Category: World

“Now, as external threats continue to rise and force-building becomes ever more urgent, we are once again seeing efforts to obstruct the strengthening of national defence,” says Taiwan President Lai Ching-te.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday (Feb 11) urged the opposition-controlled parliament to pass his US$40 billion special defence budget, which has been stalled by lawmakers, saying that given the rising threat level, strengthening the military cannot wait.

Lai last year proposed the defence boost to counter China, which views the island as its own territory. But parliament has instead advanced its own, less expensive proposals, which only fund some United States weapons.

The main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), whose vice chairman visited Beijing last week, said it supports defence spending but will not sign “blank cheques” and has a right to fully scrutinise the legislation, blaming Lai for the impasse.

Speaking to reporters at the presidential office, Lai said he had never asked lawmakers to pass the spending unconditionally, reiterating that the government was happy to provide a detailed explanation of its plans.

“I want to emphasise: political parties may compete, and policies may be fully communicated so that the public can choose. But national defence, so closely tied to national security, sovereignty, and our very survival, should be an area where we unite and present a common front to the outside,” he said.

“Now, as external threats continue to rise and force-building becomes ever more urgent, we are once again seeing efforts to obstruct the strengthening of national defence.”

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/taiwan-president-lai-parliament-pass-special-defence-budget-5922071

Trump voters urge him to tone down the rhetoric and focus more on domestic issues, especially clearer pathways to legal status for law-abiding immigrants, healthcare reform, curbing waste and fraud, and lowering US debt.

Joyce Kenney is even happier with Donald Trump today than when she voted for him in 2024.
“I would gladly vote for him any time,” said the 74-year-old retiree in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
As Trump heads into the second year of his presidency, Kenney hopes he continues his crusade against government waste and fraud, cuts costs for senior citizens, and deports more criminal immigrants – but also makes it easier for law-abiding immigrants to stay in the U.S., even those who entered illegally.
“He needs to find a gentler way on the illegal aliens, not to just say everything’s black or white, because there is a lot of gray in everything,” she said. “We need to show a lot more humanity to people that are not Americans as well.”
With Trump confronting nationwide protests against his immigration policies, mounting cost-of-living complaints, and tensions with countries from Denmark to Colombia, Kenney and 19 other Trump voters spoke to Reuters about what they want him to accomplish in the year ahead.

Almost all of them praised his first-year performance. They backed policies that polls show have alarmed many Americans – surging immigration enforcement in U.S. cities, tariffs on trading partners, deep cuts to the federal workforce and capturing Venezuela’s president.

TRUMP UNDER PRESSURE TO DELIVER BEFORE MIDTERMS IN NOVEMBER

The voters – whom Reuters has spoken with monthly for the past year – said they hoped the president would deliver further change in the months ahead, as pressure builds to help his fellow Republicans keep control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Six of the voters had virtually no criticism of Trump’s presidency to date, while three were highly dissatisfied with his performance last year. The remaining 11 voters were more mixed in their appraisals, though none of them said they regretted their vote.
The most common objectives the voters wanted Trump to pursue were immigration reform and a sharper focus on domestic issues – healthcare reform, cutting fraud in public programs and lowering the national debt – over foreign policy.
Fourteen said they were disappointed by the president’s recent rhetoric about annexing foreign countries and his tendency to inflame divisions through social media posts.
“I would like him to really focus way more on America,” said Robert Billups, 34, an unemployed accountant in Washington state.

Billups voted for Trump hoping for cheaper healthcare and more transparent government spending. Although he sees little improvement on those fronts, Billups maintains Trump was still “probably the best option” in the 2024 election.

Asked for comment, White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement: “The Trump administration remains laser-focused on continuing to cool inflation, accelerate economic growth, secure our border, and mass deport criminal illegal aliens.”
Trump’s tariffs, disdain for U.S. judges and officials with whom he disagrees, and recent “saber-rattling” about taking over Greenland and other countries – earned the president a “failing grade” from Steve Egan, 65, a promotional product distributor in Tampa.
Egan said his main hope for 2026 was that Trump would “stay in his lane” and not trigger a constitutional crisis.
“When Trump’s out of office, I’m sorry, I can’t vote Democratic generally, but if there’s a Democrat that talks more sense than Trump’s doing, then I’ll probably vote for him,” said Egan.

IMMIGRATION REFORM

The voters’ top ask for this year was a clearer pathway to legal status for law-abiding immigrants who are already contributing to the U.S. economy. Trump backed some such measures in his first term, but has not done so since retaking office.

Last spring, 14 of the voters told Reuters they wanted Trump to ease legalization for deserving foreigners. In January, eight of the voters said immigration reform should be a second-year priority.

“Latino voters, Asian-American voters who voted for the president, they voted because they wanted to see immigration reform. I don’t think all Republicans realize that the president would not have won if it wasn’t for those voters.”

Juan Rivera, a 26-year-old content creator near San Diego who has some relatives seeking legal residency in the U.S. and others who work for Border Patrol, said he was “a little disappointed” that Trump had not pursued it.
Rivera, who does Latino outreach for California’s Republican Party, said prioritizing immigration reform would help the party in November’s midterm elections.
“Latino voters, Asian-American voters who voted for the president, they voted because they wanted to see immigration reform,” Rivera said. “I don’t think all Republicans realize that the president would not have won if it wasn’t for those voters.”
Across the country, Pennsylvania state corrections worker and former National Guardsman Brandon Neumeister, 36, also wants the president to focus on immigration reform this year.
“If they’ve been here, they’ve been productive, they’ve stayed out of trouble, I feel like those are the type of people we would want,” Neumeister said.
Rather than deporting immigrants “after they’ve been a fixture in communities for decades,” he added, the administration should create “a more streamlined method for them to attain citizenship.”

Like Rivera and Neumeister, Lesa Sandberg of St. George, Utah, said she approved of Trump’s efforts to secure the U.S. border but would “love to see the same emphasis on making it legal to be here as there is on getting rid of the criminals.”
Of roughly 60,000 people currently detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of late January, about 44% had no pending criminal charge or prior conviction, according to agency statistics.

‘JUST CHILL’

As with most of the voters, Sandberg hoped Trump would continue his signature economic policies this year.
Sandberg, 58, who runs an accounting business, rents properties and works for a Republican political action committee, said last year’s deregulatory moves and tax cuts left her “satisfied” and “hopeful.” She said her grocery and gas bills had fallen, although the U.S. Consumer Price Index in January showed food prices were up while gas prices were down across the country.
But Sandberg is unsure how Trump plans to pay for hiking the military budget by two thirds over what Congress approved, and wants to know where the savings went after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed the federal workforce.

Trump’s top priority in 2026 should be “to balance a freaking budget and stop the progression of the debt,” Sandberg said.
Terry Alberta, 65, a pilot in Michigan, agreed that while “in my world, the economy is doing great,” he hoped Trump would do more this year to curb government waste.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-presidency-enters-second-year-his-voters-share-hopes-concerns-2026-02-10/

An immigration judge has rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to deport Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested last year as part of its targeting of pro-Palestinian campus activists, her lawyers said on Monday.
Lawyers for the Turkish student detailed the immigration judge’s decision in a filing, with the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had been reviewing a ruling that led to her release from immigration custody in May.

An immigration judge on January 29 concluded the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had not met its burden of proving she was removable and terminated the proceedings against her, her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union wrote.
Her immigration lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai, said the decision was issued by Immigration Judge Roopal Patel in Boston.
That ended, for now, proceedings that began with Ozturk’s arrest by immigration authorities in March on a street in Massachusetts after the U.S. Department of State revoked her student visa.
The sole basis authorities provided for revoking her visa was an editorial she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper a year earlier criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Ozturk said in a statement.
The immigration judge’s decision is not itself public, and the administration could challenge it before the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice.
A spokesperson for DHS, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in a statement said the decision reflected “judicial activism.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advocate for anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism – think again,” the spokesperson said.
The arrest of Ozturk, a child development researcher, in the Boston suburb of Somerville, was captured in a viral video that turned her case into one of the highest-profile instances of the effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to deport non-citizen students with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views.

The former Fulbright scholar was held for 45 days in a detention facility in Louisiana until a federal judge in Vermont, where she had briefly been held, ordered her immediately released after finding she raised a substantial claim that her detention constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of her free speech rights.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/immigration-judge-rejects-trump-effort-deport-pro-palestinian-tufts-student-2026-02-09/

The final ransom deadline has passed as the frantic search for Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother, Nancy Guthrie, continues.

The 84-year-old’s purported captors demanded $6 million by Monday at 5 p.m. MT (7 p.m. ET) in a ransom note.

The legitimacy of the message has not yet been verified and sources tell Page Six the family still has not been given any proof of life.

Ahead of the deadline, Savannah made a desperate plea on social media for help in the “nightmare” search.

“She was taken, and we don’t know where, and we need your help,” she said Monday. “If you see anything, if you hear anything, if there is anything at all that seems strange to you, that you report to law enforcement.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced there was no new additional information on Monday.

They added, that activity at the Guthrie residences will “continue tonight and into tomorrow as part of the ongoing investigative process, including the expansion of the search and follow-up on new leads.”

Savannah and her siblings, brother Camron Guthrie and sister Annie Guthrie, did not send the requested bitcoin sum by the first deadline: Thursday at the same time.

As the initial deadline passed, Camron issued a social media plea to Nancy’s alleged kidnappers.

“We need you to reach out and we need a way to communicate with you so we can move forward,” he said. “But first we have to know that you have our mom. we want to talk to you and we are waiting for contact.”

In a press conference earlier that same day, FBI agent Heith Janke revealed there was a second deadline.

“While we advise and recommend, from a law enforcement perspective, any action taken on any ransom is ultimately decided by the family,” he noted.

Two days later, Camron and his sisters released another video — their second as a trio, with the first being released Feb. 4 — offering to pay the ransom.

“We received your message and we understand,” Savannah said in Saturday’s Instagram upload. “We beg you now to return our mother to us, so that we can celebrate with her.

“This is the only way we will have peace,” the journalist continued over the weekend. “This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”

Nancy has not been seen since Jan. 31 when she was dropped off at her Tucson, Ariz., home following a family dinner with Annie and son-in-law Tommaso Cioni.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/02/09/celebrity-news/nancy-guthries-second-ransom-deadline-passes-as-desperate-search-for-savannahs-mother-continues/

Angelina Jolie is taking couture to the next level.

The Academy Award-winning actress arrived on the “Couture” Paris premiere red carpet Monday in a semi-sheer silver Givenchy gown that showed hints of skin between sequined embellishments.

The dress featured an asymmetric hem and beaded fringe along the sleeves and skirt.

She accessorized with custom Garatti jewelry: a 15-carat fancy green diamond ring and matching stud earrings. She paired the look with black pumps.

Jolie later changed into a black suit as she left the premiere.

During a visit by Vice President JD Vance, the US and Armenia agreed to cooperate in the civil nuclear sector. Vance will also travel to Azerbaijan, hoping to finalize a peace deal.

US Vice ‍President JD Vance and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol ⁠Pashinyan have agreed to collaborate in the nuclear energy sector.

The two leaders said they completed negotiations on Monday on what is known as a “123 Agreement.”

What do we know about the nuclear deal between the US and Armenia?

123 Agreements allow the United States to license nuclear technology and equipment to other countries.

The deal relates to small modular reactors, Vance said after meeting Pashinyan in the capital, Yerevan.

The agreement would allow up to $5 billion (€4.2 billion) in initial US exports ⁠to Armenia, plus an additional $4 billion in longer-term fuel and maintenance contracts, according to Vance.

Armenia is seeking an alternative to its ageing Russian-built nuclear power plant, Metsamor.

The new US agreement doesn’t bind Armenia to purchasing a nuclear reactor from the US.

Rather, it gives Armenia the possibility of selecting the US from a list of options, which also includes Russian, Chinese, French and South Korean companies.

Vance also said the US was ready to export advanced computer chips and surveillance drones to the former Soviet republic.

US seeking to finalize Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement

Vance’s visit comes just six months after Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders signed an agreement at the White House in August 2025.

The deal was seen as the first step towards peace ​after nearly 40 years of war.

Speaking to reporters before meeting Pashinyan on Monday, Vance said, “The prime minister has been a great friend of ours and a real ally in peace and development in this region [of] the world.”

As for Pashinyan, he thanked both Vance and US President Donald Trump and said that Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan are “very close” to achieving peace after decades of conflict.

US pushing for strategic transit corridor through Armenia

Vance was also advocating for the establishment of a major rail and road transit corridor through Armenia. Dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, the corridor would connect Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave.

The transit route in particular has been a major source of contention between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two nations have been in conflict over the Karabakh region, internationally known Nagorno-Karabakh, for nearly 40 years. Ethnic Armenian forces controlled the area from 1994 until 2020, when Azerbaijan regained control after a six-week war.

In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a subsequent attack that dislodged separatists and forced most of Karabakh’s 120,000 Armenians to flee for safety.

Both sides agreed to renounce claims on each other’s territory as well as refraining from using force during their meeting with Trump, who promised that the new transit project would bring peace and prosperity to both nations.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-armenia-sign-nuclear-deal-during-vance-visit/a-75885494

Reinstalled with a supermajority, Japanese leader Sanae Takaichi is likely to maintain a hard line on China while seeking even closer security and trade ties with the US.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi scored a resounding victory in Sunday’s general election, with her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) securing a commanding two-thirds supermajority in parliament’s powerful lower house.

Together with its partner, the Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), and several allied independents, the LDP’s ruling coalition now has as many as 352 seats in the 465-seat chamber.

The massive electoral triumph grants Takaichi a mandate to push forward with foreign and security policy initiatives that are going to delight long-standing allies but antagonize regional rivals.

US President Donald Trump was quick to congratulate Takaichi for her “landslide victory,” adding that it had been his honor to endorse her campaign a few days earlier.

In a social media post, Trump added, “I wish you Great Success in passing your Conservative, Peace Through Strength Agenda.”

The response from China, on the other hand, has been muted, with state media on Monday limiting their coverage of Takaichi’s victory to announcing the result.

Analysts say that will change in the coming days as Beijing calibrates its position towards a leader who has now secured a clear mandate — arguably in part as a result of Chinese pressure.

China ‘trying to destabilize’ Takaichi

“China has been trying to destabilize the Takaichi administration by criticizing comments she made in November about Taiwan,” said Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Tokyo’s Waseda University.

The already strained diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Tokyo nosedived in November after Takaichi said in the Japanese parliament that a crisis involving Taiwan could be a threat to Japan’s national security and might compel Japanese involvement.

Her comments drew sharp criticism from Beijing.

“Politically, Takaichi and the Chinese Communist Party are at odds and they are doing their best to portray her as a historical revisionist, playing up her support for Yasukuni Shrine,” Ascione told DW, referring to the shrine in central Tokyo that honors Japan’s war dead yet remains controversial because it is also the final resting place of 14 Class A war criminals.

“The question has to be, how much was Takaichi’s victory a result of attacks by China?” the expert said, pointing out that the Japanese public is deeply concerned about Beijing ratcheting up the pressure on Taiwan.

China views the self-ruled democratic island as its territory and vows to bring it under Beijing’s control, even by force if necessary.

Another source of tension between Tokyo and Beijing involves competing territorial claims over a group of tiny, uninhabited islets and rocks in the East China Sea.

Agreeing to disagree

With relations between the two countries at historic lows, the next moves on both sides will be telling, Ascione said.

