Israel claimed to have struck Hezbollah operatives, killing at least four people, according to Lebanon’s ministry of public health, in two separate Israeli strikes in south Lebanon.
Despite a more than a year of hostilities, including two months of open war, Israel and Hezbollah’s recent deadly attacks on Thursday were the latest in a line of deadly attacks in south Lebanon.
Three people died in Yohmor al-Shaqeef as a result of an Israeli enemy strike on a car, according to a statement from the Health Ministry that was released on Thursday by the National News Agency (NNA).
An “enemy drone” launched a strike on a vehicle close to the town, which coincided with artillery shelling, according to the NNA.
In another instance, the Israeli military claimed in a statement that “several Hezbollah terrorists were identified transferring weapons in the Yohmor region of southern Lebanon” and that the army “struck the terrorists”.
The NNA also reported that “one person was killed and another was hurt in the Israeli drone’s attack on a car in the town of Maaroub,” which also happens in south Lebanon, on Thursday morning.
Since the ceasefire on November 27, Israel has been conducting raids in Lebanon, hitting what it claims are Hezbollah military targets who have broken the agreement. However, civilians made up the majority of the victims.
The Israeli military claimed that two Hezbollah operatives were killed in an Israeli attack earlier this month, according to the Health Ministry.
Ramp up during a fight
Eight people were killed in Israeli strikes in south Lebanon over the weekend, which was the most intense escalation since the cease-fire.
Israel claimed that those raids were carried out as a result of rocket fire, the first since the ceasefire.
No one has claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, which reportedly started north of the Litani River, between Kfar Tebnit and Arnoun, close to the ceasefire zone.
Hezbollah, which has suffered from the conflict, denied involvement.
Hezbollah agreed to withdraw its forces from the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away from the Israeli border, and to destroy any remaining military installations in the south in accordance with the ceasefire.
Israel was planning to leave its forces in south Lebanon and cross the de facto border, the Blue Line, but it still maintains five positions that it considers “strategic.”
Naim Qassem, the head of Hezbollah, stated on Wednesday: “We will not accept the continued Israeli occupation.”
In a televised address, he declared, “There is no room for normalization or surrender in Lebanon.”
After national skipper Son Heung-min claimed that the country’s poor playing conditions had harmed their World Cup chances, South Korean authorities have announced they will inspect the country’s elite-level football pitches.
Former Manchester United and England international Jesse Lingard, who is currently playing for FC Seoul, has also been a subject of discussion in South Korean football.
Son also criticized the replacement venues after two home World Cup qualifiers this month were moved away from Seoul because of the state of the capital stadium’s turf.
After Tuesday’s disappointing 1-1 draw with Jordan in Suwon, Son claimed, “We’re supposed to enjoy the best playing conditions possible, but things have not improved at all.”
Beginning in April, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism will thoroughly inspect the pitches at all 27 K League stadiums.
Officials will also examine how other nations’ playing surfaces are maintained, including Japan.
A ministry official said that “the condition of a stadium’s pitch directly affects not only player performance but also injury prevention and spectator satisfaction.”
We want to find practical solutions to improve the conditions of football pitches and strengthen cooperation with the league, clubs, and stadium operators in order to create a sustainable management system through this inspection.
Son Heung-min of South Korea reacts to a missed chance in the qualifier for Tuesday’s match against Jordan [Kim Soo-Hyeon/Reuters]
Tottenham’s forward Son said: “I know we can play better than this, but when circumstances on our home soil get in the way, then I wonder where we should get our home advantage.” After drawing two games at home against Jordan and Guyang against Oman in the past week, Son said: “I know we can play better than that.”
South Korea are still in the top 16 spots in Group B heading for the 2026 World Cup in North America, but their successive draws wasted the chance to advance to the next competition.
Iraq, who could close the gap on the leaders by one point with a win, and Kuwait will play their final two matches in the qualifying campaign in June.
In their final games, Jordan are second with 13 points and will face Oman and Iraq.
In a 2-1 defeat on Thursday, Palestine’s late comeback negatively affected Iraq’s own chances of qualifying.
