With West Bank under total Israeli closure, settlers are seizing the moment

Israeli settlers have killed two Palestinians and raided dozens of villages amid the war with Iran, as the army restricts movement and backs up the attackers. By Oren Ziv and Basel Adra March 4, 2026

Palestinians in the village of Qaryut mourn the killing of two residents who were shot dead by an Israeli settler, occupied West Bank, March 3, 2026. (Oren Ziv)

With global attention fixed on the escalating U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Israel has imposed a total military closure on the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers, backed by the army, are seizing the opportunity to try to expel more rural Palestinian communities from their land, as they did in the days immediately following October 7.

Within hours of the war beginning on Saturday morning, the Israeli army shut all checkpoints across the West Bank and blocked roads between cities and villages with iron gates and earth mounds. It also installed new iron gates in locations where none had previously existed. Settlers brought in excavators to seal makeshift passages Palestinians had carved out over the past two and a half years, in areas where the army has kept roads closed since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/43173266

Naqvi, along with two other U.S. citizens and three green card holders, was detained by Customs and Border Protection agents Thursday morning in O’Hare Airport’s third terminal, where they were held for roughly 30 hours, according to Naqvi’s family, her attorney and local officials.

The group was then taken to the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview Friday evening before being transported to the Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin, where they were released early Saturday morning, officials said Sunday.

Federal authorities, meanwhile, refused to give Naqvi’s family and supporters information about her whereabouts or even say if she was in their custody, they said. Naqvi’s iPhone location is how supporters kept tabs, Naqvi’s sister, Sarah Afzal, said at a rally Sunday outside of the Broadview ICE facility, 1930 Beach St.

United States customs officers conducted a record number of searches of electronic devices last year of people travelling to the U.S., and a recent update to its directives adds new devices such as smart watches, SIM cards and flash drives to the list of things subject to search.

Officers searched 55,318 computers, cellphones and other devices in 2025, up 17.6 per cent from the 47,047 devices searched in 2024 and up 32.4 per cent from the 41,767 devices searched in 2023, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Nearly 40 employees of OpenAI and Google filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic’s Monday lawsuit.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260309204814/https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/891514/anthropic-pentagon-lawsuit-amicus-brief-openai-google

Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.

Planet wants to prevent "adversarial actors" from using images for "Battle Damage Assessment" purposes.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7675978

Mark Carney’s Canberra address and the Geelong Treaty reveal the architecture of a powerful middle-power bloc ready to be assembled.

Archived link

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Aukus delivers hard power: nuclear-powered submarines, quantum technologies, AI-enabled defence systems, hypersonic weapons, and directed-energy capabilities. But hard power without economic depth is brittle. Canzuk supplies the missing dimension – trade diversification, skilled labour mobility, critical minerals coordination, and a diplomatic network that spans every major ocean and time zone. Together they form something greater than the sum of their parts: a full-spectrum alliance that can deter adversaries, withstand economic coercion, and provide mutual resilience when the global order fractures.

...

Australia and Canada together possess the largest mineral reserves held by democratic nations. In an era of accelerating decoupling from Chinese supply chains, this is an asset of extraordinary and growing strategic value.

The polling data confirms the political feasibility. A February 2026 survey by Canzuk International found 68 per cent support in Australia, 72 per cent in Canada, 75 per cent in New Zealand, and 70 per cent in the United Kingdom for a multilateral free trade and mobility agreement. These are not marginal numbers. They represent a democratic mandate waiting to be exercised.

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The institutional scaffolding is more advanced than most commentators acknowledge. The four Canzuk nations share King Charles III as head of state, Westminster parliamentary systems, common law traditions, and deeply interoperable intelligence services through Five Eyes. The ABCANZ Armies program – encompassing all four Canzuk nations plus the United States – already facilitates military interoperability across the Anglosphere. Workforce mobility initiatives are being pursued to facilitate movement of skilled defence personnel between Australia and the United Kingdom, including reciprocal recognition of security clearances. Add Canada and New Zealand to this framework and you have a defence-industrial ecosystem that spans the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean – with Arctic reach thrown in for good measure.

New Zealand, often treated as the quiet partner, brings its own distinctive value. Its Pillar II potential under Aukus – advanced cyber capabilities, undersea sensing, and Antarctic logistics – complements the submarine focus of Pillar I. And its extraordinary 75 per cent public support for Canzuk suggests a population ready for deeper integration than its cautious political class has yet been willing to deliver.

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday would not commit to blocking any additional funding for the war in Iran, saying the president has so far failed to justify the war but “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Jeffries said the administration has so far “failed to make its case … for this war of choice in the Middle East,” and unless President Donald Trump provides a “compelling rationale,” he’s “going to have a difficult case to make on Capitol Hill.”

Congress last year approved a $900 billion defense spending bill as part of routine annual budget appropriations, and the president signed the bill into law in December. But since the U.S. began its military operation in Iran, lawmakers have been considering the need to pass additional defense spending to bolster the U.S. military.

Checked my notifications to see this, I'm not even active in those communities.

The reason says ' Piefed Troll ' I'm not sure what that could be?

Can someone help me figure out why I was banned? I wasn't very active in the last week I can't imagine why I'd be banned, especially from these communities.

Hi all! I was formally diagnosed with ADHD in my mid 20's. Currently taking generic Vyvanse and Guanfacine. Getting on meds was a huge quality of life improvement. One thing that I still struggle with is chronic insomnia, which is a common commorbidity with -- or maybe symptom of -- ADHD. The insomnia started around the time I hit puberty and I can count on one hand the number of great nights sleeps I've had since then.

I've tried a lot of environmental changes like:

• Having a rigid bedtime schedule.
• Wearing blue light filter glasses for 3 hours before bed.
• Taking melatonin supplements.
• Minimizing screentime.
• Using a weighted blanket.

Those all seem to help somewhat but not to a huge degree. I still feel sleep deprived most of the time.

Apparently I also occasionally have jerking movements while asleep somewhat consistent with "Periodic Limb Movements of Sleep (PLMS)".

Has anyone else had a similar experience and found any effective treatments?

President of Antwerp court says international drug crime is posing danger to social stability in Belgium

International drug crime poses a danger to social stability in Belgium, a senior judge has said, after his colleague warned the country was evolving into “a narco-state” where mafia groups were forming “a parallel force” in society.

Bart Willocx, the president of the Antwerp court of appeal, said Belgium was vulnerable to criminality from drug smuggling through the city’s vast port, one of the main entry points into Europe for cocaine smugglers.

“The amount of money that is involved – to influence people, to corrupt people and to bribe – it is so big that it is really a danger for the stability of our society,” he told the Guardian in an interview at his court.

German exports recorded their sharpest decline in more than a ​year and a half in January due to falling ‌demand from China and Europe, federal statistics office data showed on Tuesday.

The UAE struck an Iranian desalination facility in response to continued attacks; Israeli officials view the strike as a signal, saying the UAE may join the war if Iranian attacks escalate