The defense secretary has disparaged restrictive rules for opening fire that are aimed at reducing the risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made contempt for what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” — limits meant to reduce risks to civilians — central to his political identity, and has boasted that he unleashed the military to use “maximum authorities on the battlefield” in the Iran war.

“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Mr. Hegseth said at a briefing four days after the war started. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

This and similar statements are now the backdrop to a body of evidence that the destruction of an Iranian elementary school during the opening hours of the war was likely caused by an American missile strike. The preliminary finding of an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States was responsible, The New York Times has reported.

The destruction of the school, which coincided with an attack on an adjacent Iranian naval base, killed about 175 civilians, most of them children, according to Iranian officials.

MBFC
[Archive] (soon, fingers crossed)

🎁 gift link article.

Restaurants in India are suffering the consequences of disruptions to supplies of cooking gas caused by the war in the Middle East. Two restaurant owners describe the mounting challenges of operating under the crisis and the measures they’re taking to adapt.

As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has effectively drawn Ukraine into his domestic fight for reelection, his main competitor has found himself in a tricky situation.

Peter Magyar, a 44-year-old former insider in Orban's Fidesz party, has pledged to mend ties with European partners, ending an era of obstructionism that has often hampered assistance to Ukraine.

His Tisza party has also taken aim at the Hungarian government's tilt toward Moscow and vowed to undo the growing dependence on Russian energy.

When it comes to Ukraine, however, Magyar has been walking a fine line, promising constructive relations, yet criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky's jabs directed at Orban and the country's desire for a fast-track EU accession.

MBFC
Archive

German chancellor says decision is wrong and that pressure on Putin over Ukraine war should be increased

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has issued a sharp rebuke to the US government over its decision to temporarily lift sanctions on the sale of Russian oil in the wake of sharply rising energy prices, saying the decision was wrong.

He was reacting to Washington’s decision to temporarily waive sanctions on Russian oil stranded at sea as Trump administration officials attempt to reverse a surge in prices that is causing mounting apprehension about global supplies.

“We believe it is wrong to ease the sanctions,” Merz said on Friday morning.

“Unfortunately, Russia continues to show no willingness to negotiate. We will therefore, and must, further increase the pressure on Moscow.”

Merz insisted that support for Ukraine should continue despite the conflict in the Middle East, saying: “We will not allow ourselves to be deterred or distracted from this by the war with Iran.”

MBFC
Archive

..."This is what we call Agentic Blabbering: the AI Browser exposing what it sees, what it believes is happening, what it plans to do next, and what signals it considers suspicious or safe."

By intercepting this traffic between the browser and the AI services running on the vendor's servers and feeding it as input to a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), Guardio said it was able to make Perplexity's Comet AI browser fall victim to a phishing scam in under four minutes.

. . .

"If you can observe what the agent flags as suspicious, hesitates on, and more importantly, what it thinks and blabbers about the page, you can use that as a training signal," Chen explained. "The scam evolves until the AI Browser reliably walks into the trap another AI set for it."

saving the world instead of like me one patient at a time.

So the US has dumped billions in helping Ukraine fight the Russians but now we’ve lifted oil sanctions against Russia which will give them billions of dollars so we can fiend on crude while admin kicks EV’s and renewables in the balls.

If I ask “is admin this stupid?” I’ll get all the “duh”(s) I could ever want. I’m not the smartest guy in the room so please help me understand where my taxes go (without representation) and why so many in leadership let them get away with it. It is the most transparent admin in history, and we get to see all the corruption and law breaking and we just watch.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44439544

March 13, 2026

These diplomatic statements come after a sharp escalation in attacks and murders of Palestinians across the West Bank by Israeli settlers under the cover of Israel’s war on Iran.

On Thursday, Middle East Eye reported that at least six Palestinians had been killed in settler attacks in the past week.

Last Sunday, a group of 100 masked Israeli settlers descended on the town of Abu Falah in an attempt to displace the Palestinian residents. The attackers shot and killed Fara Hamayel, 57, and Thaer Hamayel, 30, and wounded several others, MEE reported.

Even Dhar Mann has better sets, writing and even to some extent actors. If Tyler Perry is this wealthy he has no excuse to make low quality films.

Finished Darksiders 3!

It was interesting to see Fury's character development, but I don't think all of it was explained very well. Still interesting to see how things were developing when War was busy with other stuff.

If you are a fan of the series, I'll highly recommend the game, but if you dont' care about the series at all, I don't think the game does anything outstanding in the genre. If you are in the middle, and are interested in the series but haven't played anything yet, you can play this first without any issues.

Had some free time this week, so played Little Nightmares after finishing Darksiders 3, another PS+ game that has been in my library for too long. It was a small game, finished in about 2 sittings. Game feels a bit like Limbo, but with puzzles and enemies that you have to escape. It also has some disturbing stuff in the game, though I'll probably have to read what actually happened in the game.

Finished the main campaign of Hard West. Just the side campaign left now.

Haven't played much Xuan Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains and Tom Clancy's The Division this week. Will focus on them now.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?