“There seems little point in Beijing continuing to try to destabilize Takaichi now that she is no longer politically vulnerable, so maybe the two sides can agree that they disagree on matters of history and territory, there is a way forward,” he underlined.

One way for that would be for Takaichi to follow in the footsteps of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who went to Beijing in 2018 after another sharp dip in bilateral relations over the East China Sea islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. There, he signed a series of agreements on economic cooperation and trade, effectively smoothing the issue over.

Hiromi Murakami, a professor of political science at the Tokyo branch of Temple University, said such a move by Takaichi could provide an off-ramp for the two governments without too much loss of face on either side.

She, however, stressed that cooler heads may not prevail.

“If Takaichi decides that she wants to pay her respects at Yasukuni or she increases defense spending again or if she pushes ahead with plans to rewrite the post-war constitution, then China is not going to respond well,” she said.

“And Beijing has some powerful economic levers that it can apply,” Murakami pointed out.

China has already instructed its nationals not to travel to Japan for vacations and has severely restricted exports of critical rare earth minerals to Japan.

Beijing has in the past also banned imports of marine products and that is another pressure point that could be reintroduced, Murakami said.

“Taken together, the impact on the Japanese economy and society will be very serious,” she noted. “And this is important for Takaichi because although national security was an important factor for voters, rising prices and the cost of living was the top issue.”

A greater defense burden

Relations with the US, however, are on course to soar under the new Takaichi administration.

“We have seen Takaichi already embrace the US as a partner by accepting tariffs and agreeing to take on more of the defense burden in the region with increased spending on the Self-Defense Forces, so Trump has every reason to be happy,” she said.

“And he will know that for as long as Takaichi is in power, she will do what the US wants because Japan needs US security guarantees.”

Ascione agrees that the Japanese prime minister’s foreign policy priority is to “cultivate a stronger relationship with the US as a deterrent against China,” even though the 15% tariffs on Japanese exports have caused problems for Japanese companies and dented the national economy.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/japan-election-win-improves-takaichis-foreign-policy-hand/a-75875134

The crossing between Western Africa and the Canary Islands is considered the most deadly sea migration route to the EU. People who attempt to cross face rough seas in overcrowded boats, and, in some cases, violence.

The boat carrying Ismael Outtara and his family had been adrift in the Atlantic Ocean between southern Morocco and the island of Tenerife for several days. And then within 24 hours his 1-year-old daughter and his wife died.

“My daughter died in my arms,” Outtara told DW. “The next morning, my wife simply didn’t wake up. I think it was because of the shock of her death.”

Like thousands of people, Ouattara and his family had left Cote d’Ivoire to find more sustainable conditions in Europe. He never imagined what would unfold during the crossing. “The dead were simply thrown into the sea immediately,” the Ivorian remembers. “The others didn’t ask for permission.”

The tragedy happened four years ago. It still pains Ouattara how other passengers treated the bodies of his family. At least there were no outbreaks of violence among the surviving boat passengers afterward, according to the Ivorian. This is not unusual in such extreme situations on board.

Mohammed Manga told DW that he had survived a harrowing experience while crossing to the Canary Islands, an archipelago that is part of the EU member Spain. “There was a lot of violence on our boat,” the young Gambian, who arrived on the Canary Islands in 2023, said. “On the fourth day at sea, some panicked and accused each other of being witches.”

Many migrants who have made the voyage describe similarly explosive experiences.

Although no one died in the violent outburst on Manga’s boat, he said there were many injuries. To his knowledge, no one was held accountable — not even later, when the boat finally reached the Canary Islands.

“It’s very difficult to do anything then,” Manga said. “That’s why some people think they can get away with anything on the high seas.”

Thrown into sea

Crossings on the so-called Atlantic route between Western Africa and the Canary Islands have declined significantly. While official figures show that more than 40,000 migrants arrived on the islands in 2024, the number dropped to around 18,000 a year later. Observers attribute the drop to increased cooperation between Europe and traditional transit countries like Mauritania and Morocco, and, consequently, to stricter border controls in these countries.

Reports of extreme violence and murders on board the boats are on the rise, however.

Passengers on a journey in 2024 said three Senegalese men severely abused numerous people on their boat, causing some to suffer permanent injuries. In the autumn of 2025, Spanish police arrested 19 people after around 50 passengers on a boat died between Senegal and Gran Canaria Island. The suspects are accused of aggravated assault and murder.

Survivors of that journey report that the men attacked dozens of passengers, beating them to death and, in some cases, throwing them into the sea while they were alive. It remains unclear whether they were members of smuggling networks or simply passengers.

The Spanish National Police declined to comment on the incidents when contacted by DW.

‘They are terrified’

Loueila Sin Ahmed Ndiaye, a lawyer in the Canary Islands, regularly handles cases of violence on boats. She explained that a whole range of reasons make the prosecution of violent crimes on the migrant boats extremely difficult.

First, Sin Ahmed NdiayeIt said, there are questions of jurisdiction, as the crimes usually do not take place on Spanish territory and do not involve Spanish citizens. In addition, there are massive challenges with witness statements.

“The numerous police reports we have read show that people lose their sense of time. The cold, the uncertainty, no land in sight, the fear. All of this can significantly impair their mental health,” Sin Ahmed Ndiaye told DW.

Sin Ahmed Ndiaye said that often led to contradictions in witness statements.

“It makes a difference whether someone was sitting at the front or the back of the boat,” Sin Ahmed Ndiaye said, “so the statements often don’t paint a coherent picture.”

Furthermore, many surviving passengers refuse to cooperate with the Spanish authorities. Some don’t trust the lawyers provided to them. “After 10 to 14 days at sea, they are terrified, and the last thing they want is to be subjected to a court case and burden their fellow passengers.”

The most vulnerable people on board tend to suffer the most. “Children, unaccompanied minors and women,” the lawyer stressed.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/migrants-from-africa-brave-deadly-canary-islands-crossing/a-75840372

Hamidi’s death came as Iran stepped up its crackdown after recent protests, making more arrests while holding the door open to Washington for further nuclear negotiations.

An Iranian man has reportedly died by suicide after posting a social media video of himself urging US President Donald Trump not to make a deal with Iran’s theocratic regime. In a 10-minute and 44-second video, the man, identified by Iranian media as Pouria Hamidi, said the purpose of his appeal was to draw attention to what he called a deadly crackdown on protests in Iran and called for foreign intervention against the country’s clergy leadership.

“If you’re watching this, then I’m not around anymore,” Hamidi, a resident of Iran’s southern port city of Bushehr, said in a video going viral on social media.

“More than 40,000 people died, killed, massacred, more than the Russia-Ukraine war, and more than the Israel-Palestine war,” he said during the video posted on his YouTube channel ‘PoorY X’ on February 5. Hamidi captioned his video: “This Is My Sacrifice – Please, Free My Country”.

In the video recorded in English, Hamidi addressed the American leadership directly, urging them to pursue any diplomatic agreement with Tehran, saying any agreement with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime would “betray all those people who died.”

“So please, I beg you, do whatever you can to stop this deal,” he said.

He said that US President Trump had told the Iranians to “keep protesting, and we did, we trusted him.” But he added that fighting armed men is not possible, and Iranians can’t win against the Islamic regime without external support.

“America attacking Iran is the only hope we have right now,” said Hamidi. “We can’t fight this regime alone. Our people need foreign intervention.”

He also expressed support for Iran’s exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi, saying he’s “the best choice to make a transitional government.” He called on various opposition groups outside Iran to “come together and stop fighting each other.”

“You don’t know how hopeless our people are right now. I mean, I myself, I can’t eat. I can’t sleep,” he said.

“I can’t even cry about it because it’s so laughable to be born in a place like this, to have no future. But I hoped the people of my country would finally have a future after all this,” he added.

Hamidi described the purpose of making the video as giving meaning to his life and said he hoped Iranians would support one another. As the recording came to an end, he switched to Persian, saying, “We people of Iran are lonely people and have nobody, so please support each other. Long live Iran,” according to Iran International Report.

Hamidi reportedly took his own life after sharing the video.

Iran Steps Up Arrests 

Hamidi’s death came as Iran stepped up its crackdown after recent protests, making more arrests while holding the door open to Washington for further nuclear negotiations. The arrests—including that of Javad Emam, the spokesperson for the main reformist coalition—came after Iranian and US officials held talks in Oman that both sides painted as positive.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/just-attack-iran-dont-negotiate-iranian-man-pouria-hamidis-video-appeal-to-donald-trump-just-before-suicide-10978655?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Elon Musk announced SpaceX will build a system for Moon travel and a self-growing city on the Moon within 10 years.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday announced that his company will soon build a system that allows anyone to travel to the Moon.

“SpaceX will build a system that allows anyone to travel to Moon. This will so insanely cool”, Musk wrote in a post on ‘X’.

In a brief addition to the post, Musk wrote, “And Mars too”. Elaborating his point further, the tech billionaire went on to emphasise that “life cannot just be about one sad thing after another.”

“There must be things that make us super excited and inspired about the future. This is one of things. Bigtime”, he wrote on ‘X’.

Self-Growing City On Moon

The remarks come a day after the Tesla and SpaceX Boss announced that his company is focused on building a “self-growing city” on the Moon.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars”, Musk said in a post on ‘X’.

He added that SpaceX will also attempt to build a Mars city, which he said will kick off in about 5 to 7 years. The comments are in line with Musk’s advocacy towards the concept of making humanity a “multi-planetary species”, with Mars being touted as the primary destination.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has suggested to its investors that it would prioritise going to the moon first and attempt a trip to Mars at a later time.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/so-insanely-cool-musk-says-spacex-to-build-system-to-allow-anyone-to-travel-to-moon-mars-ws-l-9891223.html

Jimmy ​Lai’s trial has been the financial hub’s most high-profile national ‌security case

Hong ‍Kong media tycoon Jimmy ​Lai was sentenced ‌on Monday (February 9, 2026) ​to a total of 20 years in jail on three charges comprising two counts ​of conspiracy to ⁠collude with foreign forces and one count of ​publishing ⁠seditious materials.

The trial has been the financial hub’s most high-profile national ‌security case.

Source : https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/hong-kong-tycoon-jimmy-lai-sentenced-to-20-years-in-national-security-trial/article70609487.ece

Israel has warned the US of its readiness to conduct a unilateral military strike against Iran if it exceeds a defined threshold concerning its ballistic missile program.

Israel has reportedly warned the United States that it is prepared to carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran if Tehran crosses a red line related to its ballistic missile program, according to a media report. The warning comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares for an upcoming visit to Washington amid heightened concern over Iran’s military capabilities.

Israeli defense officials recently told their American counterparts that Iran’s ballistic missile program represents an existential threat to Israel. Israeli officials conveyed in recent weeks that Jerusalem is prepared to act alone if necessary to dismantle Iran’s missile capabilities and related production infrastructure.

“We told the Americans we will strike alone if Iran crosses the red line we set on ballistic missiles,” a source told The Jerusalem Post, adding that Israel believes Iran has not yet reached that threshold but is “continuously tracking developments inside Iran.”

Security sources said Israeli officials outlined operational concepts during high-level exchanges with US counterparts, including possible strikes on key manufacturing and missile-related facilities. Officials stressed that Israel reserves freedom of action and will not allow Iran to restore strategic weapons systems at a level that could threaten Israel’s existence.

One Israeli defence official described the current situation as a “historic opportunity” to deliver a major blow to Iran’s missile infrastructure and neutralise active threats to Israel and neighbouring states, according to the report.

At the same time, Israeli officials have expressed concern that US President Donald Trump could adopt a limited strike model if military action is considered. Several officials cited worries that such an approach – similar to recent US operations against the Houthis in Yemen – would leave Iran’s critical capabilities intact.

“The worry is he might choose a few targets, declare success, and leave Israel to deal with the fallout, just like with the Houthis,” another military official said, as quoted by The Jerusalem Post, adding that partial measures would not eliminate the core threat.

Following the incident, Thomas Sabula was temporarily suspended after calling the President a “pedophile protector” during his visit to a Ford facility in Michigan.

Ford Motor Company has declined to dismiss a factory worker who heckled President Donald Trump during a visit to one of the automaker’s plants last month, according to union officials, allowing the employee to return to work without disciplinary marks on his record.

The worker, Thomas “TJ” Sabula, 40, was temporarily suspended after calling the president a “pedophile protector” during Trump’s appearance at a Ford facility in Dearborn, Michigan. Laura Dickerson, a vice president of the United Auto Workers, said Sabula has since returned to his job and that the incident has not resulted in a negative entry in his personnel file.

Video footage from the visit showed Trump, 79, responding to the heckle by making an obscene gesture toward Sabula and saying, “F–k you.” Dickerson said the president also told the worker, “You’re fired,” during the exchange.

Speaking to a crowd in Washington on Monday, Dickerson said that outcome was never a possibility. “This ain’t The Apprentice,” she said, according to Reuters, referring to Trump’s former television programme.

Dickerson also described the confrontation during Trump’s tour of a plant producing the Ford F-150 pickup truck. “There was a worker at that plant that day who famously told Trump exactly what he thought of him,” she said. “Unfortunately, in that moment, we saw what the current president really thinks about working people and the way he responded — he gave us the middle finger.”

Bill Ford, the company’s executive chairman and the great-grandson of its founder, Henry Ford, said the incident was unfortunate and that he was embarrassed by it.

A crowdfunding campaign launched in support of Sabula raised more than $800,000 before being suspended. Donors praised him for confronting the president over what they described as his administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/ford-refuses-to-fire-thomas-tj-sabula-worker-heckled-donald-trump-article-153588191

China on Monday (Feb 9) denied US allegations it had conducted secret nuclear explosive tests, calling them “outright lies” and accusing Washington of making excuses to start up its own trials.

At the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Friday, Thomas DiNanno, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control accused China of conducting the tests, including one on Jun 22, 2020, and of preparing for more tests with massive yields.

“The US allegations are completely groundless and are outright lies. China firmly opposes the US attempt to fabricate excuses for its own restarting of nuclear tests,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement to AFP on Monday.

It also urged the United States to “immediately stop its irresponsible actions”.

US President Donald Trump said in October that Washington would start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Moscow and Beijing, but without elaborating or explaining what kind of nuclear testing he wanted to resume.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-reject-us-claim-secret-nuclear-tests-weapons-5917816

The UK Prime Minister says he is “not prepared to walk away” as pressure builds for him to resign.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted he would not “walk away” on Monday (Feb 9) after a prominent ally demanded the prime minister quit for embroiling the British government in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Senior ministers rallied around him over the most serious crisis yet of his stuttering 19-month premiership, as a rising far-right challenges him in the polls.

“After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility,” Starmer told Labour MPs at a crunch meeting where he was greeted with applause.

The beleaguered prime minister appeared defiant as he insisted he had “won every fight I’ve ever been in”.

Earlier on Monday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on Starmer to resign for appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite knowing he had maintained links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“The distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change,” Sarwar told a press conference in Glasgow, becoming the most senior Labour politician to publicly urge Starmer to go.

Several cabinet ministers came out in support of the prime minister following several days of ominous silence, including his deputy David Lammy, foreign minister Yvette Cooper and finance minister Rachel Reeves.

Left-wing figurehead Angela Rayner and interior minister Shabana Mahmood, both tipped as possible replacements for Starmer, both said they had “full support” for their leader.

DEPARTURES

Earlier Monday, Starmer lost his second top aide in two days when his communications chief Tim Allan quit just months into the role.

On Sunday, Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned for advising Starmer to make the contentious Mandelson appointment.

