped up LPG imports from Norway, Algeria, Australia and Canada, while Japanese suppliers – traditionally serving Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand – have expanded LPG shipments to the Indian market.

Investments in storage, logistics and bottling infrastructure would help build domestic buffer capacity against future shocks, analysts said.

NRAI’s Kalra said expanding PNG infrastructure beyond malls and major urban clusters could also reduce dependence on cylinder-based LPG in smaller cities and towns, where he believes the impact may be worse due to weaker logistics and bargaining power.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/middle-east-war-india-cooking-gas-crunch-eateries-energy-crunch-5989111

Rights groups have urged FIFA to ensure the 2026 World Cup upholds commitments to inclusivity and safety, warning that U.S. immigration policies and concerns over press freedom could undermine the tournament.

The Sport & Rights Alliance said the governing body had promised a “safe, welcoming and inclusive” competition under its Human Rights Framework but that rhetoric and immigration policies under U.S. President Donald Trump risked creating fear among fans, journalists and communities.

“Football brings the world together — but not if U.S. visa bans and mass deportation raids keep immigrants, workers, journalists, communities, and fans away,” the coalition of rights groups wrote in a letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino released on Thursday.

The 2026 World Cup, the first to feature 48 teams, will be held across the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches staged in 16 host cities.

Asked about the concerns, the White House said the administration was focused on delivering a successful event.

“President Trump is focused on making this the greatest World Cup ever while ensuring it is the safest and most secure in history,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said when asked for comment.

The coalition also urged FIFA to work with host governments to guarantee access for fans and media and to ensure the tournament respects rights including free expression, press freedom and protections for workers and local communities.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sport/rights-groups-urge-fifa-ensure-inclusive-world-cup-5990371

 

Prosecutors said the brothers built a network of businesses known as the Savani Group, which generated millions of dollars through these illegal schemes over several years.

Two Indian-origin brothers from Pennsylvania, Bhaskar Savani, 60, and Arun Savani, 58, have been found guilty in a major multi-state racketeering conspiracy involving several types of fraud, including visa fraud, healthcare fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. Prosecutors said the brothers built a network of businesses known as the Savani Group, which generated millions of dollars through these illegal schemes over several years.

Bhaskar Savani, a dentist by profession, was directly linked to the group’s medical-related fraud. Authorities said the brothers orchestrated a wide range of fraudulent activities through their companies and associated entities. According to a press release by the US Attorney’s Office, their actions formed a long-running criminal enterprise designed to enrich themselves through deception and misuse of government programs.

Schemes And Scams

• H-1B visa fraud: Prosecutors said the Savani Group filed fraudulent visa applications and petitions to recruit foreign workers, most of whom were from India. Once hired, these workers were allegedly forced to pay various fees and return portions of their wages to the Savani Group, effectively exploiting their dependency on the company for immigration status.
• Health care fraud scheme: The brothers were also found guilty of large-scale healthcare fraud targeting the Medicaid programme. Investigators said the Savani Group continued to obtain Medicaid payments even after their dental practices were terminated from Medicaid insurance contracts. They allegedly did this by operating through nominee-owned dental practices, which billed Medicaid on their behalf. Officials said the scheme resulted in more than $30 million in fraudulent Medicaid claims.
• False Medicaid bills: Authorities also discovered that the group submitted false Medicaid bills using another dentist’s National Provider Identifier (NPI) on dates when that dentist was actually outside the United States. In addition, procedures were sometimes carried out by uncredentialed dentists, which further violated healthcare regulations.
• Money Laundering: Prosecutors said the Savani brothers then engaged in money laundering, transferring and concealing the proceeds of healthcare fraud through a complex network of corporate bank accounts tied to various Savani Group entities.
• Tax and wire fraud: The investigation also uncovered tax and wire fraud. Authorities said the brothers failed to pay taxes on around $1.6 million in personal income and $1.1 million in unreported employee income. They allegedly disguised personal expenses, such as college tuition payments, property taxes, and maintenance costs for their homes, as business expenses.
• Unsafe Medical Devices: In another disturbing allegation, investigators found that the group used prototype dental implants labelled “Not For Human Use” and implanted them in patients without their knowledge or consent. These devices had not been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Interestingly, despite being under investigation and later charged in 2023, the brothers had publicly posted on social media about meeting FBI Director Kash Patel and celebrated his appointment.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/indian-origin-brothers-convicted-of-h-1b-visa-and-healthcare-fraud-in-us-could-face-400-years-in-prison-11205446?pfrom=home-ndtv_topstories

Donald Trump said Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was ‘damaged but probably alive’, as reports suggested he was critically injured in the airstrike that killed his father.

