Israel have bombed people sheltering in tents in Lebanon. The genocidal settler state has a habit of bombing and re-bombing the people it has displaced. Their practice of striking tented camps is an oft-repeated story of the Gaza genocide. Now, the people they have bombed in Beirut were only sheltering in tents because Israel had forcibly displaced them from their homes.

Israel escalated its aggression around 2 March amid a spiraling US-backed war with Iran.

Israel decimates Lebanon

Al Arabiya reported on 12 March:

In a statement, the Lebanese health ministry said “the Israeli enemy strike on Ramlet al-Bayda” in the center of Beirut killed eight people and wounded 31.

Adding:

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw a damaged motorcycle and two damaged cars, with the area sealed off by security forces.

The Cradle posted image of the strikes on 12 March:

Israel has committed a massacre of innocent civilians in Ramlet al-Baida in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where many people displaced from their homes have been sheltering in tents, cars, and on mattresses along the beach with nowhere else to go.

According to local reports, at… pic.twitter.com/GcL7ZRKOmx

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 12, 2026

TV host Marwa Osman said the strikes had hit in the Ramlet al-Bayda area, leaving bodies “scattered”:

🚨BREAKING in Beirut
A horrific massacre committed by the Zionist occupation against displaced civilians in tents in the Ramlet al-Bayda area in the heart of the capital Beirut.… bodies are reportedly scattered on the ground amid the rubble. pic.twitter.com/y65VuVqPU2

— Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) March 11, 2026

Outrageous war crimes

Filmmaker Robert lnlakesh said:

An outrageous war crime reminiscent of the massacres carried out in Gaza.

BREAKING: Israel Carries Out A Beach Massacre In Beirut

An Israeli strike reportedly targeted displaced people’s tents in the Ramla al-Bayda beach area. A huge number of dead & injured.

An outrageous war crime reminiscent of the massacres carried out in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/AUJ1a5S65e

Advertisement

— Robert Inlakesh (@falasteen47) March 11, 2026

Since the latest invasion began, Israel has been hitting targets throughout Lebanon – including in densely populated civilian areas of the capital:

In theory, Hezbollah breached a US-brokered ‘ceasefire’ with Israel which had held since their last war in 2024. In practice, the US has given Israel carte blanche to strike Lebanon ever since. Israel has done so constantly since the deal was struck.

You can read about the secretive Israel-US ‘side letter’ pact here. And our extensive coverage of Israel’s ceasefire breaches here.

Aseel Habbaj was displaced from other areas Israel had bombed. She has been sheltering in a tent near where the new strikes landed:

We saw dead people on the ground. We were all asleep in my tent, when suddenly we heard a noise. We jumped up and went to see what was happening.

Drop Site News reported:

The toll since the renewed Israeli offensive began on March 2 is:  – Total Killed: 634+ – Total Wounded: 1,586+ – Displaced: More than 800,000 people (According to Lebanese Ministry of Health).

They added that Israel’s far-right finance minister had openly stated the genocidal settler-colonial state would make Beirut look like Gaza:

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated on March 5, 2026, that the Dahiyeh district, a southern suburb of Beirut, would soon “look like Khan Younis.”

Al Jazeera posted images of the damage in Beirut’s southern suburbs:

Aftermath of overnight Israeli air strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/OgnafTvf8a pic.twitter.com/xqWfIyEHPJ

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 12, 2026

Israel’s attack on Lebanon has a similar character to the Gaza genocide. It strikes civilians with impunity, while claiming to target terror groups. It’s unaccountable far-right leaders, meanwhile, openly call for the annihilation of Lebanese civilians and their means to life.

Featured image via the Canary

Migrant workers from poorer countries, including Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines, who form the backbone of the UAE’s workforce are increasingly bearing the human cost of the US-Israel-Iran conflict. At least 2 Pakistani labourers are confirmed dead so far.

— Zia Ur Rehman (@zalmayzia) March 8, 2026

This means Gulf employers extract maximum profit from the Asian labourer while bearing none of the true costs of reproducing that labour like education, healthcare, housing and childcare.

So in effect, India and other south Asian countries are subsidising the Gulf’s wealth, and the border ensures the worker can never demand more.

Gulf states complicit

Ali Kadri, also a scholar on West Asia, explains why.

Gulf rulers park their wealth in US dollars, not in their own societies. As Kadri writes:

the merchant class wealth is mostly held in dollars, so it becomes one with US-led capital in the dollar.