McSweeney’s departure deprives the beleaguered UK leader of his closest adviser and the man who helped Starmer drag Labour back to the centre after succeeding leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2020.

Starmer has had several communications chiefs in his short tenure, with staff departures, policy reversals and missteps an increasing hallmark of his administration, denting his popularity.

Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch told BBC radio that Starmer’s position was “untenable”, while hard-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the leader’s tenure was “drawing to the close”.

Labour has trailed Farage’s anti-immigration party by double-digit margins in polls over the past year.

POLICE PROBE

Police are investigating Mandelson, 72, for misconduct in public office and raided two of his properties on Friday. He has not been arrested.

Starmer, a former human rights lawyer and top prosecutor for England and Wales, has apologised to Epstein’s victims and accused Mandelson of lying about the extent of his ties to the financier during the vetting for his appointment to Washington.

The government is to release tens of thousands of emails, messages and documents on Mandelson’s appointment, which could increase pressure on the prime minister and other senior ministers.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/keir-starmer-vows-remain-uk-pm-epstein-fallout-5918211

Global equities rallied on Monday, taking heart from a rebound in U.S. chip stocks and other beaten-down assets after a volatile week, while Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s resounding election win pushed Tokyo shares to a record high.
Bargain hunting in some of the markets that were hit by selling last week, like silver, bitcoin and technology stocks, helped shore up overall sentiment, as did heightened expectation for more policy easing from the Federal Reserve that, in turn, weighed on the dollar a little.

A rate cut by June is now seen as an odds-on bet, with a slew of economic data this week on jobs, inflation and spending expected to reinforce the case for stimulus.
A Bloomberg News report, citing unnamed sources, that China had urged banks to curb U.S. Treasury exposure weighed a little further on the dollar and pushed Treasury yields a tad higher.
In stocks, Japan’s Nikkei (.N225), headlined the gains with a rise of 3.9%, hitting all-time highs as the decisive majority for the ruling LDP party clears the way for more spending and tax cuts.
The yen strengthened across the board, but most notably against the dollar, which had recovered almost all of a steep slide against the Japanese currency in late January.

“The key focus for investors will be the scale of fiscal expansion. In particular, developments around the temporary food tax cut pledged during the election campaign will be closely followed,” Sree Kochugovindan, senior research economist at Aberdeen, said.
“The LDP landslide does not give Takaichi free rein to just spend. The LDP are fiscally conservative and Takaichi has been very mindful of bond investors,” she said.
The prospect of more borrowing pushed two-year Japanese government bond yields up to their highest since 1996 at 1.3% .
Equity investors took heart from the removal of some political uncertainty in Japan, coupled with a sense of relief over the apparent end to last week’s aggressive selloff in both the companies that are spending hugely to roll out artificial intelligence, as well as in those that investors see as most vulnerable to disruption from it.

Europe’s STOXX 600 index (.STOXX), rose 0.2% towards record highs, while S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures dipped modestly, down 0.2-0.3%. The indexes bounced more than 2% on Friday to break a run of heavy losses.
Concerns remained about whether the massive amounts being spent on AI will ever make a return. The four largest U.S. tech giants alone plan to spend $650 billion on capex this year.

US DATA TO TEST FED WAGERS

U.S. data this week could prove pivotal in setting expectations for monetary policy. Reports on jobs, inflation and consumer spending all land in the coming days and, in order to keep sentiment intact, they would need to be benign enough to keep rate cuts alive, but not so weak as to threaten consumer demand and earnings.
In currencies, the dollar eased against a basket of major currencies , falling 0.45% against the yen to 156.57, while the euro was up 0.5% at $1.1873 .

The pound was under pressure against the euro, which rose 0.3% on the day, leaving the single currency at 87.05 pence, as uncertainty grew over the political survival of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/global-markets-global-markets-2026-02-09/

Indian refiners are avoiding Russian oil purchases for delivery in April and are expected to stay away from such trades for longer, refining and trade sources said, a move that could help New Delhi seal a trade pact with Washington.
The U.S. and India moved closer to a trade pact on Friday, announcing a framework for a deal they hope to conclude by March that would lower tariffs and deepen economic cooperation.

Indian Oil (IOC.NS), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL.NS), and Reliance Industries (RELI.NS), are not accepting offers from traders for Russian oil loading in March and April, said a trader who approached the refiners.
These refiners, however, had already scheduled some deliveries of Russian oil in March, refining sources said. Most other refiners have stopped buying Russian crude.

TRUMP SAYS INDIA ‘COMMITTED’ TO HALTING PURCHASES

The three refiners and the oil ministry did not respond to requests for comment. The trade minister on Saturday referred questions about Russian oil to the foreign ministry.
A foreign ministry spokesperson said: “Diversifying our energy sourcing in keeping with objective market conditions and evolving international dynamics is at the core of our strategy” to ensure energy security for the world’s most-populous nation.

Although a U.S.-India statement on the trade framework did not mention Russian oil, President Donald Trump rescinded his 25% tariffs on Indian goods, imposed over Russian oil purchases, because, he said, New Delhi had “committed to stop directly or indirectly” importing Russian oil.
New Delhi has not announced plans to halt Russian oil imports.
India became the top buyer of discounted Russian seaborne crude after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, spurring a backlash from Western nations that had targeted Russia’s energy sector with sanctions aimed at curtailing Moscow’s revenue and making it harder to fund the war.

INDIA’S RUSSIAN-OIL IMPORTS A FRACTION OF 2025 LEVELS

One regular Indian buyer is Russia-backed private refiner Nayara, which relies solely on Russian oil for its 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery. Sources said Nayara may be allowed to keep buying Russian oil because other crude sellers pulled back after the European Union sanctioned the refiner in July.

Nayara also does not plan to import Russian crude in April due to a month-long refinery maintenance shutdown, a source familiar with its operations said.
Nayara did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Indian refiners may change their plan and place orders for Russian oil only if advised by the government, sources said.
Trump’s order said U.S. officials would monitor and recommend reinstating the tariffs if India resumed oil procurement from Russia.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indian-refiners-avoid-russian-oil-push-us-trade-deal-2026-02-08/

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s coalition swept to a historic election win on Sunday, paving the way for promised tax cuts that have spooked financial markets and military spending aimed at countering China.
The conservative Takaichi, Japan’s first female leader who says she is inspired by Britain’s “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, delivered 316 seats of the 465 in parliament’s lower house for her Liberal Democratic Party, its best ever result.

With coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, Takaichi controls 352 seats and a supermajority of two-thirds of seats, easing her legislative agenda as she can override the upper chamber, where she does not have a majority.

WINTER ELECTION BRINGS BLIZZARD OF VOTES

“This election involved major policy shifts — particularly a major shift in economic and fiscal policy, as well as strengthening security policy,” Takaichi said in a television interview as the results rolled in.
“These are policies that have drawn a great deal of opposition … If we have received the public’s support, then we truly must tackle these issues with all our strength.”

U.S President Donald Trump congratulated Takaichi on the result, wishing her “great success in passing your Conservative, Peace Through Strength agenda” in a social media post.
“Sanae’s bold and wise decision to call for an election paid off big time,” said Trump, who will host Takaichi at the White House next month.
Takaichi, 64, called the rare winter snap election to capitalise on her buoyant personal approval ratings since she was elevated to lead the long-ruling LDP late last year.
Voters have been drawn to her straight-talking, hardworking image, but her nationalistic leanings and emphasis on security have strained ties with Japan’s powerful neighbour China, while her promises of tax cuts have rattled financial markets.
Residents trudged through snow to cast their ballots with record snowfall in some parts snarling traffic and requiring some polling stations to close early. It was only the third postwar election held in February, with elections typically called during milder months.

Outside a polling station in the town of Uonuma in the mountainous Niigata prefecture, teacher Kazushige Cho, 54, braved below-freezing temperatures and deep snow to cast his vote for Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party.
“It feels like she’s creating a sense of direction – like the whole country is pulling together and moving forward,” Cho said.
But Takaichi’s election promise to suspend an 8% sales tax on food to help households cope with rising prices has rattled investors concerned about how the nation with the heaviest debt burden among advanced economies will fund the plan.

Takaichi said on Sunday she would speed up consideration of the sales tax cut while focusing on fiscal sustainability.
“Her plans for the cut in the consumption tax leave open big question marks about funding and how she’s going to go about making the arithmetic add up,” said Chris Scicluna, head of research at Daiwa Capital Markets Europe in London.

PROPELLED BY YOUTH-LED CRAZE

The head of Japan’s top business lobby Keidanren, Yoshinobu Tsutsui, welcomed Takaichi’s win as restoring political stability. “Japan’s economy is now at a critical juncture for achieving sustainable and strong growth,” he said.
The LDP, which has ruled for almost all of Japan’s postwar history, had lost control of both houses in elections over the past 15 months under Takaichi’s predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba.
Takaichi has managed to turn around the party’s fortunes by striking a chord with younger voters.
She has even sparked a “sanakatsu” craze, roughly translated as “Sanae-mania”. Her handbag and the pink pen she scribbles notes with in parliament have been in high demand.
China is not a fan, however.
Weeks after taking office, Takaichi touched off the biggest dispute with Beijing in over a decade by publicly outlining how Tokyo might respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the democratic island claimed by China.
China responded with several countermeasures, including urging its citizens not to travel to Japan.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Takaichi, saying he hoped her victory would “bring a more prosperous and secure future for Japan and its partners in the region”.
Takaichi’s strong mandate could accelerate her plans to bolster Japan’s defences, further angering Beijing, which has cast her as attempting to revive its militaristic past.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/japan-votes-test-pm-takaichi-snow-weighs-turnout-2026-02-07/

Donald Trump has cast himself as Republicans’ chief messenger on the cost of living in an election year, but a Reuters review of his speeches shows a president repeatedly declaring inflation beaten while rarely acknowledging the strain many Americans say they still feel.
In five speeches on the economy since December, Trump asserted that inflation had been beaten or was way down almost 20 times and said prices were falling almost 30 times, assertions at odds with economic data and voters’ daily experiences. Much of the remaining time was spent on grievances and other issues, including immigration, whether Somalia was a country, and attacks on opponents.

Taken together, the speeches portray a president struggling to reconcile his central claim — that he has fixed the cost-of-living crisis — with inflation near 3% over the past year and voters’ lived experience of paying more for grocery staples. The price of ground beef, for example, is up 18% since Trump took office a year ago, while ground coffee prices are up 29%.

Republican strategists told Reuters that his mixed messaging on the top issue for voters risks creating a credibility gap for him and the Republican Party ahead of the November midterms, when control of Congress will be at stake. Opinion polls show voters are deeply unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy.

“He can’t continue to make claims that are demonstrably false, particularly at the expense of Republicans who are in competitive House districts or Senate races,” said Rob Godfrey, a Republican strategist. Trump “must be disciplined and focused,” he added.
One source close to the White House said the president needed to hit the issue of affordability harder and through personal visits to critical districts.
“He needs to bring the message out because the message is not resonating,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss the issue.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Trump’s focus on illegal immigration in his speeches is directly connected to his argument that people in the country illegally have an adverse impact on the economy. Desai said it causes “public services being overburdened, business activity disrupted by crime, housing markets flooded, and workers’ wages depressed.”

Trump has repeatedly stressed that much work remains to clean up the economic mess he says his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, left him, Desai added.

TRUMP VEERS OFF MESSAGE TO RAIL ABOUT IMMIGRATION

The Reuters analysis found that Trump – when not declaring inflation beaten – devoted nearly half his speaking time to grievances and other issues.
In about five hours of speaking time, he spent roughly two hours straying into about 20 topics unrelated to prices, the Reuters review found. When he veered off message, his top issue was illegal immigration, which he spent a total of about 30 to 40 minutes talking about.
In the speeches he insulted Somali Americans in Minnesota, who voted against him in the 2024 election. He referred to Somalia as “not even a country” – and in four speeches he disparaged Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

A progressive, high-profile Democrat and Muslim, Omar has been a frequent Trump critic, especially over his immigration policies.
“Every time the president of the United States has chosen to use hateful rhetoric to talk about me and the community that I represent, my death threats skyrocket,” Omar said last month, the day after a man sprayed a foul-smelling liquid on her at a town hall event.
Trump also talked about men in women’s sports, Venezuela, Iran, the Islamic State militant group, Greenland, Ukraine and Russia, military recruitment, his false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, U.S. weaponry, his exaggerated claim to have ended eight wars, and even how much a Fox News anchor likes him.

TRUMP’S MEANDERING WORRIES STRATEGISTS

“Inflation is stopped. Incomes are up. Prices are down,” Trump said in an Iowa speech on January 27.
Only twice in the five speeches did Trump acknowledge that prices are still too high, but he blamed them on Biden. Trump was elected in 2024 because of voter unhappiness with Biden’s handling of inflation – which spiked to over 9% in 2022 – and illegal immigration.
Democrats caused prices “to be too high,” Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania on December 9. “But now they’re coming down.”
In the same speech he called the term “affordability” a Democratic “hoax”. After a public backlash, he has ceased saying that in more recent speeches.
In four of the speeches Trump repeatedly and haphazardly switches topics, often when he is in the middle of talking about the economy, the Reuters review found.
Four Republican strategists interviewed by Reuters said Trump’s meandering style – which he proudly calls “the weave” – risked drowning out his core economic argument that he has brought inflation and prices down.
Speaking to world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, Trump spent the first 22 minutes on topic, then suddenly, for the next 22 minutes, insulted Europeans, said they would be speaking German if it wasn’t for America, called NATO ungrateful, and decried the “crooked” media before pivoting back to the U.S. economy.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said voters want to hear what Trump is doing to lower costs. “But they have no memory of what Trump says about economic issues because of the volume of his own rhetoric.”
One source familiar with the White House’s thinking said Trump was likely to use his State of the Union address on February 24 as the kickoff for more intense domestic travel to amplify his message on affordability.

TRUMP DOES OFFER SOLUTIONS

For many Americans, the economy still feels unforgiving. Prices remain high, even though the inflation rate has inched down since Trump took office, from 3% to 2.7%. A lower inflation rate does not mean prices are decreasing – just that they are growing at a slower pace, economists stress.
In the 12 months through December 2025, food costs were up over 3%, while average hourly earnings were up only 1.1% year over year. The unemployment rate was 4.4% in December, up from 4% when Trump took office in January 2025, according to government data.

In some of the speeches Trump correctly identifies a drop in prices for a few everyday goods, including eggs and gas. The cost of eggs fell about 21% in December from a year earlier after being 60% higher during Trump’s first months back in office. Gas prices are about 4% lower since January last year.

But the cost of an average grocery basket has risen. The price of coffee, beef, and some fruits, among other items, has risen in the past year.
Trump does offer solutions in his speeches, including his tax cuts that kicked in last month that will produce greater savings for tens of millions of families; the scrapping of taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security payments; his plan to reduce mortgage interest rates; a proposal to lower housing prices; and deals with health insurance companies to reduce drug prices.

Most economists expect U.S. households and the economy at large to benefit in the months ahead from the tax cuts. But Trump’s more recent proposals are unlikely to have a significant impact on the cost of living between now and November, some economists told Reuters. One of Trump’s ideas – to cap credit card interest rates to 10% for a year – could even backfire since it could limit access to credit for lower-income families, some economists have warned.
Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports candidates for the House of Representatives, said Trump and Republicans were helping working families. “Voters are seeing this clear contrast, and the best is yet to come.”
Some 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s overall handling of the economy, according to a January 25 Reuters/Ipsos poll, up slightly from 33% in December. But it is well below his initial 42% rating on the issue when he first took office a year ago.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/economic-speeches-trump-claims-inflation-victory-nearly-20-times-even-prices-2026-02-07/

Jimmy Lai, the founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of publishing seditious materials.