Just two race weekends into the F1 season, Red Bull Racing announced that Liam Lawson would be replaced by Yuki Tsunoda, which confirms days of rumors.
Red Bull announced in a statement on Thursday that Tsunoda will replace the sluggish New Zealander at the beginning of his home Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka.
Tsunoda, 24, joins Max Verstappen, who is four-time world champion, on the RB team. Lawson will return to his former role as RB after the 2017 campaign.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated: “It has been challenging to see Liam struggle with the RB21 at the first two races, and as a result we have collectively decided to make the decision to switch early.
We have two goals in mind for the 2025 season: to retain the World Drivers’ Championship and to reclaim the World Constructors’ title, and this is a purely sporting choice.
Lawson, 23, who was replaced by Sergio Perez at the start of the 2025 season, was drafted from RB in the winter.
He has yet to earn a point after being knocked out in the first of all three qualifying sessions.
Verstappen leads McLaren in the other Red Bull race with 36 points, eight points clear of Lando Norris, who led McLaren in the opening season.
After such a difficult start, it makes sense to act quickly to help Liam gain experience as he continues his F1 career with Racing Bulls, a place and a team he knows very well, Horner said. “We have a duty of care to protect and develop Liam, and together, we see that,”
Tsunoda has shown speed both season-long race weekends.
Due to RB’s flawed two-stop pit strategy, he finished 12th in Australia and won out of the points on Sunday in Shanghai.
Tsunoda made his Formula One debut with AlphaTauri in 2021, joining Kamui Kobayashi as the first Japanese driver to compete in the same year.
Verstappen and Tsunoda are the most recent drivers to compete for Red Bull Racing. Since Daniel Ricciardo left Verstappen at the end of the 2018 season, he will be Verstappen’s fifth teammate.
After just two races, Liam Lawson was forced out of Red Bull Racing.
Islamabad, Pakistan – The government of Pakistan has started a bold agricultural project to improve the 240 million-strong country’s food security.
A network of six canals will be built across the country to irrigate millions of acres of barren lands as part of the $3.3bn (945 billion rupees) project called Green Pakistan Initiative (GPI), which was launched by the country’s powerful army chief General Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in 2023.
The canal project, which was inaugurated by Munir and the chief minister of Punjab province last month, has received positive reviews from the public.
Munir praised Punjab, the most populous province, as the “powerhouse of Pakistan’s agriculture,” and stated that the military would continue to support the country’s economic expansion.
But critics say the megaproject, which aims to build canals across Pakistan’s four provinces, would cause water shortages in the southern parts of the country. They claim that no stakeholders’ input was needed to make the project a reality.
Many skeptics believe that the GPI will put pressure on Pakistan’s river system, which has seen declining water levels as a result of overexploitation and climate change.
Numerous protests have taken place in the southern province of Sindh since the project was announced, with the latest demonstration taking place on March 25 in major cities including Karachi, led by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the governing party in Sindh which is also supporting the Sharif-led government.
What exactly is the GPI? What does it cover? And why are some of its proposed canals facing such strong resistance?
Why did Sindh’s citizens protest?
As a lower riparian province in Pakistan, Sindh worries that losing water to upstream developments could spell disaster. Water allocation has long been a political hot button.
Since the government announced its intention to develop canals on the Indus – the country’s largest river and water lifeline — thousands of people, including women and children, have taken to the streets.
On February 16, a protest rally against the canal system was held in Bhit Shah, Sindh, where attendees expressed concern that Sindh’s water share might be slashed. For both domestic and commercial purposes, Sindh relies on the Indus River system’s water.
What is the Green Pakistan Initiative?
The economy of Pakistan is the engine of its economy, accounting for 37% of its employment and nearly 25% of GDP.
In an effort to increase productivity, the GPI was created in July 2023.
It aims to modernise the agricultural sector by introducing new technologies and equipment, including drones, land management systems, and tractors, as well as providing seeds and fertilisers to increase yields.
At the project’s inauguration in Islamabad in 2023, Munir described the project as “modern farms,” and it also aims to provide technical inputs to farmers, including soil testing among other services.
Pakistan, which has been forced to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), imported $9 billion worth of food in 2023 despite having a balance of payments issue.
