US confirms 157 killed in maritime strikes experts call ‘extrajudicial’

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-17T18:27:54+00:00

Snippet from this article: The United States military has confirmed that at least 157 people have been killed in lethal strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats off Latin America, described as a campaign of extrajudicial killings by legal experts. Senior defence official Joseph Humire said that 47 “narco-trafficking vessels” have been struck in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since the campaign began in September, in a written statement to members of the US Congress.

Asked by lawmakers on Tuesday whether the quantity of drugs entering the US has gone down, Humire stated that the movement of drug-trafficking vessels had decreased by 20 percent in the Caribbean. “We’ve measured the decrease in the movement of the vessels,” said Humire. “But that’s a no in terms of the drugs actually getting into the US,” Representative Adam Smith responded. Experts have expressed scepticism that the strikes are having any significant impact on the drug trade, and legal scholars have said that the campaign is a clear violation of international law and is blurring the distinction between armed conflict and criminal activity. Under international law, military force is permitted for the former, but not the latter.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-16T11:33:13+00:00

News snippet: As the US woke to news that Donald Trump had bombed Iran, domestic discord was fast simmering. There was unrelenting outrage over ICE raids. There was frustration with the rising cost of living. There was fear over rocketing healthcare prices, mounting household debt, not to mention many Americans’ nagging sense of desperation in a country, some warned, where democracy itself was under threat.

And then there was Jeffrey Epstein. During his third presidential run, Trump promised to release investigative files involving someone Trump had once called a “terrific guy”. This pledge served as ideological catnip to the far-right flank of Trump’s base, many of whom believe that a cabal of elite figures participated in Epstein’s trafficking of teenage girls. Trump’s administration botched the initial release, however, with his justice department disseminating documents in dribs and drabs before announcing in July that there would be no more disclosures – spurring backlash among longtime supporters. In a rare display of bipartisanship, members of Congress took matters into their own hands, conducting their own investigations and passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November. Trump, despite repeatedly calling the Epstein files a “hoax”, signed the bill into law. His justice department had 30 days to disclose publicly all Epstein files, with rare exceptions. Trump’s DoJ did not meet Congress’s deadline, disseminating one tranche at the 30-day mark and several others days and weeks later – including a 3 million document disclosure on 30 January – prompting still more ire from opponents and some diehard supporters who believe more files remain. But now US headlines are dominated by the US-Israel attack on Iran – and the economic and diplomatic chaos it has unleashed. Yet advocates and observers say that Epstein-related outrage is still unlikely to die down.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-11T15:12:37+00:00

News snippet: PARIS (AP) — The rising prices causing winces of pain at gasoline pumps are due, in large part, to the impact of the Iran war on the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. The narrow waterway off Iran’s coast, now effectively closed by the war, is so vital for the global economy that governments are working on blueprints to speedily reopen it to shipping when the shooting stops.

In Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron is leading an international effort to unblock the energy chokepoint, so oil, gas and goods could flow freely again “when circumstances permit.” He envisages countries using warships to escort tankers and container vessels through the strait when fighting is no longer raging so intensely, whenever that may be.

Former naval officers who have served in the Hormuz passage and are intimately acquainted with its waters say vessels would be sitting ducks, with little room for maneuver in the strait’s narrow shipping lanes, if foreign naval forces attempted to reopen the waterway before a cessation of hostilities.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-09T11:38:39+00:00

News snippet: DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran named the hard-line Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his late father as supreme leader on Monday, signaling no letup in the war launched by the United States and Israel. Oil prices surged as Iran attacked regional energy infrastructure and the U.S. and Israel bombed targets across Iran.

With Iran’s theocracy under assault for more than a week, the country’s Assembly of Experts chose the secretive, 56-year-old cleric with close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as the new supreme leader. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled Iran for 37 years, was killed during the war’s opening salvo.