Hong Kong’s most vocal China critic, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, was sentenced on Monday (Feb 9) to 20 years in jail, ending the city’s biggest national security case, which drew international concern about the city’s freedoms and autonomy.

Lai’s sentence on two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one for publishing seditious materials ends a legal saga that has spanned nearly five years.

Lai, founder of the feisty but shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, was first arrested in August 2020 and was convicted last year.

His 20-year sentence was within the harshest penalty “band” for offences of a “grave nature” and is the most severe punishment meted out yet, the three national security judges said.

Lai’s sentence was enhanced by the fact that he was the “mastermind” and driving force behind “persistent” foreign collusion conspiracies, the judges said.

They cited prosecution evidence that the conspiracies had sought sanctions, blockades and other hostile acts from the US and other countries while involving a web of individuals, including Apple Daily staff, activists and foreigners.

Besides Lai, six former senior Apple Daily staffers, an activist and a paralegal were sentenced to jail terms ranging between six and 10 years.

“In the present case, Lai was no doubt the mastermind of all three conspiracies charged and therefore he warrants a heavier sentence,” the judges said. “As regards the others, it is difficult to distinguish their relative culpability.”

The 78-year-old, a British citizen, has denied all the charges against him, saying in court he is a “political prisoner” facing persecution from Beijing.

Lai’s plight has been criticised by global leaders, including US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, spotlighting a years-long national security crackdown in the China-ruled Asian financial hub, following mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Those concerns reflected in part Lai’s long-standing international profile as a pro-democracy critic of China’s Communist Party leadership and his extensive political connections, particularly among US Republicans – ties that prosecutors cited during the case.

At the height of the protests in July 2019, Lai met then-US Vice President Mike Pence and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington.

Beijing in 2020 imposed the national security law upon Hong Kong, saying it was necessary to stabilise the city after months of sometimes violent unrest.

LIFE IN PRISON?

The case has drawn calls for Lai, who friends and supporters say is in frail health with diabetes and high blood pressure, to be freed.

Lai’s son, Sebastien Lai, said from outside Hong Kong that the sentence “is devastating for our family and life-threatening for my father”, marking the “total destruction” of the Hong Kong legal system.

“After more than five years of relentlessly persecuting my father, it is time for China to do the right thing and release him before it is too late.”

Jimmy Lai, who is also one of Hong Kong’s most prominent Roman Catholics, arrived at the court on Monday in a white jacket, with hands held together in a praying gesture as he smiled and waved at supporters.

“The harsh 20-year sentence against 78-year-old Jimmy Lai is effectively a death sentence,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “A sentence of this magnitude is both cruel and profoundly unjust.”

Hong Kong police swiftly played down concerns about Lai’s health. Chief Superintendent Steve Li of the force’s national security department said Lai’s health concerns had been “exaggerated” and added that the tycoon deserved his sentence.

The judges said they were not inclined to give Lai any deduction for his medical condition, age and solitary confinement but acknowledged he would face a “more burdensome” time than other inmates.

They cut a month off the sedition sentence and one year each for the collusion charges.

Beijing and Hong Kong officials have said that Lai has received a fair trial and all are treated equally under a national security law that they say has been vital to restoring order to the city.

Dozens of Lai’s supporters queued for several days to secure a spot in the courtroom, with scores of police officers, sniffer dogs and police vehicles – including an armoured truck and a bomb disposal van – deployed around the area.

“I feel that Mr Lai is the conscience of Hong Kong,” said a man named Sum, 64, who was in the queue.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/hong-kong-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-trial-sentence-20-years-prison-apple-daily-5916421

US President Donald Trump has said he will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House late this year, as the world’s top two economies look to reset ties marred by a roiling trade war.

Trump made the comment in an interview with NBC News taped on Wednesday (Feb 4) – the same day he and Xi had a wide-ranging conversation about trade, Taiwan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the situation in Iran.

Trump is expected to go to China in April, before Xi would then visit the United States.

“He’s coming to the White House, yeah – toward the end of the year,” Trump said in the interview, parts of which aired on Sunday.

“These are the two most powerful countries in the world and we have a very good relationship.”

Since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, he has been a prolific purveyor of tariffs, unveiling sector-specific levies on steel, autos and other items as well as broader measures to achieve a variety of policy objectives.

The White House has jousted with Beijing on trade but reached a broad truce with China after a major escalation last spring.

Despite moves from the United States intended to lessen its dependence on Chinese manufacturing, the two countries remain deeply entwined economically.

Xi, who last visited the United States in 2023, on Wednesday warned Trump to proceed with “caution” on selling arms to self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory.

The Chinese leader also voiced hope that bilateral issues including trade could be resolved amicably between Beijing and Washington.

“By tackling issues one by one and continuously building mutual trust, we can forge a right way for the two countries to get along,” Xi said, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/trump-xi-jinping-visit-us-5916511

Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had little trust in the US and questioned whether Washington was genuinely committed to negotiations

Iran on Sunday restated its stance amid renewed nuclear talks with the United States, with foreign minister Abbas Araghchi making it clear that Tehran will not give up uranium enrichment or bow to military pressure from Washington.

He also dismissed the US military buildup in the Middle East, including the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, saying, “Their military deployment in the region does not scare us” .

Araghchi was speaking at a forum in Tehran, when he said that Iran had little trust in the US and questioned whether Washington was genuinely committed to negotiations, reported AFP.

‘No one has the right to dictate our behaviour’

Araghchi ruled out any compromise on uranium enrichment, framing it as a matter of sovereignty rather than strategy.

“Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up, even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behaviour,” Araghchi said at the forum.

The comments came days after Iran and the United States reopened negotiations in Oman on Friday. This marks first such talks since Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June last year, a conflict the US briefly joined.

Iran is seeking relief from sweeping US economic sanctions in return for its limited steps on the nuclear front. At the forum, the foreign minister said that the country could offer “a series of confidence-building measures concerning the nuclear programme”.

Araghachi, however, added that ongoing “sanctions and military actions raise doubts about the seriousness and readiness of the other side (United States) to conduct genuine negotiations,” the AFP report added.

On atomic bomb

Amid the talks, Araghchi said Tehran was also coordinating with its key allies and “strategic partners” China and Russia about the negotiations with Washington.

“They fear our atomic bomb, while we are not looking for one. Our atomic bomb is the power to say ‘no’ to the great powers,” Araghchi said.

Western countries and Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state, accuse Iran of seeking an atomic bomb, a claim Tehran has consistently denied.

Meanwhile, the United States and Israel want the negotiations to go beyond the nuclear issue. The Trump administration is seeking to include Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its support for armed groups across the region, under the ambit of discussion.

Iran has repeatedly refused to include these subjects in the talks.

The latest diplomatic push has unfolded after an intensified crackdown reportedly by the Iranian government following anti-regime protests across the coutry.

Trump’s military push

While maintaining a diplomatic front, Donald Trump has doubled down on its military posture. US envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner visited the nuclear-powered USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM), cited by AFP.

The fleet, dubbed an “armada” by Trump, was sent to the region weeks ago as part of a broader military build-up and is reportedly positioned in the Gulf.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/iran-says-military-deployment-does-not-scare-us-as-trumps-armada-approaches-101770601307828.html

Abbas Araghchi said that Iran has little trust in Washington and questioned whether the US is serious about renewed nuclear negotiations.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday insisted that Tehran will never give up uranium enrichment, saying the country will not be intimidated by the United States’ military presence in the region.

Speaking at a forum in Tehran, Araghchi told AFP that Iran has little trust in Washington and questioned whether the US is serious about renewed nuclear negotiations. He added that Tehran is consulting with its “strategic partners” China and Russia on the talks.

“Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up, even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behaviour,” he said. “Their military deployment in the region does not scare us,” he added, referring to the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.

The US and Iran reopened talks on Friday in Oman for the first time since Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June last year. Iran is seeking the removal of US economic sanctions in exchange for what Araghchi described as “a series of confidence-building measures concerning the nuclear programme.”

Western nations and Israel have accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. “They fear our atomic bomb, while we are not looking for one. Our atomic bomb is the power to say ‘no’ to the great powers,” Araghchi said.

Earlier today, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Iran’s programme “a clear danger to peace.”

US negotiators, including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, visited the USS Abraham Lincoln on Saturday. The US military said the carrier’s presence is aimed at “upholding President Trump’s message of peace through strength.”

Despite the talks, tensions remain high. US President Trump called the negotiations as “very good,” while Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said they were “a step forward.”

The US also imposed new sanctions on shipping entities and vessels linked to Iran’s oil exports.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/does-not-scare-us-iran-defies-us-military-buildup-vows-to-continue-uranium-enrichment-ws-l-9888631.html

Elon Musk announced SpaceX is prioritizing a self-growing city on the Moon within 10 years, targeting a 2027 uncrewed landing.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday announced that his firm has shifted its focus to building a “self-growing city” on the moon.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years. The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars”, Musk wrote in a post on ‘X’.

The billionaire CEO added that SpaceX will also attempt to build a Mars city, which he said will commence in about 5 to 7 years.

“That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster,” Musk added.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX has told investors it would prioritise going to the moon first and attempt a trip to Mars at a later time.

The report said the company was targeting March 2027 for an uncrewed landing on the Moon.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/in-less-than-10-years-elon-musk-says-spacex-focused-on-building-self-growing-city-on-moon-ws-l-9888765.html

A Russian national has been detained in the United Arab Emirates in connection with Friday’s shooting of military intelligence officer ⁠Vladimir ‍Alekseyev. The Kremlin blamed Ukraine for the attempted assassination.

The man suspected of shooting senior Russian military intelligence officer ⁠Vladimir ‍Alekseyev in Moscow has been detained in Dubai, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence agency said Sunday.

The FSB named the Russian national in his 60s as Lyubomir Korba, who it said was arrested by police in the United Arab Emirates and then extradited to Russia.

TASS news agency reported Sunday that a second man was arrested in Moscow, while a suspected female accomplice of the gunman has fled to Ukraine, citing the FSB.

Russian newspaper Kommersant cited a source close to the investigation on Saturday as saying that two suspects in the shooting “will soon be interrogated” and charged.

What do we know about the shooting?

Alekseyev, deputy head of the GRU, ‌Russia’s military intelligence arm, was shot ‌several ⁠times in an apartment block in Moscow on Friday, investigators said.

The 64-year-old, whose work has been recognized by President Vladimir Putin with a Hero of Russia award, was reported to be in a serious condition, requiring surgery.

Investigators said on Friday that an unidentified gunman had fired several shots at Alekseyev before fleeing the scene.

Authorities have opened a criminal case for attempted murder.

Alekseyev played a key role in intelligence operations in Ukraine and during Russia’s intervention in Syria on behalf of now-ousted leader Bashar Assad.

He was also sent to negotiate with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin during his short-lived mutiny against the Russian military’s top brass in 2023.

Alekseyev is also subject to sanctions by the United States and the European Union over Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in England in 2018.

Ukraine denies responsibility for shooting

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind the ‍assassination attempt, which he said was designed to sabotage peace talks. Kyiv insisted it wasn’t involved in the shooting.

Since the start ‌of the invasion of Ukraine ⁠in 2022, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility for assassinating several senior Russian officers.

Three other ⁠officials of the same rank as Alekseyev have been ​killed in or near Moscow over the past year.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/arrest-in-dubai-after-shooting-of-russian-general-fsb/a-75859699

The close ally of Maria Corina Machado had been detained for over eight months. Guanipa is one of numerous prominent opposition figures who were released on Sunday, before being taken again by “heavily armed men.”

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said Juan Pablo Guanipa, one of her closest allies, was kidnapped.

This came just hours after his release from prison.

“Heavily armed men, dressed in civilian clothes, arrived in four vehicles and violently took him away,” she posted on her X account, demanding his release.

A close ally of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, Guanipa had been held in a detention facility in the capital Caracas since his arrest in May 2025.

He had been accused by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello of leading a terrorist plot to sabotage the legislative election that same month.

Guanipa’s son Ramon posted a video on social media in which he described the kidnapping as an ambush by ten heavily armed, unidentified men.

‘Much to discuss’ about Venezuela’s future, says Guanipa

Before being held again, Guanipa spoke about his release on social media, with officers and armored vehicles being seen behind him.

“Much to discuss about the present and future of Venezuela, always with the truth at the forefront,” Guanipa said.

Prisoner rights group Foro Penal said 18 people were released on Sunday and that it was verifying additional cases.

Machado’s political organization said some of its local political organizers as well as her attorney, Perkins Rocha, were among those freed.

“Let’s go for the freedom of Venezuela!” she posted on X.

Machado also posted photos of several of those released, pictured with smiling family members.

“We will not rest until every single political prisoner is freed and until all of them return home,” Machado said.

Rodriguez under pressure to release prisoners

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez — who assumed the interim role following the US capture of Nicolas Maduro — has faced increasing pressure to release hundreds of political prisoners.

Government denies holding people for their political beliefs, and says those held in prison have committed crimes.

Rodriguez’s government announced on January 8 that it would free a significant number of prisoners, which had been a key demand from Venezuela’s opposition and human rights organizations, with the calls backed by the US.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/venezuela-opposition-leader-guanipa-kidnapped-after-release/a-75864364

Epstein survivors released a new PSA during the Super Bowl to demand answers from the Justice Department. The ad urges Americans to pressure officials and support the call for full transparency in the Epstein case.

Epstein survivors are releasing a new public service announcement (PSA) on Super Bowl Sunday. The video is meant to send a clear message that they are not ready to “move on” from what they call the largest sex-trafficking scandal in the world.

The group says they want the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to release more information and take stronger action in the ongoing case.

The PSA is described as emotional and powerful. It features survivors speaking directly to the public, asking Americans to stand with them and demand transparency. The message at the end of the video says, “Stand With Us. Tell Attorney General Pam Bondi: IT’S TIME FOR THE TRUTH.”

The group says the ad is aimed at raising public pressure during one of the most-watched events of the year. Advocates supporting the survivors are urging people to share the message widely online. According to them, this is the “Super Bowl ad every American should see.”

The PSA also includes claims that Justice Department officials, including Donald Trump’s administration, did not reveal key information about the Epstein files. These are allegations made by the survivors and their supporters, and they are urging the DOJ to fully release all related documents.

The Department of Justice released newEpstein files including 3 million pages of records, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images on January 31. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on January 31 said the release was required under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law created to make information about the Epstein case public.

SUPER BOWL LX is done and the Seattle Seahawks have won 29-13 in San Francisco.

But the Seahawks sensational defence has come up trumps with six sacks and a fumble TD was run in by Devon Witherspoon.

Drake Maye has been timid for the New England Patriots while Sam Darnold has been fantastic anchoring Seattle to the victory.

Hard work pays off at Levi’s Stadium

Seattle Seahawks put a project together to achieve this win.

It comes as the icing on the cake to all their hard work.

As General Manager John Schneider lifted the trophy in celebration.

Tough night for Pats’ supporters

This one will leave a bitter taste for New England Patriots and their fans.

The franchise are serial-winners, this is not supposed to be in the script.

Patriots fans will be drowing some sorrows to make this easier to forget.

Fifth time a charm for QB

Sam Darnold has had five teams in the last eight seasons.

