Category: World

Hamas’s armed wing released a video Wednesday (Apr 23) showing an Israeli-Hungarian hostage walking through a tunnel in Gaza and lighting a candle to mark his birthday.

In the nearly three-minute clip published by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the hostage – who identifies himself as Omri Miran – addresses the camera in Hebrew.

His family confirmed his identity in a statement issued through the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, while requesting that the media refrain from publishing the footage.

AFP was unable to verify when the footage was recorded, but in it, Miran says he is marking his 48th birthday, which fell on Apr11.

He is initially shown walking through a tunnel, then seated on a mattress in a confined space, acknowledging protesters in Israel who have been demonstrating against the government and demanding the hostages’ release.

He states that hostages are living in constant fear of bombings and urges a deal be reached as soon as possible to secure their release, adding that he missed his wife and daughters.

“On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we say ‘never again,’ an Israeli citizen cries out for help from Hamas’s tunnels,” his family said in a statement.

“It is a moral failure for the state of Israel. Our Omri is strong and will not break, but our hearts are broken,” the family added.

“We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us, and especially to his two daughters who are waiting with all their hearts to hold him again.”

During the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants on Israel, Miran was seized from his home in kibbutz Nahal Oz in front of his wife Lichay Miran-Lavi and their two small daughters.

He previously appeared in an undated video released by Hamas on Apr 27, 2024.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/hamas-releases-video-showing-israeli-hostage-marking-his-birthday-5084711

Thailand will conduct tests of a cellphone disaster alert system, senior officials said on Wednesday (Apr 23), after criticism that no alarm was sent after last month’s deadly Myanmar earthquake caused damage in Bangkok.

Director General of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) Phasakorn Boonyalak said the Cell Broadcast System (CBS) will undergo a test run next month in localised areas, including the sprawling capital, which was badly shaken by the 7.7-magnitude quake in neighbouring Myanmar.

The system will use three mobile networks to send warning messages “quickly and with wide coverage, both on natural disaster and security threats”, he told a news conference.

Starting on May 2 with the smallest target area – four city hall buildings – there will be three test runs, with the third and largest drill covering the whole of Bangkok and Chiang Mai provinces on May 13.

Residents’ cellphones will get a pop-up message on their screens in Thai and English, accompanied by a siren, Phasakorn said.

The message will read: “This is a test message from Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, no action required.”

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-test-disaster-alerts-quake-criticism-5083661

Travellers from Malaysia and China will enjoy five more years of visa-free travel when visiting each other’s countries, thanks to a new mutual visa exemption agreed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent state visit.

The arrangement is an extension of a current visa-free arrangement and a move experts say could positively impact the Southeast Asian nation’s economy.

The new reciprocal agreement was among a total of 31 memoranda of understanding (MOUs) signed last Wednesday during Xi’s visit to Malaysia, as part of his Southeast Asian tour from Apr 14 to Apr 18 where he also visited Vietnam and Cambodia.

“During the president’s visit, one of the MOUs signed involved the new visa arrangement.

“We agreed to extend it for another five years, with an option to renew for a further five years once it ends,” Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said on Tuesday (Apr 22), as quoted by local news outlet the New Straits Times (NST).

“The visa exemption allows Chinese tourists to stay in Malaysia for up to 90 days, and China has offered a similar arrangement for Malaysians,” Saifuddin told reporters at the sidelines of the Home Ministry’s monthly assembly in Putrajaya.

The extension expands upon Malaysia’s visa liberalisation initiative for travellers from China and India, implemented on Dec 1, 2023.

“From 30 days, we extended the visa-free period in Malaysia to 90 days and also asked China to reciprocate but at that time, we were only given 15 days,” he said, as quoted by The Star.

The initiative has proven effective in promoting economic growth through the tourism industry which has seen a significant increase in tourist arrivals from China, according to Saifuddin.

“As of April, this year alone we recorded nearly 900,000 tourist arrivals from China. Last year, the total stood at four million,” he said, as quoted by NST.

This is seen as a positive indicator for the government to continue such initiatives for the benefit of both countries, he said.

“China remains the top source of international tourists to Malaysia, followed by India. Among ASEAN countries, Singapore leads, followed by Thailand,” he added, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

“Tourism continues to be a key contributor to the national economy, given its immediate impact compared to other forms of investment,” Saifuddin said.

Before the extension was announced, Malaysians could travel to China visa-free until only Dec 31 this year, while Chinese nationals could enjoy visa-free travel to Malaysia until Dec 31 next year, according to The Star.

Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents president Nigel Wong said that the visa extension will allow the tourism industry to better develop the Chinese inbound market.

“There is stability for the industry to plan ahead and boost efforts to attract more Chinese tourists,” he was quoted as saying by The Star, highlighting the increasing demand for Chinese travellers looking for experiential tourism products.

“It’s no longer just about the conventional tours. Instead, innovative and creative experiences like culinary tourism, heritage and culture, as well as ecotourism products, are popular with foreign tourists,” Nigel added.

He also expects the benefits of the visa extension to go beyond the Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign.

“Tourism tends to spike after the Visit Malaysia campaign and this move will tie in very nicely,” he said.

The Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign is a national drive to boost incoming tourism, with a series of bold targets, including 35.6 million international arrivals and RM147.1 billion (US$33 billion) in tourism receipts.

President of the Malaysian Inbound Tourism Association Mint Leong said the visa-free extension will give industry players a clear direction when promoting Malaysia to Chinese tourists.

“Malaysia will also have the opportunity to attract more business events and business travellers due to this,” Leong was quoted as saying by The Star.

Meanwhile, treasurer-general of the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Koong Lin Loong said the move can further spur the national gross domestic product, as the “hospitality industry is also set to benefit”.

“Chinese tourists will feel that there is less hassle due to the visa-free conditions and when they arrive, they will definitely be spending on goods as well as food and beverage,” he said.

While Chinese tourist arrivals to Malaysia continue to increase, the Bangkok Post reported a decline in arrivals to Thailand, hitting a low for 2025 with only 5,833 visitors recorded on Apr 16, below the usual daily average of 15,000 to 20,000.

Natthriya Thaweevong, chairperson of the Tourism Authority of Thailand said that the average number of tourists from Asia visiting Thailand has dropped, likely due to “safety concerns” and the “economic impact from the US tariff hike.”

The safety concerns likely refer to the high-profile kidnapping of Chinese actor Wang Xing in Thailand.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/malaysia-china-visa-free-travel-tourism-5083236

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul on Wednesday (Apr 23), with its impact and that of multiple aftershocks forcing thousands out onto the streets in panic across Türkiye’s largest city.

The quake was followed by more than 50 aftershocks, some very powerful, the interior minister said, although there were no reports of major damage or serious injury.

“An earthquake of 6.2 magnitude occurred in Silivri, Sea of Marmara, Istanbul,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X, adding that it was felt in the surrounding provinces.

The initial quake struck at 12.49 pm (0949 GMT) at a depth of 6.92km under the sea, which lies to the south of the city, and lasted 13 seconds, he said.

“By 3.12 pm (1212 GMT), 51 aftershocks – the largest of which was 5.9 magnitude – had been recorded,” he said.

As buildings shook, people rushed onto the streets where crowds of worried-looking people stared at their mobile phones for information or made calls, an AFP correspondent said.

“I just felt an earthquake, I’ve got to get out,” a shaken-looking decorator, who did not want to give his name, said while fleeing a fourth-storey apartment where he was working near the city’s Galata Tower.

Istanbul governor Davut Gul said nobody had died in the quake or the aftershocks but confirmed that hospitals were treating “151 people injured when they jumped or tried to jump from a height in panic”.

The injuries were not life-threatening, he added.

“There is no destruction to residential buildings in the city but an abandoned building collapsed in Fatih District without causing any deaths or injuries,” the governor’s office said on X.

Footage posted by the state news agency Anadolu showed the minaret of a mosque in the Beylikduzu district just west of the historic peninsula swaying during the initial quake.

But there were no reports of other buildings collapsing in the sprawling city of 16 million people, Yerlikaya told TRT public television.

Schools and universities, which were closed on Wednesday when Turkey was marking National Sovereignty Day, would remain closed until the weekend, the education ministry said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was “following the developments closely”.

“NOTHING WE CAN DO”
“We all panicked and just ran. There’s absolutely nothing else we can do,” a street seller called Yusuf told AFP.

The tremors could be felt as far away as Bulgaria, according to AFP journalists in the capital Sofia.

Silivri, on the megacity’s western outskirts, has made headlines in the past month as the location where Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was jailed after his arrest in a graft probe that his critics say is politically motivated.

Also there are a number of students detained for joining the mass protests that erupted nationwide over the move against Imamoglu, Erdogan’s biggest political rival.

But no one was hurt, the Parents Solidarity Network said on X.

“The earthquake in Istanbul was most strongly felt in Silivri but our children are fine. There is no problem at the prison,” the group wrote.

Some of the city’s southern districts lie just 15 kilometres from the North Anatolian Fault, which is distinct from the equally active East Anatolian Fault.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/powerful-62-magnitude-quake-hits-istanbul-coast-5084471

A scantily-clad Bianca Censori stepped out for a solo outing in Spain after reuniting with her husband, Kanye West.

Censori, 30, was photographed in Mallorca on Tuesday, driving her black SUV to a local building.

Once she parked, the Australian model got out of the car to reveal her — well — revealing outfit: a black thong spaghetti-strap bodysuit, sheer tights and slouchy black boots.

She wore her dark hair pulled back into a claw clip and sported minimal makeup.

Censori, whose facial expression remained emotionless, eventually got back in her car and drove off.

Though the trained architect was spouse-less for the errand, she and West, 47, were seen on a dinner date on the island just a few days ago.

Last Friday, the couple was filmed entering an Indian restaurant wearing all-black ensembles; the rapper selected an oversized hoodie, while his wife donned a skin-tight number.

It marked their first joint sighting since West confirmed on his song “Bianca,” which he released earlier this month, that she had left him following yet another string of his disturbing social media rants.

A source told Page Six in February, shortly after the Yeezy founder made Censori walk naked on the 2025 Grammy Awards red carpet, that his decision to sell swastika-printed T-shirts on his website was the “last straw” for her.

Then on Monday, West took to X to announce that he had an incestuous relationship with his male cousin when they were kids.

He made the shocking admission while releasing a snippet of a music video for a new song titled “Cousins.”

On the track, the Grammy winner also mentions Censori, singing, “And that one time that you left me, I didn’t get no sleep that night / And that one time that you left me, I took 10 Percs to get high.”

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/04/23/celebrity-news/bianca-censori-steps-out-solo-in-spain-after-reuniting-with-kanye-west/

Meghan Markle is in New York City for her speaking gig at the Time100 Summit — and Prince Harry is at her side.

The former military pilot, 40, accompanied his wife, 43, to the Jazz at Lincoln Center event Wednesday, as seen in photos obtained by Page Six.

Harry sported a sophisticated suit for the Manhattan outing.

Markle also suited up, pairing a tan blazer and matching wide-legged pants with a white button-up top and heels.

The former actress completed her look with a belt, a gold watch and hoop earrings.

The former actress was all smiles and wore her hair parted down the middle in loose waves.

Markle chatted on stage with Time’s Jessica Sibley (via People) and was asked about her “confessions” — an homage to her latest podcast, “Confessions of a Female Founder.”

The “With Love, Meghan” star called herself the “happiest [she has] ever been” in her gushing response.

“To have a husband and a partner who is so supportive, and kids who are healthy and happy, I never imagined at this point I would feel so happy and grateful, and I really do,” she said of Harry and their two children — Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3.

Markle noted that her eldest child is set to lose his first tooth, which she is hoping to “make it home in time” to witness.

The As Ever creator has been vocal about her husband’s support for her lifestyle brand since its recent launch.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/04/23/royal-family/prince-harry-supports-meghan-markles-return-to-nyc-to-speak-at-time100-summit/

Pope Francis has died at the age of 88. The Vatican announced that at 07:35 local time on Easter Monday the head of the Roman Catholic Church “returned to the house of the Father” at his residence, Casa Santa Marta. He was the first Latin American pope in the Church’s history.

Following tradition, the pontiff’s death was confirmed by the head of the Vatican’s health department and the cardinal chamberlain (camerlengo, in Italian) Kevin Joseph Farrell.

The Pope’s body will now be taken to his chapel for a private ceremony, in which it will be placed in a single coffin – a departure from the three nested coffins common in previous pontiffs’ funerals.

The last 10 popes of the Catholic Church

Pope Francis himself chose to scale back some of the funerary pomp and ceremony. In 2024, he simplified what would be his funeral rites. This time, there will be no private viewing for cardinals and a public viewing will take place in St Peter’s Basilica after a procession led by the camerlengo.

Inside the church, however, the Pope’s body will remain in the coffin, which won’t be raised on a pedestal.

Pope Francis will, like his predecessor, be buried with some items that symbolise his time as Supreme Pontiff and his achievements.

Those are the pallium, a vestment used only by the pontiff and metropolitan archbishops; the rogito, a deed that summarises the highlights of Francis’s time as Pope, and bags of silver, gold and copper coins in number equal to the years of his papacy.

In a 2023 interview, Pope Francis revealed he already had a tomb prepared for him in his favourite church, the Basilica of St Mary Major.

The basilica also houses the tombs of other popes and is located close to Rome’s main railway station. Even though it sits on Italian soil, the church is considered to be Vatican territory.

Map showing the location of the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome, close to the Roma Termini railway station

The funeral and burial rituals for Pope Francis will culminate on Saturday.

Following the Pope’s death, the cardinal chamberlain sealed his apartment in Casa Santa Marta, where he chose to live during his papacy.

The camerlengo destroys the Pope’s fisherman’s ring, a signet used to sign documents, in front of the College of Cardinals using a ceremonial hammer.

This is the beginning of the Sede vacante period, when the Catholic Church is without a Pope and prepares for the conclave – the secret meeting where cardinals elect a new Pope.

What does the Pope do?
The Pope leads the Catholic Church and is seen as St Peter’s successor, giving him authority over its 1.4 billion followers. Catholics believe this connects him directly to Jesus Christ, making him a key source of spiritual guidance.

Alongside the Bible, his teachings help shape the Church’s beliefs and practices. Other Christian denominations, such as Protestants and Orthodox Christians, do not recognise his authority.

Choosing the pontiff

135 cardinals are under the age of 80, which makes them eligible to select Pope Francis’s successor.

Pope Francis appointed 108 of the 135 cardinals. This increases – but does not guarantee – the possibility that the next Pope will share his vision of a more progressive, inclusive Catholic Church.

Most of the voting cardinals are from Europe, a trend that has persisted for centuries.

But the Catholic Church’s geographical centre of gravity is shifting. Asian cardinals, historically under-represented, now account for nearly a quarter of the men who could be part of the conclave.

Once Francis is buried, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, has 15 to 20 days to summon the cardinals to Rome.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-904185ba-2600-4d37-9419-9204b4da5167

Former child actress Sophie Nyweide was pregnant when she died in Vermont earlier this month, according to new reports.

While Nyweide’s cause of death is still under investigation, police told The Post on Wednesday that they are investigating the death as a “possible unintentional overdose.”

Nyweide, known for her roles in the films “Noah” and “Mammoth,” was just 24.

Her death certificate — obtained by People and TMZ — revealed the news of her pregnancy. TMZ was first to report the story.

The document did not disclose what stage her pregnancy was in, according to People. However, a source familiar with the investigation told the outlet “she appeared to be in the early stages.”

The Vermont Office of Chief Medical Examiner did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

“This is a fluid investigation and we are still waiting on final autopsy and toxicology reports from the Vermont Office of Chief Medical Examiner,” Bennington police told The Post Wednesday.

“Investigators are investigating this as a possible unintentional overdose,” the statement continued.

The star was “found lifeless on a riverbank” in Vermont on April 14, “not far from a high school in Bennington” around 4 a.m., The Post confirmed Tuesday.

“First responders arrived on scene and attempted life saving measures,” law enforcement added Wednesday.

Nyweide was “declared dead at the scene.”

A man was found with Nyweide but is not “considered a suspect or person of interest.” The individual “was the person who contacted 911, summing [sic] assistance for Nyweide” and is “cooperating with investigators,” police said.

The Bennington Police Department’s investigation will consider “a range of possible causes, including foul play,” TMZ reported Tuesday.

Nyweide’s family confirmed her death on Tuesday.

The actress’s mother, Shelly, told TMZ she suspected her daughter had been using drugs around the time she died.

“My knowledge is she was using drugs and was a tiny young woman,” Shelly said. “She was with other people when she died. I didn’t know them. There is an investigation ongoing. The autopsy results are not in. They said it would take 6 to 8 weeks. So I can’t say definitively.”

Nyweide’s online obituary also mentioned her struggles.

“Sophie was a kind and trusting girl,” the memorial read. “Often this left her open to being taken advantage of by others. She wrote and drew voraciously and much of this art depicts the depth she had and it also represents the pain she suffered.”

“Many of her writings and artwork are roadmaps of her struggles and traumas,” the obituary also said, noting that those close to Nyweide were unable to get her to accept help.

Source: https://nypost.com/2025/04/23/entertainment/former-child-star-sophie-nyweide-was-pregnant-when-she-died/

A new type of homeless encampment has popped up in Brooklyn.

Dozens of Sheepshead Bay residents have been living in tents on Coyle Street for the past five weeks to protest against an incoming family homeless shelter, which they claim would trigger an explosion of crime in their otherwise sleepy enclave.

“Everyday. Anytime,” said Danny Pan, who was celebrating his 55th birthday Wednesday with his fellow protesters, adding that they’ll remain on Coyle Street “until there’s no homeless shelter. Until the project is gone.”

The four large tents spanning the length of the property line of the incoming shelter were erected last month, just days after hundreds of protesters stormed the streets to accuse the city of a “bait and switch” after the controversial lot was initially planned for affordable housing.

The plastic shelters are covered in American flags and protest signs, and are filled top-to-bottom with fliers, food and drink and personal items, like a drum kit.

The so-called volunteers stage the sit-in in shifts so that between six and up to 50 people are sitting outside the property at all times, with another small group stationed on the corner of Avenue U armed with protest signs.

Nearby bakeries and restaurants donate meals almost daily to the cause, and one donor even paid for a port-a-potty for the enduring group to utilize.

The goal of the sit-in is twofold: it is mostly in protest of the incoming shelter, which plans to accommodate 169 families, but is also to ensure that neither the city nor Westhab, the private owner, begins construction without the proper permits.

The protesters began consistently stationing themselves outside after catching construction crews allegedly sneaking onto the property under the cover of darkness.

“Westhab hired construction companies to come and demolish the buildings, and they came at like crazy hours. One time they came at 6 a.m.,” explained Benjamin Louie, a neighbor and organizer.

“So I thought that of the idea, ‘Why don’t we just stake out the whole night to prevent them from coming?’ We basically blocked the doors. We’re taking up space.”

The group initially tried to block workers from the site, but after a court order were forced to let them in. Nevertheless, they remained on the sidewalk.

The protesters argued that they were not against homeless people in general, but against the potential safety risk to their children — especially because of the property’s close proximity to the numerous daycare centers that line Avenue U, as well as the elementary and middle schools just several blocks away.

The city has previously emphasized that the shelter will be for families, but the protesters remain unconvinced, saying they were already duped by city officials who originally promised the controversial lot would be turned into affordable housing units.

That plan, supported by the City Council, was dropped by the original developer back in 2023. Westhab then swooped in with their own plan to build the district’s first long-term homeless shelter, housing 169 families, with a preference for those already living in the community.

Source: https://nypost.com/2025/04/23/us-news/brooklyn-protesters-camping-24-7-outside-proposed-homeless-shelter/

India has decided to put on hold the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, 64 years after the water-sharing agreement was signed between former PM Pt Jawaharlal Nehru and then Pak President Ayub Khan.

In a strong response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, India has decided to put on hold the Indus-Waters Treaty with Pakistan. This comes a day after 26 people died after terrorists opened fire at tourists in Pahalgam. The survivors said the terrorists first asked them to recite Islamic verse, and the ones who couldn’t recite the same were shot dead in front of their families.
Pakistan-based The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s deadly attack.
Notably, former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal has earlier called for the indefinite suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, saying that “blood and water” can’t go together.

“It is time to suspend the Indus Water Treaty indefinitely as a truly meaningful response to the latest terrorist outrage in Pahalgam instigated by Pakistan. We have earlier said that blood and water can’t go together. Let’s act on our own declared position. This will be a strategic response,” Sibal, who was the Indian ambassador to Russia and is now the Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said in a post on X.

“We are in a favourable position on this with the US as the terrorist attack has occurred during Vance’s visit. Trump and Vance have strong views on Islamic extremism and terrorism,” he added.
The decision to suspend the Treaty was taken in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister. The CCS was briefed in detail on the terrorist attack on 22 April 2025.

An outbreak of the potentially deadly Legionnaires’ disease in a housing estate in Berlin has raised concerns that big housing companies are too slow to react to major health crises or keeping their tenants informed.

Tenants of a housing estate in Berlin say their landlords have failed to keep them properly informed about an outbreak of Legionella bacteria.

In mid-March, health authorities in the Neukölln district of Berlin imposed a shower ban on 332 apartments in the “High-Deck” estate after tests showed elevated levels of the Legionella bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia.

However, it is not clear how long the contamination was present in the water, and at least one tenant, Brianne Curran, believes that she contracted Legionnaires two months before she was told that the estate had a contamination.

She says her landlord, the state-owned housing company Howoge, was much too slow to keep tenants informed of the dangers after water tests took place in March, and failed to implement containment measures until external pressure was applied.

Curran began experiencing flu-like symptoms in January and endured three weeks of coughing, breathing difficulties and lung pain before those symptoms subsided. However, she only tested for Legionnaire’s disease in late March, when she first became aware that her water had been contaminated. The doctor told her she had a “weak positive” result, before mentioning that there had been several other suspected cases of Legionnaire’s disease in the area.

Dangers in the water
It was only two weeks after that, on April 11, that Howoge informed her that the water supply in her apartment had by far the highest concentration of Legionella bacteria in the estate: Some 32,600 colony forming units (CFU) per 100 milliliters in her water (anything over 100 CFUs means the case has to be reported to authorities and measures need to be taken). Curran said she had to “fight” get the results of her own apartment, after being told that the individual results could not be displayed publicly.

In a statement to DW, Howoge spokesperson Sabine Pentrop played down the extent of the outbreak, saying that only seven apartments breached safety levels, and criticized the health authority for imposing such a wide-ranging shower ban.

The Neukölln health authority gave Howoge until April 16 to implement measures to contain the outbreak, which, according to Hannes Rehfeldt, the local councillor responsible for health in the district, said had been kept — the water had been reheated to sterilize it.

“Howoge always showed that it wanted to fulfill its responsibilities,” Rehfeldt told DW.

The extent of the shower ban, he added, had been necessary because so many households were dependent on the same water system. Rehfeldt underlined that it was safe to drink, wash and cook with the water, though even cold showers should be avoided unless using the special filters.

Curran feels that it was only after she took the case to the media, especially to Germany’s national public broadcaster ARD, that she began to get prompt responses to her emails to the company.

She says that she was not informed of her right to see her apartment’s test results for data protection reasons until she went to the tenants’ association — on the phone, a Howoge representative told her that she did not need to know her own test results.

“It was quicker to get the news onto national television than it was to get a response to my email from Howoge,” she told DW.

What measures were taken?
Legionella bacteria spread through water vapor, but not through drinking or person-to-person contact. Howoge advised residents of the High-Deck estate not to take showers and avoid breathing in steam from hot water and dishwashers. According to Curran, the shower ban was initially indefinite and was only shortened following media attention, when Howoge introduced a series of measures to contain the outbreak.

These included replacing the water fittings in apartments where the Legionella concentration was above 100 CFUs, and giving residents shower heads that filter out the bacteria. Howoge also offered residents a rent reduction for the period between imposing the shower ban and installing these filters.

On April 8, an external environmental consulting company named GUC was commissioned to investigate the cause of the outbreak, and according to Howoge is now producing a “catalogue of exact measures in order to permanently eliminate the Legionella contamination.” GUC suspected that the outbreak may have been caused by special fittings in the plumbing designed to prevent backflow of liquids into the system. These are now being removed, Howoge said.

“They are relying on outdated systems and dismally imagined protocols,” said Curran.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/legionnaires-outbreak-in-berlin-has-tenants-worried/a-72323192

Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont, are among the states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

As many as 12 American states on Wednesday sued the Trump administration in New York’s US court of international trade to stop President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, arguing that it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the country’s economy.

The lawsuit said that the policy imposed by Trump has left the national trade policy subject to the US President’s “whims rather than the sound exercise of lawful authority”, a report from The Associated Press said.

The states that have brought the lawsuit are Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont.

Trump tariff schemes ‘insane’

The suit also sought to challenge Trump’s claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs on the basis of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It also asked the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal and block government agencies from enforcing them.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, in a release, described Trump’s tariff scheme as “insane”. She also said that “it was not only economically reckless, it is illegal”.

The lawsuit also asserted that only Congress holds the power to impose tariffs, adding that the president can only invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act when an urgent situation presents as an “unusual and extraordinary” threat from abroad.

“By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the lawsuit read.

Last week, Democrat California governor Gavin Newsom, sued the Trump administration in the US district court in California’s northern district over the tariff policy. He said that his state stands to lose billions of dollars in revenue being the largest importer in the country.

Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded to the California governor’s lawsuit and said the Trump administration “remains committed to addressing this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries and leaving our workers behind with every tool at our disposal, from tariffs to negotiations”.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/12-states-sue-donald-trump-administration-in-trade-court-to-stop-tariff-policy-101745443481376.html

Donald Trump chided the Ukrainian President for not agreeing with him about Crimea now being a part of Russia. “Crimea was lost years ago and is not even a point of discussion,” President Trump asserted.

Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had another unpleasant exchange on Wednesday as negotiators weighed possibilities that could result in ending the years-long war in Ukraine.

This time the Trump-Zelensky clash was over Crimea, with the US President convinced that the region should be considered as Russian territory, while Zelensky refused to agree with him, reiterating that Ukraine will stand firm on its core principles.

As negotiators met for the latest round of talks in London, reports suggest that the US proposal that was laid out had two key points in agreement with Moscow’s stand – the first being Kyiv officially recognising Crimea as Russian territory, and the second – that Ukraine can never become a NATO member.

Both these points were rejected by Ukraine, which infuriated President Trump, who had already threatened to withdraw the US from negotiations over Kyiv’s obstinacy.

TRUMP SCOLDS ZELENSKY

Donald Trump chided the Ukrainian President for not agreeing with him about Crimea now being a part of Russia. “Crimea was lost years ago and is not even a point of discussion,” President Trump asserted.

President Zelensky, who firmly rejected such a proposal, said “Ukraine will not recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea. There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”

The exchange led to President Trump scolding President Zelensky, saying that the United States is trying to stop the killing in his country. “We are very close to a deal” for peace, Trump said, putting the blame on the Ukrainian President for being stubborn, as talks seem to be heading for a stalemate.

President Trump took to social media to post a scathing attack on Ukraine’s Zelensky. “Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is boasting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal that, ‘Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There’s nothing to talk about here.’ This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“Nobody is asking Zelenskiy to recognise Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” he added.

