Israel did not have a realistic plan for regime change when it attacked Iran, multiple Israeli security sources have said, with expectations that airstrikes could lead to a popular uprising having been driven by “wishful thinking” rather than hard intelligence.

Iran has survived nearly two weeks of bombing raids and the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Trump is publicly contemplating ending the increasingly costly war.

If Iran’s new leadership keeps its grip on power, the long-term measure of the success of the conflict may hang on the fate of 440kg of enriched uranium which was buried under a mountain by US strikes last June, former and serving Israeli defence and intelligence sources said. Enough for more than 10 nuclear warheads, Iran could use it to hasten the construction of a weapon if the material remains in the country.

Israel’s latest daily large-scale attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 15 people in Beirut and the south, as Iran and Hezbollah launched coordinated waves of attacks on Israel, with renewed conflict on this volatile front boiling over as part of the wider war launched by the United States and Israel on Iran.

A “double-tap” Israeli strike on Thursday at Beirut’s seafront area of Ramlet al-Baida, where displaced families were seeking respite from relentless bombing, killed eight people and wounded 31, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

“Witnesses in Ramlet al-Baida say they were sleeping in their tents when the roar of the jets woke them,” said Heidi Pett, reporting for Al Jazeera from Beirut.

“Then there was an impact and they popped their heads out of their tents in time to see the second one.”

Pett said the strike appeared to be another Israeli attempted assassination strike, “notably in areas outside those traditionally targeted, and beyond the zones where Israel has issued evacuation orders”.

Foreign investors may take legal action if Vietnam does not fully pay electricity tariffs agreed with multiple wind and solar projects, according to ​a document signed by five chambers of commerce seen by Reuters.

Denmark’s energy minister called on citizens to reduce their energy use amid the ongoing Middle East conflict.

Oil prices jumped to over $100 a barrel on Thursday, raising fears of rising inflation.

“If it is not strictly necessary to drive the car, then don’t do it,” the minister stressed to Danish citizens.

Varoufakis argues global elites are following a “blueprint for the revival of fascism”, one he imagines dictators Mussolini, Hitler and Franco might have written “had [they] gotten together in 1945”.

He told the audience the modern “manual” starts by attacking crony capitalism, big business and financial elite — views traditionally associated with the political left – before turning against democratic institutions such as public broadcasters and universities.

London, San Francisco and Beijing are among 19 global cities that have achieved “remarkable reductions” in air pollution, analysis has found, having slashed levels of two airway-aggravating pollutants by more than 20% since 2010.

The analysis found interventions such as cycle lanes, uptake of electric cars and restrictions on polluting vehicles had helped to drive the improvements.

Beijing and Warsaw topped the ranking for cleaning up fine particulate pollution (PM2.5), reducing levels by more than 45%, while Amsterdam and Rotterdam saw the greatest improvement in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), with cuts of more than 40%.

San Francisco was the only US city that cut levels of both pollutants by more than 20%, according to the analysis of nearly 100 cities around the world. China and Hong Kong are home to nine of the 19 cities, with European cities making up the rest.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has won approval to supply electricity to households and businesses across Great Britain, as the tech billionaire expands his energy ambitions.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, has formally granted Tesla an electricity supply licence, enabling it to provide electricity to domestic and business premises in England, Scotland and Wales.

The company is expected to replicate its supply business in Texas, where it is branded as Tesla Electric and offers to help customers power “your home, electric vehicle and community with low-cost sustainable electricity”.

However, Tesla’s electricity licence means it cannot offer a dual fuel contract to households. It could supply a customer’s electricity if they had a separate tariff agreement for their gas supply.

In Texas the company already operates a “virtual power plant” that allows Tesla owners to charge their cars cheaply and then pays them for selling electricity stored in its Powerwall home batteries back to the grid.

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has accused Ukrainians of plotting to attack his family, as an increasingly bitter standoff between Kyiv and Budapest continues.

Orbán and his allies appear to be using the dispute for maximum political gain before the election due next month that could end the 16-year rule of his nationalist government.

Orbán released a video on Wednesday night purporting to show him speaking to his daughters on the phone. “I’m sure you’ll see on the news that the Ukrainians have threatened not only me but you as well,” he said, apparently emotional. “My kids and my grandkids … We have to take this seriously but we must not be scared.”

Orbán was apparently responding to the words of Hrihoriy Omelchenko, a retired politician who served in Ukraine’s SBU security service in the 1990s. He issued threats to Orbán in a televised interview this week suggesting vigilantes could hunt down the Hungarian leader if he did not change his anti-Ukrainian position.

Earlier, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had threatened to “give this person’s address to our armed forces” while speaking about Orbán, in comments that reportedly prompted European allies to ask the Ukrainian president to tone down his rhetoric.

Prime Minister Mark Carney will be in Yellowknife on Thursday before heading to Norway and the United Kingdom for meetings with allied leaders.

While in Norway he'll travel north beyond the Arctic Circle this weekend to observe NATO's massive biennial Cold Response training exercise, which is taking place against a backdrop of heightened international tensions, including the ongoing war in the Middle East between the United States and Israel and Iran.

Accompanying the prime minister to the military exercise will be his Norwegian counterpart and the chancellor of Germany.

Canadian troops are participating — alongside approximately 25,000 soldiers from 14 nations — in the Norwegian-led Cold Response.

"The Nordic countries coming together with Canada, having leaders visit the military exercise in northern Norway, this tells [U.S. President] Donald Trump that we've got Arctic security covered, that he doesn't need to worry about it," said (Michael) Byers (an expert in the Arctic and geopolitics at the University of British Columbia).

Space Rangers are cops.

And "To Infinity and Beyond" is just a way to indoctrinate kids into being comfortable with capitalism's infinite growth in a finite galaxy.

The record floods that have brought death and destruction to the heartland of Brazil’s coffee industry are expected to intensify if people continue to burn fossil fuels, analysis has shown.

Dozens of residents in the state of Minas Gerais have been buried alive in landslides or swept away as roads turned into rivers over the past month. Thousands more have been forced to evacuate their homes, while the wider, longer-term effects are likely to include higher prices for coffee across the world.

The city of Juiz de Fora was among the hardest hit, experiencing its wettest February on record, with more than 750mm of rainfall – three times the expected amount for that period and 65% more than the previous record of 456mm set in 1988, according to the latest study by the World Weather Attribution group.

The international team of scientists said a primary cause of the deaths was inequality and inadequate urban planning, which created landslide vulnerabilities for poor communities dwelling on steep, deforested and poorly drained hill slopes. Juiz de Fora is one of the 10 riskiest cities in Brazil in terms of the proportion of residents living in such danger zones.

Recent killings and arrests by Hamas security forces spark rare public criticism inside Gaza, with activists and residents accusing group of excessive force, intimidation and targeting of civilians in broader crackdown

I bought a sticker pack online and one of them was a red Arch Linux logo I've never seen before, and strangely enough the pack did not include the blue version. What does this red version mean, is it an old logo or what? Is it some sort of testing/developer branch?

The report found that Morrison’s failure to detect misleading advice from the department was caused by social services and human services departments both failing to advise him and other ministers that new laws were required.

Some of you may be interested in this petition to Jim Chalmers:

We call on the Treasurer and the Australian Government to put a 25% tax on all Australian gas exports.

This would end the gas shortages being engineered by the gas industry, cut gas prices, and could raise $17 billion every year to fund services for Australian households.

https://nb.australiainstitute.org.au/gas_export_tax_a