They have “little to lose from forfeiting its production base in the home economy.” These South Asian workers are treated as servile and disposable. Mustapha Qadri, director of human rights organisation Equiderm, explained:

There is a conscious choice made to get workers that are from relatively poor countries, who don’t get paid as much and have a lot less power in the social dynamic of these countries, to do this difficult work – because they’re less likely to complain or to demand protection.

The US guarantees the economic security of these Gulf states. As such, they never have to build functioning nations with real citizen workforces.  This US-led set-up favours both. The Gulf ruling class gets cheap labour and US protection. The US gets obedient allies and recycled petrodollars.

And the workers? They exist in an exploitative structure that treats both their lives and deaths as an acceptable cost for the gross skyscrapers that make up the skylines of the richest Gulf states.

Vassalage confirmed.

Featured image via the Canary

We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.

Spring has only just sprung, which means it’s time for that tricky edge-of-winter transitional dressing.

You know how it is – you leave the house in the morning, and it’s freezing. Then by lunch, you’re sweating your life away, but when you head home for the day, it’s chilly again.

And heaven help you if you stay out past sunset and forget a good coat!

But one of the best things about this time of year is that the weather is suddenly a lot more flat-shoe friendly, what with the fact that there’s (usually) no more snow or ice to waddle your way through, and a lot less need for thick cosy socks.

If you’re looking for a little flat shoe shopping inspo, here are some of the best flats on the high street right now that are perfect for chic gals about town.

Callum Price is Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a former Government special adviser. 

When I was a child, I used to play Playmobil ‘cowboys and Indians’ with a friend every day at the after-school club (we were about 6 and it was the early 2000s, yet to be made aware of the cultural insensitivities this threw up). One day, my friend didn’t want to play anymore, because the club got a new SEGA Megadrive, which was obviously far more entertaining. I was gutted and rather petulant about it – until I too embraced the wonders of the SEGA Megadrive.

I was reminded of this recently when Ed Davey decided to use his intervention at PMQs as the war in the Middle East unfolded to take aim at those who have moved to Dubai and paid less in UK tax as a result.

Davey probably thought he was making a very sensible and patriotic point. Why should those who have left our shores be recipients of our support?

At first glance there is some instinctive logic to this. They aren’t paying in to the coffers, so why should they be able to take out of them?

However, as many others have pointed out, there are a range of problems with this logic; not least that no-one argued that those we evacuated from Sudan or Afghanistan at times of crisis should foot their own bill.

Not only that, but our entire welfare state system is built on the premise that it is there for British citizens when they need it. In an ideal world, everyone pays into it when they can, and gets out of it what they must. It might feel strange to consider RAF repatriation flights part of the welfare state, but the logic stands just the same.

If we want to be stricter about deciding who benefits from the Treasury’s coffers based on who contributes, then I’m sure many Conservative Home readers would happily partake. But it would surprise me if those who are using the Middle East crisis to take aim at ‘tax avoiders’ in Dubai would share those sympathies.

So, what is really behind the animosity directed at those who have emigrated to Dubai?

On the surface, it seems like a primarily aesthetic debate. The Dubai Deanos vs the British Patriots. To the former Dubai is a safe haven of sunny beaches and a (much) lower tax burden, much preferable to Broken Britain. To the latter, it’s a gauche and cultureless desert that could only appeal to the uncivilised.

I admit to personally being closer to the latter than the former on purely aesthetic grounds, but 240,000 Brits have moved there for something – friends and relatives among them. Can we not accept that people might seek to use their agency to go and find a better life for themselves and their families, even if it might not be our own version of a better life?

When we scratch beneath the surface it appears that many can’t, political elites and otherwise, which is a damning illustration of their attitude to prosperity. It is a sort of Dubai Derangement Syndrome; embracing decline because prosperity is gauche. The belief that having the gall to do something radical to improve your lot in life is an act of vile self-interest, and fundamentally un-British. Taking radical action to achieve something better is beyond the pale. We have it good enough and we should be happy about it.

It is the same philosophy that leads politicians to crow about ‘1.5 per cent growth, the fastest in the G7’ as a major victory: a broad comfort with mediocrity. It is managed decline, with a patriotic spin; accepting a lesser lot to spite those who have dared stray from the accepted path.

But we shouldn’t decry ambition, we should venerate it. In the week that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations celebrates its 250th anniversary, we should remember just how important self-interest is to a functioning economy, we don’t create wealth or deliver prosperity without it. So why make villains of those who are demonstrating these values?

On the contrary, we should be doing all that we can to get them back, so they can achieve their aims in Britain and we can bask in the reflective benefits of their ambition. Dubai has a lot going for it inherently; so does Britain. But we can do significantly better in the disputed ground in between, by fixing our fundamental economic problems.