Russia seized control of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 without any significant resistance from Ukraine at the time. The move was condemned by several nations, with only a handful of countries recognising Russia’s claim to Crimea.

JD VANCE’S ULTIMATUM

Meanwhile, echoing Donald Trump’s sentiment, US Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to the US peace proposal “or for the United States to walk away from the process entirely.”

Mr Vance said that America’s proposal called for freezing territorial lines “at some level close to where they are today” and a “long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace.” He went on to say that “The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, and to freeze this thing.”

In response to the US Vice President, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote in a post on X that he made it clear to US negotiator Steve Witkoff in London that Ukraine “will stand firm on its core principles during the negotiations” that relate to sovereignty and territorial integrity.

ADVANTAGE MOSCOW?

Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has sharply altered the US approach to the Ukraine war. Instead of punishing moves against Russia like his predecessor Joe Biden, Washington is now pressing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, even if it is unacceptable to Kyiv. The US is seemingly in a hurry to broker a deal – any deal – irrespective of whether it may be a good one for Russia or a good one for Ukraine.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-and-ukraines-zelensky-clash-again-as-us-says-crimea-now-russian-territory-8240635#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

THIS is the moment a woman went head-to-head with railway staff to delay a high-speed train so her late friends could hop on – only to be arrested later.

Captured on video at a station in Shenzhen, China, the woman is seen brazenly blocking the train doors with her body as staff desperately try to get her inside the carriage.

She stands firm, resisting two railway employees who push and plead with her to move.

Instead of cooperating, she coolly continues using her phone and gesturing to her friends to hurry up – all while halting the sleek bullet train’s departure.

Despite the chaos, the train eventually pulled away and reached its destination on time.

But the drama didn’t end there.

Police tracked the 45-year-old to the city of Xiamen the following day and detained her for “interrupting train operations” – a serious offence in China’s ultra-efficient railway network.

Her antics sparked a furious backlash online.

“There should be a penalty for this behaviour. That action wasted a lot of time for others,” fumed one social media user.

Another warned: “If the woman got away with it, many people would do what she did.”

China’s high-speed trains are known for their clockwork precision – and authorities clearly weren’t amused by the woman’s attempt to derail that.

It comes after a daft tourist fell from a train after dangling out of the carriage to get the perfect snap in Sri Lanka.

The young woman was holding onto the railings and leaning back when she was bashed in the head by some tree branches.

She was then quickly dragged from the carriage.

In horrifying footage of the incident, one of her arms can be seen flailing in a panic as she falls out of the train.

The man behind the camera can be heard shouting while passengers look on in horror.

The train ground to a halt at the next stop and passengers walked back to help her.

The woman, who had visited the country from China, was luckily not seriously injured as she landed in some bushes.

Local cops have reminded passengers on trains to pay attention to their surroundings at all times.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14091623/woman-fights-train-staff-arrested/

THE first pics of Vladimir Putin’s secret son have been leaked, say anti-Kremlin activists.

Images of Ivan Vladimirovich Putin, ten, surfaced on Telegram channel VChk-OGPU, which has links to spooks and other insiders.

His mum is Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 41, with him, below.

She also has another son, Vladimir, four.

Putin, 72, has two adult daughters with his ex-wife and has never confirmed other children — but let slip he watches kids’ films with “my little ones”.

“VChK-OGPU [channel] has obtained a photo of the most secret and probably the loneliest boy in Russia,” said a report.

“This is Ivan Vladimirovich Putin.

“He hardly communicates with other children, spending all his time with guards, governesses, [and] teachers.”

The boy is said to resemble Putin in his Soviet childhood.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14084040/vladimir-putin-secret-son-photos-leaked/

Tesla’s first-quarter profits have slumped by more than two-thirds. The result comes amid a public backlash against Elon Musk over his work for the Trump administration.

Electric vehicle producer Tesla on Tuesday reported profits of $409 million (€397 million) after a slide in auto sales that saw quarterly profits fall by 71%.

The steep profit losses come as the firm fights a backlash due to owner Elon Musk’s leadership of a US government jobs-slashing program — known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

His 130-day mandate at DOGE is due to expire in late May.

How has Elon Musk reacted?

Immediately after the results were published, Musk said he planned to “significantly” reduce his work for US President Donald Trump’s administration in May to focus on Tesla.

“I think starting probably next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk told investors on a conference call.

The South Africa-born billionaire also said that the bulk of his work to set up DOGE had been completed.

What has Musk been doing for the Trump administration?

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has been leading US President Donald Trump’s attempts to cut federal government spending drastically.

Under his leadership, DOGE has sought to dismantle several government agencies, including USAID and the Department of Education, in a bid to root out alleged corruption, cut bureaucracy and boost efficiency.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been laid off, while dozens of government programs have been suspended or canceled.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musks-automaker-tesla-sees-profits-plummet/a-72314708

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have “significantly” pushed the global economy toward a downshift, reducing the global economic growth forecast for 2025 to 2.8%, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a new report published on Tuesday.

The global growth forecast was expected to stay at 3.1% in 2024 and rise to 3.3% in 2025, said IMF economic counsellor Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas.

The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) was “put together under exceptional circumstances,” following Trump’s announcement in April, Gourinchas said.

The US’ especially high levies on China and Beijing’s retaliatory measures mean lower bilateral trade, which is “weighing down on global trade growth,” Gourinchas told the Reuters news agency.

How do the US tariffs affect the global economy?

The GFSR’s authors found that “global financial stability risks have increased significantly, driven by tighter global financial conditions and heightened economic uncertainty.”

The ripple effects of Trump’s decisions extend beyond Washington. Rising bond yields have increased in countries previously considered safe choices, driving up borrowing costs globally, the IMF reported.

“Emerging market economies already facing the highest real financing costs in a decade may now need to refinance their debt and fund fiscal spending at higher costs,” the global lender said.

The IMF also warned that global tensions, including wars and military conflicts, could make the financial system even more unstable.

The IMF projects that growth would slow to 0.8% in the Euro area in 2025, and to 1.2% in 2026. Both projections are some 0.2 percentage points down from January.

Germany was set to see economic growth of 0.0% in 2025 and 0.9% in 2026, the IMF said, cutting the European Union’s largest economy’s growth forecast by 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points, respectively.

Tariff, plus uncertainty provide double whammy

Petya Koeva Brooks, the deputy director of the research department at the IMF in Washington told DW that two negative shocks had hit the global economy.

One was the level of new tariffs, bringing the effective tariff rate to levels not seen for over a century. Then, she said, policy uncertainty that had also become very high.

“The combination of those two things have resulted in those downgrades that we’ve seen for most countries in the world,” said Koeva Brooks.

The best way to deal with trade disruption was cooperation among willing countries to minimize the impact, she said.

“What would be very helpful at this point is to have a stable and predictable trading system. For countries to work together in order to achieve that would be the most beneficial thing for the global economy.”

Mexico rejects IMF projections

IMF financial counselor Tobias Adrian warned that the financial conditions in the past three weeks since Trump first announced the tariffs has “an outsized impact on those more vulnerable countries.”

The global lender expected less-developed nations to fare worse, projecting a shrinkage of Mexico’s economy to 0.3% this year, down from a previous projection of 1.4% growth.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/imf-trump-tariffs-slow-down-global-economic-growth/a-72312805

When walking through the Boedo neighborhood in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires you get to hear entirely different opinions about the country’s president Javier Milei. One is marked by optimism, the other comes from people who remain largely skeptic.

Signs of disapproval are hard to miss. At a local store, a poster is hung up reading “No entry” and showing the pictures of President Milei and Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who are clearly not welcome here.

Yet just around the corner, construction workers hammer and lay bricks on a new apartment building — revealing a new confidence in the future of a country rebuilding itself.

Since taking office as Argentina’s president on December 10, 2023, Milei has become one of the world’s most talked-about leaders. His radical libertarian stance has earned him fierce criticism from the left, while many economists see him as a reformer liberating Argentina from decades of bureaucracy and rigid controls.

Milei lifts currency controls in historic move

Milei’s most recent bold move was ending the so-called “cepo” restrictions — a Spanish term meaning “trap” or “shackles” — which had restricted access to US dollars for over two decades. Introduced in 2003 with the aim of curbing Argentina’s runaway inflation, the currency controls were officially lifted in mid-April, allowing individuals and businesses to freely conduct foreign exchange transactions.

“Contrary to alarmist predictions from many local and international economists, the exchange rate did not skyrocket,” Aldo Abram of the libertarian think tank Fundacion Libertad y Progreso in Buenos Aires told DW. “On the contrary, the rate stabilized below its pre-liberalization level. The market normalized without a crisis, without a [bank] run, and without devaluation.”

The government celebrated the historic move, showing pictures of Milei and his economy minister, Santiago Caputo, raising their arms as if celebrating a goal of their favorite football team.

Confidence and patience

In a recent televised address, Milei said his policies had brought Argentina on the right track, and he reaffirmed his commitment to fiscal discipline. “After more than 100 years of chronic budget deficits, we are now one of the five countries in the world that only spends what it earns — not a single peso more,” he declared.

He reiterated his vision for Argentina’s future, announcing the end of currency controls and promising that Argentina would experience the highest economic growth globally over the next 30 years.

“It won’t happen overnight,” Milei admitted, “but it will happen gradually and with the assurance that we’ve done our homework, both domestically and internationally, to reduce volatility as much as possible.”

There are some early signs of success. According to Argentina’s national statistics agency INDEC, poverty has dropped to 38.1% — slightly below the level Milei inherited. Inflation also decreased by 44.5% year-on-year in 2024, INDEC data shows.

Milei’s chainsaw policies leave scars

Svenja Blanke of Germany’s left-leaning Friedrich Ebert Foundation views the economic outlook with caution. Speaking to DW, she criticized the government for using the exchange rate as a “kind of crutch” to suppress inflation.

As a result, she noted, the Argentinian peso has appreciated, leading to paradoxes like a Big Mac costing the equivalent of €5.48 ($6.30) — comparable to Germany — while the minimum hourly wage stands at just €1.06, which is far below Germany’s €12.82.

“This is essentially a kind of social chainsaw massacre,” she said, citing severe cuts to wages, education, research, culture, public infrastructure, and historical memory.

Hans-Dieter Holtzmann of the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Germany is more confident about Argentina’s economic future. “With the removal of capital controls and a more flexible exchange rate, major barriers to Argentina’s economic recovery have been lifted,” he told DW.

Despite the country’s wealth of energy and mineral resources — including natural gas, hydrogen, lithium, and copper — foreign investors have “so far remained cautious,” he said. This is why it is so important now, he added, that the European Union ratifiedthe free trade agreement with the Mercosur bloc — of which Argentina is a member — “as quickly as possible.” Both Argentina and Germany would stand to benefit from the new opportunities of investing and doing business.

Pain and gain

In downtown Buenos Aires, meanwhile, Milei’s radical reforms are reaping mixed results.

On the one hand, restaurants and cafes are bustling — seemingly at odds with the opposition’s constant talk of crisis. Also, a recent general strike drew only modest participation, suggesting that after three such strikes since Milei took office, unions may have overplayed their hand. It seems most Argentinians appear ready to move forward, to work, and to leave the crisis behind.

But not all is well, as weekly protests by retirees, who saw their pensions cut, are proving. Milei’s austerity measures have taken a heavy toll on their real purchasing power and that of many others in the country.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/with-milei-500-days-in-office-are-argentinians-better-off/a-72313308

Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus hopes that Rohingya refugees will be able to celebrate next year’s Eid in Myanmar. But with continued conflict in Rakhine State, conditions for repatriation remain uncertain.

The head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, has told Rohingya Muslims who fled from neighboring Myanmar that, “may we pray to Allah, that next Eid, you can celebrate in your own homes in Myanmar.”

Bangladesh has been taking in fellow Muslims from Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state largely since a bloody 2017 army crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee their homeland.

Myanmar’s military junta has ruled since a February 2021 coup ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. Since then, fighting between ethnic rebel groups and the military has pushed more Rohingya to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh currently hosts over 1 million Rohingya Muslims in sprawling refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and on the offshore island of Bhasan Char.

Myanmar’s government confirmed earlier this month that 180,000 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh are eligible to return to Myanmar. This followed talks between representatives of both nations in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

The 180,000 names were part of a list of 800,000 Rohingya that Bangladesh submitted to Myanmar in six batches between 2018 and 2020. Myanmar also indicated that the verification of others on the list is ongoing.

“While this is an important progress, it is not enough to start repatriation. Rohingyas have always insisted on a safe and dignified return,” according to Azad Majumder, a press officer to the Chief Adviser to Bangladesh’s interim administration.

Majumder added that until Rakhine State is considered safe, “repatriation is unlikely to begin.”

About 70,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2024 during a surge in fighting between the ruling junta and the Arakan Army (AA) rebel group, which wants more autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine people, a population that is accused of aiding the military in their expulsion of the Rohingya.

The AA is the well-armed military arm of the United League of Arakan (ULA), the political organization of the Buddhist people in western Rakhine state.

The AA and the ULA seek an autonomous region in Rakhine state inclusive of both Muslims and Buddhist Rakhine.

UN mulls Bangladesh-Myanmar humanitarian corridor

Last month, Yunus hosted UN chief Antonio Guterres, who traveled to Cox’s Bazar to witness the hardships faced by the Rohingya community, all of whom rely on humanitarian assistance.

Guterres said the UN is exploring the possibility of a humanitarian aid channel from Bangladesh to Myanmar.

“We need to intensify humanitarian aid inside Myanmar to create a condition for that return [of the Rohingya] to be successful,” Guterres said during a press briefing in Dhaka during his visit.

He suggested that under the right circumstances, having a “humanitarian channel” from Bangladesh would facilitate the return of the Rohingya community, but said it would require “authorization and cooperation.”

Asked if dialogue with the AA was essential for the repatriation of Rohingyas, Guterres said: “The Arakan Army is a reality in which we live.”

He acknowledged that in the past relations with the AA have been difficult but said, “necessary dialogue must take place,” noting that sanctions against the group would require UN Security Council approval, which could prove difficult to obtain.

“It’s essential to increase pressure from all the neighbors in order to guarantee that fighting ends and the way towards democracy finally established,” Guterres said.

Khalilur Rahman, high representative on Rohingya issues for Bangladesh’s interim leader, confirmed that his government is engaged in dialogues with the AA.

“Under the 2018 bilateral agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar, verification has been ongoing,” Khalilur Rahman told reporters in Dhaka earlier this month.

“While Rakhine is a sovereign region of Myanmar, we have also engaged in dialogue with the Arakan Army, which publicly affirmed in September that repatriating the Rohingya is a key position for them. They reiterated this stance unequivocally during our discussions.”

“We believe arrangements can be made to return these 180,000 individuals,” Rahman added. “While this won’t happen overnight, we are striving to expedite the process with all stakeholders involved.”

Will refugees return to Rakhine under AA?

The Rohingya ethnic group faces discrimination and statelessness as they are denied citizenship and other rights in Myanmar.

John Quinley, director of Fortify Rights, an organization that investigates human rights violations, says that the Rohingya are unlikely to return without citizenship and equal rights — their core demands.

“Many Rohingya refugees don’t trust the Arakan Army who now controls the vast majority of Rakhine State,” Quinley told DW.

“Rohingya are indigenous to Arakan known as Rakhine and should be able to return home,” he added.

“That being said, there must be safety, restored citizenship rights, and accountability for ongoing crimes by the junta and Arakan Army,” Quinley said.

“I worry that repatriating Rohingya now would be akin to refoulement. They are at real risk from both Arakan Army and Myanmar junta.”

Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, suggested that if the Myanmar junta truly wants the refugees to return, it must make stronger commitments, including public assurances that it will not conduct airstrikes or use artillery on the Rohingya community.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/bangladesh-eyes-rohingya-return-but-hurdles-remain/a-72308583

Libya’s robust infrastructure for human traffickers and smugglers serves domestic and Russian enterprises, observers say. What can the European Union do to take control?

Ever since the toppling of Bashar Assad in Syria in December, Russia has been unsure whether its armed forces will be able to maintain their naval base at the Mediterranean port of Tartus and the Hmeimim airbase further north.

This uncertainty has prompted Russia to shift its focus to Libya.

“In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime […] you had a lot of flights and cargo ships taking Russian material from bases in Syria toward Libya,” Tarek Megerisi, an analyst at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations and author of a recent study on Russia’s influence in Libya, told DW.

“So, it was clear at that point that in Moscow’s eyes, Libya is the safe space for it in the Mediterranean,” he added.

According to a report published in March by the New York-based think tank The Soufan Center, this is not the first time that Russian ships have called at the Tobruk naval base in eastern Libya.

The strategic port is under the control of Khalifa Haftar, the warlord and commander of the Libyan National Army militia who rules large parts of the east of the divided country.

“In June 2024, two Russian destroyers visited the Haftar-controlled Tobruk naval base. The warships’ visit was billed as a training mission but was likely a continuation of the delivery of artillery to the [Libyan National Army] for potential use against its rivals in Tripoli or for export to anti-Western military forces in neighboring countries,” the study highlighted.

Moscow looks to Libya to bolster interests

Moscow’s interests in Libya are also represented by mercenary militias such as the former Wagner Group, which now operates under the name “Africa Corps.”

According to Megerisi, Moscow is pursuing several interests in Libya, which has been rattled by years of civil war.

In principle, Russia is striving to establish a military presence in the Mediterranean, the expert told DW. So far, this had mainly been concentrated in Syria. Megerisi also pointed out that Moscow was interested in commercializing local natural resources, especially energy deposits.

Under pressure from Western sanctions, Russia is also trying to find consumers for its exports. As Megerisi noted, Libya is an important export buyer for Russian weapons.

Haftar’s son expands Libya’s role as ‘hot spot for smuggling’

In the Libyan conflict, Russia has been supporting the renegade commander Haftar for years. “He remains Moscow’s most important partner,” Ulf Laessing, head of the German political foundation Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Sahel regional program in Mali, told DW.

“The Russians also have diplomatic ties to the western part of the country and to its capital, Tripoli, but the focus is clearly on Haftar,” he added.

However, this has become increasingly risky, as Haftar is now 81 years old and his rule may well be fragile in the face of political pressure from the US. One of his sons, Saddam Haftar — against whom Spain issued an arrest warrant in 2024 on suspicion of arms smuggling — has established himself as Russia’s point of contact in Libya in recent years, as Megerisi pointed out in his study. He’s provided Russia with a network of Libyan military bases, the expert explained.

“Russia has used all this to help Haftar’s putative heir, Saddam Haftar, expand Libya’s role as a hot spot for smuggling of weapons, drugs, fuel — and people,” Megerisi stated.

For years, flights from Syria to eastern Libya were operated mainly by a private Syrian airline, as Laessing noted. “They brought migrants from Asia, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, to eastern Libya. From there, they were transferred to ships that set off for Italy.”

Business based on suffering

According to Megerisi, human trafficking follows a fixed pattern.

“On arrival, migrants hand over their informal visas to [Haftar’s forces], who detain [the people] until they receive payment by the network. They are then held for between several days to several weeks, typically in inhuman conditions, before being taken to ‘launch points’ where they board boats towards Europe. At this point, Saddam [Hafter] is paid again for his coastguard units to allow boats through: $100 dollars per migrant for ‘smaller boats’ … or an $80,000 flat fee for larger boats,” he wrote in his study.

Others are taken to western Libya, Megerisi added: “This demonstrates how Libyan armed groups cross political divides in pursuit of profit.”

The routes migrants choose to reach Libya vary, depending on where they’ve come from. While Africans mostly arrive by land, people from Asia tend to come by plane. Afterwards, they usually pass through various points of contact until they reach eastern Libya, where they are handed over to Haftar’s network.

‘Migration as a weapon’

This is where Moscow’s interests vis-a-vis Europe come into play. “The Kremlin has weaponized migration,” Megerisi stated.

According to him, this was already the case during the war in Syria, when Russian planes brought migrants from Damascus to Minsk, who then traveled on toward Western Europe.

At the time, it increased pressure on the EU’s external borders, he said, adding that it is currently uncertain whether these flights are still taking place.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/russias-role-in-trafficking-smuggling-from-libya-to-eu/a-72274806

US stocks rebounded on Tuesday (Apr 22) as a spate of quarterly earnings reports and hints at the de-escalation of US-China trade tensions brought buyers in from the sidelines.

A broad rally boosted all three major US indices by more than 2 per cent, as investors looked past Trump’s ramped up rhetoric against Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who is widely considered a stabilising force for the markets.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, when asked about Trump’s attacks on Powell, said the Fed’s independence is “foundational” to better economic outcomes.

Having been battered for weeks by the White House’s erratic and multi-front tariff disputes, the S&P 500 is currently about 14.4 per cent below its record closing high reached on Feb 19.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that while trade negotiations with Beijing will likely be “a slog”, he believes that there will be a de-escalation of US-China trade tensions.

“The roller coaster continues,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha. “Some thawing of the aggression (between) US and China, thanks to Bessent’s comments, helped push things higher.”

“Washington understands that the uncertainty around tariffs is hurting markets and maybe we can get some type of positive news going forward on the trade front,” Detrick added

Those uncertainties helped prompt the International Monetary Fund to slash its forecasts for US economic growth to 1.8 per cent in 2025, citing the impact of US tariffs, now at 100-year highs.

First-quarter earnings season gathered steam.

So far, 82 of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported. Of those, 73 per cent have beaten expectations, according to LSEG.

Analysts now see aggregate S&P 500 earnings growth 8.1 per cent for the Jan – March period, down from the 12.2 per cent growth forecast at the beginning of the quarter, per LSEG.

“Current earnings are showing a continuation of good fundamentals, which is not a surprise,” said Bill Merz, head of Capital Market Research at US Bank Wealth Management, Minneapolis, who added that investors are parsing corporate guidance for “clarity on what companies are planning to do in response to tariff policy.”

Shares of industrial conglomerate 3M jumped after the company posted better-than-expected first-quarter profit expectations, though it flagged a likely hit to 2025 profit from tariffs.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/wall-street-bounces-back-earnings-take-focus-over-tariff-chaos-5081846

The World Health Organization chief said on Tuesday (Apr 22) that operations and jobs would be slashed as US funding cuts had left the UN agency with a budget hole of several hundred million dollars.

“The sudden drop in income has left us with a large salary gap and no choice but to reduce the scale of our work and workforce,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told member states, according to a transcript of his remarks.

The United Nations health agency has been bracing for President Donald Trump’s planned full withdrawal of the United States – by far its largest donor – next January.

The United States gave WHO US$1.3 billion for its 2022 to 2023 budget, mainly through voluntary contributions for specific projects rather than fixed membership fees.

But Washington never paid its 2024 dues, and is not expected to pay its 2025 dues.

This has left the WHO preparing a new structure, which Tedros presented to staff and member states on Tuesday.

“The refusal of the US to pay its assessed contributions for 2024 and 2025, combined with reductions in official development assistance by some other countries, means we are facing a salary gap for the 2026 to 2027 biennium of between US$560 and US$650 million,” he said.

The lower end of that spectrum “represents about 25 per cent of staff costs” currently, he said, stressing though that “that doesn’t necessarily mean a 25 per cent cut to the number of positions”.

He did not say how many jobs would be lost at the WHO, which employ more than 8,000 people around the world.

“VERY PAINFUL”

But he acknowledged that “we will be saying goodbye to a significant number of colleagues” and vowed to do so “humanely”.

Tedros insisted that the most significant impact would likely be felt at the organisation’s headquarters in Geneva. “We are starting with reductions in senior management,” he said.

“We are reducing the senior leadership team at headquarters from 12 to seven, and the number of departments will be reduced by (more than) half, from 76 to 34,” Tedros said.

WHO’s regional offices would meanwhile be affected “to varying degrees”, he said, adding that some country offices in wealthier countries would likely be closed.

“These are very painful decisions for all of us,” Tedros said.

The WHO chief insisted the situation could have been worse.

WHO member states agreed in 2022 to significantly increase membership fees and reduce the portion of WHO’s budget covered by less reliable and often earmarked voluntary contributions.

“Without the increase, assessed contributions for the current biennium would have been US$746 million,” he said, adding that instead, WHO expects to receive US$1.07 billion in membership fees for 2026 to 2027, “even without the US contribution”.

Nonetheless, WHO needed to reduce its activities and recentre on its core functions, he said, even as he acknowledged that “many countries need our support now more than ever”.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/who-announces-significant-layoffs-amid-us-funding-cut-5082076

In the Brazilian state of Bahia, farmer Moises Schmidt is developing the world’s largest cocoa farm.
His plan is to revolutionize the way the main ingredient in chocolate is produced, growing high-yield cocoa trees, fully irrigated and fertilized, in an area bigger than the island of Manhattan that is not currently known for producing the beans.

Schmidt’s $300 million plan is the largest and the most innovative in that region, but not the only one. There are similar super-sized projects under development, some of them nearly as big, as well-capitalized farming groups look to apply industrial-scale agriculture expertise to cocoa production to profit from sky-high prices for the beans.

If those plans work, the industry’s center of gravity could shift back to Brazil, where the cocoa tree is native, from West Africa.
“I believe Brazil will become the world’s cocoa breadbasket,” Schmidt told Reuters while walking amid row after row of young cocoa trees stretching to the distance in this flat savanna land in the country’s Centre-North region.
He estimates that as much as 500,000 hectares (1.236 million acres) of high yield cocoa farms could be in place in Brazil in 10 years, which would produce as much as 1.6 million tons of cocoa.
By comparison, Brazil currently produces only around 200,000 tons, while the world’s top grower Ivory Coast harvests 10 times more than that. Ghana, the second largest global grower, produces around 700,000 tons of the beans.

Currently, the global cocoa industry is in crisis. Production is failing in Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana, which between them grow more than 60% of the world’s cocoa. A potent mix of plant disease, climate change and aging plantations has led to three consecutive years of falling output.
That’s been bad news for chocolate lovers. Cocoa prices nearly tripled in 2024, hitting a record high of $12,931 a metric ton in December. The price has since come off to around $8,200, but remains well above the historical averages.

OPPORTUNITY IN CRISIS?

For Schmidt and other farmers in Brazil, the crisis is viewed as an opportunity. The Schmidt Agricola family business started preparing to cultivate cocoa in 2019 after concluding with the help of an in-house assessment of the cocoa market that there would be a future supply shortfall.

“We just didn’t think it would happen so soon,” he said, as he walked through the greenhouses on his farm that nurse seedlings.
His planned 10,000-hectare (24,105 acres) farm would dwarf the size of the small farms in West Africa that typically span a few dozen hectares. There are large farms in other producing countries such as Ecuador and Indonesia, some of them going over 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) in size, but still much smaller than Schmidt’s planned giant.
The plan is to apply large-scale agriculture techniques to the fully irrigated cocoa farm as if it were a soybean or corn field. The trees in the farm in the municipality of Riachao das Neves, in the west of Bahia state will be packed together, leaving only enough room between them for mechanized watering and application of fertilizer and pesticides.

