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Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on European allies to help protect the strait of Hormuz, warning that Nato faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.
The de facto closure of the vital waterway by Tehran in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices.
The US president’s call for allies to enter the war by sending ships to the strait to protect commercial shipping vessels and unblock global oil supplies has met a muted response. Australia, France, Japan and the UK are among the countries to have said they have no plans to send ships.
What did Trump say? The US president told the Financial Times in an interview: “It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there. If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.”
One Battle After Another sweeps the Oscars as Michael B Jordan and Jessie Buckley win big
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counter-culture caper, One Battle After Another, has won the Oscars war, taking home six awards after a hotly contested season.
The big-budget comedy thriller, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, was named best picture and also won best director, best supporting actor for Sean Penn, adapted screenplay, editing and the first ever Oscar for casting, a category long-petitioned for within the industry.
“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said in his first acceptance speech of the night. He also said he hoped a younger generation would help bring back “common sense and decency” to society.
Who else won? Here’s all the winners at the 98th Academy Awards.
Who was remembered this year? This year’s Academy Awards featured an extended in memoriam section to honour the considerable number of Hollywood legends who have died over the past year. Diane Keaton, Robert Redford and Rob Reiner were remembered in standalone speeches, while Claudia Cardinale and Catherine O’Hara also had extended moments. James Van Der Beek and Brigitte Bardot were among stars who were not included in the tribute.
Trump claims he has ‘absolute right’ to impose new tariffs after supreme court blow
Donald Trump has claimed he has “the absolute right” to impose new tariffs after the US supreme court ruled many of the import duties he imposed last year were illegal.
The president attacked the court in a late-night broadside on Sunday, accusing it of having “unnecessarily RANSACKED” the US and failing to show him sufficient loyalty.
In February, the supreme court found that a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies did not provide the legal justification for many of the tariffs the Trump administration had put on countries around the world.
What did Trump say? “Our Supreme Court has made these Countries very happy but, as the Court pointed out, I have the absolute right to charge TARIFFS in another form, and have already started to do so,” Trump wrote on social media yesterday. The supreme court’s decision did not say the president had the absolute right to charge tariffs in another form.
In other news …
A US treasure hunter who was imprisoned for 10 years after refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins has been released from prison, without officials apparently ever learning where that gold is.
Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.
Google has dropped a new artificial intelligence search feature that gave users crowdsourced health advice from amateurs around the world. The company had said its launch of “What People Suggest”, which provided tips from strangers, showed “the potential of AI to transform health outcomes across the globe”.
Stat of the day: Powerful storm chain to affect 200m in US
AccuWeather called the approaching weather a “triple-threat March megastorm” that will affect nearly 200 million people across the US and warned that travel disruptions were likely as the components of wind, snow, rain and cold developed into a bomb cyclone and would rank among the most impactful US weather events of the year so far.
Building power: Meet the Americans withholding their federal income tax to protest against Trump
“I’m not paying my federal income taxes this year,” Rachel Cohen declared in a recent Instagram video that received more than 140,000 likes. Cohen is part of a new generation of Americans refusing to pay some or all of their federal income taxes in protest at how their tax dollars are being spent under Trump.
Don’t miss this: How a ‘vacuum cleaner turned the other way’ became a popular solution to snoring disorders
Cpap machines were once used only for severe sleep apnoea but sleep medicine physicians say there has been a rise in prescribing for milder cases. Although sleep medicine has been slowly rising in popularity for 30 years, there has been a “rapid” spike, says Peter Cistulli, a professor of sleep medicine at the University of Sydney, driven in part by wearable consumer tech products that monitor sleep.
… or this: ‘I watched society burn a woman at the stake’: Melissa Auf der Maur on her bandmate Courtney Love and the farce of the 90s
Wary of working with Hole’s “impossible, drug addict” lead singer Courtney Love, the bassist soon found herself entranced. So why did she jump ship for the Smashing Pumpkins – and start a relationship with Love’s enemy Dave Grohl?
Last Thing: ‘A molten, mushy state’ – scientists may have found a new type of liquid planet
Astronomers have identified a planet composed of molten lava, suggesting the existence of an entirely new category of liquid planet. Astronomers initially thought the planet might harbour a deep ocean of liquid water, but the latest analysis suggests that it could be fundamentally different to anything seen before.
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