‘Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons’ Rubio tells Al Jazeera
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outlined what the US’s main demands are for Iran. Rubio said Iran must never develop nuclear weapons and must stop “sponsoring terrorism”, adding that its short-range missiles are intended to threaten countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Published On 30 Mar 202630 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Marco Rubio says President Trump prefers diplomatic solution to war on Iran
NewsFeed In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there are messages and indirect talks under way between figures inside Iran and the US, and that President Donald Trump still prefers a diplomatic outcome. He accused Iran’s leadership of funding armed groups like Hezbollah and Hamas instead of its own people, and said the US would welcome a future Iranian government with a “different view” for the country. Published On 30 Mar 202630 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Iran hits industrial zone in southern Israel
NewsFeed An Iranian missile barrage has caused a fire a chemical plant near Beersheba in southern Israel, following expanded attacks on Iranian infrastructure. Published On 29 Mar 202629 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Houthis open new front against Israel, is Red Sea shipping at risk?
NewsFeed The Houthis in Yemen have launched their first attacks on Israel, opening a new front in the month-long regional war. Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi explains why the move could raise new risks for oil shipping, and civilians in Yemen. Published On 29 Mar 202629 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
‘We can insure the ship, but we cannot insure a human life.’
NewsFeed International Maritime Organization chief Arsenio Dominguez warns of 20,000 seafarers stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, as canceled insurance, mounting mental strain and the risk to ‘innocent seafarers’ drive urgent calls for a humanitarian corridor and de-escalation. Published On 29 Mar 202629 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Iran war live: Tehran warns US, Israeli universities; Houthis fire missiles
blinking-dotLive updatesLive updates, Antiwar protesters rally in Tel Aviv and US cities, as attacks kill a family of four in Iran’s Bushehr province and damage a water facility in Khuzestan. Published On 29 Mar 202629 Mar 2026 Click here to share on social media share2 Share googleAdd Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Adblock test (Why?)
Vice President JD Vance tops CPAC’s straw poll to be US president in 2028
For the second year in a row, United States Vice President JD Vance has topped the straw poll at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the biggest right-wing gatherings in the country. The poll is a bellwether – albeit, not necessarily an accurate one – for who might ultimately become the Republican nominee for the next presidential race. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list During this year’s four-day conference, attendees were asked which candidate they would prefer to lead the Republican Party ticket for the 2028 election. The results were revealed on stage Saturday. Vance had swept up 53 percent of the votes cast by nearly 1,600 attendees. But rising up the ranks was another senior official under US President Donald Trump: his top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A former senator from Florida, Rubio notched 35 percent of the vote. It was a markedly improved standing for Rubio, who tied for fourth place at last year’s CPAC straw poll. That poll, taken within weeks of Trump starting his second term, showed Vance with 61 percent support, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with 12 percent, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 7 percent. Rubio and Representative Elise Stefanik both earned 3 percent. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press following a G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting on March 27, 2026 [AFP] Attendance at CPAC, an annual conference, tends to skew away from the political centre and farther to the right. Speakers at this year’s conference included Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi, and Eduardo and Flavio Bolsonaro, the sons of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who was imprisoned last September for attempting to subvert his country’s democracy. Advertisement But this year’s straw poll comes at a critical time for the Republican Party. Less than eight months remain until November’s midterm elections in the US, and Republicans are hoping to defend their congressional majorities at the ballot box. Trump, long the standard-bearer for his party, has seen his approval numbers sink since his return to office in 2025. Earlier this week, a survey from the news agency Reuters and the research firm Ipsos found that only 36 percent of US citizens approved of his job performance, a new low. The ongoing war in Iran and economic frustrations, including rising gas prices linked to the conflict, are among the factors contributing to the slump. While Trump has teased he may seek a third term, US law prevents modern presidents from serving more than two. His second presidency is set to expire in 2028. That leaves an open question as to who may succeed the 79-year-old Republican. Vance, a veteran and former single-term senator from Ohio, is seen to represent a more isolationist branch of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) base. He has generally been opposed to US involvement in foreign conflicts, though he has defended Trump’s decision to join Israel in joint strikes on