Schmidt is planting 1,600 trees per hectare in the new areas, compared to only 300 trees in conventional farms. The concentration should mean a much higher yield per hectare.
“The only thing that is not mechanized yet is the fruit picking from the trees,” the farmer said.
Some see this method of farming as a game changer.
“Five years from now everything we used to know about cocoa production would have changed,” said Tales Rocha, a cocoa agronomist for TRF Consultoria Agricola, a company that advises farmers in Brazil.
Rocha said the savanna region in Western Bahia has the ideal topography for large scale agriculture, with its extended flat expanses.
Farming groups such as Schmidt Agricola already produce soybeans, corn, cotton and fruits in thousands of hectares in Western Bahia, a region with ample water supplies.

MILLIONS OF SEEDLINGS

At the new farms, the cocoa trees are grown in the open, with plenty of sunlight. This contrasts with traditional cocoa plantations elsewhere in Brazil and worldwide, where cocoa trees share space with other types of trees and get some shade.
Schmidt is developing high-yield trees through a seedling operation he has been running since 2019. His team has produced new cocoa varieties through so-called positive selection, a years-long project where seedlings are multiplied from material taken from the plants that produced the highest fruit load in test fields.
The high-yielding trees planted on some 400 hectares (988 acres) in the first phase of the project are producing around 3,000 kilos per hectare (kg/h) (6,613 pounds), or 10 times the average yield of traditional cocoa areas in Brazil. Schmidt said his target is to get past 4,000 kg/h (8,818 pounds). That would be eight times the 500 kg/h (1,102 pounds) average yield in top producer the Ivory Coast.
Very high yields above 2,000 kg/ha have been reached in small test fields run by the Executive Commission for Cocoa Cultivation Planning, Brazil’s cocoa research agency, using high density of plants, opens new tab.
The researchers, however, said the results would need to be confirmed with larger scale planting and added there were questions about the economic feasibility of such practice, that would require extensive crop care and workforce.
Schmidt’s nursery installation, which operates as a separate company called BioBrasil, uses propagation machinery from Denmark’s forestry equipment maker Ellepot with capacity to produce 10 million seedlings per year. It produces the trees for the planned giant farm and also sells seedlings to other cocoa projects in Brazil.

Some people in the market, however, are not so certain this kind of expansion will indeed happen in Brazil.
“As always, price is the key determinant. At around $4,000 per ton Brazil was barely interested,” said Pam Thornton, a veteran cocoa consultant and beans trader.
“After talking to many Brazilian farmers and visiting a bunch of large commercial farms, I believe world prices have to demonstrate that they will remain near current price levels for another year or so for them to expand acreage, and probably several thousand dollars higher for it to be in a meaningful way,” she said.
Schmidt says that cocoa from his operation would be profitable even at around $4,000 per ton. “Above $6,000 it is super profitable, much better than soy or corn,” he said.
Long-term supply and demand projections seem positive for prices, considering that production in West Africa is stable or “locked into a long cycle of diminishing outcomes,” said U.S.-based veteran cocoa broker and analyst Marcelo Dorea, Chief Executive of M3I Capital Management.
“The market must, heretofore, seek alternative sources of meaningful production,” he said, adding that Brazil looks like a natural option considering cocoa know-how and land availability.

BIG COCOA IS WATCHING

Schmidt Agricola cultivates more than 35,000 hectares with soybeans, corn and cotton in Bahia. It has preliminary agreements through memorandum of understandings with chocolate producers and cocoa traders, Schmidt said.
Cargill, one of the world’s largest commodities traders and food processors, is already a partner in the initial phase encompassing the 400 hectares, and is in talks to expand the partnership.
Schmidt said that nearly all of the big cocoa traders or chocolate companies are talking to him and other farmers in Brazil regarding expansion and supply deals.
The partnerships would include investment to develop the projects, and in return the investing companies would guarantee cocoa supplies, he said.
“We are working on the contracts now,” he said, declining to name the firms, citing non-disclosure clauses.
Barry Callebaut (BARN.S), the world’s largest supplier of cocoa products and chocolate, is in talks to partner with farming group Fazenda Santa Colomba in an investment to form a cocoa farm of 5,000 (12,355 acres) to 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) in the municipality of Cocos in Western Bahia, two sources familiar with the negotiation told Reuters.
Santa Colomba declined to comment.
Barry Callebaut confirmed it has signed a partnership with one farming group in Brazil for a 5,000 hectare cocoa farm in Bahia, but declined to name the group. The deal is part of the Future Farming Initiative launched by the company to boost high-tech cocoa farming and to diversify its geographical presence.
“We are making good progress with FFI and continue to see interest from partners, clients, and investors globally,” it said.
Mars, the U.S. producer of Snickers bars and M&Ms, has set up a cocoa test field not far from Schmidt’s farm in Riachao das Neves, Bahia.
The company said its test field in the area is part of its efforts to deal with climate change and falling cocoa productivity around the world.
“Bahia is attractive due to flat topography, fertile soils, reliable water availability and established agronomical infrastructure,” said Luciel Fernandes, a manager at Mars Center for Cocoa Science in Brazil.

POTENTIAL RISKS

A leading cocoa researcher in Brazil, however, is worried.
Plant pathologist Karina Peres Gramacho, who works for CEPLAC, believes there are risks to the plans for extensive cocoa fields in Western Bahia.
The fact that each of those mega projects are based on thousands of clones of the same type of tree could leave the future fields vulnerable to diseases, which are very common in cocoa cultivation.
Brazil was once second only to Ivory Coast in cocoa production, but a devastating fungus in the 1980’s known as Witches’ Broom decimated thousands of hectares of cocoa crops.
Gramacho supports the idea of using more developed and regionally adequate varieties, usually hybrids that combine qualities from more than one genotype.
Some industry analysts also have questions about the quality of the cocoa that would be grown in direct sunlight, because fruit that is produced in shade is typically considered to have superior taste.
Cristiano Villela Dias, scientific director at Brazil’s Cocoa Innovation Center (CIC), says that some initial tests with the fruits produced in Western Bahia indicated no discernible difference in taste.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/brazils-would-be-cocoa-king-aims-revolutionize-industry-with-giant-farm-2025-04-22/

The Israeli government shared and then deleted a social media post offering condolences over the death of Pope Francis, without saying why, though an Israeli newspaper linked the decision to the late pontiff’s criticism of the war in Gaza.
The verified @Israel account had posted on Monday a message on social media platform X that read: “Rest in Peace, Pope Francis. May his memory be a blessing”, alongside an image of the pope visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Post quoted officials at the foreign ministry as saying that the pope had made “statements against Israel” and that the social media post had been published in “error”.
The foreign ministry, which social media platform X states on its website is linked to the verified @Israel account, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Francis, who died on Monday aged 88, suggested last November that the global community should study whether Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people, in some of his most explicit criticism yet of Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas that began in Oct. 2023.

In January the pope also called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “shameful”, prompting criticism from Rome’s chief Jewish rabbi who accused Francis of “selective indignation”.
Israel says accusations of genocide in its Gaza campaign are baseless and that it is solely hunting down Hamas and other armed groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads a far-right coalition of religious and nationalist parties, has not commented on the pope’s death.
However, Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday sent a message of condolence to Christians in the Holy Land and around the world, describing Francis as “a man of deep faith and boundless compassion”.
Relations between the Catholic Church and Judaism have improved in recent decades, after centuries of animosity.
Pope Francis was usually careful during his 12-year pontificate about taking sides in conflicts, and he condemned the growth of antisemitic groups, while also speaking by phone with Gaza’s tiny Christian community every evening during the war.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-shares-then-deletes-condolences-over-popes-death-2025-04-22/

AFTER twelve long years serving as the leader of 1.4billion Catholics around the world, Pope Francis’ final journey has now begun.

As the world mourns the loss of the beloved pontiff, carefully orchestrated plans are underway in the Vatican for his “humble” funeral.

The pontiff’s funeral will take place on Saturday morning in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City in Rome, with the service scheduled to begin at 10am local time.

The service will be led by the dean of the College of Cardinals and is expected to draw top world leaders who will join thousands of mourners from across the globe for the historic event.

This includes President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who have announced they would attend the Pope’s funeral.

Meanwhile, No10 said that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will also attend the funeral.

Prince William is also to attend the Pope’s funeral on behalf of the King, Kensington Palace announced.

King Charles and Queen Camilla have paid tribute to the Pope in a touching statement.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa are also expected to attend.

Many nations are likely to send heads of state or government to take part in the historic and rare event.

The ceremony will be celebrated by the cardinals, with Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals, leading the service.

He will also deliver the final commendation, the solemn rite that formally entrusts the Pope’s soul to God.

To mark the beginning of the last rites, Francis’ coffin will be kept at The Chapel of Casa Santa Marta – his Vatican residence – for a moment of prayer.

A funeral procession, expected to be two miles long, will then start heading towards St. Peter’s Basilica, where the last rites will take place.

The procession will pass through the Vatican’s Santa Marta and the First Roman Martyrs Square.

From the Arch of the Bells, it will exit into St. Peter’s Square and enter St. Peter’s Basilica through the central door.

The Pope will be kept in the open space of the basilica for thousands of followers to see and pray.

A funeral mass will then be co-celebrated by cardinals and ceremonially dressed senior clerics and other members of the clergy.

Following the funeral, the Pope’s body will be moved to the burial site outside the Vatican.

A humble Francis decreed in his will that he would be interred in a simple underground tomb at Santa Maria Maggiore, unlike the previous Popes who had been buried in the crypts beneath St Peter’s Basilica.

Francis will be the first pope in more than a hundred years to be buried outside of the Vatican walls.

He also said he had arranged for an unnamed benefactor to cover the costs of the burial.

Even the age-old tradition of preparing three coffins of cypress, lead and oak has been ditched, as desired by Francis during the years before his death.

He will be buried in a simple underground tomb prepared “without particular ornamentation,” marked only as “Franciscus,” according to his wishes.

The Pope’s death has triggered centuries-old Vatican rituals, including the symbolic breaking of his “Fisherman’s Ring” and lead seal, marking the start of the Church’s transition to a new leader.

Saturday will mark the first of nine official days of mourning, a traditional period known as novemdiales.

Once this mourning phase concludes, the conclave process to elect the next Pope will formally begin.

Tens of thousands of catholics and followers of Pope Francis are expected to attend the events.

Apart from the top world leaders, a slew of celebrities could go to Rome to attend the historic event.

This could include stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and football legend Lionel Messi.

The fashion designer said she spent the week ‘reconnecting’ with her family and nature

IVANKA Trump shared stunning photos from her family’s luxurious trip to Costa Rica.

The fashion designer boasted about the “raw beauty” of the Latin American country as she spent time with her family for Easter and Passover.

“Grateful doesn’t begin to cover it,” she began her lengthy caption on Instagram.

“Spending Passover and Easter week surrounded by the raw beauty of Costa Rica was a gift beyond words. Time slowed.

“We surfed under golden skies, zipped through the jungle canopy, leapt into cool waterfalls, read until the sun dipped low, and surrendered to stillness and deep sleep.”

The golden skies and waterfalls could be seen in the photo carousel Ivanka shared.

The first photo of the slide is Ivanka rocking a black bikini as she rides a wave in Costa Rica.

Other photos show the fashionista cliff jumping off a waterfall, running along the beach, and riding horses with her children.

In one adorable photo, Ivanka smiles with her eight-year-old son, Theodore, as they ride horses during sunset.

Ivanka included other photos of herself with her surfboard and a black bikini with high-waisted bottoms, walking along a palm-tree-lined beach.

“But more than the adventure, this week was about reconnecting—with the Earth, with faith, and with one another. Logging off and tuning in,” she continued.

“Grounding in nature’s rhythm. Feeling the sacred in the silence, in the laughter of my children, in the breath of the trees.”

The mother of three also included a photo of three books she was reading while “reconnecting” with her family.

The books pictured are The Tell, The Women, and the sci-fi novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

“My heart is full of gratitude for these moments of togetherness and renewal,” she wrote.

“Wishing you all the same kind of peace and presence, wherever you are. Pura vida. Shalom.”

Ivanka converted to Judaism in 2009, when she married Jared Kushner, a former real estate developer.

On her Instagram story, Ivanka posted photos of her children ziplining, more videos of the family riding horses, and sunsets that turned the sky a pink hue.

Shannon Sharpe’s rape accuser claims the football legend purportedly can be heard threatening to choke her in bombshell audio Page Six obtained from her lawyer Tuesday.

The “Club Shay Shay” host, 56, purportedly asks the woman — who recently sued him for $50 million for rape and battery — “You want to be a d–k to me now?,” prompting her to reply, “Don’t manipulate me.”

A man the accuser claims is Sharpe then allegedly responds, “Lord have mercy. If you say that word one more time, I will f–king choke the s–t out of you when I see you. … Thank you.”

The woman appears to tell Sharpe she does not “want to be choked,” to which he purportedly tells her, “Yes, you do. I don’t think you have a choice in the matter.”

Page Six cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the undated clip or whether it is Sharpe in the audio. It is also not clear whether the audio represents a complete conversation between her and Sharpe or in what context the conversation occurred.

We have reached out to the former NFL star’s reps for comment but did not immediately hear back.

However, in a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, he claimed the accuser’s allegations are a “shakedown” and accused her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, of “orchestrating” the entire ordeal and trying to “manipulate” the media.

“That video should actually be 10 minutes or so,” Sharpe claimed before telling Buzbee, “Hey, Tony, instead of releasing your edit, put the whole video out. I don’t have it or I would myself.”

Sharpe has also vehemently denied the rape allegations his accuser made in her lawsuit earlier this week.

The damning audio surfaced after Sharpe released a series of X-rated texts in an apparent effort to prove his innocence after the woman, identified only as Jane Doe in her suit, accused him of sexually assaulting her multiple times at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.

She claimed they met at a Los Angeles gym when she was 20 and the Hall of Famer was in his 50s, and they began a consensual relationship that allegedly turned controlling and abusive.

“He demanded complete control over her time and body, expecting her to be at his house on his schedule, at his command, whenever he called,” Buzbee claimed in court documents filed Sunday.

Doe allegedly once got into a dispute with Sharpe when his firearm was visibly in the room — which “frightened” her.

The former athlete’s attorneys said Monday that the complaint was “filled with lies, distortions and misrepresentations” and, in an attempt to show the nature of their relationship, shared with the public a text from May 5, 2023, that read, “Tie me up like this & f–k me,” to which Sharpe replied, “IF* I knew how to I would.”

“Each text released occurred before the alleged rape at issue in the case; the attached audio reveals the nature of Sharpe’s relationship with Jane Doe immediately prior to the alleged assault,” Buzbee now tells Page Six.

In response to Sharpe’s lawyers revealing Doe’s identity to the public, her attorney adds, “Doxing and trying to humiliate or discredit Jane Doe won’t deter her from pursuing justice in court.”

Buzbee continues, “The statement from Sharpe’s newest lawyer falsely accuses Ms. Jane Doe of editing a video — a claim that is not only demonstrably false, but also desperate. The lawyer also suggests Ms. Doe refused to make the video available to Mr. Sharpe. Again, this assertion is easily proven untrue. “

He claims Sharpe has switched lawyers several times throughout a period of mediation they had in February and claims Doe ultimately “refused the hefty sum offered by Sharpe and instead filed this case” Sunday night.

Buzbee notes that the contents of the audio provided are “certainly not sexual,” adding, “They are not playful. They are instead disturbing, aggressive and dangerous.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/22/celebrity-news/shannon-sharpe-threatens-to-choke-the-s-t-out-of-rape-accuser-in-damning-audio/

A wildfire exploding in size near the New Jersey shore caused officials to order thousands to evacuate and close a 17-mile stretch of the state’s busiest highway as dark smoke poured into the Jersey Shore region.

The Jones Road Wildfire sparked on Tuesday in the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area near Barnegat Township in Ocean County. As of Tuesday evening, it had consumed 3,200 acres and was only 5% contained.

Some 3,000 people were told to evacuate as the fire so far is threatening over 1,300 homes and structures, according to the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

Evacuations stretch along portions of Highways 532, 539, 72 and 9 and multiple shelters have been established for those fleeing the flames.

Additional voluntary evacuations are in place for several areas of Barnegat Township.

The busy Garden State Parkway is closed in both directions at from Exit 63-80, according to officials. Photos shared by the Garden State Parkway show smoke covering the highway and flames nearing the road.

Jersey Central Power & Light reportedly cut power along the Garden State Parkway due to the wildfire, according to the Barnegat Police Department. More than 25,000 people are without power in Ocean County, according to FindEnergy.com.

Dark smoke and ash was observed blowing across the Garden State Parkway in surrounding Ocean County communities to the north and east, including Toms River, and closer to the beach in Seaside Heights.

Forest Fire Service fire engines, bulldozers, ground crews and air support are responding to the fire.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/22/us-news/nj-wildfire-prompts-evacuations-as-it-explodes-in-size-closes-part-of-garden-state-parkway/

Today in history:

On April 22, 1889, the Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims to nearly 1.9 million acres of land that was formerly part of Indian Territory; by the end of the day, the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie were established with as many as 10,000 settlers each.

Also on this date:

In 1915, German forces unleashed its first full-scale use of chlorine gas against Allied troops at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium during World War I; thousands of Allied soldiers are believed to have died from the poison gas attacks.

In 1954, the publicly televised sessions of the Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began.

In 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans participated in gatherings for the first “Earth Day,” a series of events proposed by Senator Gaylord Nelson to promote environmental protections.

In 1994, Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States and the first to resign from office, died at a New York hospital four days after having a stroke; he was 81.

Egg on his face!

The internet was abuzz Sunday as sleuths tried to figure out whether former President Joe Biden photoshopped himself into his family’s Easter picture.

Biden, 82, posted a picture featuring his family sitting on some steps in Delaware — without scandal-scarred son Hunter Biden — on X.

The former president was apparently seated on the top step wearing a blue suit — but social media users quickly became skeptical of whether the octogenarian was actually there.

X users noted Biden’s strange hand placement, the lighting on his face and his overall positioning, making it unclear if he’s crouching or sitting behind his family.

Former first lady Jill Biden’s hair also looks altered on her right side, where her husband’s suit is, raising more alarm.

“I mean this is obviously photoshopped right? Is he supposed to be standing? Crouching down? This doesn’t even look like a plausible physically position guys,” one social media user wrote.

“This is photoshop. Biden face is brightly lit from top/bottom. Everyone else’s is diffused (shaded) Biden has no discernible shadow. Jill casts a shadow, Biden does not. Super awkward body position. Head size doesn’t match depth line. Is [Joe Biden] alive?” wrote another.

“Is your forearm 4ft long?” wrote a third. “With your arm at that angle, it’s physically impossible for those to be your fingers. Who the hell is doing this crappy Photoshop job?”

Tennessee Star reporter Tom Pappert wrote: “Why is Biden wearing a full suit and tie and TV makeup for this loving family photo”?

“Dude all politics aside, this is so bizarre. I don’t understand the [special] arrangement of Joe in this picture. Everyone in the back row of the photo *except Joe* appears to be sitting. So why isn’t he towering over them? Are we supposed to believe he’s sitting or something?” wrote yet another X user.

Others jumped to Biden’s defense, arguing he likely didn’t photoshop the picture.

“I don’t think Biden was actually photoshopped into this pic (the hand is on the guy’s back in front of him), but he still looks as photoshopped as they come. If they were gonna photoshop him in, they would definitely have made it look less obvious,” wrote social media user RedEaglePatriot.

The photoshop speculation comes after years of White House staffers claiming the former president was in top physical shape — only for voters to see Biden blunder his first and only presidential debate with President Trump in the 2024 election.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/21/us-news/biden-accused-of-photoshopping-himself-into-easter-family-picture/

U.S. stocks suffered steep losses on Monday as U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, prompting investors to worry about the central bank’s independence even as they grapple with the effects of Trump’s ongoing, erratic trade war.
All three major indexes tumbled more than 2%, with big losses in the “Magnificent Seven” group of megacap growth stocks weighing heaviest on the tech-laden Nasdaq.

The S&P 500 closed 16% below its February 19 record closing high. If the bellwether index closes 20% below that all-time high, that will confirm the index has entered a bear market.
Trump escalated his criticism of Powell on Monday, saying the U.S. economy is headed for a slowdown “unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates NOW,” in a bellicose Truth Social post which raised concerns over the Fed’s autonomy.
“Countries that have an independent central bank grow faster, have lower inflation; they have better economic outcomes for their people,” said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management in St. Louis. “And politicians trying to influence the Fed is a really bad idea, and it’s very scary for the market.”

The Sino-U.S. trade rift deepened after Beijing warned other countries against striking deals with the United States at China’s expense, adding fuel to the spiraling tariff war between the world’s two largest economies.
“Companies are … not sure how to respond, waiting for final answers from the United States about tariff rates,” Ellerbroek added. “What makes it dispiriting, I think, is the fact that this is like self-inflicted; we’re in this situation by choice, by this administration’s choice.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), fell 971.82 points, or 2.48%, to 38,170.41, the S&P 500 (.SPX), lost 124.50 points, or 2.36%, to 5,158.20 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), lost 415.55 points, or 2.55%, to 15,870.90.

All 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 ended in negative territory, with consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD) and tech (.SPLRCT) suffering the biggest percentage losses.

First-quarter earnings season shifts into higher gear this week with dozens of closely watched firms due to report. So far, of the 59 companies that have reported, 68% have beaten Wall Street expectations, according to LSEG data.

As of Thursday, analysts expect aggregate first-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth of 8.1%, year-on-year, down from the 12.2% growth projected at the beginning of the quarter, per LSEG.

Notable earnings on the docket this week include Magnificent Seven members Tesla (TSLA.O), and Alphabet (GOOGL.O), and a host of high-profile industrials including Boeing (BA.N), Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), and 3M (MMM.N).
Artificial intelligence heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA.O), dropped 4.5% after Reuters reported that Huawei Technologies planned to begin mass shipments of an advanced AI chip to customers in China as early as next month.

Tesla dropped 5.8% after Reuters reported that the production launch of its stripped-down version of the Model Y was delayed.

FIS (FIS.N) gained 2.4% after a brokerage upgrade.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 4.76-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 77 new highs and 180 new lows on the NYSE.
On the Nasdaq, 1,205 stocks rose and 3,174 fell as declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.63-to-1 ratio.
The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and nine new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 28 new highs and 184 new lows.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/us-stock-futures-drop-trump-takes-aim-powell-2025-04-21/

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the National Public Radio story on the search was not true.

Amid the buzz of US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth leaving the Trump administration, the White House on Monday refuted the claims that it has begun searching for a new defense secretary.

According to National Public Radio (NPR) report, the Trump administration reportedly began looking for a new secretary of defense after Hegseth continued to face mounting controversy related to the leak of sensitive military information.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the National Public Radio story on the search was not true.

As per the reports, the Pentagon Chief shared information regarding planned attacks on Yemen to a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.

The critical information was shared by the US Defence boss before the US launched military strikes on Yemen on March 15- raising questions about the use of Signal to share highly sensitive security details.

Earlier, a group chat from the unclassified messaging app in which Pete Hegseth shared critical details of the attack plans to other Trump administration officials was made public by Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg who had been accidentally added to the group where all of Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials.

Neither the White House nor Hegseth denied that he had shared such information in a second chat, instead focusing their responses on what they called the disgruntled workers whom they blamed for leaking to the media and insisting that no classified information had been disclosed.

Hegseth responding to the latest claims about sharing details in private family Signal group chat, said the allegations were part of a broader effort to damage his reputation.

Despite the claims, the White House has reaffirmed its support for Hegseth.

“It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories,” President Donald Trump told reporters. “I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing. So you don’t always have friends when you do that,” Trump said.

The White House also tried to deflect attention from the national security implications of the latest Signal revelation by framing it as the outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Hegseth and the career workforce. But some of the recently departed officials the administration appeared to dismiss as disgruntled were part of Hegseth’s initial inner circle, brought in when he took the job.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/is-us-defence-chief-pete-hegseth-stepping-down-white-house-says-this-amid-buzz-ws-l-9308104.html

Steak, mashed potatoes and deserts for astronauts could soon be grown from individual cells in space if an experiment launched into orbit today is successful.

A European Space Agency (ESA) project is assessing the viability of growing so-called lab-grown food in the low gravity and higher radiation in orbit and on other worlds.

ESA is funding the research to explore new ways of reducing the cost of feeding an astronaut, which can cost up to £20,000 per day.

The team involved say the experiment is a first step to developing a small pilot food production plant on the International Space Station in two years’ time.

Lab-grown food will be essential if Nasa’s objective of making humanity a multi-planetary species were to be realised, claims Dr Aqeel Shamsul, CEO and founder of Bedford-based Frontier Space, which is developing the concept with researchers at Imperial College, London.

“Our dream is to have factories in orbit and on the Moon,” he told BBC News.

“We need to build manufacturing facilities off world if we are to provide the infrastructure to enable humans to live and work in space”.

Lab-grown food involves growing food ingredients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrates in test tubes and vats and then processing them to make them look and taste like normal food.

Lab-grown chicken is already on sale in the US and Singapore and lab grown steak is awaiting approval in the UK and Israel. On Earth, there are claimed environmental benefits for the technology over traditional agricultural food production methods, such as less land use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But in space the primary driver is to reduce costs.

The researchers are doing the experiment because it costs so much to send astronauts food on the ISS – up to £20,000 per astronaut per day, they estimate.

Nasa, other space agencies and private sector firms plan to have a long-term presence on the Moon, in orbiting space stations and maybe one day on Mars. That will mean sending up food for tens and eventually hundreds of astronauts living and working in space – something that would be prohibitively expensive if it were sent up by rockets, according to Dr Shamsul.

Growing food in space would make much more sense, he suggests.

“We could start off simply with protein-enhanced mashed potatoes on to more complex foods which we could put together in space,” he tells me.

“But in the longer term we could put the lab-grown ingredients into a 3D printer and print off whatever you want on the space station, such as a steak!”

This sounds like the replicator machines on Star Trek, which are able to produce food and drink from pure energy. But it is no longer the stuff of science fiction, says Dr Shamsul.

He showed me a set-up, called a bioreactor, at Imperial College’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins in west London. It comprised a brick-coloured concoction bubbling away in a test tube. The process is known as precision fermentation, which is like the fermentation used to make beer, but different: “precision” is a rebranding word for genetically engineered.

In this case a gene has been added to yeast to produce extra vitamins, but all sorts of ingredients can be produced in this way, according to Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre.

“We can make all the elements to make food,” says Dr Ledesma-Amaro proudly.

“We can make proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fibres and they can be combined to make different dishes.”

A much smaller, simpler version of the biorector has been sent into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the ESA mission. There is plenty of evidence that foods can be successfully grown from cells on Earth, but can the process be repeated in the weightlessness and higher radiation of space?

Drs Ledesma-Amaro and Shamsul have sent small amounts of the yeast concoction to orbit the Earth in a small cube satellite on board Europe’s first commercial returnable spacecraft, Phoenix. If all goes to plan, it will orbit the Earth for around three hours before falling back to Earth off the coast of Portugal. The experiment will be retrieved by a recovery vessel and sent back to the lab in London to be examined.

The data they gather will inform the construction of a larger, better bioreactor which the scientists will send into space next year, according to Dr Ledesma-Amaro.

The problem, though, is that the brick-coloured goo, which is dried into a powder, looks distinctly unappetising – even less appetising than the freeze-dried fare that astronauts currently have to put up with.