The Green Corporate Initiative (GCI), an army-owned private company, has been tasked with converting wastelands into cultivable farmland.
Retired army general Shahid Nazir, the GPI’s head, stated to Al Jazeera that “restoring agriculture is essential for the economy, especially given Pakistan’s climate-related threats.”
Nearly 4.8 million acres (1.94 million hectares) of “barren wasteland” have been found, according to Nazir.
Making that land cultivable would also provide employment opportunities to more than 60, 000 people, he added.
After having rule over Pakistan for more than three decades, the military has an enormous influence in the nation and controls a number of businesses in the fields of agriculture, construction, and real estate.
The project will concentrate on, among other things, growing “target crops” like cotton, wheat, canola, sunflowers, rice, and lentils.
Under the plan, the company will lease land for 30 years through different business models, in which a minimum of 1, 000 acres (405 hectares) will be allocated to investors, who could be both foreign as well as domestic large-scale investors.
Nazir added that the main point is to use the large-scale investment as a model for small farmers, who could then work with other small farmers to update their farming methods and up-date them with modern practices.
Why is the Cholistan Canal significant, and what is it?
The approvals for the “six strategic canals” were given by President Asif Ali Zardari in July 2024, who is from Sindh and a co-chairperson of the PPP, after his meeting with GPI officials.
These canals were deemed “vital for agricultural development and food security,” according to meeting minutes, and Zardari endorsed their simultaneous execution while urging constant funding from both the federal and provincial governments.
The Cholistan is the most significant and significant project among the canals.
The 176km (109-mile) long canal, according to official documents, has three branches, with a total capacity of 4, 120 cusecs (116, 665 litres/second), and is expected to be completed by mid-2030, at an estimated cost of $783m.
Authorities in Punjab have 1.2 million acres (485, 623 hectares) of land, with more than 90% of it located in the Cholistan Desert, which borders India, to build the canal.
452, 000 acres of land will be covered in the first phase, while 750, 000 acres will be irrigated once the second phase is over. More than 170, 000 acres of land in the Cholistan Desert are already used by private investors for cultivation.
The Cholistan Canal is seen as a crucial intervention to transform the region by bringing reliable and sustainable water supplies to large areas of previously uncultivable land, according to the working paper produced by the federal ministry of planning, development, and special initiatives.
The paper stated that “this project is also in line with broader national objectives, such as promoting sustainable development in Pakistan’s less developed regions, and increasing food security.”
Nazir outlined three primary objectives for cultivating the Cholistan Desert: “developing land and increasing yield, enhancing biodiversity, and ensuring social impact”.
While working with foreign investors as well as large-scale domestic investors is our top priority, he said.
In order to assist investors in overcoming bureaucratic obstacles, the SIFC, a high-level body co-chaired by the army chief and the prime minister, was established in 2023.
The move is aimed at attracting investors to Pakistan, a country facing severe economic challenges and currently engaged in a $7bn IMF bailout, its 25th since 1958.
Where does the water originate?
In response to the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers, which Pakistan and India agreed to do in 1960, the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers are under the control of India, while the Sutlej, Ravi, and Beas rivers are under Indian control.
The proposed plan for canals states that they will be fed by excess floodwaters from the India-controlled Sutlej River. However, critics claim that flooding alone is a liar.
According to Naseer Memon, an environmentalist based in Islamabad, the water flow in the Sutlej, Ravi, and Beas rivers has been steadily declining as a result of dam construction and climate change.
“If you look at the flow data, between 1976 and 1998, the average flow was 9.35 million acre-feet (MAF). It has dropped to just 2.96 MAF between 1999 and 2022, he told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan’s basic food security and water supply are solely dependent on the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) according to a report released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for 2021.
The country saves only 10 percent of its river water compared with a global average of 40 percent. Pakistan, according to the FAO, is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, removing nearly 75% of its total renewable water resources.
According to FAO, the IBIS is one of the largest contiguous irrigation systems in the world, irrigating 44 million acres (18 million hectares) of land in Pakistan. It operates through “three major multipurpose storage reservoirs, 19 barrages, 12 inter-river link canals, and 45 major irrigation canals.”