If people were more able to easily find fulfilling employment, keep more of the money they earned from it, and spend it on more than just their energy bills and replacing the phone that got stolen at the bus stop, then Dubai and its competitors might become relatively less appealing. After all, at six years old I was able to embrace the SEGA Megadrive to keep playing with my friend – and it turned out to be quite fun too.

Mr. Davey, you may not like what Dubai has to offer, but don’t tarnish those who do with the brush of ‘tax exiles’ and ‘washed-up old footballers’. If we were able to attract their like and their ambition, instead of scaring them away, we would all feel the benefits.

Who was William Willett?

Why did the UK adopt BST?

The High Court has ordered former footballer Joey Barton to pay TV sports pundit and former England footballer Eniola ‘Eni’ Aluko almost £340,000 in libel compensation and costs. A first instalment of £100,000 plus interest must be paid by 24 March, though the court gave him a week to apply for a ‘variation’ in the timing.

Aluko sued Barton over a flood of posts on the X social media platform in a “deliberately targeted public campaign of vilification [and] an attack on multiple aspects of her life and personality”. Barton accused Aluko of “cynically [seeking] to exploit her status as an alleged victim of racism and bullying”. Barton has now accepted that he mounted a harassment campaign against his victim.

Aluko said simply that she is “glad it’s the end.”

Barton has been convicted twice for violent crimes. He was also convicted in 2025 of six counts of malicious communications for his abusive messages concerning Aluko and others about TV host Jeremy Vine.

Featured image via the Canary

There are now more billionaires than ever before. And they’ve just got another big win, with the highly valuable ‘Lithium Triangle’ now passing fully into far-right hands.

Lithium isn’t only a key resource for people like world’s-richest-man Elon Musk, who needs it for electric vehicles. It’s also in increasingly high demand due to the storage needs of artificial intelligence and data centre moguls. So there’s growing interest in ensuring a steady supply in a way that benefits billionaires as much as possible.

The Lithium Triangle is now fully open for billionaire exploitation

As the Canary reported previously, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile hold over 75% of the global lithium supply. And until recently, they were all resisting billionaire domination in some way, while collaborating with China on resource extraction and processing. But billionaires have been working hard to turn the tide.

In 2023, their man in Argentina – Javier Milei – became president. His hyper-corporate agenda has been hyper-problematic, with Donald Trump having to bail him out in 2025 to keep him in business. But this connection has helped the US and its billionaires to move Argentina significantly into their sphere of influence.

The first year of Trump’s second administration also saw elections in both Bolivia and Chile give pro-billionaire results. The previous governments in both countries had been insisting on continuing state control of the lithium industry, and had been facing pressure from Trump.

Bolivia, which had suffered (and overturned) a far-right pro-US coup just years earlier, opted for an elitist president who promised “capitalism for all“. Elon Musk had previously said, in reference to Bolivia, “we will coup whoever we want“. But this time, a violent takeover wasn’t necessary.

Then, Chile elected its “first far-right president since Pinochet“. He assumed office on 11 March, finalising the official shift of South America’s Lithium Triangle into far-right control.

Will Chile and Bolivia now follow Argentina’s extreme example?

The extraction of lithium has already lent itself to human rights abuses and environmental destruction. But now, as the Financial Times reports, Javier Milei and his two new counterparts (José Antonio Kast in Chile and Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia) look set to ramp this up further. Because they:

have vowed to entice foreign investment, and are turning to US President Donald Trump for bilateral deals.

And they are:

likely to fan the flames of local conflict over lithium

Milei has already shown what to expect from the latest generation of far-right leaders in South America. For example, the neoliberal extremist has:

Highly unscrupulous billionaires already hoard more wealth than 99% of the world’s countries. But the wealth they’re siphoning away from ordinary people is only growing. And with the far-right takeover of South America’s Lithium Triangle now complete, the billionaires have just secured another massive win.

Featured image via the Canary

Illustration by Tracy Worrall

11 min read6 min

Steps hang from the cliff leading to nowhere; fencing, too, curves into thin air while the skewed foundations of what was once a house slide down a sandy slope to the Suffolk sea.

This is Thorpeness, or what is left of it. The village is being eaten by the waves at a far faster rate than anyone expected and becoming emblematic of the increasing challenge of coastal erosion.

“On New Year’s Eve, we were dancing on those rocks in the garden,” says Roger Hawkins, the owner of a home apparently doomed to follow its neighbours, pointing to shoreline rubble. “The next morning, we were literally watching them fall into the sea.”

Hawkins and others at the water’s edge face not only losing their uninsurable homes but liability for the costs of demolition – and even a requirement that they first conduct a bat survey.