That is where Imperial College’s master chef comes in. Jakub Radzikowski is the culinary education designer tasked with turning chemistry into cuisine.

He isn’t allowed to use lab grown ingredients to make dishes for people just yet, because regulatory approval is still pending. But he’s getting a head start. For now, instead of lab-grown ingredients, Jakub is using starches and proteins from naturally occurring fungi to develop his recipes. He tells me all sorts of dishes will be possible, once he gets the go-ahead to use lab-grown ingredients.

“We want to create food that is familiar to astronauts who are from different parts of the world so that it can provide comfort.

“We can create anything from French, Chinese, Indian. It will be possible to replicate any kind of cuisine in space.”

Today, Jakub is trying out a new recipe of spicy dumplings and dipping sauce. He tells me that I am allowed to try them out, but taster-in-chief is someone far more qualified: Helen Sharman, the UK’s first astronaut, who also has a PhD in chemistry.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp34wzql2xvo

Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop billions of dollars in proposed cuts.

The suit filed Monday is part of a feud that escalated last week when the elite institution rejected a list of demands that the Trump administration said was designed to curb diversity initiatives and fight anti-semitism at the school.

President Donald Trump froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) of federal funding and also threatened the university’s tax-exempt status.

“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber said in a letter to the university on Monday.

The White House responded later Monday night in a statement.

“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege”, said White House spokesman Harrison Fields.

Mr Garber said the funding freeze affected critical research including studies on pediatric cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“In recent weeks, the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships that make this invaluable research possible,” the school’s lawsuit said.

“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard.”

Aside from funding, the Trump administration days ago also threatened Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

Mr Garber, who is Jewish, acknowledged Harvard’s campus has had issues with anti-semitism but said he had established task forces to work with the problem. He said the university would release the report of two task forces that looked into anti-semitism and anti-Muslim bias.

The prominent US university, located in Massachusetts, is not the only institution faced with withholding of federal dollars, which play an outsized role in funding new scientific breakthroughs.

The administration has targeted other private Ivy League institutions including suspending $1bn at Cornell University and $510 million at Brown University.

Others such as Columbia University, the epicentre of pro-Palestinian campus protests last year, have agreed to some demands after $400 million of federal funds was threatened.

The demands to Harvard included agreeing to government-approved external audits of the university’s curriculum as well as hiring and admission data. In response, Harvard released a blistering letter rejecting them.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4grwkyxgjwo

Ukraine’s military has reported Russian drone attacks on several regions overnight, just hours after the end of a 30-hour “Easter truce” declared by Moscow.

Air raid alerts were issued by Ukraine’s air force for the Kyiv region, as well as Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said “explosions were heard”. It was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties.

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed it has resumed fighting, adding that its military had “strictly observed the ceasefire and remained at the previously occupied lines and positions”.

The truce declared by President Vladimir Putin expired at midnight on Sunday Moscow time (21:00 GMT). Both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire thousands of times.

Early on Monday residents in several Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, were urged by local authorities to go immediately to nearby shelters due to the threat of drone strikes.

In the Kyiv region, local officials said air defence forces were “working on targets”.

Ukraine’s air force also reported a “rocket danger” for central regions, and said Russian aircraft were “active in the north-eastern and eastern directions”.

In an update on Telegram, the air force said Russia launched 96 drones overnight, as well as striking the southern region of Mykolaiv two missiles and Kherson with a third missile.

In Mykolaiv, regional head Vitaliy Kim said shortly afterwards that the city had been attacked by missiles. “There were no casualties or damage,” he added.

Several hours before the truce expired, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not given an order to extend it, Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported.

The BBC has not independently verified the claims by Ukraine and Russia.

US President Donald Trump – who has been pushing for an end to the war – said late on Sunday that “hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week”. He gave no further details.

Rosenberg: Is Putin’s ‘Easter truce’ cause for scepticism or chance for peace?
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and currently controls about 20% Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since 2022.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full and unconditional ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

On Saturday, President Putin said there would be an end to all hostilities from 18:00 Moscow time (15:00 GMT) on Saturday until midnight on Sunday. Kyiv said it would also adhere.

“For this period, I order all military actions to cease,” Putin said in his announcement.

“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions.”

However, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said late on Sunday there had been a total of 1,882 cases of Russian shelling, 812 of which involved heavy weaponry, according to a report from Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.

The president said the heaviest shelling and assaults were in eastern Ukraine near the besieged city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.

“The nature of Ukrainian actions will continue to be mirrored: we will respond to silence with silence, our strikes will be to protect against Russian strikes,” Zelensky said.

Earlier on Sunday, he said “there were no air raid alerts today”, referring to Russia’s daily drone and missile strikes against Ukraine.

He proposed “to cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension”.

Zelensky also said Putin’s declaration of a truce amounted to a “PR” exercise and his words were “empty”. He accused the Kremlin of trying to create “a general impression of a ceasefire”.

“This Easter has clearly demonstrated that the only source of this war, and the reason it drags on, is Russia,” the president said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5r9yppykeo

A senior Palestinian official familiar with Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations has told the BBC that Qatari and Egyptian mediators have proposed a new formula to end the war in Gaza.

According to the official, it envisages a truce lasting between five and seven years, the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a formal end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

A senior Hamas delegation was due to arrive in Cairo for consultations.

The last ceasefire collapsed a month ago when Israel resumed bombing Gaza, with both sides blaming each other for the failure to keep it going.

Israel has not commented on the mediators’ plan.

Hamas will be represented at discussions in Cairo by the head of its political council, Mohammed Darwish, and its lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya.

It comes days after the movement rejected Israel’s latest proposal, which included a demand for Hamas to disarm in return for a six-week truce.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not end the war before Hamas was destroyed and all the hostages returned. Hamas has demanded Israel commit to ending the war before the hostages are freed.

The Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Hamas has signalled its readiness to hand over governance of Gaza to any Palestinian entity agreed upon “at the national and regional level”. The official said this could be the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) or a newly formed administrative body.

Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the PA in the future governance of Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since 2007.

While it is still too early to assess the likelihood of success, the source described the current mediation effort as serious and said Hamas had shown “unprecedented flexibility”.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military offensive in response, which has killed 51,240 Palestinians – mainly civilians – according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62xnqlj11lo

Jeanius.

Over the weekend, Rihanna, 37, hit one of her go-to restaurants, Giorgio Baldi, in a head-turning all-denim outfit for a dinner date.

The “Diamonds” hitmaker went with a slouchy Canadian tuxedo moment, teaming a roomy denim jacket with baggy jeans in a slighter darker wash.

In typical Rihanna fashion, the denim didn’t stop there — the fashion and beauty mogul toted around a Dior Toujours bag ($4,300) rendered in the classic material and emblazoned with the designer’s name across the front.

From there, the Fenty founder styled the timeless denim-on-denim-on-denim look with a soft dark gray fur stole resting over her shoulders, barely-there snakeskin heels, a flashy gold necklace and coordinating large hoop earrings.

She slicked back her dark brunette hair and opted for minimal eye makeup as well as a super glossy lip.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/21/style/rihanna-triples-down-on-denim-with-4300-dior-purse-for-la-dinner-date/

Shannon Sharpe’s alleged explicit text messages with the woman suing him for rape and battery have been revealed.

Sharpe’s legal team insisted that the $50 million lawsuit filed by the woman — whom Page Six will refer to as Jane Doe — is “filled with lies, distortions and misrepresentations” before releasing numerous text exchanges the two allegedly had between March 2023 and January 2025.

Doe alleged that the NFL player-turned-broadcaster, 56, sexually assaulted her multiple times at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025.

According to the text messages released by Sharpe’s legal team, on March 5, 2023, Doe allegedly texted Sharpe a picture of a woman tied up in a compromising position and said, “Tie me up like this & f–k me,” to which he replied, “IF* I knew how to I would.”

She allegedly wrote back, “It’s ok I have handcuffs…we can stick to those for now. … I want to be in that position right now.”

When Sharpe told her it was “too L8 now,” Doe allegedly responded, “I guess I’m just gonna have to f–k myself in the ass w/ my dildo then.”

On March 14, 2023, she allegedly sent him, “I wanna be abused daddy.”

On April 21, 2023, she allegedly texted, “I’m getting your name tattooed on me in like an hour btw. Just thought I’d let you know.”

Sharpe messaged back, “In the font of my cognac,” to which she allegedly responded, “Yes daddy on my neck. If I get it can I maybe be ur baby mama?!?”

Doe allegedly messaged the former tight end on Oct. 7, 2023, “Call me, I feel like f–king with u.”

Two days later, she allegedly sent, “i want you to put a dog collar around my neck and choke me with it while ur f–king me.”

On Nov. 23, 2023, Doe allegedly texted, “only if you put that baby gravy in me, then u can do whatever u want to me. … i literally ate so much food i look like I’m pregnant with ur big black baby.”

Sharpe replied, “IF* I still fck with you around my bday in [20]24. You can take IUD out.”

On Jan. 12, 2024, she allegedly sent, “i wanna put my tongue in ur a–hole and then marry u.”

On Jan. 31, 2024, Doe messaged, “mmm that just got my p—y wet. tie me up and do bad things to me,” to which Sharpe responded, “Cuff up.”

Doe allegedly replied, “mhmmm u still have my handcuffs. I want like some hardcore bdsm action tho. feeling kinda freaky lately.”

On Aug. 11, 2024, she allegedly messaged, “i’ll let you make it hang wherever u want daddy but ONLY if you take me out and treat me good,” to which he sent back, “Deal. I crave ur p—y [Doe]. That’s my p—y now.”

According to the lawsuit, Doe claimed she “began to pull away from Sharpe” after he was heard apparently having sex on Instagram Live in September 2024. At the time, Sharpe claimed he had been hacked.

Doe claimed her attempt to break up with him led to him raping her. She alleged in the lawsuit that the first time he raped her was in October 2024 when he forced himself on her as she was “crying and sobbing.”

“when i’m 152lbs but u can’t touch me bc u cheated on me on instagram live with [redacted],” she allegedly sent him on Dec. 26, 2024, along with a photo. “gonna be 180 soon and ur still not gonna be able to touch…bet ur regretting ur actions right about now.”

According to his legal team, Sharpe replied, “I be killing that young p—y,” to which she allegedly fired back, “absolutely not. when you give me a formal apology for cheating on me on instagram live and multiple other times, then we can talk about it. FORMAL APOLOGY.”

Though Sharpe said he had already apologized, Doe allegedly retorted, “u never say what ur sorry for and how ur going to make it right. so i would appreciate if you could do that because you really hurt me and I’ve been having a hard time with it.”

Sharpe appeared to call Doe more times, which allegedly prompted her to continue demanding a formal apology. Eventually, he said, “I’m not going thru this again. I’ve already apologized. Stop playing childish gms [games].”

Doe claimed the second sexual assault happened in January when Sharpe came over to her house under the guise that he was giving her a Christmas gift, only to allegedly rape her again, according to the lawsuit.

Per his legal team, he texted her on New Year’s Day, “Happy New Year [Doe]. Can’t wait 2 see what 2025 has in store 4 us. Give 50k and I’ll let you come over to the house.”

Doe allegedly sent the Hall of Famer a link to her PayPal account, to which he responded that he doesn’t have cash apps and would give her “10k cash.”

She allegedly asked if he would send her a picture of the money or FaceTime her with it, but he seemingly didn’t.

That’s when she allegedly sent an explicit photo of herself along with the demand, “i know u miss this big juicy ass…$25k for each cheek.”

Doe claimed in the lawsuit that the sexual assaults took place after an allegedly “rocky,” years-long abusive relationship with Sharpe.

According to Doe, they met at a gym in Los Angeles in 2023 when she was 20.

Doe claimed the “Club Shay Shay” podcast host told her during the encounter that he would “buy her fake t-ts” if she won a weight-loss competition with him.

He then allegedly went on to aggressively pursue her by calling, texting and “demanding she come to his Beverly Glen mansion.”

They eventually began a consensual relationship, though Doe claimed Sharpe was controlling and verbally abusive.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/21/celebrity-news/read-shannon-sharpes-alleged-explicit-texts-with-woman-suing-him-for-rape/

A RISING MMA star has been arrested on child sex crime allegations just days before he was set to make his UFC debut.

Ahmad Hassanzada, 28, turned himself into cops in relation to an investigation that dated back to 2024.

He’s facing charges of a lewd or lascivious act with a child under 14, according to Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office records seen by The U.S. Sun.

And, he is also accused of a lewd act on a child between the age of 14 and 15, with the defendant 10 years older than the alleged victim.

He will face an arraignment hearing on April 22.

The cage fighter turned himself in on Saturday afternoon as an arrest warrant had been issued.

His bail has been set at $400,000.

Hassanzada, a lightweight fighter from Afghanistan, was set to make his debut in the Octagon on April 26.

The showdown against Mitch Ramirez was due to take place in Kansas City at the UFC Fight Night event.

Hassanzada rose to fame after prevailing in the lightweight category of Dana White’s Contender Series.

The series gives budding stars the opportunity to win UFC contracts.

Hassanzada last fought fellow lightweight Dylan Mantello on September 18 last year.

He won the contest in under three minutes via a submission.

But, chiefs have confirmed that he is no longer under contract since the arrest.

“Ahmad Hassanzada was removed from his bout and is no longer signed to the organization,” a representative told MMA Mania.

FIGHTING RECORD

Hassanzada boasted a 12-3 record during his fighting career, according to ESPN.

He had won three consecutive bouts, with his last defeat coming in February 2023.

He also competed on White’s Contender Series show in 2022.

But, he was defeated by Afghanistan rival Nazim Sadykhov.

His only other MMA defeats came against Belarussian fighter Piotr Birko in 2019, and American lightweight star Josh Streacker.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/sport/14068999/ahmad-hassanzada-mma-arrested-ufc/

Crime syndicates have made billions scamming victims in Asia and are now expanding their operations to Africa, Europe, South America and further, according to a UN report.

Asian crime networks behind the multi-billion-dollar cyberscam industry are expanding their operations globally, the UN warned in a report released on Monday, adding that the official clampdown in Southeast Asia is failing to contain them.

The UN said Chinese and Southeast Asian gangs were targeting victims through investment, cryptocurrency, romance and other scams.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), cyberscams are now a sophisticated global industry, featuring sprawling compounds housing tens of thousands of mostly trafficked workers who are forced to con other people online.

Pacific islands also affected

“It spreads like a cancer,” said Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC Acting Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific said. “Authorities treat it in one area, but the roots never disappear; they simply migrate.”

While the activity had largely been focused on the border areas in Myanmar, a country torn by civil war, and dubious “special economic zones” set up in Cambodia and Laos, UNODC reported networks are expanding their operations to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands.

“This reflects both a natural expansion as the industry grows and seeks new ways and places to do business, but also a hedging against future risks should disruption continue and intensify in Southeast Asia,” Hofmann added.

Countries in east and southeast Asia lost an estimated $37 billion (€32.5 billion) to cyber fraud in 2023, while the United States reported more than $5.6 billion (€4.9 billion) in losses the UNODC report said.

International action needed to tackle crime syndicates

A major crackdown in Myanmar this year, pushed by Beijing, led to around 7,000 workers from more than 50 countries being freed.

There were also raids in Cambodia, but they prompted the crime syndicates to move to “more remote locations” and border areas. Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona said the country is among the victims of the cyberfraud industry and is committed to fighting it. According to Bona, the government has established an ad-hoc commission chaired by Prime Minister Hun Manet which seeks to boost law enforcement and legal tools while working with international partners and the UN.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/un-warns-of-massive-cyberscams-spreading-across-the-world/a-72304457

THIS is the harrowing moment a swimmer – who is now missing and feared dead – is mauled by a shark in the Mediterranean Sea off the Israeli coast.

Clips posted to social media show a diver flailing around in the water just off Hadera, north-west Israel, in front of horrified crowds.

Earlier clips capture the shark swimming amongst aghast paddlers in shallow waves.

Some seem happy to stay in the water alongside the animal whilst others rushed back to the shore – moments before the attack.

The beast headed further back out and began mauling a swimmer in a sustained frenzy.

The diver could be seen thrashing about as the water around him foamed red with his blood.

People watched in horror from the beach as fins and limbs splashed around – but could do nothing to stop the savaging.

The attack happened in an area where swimming is prohibited, according to JNS.

Footage uploaded to social media shows helicopters scanning the water for the missing diver.

Police have closed the beach while the rescue mission continues.

An eyewitness told Channel 12 News: “I saw the diver in the depths of the water, he shouted: ‘I’m bitten, I’m bitten,’ and waved his hands in the air.

“After a few minutes, sharks bit him – and suddenly he disappeared.’

Channel 12 News also reported that the shark later attacked a rescue diver.

The Hadera Municipality Coastal Department said it was “conducting searches by jet ski to locate the diver and will continue to update as developments occur”.

It added: “We urge the public traveling in the area to avoid entering the water and contact with the sharks.”

Emergency teams received a call at 3:02pm for the attack at Olga Beach.

A statement from the Israel Police said: “A short time ago, officers from the Hadera Police Station and the Maritime Police were dispatched to the Hadera stream following reports from citizens who claimed they saw a shark attacking a diver in the water.

“Forces are en route, but no casualties have been located so far.”

Shark attacks in the Med and Israel are extremely rare.

Dusky and Sandbar sharks often visit the area between November and May, but are not known to attack humans.

The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has reacted to the shark attack by insisting it called on the state four years ago to regulate behaviour in waters sharks visit.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14072361/swimmer-missing-dead-shark-attack-israel/

It was suspected that one of the aircraft’s tyres was flat.

A Saudia Airlines aircraft coming from Jeddah made an emergency landing at the Delhi airport on Monday evening due to suspected flat tyre, according to a source.

The source said the plane, operating the flight SV758 from Jeddah to Delhi, had more than 300 people onboard, and made a safe landing at the airport.

It was suspected that one of the aircraft’s tyres was flat, the source added.

Source : https://www.news18.com/india/saudia-airlines-flight-makes-emergency-landing-at-delhi-airport-ws-kl-9308058.html

FOLLOWING the death of Pope Francis on the morning of Easter Monday, attention turns to the question of his successor.

Francis led the Catholic church for 12 years, right up until his death at 88 – as is tradition.

The Vatican paid tribute to their former leader with a statement that hailed his “faithfulness, courage, and universal love, especially for the poorest and most marginalised”.

It continued: “With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite, merciful love of God, One and Tribune.″

After the nine days of mourning have been observed – during which time Francis will be buried – the papal conclave will begin in order to select a successor.

All 252 cardinals from around the world will travel to Rome for the secret ballot, in which a maximum of 115 can vote.

When a candidate has two thirds of the vote, they will be appointed Pope through a pontifical coronation.

Here are some of the front-runners:

CARDINAL LUIS TAGLE

THE Pope’s successor will be selected by a Conclave in an ancient and secret process that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

The selection will be initiated after the death of Pope Francis at 88 on the morning of Easter Monday, following a battle with pneumonia.

The role of head of the Catholic Church is taken on by an elected senior cardinal usually until their death which is announced via ancient smoke signals.

Pope Francis was anointed in 2013 when he took over from Pope Benedict XVI who stepped back from the role due to ill health in an incredibly rare move.

It was then that a few tweaks were made to the succession process but in general, the Papal Conclave system has been unchanged for 1,000 years and will be used again to choose Francis’ successor.

The death of the Pope has to be confirmed by a medic, their passing is only made official by the camerlengo, the Pope’s Chief of Staff.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell held that position to Francis, and he confirmed the Pope’s passing with a touching tribute on Monday morning.

They call out the Pope’s birth name three times and usually taps the Pontiff’s head with a silver hammer.

If these calls and actions go unanswered, the death is declared and senior church officials, notably the Cardinal Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, are informed.

The public will hear of the Pontiff’s death by seeing black smoke known as fumata nera emerge from a chimney in the Sistine Chapel.

The Pope’s ring, the Ring of the Fisherman, is also burned after being removed and crushed by the camerlengo who will have also locked the pontiff’s apartment, desk, and cut off his telephone wires.

The decision of the sacred Conclave will later be revealed through the smoke of the chimney.

But first, there is then a period of mourning during which the Papal Vacancy is announced by the Vatican known as the Sede Vacante or “the seat is vacant”.

The mourning period usually lasts for nine days and the funeral of the Pope is typically held between the fourth and sixth day where he is traditionally buried at St Peter’s Basilica.

The Conclave and oath to secrecy

Then begins the ritual of electing a new pope which is a process shrouded in secrecy.

The democratic process sees multiple rounds of voting by Cardinals under the age of 80 who make up the Conclave.

This continues until a clear successor is chosen by consensus.

All Cardinals across the world are called to Rome for the Conclave, with 138 out of the current 252 being eligible to vote with the Financial Times calling it “the world’s most powerful electorate.”

Since 1492, the Papal Conclave has taken place in the Sistine Chapel where they were traditionally locked-in until a decision was made.

Now, it takes place in the Domus Sanctae Marthae adjacent to St Peter’s Basilica but all votes are still cast inside the Sistine Chapel.

All cardinals are taken inside to swear an oath of secrecy where they are isolated from the outside world and the building is swept for listening devices to protect the sanctity of the ancient process.

Any outside communication or leaks would result in excommunication from the church.

The locked-in tradition which gives the Conclave its name which in Latin means “with key” dates back to 1268.

The process is so strict that until 2005 the cardinals were forced to sleep in hard beds in makeshift cells with chamber pots for toilets.

Pope John Paul II improved matters by building the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the five-story 130-room guest house.

For a Pope to be elected they must get two-thirds of the vote, and each cardinal’s vote has equal value.

Candidates to be Pontiffs are officially only required to be Catholic and male but for centuries, they have only ever been chosen once reaching the rank of Cardinal.

No age limit is in place with Francis taking on the role at 76 and his predecessor Benedict was 78.

Candidates are not allowed to openly campaign for the role though the BBC reports that it is “still a highly political process”.

While the cardinals are said to be “guided by the Holy Spirit,” the Conclave is also impacted by factions and groupings that strengthen candidates’ positions, according to the BBC.

Voting and smoke signals

When the Conclave begins, the merits of each candidate are secretly discussed and voting begins where each cardinal will write the name of their choice on a piece of paper in disguised handwriting.

This is folded in half and placed in an urn at the altar one by one where they are mixed, opened and counted by three cardinals who are selected an random to be Scrutineers.

The third scrutineer sews up the counted votes which are then burned.

This voting process continues until a clear decision is made with Cardinals in the past being allowed just one meal a day in a bid to speed up the process if it went on for more than three days.

After another five days of no decision, the Cardinals were given just bread and water.

A relatively new rule states that after 12 days of voting, a candidate can win with a 50 per cent plus one vote majority.

Ballots are held twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon and they are all burned in the stove at the Sistine Chapel with black smoke emerging to show that a decision has not yet been made.

This smoke is now made with the help of chemicals after some confusion was seen in previous years where it took time to turn black.

The signal that a new Pope has been elected is when white smoke or fumata bianca emerges from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel along with the ringing of bell.

It is not clear when this ritual began but it has been consistently used to declare a new pope since at least 1878.

New Pope is declared

The elected Pontiff is then asked by the Cardinal Dean if they accept the position and they then state the name that they will take upon becoming the Pope.

This is usually inspired by a saint or previous pope that they wish to honour.

The new Pontiff then enters the Room of Tears inside the Sistine Chapel where they are said to be so overwhelmed with emotion they cry – hence the name.

They then dress and prepare to greet the world on the balcony on St Peter’s Basilica overlooking 100,000 people on St. Peter’s Square.

Robes of multiple sizes are prepared in advance by papal tailors Gammarelli.

The three sets of vestments in sizes small, medium, and large include a white cassock, a white silk sash, a white zucchetto (skullcap), red leather shoes and a red velvet mozzetta or capelet with ermine trim.

The Pope will dress alone, wearing a gold-corded pectoral cross and a red embroidered stole before emerging onto the balcony.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14069661/pope-francis-death-conclave-secret-rituals/

Three Indian and two Chinese students are part of a suit brought against the Trump administration over the termination of several international students’ F1 visas.

Three Indian and two Chinese students in the US have sued the Department of Homeland Security and other immigration officials for terminating the F-1 visas of several international students.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) before the US District Court in New Hampshire, accuses the Trump administration of “unilaterally terminating the F-1 student status of hundreds, if not thousands, of international students.”

What does the lawsuit say

The lawsuit suggests students not only face the threat of deportation or visa cancellation, but also “severe financial and academic hardship.” It said the government did not give the required notice before terminating a foreign student’s legal status.

Among the petitioning students are Chinese nationals Hangrui Zhang and Haoyang An, and Indian nationals Linkhith Babu Gorrela, Thanuj Kumar Gummadavelli and Manikanta Pasula.

Hangrui’s research assistantship has been terminated due to the termination of his F1 visa status. Haoyang may have to abandon his degree despite having already invested $329,196 (€289,467).

Gorrela is due to finish his degree on May 20, but cannot do so or participate in an additional training program without a valid F1 visa. Gummadavelli and Pasula would have one more semester left before finishing their degree.

International students in the US concerned

The Trump administration’s tightening of student visa policies sparked widespread concern among international students, universities and advocacy groups.

Chinese and Indian students make up a large chunk of international students in the United States.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/indian-chinese-students-sue-trump-over-visa-rules/a-72291505

Angry mobs in Pakistan are targeting the famous US chicken chain, linking it to the American government’s support for Israel. Pakistani police are now ramping up security at KFC restaurants across the country.

Pakistani authorities have arrested scores of people in response to a string of mob attacks on KFC restaurants.

The crowds are targeting the US chicken chain because they view it as linked to the US government’s support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

What do we know so far?

Pakistani officials have said this week that as many as 178 people have been taken into custody over the attacks. Incidents have been reported in major cities such as Karachi, the capital Islamabad, and Lahore.

“A total of 20 incidents occurred across Pakistan with one fatality reported. The man was a staff member at KFC,” Pakistani Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry told journalists on Saturday.

A worker at a KFC branch in the outskirts of Lahore, the capital of the Punjab Province, was killed by a gunman this week, though it is unclear whether that killing was linked to anti-Israel protests.

Chaudhry said 145 people were arrested in Punjab province and 15 were detained in Islamabad in connection with the mob attacks.

“These franchises invest over $100 million (€88 million) in Pakistan, employ more than 25,000 people, pay 100% taxes and buy from local vendors,” Chaudhry said. “The entire profit stays in Pakistan. What excuse is there for such attacks?”

Yum! Brands, which owns KFC, has not yet commented on the attacks.

Security ramped up as Islamist party denies responsibility

Security is being ramped up at KFC restaurants in Pakistan, particularly in Lahore.

Lahore police said a member of the Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) was among those arrested in the crackdown. However, the TLP said it has not called for protests outside KFC restaurants.

Many people in Muslim-majority Pakistan have felt sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza as Israel blocks humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-protesters-attack-kfc-restaurants-over-gaza-war/a-72288366

Justin Bieber’s fans expressed concern over the pop star’s behavior during the second weekend of Coachella 2025.

The “Peaches” singer was seen in a video posted to TikTok puffing on what appeared to be a joint at a private event near the music festival in Indio, Calif.

