Social Media

Iran proxy forces launched about seven rockets targeting a U.S. base in Northeast Syria today in retaliation to the U.S., a defense official confirms to Fox News. In first assessments, there are no U.S. casualties and no damage to the base near the Al-Omar oil field. The rocket attacks came after President Biden ordered a series of retaliatory strikes in response to a suspected Iranian-made drone that killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans on Thursday. The US. strikes reportedly killed eight Iranians.

Physician-assisted suicide has been a hotly debated topic across the United States for decades but a push to legalize the controversial practice in more states is picking up steam this year. Starting with Oregon in 1997, ten other states and the District of Columbia have made it legal for a terminally ill patient to ask their doctor for a lethal cocktail of drugs they ingest to die. They include California, Montana, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey and Hawaii. Lawmakers in ten more states have introduced physician-assisted suicide laws in 2023.

12:55 Today is World Water Day, an annual event that aims to highlight the problems millions of people around the world have in accessing clean, safe drinking water. The United Nations children's agency UNICEF says that on the continent of Africa alone, 190 million children in ten countries are at the highest risk from a convergence of three water-related threats - inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene-related diseases. The triple threat was found to be most acute in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Somalia. Central Africa is one of the world's most water-insecure and climate-impacted regions, according to the UNICEF analysis.

Scientists have discovered a new disease in seabirds that eat plastic. Every day, around 8 million pieces of plastic spew into the world’s oceans. Much of it ends up in the guts of seabirds. These birds have scarred digestive tracts - a phenomenon that scientists at the Natural History Museum in London have named ‘plasticosis’. This plastic induced illness has major knock-on impacts on growth and survival, warns Dr Alex Bond, co-author of a study into the pollution. “While these birds can look healthy on the outside, they’re not doing well on the inside,” he says. “This study is the first time that stomach tissue has been investigated in this way and shows that plastic consumption can cause serious damage to these birds’ digestive system.”

Lawmakers in Sweden voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Nordic nation joining NATO, signing off on the country's membership along with the required legislation. The 349-seat Riksdagen, or parliament, authorised Sweden’s accession to NATO on a 269-37 vote, with 43 absent. It was the last required domestic hurdle to the country becoming part of the 30-member Western military alliance.

Extreme weather events are increasing in many parts of the world, but can we always blame their mounting severity on climate change? Join us for a live YouTube debate, and ask your questions! In the aftermath of a heatwave, flood or drought, public interest is often intense, but can scientists really pinpoint whether a storm was made worse by climate change, and how can the science of extreme weather event attribution help them to do so? At 2pm (CET) on 23 March our panel of experts will discuss the role that extreme weather attribution plays in educating the public about the link between climate change and today's weather.

The Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates for the 11th time in a row, after yesterday’s shock rise in inflation and a banking crisis that has rocked the financial world. is due to announce its decision at noon, with economists and financial markets predicting that the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will lift interest rates a quarter of 1 per cent, to 4.25 per cent – mirroring yesterday’s US Federal Reserve’s hike. Any rate rise would be consistent with the Bank’s plan to battle inflation, but would have a detrimental impact on borrowers and those on tracker mortgage deals. Recent bank failures in the US have been blame partly on rising rates.

On Thursday, TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew, will be opening a lion's mouth and placing his own head into it. He's giving testimony in the US Congress for the first time, a scary thing to do. And at stake is the future of the phenomenally popular video-sharing app in the US. "I think that there is a real risk that if this hearing doesn't go well… that could have a massive impact on the future of TikTok," said Chris Stokel-Walker, author of TikTok Boom. Mr Chew is likely to face a barrage of questions on TikTok's relationship with China, what data it collects, and what it does with it. He'll also be quizzed on why several journalists were spied on by ByteDance employees - something TikTok has already admitted.

Ford’s new era has begun: the Explorer is a European-focused, European-designed and European-built electric SUV channelling the Blue Oval’s American spirit and conceived to do battle in one of the market’s fiercest emerging segments. Due to start rolling down the production line at Ford’s revamped Cologne factory (where it currently builds the Ford Fiesta) from mid-2023, the squat new crossover measures 4460mm long. This pitches it roughly between the highly competitive small and midsized SUV markets and means it will compete with everything from the Jeep Avenger and Mini Aceman to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Skoda Enyaq iV.

Think what you like about ‘electromodded’ classic cars; love them or hate them, there is definitely demand for them - and it’s taken North Oxfordshire’s conversion specialist Electrogenic to what you might call the second phase of its expanding business model. Having spent five years doing bespoke conversions of cars as different as a Citroen DS, Daimler Majestic Major, Reliant Kitten and TVR Cerbera, then, the firm is now acting as a supplier of ‘electrification swap’ kits to be fitted by any one of a number of independent garage partners around the world.

Russia is “deliberately trying to disinform,” said the UK Ministry of Defense on Tuesday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned London against providing Ukraine with ammunition that contains depleted uranium. On Monday, the UK confirmed that it will send ammunition containing depleted uranium to Ukraine, a development which Putin referenced at a press conference on Tuesday. “Today it became known that Great Britain, through the mouth of the deputy head of the Ministry of Defense of this country, announced not only the supply of tanks to Ukraine, but also shells with combined uranium,” Putin said.

A deadly fungal infection that is hard to treat is spreading rapidly at an "alarming" rate, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). US cases nearly doubled in 2021 from 756 to 1,471, says the CDC report. Healthy people are not at risk from Candida auris but those with weak immune systems or using medical devices like ventilators or catheters can suffer severe illness or die. The majority of cases tested were immune to anti-fungal treatment. For this reason the CDC has called it an "urgent antimicrobial resistance threat". Many patients are in hospitals and elderly care homes. One in three patients with invasive infections die but it can be difficult to assess the exact role Candida auris played in vulnerable patients, said CDC epidemiologist Dr Meghan Lyman, the report's lead author. The infection was first reported in the US in 2016. The most rapid rise in cases was from 2020 to 2021, according to CDC data which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In the opening paragraph of a nearly $3 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, we encounter this brilliant expression of the truth: “The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”