Russia plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade to supply its lunar space programme and a joint Russian-Chinese research station, as major powers rush to explore the Earth’s only natural satellite.
Ever since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space in 1961, Russia has prided itself as a leading power in space exploration, but in recent decades it has fallen behind the United States and, increasingly, China.
Russia’s ambitions suffered a massive blow in August 2023 when its unmanned Luna-25 mission smashed into the surface of the moon while attempting to land, and Elon Musk has revolutionised the launch of space vehicles – once a Russian speciality.
IS THAT A NUCLEAR REACTOR ON THE MOON?
Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, said in a statement that it planned to build a lunar power plant by 2036 and signed a contract with the Lavochkin Association aerospace company to do it.
Roscosmos did not say explicitly that the plant would be nuclear but it said the participants included Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom and the Kurchatov Institute, Russia’s leading nuclear research institute.
Roscosmos said the purpose of the plant was to power Russia’s lunar programme, including rovers, an observatory and the infrastructure of the joint Russian-Chinese International Lunar Research Station.
“The project is an important step towards the creation of a permanently functioning scientific lunar station and the transition from one-time missions to a long-term lunar exploration programme,” Roscosmos said.
The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, said in June that one of the corporation’s aims was to put a nuclear power plant on the moon and to explore Venus, known as Earth’s “sister” planet.
The moon, which is 384,400km from our planet, moderates the Earth’s wobble on its axis, which ensures a more stable climate. It also causes tides in the world’s oceans.
US ALSO PLANS A REACTOR ON THE MOON
Russia is not the only one with such plans. NASA in August declared its intent to put a nuclear reactor on the moon by the first quarter of fiscal year 2030.
“We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon. And to have a base on the moon, we need energy,” US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said in August, when asked about the plans.
He added that the United States was currently behind in the race to the moon. He said energy was essential to allow life to be sustained on the moon and, thence, for humans to get to Mars.
International rules ban putting nuclear weapons in space but there are no bans on putting nuclear energy sources into space – as long as they comply with certain rules.
Two weeks after Australia’s social media ban for children under 16 took effect, debate continues over how effective and enforceable the new law will be.
Noah Jones shows a warning on his phone that says he cannot access a social media site in Sydney, Australia Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo: AP/Rick Rycroft)
It is the start of summer holidays in Australia and school is out.
For many teenagers, that usually means spending more time online. For 15-year-old Amber Hunter, social media was the main way she stayed connected with friends during the holidays.
But a new law that came into effect two weeks ago has changed that. It bans Australians under the age of 16 from major social media platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.
Amber said she used to “doomscroll” through social media excessively – referring to the habit of endlessly scrolling through online content.
“Like TikTok, I (used to use) most days. Snapchat as well. I used that every morning to check what’s going on, where my friends are and talk to them,” she told CNA.
“A lot of us don’t like (the new law). I know a lot of people are annoyed by it. Everything that I (used to) search for … things that I enjoy, they’re not going to be there anymore.”
Still, Amber admits the ban may have some upside – she hopes it will help her spend less time scrolling and more time on hobbies like dancing and reading.
Her mother Lindsay Hunter is broadly supportive of the move, saying it eases the burden on parents.
“(It) makes parenting much easier. It takes away those arguments you have to have. It takes away the risks,” she said. “If the government can do (that for parents) or the apps can do it, then that’s great,” she said.
But she also has doubts about how effective the law will be, saying that so far, the changes appear limited.
“I don’t know how they’re going to police it. How can you really tell that she’s (Amber’s) only 15?” she asked.
“Nothing’s changed on my apps yet, except getting certain scans. The kids who look young have been taken off, (but) anyone who can get past those verification scans are still on the apps. I find it hard to believe that it will work.”
BAN IS WORLD’S FIRST
Australia on Dec 10 became the first country in the world to ban social media for children.
Under the nationwide law, 10 of the biggest platforms are required to block users under 16 years of age, or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$33 million).
Firms must enforce stringent age verification measures such as identity checks or facial scanning to comply with the new rules.
Platforms are using a mix of methods to determine users’ ages, including age inference based on online activity, age estimation through selfies, and official documents such as identification cards or bank account details.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the aim is to protect children and take back control from big technology companies.
The government said it understands the challenges but insists young Australians must be shielded from online harms such as cyberbullying, body image issues, grooming and addictive algorithms.
While the ban has broad public support, concerns have been raised about data privacy, freedom of expression and the risk of online harms moving to less regulated spaces.
UNDER GLOBAL SCRUTINY
Ross Tapsell, a researcher at the Australian National University, said the debate itself is already having a positive impact.
“The immediate benefit (is that) people are talking about the role that social media is having on young people,” the associate professor told CNA.
“From my experiences talking to university students, even at 18 or 19 years old, students are not necessarily able to critically reflect on the impact that social media has on their lives.”
However, he cautioned that government regulation could overreach, warning that overly strict enforcement could lead to unintended consequences.
Justin Bieber gave his fans a look at his holiday celebrations, including rare pics of his son, Jack Blues, dressed up as Santa.
The singer shared adorable snaps of Jack, 16 months, sporting a red Santa hat with a white puffball at the end.
The toddler wore a bright red sweater and gray sweatpants while he wandered around a private jet with leather seats.
The plane had holiday decorations, including a snowman figurine and a flower arrangement.
Justin Bieber shared pics of his son, Jack Blues, dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve. Instagram/Justin Bieber
Bieber also shared a picture of his warm holiday surroundings outside of the plane, which included three cream-colored knit stockings hanging on a fireplace — presumably for him, wife Hailey Bieber and their son — as well as a Christmas tree.
The “Peaches” singer, 31, later shared what Christmas means to him.
“Christmas time is that time to reflect and ask yourself what you really want. What truly fulfills?” he wrote.
“Christmas is a reminder of Jesus and the free gift of forgiveness only he can offer,” he continued. “Reflecting on this reminds me of all I have went through. And how he has brought me through it all.”
He concluded, “Letting go [of] resentment is hard but when Jesus reveals hisself as willing and able, it’s hard to deny him. Hope wherever you are you can lean into this love that meets us exactly where we are no matter what.”
In the emotional post, he shared pages of notes tiled “A Message.”
“I grew in a system that rewarded my gift but didn’t always protect my soul,” the message reads. “There were moments I felt used, rushed, shaped into something I didn’t fully choose. This kind of pressure leaves wounds you don’t see on stage.”
He acknowledged that he “carried anger,” but said he had been “healed” by his faith.
“I’ve asked God why. But Jesus keeps meeting me in the middle of the pain – not excusing what hurt me, but teaching me how not to become bitter,” he wrote.
“I’ve been through pain that shaped me before I had the words to name it… I don’t want to burn the music industry down,” he continued. “I want to see it made new – safer, more honest, more human.”
Showing off his more playful side, he later shared two pics of him pulling funny faces.
Bieber has been spending plenty of quality time this month with Hailey, 29, and Jack.
Kim Kardashian’s eldest daughter, North West, was notably absent from her family holiday shoot this year.
Kardashian took to Instagram Wednesday and shared a series of adorable snaps of her and her three other children — Saint, 10; Chicago, 7; and Psalm, 6 — posing in Christmas-themed pajama sets from her Skims clothing line.
Her sister Khloé’s son, Tatum, 3, and brother Rob’s daughter, Dream, 9, were also included in the family shoot.
Kim Kardashian’s eldest daughter, North West, was notably absent from her family’s holiday shoot this year. Instagram/kimkardashian
“‘Twas the night before Christmas…” the reality star captioned the carousel of pictures.
But fans in the comments section could only focus on one thing — North’s absence. The 12-year-old was nowhere to be seen in the shots.
“Northie said not today lol gotta love teenagers!” one fan quipped.
“I guess Northie was in a mood and didn’t want to participate in pictures,” one guessed. “You gotta start paying Northie girl 😂 she’s not with the photos,” another joked.
Many fans in the comments weren’t surprised by the preteen skipping this latest shoot, as Kim already admitted she’d failed to wrangle North into her last attempt at a holiday photo.
The “All’s Fair” star admitted via Instagram Monday that she couldn’t get all four of her children to cooperate for a family Christmas photo.
“I really tried,” she captioned the chaotic carousel, where North can be seen walking out of the frame and was also absent from the first two snaps.
This isn’t the first time North has been uncooperative at Christmas picture time. When the “Kardashians” star posed with her children for 2022 holiday snaps, she revealed, “Most of the photos… were unusable because North was sticking out her middle finger.”
She told viewers of her Hulu reality show that the shoots are the “most stressful time of [her] life no matter what” because the siblings “always cry” and “nobody gets along.”
The “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” alum shares her kids with ex-husband Kanye West, whom she split from in 2021.
Travis Kelce revealed the thoughtful gift he gave fiancée Taylor Swift, which was “one of [her] favorites,” during Wednesday’s “New Heights” episode.
The athlete, 36, told brother Jason Kelce and sister-in-law Kylie Kelce that he purchased a bread slicer for the pop star.
Travis Kelce described Taylor Swift’s “favorite” gift from him on Wednesday’s “New Heights” podcast. Travis Kelce/Instagram
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end picked out the present “because [his partner has] been throwing together so much f–king sourdough.”
He noted, “Gosh, I’ve got the best gut health there is. I love you, Tay.”
Jason, 38, applauded the choice on the podcast since something to help with “slicing is a big deal.”
The retired NFL player added, “It is true. One of the unfortunate things with making fresh bread is trying to cut that s–t. It’s hard.”
When Kylie, 33, claimed the “hardest part” is “the responsibility to eat it,” her husband disagreed.
“That’s the easiest,” Jason said.
Swift, who began dating Travis in July 2023, repeatedly gushed about her bread-baking obsession while promoting her “Life of a Showgirl” album in October.
“It’s a danger … because I cannot stop talking about bread when I start,” the songwriter said on BBC Radio 1. “And it has nothing to do with music.”
When the Grammy winner appeared on “New Heights” the previous month, she detailed the depths of her “granny” hobby.
“The sourdough has taken over my life in a huge way,” Swift explained to listeners. “I’m really talking about bread 60 percent of the time now.
“I’m just, like, always baking bread and texting my friends and being like, ‘Can I send you some bread? I need some feedback. Do you like this one better than you liked the other one? Like, I did the rise a little differently,” she continued.
The performer, who often reads “sourdough blogs,” said, “There’s a whole community of us and I didn’t know it. This is an underworld.”
Workers sell off cuts of meat during the traditional Christmas Eve auction at Smithfield meat market in London, UK
From skiing Santas in the US and Mass with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, to giant cuts of meat being thrown into crowds in London, Christmas celebrations around the world are in full swing.
Worshippers in Ukraine, China and Pakistan gathered for Christmas Eve services at their local churches.
While most Christians mark Christmas on 25 December, many Orthodox Christians do not celebrate until 7 January.
Here are some of the best images of the holiday cheer around the world.
Pope Leo holds a figurine of Baby Jesus during Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, ItalyTwo women take a photo in front of the Christmas tree in Nativity Square in Bethlehem, held to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the occupied West BankA woman lights a candle with her son during a Christmas Eve service in Kyiv, UkraineWorshippers attend a Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Saviour in Beijing, ChinaChristians attend midnight Mass at Central Brooks Memorial Church in Karachi, PakistanA man decorates a Christmas tree during Christmas Eve celebrations in Islamabad, PakistanGirls stand alongside a Christmas nativity scene at St Mary’s Church in the village of Uswetakeiyawa, Sri LankaWomen hold candles as they attend a Christmas Eve mass in Nairobi, Kenya
Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura won Honduras’ presidential election, electoral authorities said Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long count that has whittled away at the credibility of the Central American nation’s fragile electoral system. (AP Video: Elmer Martínez)
Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura won Honduras’ presidential election, electoral authorities said Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long count that has whittled away at the credibility of the Central American nation’s fragile electoral system.
The election is continuing Latin America’s swing to the right, coming just a week after Chile chose the far-right politician José Antonio Kast as its next president.
Asfura, of the conservative National Party received 40.27% of the vote in the Nov. 30, edging out four-time candidate Salvador Nasralla of the conservative Liberal Party, who finished with 39.53% of the vote.
Honduras’ president-elect
The former mayor of Honduras’ capital Tegucigalpa, won in his second bid for the presidency, after he and Nasralla were neck-and-neck during a weeks-long vote count that fueled international concern.
On Tuesday night a number of electoral officials and candidates were already fighting and contesting the results of the election. Meanwhile, followers in Asfura’s campaign headquarters erupted into cheers.
“Honduras: I am prepared to govern,” wrote Asfura in a post on X shortly after the results were released. “I will not let you down.”
The results were a rebuke of the current leftist leader, and her governing democratic socialist Liberty and Re-foundation Party, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished in a distant third place with 19.19% of the vote.
Trump takes a spotlight in Honduras
Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Asfura on Wednesday, writing on a post on X: “The people of Honduras have spoken … (the Trump administration) looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere.”
The European Union and number of right-leading leaders across Latin America, namely Trump-ally Argentine President Javier Milei, also congratulated the politician.
Asfura ran as a pragmatic politician, pointing to his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the U.S. administration would work with.
Nasralla maintained the claim that the election was fraudulent on Wednesday, saying electoral authorities who announced the results “betrayed the Honduran people.”
On Tuesday night, he also addressed Trump in a post on X, writing: “Mr. President, your endorsed candidate in Honduras is complicit in silencing the votes of our citizens. If he is truly worthy of your backing, if his hands are clean, if he has nothing to fear, then why doesn’t he allow for every vote to be counted?”
He and other opponents of Asfura have maintained that Trump’s last-minute endorsement was an act of electoral interference that ultimately swung the results of the vote.
A chaotic election
The unexpectedly tumultuous election was also marred by a sluggish vote count, which fueled even more accusations.
The Central American nation was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks as vote counting by electoral authorities lagged, and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of final vote tallies was called, fueling warnings by international leaders.
After expressing democratic concern about the lack of results days before, Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Rambin wrote on a post on X on Wednesday that the OAS “takes note” of the results announced and noted it is “closely following events in Honduras”.
It also condemned electoral authorities for announcing the results while the final .07% of votes were counted with such razor-thin margins in the election.
Jeffrey Epstein and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell
US authorities have discovered more than a million more documents potentially related to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that they plan to release in the coming days and weeks, officials say.
The FBI and federal prosecutors in New York informed the Department of Justice (DoJ) of the discovery.
“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the DoJ said on Wednesday.
The department said it could take “a few more weeks” before all the files are released. The DoJ has been under scrutiny after not releasing all Epstein files by 19 December, the deadline mandated under a new law.
The agency said it would “continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files”.
The statement did not specify how the FBI and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York came across the additional material. Epstein had been facing charges of sex trafficking minors in the state when he died awaiting trial in a New York prison.
The news comes after the justice department released thousands of documents – some heavily redacted – related to their investigations into Epstein.
The department has been releasing the documents in batches and top officials have said hundreds of thousands of documents still are to be released.
The files were released after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act – signed into law by US President Donald Trump – that ordered the agency to share all the documents with the public while protecting victims’ identities.
Many of the released documents, which include videos, photos, emails and investigative documents, have heavy redactions, including names of people the FBI appears to cite as possible co-conspirators in the Epstein case.
The justice department has faced criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the amount of redactions, which the law permits only to protect victims’ identities and active criminal investigations.
In a post on X after the discovery of the additional documents was announced, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, a congressional panel that has been investigating the Epstein saga, accused the White House of “illegally” withholding the files.
“Every day we see lies, incompetence, missed deadlines, and illegal redactions,” Representative Robert Garcia said in a statement.
The law passed by Congress and signed last month by Trump states that names and information that might be embarrassing or cause “reputational harm” are not allowed to be redacted.
It specifically asks the DoJ for internal communications and memos detailing who was investigated and decisions on whether “to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates”.
Included in the documents are emails appearing to be exchanged between FBI personnel in 2019 that mention 10 possible “co-conspirators” of Epstein.
The emails said six of the group had been served with subpoenas. This included three in Florida, one in Boston, one in New York City, and one in Connecticut.
Possible co-conspirators in Epstein’s crimes are a major focus for his victims, and for several lawmakers who have demanded more transparency from the justice department.
Previous releases of Epstein documents have included revelations that reverberated across the Atlantic.
Peter Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US after details emerged about his friendship with the convicted paedophile, and that he told Epstein “I think the world of you”, the day before Epstein began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008.
Lord Mandelson said in a letter to staff that “I deeply regret” the circumstances of his departure from the British embassy in Washington DC. He said being ambassador had been “the privilege of my life” and he continued “to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims”.
In October, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lost his prince title and was asked to leave his Windsor mansion, Royal Lodge, following prolonged scrutiny over his links to Epstein.
Zelensky said the 20 points agreed with the Americans offered Ukraine security guarantees that mirrored Nato membership
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has given details of an updated peace plan offering Russia the potential withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the east and the creation of a demilitarised zone in their place.
Detailing the 20-point plan agreed by US and Ukrainian envoys in Florida at the weekend, Zelensky said the Russians would respond on Wednesday once the Americans had spoken to them.
Describing the plan as “the main framework for ending the war”, he said it proposed security guarantees from the US, Nato and Europeans for a co-ordinated military response if Russia invaded Ukraine again.
On the key question of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, Zelensky said a “free economic zone” was a potential option.
He told journalists that as Ukraine was against withdrawal, US negotiators were looking to establish a demilitarised zone or a free economic zone. Any area that Ukrainian troops pulled out of would have to be policed by Ukraine, he stressed.
“There are two options,” Zelensky said, “either the war continues, or something will have to be decided regarding all potential economic zones.”
The 20-point plan is seen as an update of an original 28-point document, agreed by US envoy Steve Witkoff with the Russians several weeks ago, which was widely seen as heavily geared towards the Kremlin’s demands.
The Russians have insisted that Ukraine pulls out of almost a quarter of its own territory in the eastern Donetsk region in return for a peace deal. The rest is already under Russian occupation.
Sensitive issues including questions over territory would have to be resolved “at the leaders’ level”, but the new draft would provide Ukraine with strong security guarantees and a military strength of 800,000, Zelensky explained.
Much of the updated plan resembles what came out of recent talks in Berlin involving US negotiators Witkoff and Jared Kushner with Ukrainian and European leaders. The setting then moved to Miami last weekend where US President Donald Trump’s team spoke separately to Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev and then Ukrainian and European officials.
There now appears to be far more detail on the territorial issue, although it is clear the Ukrainian side was unable to reach a consensus with the Americans.
Zelensky explained that if Ukraine was prepared to pull its heavy forces back by five, 10 or 40km in the 25% of Donetsk it still held to create an economic zone, making it virtually demilitarised, then Russia would have to do the same “accordingly by five, 10, or 40km”.
Russian troops are currently about 40km (25 miles) east of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, having captured the town of Siversk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to be impressed by the kind of compromise being proposed for Donetsk. He said this month that Russia would take control of the entire east of Ukraine by force if Ukrainian troops did not pull out.
However, Trump is pushing for a deal to end almost four years of full-scale war and the Ukrainian president believes Russia cannot afford to reject the US plan.
“They cannot tell President Trump, ‘look we’re against a peaceful settlement’,” Zelensky told reporters. “If they try to obstruct everything, then President Trump would have to arm us heavily, while imposing all possible sanctions against them.”
Zelensky made clear that if a free economic zone were established in Donetsk it would have to be under Ukrainian administration and police – “definitely not the so-called Russian police”. The current front line would then become the boundary of the economic zone with international forces on the ground along the contact line to ensure no Russian infiltration.
Russia has so far rejected a European proposal to police any peace deal through a Coalition of the Willing as a “brazen threat”.
A referendum would need to be held on the whole peace plan, Zelensky said, and only a referendum could decide on the idea of a potential free economic zone in Donbas.
He emphasised that an economic zone would also have to be set up around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant currently occupied by Russia, and that Russian troops would have to pull out of four other Ukrainian regions – Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv.
The current US proposal for the nuclear plant would be for Ukraine, the US and Russia to operate it jointly, but Kyiv disagreed with that, Zelensky said.
The main points of the plan reaffirm Ukraine’s sovereignty and propose a non-aggression pact between Russia and its neighbour with a monitoring mechanism.
As well as strong security guarantees mirroring Nato’s Article Five, which requires members to aid an ally under attack, Ukraine is to be allowed a maximum military strength of 800,000 in peacetime.
Discussions are still going on over a US plan to receive compensation in return for security guarantees, so Zelensky says it is not currently part of the document.
There is no reference barring Ukraine from joining Nato, which was in the original 28-point plan and something Russia has consistently demanded.
President Donald Trump flew on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” according to an email from a New York prosecutor that forms part of a new batch of documents about Epstein released Tuesday by the U.S. Justice Department.
In an email dated January 7, 2020, the unidentified prosecutor wrote that flight records showed Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet eight times during the 1990s. Among those were at least four flights on which Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was also aboard. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping late financier Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
In a social media post in 2024, Trump said he “was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.” There was no allegation in the prosecutor’s email that Trump had committed any crime. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the email.
On one flight described in the newly released records, the only three passengers were Epstein, Trump and a 20-year-old woman whose name was redacted. “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case,” the document stated.
Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump has said their association ended in the mid-2000s and that he was never aware of the financier’s sexual abuse. Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. The Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking in 2019.
The Department of Justice posted a statement on X saying: “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.
“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” it said.
The latest release of Epstein files includes around 30,000 pages of documents, with many redactions, and dozens of video clips, including several purporting to be shot inside a federal detention center. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in a New York jail. His death was ruled a suicide.
In another email, an unidentified person wrote in 2021 that they had recently been looking through data the government obtained from former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s cellphone and found an “image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell.” The government redacted parts of the message indicating who sent and received it.
Another file in the government’s release included a grainy photo of Trump seated next to Maxwell. It matches an image of the two at a New York fashion show in 2000.
The disclosures included a scattering of other records that reference Trump, though they give little indication that the government considered them to be credible.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Donald Trump are shown in this image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., on December 23, 2025 as part of a new trove of documents from its investigations into the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. U.S. Justice Department/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Among them was an image of a card purporting to be from Epstein to Larry Nassar, a former gymnastics doctor who was convicted of sexually abusing girls under his care. A handwritten message in the card referenced Trump without using his name.
The Justice Department later labeled the card a “fake” and said it will continue to release Epstein file documents as required by law.
The government also disclosed several reports of phone calls to an FBI tip line that reference Trump, though they did not identify the people who made the calls or give an indication of whether investigators followed up on the calls or found them to be credible.
One caller claimed that he had driven a limousine for Trump in 1995 and overheard him making a phone call in the back in which he addressed someone as “Jeffrey” and at one point mentioned abusing a girl.
The government Tuesday also released a video that purports to show Epstein kneeling inside his jail cell, but a Reuters examination found it appears to be a computer-generated clip that first surfaced on social media in 2020, a year after his death. It was submitted to the Justice Department by a person who said it purported to show Epstein’s death, according to an email also released on Tuesday.
TRANSPARENCY LAW
The Trump administration last week published a large cache of Epstein files in an attempt to comply with a new law forcing disclosure on the politically fraught topic.
However, the releases on Friday and Saturday contained extensive redactions, angering some Republicans and doing little to defuse a scandal threatening the party ahead of 2026 midterm elections.
On Monday, Trump downplayed the importance of the Epstein files. Speaking to reporters, he said the material was “just used to deflect against tremendous success” by him and his fellow Republicans.
U.S. flag, H-1B visa application form and displayed company logos are seen in this illustration taken September 26, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a challenge by the largest U.S. business lobby group to President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, saying it fell under his broad powers to regulate immigration.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., rejected arguments by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the fee conflicts with federal immigration law and will lead many companies, hospitals and other employers to cut jobs and the services they provide to the public.
“The parties’ vigorous debate over the ultimate wisdom of this political judgment is not within the province of the courts,” Howell wrote. “So long as the actions dictated by the policy decision and articulated in the Proclamation fit within the confines of the law, the Proclamation must be upheld.”
Howell is an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Chamber’s executive vice president and chief counsel, Daryl Joseffer, said many small and medium-sized businesses will be unable to afford the fee.
“We are disappointed in the court’s decision and are considering further legal options to ensure that the H-1B visa program can operate as Congress intended,” Joseffer said in a statement.
The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with training in specialty fields. Technology companies in particular rely heavily on workers who receive H-1B visas. The program offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years.
Trump’s order would sharply raise the cost of obtaining H-1B visas, which had typically come with about $2,000 to $5,000 in fees depending on various factors.
The Chamber in its lawsuit says the new fee would force businesses that rely on the H-1B program to choose between dramatically increasing their labor costs or hiring fewer highly-skilled foreign workers.
A group of Democratic-led U.S. states and a coalition of employers, nonprofits and religious organizations have also filed lawsuits challenging the fee.
National Guard members walk at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Broadview facility in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., October 9, 2025. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon Purchase Licensing Rights
The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send National Guard troops to the Chicago area as the Republican president expands the use of the military for domestic purposes in a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions, a policy critics call an effort to punish adversaries and stifle dissent.
The justices let stand for now a judge’s order blocking the deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops in a legal challenge brought by Illinois officials and local leaders. The U.S. Justice Department had sought to allow the deployment while the case proceeds.
“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court’s majority held in an unsigned order.
The order said the president’s authority to take federal control of National Guard troops likely only applies in “exceptional” circumstances.
Three conservatives on the court said they dissented from the order: Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that Trump “promised the American people he would work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters” and that “(n)othing in today’s ruling detracts from that core agenda.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called the ruling “an important step in curbing the Trump Administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism.”
HIGH COURT RULING A RARE SETBACK FOR TRUMP
It was a rare setback for Trump’s administration at the high court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority and has frequently backed his broad assertions of presidential authority since his return to the White House.
The National Guard serves as state-based militia forces that answer to state governors except when called into federal service by the president.
Trump ordered troops to Chicago, the third-largest U.S. city, and to Portland, Oregon, following his earlier deployments to Los Angeles, Memphis and Washington, D.C.
The case has been characterized by starkly different portrayals of the protests against Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement in and around Chicago.
Trump and his allies have described Democratic-led cities as lawless, crime-ravaged and plagued with vast, violent protests.
His administration has said troops are needed to protect federal property and personnel at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility that has become a flashpoint for Chicago activists opposed to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Democratic mayors and governors, along with other Trump critics, have said these claims are a false account of the situation and a pretext for sending troops, accusing Trump of abusing his power.
FEDERAL JUDGES SKEPTICAL OF ADMINISTRATION’S VIEW
Federal judges have expressed skepticism over the administration’s dire view of protests that local law enforcement officials have called limited in size, largely peaceful and manageable by their own forces – far from the “war zone” conditions described by Trump.
Trump has relied on a law that lets a president deploy state National Guard troops to suppress a rebellion, repel an invasion or if he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
Illinois and Chicago sued after the administration federalized 300 Illinois National Guard troops and also ordered Texas National Guard troops into the state, calling the actions unlawful. Officials have since announced the administration was sending home hundreds of National Guard troops who were dispatched to Portland from California, and to Chicago from Texas.
Chicago-based U.S. District Judge April Perry temporarily blocked the move on October 9, finding that the claims of violence during protests at an immigration facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, Illinois, where a small group of demonstrators had gathered daily for weeks, were unreliable.
Perry, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, found that there was no evidence of rebellion or that the law was not being enforced, faulting officials for “equating protests with riots and a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting or doing violence.”
A National Guard deployment would “only add fuel to the fire,” Perry said.
A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift Perry’s order blocking the deployment, concluding that “the facts do not justify the president’s actions in Illinois.” Two of the three judges were appointed by Republican presidents, including one by Trump.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the assessment by local officials of the protests was “implausibly rosy,” and that federal agents “have been forced to operate under the constant threat of mob violence.”
Lawyers for Illinois and Chicago told the justices that the local protests have “never hindered the continued operation” of the Broadview facility, and that state and local authorities have responded to every request for assistance and contained any sporadic disruption.
Officials from Portland and Oregon are pursuing a separate legal challenge to Trump’s planned deployment to that city. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, permanently blocked that deployment in a November 7 ruling. The administration has appealed that ruling.
The Supreme Court in October asked the administration as well as Illinois and Chicago to provide written arguments over how to interpret the words “regular forces” in the law at issue in the case.
Every year, millions of people sing the beautiful carol Silent Night, with its line “all is calm, all is bright.”
We all know the Christmas story is one in which peace and joy are proclaimed, and this permeates our festivities, family gatherings and present-giving. Countless Christmas cards depict the Holy Family – starlit, in a quaint stable, nestled comfortably in a sleepy little village.
However, when I began to research my book on the childhood of Jesus, Boy Jesus: Growing up Judaean in Turbulent Times, that carol started to sound jarringly wrong in terms of his family’s actual circumstances at the time he was born.
The Gospel stories themselves tell of dislocation and danger. For example, a “manger” was, in fact, a foul-smelling feeding trough for donkeys. A newborn baby laid in one is a profound sign given to the shepherds, who were guarding their flocks at night from dangerous wild animals (Luke 2:12).
When these stories are unpacked for their core elements and placed in a wider historical context, the dangers become even more glaring.
Take King Herod, for example. He enters the scene in the nativity stories without any introduction at all, and readers are supposed to know he was bad news. But Herod was appointed by the Romans as their trusted client ruler of the province of Judaea. He stayed long in his post because he was – in Roman terms – doing a reasonable job.
Jesus’ family claimed to be of the lineage of Judaean kings, descended from David and expected to bring forth a future ruler. The Gospel of Matthew begins with Jesus’ entire genealogy, it was that important to his identity.
But a few years before Jesus’ birth, Herod had violated the tomb of David and looted it. How did that affect the family and the stories they would tell Jesus? How did they feel about the Romans?
A Time of Fear and revolt
As for Herod’s attitude to Bethlehem, remembered as David’s home, things get yet more dangerous and complex.
When Herod was first appointed, he was evicted by a rival ruler supported by the Parthians (Rome’s enemy) who was loved by many local people. Herod was attacked by those people just near Bethlehem.
He and his forces fought back and massacred the attackers. When Rome vanquished the rival and brought Herod back, he built a memorial to his victorious massacre on a nearby site he called Herodium, overlooking Bethlehem. How did that make the local people feel?
And far from being a sleepy village, Bethlehem was so significant as a town that a major aqueduct construction brought water to its centre. Fearing Herod, Jesus’ family fled from their home there, but they were on the wrong side of Rome from the start.
They were not alone in their fears or their attitude to the colonizers. The events that unfolded, as told by the first-century historian Josephus, show a nation in open revolt against Rome shortly after Jesus was born.
When Herod died, thousands of people took over the Jerusalem temple and demanded liberation. Herod’s son Archelaus massacred them. A number of Judaean revolutionary would-be kings and rulers seized control of parts of the country, including Galilee.
It was at this time, in the Gospel of Matthew, that Joseph brought his family back from refuge in Egypt – to this independent Galilee and a village there, Nazareth.
But independence in Galilee didn’t last long. Roman forces, under the general Varus, marched down from Syria with allied forces, destroyed the nearby city of Sepphoris, torched countless villages and crucified huge numbers of Judaean rebels, eventually putting down the revolts.
Archelaus – once he was installed officially as ruler – followed this up with a continuing reign of terror.
A Nativity Story for Today
As a historian, I’d like to see a film that shows Jesus and his family embedded in this chaotic, unstable and traumatic social world, in a nation under Roman rule.
Instead, viewers have now been offered The Carpenter’s Son, a film starring Nicholas Cage. It’s partly inspired by an apocryphal (not biblical) text named the Paidika Iesou – the Childhood of Jesus – later called The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
You might think the Paidika would be something like an ancient version of the hit TV show Smallville from the 2000s, which followed the boy Clark Kent before he became Superman.
But no, rather than being about Jesus grappling with his amazing powers and destiny, it is a short and quite disturbing piece of literature made up of bits and pieces, assembled more than 100 years after the life of Jesus.
The Paidika presents the young Jesus as a kind of demigod no one should mess with, including his playmates and teachers. It was very popular with non-Jewish, pagan-turned-Christian audiences who sat in an uneasy place within wider society.
The miracle-working Jesus zaps all his enemies – and even innocents. At one point, a child runs into Jesus and hurts his shoulder, so Jesus strikes him dead. Joseph says to Mary, “Do not let him out of the house so that those who make him angry may not die.”
Such stories rest on a problematic idea that one must never kindle a god’s wrath. And this young Jesus shows instant, deadly wrath. He also lacks much of a moral compass.
But this text also rests on the idea that Jesus’ boyhood actions against his playmates and teachers were justified because they were “the Jews.” “A Jew” turns up as an accuser just a few lines in. There should be a content warning.
Himanshi Khurana, a 30-year-old Indian-origin woman, was found murdered in Toronto. Police suspect intimate partner violence and have issued a nationwide arrest warrant for a man identified as Abdul Ghafoori.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Abdul Ghafoori in connection with Himanshi Khurana’s murder. (Image credits: Toronto Police)
A 30-year-old Indian-origin woman was found murdered in Toronto, police said, and a Canada-wide arrest warrant has been issued for a suspect they say knew the victim.
The woman was identified as Himanshi Khurana of Toronto. Police are searching for Abdul Ghafoori (32), also of Toronto, in connection with the murder. Police said the case appears to involve “intimate partner violence”, according to CBC News.
Toronto Police said officers were called late Friday night after receiving a report of a missing person. “On Friday, December 19, 2025, at approximately 10:41 pm, police responded to a call for a Missing Person in the Strachan Avenue and Wellington Street West area,” police said.
The investigation continued overnight. “On Saturday, December 20, 2025, at approximately 6:30 am, officers located the missing female deceased inside a residence,” police said, adding that the death was deemed a homicide.
Police said the victim and the suspect were known to each other. Ghafoori is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for first-degree murder, a charge that can carry a life sentence without parole if premeditation and intent are proven in court.
In a post on X, India’s Consulate in Toronto said it is assisting Himanshi Khurana’s family.
All the proceeds will go to the Superhumans Center, a specialist clinic for the treatment and rehabilitation of war-wounded victims.
Before the war, Ukraine’s own “Dancing with the Stars” was a cherished and popular television show, dazzling the audiences with performances by celebrities and professional dancers. The show is now back on for one special episode — this time with Ukrainian wartime heroes as the stars, underscoring the nation’s resilience in difficult times.
Many still remember how President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — then an actor — won the dance competition in 2006, the year that “Tantsi z zirkamy” as the show is known in Ukrainian, first debuted.
In the new, special episode, the dancers perform with prosthetic limbs, showcasing their strength in overcoming adversity. The lineup of participants includes public figures who rose to prominence since Russia’s full-out war on Ukraine was launched in February 2022.
But like all of present-day Ukraine, the show — which is part of an international franchise — has had to deal with a multitude of wartime challenges, including frequent power outages.
All the proceeds will go to the Superhumans Center, a specialist clinic for the treatment and rehabilitation of war-wounded victims.
A new reality
During a prerecording last week, dancers spun, leapt and glided under the sparkle of lights, some seamlessly integrating their prosthetic limbs into the choreography.
For creative producer Volodymyr Zavadiuk, every segment of the show is precious, creating something special during tough times.
“It’s about our resilience and it’s about our future,” said Zavadiuk, who also heads Big Brave Events and the Big Entertainment Shows department at 1+1 Media.
Among the performers was Ruslana Danilkina, a war veteran who lost her leg in combat in 2022 and is now renowned in Ukraine for dedicating herself to helping injured troops adapt to life with prosthetics.
She delivered a passionate performance centered on reclaiming her womanhood following the traumatic injury.
Also back in the show is beloved dancer Dmytro Dikusar, this time as a competition judge. He juggled filming and serving with his platoon on the front lines.
Ukrainian rock musician Yevhen Halych sat in the makeup chair ahead of his number, reflecting on his own determination to bring back the show.
“We are filming this project in a country where there is a war. … We have power cuts, we may have an air alert, it could be bombing,” he said. “What do I feel? I feel a genuine desire to live a full life, no matter what happens.”
Wartime challenges
Producing the show’s special episode has been no easy feat in time of war. A live broadcast was impossible — a Russian attack can happen at any time. Then there were the technical obstacles: during last week’s recording, a key generator malfunctioned.
When the show airs on Sunday, audiences will vote for their favorite.
Danilkina, who was only 18 years old when she lost her leg and who today works at the Superhumans Center, enthralled everyone with her passionate performance, her prosthetic limb artfully integrated into her routine.
“Our dance number is about life. It’s about accepting love,” she told The Associated Press after her performance. “Because in reality, when your body is wounded, it’s very difficult to love yourself. And allowing someone else to love you is even harder.”
Her injury was not the end of her life, she said, and now she wants to show “thousands of wounded boys and girls who are starting their lives over again” that it’s not the end of theirs.
KIM Kardashian fans have applauded the star for her “relatable” holiday card disaster with her four kids.
The Kardashians star shared a slideshow of photos on Instagram of herself attempting to pose alongside her sons, Saint, 10, and Psalm, 6, and her daughters, North, 12, and Chicago, 7.