Amid mounting speculation over the condition of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he believes the leader is still alive but may have suffered serious injuries.

Speaking to Fox News Radio, when asked whether he believes Mojtaba — who assumed leadership after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in US-Israel strikes — is alive, Trump said, “I think he probably is.”

“I think he is damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form, you know,” Trump added at the Brian Kilmeade Show.

Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since the start of the war, fuelling speculation about his health and his ability to lead Iran during the ongoing conflict.

The US President’s remarks came amid reports suggesting that the new leader may have been seriously wounded in the airstrike that killed his father on February 28. According to a report by The Sun, the 56-year-old cleric is in a coma and lost at least one leg after being critically injured in the attack.

Sources cited by the publication claimed Khamenei “lost at least one leg and has also suffered serious stomach or liver damage.” The report said he is being treated under heavy security at Sina University Hospital in Tehran.

“One or two of his legs have been cut off. His liver or stomach has also ruptured. He is apparently in a coma as well,” a source told the newspaper.

Iranian officials have also acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei was injured in the attack but said he is safe and recovering. Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus confirmed to The Guardian that he sustained injuries in the strike and described him as fortunate to have survived the bombardment.

The diplomat, Alireza Salarian, said, “I have heard that he was injured in his legs and hand and arm I think he is in the hospital because he is injured.”

Explaining why the 56-year-old cleric had not appeared in public or made any statements since he succeeded his father on Sunday, he added, “I don’t think he is comfortable (in any condition) to give a speech.”

Iranian state television has attempted to show continuity in leadership by broadcasting what it described as Khamenei’s first statement since taking power.

In the statement, broadcast on Iranian state television and read by a news presenter rather than the leader himself, Khamenei warned that Iran would avenge the deaths of those killed in the conflict and threatened action against US military installations in the region.

“All US bases should be immediately closed in the region, otherwise they will be attacked,” Khamenei said.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/trump-says-irans-mojtaba-khamenei-probably-alive-in-some-form-amid-injury-reports-2881212-2026-03-13

A US KC-135 refuelling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during Operation Epic Fury, prompting rescue efforts. Officials said the incident was not caused by hostile fire, while another aircraft landed safely.

A US Air Force aircraft crashed in Iraq amid the ongoing war in Iran, the United States Central Command confirmed on Thursday. The aircraft was carrying five crew members and the crash prompted a rescue operation in western Iraq where the incident took place. The aircraft was a KC-135 aerial tanker, a key platform used by the US military to refuel fighter jets and other aircraft during long-range missions.

While an Iran-backed Islamic group operating in Iraq has claimed responsibility for downing the plane, according to news agency Reuters, the US military has said that hostile action was not responsible for the crash.

In a statement, the US Central Command said two aircraft were involved in the incident. One aircraft landed safely, while the other went down over western Iraq.

“The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing,” the command said, referring to the US military campaign targeting Iran.

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U.S. Central Command is aware of the loss of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft. The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the…

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 12, 2026

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the situation is still developing, confirmed that the second aircraft involved in the incident was also a KC-135 tanker.

“More information will be made available as the situation develops,” Central Command said in a statement. “We ask for continued patience to gather additional details and provide clarity for the families of service members”.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-backed armed factions, claimed responsibility for shooting down the US KC-135 refuelling aircraft, stating it was “in defence of our country’s sovereignty and airspace”.

The KC-135, manufactured by Boeing in the 1950s and early 1960s, has long been a central component of the US military’s air refuelling fleet. Its role is crucial, enabling US aircraft to extend missions without needing to land for fuel.

The tanker is the fourth aircraft publicly known to have crashed during the US military’s operations against Iran, according to the Associated Press. Last week, the US military confirmed that three American fighter jets were accidentally shot down by friendly Kuwaiti fire.

All six crew members aboard the F-15E Strike Eagles safely ejected and were in stable condition after being rescued, US officials said.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/us-military-refuelling-plane-crashes-in-iraq-during-iran-war-mission-as-rescue-effort-begins-2881207-2026-03-13

 

The war in the Middle East is dominating the news but Ukraine is still under fire from Russia. Kyiv is now offering insight into shooting down Iranian drones in exchange for continued support from its allies.

As the war in Iran pushes Ukraine’s fight against Russian invaders off the front pages, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is working to leverage hard-won lessons learned on the battlefield in more than four years of war to inspire allies to continue their support for his besieged nation.