Thorpeness is a genteel sort of a place, notable for a boating lake, proximity to a nuclear power station, and a history of having been developed into an elite holiday resort full of mock Tudor houses. 

When local MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter was first contacted by residents about coastal erosion, it was, she recalls, a relaxed conversation with everyone expecting five to 10 years to prepare for any damage.

Just eight months later, the local council is battling to save a second line of houses from falling into the sea. “The speed of it has been quite devastating,” Riddell-Carpenter says. In the last year, 28m of the cliff at Thorpeness has fallen away, forcing 10 properties – a mix of first and second homes – to be demolished in just four months. According to East Suffolk council (ESC), in some places as much as 16m of the shoreline has been lost in just the last four weeks.

Those working on the issue believe that the phenomenon should be a wake-up call for government. According to the Environment Agency, there are currently 3,500 homes at risk of coastal erosion across England in the period up to 2055. But that is not the full story. “The Environment Agency has told me the number will be much higher once there is a reassessment,” Riddell-Carpenter says. “People will need to be rehoused. We need to have an adaptive policy for rehousing these people. We need to prioritise that.”

Land loss due to climate change-accelerated coastal erosion is unavoidable

Advertisement

Experts blame a combination of rising sea levels and increased storm frequency – both attributed to climate change. “Climate-change accelerated coastal erosion will continue for centuries, increasing the rate and extent of landscape change,” says Larissa Naylor, professor of geomorphology and environmental geography at the University of Glasgow.

“Land loss due to climate change-accelerated coastal erosion is unavoidable,” she adds. The East Coast of England has been particularly affected in recent years, with easterly winds battering the coast.

The House has visited Thorpeness on a grey and windy day towards the end of February. Picking our way down the shingle beach with Riddell-Carpenter and Karen Thomas, the strategic lead for coastal management adaptation for ESC, we pass a sign on the shore, warning visitors: “Stay away. Beach closed.”

“We’ve got 250-60 properties at erosion risk according to the current risk map,” Thomas says. While government funding has recently been made available for adaptive measures, such as managed retreat or rerouting roads deemed at risk, Thomas argues there is still a policy-sized gap for those at risk of erosion.

Currently, the council has a duty to rehouse those who have lost their main home and have no ability to buy or rent another. Thomas explains that the council currently has a map of the most at-risk homes, but there is currently an 18-month waiting list for social housing across the whole East Suffolk council area. 

While the pressure on social housing as a result of the erosion in Thorpeness has not been acute so far, the housing team is currently developing a new policy to give priority to those at very imminent erosion risk and embed planning for erosion. This would give the team the flexibility to be able to re-house people quickly if needed.

“Thorpeness is caught between the old way of doing the coast, which is you can keep putting stuff in front of things, and the new way of doing things, which is, if we can move people away from risk, that would be preferable. 

“In the middle, there are a few communities that do not benefit from either of those two options, and the best that we could do as a council was offer them demolition,” Thomas says.

“You’re still going to have to incentivise people to move or take it seriously, because no one’s going to move until they absolutely have to, because no one’s offering them anything.”

A Defra spokesperson told The House: “Coastal erosion is an extremely challenging impact from climate change, and we will always support coastal communities to adapt where the forces of nature make long-term defence impossible.

“This government is determined to make a difference and over the last two years more than £600m has been invested in protecting communities from sea and tidal flooding as well as coastal erosion.

“To help the communities that are most at risk, a £30m pilot scheme is underway to take further practical action including considering selective property purchases.”

One seemingly unfair aspect of the problem is how quickly your money can literally fall off a cliff. “There’s no compensation if you lose your home,” Riddell-Carpenter explains. Technically, homeowners actually need to cover the demolition of their home if it has been identified as high-risk. Thomas says the costs of demolition exceed the amount that can be claimed from Defra’s Coastal Assistance Grant (£6,000), therefore the majority of the bill must be footed by individuals or the council.

The House understands that the Environment Agency is looking at increasing the current figure after both Riddell-Carpenter and ESC raised concerns that the current compensation is inadequate.

For now, ESC has managed to fund the gap. But Thomas explains that Thorpeness is not an isolated incident. Just up the coast in Corton, Thomas says, there are a lot more houses at erosion risk. Thomas explains that council demolition costs are not sustainable for the number of homes at erosion risk, so it will be a challenge if there is no additional assistance from the government.

In Corton, Thomas and the council are already thinking about what the opportunities might be for new housing, or temporary housing. She also raises the possibility of renting the property out to those working on the nearby Sizewell site to make money before it is knocked down.