Kim Kardashian shared photos of herself attempting to wrangle her four children for a Christmas cardCredit: Instagram
However, Kim, 45, had a noticeably difficult time wrangling all her children for the photo op at her lavish Hidden Hills mansion.
The beauty mogul managed to get just her three youngest kids in most of the frames, although she struggled to gather them together and get them to smile.
Some of the pics showed the youngsters making silly faces at the camera, while another captured North and Saint dodging the lens while Kim tried to snap a shot in front of their decorated Christmas tree.
That was the only photo that included North, even though it partly captured her walking out of the frame.
The pre-teen, however, joined her mother in a video of the duo dancing and lip-syncing to Ken Carson’s track, Thx, which Kim added to her post.
North rocked black jeans, a black jean jacket, a full face of makeup, and her hair partly slicked back, leaving her teal highlights flowing down.
Kim donned skintight brown leggings, a furry brown cropped sweater, and oversized black sunglasses, with her dark locks in a sleek updo.
Her younger kids were also dressed nicely for the photo session, with Saint wearing white pants, a white shirt, a white jean jacket, and sneakers.
Chicago wore a black dress, a jean jacket with brown fur on the collar, and black boots, while Psalm sported tan camo pants, a red-and-white flannel button-down shirt, and sneakers.
Kim poked fun at her failed efforts to capture the entire group in a photo in her caption, which read, “I really tried.”
Fans praised the reality star for showing a more relatable side to parenting, rather than a perfectly crafted photo of the family of five.
“We all live the same lives (when it comes to pics with kids),” one person commented.
“Glad to see I’m not the only one who’s preteen son prefers to stand a whole arm’s length away from me,” laughed another.
“This is so relatable. The kids never want to take pics with me anymore,” remarked a third.
“Kim, you’re our superstar, but you’re still a mom,” stated a fourth.
“Is so hard to get a picture of our kids all together the more they grown,” pointed out a fifth.
“All mothers understand this struggle,” added a sixth.
Kim shares her kids with her ex-husband, Kanye West.
The exes agreed to joint legal and physical custody of their kids following their divorce in November 2022.
A PROTECTIVE dome which stops radiation leaking from Chernobyl could collapse after it was hit by a Russian drone.
The director of the defunct nuclear power plant has warned that the shelter is now at risk of falling down completely.
A large hole was punched in Chernobyl reactor four’s protective shield in FebruaryCredit: AP
Chernobyl director Sergiy Tarakanov said that a further Russian hit could even knock down the inner protective shell.
Tarakanov said: “If a missile or drone hits it directly, or even falls somewhere nearby, for example, an Iskander, God forbid, it will cause a mini-earthquake in the area.
“No one can guarantee that the shelter facility will remain standing after that. That is the main threat.”
The shelter was built to contain radiation from reactor four, which exploded in 1986, causing the world’s worst nuclear meltdown.
But a Russian drone strike hit the dome on February 14 this year, inflicting serious damage.
The attack punched a hole in the radiation shield, leading to fears of a radiation leak.
Director Tarakanov warned that fully re-building the shelter could take three to four years.
The hole from the drone hit has been covered with a protective layer, he said.
But the plant director warned that there are still 300 smaller holes in the shelter, made by firefighters as they tackled the blaze.
Tarakanov added that current radiation levels at the site are “stable and within normal limits”.
It comes after fears at the start of this month that radiation would leak through the damaged dome.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the protective cover had “lost its primary safety functions”.
The February hit punched a hole in the dome, triggering a warning from the IAEA.
Rafael Grossi, IAEA director general, said some repairs had been carried out “but comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety”.
The UN said in February that there had been no reports of radiation leaks and that levels remained stable and normal.
The shelter was designed to arch over a concrete sarcophagus, further sealing off radiation and allowing the safe dismantling of the reactor beneath.
It also acts as a containment zone to trap radioactive dust, using negative pressure and a sealed membrane.
But the outer shelter was never built to withstand the force of a brutal Russian attack.
AMERICAN Airlines is bringing the heat during the coldest months of the year.
The airline has begun rolling out flight deals that make chasing warm weather easier and cheaper than ever.
The airline is offering deeply discounted domestic one-way and round-trip flights under $100Credit: Getty
American Airlines has offered its customers deeply discounted domestic one-way and round-trip flights for under $100 on select routes and dates from January through early March 2026.
The deals give travelers a chance to book quick winter escapes, long weekends, or budget-friendly visits with loved ones from major cities across the US.
This includes warmer climates such as flights from New York to Miami, Florida.
One-way fares apply to select travel dates between January 6 and March 2 next year.
Meanwhile, round-trip bargains are available throughout January and February, depending on the route and availability.
Prices start as low as $46, though fares can change quickly.
These flights include New York to Miami and Atlanta to Miami, starting in January and going until February.
$46 flights from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale will depart on February 22, 2026.
The highest price for a one-way flight is $94, departing from New York to Los Angeles starting on January 23, 2026.
The latest discounts follow a similar promotion launched on November 28 for Black Friday and ran through early December 2, in honor of American Airlines gearing up to celebrate its 100th anniversary.
ICONIC filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner died of multiple sharp force injuries caused with “a knife, by another,” the couple’s death certificates have disclosed.
Reiner and Singer were found brutally stabbed to death in their home in the affluent neighborhood of Brentwood in Los Angeles on December 14.
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner attend the Human Rights Campaign’s 2025 at Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles in MarchCredit: Getty
The couple were both cremated at Mount Sinai Mortuary and their remains were given to their eldest son, Jake, according to TMZ.
Reiner and Singer died “minutes” after the brutal attack, the death certificates revealed.
The legendary director’s time of death was listed at 3:45 pm, while his wife’s was noted as 3:46 pm.
Reiner’s marital status was listed as “married,” and Michele’s was recorded as “widowed.”
Reiner and Singer‘s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has since been charged with his parents’ murders and could potentially face the death penalty.
After he allegedly stabbed his parents to death at their $13.5 million estate, Nick reportedly checked into a motel close to the Santa Monica pier.
GRUESOME SCENE
The horrific killings of Reiner, 78, and Singer, 68, were only uncovered after a massage therapist arrived at the couple’s gated home for a scheduled appointment on the afternoon of December 14, according to The New York Times.
The therapist received no answer at the front gate from either Reiner and Singer and decided to call the couple’s daughter, Romy, who reportedly lived in the area.
When Romy arrived and entered her parents’ home, she discovered her father’s body and the grisly scene.
Reiner and his wife were found in their bed with their throats slashed and could have been asleep when they were murdered, the Daily Mail reported.
Romy, 27, told authorities when they arrived at the scene at around 3:30 pm that her brother Nick lived in their parents’ home.
However, Los Angeles police were unable to locate Nick on the property.
Nick was eventually arrested at around 9:15 pm near Exposition Park, about 14 miles from where his parents were found dead, said Alan Hamilton, the deputy police chief at the LAPD.
About an hour before his arrest, Nick was captured on a gas station surveillance footage acting nervously while buying a Gatorade.
Moments later, after exiting the gas station, video captured three police cruisers swarm Nick on a nearby sidewalk.
Nick was seen raising his hands and surrendering to police as multiple officers approach him and take him into custody.
‘FACING DEATH’
It is believed Nick stabbed his parents to death after the trio got into a heated argument at a holiday party on the night of December 13 that several guests in attendance overheard.
A source previously disclosed to The U.S. Sun that attendees at the Hanukkah party were “shocked” when they learned about the murders, but “once they heard Nick was implicated, no one was surprised.”
Nick made his first appearance in court on December 17 as he was seen shackled and wearing a blue anti-suicide vest.
Myanmar’s junta is set to preside over voting starting on Sunday, touting heavily restricted polls as a return to democracy five years after it ousted the last elected government, triggering civil war.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk delivers his speech at the opening of the 60th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, on Sep 8, 2025. (File photo: AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
The UN said on Tuesday (Dec 23) that Myanmar’s junta was using violence and intimidation to force people to vote in upcoming military-controlled elections, while armed opposition groups were using similar tactics to keep people away.
“The military authorities in Myanmar must stop using brutal violence to compel people to vote and stop arresting people for expressing any dissenting views,” United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
Myanmar’s junta is set to preside over voting starting on Sunday, touting heavily restricted polls as a return to democracy five years after it ousted the last elected government, triggering civil war.
But former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains jailed and her hugely popular party dissolved after soldiers ended the nation’s decade-long democratic experiment in February 2021.
International monitors have dismissed the phased month-long vote as a rebranding of martial rule.
Turk, who last month told AFP that holding elections in Myanmar under the current circumstances was “unfathomable”, warned on Tuesday that civilians were being threatened by both the military authorities and armed opposition groups over their participation in the polls.
His statement highlighted the dozens of individuals who have reportedly been detained under an “election protection law” for exercising their freedom of expression.
Many had been slapped with “extremely harsh sentences”, the statement said, pointing to three youths in Hlainghaya Township in the Yangon region who were sentenced to between 42 and 49 years behind bars for hanging up anti-election posters.
The UN rights office said it had also received reports from displaced people in several parts of the country, including the Mandalay region, who had been warned they would be attacked or their homes seized if they did not return to vote.
“Forcing displaced people to undertake unsafe and involuntary returns is a human rights violation,” Turk stressed.
He said that people were also facing “serious threats” from armed groups opposing the military, including nine women teachers from Kyaikto who were reportedly abducted last month while travelling to attend a training on the ballot.
They were then “released with warnings from the perpetrators”, the statement said.
View of a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) passenger plane, taken through a glass panel, at Islamabad International Airport, Pakistan October 3, 2023. (Photo: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro/File Photo)
A Pakistani firm on Tuesday (Dec 23) won an auction with a US$482 million bid for a majority stake in the loss-making national carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), in a deal seen as a key test of the government’s privatisation drive.
The Arif Habib investment group emerged as the highest bidder, offering 135 billion rupees for a 75 percent stake in PIA, with an option to buy the remaining 25 percent in the coming months. The auction was carried live by state broadcasters, with three Pakistani firms participating.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said transparency was critical given the scale of the transaction. “It was essential to make this process transparent because the biggest transaction of Pakistan’s history is about to take place,” he told his cabinet as the bidding began.
COMPETITIVE BIDDING
Two other bidders took part in the auction. A consortium led by Lucky Cement offered 134 billion rupees, while private carrier Air Blue bid 26.5 billion rupees.
The sale follows a failed privatisation attempt last year, when the government received just one bid of US$36 million, far below its target range of US$300 million to US$305 million.
PIA has long been criticised for bloated staffing, mismanagement and persistent losses. Before being delisted from the Pakistan Stock Exchange, the airline reported a net loss of US$437 million for 2022 on revenue of US$854 million.
IMF-BACKED PRIVATISATION PUSH
Islamabad has pledged to divest dozens of loss-making state-owned enterprises by 2029 under a US$7 billion loan programme agreed with the International Monetary Fund last year. The government says repeated bailouts of poorly run firms have drained public finances and worsened the country’s balance-of-payments pressures.
Officials argue that privatisation is essential to reduce fiscal risks and attract private investment, though the policy has faced political resistance and labour opposition.
FALL FROM GRACE
Founded in 1955, PIA was once a symbol of national pride, pioneering international routes and even showcasing flight attendant uniforms designed by French couturier Pierre Cardin in the 1960s.
Its reputation deteriorated over the years amid mounting losses and safety lapses. In June 2020, a month after one of its Airbus A320 jets crashed into a Karachi neighbourhood killing nearly 100 people, the airline was banned from flying to the European Union, Britain and the United States.
FILE PHOTO: Paramount and Warner Bros logos are seen in this illustration taken December 8, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Paramount Skydance’s latest offer to buy Warner Bros Discovery is still not good enough for prominent shareholder Harris Oakmark, the investor told Reuters on Monday.
Warner Bros’ fifth largest shareholder, owning 96 million shares or about 4 per cent of shares as of the end of September, said it would hold out for more from the Ellison family-controlled Paramount.
“The changes in Paramount’s new offer were necessary, but not sufficient,” Harris Oakmark portfolio manager and Director of U.S. Research Alex Fitch said in an email to Reuters. “We see the two deals as a toss-up, and there is a cost to changing paths. If Paramount is serious about winning, they’re going to need to provide a greater incentive.”
Paramount on Monday amended its $108.4 billion hostile bid for the storied Hollywood studio to bolster its financing.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose son David owns Paramount, is now personally guaranteeing $40.4 billion of the bid to secure Warner Bros, which owns HBO Max and controls the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Superman franchises.
Questions about the financing, much of which was held in a revocable trust, had some Warner Bros investors unsure whether they would accept the offer.
Paramount also increased the fee it will pay to $5.8 billion from $5 billion if regulators don’t approve the deal, to match a competing offer from Netflix , although it didn’t raise its $30-a-share bid.
‘TOP SHELF MEDIA ASSETS’
Warner Bros investors now have until January 21, extended from January 8, to accept or reject the so-called tender offer.
The board of Warner Bros unanimously recommended on Wednesday that shareholders reject Paramount’s earlier bid in favor of Netflix’s offer, saying the financing didn’t provide a “full backstop”.
Even though Netflix’s cash offer of $23.25 a share is lower, the board said its bid was superior because the financing was more secure and it includes $4.50 in shares of Netflix common stock as well as whatever Warner Bros can get when it spins out Discovery Global as part of the deal.
The bidding war speaks to the quality of Warner Bros assets, said Yussef Gheriani, chief investment officer of Chicago investment firm IHT Wealth Management, which owns 16,000 shares of Warner Bros, 6,500 shares of Netflix and 60,000 of Paramount.
“It’s really rare to get an opportunity to add top shelf media assets to your portfolio,” he said, adding that he’ll likely follow the board’s advice on the sale. “They know the business inside out and have a better grasp of the nuances associated with the deal than we do.”
Investor Thomas Poehling, who owns 484,000 shares of Warner Bros and 639,000 of Paramount, said he’ll likely take the revised offer if Netflix doesn’t counter because Paramount has a better chance of winning approval from regulators.
In his Christmas address, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has highlighted the importance of community and togetherness — which he says are glimmers of light when the world seems dark.
The transcript of Steinmeier’s televised address is distributed to media outlets, including DW, ahead of its airing on televisionImage: Bundespresseamt
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier used his Christmas address on December 24 to highlight the importance of community, communication and cooperation, and called on his fellow Germans to work together and help each other in difficult times.
“In der Dunkelheit erstrahlt ein Licht,” he said in a televised speech: “A light is shining in the darkness.”
For Steinmeier (Germany’s head of state as opposed to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the head of the current government), many worries big and small can make the world seem dark: illness, loss, loneliness, job insecurity, or global crises and wars.
But he also said light could be found in “community”: family, friends, groups, clubs and any experiences which make people feel welcome and accepted — especially at Christmas, which he said “makes our lives more hopeful, happier, warmer and more optimistic.”
Steinmeier: ‘We need community’
In a world increasingly dominated by social media and individualism, Steinmeier reminded Germans that “we need community” and encouraged them to reach out to one another.
“I believe that if we join others in the search for goals and guidance, we can gain a great deal, provided that we allow others to speak and listen intently to what they have to say, rather than simply reiterating what we ourselves have always thought was right,” Steinmeier said.
“Finding a sense of direction by asking genuine questions, being open, engaging in dialogue and taking joint action can illuminate the path that lies ahead of us and give it a purpose.”
Steinmeier said that Christmas is a time when friendships, partnerships and family ties are renewed via visits or festive greetings, a time when people are reminded of how “essential reliable companions are” as we go through life.
“And we know that we can trust in lasting connections on both good and bad days,” Steinmeier said, while later adding that “we also know that being there for others gives our lives fulfilment and meaning.”
Solidarity with Ukraine as Russia’s invasion approaches fifth year
There was a political note to Steinmeier’s address, too, as the president offered his solidarity to Ukrainians whose suffering at the hands of Russian aggression is approaching a fifth year.
“In recent days, intensive efforts were made to find ways to end the war,” he said. “Most of us will have followed the events with hope, but also skepticism and concern.”
Heavy rainfall near the southern French city of Montpellier has unleashed widespread flooding, which local officials say could be the worst they have seen in 30 years.
Severe weather warnings remain in place in the Hérault region, including in the city of Montpellier seen hereImage: Sylvain Thomas/AFP
Torrential rains set off “exceptional flooding” near the French city of Montpellier, local authorities said on Wednesday.
The floodwaters appear to be receding, but weather alerts are to remain in place until December 24.
No casualties have been reported so far.
What we know about the flooding in southern France
Almost 1,000 homes were left without electricity on Monday evening in the department of Hérault on the south coast, including 520 in Montpellier where parks, gardens, cemeteries, the local zoo and the Christmas market remain closed.
Public transport routes were partly closed off, too, and the prefect of Hérault, Chantal Mauchet, said getting around the region remained difficult.
The highest water levels in the region were recorded just to the south of Montpellier in the coastal town of Agde, where the River Hérault reached more than 11 feet, leading to what forecasters said was likely the worst flooding the region had experienced since November 1994.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s charity is down to just two employees ahead of its much-publicized rebrand — as the couple is desperate to save cash, multiple sources told Page Six.
“Harry and Meghan have been forced to downsize the staff as it was costing them so much,” said one source.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced last week that their Archewell Foundation will become Archewell Philanthropies, claiming that “moving to a ‘philanthropies’ model signals something designed to grow and evolve over time, with more flexibility and less administrative burden.”
But we’re told Harry and Markle have, in fact, spent the past few months in deep discussion about the charity’s future as it has struggled with funding.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s charity is down to just two employees ahead of its much-publicized rebrand — as the couple is desperate to save cash, multiple sources told Page Six. Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock
“The big question was, would Archewell close, or would another charity take it over?” the source said. “Harry and Meghan were looking to get a fiscal sponsor, someone to take on the outgoing costs and to keep things cheap.
“Really, it’s all smoke and mirrors.”
Page Six can confirm that three members — 60 percent of the charity’s staff — have been let go.
Only Executive Director James Holt, who’s been with the couple since they were working royals in Britain, and Vice-President of Philanthropy Shauna Nep will remain with the re-branded charity.
A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Markle said, “Currently, the same full team remain in place. This move does mean that some staff redundancies are inevitable, particularly with junior admin roles.”
Earlier this year, Page Six reported that the couple had cut ties with six personal employees as they focused on saving cash — and as their security bill is said to be around $2 million a year.
And new tax information reveals that money is flowing out of their charity.
Archewell recorded total expenses of $5.1 million, according to its latest 990 form, made public Friday.
Salaries for 2024 were listed at $913,000 — and expenses were up 54 percent year over year, soaring from $3.3 million. This may relate to the couple’s quasi royal tours of Nigeria and Colombia in 2024, as “other expenses” are recorded at $2.9 million; in 2023, that category totaled $1 million.
Meanwhile, donations and grants to the group dropped from $5.3 million in 2023 to $2.1 million in 2024.
Insiders are skeptical of how Archewell, which doled out $1.25 million in grants in 2024, can continue.
“If they’re shooting out grants, then that’s a net loss and they’re not bringing in that much money,” said the source.
Liev Schreiber flaunted his fit physique during a family getaway to Barbados following his mystery hospitalization.
During a family vacation in Barbados, the actor strolled along the beach on Tuesday wearing green swim trunks with a tropical pattern.
In photos obtained by Page Six, he was also spotted with two of his three kids Sasha, 18, and Kai, 17, and one of their friends before they hopped on a boat for water sports.
Liev Schreiber flaunted his fit physique during a family getaway to Barbados after his mystery hospitalization. @CHRISBRANDIS / BACKGRID
Schreiber, 58, was in high spirits as he went water skiing and enjoyed a boat day with his children.
The family vacation comes several weeks after the “Ray Donovan” star was hospitalized in New York City after experiencing a “massive headache.”
A source told TMZ that Schreiber’s doctor advised him to “immediately” seek medical help and stay overnight at the hospital for monitoring.
“Out of an abundance of caution, Liev went into the hospital for testing,” a rep for the actor told Page Six on Nov. 17. “And as of this afternoon, he has been cleared to return to work.”
Three days after his hospitalization, the director was spotted walking home in NYC with his wife, Taylor Neisen.
He appeared cheerful as he carried a few shopping bags and chatted with Neisen, who was smiling and walking their dog.
Bangladesh’s finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed moved for reconciliation as ties between Delhi and Dhaka seemed to be in a free fall. He said that the head of the interim administration, Muhammad Yunus, was personally working to mend India-Bangladesh ties.
The administration of Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh has decided to import 50,000 metric tonnes of rice from India.
The Bangladesh interim administration has no intention of allowing relations with India to turn bitter and is instead focused on strengthening bilateral ties and ensuring economic stability, Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed said on Tuesday. These were the first words aimed at reconciliation even as protests, cancellation of visa services and protests threatened to plunge the ties between India and Bangladesh to a new low. He said the head of the interim administration, Muhammad Yunus, was personally working to normalise ties.
Suspension of consular and visa services by Bangladesh and statements by Bangladeshi officials and leaders targeting India added to the chill in ties. As the historical relations between the two countries were in a free fall, the public remarks from finance adviser Ahmed seemed to be an olive branch. In the interim set-up, the finance adviser is functioning as the finance minister.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the Advisory Council Committee on Government Procurement at the Secretariat, Ahmed stated, “The current interim government does not want any kind of bitter relationship with a big neighbour like India. Rather, the government’s main goal is to further develop bilateral relations and maintain economic stability.”
He noted that Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus was personally working to ease existing tensions and normalise ties with New Delhi. The interim regime, he said, does not want relations with India to deteriorate under any circumstances, reported Dhaka-based Bangla daily Desh Rupantor.
Addressing recent anti-India remarks heard in some quarters, the Bangladesh finance adviser said these were political in nature and had no involvement of the interim administration. Regardless of political rhetoric, he stressed that the Yunus administration remained committed to maintaining stable state-to-state relations with India.
BANGLADESH TO IMPORT RICE FROM INDIA, BOOST ECONOMIC TIES
Ahmed also stated that the current political situation would not disrupt trade or economic cooperation. He confirmed that Bangladesh had decided to import 50,000 metric tonnes of rice from India, describing the move as a step that would further strengthen economic ties. He added that there would be no barriers to importing essential commodities, reported Dhaka-based Bangla daily Desh Rupantor.
Dhaka-based daily The Daily Star reported that the Yunus administration is also going to buy an additional 50,000 metric tonnes of rice from Pakistan.
He said the administration would not be drawn into any attempts by third parties to provoke or damage relations with India. The interim administration, Ahmed added, was handling the situation cautiously and aimed to advance bilateral relations by prioritising national interests.
His remarks came as India-Bangladesh diplomatic ties declined following the outbreak of anti-India protests after the assassination of anti-India radical leader Osman Hadi, who was contesting as an independent candidate from the Dhaka-8 seat.
The aftermath of his death saw radical protestors and extremists targeting Indian diplomatic missions in different Bangladeshi cities, leading to India temporarily suspending visa services in the country.
The US Homeland Security will replace the H-1B visa lottery programme with a wage-weighted system from 2026, prioritising higher-paid and higher-skilled applicants while keeping visa caps unchanged to curb abuse and protect American workers.
The new rule will prioritise higher-paid and higher-skilled workers.
The US government has decided to replace the longstanding H-1B lottery system programme for visas with a new scheme that ensures that skilled, higher-paid foreign workers are prioritised. The new rule is set to take effect on February 27, 2026, and will apply to the 2027 financial year cap registration season, with registrations expected in March 2026 for jobs starting October 1 that year.
The number of H-1B visas issued annually will remain unchanged, capped at 65,000 under the regular quota, with an additional 20,000 reserved for holders of US advanced degrees.
Under the revised framework, registrations will no longer be picked at random. Instead, they will be weighted by employer and wage level, a move designed to discourage duplicate filings and manipulation of the system. Applications offering higher wages will receive stronger odds of selection, while lower-paid roles will still be eligible but face reduced chances.
The change is particularly significant for Indian applicants, who make up a large share of H-1B approvals each year, and comes as US authorities step up efforts to tighten compliance and curb misuse of employment-based visas.
“On Dec 23, DHS (Department of Homeland Security) announced a final rule to amend regulations governing the process by which USCIS selects H-1B registrations for unique beneficiaries for filing of H-1B cap-subject petitions. The rule implements a weighted selection process that will favor allocating H-1B visas to higher-skilled and higher-paid aliens while maintaining the opportunity for employers to secure H-1B workers at all wage levels.This final rule is effective Feb 27, 2026, and will be in place for the FY 2027 H-1B cap registration season,” a statement from the US government read.
The DHS said the rule is intended to strike a balance — tightening protections for US workers while preserving access to foreign professionals in fields such as technology, engineering and healthcare, where demand continues to exceed supply.
According to the department, the change is part of a broader push to reinforce the integrity of the H-1B visa programme by discouraging misuse and tightening eligibility standards. It aligns with other measures introduced by President Donald Trump’s administration, including a presidential proclamation that requires certain employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa as a condition for participation – which has created a massive stir since the announcement.
“The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by US employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,” said Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The new system, he said, would “better serve Congress’s intent” and strengthen US competitiveness by incentivising employers to seek higher-skilled talent.
“We will continue to demand more from both employers and aliens so as not to undercut American workers and to put America first,” Tragesser said, adding that further changes could follow as the system’s impact is reviewed.
The overhaul follows years of criticism that the H-1B lottery had become vulnerable to gaming, with some employers flooding the system with low-wage applications.
Officials said the weighted approach is expected to push companies to rethink hiring strategies, rewarding higher wages and specialised roles while making it harder for low-paid applications to dominate the H-1B pipeline.
Indian EB visa holders in the US waiting for Green Cards have a new narrow window to file their permanent residency applications after a new USCIS bulletin. The USCIS January 2026 bulletin advanced the date of several EB visa categories. Lawyers and experts are calling for eligible applicants to avail this rare opportunity without delay.
The USCIS January 2026 bulletin advanced the date of several EB visa categories, with the biggest gains seen in EB-1 and EB-5 for Indian applicants. (Image: File)
Indian professionals waiting in long US Green Card queues have received a new opening after two back-to-back announcements from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The January 2026 visa bulletin showed sharp forward movement in several employment-based categories, with the biggest gains seen in EB-1 and EB-5 for Indian applicants. This comes after the December 2025 visa bulletin that had already advanced the dates for several EB category visas. Soon after, the USCIS confirmed that applicants could file permanent residency applications using either the Final Action Dates chart or the Dates for Filing chart.
Immigration attorneys say the combination has created a rare opportunity for many applicants who were previously shut out. By allowing filings under either chart, the USCIS has widened eligibility to include professionals whose priority dates are still not current under Final Action Dates. Experts are urging those who qualify to move fast, warning that such windows tend to be brief.
The January bulletin reflects progress across almost all employment-based categories. EB-1 advanced by nearly a year for Indians, while EB-5 jumped by close to two years. EB-2 and EB-3 also moved forward, offering some relief to applicants from heavily backlogged countries such as India and China.
Michael Valverde, founder of True North Pathways LLC and a former USCIS official, told the American Bazaar that the scale of the advancement was unexpected. He believes the agency may be trying to increase filings because it does not see enough cases in the pipeline to fully use available visas. Longer processing times and higher denial rates have also weighed on overall visa usage, he noted.
He said, “I would advise anyone who is now able to file their green card application to take advantage of the moment. Historically, big steps forward like this have often come with retrogression later in the year. You don’t want to miss the opportunity,” as reported in the American Bazaar.
Despite the optimism, lawyers cautioned against delays. Historically, large advances are often followed by retrogression later in the year.
January will be crucial because the filing window runs from January 1 to January 31. Applicants must ensure that paperwork is complete, including medical examinations, which the USCIS now requires to be filed at the same time as the I-485, or Application to Register Permanent Residence.
Sangeetha Mugunthan of Somireddy Law Group PLLC speaking to the American Bazaar said that this moment, especially with renewed momentum in both EB-1 and investor visa EB-5 categories, demands careful preparation. She advised applicants to review their professional record, identify their strengths, and thoroughly document achievements to build a strong case.
She stated, “Individuals need to initially invest time in looking back at their professional trajectory, focus on their niche areas of expertise, and list out their key achievements and contributions. It is also extremely important to carefully document everything and strongly develop their EB-1A case.”
Military vehicles carrying DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles travel past Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th founding anniversary of People’s Republic of China, on its National Day in Beijing, China October 1, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
China is likely to have loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles across its latest three silo fields and has no desire for arms control talks, according to a draft Pentagon report which highlighted Beijing’s growing military ambitions.
China is expanding and modernizing its weapons stockpile faster than any other nuclear-armed power, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a Chicago-based non-profit. Beijing has described reports of a military buildup as efforts to “smear and defame China and deliberately mislead the international community.”
Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he may be working on a plan to denuclearize with China and Russia. But the draft Pentagon report, which was seen by Reuters, said Beijing did not appear to be interested.
“We continue to see no appetite from Beijing for pursuing such measures or more comprehensive arms control discussions,” the report said.
In particular, the report said that China had likely put in more than 100 solid-fuelled DF-31 ICBMs in silo fields close to China’s border with Mongolia – the latest in a series of silo sites. The Pentagon had previously reported the existence of the fields but not the number of missiles loaded.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
China’s embassy in Washington D.C. said China has “maintained a defensive nuclear strategy, kept its nuclear forces at the minimum level required for national security, and abided by its commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing.”
The draft Pentagon report did not identify any potential target of the reported newly placed missiles. U.S. officials noted that the report could change before it was sent to lawmakers.
The report said China’s nuclear warhead stockpile was still in the low 600s in 2024, which reflected “a slower rate of production when compared to previous years.”
But the report added that China’s nuclear expansion was ongoing and it was on track to have over 1,000 warheads by 2030.
China has said it adheres to a “nuclear strategy of self-defense and pursues a no-first-use policy.”
Trump has said he wants the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing, but it is unclear what form that will take.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden and Trump, during his first term, sought to engage China and Russia in negotiations on replacing New START with a three-way strategic nuclear arms control treaty.
The wide-ranging Pentagon report detailed China’s military buildup and said that “China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has never renounced use of force to “reunify” with the island.
Beijing was refining its military options to take Taiwan by “brute force,” the report said, adding that one option could include strikes 1,500-2,000 nautical miles from China.
“In sufficient volume, these strikes could seriously challenge and disrupt U.S. presence in or around a conflict in the Asia-Pacific region,” it added.
The report comes less than two months before the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty, the last U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control accord, which limits the sides to deploying 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads on 700 delivery systems.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Biden extended the pact for five years in February 2021, but its terms do not allow for a further formal extension.
Many experts fear that the expiration of the pact could fuel a three-way nuclear arms race.
“More nuclear weapons and an absence of diplomacy will not make anyone safer, neither China, Russia, or the United States,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association advocacy group.
Newspapers with articles reporting U.S. President Donald Trump’s message to Nigeria over the treatment of Christians hang at a newspaper stand in Ojuelegba, Lagos, Nigeria November 2, 2025. REUTERS/Sodiq Adelakun/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
The U.S. has been conducting intelligence-gathering flights over large parts of Nigeria since late November, according to flight tracking data and current and former U.S. officials, in a sign of increased security cooperation between the countries.
Reuters could not determine what information the flights are meant to obtain.
But the flights in West Africa follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats in November to militarily intervene in Nigeria over what he says is its failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities. The flights also are occurring just months after a U.S. pilot working for a missionary agency was kidnapped in neighboring Niger.
The U.S. contractor-operated aircraft used for the surveillance operations typically takes off from Ghana and flies over Nigeria before returning to Accra, the Ghanaian capital, the tracking data for December shows.
Flight tracking data shows the operator is Mississippi-based Tenax Aerospace, which provides special mission aircraft and works closely with the U.S. military, according to the company’s website. Tenax Aerospace did not respond to a request for comment.
Liam Karr, the Africa Team Lead for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, has analyzed the flight data. He said the operation appeared to be running out of an airport in Accra, a known hub for the U.S. military’s logistics network in Africa.
Karr said the operation was an early sign the U.S. was rebuilding its capacity in the region after Niger ordered U.S. troops to leave a sprawling, newly built air base in the desert last year, and turned instead to Russia for security assistance.
“In recent weeks we’ve seen a resumption of intelligence and surveillance flights in Nigeria,” Karr said in an interview.
A former U.S. official said the aircraft is among several assets the Trump administration moved to Ghana in November. It is unclear how many aircraft remain in Ghana, but the former official said the missions include tracking down the kidnapped U.S. pilot and gathering intelligence on militant groups operating in Nigeria. Boko Haram and its splinter organization, Islamic State West Africa Province, are among the militant groups operating in Nigeria.
A current U.S. official confirmed the aircraft has been flying over Nigeria but declined to provide details given the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.
A separate administration official said Washington was continuing to work with Nigeria to “address religious violence, anti-Christian attacks, and the destabilizing spread of terrorism.”
The former U.S. official and the current administration officials all spoke on condition of anonymity.
In a statement, the Pentagon said the U.S. government held productive meetings with Nigeria following Trump’s message about the country, but declined to discuss intelligence matters.
Nigeria’s military spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Ghana’s deputy defense minister also did not respond to a request for comment.
DAILY SURVEILLANCE FLIGHTS
Nigeria’s government has said armed groups target both Muslims and Christians and that U.S. claims that Christians face persecution do not represent a complex security situation and ignore efforts to safeguard religious freedom. But it has agreed to work with the U.S. to bolster its forces against militant groups.
The country’s population is split between Muslims living primarily in the north and Christians in the south.
A Nigerian security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. agreed in a November 20 meeting between Nigerian National Security Advisor Nuhu Ribadu and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy air assets to gather intelligence. A spokesperson for the Nigerian military did not respond to requests for comment.
The Tenax Aerospace aircraft was seen on November 7 by flight tracking data at MacDill Air Force Base, which is home to the headquarters of the United States Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida. It flew to Ghana on November 24, just days after the high-level meeting between U.S. and Nigerian security officials, according to flight tracking data.
The data shows the aircraft has flown over Nigeria almost daily since the start of the operation. The aircraft is a Gulfstream V, a long-range business jet often modified for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, according to the data.
Australia’s most populous state is set to pass tougher gun laws, ban the display of terrorist symbols and curb protests in an emergency sitting following the Bondi mass shooting, as authorities stepped up their response to the antisemitic attack.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on December 14, a shock attack that prompted calls for tougher gun laws and stronger action against antisemitism.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said earlier on Tuesday his government would address hate speech and gun control, working with the states on new laws.
The terrorism and other legislation amendment bill is expected to clear the upper house of the New South Wales parliament on Tuesday.
The state’s centre-left Labor government has proposed capping most individual gun licences at four firearms with farmers allowed as many as 10.
Police said one of the alleged Bondi gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by officers at the scene, owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed, who was transferred from hospital to prison on Monday, faces 59 charges, including murder and terrorism.
GOVERNMENT TACKLES HATE SPEECH
A Muslim prayer hall previously linked by a court to a cleric who made statements intimidating Jewish Australians was shut on Monday by local authorities, a move described by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns as an “important step” for the community.
Minns said authorities “need to make decisive steps, whether its through planning law or hate speech [law], to send the message to those who are intent on putting hate in people’s heart or spreading racism in our community that they will be met with the full force of the law.”
The Canterbury Bankstown Council said on Tuesday it had issued a “cease use” directive to shut down an “illegal prayer hall” run by cleric Wissam Haddad after surveillance of the Al Madina Dawah Centre showed the premises was being used in violation of planning laws.
People attend the ‘Light Over Darkness’ vigil honouring victims and survivors of a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on December 14, in Sydney, Australia, December 21, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams Purchase Licensing Rights
An official at the centre told Reuters by telephone that Haddad was no longer involved in managing the centre.
The Al Madina Dawah centre said in a statement on social media on December 15 that Haddad’s involvement was “limited to occasional invitations as a guest speaker, including delivering lectures, and at times Friday sermons”.
A source close to Haddad, who declined to be named, also told Reuters the preacher was no longer involved in the management of the centre.
Haddad denies any involvement or knowledge of what happened in Bondi, the source added.
ALBANESE CALLS ISRAEL’S HERZOG
Albanese called Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday to express shock and dismay at the attack on the Australian Jewish community, Albanese’s official social media account said, adding Australia would invite Herzog to make an official visit as soon as possible.
Herzog conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims and said he would accept the invitation, the president’s office said in a statement.
“President Herzog underscored the importance of taking all legal measures to combat the unprecedented rise in antisemitism, extremism, and jihadist terror,” the Israeli statement added.
The H-1B visa programme is used extensively by American technology companies to employ foreign workers. Indian professionals, including technology workers and physicians, form one of the largest groups of H-1B visa holders.
Hundreds of Indian immigrants are facing visa delays due to new US policies.