Critics worry that the new canal project in Punjab could lead to water shortages in Sindh province, affecting ecology and people’s livelihoods who are dependent on the Indus River]File: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]
What are the criticisms’ assertions?
The Indus River System Authority (IRSA), a regulatory body established in 1992 to distribute Indus River water among the four provinces, manages the distribution of water in Pakistan.
Despite opposition from Sindh’s IRSA representative Ehsan Leghari, the authority last month issued a certificate essentially accepting that there was enough water available for the Cholistan Canal.
Leghari argued that this might result in the redirection of Indus water to the Cholistan Canal, which he said would be “unfair to Sindh.”
According to Leghari, “the analysis of the Indus basin’s data has indicated in numerous reports that the Indus basin is entering a critical state, unable to meet existing irrigated, drinking water needs, and unable to stop sea water intrusion,” according to Leghari.
The Sindh government, which is led by the PPP, an ally of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), has passed a unanimous resolution in the provincial assembly, demanding an immediate halt to all activities related to the canal project.
A senior PPP official has also criticized the project, claiming it would harm Sindh’s agricultural sector.
The party’s leader in Sindh’s upper house, Sherry Rehman, warned that the project would cause the country’s fertile lands to become desertified.
Memon, the water expert, questioned the lack of transparency from the military and Punjab’s government on how irrigation water would be sourced.
According to him, Punjab’s shortfall may be compensated by diverting more water from the Indus, depriving Sindh, if Sutlej does not have enough water and Punjab diverts from the Jhelum River.
An official IRSA memo last week warned of water shortages in Punjab and Sindh, adding to the concerns raised by Memon, with the potential shortages rising to 30 to 35 percent in the upcoming months.
Memon agreed that improving agricultural practices and bringing them on par with modern practices is necessary, but said, “The process has to be transparent and equitable”.
As his administration struggles to stop the fallout, US President Donald Trump downplayed a recent Signal chat leak as a “witch hunt” and claimed the encrypted messaging app “could be defective” without providing any supporting evidence.
Trump responded to a reporter’s question on Wednesday, asking if his administration should take more responsibility for the chat leak. “The press has] overplayed it,” he said. It’s a witch hunt, in my opinion. I didn’t participate in it at all. I was not there, ” “
A journalist from The Atlantic magazine was unintentionally a part of a top-secret discussion about a looming Houthis attack, according to the Trump administration’s confirmation on Monday.
Some Republican senators are now calling for an investigation into the scandal in response to the House Democrats’ widespread criticism, raising concerns about the political repercussions if the issue is not properly addressed.
Senators Roger Wicker and Jack Reed, the top Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, have announced that they will request an inspector general investigation into the use of the Signal messaging app.
Additionally, they want a top administration official to give a classified briefing, Wicker said, who “actually has the facts and is able to speak on behalf of the administration.”
According to his assertion, “the information, as it has recently been made, appears to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” he continued.
Trump responded, “It doesn’t bother me, I don’t want an inspector general probe.”
Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton, who served as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, for communicating via a private email server in 2014.
Clinton is accused of undermining national security, which became one of the most important topics in the 2016 presidential election. Trump defeated her.
Making a compulsive error
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, described the shocking realization that he had been included in a group discussion about plans to launch military strikes on Yemen in an article published on Monday.
Democrats questioned whether the information shared through Signal was credible given that it contained sensitive US military information about Yemen’s Houthis, which the White House claimed was not classified.
Senator Mark Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, used the word “baloney” to describe the position the Trump administration is staking out.
Trump, who has defended his national security team and has attacked the reporter’s credibility, has no indication that the controversy will soon end.
American Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said to a reporter on March 24 that no one was texting war plans and that’s all I can say in relation to that while standing on a runway in Hawaii. He repeated the statement the following day.
A different story was told in the Signal group texts by the Trump administration.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, went into great detail about how he was unintentionally added to a group discussion on the messaging app Signal with senior Trump administration officials about a planned airstrike on Yemen on March 24.
Goldberg claimed in the opening statement that the “war plans” he had in the chat included “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” Because he was concerned about the publication of sensitive security information, Goldberg refused to provide detailed information about the military strikes.
