geneva_convenience

Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly gained access to a payroll system over the weekend that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across various government agencies, despite warnings from senior staff about the potential risks.

According to two people familiar with the situation who spoke with the New York Times, Doge employees had spent about two weeks trying to obtain administrative access to the program, known as the Federal Personnel and Payroll System.

Then, toward the end of last week, senior career officials at the interior department reportedly issued a memo highlighting the unusual nature of the request and the associated risks with granting it.

The al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said on Monday that it has resumed direct attacks on Israeli forces, in what appears to be the first such action since Israel resumed its war on Gaza on 18 March.

“We detonated a Zionist tank with a pre-prepared explosive device while it was operating near the dividing line and bombarded the area with several mortar shells east of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, on March 29, 2025," the statement on the Qassam Brigades Telegram account said.

US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce dodged a question at Monday's briefing about whether naturalised US citizens of Middle Eastern descent might have their citizenships revoked over pro-Palestine speech.

"I'm not going to discuss the nature of the diplomatic or strategic conversations that any department in the government's having," she told reporters.

Asked later about whether she can confirm if pro-Israeli advocacy group Betar has provided the US government with lists of names recommended for deportation, Bruce only said, "Whether it exists or not, I won't confirm," and that the State Department has "broad authority".

Israeli forces have been accused of executing handcuffed Palestinian medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza's Rafah.

Fifteen humanitarian workers went missing last week after responding to a distress call from civilians being attacked by Israeli forces.

The workers include eight paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six members of the Palestinian Civil Defence search-and-rescue teams, and one UN staff member.

They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with at least around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza.

At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless, he added.

Israeli forces have been accused of executing handcuffed Palestinian medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza's Rafah.

Fifteen humanitarian workers went missing last week after responding to a distress call from civilians being attacked by Israeli forces.

The workers include eight paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six members of the Palestinian Civil Defence search-and-rescue teams, and one UN staff member.

They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with at least around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza.

At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless, he added.

Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.

“I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: “Get angry, man,” punctuating the message with a profanity.

The anger roiling the party, slow to build, is now a forceful current coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified that the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury.

At rallies, town halls and protests, voters are venting their fury with Donald Trump and his empowerment of Elon Musk’s full-frontal assault on federal agencies, stoking what progressive activists believe are the embers of a populist backlash against the president – and the Democratic leaders they believe are not meeting the moment.

The International Court of Justice will hold public hearings on April 10 in Sudan’s case against the United Arab Emirates, the court announced Friday.

The hearings, at the Peace Palace in The Hague, will address Sudan’s request for provisional measures over alleged violations of the Genocide Convention.

Sudan filed the case on March 5, accusing the UAE of violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, particularly in relation to actions involving the Masalit group in West Darfur.

Israeli air strikes continued on Sunday, March 30, the first day of Eid al-Fitr, with attacks targeting tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The attack came as Israeli bombardments persist across Gaza despite calls for a cease-fire during the Islamic holiday.

The Israeli army launched a surprise aerial campaign on Gaza on 18 March, killing more than 920 victims, injuring over 2,000, and shattering a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement.

France has long tried to balance two contradictory roles with Algeria: a fair-weather friend and a former coloniser that never truly let go. However, as the right wing reshapes the political mainstream in Paris, Algerians in France say they are being scapegoated in the name of 'national security.'

On 8 March, Michel Onfray, a prominent French essayist, declared on CNEWS—a far-right-leaning channel often compared to America’s Fox News—that "the danger in France now is Algerian."

Once confined to the fringes, this rhetoric is now seeping into Matignon (France's 10 Downing Street), with supposedly centrist ministers inching ever closer to the right.

On 24 February, Prime Minister François Bayrou lashed out at Algerian authorities for their "unacceptable" refusal—ten times over—to issue a consular pass for the return of a 37-year-old Algerian national ordered to leave French territory.

Algeria has also refused to accept the return of two of its nationals arrested in France for inciting violence online.

In response, Bayrou, backed by his cabinet, is now threatening to scrap the 1968 Franco-Algerian agreement, which grants Algerians special immigration privileges, as retaliation for Algiers' reluctance to take back its nationals.

A group of 15 paramedics and rescue workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and Gaza’s Civil Defence, who disappeared while responding to casualties in Rafah, are believed to have been executed by Israeli forces.

PRCS confirmed the rescue workers "vanished" while on duty in the Tal Sultan neighbourhood in southern Gaza. They had arrived in response to an Israeli bombing and were attempting to save lives when they were abducted. In a statement issued on Friday, PRCS detailed its efforts to locate the team, working alongside the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"So far, no trace of our team members has been found. Yesterday, we discovered the four ambulance vehicles completely destroyed and buried in the sand," PRCS stated in reference to its nine missing members. "The occupation is deliberately obstructing search efforts to uncover the fate of our missing teams."

At the South Louisiana Ice processing centre, an all-female facility that is also operated by the Geo Group and where Ozturk is now being held, the ACLU of Louisiana recently filed a complaint to the DHS’s civil rights division alleging an array of rights violations. These included inadequate access to medical care, with the complaint stating: “Guards left detained people suffering from severe conditions like external bleeding, tremors, and sprained limbs unattended to, refusing them access to diagnostic care”.

The complaint was filed in December 2024, before the Trump administration moved to gut the DHS’s civil rights division earlier this month.

If there has ever been a blatant form of oblivion in the EU’s political communications, the European Council’s conclusions on 20 March exceed all previous examples. “The European Council is deeply alarmed by the dramatic military escalation in the Middle East and the risk this represents for the entire region,” it said in the introduction. One would expect that such vagueness would be followed by specifics.

Under the heading “Gaza”, the European Council completely failed to mention Israel. Or rather, refused to mention Israel, because such an omission was surely not unintentional.

The European Council’s conclusions would have read very differently had it acknowledged Israel’s culpability in the genocide, either by reinforcing Israel’s security narrative or — and this is highly unlikely — by taking a stance against the Gaza Genocide. The council opted for oblivion, however, which is worse. It means that Israel has absolute impunity, and that whatever Palestinians may argue against remains trapped within a vacuum created by Europe.