The United States has announced that it is “expanding” the online presence reviews to all H-1B and H-4 applicants as part of its standard visa screening, and the social media vetting is being conducted globally for “all applicants of all nationalities” for the two visa categories. In a brief statement, the US Embassy in India asked applicants to apply “as early as they can” and anticipate additional processing time for these visa classifications.
The statement comes at a time when pre-scheduled interviews of thousands of H-1B visa applicants scheduled for later this month in India are being abruptly postponed by several months.
“WORLDWIDE ALERT FOR H-1B AND H-4 VISA APPLICANTS. Beginning December 15, the Department of State expanded online presence reviews to ALL H-1B and H-4 applicants as part of standard visa screening. This vetting is being conducted globally for ALL applicants of ALL nationalities for H1-B and H-4 visas (sic),” the US Embassy said in a post on X.
Amid the hardship faced by many of these visa applicants, the embassy said the move was being implemented as an effort to address abuse of the H-1B programme while still permitting companies to hire the best of the best temporary foreign workers.
“US embassies and consulates continue to accept and process H-1B and H-4 non-immigrant visa applications. We encourage applicants to apply as early as they can and anticipate additional processing time for these visa classifications,” it added.
WORLDWIDE ALERT FOR H-1B AND H-4 VISA APPLICANTS
Beginning December 15, the Department of State expanded online presence reviews to ALL H-1B and H-4 applicants as part of standard visa screening. This vetting is being conducted globally for ALL applicants of ALL nationalities… pic.twitter.com/qMrMrOvqy0
Significance of the H-1B Visa for Indian Professionals
The H-1B visa programme is used extensively by American technology companies to employ foreign workers. Indian professionals, including technology workers and physicians, form one of the largest groups of H-1B visa holders.
The brief statement also comes at a time when the US has launched a crackdown to check abuse of the H-1B visa programme, as well as illegal immigration.
Hundreds of Indian immigrants are facing visa delays due to new US policies. The rescheduling of interviews is for all applicants who were previously scheduled from December 15 onwards. The mass cancellation of scheduled interviews for H-1B visa applicants, in view of the enhanced vetting measures, is set to result in significant delays in their return to the US.
A large number of applicants have already arrived in India and are now unable to return to the US since they don’t have a valid H1B visa to travel back to the US for their jobs. For example, those whose interviews were scheduled for December 15 had received emails postponing the date to sometime in March. Applicants whose appointments were scheduled for December 19 were given new dates in late May.
America’s Visa Warnings
The US Embassy, through many posts on X in the past several months, has underlined that a US visa is “a privilege, not a right.”
On June 19, it wrote in a post, “A US visa is a privilege, not a right. US visa screening does not stop after a visa is issued – and we may revoke your visa if you break the law.”
On June 23, the US Embassy had asked those applying for an F, M, or J non-immigrant visa to switch the privacy settings of their social media accounts to “public” to facilitate vetting, which it said was necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the US under law.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh had on December 18 said that the US Administration has recently announced that every visa adjudication is a national security decision. The US has also clarified that a US visa is a privilege, not a right, he said.
Sydney’s Bondi Beach saw a deadly mass shooting during Hanukkah. Usman Khawaja’s family faced Islamophobic abuse, prompting calls for unity against racism and antisemitism.
Usman Khawaja’s family faced online abuse (Instagram)
Australia was in shock following one of its deadliest mass shootings in nearly thirty years, which occurred at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14. During a Hanukkah celebration, fifteen people were killed when two gunmen, Sajeed Akram and his son Naveed, opened fire on the crowd. The tragedy sent ripples of grief and condemnation throughout the country and drew solidarity from various communities worldwide.
In the midst of national mourning, the family of Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja, who is participating in the Ashes series, faced a surge of online abuse. Khawaja, a prominent Muslim athlete, has not addressed the hateful comments publicly, but his wife Rachel Khawaja shared the disturbing messages they received. “I’ve collected a small sample of some of the comments we have received over the past week,” she posted. “I would love to say this is new, but sadly we have always received these kinds of messages. But of course, they have gotten worse.”
The abuse extended beyond the couple, targeting their children with particularly offensive language. Messages referred to their daughters as “future school blasters” and “cancer terr***** blood”, while others demanded they “go home” to Pakistan. These remarks highlighted how grief and fear can quickly turn into Islamophobia and racism.
Rachel Khawaja called for unity and collective responsibility during this tense time. “It is important now more than ever that we continue to come together and stay united,” she stated. “Whether it’s standing up against antisemitism, Islamophobia, or racism, we shouldn’t stand for any of it.”
Usman Khawaja had earlier expressed his sorrow over the attack, posting a heartfelt message to those affected. “To the whole Bondi and Jewish community. Two horrible crimes in two years. Truly devastating news from Bondi today,” he wrote, accompanied by a broken-heart emoji. “Lives lost senselessly, families shattered, the Bondi community traumatised. There are no words-only heartbreak. My thoughts and prayers are with all affected.”
Khawaja also shared a statement from the Jewish Council of Australia, which voiced its devastation following the shooting. “We are horrified and shaken in the wake of the mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Bondi this evening, which has left at least 10 people dead and injured many more,” the council stated.
Just a timely call could have saved the life of 27-year-old Hindu man Dipu Chandra Das, who was lynched by Islamists in Bangladesh. Investigators and reports have revealed that Das was forced to resign by his factory colleagues and handed over to the mob that broke into the factory to drag him out. He was brutally beaten to death and his body was set on fire.
Bangladeshi Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was lynched by an Islamist mob, after which his body was tied and set on fire. (Images: Social Media/India Today)
Just a timely call from the factory management to the police could have saved the life of Bangladeshi Hindu man Dipu Chandra Das, who was lynched and killed on Thursday (December 16) following vague allegations of blasphemy. But instead of calling the police and saving him, Das was forced to resign by his factory supervisors, pushed out of his workplace, and handed over to an enraged mob of Islamists that beat him to death, hung his body and set fire to it. His colleagues reportedly joined the mob in killing him.
Shocking details have emerged in the lynching of 27-year-old Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu garment factory worker in Bhaluka, Mymensingh, who was killed over unverified blasphemy claims. According to Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and police officials, Dipu was forced to resign by factory supervisors and then handed over to the mob, which brutally assaulted and killed him, hung his body on the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway, and set fire to it, according to reports in Bangladeshi media outlets.
Authorities said that no clear evidence had been found to substantiate the blasphemy allegations. A total of 12 people have been arrested so far, including factory officials and workers, after CCTV footage and videos of the incident were reviewed.
But investigators suggest the killing of Dipu Chandra Das was far from a sudden flare-up. It bore clear signs of planning. Spanning several hours, the sequence — from a forced resignation and delayed police alert to his eventual handover to an Islamist mob — points to a deliberate chain of actions rather than an impulsive act of violence.
Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen on X suggested that the police might have been involved in Das’s lynching and questioned who will bring the perpetrators of the murder to justice.
Dipu, married three years ago, leaves behind a one-and-a-half-year-old child.
The lynching occurred hours before widespread riots, protests, and violence by Islamists erupted in Bangladesh on Thursday, immediately after news of the anti-India radical leader Sharif Osman Hadi broke the same night. However, the mayhem that erupted across Bangladesh on Thursday night and continued on Friday, was the culmination of a series of anti-India remarks by multiple leaders, operating with impunity under the Islamist-backed Muhammad Yunus regime. During the violent protests, Indian diplomatic missions were targeted amid a wave of anti-India protests.
BANGLADESH HINDU MAN WAS FORCED TO RESIGN, THEN HANDED OVER TO ISLAMIST MOB
At a press conference in Mymensingh on Saturday, RAB-14 commander Naimul Hasan said the violence began inside the factory itself.
“The incident began around 4 pm. The factory floor in-charge forced him to resign and handed him over to an enraged mob… We arrested two factory officials because they did not hand him over to the police and failed to ensure his safety,” Naimul Hasan was quoted as saying by Dhaka-based Prothom Alo.
Those arrested by the RAB include Mohammad Alamgir Hossain, the factory’s floor in-charge, Mohammad Miraj Hossain Akon, the quality in-charge, and five factory workers. Three more individuals were arrested separately by the police.
“As it was the time for shift change, workers for another shift also gathered in front of the factory and local people joined as the news spread outside,” reported The Daily Star.
“Around 8:45pm, the agitated people entered the factory, breaking open its pocket gate and took Dipu away from the security room, alleged the senior manager,” it reported.
The report and the arrests make it evident that Das’s colleagues from the factory were part of the mob that lynched him, hung his body and set fire to it.
BLASPHEMY CLAIMS ON BANGLADESH HINDU MAN VAGUE, NO EVIDENCE FOUND: AUTHORITIES
The RAB officials said the allegations that triggered the killing remain unclear.
“The issue of blasphemy is extremely vague. We tried to find out what he had actually said, but no one could clarify it,” Naimul Hasan said.
He further added, “We are investigating whether there was any prior enmity. It has not yet been possible to identify with whom the incident initially began”.
Rab officials confirmed arrests were made after reviewing video evidence and said further details would emerge following remand interrogation.
Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star reported that the incident coincided with the time for a shift change, when workers from the incoming shift gathered outside the factory, and local residents also assembled as news of the incident spread. Around 8:45 pm, agitated people broke open the pocket gate of the factory and took Dipu from the security room, where he was sheltered for safety.
Factory sources told the newspaper that Dipu was then dragged out of the premises, after which locals joined the assault, killing him on the spot and later setting his body on fire.
JUST A TIMELY CALL COULD HAVE SAVED BANGLADESHI HINDU MAN: POLICE
Police said factory authorities informed them of the escalating incident too late, despite the situation worsening for hours.
“I was informed about the incident around 8.00 pm. Immediately, we started running towards the spot, but it was too late,” Md Farhad Hossain Khan, the superintendent of Industrial Police in Mymensingh told The Daily Star.
Describing the scene, he added, “Hundreds of people were on the road. When we reached the factory gate, we saw the body being carried by a furious mob towards the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway”.
A massive traffic jam delayed law enforcement further. “A 10-kilometre traffic jam was created for nearly three hours, seriously obstructing our movement, Md Farhad Hossain Khan added.
“Just a timely call could have saved Dipu’s life,” the SP said pointedly.
FACTORY’S DEFENCE AND CONTRADICTIONS BANGLADESHI HINDU MAN’S BRUTAL KILLING
Factory officials have denied negligence, even as accounts differ sharply from law enforcement findings.
Sakib Mahmud, the senior manager of Pioneer Knitwears (BD) Ltd, where Dipu Chandra Das was employed, said, “A group of workers started protesting inside the factory around 5 pm, accusing Dipu of hurting religious sentiments”.
He, however, admitted that “There was no proof of the allegations [of blasphemy]”.
According to him, a “fake resignation” was arranged around 7.30 pm to pacify the Islamist mob that was going after Dipu’s life. But the agitating workers did not bother, said Mahmud, according to The Daily Star.
Factory sources claimed Dipu was kept in a security room and police were informed at 8.00 pm, but by 8.45 pm, the agitated Islamists entered the factory, broke open the pocket gate, and took Dipu away.
Dipu was handed over to the mob despite it being clear he would be killed to save the factory from any attack.
“When the situation became volatile, he was forcibly pushed out of the factory to protect the factory,” said Rab-14 company commander Md Samsuzzaman, adding, “No evidence was found that he wrote anything on Facebook that hurt religious sentiments”.
BRUTAL KILLING OF BANGLADESHI HINDU MAN AND AFTERMATH
According to police and local sources, Dipu was beaten to death, his naked body hung at a highway median, and then set on fire.
After a post-mortem at Mymensingh Medical College, his body was cremated late Friday night.
While it was alleged that Dipu made derogatory remarks, there is no evidence, the police said. Even if he had said something, it could have been handled legally, Dipu’s younger brother, Opu Chandra Das, who filed the case, said.
“Even if he had said something, and it was an offence, the matter could have been dealt with through legal channels. Instead, he was brutally murdered. I demand the terrorists who killed him by making false allegations be brought to book. At the same time, the question of how his family will survive must also be addressed,” Opu told Prothom Alo.
Nuclear reform opens India’s nuclear sector to foreign firms, but critics highlight safety and supply chain gaps.
India is on track to meet and exceed its pledge to reduce emission intensity by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030Image: Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo/picture alliance
Last week, India’s parliament approved legislation that opens nuclear power generation to private and foreign companies.
The landmark Atomic Energy Act marks a significant government shift as India moves towards increased nuclear energy and reduced dependence on fossil fuels in order to meet climate targets.
India is seeking to boost its nuclear power capacity tenfold to 100 gigawatts by 2047, which would be enough to power nearly 60 million Indian homes annually and is essential to achieving carbon neutrality by 2070.
Reaching this target requires around 20 trillion Indian rupees ($226 billion, or €193 billion) in investment that the new legislation aims to unlock from private sources.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it “marks a transformational moment for our technology landscape” and also opens “numerous opportunities” for the private sector.
Major Indian conglomerates, including Tata Power, Adani Power and Reliance Industries, have already signaled their interest in entering the country’s tightly controlled civil nuclear power sector.
Nuclear reform spurs safety concerns
Alongside the government optimism, many experts warn of potential challenges, ranging from liability caps and regulatory oversight to safety standards, which could complicate India’s nuclear power ambitions.
Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian envoy to Pakistan, said the legislation removes the legal barriers that kept US and French companies out since 2010, enabling India to diversify beyond Russia.
“This reform moves India-US nuclear cooperation from political signaling to commercial reality. Joint statements on large reactors and SMRs [small modular reactors] can now translate into actual projects, with improved Indo-US relations expected in 2026 providing further momentum,” Bisaria told DW.
“Licensing timelines, localization requirements, nuclear material safeguards for imported fuel, financing constraints and questions about regulatory capacity are issues.”
US interest questioned in India’s nuclear shift
Opposition parties have alleged India’s new legislation — dubbed “SHANTI” (meaning “peace” in Hindi), an acronym for Sustainable Harnessing of Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India — was expedited to meet US demands.
The Indian reform coincides with US President Donald Trump signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 18.
The NDAA, a sweeping defense policy bill, includes provisions mandating a joint US-India consultative mechanism to align New Delhi’s domestic nuclear liability rules with international norms.
India balances safety with investment push
Jairam Ramesh, a senior member of India’s main opposition Indian National Congress party, claimed that recent changes to the country’s nuclear liability framework were pushed through Parliament to align domestic law with US interests.
The Indian government maintains that the country’s energy security needs and clean energy commitments are driving the nuclear reform.
Sameer Patil, director of the security, strategy and technology center at the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank, said that the policy shift is a necessary structural reform to unlock private investment for India’s nuclear ambitions.
“However, there are several challenges, such as the lack of indigenous supply of fuel supplies being a chief concern. This makes the sector and country vulnerable to vagaries of geopolitics,” Patil told DW.
“The question of safety and oversight, frankly, in my opinion, is a trade-off between incentivizing commercial participation and imposing reasonable safeguards.”
Patil noted the nuclear legislation’s current provisions may seem inadequate given the possible damage from a nuclear accident, but they are sufficient to keep private companies interested in India’s nuclear expansion plans.
Skepticism over private sector role
However, a government official familiar with the nuclear sector, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed skepticism.
“India’s nuclear industry has consistently missed targets, and the private sector’s track record of abandoning high-risk ventures like gas and hydro raises questions about sustaining capital-intensive nuclear commitments with weakened liability protections,” the official told DW.
Anil Wadhwa, a former diplomat with extensive experience in nuclear and disarmament issues, told DW that India faces implementation challenges to realize its ambitious goal.
“Supply-side issues include poor domestic uranium quality, the need for skilled workforce development, and insufficient manufacturing capacity for reactor components,” said Wadhwa.
Safety caps and supply gaps under fire
Wadhwa said that debates were continuing around critical issues.
“Whether liability caps of 15 billion Indian rupees ($168 million, €143 million) are adequate for major accidents, whether the regulatory body, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, has sufficient independence from government, and how to properly balance commercial incentives with safety standards,” queried Wadhwa.
Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011 cost over $200 billion in cleanup and compensation, more than 1,200 times India’s proposed liability cap.
Emergency personnel rush a victim of a small plane crash to an awaiting ambulance on Dec 22, 2025, near the Galveston causeway, near Galveston, Texas. (Photo: AP/Jennifer Reynolds)
A small Mexican Navy plane transporting a 1-year-old medical patient along with seven others, crashed on Monday (Dec 22) near Galveston, killing at least two people, officials said.
Emergency officials rescued four people and were searching for two who were inside the aircraft, Mexico’s Navy said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Four of the people aboard were Navy officers and four were civilians, according to the Navy. It was not immediately clear which ones were missing and which had been killed.
Two of the people aboard were members of the Michou and Mau Foundation, which is a nonprofit that provides aid to Mexican children who have suffered severe burns.
The crash took place on Monday near the base of a causeway near Galveston, along the Texas coast about 80.5km southeast of Houston.
Mexico’s Navy said in a statement that the plane was helping with a medical mission and had an “accident”. It promised to investigate the cause of the crash.
The Navy is helping local authorities with the search and rescue operation, it said in a post on the social media platform X.
Teams from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board have arrived at the scene of the crash, the Texas Department of Public Safety said on X.
The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said officials from its dive team, crime scene unit, drone unit and patrol were responding to the crash.
“The incident remains under investigation, and additional information will be released as it becomes available,” the sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook, adding that the public should avoid the area so emergency responders can work safely.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the US “needs” Greenland for security reasons and has refused to rule out using force to secure it.
US President Donald Trump and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry attend an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Mar 24, 2025. (File photo: AFP/Brendan Smialowski)
Denmark summoned the United States ambassador on Monday (Dec 22) after US President Donald Trump appointed a special envoy to Greenland who immediately vowed to make the Danish autonomous territory “a part of the US”.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly said the US “needs” the resource-rich Arctic island for security reasons and has refused to rule out using force to secure it.
On Sunday, Trump appointed Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Monday he was “deeply angered” by the move and warned Washington to respect Denmark’s sovereignty.
The European Union later offered its “full solidarity” to Denmark.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said Landry understood “how essential Greenland is to our national security, and will strongly advance our country’s interests for the safety, security, and survival of our allies, and indeed, the world”.
Landry responded directly to Trump in a post on X: “It’s an honour to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US”.
The Danish foreign minister told TV2 television the appointment and statements were “totally unacceptable” and, several hours later, said the US ambassador had been called up to the ministry for an explanation.
“We summoned the American ambassador to the foreign ministry today for a meeting, together with the Greenlandic representative, where we very clearly drew a red line and also asked for an explanation,” Lokke Rasmussen told public broadcaster DR in an interview.
Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a joint statement: “You cannot annex another country.
“We expect respect for our joint territorial integrity.”
In a Facebook post addressed to Greenlanders, Nielsen said the appointment of a US special envoy had not changed anything for Greenlanders.
“We will determine our future ourselves. Greenland is our country,” he wrote, adding: “Greenland belongs to Greenlanders”.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Antonio Costa stressed on social media that territorial integrity and sovereignty were “fundamental principles of international law”.
“These principles are essential not only for the European Union but for nations around the world. We stand in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland,” they wrote on X.
“SHOW RESPECT”
Most of Greenland’s 57,000 people want to become independent from Denmark but do not wish to become part of the US, according to an opinion poll in January.
Leaders of both Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly insisted that the vast island is not for sale and that it will decide its own future.
Lokke Rasmussen said the appointment confirmed continued US interest in Greenland.
“However, we insist that everyone – including the US – must show respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” he said in a statement emailed to AFP.
The US argues Greenland, located between North America and Europe, can give it an economic edge over its rivals in the Arctic region.
The island has untapped rare earth minerals and could be a vital player as the polar ice melts and new shipping routes emerge.
Greenland’s location also puts it on the shortest route for missiles between Russia and the US.
The US has its Pituffik military base in Greenland and opened a consulate on the island in June 2020.
Providing unskilled public work, the jobs scheme has become a backbone of rural livelihoods in India
India is home to one of the world’s most ambitious social programmes – a jobs guarantee that gives every rural household the legal right to paid work.
Launched in 2005 by a Congress party government, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) gave every rural household a legal right to demand up to 100 days of paid manual work each year at a statutory minimum wage.
This mattered in a country where 65% of 1.4 billion people live in rural areas and nearly half rely on farming, which generates insufficient income, accounting for just 16% of India’s GDP.
Providing unskilled public work across all but fully urban districts, the scheme has become a backbone of rural livelihoods, cushioning demand during economic shocks. It is also among the world’s most studied anti-poverty programmes, with strong equity: over half of the estimated 126 million scheme workers are women, and around 40% come from “scheduled castes” or tribes, among the most deprived Indians
The ruling Narendra Modi government, initially critical and later inclined to pare it back, turned to the scheme in crises – most notably during the Covid pandemic, when mass return migration from cities to villages sharply drove up demand for work. Economists say the scheme lifted rural consumption, reduced poverty, improved school attendance, and in some regions pushed up private-sector wages.
Last week, the government introduced a new law that repeals and rebrands the scheme. The programme – renamed MGNREGA in 2009 to honour Mahatma Gandhi – has now dropped his name altogether.
While the renaming drew the political heat, the more consequential changes lie in what the new law – known as G RAM G for short – actually does.
It raises the annual employment guarantee from 100 to 125 days per rural household. It retains the provision that workers not given jobs within 15 days are entitled to an unemployment allowance.
Under the original scheme, the federal government paid all labour wages and most material costs – roughly a 90:10 split with the states.
Funding will now follow a 60:40 split between the federal government and most states. That could push states’ contribution to 40% or more of total project cost. The federal government keeps control, including the power to notify the scheme and decide state-wise allocations.
States remain legally responsible for providing employment – or paying unemployment allowances, even as the central government allocates $9.5bn for the scheme in the current financial year, ending next March.
The government frames the reforms as a modernised, more effective, and corruption-free programme aimed at empowering the poor.
“This law stands firmly in favour of the poor, in support of progress, and in complete guarantee of employment for the workers,” says federal agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Critics – including opposition parties, academics, and some state governments – warn that capping funds and shifting costs to states could dilute a rare legal right in India’s welfare system.
“It is the culmination of the long-standing drive for centralisation of the scheme under the Modi government. But it is more than centralisation. It is the reduction of employment guarantee to a discretionary scheme. A clause allows the federal government to decide where and when the scheme applies,” Jean Dreze, a development economist, told me.
Prof Dreze says the increase to 125 guaranteed workdays per household may sound like a major revamp, but is a “red herring”. A recent report by LibTech India, an advocacy group, found that only 7% of rural households received the 100 days of work guaranteed under the scheme in 2023-24.
“When the ceiling is not binding, how does it help to raise it? Raising wage rates, again, is a much better way of expanding benefits. Second, raising the ceiling is a cosmetic measure when financial restrictions pull the other way, ” Prof Dreze notes.
These and other concerns appear to have prompted a group of international scholars to petition the Modi government in defence of the original scheme, warning that the new funding model could undermine its purpose.
“The [scheme] has captured the world’s attention with its demonstrated achievements and innovative design. To dismantle it now would be a historic error,” an open letter, led by Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, warned.
To be sure, the scheme has faced persistent challenges, including underfunding and delays in wage payments. West Bengal’s programme, for example, has faced deep cuts and funding freezes since 2022, with the federal government halting funds over alleged non-compliance.
Yet despite these challenges, the scheme appears to have delivered measurable impact.
An influential study by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus, and Sandip Sukhtankar found that the broader, economy-wide impacts of the scheme boosted beneficiary households’ earnings by 14% and cut poverty by 26%. Workers demanded higher wages, land returns fell, and job gains were larger in villages, the study found.
But many say the scheme’s durability also underscores a deeper structural problem: India’s chronic inability to generate enough non-farm jobs to absorb surplus rural labour.
Agriculture has consistently lagged behind the broader economy, growing just 3% annually since 2001–02, compared with 7% for the rest of the economy.
Critics such as Nitin Pai of the Takshashila Institution, a think-tank, argue that the scheme cushions distress but does little to raise long-term rural productivity, and may even blunt incentives for agricultural reform.
“With [the scheme] we’re merely treating a serious underlying malaise with steroids,” said Mr Pai in a post on X.
The government’s Economic Survey 2023–24 questions whether demand under the scheme truly mirrors rural hardship.
If that was the case, data should show higher fund use and employment in poorer states with higher unemployment, the survey says.
Yet, it notes, Tamil Nadu, with under 1% of the country’s poor, received nearly 15% of the scheme’s funds, while Kerala, with just 0.1% of the poor, accounted for almost 4% of federal allocations.
The survey adds that the actual work generated depends largely on a state’s administrative capacity: states with trained staff can process requests on time, directly influencing how much employment is provided.
Despite these anomalies, the case for the scheme remains strong in a country where many depend on low-income rural work and where the deeper challenge is the lack of quality employment.
Even headline figures on rising labour participation in India can be misleading: more people “working” does not always mean better or more productive jobs.
A recent paper by economists Maitreesh Ghatak, Mrinalini Jha and Jitendra Singh finds that the country’s recent rise in labour force participation, especially among women, reflects economic distress rather than growth-driven job creation.
President Trump revealed that he does not like the Justice Department’s release of embarrassing photos of a half-naked Bill Clinton swimming with late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s madam, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“No, I don’t like the pictures of Bill Clinton being shown,” he told reporters Monday. “I don’t like the pictures of other people being shown. I think it’s a terrible thing.”
“But you probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago.”
Former President Bill Clinton is seen in an image from the Epstein files dump with a blurred-out person nearby. DOJ
The DOJ has been forced to release the Epstein files due to a law Trump signed last month amid mounting political pressure. The Epstein Files Transparency Act had cleared the House and Senate nearly unanimously, with only one vote against it.
The law gave the DOJ a deadline of Dec. 19 — last Friday — to release all the files with redactions to protect the notorious pedophile’s victims.
While the Trump administration released thousands of pages of files, many more remain sealed, and top officials have said they will be released on a rolling basis.
One of the headline-making disclosures was the photo of Clinton in a jacuzzi with Maxwell. Another picture showed him next to Epstein and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
Notably, the disclosures had few new images of Trump. There was one photo of him in a batch on Friday that the DOJ scrubbed from its website due to concerns from several of Epstein’s victims, according to US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Clinton’s team fired back at the Trump administration, highlighting how there’s a deluge of documents still outstanding.
“What the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected,” Clinton’s rep Angel Ureña needled Trump in a statement.
“We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection.”
Thailand and Cambodia will resume talks later this week to work toward a more durable ceasefire along their border, Thailand’s foreign minister said Monday, stressing that progress depends on detailed bilateral negotiations rather than public declarations that internationalize the dispute.
A ceasefire agreement in October was rushed to ensure it could be witnessed by U.S. President Donald Trump and lacked sufficient details to ensure the deal to end the armed conflict would hold, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Monday after an Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
While Cambodia has publicy said it is ready for an unconditional ceasefire, Bangkok never received any direct proposal and Thailand believed such statements were aimed at increasing international pressure rather than resolving the issue, Sihasak said following the meeting that was arranged to seek ways to end the crisis.
The general border committee involving both nations will meet Wednesday to iron out detailed measures toward a lasting ceasefire, he said.
“This time, let’s thrash out the details and make sure the ceasefire reflect the situation on the ground and the ceasefire is one that really holds, and both sides are going to fully respect the ceasefire,” Sihasak told a news conference.
The border conflict escalated into deadly combat two weeks ago and derailed the agreement promoted by Trump, which ended five days of fighting in July. The agreement was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through under pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. The ceasefire was formalized with more detail at an October regional summit in Malaysia attended by Trump.
The fighting has drawn international concern. The U.S. Department of State on Sunday released a statement calling for Thailand and Cambodia to “end hostilities, withdraw heavy weapons, cease emplacement of landmines, and fully implement the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords, which include mechanisms to accelerate humanitarian demining and address border issues.”
The fighting is a result of a dispute over patches of territory claimed by both nations along their shared border.
The latest round of fighting began Dec. 8, a day after a border skirmish wounded two Thai soldiers. Since then combat has broken out on several fronts, with Thailand carrying out airstrikes in Cambodia with F-16 fighter jets and Cambodia firing thousands of medium-range BM-21 rockets from truck-mounted launchers that can launch up to 40 rockets simultaneously.
More than three dozen people on both sides of the border have officially been reported killed in the past week of fighting, while more than half a million have been displaced, according to officials.
Under the October truce Thailand was to to release 18 Cambodian soldiers held prisoner and both sides were to begin removing heavy weapons and land mines along the border. But the two countries have carried on a bitter propaganda war with minor cross-border violence.
Land mine explosions have been a particularly sensitive issue for Thailand, which has lodged several protests after alleging Cambodia laid new mines that wounded soldiers patrolling the frontier. Cambodia insists the mines were remnants of its decades-long civil war, which ended in 1999.
A Russian general was killed Monday morning after an explosive device detonated underneath his car in southern Moscow, investigators said.
A car bomb killed a Russian general on Monday, the third such killing of a senior military officer in just over a year. Investigators said Ukraine may be behind the attack.
Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, died from his injuries, said Svetlana Petrenko, the spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee, the nation’s top criminal investigation agency. He was 56.
“Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of inquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services,” Petrenko said.
Since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, Russian authorities have blamed Kyiv for several assassinations of military officers and public figures in Russia. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for some of them. It has not yet commented on Monday’s death.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin had been immediately informed about the killing of Sarvarov, who fought in Chechnya and had taken part in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria.
Russia has blamed a series of other apparent assassinations on Ukraine.
Just over a year ago, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter outside his apartment building. Kirillov’s assistant also died. Ukraine’s security service claimed responsibility for the attack.
An Uzbek man was quickly arrested and charged with killing Kirillov on behalf of the Ukrainian security service.
Putin described Kirillov’s killing as a “major blunder” by Russia’s security agencies, noting they should learn from it and improve their efficiency.
In April, another senior Russian military officer, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, a deputy head of the main operational department in the General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed in his car parked near his apartment building just outside Moscow. A suspected perpetrator was quickly arrested.
Days after Moskalik’s killing, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he received a report from the head of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence agency on the “liquidation” of top Russian military figures, adding that “justice inevitably comes” although he didn’t mention Moskalik’s name.
Ukraine, which is outnumbered by Russia’s larger, better equipped military, has frequently tried to change the course of the conflict by attacking in unexpected ways. In August last year, Ukrainian forces staged a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region even as they struggled to stem Russian offensives on many parts of the front line. Moscow’s troops eventually drove them out, but the incursion distracted the Russian military resources from other areas and raised Ukrainian morale.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s charity is down to just two employees ahead of its much publicized rebrand — as the couple is desperate to save cash, multiple source told Page Six.
“Harry and Meghan have been forced to downsize the staff as it was costing them so much,” said one source.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced last week that their Archewell Foundation will become Archewell Philanthropies, claiming that “moving to a ‘philanthropies’ model signals something designed to grow and evolve over time, with more flexibility and less administrative burden.”
But we’re told Harry and Markle have, in fact, spent the past few months in deep discussion about the charity’s future as it has struggled with funding.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s charity is down to just two employees ahead of its much publicized rebrand — as the couple is desperate to save cash, multiple source told Page Six. Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock
“The big question was, would Archewell close, or would another charity take it over?” the source said. “Harry and Meghan were looking to get a fiscal sponsor, someone to take on the outgoing costs and to keep things cheap.
“Really, it’s all smoke and mirrors.”
Page Six can confirm that three members — 60% of the charity’s staff — have been let go.
Only Executive Director James Holt, who’s been with the couple since they were working royals in Britain, and Vice-President of Philanthropy Shauna Nep will remain with the re-branded charity.
A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Markle said: “Currently, the same full team remain in place. This move does mean that some staff redundancies are inevitable, particularly with junior admin roles.”
Earlier this year, Page Six reported that the couple had cut ties with six personal employees as they focused on saving cash — and as their security bill is said to be around $2 million a year.
And new tax information reveals that money is flowing out of their charity.
Archewell recorded total expenses of $5.1 million, according to its latest 990 form, made public Friday.
Salaries for 2024 were listed at $913,000 — and expenses were up 54% year over year, soaring from $3.3 million. This may relate to the couple’s quasi royal tours of Nigeria and Colombia in 2024, as “other expenses” are recorded at $2.9 million; in 2023, that category totaled $1 million.
Meanwhile, donations and grants to the group dropped from $5.3 million in 2023 to $2.1 million in 2024.
Insiders are skeptical of how Archewell, which doled out $1.25 million in grants in 2024, can continue.
“If they’re shooting out grants then that’s a net loss and they’re not bringing in that much money,” said the source.
The Sussexes last week announced they will produce a film adaptation of the book “The Wedding Date,” by Jasmine Guillory, for Netflix, with whom they retain a first-look arrangement after losing their exclusive deal.
Sports podcaster Bill Simmons sparked Taylor Swift pregnancy rumors after he claimed the pop star’s fiancé, Travis Kelce, is “having a kid with her.”
It is unclear if Simmons was referring to the future or simply speculating about the couple as the rumors are unfounded.
Simmons was reacting to Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs — who are already out of playoff contention — losing to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.
The analyst made a plea for Kelce to end his NFL career two games early.
The sports podcaster dropped the comment during his plea for Kelce to retire early after his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, lost to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.
‘It was officially a ‘Feel bad for Kelce,’” Simmons said on his podcast Sunday. “Guy’s a Hall of Famer, he’s getting married to Taylor Swift, having a kid with her, probably flies everywhere private, has private security everywhere he goes.”
“And he’s just kind of running around this f—ing Titans game, trying not to get hurt,” he continued. “Fake an injury. Just fake an injury and end the thing.”
A rep for Simmons did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
Swift’s rep also didn’t immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
Fans were skeptical of Simmons’ statement, with one comment on X reading, “I love that he knows that she’s pregnant but isn’t sure if he flies private or not LOL.”
In August, a source told Us Weekly that Swift and Kelce, both 36, may “not wait too long” to start their “dream” family after getting engaged.
“She’s in a great space in her career and with her success and she can take some time away,” the insider said.
The outlet also reported that the two “absolutely want” to welcome children together.
A Russian-made Venezuelan Air Force Sukhoi Su-30MKV multirole strike fighter flies over Venezuelan Independence parade to celebrate in Caracas, Venezuela on July 5, 2017. (AFP Photo)
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has begun evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, a European intelligence official told AP on Monday, as the United States pursues its third sanctioned oil tanker in the Caribbean and President Donald Trump convenes senior national security officials at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The evacuations, which started Friday and include women and children, come as Russian officials assess the situation in Venezuela in what the intelligence source described as “very grim tones.” The withdrawals signal heightened concerns about stability in the South American nation as the Trump administration escalates its four-month pressure campaign against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
More than 10 vehicles bearing diplomatic license plates stood outside Russia’s embassy in Caracas Monday morning, though no personnel were visible entering or exiting the compound. The vehicles had departed by early afternoon. Neither the White House nor the Kremlin responded to requests for comment.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said Monday he spoke by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who expressed Moscow’s support against Trump’s declared blockade. Gil accused Washington of committing “attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy” in the Caribbean.
Trump gathers security team as tanker interdictions continue
Trump’s meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan comes as Coast Guard vessels continue tracking sanctioned tankers in Caribbean waters. The White House characterized the gathering as preparation for a “major announcement,” with a White House official saying Trump planned to discuss a shipbuilding initiative.
Coast Guard cutters on Monday pursued for a second consecutive day a sanctioned tanker that officials describe as operating under a false flag and subject to a US judicial seizure order. The vessel is the third targeted in recent days as part of what the Trump administration calls Venezuela’s “dark fleet” — ships used to evade US sanctions on oil exports.
On Saturday, Coast Guard personnel seized the Panama-flagged tanker Centuries, following the December 10 interdiction of another Panama-registered vessel, the Skipper. Both ships allegedly participated in transporting sanctioned Venezuelan crude oil through international waters.
Economic pressures visible at Venezuelan refineriesc
While US forces operated in international waters, a tanker identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent government watchdog, as part of the shadow fleet was observed moving between Venezuelan refineries, including a facility in El Palito, roughly three hours west of Caracas.
The vessel remained docked at the refinery through Sunday, as families visited the adjacent beach during the school holiday break. Manuel Salazar, who has worked parking cars at the beach for more than three decades, noted stark contrasts with earlier years when Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.
“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” said Salazar, 68. “Now, look, one.”
Beach visitors recalled how tankers would sound their horns at midnight on New Year’s Eve and launch fireworks to mark the holiday — traditions that have faded as the country’s energy sector contracted.
“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said, referring to Venezuelan families at the beach. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”
Military operations draw scrutiny over civilian casualties
The tanker interdictions represent one front in Trump’s broader campaign targeting Venezuelan-linked vessels. The Defense Department has conducted 28 strikes since early September on smaller boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that officials allege transport narcotics to the United States.
At least 104 people have died in those operations, which have drawn scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists. Critics contend the administration has provided minimal evidence that targeted vessels were engaged in drug trafficking, characterizing the fatal strikes as extrajudicial killings.