With some Western allies — especially the US under President Donald Trump — less than enthusiastic about continuing to provide assistance to Ukraine as it fends off Russian invaders, Kyiv suddenly has something its allies desperately want and need, effective anti-drone technology.

Russia has peppered Ukraine with more than 57,000 Iranian-made Shahed drones since launching its invasion on February 24, 2022, the same type of mass-produced drones that Iran is now launching at its neighbors across the Middle East.

Middle East nations seeking Ukrainian expertise; Europeans are, too

Ukraine has already dispatched teams of experts to the Middle East since Israel and the US launched their war against Iran, specifically to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); and President Zelenskyy has been actively making the rounds to European allies keen to protect their assets as Russia tests their readiness, mainly along NATO’s eastern flank, with regular drone incursions.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy and Romanian President Nicusor Dan signed a letter of intent for the production of drones in the eastern European NATO country.

Zelenskyy, who has clearly stated Ukraine’s offer to form joint-partnerships with allies, will travel to Paris on Friday.

There, the Ukrainian leader will meet with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to discuss defense cooperation as well as the impact of the Iran war on oil prices and what this means for Ukraine.

Russia, which largely uses illicit gas and oil revenues to finance its invasion of Ukraine, has been buoyed by US sanctions and tariff exemptions for nations buying Russian oil and gas as the new US-Israeli war on Iran sends global energy prices skyrocketing.

Zelenskyy on Thursday said Ukraine is still waiting for the White House to sign a major drone production agreement put forth by Kyiv last year.

Writing on social media, Zelenskyy said the proposed US deal would cover drones and air defense systems built to operate as a connected system with the ability to disable swarms of hundreds or even thousands of Shahed drones.

Ukraine taking out deadly Iranian drones with inventive yet cheap defense tech

Two key selling points for Zelenskyy will be price point and scalable production.

Although Ukraine has received a number of anti-aircraft defense batteries from allies, such as top of the line US-made Patriot missile systems, these are expensive and complicated to make and replace.

Left to fend for itself, Ukraine and its people have risen to the existential threat posed by Russia, finding inventive ways to pioneer effective yet cheap drone-killing technology.

Ukraine has rewritten the handbook on air-defense technology as a result, mass producing anti-air interceptor drones for just a few thousands dollars each, while Patriot missiles — 60 to 65 of which are produced each month — carry a price tag between $3 million and $4 million each (€2.6 million and €3.5 million).

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-kyivs-anti-drone-tech-in-demand-in-gulf-and-nato/a-76338633

 

Fifteen men received life sentences for the Crocus City Hall attack that killed 150, including children, and wounded hundreds inside a burning building. It was Russia’s deadliest such incident in two decades.

A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced 15 men to life in prison over the 2024 Crocus City Hall massacre that killed 150 people, the deadliest terror attack in the country in more than two decades. The incident, which targeted a sold-out concert venue, was later claimed by the “Islamic State.”

Among those given life sentences were the four gunmen — all Tajik citizens — who carried out the assault, opened fire on the crowd and then set the building on fire.

Eleven others, including some Russian citizens, were also sentenced to life as accomplices with terrorist links.

Those tried alongside them included three men who sold the gunmen a car, a landlord who rented them an apartment and 10 others accused of terrorist ties, according to the independent Russian news site Mediazona.

Four additional defendants — including a father and his sons — received prison terms of between 19 and 22 years.

Russia’s deadliest attack in two decades

The March 2024 attack on the Moscow concert hall was the country’s worst since the 2004 siege of a school in Beslan.

The gunmen entered the concert hall shortly before a performance by the Soviet-era rock band Picnic. They opened fire on concertgoers and then set the building ablaze, trapping many inside.

More than 600 people were wounded. Six of those killed were children.

The attack took place two years into Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have claimed, without presenting evidence, that Ukraine had a role in the attack. Kyiv has denied any involvement.

‘Like yesterday,’ said survivor

The verdict came ahead of the second anniversary of the incident.

“For us all it’s like yesterday,” Ivan Pomorin, who was filming at the concert hall that night, told AFP in court.

The four gunmen, who were aged between 20 to 31 during the attack, had worked in various professions, including as a taxi driver, factory employee and construction worker.

They stood in a glass defendant’s cage, surrounded by security guards.

Hours after the attack, the suspects were brought to court showing signs of torture. One of them was barely conscious in a wheelchair. Videos circulating on social media and linked to security services appeared to show bloody interrogations.

