Thousands of people took to the streets in Buenos Aires to mark the 50th anniversary of Argentina’s last military coup. The day is a national holiday to honour the estimated 30,000 people who were disappeared during the dictatorship’s so-called “Dirty War”.
Published On 25 Mar 2026
Reference #18.4a200117.1774465787.14be0b43
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.4a200117.1774465787.14be0b43
The Estate Department has issued a notice to the Congress Party on Wednesday. In this notice, the party has been instructed to vacate its office located at 24 Akbar Road by March 28. According to Congress sources, the department has issued a formal order in this regard. This building has been the headquarters of the Congress Party for the last 48 years.
Trita Parsi, Vice President of the Quincy Institute, argues that Iran is unlikely to agree to end the war without sanctions relief, while there is little sign Donald Trump is willing to offer meaningful concessions, adding that a deal remains unlikely until then.
Published On 25 Mar 2026
The ongoing war between America, Israel and Iran has reached its 26th day today. US President Donald Trump, while talking to the media at the White House, clearly said, ‘We have won this war. Iran has become completely weak and has now agreed not to make nuclear weapons.’
Trump said that Iran is ready to compromise and talks are going on between both sides. US Vice President JD Vance, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are involved in these conversations. He said that Iran has given a ‘huge gift’ to America, which is related to oil and gas. Trump also warned that if talks fail, Iran’s power plants could be attacked again, but at present 5 days have been given.
These talks have been openly denied by Iran, but according to some sources, messages are being exchanged through intermediaries. Pakistan has offered to host the talks and its Army Chief is being said to be the main mediator.
Attacks continue amid talks of peace
Today Hezbollah fired more than 30 rockets at Israel’s Haifa and Nahariya. Apart from this, a woman died and many people were injured in Israel due to rocket and drone attacks from Lebanon. Iran carried out drone attacks on Israel’s aerospace and weapons factories, while Israel attacked several Iranian targets including Shiraz Airport. Clouds of smoke were seen rising in Shiraz.
Three buildings were damaged by missile attack in Tel Aviv, many people were injured. A fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport caught fire due to a drone attack. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait intercepted many drones and missiles.
Oil price fluctuations
Due to the war, Brent crude had once reached $104 per barrel, but after Trump’s conciliatory statement the prices fell by 6-6.5% to around $94-97. Still above pre-war levels. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, although Iran has said that non-enemy ships are allowed to pass.
What is India’s position in the Middle East war?
India is continuously keeping an eye on this entire matter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Trump on phone yesterday and appealed for early peace in the region and to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and safe. India’s concern is about its energy security, oil supply and the safety of the Indians living there.
What are the latest updates on the US-Iran war?
America has decided to send 2000 additional troops to the Middle East. Israel is planning to increase its presence in southern Lebanon. There have been more than 1500 deaths in Iran so far, while in Lebanon also more than 1000.
The situation is still very sensitive. Trump says that Iran is now showing understanding, but attacks on the ground continue. Countries around the world are hoping for this war to end soon because it is increasing oil prices and affecting the global economy.
As the United States-Israeli war with Iran sends tremors through the global economy, the poorest members of the Global South are the most exposed to the fallout.
In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, developing economies are bearing the brunt of surging energy costs prompted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf.
From Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, through to Jordan, Egypt and Ethiopia, policymakers are facing the double whammy of being both heavily dependent on imported energy and having limited financial firepower to absorb the shock of spiking prices.
In Pakistan, which imports about 80 percent of its energy from the Gulf and has lurched between economic crises for years, authorities have scrambled to roll out measures to conserve fuel.
Facing the depletion of the country’s petrol and diesel reserves within weeks, officials have closed schools, introduced a four-day work week for government offices, ordered half of the country’s public sector employees to work from home, and slashed fuel allowances for official business.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said last week that he had decided against a proposed hike in petrol and diesel prices before the Eid Al-Fitr celebration, saying the government would “bear the burden” of rising costs.
Sharif’s announcement came after the government had earlier this month approved a 55 rupee ($0.20) rise in the price of a litre (0.26 gallons) of petrol or diesel.
While government subsidies have helped cushion the blow for the public, there are fears that petroleum prices will surge and bring economic activity to a halt if the war drags on, said S Akbar Zaidi, the executive director of the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.
“The overall shock is quite severe, although it has not been fully passed on to consumers and to industry,” Zaidi said.
“I expect the next few weeks to make things far worse once the disruption and price factors pass through.”
In Bangladesh, which imports about 95 percent of its oil and is expected to run through its fuel reserves within days, petrol pumps in some districts have run dry despite the introduction of fuel rationing.
Sri Lanka, which imports about 60 percent of its energy needs and is still reeling from an economic meltdown that began in 2019, has declared every Wednesday a public holiday and introduced a mandatory fuel pass for vehicle owners to conserve petrol and diesel, stockpiles of which are projected to run dry within weeks.
In Egypt, one of the biggest energy importers and among the most indebted economies in the Middle East, the government has ordered malls, shops and cafes to close by 9pm during weekdays and 10pm during weekends, and cut back on public lighting.