Trump launched the pressure campaign with stated goals of reducing illegal drug flows from Venezuela but has since expanded the objectives. Last week, he demanded that Maduro’s government return assets it seized from US oil companies years ago, citing this as additional justification for the blockade announcement.
People visit the booth of battery giant CATL during the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, China July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo Purchase Licensing Rights
A revamp of China’s electricity market is boosting the economics of storing power just as international demand surges, sparking a boom for the Chinese energy storage manufacturers that already dominate globally.
Chinese firms are on track for a 75% jump this year in global shipments of lithium-ion battery cells for energy storage, according to one estimate.
They have exported more than $65 billion worth of storage and electric-vehicle batteries this year, cementing their dominance in a sector vital to backing up wind and solar and keeping power coursing through artificial-intelligence data centres.
The surge in sales is driven by data centres and renewables domestically, as well as by Chinese reforms and subsidies that are boosting general demand for energy storage. International demand is rising in tandem with the surging growth in data centres, a need to back up Europe’s ageing grid and China’s burgeoning renewable energy business in the Middle East, analysts say.
GOING GLOBAL
“These leading energy storage cell makers, they have full orders. Many of them are basically working double shifts now to try and meet demand,” said analyst Cosimo Ries at policy research firm Trivium China. The boom “is one of the biggest surprises of the year, I think, in China’s energy space.”
UBS last month raised its 2026 forecast for global battery-energy storage installations by 25%.
The International Energy Agency forecasts global investment in battery storage facilities will rise 16% this year to $66 billion. Much of that is set to be captured by Chinese firms because while Tesla (TSLA.O), is number one in energy storage systems, China dominates production of the tiny cells inside them.
All of the six top global cell suppliers – Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) (300750.SZ), HiTHIUM, EVE Energy (300014.SZ), BYD (002594.SZ), CALB (3931.HK), and REPT BATTERO (0666.HK), – are Chinese, according to a January-to-September ranking by consultancy Infolink. Of the top 10, only Japan’s AESC is not from China.
EVE’s energy storage sales volumes rose 35.51% in the first three quarters from the same period last year. REPT BATTERO’s third-quarter shipments of all batteries set a record high. Top EV players CATL and BYD did not break out energy storage shipments through the third quarter. Storage has historically made up less of their revenue than automotive batteries and EVs, although the proportion is growing.
“Pairing solar with storage has effectively become the only solution for meeting U.S. AI data-centre power needs,” UBS analyst Yishu Yan told a media briefing. “U.S. AI data centre power demand is very robust, but power is the biggest bottleneck, and U.S. baseload power – gas, nuclear, thermal – they won’t grow much in the next five years.”
However, Yan said, Chinese manufacturers face risks from U.S. restrictions, on projects receiving investment tax credits that involve designated “foreign entities of concern”, which include China.
POWER MARKET SHAKE-UP
China’s battery exports, including for EVs and energy storage, hit a record $66.761 billion in the first 10 months of the year, according to data from energy think tank Ember. Batteries have been China’s most lucrative clean-technology export since 2022, surpassing solar photovoltaics.
That is likely to grow again next year, as consultancy Infolink anticipates global energy storage cell shipments could rise to 800 gigawatt-hours, a 33% to 43% increase from this year’s forecasts.
China’s exports of energy storage and other non-automotive batteries rose 51.4% in the first 11 months from the same period last year, faster than the 40.6% growth in EV battery exports, according to the China Electric Vehicle Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance.
China already has the world’s largest battery energy storage fleet – some 40% of the global total – driven in part by local government mandates for developers to add storage to wind and solar projects. China’s battery storage this year overtook its capacity of conventional pumped hydro, a geographically more limited technology that uses water stored behind dams to generate electricity when needed.
However, much of that battery storage capacity has sat idle because it was not profitable to operate.
That model is changing with reforms in June that required newly built projects to sell their power through market-based auctions, instead of at a fixed rate. As a result, it has become more profitable to run a storage plant that profits by recharging when prices are low and discharging when prices are high.
Australian police say homemade pipe and tennis ball bombs were thrown at a crowd at Bondi Beach before a mass shooting but failed to detonate, according to court documents released on Monday.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on December 14. The attack has shocked the nation and sparked calls for tougher gun laws and heightened efforts to stop antisemitism.
One of the alleged gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by police, owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed Akram has been charged with 59 offences, including murder and terrorism, according to police.
The alleged gunmen had planned the attack for several months and visited the Bondi beachside park for reconnaissance two days prior, said a police fact sheet released by the court.
Pictures included in the police report showed the father and son allegedly training with firearms in an isolated rural part of New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state which includes Sydney.
Police found a video taken in October on one of the gunmen’s mobile phone showing them sitting in front of an image of an Islamic State flag and making statements in English about their reasons for the attack, while condemning the acts of Zionists.
Just after 2:00 a.m. (1500 GMT) on the day of the attack, the men were captured on CCTV video carrying long and bulky items wrapped in blankets from a short-stay rental house in the suburb of Campsie to a car, said the police report.
They later drove to Bondi around 5:00 p.m. (0800GMT).
Police believe the items wrapped in the blankets were two single-barrel shotguns, a Beretta rifle, three pipe bombs, a tennis ball bomb and a large improvised explosive device.
Police allege the men threw the pipe bombs and tennis ball bomb at the crowd in the Bondi park before they began shooting, but the explosive devices did not detonate, according to the statement tendered to the court.
Police said that they later found 3D printed parts for a shotgun component at the Campsie house, bomb making equipment and copies of the Quran.
TOUGH NEW GUN LAWS
The parliament of New South Wales state was recalled on Monday to vote on proposed new laws that would impose major curbs on firearm ownership, ban the display of terror symbols and restrict protests, following the mass shooting.
The state legislation would cap the number of firearms a person can own at four, or up to 10 for certain groups, such as farmers.
A CCTV footage shows Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid Akram, both suspects in the shooting attack during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on December 14, carrying items wrapped in blankets, while exiting 103 Brighton Avenue, Campsie, New South Wales, Australia, in this still image taken from a court document released on December 22, 2025. NSW Police/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Although Australia has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world after a 1996 shooting that killed 35 people, the Bondi shooting has highlighted what authorities say are gaps.
In New South Wales, there are more than 70 people in the state who own more than 100 guns, a police firearms registry shows. One licence holder has 298 guns.
The proposed legislation would also give police more powers to remove face coverings during protests or rallies. The state government has vowed to ban the chant “globalise the intifada” which it says encourages violence in the community.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told reporters outside parliament that he expected opposition to the legislation, which includes restrictions on public assemblies in the aftermath of a terrorism event, but said it was needed to keep the community safe.
“We have got a responsibility to knit together our community that comes from different races and religions and places from all over the world. We can do it in a peaceful way,” he said.
‘I AM SORRY’ PRIME MINISTER SAYS
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has faced mounting criticism from opponents who argue his government has not done enough to curb a rise in antisemitism. He was booed by sections of the crowd during a memorial event in Bondi attended by tens of thousands of people on Sunday, one week after the shooting.
A poll conducted for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper among 1,010 voters released on Monday found Albanese’s approval rating slumped 15 points to -9 from +6 at the beginning of December, the lowest since his resounding election win in May.
Albanese on Monday said he understood that some of the anger in the Jewish community in the aftermath of the attack was directed towards him and pleaded for national unity.
“As prime minister I feel the weight of responsibility for an atrocity that happened whilst I am prime minister and I am sorry for what the Jewish community and our nation as a whole has experienced,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)’s Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, one of the world’s largest nuclear facilities, stands along the seaside in Kashiwazaki, Niigata prefecture, Japan December 21, 2025.REUTERS/Issei Kato Purchase Licensing Rights
Japan took the final step to allow the world’s largest nuclear power plant to resume operations with a regional vote on Monday, a watershed moment in the country’s return to nuclear energy nearly 15 years after the Fukushima disaster.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, located about 220 km (136 miles) northwest of Tokyo, was among 54 reactors shut after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Since then, Japan has restarted 14 of the 33 that remain operable, as it tries to wean itself off imported fossil fuels. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa will be the first operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) (9501.T), which ran the doomed Fukushima plant.
On Monday, Niigata prefecture’s assembly passed a vote of confidence on Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi, who backed the restart last month, effectively allowing for the plant to begin operations again.
“This is a milestone, but this is not the end,” Hanazumi told reporters after the vote. “There is no end in terms of ensuring the safety of Niigata residents.”
While lawmakers voted in support of Hanazumi, the assembly session, the last for the year, exposed the community’s divisions over the restart, despite new jobs and potentially lower electricity bills.
“This is nothing other than a political settlement that does not take into account the will of the Niigata residents,” an assembly member opposed to the restart told fellow lawmakers as the vote was about to begin.
Outside, around 300 protesters stood in the cold holding banners reading ‘No Nukes’, ‘We oppose the restart of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’ and ‘Support Fukushima’.
“I am truly angry from the bottom of my heart,” Kenichiro Ishiyama, a 77-year-old protester from Niigata city, told Reuters after the vote. “If something was to happen at the plant, we would be the ones to suffer the consequences.”
TEPCO is considering reactivating the first of seven reactors at the plant on January 20, public broadcaster NHK reported.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s total capacity is 8.2 GW, enough to power a few million homes. The pending restart would bring one 1.36 GW unit online next year and start another one with the same capacity around 2030.
“We remain firmly committed to never repeating such an accident and ensuring Niigata residents never experience anything similar,” said TEPCO spokesperson Masakatsu Takata. Takata declined to comment on timing.
TEPCO shares closed up 2% in afternoon trade in Tokyo, higher than the wider Nikkei index (.N225), which was up 1.8%.
RELUCTANT RESIDENTS WARY OF RESTART
TEPCO earlier this year pledged to inject 100 billion yen ($641 million) into the prefecture over the next 10 years as it sought to win the support of Niigata residents.
But a survey published by the prefecture in October found 60% of residents did not think conditions for the restart had been met. Nearly 70% were worried about TEPCO operating the plant.
Ayako Oga, 52, settled in Niigata after fleeing the area around the Fukushima plant in 2011 with 160,000 other evacuees. Her old home was inside the 20 km irradiated exclusion zone.
The farmer and anti-nuclear activist has joined the Niigata protests.
“We know firsthand the risk of a nuclear accident and cannot dismiss it,” said Oga, adding that she still struggles with post-traumatic stress-like symptoms from what happened at Fukushima.
Even Niigata Governor Hanazumi hopes that Japan will eventually be able to reduce its reliance on nuclear power. “I want to see an era where we don’t have to rely on energy sources that cause anxiety,” he said last month.
STRENGTHENING ENERGY SECURITY
The Monday vote was seen as the final hurdle before TEPCO restarts the first reactor, which alone could boost electricity supply to the Tokyo area by 2%, Japan’s trade ministry has estimated.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office two months ago, has backed nuclear restarts to strengthen energy security and to counter the cost of imported fossil fuels, which account for 60% to 70% of Japan’s electricity generation.
Japan spent 10.7 trillion yen ($68 billion) last year on imported liquefied natural gas and coal, a tenth of its total import costs.
Despite its shrinking population, Japan expects energy demand to rise over the coming decade due to a boom in power-hungry AI data centres.
To meet those needs, and its decarbonisation commitments, it has set a target of doubling the share of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 20% by 2040.
Joshua Ngu, vice chairman for Asia Pacific at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said public acceptance of the restart of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa would represent “a critical milestone” towards reaching those goals.
On a recent snowy morning in a Trump-loving part of rural Michigan, three dozen cars idled outside a firehouse-turned-food pantry. Inside, volunteers packaged lettuce, apples and other household staples that have surged or stayed high in price this year.
Taylor Ludwig, a 35-year-old mother of three, had lined up in her pickup truck well before the pantry’s 10 a.m. opening in the town of Capac, seeking the kind of help she hoped would not be necessary when she voted last year for President Donald Trump, who campaigned on lowering prices.
Ludwig said she had expected Trump to have made greater progress on inflation nearly a year into his presidency. But, the cost of basics such as cereal, fruit and vegetables remains painfully high.
While Ludwig blames the high cost of living on Democratic former President Joe Biden, the Republican-leaning independent said the party could lose her vote in next November’s congressional elections if Trump does not move faster to fulfill his 2024 campaign promise.
“I’m not just gonna follow along somebody like a sheep,” she said of her current backing of Trump. “I will follow you until I know it’s not OK to.”
Trump swept rural Michigan on promises to ease the cost of living. But now, persistent inflation is testing that pledge — and the patience of voters who helped put him in office. Their frustration could ripple far beyond Ludwig’s corner of the state, threatening Republican hopes in the midterms and giving Democrats an opening in a state that will help decide control of the Senate.
Ludwig was among 19 Trump voters Reuters interviewed in Capac and other parts of St. Clair County, which has grown steadily more Republican in recent years, backing Trump by 66.5% of the vote in 2024.
REPUBLICANS STILL BLAME BIDEN FOR FINANCIAL HARDSHIP
St. Clair runs along Michigan’s eastern edge on the Canadian border, linking the blue-collar river city of Port Huron with a patchwork of farms and small towns connected by two-lane highways. The county’s population of 160,000 is predominantly white. Auto suppliers and other manufacturers anchor parts of the local economy, but limited access to high-paying jobs means many residents feel left behind economically.
Inflation has cooled this year in the Detroit metropolitan statistical area, which includes St. Clair County. In August — the latest month with available data — the region’s all-items price index rose just 0.7% annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as an 8.3% drop in gasoline prices offset a 9.4% surge in fruit and vegetable costs.
Nationwide, inflation is running at roughly a third of its mid-2022 peak of more than 9%, easing to 2.7% in November, but that headline figure masks sharp increases in everyday staples such as beef, coffee and orange juice, which have climbed at double-digit rates this year. Meanwhile, an AI-driven investment boom has begun to strain the nation’s power supply, pushing electricity prices in the U.S. up 6.9% last month, the largest year-on-year increase since April 2023.
Most of the 19 people interviewed said they still blamed Biden for inflation, and all pointed to a drop this month in gasoline prices as a positive development under Trump. Half said they or their families were struggling to make ends meet, including a Marine veteran, a disabled man and several retirees living on Social Security checks.
Four told Reuters that if inflation and other economic conditions did not improve by next November, they could see themselves giving Democrats a serious look. A dozen said they would still vote Republican, and three said they were unsure or did not share their voting plans.
Bob Benjamin, a retired auto worker, said he came to the food pantry to pick up groceries for his adult grandchildren, who are struggling to keep up with the cost of food, rent, healthcare and car insurance. While he voted for Trump in 2024, Benjamin said he would consider voting Democrat next year depending on economic conditions.
“I would probably vote the way the conditions are going. If he’s doing good, if you can see it coming out of a hole, then I give it two more years,” he said. “But if it’s starting to go back down again, well maybe we need a little change.”
Economists say there is little a president can do to quickly bring down prices and note that Trump’s tariffs raise import costs that are largely passed on to consumers. Trump has not said how he would lower prices and has pointed to tax cuts passed by Congress this year that are set to take effect in January. The White House says Trump will hit the campaign trail in 2026 to emphasize the economic benefits of his policies.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was working hard to address the “generational economic crisis” caused by Biden, who he accused of dismissing or ignoring inflation. “The reality is that Democrats still have no actual solutions for everyday Americans,” Desai said in a statement.
DEMOCRATS LAUNCH ‘PRICE HIKE MIKE’ CAMPAIGN
Volunteers carry groceries during a mobile pop-up food pantry at Mussey Fire Hall in Capac, Michigan, U.S., December 9, 2025. REUTERS/Emily Elconin Purchase Licensing Rights
Democrats plan to make rising prices central to their 2026 election campaign, sensing a vulnerability as Trump downplays the “affordability” issue, calling it a Democratic “hoax.” Trump’s statements worry Republican Party strategists, who say they could make him appear out of touch and prompt some of his supporters to sit out the election.
Still, most of the 19 interviewees were unaware of Trump’s comments on affordability, although only a few agreed with his assertion that the economy is booming and inflation is under control.
“I think he’s doing an amazing job as far as the economy goes,” said Kerry Ange, a county commissioner in St. Clair.
Darryl Kalich, an out-of-work field service technician whose red truck displays a Semper Fi sticker honoring his military service as a Marine, said he regretted his vote for Trump last year. Kalich said he was upset by Trump’s focus on foreign policy, citing the president’s threats against Venezuela and recent bailout of Argentina.
Kalich, who says leaders of both parties are equally detached from the problems facing everyday Americans, is unsure how he will vote.
Michigan Democrats are already working to tie Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers squarely to Trump on inflation, branding him “Price Hike Mike” in press releases and across social media.
Mallory McMorrow, who is running in a four-way Democratic primary to replace retiring Senator Gary Peters, said that if she wins the party’s nomination she will make criticism of Rogers on high prices a focal point of her campaign.
“The opportunity in the general (election) is to, frankly, pair Mike Rogers with Donald Trump: wealthy guys who don’t know what groceries are, who don’t understand the real challenges that people face in cost of living,” she told Reuters.
Rogers, who has reported assets between $6.7 million and $13.5 million, rejected this criticism in an interview, saying his working-class background attuned him to the needs of everyday Michiganders.
He predicted Trump’s tariffs would bring back high-paying manufacturing jobs and boost wages above the rate of inflation.
INTENSE POLITICAL TRIBALISM SPLITS VIEWS ON TRUMP POLICIES
Trump’s approval rating edged down to 39% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week as some Republicans soured on his handling of the economy. His approval level on the cost of living was just 27%, with 61% of Republicans rating him favorably on the issue, down from 69% earlier this month.
Approval on cost of living was significantly lower among Democrats, at 5%, and stood at 16% among independents, a crucial group for both parties in competitive races.
The stark divide reflects political tribalism: an in-group loyalty long present in U.S. politics but which has intensified in the age of Trump.
For Democrats, that meant downplaying the impact of inflation on everyday Americans while Biden was president. And for Republicans, that can mean believing that a policy like tariffs, which many economists argue is damaging the economy, will prove beneficial in the long run.
“You don’t want to believe that your party, which you value and which is important to you, is doing the wrong thing,” said Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota.
In Port Huron, freighters move steadily along the St. Clair River, highlighting the area’s industrial and economic significance, even as downtown retailers lament a drop in business from Canadian tourists who are staying away amid trade tensions and Trump’s threat to make their country the 51st state.
U.S. federal agents smash a car window while trying to detain a man during an immigration raid, after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered increased federal law enforcement presence to assist in crime prevention, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., December 17, 2025. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing for a more aggressive immigration crackdown in 2026 with billions in new funding, including by raiding more workplaces — even as backlash builds ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Trump has already surged immigration agents into major U.S. cities, where they swept through neighborhoods and clashed with residents. While federal agents this year conducted some high-profile raids on businesses, they largely avoided raiding farms, factories and other businesses that are economically important but known to employ immigrants without legal status.
ICE and Border Patrol will get $170 billion in additional funds through September 2029 – a huge surge of funding over their existing annual budgets of about $19 billion after the Republican-controlled Congress passed a massive spending package in July.
Administration officials say they plan to hire thousands more agents, open new detention centers, pick up more immigrants in local jails and partner with outside companies to track down people without legal status.
The expanded deportation plans come despite growing signs of political backlash ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Miami, one of the cities most affected by Trump’s crackdown because of its large immigrant population, elected its first Democratic mayor in nearly three decades last week in what the mayor-elect said was, in part, a reaction to the president. Other local elections and polling have suggested rising concern among voters wary of aggressive immigration tactics.
“People are beginning to see this not as an immigration question anymore as much as it is a violation of rights, a violation of due process and militarizing neighborhoods extraconstitutionally,” said Mike Madrid, a moderate Republican political strategist. “There is no question that is a problem for the president and Republicans.”
Trump’s overall approval rating on immigration policy fell from 50% in March, before he launched crackdowns in several major U.S. cities, to 41% in mid-December, for what had been his strongest issue.
Rising public unease has focused on masked federal agents using aggressive tactics such as deploying tear gas in residential neighborhoods and detaining U.S. citizens.
‘NUMBERS WILL EXPLODE’
In addition to expanding enforcement actions, Trump has stripped hundreds of thousands of Haitian, Venezuelan and Afghan immigrants of temporary legal status, expanding the pool of people who could be deported as the president promises to remove 1 million immigrants each year – a goal he almost certainly will miss this year. So far, some 622,000 immigrants have been deported since Trump took office in January.
White House border czar Tom Homan told Reuters Trump had delivered on his promise of a historic deportation operation and removing criminals while shutting down illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. Homan said the number of arrests will increase sharply as ICE hires more officers and expands detention capacity with the new funding.
“I think you’re going to see the numbers explode greatly next year,” Homan said.
Homan said the plans “absolutely” include more enforcement actions at workplaces.
Sarah Pierce, director of social policy at the center-left group Third Way, said U.S. businesses have been reluctant to push back on Trump’s immigration crackdown in the past year but could be prompted to speak up if the focus turns to employers.
Pierce said it will be interesting to see “whether or not businesses finally stand up to this administration.”
Trump, a Republican, recaptured the White House promising record levels of deportations, saying it was needed after years of high levels of illegal immigration under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. He kicked off a campaign that dispatched federal agents to U.S. cities in search of possible immigration offenders, sparking protests and lawsuits over racial profiling and violent tactics.
Some businesses shut down to avoid raids or because of a lack of customers. Parents vulnerable to arrest kept their children home from school or had neighbors walk them. Some U.S. citizens started carrying passports.
Despite the focus on criminals in its public statements, government data shows that the Trump administration has been arresting more people who have not been charged with any crimes beyond their alleged immigration violations than previous administrations.
Some 41% of the roughly 54,000 people arrested by ICE and detained by late November had no criminal record beyond a suspected immigration violation, agency figures show. In the first few weeks in January, before Trump took office, just 6% of those arrested and detained by ICE were not facing charges for other crimes or previously convicted.
The Trump administration has taken aim at legal immigrants as well. Agents have arrested spouses of U.S. citizens at their green card interviews, pulled people from certain countries out of their naturalization ceremonies, moments before they were to become citizens, and revoked thousands of student visas.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk boards Air Force One with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) as they depart for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey, U.S., March 22, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Tesla (TSLA.O), CEO Elon Musk’s net worth surged to $749 billion late Friday after the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated Tesla stock options worth $139 billion that were voided last year, according to Forbes’ billionaires index.
Musk’s 2018 pay package, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.”
The Supreme Court said that a 2024 ruling that rescinded the pay package had been improper and inequitable to Musk.
Earlier this week, Musk became the first person ever to surpass $600 billion in net worth on the heels of reports that his aerospace startup SpaceX was likely to go public.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Varadarajan holds a master’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University
Anand Varadarajan will take charge on January 19
Starbucks has appointed Indian-origin technology executive Anand Varadarajan as its new executive vice president and chief technology officer (CTO), tapping a nearly two-decade Amazon veteran to lead its global technology operations.
Varadarajan will take charge on January 19, join the company’s Executive Leadership Team, and report directly to Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol, Starbucks said. He succeeds Deb Hall Lefevre, who retired in September.
At Amazon, Varadarajan spent close to 19 years building large-scale, customer-focused technology platforms, most recently overseeing technology and supply chain for its Worldwide Grocery Stores business. Earlier, he worked as a software engineer at Oracle and with several startups.
Starbucks said Varadarajan brings deep experience in developing secure, reliable systems and scaling technology to support operational excellence while keeping customers at the centre.
The US seized another oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Saturday
The US Coast Guard is in “active pursuit” of another vessel in international waters near Venezuela as tensions in the region continue to escalate.
US authorities have already seized two oil tankers this month – one of them on Saturday.
Sunday’s pursuit related to a “sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion”, a US official said. “It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.”
Washington has accused Venezuela of using oil money to fund drug-related crime, while Venezuela has described the tanker seizures as “theft and kidnapping”.
US President Donald Trump last week ordered a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the country.
Venezuela – home to the world largest proven oil reserves – has accused the Trump administration of trying to steal its resources.
US authorities have not yet officially confirmed Sunday’s pursuit, and the exact location and name of the tanker involved is not yet known.
As of last week, more than 30 of the 80 ships in Venezuelan waters or approaching the country were under US sanctions, according to data compiled by TankerTrackers.com.
Saturday’s seizure saw a Panamanian-flagged tanker boarded by a specialised tactical team in international waters.
That ship is not on the US Treasury’s list of sanctioned vessels, but the US has said it was carrying “sanctioned PDVSA oil”. In the past five years the ship also sailed under the flags of Greece and Liberia, according to records seen by BBC Verify.
“These acts will not go unpunished,” the Venezuelan government said in response to Saturday’s incident. It added that it intended to file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council and “other multilateral agencies and the governments of the world”.
Venezuela is highly dependent on revenues from its oil exports to finance its government spending.
In recent weeks, the US has built up its military presence in the Caribbean Sea and has carried out deadly strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats, killing around 100 people.
Sanctions also were placed on some of President Maduro’s relatives and on businesses associated with what the US calls his illegitimate regime.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday: “It is clear that the current status quo with the Venezuelan regime is intolerable for the United States.”
He added that the goal of the Trump administration is to change that dynamic.
His comments were criticised by Venezuela’s foreign minister who accused Rubio dragging the US down the path of “regime changes”.
The new theme park is expected to eventually attract more visitors than any other park in Europe, according to Universal
Universal Studios’ UK theme park was given the green light this week, a decision creating buzz for families up and down the country who might one day want to go.
After months of discussions, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Steve Reed gave planning permission for the park to be constructed in Kempston Hardwick, close to Bedford.
This isn’t just another attraction – it’s an attempt by the US entertainment giant to build one of the biggest theme parks in the world.
Universal mentioned in planning documents that a country like the UK should have at least two global theme parks, and this project was described as a “generational opportunity”.
But can Universal pull off something of quite this scale, going up against the likes of Disneyland Paris? As BBC News heard from locals, it might be a tall order – and not everyone is happy.
Living on the doorstep of a theme park
“They haven’t bought enough land; what they should be buying is 2,000 acres somewhere and put their theme park in the middle,” says Claudia Pixley, 46, who lives in a bungalow on the road where the theme park entrance will be built.
“But as it happens, some of these roads around here are tiny village roads.
“Anything goes wrong on the M1 or the A421, this whole area is at a standstill… and then you want to put Universal Studios in the middle of that.”
She describes the project as “absolute madness” and says representatives of Universal have approached her about buying her home, where she’s lived for the last decade, but she wants to stay put in her “little slice of Eden”.
She may well be one of few people in the area unhappy about the new park. According to Universal, in the Bedford area 92% of those who responded to its survey of 6,000 people were supportive of the development.
But it raises an interesting point about what might and might not be achievable in the grand vision for Universal UK to rival some of the biggest and best current theme parks.
Slated to open by 2031, the park is expected to draw 8.5 million annual visitors and could feature the tallest rides seen in Europe. The total size of the resort would be 268 hectares (662 acres), with the theme park 96.7 hectares (238 acres).
By comparison, Disneyland Paris is by several estimates just under 52 hectares (130 acres), though some of Disney’s other parks worldwide are far larger.
Universal said its UK visitor numbers were expected to rise to 12 million by 2051, which could make it the most-visited park in Europe by today’s standards. According to Forbes, Disneyland Paris held that title last year with 10.2 million visitors.
However, even at opening, 8.5 million is more than three times the attendance of the UK’s biggest parks today:
Thorpe Park, Surrey: 200 hectares (490 acres), 1.62 million annual visitors (2023)
Chessington World of Adventures Resort: 52 hectares (128 acres), 1.5 million annual visitors (2022)
Can Universal UK shake things up?
For content creator Theme Park Kate, who specialises in theme parks and attractions on TikTok, Universal’s future attraction could be “a huge game changer within Europe” and the ambition with its size and rides is realistic.
“It will potentially be a theme park that can compete with the popularity of Disneyland Paris, which has dominated the European theme park market for many years now,” she tells BBC News.
The theme park fan speculated that the park would benefit from using intellectual property (IP) that has not been used at other locations around the world.
She adds: “Harry Potter has been done now at various Universal parks, but a new IP like the rumoured James Bond or Lord of the Rings will be unique to the park and bring in a large amount of fans that will want to see these brand new experiences for themselves for the very first time.”
Last year, a source told the BBC that the new park could include James Bond, The Lord of the Rings, Paddington and Jurassic World-themed rides – although a Universal spokesperson said it was too early to confirm this.
Theme Park Kate is hopeful this could have a ripple effect of boosting the country’s existing parks and forcing them to “step up their game” to match Universal.
YouTuber Jack Silkstone, who visits theme parks around the world, agrees with the sentiment. He lives “next door” to Thorpe Park – and his message to any unhappy Bedford residents like Claudia is that living on the doorstep of a theme park is “honestly a dream”.
“Everyone has some form of connection to the park – whether they work there themselves, they know someone that works there, they love to visit, or they aspire to work at the park when they’re older,” he says.
“It creates a real sense of community that then spills out into the wider surrounding towns.”
Jack sees the projected scale of the Universal UK park as a huge oportunity for the UK’s economy, and seems confident that the company can pull off its aims for scale.
“We’re very lucky, we’ve got some amazing, classic theme parks already in this country. But Universal are global leaders in the theme park industry; they do it different.”
‘Winners and losers’
Universal said it expected to directly create 8,050 jobs when it opens, with many staff coming from the surrounding areas.
Wixams, a town which will border the new theme park, will also get an upgraded four-platform railway station as part of the proposals.
Despite the concern expressed by some like Claudia that the area may not be able to cope with an influx of visitors, Bedford borough councillor Marc Frost says councillors have been assured that traffic surveys are complete and road infrastructure will be in place.
Universal’s engagement with local officials suggested they “genuinely want to work and get on with their neighbours”, he adds.
Another consideration for those in the local area is property prices – and some could fare better than others here, too.
A recording of the “creepy” moment a pilot was told “good luck with the aliens” after reporting a UFO sighting to air traffic control has resurfaced following the bizarre incident over the skies of Rhode Island.
Newly resurfaced video of the live ATC broadcast captures the moment the pilot told the ground team, “It appears to be standing still,” as the mysterious object, which he compared to a silver canister, floated beside him.
A recording of the “creepy” moment a pilot was told “good luck with the aliens” after reporting a UFO sighting to ATC. Robert – stock.adobe.com
“Looks like a strange, small object that we just floated by. A small silver canister. Do you know what that could be?” the pilot told ATC in the recording, shared on YouTube in October by the VASAviation channel, which regularly posts ATC frequency conversations.
After ATC confirmed that they did not know what the object was and asked for further details, the pilot responded that the UFO was just feet from their plane in midair.
“Appears to be standing still and I’m at 3,500 feet. It was right off our wingtip. Small silver canister,” said the pilot, flying a Piper PA-32RT-300T Turbo Lance II, which seats up to five passengers.
He added that the “astonishing” object did not appear to be attached to anything, but was just “hovering” in midair, in response to a further question about whether it was a drone or a balloon.
“Kablooey!” That’s the word U.S. Geological Survey volcanic experts used to describe a muddy eruption at Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone National Park on Saturday morning. Video shared by the USGS on social media shows mud spraying up and out from the pool just before 9:23 a.m. in Biscuit Basin about midway between park favorites Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic.
“Kablooey!”
That’s the word U.S. Geological Survey volcanic experts used to describe a muddy eruption at Black Diamond Pool in Yellowstone National Park on Saturday morning.
Video shared by the USGS on social media shows mud spraying up and out from the pool just before 9:23 a.m. in Biscuit Basin about midway between park favorites Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic.
Other recent eruptions have mostly been audible and not visible, because they happened either at night or when the camera was obscured by ice.
The agency said the Black Diamond Pool was previously the site of a hydrothermal explosion, in July 2024, that sent rocks and mud flying hundreds of feet high and damaged a boardwalk. It prompted the closure of the area to visitors due to the damage and the potential for additional hazardous activity.
So-called dirty eruptions reaching up to 40 feet (about 12 meters) have occurred sporadically since then.
Researchers installed a new camera and a seismic and acoustic monitoring station this summer, and they say the instruments, along with temperature sensors maintained by the Yellowstone National Park Geology Program, can better detect and characterize the eruptions.
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory webcam at Black Diamond Pool didn’t disappoint Saturday.
THE horrifying scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual depravity has been exposed, with newly-released phone messages revealing his twisted interest in girls as young as 14.
Handwritten notes taken by staff at Epstein’s Florida mansion were published by the US government this weekend after Friday’s initial tranche of files related to the disgraced billionaire were released.
More details of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s perverted operation have been laid out in the drip feed of files released this weekendCredit: Rex Features
The messages include chilling phrases such as “I have a female for him” and “[caller] has girl for tonight”.
One note also refers to Donald Trump attempting to call Epstein at his Palm Beach home.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the US president.
The messages were shown by an FBI special agent to a federal grand jury in New York in June 2019, less than two months before the notorious paedophile was found dead aged 66.
Epstein died in a prison cell while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking offences.
Other material released in the first batch includes an unusual picture showing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sprawled across the laps of five women as Ghislaine Maxwell laughs along.
The image was taken at the Sandringham royal estate, with details matching the saloon room.
The files also reveal how Epstein pulled Maxwell out of a “dark depression” after meeting the British socialite following the death of her father, newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell.
Victims and US Democrats voiced fury after only a fraction of the Epstein files were released on time, with many documents heavily redacted.
Trump, who opposed publication of the files for years, left the White House for a 16-day Christmas break in Florida without comment.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are quizzing Attorney General Pam Bondi on why a photograph from the release, “File 468”, featuring Trump and shared on Friday, had since been removed.
It was unclear in the first instance if any grand jury proceedings would be released as they are strictly confidential in nature.
But US District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that the court docs must be released in line with the Epstein Transparency Act.
Documents unsealed from those proceedings on Saturday contained distressing new evidence with much more context to them.
Details of a 14-year-old girl who visited Epstein’s Manhattan pad “dozens” of time was included in data set six as part of an FBI agent’s testimony at the 2019 federal case against Maxwell
She had dropped out of school and another teen had told the girl “she could make money if she massaged this rich guy”.
The agent added: “Things progressed each time she went.
“She would have to massage him while she was in her panties or without underwear or without any clothes on.
“And then eventually he would touch her.”
The vile predator then performed a graphic sex act on the girl he knew to be only 14 and who was paid $300 for each trip to his mansion.
The documents include testimony describing how a girl spoke about the library in Epstein’s Manhattan lair, where Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has previously stayed, saying it “looked like it was something out of [Disney film] Beauty and the Beast“.
Another piece of testimony from the agent reveals how Epstein and Maxwell befriended a 13-year-old girl at a summer camp in 1994 at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
The sex trafficking pair swooped in on her while she was eating with friends at a picnic table.
Eventually, Epstein managed to sway the girl’s mother with boastful claims that he “gives scholarships” and “likes to mentor people”, according to the agent.
After wooing the girl to their Palm Beach pad, the sick duo began their grooming routine.
Epstein discovered the girl wanted to become a model and actress, and claimed to be “best friends” with the Victoria’s Secret owner – a line he used frequently with girls who shared that ambition.
The agent alleged that Epstein then pulled the teen onto his lap, exposed himself and sexually abused her.
The grand jury documents also paint Maxwell as his enforcer, telling one girl she would “get in trouble” if she didn’t give the monster his daily massage in an attempt to guilt her.
She was also accused of groping the underage girls herself during massage instructions, and parading topless around the pool area of the estate.
Comments made during the grand jury trial in 2007 reveal that Epstein would turn his less susceptible victims into recruiters, shelling out $200 per girl procured.
One such accuser added that the billionaire paedo was unyielding about the age of the girls, saying: “There were a few girls he wasn’t crazy about.
“He didn’t favor [redacted] for instance, 23, he thought she was kind of too old.
“The more you did is the more you make. Basically, the more clothes that come off, the more you let him touch you, the more you just let him have his way with you is the more that you would make, otherwise, you would be demoted down to bringing girls over and just making money that way.”
Another 14-year-old introduced to Epstein through her 17-year-old boyfriend was coaxed into massaging the paedo in a lewd massage room fitted with cameras.
She began bringing more victims and was promised “she could earn more money” if “she could bring younger girls”.
The recruiters would receive lavish gifts on top of their $300 fee paid in “crisp $100 bills“.
These presents included flowers, Victoria’s Secret lingerie and a Massage for Dummies book, according to the FBI agent.
Jurors were also shown phone messages taken by an assistant at Epstein’s Florida home in 2004 and 2005.
One message from an unidentified caller reads: “She had female for Mr JE.”
Another states: “Wondering if you would want her to work tomorrow and at what time.”
The FBI agent told jurors that “work” was a euphemism for sex.
A third message refers to a girl cancelling an appointment, adding: “She would like to speak to you. I believe about college.”
Most caller identities have been blacked out in the logs.
Trump’s name appears in one note from 2004, though no message was recorded.
British supermodel Naomi Campbell is also named in the files.
An email logged by Epstein’s staff on November 4, 2005, reads: “Hello, Naomi here. Would like to know when I can speak to Jeffery [sic], regarding my swimsuit line… I have pics and some of the suits with me. Hope all is well.”