The Russian state news agency TASS reported this month that two of the men sentenced to life had asked the court to send them to fight in Ukraine instead of serving life in prison.

One of them said he hoped to “redeem his guilt with blood,” according to a lawyer quoted by TASS.

Since invading Ukraine, Russia has recruited prisoners for the war, offering them freedom if they survive combat.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/russia-jails-15-men-for-life-over-concert-hall-terror-attack/a-76331144

A million illegally-registered cars are being driven in France in a fraud scandal that has cost hundreds of millions of euros in lost taxes and fines, according to the state auditor.

The fraud – in which fake dealerships manipulate the records of the state vehicle licensing agency (SIV) – is also endangering lives by allowing unsafe cars and lorries onto the road.

And it has proved a boon for crime.

Vulnerabilities “have allowed the whole gamut of criminality – from petty delinquency to organised crime – to penetrate the registration system in order to pursue their fraudulent ends”, according to the Cour des Comptes in a report released on Thursday.

The fraud goes back to 2017, when the French government decided to part-privatise the system, in a bid to speed up the notoriously slow process of delivering registration papers to car-buyers.

Some 2,000 civil servants were assigned to new tasks, and instead car-dealers were given the right to access the register themselves in order to issue documents for their clients.

But according to the Cour des Comptes, the new system relied excessively – and mistakenly – on good faith.

In fact, it was quickly abused by hundreds of unscrupulous operators who found they could set up ghost dealerships and then, for a fee, fiddle with the registry.

The report said that there were around one million cars on the road which had been registered by nearly 300 “fictitious companies operating totally free of state control”.

Papers shown by drivers of these vehicles would appear normal to a police officer, but afterwards the car and its owner would be untraceable.

“For solely the years 2022-2024 the financial prejudice was €550m (£475m), in non-collection of registration fees, and speeding and parking fines,” it said.

In all, the auditor listed 30 different types of fraud linked to the scam, from avoiding environmental taxes on heavily-polluting cars, to altering results of road-worthiness tests, and suppressing the identity of a car’s previous owner.

In a special report on the phenomenon, Le Monde newspaper told of a SIV-eur (as the fraudsters are known to police) who helped a luxury car importer escape tens of thousands of euros in import and environmental taxes.

He did this by registering the Rolls-Royces and Mercedes as vehicles specially adapted for disabled people, meaning they were exempt from duty.

Stolen vehicles can be re-registered by SIV-eurs to avoid detection, and drug gangs use SIV-ed cars for special jobs, like so-called “go-fast” deliveries down motorways.

According to Le Figaro newspaper, police were alerted by a big increase in “very fast” speeding offences – up 160% between 2016 and 2022. When they looked into registrations, they found that many had been faked.

The Cour des Comptes said the state had been lax in not checking the credentials of the 30,000 dealers to whom it allows access to the SIV.

All would-be entrants had to do was set up a shell company and then apply for access to the registry, which was normally given.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqw0jgn5xgo

Iran will continue blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s busiest oil shipping channel, according to a statement attributed to Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

His message was broadcast on Iranian state TV, but Khamenei did not appear in person. His message was instead read out by a newsreader.

Iran would “avenge the blood” of Iranians killed in the war with the US and Israel, Khamenei said in the statement, which also warned neighbouring countries to stop hosting US bases.

He was named supreme leader on 8 March after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day of the war.

Mojtaba Khamenei lost his wife and a son in the US-Israeli strike on the supreme leader’s compound that killed his father. His mother was also reportedly killed in the attack, though one Iranian outlet has since said she is alive.

It has been reported by the Reuters news agency, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Khamenei was “lightly injured”, but there have been no details.

He has not been seen in public and there have been no photographs or videos of him since becoming supreme leader.

Iran’s state TV news channel has referred to him as a “veteran of the Ramadan war”, without any further confirmation on whether he was injured.

In the first public message attributed to him, Khamenei said Iran should use the “lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz” as the channel is an area where “the enemy is highly vulnerable”.

Iran would continue targeting US bases in the region, Khamenei said in his statement.

Tehran had a policy of “friendship” with neighbouring countries, but he warned them to close their American bases.

“We share land or maritime borders with 15 neighbouring countries and have always sought warm and constructive relations with all of them,” he said.

“These countries must clarify their stance toward the aggressors against our homeland and the killers of our people.”

“I advise them to close those bases as soon as possible.”