It seems he may have found somewhere to call home now.

He was in the same draft class as Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson in 2018. He’s the first of this group of QBs to win the Super Bowl

Seattle fans loving life

Once you get to the Super Bowl, you are going to either have elation or depression at the end of the match.

The Seahawks’ fans will be glad they were the ones seeing Mike MacDonald guiding their team to victory.

A few businesses in the Seattle area may short a few employees tomorrow morning.

Seahawks write their names in history

Seattle Seahawks lifts the most-coveted trophy, the Lombardi Trophy.

Coach Mike MacDonald does not want to lift it alone so calls his players up with him as they celebrate.

This is some tight unit they have here, they would walk through walls for each other.

It all feels like a dream for Sam

After having testing moments in his career, Sam Darnold must have wondered if it was going to happen for him.

Now he is a Super Bowl winning quarterback and it must seem like a dream.

This makes all those dark times and hard work seem so worth it.

We could be heroes, just for one day

As they prepare the stage, the end is in sight for Seattle.

The coach stands there glancing across at it like a the girl of his dreams he has spotted in a local bar.

Seahawks are going to be lifting the Vince Lombardi Trophy for only the second-time in their history, becoming the 17th multiple winner of the competition.

Coach gets traditional shower for victory

The Seattle Seahawks made sure they celebrated the right way.

As coach Mike MacDonald had the barrel of drink thrown over him.

This is going to be some night for this group of players as they celebrate doing something most players can only dream of.

View from SunSport’s Sunni Upal at Levi’s Stadium

The confetti has fallen on the Seattle Seahawks.

They are Super Bowl champions and they have done it at the home of their biggest rivals the San Francisco 49ers.

Their fans are used to traveling to this stadium, but seeing their confetti and colors after this game will bring them more satisfaction than ever before.

Seahawks finally find their man

Every NFL team wants to find a young coach who can create a dynasty of teams over many years.

Mike MacDonald becomes the third-youngest coach to ever win the Superbowl.

What a moment this is for him as he brings Seattle Seahawks their second-ever Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Seattle Seahawks 29-13 New England Patriots

Q4 1:00. The Patriots manage to get a first-down on their own 17-yard line.

Maye is looking to get them downfield as quickly as possible.

However on the next play he is sacked but a flag is out and they award a five-yard penalty against the defence for offside.

Seattle Seahawks 29-13 New England Patriots

Q4 2:00. Walker runs in another touchdown but their is flag in play.

Offence is penalised for holding so it will not stand and they also receive a ten-yard penalty.

The Seahawks are just two-minutes away from winning their second-ever Superbowl.

Seattle Seahawks 29-13 New England Patriots

Q4 2:10. Walker picks up the ball and uses the blockers to go wide.

He smartly dives to the floor and stays inbounds so they can use a timeout.

On the next play Darnold cannot get his pass away and goes to ground with the ball.

Seattle Seahawks 29-13 New England Patriots

Q4 2:21. The Patriots get a touchdown as Maye runs it before offloading to Stevenson to score.

They opt to go for the extra point but it does not come off as Henry is hit hard in the N-zone.

Both players are back to theiir feet after a heavy clash of helmets.

Seattle Seahawks 29-7 New England Patriots

ANDREW Mountbatten-Windsor invited Jeffrey Epstein and a Russian model to dinner at Buckingham Palace on a four-day trip to London.

Emails released as part of the Epstein files last week reveal how the paedo financier hired a 26-year-old woman called Vera to attend a dinner party and took her to the Palace for a private meeting.

She is described as “enchanting” and a “great friend” in the tranche of documents.

Epstein’s London stay took place two months before Andrew repaid the favour and visited the paedophile in New York.

The revelation comes after it was alleged last week that Andrew was targeted by Russia using Epstein’s sex contacts to pull him in.

The woman first appeared in the files when she was invited to a dinner of the then President of South Africa Jacob Zuma at the Ritz London in 2010.

On March 4, Mark Lloyd, a pal of Epstein’s who helped him arrange high-profile meetings, messaged Vera telling her: “Jeffrey suggested I invite you, as you would be certain to add some real glamour.”

She responded, telling Lloyd she was “honoured”, adding: “I am from Russia and I have lived in London for the past two years.

“I am a model, represented by Select model agency.”

She went on to say how she had been modelling for the past six years and lived in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Japan.

The same day, further emails show Epstein bragging to disgraced peer Lord Peter Mandelson, writing: “Mark Lloyd is having dinner for Zuma tonight. I have invited a beautiful Russian.”

Days later, Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 awaiting trial for sex trafficking crimes, received an email from somebody whose name is redacted saying how “charming” Vera “enchanted all those she met”.

Later that year, Epstein wrote to Andrew to introduce him to the same woman. Andrew asked him who she was, and Epstein replied: “A great friend of mine. Very pretty. She is my future ex wife.”

Hours later Andrew moaned to Epstein: “No response from your future ex. I emailed her this morning but I suspect it went into her junk email.”

Epstein joked: “Why? Are you spamming beautiful Russians.”.

He then gave Andrew her details and said she was “expecting his call”.

Three months later, in September 2010, disgraced money man Epstein emailed Andrew to say he would see him “tomorrow night for dinner”.

Andrew replied: “Great! Where do you want to go — private at BP or out in a private room or in a restaurant?”

Epstein emailed somebody that day to brag: “I will be having dinner at Buckingham Palace tomorrow. Want to join?”

Andrew told him the next day: “I am just departing Scotland. Should be down by 1800. We could have dinner at Buckingham Palace and lots of privacy.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/royals/15906618/andrew-epstein-russian-model-buckingham-palace

THIS is the terrifying moment a man was attacked by a pet lion after trying to shake the paw of the dangerous predator.

Shocking footage shows a man approaching the beast being walked on a lead like a dog in Makhachkala, southern Russia.

At first, the animal appears calm, almost bored, as the man edges closer, reaching out towards its face.

The man offers a hand to the lion, and the beast grabs hold of it.

But trying to play with the powerful predator has dramatic consequences.

Alarmed, the man recoils – but the lion lunges.

It charges at the man, who tries to run.

The beast catches up and clamps its jaws around the man’s arm, as screams erupt from stunned bystanders.

The video shows the man desperately trying to pull free, with his hand briefly disappearing inside the animal’s mouth.

Panicked locals rush to help and the lion’s apparent owner yanks back on the leash in a frantic attempt to stop the attack.

Miraculously, the man is freed from the predator’s jaws — and quickly escapes.

He later claimed he did not have any serious injuries from the attack.

Authorities in Russia‘s Dagestan region, close to Georgia, are now investigating the incident.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15905370/lion-mauls-man-shaking-paw-onlookers-rush-to-help/

Ongoing surveillance of bat populations in Singapore has found no evidence of the Nipah virus, the Communicable Diseases Agency says.

Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) said on Saturday (Feb 7) it is closely monitoring a reported case of Nipah virus infection in northwest Bangladesh, adding that no cases linked to those in India and Bangladesh have been detected in Singapore.

The case was reported in Naogaon District in Bangladesh’s Rajshahi Division. The World Health Organization said on Friday that a woman had died in January after contracting the deadly Nipah virus infection. She was said to have a history of consuming raw date palm sap, a known risk factor for Nipah virus infection.

Nipah is endemic in Bangladesh, said CDA, with recurring seasonal outbreaks linked to the consumption of raw date palm sap contaminated by fruit bats.

CDA said there is no evidence that the case is linked to recent infections reported in West Bengal, India, or of any human-to-human transmission in Bangladesh. It added that there is also no indication of active community spread in either Bangladesh or West Bengal.

To date, no Nipah virus cases associated with the situations in Bangladesh or India have been detected in Singapore, said CDA. Ongoing bio-surveillance of bat populations here, which has been conducted since 2011, has also not found evidence of the virus.

MEASURES TAKEN BY SINGAPORE

Singapore has progressively stepped up precautionary measures since Jan 28.

These include requiring medical practitioners and laboratories to immediately notify CDA of confirmed or suspected cases, and alerting doctors to be vigilant for patients with compatible symptoms and recent travel history to affected areas.

Temperature screening has been implemented at air and sea checkpoints for arrivals from affected areas in India, while health advisories are being issued to travellers.

Singapore’s arrival health declarations have also been adjusted to include Nipah virus, and surveillance of newly arrived migrant workers from South Asia has been enhanced.

CDA on Saturday reiterated its advice for travellers to affected areas to avoid food and drinks that may be contaminated by bats, such as raw date palm sap and fruit found on the ground.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/nipah-virus-bangladesh-india-fruit-bat-5914321

Bangladesh’s leading prime ministerial contender, Tarique Rahman, on Friday (Feb 6) rejected a proposal from his main rival for a unity government after elections next week, saying his party was confident of winning on its own.

Rahman, 60, who heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), returned home in December after nearly two decades in exile in London following a youth-led uprising that toppled long-time leader Sheikh Hasina, a bitter rival of his mother, the country’s first woman Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia.

The BNP’s main rival in the Feb 12 election is the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami, once banned but now resurgent.

The two parties governed together between 2001 and 2006, and Jamaat has said it is open to renewing the partnership for a unity government to help stabilise the country, whose giant garments industry was badly disrupted by months of turmoil in 2024.

“How can I form a government with my political opponents, and then who would be in the opposition?” Rahman said in an interview at his party office, sitting beneath portraits of his mother and his father, a former president.

“I don’t know what will be their seat number, but if they are in the opposition, I hope to have them as a good opposition.”

His aides said the BNP was confident of winning more than two-thirds of the 300 parliamentary seats up for grabs. The party is contesting 292 of them, with allies vying for the rest.

Rahman declined to give a number but said, “we are confident that we’ll have enough to form a government”.

All opinion polls have forecast a BNP victory but also a stiff challenge from the Jamaat alliance, which includes a Gen Z party that emerged from the youth-led anti-Hasina protests.

GOOD RELATIONS GLOBALLY

New Delhi’s decision to shelter Hasina, whom a Dhaka court last year sentenced to death for her role in the crackdown, has badly strained Bangladesh-India relations while giving China an opening to expand its investments and political outreach.

Asked whether he would pivot away from India toward China should he win, Rahman said Bangladesh needed partners capable of boosting economic growth for its nearly 175 million people.

“If we are in the government, we need to provide jobs for young people. We need to bring businesses into the country so that jobs can be created and people can have a better life,” he said.

“So whoever, while protecting the interests and sovereignty of Bangladesh, offers what is suitable for my people and my country, we will have friendship with them, not with any particular country.”

Asked whether Hasina’s children were free to return from abroad and engage in politics, he said: “If someone is accepted by the people, if people welcome them, then anyone has the right to do politics.”

Hasina’s Awami League is banned from contesting the election. Many senior leaders and members of her family were already abroad before her fall or fled around that time.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/bangladesh-pm-front-runner-rejects-unity-government-offer-says-his-party-set-win-5913536

Thousands of mourners gathered in Islamabad on Saturday (Feb 7) to start burying the 32 people killed in a suicide bombing at a Shia Muslim mosque during Friday prayers, as the city tightened security and authorities arrested four people believed to have helped the bomber.

In Friday’s attack, a man opened fire at the Khadija Tul Kubra Imambargah compound on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, then detonated a bomb that killed 32 people, as well as himself, and injured more than 170.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest of its kind in Islamabad in more than a decade, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

Minister of Interior Moshin Naqvi told a press conference that four people, including the alleged mastermind of the attack, had been arrested following an operation in Peshawar and Nowshera. During the operation, one counter-terrorism officer was killed and three more were wounded, he said.

“Yesterday’s suicide attack has rattled us,” he added.

While bombings are rare in heavily guarded Islamabad, this is the second such attack in three months and – given a recent rise in militancy – they have triggered fears of a return to violence in Pakistan’s major urban centres.

Security was visibly beefed up across the city, with police checkpoints set up on all main roads and streets leading to important sites. Police and elite commandos stood guard as funeral prayers for some of the victims were held in an open area near the Imambargah.

The government had boosted Islamabad’s security and would be taking further steps to make sure it was “foolproof”, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said.

MOURNERS GRIEVE AT FUNERAL

Shia Muslims are a minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation of 241 million, have been targeted in sectarian violence in the past, including by the Islamic State group and the Sunni militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Thousands attended the mass funeral, which ended with mourners beating their chests before stooping to lift 20 coffins and carry them away for burial. Many of the mourners openly wept and cried.

“Whoever did this terrorism, may God burn them in hell and turn them to ash,” the imam presiding over the funeral, Hussain Muqaddasi, told mourners.

Ashiq Hussain, who lost his 21-year-old nephew Mujtaba Ali in the attack, said the family was “broken”.

“I want to ask what sin this young man had committed that he died a useless death,” he added.

Ajmal Rahbar, a student of COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, said two of his classmates died in the blast.

“They were too young to die,” he said.

Prayers were read for a further two victims in the city of Dera Ismail Khan on Saturday.

The injured, some in critical condition, remain in Islamabad hospitals. Yaqoob Bangash, an official at Islamabad’s largest public hospital, said major surgeries had been carried out and the hospital had moved on to minor surgeries.

Bangash, who works at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, said the hospital had sufficient resources to deal with the influx of patients after the attack.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thousands-mourn-victims-suicide-bombing-in-islamabad-four-arrests-made-5915076

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was reportedly spirited out of his longtime home at Royal Lodge in the middle of the night.

According to royal sources for the Daily Mail, the former prince was “dispatched by car to the depths of Norfolk” on Monday amid the ongoing Epstein scandal.

“It was hastily arranged and done under the radar, leaving Royal Lodge staff to pack up what remains of Andrew’s belongings,” an insider told the outlet on Saturday of the move, which reportedly saw Andrew moving to temporary housing on Wood Farm at Sandringham in Norfolk.

A source told the outlet that the decision was made by Prince William and King Charles on Sunday evening following an “urgent discussion” at Sandringham.

Now, Andrew is said to be waiting on renovations on a permanent residence at March Farm, though royal author Andrew Lownie told Page Six last month that Andrew could end up further away than Marsh Farm following the ongoing scandal.

The “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York” author told us he’s heard that the exiled prince will relocate to Bahrain.

The BBC reported earlier this week that the former prince was seen in Windsor horseback riding on Monday near Royal Lodge, and caught by photographers waving at bystanders while driving away from Windsor Castle.

“Waving at the public harked back to his royal days when he was used to adulation and respect,” an insider told the Daily Mail on Saturday.

“Andrew is having difficulty acknowledging reality and it was increasingly causing concern at the Palace – both as a sign of his mental state and because it wouldn’t play well with the public witnessing him still enjoying the trappings of royalty.”

Buckingham Palace did not immediately return Page Six’s request for comment.

Back in October, an announcement was made that “formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease” on Royal Lodge. Andrew was also stripped of the titles of “Duke of York” and “prince” at the time by King Chrarles.

“His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew,” Buckingham Palace told Page Six in a statement at the time.

“His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation.”

The statement continued, “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.”

Andrew’s official move from his longtime home comes following the release of new documents and allegations regarding late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Last week, the DOJ released more than 3 million records on Epstein, who died in prison at the age of 66 in 2019.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/02/07/royal-family/how-prince-william-king-charles-ejected-ex-prince-andrew-from-royal-home-at-midnight

According to Russia’s interior ministry, the attacker stabbed several students and also two police officers in an attempt to resist arrest.

The Indian Embassy in Russia said on Saturday night that four Indian students were among several people injured in an attack in Russia’s Ufa.