The National Security Council affirmed the thread’s authenticity and said it would look into how Goldberg’s number was added to the chain.
The Atlantic published the full text thread after Hegseth, White House, and others debating whether “war plans” were being discussed. Hegseth provided information on when drones and aircraft would launch, when bombs would fall, and when targets would be moving, according to messages from March 26.
A spokesperson for the White House directed us to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s post on X, in which it was stated that “no “war plans” were being discussed when we sought comment.
In an effort to combat the group, the US struck Houthi fighters on March 15 in a US-led assault on ships in the Red Sea since Israel’s occupation of Gaza began in October 2023.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz wrote on X, “No locations,” after The Atlantic’s second story. No methods or sources. NO PLANS FOR WAR. There are some really shitty war plans, according to Headseth in a similar post on X, where he claimed the released messages had no names or targets. There were no war plans there, according to Marco Rubio, the secretary of state.
According to experts, the military doesn’t officially refer to “war plans.” The most in-depth military plans include details about force deployment and are lengthy (so many or even thousand pages).
However, the majority of the experts we spoke to agreed that civilians would view the Signal messages as being specific plans in general and with justification.
According to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, “it’s about as specific as it gets” after The Atlantic published the messages in their entirety.
What Hegseth shared, and what experts think of it
Hegseth’s messages, according to Goldberg’s initial article, included “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be using, and attack sequencing.”
After the publication of the story, Goldberg said in an interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki, the White House representative under former president Joe Biden, that the messages contained “the specific time of a future attack, specific targets, including human targets meant to be killed in that attack, weapon systems, even weather reports.” He can assert that it was merely a minute-by-minute account of what was going to happen, not a war plan.
These messages from Hegseth were included in the follow-up article published on March 26 in The Atlantic:
“TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. We are a GO for mission launch, we just CONFIRMED with CENTCOM.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: “Trigger Based” F-18 First Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is@his Known Location, SHOULD BE ON TIME; see also “Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”).
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THE FIRST BOMBS WILL FINALLY DROP, pending earlier “Trigger Based” targets)”
The first sea-based Tomahawks to be launched is the 1536 F-18 2nd Strike Start.
“MORE TO FOLLOW (PER TIMES)”
“We are currently operational security clean on OPSEC,” that is.
Godspeed, our warriors.
The texts, according to military experts, do not represent a comprehensive plan but do provide alarmingly specific details.
Nora Bensahel, professor of practice at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and contributing editor to the website that covers national security, said that the term “war plan” frequently (but not always) refers to a more thorough planning document, which can run hundreds of pages, with details of how the US military intends to pursue a particular military objective.
These are precise operational plans for the use of military force, Bensahel said after reading the messages. Because these are clear plans for war, I don’t understand how the administration can justify making that claim.
An operation plan, also known as an OPLAN, is defined as a “complete and detailed plan containing a full description” and a “timephased force and deployment list,” according to a 2023 Defense Department guide.
Ty Seidule, a retired US Army brigadier general and visiting professor of history at Hamilton College, said, “We have OPLANs as a contingency if we have to go to war.” “Like we had for Iraq in 1990 and 2003. These contain a lot of detail and number in the thousands.
According to Seidule, the text messages were more of the “CliffsNotes” style, with “all the crucial details of a military operation” and “clearly a security breach of the first order” than the “OPLAN” version.
According to Heidi A. Urben, a Georgetown University professor of practice and former military intelligence officer, the newly revealed texts “amount to operational details from a concept of the operation (CONOP) or, in this case, colloquially, a strike package.”
Hegseth made the claim that the text exchange was not a lengthy war plan, but that “all the crucial details of a joint operation against an enemy force, which is worse,” according to Seidule.
Since the Defense Department doesn’t use the term “war plan,” Thane Clare, who served in the Navy for 25 years and retired as a captain, “technically gives Hegseth et al a completely disingenuous out.” The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent source for defense analysis, is now Claire’s senior fellow.
However, Clare asserted that “the Yemen chat is entirely operational information that reveals crucial details about upcoming operations.”
Military experts observed numerous security issues involving administration officials’ communication of plans using Signal.
