Armour
Iraq has warned of “disastrous consequences” for the region as the United States launched retaliatory airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets.
The strikes ordered by President Joe Biden were the first in response to a deadly attack that killed three US troops at an American outpost in Jordan.
“This is the start of our response,” said US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else, but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces.”
The US aimed for sites linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the militias it backs.
More than 30 people were reportedly killed, including civilians.
The strikes included the use of long-range B-1 bombers flown from the United States.
More US military operations were expected in the coming days.
The strikes intensified a conflict that has spread into the region since war erupted between Israel and Hamas after the militant Palestinian group’s deadly assault on Israel on October.7.
SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA
No single artefact did more to launch the climate change scare than Professor Michael E Mann’s famous – or should that be infamous? – 1998 hockey stick graph, showing an unprecedented and sudden rise in global warming. Widely criticised on many scientific counts it is again under fire, in a Washington courtroom drama significant for both free speech and climate science.
A 12-year defamation battle between Mann and the witty and acute conservative Canadian pundit Mark Steyn is culminating in Room 518 in D.C.’s Superior Court, after Steyn wrote a piece in National Review in 2012 referring to Mann as ‘the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus’. Scientist blogger Rand Simberg, quoted in Steyn’s piece, is also being sued.
For those who have followed the climate-change gravy train for decades, as I have, this will be a walk down memory lane. All the old stagers are there, either listed as witnesses or mentioned in despatches – Steve McIntyre (‘human filth’, according to Mann), Roger Pielke Jnr, Ross McKittrick, ‘Mike’s Nature trick’, Climategate emails, tree rings and bristlecone pines. Even the catchy harmonies of ‘Hide the Decline’, the cult hit song by Minnesotans for Global Warming, have rung through the court.
SKY
Questions raised after ‘pretentious, self-righteous’ journalist joins PM’s office
Journalist Katharine Murphy – who is set to join the Prime Minister’s office – has been the author of some of the most “pretentious, self-righteous articles” about ethics in politics, according to Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton.
Mr Houghton slammed the “hard left” reporter after she accepted to work for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s communications office.
Mr Houghton questioned how long the veteran Canberra journalist knew she was going to work for Labor.
“You might recall Murphy as being the author of some of the most pretentious, self-righteous articles about ethics in politics,” he said.
“Murphy has shamelessly barracked for one side of politics in a role which required objectivity.
“There are serious questions this raises about credibility within the Guardian newsroom and in Albanese’s own office.”

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