While smoking, his body was hunched over as he bounced his head to his 2015 song “What Do You Mean?”

Bieber was attending the invite-only Friday Nights in the Desert party, per TMZ.

At another point, the clip showed a shirtless Bieber, 31, oddly moving his body to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in a crowd.

Fans reacted to the footage of the Grammy winner in the comments, with one person claiming, “I’m sorry but he doesn’t look OK, he’s not just ‘having fun,’ he’s definitely under some hard influence. :(.”

“He needs better friends by [his] side,” another added.

“I’m mad that the people around him are not doing anything,” a third chimed in.

“poor guy, i don’t understand why they say he is enjoying. You can see clearly he needs help,” a fourth user claimed, echoing several others.

The “Baby” singer sparked worry for his well-being in February when he was seen swaying his body from side to side and smiling wide while at his wife Hailey Bieber’s Rhode pop-up event in Los Angeles.

Days later, Justin’s rep slammed allegations about the singer using drugs.

His rep told TMZ that the rumors were “exhausting and pitiful and shows that despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive.”

However, the “Sorry” hitmaker’s friends and former colleagues are also reportedly concerned about Justin’s mental health.

“Seeing him disintegrate like this … it’s watching the embodiment of someone not living their purpose,” an ex-team member told the Hollywood Reporter.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/20/celebrity-news/justin-biebers-fans-claim-singer-needs-help-after-worrying-behavior-at-coachella/

Every morning, India’s newspapers are filled with reports of road accidents – passenger buses plunging into mountain gorges, drunk drivers mowing down pedestrians, cars crashing into stationary trucks and two-wheelers being knocked down by larger vehicles.

These daily tragedies underscore a silent crisis: in 2023 alone, more than 172,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads, averaging 474 deaths each day or nearly one every three minutes.

Although the official crash report for 2023 has yet to be released, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari cited the data to paint a grim picture at a road safety event in December.

Among the dead that year were 10,000 children. Accidents near schools and colleges accounted for another 10,000 fatalities, while 35,000 pedestrians lost their lives. Two-wheeler riders also bore the brunt of fatalities. Over-speeding typically emerged as the single biggest cause.

A lack of basic safety precautions also proved deadly: 54,000 people died due to not wearing helmets and 16,000 from not wearing seatbelts.

Other major causes included overloading, which led to 12,000 deaths, and driving without a valid licence, which factored in 34,000 crashes. Driving on the wrong side also contributed to fatalities.

In 2021, 13% of accidents involved drivers with a learner permit or no valid licence. Many vehicles on the road are old and missing basic safety features like seatbelts – let alone airbags.

This hazardous road environment is further complicated by India’s chaotic traffic mix.

A bewildering array of users crowds India’s roads. There are motorised vehicles like cars, buses and motorcycles vying for space with non-motorised transport such as bicycles, cycle rickshaws and handcarts, animal-drawn carts, pedestrians and stray animals. Hawkers encroach upon roads and footpaths to sell their wares, forcing pedestrians onto busy roads and further complicating traffic flow.

Despite efforts and investments, India’s roads remain among the most unsafe in the world. Experts say this is a crisis rooted not just in infrastructure, but in human behaviour, enforcement gaps and systemic neglect. ​Road crashes impose a significant economic burden, costing India 3% of its annual GDP.

India has the world’s second-largest road network, spanning 6.6m kilometres (4.1m miles), just after the US. National and state highways together make up about 5% of the total network, while other roads – including gleaming access-controlled expressways – account for the rest. There are an estimated 350 million registered vehicles.

Gadkari told the road safety meeting that many road accidents happen because people lack respect and fear for the law.

“There are several reasons for accidents, but the biggest is human behaviour,” he said.

Yet that’s only part of the picture. Just last month, Gadkari pointed to poor civil engineering practices – flawed road design, substandard construction and weak management – along with inadequate signage and markings, as key contributors to the alarmingly high road accident rate.

“The most important culprits are civil engineers… Even small things like the road signages and marking system are very poor in the country,” he said.

​Since 2019, his ministry reported 59 major deficiencies in national highways, including cave-ins, Gadkari told the parliament last month. Of the 13,795 identified accident-prone “black spots”, only 5,036 have undergone long-term rectification.

Over the years, road safety audits, conducted by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre (TRIPP) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, have uncovered serious flaws in India’s road infrastructure.

Take crash barriers. These are meant to safely stop vehicles that stray off the road – without flipping them over. But in many places, they’re doing the opposite.

Despite clear standards for height, spacing and installation, on-ground reality often tells a different story: the metal barriers at the wrong height, mounted on concrete bases, or poorly placed. These flaws can cause a vehicle, especially a truck or bus, to flip over instead of being safely stopped.

“Unless installed exactly as specified, crash barriers can do more harm than good,” Geetam Tiwari, emeritus professor of civil engineering at IIT Delhi, told the BBC.

Then there are the tall medians – or road dividers, as they are locally called. On high-speed roads, medians are supposed to gently separate traffic moving in the opposite direction. They shouldn’t be taller than 10cm (3.9in) but, audits show, many are.

When a high-speed vehicle’s tyre hits a vertical median, it generates heat, risks a tyre burst, or even lifts the vehicle off the ground – leading to dangerous rollovers. Many medians in India are simply not designed keeping this threat in mind.

A stretch of a highway near the capital, Delhi, stands as a stark example – a road slicing through dense settlements on both sides without safety measures to protect residents. Throngs of people precariously stand on the medians as high-speed traffic whizzes by.

And then there are the raised carriageways. On many rural roads, repeated resurfacing has left the main road towering six to eight inches above the shoulder.

That sudden drop can be deadly – especially if a driver swerves to avoid an obstacle. Two-wheelers are most at risk, but even cars can skid, tip, or flip. With every layer added, the danger just keeps rising, experts say.

Clearly, India’s road design standards are solid on paper – but poorly enforced on the ground.

“One key issue is that non-compliance with safety standards attracts minimal penalties. Contracts often don’t clearly spell out these requirements, and payments are typically linked to kilometres constructed – not to adherence to safety norms,” says Prof Tiwari.

Minister Gadkari recently announced an ambitious plan to upgrade 25,000km of two-lane highways to four lanes. “It will help reduce accidents on the roads significantly,” he said.

Experts like Kavi Bhalla of the University of Chicago are sceptical. Mr Bhalla, who has worked on road safety in low and middle-income countries, argues that India’s road designs often mimic Western models, ignoring the country’s unique traffic and infrastructure needs.

“There is no reason to believe that road widening will lead to fewer traffic deaths. There is a lot of evidence that road upgradation in India results in higher traffic speeds, which is lethal to pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists,” he says.

“A key issue is that new roads in India simply copy road designs used in the US and Europe, where the traffic environment is very different. India is trying to build US-style highway infrastructure but not investing in US-style highway safety engineering research and crash data systems,” Mr Bhalla adds.

To tackle the escalating road safety crisis, the government is “implementing” the “5Es” strategy: engineering of roads, engineering of vehicles, education, enforcement and emergency care, says KK Kapila of the International Road Federation. (​According to a report by the Law Commission of India, timely emergency medical care could have saved 50% of road crash fatalities.)

Mr Kapila is helping the federal government with a road safety plan. He says seven key states were asked to identify their most accident-prone stretches. After implementing targeted interventions based on the 5Es framework, these stretches “have become the safest” in their states, he told me.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g49pgx6d0o

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of breaching a 30-hour “Easter truce” announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, which has now expired.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian troops had violated the ceasefire nearly 3,000 times since the start of Sunday.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had “repelled” assaults by Ukraine and accused Kyiv of launching hundreds of drones and shells. The BBC has not independently verified claims by the warring sides.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump – who has been pushing for an end to the war – said that “hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week”, without giving further details.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and currently controls about 20% Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since 2022.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full and unconditional ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

On Saturday, Putin said there would be an end to all hostilities from 18:00 Moscow time (16:00 BST) on Saturday until midnight on Sunday (22:00 BST). Kyiv said it would also adhere.

“For this period, I order all military actions to cease,” Putin said in his announcement.

“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions.”

However, Zelensky said late on Sunday that there was a total of 1,882 cases of Russian shelling, 812 of which involved heavy weaponry according to a report from Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.

The president said the heaviest shelling and assaults were in eastern Ukraine near the besieged city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.

“The nature of Ukrainian actions will continue to be mirrored: we will respond to silence with silence, our strikes will be to protect against Russian strikes,” Zelensky said.

Earlier in the day, he said that “there were no air raid alerts today”, referring to Russia’s daily drone and missile strikes against Ukraine.

He proposed “to cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension”.

Zelensky also said Putin’s declaration of a truce amounted to a “PR” exercise and his words were “empty”. He also accused the Kremlin of trying to create “a general impression of a ceasefire”.

“This Easter has clearly demonstrated that the only source of this war, and the reason it drags on, is Russia,” the president said.

The Russian defence ministry insisted its troops had “strictly observed the ceasefire”.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of using US-supplied Himars missiles during the ceasefire.

Several hours before the truce expired, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not given an order to extend it, Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported.

The surprise ceasefire announcement came shortly after US Trump threatened to “take a pass” on brokering further Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

However, a state department spokesperson said on Sunday that Washington remained “committed to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire”.

“It is long past time to stop the death and destruction and end this war,” the spokesperson added.

There were mixed reactions about the 30-hour truce from Ukrainians attending Easter morning services in Kyiv and the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk on Sunday.

“I do not think this man [Putin] has anything to do with humanity,” 45-year-old lawyer Olena Poprych told Reuters news agency.

Meanwhile in Donetsk, which has been under Russian control since 2014, residents expressed similar distrust that Zelensky will stick to the terms of the ceasefire.

“I watched very closely his [Zelensky’s] reactions,” said Vladimir, who attended an Easter morning service in the city.

“There was nothing about the ceasefire… just some vague statements, not giving any confidence that we will not be shelled.”

On Sunday, the British government described the proposed ceasefire as a “one day stunt”, saying that the claimed truce involved “violations, including the killing and wounding of more innocent Ukrainians”.

The statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said that the truce fitted the “pattern of previous fake ceasefires” and instead called for a longer 30 day pause in the fighting, as proposed by Ukraine.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd3ge7j92zo

Meghan Markle’s Easter celebration was a little bit more eggs-tra this year.

The Duchess of Sussex took to Instagram to share a sweet video of a mama duck and her ducklings waddling across a path near her $14 million Montecito, Calif., mansion.

Markle appeared to be shocked and delighted by the unexpected visitors as she was seen covering her open mouth with her hand and shaking her arms in excitement.

“Wishing you a Happy Easter full of love…and surprises!” she captioned the post on Sunday.

The “Suits” alum, 43, was barefoot and dressed in a chic white dress as she spotted the flock in the video.

Markle has been giving fans more glimpses of her and husband Prince Harry’s 18,000-square-foot estate while promoting her latest business ventures, including “With Love, Meghan” on Netflix and her As Ever brand.

The couple purchased the lavish property located in the Santa Barbara enclave in 2020 after stepping down from their roles as senior royals.

The couple and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, have plenty of space with nine bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, plus a pool, a tennis court, a rose garden, a children’s cottage, a chicken coop and a guest house.

Last month, Markle opened the doors of her home to a journalist for the first time with one strict rule.

“I was allowed in on the condition that no photographs were taken in, or of, the house,” New York Times food writer Julia Moskin revealed in article published in early April.

Markle also prioritized her family’s privacy by opting to film her Netflix series at an $8 million farmhouse two miles away from her own mansion.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/20/royal-family/meghan-markle-shocked-by-unexpected-visitors-near-14m-montecito-mansion/?_gl=1*rv2u47*_ga*MTgwMjY4OTEzMy4xNzQ0ODU3NDg5*_ga_0DZ7LHF5PZ*MTc0NTE5OTM0NC41LjAuMTc0NTE5OTc3NS41Mi4wLjA

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said again Saturday that Israel has “no choice” but to continue fighting in Gaza and will not end the war before destroying Hamas, freeing the hostages and ensuring that the territory won’t present a threat to Israel.

The prime minister also repeated his vow to make sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu is under growing pressure at home not only from families of hostages and their supporters but also from reservist and retired Israeli soldiers who question the continuation of the war after Israel shattered a ceasefire last month.

In his statement, he said Hamas has rejected Israel’s latest proposal to free half the hostages in return for another temporary truce. Hamas has said it will only free the remaining hostages in return for an Israeli withdrawal and a lasting ceasefire, as called for in the agreement that Israel ended.

Israeli strikes meanwhile killed more than 90 people in 48 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday. Israeli troops have been increasing their attacks to pressure Hamas to release the hostages and disarm.

Children and women were among the 15 people killed overnight, according to hospital staff. At least 11 dead were in the southern city of Khan Younis, several of them in a tent in the Muwasi area where hundreds of thousands of displaced people stay, hospital workers said. Israel has designated it as a humanitarian zone.

Mourners cradled and kissed the faces of the dead. A man stroked a child’s forehead with his finger before body bags were closed.

“Omar is gone … I wish it was me,” one brother cried out.

Four other people were killed in strikes in Rafah city, including a mother and her daughter, according to the European Hospital, where the bodies were taken.

Later on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a group of civilians west of Nuseirat in central Gaza killed one person, according to Al-Awda Hospital.

Israel’s military in a statement said it killed more than 40 militants over the weekend.

Separately, the military said a soldier was killed Saturday in northern Gaza and confirmed it was the first soldier death since Israel resumed the war on March 18. Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it ambushed Israeli forces operating east of Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood.

Israel has vowed to intensify attacks across Gaza and occupy indefinitely large “security zones” inside the small coastal strip of over 2 million people.

Israel also has blockaded Gaza for the past six weeks, again barring the entry of food and other goods.

This week, aid groups raised the alarm, saying thousands of children have become malnourished and most people are barely eating one meal a day as stocks dwindle, according to the United Nations.

The head of the World Health Organization’s eastern Mediterranean office, Dr. Hanan Balkhy, on Friday urged the new U.S. ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, to push the country to lift Gaza’s blockade so medicines and other aid can enter.

“I would wish for him to go in and see the situation firsthand,” she said.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Hamas currently holds 59 hostages, 24 of them believed to be alive.

Israel’s offensive has since killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The war has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and most of its food production capabilities. Around 90% of the population is displaced, with hundreds of thousands of people living in tent camps and bombed-out buildings.

Frustration has been growing on both sides, with rare public protests against Hamas in Gaza and continued weekly rallies in Israel pressing the government to reach a deal to bring all hostages home.

Thousands of Israelis joined protests Saturday night pressing for a deal.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-04-19-2025-5e80a0efc0b267515ec88aec4c3672d1

Pope Francis decried the numerous conflicts plaguing the planet and appealed to world leaders “not to yield to the logic of fear” in his Easter message “urbi et orbi” (to the city and to the world) on Sunday.

The pope’s traditional blessing, “urbi et orbi,” was read by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations, as the 88-year-old pontiff, still convalescing, was present but physically limited.

Francis, who arrived at the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica in a wheelchair, greeted the faithful with a brief “Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter” before asking Archbishop Ravelli to read the message on his behalf.

“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development,” the message stated.

Earlier in the morning, at approximately 11:30 a.m., Pope Francis held a brief private meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Casa Santa Marta, according to the Holy See Press Office.

The meeting, which lasted only a few minutes, provided an opportunity for the two to exchange Easter greetings.

Vice President Vance met Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Saturday regarding international relations, religious freedom, and humanitarian concerns.

The pope’s Easter address — delivered amid a confluence of global conflicts — focused particularly on war-torn regions, including Ukraine, the Holy Land, Myanmar, and various parts of Africa.

Regarding Gaza, where “the terrible conflict continues to generate death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation,” Francis called for concrete action: “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!”

The Holy Father also lamented the “growing climate of anti-Semitism throughout the world” while expressing closeness to “the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people.”

The pope’s message emphasized that “there can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and respect for the views of others.” He added that peace is also impossible without “true disarmament,” warning against the “race to rearmament” that threatens global stability.

Reflecting on the spiritual significance of Easter, Francis reminded the faithful that Christ’s resurrection represents “the basis of our hope” and that “hope does not disappoint!” He characterized this hope not as “an evasion, but a challenge” that “does not delude, but empowers us.”

The message “urbi et orbi” concluded with the pontiff’s customary invocation for a peaceful world: “Let us entrust ourselves to him, for he alone can make all things new.”

Source : https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263497/urbi-et-orbi-2025-pope-francis-easter-message-urges-world-leaders-not-to-yield-to-logic-of-fear

JUSTIN Bieber has shared a rare new snap of baby Jack Blues after he was slammed for ‘inappropriate’ behavior.

Canadian pop star Justin, 31, tied the knot with wife Hailey back in 2018.

At the end of August 2024, Hailey and Justin announced they had welcomed their first child, Jack Blues Bieber.

Eight months on, the couple have shared a sweet snap of their son, showing the world how much he has grown.

Justin took to Instagram this weekend to share the cutest snap of baby Jack crawling on the floor.

The tot could be seen rocking some khaki green pants and a lemon t-shirt.

You could not see Jack’s face, but fans still gushed over the baby nonetheless.

“OH GOD! time went by SO fast how is he already this size?” penned one.

“He’s getting soooo big,” said another.

A third person then wrote: “BABY JACK YOU’RE ALREADY SO LOVED BY EVERYONE.”

While a fourth said: “Your son is a little angel! You and Hailey are so lucky and blessed.”

Hailey re-shared the snap on her Instagram stories and penned: “My baby is getting so big.”

This comes after Justin was slammed for being “inappropriate” when he was seen kissing rapper Sexyy Red on the cheek.

The pair were out celebrating her 27th birthday.

Posting the clip to Instagram, Sexyy Red – real name Janae Wherry – captioned: “My two personalities… thanks for comin friend @justinbieber.”

She concluded: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 DA BADDEST.”

Justin’s fans soon showed their disapproval regarding the kiss.

One remarked: “Kissing a friend on the cheek as a married man is a lil much… idk.”

A second person penned: “lowkey gives red more attention than he does to hailey.”

This all comes after Hailey showed off her post-partum figure while donning a bikini.

The stunning wife of the hitmaker left fans taken aback by sharing a sizzling snap mere months after carrying and welcoming her first baby.

Hailey showed off her toned stomach as she snapped a mirror selfie while donning a bikini.

The Rhode beauty founder could be seen pouting while showing off her slender physique and flat stomach.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/14066178/justin-bieber-rare-new-snap-baby-jack-blues/

FOUR people have been killed after a plane struck power lines and crashed into a road.

No survivors were found after the tragic fireball crash on Saturday morning in Trilla, Illinois.

Horror video showed the plane’s flaming wreckage plastered across a road and field as cops rushed to the scene.

Local police said the single-engine plane crashed just 200 miles south of Chicago at around 10.15am today.

The aircraft had smashed into a set of power lines before the fatal smash, reports CBS News.

The burning wreckage slowly petered out after all four people on board died.

Cops said all four victims – two men and two women – killed in the crash were from Wisconsin but didn’t disclose their identities.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the fatal crash.

They said that four people were on board a Cessna 180 which crashed in a field southeast of Coles County Memorial Airport.

It is still unclear where the plane departed from and where it was going.

Local authorities said that the Federal Aviation Administration was on the scene and investigating.

The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to arrive on Sunday to launch a probe.

Illinois State Police told People: “ISP Troop 7 was notified of a small single-engine plane crash at the above location.

“All four occupants were from Menomonie, Wisconsin, and were pronounced deceased on scene.”

They added: “The aircraft remains in the roadway and the roadway will be shut down until later today.

“This in an active and ongoing investigation.”

Crash witness Kynnedi Goldstein told CBS News Chicago: “I was getting ready to turn a show on and all of a sudden I hear this noise.

“It’s like the whole ‘boom,’ and then our power went out for a second, and then our generator kicked on.

“So then I go out to our sunroom, and I look, and there’s a huge pile of smoke.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said the news was “terrible” and thanked the first responders who rushed to the scene in a statement on X.

The deadly crash is the latest in a spate of horror plane accidents.

On Friday, three people were killed after a plane crash landed in a river in Nebraska.

Days earlier, an eight-year-old girl was among six people who died in a helicopter crash over the Hudson River.

Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife, their three children, and a pilot all perished in the disaster.

Chilling footage of a separate crash site showed the remains of a private plane which killed a family of top doctors.

The parents, two children, and the children’s partners all died when their plane plunged on their way to the Catskills for a birthday and Passover celebration last Saturday.

Investigators shared a harrowing video of the aircraft wreckage ripped apart in a muddy field in Copake, New York, just 10 miles from the airport it was headed toward.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14066873/plane-crash-kills-four-illinois/

Perched on top of Santorini’s sheer cliffs is a world-famous tourist industry worth millions. Underneath is the fizzing risk of an almighty explosion.

A huge ancient eruption created the dreamy Greek island, leaving a vast crater and a horse-shoe shaped rim.

Now scientists are investigating for the first time how dangerous the next big one could be.

BBC News spent a day on board the British royal research ship the Discovery as they searched for clues.

Just weeks before, nearly half of Santorini’s 11,000 residents had fled for safety when the island shut down in a series of earthquakes.

It was a harsh reminder that under the idyllic white villages dotted with gyros restaurants, hot tubs in AirBnB rentals, and vineyards on rich volcanic soil, two tectonic plates grind in the Earth’s crust.

Prof Isobel Yeo, an expert on highly dangerous submarine volcanoes with Britain’s National Oceanography Centre, is leading the mission. Around two-thirds of the world’s volcanoes are underwater, but they are hardly monitored.

“It’s a bit like ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in terms of understanding their danger, compared to more famous ones like Vesuvius,” she says on deck, as we watch two engineers winching a robot the size of a car off the ship’s side.

This work, coming so soon after the earthquakes, will help scientists understand what type of seismic unrest could indicate a volcanic eruption is imminent.

Santorini’s last eruption was in 1950, but as recently as 2012 there was a “period of unrest”, says Isobel. Magma flowed into the volcanoes’ chambers and the islands “swelled up”.

“Underwater volcanoes are capable of really big, really destructive eruptions,” she says.

“We are lulled into a sense of false security if you’re used to small eruptions and the volcano acting safe. You assume the next will be the same – but it might not,” she says.

The Hunga Tunga eruption in 2022 in the Pacific produced the largest underwater explosion ever recorded, and created a tsunami in the Atlantic with shockwaves felt in the UK. Some islands in Tonga, near the volcano, were so devastated that their people have never returned.

Beneath our feet on the ship, 300m (984ft) down, are bubbling hot vents. These cracks in the Earth turn the seafloor into a bright orange world of protruding rocks and gas clouds.

“We know more about the surface of some planets than what’s down there,” Isobel says.

The robot descends to the seabed to collect fluids, gases and snap off chunks of rock.

Those vents are hydrothermal, meaning hot water pours out from cracks, and they often form near volcanoes.

They are why Isobel and 22 scientists from around the world are on this ship for a month.

So far, no-one has been able to work out if a volcano becomes more or less explosive when sea water in these vents mixes with magma.

“We are trying to map the hydrothermal system,” Isobel explains. It’s not like making a map on land. “We have to look inside the earth,” she says.

The Discovery is investigating Santorini’s caldera and sailing out to Kolombo, the other major volcano in this area, about 7km (4.3 miles) north-east of the island.

The two volcanoes are not expected to erupt imminently, but it is only a matter of time.

The expedition will create data sets and geohazard maps for Greece’s Civil Protection Agency, explains Prof Paraskevi Nomikou, a member of the government emergency group that met daily during the earthquake crisis.

She is from Santorini, and grew up hearing about past earthquakes and eruptions from her grandfather. The volcano inspired her to become a geologist.

“This research is very important because it will inform local people how active the volcanoes are, and it will map the area that will be forbidden to access during an eruption,” she says.

It will reveal which parts of the Santorini sea floor are the most hazardous, she adds.

These missions are incredibly expensive, so Isobel crams in experiments night and day as the scientists work in 12-hour shifts.

John Jamieson, a professor at Canada’s Memorial University in Newfoundland, shows us volcanic rocks extracted from the vents.

“Don’t pick that one up,” he warns. “It’s full of arsenic.”

Pointing to another that looks like a black and orange meringue with gold dusting, he explains: “This is a real mystery – we don’t even know what it is made of.”

These rocks tell the history of the fluid, temperature and material inside the volcano. “This is a geological environment different to most others – it’s really exciting,” he says.

But the mission’s beating heart is a dark shipping container on deck where four people stare at screens mounted on a wall.

Using a joystick that wouldn’t look out of a place on a gaming console, two engineers drive the underwater robot. Isobel and Paraskevi trade theories about what is in a pool of fluid that the robot has found.

They have recorded very small earthquakes around the volcano, caused by fluid moving through the system and causing fractures. Isobel plays us an audio recording of the fractures reverberating. It sounds like the bass in a nightclub being amped up and down.

They identify how fluid moves through rocks by pulsing an electromagnetic field into the earth.

This is creating a 3D map that shows how the hydrothermal system is connected to the volcano’s magma chamber where an eruption is generated.

“We are doing science for the people, not science for the scientists. We are here to make people feel safe,” Paraskevi says.

The recent earthquake crisis in Santorini highlighted how exposed the island’s residents are to the seismic threats and how reliant they are on tourism.

Back on dry land, photographer Eva Rendl meets me in her favourite location for wedding shoots. When the so-called swarm of earthquakes hit in February, she left the island with her daughter.

“It was really scary, as it got more and more intense,” she says.

She’s back now but business is slower. “People have cancelled bookings. Normally I start shoots in April but my first job isn’t until May,” Eva says.

In the main square of Santorini’s upmarket town Oia, British-Canadian tourist Janet tells us six of her group of 10 cancelled their holiday.

She believes more accurate scientific information about the likelihood of earthquakes and volcanoes would help others feel more reassured about visiting.

“I get the Google alerts, I get the scientists’ alerts, and it helps me feel safe,” she said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm25lz56rezo

A rare blue diamond was displayed Tuesday at an exhibition of $100 million worth of the world’s rarest diamonds in the United Arab Emirates’ capital, Abu Dhabi.

The eight diamonds on display at the Sotheby’s exhibition have a total weight of over 700 carats. They include red, yellow, pink and colorless diamonds.

Visitors focused on the 10-karat blue diamond from South Africa, considered one of the most important blue diamonds ever discovered. Sotheby’s expects it to be auctioned off at $20 million in May.

Quig Bruning, the company’s head of jewels in North America, Europe and the Middle East, said they chose Abu Dhabi for the current exhibition because of the Gulf nation’s high interest in diamonds.

“We have great optimism about the region,” he said. “We feel very strongly that this is the kind of place where you have both traders and collectors of diamonds of this importance and of this rarity.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/uae-diamonds-abu-dhabi-auction-c3df44401d52aff9671b81a09c8fd738

IT’S now 30 long years since the devastating Oklahoma City bombing, but the heartbreakingly tragic memories continue to haunt the first medic on the scene.

Carl Spengler was working as a resident doctor at the University of Oklahoma on April 19, 1995.

DAY OF HELL

He had just finished a grueling night shift and, unusually, went to a nearby diner for breakfast with a friend.

“It was the first time I went for food after work in the four years I had been there,” he told The U.S. Sun.