Iran’s new leader also mentioned “the crimes against children, such as the deliberate crime at the Minab school”. According to American media reports, US investigators believe American forces mistakenly hit a school in southern Iran which was located near a military base.

Khamenei said he learned he had become the supreme leader of Iran via the country’s state TV channel.

“I learned about the result of the vote of the esteemed Assembly of Experts at the same time as you and through the Islamic Republic’s television.”

Speaking hours later after Israel said it had launched a new wave of strikes on Tehran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s new leader was a “puppet” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards who “can’t show his face in public”.

Asked about Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem he said “I wouldn’t issue life insurance policies on any of the leaders of the terrorist organisation”, according to Reuters.

Iran has threatened attacks on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which is normally a conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg599655vo

One person has died and two others were injured at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, in a shooting that the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism.

The suspect was also killed in the incident on Thursday.

The FBI identified the alleged gunman as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former Virginia National Guard member who had previously been jailed for trying to support the Islamic State group.

Jalloh allegedly opened fire into a classroom and some students were able to subdue and kill him, said Dominique Evans, Special Agent in Charge of the Norfolk FBI field office, at a news conference.

The students “subdued him, and rendered him no longer alive”, she said, adding that he was not shot, without providing further details.

They were members of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programme, which combines college coursework with military leadership training.

Officers first responded to reports of a shooting inside a classroom in Constant Hall, the university’s business school building, university police chief Garrett Shelton said on Thursday afternoon.

When the suspect walked in, he asked if it was an ROTC class, and after someone answered in the affirmative, he opened fire, law enforcement sources told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

When officers arrived, they found that the gunman was already dead, Shelton said.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the shooter died “thanks to a group of brave students who stepped in and subdued him – actions that undoubtedly saved lives along with the quick response of law enforcement”.

Three people in the room were shot, one of whom later died of their injuries in hospital, officials said.

Two of the victims were Army personnel, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on social media.

“I’m praying for them and all those impacted by this terrible event,” Driscoll said.

CBS News reported that the victim who was killed was the class instructor, a retired military officer.

In 2016, Jalloh was arrested and pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group, the FBI’s Evans said.

He was sentenced in 2017 and was released from prison in 2024, she said. When asked what kind of aid Jalloh was giving to the IS group back then, Evans said he had wanted to conduct a terrorist attack similar to the 2009 attack at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, that killed 13 people.

Evans said Thursday’s shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism because of the suspect’s prior conviction and because he allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar”, an Arabic phrase that means “God is greater”, before the incident.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gjrzgr32mo

Zendaya appeared to confirm she Tom Holland are already married during a telling moment at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards.

The “Euphoria” star, 29, attended the awards show Thursday and was a good sport when she was playfully put on the spot by host Marsai Martin.

The “Black-ish” star cracked onstage that Zendaya “didn’t play about her personal life,” and asked her to “just give a little nod or signal” when she should send a wedding gift — clearly referencing rumors she and Holland secretly tied the knot — in video obtained by People.

Zendaya responded by adorably flashing her hands around her face, showing off what appears to be her gold wedding band, as the crowd cheered and clapped.

She joyfully laughed as Marsai continued to joke that she was going to give Zendaya “T and Z forever” monogram towels as a wedding gift.

Zendaya was also overheard accepting well wishes from other attendees at the event, a source told People.

Page Six has reached out to reps for Zendaya and Holland, but didn’t immediately receive a response.

Zendaya and Holland, 29, reportedly got engaged over the 2024 holidays, and her longtime stylist, Law Roach, claimed the two had already tied the knot during a red carpet interview at the 2026 SAG Actor Awards earlier this month.

“The wedding has already happened,” he told Access Hollywood when asked about the nuptials. “You missed it.”

Rumors already swirled last month that Zendaya and Holland may have secretly wed after she was spotted wearing a gold band on her left ring finger instead of her 5-carat diamond sparkler.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/12/celebrity-news/zendaya-gives-clearest-sign-yet-she-married-tom-holland-at-essence-black-women-in-hollywood-awards/

Every year, thousands of Rohingya attempt to flee Myanmar and Bangladesh by sea. The escape effort kills hundreds of people per year.

It was late November when Nur Begum, an ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar living in the sprawling refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, received the call that her eldest daughter, Nur Kayas, was dead.

The call came from her former husband’s father, who had recently landed illegally in Malaysia aboard a smuggler’s boat near the island of Langkawi.

“He said their boat sank close to Langkawi,” Nur Begum told DW. He said he was in the same boat with her and that he and a few others were rescued by another boat and taken away, but everyone else died.