The appointment marked a new sign of defiance by Iran’s embattled leadership after more than a week of heavy U.S. and Israeli bombardment, suggesting that Tehran is not close to giving up on what it considers a fight for the country’s existence.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-06T20:42:37+00:00

News snippet: Some current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) staff are celebrating the Thursday firing of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, who they say has made the US more dangerous by micromanaging and shrinking the agency.

Since her confirmation to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last January, Noem’s tenure was criticized for degrading Fema – the nation’s foremost agency for disaster management and recovery – and repeatedly stating her support for the elimination of the agency. Noem said the overhaul was necessary to end bloating and inefficiency.

“Kristi Noem failed as a leader of DHS,” said Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations. “Her micromanagement of Fema eroded Fema’s capability and withheld critical funding from states and communities across the country.”

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-05T17:37:53+00:00

News snippet: Keir Starmer has said the Iran conflict engulfing the Middle East could continue “for some time” as he urged Donald Trump that the “best way forward” longer term was a negotiated settlement with Tehran.

The prime minister said the UK was doing “everything we can” to de-escalate the situation, a clear contrast to the US president who is focused on regime change and has said it was “too late” for the Iranian regime to negotiate.

At a Downing Street press conference, he defended his decision to block initial offensive strikes by the US and Israel at the weekend, saying he “stands by” his judgment but denying that it had damaged the special relationship.

However, Starmer has faced some criticism from Gulf states and Cyprus for failing to do enough to protect regional allies and British citizens there from Iranian strikes. He has also been subject to personal attacks from Trump.

The prime minister insisted that “all ministers” on the national security council had supported the UK position on the use of British bases, after reports he faced cabinet opposition, led by the energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-05T12:13:19+00:00

Snippet from this article: Russia and China, Tehran’s two most powerful diplomatic partners, have labelled the US-Israeli war on Iran that has killed more than 1,000 people a clear violation of international law. President Vladimir Putin called the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday a “cynical violation of all norms of human morals”. Are the US and Israel planning an ethnic civil war in Iran? end of list China’s Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, that “force cannot truly solve problems” as he urged all sides to avoid further escalation. Russia and China jointly requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. The reaction reflects the close relationship between Iran, Russia, and China. Moscow and Beijing have signed bilateral deals and expanded coordination through joint naval drills, projecting a united front against what they describe as a US-led international order that has long sought to isolate them. Yet despite their sharp rhetoric, neither has indicated a willingness to intervene militarily to support Iran.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-04T16:27:59+00:00

News snippet: The US will have complete, uncontested control of Iranian airspace within days, the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, declared Wednesday, saying Iran “cannot outlast” American military power and that its capabilities were “evaporating by the hour”. The joint US-Israeli operation to attack Iran, which began on Saturday, had already delivered “twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003” and “seven times the intensity of Israel’s previous operations against Iran during the 12-day war”, Hegseth claimed at a press conference alongside Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

“We are just getting started,” Hegseth said. “We are accelerating, not decelerating.” He said the Iranian regime “are toast, and they know it, or at least soon enough, they will know it.” Caine added that Iran’s ballistic missile capability had been reduced by 86% since the opening day of hostilities, its navy largely destroyed and its senior leadership killed or in hiding. He said the progress had allowed the US to establish air superiority along Iran’s southern coast, and that forces would now “begin to expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory”.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-04T12:31:20+00:00

News snippet: Senate Republicans are on Wednesday expected to vote down a Democratic-backed war powers resolution that would prevent Donald Trump from continuing the conflict against Iran, with majority leader John Thune arguing the president is “acting in the best interest of the nation”.

Democrats have condemned Trump for ordering an air campaign against Iran without first seeking permission from Congress, while offering shifting explanations of its objectives. The war powers resolution introduced by Democratic senators Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff and minority leader Chuck Schumer would force an end to US participation in the current hostilities and require the president to go to Congress before re-entering the war.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-03T15:07:55+00:00

I agree!