Little did he know that at precisely 9:02 a.m., he would be sucked into a brutal nightmare that killed 168 innocent people and cast a shadow over his life, and hundreds of thousands of others, forever.

The nearby Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was ripped apart by a truck bomb containing 4,850 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane, and diesel fuel, creating a 30 foot-wide, 8 foot-deep crater.

Former soldier Timothy McVeigh, who was 27 at the time, and accomplice Terry Nichols’ deluded plan to take revenge on the government for their perceived wrongdoing at the Waco siege — among other things — exactly two years to the day, was the worst act of terrorism before September 11, 2001.

A daycare center was in the building where, tragically, 19 children also perished.

Estimates claim over 300,000 people knew someone personally who worked in or was in the building, which also housed a law enforcement satellite office used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Everything was ripped apart.

McVeigh received the death penalty and was executed by lethal injection in 2001, with hundreds of victims’ friends and family watching on closed-circuit TV.

Nichols received 161 consecutive life terms without parole.

Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror, a new Netflix documentary detailing the shocking, senseless act of pure atrocity, was released this week to commemorate the lives lost.

TOUGHEST OF TIMES

It is a difficult and emotional watch for Spengler, now 67, who was in the center of the chaos, performing with almost incomprehensible heroism.

Initially, he thought the ear-piercing bang was a gas explosion and ran to the scene.

He saw cars crushed by the shockwave of the detonated Ryder rental truck.

Glass was everywhere as he made his way to the front of the building, which now had a gaping, crater-like hole.

The scene was instantly nightmarish. “People would walk a few yards, kind of zombie-like, then either lie down or fall. A few made it to the curb,” he remembered.

A firefighter quickly explained the explosion was a bomb because “gas explosions blow the asphalt out, but bombs blow the asphalt in.”

“Then I knew,” Spengler said. “We had to get to work.”

VICTIMS PILING UP

People were being brought out on backboards in droves. Spengler says the recovery operation quickly became massive — ambulances, fire, rescue and police. Two people at a time were lifted into every ambulance.

In the first hour, according to the doctor, an average of 2.3 patients were being rushed away every minute.

The injuries were severe. “I saw everything,” he said. “Crush injuries, lacerations, head injuries. One man had a lacerated windpipe. I intubated him with a kit.”

Working amid such chaotic, tragic scenes took its toll.

While Spengler and his colleagues were doing everything possible, heartbreaking decisions were being made in a split second. “You had seconds to assess and decide what to do. That first couple of hours was very intense.”

In Greg Tillman’s recently released documentary, the doctor emotionally recalls having to stop treating a dying young girl and switch to another person “in the throes of death.”

“It was a young girl,” he said. “Catastrophic head injury…clinically brain dead. I told them we couldn’t do anything. Another woman nearby had been turned into cannon fodder. Both had agonal breathing, meaning they were dying. I told someone to stay with the child, move her to the temporary morgue.”

More people, including another child, were already on their way. He saw the girl’s distraught mother. “She just waved,” he said. “And then walked away.”

Some bystanders took exception to what they saw and began berating Spengler for supposedly leaving people to die. They were hurling expletives at him.

The woman he prioritized, meanwhile, had massive facial trauma.

He was ready to give up and move to the next victim, but a firefighter handed him a breathing tube and urged him to “try one more time.”

“I had to clear debris off her; her face was detached from her skull,” he said. “I inserted a breathing tube, and they ran her to an ambulance.”

Eight months later, the pair were reunited on a TV show. It was hard for Spengler, now a realtor after 20 years of practicing medicine, to contain his emotions.

“It was great for her, hard for me. Her husband hugged me and said I gave his wife her life back. But he didn’t know I was the person who had, just moments before, almost decided to let her die.”

As the nightmare continued, many involved in the rescue effort were unaware a daycare center had been destroyed. Little Bailey Almon was the first child recovered and the first fatality.

“We met eyes,” Spengler remembered.

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES

More patients arrived, yet one has never left his mind.

He almost breaks down in tears at the end of the documentary, recalling the moment fresh fear gripped everyone with the sighting of another bomb.

His treatment of a little girl was interrupted by a furious police officer who threatened to shoot Spengler unless he left immediately. It turned out the device was a dummy from the ATF office.

The agony of leaving his young patient to die has been a terrible burden, even after three decades.

“It still bothers me,” he admitted.

Spengler worked mainly on the street but entered the building several times.

Another girl’s leg was trapped under concrete. Unable to get cell service, the desperate search for an orthopedic surgeon began. “I went outside, and two were standing there,” he said with a smile. “It was like God put them there.”

Unimaginable tragedies continued. He saw a nurse killed by falling debris. Despite having worked a night shift, Spengler incredibly kept working until 5pm, a 40-hour span of pure hell.

The next day, he was back, helping a city come to terms with the atrocity.

His heroic efforts were beyond belief, yet the now 60 year-old admitted to The U.S. Sun that participating in Tillman’s film was “tough.”

He hopes its release will offer some closure.

“You have to face it,” he said.

“All the mass-casualty training I had, no one ever trained me on the human factor,” Spengler told Tillman. “The one thing I didn’t know going into that was what it was going to do to me.”

The documentary producer was blown away after telling Spengler’s story.

“Superheroes go into dangerous situations knowing full well that they have superpowers,” he told The U.S. Sun, “they’re probably going to be okay, they’ve got a shield, they’re gonna turn into a monster, whatever it is. But this was a day for real heroes.

“When people walk into an incredibly dangerous situation they could have easily walked away from and then risked their lives to help save people, they had no way of knowing what the effect would be for them for the rest of their lives.”

One-time Crossfit fanatic Spengler went on to work as a medic for a SWAT team during two different spells in Florida between 1997 to 2003, and one year from 2009 to 2010.

He even became a bodybuilder in his 60s.

“Carl has had an amazing life, but he has carried some of this with him,” Tillman added. “He has a conscience.”

BRAVE RESPONSE

The city of Oklahoma responded to the nightmare with generosity. The governor noted that crime was down because “all the looters were queuing around the block waiting to give blood.”

The dust may have settled in the weeks after — President Bill Clinton commended Spengler for his instrumental role in the triage operation in the wake of the tragedy — but the pain remains.

“It changed me,” Spengler concluded. “It made me more empathetic, but it also made me compartmentalize. You have to, otherwise, you burn out fast.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14060883/oklahoma-bombing-netflix-timothy-mcveigh-terrorism/

Kanye West and Bianca Censori’s relationship is looking stronger.

The couple was spotted out on a dinner date in Spain on Friday despite the rapper’s confirmation that Censori “dumped” him earlier this year.

Video obtained by Page Six showed the pair entering an Indian restaurant in the Balearic Islands.

The “Carnival” hitmaker — who now goes by the name Ye — wore an oversized hoodie for the outing while Censori donned one of her usual skintight looks, wearing a black bodysuit.

Prior to their Spain outing, the rapper spent some time alone in Japan, where he fled to last month to “decompress” following his many divisive social media rants.

Earlier this month, West rapped that Censori, 30, “ran away” from him on his track, “BIANCA,” which is featured on his new album “WW3.”

“My baby she ran away / But first she tried to get me committed / Not going to the hospital ’cause I am not sick I just do not get it,” West, 47, rapped.

“She’s having a panic attack and she is not liking the way that I tweeted / Until Bianca’s back I stay up all night I’m not going to sleep / I really don’t know where she’s at,” he continued.

He went on to confess in the song that he tracked her location through his Maybach app.

Page Six confirmed Censori and the rapper went their separate ways after two years of marriage on Feb. 13.

At the time, a source told us the former Yeezy architect left him because she had “had enough” of his antisemitic stunts after West started selling Swastika-branded shirts.

“The swastika shirt [he was selling] was the last straw. She told him that’s not who she is, and that she can’t be associated with that,” a source said at the time.

Just a week later, an insider shared that West and Censori “decided to make their marriage work again.”

The source claimed the two had “done a lot of talking” and came to the conclusion that they were “not ready to give up on each other.”

The week of their alleged reconciliation, the couple had been seen together on several different occasions in Los Angeles.

Though the couple, who wed in December 2022, appears to be together, their exact relationship status remains unclear as a source claimed last month that Censori is “frightened” of her husband.

“I think Bianca wants to break up, but it’s not easy. Kanye controls so many aspects of her life,” the insider alleged.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/19/celebrity-news/kanye-west-and-bianca-censori-spotted-on-dinner-date-in-spain-after-he-claimed-she-dumped-him/

Michelle Obama continues to silence the haters.

The former first lady, 61, flashed her wedding ring while out and about in Los Angeles Thursday after shutting down rumors that she and husband Barack Obama are headed for divorce.

Michelle sent a clear message to skeptics while rocking her diamond bands during a visit to The Academy headquarters with her brother and podcast co-host, Craig Robinson.

The mother of two added some other chunky jewelry, including knot earrings, to her olive green ensemble.

Michelle looked stylish in a cardigan and matching sweater, baggy cargo pants, brown sling-back kitten heels and a $3,700 Bottega Veneta “Arco Intrecciato” Leather Tote Bag.

She wore her braided hair back in a long, low ponytail.

Although Barack did not join the outing, the siblings seemed to be in great spirits as they walked and talked with staffers.

The Obamas, who wed in 1992, have not been spotted together since December 2024 following a tiring months-long campaign to support Kamala Harris’ run for presidency.

Michelle decided to take a step back from the spotlight after Donald Trump won the ticket, leading to unfounded speculation that there was trouble in paradise.

The chatter first picked up steam after the 44th US President attended Trump’s inauguration without Michelle.

Although the couple posted about each other on social media, the rumor mill continued to swirl after the “Becoming” author continued to skip public-facing events.

Michelle spent nearly three months out of the spotlight before making her first public appearance of 2025 on the “Jennifer Hudson Show” in March.

Michelle and Robinson, 62, launched their podcast that same month and the former attorney has shared insight into her relationship with Barack in several episodes since.

She also directly addressed speculation that she and the politician, 63, were on the rocks during an episode of Sophia Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast last week.

Michelle explained that she stopped going to political events because it no longer served her — not because there was any tension between her and her husband.

“The interesting thing is that when I say ‘no,’ for the most part, people are like, ‘I get it,’ and I’m OK,” she explained of her choice to take a step back.

“And that’s the thing that we as women struggle with — disappointing people,” she continued. “So much so that people, they couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.”

Michelle laughed about the notion that there was anything wrong with their marriage, adding that it’s hard for people to comprehend “a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself.”

“But that’s what society does to us,” she said. “We actually finally start going, ‘What am I doing? Who am I doing this for?’ And if it doesn’t fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible.”

After spending so many years appeasing others and doing her job as first lady, she noted that it was “time to make some big girl decisions” in her life and “own it fully.”

“If not now, when? What am I waiting for?” she asked. “Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?’ And that changes.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/19/celebrity-news/michelle-obama-flashes-her-wedding-ring-after-shutting-down-barack-divorce-rumors-once-and-for-all/

An 82-year-old woman who teaches the ancient Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu says she has no plans to retire.

“I’ll probably practise Kalari until the day I die,” says Meenakshi Raghavan, widely thought to be the oldest woman in the world to practise the art form.

Kalaripayattu – kalari means battleground and payattu means fight – is believed to have originated at least 3,000 years back in the southern state of Kerala and is regarded as India’s oldest martial art.

It is not solely practised for combat or fighting; it also serves to instil discipline, build strength and develop self-defence skills.

Ms Raghavan is fondly known as Meenakshi Amma – Amma means mother in the Malayalam language – in Kerala’s Vadakara, where she lives. The town is also home to other renowned exponents of the art like Unniyarcha, Aromal Chekavar and Thacholi Othenan.

Meenakshi Amma occasionally performs in other cities but mainly runs her own Kalari school, founded by her husband in 1950. Her days are busy, with classes from five in the morning to noon.

“I teach about 50 students daily. My four children were also trained [in the art form] by me and my husband. They started learning from the age of six,” she says.

Kalaripayattu has four stages and it requires patience to learn the art form.

Training begins with meypattu – an oil massage followed by exercises to condition the body.

After about two years, students progress to kolthari (stick fighting), then to angathari (weapon combat), and finally to verumkai – the highest level, involving unarmed combat. It typically takes up to five years to master Kalaripayattu.

Kung fu is believed to have adapted principles like breathing techniques and marmashastra (stimulating vital points to optimise energy flow) from Kalaripayattu, according to Vinod Kadangal, another Kalari teacher.

Legend has it that around the 6th Century, Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma introduced these techniques to the Shaolin monks, influencing the more famous Chinese martial art.

Meenakshi Amma still recalls the first time she stepped into a Kalari – the red-earth arena where the art is practised – 75 years ago.

“I was seven and quite good at dancing. So my guru – VP Raghavan – approached my father and suggested that I learn Kalaripayattu. Just like dance, the art form requires you to be flexible,” she says.

Hailing from Kerala’s Thiyya community, Meenakshi Amma’s guru was 15 when he and his brothers opened their own Kalaripayattu school after being denied admission elsewhere because of their low social caste.

“There was no bias when it came to girls enrolling to study Kalari – in fact, physical education was compulsory in all Kerala schools at that time. But we were expected to stop after attaining puberty,” she says.

Unlike others, Meenakshi Amma’s father encouraged her training into her late teens. At 17, she fell in love with Raghavan, and they soon married. Together, they went on to train hundreds of students, often for free.

“At the time, a lot of children came from poor families. The only money he [Raghavan] accepted was in the form of dakshina or a tribute paid to the teacher,” she says.

Donations sustained the school, while Raghavan later took a teaching job for extra income. After his death in 2007, Meenakshi Amma formally took charge.

While she has no plans to retire at the moment, she hopes to hand over the school one day to her eldest son Sanjeev.

The 62-year-old, who is also an instructor at the school, says he is lucky to have learnt from the best – his mother. But being her son earns no favours; he says she’s still his toughest opponent.

Meenakshi Amma is a local celebrity. During our interview, three politicians drop by to invite her to an awards ceremony.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyqqz9mr6yo

The Taliban’s acting foreign minister on Saturday expressed “concern and sadness” during a rare meeting with Pakistan’s foreign minister over the deportation of tens of thousands of Afghans, according to a statement.
Pakistan has expelled more than 80,000 Afghan nationals since the end of March, a senior official said on Friday, as part of a renewed surge in a repatriation drive that began in 2023.

But Saturday’s meeting marked a possible thaw in relations for the neighbouring countries, whose forces have also clashed violently in recent months. Islamabad says Islamist militants who have carried out attacks in Pakistan have safe havens in Afghanistan, a charge Kabul denies.
Pakistani foreign minister Ishaq Dar travelled to Kabul for the one-day visit to discuss security and commerce, the first such visit by Pakistan since 2022.
The Taliban administration’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said in a statement he “expressed deep concern and sadness over the situation of Afghan migrants in Pakistan and their forced deportation.”

“He strongly urged Pakistani officials to prevent the violation of the rights of Afghans residing in or arriving in Pakistan,” the statement said, adding that they also discussed a boost to bilateral trade and ensuring returning Afghans could take the proceeds of their property in Pakistan with them.
Pakistan’s foreign office said in a statement that Dar: “emphasised the paramount importance of addressing all pertinent issues, particularly those related to security and border management, in order to fully realise the potential for regional trade and connectivity.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-minister-expresses-concern-pakistan-over-afghan-repatriation-drive-2025-04-19/

Ever since Donald Trump took office in January, migrants entering the United States have increasingly feared the threat of deportation. Now this threat has taken on a new dimension: The possibility of ending up in a high-security prison in El Salvador.

Since March, Trump’s government has deported a total of 271 Salvadoran and Venezuelan migrants from the US to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. Washington claims that the deportees belong to criminal organizations, but has provided no evidence.

Instead, relatives and human rights organizations warn that innocent people with no criminal record are among those who have been deported. The most symbolic case is that of the Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who Washington has acknowledged was deported because of a “procedural error.”

US media reported that Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally in 2011 as a teenager fleeing gang violence. Although his asylum application was rejected in 2019, he was granted a work permit and protection from deportation due to the threat of persecution. Nevertheless, the 29-year-old father of three was arrested in mid-March and deported shortly afterwards.

Washington now claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of the notorious MS-13 gang. His lawyers deny this.

Both Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have refused to return Abrego Garcia to the US. Trump has also ignored a corresponding order from the US Supreme Court.

Instead, the US president is publicly toying with the idea of having US citizens imprisoned in CECOT.

CECOT, which translates as “Center for the Containment of Terrorism,” is the largest high-security prison in Latin America. It opened in January 2023 and has space for 40,000 inmates.

No information about deportees

Ana Maria Mendez Dardon, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America says that the identity and whereabouts of those deported from the US since March are currently unknown. It is therefore unclear whether they are actually being held in CECOT or in another Salvadoran prison.

“Without knowing their identity, it is difficult to verify whether they really have a criminal record. That’s why eight US congressmen sent a letter to Secretary of State Rubio in the midst of this serious human rights crisis, asking him to inform Congress about the details of the agreement” between the US and El Salvador, Dardon told DW.

No details on deportation agreement

“The agreement has not been made public, which is a serious violation of the principles of transparency and accountability,” Irene Cuellar, researcher on Central America for Amnesty International, told DW. “However, press reports indicate that the US is transferring $6 million to the Salvadoran government for one year for the detention of these people.”

She described what she called an “enforced disappearance” of the deportees because they have been granted neither contact with their families nor access to legal counsel.

In her opinion, the pact “opens the door to normalizing institutional violence as an instrument of migration management and foreign policy.” Furthermore, “it directly attacks the fundamental pillars of any democracy: The presumption of innocence, due process and the absolute prohibition of arbitrary detention.”

‘Illegal and unprecedented’

Deporting people from the US to then hold them in a Central American prison “is completely illegal and unprecedented,” said Salvadoran lawyer Leonor Arteaga Rubio, program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation.

“In a democracy, the court should order the immediate release of these people. But in El Salvador there is no independence of powers. The court does what Bukele wants,” she said, adding that “no democracy should support such a model, let alone emulate it.”

Still, Arteaga Rubio predicts that the agreement will hold. Both Trump and Bukele want to send the message “that anyone who is considered an enemy of Trump can be sent to Bukele’s prison, which functions like a black hole, a new Guantanamo from which there is no way out,” she said. In El Salvador, no judge could put a stop to this, she added. “The law in this prison is Bukele’s, with Trump’s full support.”

Trump against the courts?

It remains uncertain how the legal tug-of-war over Kilmar Abrego Garcia will end. The Trump administration has refused to take steps to repatriate the Salvadoran and continues to accuse the 29-year-old of being a criminal gang member without providing any evidence.

“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?” Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen, who is from Abrego Garcia’s home state of Maryland, asked reporters after a meeting with the prisoner in El Salvador.

With US media casting doubt on the alleged criminal past of other migrants who have been deported to CECOT, Van Hollen accused the Trump administration of lying, and criticized their disregard of judicial orders.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-deportations-to-el-salvador-test-legal-limits/a-72289913

CAIRO: The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday (Apr 19) the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.

A month after Israel re-launched intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza following the collapse a ceasefire, Israel was intensifying its attacks. Palestinian health authorities said at least 50 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday.

President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct 7 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority”. His release was at the centre of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.

Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.

“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.

“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.

There was no immediate comment by the Israeli army.

Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on Jan 19. 59 are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.

Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on Mar 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.

Since renewing its attacks, Israel has seized swathes of Gaza and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate in what Palestinians fear is a step towards permanently depopulating swathes of land. The Gaza health ministry says 1,600 people have been killed in the past month.

Palestinian health officials said the military had escalated its strikes across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 92 people in the past 48 hours, at least 50 of them on Saturday.

On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day.

NETANYAHU STATEMENT

Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.

He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions”.

Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.

Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/hamas-says-fate-us-israeli-hostage-unknown-after-guard-killed-israel-strike-5075771

ROME: The United States and Iran made progress in a second round of high-stakes talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme on Saturday (Apr 19) and agreed to meet again next week, both sides said.

The Oman-mediated talks in Rome lasted about four hours, Iranian state television and a senior US official said. Tehran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi declared it a “good meeting” that yielded progress.

“This time we managed to reach a better understanding on a series of principles and goals,” he told Iranian state TV.

The senior US official said in a statement, “Today, in Rome over four hours in our second round of talks, we made very good progress in our direct and indirect discussions.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said the parties had “agreed to resume indirect talks at a technical level over the next few days and subsequently continue at the level of two senior negotiators next Saturday”, Apr 26.

Oman said the third round would be in Muscat, returning to the site of the first talks a week ago.

Those were the first discussions at such a high level between the foes since US President Donald Trump abandoned a landmark nuclear accord in 2018.

Western countries including the United States have long accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, an allegation Tehran has consistently denied, insisting that its programme is for peaceful civilian purposes.

After Saturday’s talks, Oman’s foreign ministry said Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff had agreed to keep negotiating.

The talks, it said, “aim to seal a fair, enduring and binding deal which will ensure Iran (is) completely free of nuclear weapons and sanctions, and maintaining its ability to develop peaceful nuclear energy”.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said the talks were “gaining momentum and now even the unlikely is possible”.

Baqaei said the delegations had been “in two different rooms” at the Omani ambassador’s residence, with Albusaidi passing messages between them.

Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

After returning to office in January, Trump revived his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Iran.

In March he wrote to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urging renewed nuclear talks while also warning of military action if diplomacy failed.

“I’m not in a rush” to use the military option, Trump said Thursday. “I think Iran wants to talk.”

On Friday, Araghchi said Iran “observed a degree of seriousness” on the US side during the first round but questioned their “intentions and motivations”.

‘Crucial stage’

In an interview published Wednesday by French newspaper Le Monde, the United Nations nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb, noting a day later that talks were “at a very crucial stage”.

During Trump’s first term, Washington withdrew from the 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers that offered Iran relief from international sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

Tehran complied with the agreement for a year after Trump’s withdrawal before scaling back its compliance.

Araghchi was a negotiator of the 2015 deal. His US counterpart, Witkoff, is a real estate magnate Trump has also tasked with talks on Ukraine.

Iran currently enriches uranium up to 60 percent, far above the 3.67 percent limit in the deal but still below the 90 percent threshold required for weapons-grade material.

On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged European countries to decide whether to trigger the “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 agreement, which would automatically reinstate UN sanctions on Iran over its non-compliance.

The option to trigger the mechanism expires in October.

Iran has previously warned it could withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the mechanism were triggered.

‘Non-negotiable’

Analysts had said the United States would push to include discussions over Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its support for militants in the Middle East.

But Araghchi said Saturday the US side had “not raised any issues unrelated to the nuclear topic so far”.

He said earlier this week Iran’s right to enrich uranium was “non-negotiable”, after Witkoff called for its complete halt. Witkoff had previously demanded only that Iran return to the ceiling set by the 2015 deal.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-iran-report-progress-nuclear-talks-will-meet-again-5076146

China’s shipbuilders on Saturday blasted as “short-sighted” U.S. port fees announced by President Donald Trump’s administration on China-linked ships, a measure aimed at the nation’s shipbuilding industry.
Trump signed an order on Wednesday aimed at reviving U.S. shipbuilding and reducing China’s grip on the global shipping industry. His government the next day watered the measures down by shielding domestic exporters and vessel owners serving the Great Lakes, the Caribbean and U.S. territories.

The spat over ocean shipping, which conveys 80% of global trade, is the latest conflict in an intensifying trade war between China and the U.S. that has pushed levies on each other’s imports beyond 100%.
The China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry expressed “extreme indignation and resolute opposition” to the U.S measures, joining protests from the government and country’s shipowners.
“The decline of the U.S. shipbuilding industry is the result of its protectionism and has nothing to do with China,” the shipbuilders said in a statement.
It warned the U.S. restrictions would disrupt the global maritime system, lead to soaring shipping costs, further push up U.S. inflation and harm the interest of the U.S. people.

“We call on the international maritime industry to jointly resist this short-sighted U.S. behaviour, and jointly maintain a fair market environment,” the industry body said, adding it expects Chinese authorities to take strong countermeasures.
The government protested against the “discriminatory” steps on Friday, urging Washington to “correct wrongdoings.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-shipbuilders-rip-trumps-short-sighted-us-port-fees-2025-04-19/

The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily barred the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members under a rarely used wartime law, but the government urged the justices to lift their order.
The court issued the decision after lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union asked it to intervene on an emergency basis, saying dozens of Venezuelan migrants faced imminent deportation without the judicial review the justices previously ordered.

“The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the justices said earlier in a brief, unsigned decision.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissented from the decision, issued around 12:55 a.m. (0455 GMT).
The Trump administration filed a response on Saturday afternoon urging the justices, once they review the matter further, to formally reject the ACLU’s request on the migrants’ behalf.
The White House responded that President Donald Trump would stay the course in his immigration crackdown but gave no immediate indication that the administration would defy the Supreme Court, appearing for now to avert a potential constitutional crisis between coequal branches of government.

Although it was unclear where the Venezuelan migrants were headed, the Trump administration already has deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador more than 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran men it claims are gang members.
The deportees included Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant whom the administration admitted was removed by mistake, igniting an outcry over its immigration policy.
Many of the migrants’ lawyers and family members say they were not gang members and had no chance to dispute the government’s assertion that they were.
“We are confident in the lawfulness of the Administration’s actions and in ultimately prevailing against an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of terrorist aliens than those of the American people,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The case has raised questions about whether Trump, who has shown a willingness at times to defy court decisions since returning to office on January 20, will comply with limits set by the nation’s highest court.

MEN LOADED ABOARD BUSES

The high court majority issued Saturday’s stay after ACLU lawyers filed urgent requests for immediate action in multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, after reporting that some of the men already had been loaded aboard buses and were told they were to be deported.
The ACLU said the administration was poised to deport the men using a 1798 law that historically has been employed only in wartime without affording them a realistic opportunity to contest their removal – as the Supreme Court had ordered.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in a written filing, asked the court to lift its temporary order halting the deportations to first allow lower courts to resolve the “adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive.”

Barring that action, Sauer wrote, the court should clarify its order to say that it “does not preclude the government from removing detainees pursuant to authorities other than the Alien Enemies Act.”
Sauer said the government provided advance notice with “adequate time” to the detainees prior to starting deportations – though he did not say how much time was given.
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement earlier on Saturday: “These men were in imminent danger of spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had a chance to go to court. We are relieved that the Supreme Court has not permitted the administration to whisk them away the way others were just last month.”
In an audio recording posted on TikTok, several men said they were Venezuelans falsely accused of being gang members and held at Bluebonnet immigration detention center in Texas. They said they were taken by bus to a regional airport late on Friday but then returned.
The recording has not been verified by Reuters. An earlier post on TikTok from the same account was cited in court filings on Friday.
More than 50 Venezuelans had been scheduled to be flown out of the country — presumably to El Salvador — from the immigration center, the New York Times cited two people with knowledge of the situation as saying.
Among the detainees was Diover Millan, 24, a Venezuelan who came to the U.S. in 2023, had no criminal record and was granted temporary protected status, according to his wife, who declined to give her full name for fear of retaliation.
“I’m scared,” she said her husband, who was arrested in Atlanta last month, told her. The men were told they would be being taken to the CECOT prison in El Salvador but the bus turned back after one of the officials got a phone call, she said.
Elected last year on a promise to crack down on migrants, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in a bid to swiftly deport accused members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang originating from Venezuelan prisons that his administration labels a terrorist group.
Trump and his senior aides have asserted their executive power grants them wide authority on immigration matters, testing the balance of power between branches of government.
The administration scored one victory on Friday when an appeals court put on hold a threat by District Judge James Boasberg of contempt charges.
Trump previously called for Boasberg’s impeachment following an adverse ruling, prompting a rare rebuke from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.