Her 10-year-old daughter was one of the 892 Rohingya who died or went missing in 2025 while attempting the sea crossing from Bangladesh or Myanmar in hopes of finding more sustainable conditions abroad, most often in Malaysia.

That grim figure, recorded by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, seems to be the highest death toll in well over a decade. In 2013, the UN estimated that 890 Rohingya died or went missing while attempting the same journey.

Gangs prowl camps at Cox’s Bazar

“The dire humanitarian situation in both Myanmar and Bangladesh, exacerbated by funding cuts, is having a devastating impact on the lives of Rohingya people. More and more are resorting to dangerous journeys to seek safety, protection and a dignified life for themselves and their families,” Mariko Hall, the UNHCR’s spokesperson for Asia and the Pacific, told DW.

Nur Begum and her daughter were among the roughly 700,000 Rohingya who fled their homes in Myanmar to escape the campaign of arson, rape and murder unleashed on the Muslim minority by the predominantly Buddhist Myanmar soldiers in 2017. That exodus, combined with a similar move in 2024, has pushed the population of the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh well past 1 million.

Inside the camps, jobs are scarce and food rations, funded by a dwindling pool of foreign aid, are falling. Gangs prowl the settlements for children to hold ransom or young men to recruit for the civil war back in Myanmar, where the military ousted a democratically elected government in 2021.

In Myanmar itself, the Rohingya are caught between the military and the Arakan Army, one of the many armed groups fighting the junta, persecuted by both and forced into fighting for either side.

“Vulnerability to exploitation and despair is increasing, and more people are resorting to harmful coping mechanisms,” said Hall.

Faced with these pressures, an increasing number of people are putting their lives on the line to reach Malaysia by sea, aided by a well-worn network of smugglers and human traffickers.

‘Never, ever wanted my daughter to go to Malaysia’

Despite the dangers and grinding poverty of the Cox’s Bazar camps, Nur Begum said she had no intention of sending her daughter away. She believes she may have been tricked. “I never, ever wanted my daughter to go to Malaysia. It was not my decision, and I don’t think it was my daughter’s decision. Maybe the human traffickers around here took her. I still don’t know how she got onto the boat,” she said.

“I can’t sleep or eat when I think about her. I miss her most of the time. Whenever I see her friends, they ask me about her, but I can’t tell them that she’s dead. I’m always depressed.”

Nur Begum said she did not know why the boat sank.

Media outlets offered conflicting narratives over the fate of nearly 300 people believed to be on the boatthat reportedly capsized when the sea turned suddenly choppy.

Some accounts say it was one of the smaller boats that capsized while ferrying passengers to shore, rather than the larger ship that made the bulk of the journey to Langkawi.

A Rohingya news outlet, which interviewed one of the survivors, reported that some 200 passengers had already disembarked before the last of the smaller boats sank.

The UN, however, estimates 266 people died or went missing in the tragedy.

The Arakan Project, a non-government group that tracks the Rohingyas’ boat journeys, told DW that its own research corroborates the news outlet’s account, which would bring the UNHCR’s figure for the year down.

Critics slam authorities’ response to Rohingya boats

Even with the accounts of the November tragedy still being clarified, it is clear that thousands of Rohingya are fleeing Bangladesh and Myanmar by boat each year, and hundreds of them continue to die or go missing along the way.

Many of the boats the smugglers use are old and ill-equipped for the journeys, which can take more than a week.

Setting off during the margins of the monsoon season, as some boats do, only adds to the risks, said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project.

But what makes the journeys most dangerous, she pointed out, is how the authorities of the countries the boats are trying to reach — mainly Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — react to those arrivals.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/rohingya-risk-lives-at-sea-to-flee-myanmar-bangladesh/a-76307157

Iran are not in a position to participate in the 2026 World Cup, says the country’s Minister of Sports and Youth Ahmad Donyamali.

The team are scheduled to play three group matches in the tournament, which is being held in the United States, Canada and Mexico and gets under way on 11 June.

Iran are due to face New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles on 15 and 21 June respectively, and Egypt in Seattle on 26 June.

But their participation has been in doubt since the US and Israel launched strikes on the country, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones towards Israel and other nations which host US military bases.

Earlier on Wednesday, Fifa president Gianni Infantino said US President Donald Trump had told him Iran are “welcome to compete” at this summer’s finals.

But in an interview with the IRIB Sports Network on Tuesday, Donyamali said: “Given that this corrupt government has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances do we have the appropriate conditions to participate in the World Cup.