The costs for taking down a home extend beyond simple demolition. Utilities must be disconnected, and properties surveyed for asbestos, even bats. Thomas explains that the challenges have been exacerbated by the nearby construction work on a £40bn nuclear power plant at Sizewell C.

“There are challenges around trying to get someone to do a bat survey, it’s really difficult because there aren’t a lot of bat survey specialists, and they’re all tied up with Sizewell.”

The cost of demolition has also been pushed up by Sizewell – getting machinery to the site is more complicated because of the project. “We’ve just got the perfect storm of getting vehicles here, getting the right expertise in,” Thomas explains.

Riddell-Carpenter mentions that there is a question over whether those benefiting from the shoreline economically could have a role to play in contributing financially towards the council’s current work.

When The House visits Thorpeness, the council is trying to plan ahead, aiming for a natural cliff line with the second row of houses across the road remaining. Ultimately, the council wants to end up with a wide beach that will become a natural defence. With a good beach, Thomas explains, erosion will be close to one metre a year.

But it is just a temporary fix. “The houses on the other side of the road might have 15 to 30 years, but you might only have five, if we’re unable to manage this the way that we’d like to.”

After leaving the beach, The House visits resident Roger Hawkins’ home, after seeing it from the beach. Hawkins was one of those who contacted Riddell-Carpenter in May last year when the threat facing the homes on the front still seemed like a far-off worry.

Hawkins explains that the house, which he designed, is now 20 years old. It was originally a second home, but his wife has recently retired, and they had hoped to make it their permanent residence.

Hawkins is now spearheading several protective works to, as he puts it, “buy time” for both his property and around 24 others. In total, the works will cost £500,000, funded 50:50 with the council and privately. Hawkins hopes the move will buy two to five years, by which point the rate of erosion may have stabilised.

Under the current non-statutory Shoreline Management Plans, defences can be installed in a way that allows managed realignment of the coast, but cannot have any negative impact on communities elsewhere along the shoreline.

While Hawkins is facing a worst-case scenario, unable to insure the home he could lose, there is a sense that such resources and expertise would not be available to all communities.

After leaving Hawkins, The House walks down North End Avenue, where the houses on the frontline have been demolished and the second line on the other side of the road stands resolute, for now.

The avenue feels almost haunted by the ghosts of the now-demolished homes. Garden gates and walls remain standing, now marking the entrance to nothing but compact muddy earth, and the remnants of some garden paving.

On our return, Riddell-Carpenter says that she would like to see the government allow communities to be more agile in their response. “Have a pot of money, let the community access it, let us lead the adaptation,” she urges.

Our conversation pauses when the MP stops and points out two apparent “doom tourists” ignoring a “Road Closed” sign and heading down a forbidden path past demolition sites. “It’s really infuriating that people are travelling to this part of the country to have a look at what is going on. Let people have their dignity. Their home is being pulled down,” she bristles.

Thorpeness is the first in a long line of communities that are going to be affected

Advertisement

Another policy hole, as Riddell-Carpenter sees it, is the fact that there is “nothing in law” about not declaring a property as at risk of coastal erosion when it is sold. “People have tried to sell their homes and not too long ago some were bought. That needs to change,” she says, adding that this is something she is pushing the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on.

As The House says goodbye to Riddell-Carpenter, she reflects that Thorpeness “is the first in a long line of communities that are going to be affected” by coastal erosion.

“I think this has shone a light on [the fact that] we’re not getting away from climate change.

“The whole system needs to be relooked at, just to make sure, are we doing enough to support our communities? I would argue at the moment, we’re not. That’s because we weren’t expecting it to happen this fast. Where can we make lessons learned?”

Liberal Democrat MP Caroline Voaden is seeing a similar problem 352 miles away, in her constituency in South Devon. In the village of Torcross, intensifying storms and higher waves are buffeting the community. While there is an Environment Agency sea defence wall in place, Voaden says it “is clearly not enough to protect the homes now that the beach has eroded and dropped by several metres”.

Currently, around 20 homes are being affected, with several more directly behind those. “The houses are very badly damaged and it’s not clear whether people will be able to go back into them. The waves race up the wall and crash down on the top of the houses, blasting out windows and raining shingle down on the rooftops.”

Voaden says the incident raises difficult questions over who should be responsible. For some, their properties were bought when erosion “wasn’t even a conversation” and “for them to lose everything feels deeply unjust”. She says we need to start thinking seriously at a national government level about how coastal erosion is managed and who is responsible for what.

“The long term is still a big unknown, with climate change effects likely to intensify. But for now we need to bolster the defences we have, protect those homes and give people the time to make long-term decisions.”