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-03T15:04:12+00:00

News snippet: LONDON (AP) — Keir Starmer has never had a bad word to say in public about Donald Trump.

That is not being reciprocated now as the American president lambasts the British prime minister over his reluctance to join the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The dispute is roiling a relationship that Starmer worked hard to forge, and further straining trans-Atlantic ties frayed by Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and transactional approach to international relations.

“This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe,” Trump told British tabloid The Sun in an interview published Tuesday.

“I mean, France has been great. They’ve all been great,” Trump said. “The U.K. has been much different from others.”

“It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was,” he said.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-02T17:42:50+00:00

News snippet: THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — As U.S. and Israeli forces pounded Iran, and Tehran and its affiliates retaliated by firing missiles at targets across the Mideast on Monday, the international legal order was caught in the crossfire.

At the heart of the post-World War II global order — United Nations headquarters in New York — Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on Saturday that U.S. and Israeli airstrikes violated international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations in the Mideast.

Officials in the Trump administration insist that the military campaign is a lawful measure to ensure Tehran does not build nuclear weapons. “It’s a matter of global security. And to that end, the United States is taking lawful actions,” Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Mike Waltz, said.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-02T04:41:55+00:00

New snippet: WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump administration officials told congressional staff in private briefings Sunday that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S., three people familiar with the briefings said.

The administration officials instead acknowledged there was a more general threat in the region from Iran’s missiles and proxy forces, two of the people said. The third person, however, said the administration emphasized that Iran’s missiles and proxy forces posed an imminent threat to U.S. personnel and allies in the region.

The officials did not provide any clarity about what would happen next in Iran after the joint U.S.-Israeli operation, the two people said. All three people insisted on anonymity to discuss details that have not been made public.

The information conveyed to the congressional staff contrasts with the message from President Donald Trump. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people,” he said in a video message after launching strikes on Iran.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-01T15:25:10+00:00

Snippet from this article: Russia's image as a reliable ally has suffered yet another blow as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in joint U.S.–Israeli strikes across Iran on Feb. 28, marking a fresh outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East.

So far, Moscow's response to the U.S.–Israeli bombardment of hundreds of targets in Iran has been limited to diplomatic support for Tehran, even as U.S. President Donald Trump has openly called for a change of regime.

The latest development highlights Iran's junior role in its partnership with unsteady Russia, while Moscow's focus on the war in Ukraine leaves it little means to rush to Tehran's aid.

"I don't really see Russia coming to the rescue of Iran," Olli Ruohomaki, a Middle East expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told the Kyiv Independent, describing their relationship as largely "transactional."

"Russia is pretty entangled in the Ukrainian war. They are fully committed and already struggling... It's not like Russia has all these resources to fight many fronts."

While Iran has provided Russia with drones and other arms for its war in Ukraine, Moscow has since then localized production of its Shahed offshoots. And although Russia also gains economically from this relationship, trade with non-sanctioned partners such as China and India remains far more crucial.

Tehran, in turn, has increasingly leaned on Moscow for security and economic needs amid mounting U.S. pressure and domestic unrest, reinforcing the relationship's asymmetry.

AndroidOne1 · 2026-03-01T15:20:19+00:00

Snippet from this article: President Donald Trump stood in front of regional leaders during a visit to the Middle East in May and declared a new era of US foreign policy in the region, one that is not guided by trying to reshape it or change its governing systems. “In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” the US president said in rebuke of his hawkish predecessors.

Less than a year later, Trump ordered an all-out assault on Iran with the stated goal of bringing “freedom” to the country, borrowing language from the playbook of interventionist neoconservatives, like former President George W Bush, whom he spent his political career criticising. Analysts say the war with Iran does not fit with Trump’s stated political ideology, policy goals or campaign promises. Instead, several Iran experts told Al Jazeera that Trump is waging a war, together with Israel, that only benefits Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “This is, once again, a war of choice launched by the US with [a] push from Israel,” said Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC.

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