Iran. Rubio, meanwhile, has a longer political resume than Vance and is seen to be more hawkish towards regime change, particularly in his family’s ancestral home of Cuba. He served as a senator for Florida from 2011 until his unanimous confirmation as secretary of state in 2025. Both men had been critical of Trump before joining his administration. Vance once called Trump “unfit” for office, and Rubio derided Trump as a “con artist” and an “embarrassment” when he was a rival candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Senator Ted Cruz speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 28 [Gabriela Passos/AP Photo] CPAC tends not to survey participants about who should be president when a Republican is already in the Oval Office. But the straw polls it held before and after Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, have shown a noticeable realignment in the Republican Party. In the decade leading up to the 2016 election – Trump’s first successful campaign for office – moderate Republican Mitt Romney and libertarian Rand Paul consistently won the CPAC straw polls. Ever since his first term, however, Trump has trounced the competition. Despite his 2020 election defeat, he still garnered the most backing in 2021’s straw poll, with 55 percent support, and his numbers climbed each successive year, through to his re-election in 2024. Advertisement Experts have noted that the Republican Party has largely consolidated around Trump’s politics, with the few remaining moderate and critical voices increasingly marginalised. The CPAC straw poll, however, is not always accurate. Ahead of Trump’s victory in 2016, the majority of straw poll participants backed Senator Cruz of Texas to be the next president. Trump came in third place with 15 percent support, trailing Rubio at 30 percent. Adblock test (Why?)
As war on Iran enters second month, Yemen’s Houthis open new front
Yemen’s Houthis have attacked Israel for the first time, a month after US and Israeli forces began striking Iran, opening up a new front in a rapidly escalating conflict that has killed thousands of people, displaced millions and rattled the global economy. The Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, entered the fray on Saturday with two missile and drone attacks on Israel in the space of fewer than 24 hours. The Israeli army said the attacks were intercepted, but the Iran-aligned group pledged to continue fighting in support of “resistance fronts in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran”. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list The Houthis had sat out of the hostilities until now, in contrast with their stance during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, when their attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea upended commercial traffic worth about $1 trillion a year. Their widely anticipated involvement in the latest conflict comes just as Iran has throttled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for about a fifth of the world’s oil, raising fears that the Yemeni group will again disrupt Red Sea traffic by blocking the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Reporting from Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry described Bab al-Mandeb as the group’s “ace”. “They want to make Israel pay economically. They want to disrupt their trade routes. They want to disrupt the imports and exports in and out of Israel,” he said. ‘Civilians bearing brunt of war’ The Houthi attacks came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Washington expected to conclude its military operations against Iran within weeks, even as a new deployment of US Marines has begun to arrive in the region, so US President Donald Trump would have “maximum” flexibility to adjust the strategy as needed. Advertisement With no immediate diplomatic breakthrough in sight as both the US and Iran harden their positions, many fear that the US-Israel war on Iran, which started on February 28 and has since engulfed the region, will spiral out of control. The US and Israel continued their bombardment over the past 24 hours, with the Israeli military claiming it had struck an Iranian research facility for naval weapons, while a series of loud explosions rattled Tehran as night fell on Saturday. Iranian media said at least five people were killed in a US-Israeli attack on a residential unit in the northwestern city of Zanjan. In Tehran, authorities said the University of Science and Technology was the latest educational facility to be struck, prompting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to issue a threat against Israeli and US universities in the region. Separately, Iran’s Fars news agency said a water reservoir in the city of Haftgel, located in western Khuzestan province, had also been attacked. The Iranian Ministry of Health announced that 1,937 people have been killed since the start of the conflict, including 230 children. Iran’s Red Crescent Society said US-Israeli strikes had damaged more than 93,000 civilian properties. “Civilians are bearing the brunt of this war,” Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, said. Devastation in Lebanon Meanwhile, Israel’s devastation of Lebanon continued apace, as the Lebanese Ministry of Health reported that 1,189 people had been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2. The death toll has been mounting as Israeli troops have pushed further into the south, advancing towards the Litani River in their stated bid to wipe out Hezbollah and carve out a buffer zone along the lines of the “Gaza model”. Among Saturday’s killings, an Israeli strike killed three journalists in southern Lebanon. In parallel, the Health Ministry announced that Israel had also killed nine