“Our boys are not safe, and conditions for participation do not exist.”

He added that “over the past eight or nine months, two wars have been imposed on us and several thousand of our people have been killed and martyred. Therefore, we definitely do not have the possibility for participation.”

Infantino had earlier posted on Instagram that he had met with President Trump to discuss preparations for the tournament and “spoke about the current situation in Iran”.

He said: “We all need an event like the Fifa World Cup to bring people together now more than ever, and I sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support, as it shows once again that football unites the world.”

Mehdi Taj, the head of Iran’s Football Federation, had also questioned their ability to participate in the World Cup, following six members of Iran’s women’s national team receiving “humanitarian” visas from Australia over concerns for their safety.

The remaining Iranian players left Australia on Tuesday after the team’s elimination from the Asian Cup.

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said seven people were granted asylum, but one woman later changed her mind and opted to return home.

Taj said: “Given the problems created for the female footballers, if the World Cup outlook is like this, no sound mind would accept sending the team to the US.”

If Iran does withdraw from what would be its fourth consecutive World Cup, Fifa’s regulations give the governing body discretion to choose a replacement, but it is unclear who that would be.

The most likely is thought to be a fellow team from the Asian Football Confederation – Iraq, who could secure qualification anyway through a play-off match this month, or the UAE, who missed out on the play-offs.

However, Fifa’s rules state that a replacement need not be from the same confederation.

A jury has ordered controversial US rapper Kanye West to pay $140,000 (£104,415) after a handyman sued him over unpaid work for renovations at his Malibu mansion.

The verdict in the trial in Los Angeles came after Tony Saxon claimed the rapper, also known as Ye, did not pay him properly for work at the beachside property and fired him unjustly.

The rapper’s team argued in court that Saxon was an unlicensed contractor who “destroyed” the “architectural gem” while working there.

Saxon had sought $1.7m (£1.267m) in damages but a jury on Wednesday awarded him $140,000, along with attorney and court fees.

The Los Angeles Superior Court trial included both the “Stronger” rapper and his wife, Bianca Censori, taking the stand to testify about work at the home, along with a litany of claims from Saxon about working conditions.

The handyman initially filed the lawsuit in 2023, alleging unsafe working conditions, unpaid wages and wrongful termination. He also sued for medical expenses after saying he injured his neck and back on the job.

Saxon claimed West, 48, agreed to pay him $20,000 (£14,916) per week but only gave him one $20,000 payment and one other payment of $100,000 (£74,582) for construction costs.

Saxon testified to the court that West said he could not leave the property and, on one occasion, woke him up at 0300 local time to ask why he wasn’t working.

The jury was shown a photo of a small mattress on a concrete floor that Saxon claimed he slept on while working at the property in Malibu, which West had purchased in 2021 for $57m (£40.27m).

During his testimony, Saxon claimed that West had asked him to install a system that would allow “his urine and faeces [to] be treated into fresh water for drinking and bathing”.

He testified that during another occasion, West allegedly noticed he “smelled really bad” because the property didn’t have a shower, and took him to the luxury Nobu Hotel in Malibu, where he drew Saxon a bath.

“He handed me a towel and then says, ‘this is a moment you’ll never forget,'” Saxon told the court.

Saxon also told the court that West wanted to “gut” the beach house, which was built and designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, to make it off-grid.

Saxon claimed those changes included removing electricity and plumbing from the home, as well as removing a staircase and replacing it with a slide.

When West took the stand, he reportedly said he did not remember many of the interactions Saxon testified to, but he did acknowledge complaining about the handyman’s smell.

West’s lawyer Andrew Cherkasky depicted Saxon as an unreliable witness, and said bank records showed Saxon was paid $240,000 during the six weeks he worked for the rapper. The rapper’s team also disputed Saxon’s reported injuries, sharing a video showing the handyman preforming with a band and rolling on the floor.

“The lies are so deep and so wicked that not a thing can be believed that came out of his mouth,” Cherkasky said in his closing statements, calling Saxon “a professional victim”.

West took the stand and was questioned about the case. While in court, he appeared to fall asleep at one point, media reports indicate.

His lawyer, though, refuted that West fell asleep, telling the jury: “He wasn’t sleeping. He was bored. This is beneath him.”

West bought the home for $57m in 2021, but after it was stripped out and abandoned, sold it for a loss in 2023.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62g90w8dkko

Brianna LaPaglia is sharing her uncut opinion.