The Indian students were among at least six people who were injured in a knife attack at a university in Russia’s Bashkortostan Republic, news agency PTI reported citing the Indian mission.

“An unfortunate incident of attack has occurred in Ufa. Several persons including four Indian students have been injured,” the Indian Embassy in Moscow said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

The Embassy added that it is in touch with the authorities and that the “officials from the Consulate in Kazan are on their way to Ufa to provide assistance to the injured students.”

What happened?

The incident happened on Saturday when a teenager entered the premises of the State Medical University in Ufa in Russia’s Bashkortostan Republic, according to preliminary reports. The attacker reportedly entered the dormitory and attacked the students there, catching them unawares.

According to Russia’s interior ministry, the attacker stabbed several students and also two police officers in an attempt to resist arrest.

“The attacker resisted arrest, during which two police officers were stabbed. Furthermore, the suspect also inflicted bodily harm on himself,” said Interior Ministry spokesperson Maj General Irina Volk, as quoted by RTVI.com webportal.

Russia’s federal health ministry said that four of the people attacked were receiving medical care out of which, one is in critical condition.

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/art-culture/step-inside-spacious-4bhk-bengaluru-twin-home-built-by-two-it-engineer-brothers-who-wanted-to-live-side-by-side-watch-101770471884630.html

The United States wants Ukraine and Russia to end their nearly four-year war by June, and has offered to host talks between the two sides in Florida next week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

US-led efforts to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since WWII have stepped up a gear in recent weeks, but Moscow and Kyiv remain at odds over the key issue of territory.

Russia, which occupies around 20 per cent of its neighbour, is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal and has threatened to take it by force if talks fail.

But Ukraine says ceding ground will embolden Moscow and has signalled it will not sign an agreement that fails to deter Russia from invading again.

“The United States has proposed for the first time that the two negotiating teams – Ukraine and Russia – meet in the United States, probably in Miami, in a week’s time,” Zelenskyy told reporters in comments made public early Saturday.

“They say that they want to do everything by June,” he added.

The US has mediated two rounds of negotiation between the two sides in Abu Dhabi since January, brokering a major prisoner exchange but failing to reach a breakthrough on territory.

Both Moscow and Kyiv say talks have been difficult.

“FREE ECONOMIC ZONE”

Zelenskyy has repeatedly expressed frustration that his country is being asked to make disproportionate compromises compared to Russia.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

But Russia has rejected this, and Washington has pushed for Kyiv to convert the land it currently controls in the Donetsk region into a “free economic zone” where neither side has military control.

“Even if we come to the creation of a free economic zone, we will need fair and reliable rules,” Zelenskyy said.

The two sides have also failed to reach a “common understanding” on the issue of control over the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Zelenskyy said.

Russian forces seized the plant, the largest in Europe, at the start of the conflict and have held onto it since.

Ukraine will not tolerate Russia and the United States making deals about Ukraine behind its back, Zelenskyy added.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-pressing-ukraine-and-russia-end-war-june-zelenskyy-says-5915026

The Indian government announced duty concessions for select American products as part of an interim trade deal with the United States. Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal highlighted that while certain US goods will benefit from reduced tariffs, sensitive sectors like agriculture and dairy remain protected.

A disturbing photo showed showed a woman in a bikini crawling under a table while Jeffrey Epstein and two men work on laptops.

A disturbing photo earlier reportedly released by the US Department of Justice shows Jeffrey Epstein sitting at a table with two other men, acting as if everything is normal. Under the table, a woman in a white bikini is crawling on the floor with her back facing the camera. Her face is turned toward the wall, and parts of her body were blacked out before the photo was released.

The setting appears strange and unsettling. On the wall behind them, there is a creepy painting of a naked baby inside a sink, and the baby’s private parts were also censored. A pair of orange flip-flops lies near the woman’s bare feet.

In the picture, Epstein is wearing a white T-shirt and black sweatpants with the initials “LSJ.” These likely refer to his private island, Little Saint James, known as “Pedo Island.” It is not known where or when the photo was taken, according to New York Post report.

Why Did DOJ Release Epstein Files?
The Department of Justice released the photo as part of a massive document dump including 3 million pages of records, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on January 31 said the release was required under the new Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law created to make information about the Epstein case public.

The DOJ originally reviewed 6 million documents, but only half could be released. The remaining documents include child sexual abuse material, personal information about victims, and records that cannot legally be made public.

Blanche also said that being named in these files does not prove anyone committed a crime.

The newly released documents reportedly include allegations involving several well-known public figures, including US President Donald Trump. Officials repeat that these are only mentions, not confirmed wrongdoing.

What Happened To Epstein And Maxwell?
Jeffrey Epstein has a long criminal history. In 2008–2009, he served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Investigators had strong evidence he abused many underage girls, but prosecutors allowed him to plead to lesser charges.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/disturbing-jeffrey-epstein-photo-shows-naked-baby-picture-on-wall-bikini-clad-woman-under-table-article-153578313

In the streets of Lahore there are hints that the kite flying festival, Basant, has returned. Someone is fishing a kite from electricity cables, the distant sound of a drum beat, a flash of neon when you look up in the walled city’s narrow streets to a stretch of sky. This party is above.

As the sun sets across the city, on every rooftop we can see families and friends, laughing, shouting, watching as kites zig zag, circle, and soar through the city’s skies.

“It’s really difficult!” Abu Bakar Ahmad tells me.

The 25-year-old tech engineer has been coached by his cousin, coaxing the kite higher and higher with a twitch of the string.

“All our generations here are very excited; the elders know how to fly a kite, but we Gen-Zers don’t know.”

The festival has returned after nearly two decades. Marking the start of spring, it dates back centuries, but was banned in 2007 after several years of injuries and fatalities caused by sharp kite strings, falls and aerial firing.

It means for many this is their first time flying; they’ve never seen the skies above Lahore like this. Others are practicing the skill after years.

“It’s gathering, it’s love. Flying kites is ok, but the main thing is bonding,” Kanwal Amin, 48, tells me. “I like watching and eating good food.”

Kashif Siddiqui is a pharmacist, but admits his kite flying is a bit rusty. He shows me pictures of his last Basant – then Kashif’s son was three. Now his son is here with his own children.

“It’s special for Lahori’s – this runs in our blood. It’s not about kite and thread, it’s about tradition. My father and his father before him used to do it.”

Kashif’s aunt, Mina Sikander, 60, is here from Miami; she didn’t want to miss out.

“I’m very fond of this festival,” she says. “It was worth the journey!”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dkd5ql91lo

Jack Lang, a former French culture minister, has resigned as president of the Arab World Institute, the French Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Saturday, after revelations of his past contacts with Jeffrey Epstein and the launch of a financial investigation.

Earlier this Saturday, the French Financial Prosecutor’s Office had opened an investigation into Jack Lang and his daughter Caroline on suspicion of ‘aggravated tax fraud laundering’.

Calls for Lang to step down intensified since files released on January 30 by the U.S. Department of Justice showed Epstein and Lang corresponding intermittently between 2012 and 2019, when the financier died by suicide in jail.

French media including Le Monde, Le Figaro and Mediapart said the preliminary investigation had been opened after the U.S. documents revealed years of correspondence and financial links between Lang and Epstein.

The office confirmed the investigation but did not provide further details.

Jack Lang had been summoned to report on Sunday to the Foreign Ministry, which supervises the Arab World Institute, a cultural and research institution that promotes understanding of the Arab world.

LANG DENIES WRONGDOING AMID INVESTIGATION

Lang said earlier on X that he welcomed the investigation “with serenity and even relief.”

“The accusations levelled against me are baseless, and I will demonstrate this, beyond the sound and fury of the media and digital courts,” he added.

Lang’s name appears more than 600 times in the Epstein files, according to a Reuters review of them. On Monday, Caroline Lang, a long-time media executive, resigned as head of France’s Independent Production Union after her own links to Epstein surfaced.

Jack Lang’s lawyer told BFM TV that he would “prove that he is not involved in any malpractice or criminal offence”.

“There has been no movement of funds … But I think it is normal for the justice to want to verify this,” Laurent Merlet said.

The file dump has heightened scrutiny of Epstein’s global connections with public figures including Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – the younger brother of King Charles – Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the United States and Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/french-justice-opens-epstein-linked-probe-against-former-culture-minister-2026-02-07

Donald Trump has cast himself as Republicans’ chief messenger on the cost of living in an election year, but a Reuters review of his speeches shows a president repeatedly declaring inflation beaten while rarely acknowledging the strain many Americans say they still feel.

In five speeches on the economy since December, Trump asserted that inflation had been beaten or was way down almost 20 times and said prices were falling almost 30 times, assertions at odds with economic data and voters’ daily experiences. Much of the remaining time was spent on grievances and other issues, including immigration, whether Somalia was a country, and attacks on opponents.

Taken together, the speeches portray a president struggling to reconcile his central claim — that he has fixed the cost-of-living crisis — with inflation near 3% over the past year and voters’ lived experience of paying more for grocery staples. The price of ground beef, for example, is up 18% since Trump took office a year ago, while ground coffee prices are up 29%.

Republican strategists told Reuters that his mixed messaging on the top issue for voters risks creating a credibility gap for him and the Republican Party ahead of the November midterms, when control of Congress will be at stake. Opinion polls show voters are deeply unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy.

“He can’t continue to make claims that are demonstrably false, particularly at the expense of Republicans who are in competitive House districts or Senate races,” said Rob Godfrey, a Republican strategist. Trump “must be disciplined and focused,” he added.
One source close to the White House said the president needed to hit the issue of affordability harder and through personal visits to critical districts.

“He needs to bring the message out because the message is not resonating,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss the issue.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said Trump’s focus on illegal immigration in his speeches is directly connected to his argument that people in the country illegally have an adverse impact on the economy. Desai said it causes “public services being overburdened, business activity disrupted by crime, housing markets flooded, and workers’ wages depressed.”

Trump has repeatedly stressed that much work remains to clean up the economic mess he says his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, left him, Desai added.

TRUMP VEERS OFF MESSAGE TO RAIL ABOUT IMMIGRATION

The Reuters analysis found that Trump – when not declaring inflation beaten – devoted nearly half his speaking time to grievances and other issues.

In about five hours of speaking time, he spent roughly two hours straying into about 20 topics unrelated to prices, the Reuters review found. When he veered off message, his top issue was illegal immigration, which he spent a total of about 30 to 40 minutes talking about.

In the speeches he insulted Somali Americans in Minnesota, who voted against him in the 2024 election. He referred to Somalia as “not even a country” – and in four speeches he disparaged Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

A progressive, high-profile Democrat and Muslim, Omar has been a frequent Trump critic, especially over his immigration policies.

“Every time the president of the United States has chosen to use hateful rhetoric to talk about me and the community that I represent, my death threats skyrocket,” Omar said last month, the day after a man sprayed a foul-smelling liquid on her at a town hall event.

Trump also talked about men in women’s sports, Venezuela, Iran, the Islamic State militant group, Greenland, Ukraine and Russia, military recruitment, his false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, U.S. weaponry, his exaggerated claim to have ended eight wars, and even how much a Fox News anchor likes him.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/economic-speeches-trump-claims-inflation-victory-nearly-20-times-even-prices-2026-02-07

President Donald Trump condemned but did not apologize for a video on his social media account depicting Democratic former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, a post that triggered swift, bipartisan criticism for dehumanizing people of African descent.
The White House first defended the racist post on Friday, then deleted it 12 hours after it appeared.

The minute-long video shared on Trump’s Truth Social network late Thursday amplified false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud. Spliced into the video near its end was a brief, apparently AI-generated, clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas’ heads.

HISTORY OF PROMOTING RACIST RHETORIC

On Friday night, Trump told reporters he had not watched the entire video before a White House aide posted it to his account.
“I didn’t see the whole thing,” Trump said. “I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud in the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is. Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t.”
Asked by reporters if he condemned the clip, Trump said, “Of course I do.” But he declined to apologize, saying, “I didn’t make a mistake. I mean, I give – I look at a lot – thousands of things.”
Trump’s comments capped a day of competing narratives within the White House. An administration spokesperson initially defended the video as a harmless “internet meme” before another official said it had been posted in error and was removed, marking a rare retreat for a White House typically unflinching in defending Trump.

Trump, who is in his second term, has a history of sharing racist rhetoric. He long promoted the false conspiracy theory that Obama, the president from 2009 to 2017, was not born in the United States.
The post depicting the Obamas drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, including Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who is Black.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott said on X. “The President should remove it.”
Other lawmakers in Trump’s Republican Party called on him to apologize and delete the post. Some also privately contacted the White House about the video, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mark Burns, a Black pastor and Trump ally who said he spoke to the president about the video on Friday, called for the staff member to be fired.

White supremacists have for centuries depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys or apes as part of campaigns to dehumanize and dominate Black populations.
“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” said Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, on X.

A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.

WHITE HOUSE DEFENDS, THEN DELETES, POST

Only a few senior aides have direct access to Trump’s social media account, according to a Trump adviser and a person familiar with White House process. Trump and White House officials declined to identify the staffer who posted the video.
Before the post was deleted on Friday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt defended it and described the wave of negative reactions as “fake outrage.”
Leavitt said it was “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.” Trump’s clip included a song used in that Disney (DIS.N), opens new tab musical.
But as criticism mounted, a White House official said the post had been taken down. “A White House staffer erroneously made the post,” the official said.
A Trump adviser said the president had not seen the video before it was posted late on Thursday and ordered it removed once he had.
Both officials declined to be named.
Trump told reporters Friday night that the video had some images at the end that “people don’t like.”
“I wouldn’t like it either,” he said.
Trump has long used social media to unveil policy, weigh in on issues and share fan-generated content to his nearly 12 million followers on Truth Social, a platform owned by his Trump Media & Technology Group. (DJT.O).

Thursday’s post raised questions about the protocols used around Trump’s social media communications, which can move markets and provoke adversaries.
Trump has criticized his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for not tightly controlling the presidential memoranda distributed under his name and signed by “autopen.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-shares-racist-video-depicting-obamas-apes-2026-02-06/

Iran’s top diplomat said on Friday that nuclear talks with the U.S. mediated by Oman were off to a “good start” and set to continue, in remarks that could help allay concern that failure to reach a deal might nudge the Middle East closer to war.
But Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said after the talks in the Omani capital Muscat, which involved him, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, that “any dialogue requires refraining from threats and pressure. (Tehran) only discusses its nuclear issue … We do not discuss any other issue with the U.S.”

While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Washington wanted to expand the talks to cover Iran’s ballistic missiles, support for armed groups around the region and “treatment of their own people,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
A regional diplomat briefed by Tehran on the talks told Reuters Iran insisted on its “right to enrich uranium” during the negotiations with the U.S., adding that Tehran’s missile capabilities were not raised in the discussions.
Iranian officials have repeatedly ruled out putting Iran’s missiles – one of the largest such arsenals in the Middle East – up for discussion, and have said Tehran wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium.

Trump ratcheted up the pressure on Iran on Friday with an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on imports from any country that “directly or indirectly” purchases goods from Iran, following through on a threat he made last month.
The White House has said the measure is intended to deter third countries from maintaining commercial ties with Iran, particularly in energy, metals and petrochemicals, sectors that remain key sources of revenue for the Iranian government.
“I think Iran looks like they want to make a deal very badly,” Trump told reporters on Friday evening, adding that his team would meet with the Iranians again early next week.
Asked how long he was willing to wait for a deal on Iran, Trump said: “Well, you have to get in position. We have plenty of time.”

