Iran unable to find mines it laid in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says

Iran unable to find mines it laid in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. says

The New York Times reports: Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials. The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and…

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Iran attacks on crucial Saudi pipeline and production facilities slash kingdom’s oil output

Iran attacks on crucial Saudi pipeline and production facilities slash kingdom’s oil output

CNBC reports: Saudi Arabia’s critical pipeline to the Red Sea suffered a recent attack from Iran, cutting throughput by 700,000 barrels per day. The attack hit a pumping station on the East-West pipeline, according to a state news agency report. This pipeline brings crude oil from processing facilities near the Persian Gulf to an export terminal on the Red Sea called Yanbu. The Saudis have relied on the pipeline, which has a capacity of 7 million bpd, as their main…

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Lebanese ask whether peace can ever be possible with a neighbor that repeatedly violates its sovereignty

Lebanese ask whether peace can ever be possible with a neighbor that repeatedly violates its sovereignty

  What is really going on in Lebanon? Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, Israel launched a massive wave of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah across the country. Iran says Israel is violating the terms of the ceasefire – so could the peace talks set to be held tomorrow in Islamabad collapse before they’ve even started? And is this exactly what Israel wants? On this episode of the Fourcast, Krishnan Guru-Murthy was joined from Beirut by…

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War has become indivisible from Gaza

War has become indivisible from Gaza

Ghada Abdulfattah writes: Rubble is everywhere. In Gaza, there’s more than one kind. Towers that once held dozens of families have been reduced to hills: broken slabs stacked in layers, steel bars twisted through them like exposed nerves, concrete pancaked over furniture. Sometimes, the remains of a home lean at an angle, like the Tower of Pisa. Other buildings are hollowed out from below, the lower floors erased while the upper floors hang in a crooked pause, held up by…

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Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing

Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing

Illy Pe’ery writes: In October 2023, Gili was called up for reserve duty in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and assigned to the Northern Command. In the days following Hamas’ attacks, while public attention in Israel was fixed on the devastation in the south, Hezbollah began launching rockets and anti-tank missiles toward northern Israel. “We were working 12-hour shifts in an underground operations room, while soldiers in outposts were terrified, but we couldn’t convey that the north was on fire,” she…

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Disciples of Christ never side with warmakers, says Pope Leo

Disciples of Christ never side with warmakers, says Pope Leo

The Wall Street Journal reports: Pope Leo XIV appeared to take aim at religious language used by U.S. officials to justify the war in Iran, in the latest salvo between the pontiff and the Trump administration over the conflict. “God does not bless any conflict,” the American pontiff said on X on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”…

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Why your brain already understands complex music theory

Why your brain already understands complex music theory

ZME Science reports: The human brain operates as a tireless prediction machine. It watches a dropped glass and anticipates the shatter. It listens to a conversation and guesses the final word of a sentence. And, as it turns out, it listens to a melody and inherently knows exactly what chord should fall next. If there’s something in the world most people tend to agree is that they love music. But to feel the music, our minds must decode a hidden…

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Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

The Guardian reports: The flood of wounded came after Israel bombed more than 100 targets across Lebanon in those 10 minutes on Wednesday, killing more than 300 people and wounding 1,165, according to an initial count by Lebanon’s civil defence. The death toll, which was expected to rise as more bodies were found, was higher than Beirut’s 2020 port explosion – one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history. The Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah “command and…

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In a war with no real winners, Netanyahu looks like the biggest loser

In a war with no real winners, Netanyahu looks like the biggest loser

Peter Beaumont writes: In a war where there have been no winners, Israel’s prime minister looks set to be the biggest loser entering a fragile and vague ceasefire with Iran. After years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats against Iran, his stunts at the UN’s general assembly, the dodgy dossiers endlessly wafted under the noses of the world’s media, and diplomatic pressure on successive US presidents to agree to a war against Iran, Israel’s conflict has turned out to be a bust….

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Iran’s rulers are now in a stronger position than before the war began

Iran’s rulers are now in a stronger position than before the war began

The New York Times reports: Their supreme leader and top commanders were killed. Military bases, factories and bridges were reduced to rubble. Their economy has taken blow after blow. Yet Iran’s authoritarian rulers believe they have emerged from this war in a stronger position than when it began. After six weeks of an intense U.S.-Israeli campaign and with a temporary cease-fire in place, Iran’s leadership isn’t conciliatory as it enters into renewed negotiations with the United States. Instead, it has…

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Pope Leo not planning to visit U.S. after Pentagon officials threatened military force against papacy, reports

Pope Leo not planning to visit U.S. after Pentagon officials threatened military force against papacy, reports

The Catholic Observer reports: The Defense Department summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. to the Pentagon in January and subjected him to a “bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side,” according to published reports. Elbridge A. Colby, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy, summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, who had served as the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio to the U.S. for…

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Orban’s fate is a warning about the danger of getting too close to Trump

Orban’s fate is a warning about the danger of getting too close to Trump

David Broder writes: The caps said it all. Writing on Truth Social in late March, President Trump expressed solidarity with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. Looking ahead to Hungary’s parliamentary election this Sunday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Orban “a truly strong and powerful Leader” who “fights tirelessly for, and loves, his Great Country and People.” In case there was any doubt where his support lay, he concluded: “I AM WITH HIM ALL THE WAY!” This was no isolated enthusiasm. Despite…

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Government ordered to turn over files on Renee Good’s killer, ICE agent, Jonathan Ross

Government ordered to turn over files on Renee Good’s killer, ICE agent, Jonathan Ross

The Intercept reports: Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are being forced to turn over critical information on the shooting of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross in relation to a separate case involving Ross. Prosecutors have until May 1 to provide a slew of records, including Ross’s personnel file, to a magistrate judge to review and determine which files should be released. The materials could shine light on the killing of Good, an observer who died after…

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NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

NASA is throttling the scientific pipeline and diminishing our ability to see and understand our planet

Kate Marvel writes: Artemis II’s journey around the moon, scheduled to conclude on Friday, has delivered stunning new images of our home world taken from space. Those pictures remind us that Earth has changed immensely since the last time astronauts went near the moon in 1972. So has NASA. Budget cuts, chaos and political interference now threaten the very science that motivates and enables space exploration. President Trump’s 2027 budget request calls for a nearly 50 percent cut to NASA’s…

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Mass drowning of chicks puts emperor penguins at risk of extinction

Mass drowning of chicks puts emperor penguins at risk of extinction

The Guardian reports: The mass drowning of emperor penguin chicks as sea ice is melted by the climate crisis has led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to declare the species officially in danger of extinction. Emperor penguins rely on “fast” ice – sea ice that is firmly attached to the coast – for nine months of the year. It is where their fluffy chicks are hatched and grow until they have their waterproof feathers. Adults moult every…

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