Campbell has previously branded Epstein’s behaviour “indefensible”, saying: “When I heard what he had done, it sickened me to my stomach … I stand with the victims.”
Trump and Epstein once moved in the same elite circles before falling out.
While the US president resisted releasing the Epstein files for years, he backed a Congressional vote last month calling for the documents to be made public.
ACTOR James Ransone who starred in The Wire has died at the age of 46, officials have confirmed.
The star was found dead at a property in Los Angeles on Friday.
Actor James Ransone has died aged 46Credit: Getty – Contributor
His cause of death has been determined as suicide, according to the LA County Medical Examiner.
Ransone leaves behind his wife Jamie McPhee and two children.
McPhee has since shared a fundraiser for the National alliance on Mental Illness on her social media.
Ransone is best known for playing Ziggy Sobotka in The Wire, a television drama running from 2002 to 2008.
He starred in the second season of the show, playing Frank Sobotka’s dock worker son.
In total he appeared in 12 episodes in 2003 and has taken on a number of other television and film roles.
Shows he featured in include Generation Kill, Bosch, and Poker Face.
Meanwhile, he has starred in films like IT Chapter Two, Prom Night, Mr Right, and The Black Phone plus the sequel.
In 2021, Ransone revealed that he was a survivor of sexual abuse, claiming that a former tutor abused him for months as a child while growing up in Phoenix, Maryland in 1992.
He said at the time that the alleged abuse led to “a lifetime of shame and embarrassment” contributing to his struggled with alcohol and drugs.
Ransone got sober in 2006 and reported the sexual abuse in 2020 after “confronting his past”.
He was allegedly told by prosecutors later that year that no further investigation would take place and no charges were brought forward.
The same year he got sober, Ransone was hailed a hero for saving a woman from being raped outside his apartment in New York.
With India suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and Afghanistan planning to build a dam on the Kunar River, Pakistan has reason to be anxious, say NUS’ Dr Amit Ranjan and Pacific Forum’s Genevieve Donnellon-May.
A Taliban fighter stands next to vehicles destroyed during an airstrike, following a temporary ceasefire, amid the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, October 16, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer
Water has long been a critical dimension of Afghanistan–Pakistan relations. But against the backdrop of deteriorating political ties, water is emerging as a potential flashpoint that could turn a border dispute into a wider crisis.
In October, the two countries engaged in some of the worst violence in recent years. The two sides agreed to a ceasefire on Oct 19, which remains fragile amid attacks in December. It was during the earlier clashes that Afghanistan’s Taliban government announced plans to build a dam on the Kunar River.
Known also as the Chitral River in Pakistan, it originates in northern Pakistan, enters Afghanistan and meets the Kabul River near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province. Kabul River empties itself in the Indus River near Attock in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Physically, Pakistan has some upstream advantage but it is water-dependent in the downstream region. It is estimated that Pakistan receives around 21 billion cubic metres of water annually from the Kabul River system.
The directive came from Supreme Leader Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, with the acting water minister declaring on social media platform X that “Afghans have the right to manage their own water”.
Pakistan responded sharply. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned the Taliban against proceeding unilaterally with plans to build a dam on the Kunar River, declaring that Kabul “cannot disregard Pakistan’s water rights”.
Historically, the Pakistani security establishment has supported the Taliban. And Pakistan welcomed the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
But relations have strained over the Afghan Taliban hosting the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan or TTP), a group Islamabad accuses of carrying out militant attacks inside the country. Their relations also deteriorated over the status of the 2,600km-long Durand Line as the international border between the two countries, which some Taliban leaders have termed a “hypothetical line” or an “imaginary line”.
Amid the fighting, transboundary rivers are becoming an extension of broader strategic rivalry.
DEEP ANXIETY OVER WATER STRESS
Pakistan and Afghanistan share nine rivers, but do not have any formal agreement or joint management framework. Both countries face growing water stress.
Many parts of Afghanistan face water scarcity. Capital Kabul risks becoming the first modern city to completely run out of water. A recent report by non-governmental organisation Mercy Corps warned that, due to over-extraction and devastating climate change effects, Kabul’s aquifer levels have dropped between 25m and 30m over the past decade and will run dry by 2030.
Pakistan has been facing drought and floods, made more frequent and more intense by the climate change. Flooding in 2025 monsoon season affected around six million people, killing more than 1,000 and affected major crops like rice and wheat. Simultaneously, Pakistan’s per capita water availability is declining. It is estimated that by 2030 the country’s per capita water availability will fall to 795 cubic metres.
Afghanistan’s Kunar River dam will take time to build. Meanwhile, according to local media reports, Kabul is finalising plans to transfer water from the Kunar River to the Darunta Dam in Nangarhar, which will affect flow downstream in Pakistan.
THE TIMING OF DAM ANNOUNCEMENT
This is not the first time Afghanistan has raised the possibility of building dams on the transboundary rivers flowing into Pakistan. What is concerning is the timing and changed nature of political ties between the two countries.
During better times, in 2013, they had agreed in principle on the joint management of shared rivers and the building of a 1500 megawatt (MW) dam on Kunar River.
The present plan was wielded as a threat during the October cross-border skirmishes. It is worth noting too, that the clashes occurred while the Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi made a rare trip to India – signalling warming ties with India, Pakistan’s rival in South Asia.
During Mr Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi, both sides issued a joint statement emphasising “the importance of sustainable water management” and interest in “cooperat(ing) on hydroelectric projects to address Afghanistan’s energy needs and support its agricultural development”.
Later, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal further noted that there is a “long history of cooperation on water matters” between the two countries. His remarks effectively indicate a new phase of pragmatic engagement that will help India to secure its interests in the country.
He also reiterated that New Delhi was prepared to support all Taliban initiatives related to water resource management, including hydropower projects. By doing so, India aims to maintain political, economic and strategic ties with a country where its presence had significantly diminished following the US withdrawal in 2021.
New Delhi’s stance builds on a history of water-related cooperation with Afghanistan, most notably the Salma Dam, also known as the India–Afghanistan Friendship Dam, on the Hari River in Herat province. Completed in 2016 with around US$300 million in Indian funding, the dam generates 42MW of electricity and irrigates about 75,000 hectares of farmland.
The project, while symbolising friendship, has also been a target of political and militant hostility: in 2017, Taliban militants attacked the hydropower dam, killing ten Afghan soldiers. Ironically, the same group now seeks India’s technical and financial assistance to replicate similar projects, reflecting the shifting pragmatism on both sides.
RIVERS ON TWO PAKISTAN BORDERS
By supporting Kabul in its water projects, New Delhi aims to fulfill overlapping objectives. This, however, has risks as the Pakistani power establishment does not like the Taliban to engage with India.
All this is notwithstanding India’s own dispute with Pakistan. In April, it suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) that governs water-sharing with Pakistan, following a terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad which denied any role in it.
Japan’s top currency diplomat, Atsushi Mimura, said on Monday authorities will take “appropriate” action against excessive exchange-rate moves, warning of the chance of intervention after last week’s central bank meeting that caused renewed yen declines.
“The recent foreign exchange moves were one-sided and sharp, and I’m concerned about them,” he told reporters. “We’ll take appropriate actions against excessive moves.”
The remarks followed those by Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama late on Friday that Tokyo would respond appropriately to excessive, speculative moves in the yen, underscoring its concern over sharp yen falls that push up import prices and households’ cost of living.
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) raised interest rates to 0.75 per cent from 0.5 per cent on Friday, taking borrowing costs to levels unseen in three decades and narrowing the rate differential with the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Paul King is set to direct and produce after Sony acquired film rights for Chinese brand owner Pop Mart’s popular collectible toys.
This image provided by Pop Mart shows Pop Mart’s Labubu Rock The Universe (Pop Mart via AP)
Paddington and Wonka director Paul King will be helming a new Labubu film about the popular collectible plush toys that originated in Hong Kong.
King is set to direct and produce the film with Department M and Wenxin She, although the project is still in need of a writer as it is in early development.
Sony had acquired film rights for Labubu last month and is working with Chinese brand owner Pop Mart on the big-screen adaptation.
Labubu was originally designed by the Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung and initially made by the firm How2Work, but the collectibles truly took off when Pop Mart took over manufacturing and selling the toys in 2019.
The plush toys have soared in popularity in recent times for two main reasons. The first is Pop Mart’s use of selling them via “blind boxes” – meaning that consumers never know what they are getting until they have opened their package.
This ploy has created a secondary market where collectors pay extraordinary amounts to get the dolls they want, either online or at pop-up sales.
Some auctions have seen items fetch six-figure sums.
The second reason was the adoption of Labubu – such as Blackpink singer Lisa, who used the collectibles as accessories last year.
King has worked with Hugh Grant on the films Paddington 2 and Wonka and revealed that he would “cheerfully” collaborate with the Notting Hill star on more movies.
The 47-year-old director told Radio Times magazine ahead of Wonka’s release in 2023: “I loved working with Hugh on Paddington 2 and would cheerfully work with him every day for the rest of my life.
“He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met and he certainly has a naughty side, so I think he sits very comfortably in Dahl’s universe.
“The Oompa-Loompas don’t have much dialogue in the books but they do have these long songs where they take an almost gleeful pleasure in the demise of all the ghastly children who tour the factory.
“They’re so funny and biting and scornful, and as I was reading them, Hugh’s voice kept coming into my head.
“From there, it wasn’t a huge step to go, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to see him 18 inches high with bright green hair and orange skin?’ It was perfect.”
A new study has shown that prompts in the form of poems confuse AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — to the point where sometimes, security mechanisms don’t kick in. Are poets the new hackers?
AI systems are becoming increasingly complex — yet poetry can still make them stumbleImage: Christian Ohde/CHROMORANGE/picture alliance
The result came as a surprise to researchers at the Icaro Lab in Italy. They set out to examine whether different language styles — in this case prompts in the form of poems — influence AI models’ ability to recognize banned or harmful content. And the answer was a resounding yes.
Using poetry, researchers were able to get around safety guardrails — and it’s not entirely clear why.
For their study titled “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” the researchers took 1,200 potentially harmful prompts from a database normally used to test the security of AI language models and rewrote them as poems.
Known as “adversarial prompts” — generally written in prose and not rhyme form — these are queries deliberately formulated to cause AI models to output harmful or undesirable content that they would normally block, such as specific instructions for an illegal act.
In poetic form, the manipulative inputs had a surprisingly high success rate, Federico Pierucci, one of the authors of the study, told DW. However, why poetry is so effective as a “jailbreak” technique — i.e. as an way to circumvent the protective mechanisms of AI — remains unclear and is undergoing further research, he says.
Poetry as a security weakness
What prompted the Icaro Lab’s research was the observation that AI models get confused when a manipulative, mathematically-calculated piece of text is appended to a prompt — known as an “adversarial suffix,” a kind of interference signal that can cause the AI to circumvent its own security rules. These are created using complex mathematical procedures. Major AI developers regularly test their models using precisely these types of attack methods to train and protect their models.
“We asked ourselves, what happens if we give the AI a text or prompt that is deliberately manipulated, like an adversarial suffix?” says Federico Pierucci. But not with the help of complex mathematics, but quite simply with poetry — to “surprise” the AI, he continues. He explains the thinking behind this: “Perhaps an adversarial suffix is a bit like the poetry of AI. It surprises the AI in the same way that poetry — especially very experimental poetry — surprises us,” says Pierucci.
The researchers personally crafted the first 20 prompts into poems, says Pierucci, who also has a background in philosophy. These were the most effective, he adds. They wrote the rest with the help of AI. The AI-generated poems were also quite successful at circumventing the safety guardrails, but not as much as the first batch. Humans are apparently still better at writing poetry, says Pierucci.
“We had no specialized author writing the prompts. It was just us — with our limited literary ability. Maybe we were terrible poets. Maybe if we had been better poets, we would have achieved a 100% jailbreak success,” he says.
For security reasons, the study did not publish specific examples.
Challenge for AI systems: The diversity of human forms of expression
The big surprise coming out of this study is that it identified a thus-far unknown weakness in AI models that allows relatively straightforward jailbreaks.
It also raises questions that beg further research: What exactly is it about poetry that circumvents the safety mechanisms?
Pierucci and his colleagues have various theories, but they can’t say for certain yet. “We are conducting this type of very, very precise scientific study to try to understand: Is it the verse, the rhyme, or the metaphor that really does all the heavy lifting in this process?” explains Pierucci.
They also aim to find out if other forms of expression would yield similar results. “We have now covered one type of linguistic variation — namely poetic variation. The question is whether there are any other literary forms, such as fairy tales that work. Perhaps an attack based on fairy tales could also be systematized,” says Pierucci.
Generally speaking, the range of human expression is extremely diverse and creative, which could make it more difficult to train the machines’ responses. “You take a text and rewrite it in infinitely many ways and not all rewritten versions will be as alarming as the original,” says the researcher. “This means that, in principle, one could create countless variations of a harmful prompt or request that might not trigger an AI system’s safety mechanisms.”
The cultural sector is also involved in AI research
The study also highlights the fact that many disciplines are cooperating in research into artificial intelligence — like at the Icaro Lab, where teams work together with scholars from the University of Rome on topics such as the security and behavior of AI systems. The project brings together researchers from the fields of engineering and computer science, linguistics and philosophy. Poets haven’t been part of the team so far, but who knows what the future will bring.
Federico Pierucci is definitely very keen to pursue his research. “What we showed, at least in this study, is that there are forms of cultural expressions, forms of human expressions, which are incredibly powerful, surprisingly powerful as jailbreak techniques, and maybe we discovered just one of them,” he says.
Jewish leaders have called for a royal commission, the most powerful type of Australian government inquiry, to be set up to investigate the attack at Bondi.
People walk past the NSW Parliament House in Sydney, Australia, on Dec 22, 2025. (Photo: Reuters/Eloisa Lopez)
Australia’s New South Wales state parliament was recalled on Monday (Dec 22) to vote on proposed new laws that would impose major curbs on firearm ownership, ban the display of terror symbols and restrict protests, following a mass shooting at Bondi Beach.
The state parliament was recalled for two days from Monday to debate the firearm legislation, which would cap the number of firearms a person can own at four, or up to 10 for certain groups, such as farmers.
There is currently no limit to firearm ownership if the reason can be justified to police, and there are more than 50 people in the state who own more than 100 guns, the Australian Broadcasting Corp said in a report, citing police data.
One of the alleged Bondi gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police and owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed Akram has been charged with 59 offences, including murder and terrorism, according to police.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec 14. The attack has shocked the nation and sparked calls for tougher gun laws and heightened efforts to stop antisemitism.
The proposed legislation would also give police more powers to remove face coverings during protests or rallies. The state government has vowed to ban the chant “globalise the intifada”, which it says encourages violence in the community.
Jewish leaders on Sunday called for a royal commission, the most powerful type of Australian government inquiry, to be set up to investigate the attack at Bondi.
The opposition Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley backed those calls on Monday, and told a news conference that she has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to meet with her to review the terms of reference for a royal commission.
ALBANESE APPROVAL DIPS
Albanese has faced mounting criticism from opponents who argue his government has not done enough to curb a rise in antisemitism.
He was booed by sections of the crowd during a memorial event in Bondi attended by tens of thousands of people on Sunday, one week after the shooting.
Albanese’s government has said it has consistently denounced antisemitism and highlighted legislation passed over the last two years to criminalise hate speech and doxxing.
It also expelled Iran’s ambassador earlier this year after accusing Tehran of directing antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.
“You’ve seen us crack down on hate speech. You’ve seen us criminalise doxxing. You’ve seen us be very clear about counterterrorism laws banning Nazi salutes and so forth,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio on Monday.
The German government said hundreds of people turned away at the border later applied for asylum. Meanwhile, Berlin’s mayor is warning New Year’s Eve’s trouble makers.
Since coming into power in May, Germany’s conservative-led government has tightened border controls with more checks and patrolsImage: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images
Most German retailers disappointed by Christmas sales so far
Sales in Germany over the Christmas period this year have been disappointing, according to a survey by the HDE German Trade Association.
Two-thirds of businesses surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their Christmas sales, compared to 23% who were satisfied.
Some 71% of the 300 respondents said customer numbers were down this year compared to 2024. Sales also fell on the last Saturday before Christmas.
HDE chief executive Stefan Genth pointed to a low level of turnover and consumer caution.
He said retailers were pinning their hopes on a sales surge before Christmas Eve and in the run-up to the New Year.
Jewish leader warns of normalization of antisemitism in Germany
The president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews has warned that antisemitism is becoming normalized in the country.
In an interview with the dpa news agency following the Bondi Beach attack in Sydney, in which two men killed 15 people attending a Jewish celebration, Josef Schuster said data shows that antisemitism is consolidating “at a high, far too high, level.”
“Much worse, my feeling is that our society is experiencing a habituation and normalization effect regarding antisemitism. That must not happen,” Schuster added.
He said that the “degree of habituation to antisemitism” had become so high that it is “widely accepted that Jewish life is only possible under immense protective efforts” and that political measures to tackle it were often exhausted.
“These conditions are intolerable,” he said.
Schuster pointed out that antisemitism had “surged explosively” since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023. He said the recent relative easing of hostilities in Gaza had not resulted in a decline.
He said he was “very grateful” to German authorities for the security arrangements protecting Jewish communities, and called on politicians and civil society to work towards eliminating hatred of Jews.
“Only then is the vision of Jewish life without a protective shield conceivable,” Schuster said.
Over 100,000 visas issued for family reunification in 2025
German authorities issued more than 100,000 family reunification visas this year.
According to figures from the Foreign Ministry reported by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, 101,756 visas were issued by the end of November.
The numbers continue a downward trend observed in recent years. In 2023, a record of more than 130,000 family reunification visas were issued, falling to 120,000 in 2024.
The continued decline comes after the federal government in July suspended family reunification for people with subsidiary protection for two years. This primarily affects Syrian war refugees.
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), subsidiary protection applies when a person from abroad does not qualify for refugee protection or asylum, but they still face “serious harm” such as the death penalty or torture in their country of origin.
Most applicants were Turkish (14,907) and Syrian (13,148), followed by Indians (9,286), people from Kosovo (7,143) and Albania (4,426).
The most common type of visa was for spouses of foreigners living in Germany, with 44,426 issued through November.
A third of cases (37,227) were visas issued for children to join their parents. Around 3,500 were for parents to move to be with their children.
UK’s Erasmus re-entry welcomed by German body
The German-British Chamber of Commerce (AHK) has welcomed the UK’s re-admission to the European Union’s Erasmus program, following a hiatus due to Brexit.
Ulrich Hoppe, head of the German-British Chamber of Commerce (AHK), said in an interview to German DPA news agency the move will allow young people “to gather valuable academic and professional experience across the English Channel.”
The UK left the Erasmus program in January 2020, as one of many consequences of its EU exit.
The Erasmus program is an EU educational initiative which allows students from across the EU to study in other member-countries of the bloc. Before Brexit, British students were therefore allowed to study in other EU countries and vice versa.
Magdeburg in grief one year after Christmas market attack
On December 20, 2024, six people were killed at the Christmas market in central Magdeburg — five women and a nine-year-old boy — and more than 300 were injured, some seriously, when a man drove a vehicle into the crowd.
A year on, the perpetrator’s precise motives remain unclear, while residents continue to carry the shock and grief.
Zero tolerance for crimes during NYE celebrations, Berlin mayor says
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said those causing trouble ahead of New Year’s Eve will face the consequences.
“Anyone causing a disturbance or committing a crime will feel the force of the law,” he told German DPA news agency in an interview.
While emphasizing people should enjoy the New Year’s celebrations, Wegner warned that those committing criminal offences will be faced by a determined police operation.
“We will do everything to ensure that the night will be peaceful and happy, as we ring in the New Year,” the German capital’s conservative mayor said.
Germany: 1,600 asylum requests by people rejected at border
Some 1,600 people who had been denied entry into Germany at the border have later sought asylum in the country, German authorities have said.
The number of asylum applications from people who had been refused entry since the intensification of the country’s border checks earlier this year reached 1,582 between May 7 and October 31, the German DPA news agency reported, citing a response to a parliamentary inquiry by the Greens.
The government did not say where the asylum seekers applied from.
This comes as Germany’s conservative-led government looks to curb immigration, as promised in its campaign ahead of the 2025 election.
Border checks are normally not conducted within the Schengen area, a border-free zone including most European Union countries as well as a few countries not in the bloc.
But since coming to power in May, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has intensified already placed border checks, and ordered authorities to turn away all asylum seekers except some vulnerable groups.
Welcome back to our coverage
We are resuming our coverage in this weekend edition of our Germany blog!
Stay tuned as we continue to bring you the latest news, videos and analyses on all things Germany.
The northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy is a frequent target of Russian drone attacks [FILE: December 18, 2025]Image: Francisco Richart/ZUMA/picture alliance
Witkoff also says talks with Russia were ‘productive’
US special envoy Steve Witkoff also posted on X regarding talks in Miami with Russia’s Kirill Dmitriev.
Over the last two days in Florida, the Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev held productive and constructive meetings with the American delegation to advance President Trump’s peace plan on Ukraine.
The American delegation included Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner,…
Witkoff said that over the past two days in Florida, “the Russian Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev held productive and constructive meetings with the American delegation to advance President Trump’s peace plan on Ukraine.”
Witkoff said the US delegation included Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House staff member Josh Gruenbaum. Kushner does not have an official role in the administration.
“Russia remains fully commited to achieving peace in Ukraine,” Witkoff said. “Russia highly values the efforts and support of the United States to resolve the Ukrainian conflict and re-establish global security.”
Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. So far, diplomatic talks have failed to end the conflict.
Umerov, Witkoff say Ukraine talks were productive
Talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, held between American, European and Ukrainian officials in Florida over the last three days, were “productive and constructive,” according to identical posts by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian envoy Rustem Umerov on X.
Over the last three days in Florida, the Ukrainian delegation held a series of productive and constructive meetings with American and European partners.
The Ukrainian delegation included Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, and the…
According to their posts, the US and Ukrainian delegations held a separate meeting focusing on four key documents: further development of the 20-point plan; alignment of positions on a multilateral security guarantee framework; alignment of positions on a US security guarantee framework for Ukraine; and further development of an economic and prosperity plan.
“Ukraine remains fully committed to achieving a just and sustainable peace. Our shared priority is to stop the killing, ensure guaranteed security, and create conditions for Ukraine’s recovery, stability, and long-term prosperity,” the envoys wrote.
They also added that “Ukraine highly values the leadership and support of the United States and the continued close coordination with its partners in the next stages of this important work.”
Starmer, Trump discuss Ukraine peace talks over phone
The United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to US President Donald Trump over the phone on Sunday afternoon.
Starmer and Trump discussed the war in Ukraine, as well as other issues, including the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“The two leaders began by reflecting on the war in Ukraine,” Downing Street said in a statement. “The Prime Minister updated on work by the coalition of the willing to support any peace deal and ensure a just and lasting end to the hostilities.”
The call between the two leaders, which is likely to be their last of 2025, came after US and Russian negotiators met in Florida to discuss the latest revisions to a US proposal to end the war.
European and Ukrainian officials also met separately with a US team on Friday.
Huge sunflower tank struck in Russian drone attack on Odesa
A Russian drone attack on Saturday has struck a sunflower oil tank near the Black Sea city of Odesa, media reports in Ukraine said Sunday.
A huge container was on fire in the port of Pivdenne, according to videos published on Telegram.
Another video shows streets near the tank that are flooded with sunflower oil.
One port employee was killed and two were wounded.
The co-founder of one of Ukraine’s top seed oil traders said “thousands of tonnes” were lost.
The tank was struck during strikes in and around the Odesa region that continued for multiple consecutive days.
The attacks hit bridges, ports and cut power lines and heating to thousands of people.
“Russia is once again trying to restrict Ukraine’s access to the sea and block our coastal regions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday of the attacks.
Ukraine is the world’s leading producer of sunflower oil. Attacks on its export infrastructure could upset markets and dent state revenues, analysts say.
Ukrainian negotiator to meet with US officials for third day of talks
Ukrainian top negotiator Rustem Umerov said he would again meet with US officials in Miami.
“Third day of work in the United States. Today, together with Lieutenant General Andrii Hnatov, we will have another meeting with the American side,” he said in a post on the Telegram messaging service.
“We are working constructively and substantively. We are counting on further progress and practical results,” Umerov said.
Zelenskyy wants talks with European leaders after Miami discussions
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would seek to hold a meeting with European allies following discussions in Miami aimed at bringing an end to the war with Russia.
“There is a shared sense that after the work by our diplomatic team in the United States, we should now hold consultations with European partners in a broader circle,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media platform X after he held a phone call with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
I spoke with the Prime Minister of Norway, @jonasgahrstore. We discussed in detail the diplomatic work underway these days.
We are moving at a fairly rapid pace, and our team in Florida has been working with the American side. European representatives were also invited. These…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 21, 2025
European and Ukrainian negotiators have spent the weekend in Florida meeting with their US counterparts to discuss Washington’s peace plan, which Zelenskyy called constructive.
Ukraine fighting to resist new Russian incursion in Sumy region
The Ukrainian army was seeking to stop an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it has been reported on Sunday.
This follows reports that Moscow had allegedly forcibly moved at least 50 people from the border village of Hrabovske.
“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Hrabovske,” Ukraine’s joint task force said.
The military added that troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory,” but dismissed media reports that Russian soldiers were also in the neighboring Riasne village.
Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian rights ombudsman made an assessment that enemy troops had forcibly moved about 50 civilians from Hrabovske to Russia.
Those claims could not be independently verified, and Russia made no comment although the army said on Saturday they had captured the village of Vysoke, a few kilometers from Hrabovske.
Putin ready to talk to France’s Macron, Kremlin says
Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to hold talks with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, a Kremlin spokesman said on Sunday.
Dmitry Peskov said Putin “expressed readiness to engage in dialogue” in comments carried by Russian state news agency Ria Novosti. He added that with mutual political willingness, talks between both sides could be beneficial.
It follows Macron saying on Friday that Europe and Ukraine should hold direct talks with Putin as they seek to reach an agreement on a peace deal that would bring an end to Russia’s invasion of their neighbors.
“Otherwise, we are discussing among ourselves with negotiators who will negotiate on their own with the Russians. That is not optimal,” the French president had said.
Paris on Sunday welcomed Putin’s openness to the idea.
“We will decide in the coming days on the best way to proceed,” the Elysee said.
Kremlin squashes chances of three-way talks in Miami
The Kremlin emphasized that three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States were not on the cards, despite diplomats from all parties currently being in Miami.
According to Russian news agencies, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, told reporters that discussions for such a meeting had not taken place and no preparation was therefore being made.
The comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Washington had spoken of a possible trilateral format, though he too expressed scepticism.
Despite saying it would be a logical step for a first face-to-face meeting in almost six months between Russia and Ukraine, Zelenskyy added: “I am not sure that anything new could come of it.”
On Saturday, Ukrainian and European negotiators met with US diplomats while Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev also travelled to Florida to meet with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in a separate meeting at different locations.
Those talks will continue on Sunday, after which Ushakov said Dmitriev “will return to Moscow, make his report, and we will discuss what to do next.”
Meanwhile, Ushakov also expressed doubts that any changes put forward by European and Ukrainian diplomats to the current US peace plan would yield a positive outcome.
“I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and Ukrainians have made or are trying to make definitely do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace,” he said.
Kyiv holds firm on territory as Russia, US talk in Miami
As fierce fighting continues on Ukraine’s eastern frontline, soldiers say any peace deal that trades territory for an end to the war is unacceptable.
At the same time, Kyiv is bolstering European backing following Tuesday’s talks in Berlin as it seeks leverage in ongoing US-led negotiations.
US-Russia talks in Florida end ‘constructively’
Officials from Russia and the United States ended a day of peace talks in the southern US state of Florida and will continue their efforts on Sunday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev told reporters that the meeting with US counterparts Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been constructive.
“The discussions are proceeding constructively. They began earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow,” Dmitriev said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio might also join the talks, Dmitriev had said.
Saturday’s negotiations with Russia come after the US spent Friday in talks with Ukraine and European officials. They reported progress on security guarantees for Ukraine. However, it remains unclear to what extent Moscow will accept those terms.
Ukraine calls for US to exert ‘full pressure’ on Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the United States to put more pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
“America must clearly say: if not diplomacy, then there will be full pressure,” Zelenskyy said. “Putin does not yet feel the kind of pressure that should exist.”
Zelenskyy also called for increased arms supplies to Ukraine and sanctions on the entire Russian economy.
Earlier on Saturday, the Ukrainian president said that Washington had proposed trilateral negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the United States (see entry below).
When it comes to marketing his movies, no actor in Hollywood is working harder than Timothée Chalamet.
For his new movie “Marty Supreme,” which opens nationwide Christmas Day and is already playing in New York City and Los Angeles, Chalamet’s gone global — traveling to merch events and appearing on “The Tonight Show” with a squad of people wearing giant Ping-Pong balls as heads. This week, he even surprised the crowd at an NYC table-tennis invitational.
He promised on Friday to make “128 appearances” at pre-release screenings of the film. And there was the cringe-comedy Zoom call on social media in which he “fruitionized” his ideas — like painting the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower the movie’s signature “corroded orange, falling apart orange” color.
Timothée Chalamet, seen here at the Los Angeles premiere of his movie “Marty Supreme” with girlfriend Kylie Jenner, has been “Kardashianized,” a source told Page Six. FilmMagic
He’s been wearing that eye-popping hue to the film’s premieres, coordinating outfits with his mom, Nicole Flender, in New York City and girlfriend Kylie Jenner in Los Angeles.
Amid rumors that he’s been living out an Andy Kaufman-style stunt as a masked Liverpool rapper called EsDeeKid, on Friday Chalamet released a music video with the musician, rapping about “Marty Supreme” and Jenner: “It’s Timothée Chalamet chillin’/ Tryin’ to stack $100 million / Girl got a billion.” (Although, Variety points out, who knows if this EsDeeKid is real … or a stand-in.)
Now, sources told Page Six that the actor has been influenced by the example of Jenner’s family — who are all about building their personal brands.
“Timmy’s been ‘Kardashian-ized,” said one industry source who has worked with him.
It’s apparently working for him. “Marty Supreme,” in which he gives a critically lauded turn as frantic table-tennis player Marty Mauser, has racked up the fastest pre-sales in studio A24’s history, according to Deadline, and he’s already nominated for a Golden Globe.
The power player compared Chalamet’s gonzo movie-marketing techniques to the Kardashian family’s ethos of creating a strong personal brand.
“Both Timmy and Kylie are just into a different genre, the way they think about life and how they want to live,” the industry source said, noting, “he has pretty lofty goals.”
Indeed, Chalamet makes no bones about his ambition. He was nominated for an Academy Award for “Call Me by Your Name” in 2018 and again this year for “A Complete Unknown,” making him the youngest two-time Best Actor nominee since James Dean.
In accepting a SAG Award for best actor for the Dylan biopic earlier this year, Chalamet said that he is “really in pursuit of greatness” — a seemingly sincere comment that was met with online snark — and has name checked Michael Jordan alongside Day-Lewis and Viola Davis.
“All big actors get to be full of themselves, it’s par for the course,” said another Hollywood source who knows him. “He really cares about the craft for sure, he’s an actor with a capital A.
“But he’ll say ‘I don’t want to promote this movie using the old playbook and doing the same types of interviews … He’ll say ‘Let’s make it fun, let’s do it different way.’”
There’s also, the Hollywood source said, an unusual understanding of how to appeal to his very online audience: “His fans love him and he definitely knows how to speak to his fans and interact and it’s really important to him.
Despite recent rumblings that Jenner and Chalamet may have broken up, they were glued together at the LA premiere for “Marty Supreme” earlier this month — and Page Six is told that he’ll join the Kardashians at Kris Jenner’s legendary Christmas Eve bash at her home in Calabasas, California, the day before his film opens nationwide.
“They’re definitely still together, but it’s not like she needs to be at every promotional event [to prove it],” the industry source told Page Six of Jenner, who has been linked to Chalamet since the spring of 2023.
And Jenner will be by the bright young star’s side as he prepares for an inevitable Oscars run in the new year. He’s already nominated for Best Actor, Musical or Comedy, at January’s Golden Globes.
Despite his readiness to hit the spotlight for the sake of his work, his relationship with Jenner is conducted mainly under the radar — and that’s how they both like it.
“Timmy’s pretty quiet about Kylie,” said the industry source. “But he’s pretty private as a person.”
Although Kylie will likely join her man at the Golden Globes on January 11, “They both want to be their own person, for sure,” said the industry source. “They’ll do some promo, but for the rest they want to keep things between them.”
By keeping their romance pretty quiet, Chalamet and Jenner have outsmarted her sisters — whose various boyfriends and husbands have struggled with what’s been called the “Kardashian curse.”
“It’s definitely a smarter play than how Kylie’s other sisters have handled their own love lives in the public eye,” said the Hollywood source.
Jenner, 28, went incognito when she joined Chalamet — who turns 30 on December 27 — at a secret screening of “Marty” at the New York Film Festival back in October.
The mom-of-two was spotted backstage with Chalamet and Josh Safdie, who wrote and directed the film, before the lovebirds celebrated with an afterparty at NYC’s Waverly Inn, where they were joined by friends in a booth for most of the night, looking “warmly affectionate and happy,” according to an onlooker.
The couple were not publicly seen together after that until July, when they were spotted holding hands during a weekend in Saint-Tropez (Chalamet, whose father is French, speaks the language fluently) and then in August at a coffee shop in Budapest, where he was filming “Dune: Part Three.”
The fact that they’re rarely seen together has the effect of adding public intrigue — and, no surprise, they have figured out how to make those appearances memorable. Experts say the attention-getting idea for matching outfits likely came from Chalamet.
“He is at the forefront of Hollywood men having more fun…wearing cool s–t,” said noted fashion writer Amy Odell, who penned the recent biography on Chalamet’s “Marty” co-star Gwyneth Paltrow.
In this respect, he seems to have taken a leaf out of the Kardashian playbook. “That family is enmeshed in fashion [in a way that drives people to] talk about them. I keep thinking they are going to fade and they just don’t,” said Odell.
“It’s hard to get people to go to the movies,” she added, pointing out that Chalamet has been working tirelessly to promote “Marty” with his own unique sense of style, just as he did with last year’s PR campaign for “A Complete Unknown.”
Although Chalamet naturally leans toward street style and baggy sweats, he’s been working with his high-fashion pal Haider Ackermann, who now designs for Tom Ford.
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner’s loved ones were photographed gathering at his sister Annie’s home on Sunday, one week after the couple’s tragic deaths.
Rob’s younger brother Lucas was spotted wearing black pants, a blue button-up shirt and a black jacket.
Other guests carried boxes of what appeared to be food to the gathering held at Annie’s Los Angeles home.
Rob Reiner’s younger brother Lucas was spotted at their sister Annie’s house on Sunday at what appeared to be a gathering. London Entertainment for NY Post
Rob and Michele were discovered stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home on Sunday. Rob was 78, and Michele was 70.
Their bodies were returned to their family on Friday following an autopsy by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner, People reported.
Their official causes of death were revealed to be “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to a Wednesday report from the LACME office, and heir deaths were ruled a homicide.
Sources previously told The Post that Rob and Michele’s daughter, Romy, found the couple’s bodies with their throats slit and multiple stab wounds on Sunday.
The couple’s son Nick was arrested later that evening in connection with his parents’ deaths and has since been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Nick, 32, has been locked away in solitary confinement at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, and remains on suicide watch following his parents’ murders, a police source told People.
Just hours before their deaths, Rob and Michele attended Conan O’Brien’s holiday party on Saturday night. While there, a lifelong family friend told The Post that Rob and Michele got into a big fight with Nick.
Hundreds of thousands of guns were handed in across Australia during the last major government buyback scheme
It was a Sunday afternoon in April 1996 when a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic rifles killed 35 people in the Australian tourist town of Port Arthur.
The massacre almost 30 years ago, which ushered in some of the strictest gun laws in the world, feels like a bygone age for many Australians.
But the Bondi Beach attack on Sunday, which left 15 dead, rekindled memories of the Tasmanian tragedy – none more so than for leading gun control advocate Roland Browne.
As the country’s deadliest modern-day mass shooting was unfolding an hour’s drive away, Mr Browne was meeting fellow gun control advocates at his home, ahead of a government meeting, to lobby for a ban on the exact type of firearm the Port Arthur gunman was using.
Mr Browne, 66, was again at home in Hobart on Sunday when he received news of the shooting at Bondi, targeting a Jewish event celebrating the first night of Hanukkah.
“There’s just a lot of similarities,” Mr Browne, who spent childhood summers in Bondi and still has family there, told the BBC.
“They’re both very public places frequented by tourists from around the nation and around the world.”
“It’s sickening and I’m bitterly disappointed in our political system whereby the voices for tighter gun laws and public health aren’t listened to until there’s a major event like this,” he added.
