Ukrainian attack on Russian LNG tanker a ‘terrorist act’ – Putin

The ship was targeted by a drone near Malta this week, the Transport Ministry in Moscow has said

The Ukrainian attack on a Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker in the Mediterranean Sea is a “terrorist act,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russia-flagged Arctic Metagaz was targeted this week close to Malta’s territorial waters. According to Russia’s Transport Ministry, Ukrainian unmanned boats launched from the Libyan coast hit the LNG carrier, which had been sailing from Murmansk. All 30 crew members were safely evacuated.

Putin said “this is terrorist attack” and added it’s not the first time that Russia has faced energy-related terrorism.

According to the Russian president, Kiev is now preparing, “with the support of some Western intelligence services, to sabotage the Blue Stream and TurkStream” gas pipelines running under the Black Sea, “just as the Nord Stream pipelines were once blown up.” He said it is “a very dangerous game” by Ukraine, adding that Moscow has already informed the Turkish side.

Oil and gas infrastructure in the Black Sea and beyond has repeatedly come under Ukrainian attacks. The attacks involved long-range UAV strikes against various facilities ashore, as well as repeated attempts to target Russian naval vessels patrolling the pipelines with sea drones.

The September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea is the largest attack on underwater energy infrastructure in modern history. While the theory that it was carried out by a group of Ukrainian divers has become mainstream in the West, Moscow has been skeptical about that version, suggesting instead that Western state actors may have had a hand in the sabotage.

In December 2025, Kiev acknowledged striking the Qendil, a Russia-linked and Omani-flagged oil tanker, in the eastern Mediterranean off Libya’s coast. At the time, Euronews cited a Ukrainian intelligence source describing the attack as “an unprecedented special operation.”

FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov warned last October that Ukraine and the UK were jointly preparing an attack on the TurkStream pipeline. London and Kiev have also been plotting attacks on other critical infrastructure sites in Russia, using sea and aerial drones, as well as saboteur divers, Bortnikov said at the time.

https://www.rt.com/russia/633810-russian-lng-tanker-attack-ukraine/

21:41 GMT

Several media outlets, including AP and i24NEWS, reported that Iraqi-based Kurdish groups are preparing to launch an offensive against Iran.

An official with the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan told i24NEWS that militias began taking combat positions inside Iran on Monday.

CNN reported earlier that the CIA was working to arm Kurdish groups as part of a plan to start a rebellion in Iran, which has a sizable Kurdish minority.

19:59 GMT

Iran’s IRIB broadcaster has released a compilation of Iran’s strikes on US military infrastructure throughout the Gulf region. The video shows drone hits on radar systems in Bahrain, ballistic missile strikes on Qatar, and drone and missile impacts on facilities in the UAE.

19:46 GMT

Israel has conducted a massive airstrike in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, after ordering the mass evacuation of the entirety of Lebanon south of the Litani river.

NY AG James Orders Hospital To Resume Gender-Transition Treatment For Minors

In a rare and controversial move, New York Attorney General Letitia James has ordered a Manhattan hospital to resume offering gender-transition treatment to transgender youth. NYU Langone had discontinued such treatments after funding threats from the Trump administration. It is now caught between the proverbial rock (HHS) and a hard place (NYAG).

Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” seeking to restrict gender-transition treatment for people under 19. HHS then threatened hospitals with a cut off of federal Medicaid and Medicare funding for continuing such treatment for children.

Various European countries have also halted certain procedures after countervailing studies suggesting that the risks are too high. England’s National Health Service 2024 report on the subject, known as the Cass Report, found concerning evidence of harm for minors and inconclusive benefits.

James threatened “further action” if NYU Langone does not defy the Trump Administration, declaring that the cessation of its Transgender Youth Health Program violates New York anti-discrimination law by “jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.”

NYU Langone had previously declared that it would no longer provide certain gender-transition treatments for patients under the age of 19.

James’s move could trigger a fascinating challenge. In the Feb. 25 letter signed by the attorney general’s health care bureau chief, Darsana Srinivasan, the state said that the federal regulatory change did not affect a “medical institution’s existing duties and obligations under New York law.” That raises an interesting conflict between state and federal regulations.

The letter gives the hospital until March 11 to comply and resume these treatments.

Effectively, James is ordering the hospital to defy the federal government. However, the hospital, not James or the state, would bear the financial and regulatory consequences.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ny-ag-james-orders-hospital-resume-gender-transition-treatment-minors

Trump's Venezuela Oil Plan Runs Into Hard Reality

Last week US President Donald Trump announced that Venezuela’s interim authorities will turn over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, before later declaring his administration will control Venezuela's oil sales “indefinitely”.

Decrying the state of Venezuela’s oil sector, including that the South American country now pumps a fraction of what it used to, Trump said, “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

While that sounds like a great opportunity for the US oil majors, it’s one they may want to refuse. Why? Because the oil underneath Venezuela, which has the largest crude reserves in the world, greater even than Saudi Arabia and Iran, is technically challenging to extract and costly.

Moreover, it’s uncertain whether there would a change in the way Venezuela and its oil industry are being run, which presents a huge political risk for companies to return and operate there.

Former President Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry in the 1990s, and in 2007, he forced Exxon and ConocoPhillips out, after the companies refused to accept new terms that would give the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, a majority share in their projects.

ConocoPhillips is still owed about $10 billion.

Only Chevron is currently authorized to operate in Venezuela and export crude to the United States.

“Until Caracas has a new government capable of gaining the confidence of international investors and banks, oil companies will be reluctant to make any major commitments,” states a recent Reuters piece.

When Trump met with oil executives last Friday, Exxon’s CEO Darren Woods said, “We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes.”

Trump has said the US government is prepared to provide security guarantees but not money for oil projects.

How much oil does Venezuela have?

A founding member of OPEC, Venezuela has more oil reserves than any OPEC member and top exporters in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/trumps-venezuela-oil-plan-runs-hard-reality

The murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed

Western media is either silent or implicitly blaming Tehran for the strike that killed 168 girls

In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.

The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.

It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.

None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.

On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”

At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.

International reaction: Silence

If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy. In 2017, in his home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.

Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.

Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.

https://www.rt.com/news/633794-iran-schoolgirls-murder-media/

Seeing loads of this

Largest US military base in Middle East hit by ballistic missile, Qatar says

Iran had also struck a CIA station at the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia, which sustained ‘structural damage’ while personnel were advised to ‘shelter in place,’ according to the Washington Post.

A total of about 50,000 US troops in the Middle East have been assigned to the war against Iran – with more forces headed to the region, an official told The New York Times.

https://youtu.be/UN3eaXeuDoc

Six US soldiers have already been killed in the military operation, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, with authorities announcing on Tuesday they included decorated servicemembers and even a mother-of-two.

Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Spc. Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa were killed when a drone hit a command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait on Sunday

https://citizenwatchreport.com/largest-us-military-base-in-middle-east-hit-by-ballistic-missile-qatar-says/