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Iranian leaders taunt ‘U.S. Epstein class’ during war

Iranian leaders taunt ‘U.S. Epstein class’ during war

Middle East Eye reports: Senior Iranian officials have repeatedly invoked the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to attack Washington’s political elite during the ongoing Israeli-US war on the country. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, accused figures linked to Epstein’s network of plotting to provoke a global crisis and blame Tehran. Posting on X, Larijani said: “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…

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Trump’s threats against NATO reveal glaring absence of any strategy on Iran

Trump’s threats against NATO reveal glaring absence of any strategy on Iran

Dan Sabbagh writes: If there was a moment when the absence of a US strategy on Iran was exposed, then this was it. Donald Trump demanded on Saturday that the UK, China, France, Japan and others participate in a naval escort for oil tankers through the strait of Hormuz. Despite launching the attack on Iran, with Israel, the White House does not seem to have fully anticipated what was likely to follow. Iran had few good military options for fighting…

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Germany to Trump: We won’t help you reopen the Strait of Hormuz — ‘It’s not NATO’s war’

Germany to Trump: We won’t help you reopen the Strait of Hormuz — ‘It’s not NATO’s war’

Politico reports: Germany’s government rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand that NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz, declaring that the alliance had no place in the war. “This war has nothing to do with NATO. It’s not NATO’s war,” Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, told reporters in Berlin on Monday. “NATO is a defensive alliance, an alliance for the defense of its territory,” he added. Trump had warned NATO allies on Sunday they face…

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Starmer distances UK from Iran war as EU leaders rule out sending warships

Starmer distances UK from Iran war as EU leaders rule out sending warships

The Guardian reports: Keir Starmer has insisted that the UK will not be drawn into the wider war in the Middle East as European leaders ruled out sending warships to the strait of Hormuz. In his clearest signal yet of the UK’s divergence from Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, the prime minister said he would stand firm in the face of US pressure despite the decision being “difficult, there’s no hiding that”. As concerns mounted at home over US demands…

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The Trump administration’s ‘disturbing’ new legal strategy to prosecute border crossers is taxing courts and testing the law

The Trump administration’s ‘disturbing’ new legal strategy to prosecute border crossers is taxing courts and testing the law

By Agnel Philip, Abe Streep, Perla Trevizo and Pratheek Rebala This story was originally published by ProPublica Jose Omar Flores-Penaloza was willing to admit that he had entered the United States illegally. He was ready to be deported, according to his attorneys. But federal prosecutors would not let him go last spring without making him answer for another crime — one he had never heard of. Weeks earlier, President Donald Trump, to address what he called a national emergency, ordered…

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Gamblers betting on Polymarket vowed to kill a journalist who wouldn’t rewrite an Iran missile story

Gamblers betting on Polymarket vowed to kill a journalist who wouldn’t rewrite an Iran missile story

Emanuel Fabian, a reporter for The Times of Israel, writes: On Tuesday, March 10, a massive explosion shook the city of Beit Shemesh, just outside Jerusalem, in yet another Iranian ballistic missile attack during the ongoing war. Rescue services scrambled to the scene in search of possible casualties, though as it turned out, the projectile had struck a forested area just outside the city, around 500 meters from homes. On The Times of Israel’s liveblog that day, I reported that…

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America’s real leaders are not vain, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, deceitful fools

America’s real leaders are not vain, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, deceitful fools

Tom Friedman writes: The last year has been one of the most depressing of my nearly 50 years as a journalist. It’s not just that I’ve had to watch the Trump administration destroy cherished alliances, like ours with Western Europe and Canada, that have upheld freedom, democracy and global trade since World War II. It’s also been the stunning cowardice and boundless greed with which leaders of big law firms and Big Tech have bent their knees to King Donald…

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How war with Iran might cost Washington the Gulf

How war with Iran might cost Washington the Gulf

Yara Bataineh writes: Just before the [Israeli-U.S.] strikes, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who had been mediating talks between Washington and Tehran, said negotiations were close to a breakthrough. Iran had accepted key U.S. conditions, including commitments not to accumulate nuclear material capable of producing a weapon and to stop stockpiling enriched uranium. That agreement would have surpassed former U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, long a goal of current U.S. President Donald Trump. What appeared…

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How Trump is making China great again

How Trump is making China great again

Politico reports: The 21st century is more likely to belong to Beijing than to Washington — at least that’s the view from four key U.S. allies. Swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, according to recent results from The POLITICO Poll. Respondents in these countries increasingly see China as a more dependable partner than the U.S. and believe the Asian economic colossus is…

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Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

The Washington Post reports: Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador. The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an…

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Wearing all black at protests makes you guilty of terrorism, prosecutors tell jury

Wearing all black at protests makes you guilty of terrorism, prosecutors tell jury

The Intercept reports: Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday. A printing press. That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said. Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as…

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The vagus nerve: How our longest nerve orchestrates the mind-body connection

The vagus nerve: How our longest nerve orchestrates the mind-body connection

R. Douglas Fields writes: It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your blood pressure skyrockets. Goose bumps appear on your arms, sweat on your palms. Your stomach knots and your muscles coil, ready to sprint or fight. Now imagine the same scene, but without any of the body’s innate responses to an external threat. Would you still feel…

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Trump foolishly miscalculated the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz

Trump foolishly miscalculated the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz

The Wall Street Journal reports: Before the U.S. went to war, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told President Trump that an American attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Caine said in several briefings that U.S. officials had long believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world’s most vital shipping lane, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Trump acknowledged the risk, these people said, but…

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