While Iran ruled out Washington’s demand for no enrichment on its soil, the diplomat who asked not to be named said Tehran showed openness to discussing the “level and purity” of enrichment or alternative arrangements, including a potential regional consortium.
In return, Iran had several demands, such as “efficient and immediate sanctions relief, including banking and oil, and the moving of U.S. military assets away from Iran.”
For Washington, carrying out enrichment – a possible pathway to nuclear bombs – inside Iran is a red line. Tehran has long denied any intent to weaponise nuclear fuel production.

However, the diplomat said, Tehran believed the U.S. negotiators “seemed to understand Iran’s stance on the enrichment.”
Araqchi earlier told Iran’s state TV that “It was a good start to the negotiations.”
“And there is an understanding on continuing the talks. Coordination on how to proceed will be decided in the capitals,” Araqchi said. “If this process continues, I think we will reach a good framework for an understanding.”

TALKS WERE ‘VERY SERIOUS,’ SAYS OMAN

Mediator Badr al-Busaidi, Oman’s foreign minister, said the talks had been “very serious,” with results to be considered carefully in Tehran and Washington. The goal was to reconvene in due course.
Despite the talks, the United States announced on Friday it was sanctioning 15 entities and 14 shadow-fleet vessels connected to illicit trade in Iranian petroleum, petroleum products and petrochemical products, the latest U.S. economic measures targeting Tehran and trade with it.
Iran’s leadership remains deeply worried that Trump may carry out his threats to strike Iran after a U.S. naval buildup in seas in the region.
Last June, the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in the final stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Tehran has since said it has halted uranium enrichment activity.
The naval buildup, which Trump has called a massive “armada,” has followed a bloody government crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran last month, heightening tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Trump has said “bad things” will probably happen if a deal cannot be reached, increasing pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of air strikes.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-us-negotiate-oman-amid-deep-rifts-mounting-war-fears-2026-02-06/

The United States will make an initial payment towards the billions of dollars it owes to the United Nations in a matter of weeks, the U.S. ambassador to the world body told Reuters on Friday, while stressing the need for the U.N. to continue reforms.
Mike Waltz made the comments in a telephone interview two weeks after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded the alarm on U.N. finances and warned that the 193-country organization is at risk of “imminent financial collapse” due to unpaid fees, the majority of which are owed by Washington.

“You’ll certainly see an initial tranche of money very shortly,” Waltz said. “It’ll be a significant … down payment on our annual dues … I don’t believe that the ultimate figure is decided, but it’ll be in a matter of weeks.”
U.N. officials say more than 95 percent of what is owed to the regular U.N. budget is owed by the United States – $2.19 billion by the start of February. The U.S. also owes another $2.4 billion for current and past peace-keeping missions and $43.6 million for U.N. tribunals.
On December 30, the U.N. General Assembly approved $3.45 billion for the regular U.N. budget for 2026, following weeks of negotiations. This covers costs of running U.N. offices around the world, including the headquarters in New York, staff salaries, meetings and development and human rights work.

The U.N. funding crisis comes at a time when the United States under President Donald Trump has been retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts. U.S. arrears to the United Nations have grown substantially during his presidency, even though America’s history of falling behind on its U.N. payments stretches back decades.
U.N. officials say the U.S. did not pay into the regular budget last year and owes $827 million for that, as well as $767 million for 2026.

CONGRESSIONAL SPENDING BILL

On Tuesday, Trump signed into law a spending bill that includes $3.1 billion for U.S. dues to the U.N. and other international organizations.
Asked if the money he spoke of would go towards last year’s dues or those for 2026, or both, Waltz said: “just in general, towards the arrears, and also in recognition of some of the reforms that we’ve seen.”
Under Trump, as well as refusing to make mandatory payments to the U.N.’s regular and peacekeeping budgets, the U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies with their own budgets, and moved to exit U.N. organizations including the World Health Organization.
Waltz said the United States was very supportive of Guterres’ UN80 reform effort and called it an important first step that needed to be continued.
“It doesn’t go far enough, but it’s an important step. I wish the secretary-general had made it in year one or two of his tenure, not year nine,” he said.
“We’re very focused … on getting back to basics, on peace and security. And … the president is rightly asking, how can we get the UN back to realizing its full potential?
“All of those conversations are currently being had and are in play, and we expect to see more reforms coming,” Waltz said.

‘TOUGH LOVE’

“This is some tough love. The current model is unsustainable for a lot of countries, and we’re trying to get the UN back, fit for purpose and focused, and stop trying to do everything for everyone.”
Waltz said reducing duplication was a key aim, saying that for example, there were seven UN agencies with climate change as their primary mission.
“Now, regardless of the climate change debate, we don’t need seven,” he said, adding that the U.S. also supported consolidation of logistics and back offices at humanitarian agencies.
“The UN bureaucracy has grown too large, and needs to be much more efficient and effective,” he said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-plans-initial-payment-towards-billions-owed-un-envoy-waltz-2026-02-07/

The BNP promised to end all political and social division in its election manifesto, emphasising that “we are all Bangladeshis” amid a wave of attacks on Hindus.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), headed by late former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman, released its manifesto for the upcoming national election scheduled for February 12, focusing on nation-building, economic measures, religious freedom and sustainable development.

The manifesto had five key priorities: State reform, socio-economic development and sustainable state capacity, rebuilding and restoring Bangladesh’s economy, regional balanced development, and measures concerning religion, society, sports and culture.

In its manifesto, the BNP promised to end all political and social division, emphasising that “we are all Bangladeshis”. It said people, regardless of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian, will build national unity and an indivisible national identity.

Focus On Religious Freedom

The BNP’s manifesto promised to ensure religious harmony, emphasising that “religion is individual, the state is for all”. It promised to ensure the right to perform religious rituals and celebrate festivals without any hindrance and implement strict legal protections for religious minorities.

This came after Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, faced criticism for a wave of attacks on Bangladesh’s religious minorities, particularly Hindus. Several Hindus in Bangladesh have been lynched by Islamist mobs in the past few months, while houses belong to Hindu families have been set on fire.

The attacks have further strained ties between New Delhi and Dhaka, with India last week strongly criticising the Yunus–led interim government for attempting to whitewash the communal nature of the crimes.

Zero-Tolerance Policy Against Terrorism

While the manifesto made no mention of India, it outlined a foreign policy basis of ‘Bangladesh Before All: Friend Yes, Master No’ in relations with other countries based on equality and self-dignity.

“Bangladesh will not interfere in other states’ internal matters and will not allow interference in its own matters,” it affirmed. The BNP assured effective measures to claim a fair share of water from the Teesta and Padma Rivers, and promised a strict position on stopping border killings and smuggling.

It also vowed to build a ‘Strategic Partnership’ with the Muslim world, along with making SAARC effective and efforts to get ASEAN membership. The BNP also promised a zero-tolerance policy against terrorism, militancy and extremism and outlined a ‘Made in Bangladesh’ initiative to meet the demand of its Armed Forces’ to build a self-reliant defence industry.

Reforms, Anti-Corruption Push

The manifesto also promised to eliminate inequality and form a people-oriented and inclusive government. “If BNP gets the opportunity to run the state in the upcoming national election, anti-corruption and law and order control will be the top priority,” it said.

The manifesto reinstated the Caretaker Government System, introducing an Upper House in Parliament, and creating a Vice-President post. It also proposed a 10-year limit for the Prime Minister’s term.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/focus-on-religious-freedom-zero-tolerance-against-terrorism-bnps-manifesto-for-bangladesh-polls-ws-kl-9885213.html

Under the new framework, US tariffs on Indian goods drop to 18 per cent, setting the stage for a deeper Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) and broader cooperation in key sectors.

The United States and India have finalised an interim trade agreement that cuts US tariffs on Indian goods to 18 per cent. As part of the deal, the US has withdrawn the additional 25 per cent duty it had imposed on Indian imports.

Here are 10 points on this big story:

1. 1. India will lower or remove tariffs on all US industrial goods and on many US farm and food items like dried distillers’ grains, red sorghum for animal feed, tree nuts, fresh and processed fruits, soybean oil, wine, spirits, and more.
   2. The US will charge an 18% tariff on Indian goods, covering textiles and apparel, leather and footwear, plastic and rubber, organic chemicals, home decor, artisanal products, and some machinery.
   3. If the Interim Agreement is fully concluded, the US will end the reciprocal tariff on many Indian products, including generic medicines, gems and diamonds, and aircraft parts.
   4. Separately, the US will also remove tariffs on certain aircraft and aircraft parts from India.
   5. Both countries will tackle non-tariff barriers that make trade harder, to smoothen business on both sides. India will also fix long-standing hurdles for US medical devices, so these products can enter the Indian market more easily.
   6. India will scrap restrictive import licensing rules for US ICT (information and communication technology) goods that delay market access or cap quantities.
   7. India will also address long-standing non-tariff barriers affecting US food and farm products, improving access for those items.
   8. India plans to buy $500 billion of US goods over the next five years (energy, aircraft and parts, precious metals, tech products, and coking coal).

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/india-us-trade-deal-tariffs-cut-to-18-500-billion-trade-aim-india-us-framework-in-10-points-president-donald-trump-pm-narendra-modi-10962619?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Travelers are being warned of heightened security ahead of Super Bowl Sunday

SUPER Bowl fans flying to the West Coast for the big game are facing heightened security and multiple ID checks.

Airports, including New York’s JFK, are implementing extra precautions ahead of Sunday’s event.

This year’s game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the home of the San Francisco 49ers, will see the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots.

Travelers heading to Super Bowl LX have already noticed stepped‑up security, including longer waits at checkpoints and extra ID verifications – as federal, state, and local agencies work to keep the massive event safe.

One fan, who jetted out from JFK to San Fransico on Thursday morning, told The U.S. Sun they were stunned by their travel experience.

“I travel often weekly, and the security is like nothing I’ve ever seen. All staff appear to be on alert,” she said.

“I flew Delta, and they are doing the normal ID checks, and then the TSA agents are doing a second one at the plane door.

“They said it’s for every flight going to San Francisco, and it’s increased security because of the Super Bowl.

“I was almost expecting them to check me a third time once I got to my seat,” they added.

“I didn’t see TSA at any of the other gates, and they don’t usually float around at the gates.”

POLITICALLY-CHARGED YEAR

Asked about the multiple checks, a TSA spokesperson told The U.S. Sun, “Nothing is more important to TSA than ensuring the security of our nation’s transportation systems and keeping the traveling public safe.

“TSA’s multiple layers of security are both seen and unseen to keep threats at bay, and our transportation systems secure.”

TSA also posted photographs of security dogs on X this week, writing, “TSA K9 teams are ready to touch down in the San Francisco Bay Area to help secure #SuperBowlLX.

“These incredible partners of explosive detection canines & their handlers are a vital part of the layered security mission keeping fans & the surrounding communities safe.“

The TSA said it’s flying more than 60 K9 teams out to the big game.

Security for football’s biggest day has also been increased in the skies.

Days before kickoff, police and military helicopters were seen joining the “ring of steel” fortifications put in place during last year’s Super Bowl ahead of President Donald Trump’s appearance at the game.

During last year’s Super Bowl at the Caesars Superdrome in New Orleans, extra security came in the form of “ring of steel” around the arena comprised of drones, helicopters, National Guard troops and armored vehicles.

The game has become unusually political this year, in part because Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny is headlining the halftime show.

He will take to the stage for a first‑of‑its‑kind Spanish‑language solo performance that drew heavy criticism from some conservative figures who called it a “terrible decision.”

The TSA advises arriving two to three hours early for domestic flights to ensure plenty of time to get through screening.

Fans should also keep their government-issued photo ID and boarding pass handy, as additional checks are likely, and be aware of standard TSA rules: liquids must be in containers no larger than 3.4 ounces, and prohibited items such as weapons, fireworks, and alcohol purchased elsewhere will be confiscated.

Passengers may also face random screenings, including pat-downs, metal detector scans, and bag swabs.

With major events like the Super Bowl, travelers are urged to factor in extra time for airport traffic and city congestion when planning their journey.

That backlash over the halftime show sparked a planned rival event from the conservative group Turning Point USA, which billed its own “All‑American Halftime Show” timed to coincide with the game.

Pro-Trump singer Kid Rock to set to headline the rival broadcast.

He said, “We’re approaching this show like David and Goliath. Competing with the pro football machine and a global pop superstar is almost impossible… or is it?”

The political heat has fed public debate, with critics and supporters trading barbs over culture and identity ahead of one of the most‑watched entertainment events of the year.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/travel/15897291/tsa-super-bowl-san-francisco/

The United States accused Beijing on Friday (Feb 6) of conducting a secret nuclear test in 2020 as it called for a new, broader arms control treaty that would bring in China as well as Russia.

The accusations at a global disarmament conference highlighted serious tensions between Washington and Beijing at a pivotal moment in nuclear arms control, a day after the treaty limiting US and Russian missile and warhead deployments expired.

“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNanno told a Disarmament Conference in Geneva.

The Chinese military “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognised these tests violate test ban commitments. China has used ‘decoupling’, a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide their activities from the world”, he said.

DiNanno said China had conducted one such “yield-producing test” on Jun 22, 2020.

China’s ambassador on disarmament, Shen Jian, did not directly address DiNanno’s charge but said Beijing had always acted prudently and responsibly on nuclear issues.

“China notes that the US continues in its statement to hype up the so-called China nuclear threat. China firmly opposes such false narratives,” he said.

“It (the US) is the culprit for the aggravation of the arms race.”

A norovirus outbreak has hit the Finnish women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Olympics, sidelining 13 players and forcing officials to postpone a key match against Canada. Norovirus, a highly contagious stomach virus, causes vomiting and diarrhoea and can spread quickly in close-contact settings, prompting strict isolation and safety measures to prevent further transmission.

A fast-spreading stomach virus has sidelined the Finnish women’s ice hockey team, forcing officials to postpone a highly anticipated Winter Olympic matchup against Canada. The Finnish Ice Hockey Association confirmed that 13 players were either sick or placed in quarantine amid a norovirus outbreak. Olympic officials said delaying the game was the safest choice.

“While all stakeholders recognize the disappointment of not playing the game as originally scheduled, this was a responsible and necessary decision that reflects the spirit of the Olympic Games and the integrity of the competition,” a statement from Olympic officials said.

Norovirus – also known as the “stomach bug” leads to vomiting and diarrhoea, thereby quickly leading to dehydration. While most people become alright within a few days, the virus can still spread even after the symptoms fade, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

According to the International Olympic Committee, there are plans laid out to detect and manage cases when they arise.

Google executives are facing pressure from staff over the company’s ties to the federal government’s crackdown on immigration enforcement, which in recent months turned violent and deadly.

In an open letter published on Friday, nearly 900 full-time Google employees demanded more transparency over what the company’s technology is being used for inside the US government.

Google has contracts to provide federal agencies with cloud services and also has links to work being done on federal immigration enforcement.

In a call after the letter was published, a Google employee of seven years said he found it “mind-boggling” that Google was maintaining its ties with the immigration enforcement bodies.

The letter from Google employees follows a separate letter published two weeks ago and signed by hundreds of workers at various companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, calling for all tech companies to stop their work supporting the federal immigration crackdown.

In the last year, the Trump administration has stepped up its programme to forcibly remove immigrants, sending armed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) into several cities.

Operations to carry out such removals lead to two high-profile killings of US citizens who were observing federal agents.

The Google employee forefronting the demands to management identified himself as Alex and said he joined the company seven years ago.