Facing growing pressure on public finances due to the government’s heavy subsidisation of fuel prices, Egyptian officials on March 10 announced price hikes of between 15 and 22 percent for petrol, diesel and cooking gas.
While acknowledging the burden on the public, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said the move was necessary to avoid “harsher and more dangerous outcomes”.
“For a majority of developing economies, especially those already grappling with debt and high import dependence, they are facing a potent mix of inflation, currency pressures, and fiscal strains,” said Yeah Kim Leng, a professor of economics at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“The hardest hit are net energy and food importers, especially those with fragile macroeconomic foundations and pre-existing vulnerabilities that typified countries with low per capita income and high poverty rates,” Yeah added.
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Senegal, Egypt, Angola, Ethiopia and Zambia are among the most at risk, according to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development, which looked at factors including dependence on fuel imports, public debt levels and foreign exchange reserve/import ratios.
The weakening of many developing countries’ currencies against the US dollar – the result of investors buying the greenback amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty – has compounded the situation by further driving up costs.
“Countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines have already seen their currencies at near record lows even before the start of the conflict, making imports, including oil, much more expensive,” said Azizul Amiludin, a non-resident senior fellow at the Malaysia Institute of Economic Research in Kuala Lumpur.
Much as the fallout of the war poses particular challenges for governments in developing countries, the effect on citizens is disproportionate, too.
In less advanced economies, citizens spend much more of their pay cheques on fuel and food, leaving them more exposed to rising living costs.
At the same time, governments in developing countries have less capacity to provide a safety net for those at risk of falling through the cracks.
“In vulnerable economies, governments often attempt to shield their populations from price hikes by subsidising fuel and food,” said Yeah, the Jeffrey Cheah Institute professor.
“However, with depleted fiscal buffers and shrinking revenues, this becomes unsustainable. The ensuing austerity, combined with hyperinflation, can trigger widespread social unrest and a full-blown fiscal crisis.”
With the US and Israel barely a month into their war and no clear timetable for its end in sight, many analysts expect things to get worse before they get better.
Khalid Waleed, a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, said rising transport costs would soon be felt at supermarket checkouts.
“Diesel is the backbone of Pakistan’s freight and agricultural economy,” Waleed said.
“Trucking costs have started climbing, and that will feed into everything from flour to fertiliser in the weeks ahead.”
Once Pakistan’s wheat harvest gets under way in April, food prices could spike well beyond their current levels, Waleed said.
“Combine harvesters, threshers, tractors for haulage from field to market, and the trucks that move grain from fields to flour mills and storage facilities all run on high-speed diesel,” he said.
“For a country where wheat flour is the single largest item in the food basket of the bottom two income quintiles, this is not a marginal concern,” Waleed added.
“If diesel prices stay elevated through April and May, Pakistan will harvest its wheat at the most expensive input cost in years, and that cost will transmit directly into food inflation at a time when households have almost no capacity left to absorb further price shocks.”
This is first big step by the ChatGPT maker to focus its business on potentially more lucrative areas, such as coding tools.
Published On 25 Mar 2026
OpenAI is shutting down its social media app Sora, which went viral towards the end of last year as a place to share short-form videos generated by artificial intelligence but also raised alarms in Hollywood and elsewhere.
OpenAI said in a brief social media message on Tuesday that it was “saying goodbye to the Sora app” and that it would share more soon about how to preserve what users had already created on the app.
“What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” it said.
The company behind ChatGPT released Sora in September as an attempt to capture the attention, and potentially advertising dollars, that follow short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube or Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.
But a growing chorus of advocacy groups, academics and experts expressed concerns about the dangers of letting people create AI videos on just about anything they can type into a prompt, leading to the proliferation of nonconsensual images and realistic deepfakes in a sea of less harmful “AI slop”.
OpenAI was forced to crack down on AI creations of public figures – among them, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr and Mister Rogers – doing outlandish things, but only after an outcry from family estates and an actors’ union.
Disney, which made a deal with OpenAI last year to bring its characters to Sora, said in a statement on Tuesday that it respects “OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere”.
On Monday evening, Walt Disney and OpenAI teams were working together on a project linked to Sora. Just 30 minutes after the meeting, the Disney team was blindsided with word that OpenAI was dropping the tool altogether, a person familiar with the matter said.
OpenAI announced the move publicly on Tuesday.
“It was a big rug-pull,” according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter.
The move is the first big step by the ChatGPT maker to focus its business on potentially more lucrative areas, such as coding tools and corporate customers.
But the abrupt cancellation of Sora illustrates how messy the streamlining process may become as OpenAI prepares for a stock market debut that could come as early as later this year.
The Sora decision means the end of a blockbuster $1bn deal between Disney and the ChatGPT maker that was announced a little more than three months ago. As part of the three-year deal, Disney said it would invest $1bn in OpenAI and lend more than 200 of its iconic characters to be used in short, AI-generated videos.
But the transaction between the companies never closed, two other people familiar with the matter said, and no money changed hands.
Reference #18.49200117.1774416830.e3ad309
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.49200117.1774416830.e3ad309
Reference #18.50200117.1774418039.256f3678
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.50200117.1774418039.256f3678
Reference #18.4a200117.1774418517.128d6865
https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.4a200117.1774418517.128d6865