For decades, Australia has stood as a beacon on the world stage for its strict gun laws, he says, taking a similar path to the UK which experienced its own mass shooting in Dunblane, just one month before Port Arthur.
Even now, Mr Browne remains friends with relatives of some of the 17 victims – mostly children aged five and six – killed at a primary school in Scotland.
But despite being praised for its stringent gun laws, the reality in Australia is not clear-cut.
Gun ownership at record high
A report by the Australia Institute earlier this year revealed that there are more than four million privately-owned firearms across the country – almost double the number from about 20 years ago.
That equates to one gun for every seven Australians, the report says.
Queensland has the most registered guns, followed by New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria while Tasmania and the Northern Territory have the most guns per person.
The report also dispels a common view that guns are mainly owned by rural residents.
Guns are widespread in metropolitan and suburban areas, with one in three firearms in NSW located in major cities, the report said.
The total figure has risen at a lower rate than population increases, but there are now more guns in fewer hands, with every licence holder owning an average of more than four firearms.
And that’s one of the key issues that Mr Browne wants the government to address.
Currently, only one jurisdiction – Western Australia – has a cap on the number of legal firearms that a licence holder can have. Under new laws introduced in March this year, gun owners can have between five and ten firearms, depending on the type of licence and model of firearm.
Authorities have confirmed that one of the alleged gunmen, Sajid Akram who was killed at the scene of the Bondi attack, owned six registered guns.
Mr Browne wants a cap of one to three guns, depending on the licence category, to be introduced across Australia.
But Tom Kenyon, chief executive of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, argues that a cap would be meaningless.
“Limiting the number of guns wouldn’t have made a difference on Sunday,” he says.
“And it wouldn’t have changed the fact that an attack occurred because those two individuals had been radicalised.”
Mr Kenyon argues that people intent on harm, without access to guns, will use other weapons, referencing the 2016 Bastille Day massacre in the French city of Nice where 86 people were killed after a man drove a truck into crowds during fireworks celebrations. The attack was claimed by Islamic State (IS).
The other alleged Bondi gunman, 24-year-old Naveed Akram, was previously investigated over links to IS, according to comments made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Mr Kenyon also says that more guns are found in cities because most people in Australia live in metropolitan areas and travel to other areas to hunt.
What are Australia’s current gun laws?
Gun control laws in Australia are not uniform across the country, with inconsistent implementation of the rules across states and territories.
But generally, to apply for a gun licence, you must be over 18, a “fit and proper person”, pass a training and safety course and give a “genuine reason” for having a firearm.
The eight accepted reasons include recreational hunting or pest control, target or sport shooting, for work (such as security guards and prison officers), for use in farming or animal welfare and firearms collectors.
But there are loopholes.
For example, anyone under 18 was meant to be barred from owning a firearm under the 1996 gun control reforms, but minors in various jurisdictions can have access to a firearm while under supervision, ranging from age 10 in the Northern Territory to 12 in other states.
Another situation is where a particular type of gun is banned in one state but legal elsewhere.
In the days after the Port Arthur massacre, then-Australian prime minister John Howard galvanised every state and territory to overhaul the country’s gun laws.
More than 650,000 firearms were voluntarily handed in to authorities and destroyed, as part of a buyback programme. And background checks and a mandatory cooling-off period for gun sales were introduced. Automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were banned.
Similar gun reforms – a ban on semi-automatic weapons and a buyback scheme – were introduced in New Zealand after a white supremacist killed 51 Muslims at two Christchurch mosques in 2019.
Part of Howard’s reforms included scrapping self-defence as a reason for owning a firearm – a contrast to gun laws in the United States where personal protection is often the main reason for citizens to own guns.
Gun ownership in the US is much higher compared to Australia as is gun violence. The country saw 488 mass shootings – defined as where four or more people are killed or injured – last year.
Recent polling by the Australia Institute showed that seven out of ten Australians think gun laws should make it harder to access a gun and 64% agreed that current gun laws need to be strengthened.
Fresh reform for gun laws
In the hours after the Bondi shooting, the NSW Premier Chris Minns was unequivocal about the need to tighten the state’s gun laws.
“If you’re not a farmer, you’re not involved in agriculture, why do you need these massive weapons?” he asked.
And less than 24 hours after the shooting, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosted an emergency meeting where leaders from across the country pledged to tighten gun laws. On Friday he announced a national gun buyback scheme “to help get guns off our streets”, the first scheme of its size since 1996.
Other proposals include:
limiting the number of guns someone can legally own
limiting “open-ended” licensing
making Australian citizenship a condition of owning a firearm
improving intelligence sharing when licence applications are being assessed
Albanese said there should also be regular reviews of licence holders.
“People’s circumstances can change,” he said. “People can be radicalised over a period of time.”
The swift action prompted Howard – the architect of the 1996 gun laws – to weigh in.
While he supported stricter gun laws, Howard said the move was an “attempted diversion” from the real cause of the tragedy, which he said was a rise in antisemitism in recent years.
Mr Kenyon believes the moves to tighten gun laws are a waste of resources.
“All that time and effort and political capital could be spent combating radicalisation of individuals,” he says.
The only thing that might have prevented Sunday’s attack was better intelligence-sharing that would have flagged the gunmen’s links to extremist ideology to the NSW firearms’ registry, he says.
Elsewhere, one of the headline reforms proposed in 1996 – a national firearms register – is yet to be created, with authorities saying the database is “expected to be operational by mid-2028”.
Little had been done to implement the measure until the 2022 fatal shooting of two police officers and a civilian in Wieambilla became a catalyst to speed the process up.
The Bondi shooting has now propelled the government to list the creation of the register as a priority.
Recreational hunting under spotlight
Mr Browne believes the application process for a gun licence is too easy and that licences for recreational hunting should be abolished as its definition is ambiguous.
Sajid Akram owned a recreational hunting licence.
But recreational hunting contributes a “valuable social good” to Australia, argues Mr Kenyon, saying that hunters remove millions of feral animals such as rabbits, foxes and cats.
He was just 10 when he picked up his first gun. Now 53, he goes on regular hunting trips – often shooting deer in Victoria’s high country – and competes in pistol shooting events six times a year.
Hunting isn’t just a pastime for him, it’s about family and community connections. He taught his three children – all adults now – how to shoot when they were teens.
“All my life I’ve had the opportunity to do it and I’ve enjoyed it,” Mr Kenyon, a former Labour politician in South Australia, says, “so I want my kids to have the same opportunity”.
In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, self-loading firearms were banned, resulting in a drop in gun-related deaths, but the risk to public safety has now shifted to high-powered fast-loading rifles with magazines that can shoot up to five rounds, of the kind believed to have been used by the gunmen.
“If you watch the video, you’ll see him firing rapidly with his rifle,” Mr Browne says, referring to footage of one of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge leading to Bondi Beach.
“If he didn’t have a magazine in that rifle, he would have had to manually reload each time,” which would dramatically reduce – but not eliminate – the threat of a mass shooting.
Mass shootings remain rare in Australia.
In 2018, a Western Australian grandfather killed his wife, his daughter and four grandchildren before turning the gun on himself in what was, at the time, the worst such incident since Port Arthur.
For Mr Browne, Australia is a safe country but incidents involving firearms are not uncommon, ranging from neighbourhood disputes to gang shootings.
“This is a reflection on guns being in the wrong hands, a legacy of poor storage allowing guns to be stolen and sold – and thus move into black markets.”
But the issue of gun control isn’t just about the physical firearm.
“It’s like a plane crash, it’s never just one thing. It’s a culmination of a lot of factors,” he says. Australia needs better assessment of whether a licence holder is a suitable candidate and more stringent rules on the types of guns that can be legally owned, he says.
Reporters ask world leaders questions all the time.
No big deal. Right?
But what’s it like putting a question to Vladimir Putin – the president who ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the leader whose country was accused this week by the head of MI6 of “the export of chaos”?
And imagine asking that question live on TV while millions of Russians are watching.
It’s a big responsibility. You don’t want to mess up.
“My question is about Russia’s future. What kind of future are you planning for your country and your people?” I ask President Putin.
“Will the future be like the present, with any public objection to the official line punishable by law? Will the hunt for enemies at home and abroad be accelerated? Will mobile internet outages become even more common? Will there be new ‘special military operations’?”
While I’m speaking, Vladimir Putin is making notes. And then replies.
He defends Russia’s repressive foreign agent law. Hundreds of Russians who are critical of the authorities have been designated “foreign agents”.
“We didn’t invent it,” Putin tells me.
“This [foreign agent] law was adopted in a string of Western countries, including in America in the 1930s. And all these laws, including the US one, are much tougher…”
In reality, the Russian law is draconian. It excludes “foreign agents” from many aspects of public life, including teaching, the civil service, elections and public events. It imposes financial and property restrictions. Criminal prosecution can follow a single administrative fine.
However, I’m unable to point this out to President Putin. The microphone was taken away from me after I’d finished my question.
Suddenly the moderator intervenes to change the subject.
“There’s another question here: ‘What’s going to happen to the BBC? It’s facing a multi-billion lawsuit from the US president?’,” says anchor Pavel Zarubin.
“I think President Trump is right,” President Putin confirms.
The Kremlin and the White House seeing eye to eye… on the BBC.
Putin returns to my question.
“Will there be new special military operations? There won’t be, if you treat us with respect, and respect our interests, just as we’ve always tried to do with you. Unless you cheat us, like you did with Nato’s eastward expansion.”
Visible for all to see is what is driving Vladimir Putin – a deep-seated resentment of the West.
He argues that, for years, Western leaders have disrespected, deceived and lied to Russia – and that they’re lying still by claiming that Moscow intends to attack Europe. “What kind of rubbish is that?” declares the Kremlin leader.
But many European leaders simply don’t trust Moscow.
In the run-up to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials denied they had plans for a mass attack.
More recently Russia has been accused of violating European air space with fighter jets and drones, as well as of carrying out cyber-attacks and acts of sabotage.
AI-generated influencers now look almost indistinguishable from humans, raising questions about credibility, jobs and the future of advertising. As brands explore their potential, audiences and experts warn that trust is still the key to winning over customers.
Hyper-realistic influencers generated by artificial intelligence have been on the rise in recent years, sprouting concerns that they might take away jobs from people in the creative industries. (Illustration: CNA/Nurjannah Suhaimi)
When Spanish influencer Aitana Lopez posts a photo of herself stretching at the gym or strolling through the sun-washed streets of Barcelona, her followers respond instantly.
Tens of thousands of likes, heart-eyed emojis and adoring comments pile up beneath each image. It all looks effortless: a fit, stylish 25-year-old documenting her daily life.
Yet, Aitana cannot do any of these things, because she is not real.
She is a hyper-realistic digital influencer generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Compared with the virtual influencers that came before her, such as Singapore’s Rae and United States-based Lil Miquela, who obviously look like digital avatars, Aitana looks a lot more like your everyday red-carpet model.
Her creators, Barcelona-based agency The Clueless, waxed lyrical about the benefits of having an AI creation like Aitana in response to queries by CNA TODAY.
Its representative Paula Garcia said: “Hyper-realistic AI influencers bring great versatility, as they can adapt much faster and more precisely to each client’s needs.
“AI allows us to work with creativity and immediacy while breaking the barriers of time and space. We can carry out campaigns anywhere in the world without the need for travel, saving both time and costs.”
Ms Garcia added that Aitana generates around S$15,000 (US$11,700) a month for the company, and has recently worked with brands such as Amazon and gaming technology company Razer, co-founded by Singaporean entrepreneur Tan Min-Liang.
Aitana is not the only AI influencer drawing attention. Another, Mia Zelu, went viral recently for a picture-perfect Instagram post of her “attending” Wimbledon tennis events in England – until users discovered that she, too, was created with AI.
Mia has 221,000 followers on Instagram and even has a virtual sister called Ana, whose follower count stands at 307,000. Both are labelled in their Instagram bios as creations managed by a company called Zelu Vision House.
Though it is unclear whether the Zelu sisters have earned their creators any money through brand collaborations, “models” similar to them look set to become ubiquitous.
Consulting firm Grand View Research estimated that the global virtual influencer market was valued at US$6.06 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach US$45.88 billion by 2030.
The hyperrealism of AI-generated people has already caused some anger and controversy in Hollywood, when a showreel of AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood made rounds on the internet.
Her Dutch creator Eline Van der Velden, chief executive officer of AI media firm Particle 6, said in September that the synthetic performer is “in talks” with talent agencies.
This drew criticism from A-list actresses such as Emily Blunt, Natasha Lyonne and Whoopi Goldberg. When shown a video of Tilly Norwood on a podcast with Variety, Blunt said: “That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed … That is really, really scary.”
The sudden rise of these hyper-realistic figures has ignited debate about what this means for consumers, influencers and the advertising economy at large.
Beyond questions of authenticity, many are asking whether such collaborations are intentionally misleading, and whether AI-generated models are now encroaching on jobs traditionally held by creative professionals, from photographers and production crews to makeup artists and stylists.
A HUMAN-AI SHOWDOWN
Some advertising agencies in Singapore are already incorporating AI-generated models and influencers into client campaigns. One such firm is Coco Creative Studio.
Its founder and creative director, Mr Jose Jeuland, told CNA TODAY that the agency has been producing AI-assisted advertising visuals at campaign level for major clients in cosmetics, beverages, fashion, hair care and even government agencies.
Mr Jeuland said the agency would “absolutely continue to do so” whenever it makes strategic sense.
However, instead of relying solely on artificial content, the agency sees its strength in hybrid production, blending AI elements with traditional photography and videography to maintain realism and quality.
This might include pairing AI models with real product shots, or compositing human actors into AI-generated environments before handing everything off to professional “re-touchers”.
That is how many professionals in the industry would prefer it – for AI to be a collaborator, not a replacement for human professionals.
In response to queries from CNA TODAY, the Visual, Audio, Creative Content Professionals Association in Singapore said that fair work opportunities for freelancers must be protected, and brands and agencies should not use AI influencers to undercut fair pay or bypass professional creatives.
“Clear industry guidelines are needed to ensure AI-generated content does not displace human creators without proper consideration and compensation.
“At present, these safeguards are still evolving, making this a murky space that requires vigilance.”
The association added that there must be transparency, education and accountability.
“Audiences deserve honesty, and all AI-generated influencers and content should be clearly disclosed.
“When an influencer or persona is fully AI-created, clear disclosure helps maintain trust and prevent misrepresentation.”
It also called for intellectual property and consent to be upheld.
“AI influencers are often trained on data derived from real creative works. Freelancers’ works, voices, likenesses and styles must never be used without permission, proper licensing and fair remuneration. Respect for copyright is non-negotiable,” the association asserted.
In the meantime, influencers in Singapore themselves do not seem too worried about these AI models. Many who were interviewed said that the core of their work is connection, which is something technology cannot easily mimic.
Singapore micro-influencer Gargi Sharma, for instance, said she does not think she can be replaced.
“When brands reach out to (real-life) influencers, they’re not just paying for the way they look, they’re paying for the connection and community they have built from scratch,” she added.
That sense of lived experience, she and others argued, is what gives human influencers their value.
Others point to a growing fatigue with overly polished content, which is something AI tends to produce by default.
Parenting and lifestyle influencer Zhang Shiqi, known online as “Jang Shiki” and whose children appear regularly in her social media posts, said that the hyper-smooth aesthetic of AI often works against engagement.
“AI-generated content can feel too polished … and it loses the authenticity of interaction with my kids and the product.”
Such videos would not resonate with her audience, she added.
Indeed, it is for this reason that not all agencies are as enthusiastic about recommending AI influencers to their clients.
Ms Robyn Chew, the Singapore market lead at social media marketing consultancy VoxEureka, said the firm remains “cautious, though not closed off” about doing so.
“Consumers today aren’t just drawn to aspirational content. They want relatable and sometimes, imperfect, human stories.”
GENERATING HYPE, NOT SALES
Even as AI-generated influencers are becoming more common, what is less clear is whether they even work to attract consumers.
An informal straw poll conducted by CNA TODAY with about 75 people under the age of 35 suggested that most consumers were not as enthusiastic about AI influencers as their creators may be.
About 80 per cent of the respondents said they would not trust a product, service or brand promoted by an AI influencer.
For many, the issue came down to credibility and relatability.
Ms Samantha Lim, a 27-year-old healthcare professional, said AI influencers simply would not sway her.
People tend to follow influencers “who reflect your personal values, life experience and socio-economic status”, she said, and these are qualities that AI personas – no matter how realistic they look – do not genuinely possess.
Others pointed to the question of whether an AI-generated figure can provide dependable recommendations at all.
Ms Brenda Chan, 26, who works in communications, said she would feel wary about buying something pushed by an AI influencer because she would be “unsure of the credibility” of the endorsement.
If an AI model appeared in sponsored apparel, she said, she would question whether the fit and details shown were truthful or merely virtually generated.
She would consider buying something promoted by an AI influencer only if real humans who had bought the items chime in with positive reviews, she added.
The type of product matters as well.
“I would be more inclined to purchase lower-cost items like clothes, household items and makeup,” Ms Chan said. “But not health-related products like supplements, which can be risky, or experience-focused products like travel vouchers.”
Her view highlights a trend that is being borne out by some recent research: People may be willing to trust an AI influencer for low-stakes purchases, but for anything experience-related, they would still trust another human being more.
Mr Mimrah Mahmood, vice-president of media, social and consumer intelligence firm Meltwater Asia-Pacific, said that some sectors see three to four times more engagement when using AI influencers compared with human creators – particularly in categories that are “product-heavy” or “specification-based” such as cameras, drones or smartphones.
This aligns with findings pointed out by Associate Professor Donny Soh from the Infocomm Technology Cluster of the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).
Referring to a 2024 study by researchers from the University of Zaragoza in Spain, he noted that AI or virtual influencers tend to perform better with “utilitarian” products, meaning items valued for their technical or functional use such as smartphones and appliances.
Human influencers, on the other hand, remain far more effective when it comes to emotionally driven or experience-based products: wellness, fashion, travel, lifestyle and anything requiring the authenticity of personal use.
Notably, the same study did not show significant differences in conversion or purchase intent. This meant that consumers might engage with AI content, but that did not necessarily translate into sales.
That distinction matters, one analyst said. Mr Adam Furness, Asia-Pacific and Japan managing director at partnership management platform Impact.com, cautioned that the current surge in views for AI influencers is likely inflated by novelty.
“When there’s something new, there’s always a bit of a spike,” he said. “People will ask, ‘Is this really interesting? I want to check it out and have a look at it’. That’s happening with AI influencers. And brands are asking how they can get involved.”
However, higher views or engagement do not automatically equate to real business outcomes.
“They can be really creative with it,” Mr Furness added. “But are they actually selling products, or just generating headlines and (building) public relations? Getting eyeballs is one thing, converting them is another. The jury’s still out.”
THE GROWING UNEASE OVER AI
What all this points to is that even as AI-generated influencers gain traction among marketing professionals, the broader public remains slightly uneasy about embracing them fully.
A significant part of this wariness stems from the rise of deepfakes, and the increasing difficulty of distinguishing what is real from what is fabricated.
A finding from the We Are Social’s Digital 2026 Global Overview Report showed that 71 per cent of Singaporeans are concerned about telling real content apart from AI-generated visuals.
Ms Naiyen Wang, the creative agency’s Southeast Asia managing director, said that this anxiety would only intensify.
“The greater concern for human influencers is not competition but imitation,” she added.
“The rise of AI-generated deepfakes poses real risks, from impersonation and misinformation to scams. We’ve seen how damaging these can be, affecting everyone from politicians to celebrities and everyday people.”
This broader scepticism has already seeped into marketing culture. Multiple brands have begun leaning into “anti-AI” messaging to differentiate themselves.
In the US, Polaroid ran a campaign across Manhattan – including outside Google’s New York headquarters – featuring bus-stop ads declaring: “AI can’t generate sand between your toes.”
Closer to home, Singaporean tech influencer Ainul Md Razib pointed to the public backlash that Uniqlo Malaysia faced after online users accused the retailer of using AI-generated designs for merchandise created in collaboration with Malaysian food chain Oriental Kopi.
The criticism online was targeted at the quality and inconsistencies of the artwork – for example, a singular prawn without a head – and the decision not to hire real artists when “their business is so good”.
The reaction, she said, reflected how sensitive consumers have become to perceived inauthenticity.
“People were already saying things, like, ‘Oh, I’m never going to shop at Uniqlo again’. When a brand uses AI, there is this feeling that they don’t respect human creativity.”
Agencies themselves are also aware of the shifting mood.
Dentsu Creative Singapore, which manages a virtual influencer named Rae, noted that the sheer volume of AI-generated content flooding social platforms may be reducing its impact.
Mr Stan Lim, its chief creative and experience officer, said: “At the moment, with the inundation of AI-generated content, there is a fair bit of creative noise that makes the space crowded and often indistinguishable. AI is everywhere, yet few executions truly move people.”
He added: “Timing and intent matter more than novelty … So until the creative use of hyper-realistic AI influencers can bring true differentiation and relevance to audiences, we think it is important to pause and assess what actually creates value, both for brands and for consumers.”
Mr Lenney Leong, founder of marketing agency Get Customers, pointed to how Coca-Cola released an AI-generated Christmas advertisement last month that was greeted with ridicule, with many consumers feeling that it was rushed and inauthentic.
“This reflects a broader sentiment that while AI is exciting, audiences are wary when it feels ‘slapped on’ without intention.”
So where does that leave AI influencers?
Analysts said that the answer for companies looking to market their products cheaply is not to avoid them completely, but to use them more thoughtfully, and in tandem with human creators.
Assoc Prof Donny Soh from SIT said that AI influencers can still work, but only when brands keep the “human touch” visible.
“Brands have to be upfront and show how it’s part of a broader creative idea. It feels less like a replacement for humans and more like an experiment in storytelling.”
He pointed to a recent campaign in the US involving an AI influencer paired with real-life personality Jojo Siwa to boost sign-ups for the National Marrow Donor Program.
The campaign embraced transparency with its tagline: “She’s not real, but the crisis is.”
By pairing AI with a real celebrity, the campaign reached 11.3 million Instagram followers and more than 46,100 TikTok users – numbers the organiser considered a strong success.
When it comes to transparency, experts said that it is non-negotiable.
Mr Lyon Poh, partner and head of corporate transformation at auditing and consultancy firm KPMG Singapore, warned that some AI influencers still do not clearly disclose that they are artificial, which should be a red flag for consumers.
“Businesses should clearly and consistently disclose that the influencer is AI-generated,” he said.
“AI influencers should not simulate or fabricate human experiences, because this can mislead consumers into believing that they are engaging with a real person, undermining trust.”
Used thoughtfully, with transparency, creative purpose and human oversight, AI influencers may still have a role to play. Without those safeguards, then brands risk alienating the very audiences they are trying to win over.
The drugs could have been supplied to as many as 68.5 million users, according to Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department.
Malaysian police seized over 18,000kg of drugs worth RM1.53b in one of the country’s biggest drug busts on record, Dec 20, 2025 (Photo: Facebook/ Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department）
An international drug syndicate was busted after Malaysian police seized over 18,000kg of drugs worth RM1.53b (US$375m), in one of the country’s biggest drug busts on record.
Local media reported on Saturday (Jan 20) that a series of raids in the Klang Valley on Dec 16 uncovered a massive drug processing lab located in a three-storey bungalow, as well as various other premises used for drug storage.
The seizures included 3kg of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) which is commonly known as ecstasy, 4,041kg of cocaine and 14,493kg of ketamine, according to Free Malaysia Today (FMT).
“It is definitely one of the biggest drug seizures ever,” said Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) director Hussein Omar Khan, as quoted by The Star.
“The drugs could have been supplied to 68.5 million users,” he said.
That is about twice Malaysia’s population of 34.2 million.
Six suspects – three Malaysian men and three foreign women, aged 24 to 39 – were arrested.
“The three foreign women detained were the girlfriends of the male suspects,” said Hussein.
Initial drug tests showed some suspects were positive for ketamine and methamphetamine.
Hussein said one suspect acted as the head storekeeper and assistant to the “chemist”, FMT reported.
Another two suspects were responsible for managing the residential homes and business premises used as illegal drug laboratories.
The syndicate is believed to have been active since April, using residential homes and business premises to process drugs for the international market.
“Our investigations showed the syndicate had been making various shipments overseas before the raids,” Hussein added.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff gather for a family photo at the Chancellery in Berlin, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Photo: AP/Lisi Niesner/Pool Photo)
The United States joined Qatar, Egypt and Turkey on Saturday (Dec 20) in urging all parties to the Gaza ceasefire to uphold their commitments and exercise restraint, following talks in Miami aimed at stabilising the fragile truce.
Top officials from the four countries met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff to review the first phase of the ceasefire, which came into effect on October 10 after more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
“We reaffirm our full commitment to the entirety of the President’s 20-point peace plan and call on all parties to uphold their obligations, exercise restraint, and cooperate with monitoring arrangements,” Witkoff said in a statement posted on X.
ONGOING STRAINS ON CEASEFIRE
The meeting took place amid continued strains on the agreement. Gaza’s civil defence agency said six people were killed on Friday in Israeli shelling of a shelter, bringing to about 400 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the truce began.
Israel, meanwhile, has repeatedly accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire, with its military reporting that three Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since October.
Against this backdrop, Turkey said it was holding parallel discussions with Hamas on moving the deal forward. Turkish security sources said the head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, met Hamas negotiating team leader Khalil Al-Hayya in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss steps needed to proceed to the second phase of the peace plan.
According to the sources, the talks covered measures to address what they described as Israeli violations of the ceasefire, as well as unresolved issues that could hinder progress to the next stage of the agreement. No further details were given.
TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY PLANNED
The four countries called for the “near-term establishment and operationalisation” of a transitional administration for Gaza, which is due to take shape in the second phase of the agreement. They said consultations would continue in the coming weeks on how to implement the next steps.
Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were found guilty of corruption in relation to selling state gifts. The ruling is the latest legal setback for the former prime minister, who has been jailed since 2023.
Imran Khan and wis wife Bushra Bibi have already been jailed in a separate corruption case [FILE: July 17, 2023]Image: K.M. Chaudary/AP Photo/picture allianceA court in Pakistan on Saturday sentenced former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to 17 years in prison after being found guilty of corruption.
The court’s decision is the latest setback for Khan, who has been accused in multiple cases since he was ousted in 2022.
Khan, who is 73, has been in prison since 2023. He denies the charges, accusing Pakistani authorities of politically persecuting him.
What was the case against Khan and his wife?
Khan and Bibi were found guilty of retaining, selling and underpricing state gifts while the former prime minister was in office.
The gifts they were accused of selling at vastly reduced prices included jewelry from the Saudi Arabian government.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented a jewellery set made by the Italian luxury brand Bulgari to Khan and his wife in May 2021.
Prosecutors said Khan and his wife had said the value of the gifts was just over $10,000, well short of their real market value of $285,521 (€243,780).
According to Pakistani law, government officials and politicians are allowed to keep gifts received from foreign dignitaries if they are under a certain value. To keep the gifts, they must purchase them at market value and declare the proceeds from any sale.
Khan and Bibi were sentenced to 10 years for criminal breach of trust and seven years for corruption.
Saturday’s sentencing is separate from an earlier case against the couple. In that case, Khan and his wife were sentenced to 14 and seven years, respectively.
What has been the reaction to Khan’s sentencing?
Khan’s lawyer, Salman Safdar, has said the couple will appeal the ruling.
A spokesperson for Khan, Zulfiquar Bukhari, slammed the sentence, which he said “raises serious questions about the fairness and impartiality of the process, turning justice into a tool for selective prosecution.”
Khan’s party, the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), also condemned the ruling.
In a statement, it called the decision “a black chapter in history.”
In a post on X, the party said Khan’s family had been barred from the court when the verdict was announced at the Adiala prison in Rawalpindi.
In the eastern city of Magdeburg, people are still grieving one year after an attack on the Christmas market killed six people. But residents are also trying to carry on despite the heightened security.
The number of visitors is down at Magdeburg’s Christmas market, but more have come than expectedImage: Julie Gregson/DW
Police officers — one toting a submachine gun — and security guards are grouped around the entrances to Magdeburg’s Christmas market. Occasionally, people are stopped and questioned. Large red and green concrete blocks, sand sacks and steel security barriers line the access points to the market, situated in the square by the city hall.
On December 20, 2024, six people were killed here — five women and a 9-year-old boy — and more than 300 were injured, some severely, when a man drove a vehicle into the crowds. His precise motives remain unclear.
Stallholder Mirko Stage was standing just 20 meters (65 feet) away from the area where most victims were killed in Magdeburg on December 20, 2024.
Just around the corner from his sugared-almonds and waffle stand, there are memorial stones set into the pavement, adorned with candles and flowers.
Stage, who lives in Magdeburg, said he had had some qualms ahead of the November 20 opening. “All of us went into this Christmas market with a funny feeling because we weren’t sure how it would be to suddenly reopen here after the events of last year,” said Stage.
He said his experiences had been unexpectedly positive, with stallholders and visitors beginning to open up and process their grief. “First of all, you are shocked and depressed,” he said, “and, at some point, you start talking to one another about what happened.”
Stage said visitors had approached him to share their experiences. “People who say: “I was standing there as a first-aider and was standing there and there that evening.” Those very people are returning here because the Old Market Square is the city’s living room. We don’t want to let this be taken away from us by some kind of crazy perpetrator,” said Stage.
Karim Champi, an Italian stallholder with Tunisian roots, saw the attacker’s car drive right past his olive-wood handicrafts stall.
His stall now stands in a different location. “This year, there aren’t as many tourists. People are frightened,” he said, tearing up.
Christmas cheer and tragedy side-by-side
The market has been given a redesign. The optical changes — along with the security measures — are intended to calm people’s anxieties.
Not everyone is convinced by the changes. “It’s like Fort Knox,” said one Christmas market visitor. “It’s madness all this barricading.” The 54-year-old lives almost 60 kilometers from Magdeburg, but he came here with his wife “out of principle and protest.”
“If we don’t come, he has won,” he added in reference to the attacker, sipping a mulled wine.
As dusk settles and the lights go on, more people begin to arrive at the market. The hum of voices, Christmas music, and fairground rides becomes louder. Couples, families and friends of all ages stroll across the square or gather.
Mixed opinions about market reopening
Magdeburg’s Christmas market has about 140 stands this year. Traditional wooden Christmas decorations from the Ore Mountains and illuminated stars are on offer. But lots of food, too — from German Bratwurst and Christmas biscuits to burgers, Belgian waffles and, this year, falafels.
Market managing director Paul-Gerhard Stieger said not everyone had agreed with the decision to hold the event again this year.
“Some of those affected by the attack, of course, say: ‘How can you do this here?’ and there are some city residents of that opinion, too,” Stieger said. “But there are also people directly affected who have approached us and said they think it is important that the Christmas market takes place here.”
The number of visitors is down this year. Turnout, says Stieger, is nonetheless better than expected. He conceded that holding the event was a tricky balancing act. “Of course, a Christmas market is a commercial event, but it’s also the stallholders’ livelihood. It’s their peak season.”
The market organizer said only two stallholders had pulled out — one in connection with the tragic events. And there were even 10 newcomers this year, Stieger said.
Among them is Fares Saleh Aga, who came from Syria to the city eight years ago and now runs a falafel store in the city. He said he had decided to come here to send a signal.
“People walk past me and see a friendly face. The meaning of Christmas is peace. I am very happy. The people are nice,” said Aga, who was giving people heart-shaped chickpea balls to taste.
One visitor there with her husband and son said she welcomed the inclusion of food from other cultures. The 49-year-old conceded feeling a little uneasy, but added, “Christmas markets are definitely part of Christmas for us. It is our tradition and we love Christmas.” She said she also wanted to support the traders.
Fake news about canceled Christmas markets
Frank Hakelberg, CEO of the Deutscher Schaustellerbund, a national organization representing event stallholders and fairground operators, confirmed that this year’s visitor figures were lower across Germany, but said they seemed to be picking up in the run-up to the holidays. He blamed a social media campaign, in part, for the slow start to the season.
Hakelberg said his organization had fielded media inquiries from all over the world after rumors went viral that Christmas markets were being canceled in Germany. In fact, he stressed that only a handful or so of the 3,200 major markets in the country had been called off.
He said there was no such thing as 100% security — no matter how tight the measures are.
President Donald Trump backed Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman for New York governor Saturday, a day after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) announced her stunning withdrawal from the race.
“Bruce is MAGA all the way, and has been with me from the very beginning,” the president posted on his Truth Social account, in his first endorsement since the dramatic development in the Republican primary.
He called Blakeman, a longtime friend, a “fantastic guy” who will “win the big November Election” against Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY).
President Donald Trump backed Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman for New York governor Saturday. AP
“I am blessed and grateful to have the endorsement of President Donald J. Trump,” Blakeman said in a statement.
“President Trump is driving down gasoline prices and slashing the cost of prescription drugs. Securing our borders has made America safer. President Trump loves New York and we will be partners in making New York safe and affordable,” he added.
Trump said “without hesitation” that Blakeman “has my Complete and Total Endorsement of the ONCE GREAT STATE OF NEW YORK” and said Blakeman “WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
The president’s unequivocal praise came after he spoke highly of both candidates for the previous two weeks – and could serve to discourage any further primary drama or even clear the field, after Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) left the door open to taking another look at the race.
“I’m going to take a little bit of time before I comment further as to what I may or may not do,” he told CNN in the minutes after Stefanik’s shock Friday announcement.
Lawler had earlier endorsed Stefanik. His office didn’t respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, reportedly dined with Maria Shriver less than 48 hours before their gruesome murders.
The trio is said to have dined at Brentwood, Los Angeles, eatery Amici on Dec. 12, according to restaurant owner Tancredi DeLuca.
“They were very good people, always very approachable and so very kind to the entire staff,” DeLuca told the Daily Mail in an interview published Saturday.
“We are all in complete shock. We are all saddened about what happened. They are very good people, very down to earth and always treated everyone here very well.”
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner (pictured above with family in 2024) reportedly dined at Amici’s restaurant with their pal Maria Shriver less than 48 hours before their deaths. Getty Images for Wynn Las Vegas
According to the staff, the group dined on the restaurant’s winter special, Sogliola Alla Mugnaia, which is an imported Dover sole served in a lemon-caper sauce, with broccolini and roasted potatoes. They had some pasta with the dish.
Reps for Rob have not responded to Page Six’s repeated requests for comment. A rep for Shriver did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment either.
The famed director and his wife were found stabbed to death inside their Los Angeles home on Dec. 14. Rob was 78. Michele was 70.
Among the list of celebrities who mourned the Hollywood loss, Shriver, 70, also shared a touching tribute to the couple, whom she affectionately referred to as two of her “closest friends.”
“I loved Michele and Rob Reiner,” she wrote via X on Dec. 15. “We raised our kids together, from mommy and me on up. We laughed together, we cried together, we played together, we dreamed together. We had dinner this past week, and they were in the best place in the their lives: loving one another, loving their friends, their family, their country.”
“They never gave up on our country. They wanted to make it better. They always, always wanted to make our world better, and they were willing to fight to make it the country they loved.”
“I’ll miss you, Michele. I’ll miss you, Rob. I love you both. Thank you for your friendship. God bless you both. Life will not be the same without you here, that’s for sure,” she closed her lengthy message.
As previously reported, Rob and Michele were last seen alive at Conan O’Brien’s holiday party on Dec. 13, where they allegedly got into a heated argument with their son, Nick, sources told The Post.
Multiple outlets reported that Nick, who has publicly struggled with drug addiction, behaved erratically at the party, disturbing the other A-list guests including comedian Bill Hader.
At one point, a source familiar with the event claimed that Nick’s behavior had several guests looking to call the police on him. Though, they were stopped by party host O’Brien.
“They got in an argument, the father and son. It got so bad and loud [that] someone wanted to call the police to report it,” an insider told the Daily Mail on Friday. “But Conan stepped in and said, ‘It’s my house, my party, I’m not calling the police.’ He talked them out of calling the police.”
it was also reported that Rob shockingly told close friends at the party he was “petrified” that his son could “hurt” him in his last words at the event following the massive blowup.
The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority in Bangladesh.
In moments when she is alone, when there is a break in the beatings from her husband, the girl cries for the school that was once her place of peace in a world that has otherwise offered her none.
Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority.
It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school’s funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina’s education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.
With her learning opportunities gone, and her family worried that foreign aid cuts would make their fight for survival in the camps even more perilous, Hasina — along with hundreds of other girls under the age of 18 — was quickly married off. And, just like Hasina, many of the girls are now trapped in marriages with men who abuse them.
“I dreamed of being something, of working for the community,” Hasina, now 17, says softly. The Associated Press is withholding her full name to protect her from retaliation by her husband. “My life is destroyed.”