HABEAS CORPUS RELIEF

The Venezuelans’ deportation would be the first since the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that allowed removals under the 1798 law while specifying that “the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
Habeas corpus relief refers to the right of detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. It is considered a bedrock right under U.S. law.
The Supreme Court did not indicate how much notice should be provided. Lawyers around the country have asked that the migrants be given 30 days’ notice to allow them to contest their deportations.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-temporarily-blocks-deportations-venezuelan-migrants-under-2025-04-19/

Pakistan has deported more than 19,500 Afghans this month, among more than 80,000 who have left ahead of a 30 April deadline, according to the UN.

Pakistan has accelerated its drive to expel undocumented Afghans and those who had temporary permission to stay, saying it can no longer cope.

Between 700 and 800 families are being deported daily, Taliban officials say, with up to two million people expected to follow in the coming months.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul on Saturday for talks with Taliban officials. His counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed “deep concern” about deportations.

She kept her p-p-p-poker face on.

Lady Gaga powered through a technical blunder that took place during her headlining set for Weekend 2 of Coachella 2025 Friday night.

The pop superstar’s microphone went out while she was in the middle of performing “Abracadabra,” the lead single off her new album, “Mayhem.”

Gaga — who treats her Little Monsters to a fashion feast of several high-fashion looks throughout the festival concert — was dressed at the time in a larger-than-life red ruffled gown made by Jet Sets.

In social media video of the mishap, the Grammy winner could be heard singing, “When the devil turns around,” as the sound from the mic begins to go in and out.

However, Gaga played it cool and continued to sing the rest of the track and do her choreography.

Later in the set, she addressed what occurred, telling her fans, “I’m sorry my mic was broken for a second… at least you know I sing live!” and laughed off the minor setback.

She added, “I guess, all we can do is our best, right? I’m definitely giving you my best tonight.”

People online praised the “Paparazzi” singer for how she handled the situation, with one person writing on X, “the way lady gaga handled her microphone malfunctioning was truly professional… what a legend 😭.”

Another agreed, “Didn’t miss a beat and kept the show going! Truly a living legend.”

Last week, Gaga hit the stage for her first headlining set of Coachella 2025, and it went off without a hitch.

In the nearly two-hour set, the “Bad Romance” singer paid homage to several of her past music videos.

Gaga also headlined in 2017 after Beyoncé had to drop out last minute. However, leading up to her return to the music festival this year, the “Just Dance” singer shared her excitement for what she had in store.

She told Uproxx, “I’ve been lucky that I’ve had some real success since the last time I performed at Coachella. But also, I love my new album so much, and I’m so excited to perform it live. I can’t wait.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/19/entertainment/lady-gagas-mic-malfunctions-in-the-middle-of-her-coachella-2025-performance/

ONE of the world’s most bizarre marathons has seen 21 humanoid robots face off against 12,000 real runners – but who came out on top?

The historic first ever competitive race between man and bot was about as fascinating as it sounds with incredible pictures showing the AI machines trying to navigate the 13-mile course.

All of the runners had been specifically trained to compete in the half marathon with some even wearing running trainers and donning boxing gloves.

The athletic androids came from various Chinese manufacturers, such as DroidVP and Noetix Robotics.

And they appeared to come in all shapes and sizes – with some of the designs being as tall as 1.8 metres, and others resembling adolescent bots at just 1.2 metres tall.

The rules of the race said that the robots had to resemble actual people – wheels were deemed cheating.

One of the manufacturers boasted that its invention resembled a feminine runner which could even wink at onlookers.

The racing robots were accompanied by flesh-and-blood athletes, some of whom had to physically support the machines during the run.

But one triumphant machine came out on top.

It pushed through the marathon in just two hours and 40 minutes, beating out all the other bots.

Tiangong Ultra, made by the Beijing Innovation Center of Human Robotics, proved to be the fastest.

On the other hand, the men’s winner of the mixed race finished in just one hour and two minutes.

Some of the bots didn’t actually finish the race.

One droid fell at the starting line – seeming to rest for a few minutes before eventually getting up and setting off.

Another dramatically crashed into a railing after running a short distance – throwing its human operator on the floor in the process.

The Beijing robotics centre’s chief officer Tang Jian said that winner Tiangong Ultra’s performance was made possible by long legs and a genius algorithm.

This allowed it to accurately imitate how humans run a marathon – as well as change battery just three times during the race.

The chief said: “I don’t want to boast but I think no other robotics firms in the West have matched Tiangong’s sporting achievements.”

Humanoid robots have appeared at marathons in China over the past year – but this marks the first time in history they have raced alongside humans.

Computer science professor Alan Fern said that such tech displays do little to demonstrate artificial intelligence’s ability to demonstrate “useful work or basic intelligence” – despite boastful claims by Beijing.

He added that the software enabling humanoid bots to run was shown off over five years ago.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14062918/human-robot-marathon/

A WOMAN was shocked to discover several creepy tunnels dug underneath her home.

Social media users speculate that these tunnels could be related to something even more sinister.

The woman, who goes by the name Victoria Vale, shared her discovery on Reddit after she recorded an hour-long DJ set in her home’s basement.

“Found a network of tunnels and rooms under my house,” she title her post.

“There are many stained blankets, with perhaps blood.

“The tunnels just keep going, maybe 5 rooms? Some rooms have power, others with flowing water.”

Attached to the post, she shared five eerie photos of a decrepit basement with stairs leading into it.

In the basement, there appears to be a tunnel system with windows that let in little outside light.

The DJ elaborated on the mystifying tunnel’s condition in the comments.

She said that the floor is wet and made of dirt and that the tunnel goes under a road.

In total, there are over five rooms littered with cockroaches.

The post sparked major interest from Redditors, with over 1,500 users commenting their takes on the bizarre basement.

“The Last of Us origin story,” one user replied, comparing the basement to HBO’s hit show about the end of the world based on the video game, The Last of Us.

Others joked that the basement resembles the horror movie, Barbarian.

“Instantly thought of Barbarian when I saw this post,” one person commented, with dozens of other users agreeing.

One person speculated that maybe the basement has historical ties to the Underground Railroad.

“[She] said there were blankets, stained possibly with blood. First thing I thought of, as an American in the mid-Atlantic region near the Mason-Dixon Line, was a stop on the Underground Railroad,” one commenter wrote.

More concerned commenters recommended that the poster get the basement checked for radon.

The radioactive substance can cause lung cancer and other serious health issues if left untreated.

“Radon detectors aren’t cheap but they’re easier than tests and you can see the results yourself,” one user wrote.

“Better than decades later when you regret not having thought about radon.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14061353/scary-tunnels-under-home-reddit/

THE birth mother of the alleged Florida State University gunman hurled insults in an angry social media tirade right before her son was named as the suspect.

Phoenix Ikner, 20, was arrested on Thursday after allegedly gunning down two victims and wounding six others in a sick attack at FSU.

But before he was named as the shooter, his birth mom Anne-Mari Eriksen shared a post criticizing Phoenix’s dad, Christopher.

Eriksen and Christopher were locked in a custody dispute that spanned more than 15 years, according to court documents seen by CBS News.

The nasty custody battle started in 2007 and continued until 2023.

While the dispute was ongoing, Eriksen accused Christopher and his wife, Jessica, of slander and she filed a lawsuit in 2015. The case was dismissed just one year later.

On Thursday, Eriksen berated Christopher and Jessica online – just moments before Ikner was unmasked as the suspect.

She accused Christopher of being unstable and claimed they were not replying to her messages when she asked about Ikner, according to a now-deleted post seen by The Mail.

Eriksen claimed the family is “nuts” before continuing to hurl insults about Christopher.

“He should write a book on how to parent badly, but he can’t communicate,” she claimed.

Eriksen later deleted the social media post.

More information about Ikner and his upbringing has emerged after he was shot and arrested on campus.

He was previously known as Christian Eriksen before changing his name in 2020.

The name change came years after Anne-Mari was found guilty over allegations that she illegally removed a child from Florida.

Court documents seen by ABC said she took her son to Norway in March 2015 without permission.

Anne-Mari and Ikner have dual citizenship, according to the court filing.

Anne-Mari was arrested at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport in July of that year.

Her Facebook account is littered with pictures of Ikner from when he was a small child.

The United States and Japan must cooperate more on defense in the face of an increasingly confrontational China, new US ambassador to Tokyo, George Glass, said upon his arrival in the country on Friday.

Tokyo has started a historic military build-up in recent years and has embarked on various projects with Washington to align their forces and defense sectors.

Meanwhile, Japan is also trying to negotiate its way out of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs.

Although a 90-day pause temporarily spared Japan from 24% across-the-board tariffs, a 10% baseline tariff and a 25% tax on imported cars, auto parts, steel and aluminum exports still remain in place.

“I’ve met now with most of the principals who are in the room and doing the negotiating… I’m extremely optimistic that a deal will get done,” Glass said.

‘Japan in a very tough neighborhood’

Glass said Washington was focused on the safety of US and Japanese citizens and ensuring the military had all the support and materiel it needed to counter Beijing’s increasing assertiveness.

“We sit with Japan in a very tough neighborhood. You have Russia, you have China, and you have North Korea,” Glass told reporters at the Japanese capital’s Haneda airport, adding the allies needed to “push back against a country like China”.

“This is currently a partnership between the United States and Japan that is a powerful force for peace, a powerful force for prosperity, and a powerful force for progress in the region.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Glass’s remarks.

How has China responded?

Responding to Glass’s comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said diplomats should promote friendship between countries rather than smear them.

He stressed that China has been a force for international peace.

“Who is flaunting military force, provoking confrontation and threatening peace everywhere?” Lin told a regular press briefing. “The international community has never been clearer about this.”

What does the US want Japan to do?

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his displeasure at the cost of defense alliances.

Japan hosts the biggest overseas deployment of US troops internationally and is also a base for squadrons of US fighter jets and Washington’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group.

Glass told his ambassadorial confirmation hearing in March that he would need to push Japan to pay more toward military support.

The US president has made no secret of his displeasure at the cost of defense alliances.

He reportedly wants Japan to pay more for hosting 54,000 US troops, mostly in the southern island prefecture of Okinawa. Japan currently pays about $1.4 billion (just over €1.2 billion) annually to keep the US military presence.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-envoy-urges-japan-to-push-back-against-china/a-72282233

Lionel Messi has poured cold water on the idea of a heated rivalry between Argentina and Mexico, saying that the alleged tensions between the teams simply do not exist.

Video footage of an incident in the dressing room after the Mexico v Argentina group match at the 2022 Qatar World Cup appeared to show Messi nudging Mexico captain Andres Guardado’s jersey, sparking a media storm.

“They put themselves in a position of having a rivalry with us that doesn’t really exist,” Messi told Simplemente Futbol.

“There is no comparison between Argentina and Mexico and I don’t know where it comes from.”

Messi insisted his relationship with the country remained positive.

“I’ve always felt very loved by the Mexican people, I’ve never disrespected anyone,” he said.

The eight-times Ballon d’Or winner recalled his decisive goal against Mexico in Qatar, describing it as a huge relief that revitalised his team’s campaign on a day when the Mexican supporters dominated the stands.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sport/messi-plays-down-argentina-mexico-rivalry-5075121

Meredith Marks has became the latest “Real Housewife” to get called out for heavily editing Instagram photos of herself.

In the photos shared on Friday, Marks, 53, smiles and posed in a stairwell while wearing a metallic, monochrome ensemble.

“Jealousy is a disease, to which I say, ‘Get well soon!’v💖💎✨ #RHOSLC,” she captioned the post, quoting her famous tagline on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”

Shortly after Marks uploaded the images, a number of her followers accused the star of abusing Facetune, the popular photoshop app.

“Love you but the editing is criminal,” one Instagram user said, while another wrote, “I feel like this is almost rage bait.”

“Is this Meredith?” someone else asked. “I am not even being rude, genuinely confused. Because this is not what she looks like.”

“We need to rip FaceTune from the clutches of all the Housewives until we get this sorted out,” another fan added.

Similarly, “Real Housewives of New York City” alum Ramona Singer was recently blasted by fans after she was caught heavily editing one of her Instagram pics last week.

Singer, 68 posted a snap of herself posing with friends Steven LaRochelle and Mo Kanafani during a night out in Palm Beach, Fla.

She appeared to have digitally touched up her face, as her forehead, cheeks and nose looked perfectly smooth. However, she neglected to edit the skin on her arm and hand.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/18/celebrity-news/meredith-marks-trolled-over-criminal-facetune-on-new-photo/

Donald Trump has said the US will “take a pass” on brokering further Russia-Ukraine talks if Moscow or Kyiv “make it very difficult” to reach a peace deal.

The US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he was not expecting a truce to happen in “a specific number of days” but he wanted it done “quickly”.

His comments came hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US would abandon talks unless there were clear signs of progress within days.

“We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end,” Rubio said, adding that the US had “other priorities to focus on”.

This comes as Russian strikes on Ukraine continue, with two people reported killed and more than 100 injured in the north-eastern cities of Kharkiv and Sumy on Friday.

Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Russian troops have been advancing – albeit slowly – in eastern Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin has placed a number of conditions on any potential ceasefire.

When asked about a deal between Russian and Ukraine, Trump said: “We’re talking about here people dying. We’re going to get it stopped, ideally.

“Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass.”

Despite the Trump administration’s initial confidence that it could secure a deal quickly, attempts to reach a full ceasefire have yet to materialise, with Washington blaming both sides.

Following a meeting with European leaders in Paris about a potential ceasefire on Thursday, Rubio told reporters on Friday: “We need to determine very quickly now – and I’m talking about a matter of days – whether or not this is doable.”

“If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on,” he said about truce talks.

He admitted that a peace deal would be difficult to strike.

Trump had said before he re-entered office that he would stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked to respond to Trump saying he expected an answer from Russia on a ceasefire, said “the negotiations taking place are quite difficult”.

“The Russian side is striving to reach a peace settlement in this conflict, to ensure its own interests, and is open to dialogue,” he said.

During a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance said he was still “optimistic” about ending the Ukraine war.

“I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and also some of the things that have happened even in the past 24 hours,” he said.

“I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war – this very brutal war – to a close.”

Vance’s comments followed separate news that Ukraine and the US took the first step towards striking a minerals deal, after an initial agreement was derailed when a February meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky erupted into a public shouting match.

On Thursday, the two countries signed a memorandum of intent on setting up an investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction as part of an economic partnership agreement.

The aim is to finalise the deal by 26 April, the memo published by the Ukrainian government says.

The details of any deal remain unclear. Previous leaks have suggested the agreement has been extended beyond minerals to control of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, as well as its oil and gas.

Ukrainian negotiators have tried to resist Trump’s demands that a joint investment fund would pay back the US for previous military aid, but have seemingly accepted his claim that it would help the country recover after the war ends.

The memo said the “American people desire to invest alongside the Ukrainian people in a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.

Zelensky had been hoping to use the deal to secure a US security guarantee in the event of a ceasefire deal, telling European leaders last month that “a ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine”.

The US has so far resisted providing Kyiv with security guarantees.

The White House argues the mere presence of US businesses would put off Russia from further aggression, but that did not exactly work when they invaded in 2022.

Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced the signing of the memorandum on X, with pictures of Svyrydenko and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately signing the document over an online call.

“There is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reason to expect that the document will be very beneficial for both countries,” Svyrydenko wrote.

Bessent said the details were still being worked out but the deal is “substantially what we’d agreed on previously.”

Trump hinted at the deal during a press conference with Meloni, saying “we have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on (next) Thursday… and I assume they’re going to live up to the deal. So we’ll see. But we have a deal on that”.

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, an MP and the chair of Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on EU Integration, told the BBC the Ukrainian parliament would have “the last word” in the deal.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20x5xn1g92o

Every iPhone comes with a label which tells you it was designed in California.

While the sleek rectangle that runs many of our lives is indeed designed in the United States, it is likely to have come to life thousands of miles away in China: the country hit hardest by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, now rising to 245% on some Chinese imports.

Apple sells more than 220 million iPhones a year and by most estimates, nine in 10 are made in China. From the glossy screens to the battery packs, it’s here that many of the components in an Apple product are made, sourced and assembled into iPhones, iPads or Macbooks. Most are shipped to the US, Apple’s largest market.

Luckily for the firm, Trump suddenly exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from his tariffs last week.

But the comfort is short-lived.

The president has since suggested that more tariffs are coming: “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’,” he wrote on Truth Social, as his administration investigated “semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN”.

The global supply chain that Apple has touted as a strength is now a vulnerability.

The US and China, the world’s two biggest economies, are interdependent and Trump’s staggering tariffs have upended that relationship overnight, leading to an inevitable question: who is the more dependent of the two?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he discussed his country’s potential to collaborate with the US on “technology and innovation” during a conversation with Elon Musk.

On Friday, Modi shared a post on X detailing his telephone conversation with the tech billionaire and said they had revisited topics from their meeting in Washington earlier this year.

Modi’s conversation with Musk comes as India is working towards securing a bilateral trade agreement with the US to offset the brunt of US President Donald Trump’s potential tariffs.

It also comes days before US Vice-President JD Vance’s four-day trip to India.

“We discussed the immense potential for collaboration in the areas of technology and innovation,” Modi wrote in his post on X.

He added that India remained “committed to advancing our partnerships with the US” in these domains.

Musk, who is seen as being close to Trump and also heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is looking at making inroads into India with his business plans.

In March, Starlink signed an agreement with two of India’s biggest telecoms firms to bring satellite internet to India and is awaiting government approval to start providing its services.

• Musk’s X is suing India, as Tesla and Starlink plan entry
• Musk v Ambani: Billionaires battle over India’s satellite internet

Tesla could also finally be making its debut and has begun hiring for a dozen jobs in Delhi and Mumbai. It is also reportedly hunting for showrooms in both cities.

Meanwhile, Vance is set to meet Modi on 21 April, the first day of his trip, for discussions on economic, trade and geopolitical ties.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8073ggz1eeo

Police in Pakistan have made dozens of arrests following a string of protests targeting KFC branches across the country which led to one man being killed.

Protesters, angry at the war in Gaza, have been urging a boycott of the chain, claiming it’s a symbol of the United States and its ally Israel.

At least 20 attempted attacks on KFC outlets have been recorded across the country in the past week, Pakistan’s Minister of State for the Interior Talal Chaudhry told the BBC.

Videos on social media show mobs armed with iron rods entering KFC stores and threatening to burn them down before police arrive to arrest protesters. In Karachi, two stores were set on fire.

A video on social media shows a man yelling, “They are buying bullets with the money you make.”

Condemning the violence, Chaudhry said that “most of the vendors involved are Pakistani” and “the profits go to Pakistanis”.

A police officer confirmed to BBC News that the man who was killed, 45-year-old Asif Nawaz, was a staff member at KFC who was shot during one of the protests in the city of Sheikhupura, on the outskirts of Lahore, on 14 April.

Sheikhupura Regional Police Officer Athar Ismail said Nawaz was working in the kitchen at the time and was hit in the shoulder by a bullet that was fired from a pistol more than 100ft away. He told BBC News that the main culprit is still at large, but that police have made 40 arrests so far.

A bullet fired from that distance is not usually fatal, but a post-mortem found that after hitting his shoulder, the bullet travelled towards his chest.

Mr Ismail told BBC News there was no evidence so far that suggested Mr Nawaz was the intended target and the shooting may have been accidental.

Across Pakistan, influential figures have condemned the war in Gaza.

The Islamist party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has called for protests against Israel and the US, but has denied any involvement in the attacks on KFC.

Pakistan’s most influential Sunni scholar, Mufti Taqi Usmani, has encouraged a boycott of products perceived to be linked to the war.

But both have urged protesters to avoid resorting to violence.

Usmani said in remarks made at the National Palestine Conference on Thursday that while it was essential to boycott products and companies from or linked to Israel, Islam “is not a religion that encourages harming others” and said it is prohibited to “throw stones or put anyone’s life at risk”.

“So, continue your protest and boycott, but do so in a peaceful manner. There should not be any element of violence or non-peaceful behavior,” he said.

TLP spokesman Rehan Mohsin Khan said the group “has urged Muslims to boycott Israeli products, but it has not given any call for protest outside KFC”.

There have been several cases of Western brands facing attacks, boycotts and protests in Pakistan and other Muslim countries since Israel’s war on Gaza began.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x81r4nxdeo

Healthcare in the Gaza Strip is itself a casualty of 18 months of war between Israel and Hamas. With doctors struggling to cope, the BBC followed one GP through her shift at a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic.

By 07:30, a slight figure in a pink headscarf, Dr Wissam Sukkar, is picking her way through the devastated streets of Gaza City.

“I was walking for around 50 minutes to reach our clinic,” she explains when she is met by a local BBC journalist who helped us log her day. With virtually no fuel left in Gaza, few taxis are running.

“With our limited resources we’re still trying to be here in northern Gaza through these difficult times,” adds Dr Sukkar.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) says that only 21 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are currently partially functional. Medical supplies are running critically low due to Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza.

The GP points out what is left of her former workplace, an MSF burns clinic that came under fire in the early weeks of the war, during street battles between Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters.

Her team has now converted an office towards the west of Gaza City into a clinic – and by 09:30, as Dr Sukkar is putting on her white robe, there are already some 150 people waiting outside in a tented reception area.

“Most of our patients are displaced people,” Dr Sukkar says. “They live in shelters, they even live in tents in the streets.”

Since a ceasefire collapsed a month ago, thousands of Gazans have once again left their homes and fled to this neighbourhood, seeking safety.

With little food and clean water, there is a rise in malnutrition and diseases – from stomach bugs to scabies. The elderly and young are worst affected, and the first patients of the day are babies with viral infections.

“We receive a lot of children who suffer from upper respiratory tract infections and diarrhoea. In the shelters, there are a lot of children in the same place and a virus can spread very quickly,” the doctor explains.

One toddler has his face dotted with mosquito bites and Dr Sukkar administers some soothing cream. As cooking gas has run out, families have taken to using open fires to heat food and this has also led to an increase in serious burns.

Within an hour, Dr Sukkar and three other physicians have seen dozens of patients. But there are many whom they struggle to help.

“We have more and more challenges with the huge number of patients with less and less medical supplies,” Dr Sukkar says wearily.

“Also, we receive complicated cases, and we don’t know where to refer these patients because the health system in Gaza has collapsed.”

There has been an influx in seriously wounded patients arriving at the clinic since last Sunday, when Israeli warplanes attacked al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City.

Israel accused Hamas of using a hospital building as a “command and control centre”; something the armed group denied.

Al-Ahli – which was the main medical site for treating trauma in northern Gaza – can no longer accept patients. The WHO says the emergency room, laboratory, X-ray machines and pharmacy were destroyed.

“I started my treatment at al-Shifa hospital, then I got transferred to al-Ahli and they bombed it,” says Saeed Barkat, an older man with a fractured thigh bone, who arrives at the MSF clinic on crutches.

He had surgery after he was wounded by Israeli artillery fire on the shelter where he was staying late last year. He has pins in his leg, and it is swollen.

“I came here for any treatment and to follow-up,” says Mr Barkat, as nurses change his dressing and give new painkillers.

At midday, when Dr Sukkar checks on the small pharmacy at the clinic, she looks worried. Many of the shelves are bare.

Israel closed all crossings to Gaza at the start of March, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages it is holding. Since then, no aid has entered.

“For diabetes, we don’t have insulin, we don’t have treatments for epilepsy, we don’t have basic medicines like anti-fever drugs,” Dr Sukkar says.

“It’s the season for skin infections and we don’t have creams or ointments for bacterial infections, no medicines to treat scabies and head lice.”

The doctors are rationing the supplies that remain.

“We are doing our best so that it will be enough for the coming week,” sums up Dr Sukkar, “but we expect that our stock will run out in more or less two weeks.”

Soon Dr Sukkar is back in her consultation room. The rush of patients continues with many more sick children. They have coughs, fevers and stomach upsets.

By 15:30, it is time to close up the clinic for the day. The four doctors here calculate that they have seen nearly 390 patients.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgekpvj3rko

Most U.S. stocks climbed Thursday, but the worst drop for UnitedHealth Group in a quarter of a century kept Wall Street in check.

The S&P 500 edged up by just 0.1%, even though three of every four stocks climbed in the index. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1% in a mostly steadier performance following its sell-off the day before.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 527 points, or 1.3%, largely because of just stock. UnitedHealth Group lost more than a fifth of its value and fell 22.4% following a weaker-than-expected profit report.

Helping to lead the way higher on Wall Street was Eli Lilly, which jumped 14.3% after the drugmaker reported encouraging results for a once-daily pill that could help treat people with obesity and diabetes.

Stocks of companies in the oil-and-gas industry also rallied after the price of crude rose to recover some of its sharp losses taken this month. Diamondback Energy jumped 5.7%, and Halliburton climbed 5.1%.

Technology stocks held firmer after global heavyweight Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported a profit for the latest quarter that matched analysts’ expectations. Perhaps more importantly, it also said it hasn’t seen a drop-off in activity from its customers because of President Donald Trump’s trade war, as some other companies have suggested.

Still, the company known as TSMC was cautious. “While we have not seen any changes in our customers’ behavior so far, uncertainties and risks from the potential impact from tariff policies exist,” Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang said. TSMC’s stock that trades in the United States added 0.1%.

They helped offset UnitedHealth’s drop, its worst since 1998, after it slashed its forecast for financial results this year. It was surprised by how much care its Medicare Advantage customers were getting from doctors and outpatient services, which was above the company’s expectations.

Another high-profile stock, Nvidia, weighed on the market after sinking a second straight day following its disclosure that new export limits on chips to China could hurt its first-quarter results by $5.5 billion. It sank 2.9% and was the second-heaviest weight on the S&P 500.

All told, the S&P 500 added 7.00 points to 5,282.70. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 527.16 to 39,142.23, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 20.71 to 16,286.45.

Uncertainty still remains high about tariffs, which Trump wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States and trim how much more it imports than it exports. Economists worry that the tariffs could cause a recession if fully implemented and left in place for a while.

Trump on Thursday offered some encouraging signals that negotiations with other countries could lead to lower tariffs, which is what Wall Street is hoping for.

The uncertainty about what will happen in Trump’s on-again-off-again rollout of tariffs, though, could damage the economy by itself. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped send stocks lower Wednesday when he reiterated that Trump’s tariffs appear to be larger than the central bank was expecting, which could in turn slow the economy and raise inflation more than it had earlier thought.

That could set up a dilemma for the Fed. It could cut interest rates to help the economy, but that would also push inflation higher. It has no good tool to fix both at the same time. Powell said again on Wednesday that the Fed would wait to see how conditions play out more before moving on interest rates.

