While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, March 12, 2026
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US President Donald Trump told a campaign-style rally in Hebron, Kentucky, on March 11, that the US has "won" in its war against Iran.
PHOTO: REUTERS
‘We won’, Trump says on Iran, signalling US will stay in fight
US President Donald Trump said on March 11 that “we won” the Iran war but that the United States will stay in the fight to finish the job.
“You never like to say too early you won. We won,” Mr Trump told a campaign-style rally in Hebron, Kentucky.
“In the first hour it was over.”
He said the United States had knocked out 58 Iranian naval ships.
Iran warns of long war that would ‘destroy’ world economy
PHOTO: AFP
Iran warned on March 11 it could wage a long war with the US and Israel that would “destroy” the world economy, as it effectively closed off transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
Under political pressure over the economic fallout from the war, US President Donald Trump said the conflict would end “soon” and promised “great safety” for vessels in the strategic waterway.
Oil prices have surged since Feb 28, when the United States and Israel launched air strikes on Iran, killing its supreme leader and plunging the Middle East into war.
The Strait of Hormuz accounts for a fifth of the world’s oil supplies, and a mix of Iranian missile strikes and drone barrages has brought shipping through the passage almost to a halt.
Ukraine anti-drone teams in Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia
PHOTO: AFP
Ukrainian anti-drone experts have begun working in three Gulf states targeted by Iranian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 11.
Kyiv has sought to leverage its expertise in downing Russian drones to help the Gulf nations, which are being attacked with the same Iranian-designed Shahed drones that Russia fires at Ukraine.
“Three of our teams have gone – strong teams of experts, military personnel, engineers, different people. Today, the military are already communicating and already working,” Mr Zelensky told reporters, including journalists from AFP.
‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’: AI chatbots help plot attacks
PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published March 11 that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm.
Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Centre for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek, and Meta AI.
Testing showed that eight of those chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in over half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said.
‘This is me, very pretty’: Inside a Cambodian cyberscam site
PHOTO: AFP
Multilingual scripts, images of young women and timed toilet breaks: a police tour of a newly busted cyberscam operation in Cambodia on March 11 revealed how fraudsters ensnare foreign victims online.
Cambodia has become a major hotspot for crime syndicates running a multibillion-dollar illicit industry in which scammers defraud internet users globally in romance and cryptocurrency investment cons.
As countries like the US and China press Cambodia to crack down on the networks stealing from their citizens, AFP was invited to visit an office in the capital Phnom Penh a day after it was raided by police.