The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs. Beyond unwanted marriages, scores of children as young as 10 were forced into backbreaking manual labor, and girls as young as 12 forced into prostitution. With no safe space to play or learn, children were left to wander the labyrinthine camps, making them increasingly easy targets for kidnappers. And the young and desperate were picked off by traffickers who promised to restore what the children had lost: Hope.
In a sweltering building not far from the cramped shelter where her husband tortures her, Hasina plays nervously with the strap of her pink mobile phone case, emblazoned with the words “Forever Young.”
She is still young, she says. But the aid cuts forced her into womanhood and into a nightmare. Not long after marrying her husband, she says, he isolated her from her family and began to beat and sexually abuse her. She daydreams daily of school, where she was a whiz at English and hoped to become a teacher. Now, she is confined largely to her shelter, cooking and cleaning and waiting with dread for the next beating.
If she had any way to escape, she says, she would. But there is nowhere to go. She cannot return to Myanmar, where the military that killed thousands of Rohingya in 2017 during what the U.S. declared a genocide remains in charge of her homeland.
Now, her husband is in charge of her future, though she no longer sees one.
“If the school hadn’t closed,” she says, “I wouldn’t be trapped in this life.”
Children targeted
Life has always been dangerous for the 600,000 children languishing in these chaotic, overcrowded camps, where a squalid jumble of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters are jammed onto landslide-prone hills. But Trump’s decision in January to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development has made it even more so, the AP found in interviews with 37 children, family members, teachers, community leaders and aid workers.
Violations against children in the camps have risen sharply this year, according to UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency. Between January and mid-November, reported cases of abduction and kidnapping more than quadrupled over the same time period last year, to 560 children. And there has been an eightfold increase in reports of armed groups’ recruitment and use of children for training and support roles in the camps, with 817 children affected. Many members of the armed groups are battling a powerful ethnic militia across the border in Myanmar. The actual number of cases is likely higher due to underreporting, according to UNICEF, which lost 27% of its funding due to the U.S. aid cuts and subsequently shuttered nearly 2,800 schools.
“The armed groups, with their roots in Myanmar, are operating in the camps, using the camps as a fertile ground for recruiting young people,” says Patrick Halton, a child protection manager for UNICEF. “Obviously, if children are not in learning centers and not in multipurpose centers, then they’re more vulnerable to this.”
Verified cases of child marriage, which the U.N. defines as the union of children under age 18, rose by 21% and verified child labor cases by 17% in the year to September, compared to the same time period last year. Those statistics are likely to be a significant undercount, says Halton.
“With the funding cuts, we had to downscale a lot in terms of the education,” Halton says. “It’s meant that children have not necessarily had things to do, and we’ve therefore seen this rise in children being married, children being in child labor.”
Though the U.S. spent just 1% of its budget on foreign aid, Trump dubbed USAID wasteful and shut it down, a move that has proven catastrophic for the world’s most vulnerable. In Myanmar, the AP found the aid cuts have caused children to starve to death, despite U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement to Congress that “No one has died” because of the dissolution of USAID. A study published in The Lancet journal in June said the U.S. funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths, including more than 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.
In the Bangladesh camps, the U.S. — which has long been the biggest provider of aid to the predominantly Muslim Rohingya — slashed its funding by nearly half compared to last year. The overall Rohingya emergency response is only 50% funded for 2025, and aid agencies say next year is expected to be far worse.
In a statement to the AP, the State Department said the U.S. has provided more than $168 million to the Rohingya since the beginning of Trump’s term, although data from the U.N.’s financial tracking service show the U.S. contribution in 2025 is $156 million. Asked about the disparity, the State Department said the U.N.’s financial tracking service had not been recently updated and “generally does not show the latest information on all U.S. funding.”
The department said it had “advanced burden sharing and improved efficiency” in the Rohingya response, resulting in 11 countries increasing their funding by more than 10% year on year, collectively contributing $72 million.
“The Trump Administration continues to pursue the diplomatic efforts to encourage additional countries to help shoulder the burden,” the statement said.
The department didn’t respond to the AP’s request for evidence that the U.S. had influenced other countries’ funding decisions for the Rohingya response.
When the schools shut down, hundreds of underage girls — some as young as 14 — were married off, says Showkutara, executive director of the Rohingya Women Association for Education and Development. Her network of contacts across the camps have also reported an increase in kidnapping and trafficking, as well as a huge surge in the prostitution of girls as young as 12 since the aid cuts.
“After the school closures, they had no space to play. … That’s why they’re playing on the roads, far away from their blocks,” says Showkutara, who goes by one name. “There are some groups who are targeting the children.”
While UNICEF managed to repurpose some of its remaining funding, enabling the agency to recently reopen most of its learning centers, scores of schools run by other aid groups are still shut, and thousands of children remain out of class. And aid workers are anticipating even steeper funding cuts next year, leaving the schools’ futures uncertain. Save the Children has only secured a third of its funding target for life-saving services for 2026, meaning 20,000 children attending its schools are at risk of losing their education starting in January, says Golam Mostofa, the group’s area director for Cox’s Bazar, the closest city to the camps.
Meanwhile, Showkutara says, the children locked out of learning by the initial closures are forever lost: Both metaphorically, in the case of girls like Hasina who were married off to men who will never let them return to school even if they reopen, and literally, in the case of children who vanished into the trafficking network.
“It’s too late,” she says.
The death of dreams
The little boy sits slumped on a plastic stool under the punishing sun, his cheeks streaked with sweat, a cooler of freeze pops and other treats at his dirty feet. Ever since 10-year-old Mohammed Arfan’s school closed, this is where he spends 10 hours a day, seven days a week, selling snacks and daydreaming of the small schoolroom where he once felt safe and loved.
He had just finished his math lessons the day that his teacher told him the school’s funding was gone. As he walked home, he and his friends began to cry.
“I thought that I would not see my friends anymore, and that I was losing my future,” he says.
With no lessons to occupy his time, and his parents worried about their seven children’s survival, Arfan’s mother told him he would need to work to help keep the family fed.
He was terrified. If the camp’s kidnappers or thieves targeted him while he was working, he knew he was too small to fight back.
But he had no choice, and so his daily drudgery began. Each morning, he wakes at 7 and walks for half an hour to the factory to pick up the treats. Then, hoisting the 15-kilogram (30-pound) cooler upon his bony shoulder, he walks another 30 minutes to the corner of the dusty road where he sets up shop among the garbage, rotting banana peels and swarms of flies. For his efforts, he takes home around 200 to 300 taka ($1.60 to $2.50) a day.
There are boys like Arfan all over the camps, selling food they’re desperate to eat and collecting trash in exchange for cash, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, skin seared by the sun.
In a drainage ditch next to a row of stinking latrines, 13-year-old Rahamot Ullah wades up to his waist in water clouded with raw sewage, plucking from the muck discarded pieces of plastic. Five hours of rummaging through the waste will generally net him enough plastic to trade for around 50 taka (40 cents).
His eye blazes with blood from the bamboo that pierced it 10 days earlier while slogging through the sewage. He began coming here soon after his school shut down, in the hopes he could collect enough trash to pay the 500 taka ($4) a month fee for private lessons. Many months, that fee has remained out of reach.
He worries he will drown in the ditch. And he worries that his dreams of becoming a camp official or a teacher will never come true.
Back on the street corner, Arfan, too, feels his dreams dying. He shouldn’t be here, he says, voice barely audible above the incessant shrieking of horns from the rickshaws racing past, just inches from his cooler.
“I feel shame working,” he says. “This is the time I should be studying.”
Each night when the sun sets, Arfan packs up and heads back to his shelter. And it is here where he lies on a mat on the bamboo floor, crying himself to sleep and pining for the life he was forced to leave behind.
‘My heart is still crying’
The laughter that once filled Noor Zia’s classroom has been replaced by tears. Nearly every day, she says, her former students stop by to see if the school has reopened, only to break down when told it has not.
Zia often finds herself in tears, too. Before the aid cuts, she was the head teacher of 21 early learning centers that served 630 children aged 3-5. But the closures left her without a job, making it even harder for her to keep her family alive on the camp’s meager rations.
“My heart is still crying, because my family depends on this job,” she says, sitting in the empty classroom, where the wall behind her is adorned with a drawing of the Myanmar flag — a country most of her students, born in the camps, have never seen.
The funding cuts’ pain goes beyond the school closures. Skills development programs that kept thousands of children occupied were also halted. Healthcare, nutrition and sanitation services have been reduced. In camps crawling with scabies and other diseases, the results of the reductions are clear on the children’s scrawny bodies. Lesions line their slender limbs. The wet, rattling coughs of babies fill the fetid air. Atop a muddy hill, clusters of kids scratch ferociously at their heads, while a 4-year-old stoically plucks nits from her friend’s scalp.
Bangladesh has barred the Rohingya from leaving the camps to find work, so they are reliant upon humanitarian aid to survive. But the U.N.’s World Food Program, which had counted the U.S. as its largest donor, says it only has enough funds to continue providing food rations through March.
The prospect of a ration cut has terrified families. With no country offering the Rohingya large-scale resettlement, many have opted to make a run for it, with devastating results. Nearly a third of the 1,340 Rohingya who have fled Bangladesh by boat this year have died or gone missing en route, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Noor Kaida, a 17-year-old whose dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed when she was married off after her school shut, says she has lost two young relatives to traffickers. Shattered by the school closures, the 13- and 16-year-old girls believed traffickers who promised them a better life in Malaysia, Kaida says. Other passengers on the girls’ boats later told Kaida’s family both girls were killed; one by drowning, and the other at the hands of a trafficker.
“If the school wasn’t closed, they wouldn’t have had to take these risks,” Kaida says. “Because of the funding cuts and the school closures, thousands of girls were scattered in different places and their lives have been ruined.”
’Pray for me’
The 13-year-old boy had been missing for nine days when the call came in from an unfamiliar number.
“Baba, I’m leaving,” Mohammed told his frantic father. “I’m on the big boat now. Pray for me.”
The call disconnected, and Mohib Ullah knew his worst nightmare had come true: Just like so many other children in recent months, his boy had been taken by traffickers. Ullah — who has no relation to Rahamot Ullah — called back again and again, but the phone was switched off.
Mohammed — whose full name the AP is withholding for safety reasons — had been miserable since his school closed. The kindhearted boy who loved to read and learn, especially English, had long dreamed of becoming a teacher. When his education ended, he told his father through tears that his life was over. Ullah promised to try and find money for private school, but as a widower caring for four children, it was impossible.
The teen hatched a plan, which he shared in secret with his big sister, Bibi: He would go with a trafficker to Malaysia, and find a future there. Bibi tried to talk him out of it; traffickers who take children on the long, dangerous journey generally detain the youngsters at the end until their parents pay a fee for their release. The children of parents who can’t pay are often tortured, and sometimes killed. Bibi warned her brother that their father would never be able to afford the trafficker’s payment.
But Mohammed didn’t care. “It’s better to withstand two years of torture than stay here in a hopeless camp,” he told his sister. “It’s better to die if I can’t continue learning.”
In a panic, Bibi shared her brother’s plan with their father, who was horrified; he knew how deadly the journey to Malaysia can be. He ordered his son to stay put, and to stay patient. The schools will reopen someday, he assured Mohammed. But the teen was convinced they would not.
And so, one morning in October, Mohammed left his family’s shelter and never returned. Ullah scoured the camps and called relatives, searching for any trace of his son. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. He has already lost another son, an 8-year-old who suddenly died on the anniversary of Ullah’s wife’s death, after crying all day about missing his mother and then saying he felt unwell. The prospect of losing one more child was unbearable.
Mohammed’s call came on Oct. 21. And then, for over six weeks, there was silence.
On Dec. 6, Ullah’s phone finally rang. It was Mohammed — still alive, but sick and sobbing. The traffickers were demanding 380,000 taka ($3,100) for his release — an astronomical sum that Ullah told Mohammed he did not have. But the terrified boy begged his father to try and find it.
Recent changes to the H-1B visa vetting process have left many Indian workers stranded in India after their visa appointments were suddenly cancelled or delayed by several months.
Several H-1B workers were affected by abrupted cancellations or delay in visa appointments. (Photo Credit: Representative Image)
Indian H-1B visa holders who travelled back to India to renew their work permits in America are reportedly stranded in the country after their appointments were abruptly cancelled by US consular offices and rescheduled for months later, according to immigration lawyers.
These long wait times are largely attributed to the rollout of rigorous new vetting protocols by the US Department of State earlier this month. Under new directives from the Donald Trump administration, consular offices are now required to conduct “online presence reviews”, which involve a deep-dive screening of an applicant’s social media accounts.
Thousands of Indian professionals who travelled to India for H-1B and H-4 visas between December and February have had their consular interview appointments abruptly postponed by several months. In some cases, the rescheduled dates extend to mid-2026 or even 2027, leaving them stuck in India and facing serious uncertainty about their employment, as per reports.
Immigration lawyers told The Washington Post that the sudden cancellations have upended lives, leaving workers on expired visas fearful of losing their jobs. Emily Neumann, a partner at the Houston-based immigration firm Reddy Neumann Brown PC, said she had at least 100 clients stranded in India.
Veena Vijay Ananth, an immigration attorney in India, and Charles Kuck, who practices immigration law in Atlanta, said they each had more than a dozen similar cases. These lawyers said many of those affected by the sudden H-1B visa rules are tech workers in their 30s or 40s, who have been living in the United States for years.
‘Biggest Mess’ Under Trump Administration
Several workers are now scrambling to find alternative work arrangements with their US companies, while others are debating whether to keep their children out of school or send them home alone. Other people are completely separated from their families.
“This is the biggest mess we have seen,” said Ananth, who has worked on H-1B cases for over 20 years. “I’m not sure there is a plan.”
A spokesperson for the State Department told The Washington Post that “while in the past the emphasis may have been on processing cases quickly and reducing wait times, our embassies and consulates around the world, including in India, are now prioritizing thoroughly vetting each visa case above all else.”
India has long been the biggest beneficiary of the H-1B programme, accounting for 71% of visa holders, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). As of September, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft were the three largest sponsors of H-1B workers, the USCIS data shows.
However, the H-1B programme came under sharp attack after US President Donald Trump took office in January, with some of his influential far-right backers claiming that it takes jobs from American workers. On September 19, Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applications in a bid to reduce misuse.
On December 3, the Trump administration announced “expanded screening and vetting” procedures for H-1B and H4 dependent visa holders, including a review of their online presence. “Every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” the State Department said. “A US visa is a privilege, not a right.”
Why Are Indians Facing Delays In Visa Interviews?
In the following days after the new vetting process was announced, H-1B visa holders with renewal appointments in mid to late December started receiving emails from the State Department saying that “operational constraints” had forced consulates to reduce the number of appointments they could take each day, as per the report.
The bulk of the renewal appointments are being rescheduled between March and June 2026, while one applicant was given a makeup date in 2027. An Indian man living in Detroit and working as an engineer narrated his ordeal, saying he flew back to India in early December for a wedding and had consular appointments set up for December 17 and 23 to renew his H-1B visa, which is now expired.
On December 8, he got a series of emails from the US State Department saying his consular appointment had been cancelled and rescheduled for July 2, 2026, more than six months away. This caused panic, as the man has a wife in the US and a five-year-old son. He was later able to secure an expedited appointment after his company submitted documentation showing several of the projects he’s working on are ramping up next year.
The engineer told The Washington Post that the changes to the H-1B programme are misguided because foreign workers help power many leading American companies. “If you see an overnight exodus of people working on H-1Bs, I promise you, a lot of companies are going to fall flat,” he said.
Even companies are not immune to this recent H-1B shockwave. Unable to predict when employees will return, US tech executives are scrambling to come up with accommodations and workarounds, said a person familiar with the issue.
While the interim Bangladesh administration frames the unrest as a spontaneous eruption of grief, ground intelligence suggests a far more calculated design
The relations between India and Bangladesh came under strain after the interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus came to power in Dhaka. (File pic/PTI)
The escalating turmoil in Bangladesh following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Hadi is being viewed by top intelligence sources as a meticulously timed and premeditated pivot towards a hardline anti-India stance. While the interim administration frames the unrest as a spontaneous eruption of grief, ground intelligence suggests a far more calculated design. The violence is not merely a byproduct of a power vacuum but a deliberate use of “controlled chaos” to reshape the country’s foundational identity and its relationship with New Delhi.
The systemic failure to protect diplomatic missions—including the targeted stone-pelting at the Indian Assistant High Commission in Chattogram and the siege of the High Commission in Dhaka—stems from a lack of political will rather than a lack of security capacity. Reports indicate that Jamaat-e-Islami-aligned student and street networks were mobilised with precision immediately following the incident. Despite having the resources to intervene, local police stations in several Dhaka zones were effectively immobilised by political fear. Officers were reportedly ordered to avoid immediate arrests to prevent “escalation”, a hesitation that granted attackers the necessary window to disperse and escape.
Crucially, this administrative paralysis serves an underlying narrative: any robust police action risked being branded as “pro-India suppression”, which would feed the radical claim that the unrest was an Indian-backed plot. This premeditated blame shift onto India serves to delegitimise the entire Awami League ecosystem and sideline any remaining pro-Hasina institutions. By allowing radical elements to dominate the streets and fan anti-Hindu sentiment, the interim government is successfully reorienting the domestic political discourse towards a “revolutionary” legitimacy that is inherently hostile to India.
DAVID and Victoria Beckham no longer follow son Brooklyn on Instagram — a new twist to the family’s feud in the run-up to Christmas.
It is the most public sign to date that the ex-England footballer and his wife are not in direct contact with their eldest son or his missus Nicola Peltz.
David and Victoria have mysteriously unfollowed son Brooklyn on InstagramCredit: AFP
It comes after other sons Romeo and Cruz unfollowed their brother and his wife on the app in July.
A source said: “This is the ultimate snub in 2025 and it shows just how deep their rift is.” He added that the unfollowing could have been automatic if Brooklyn had blocked them first.
Nicola, 30, has hinted that she and Brooklyn, 26, will spend Christmas Day with her family this year, snubbing the Beckhams’ celebrations.
She shared a snap on Friday showing Brooklyn and her brother Bradley Peltz at her family’s £76million mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.
Brooklyn and Nicola were absent from David’s long-awaited knighthood and 50th birthday do this year.
Meanwhile David and Victoria, 51, missed their son and Nicola renewing their vows in New York in August.
The couple, who wed in 2022, were last pictured with Brooklyn’s parents on Boxing Day last year when fashion designer Victoria put a snap on Instagram of David with their three sons, daughter Harper, now 14, and Nicola.
She wrote: “Being together for the holidays makes me so happy.”
Israeli officials believe Iran is expanding its ballistic missile program. They are preparing to make the case during an upcoming meeting with Trump that it poses a new threat.
President Donald Trump speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on Oct. 13.Chip Somodevilla / AFP – Getty Images
Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.
Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said. But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet later this month in Florida at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. At that meeting, the sources said, Netanyahu is expected to make the case to Trump that Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program poses a threat that could necessitate swift action.
They said part of his argument is expected to be that Iran’s actions present perils not only to Israel but also to the broader region, including U.S. interests. The Israeli leader is expected to present Trump with options for the U.S. to join or assist in any new military operations, the sources said.
Asked Thursday about a Dec. 29 meeting with Netanyahu, Trump told reporters, “We haven’t set it up formally, but he’d like to see me.” Israeli officials have announced a Dec. 29 meeting.
The Israeli government declined to comment. The Iranian Mission at the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close.”
Israel’s plans to brief Trump on — and give him the option to join — possible additional military strikes in Iran come as the president is considering military strikes in Venezuela, which would open a new warfront for the U.S., and as he is touting his administration’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and success negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Trump said told Americans he’s “destroyed the Iran nuclear threat and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years, peace to the Middle East.”
The Israeli concerns about Iran come as Tehran has expressed interest in resuming diplomatic talks with the U.S. aimed at curtailing its nuclear deal, which could potentially complicate Israel’s approaching Trump about new strikes.
The funding of Iranian proxies in the region also is top of mind for the Israelis, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans.
“The nuclear weapons program is very concerning. There’s an attempt to reconstitute. It’s not that immediate,” this person said.
The strikes the U.S. conducted in June against Iran, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, included more than 100 aircraft, a submarine and seven B-2 bombers. Trump has said they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, though some early assessments indicated the damage may not have been as extensive as the president has said.
Israeli forces at the same time struck several of Iran’s ballistic missile sites.
Israeli military strikes in April and October 2024 also damaged all of Iran’s S-300 air defense systems, the most advanced system the country operates, clearing the way for manned flights into Iranian airspace months later by dramatically reducing the threat to pilots.
Unlike strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program, direct U.S. military involvement was needed to significantly damage Iran’s nuclear sites as that required American-made 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs.
Last week, Trump hinted he might be open to returning to talks with Iran, while also warning Tehran against trying to reconstitute its ballistic missile or nuclear programs.
He said Iran “can try” to rebuild its ballistic missile program, but “it’s going to take them a long time to come back.”
“But if they do want to come back without a deal, then we’re going to obliterate that one, too,” Trump said. “You know, we can knock out their missiles very quickly, we have great power.”
Prior to the strikes in June, the Israelis had presented Trump with four options for military action, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans. Israeli officials laid out the options on a coffee table in the Oval Office, this person said. One involved Israel going it alone, another included limited U.S. support, a third was the U.S. and Israel conducting joint operations against Iran, and a fourth had the U.S. conducting the operation on its own, this person said. Ultimately Trump decided to approve a joint operation. The person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans suggested Netanyahu may present Trump with a similar set of options during their Mar-a-Lago meeting.
The fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is also expected to feature prominently in the talks between Netanyahu and Trump, amid concerns both sides are failing to take action to carry out the next phase of the deal.
Under the second stage of the agreement, Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces from Gaza, and an interim body is to assume authority over the Palestinian enclave instead of Hamas. An international stabilization force also is supposed to be deployed to Gaza.
Trump could be less enthusiastic about new military action in Iran if there continues to be friction between U.S. and Israeli officials over Netanyahu’s approach to the ceasefire, two former Israeli officials said.
Left unchecked, Iran’s production of ballistic missiles could increase to as many as 3,000 per year, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans and former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.
The threat of ballistic missiles, and the number of them that the Iranians could use in an attack, is Israel’s most immediate concern, said one of the former Israeli officials who has discussed the concerns with current Israeli officials.
“There is no real question after the last conflict that we can gain aerial superiority and can do far more damage to Iran than Iran can do to Israel,” the official said. “But the threat of the missiles is very real, and we weren’t able to prevent them all last time.”
President Donald Trump likes to use a big number to anchor his point, especially when he wanders off on a tangent. Often it seems that a specific figure is on the tip of his tongue.
At this year’s ceremonial turkey pardon, Trump praised a farmer from Wayne County, North Carolina, for raising two “record-setting” birds, but then pivoted to his own electoral margin of victory: “I won that county by 92 percent.” (In fact, he won it by 16 percentage points.) At a McDonald’s corporate event last month, Trump claimed that the United States controls 92 percent of the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico (the Gulf of America, as he calls it). It’s really about 46 percent. Trump won the veterans’ vote, he said on Veterans Day, with “about 92 percent or something,” and in July, he said he won farmers—well, “by 92 percent.” (More accurate estimates of the portion of the electorate he won would be 65 percent of veterans and 78 percent of voters in farming counties, according to exit polls and election data.)
His fixation on the number between 91 and 93 has been a feature for a while. In April, Trump claimed that egg prices had fallen by 92 percent. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics said 12.7 percent.) And at a rally shortly before last November’s election, while railing against journalists and the media, he allowed that “not all of them” are “sick people.” Just “about 92 percent.” That one, admittedly, is difficult to fact-check.
I came upon this curious pattern in the course of tracking down the basis for a far more serious claim the president has made repeatedly as part of his justification for the U.S. military buildup near Venezuela. More than two dozen strikes on small boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed more than 100 people since September. The strikes have formed the core of the administration’s ongoing campaign to treat President Nicolás Maduro as a “narco-terrorist,” which many view as a veneer for wanting to see the Venezuelan strongman ousted from power and work with a new government to secure access to the country’s oil and rare earth minerals.
“The drugs coming in through the sea are down to—they’re down by 92 percent,” Trump told Politico on December 8. At a roundtable later the same day, he went with “92 or 94 percent.” Three days later: “Drug traffic by sea is down 92 percent,” Trump said in the Oval Office. A day after that brought a new estimate: “We knocked out 96 percent of the drugs coming in by water,” he told reporters.
More often than not, the president links the 92 (or more) percent claim to another: “Every one of those boats you see get shot down, you just saved 25,000 American lives.” In December alone, he has cited that figure—25,000 American lives saved per boat strike—on at least six different occasions.
I asked the Coast Guard—the lead federal agency for maritime drug interdiction—for any underlying data or information to support both of those figures. The Coast Guard referred me to the Pentagon. The Pentagon referred me to the White House. The Department of Homeland Security referred me to the Pentagon and the White House, which repeated Trump’s remarks without elaboration.
“President Trump is right. It is widely known that one small dose of these drugs is deadly, fentanyl is the number one killer of adults between the ages of 18 and 45, and any boat bringing this poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, told me in a statement. “Rather than try to poke holes in these facts, The Atlantic should join President Trump in elevating the voices of families who have lost loved ones to the scourge of narcoterrorism.”
The president’s claims, however, are so porous that I hardly found anywhere to poke. Although Trump and other officials have repeatedly said that the goal of the strikes is to combat the trafficking of illicit fentanyl—the synthetic opioid chiefly responsible for an epidemic of fatal overdoses over the past decade—the drug does not come from South America. It enters America primarily across the border with Mexico and is produced using precursor chemicals from China. Venezuela, however, is primarily a transit country for cocaine bound for Europe.
In a briefing with lawmakers early last month, top officials acknowledged that they believed it was cocaine, not fentanyl, on the boats. A former senior Coast Guard official told me that in his more than three decades in the service, he has not been aware of a single instance of an intercepted load in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific containing fentanyl. In sum, the boats being struck aren’t carrying the drug that is the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S.—and what drugs they may be carrying aren’t coming to America. So it is hard to see how each strike saves 25,000 American lives.
Bill Baumgartner, a retired Coast Guard rear admiral who directed the agency’s operations in the Caribbean, told me that number “is just complete and pure fantasy.” The only way to arrive at that total of saved lives is if you would have rounded up 25,000 people and forced them to consume lethal doses of cocaine—a claim “just as stupid as saying that there’s a box of ammunition; if you confiscate a box of ammunition, you have saved 100 lives because there were 100 bullets there,” Baumgartner said.
It is even unclear how many of the destroyed vessels were actually carrying narcotics. The administration has not specified or released evidence of the types or quantities of drugs on them. When identifying boats ferrying drugs, “the intelligence isn’t foolproof,” and destroying a vessel with a strike—unlike boarding it during an interdiction—leaves no room to correct faulty intelligence, Baumgartner said. In the 13 months leading up to early October, 21 percent of the boats interdicted off the coast of Venezuela turned out not to be carrying any contraband, according to data shared by Coast Guard Acting Commandant Admiral Kevin Lunday in a letter to Senator Rand Paul, a Republican.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the 12-month period ending in April, there were about 73,690 total drug overdose deaths in the United States (although that number is likely to increase when final data are tallied). If it were the case that each strike since September has saved 25,000 American lives, and given that 28 boats have been destroyed to date, the operation would have saved 700,000 lives—more than nine times the total U.S. drug overdose deaths in a year. “That makes no sense,” Adam Isacson, an expert on drug trafficking in Latin America at WOLA, an NGO based in Washington, D.C., told me.
The majority of overdose fatalities stem from opioids, not stimulants such as cocaine. In 2023, the most recent year for which such data are available, the CDC tracked 29,449 cocaine-linked deaths. (About 1.2 grams of cocaine can constitute a fatal dose. That amount is 600 times greater than the 2 milligrams of fentanyl that can cause a deadly overdose.) But notably, nearly 70 percent of cocaine- and other stimulant-related deaths that year also involved fentanyl.
As for the basis for the president’s claim of a 92 percent decline in maritime drug traffic: “We’ve only seen that in Trump’s remarks. No sourcing, no other data,” according to Isacson. (The White House did not specifically respond to my inquiry about it.) But the numbers the government does release give ample reason to doubt the statistic. Last month, the Coast Guard touted a record-setting year of drug interdiction; the agency seized more than 510,000 pounds of cocaine, primarily in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, compared with the 167,000 pounds it seized on average in prior years. This month, as part of its ongoing maritime-law-enforcement operations separate from the strikes, the Coast Guard seized 20,000 pounds of cocaine in a single interdiction. But global cocaine supply and demand continue to reach new heights, according to a June report from the United Nations. And counternarcotics-enforcement veterans told me that even if drug traffic by sea has seen a sharp drop, that does not signal an overall decline in cocaine traffic, because traffickers adapt and reroute shipments.
Perhaps the president has divined these numbers through a mathematically rigorous process beyond the reaches of my imagination. After all, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told Vanity Fair that her boss is a “statistical savant.” More likely, his affinity for 92 percent and extravagantly large round numbers is what in a game of poker might be called a tell. In 2019, Bloomberg noticed 10,000 cropping up whenever Trump made big claims, in topics such as the stock market and ISIS fighters. It was the number Trump cited for known or suspected gang members whom ICE removed in 2018 (though the agency put that number at 5,872). And it’s the number of points he said the Dow Jones would have been up in 2019 had the Federal Reserve not raised interest rates the previous year.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers.
At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein – including a photograph showing President Donald Trump – less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”
The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.
Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.
Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions – records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.
The gaps go further.
The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability
Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.
The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the US Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.
There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.
Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.
That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.
“I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.
The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.
Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.
Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.
Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.
The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.
Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.
One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.
Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.
“For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”
The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.
Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.
He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.
“I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.
Hadi’s elder brother, Abu Bakar, led the janaza prayers. Immediately afterward, the body was escorted under tight security to the Dhaka University campus, where burial preparations had been completed overnight. The grave was dug beside the mausoleum of Bangladesh’s national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners poured into central Dhaka on Saturday to bid farewell to Hadi
Hundreds of thousands of mourners poured into central Dhaka on Saturday to bid farewell to Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent Bangladeshi activist whose death from gunshot wounds earlier this month has further inflamed an already volatile political climate ahead of national elections.
From dawn, groups of people arrived towards Manik Mia Avenue, quickly filling the area outside the Parliament complex. Many draped themselves in the national flag, while others shouted demands for accountability over Hadi’s killing.
Authorities rolled out heavy security for the funeral at the South Plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. Police officers equipped with body cameras were stationed across Dhaka, while the national flag was lowered to half-staff at public and private institutions in observance of the official day of mourning. Additional forces from the Border Guard Bangladesh and police units were deployed around the Parliament and other strategic locations, according to BDNews24.
#WATCH | Bangladesh | The funeral procession of Osman Hadi, a key leader in the protests against Sheikh Hasina, who died on 18 December, is underway at Manik Mia Avenue in Dhaka. pic.twitter.com/FSoJSfM6TT
Hadi’s elder brother, Abu Bakar, led the janaza prayers. Immediately afterward, the body was escorted under tight security to the Dhaka University campus, where burial preparations had been completed overnight. The grave was dug beside the mausoleum of Bangladesh’s national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam.
“In line with the earlier announcement, the body was not kept for public viewing, and only select people were allowed to witness the burial,” a police officer said.
While access to the burial itself was restricted, police permitted tens of thousands to take part in the funeral prayers. Many in the crowd raised political slogans, including “Delhi or Dhaka – Dhaka, Dhaka” and “brother Hadi’s blood will not be allowed to go in vain.”
Hadi, a spokesperson for the Inqilab Moncho cultural platform, had emerged as a key figure during last year’s political uprising that brought an end to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure. He was shot in Dhaka on December 12 and later flown to Singapore, where he died in hospital on Thursday. His body was returned to Bangladesh late Friday.
Investigators look at a grey Nissan car at a storage facility where the Brown University shooter, identified by authorities as Claudio Neves Valente, took his own life, in Salem, New Hampshire, U.S., December 18, 2025. REUTERS/CJ Gunther Purchase Licensing Rights
A quarter of a century ago, Claudio Neves Valente was briefly enrolled as a promising young doctoral student in the physics department at Brown University before dropping out of the school in Rhode Island.
On Friday, police were still trying to figure out why Valente returned to the Ivy League school nearly a week ago, armed with at least one handgun. He killed two students and injured several others, police say, before fleeing from the building where he once studied.
Searching for a motive, investigators were examining Valente’s earliest days in academia, which took him from the University of Lisbon to the U.S. Northeast.
Two days into the manhunt for the Brown University attacker, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot in his home outside Boston: Nuno Loureiro, who had been Valente’s classmate as physics students at Lisbon’s elite Instituto Superior Tecnico in their native Portugal in the late 1990s.
VALENTE LIKELY TOOK COURSES BUILDING WHERE SHOOTING OCCURRED
Investigators announced on Thursday night they believe both attacks were committed by Valente, 48, whom they found dead on Thursday in a storage locker he had recently rented in Salem, New Hampshire.
An autopsy conducted by the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed on Friday found that Valente shot himself in the head and that he had likely been dead since Tuesday – the day after authorities say he killed Loureiro.
Two 9mm pistols were recovered with Valente’s body and were determined by a forensic laboratory to be positively correlated with the Brown University mass shooting and Loureiro’s murder, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said late on Friday.
MIT, one of the world’s preeminent scientific research universities, mourned Loureiro, 47, calling him “an incredible scientist, colleague, mentor, and friend” in a statement.
His former classmate and suspected murderer, Valente, was not known at all by the international community of physicists. Investigators have not said what Valente did in the decades after abandoning his physics studies.
“It’s quite shocking to even think that someone who studied with (Loureiro) may have had some kind of anger that comes from the period” when they attended school together, Bruno Goncalves, the director of Lisbon’s Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion, where Loureiro once worked, said in an interview.
Brown University President Christina Paxson wrote in a message to the campus on Friday that Valente was enrolled in a physics PhD program for a few months in 2000 to 2001. She wrote that “it is likely that he would have taken courses and spent time at the site of the shooting, Barus & Holley, where the vast majority of physics courses take place in classrooms and laboratories.”
Any affiliation Valente had with Brown ended in 2003, when he dropped out after a long leave of absence, according to university officials and investigators. There was no sign of any recent contact. No Brown employee spoken to so far has any memory of him, Paxson wrote.
Hospitalized survivors of Saturday’s attack in the Brown classroom also appear not to have known their assailant, but later recognized Valente when shown images of him by investigators.
One victim told investigators she got a look at the shooter, and, upon seeing Valente’s photo, she “froze, physically pushed back, and became emotional,” according to a police affidavit.
Aside from perhaps using the same classrooms in different decades, there were no known ties between Valente and the two young students killed at Brown: Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.
PURSUING PHYSICS FROM LISBON TO THE U.S.
Valente won the U.S. green card lottery and became a lawful permanent resident in 2017, according to a police affidavit. He listed Brown’s Barus & Holley building as the address of his “institution” in his immigration paperwork, despite also noting there that he had dropped out more than 15 years earlier.
Outside the building on Friday, Rahul Mani, a graduate student in computer science, stood in the pelting rain soaking a largely deserted Brown campus, where the semester was ended early. Nearby, a food truck run by a local charity was feeding first responders and investigators.
“I had to come here to see it for myself,” Mani said. “I am glad they found the shooter but it is still a very, very unnerving feeling to be here.”
Valente grew up in Torres Novas, a town an hour north of Lisbon, and was good enough at physics as a high school student that he competed in a Physics Olympiad. As a 17-year-old, he went on a trip to the Australian capital, Canberra, with other students and teachers, according to local media.
Loureiro, the murdered MIT professor, studied engineering physics alongside Valente at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Tecnico. It was unclear whether the two men knew each other.
Valente became a teaching assistant at the institute, before his contract was terminated in February 2000, according to Diario da Republica, Portugal’s official state gazette.
Ukraine thanked the European Union on Friday for deciding to provide it with 90 billion euros ($105.46 billion) of support over the next two years – even if the bloc failed to agree on an ambitious plan to finance it using frozen Russian assets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the EU had backed away from the plan to use its frozen assets because it would have faced serious repercussions.
The stakes for finding money for Kyiv were high because without the EU’s financial help, Ukraine would run out of money in the second quarter of next year and most likely lose the war to Russia, which the EU fears would bring the threat of Russian aggression against the bloc closer.
“This is significant support that truly strengthens our resilience,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram app after the agreement was reached at a summit of EU leaders.
The decision followed hours of discussions on the proposal for an unprecedented loan based on Russia’s assets, which turned out to be too politically demanding to resolve at this stage. Instead, the EU will borrow cash.
‘DAYLIGHT ROBBERY’
Putin said the initial plan to use Russia’s frozen assets to back the loan would have amounted to “daylight robbery.”
“Why can’t this robbery be carried out? Because the consequences could be grave for the robbers,” he said during his annual end-of-year press conference.