Trump criticized that stance Thursday, saying the Fed is “always TOO LATE AND WRONG.” He also said, “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

That could spook Wall Street. An independent Fed able to act without influence from the White House is one of the primary reasons the United States has benefited from its reputation as a safe place to invest. History suggests central banks with more autonomy tend to have economies with lower and more stable inflation.

Research also suggests Trump’s past attacks on the Fed in favor of lower interest rates may have helped drive expectations in financial markets for lower rates, which in turn may have had some influence on the Fed. But conditions are different this time around from when inflation was low during Trump’s first term.

“This request for lower rates could backfire if markets perceive that going forward the Fed will be less committed to low and stable inflation,” said Francesco Bianchi, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.32% from 4.29% late Wednesday. It had been easing for much of this week, following last week’s scary rise. That sudden climb last week had raised concerns that Trump’s frenetic moves in his trade war may be causing investors worldwide to lose faith in U.S. investments as the world’s safest.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/stock-market-trump-tariffs-bonds-trade-7ddec17196daa9c9ae4c1802738abd21

Vice President JD Vance and his family will travel to Italy and India this week and next to meet with leaders and visit cultural sites.

Vance’s office said Wednesday his trip from Friday to April 24 will include visits to Rome and New Delhi along with the Indian cities of Jaipur and Agra.

The trip comes as Vance has taken on a prime role in the White House’s engagements abroad. The Republican vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, traveled to Greenland last month, and he went to Paris and Munich in February.

President Donald Trump is expected to make his first foreign trip in May to Saudi Arabia.

In Rome this week, Vance is expected to meet with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is due to visit the White House on Thursday. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, will also meet with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, according to his office, and is expected to participate in ceremonies around Easter Sunday.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/vance-travel-italy-india-3e15a473751a24be3eca09d5cdf1009c

US District Judge James Boasberg denied an emergency request from lawyers for alleged Venezuelan gang members Thursday seeking to block “imminent” deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing suspected Tren de Aragua gang members being detained in Texas, had asked Boasberg to issue a temporary restraining order requiring 30 days’ notice from the Trump administration before any of their clients are deported under the 18th-century law after learning the removal notices had recently been issued to detainees.

“I’m sympathetic to your conundrum, but I don’t think I have the power to do anything about it,” Boasberg said during an emergency hearing in the District Court for Washington, DC.

The judge noted that a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, which lifted his pause on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, determined that if “detainees are confined in Texas … venue is improper in the District of Columbia.”

Boasberg also received assurances from the Trump administration that no deportation flights under the rarely used wartime law would take place Friday night.

“I’ve also been told that there are no flights tonight, and that the people I spoke to were not aware of any plans for flights tomorrow,” Justice Department official Drew Ensign told the court.

After a recess, Ensign clarified that after contacting the Department of Homeland Security, he was “told to say that they reserve the right to remove people tomorrow.”

“It is very concerning, but at this point I just don’t think I have the ability to grant relief to the plaintiffs,” Boasberg said. “I just don’t really see how you’re asking me to do anything different from what the Supreme Court said I couldn’t do.”

The judge issued an order formally denying the ACLU’s request after the hearing.

The ACLU has separately petitioned the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court seeking the same temporary restraining order.

“Late last night and early today, Plaintiffs learned that the government has begun giving notices of removal to class members, in English only, which do not say how much time individuals have to contest their removal or even how to do so,” the ACLU’s motion to the DC district court stated.

“And officers last night told class members that they will be removed within 24 hours, which expires as early as this afternoon,” the filing continued.

“Upon information and belief, individuals have already been loaded on to buses.”

The ACLU also cited a Friday night ABC News report indicating that Plans for more deportations under the Alien Enemies Act are underway and flights are “imminent,” according to a US official.

“We are not going to reveal the details of counter terrorism operations, but we are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Post.

Boasberg blocked President Trump from invoking the rarely used wartime law last month but his temporary restraining order was lifted by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision on April 7.

The high court ruled that the Trump administration could resume deportations of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act so long as detainees can challenge their removal.

The Supreme Court ordered that anyone the Trump administration is seeking to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must be afforded notice “within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek [a court hearing] in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the suspected Venezuelan gang members slated for deportation, claims the Trump administration has refused to provide any information about the removal notices their clients allegedly received.

They fear their clients will be sent to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) without an opportunity to challenge their removal.

“Without this Court’s immediate intervention, dozens or hundreds of class members may be removed to CECOT within hours — all without any real opportunity to seek judicial review, in defiance of due process and the Supreme Court’s order,” the motion stated.

The ACLU said the migrants currently facing deportation are being held at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas.

The group said the district court in the Northern District of Texas, where Bluebonnet is located, has refused to act on an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order, which is why it is petitioning the court in DC.

“The Court should immediately issue the temporary restraining order requiring the government to give each class member and class counsel 30 days’ notice, in both English and Spanish, before taking any action to remove a class member from the United States,” the ACLU demanded.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/04/18/us-news/federal-judge-calls-emergency-hearing-amid-report-trump-administration-plans-imminent-deportations-under-alien-enemies-act/

The U.S. has 800 cases of measles nationwide as of Friday, and two more states identified outbreaks this week.

Texas is driving the high numbers, with an outbreak centered in West Texas that started nearly three months ago and is up to 597 cases. Two unvaccinated elementary school-aged children died from measles-related illnesses near the epicenter in Texas, and an adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated died of a measles-related illness.

Other states with active outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. The U.S. has more than double the number of measles cases it saw in all of 2024.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000.

Health experts fear the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year.

In North America, an outbreak in Ontario, Canada has sickened 925 from mid-October through April 16. That’s on top of cases in Mexico that the World Health Organization has said are linked to the Texas outbreak. A large outbreak in Chihuahua state has 433 cases as of April 18, according to data from the state health ministry.

How many measles cases are there in Texas and New Mexico?

Texas state health officials said Friday there were 36 new cases of measles since Tuesday, bringing the total to 597 across 25 counties — most of them in West Texas. Four more Texans were hospitalized, for a total of 62 throughout the outbreak, and Parmer and Potter counties logger their first cases.

State health officials estimated about 4% of cases — fewer than 30 — are actively infectious.

Sixty-two percent of Texas’ cases are in Gaines County, population 22,892, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has logged 371 cases since late January — just over 1% of the county’s residents.

The April 3 death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Health officials in Texas said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of “what the child’s doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.” A unvaccinated child with no underlying conditions died of measles in Texas in late February — Kennedy said age 6.

New Mexico announced five new cases this week, bringing the state’s total to 63. Three more people were in the hospital this week, for a total of six since the outbreak started. Most of the state’s cases are in Lea County. Two are in Eddy County and Chaves and Doña Ana counties have one each.

State health officials say the cases are linked to Texas’ outbreak based on genetic testing. New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in an adult on March 6.

How many cases are there in Kansas?

Kansas has 37 cases in eight counties in the southwest part of the state, health officials announced Wednesday.

Finney, Ford, Grant, Gray and Morton counties have fewer than five cases each. Haskell County has the most with eight cases, Stevens County has seven, Kiowa County has six.

The state’s first reported case, identified in Stevens County on March 13, is linked to the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks based on genetic testing, a state health department spokesperson said. But health officials have not determined how the person was exposed.

How many cases are there in Oklahoma?

Cases in Oklahoma remained steady at 12 total cases Friday: nine confirmed and three probable. The first two probable cases were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks, the state health department said.

A state health department spokesperson said measles exposures were confirmed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Rogers and Custer counties, but wouldn’t say which counties had cases.

How many cases are there in Ohio?

The Ohio Department of Health confirmed 30 measles cases in the state Thursday. The state county includes only Ohio residents.

There are 14 cases in Ashtabula County near Cleveland, 14 in Knox County and one each in Allen and Holmes counties, the state said. The outbreak in Ashtabula County started with an unvaccinated adult who had interacted with someone who had traveled internationally.

Health officials in Knox County, in east-central Ohio, say there are a total of 20 people with measles, but seven of them do not live in Ohio. In 2022, a measles outbreak in central Ohio sickened 85.

How many cases are there in Indiana?

Indiana has confirmed six connected cases of measles in Allen County in the northeast part of the state — four are unvaccinated minors and two are adults whose vaccination status is unknown. The cases have no known link to other outbreaks, the Allen County Department of Health said April 9.

How many cases are there in Pennsylvania?

In far northwest Pennsylvania, Erie County health officials declared a measles outbreak Monday after finding two new cases linked to a measles case confirmed March 30.

The state has had nine cases overall this year, six of which are not linked to the outbreak, including international travel-related cases in Montgomery County and one in Philadelphia.

How many cases are there in Michigan?

Montcalm County, near Grand Rapids in western Michigan, has three linked measles cases. State health officials say the cases are tied to a large measles outbreak in Ontario, Canada.

The state has seven confirmed measles cases as of Thursday, but the remaining four are not part of the Montcalm County outbreak. Michigan’s last measles outbreak was in 2019.

Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.?

There have been 800 cases in 2025 as of Friday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 10 clusters — defined as three or more related cases.

Measles cases have been reported in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington.

Cases and outbreaks in the U.S. are frequently traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles.

What do you need to know about the MMR vaccine?

The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.

Getting another MMR shot is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says. People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don’t need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective measles vaccine made from “killed” virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said.

People who have documentation that they had measles are immune and those born before 1957 generally don’t need the shots because most children back then had measles and now have “presumptive immunity.”

In communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — diseases like measles have a harder time spreading through communities. This is called “herd immunity.”

But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots. The U.S. saw a rise in measles cases in 2024, including an outbreak in Chicago that sickened more than 60.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/measles-outbreak-texas-rfk-new-mexico-kansas-vaccine-e904ec9781f1d164c73afe4ab71774fe

Artists and creatives are pushing back against a recent trend using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate “starter pack” images of people as toys – which they say may be in danger of risking their livelihoods.

Since the start of April, thousands of people have uploaded their photos to generate images of themselves as dolls, despite warnings of damaging the environment, giving away personal information, and devaluing creativity.

Nick Lavellee, who has made custom action figures for six years, told the BBC he was concerned his work may be at risk after “AI images saturated social media”.

“People are sick of them,” he said. “It’s an artistic aesthetic – AI-generated art diminishes that.”

Nick has made figures of – and for – comedians, film directors, and artists such as Weezer and Tyler Childers, which sell for as much as $250 (£188) online on his Wicked Joyful website.

His success has led to a clothing brand and will soon be followed by a physical shop in his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire.

But he’s concerned action figure commissions could soon dry up, as well as the public perception of his work, from thousands of AI images mimicking his passion.

The feeling has been shared by other creatives with the rise of the #StarterPackNoAI movement, which has been used thousands of times since first appearing on Instagram in early April before spreading to X soon after.

After Patouret’s post, others quickly joined the counter-trend, with artist Maria Picassó Piquer saying she chose to take part “for fun, but also as a statement”.

“While AI pieces all looked more or less the same, I was amazed at the variety of the ‘human’ works,” she said.

“Plus, self-portraits added an extra layer of, well, humanity.”

Maria, like many other artists, sees the dual risk of AI images threatening intellectual property rights by being “fed on ‘stolen’ art”, and the possibility of reducing her finding new clients.

Illustrator Dav le Dessineux, working in Bordeaux, France, said some in his industry had already lost contracts to AI design work.

He contributed his starter pack because “like many artists who use their real hands”, he was “tired” of the deluge of AI-generated doll images.

Dav’s illustration featured only a pencil and sheet of white paper – tools he said are “all you need to start being an artist”.

“People usually forget about it because of the technology surrounding us, but we really don’t need more than basic stuff to create something and be original,” he said.

Eli Dibitonto, an artist living in Barletta, Italy, agreed, describing the process of digitally illustrating his own starter pack as “carefree and fun”.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect – mine isn’t,” he said. “Art isn’t meant to be perfect or look flawless.”

And illustrator and student Evie Joyce said creating her own artwork meant being able to consider what to reflect of her personality during a process lasting several hours, rather than seconds.

“I think that what’s so magical about it is you’re seeing people put time and effort and their personality, all of their experiences, into pieces of art,” she said.

“With AI, it can even steal from artists and steal their work and their style, it just loses that touch of personality.”

Ford Motor said on Friday (Apr 18) it has halted shipments of its SUVs, pick-up trucks and sports cars to China, as it starts to face the heat from retaliatory tariffs that have seen vehicles face taxes as high as 150 per cent.

“We have adjusted exports from the US to China in light of the current tariffs,” Ford said in a statement.

The car maker earlier this week halted shipments of its F-150 Raptors, Mustangs and Michigan-built Bronco SUVs as well as Kentucky-made Lincoln Navigators to China.

It operates a number of manufacturing joint ventures in China with Chinese companies, producing vehicles under both the Ford and Lincoln brands.

The development comes as US car makers scramble to find ways to tackle President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, which are expected to dent profits of carmakers and parts suppliers likewise.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the halt, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ford’s exports of US-built engines and transmissions to China are expected to continue despite the pause on exports of assembled vehicles.

Its Lincoln Nautilus model, which is manufactured in China, is also expected to have continued shipments, despite heavy tariffs.

Ford is among the best-placed automakers to weather tariffs, as it produces about 80 per cent of its US-sold vehicles domestically.

Still, the automaker is expected to raise prices of its new vehicles if tariffs continue, according to an internal memo sent to dealers that was seen by Reuters.

An analysis by the Center for Automotive Research published earlier this month said that Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on automotive imports will escalate costs for automakers by about US$108 billion in 2025.

Overall, Ford sold 442,000 vehicles – made in the US and elsewhere – in China in 2024, comprising 1.6 per cent of the market, according to the car maker’s latest annual report.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/ford-halts-shipments-vehicles-china-amid-trump-tariffs-5074836

A heavy spring storm on Friday is wreaking havoc across Europe’s Alps region, with Italy, Switzerland and France among the countries affected.

Northern Italy on high alert due to flooding

The weather system is dumping heavy rain on northern Italy, most notably the Piedmont, South Tyrol and Lombardy regions, causing flooding.

In the town of Valdagno, a car swept away by the floodwaters killed a father and son.

In the Piedmont region, a 92-year-old man was discovered dead on Thursday by firefighters after his home was flooded. Piedmont has allocated €5 million ($5.7 million) in emergency assistance due to the storm.

The floodwaters prompted evacuations in the Aosta Valley, with 6,400 people there without electricity, according to the Italian ANSA news agency. The Aosta Valley lies east of France and south of Switzerland.

Some parks in the northern city of Milan were also closed due to strong winds and flooding concerns. Residents in the northwestern city of Turin were asked to stay home.

Zermatt resort in Swiss Alps hit by power outtages

In Switzerland, the Alpine resort destination Zermatt in the southern canton of Valais reported electricity and phone network outages amid heavy snow. Roads to Zermatt were cut off due to the storm.

In Sion, also in Valais, 36,000 residents were asked to stay home and wait out the bad weather.

In the French resort of Val Thorens, a woman suffered a heart attack after she was hit by an avalanche, killing her.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/deadly-storm-hits-north-italy-switzerland-french-alps/a-72284610

Chaos erupted during President Trump’s speech at the White House Friday when Dr. Mehmet Oz’s 11-year-old granddaughter fainted.

Moments after Dr. Oz was sworn in as Trump’s administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, panic ensued when 11-year-old Philomena Bijou fainted in the audience, according to video obtained by Page Six.

The doctor’s daughter, Daphne Oz, was heard shouting for help as the frightening episode unfolded.

“Philo fainted! Philo fainted! Dad, go,” Daphne yelled, prompting Dr. Oz, 64, to jump into action and causing the president to pause his update on Iran.

Staffers were heard ordering reporters to evacuate the room and one aide was captured telling journalists, “No photos.”

Fortunately, the child was soon back on her feet and being taken out of the room by her influencer mom.

While her actual fainting wasn’t caught on camera, Philomena appeared to look pale as she was ushered away. Later, a White House spokesperson confirmed to People that the child had passed out.

“A minor family member fainted during Dr. Oz’s swearing in ceremony in the Oval Office. We are happy to say she is okay,” the spokesperson said.

The former “Dr. Oz Show” host had been sworn in by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., before the incident.

Daphne shares Philomena with her husband John Jovanovic, whom she married in 2010.

They also share three other children: daughters Giovanna Ines and Domenica Celine and son Jovan.

Daphne has previously expressed how grateful she is to have her dad on hand for family emergencies.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/04/18/celebrity-news/dr-ozs-11-year-old-granddaughter-faints-during-trump-speech-in-chaotic-scene-at-white-house/

SPACE is set to be flooded with even more stars in the future following pop icon Katy Perry’s successful mission this week.

The Roar hitmaker made a historic journey on board Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket capsule – but which other famous faces could soon put on a spacesuit as part of the next star-studded crew?

Superstar Perry became the first popstar to travel beyond the edge of space aboard Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard rocket on Monday.

She was joined by Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, TV icon Gayle King, ex-NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

The six women returned to Earth full of excitement and joy as they joined a unique club of people to ever reach the Kármán line – the internationally recognised boundary of space.

Their positive reviews of the trip and thrilling tales of what it was really like on board a real space capsule are sure to have reignited hopes among others of going on a similar trip.

But the price of going to space remains astronomical for the average person.

Blue Origin has never publicly disclosed how much it costs to go on a trip but they do charge a whopping $150,000 to reserve a single seat.

This huge starting price has meant that analysts believe a complete space ticket could cost anywhere up to $475,000 in total.

Leaving the general public with very little chance of securing a spot to space.

But for the rich and famous, a trip into orbit is not only affordable but becoming more and more likely ever since Katy Perry’s visit.

The superstar singer was gifted a seat by Bezos as he continues to test out the Blue Origin capsules and promote his space company to the world.

And the world’s second richest man isn’t the only person who is opening the door to celebs to head of into space.

His main rival – both in the space travel industry and in the battle of the billionaires – Elon Musk is also open to sending people into the galaxy through SpaceX.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic service is also offering out tickets.

This means getting to space is easier than ever for those who wish to fly away for a fleeting through minutes.

Several musicians, actors and top media personalities have already put their names in the hat for a potential space mission on day – including Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and even Ivanka Trump.

KIM KARDASHIAN

The famous model, turned trainee US lawyer, was actually invited to be one of the women on board the Blue Origin capsule this week.

Kim and her mom Kris Jenner were both asked to go – but turned it down for two reasons, The U.S. Sun exclusively revealed.

A source said: “Kris and Kim were offered to go on the Blue Origin.

“Kris absolutely did not want to go for safety concerns and not wanting to put herself in a risky position being a mom and a grandma.

“Kim was more open to it but had scheduling conflicts. Maybe in the future, especially seeing how much of a success this flight was.”

The billionaire beaut, 44, has already tried her hand at dozens of different jobs across her life with a spacewoman potentially next up.

Kris and sister Khloe Kardashian were also in attendance in Texas as they watched Monday’s launch.

PARIS HILTON

Fifteen years ago, the concept of space tourism was started to attract the stars with dozens of celebs buying a ticket to go outside of Earth’s orbit.

One of these was reality TV star turned business woman Paris Hilton.

The now 44-year-old reportedly purchased a Virgin Galactic ticket in 2008.

She was due to set off on the first commercial space flight in the Virgin Enterprise – Brit Richard Branson’s suborbital DeLorean.

In the end, Hilton never actually boarded a spaceship but her dreams of intergalactic travel could have been reignited after watching Perry and her crew.

Back in 2008, the TV icon did admit to the Guardian that she was “very scared” to go to space.

She said: “What if I don’t come back? What if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead?

“I’ll be like, ‘Great. Now I have to start all over.'”

LEONARDO DICAPRIO

The Oscar winning icon has a long history with space from his film roles, obsession with the Hubble telescope and even buying Virgin Galactic travel tickets.

In 2013, DiCaprio purchased a ticket to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

In recent years he has also grown closer to Bezos with this relationship sparking rumours he may soon be in a Blue Origin cockpit.

He also has a long past with sci-fi films.

DiCaprio narrated the IMAX documentary “Hubble 3D,” which follows the Space Shuttle missions to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

He has also starred in “Don’t Look Up” and “Inception”.

IVANKA TRUMP

The daughter of the US President Donald Trump is one of the more likely candidates to go to space due to her links to Elon Musk and NASA.

Back in 2018, Ivanka revealed she always dreamed of being an astronaut as a child.

She spoke to crew on board the Intentional Space Station from NASA’s Mission Control Center as she said: “I think I can speak for all of us here to say you inspire us all. You actually have my dream job,

“I always wanted to be an astronaut, and I always wanted to go to space. You are fulfilling my dream up there.”

The Trump’s have always had an obsession with space with Trump even declaring he wants to put a man on Mars in the near future.

A date is yet to be announced for a potential first Martian mission but Trump said at his inauguration in January that he wants the US to fulfil its “destiny into the stars”.

Tech billionaire Musk is the man touted to lead the Mars charge due to his close relationship with Trump and his hugely successful SpaceX company.

JUSTIN BIEBER

Pop sensation Justin Bieber once announced he wanted to shoot a music video up in space.

In 2013, the Love Yourself singer was already one of the biggest heartthrobs on the planet despite still being a teenager.

He had already conquered the musical charts and became close friends to some of Hollywood’s most loved names – leaving him itching for a new challenge.

So he signed up for a trip to space with Richard Branson.

Bieber was prepared to go on a Virgin Galactic trip after buying a ticket alongside his manager at the time Scooter Braun.

In a 2013 resurfaced tweet, Branson said: “Great to hear @justinbieber & @scooterbraun are the latest @virgingalactic future astronauts.

“Congrats, see you up there!”

Replying to the message, Bieber wrote: “Let’s shoot a music video in SPACE!! #nextLEVEL.”

The ambitious plan never quite took off and in the two decades since he has gone on to marry wife Hailey and father a baby boy.

But if a lucrative offer was to come in to send the multi-award winning artist to space, he could be tempted to follow Perry’s footsteps by singing in a rocketship.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14041989/next-celeb-space-blue-origin/

TWO people are dead and five more have been hospitalized after a Florida State University student opened fire on a crowd of people at the campus’ busy student center, cops said.

Police descended on the chaotic scene and arrested Phoenix Ikner, 20, after he allegedly swiped one of his cop mom’s weapons and attacked his peers.

Leon County Sheriff Walter McNeil said the department was heartbroken to learn the shooter was allegedly a man who had grown up in their office and been a member of their youth program.

“He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff’s Office family,” McNeil said.

Because Ikner is the son of a deputy, McNeil said he was “not surprised” that the student had access to weapons.

Officials said the handgun found at the scene was his mom’s personal firearm. It was a weapon that she previously used on duty, but she purchased it when she got a new one.

“This event is tragic in more ways than you people in the audience could ever fathom from a law enforcement perspective,” McNeil said.

“But I will tell you this, we will make sure that we do everything we can to prosecute and make sure that we send a message to folks that this will never be tolerated here in Leon County, and I dare say, across this state and across this nation.”

Ikner is in custody and is at the hospital getting treatment. He was shot by officers after he “did not comply with commands” from law enforcement, Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell said.

He’s refusing to speak to law enforcement, cops said.

The two victims haven’t been named, but officials said they were not students at the school.

Florida State University’s President Richard McCullough said it was a “tragic day” on his campus.

“We’re absolutely heartbroken by the violence that occurred on our campus earlier today,” he said at the news conference.

“Our hearts go out to our students and the victims of this terrible tragedy.”

The university is providing counseling resources for students and urges people to stay away from the student union as they investigate.

Classes have been cancelled through Friday, and sporting events were cancelled through Sunday.

HORRIFIC TRAGEDY

The shooter opened fire on a crowd of people at 11:50 am, and FSU warned students that there was an emergency just ten minutes later.

Students were urged to take shelter, lock all the doors, and stay away from the windows as the cops quickly cleared all the classrooms.

The campus initially told students to stay indoors until police approached them with a safe word, which they posted on their website and later deleted.

After 3 pm, officials told students that it was safe to come out of hiding.

Sam Swartz, who is a student at FSU said he didn’t think twice about screaming coming from the campus, until he heard gunshots.

“Everyone was like, ‘this is something serious,'” he told NBC News.

Another student who was inside the student union described instantly sprinting for his life after hearing the gunfire ring out.

“I was getting food at the Panera and heard a group of girls saying something about a gun, right after I heard the shots and immediately started running,” Cole Summers told Fox News.

“I ran out the back of the union and as I was running I heard more shots coming from the entrance of the union.”

The Wall Street Journal has published an eye-opening exposé on Elon Musk’s “harem drama,” diving into the relationships the world’s richest man has with his baby mamas – and the labyrinthine system by which he allegedly manages them.

Musk is on a mission to help “seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence,” per the Journal’s Dana Mattioli. The White House senior advisor has at least 14 children by four different mothers – though this number is thought to be higher. Conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, one such mother, reveals how after being impregnated by Musk, he offered her “$15 million and $100,000 a month in support,” while encouraging them a “legion-level” of children “before the apocalypse.”

The quest to repopulate America and save civilization is a noble one — even if Elon’s vision of supplanting the nuclear family with “a compound in Austin where Musk imagined the women and his growing number of babies would all live among multiple residences” might scandalize the Republican party he joined last year.

That got Cockburn thinking: who’s next?

Natalie Winters

Surely “Washington’s most eligible bachelorette” is Elon’s most obvious next target? The Journal describes how Musk uses X to boost certain users: “He replies to them and sometimes interacts through direct messages, some of whom he eventually solicits to have his babies.” Winters, the bright 24-year-old executive editor for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, has posed for pictures at the White House in a DoGE cap. Elon regularly pops up in her replies.

When asked about this prospect, Winters told Cockburn: “Maybe he just shares my stories because they’re good?” She added, “No H-1Bs,” seemingly taking her boss’s side in the feud that saw Bannon and Musk hash it out on X.

That’s another reason Winters may not be a viable candidate for Musk. Bannon has branded Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant.” It’s unlikely he’d want a mini-Elon bawling in the back of the War Room studio.

Bridget Phetasy

The Spectator’s very own columnist and Dumpster Fire host Bridget Phetasy has declared Elon her “nemesis.” Yet Cockburn thinks the lady doth protest too much. She may be married, but that allegedly hasn’t stopped him before. Phetasy is already an Austin resident, so relocating to his compound would be no issue.

“I’d only have his baby if it ensured my current daughter a spot on the rocket off earth or in his bunker,” Phetasy told Cockburn, alluding to Musk’s predicted apocalypse. A strong maybe.

A new X-ecutive

Shivon Zilis is mother to four of Elon’s kids and serves on the board of Neuralink, one of his many companies. What’s to stop him from making a similar proposal to the high-flying girlbosses of Tesla, SpaceX, X and the rest? Musk is said to consider intelligence a crucial trait, both to run the boardroom and to have his children. No wonder he has such an unorthodox approach to “company benefits” – most people just want healthcare and a 401k…

Giorgia Meloni

Will they, won’t they? Furious speculation has surrounded Elon’s relationship with the Italian PM, whose pronatalist views are, astoundingly, even more robust than Musk’s. The X CEO felt compelled to declare last year that he had “no romantic relationship whatsoever with PM Meloni” – because every time the pair are pictured together, the sprezzatura is conspicuous. She’s in DC tomorrow…

Source : https://thespectator.com/topic/elon-musk-next-child-baby-mama-natalie-winters/