paramedics, bringing the death toll among healthcare workers in the latest war to 51. Lebanon’s Public Health Emergency Operations Centre said an Israeli attack on the town of al-Haniyah, in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, killed at least seven people, including one child. An Israeli air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Deir al-Zahrani killed a Lebanese soldier, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. Hezbollah, which attacked Israel amid a ceasefire that Israel kept violating in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, claimed dozens of operations against Israeli forces in the past 24 hours. Mixed messages Trump has threatened to hit Iranian power stations and other energy infrastructure if Tehran does not fully open the Strait of Hormuz. But he has extended the deadline he had imposed for this week, giving Iran another 10 days to respond. Advertisement With the US midterm elections coming up in November, the increasingly unpopular war is weighing heavily on the president’s Republican Party. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Friday that he believed Tehran would hold talks with Washington in the coming days. “We have a 15-point plan on the table. We expect the Iranians to respond. It could solve it all,” Witkoff said. Pakistan, which has been a go-between between US and Iranian officials, will host foreign ministers from regional powers Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt in Islamabad for talks on the crisis. Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ishaq Dar spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, late on Saturday, urging “an end to all attacks and hostilities” in the region. In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Dar had told Araghchi that Pakistan remains committed to supporting efforts aimed at restoring regional peace and stability. Dar also announced that Iran had agreed to allow 20 Pakistani-flagged vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz, calling it a meaningful step towards easing one of the worst energy crises in modern history. Adblock test (Why?)
Morocco claims AFCON case closed, despite Senegal appeals to CAF and CAS
Morocco believe their successful appeal against their 1-0 defeat by Senegal means the case of the AFCON crown is closed. Published On 28 Mar 202628 Mar 2026 Senegal may still possess the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy and have launched a legal battle against the decision to strip them of it, but as far as new champions Morocco are concerned, the case is closed. Although the Atlas Lions lost 1-0 in the January final, the Confederation of African Football awarded them a 3-0 victory last week because of several Senegal players leaving the pitch in protest at the award of a penalty. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list Morocco drew 1-1 against Ecuador on Friday in a friendly in Madrid, in their first match since the final and the controversial decision to punish Senegal. It was new coach Mohamed Ouahbi’s first game at the helm, just three months out from the 2026 World Cup. After becoming the first African side to reach the final four in Qatar in 2022, expectations are high for Morocco, and they are looking to the future, despite Senegal’s outrage. “We’re focused on what’s to come and not getting into that [topic],” Morocco goalkeeper Yassine Bounou told reporters. “The answer from us [about whether the decision was fair] would be what our federation said, and that’s all … we’re looking forwards.” Thousands of Morocco fans, many draped in their country’s flag and tooting vuvuzelas, are convinced justice was served. “If someone says there are regulations, you have to follow them,” said Yassine el-Aouak, 35, a Morocco supporter who travelled to the game from Italy. “I think we will bring the trophy home [eventually] – we know that we deserve it.” Before being awarded victory against Senegal, Morocco had won the Africa Cup of Nations only once, in 1976. Advertisement “The rules are the rules … they are so clear, you go outside the pitch without any reason, you lose 3-0,” said another Morocco supporter, Taha El Hadiguy, 22. “It’s very different to winning on the night of the final, to win two months later, but a win is a win. We have one more star on our shirt.” Like the players, the Moroccan media was more concerned with the upcoming World Cup and Ouahbi’s tactical approach than whether Senegal are right to feel aggrieved. Ecuador’s coach Sebastian Beccacece said his were satisfied with a draw against the “African champions”. Ouahbi’s team are now technically unbeaten in 25 matches, despite falling 1-0 on a dramatic night in Rabat against Senegal in the AFCON final. They lacked precision in attack against Ecuador, but Ouahbi, who led Moroccan youngsters to Under-20 World Cup glory last year, highlighted the strength of his team. “I don’t talk in terms of weaknesses. They’re not weaknesses. We are a top-level team – the Ecuadorian coach reminded us of that,” Ouhabi told reporters. “If you are a top-level team, ranked eighth in the world and World Cup semifinalists, you don’t have weaknesses. “You only have strengths, and then any qualities we’re missing, areas where we’re not performing, we have to make up for collectively.” Morocco will face record five-time World Cup winners Brazil in their first game at the tournament this summer on June 13, one of the most intriguing match-ups of the group phase. Before then, the Moroccan Federation’s lawyers may have to defend their status as African champions against Senegal’s case, but Ouahbi and his players are only looking forward to the summer, when they have a chance to win another trophy, this time on the pitch. Adblock test (Why?)