“This isn’t just a blow to their image; it’s an undermining of trust in the euro zone, and the fact that many countries, not just Russia, but primarily oil-producing countries, store their gold and foreign exchange reserves in the euro zone.”
Paramedics assist a resident during an evacuation from an apartment building hit by a Russian air strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine December 17, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer Purchase Licensing Rights
GERMANY FAILED TO CONVINCE
The main difficulty for the reparation-loan plan was providing Belgium, where 185 billion euros of the total Russian assets in Europe are held, with sufficient guarantees against financial and legal risks from potential Russian retaliation for the release of the money to Ukraine.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had pushed hard for a reparations loan backed by the frozen Russian assets, argued this was still a good deal.
“This is good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia and this was our intention,” he said.
‘PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD’
Ukraine said this was still hugely welcome.
“Indeed, there are moments when one should keep in mind that ‘Perfect is the enemy of good’. It was a long night for European leaders but they were able to come up with a workable result,” said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya.
Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro research at ING in Frankfurt, also welcomed the deal.
U.S. President Donald Trump and nine major pharmaceutical companies on Friday announced deals that will slash the prices of their medicines for the government’s Medicaid program and for cash payers, in his latest bid to align U.S. costs with those in other wealthy nations.
Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY.N), Gilead Sciences (GILD.O), Merck (MRK.N), and Roche’s (ROG.S), U.S. unit Genentech have struck deals. Novartis (NOVN.S), Amgen (AMGN.O), Boehringer Ingelheim, Sanofi (SASY.PA), and GSK (GSK.L), have also signed on.
“We were subsidizing the entire world. We’re not doing it anymore,” Trump said at a White House press conference, flanked by nine drugmaker executives.
U.S. patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere.
Despite the announcements, shares of most of the drugmakers rose about 1% to 3% as the deals removed Trump’s threat of tariffs for three years and investors downplayed the impact of the price cuts the White House said were up to 70% off list prices. Companies already give substantial after market discounts on most list prices.
“These deals re-affirm that the pharma leaders have taken this opportunity to collaborate with this administration to deliver headlines and minimize any step-change in company economics from these deals,” Bernstein analyst Courtney Breen said, adding that Gilead is likely the largest beneficiary given its Medicaid exposure.
Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service, said Regeneron (REGN.O), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), and AbbVie (ABBV.N), would visit the White House after the holidays for the launch of the government’s TrumpRx website.
All three companies confirmed they were in conversations with the administration.
Under the deals, each drugmaker will cut prices on most drugs sold to the Medicaid program for low-income people, senior administration officials said, promising “massive savings” on widely used medicines. Analysts have noted that Medicaid, which accounts for only around 10% of U.S. drug spending, already benefits from substantial price discounts, exceeding 80% in some cases.
Agreements included cutting cash-pay, direct-to-consumer prices of select drugs sold potentially through the TrumpRx.gov website, launching drugs in the U.S. at prices equal to those in other wealthy nations and to increase manufacturing. In return, companies can receive a three-year exemption from any tariffs.
Most Americans with health insurance pay for drugs with set co-pays or co-insurance based on the list price. They may not be helped by TrumpRx, which will direct customers to drugmakers’ websites where they will sell their product to cash-pay customers.
MERCK’S JANUVIA, JANUMET ON TRUMPRX
U.S. President Donald Trump makes an announcement about lowering the cost of drug prices, at the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 19, 2025. REUTES/Evelyn Hockstein Purchase Licensing Rights
Merck said it will sell its diabetes drugs Januvia, Janumet and Janumet XR – set to face generic competition next year – directly to U.S. consumers at about 70% off list prices. If approved, its experimental cholesterol drug enlicitide will also be offered through direct-to-consumer channels, including TrumpRx.
Enlicitide is one of two Merck drugs expected to receive a speedy review under the FDA’s new, fast-track pathway, Reuters previously reported.
An executive for Bristol Myers said during the White House press conference that the company would provide its blockbuster blood-thinner Eliquis to Medicaid for free as part of its deal.
Amgen said it will add migraine drug Aimovig and arthritis treatment Amjevita to its direct-to-patient program at $299 a month, which is 60% to 80% off list.
Sanofi said it will offer lower-cost medicines via TrumpRx and other direct-to-patient platforms, with average savings of about 70% on treatments for infections, heart disease, and diabetes.
In July, Trump sent letters to leaders of 17 major drugmakers, urging them to offer so-called most-favored-nation prices to Medicaid and ensure new medicines launch at prices no higher than those in other wealthy countries.
Five companies had previously struck deals with the administration to rein in prices – Pfizer, Eli Lilly (LLY.N), AstraZeneca (AZN.L), Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), and EMD Serono, the U.S. division of Germany’s Merck KGaA (MRCG.DE). Three – Regeneron, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie – are now left.
Investors initially feared sweeping U.S. price controls, but the details of recent deals have largely eased those concerns.
Drugmakers on Friday committed to “most-favored-nation” pricing on all new U.S. drug launches across commercial, government and cash-pay markets, including the U.S. Medicare program for those aged 65 and over, officials said.
NASCAR legend Greg Biffle’s private plane was in the air for just seven minutes and was “incredibly close” to making a safe emergency landing before it suddenly burst into flames — killing all seven on board, experts said.
Biffle, his family and three others all died when the Cessna C550 jet they were on experienced engine problems and crashed just shy of the runway at Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina on Thursday afternoon.
The plane had only just taken off from the airport, roughly 45 miles north of Charlotte, when it made an abrupt 180-degree turn and headed back, flight records show.
NASCAR legend Greg Biffle’s plane was allegedly only in the air for 7 minutes before it crashed, killing everyone on board. X/thenewsdrill
Cristina Biffle’s mom told People that her daughter had sent her a tragic text message saying, “We’re in trouble,” just moments before the crash.
Aviation expert Max Trescott told the NTSB News Talk podcast that the tracking data showed a “rather unusual” jump after the jet had been in the air for seven minutes.
He noted the pilot did a “remarkable job” making the turn back toward the airport in drizzle and cloudy conditions — but ultimately came short of the runway.
Indian-origin US diplomat Mahvash Siddiqui, writing for an anti-immigration think tank, alleged that the H-1B visa programme has turned into a de facto immigration shortcut dominated by India. She claimed that unqualified Indian applicants use fraud and bribery to enter the US, even as she urged the US to pause the visa programme pending a full audit.
Weeks after lambasting Chennai as H-1B visa fraud capital, Indian-origin American Diplomat Mahvash Siddiqui has now claimed that unqualified Indians use bribes to game the programme. (Image: File)
An Indian-origin American diplomat, Mahvash Siddiqui, has urged the need for the US to immediately pause its H-1B visa programme pending a full programme audit, alleging systematic fraud and the use of rishwat (bribery) by unqualified Indian applicants to game the programme. Writing for the anti-immigrant think tank Centre for Immigrant Studies, she cited her experience as a junior officer in the US Consulate in Chennai, stating that a majority of Indian nationals aged 20-45 used the H-1B as a perfect loophole to enter the US with fraudulent or inflated credentials, displacing qualified American IT and STEM workers.
Siddiqui wrote that many H-1B applicants claiming computer science degrees had no relevant coursework or programming skills and routinely failed basic coding tests. She alleged that corrupt HR officials in both India and the US enabled the use of fake employment letters allowing underqualified candidates to bypass scrutiny.
She wrote that the issue extends beyond IT, with Indian medical graduates who were admitted to schools via affirmative action or bribery entering US residency programmes on J-1 visas, ultimately practising medicine with lower skill levels than American-trained physicians.
According to her, a “halo effect” favoured Indian applicants aided by bribery and social acceptance of fraud among peers. In the US, Mahvash Siddiqui claimed some Indian managers created insular hiring networks that excluded Americans, protected unqualified hires and fostered environments where whistleblowing was actively discouraged. As a result, the American diplomat said better qualified American IT graduates who had passed through more rigorous programmes were routinely displaced by less qualified H-1B hires or forced to train their replacements for lower pay.
In an earlier podcast, Siddiqui said she was one of 15 junior visa officers in Chennai, which she now describes as the H-1B visa fraud capital of the world.
She noted that between 2005 and 2007, the Chennai consulate adjudicated about 1 lakh H-1B applications annually, a figure which she says has since then surged to more than 40 lakhs a year. She also alleged the existence of an industrialised system of H-1B frauds, writing that “in Ameerpet, Hyderabad, entire markets sold fake degrees, forged bank statements, and counterfeit marriage/birth certificates”.
Siddiqui also accused Indian lobbyists and Silicon Valley executives of running a disinformation campaign portraying American workers as less capable and said that the US Congress was often unaware of the ground realities and has been misled.
Hours before the fatal attack on anti-India leader Sharif Osman Hadi, the alleged shooter, Faisal Karim, told his girlfriend that “something was coming that would shake the entire country”. The warning proved eerily true as Bangladesh is now reeling from violence ahead of crucial February 2026 elections.
Sharif Osman Hadi was shot in broad daylight last week in Dhaka by masked attackers. (Images: Social Media)
Violence and chaos gripped Bangladesh on Thursday night. Nationwide protests and unrest came after the death of radical anti-India leader Sharif Osman Hadi in Singapore. Media houses, cultural centres, and even the residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman have been torched. A Hindu man was lynched and burnt to death over blasphemy allegations. Osman Hadi was shot last week by masked, bike-borne attackers in Dhaka. The alleged shooter and prime accused, Faisal Karim, could only have guessed what was to come. The outcome of the shooting is eerily close to what Faisal himself had foretold. At a resort outside Dhaka, the night before the shooting, Faisal told his girlfriend that something was going to happen that would “shake entire Bangladesh”, according to reports.
Hours later, Faisal, along with two accomplices, shot Hadi in broad daylight in the capital, Dhaka. A bullet penetrated Hadi’s ear and came out of the other. Hadi was rushed to hospital, where he remained in critical condition for days. Under the Muhammad Yunus administration’s supervision, he was flown to Singapore by air ambulance, where he died after days of treatment.
What has followed Hadi’s death is pure mayhem. Bangladesh has been pushed into chaos just as crucial elections are set for February 2026.
Sharif Osman Hadi was a radical anti-India leader and the spokesperson of the Anti-Sheikh Hasina Inqilab Mancha. He was also an independent political candidate from the Dhaka-8 constituency.
WHAT BANGLADESHI INVESTIGATORS SAID ABOUT THE NIGHT BEFORE HADI’S SHOOTING?
According to Bangladeshi investigators, the night before the attack holds critical clues.
Law enforcement agencies probing the case said Faisal had hinted to his girlfriend about a major incident even before the first shot was fired. While staying at a resort in Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Faisal allegedly told his close associate and girlfriend, Maria Akhtar Lima, that something dramatic would happen the following day.
“It would be something that would shake the entire country,” Faisal told Maria, while he showed her a video clip of Hadi, reported Dhaka-based Jamuna Television.
“Something will happen tomorrow (on Friday), that the whole country will tremble,” newspaper Daily Jugantor quoted Faisal as saying.
That statement emerged during interrogation of those arrested, including Maria, and from investigation-linked sources. Authorities said the comment suggested prior knowledge and planning. This, they claimed, revealed that the attack on Hadi was a well-planned and coordinated operation, involving dozens of people.
Faisal is married to a woman named Saheda Parvin Samia, who has been arrested along with other family members.
HOW WAS SHARIF OSMAN HADI’S SHOOTING PLANNED?
Investigators in Bangladesh believe the shooting was the result of a well-organised conspiracy. According to police findings, a former councillor is suspected to be the main planner behind the attempted assassination. Officials said at least 20 people were involved in various roles, ranging from financing and weapons procurement to executing the attack and facilitating the escape of the shooters.
So far, nine people have been arrested in joint operations conducted by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and the police, reported Prothom Alo newspaper.
Raids conducted as part of the investigation have led to the recovery of firearms, bullets, magazines, and cheques worth several crore taka, Jamuna Television reported. Officials said information obtained during remand has pointed to the existence of additional shooter groups.
An investigating officer said preliminary findings suggest that a significant amount of money was invested with the clear intention of killing Hadi.
The RAB has confirmed that two magazines used in the shooting and 11 rounds of ammunition were recovered from beneath the residence of Faisal’s sister. Separately, investigators recovered two foreign pistols, two magazines, a toy pistol, and 41 rounds of ammunition from a pond in Dhaka’s adjoining Narsingdi district, which the police believe were used in the attack.
Investigators confirmed that the motorcycle used during the shooting carried a fake number plate. After the attack, Faisal and his accomplices reportedly went into hiding in multiple locations in Dhaka. Police have also uncovered evidence suggesting that number plates were changed by Faisal’s father to evade detection.
SEVERAL ARRESTS MADE BUT OSMAN HADI’S SHOOTERS STILL AT LARGE
Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested several people linked to the attack on Sharif Osman Hadi, but the main shooters are still missing. The RAB took Faisal Karim’s parents into custody and handed them over to the Detective Branch (DB). Others arrested include Faisal’s wife Saheda Parvin Samia, his brother-in-law Wahid Ahmed Shipu, his girlfriend Maria Akhtar Lima, the alleged motorcycle owner Abdul Hannan, and Faisal’s close aide Md Kabir, along with a few more.
Some of the accused are on remand, while several others remain under watch by the police. However, Faisal Karim and his accomplices, the ones who shot Hadi in broad daylight, are still absconding. Bangladeshi news outlets had earlier reported that Faisal and his aides had escaped to India, even as the Dhaka Metropolitan Police said “there was no verified evidence that the attackers crossed into India”, reported Dhaka-based TV channel, Jagonews24 on December 14.
However, on the same day, the Muhammad Yunus-led interim administration urged India to arrest and hand over the attackers, even as the Dhaka Metropolitan Police said there was no verified evidence that the shooters had crossed into India.
KHLOÉ Kardashian has dropped some hot tea about changes to the family’s infamous Christmas Eve Party.
The Good American co-founder spoke on her podcast, Khloé in Wonder Land, that the venue for the lavish affair might move, but the budget won’t.
“We all equally split the cost of the party,” Khloé said in the podcast. “Because it’s a family [thing].”
She also admitted that the famed Kardashian-Jenner family’s iconic Christmas Eve party is getting ready for some significant changes this year.
Momager extraordinaire, Kris Jenner, who spoke as a guest on the podcast, verified the changes to the party she has been hosting since 1978.
“It gets really crazy,” Kris stated. “I think one of the most fun things, too, is to be able to share things with our friends. We’ve always been able to give out some amazing gifts at the end of the party.”
While the glam vibes might stay the same, the annual A-list Hollywood party is going to look very different.
As the family prepares to create another unforgettable evening, the exciting news is that Kendall Jenner will be stepping into the hosting role this year at her stunning Beverly Hills mansion.
This is the second year Kendall has taken on the role of host.
Last year, she had a “smaller” cozy affair at her, chock-full of her 818 Tequila. The new role as hostess comes with its own delightful challenges, especially since the family’s other homes are currently being renovated.
“It’s pretty much the usual,” she recently told People magazine. “Last year, we did a smaller Christmas Eve party, and it was super lovely. Usually, they’re kind of these blowouts for the last, like, since I was born. But we’re doing a smaller one again this year, and I’m really happy about it.”
Kris created this tradition in the 1970s as a joyful occasion for family and friends, and it naturally grew as the family expanded.
The early 2000s marked a significant transition for the party, as it really took off following Kris’s marriage to Caitlyn Jenner.
The event gained prominence, particularly with the success of the Keeping Up With The Kardashians reality show, which launched in 2007.
As time went on, Kris graciously passed the baton to her talented daughters.
The party has been hosted at various times by Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, and Kylie, with each of them bringing their unique flair and creativity to the festivities.
“Christmas is our World Cup,” Khloe said in a video posted to Instagram.
The video had the caption “Merry Kristmas!!! Come celebrate the holidays with us in Wonder Land.”
Fans are surely reminiscing about the fabulous past celebrations, beautifully documented in social media posts that have showcased glamorous outfits and exquisite decorations.
OVER 600,000 Americans coast-to-coast are without power, causing flight cancellations and dangerous conditions.
Powerful wind gusts and storms have knocked the power out in several states across the northern half of the US.
US Power Outage Map
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are without power as storms batter the US.
Colorado and Pennsylvania were hit the hardest, with over 100,000 customers without power, according to PowerOutage.com.
Major power outages were also reported in Maine, New Jersey, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Oregon.
In Colorado, Xcel Energy intentionally shut off power because of strong wind gusts, dry conditions, and low humidity.
Though the shut-off in Jefferson County, a suburb of Denver, was planned, many residents felt blindsided.
“It’s hard to happen right before Christmas, but you have to do what you have to do and hopefully try to help out the people around you the best as you can,” Jefferson County resident Mallory McKenna told CBS Colorado.
The power was first shut off by Xcel on Wednesday and turned back on Thursday, with another anticipated shutdown on Friday.
At a HUD-assisted facility in Jefferson County, residents feared another 24 hours without power.
“Our food is rotting in our refrigerators, and people are stressed out,” resident Laurie Miller told local ABC affiliate KMGH.
For people with medical conditions, the situation was even more difficult.
“I didn’t have any oxygen all last night,” resident Kathleen Mood said.
FORMER president Bill Clinton can be seen cozying up to infamous sex predator Jeffrey Epstein in multiple pictures in the newly-released files – and appears alongside several unidentified women.
The Department of Justice finally released the first tranche of long-sealed federal records on Epstein in four data sets at 4pm ET on Friday.
Bill Clinton swims with Ghislaine Maxwell & a mystery woman in a slew of new images from the Epstein filesCredit: DOJ
The partial dump forces into daylight a substantial but incomplete official account of the disgraced billionaire paedophile, his alleged sex-trafficking network and his decades-long proximity to global power.
Thousands of PDF links lead to pictures such as Bill Clinton relaxing with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and a mystery woman in a swimming pool.
A portrait of the former president sporting a blue dress and red high heels is snapped hanging in the monster’s Manhattan pad.
Other unusual images show disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lying across the laps of five women while sharing a laugh with Ghislaine Maxwell, Clinton and Michael Jackson posing alongside an unidentified woman and Richard Branson arm-in-arm with Epstein.
A run of photos show Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger socialising with Clinton, Maxwell and an anonymous woman.
There is no suggestion that these images suggest misconduct, and many of the individuals shown have denied any involvement in wrongdoing connected to Epstein.
White House officials reacted to the bombshell photos of Bill Clinton lounging in the pool, with Communications Director Steven Cheung describing him as “just chilling, without a care in the world”.
Clinton’s spokesman Angel Ureña responded on X by vehemently defending Clinton and suggesting that the spate of pictures are being used as a smokescreen.
He said: “They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
One section of the files has around 170 redacted images of women in sexual positions or simply titled “nude”.
A “masseuse list” containing 254 redacted names appears elsewhere.
The material made public represents only an initial batch, not the full archive required to be released on Firday under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, despite the law’s clear deadline of December 19.
Justice Department officials say “several hundred thousand documents” have been published so far, with further releases promised over the coming weeks.
Republican and Democrat representatives alike have criticised the release for failing to comply with standards set out in the Epstein Transparency Act.
But White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded by lauding the Trump administration as “the most transparent in history”.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explained the DOJ was taking pains to ensure that the identities of Epstein’s hundreds of victims were redacted from the records, hence the delay.
“I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today,” Blanche said.
“And those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with all of the investigations into Mr Epstein.”
“So today, several hundred thousand and then over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” he added.
Even in partial form, the release brings into public view core elements of the government’s own investigative record – material that had remained sealed for years amid intense public scrutiny and political pressure.
More than 300 gigabytes of investigative material is set to be out in the open following a new federal law that left the Justice Department with no choice but to publish what it has held for years.
It lands after two decades of secrecy and sweetheart deals that allowed Epstein to offend with impunity until his death in prison in 2019.
The files span the FBI’s two major probes into Epstein: the first, launched in Florida in 2006 and quietly defused by a notorious non-prosecution agreement; and the second, a New York investigation that finally led to his 2019 federal sex-trafficking indictment.
Epstein pleaded not guilty, then died in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.
What’s in the drop?
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department was required to release “searchable and downloadable” copies of virtually all unclassified Epstein- and Ghislaine Maxwell-related records in its possession.
That includes FBI case files, search-warrant materials from raids on Epstein’s homes in Florida, New York and his private island Little Saint James.
It also features interview memos, financial and bank records, travel logs from commercial and private flights, internal Justice Department communications, corporate records, and documents relating to Epstein’s death.
Federal judges also cleared the way for the release of grand jury materials from the Epstein indictment, the Maxwell trial and a related Florida probe – though courts have warned much of that material may already be familiar.
What the law does not allow is redactions for “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” even when the names involved belong to presidents, billionaires or foreign dignitaries.
Victims’ identities, child sexual abuse material, classified documents and anything that could jeopardize an active federal investigation may still be withheld, but every redaction must now be publicly justified.
Epstein’s global elite pals
The newly released material also sharpens the global picture around Epstein — not just who he knew, but how far his influence and access reportedly travelled once he had money, contacts and kompromat-style rumours swirling around him.
Epstein was photographed with Trump decades ago, lived in Florida at the same time and moved in overlapping social circles.
Trump has long said the two men fell out before Epstein’s convictions and that he banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in the 2000s.
His claims were supported by emails released in a major House Oversight dump last month.
That November dump saw more than 20,000 mostly unredacted files released.
They showed Epstein complaining he had been booted from the club and that Ghislaine Maxwell had been ordered to stop recruiting girls there.
Virginia Giuffre, who was recruited while working at Mar-a-Lago, has repeatedly said Trump was not involved in Epstein’s abuse.
Still, the political fight reignited when Democrats released selectively redacted emails mentioning Trump, prompting Republicans to accuse them of a smear – before dumping the far larger unredacted archive that deepened the picture of Epstein’s elite access.
In the November House Oversight dump, newly disclosed emails appeared to confirm Epstein’s connection to former Prince Andrew went well beyond casual socialising.
The tranche included messages in which Epstein appeared to confirm the authenticity of the infamous 2001 photograph of Andrew with Virginia Giuffre – directly undercutting Andrew’s long-running claims it may have been fake.
The same document set showed Andrew reaching out to Epstein for help as Giuffre’s allegations were about to explode into public view.
Andrew has denied wrongdoing and later paid a reported $12 million settlement while maintaining his innocence.
But the paper trail added fresh weight to the allegation that Epstein wasn’t just collecting powerful friends, he was actively managing their crises.
The same cache also laid out Epstein’s continued links to British political power.
Emails showed Peter Mandelson stayed in contact with Epstein until at least 2016 – long after Epstein’s 2008 conviction – deepening questions about how a convicted sex offender kept a seat at elite tables across borders and years.
Mandelson has admitted maintaining the friendship longer than he should have, but the correspondence reinforced a recurring theme in the Epstein story: reputations were allegedly protected, not policed.
And then there’s the Kremlin thread – the kind of line that reads like a spy novel, until it’s sitting in an official archive.
Among the revelations previously teased in those Oversight files was evidence that Epstein offered to advise the Kremlin in 2018 on how Vladimir Putin could approach talks with President Donald Trump, reportedly suggesting Trump needed to be seen as “getting something” from negotiations.
Last week, newly released photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show several elite figures from former Prince Andrew to Donald Trump, Woody Allen and Richard Branson.
The bombshell snaps were released by Trump’s Democrat enemies in the House Oversight Committee on Friday, showing a string of powerful figures in the convicted sex trafficker’s orbit.
The release includes snaps of ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and others.
Lawmakers reported receiving 95,000 images from Epstein’s estate, but the Dems released just 19 of them, apparently selecting those they believed would be the most shocking and newsworthy.
And on Thursday night, a fresh batch of Epstein-related images was released – just hours before the deadline.
The photos, some partially redacted, include chilling images showing handwritten passages from Lolita scrawled on a person’s foot, chest and neck.
One message reads: “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.”
Other phrases include “she was Lola in slacks” and “she was Polly at school”.
The novel tells the story of a 12-year-old girl groomed and sexually abused by a middle-aged man.
Other images show Epstein alongside women whose faces have been blacked out, including one photograph of him on a plane pointing out of a window.
Back and forth in DC
The partial release follows weeks of political whiplash in Washington and now lands short of what the law requires.
Congress rammed the law through with veto-proof majorities after a wave of public anger and pressure from survivors, mandating the full release of the records by today.
Sky Roberts, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, said lawmakers needed to “stop talking and act.”
“My sister is not a political tool for you to use. These survivors are not political tools for you to use. These are real stories, real trauma,” he said.
“We will not let Virginia’s fight be in vain together. We will not let the predators win together.”
Another survivor, Danielle Bensky, said she was recruited by Epstein in 2004 and trapped in “a year-long cycle of abuse,” claiming Epstein threatened to “withhold care” for her mother, who had a brain tumour.
Pakistan says it has seen “abrupt variations” of water in the Chenab River that threaten Pakistan’s safety and well-being. This comes 10 months after India unilaterally withdrew from a treaty covering shared water use.
India’s decision to release water from its dams in August led to the destruction of numerous villages in eastern Pakistan (FILE: September 8, 2025)Image: SHAHID SAEED MIRZA/AFP/Getty Images
Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar on Friday accused India of “weaponizing water” by manipulating the flow of water into his country.
Dar said Pakistan’s water treaty commissioner had detected “unusual, abrupt variations” of water flow on the Chenab River between December 7 and 15, much as it did in April and May.
Dar said New Delhi had been contacted over the issue.
In April, India unilaterally withdrew from the Indus Water Treaty — which was negotiated by the World Bank in 1960 to insure “equitable use” of the six rivers that feed into the Indus system — purportedly in response to a terror attack that killed 26 people in India-administered Kashmir on April 22.
India justified the move by blaming Islamabad for the attack. Pakistan has vehemently denied any involvement and has said that Indian attempts to restrict, divert or increase water flow would be considered an “act of war.”
Beyond India’s withdrawal from the treaty, the April attack triggered hostilities between the neighboring countries in May, when drone, missile and artillery fire killed nearly 70 people on both sides of the border, many of them civilians.
Why is India manipulating water flow into Pakistan?
Though India used the situation in Kashmir as an opportunity to exit the 65-year-old treaty, it also cited “fundamental changes,” “population dynamics,” and the “need to accelerate the development of clean energy” as further justification.
India has also declared that construction is underway for several new dams on the vital river.
Dar on Friday said, “Such illegal and irresponsible conduct has the potential to trigger a humanitarian crisis in Pakistan,” affecting not only farmers, but also millions of Pakistani citizens.
New Delhi has yet to comment on the allegations.
In September, Pakistan was devastated by flooding after India released masses of water into the river, wiping out villages in eastern Pakistan.
At the time, India said it warned Pakistan of possible flooding in advance.
US officials said the strikes were aimed at IS targets, not the Syrian state, in retaliation for an attack which killed two American servicemen and an interpreter last week.
The US has carried out airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria in response to an attack that killed two American soldiers recently. [File photo of US troops in Syria in 2019]Image: Baderkhan Ahmad/AP Photo/picture allianceThe United States on Friday launched airstrikes against more than 70 Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria in retaliation for an attack that killed two US soldiers and an interpreter in Palmyra last week.
The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), which is responsible for the Middle East, said on social media that US forces “have commenced a large-scale strike against ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites in Syria.”
Syrian state television reported that strikes hit targets in rural areas of Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa provinces as well as in the Jabal al-Amour area near Palmyra.
It said they targeted “weapons storage sites and headquarters used by IS as launching points for its operations in the region.”
A Pentagon official told the Associated Press that the attack was conducted using F-15 Eagle fighter jets, A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack aircraft and AH-64 Apache helicopters.
“Earlier today, US forces commenced OPERATION HAWKEYE STRIKE in Syria to eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites in direct response to the attack on US forces that occurred on December 13 in Palmyra, Syria,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a social media post.
“This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” he continued. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.”
Earlier today, U.S. forces commenced OPERATION HAWKEYE STRIKE in Syria to eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites in direct response to the attack on U.S. forces that occurred on December 13th in Palmyra, Syria.
Two Iowa National Guard members and a civilian interpreter were killed on December 13 in an attack in the Syrian desert that the Trump administration has blamed on the Islamic State group.
The US Army named the soldiers as Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, and Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown. The interpreter was Ayad Mansoor Sakat of Macomb, Michigan.
Soon after the attack, which occurred when a Syrian security guard burst into a meeting of US and Syrian security officials and opened fire, US President Donald Trump promised “very serious retaliation.”
He insisted the target of the response would be IS, not Syria, stressing that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
On Friday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry released a statement reading: “Syria reiterates its commitment to combat Islamic State and intensify military operations against the group after the US strikes.” It said there could be “no safe havens on Syrian territory” for the terrorist group.
Trump said on Friday that the US was “striking very strongly against ISIS strongholds in Syria, a place soaked in blood which has many problems, but one that has a bright future if ISIS can be eradicated.”
Earlier this week, Trump met privately with the families of the dead Americans at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Authorities said the alleged perpetrator died by suicide to escape arrest. The attack involved smoke grenades and a knife in multiple locations.
Authorities said they were ramping up security across the island in response to the attacksImage: Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo/picture alliance
At least three people were killed and five injured in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, in attacks at two metro stations on Friday.
The perpetrator, a man said to be in his twenties, was initially thought to have jumped to his death from a nearby building after the attack.
That fact was later confirmed by police, who said he had been certified dead after he was sent to the hospital, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, bringing the total number of dead to four.
What happened in the Taiwan metro attacks?
The attacks took place at two metro stations in Taipei. Here’s what we know so far based on footage carried by broadcaster EBC and authorities’ remarks:
A masked person threw gasoline bombs or smoke grenades at Taipei Main subway station
The perpetrator rode the subway for one stop before exiting the station and throwing more smoke grenades on the street
Outside, he started wielding a knife at pedestrians before running into a shop
It is unclear how the attacker got to a rooftop of a building, from which he jumped to evade arrest.
Police say several individuals were not only injured in the knife attack, but also by the smoke grenades.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an said one of the victims was killed while trying to stop the attack.
FILE PHOTO: A message reading “AI artificial intelligence”, a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Global data-center dealmaking surged to a record high through November this year, driven by an insatiable demand for computing infrastructure to meet the boom in artificial intelligence usage.
Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence showed that there were more than 100 data center transactions during the period, with the total value sitting just under $61 billion.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Interest in data centers has swelled this year as tech giants and AI hyperscalers have planned billions of dollars in spending to scale up infrastructure.
AI-related companies have powered much of the gains in U.S. stocks this year, but concerns over lofty valuations and debt-fueled spending have also sparked worries over how quickly corporates can turn the investments into profits.
BY THE NUMBERS
Including M&As, asset sales and equity investments, data center investments hit nearly $61 billion through the end of November, already surpassing 2024’s record high $60.81 billion.
Since 2019, data center dealmaking in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $160 billion, with Asia-Pacific reaching nearly $40 billion and Europe $24.2 billion.
The court ordered safeguards on adult products but rejected a full suspension, prompting the government to appeal.
Clothes by Chinese company Shein are seen in the BHV (Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville) department store, Tuesday, Nov 4, 2025 in Paris. (Photo: AP/Aurelien Morissard)
The French government said it would appeal a Paris court ruling on Friday (Dec 19) that rejected a three-month suspension of Shein, as it attempts to crack down on the Chinese online platform after uproar over childlike sex dolls sold on its marketplace.
A Paris court ordered Shein to implement age verification measures for any adult products sold via its French website and set a 10,000 euro (US$11,709) fine for any breach.
Friday’s ruling comes as authorities try to force Shein to tighten oversight of products sold by third parties on its site.
However, the court rejected the government’s request to suspend Shein’s website as a whole for three months, saying that would be “disproportionate”.
The French government said it would appeal the ruling in the coming days “at the request of the Prime Minister”, adding it is convinced of the “systematic risk” linked to Shein’s model.
Shein has been embroiled in a scandal since France’s consumer watchdog DGCCRF found sex dolls resembling children and banned weapons for sale on its marketplace, prompting the government attempt to suspend the platform.
A spokesperson for Shein said it welcomed the ruling.
“We remain committed to continuously improving our control processes, in close collaboration with the French authorities, with the aim of establishing some of the most stringent standards in the industry, and we have been intensifying these efforts,” the spokesperson said.
“Our priority remains protecting French consumers and ensuring compliance with local laws and regulations,” they added in a statement. Shein declined to comment on the government’s decision to appeal.
Shein could now reinstate its marketplace in France, which it suspended last month after the DGCCRF findings. Its site selling Shein-branded clothes has been accessible throughout.
“PEDOPORNOGRAPHIC” SEX DOLLS
The Court of Paris said Shein must implement measures to verify age – more than a simple declaration – to prevent “sexual products that may constitute pornographic content” from being accessed by minors.
The French government began proceedings to suspend Shein on Nov 5, less than two hours after the opening of its first ever physical store in the BHV department store in Paris.
The court said in a statement that Shein had removed the products rapidly, and that a systematic lack of controls, oversight or regulation had not been proven.
However, Christine Cerrada, a lawyer and legal adviser for French child protection group L’Enfance au Coeur, said the French court’s actions were “clearly insufficient”.
“From a legal standpoint, it is well known that age‑verification measures are extremely difficult to implement,” she said following the ruling.
Shein banned all sex dolls and suspended the adult products category from its marketplace globally on Nov 3 after the consumer watchdog’s findings. It could decide to keep this in place, thus avoiding the question of age verification.
Shein, which is privately owned but aims to go public in Hong Kong after failed attempts in New York and London, had global revenues of US$37 billion in 2024, the most recent filing of parent company Roadget Business Pte Ltd in Singapore shows.
FRENCH CRACKDOWN ON ONLINE PLATFORMS
France’s consumer regulator also said last month it had found five other platforms – AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Joom, and Temu – sold illicit products in France. But none of those suspended their marketplaces, and the government has not targeted them to the same extent as Shein.
In a hearing earlier this month, lawyers for Shein said it is facing discriminatory treatment and there was a “crusade” against it by politicians and the media.
France has in recent weeks pushed European authorities to crack down on Shein as well, calling for a formal investigation under the EU law governing online platforms.
Elon Musk attends the opening ceremony of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, March 22, 2022. Patrick Pleul/Pool via REUTERS
Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package from Tesla, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, nearly two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.”
The ruling overturns a decision that had prompted a furious backlash from Musk and damaged Delaware’s business-friendly reputation. It assures Musk greater control over the company, which he has said is his main concern, even after shareholders recently approved a new pay package that could be worth $878 billion if Tesla meets certain targets.
The Supreme Court said a 2024 ruling that rescinded the pay package had been improper and inequitable to Musk.
The remedy of total rescission “leaves Musk uncompensated for his time and efforts over a period of six years,” the 49-page ruling issued on Friday stated.
The 2018 pay package is now worth about $139 billion based on the price of Tesla’s stock at the close of trading on Friday.
“For Elon, this is a win because he gets control faster,” said Gene Munster, managing partner at Tesla investor Deepwater Asset Management.
If Musk exercises all the stock options from the 2018 package, his stake in Tesla would grow from about 12.4 per cent to 18.1 per cent of an expanded share base. The company is issuing shares tied to his new pay package, although he must earn them by hitting performance goals.
Tesla shares were up less than 1 per cent in after-hours trading following the ruling.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk posted on X that he was “vindicated.”
Lawyers who challenged the pay package said in a statement that they were considering their next steps and were “proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty.”
The pay package was by far the largest ever until Tesla shareholders approved the new pay plan in November. If Tesla’s appeal had failed, it could have triggered a $26 billion hit to profit over two years to account for the replacement stock-compensation package it had promised Musk – at today’s much higher stock price.
The 2018 pay deal provided Musk options to acquire about 304 million Tesla shares at a deeply discounted price if the company hit various milestones, which it did. The options represent around 9 per cent of Tesla’s outstanding stock.
Musk never collected his stock options because soon after shareholders approved the 2018 compensation, the board was sued by Richard Tornetta, an investor with nine Tesla shares.
UNFRIENDLY TO BUSINESS?
In 2024, after a five-day trial, Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick concluded that Tesla’s directors were conflicted and key facts were hidden from shareholders when they voted to approve the plan. She ordered that the 2018 plan be rescinded.
Musk accused Delaware judges of being activists who are hostile to tech founders and he urged businesses to follow Tesla and reincorporate elsewhere. Dropbox, Roblox, Trade Desk and Coinbase were among the handful of large companies that moved their legal homes to Nevada or Texas. However, Delaware remains by far the most popular legal home for U.S. public companies.
Tesla’s board had warned that Musk, the world’s richest person who also leads the SpaceX rocket venture and artificial intelligence startup xAI, could leave the electric car company if he did not get the pay he wanted and an increase in his voting power.
The Delaware Supreme Court may have been reluctant to annul Musk’s pay package because shareholders had overwhelmingly voted in favor of it, said Brian Dunn, director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
“I think that there’s some belief that maybe the courts shouldn’t get between the shareholders and the decisions that they make,” said Dunn.
