Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Workers move a decorative replica Oscar statue as preparations are made on the red carpet arrivals area ahead of the 98th Academy Awards in Hollywood on Friday. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . It's been more than two decades since the Oscars were celebrated as the United States was launching a war in the Middle East.

A drone attack on a busy market in western Sudan has killed 11 people and wounded dozens more, including children, as the United Nations warns that the country's rapidly escalating air wars have claimed more than 200 civilian lives in little over a week. The attack on Adikong market, near Sudan's border with Chad, ignited fuel reserves and sent flames tearing through the area on Thursday. MSF described it as the second deadly drone attack on the same area in less than a month. Drones have become a key weapon used by both sides in the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that began in April 2023. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said on Thursday he was appalled by the scale of intensifying aerial assaults on civilians in the war, warning that more than 200 people had been killed by drones across the Kordofan region and White Nile state since March 4 alone.

Trump says Putin may be helping Iran'a bit' US President Donald Trump has said he believes that Vladimir Putin and Russia are helping Iran a bit amid the conflict with the US and Israel. In an interview with Fox News, Trump acknowledged that the US also helps Ukrainian forces as they battle with Russian forces. According to some US media reports, Russia has been sharing the location of US military forces with Iran that could help guide missile and drone attacks across the Middle East. On Thursday, US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff said that Russia's government had assured the Trump administration that it was not providing intelligence to the Iranian government in Tehran. Asked by Fox about the potential of Russian intelligence being shared with Iran, Trump said that I think he [Putin] may be helping them a bit, yeah.

How the US left Ukraine exposed to Russia's winter war Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? The United States, which stopped providing military and financial assistance to Ukraine under President Donald Trump, has asked for Kyiv's assistance in protecting its bases from Iranian retaliatory strikes in the Gulf. Ukraine's head of the Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, made the request public on March 6. On March 9, Zelenskyy also dispatched chief negotiator Rustem Umerov to sell Ukrainian interceptor drones to Gulf states.

Israel's elite drone Squadron 200 reportedly destroys over half of Iran's ballistic missile launchers in ongoing Middle East conflict operations.

US's new scramble for Africa is biomedical imperialism Late in February, Zimbabwe pulled out of a proposed $367m United States health funding agreement after objecting to provisions requiring broad American access to sensitive health data. The five-year programme was presented as support for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and epidemic preparedness efforts. However, the terms demanded extensive sharing of national health intelligence, including epidemiological surveillance data and pathogen samples, while offering no binding guarantees that Zimbabwe would receive equitable access to medical technologies developed from them. Harare called the proposal an "unequal exchange", warning that Zimbabwe risked supplying the "raw materials for scientific discovery" while the resulting benefits could remain concentrated in the United States and global pharmaceutical firms. Critics increasingly describe this pattern as biomedical extractivism: a toxic combination of exploitative research practices and colonial thinking that reinforces Western dominance.

Less than a decade ago, Google employees scuttled any military use of its AI. The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war - and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley's rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech's answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago. Anthropic's feud with the Trump administration escalated three days ago as the AI firm sued the Department of Defense, claiming that the government's decision to blacklist it from government work violated its first amendment rights. The company and the Pentagon have been locked in a months-long standoff, with Anthropic attempting to prohibit its AI model from being used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.

Amid an increasingly severe security environment, the Defense Ministry plans to establish a coastal defense system using thousands of drones, though there are still many issues to overcome. The SHIELD defense system will involve more than 10 types of drones, including those for attacking enemy ships, collecting information and protecting radar sites, to thwart enemy advances in a multilayered manner. The government's fiscal 2026 budget bill allocates around ¥100 billion ($628.7 million) for the drone defense system, which the ministry aims to implement in fiscal 2027. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Iranian sleeper cells prompt President Donald Trump warning as Canadian opposition lawmakers accuse government of allowing Tehran operatives to remain despite visa cancellations.

British forces based in Iraq shot down two Iranian drones overnight, Defence Secretary John Healey has said. But some drones in the attack hit the coalition base in the Iraqi city of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, and injured a number of US troops. There were no British casualties. Brigadier Guy Foden said the base and another in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad were struck a number of times on Wednesday night and British personnel are currently in Erbil helping to defend that base. Since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, US bases in Iraq have been targeted in retaliation.