“No tea, no shade, no hate, just some field research,” the influencer, 26, began in a Tuesday TikTok video. “Every single bitch I know is on Ozempic. People that do not need Ozempic. It’s like if I did Ozempic. Could I lose a couple? Surely. Do I need Ozempic? No!”

LaPaglia had an urgent warning for those who use the drug without cause: “You’re gonna die. You’re all gonna die.”

Ozempic is a GLP-1 injection used to treat Type 2 diabetes. However, it is widely prescribed for weight loss.

Using a GLP-1 when not needed could have serious side effects, including gallbladder and kidney problems, per Baptist Health.

LaPaglia has previously opened up about her own struggles with disordered eating.

“I had an anxiety-induced eating disorder, where I was always nauseous,” she expressed while on the “Real Pod” podcast in February. “Anytime I ate something, I would throw up.”

“I would just avoid food at all costs because I knew that it would make me sick, or I was just so nauseous all the time [because of] my anxiety that I couldn’t eat,” the social media star added.

LaPaglia hit “rock bottom” in 2023, when she was her lowest weight to date.

“People were horrified. Every time I went home, my family was, like, ‘Oh, my gosh,’” LaPaglia recounted. “I was anemic from it, I had bruises all over me, and it was really, really hard when you’re in it for so long. Your body just gets used to it, and when I finally came out of all that anxiety or I was able to look at myself in the mirror and saw the way I looked, [it] was just so unhealthy.”

Despite trying to create a “healthy relationship” with food, LaPaglia did not make the connection between her eating habits and anxiety.

“It really did, without me even knowing, create an eating disorder that I didn’t know how to navigate [or] what to do with it,” she said.

After gaining 25 pounds back, LaPaglia was at what she considered a “healthy weight.”

“It didn’t happen overnight,” she continued. “Once I realized, I was like, ‘Holy s–t, this is what’s happening to you.’ It took me four or five months to get back to a healthy weight or get back in a healthy mindset.”

“It was a f–king process,” LaPaglia admitted. “Slowly but surely, obviously with anything that you do over time, it got better.”

Meanwhile, despite the TikToker steering clear from Ozempic, many A-listers have been open about their use of the weight-loss medication.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/11/celebrity-news/brianna-chickenfry-issues-harsh-warning-to-ozempic-users-youre-all-gonna-die/

Rebecca Gayheart shared the “powerful moment” she experienced with her late husband, Eric Dane, that left him “visibly emotional” shortly before his tragic death last month.

In the weeks leading up to his passing, the “Grey’s Anatomy” star lent his voice to a restoration project spearheaded by AI firm ElevenLabs with the goal to use past recordings of Dane’s voice to create a synthetic replica of the actor’s voice.

Dane “was really excited about it, because he was losing his voice, and it was becoming more difficult for him to communicate each and every day. So it became sort of urgent,” Gayheart, 54, told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday.

The actor’s participation was inspired by a final effort to leave something behind for his teenage daughters, Billie,16, and Georgia, 14.

“He was waiting anxiously to hear it, and when we got it from ElevenLabs it was a really big moment. It was a powerful moment. We played it, and Eric became visibly emotional,” Gayheart shared.

“And when I heard it, I cried. I think everyone in the room did.”

In connection with the project, the AI firm also produced a docuseries titled, “11 Voices,” which Dane was reportedly supposed to star in with a bonus episode.

However, he was ultimately unable to make an appearance in the series because his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) condition worsened. Instead, Gayheart is planning to speak as part of a panel tied to the series’ SXSW premiere, which will take place on March 13.

“He wanted to advocate for love and for the movement [around ALS] and so I’m there to do this for him,” she explained.

“For a million people to get a voice to be able to communicate with their children or their loved ones or their caretakers or their doctors or in their job — this is a really huge movement.”

On the actor’s death, Gayheart told the outlet she and her family are “still in shock” since his passing. But, she echoed her previous statement as she thanked those who had shown support for her family in the years since Dane’s 2024 ALS diagnosis.

“I’m having trouble receiving all of the support and love coming at me from every which way because of Eric and the [entertainment] community that’s so generous with their time,” she said.

“They’ve been holding me and the girls up the last two weeks, and I don’t think they’re going anywhere. I think they’re in it for the long haul. Hollywood gets a bad rap. That kind of makes me mad, because we have a lovely community of people, and I’m so grateful for them.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/03/11/celebrity-news/rebecca-gayheart-details-powerful-moment-that-made-eric-dane-emotional-before-death/