Three journalists killed in Israeli strike on marked press car in Lebanon
Lebanon’s president condemns ‘blatant crime’, as Israeli attacks kill more journalists Published On 28 Mar 202628 Mar 2026 Three Lebanese journalists have been killed in an Israeli air strike on their clearly marked press vehicle in southern Lebanon. Other journalists were wounded in the attack, and one paramedic was killed. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Fatima Ftouni and her brother and colleague, Mohammed, of Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar’s Ali Shuaib were killed on Saturday on the Jezzine Road when, according to Al Mayadeen, four precision missiles hit the vehicle. When ambulances arrived, paramedics were also reportedly targeted, killing one. Al Mayadeen and Al-Manar have confirmed the deaths of their journalists. The Israeli military acknowledged the strike, claiming Shuaib was embedded within a Hezbollah intelligence unit and had been tracking Israeli troop positions in southern Lebanon. It also alleged he had been distributing Hezbollah propaganda. Al-Manar, his employer, described him as one of its most prominent war correspondents, having covered Israeli attacks on Lebanon for decades. Israel, which has killed more than 270 journalists in Gaza, often alleges that the reporters it targets are members of or are linked to armed groups without providing evidence. Neither network accepted Israel’s characterisation. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Israel had once again violated “the most basic rules of international law” by targeting civilians carrying out their professional duty. Citing the 1949 Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council Resolution 1738, he called it “a blatant crime that violates all norms and treaties under which journalists are granted international protection during armed conflicts”. Advertisement Prime Minister Nawaf Salam decried the attack as “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”. Six Al Mayadeen journalists killed in weeks For Ftouni, the war had already struck close to home. Earlier this month, her uncle and his family were killed in an Israeli strike, a loss she had reported on live television. Al Mayadeen has now lost six journalists since hostilities began. Farah Omar, Rabih Me’mari, Ghassan Najjar and Mohammad Reda were killed in earlier attacks. Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said 1,142 people have been killed and more than 3,300 injured in Israeli attacks since March 2 amid the rapidly widening regional conflict now entering a fourth week. Israeli troops have pushed further into the south, advancing towards the Litani River. Hezbollah has claimed dozens of operations against Israeli forces in the past 24 hours. An Israeli air raid in the southern Lebanese town of Deir al-Zahrani killed one Lebanese soldier, Lebanon’s National News agency reported. Saturday’s killings fit a pattern that press freedom organisations have been tracking with alarm. The Committee to Protect Journalists recorded a global high of 129 journalists killed in 2025, the most since it began collecting data over three decades ago, with Israel responsible for two-thirds of those deaths. It has now killed more journalists than any other nation in CPJ’s recorded history. A separate assault earlier this month killed Al-Manar’s political programmes director, Mohammad Sherri, in central Beirut. Adblock test (Why?)