China’s clean energy push has made it less vulnerable to energy shocks, including the Iran war

China’s clean energy push has made it less vulnerable to energy shocks, including the Iran war

Inside Climate News reports: When Gary Dirks arrived in China in 1995, the country’s government was looking to source more of its energy at home. Dirks was the incoming country head for BP, but efforts to find more oil and gas in the country had largely fizzled. So government leaders pivoted, Dirks said. China invested heavily in its domestic coal and, later, in building wind and solar energy. Now, those investments and other steps are shielding China from more severe…

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Nothing to lose: Iran’s bankruptcy is its best weapon against the wealthy Gulf states

Nothing to lose: Iran’s bankruptcy is its best weapon against the wealthy Gulf states

A commentator at bne IntelliNews writes: There is an old saying, attributed to the British Foreign Office in colonial days: “Keep the Persians hungry, and the Arabs fat.” Washington appears to have taken that advice to heart. The trouble is, when the hungry finally have nothing left to lose, it is the fat who pay the price. There is something darkly rational about Iran’s approach to this war. The Islamic Republic entered the conflict already ruined. Inflation was running above…

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Iran’s conventional navy is largely gone. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz is not

Iran’s conventional navy is largely gone. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz is not

RFE/RL reports: The United States and Israel have largely destroyed Iran’s conventional naval fleet in a massive bombing campaign since February 28. But Tehran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes, has not diminished. Iran has effectively closed the narrow waterway, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies flow, by using asymmetric warfare tactics. Besides Iran’s conventional navy, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the country’s…

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Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping

Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping

Hegseth: They are exercising sheer desperation in the straits of hormuz, something we're dealing with. We have been dealing with it and don't need to worry about it. pic.twitter.com/xJS8gIMRWZ — Acyn (@Acyn) March 13, 2026 The Guardian reports: Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield. Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of…

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Attacks on ME desalination plants highlight risks of near-total dependence on ‘fossil fuel water’

Attacks on ME desalination plants highlight risks of near-total dependence on ‘fossil fuel water’

Inside Climate News reports: Recent attacks in the Middle East on desalination plants, facilities that remove salt from seawater, raise the potential for a humanitarian crisis if the region’s freshwater production facilities are subjected to more widespread destruction. The attacks also underscore the region’s heavy reliance on an energy-intensive method of producing drinking water that is powered almost entirely by fossil fuels. On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of striking a desalination plant in southern…

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Trump’s secret police

Trump’s secret police

Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf write: Since the Pendleton Act of 1883, the U.S. federal government has rested on a simple promise: professionalism, merit-based recruitment, independent oversight. Over time, U.S. federal law enforcement became a global reference point—effective, technically sophisticated, built to serve the law rather than a leader. And it traveled. For decades, officers from across the world sought training through U.S. programs such as the FBI’s National Academy and the Justice Department’s ICITAP. Now that model is collapsing…

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Trump’s concentration camps

Trump’s concentration camps

Tim Dickinson writes: Donald Trump’s brutal ICE detention facilities have been blasted as “concentration camps.” This is a freighted term — summoning more than a century of deplorable history. But experts in the field have no hesitation in using these words to describe the network of facilities that the federal government is using to literally warehouse tens of thousands of immigrants — men, women, and even children — snatched out of their communities by masked federal agents. The activist group…

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Dark money group offers influencers $1,500 for posts attacking Dem primary candidate, Kat Abughazaleh

Dark money group offers influencers $1,500 for posts attacking Dem primary candidate, Kat Abughazaleh

MS Now reports: A week out from a crowded and contentious Democratic primary in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, Amanda Informed, an online influencer in Florida received an email with an offer: one negative post about candidate Kat Abughazaleh on Instagram and TikTok, for $1,500. The request, which came from a secretive political organization called Democracy Unmuted, was forwarded to her by Matt Anthes, founder of Advocators, a digital marketing agency focused on politics and advocacy through micro-influencers. The job offer,…

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Escalating Hormuz crisis raises specter of prolonged closure

Escalating Hormuz crisis raises specter of prolonged closure

The Wall Street Journal reports: Escalating Iranian attacks and the U.S. government’s decision to hold off on military escorts for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz are raising the prospect of a prolonged closure that would choke off exports through the world’s most important energy-transport route. On Wednesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck three cargo ships attempting to transit the waterway, the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf. It warned that any other vessels trying to…

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Oman evacuates key oil port as Iran war intensifies

Oman evacuates key oil port as Iran war intensifies

OilPrice.com reports: Oman has ordered the evacuation of vessels from its key Mina Al Fahal oil port, which sits outside the Strait of Hormuz, in a sign that the disruption to oil supply is spreading in the Middle Eastern ports that don’t need passage through the world’s most critical chokepoint. All vessels were told to evacuate Mina Al Fahal, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, as attacks on regional energy infrastructure intensify and tankers and cargo vessels are now being targeted more…

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The other global crisis stemming from the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz

The other global crisis stemming from the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz

Noah Gordon and Lucy Corthell write: The Gulf region is a key producer not only of liquified natural gas (LNG) and oil products but also of fertilizer. About one-third of global seaborne trade in fertilizers typically passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been nearly entirely closed since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. In particular, Gulf countries are important producers of nitrogen fertilizers, which depend primarily on natural gas burned at high pressure in the presence of hydrogen to synthesize ammonia. (The…

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War crimes: Strikes hit World Heritage sites in Iran

War crimes: Strikes hit World Heritage sites in Iran

The New York Times reports: In the city of Isfahan, Israeli airstrikes have damaged several of Iran’s most cherished cultural jewels, Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Heritage said. The Ali Qapu Palace and the Chehel Sotoun palace and garden, dating to the 17th-century Safavid dynasty, sustained serious harm, photos and videos released by the ministry show. The blast waves on Monday also sent the turquoise tiles of the iconic Jameh Mosque crashing to the ground, with ministry photographs showing a…

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How ‘Handala’ became the face of Iran’s hacker counterattacks

How ‘Handala’ became the face of Iran’s hacker counterattacks

Wired reports: Since the United States and Israel first unleashed a broad campaign of air strikes across Iran in late February, the cybersecurity industry has warned that the country’s retaliatory measures would include punishing, disruptive cyberattacks against Western targets. Late Tuesday night, the first of those attacks arrived in the US: a devastating breach of the medical technology firm Stryker that has reportedly disabled as many as tens of thousands of computers and paralyzed much of the company’s global operations—all…

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U.S. intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse, say sources

U.S. intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse, say sources

Reuters reports: U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is still largely intact and is not at risk of collapse any time soon after nearly two weeks of relentless U.S. and Israeli bombardment, according to three ​sources familiar with the matter. A “multitude” of intelligence reports provide “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public,” ‌said one of the sources, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence findings….

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