People arrested while protesting ICE say federal agents took samples of their DNA. It's legal, but experts say the practice raises questions about what the government is doing with that genetic data. n.pr/4lyzEDy

Bellingcat and our partners at @evidentmedia.org and @calmatters.org have tracked US Border Patrol agents, analysing over 85 hours of footage taken across the country to try and unpack the circumstances around multiple use-of-force incidents. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

Former head of Adra Prison, Damascus, found guilty of torturing inmates US federal prosecutors charged Samir Ousman Alsheikh, 73, with conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture. On Monday, a jury in Los Angeles found him guilty on all charges. www.courthousenews.com/former-syria...

Take a listen to the wonderful Rania Abouzeid podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/f...

U.S. Considers Withholding H.I.V. Aid Unless Zambia Expands Minerals Access www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/h...

Donald Trump letting you know how the authoritarian capture of the media is going, in case you missed it. Unlike other authoritarians in places like Hungary and Poland he has no worries about advertising his authoritarian take over of the media.

De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest newspaper, recently published an interview with a woman promoting €1,600 seats on private evacuation flights from Dubai. Bellingcat found that her image was likely AI-generated, and flight data suggests no such plane took off. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

New video footage shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting an IRGC facility in Minab, Iran, on Feb 28, showing for the first time that the US struck the area. The footage also shows smoke already rising from the vicinity of the girls’ school, where 175 people were reportedly killed, including children.

Read our analysis of the video showing a US Tomahawk missile strike next to Girls’ School in Iran on February 28 here: www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

New: Prison guards discussed cover-up in Epstein's death, inmate tells FBI. open.substack.com/pub/jkbjourn...

In a follow-up statement, the Lebanese army said Israeli commandos were dressed like them, using vehicles & ambulances similar to those of Islamic Health Authority, a Hezb-affiliated org. So an airborne & land op. Where did the vehicles come from? Nabi Chit is closer to Syria than to Israel #lebanon

Latest Lebanese Ministry of Health casualty figures: 217 killed, almost 800 wounded, half a million displaced and counting #beirut #lebanon

Leb army on last night’s Israeli commando raid on Bekaa town of Nabi Chit (Israel says was looking for remains of airman Ron Arad MIA since mid-80s) Leb Army detected 4 choppers, 2 dispatched forces. Exchange of fire w ‘local residents.’ Says 3 soldiers killed. Leb Health Min: 41 killed 40 wounded

A quick roundup #beirut #lebanon

The documentary produced by our partners includes on-the-ground reporting at strike sites in Iran and exclusive interviews — including with Ali Larijani, the leader of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBY...

🔴 Paul Conroy’s Last Photo Essay: Cuba’s Moment of Reckoning, Veteran war photographer and correspondent Paul Conroy died of natural causes a day after returning from Cuba with this report of another city under siege. He never stopped bearing witness open.substack.com/pub/bylineti...

NEW: X Is *drowning* in disinformation following US and Israel’s attack on Iran. WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack. read @davidgilbert.bsky.social:

We obtained footage showing a man who appeared to be refugee Nurul Amin Shah Alam being dropped off by Border Patrol outside a Buffalo coffee shop after 8pm. The shop locks its door at 7pm. He never made it inside, and was found dead five days later:

According to an NPR investigation, the DOJ failed to release documents relating to interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child. Only the first interview, is available to the public and she doesn’t mention Trump at all. trib.al/BU8zkFp

Exclusive: An internal State Department email obtained by @hana-kiros.bsky.social reveals that the U.S. plans to end all of its current lifesaving aid to seven African countries.

#Sudan: MSF treated 167 patients injured in drone strikes over two weeks. Among them was a nine-year-old boy with a large shrapnel wound to his eye, facial fractures and amputated fingers. www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/sudan-msf-tr...

12-year-old Ender wrote that when she felt sick at Dilley, the doctor would only say to drink more water. “The worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here,” she wrote in her letter. By @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Friends! The New School has cancelled one of its most popular graduate courses, Global Soccer and World Politics. We want to host this course for @resistanceschool.bsky.social ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Interested? Fill the interest form here! www.resistancestudiesseries.com/worldcupwait...

The Trump administration is incarcerating migrant girls in, essentially, a forced pregnancy camp.

NEW: “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note: Stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

Simply on a live performance stagecraft-design-camerawork-logistics-direction level, this is ASTOUNDING.

In Minnesota, away from the cameras, a quiet resistance to ICE raids is ongoing. This week, our Minnesotan reporters connect with friends and neighbors back home and find resolute resistance to ICE at every turn.

I wrote about all the men who flocked to Jeffrey Epstein's inbox to talk about sexual abuse allegations with an expert. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

MUST READ this powerful, intimate dispatch from Minneapolis by @propublica.org visual journalists @peterdicampo.bsky.social (who lives there) & @cengizyar.com This is America.

— Israel kills 3 journalists, including CBS contributor — AFP, the other impacted outlet, condemns killing & calls for investigation — CBS doesn't, instead peddles Israel's claim that they were targeting a group with "a drone affilliated with Hamas" Inside the Bari Weiss-led CBS response:

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com The Lundin Oil trial in Stockholm is “the most ambitious effort since Nuremberg to hold corporate executives accountable for alleged complicity in war crimes,” the columnist M. Gessen writes.

This is something else. Lots of respect for @60minutes.bsky.social reporter Sharyn Alfonso for defending the integrity of her work. What a disgrace for 60 Minutes. The Trump effect destroys every institution it touches. GIFT LINK: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

Introducing the #DamascusDossier investigation: A collaboration from ICIJ, @recherche.ndr.de and 24 media partners in 20 countries uncovers harrowing new details about former Syrian president Bashar Assad’s regime and one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century.

Aanjalie Roane, MSF Director of Communications, writes in the @thestar.com on how Canada’s #Budget2025 frames a $2.7 billion cut to international assistance as “savings.” For people in crisis, those cuts mean fewer doctors, fewer medicines, less hope. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight

Meet one of Syria’s “shadow warriors.” Hassan Al Hariri risked everything to help smuggle more than a million documents out of Syria during the war. They include evidence of war crimes that could one day hold Bashar al-Assad and his top officials to account.

It's the peak of the fall migration season. This is when bird deaths from window collisions tend to spike, even though simple solutions can prevent this.

The Vanishing Act: How Assad’s Top Henchmen Fled Syria, and Justice www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/w...

“They’re, they’re animals anyway. That’s what I would tell my kids all the time,” said the ICE agent, according to body cam footage. spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-...

When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets. Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵 www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

NEW: We got access to Jeffrey Epstein’s personal Yahoo inbox — more than 18,000 emails. It shows Epstein’s world in his own words: an unfiltered look at how his operation worked, who enabled it, and how Ghislaine Maxwell stayed at the center of it all.

Wonderful news: Elizabeth Tsurkov who was kidnapped in Iraq by the Kataib Hezbollah militia in 2023 has finally been freed from captivity. Elizabeth remained 900 days stripped of the very freedom she spent her adult life advocating for. Tonight I sleep with a smile on my face.