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Hundreds of doctors in the UK have signed a petition accusing the country's medical regulator of fostering an “environment of fear” by pursuing what they say is a politically motivated campaign against the prominent British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah.

The petition, organised by Health Workers 4 Palestine, calls on the leadership of the General Medical Council (GMC) to resign after the regulator said it would challenge the outcome of an independent tribunal which cleared Abu Sittah of wrongdoing following a complaint brought by a pro-Israel advocacy group over an article he had written for a Lebanese newspaper.

The petition also raised concerns about financial governance at the regulator, after noting that legal costs in the Abu Sittah case reportedly exceed £200,000 - an amount that requires approval from the GMC’s most senior leadership.

Last week a second medical regulatory body, the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA), said it had joined the GMC in challenging the tribunal's judgment in favour of Abu Sittah.

Donald Trump is stuck between “a rock and a hard place” after three weeks of war in Iran and “sending a message of weakness” to the world, Leon Panetta, a former US defence secretary and Central Intelligence Agency director, has told the Guardian.

Panetta, who served in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, recalled that national security officials were always keenly aware of Iran’s ability to create an energy crisis by blocking the strait of Hormuz. That very scenario is now unfolding, leaving Trump with no exit strategy beyond wishful thinking.

“He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Panetta, 87, who supervised the operation to find and kill Osama bin Laden, said by phone. “If he says it and keeps saying it there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”

Trump’s war began on 28 February with what it hoped would be a knockout blow. A surprise strike by Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US and Israel soon gained air supremacy. But the longer the conflict has raged, the more that initiative appears to be slipping away.

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U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Aguto, who oversaw the command that coordinated, trained and equipped Ukraine’s military, left a tube of classified maps on a train to Poland for more than 24 hours and was concussed from falling after “overindulgence” in alcohol during a dinner in Ukraine, a recently released Pentagon inspector general report found.

The 56-page report, which was published on Friday, found the now-retired two-star general, who led the Wiesbaden, Germany-based Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U), brought the classified maps during a trip from Germany to Ukraine in late March 2024 and assigned control of them to his staff.

“We found insufficient evidence to determine who had control of the classified maps once the travelers boarded the train for the return trip,” the watchdog said in the report, adding that travelers left the maps in the train when they arrived back in Poland on April 4, 2024, and the  U.S. Embassy in Ukraine recovered the unattended documents a day later.

When he got back to Wiesbaden, Aguto was told by his executive officer that the tube was gone. Classified information is typically transported via courier; it was not ordered that time, the report said.

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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that the near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and has ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who were placed on leave from the media organization.

The order by District Judge Royce Lamberth amounted to a sharp rebuke to the administration, which has aggressively sought to shrink and remake VOA through Kari Lake, the ally of President Donald Trump who has served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lamberth said in a pair of rulings that Lake’s moves to close the agency violated federal administrative law and directed that the employees return to work by March 23. He also ordered a resumption of international broadcasting, which the U.S. has used for decades to promote press freedom around the world.

Beginning in early 2025, hundreds of journalists were placed on administrative leave and then targeted for layoffs, with more than 600 cuts announced by summer and ultimately roughly 85 percent of staff eliminated across the agency. The reductions were so deep that VOA, which once broadcast in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people, was pared down to a skeleton operation with only a handful of language services still running.

Lamberth issued a scathing review of the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to uphold statutory requirements set by Congress, adding that Lake “thumbed her nose” at the requirements.

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Israel has killed three Palestinians and wounded five others, including a child, in separate attacks targeting areas in eastern Gaza City and the northern Gaza, according to medical sources.

Sources told Anadolu agency that the bodies of three young men were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza City after a drone strike targeted them on Mushtaha Street in the Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of the city.

The victims were identified as Mahmoud Saher al-Siqli, 17, Younes Saed Ayad, 17, and Abdullah Taysir Shoumer, 20, the sources said.

In a separate attack, four Palestinians were wounded when an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The wounded were taken to the Palestine Red Crescent Society field hospital in Al-Saraya Square in the city centre.

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Teens in Texas mariachi band released from ICE detention after bipartisan backlas

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

Two teenage mariachi musicians were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after their detention sparked widespread backlash, including from a Republican congresswoman.

The Democratic representative Joaquin Castro of Texas announced the release of the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, on Monday afternoon, sharing photos on social media of the family reuniting.

The case has drawn national attention because the brothers had travelled to Washington DC last summer after their high school’s mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Ono, won a state mariachi competition. Their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, had invited them to the House floor, where she celebrated their accomplishment.

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