“I was proud to be working at a company with a moral compass. I’m not proud anymore,” he said.

In 2018, amid pressure from thousands of employees, Google abandoned a contract with the Pentagon known as Project Maven to develop more efficient drone technology for use by the US military.

Alex added that he found it “abhorrent” coming to work each day now, knowing that his efforts were supporting the work of federal agents within Department for Homeland Security (DHS), ICE and CBP, or working on removing apps which the authorities find “threatening”.

In October, Google said it had removed several apps from its app store which allowed users to report and document sightings of ICE agents. Apple did so as well.

Another Google employee, who identified herself as “S”, said she came to work for Google about three years ago, but said that had she known then of its work with federal agencies, she would have not have joined.

“This is not the company I signed up to work for – I would have never interviewed to work for a military contractor,” she said.

Alex and S both said that they were speaking out now about Google’s work with federal agencies because they objected to their work contributing towards militarised actions against people.

They added that inside the company the Google leadership, including chief executive Sundar Pichai, had failed to address the extent of Google’s work with the federal government, leading to the open letter demanding more transparency.

Other demands from employees are that Google pull its technology from any work within DHS, ICE and CBP, that it provides its workers with protection from immigration enforcement activities, and that the company hold an all-hands meeting to address their concerns.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgjg98vmzjo

Authorities are searching for a car believed to be possibly linked to Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapping.

A Circle K spokesperson alleged on Friday that law officials reached out to one of their stores on Oracle Road in Tucson after “receiving a tip regarding a vehicle of interest, and our team has provided them access to the store’s surveillance video,” reports NBC News.

When reached for comment, the FBI told Page Six in a statement: “The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department are aware of a new message regarding Nancy Guthrie. Investigators are actively inspecting the information provided in the message for its authenticity.”

The statement continued: “While this is one new piece of information, the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department are still asking anyone with tips to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.”

The investigation bureau noted once again that the organization “continues to offer a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of Nancy Guthrie and/or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.”

The car in question that police are searching for remains unclear at this time. However, days before Nancy vanished, Guthrie’s neighbor, Brett McIntire, reported a suspicious white van parked near the 84-year-old’s home to police.

“It was somewhere on that street. It was a white van, full-sized, with no printing on the sides. It was parked on the street,” McIntire, who lives across from Nancy, told The Post on Thursday.

“Normally people that are coming to work on your home will have a company vehicle or if they’re independent, something written on it,” the neighbor continued. Though, the 72-year-old could not remember the exact day he first sighted the vehicle.

The update comes shortly after it was reported that authorities are reviewing another potential ransom note related to Guthrie’s case.

The message was shared with KOLD 13 News, a local outlet in Arizona. Though, the outlet did not share any further details about the note’s contents.

Nancy, who is the 84-year-old mother of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on Sunday after she missed church services.

The Guthrie matriarch’s last sighting took place on Saturday around 9:30 p.m. Nancy was dropped off at her home by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, after having dinner with family.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/02/06/celebrity-news/authorities-on-the-hunt-for-car-possibly-linked-to-nancy-guthrie-kidnapping-report/

Following a fatal attack on a railway employee, a debate has erupted in Germany about how such incidents can be prevented.

A recent act of violence has shocked Germany: a Deutsche Bahn employee was checking passengers on a regional train near the southwestern city of Kaiserslautern on Monday night when he encountered a man traveling alone without a valid ticket. When the train conductor asked the passenger to leave the train at the next stop, he was attacked and punched repeatedly.

The train conductor lost consciousness, had to be resuscitated and died a day later in a hospital from a brain hemorrhage as a result of blunt force trauma. The alleged perpetrator is now in custody.

Statistics show that last year alone, nearly 3,000 railway employees were attacked. According to the German Interior Ministry, an average of five employees were physically assaulted and four threatened every day. “I don’t check tickets because I want to get home alive,” a conductor told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

However, this threatening development is by no means new, violence researcher Jonas Rees told DW.

“We have seen a steady increase in violence since 2015. The new normal for at least the last 10 years has been that it is virtually part of everyday life for employees to be verbally abused, insulted, threatened, or even physically attacked,” he said.

“The crucial point, however, is not whether our society is becoming increasingly brutal, but rather what we have become accustomed to in terms of violence and misconduct over the last few years,” said Rees.

Fridays, train delays and too much alcohol

Rees is a political psychologist at Bielefeld University and has spent more than a year researching the causes of violence against railway employees. His research found that violence occurs particularly frequently when passengers are intoxicated, when trains are overcrowded or delayed, and when they are traveling to and from major events.

The day of the week also plays a major role, with the number of violent incidents rising significantly on Saturdays and especially on Fridays after work. However, verbal abuse and physical assaults occur primarily during ticket inspections, according to Rees.

“We know that the likelihood of violence increases when potential perpetrators can escape the situation without being identified. And that’s why the rail context is, unfortunately, somewhat predestined for violence: you have a public space, often alcohol consumption, and the opportunity to simply get off at the next stop and disappear.”

Railway employees targeted for railway’s shortcomings

Railway employees are not the only ones fearing for their physical safety. Police officers, firefighters and paramedics are also increasingly becoming targets of violence.

“One thing that public service employees have in common is that police officers, emergency responders and railway employees in particular, wear uniforms. And this leads to a kind of vicarious liability, with police officers often being attacked on behalf of the state they represent, and railway employees on behalf of the railway,” explained Rees.

It also affects civil servants who do not wear uniforms: Rees and his research team recently surveyed 2,000 teachers in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who are also increasingly being harassed and attacked by students and even parents.

Tougher penalties for attackers or better prevention?

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), wants to significantly increase the minimum penalties for attackers as a consequence. “I expect the perpetrator to be punished with the full force of the law for his brutal act,” the CSU politician said in relation to the death of the train conductor.

But Rees does not believe tougher penalties are effective. “In spontaneously occurring and rapidly escalating situations, a violent offender is not usually stopped by the thought ‘Oh dear, the penalty for that has recently been increased.’ So a tougher penalty won’t necessarily help prevent spontaneous acts of violence.”

Instead, it’s essential to increase staffing levels, especially when it comes to security personnel. The railway company should prepare its employees for dangerous situations with several days of de-escalation training, he said. Train attendants should also have the option of not carrying out ticket inspections if they consider the situation to be dangerous. Turnstiles in front of the platforms would also be a good idea, as they would eliminate the need for ticket inspections.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/german-train-conductors-death-highlights-rise-in-violence/a-75836876

Norway’s economic crime police unit, Oekokrim, said on Thursday it has opened an investigation into former prime minister and chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, on suspicion of aggravated corruption.
The decision to investigate Jagland, also a former Secretary General of the Council of Europe, was based on information revealed by newly released files related to the late U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Oekokrim said.

“We consider there are reasonable grounds for investigation, given that he held the positions of chair of the Nobel Committee and Secretary General of the Council of Europe during the period covered by the released documents,” Oekokrom director Paal Loeseth said in a statement.
Jagland has not been charged with any crime and the investigation will among other things cover whether gifts, travel and loans were received in connection with his position.
The police also asked that the immunity Jagland has due to his position as a former head of an international organisation be lifted, a request acquiesced to by the Foreign Ministry.

“It is important that the facts of this case are brought to light,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement.
“I have therefore decided that Norway will put forward a proposal to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers that Jagland’s immunity be revoked,” he said.
A lawyer for Thorbjoern Jagland said he welcomed police opening an investigation and that his client would contribute fully to it.
“Based on what we have found so far, we are confident of the outcome,” Anders Brosveet said in a statement to Reuters.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/norway-police-open-investigation-into-ex-prime-minister-jagland-over-epstein-2026-02-05/

Ukraine and Russia concluded a second round of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday aimed at ending Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two, with the two sides conducting a major prisoner swap and agreeing to resume negotiations soon.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the delegations from the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia had agreed to an exchange of 314 prisoners of war, which took place on Thursday. It was the first such swap in five months.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said some of the released POWs had been held for nearly four years. He said the next round of talks would be held soon, likely in the United States.
Witkoff, writing on the X social media platform, said: “The discussions were constructive and focused on how to create the conditions for a durable peace.”
He said the talks “demonstrate that sustained diplomatic engagement is delivering tangible results and advancing efforts to end the war in Ukraine.”
Zelenskiy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Ukraine favored any diplomatic format “that can realistically bring peace closer and make it reliable, lasting, and such that deprives Russia of the appetite to continue fighting.”

Speaking earlier alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Zelenskiy said the talks covered the main differences between the two sides.

RUSSIA SEES PROGRESS AND POSITIVE MOVEMENT

Zelenskiy said he was keen for the talks to lead to the end of the four-year war, but repeated his insistence that Ukraine must receive robust security guarantees, including from Washington, to ensure Russia does not attack again.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who took part in earlier talks with Russian officials and Witkoff, said the imposition of further sanctions on Russia would depend on how the talks proceeded. Bessent maintained his belief that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was illegal and continued to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin was a war criminal.
Russia’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said there was progress and positive movement. He also said work was under way to restore Russia’s relations with the United States, including within a U.S.-Russia working group on the economy.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.
A video released by Ukraine’s presidency showed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war – many wrapped in the national flag – disembarking from buses in the snow, some hugging each other and others crying as they spoke to relatives on mobile phones.
POW exchanges were the only concrete steps towards peace that emerged from the previous rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia last year in Turkey.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, wounded, or gone missing in nearly four years of war.
Zelenskiy said this week that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield, but gave no details on the number of wounded or missing Ukrainian servicemen.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said Russia had suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties. Moscow dismissed the report as unreliable.

PRESSURE BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Despite pressure by the Trump administration on Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise, fighting continues to rage along the roughly 1,200-km (750-mile) front line.
Russia’s troops launched major airstrikes on Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, ahead of the talks, and followed up with smaller drone attacks on Wednesday and Thursday.
In his address, Zelenskiy noted “good results” from the Security Service of Ukraine, singling out an attack by Ukrainian-made long-range Flamingo missiles on the testing ground for Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missiles near the Caspian Sea.
After his talks with Tusk, Zelenskiy repeated his pleas for air-defence missiles and said Kyiv was ready to swap its drones, in which it has become a global leader, for the missiles from allies or for Poland’s Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets.
The Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement its forces had launched successful strikes on a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile launch site last month.
The fate of the eastern Donetsk region, where the most intense battles are taking place, remains one of the most complicated issues in the talks.
Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops from the entire region, including a line of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-russia-start-second-day-peace-talks-abu-dhabi-2026-02-05/

Mexican officials are evaluating how to send fuel to Cuba to help meet basic needs such as electricity and transportation without triggering reprisals from Washington, which has threatened tariffs against countries supplying fuel to the Caribbean island, four sources familiar with the matter said.
The sources said high-level Mexican officials have been talking to U.S. counterparts in order to gain clarity on the scope of the tariff threat outlined by President Donald Trump in an executive order and see whether there was a way to deliver the much-needed fuel. It remains uncertain whether Mexico will find a solution.

The White House referred Reuters to previous comments by Trump, who on Monday told reporters Mexico would stop sending oil to Cuba, without elaborating on why he believed that to be the case.
The U.S. State Department and the Mexican presidency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said it had no information on the matter.
Cuba needs to import fuel for two-thirds of its energy needs, and is struggling with worsening power outages and long lines at gas stations.
Shipments of Venezuelan oil to the island ceased following a U.S. blockade of Venezuelan tankers in December and the capture of President Nicolas Maduro in early January, leaving Mexico as Cuba’s largest supplier.

However, in mid-January, the Mexican government halted shipments of crude and refined products amid pressure from the Trump administration. Washington subsequently threatened tariffs on countries that supply oil to the communist-ruled island, saying that Cuba poses an “extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security – a claim Havana denies.
“There are talks happening almost every other day,” said one of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. “Mexico doesn’t want tariffs imposed, but it is also firm in its policy of helping the Cuban people,” the source added.
The Cuban government said on Thursday it was preparing a plan for “acute fuel shortages” and would release details over the next week.
This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that Cuba risks a humanitarian “collapse” if it does not receive oil to meet its needs.

Mexico, and in particular the ruling Morena party, has long maintained ideological and historical ties with Cuba, and President Claudia Sheinbaum is under pressure from within her coalition to not abandon Havana.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/mexico-seeking-way-to-send-fuel-cuba-without-being-hit-by-us-tariffs-sources-say-2026-02-05/

The US military said the aim of re-establishing the mechanism was to avoid miscalculation and escalation by either side.

The US and Russia agreed Thursday (Feb 5) to re-establish high-level, military-to-military dialogue for the first time in more than four years in another sign of warming relations between the two countries since President Donald Trump took office and sought to end the war in Ukraine.

The agreement emerged from a meeting between senior Russian and American military officials in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the US military in Europe said.

The restored communication channel “will provide a consistent military-to-military contact as the parties continue to work towards a lasting peace,” the US European Command said in a statement. High-level military communication was suspended in 2021, as relations between Moscow and Washington became increasingly strained ahead of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

US Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who is the commander in Europe of both US and NATO forces, was in Abu Dhabi, where talks between American, Russian and Ukrainian officials on ending the war entered a second day.

Meanwhile, Moscow escalated its attacks on Ukraine’s power grid in an apparent effort to deny civilians power and to weaken public support for the fight, while hostilities continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front line snaking through eastern and southern parts of Ukraine.

AN EFFORT TO LOWER TENSIONS

The resumption of the military-to-military hotline marks an effort to ease tensions that soared after the start of the war and to avoid collisions between Russian and US forces.

In one such incident in March 2023, the American military said it ditched an Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Black Sea after a pair of Russian fighter jets dumped fuel on it, and then one of them struck its propeller while flying in international airspace.

Moscow has denied that its warplanes hit the drone, alleging that it crashed while making a sharp manoeuvre. The Kremlin said its aircraft reacted to a violation of a no-fly zone Russia has established in the area near Crimea.

Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about intelligence flights by the US and other NATO aircraft over the Black Sea, and some Russian officials charged that the American surveillance flights helped gather intelligence that allowed Ukraine to strike Russian targets.

NATO members have been increasingly worried about intrusions into allied airspace. Some European officials described the incidents as Moscow testing NATO’s response.

In September, a swarm of Russian drones flew into Poland’s airspace, prompting NATO aircraft to scramble to intercept them and shoot down some of the devices. It was the first direct encounter between NATO and Moscow since the full-scale invasion. Later that month, NATO jets escorted three Russian warplanes out of Estonia’s airspace.

RUSSIA, UKRAINE EXCHANGE PRISONERS FOLLOWING TALKS

The delegations from Moscow and Kyiv were joined Thursday in Abu Dhabi by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief, who was present at the meeting.

They were also at last month’s talks in the same place as the Trump administration tries to steer Russia and Ukraine toward a settlement.

Officials have provided no information about any progress in the discussions.

Following the talks on Thursday, however, Russia and Ukraine said they carried out a prisoner exchange.

The Russian Defence Ministry said it brought 157 Russian servicemen back from Ukrainian captivity, as well as three Russian nationals captured during Kyiv’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian officials said 150 Ukrainian servicemen and seven civilians returned from Russian captivity.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the released Russian soldiers are currently in Belarus, getting medical assistance, before being taken back to Russia “for treatment and rehabilitation.”

Ukrainian human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that among the 150 service members who returned from Russian captivity, 18 were “illegally sentenced by Russia.” He said that “overall, those released are in a difficult psychological condition, and some are critically underweight.”

ZELENSKYY SAYS 55,000 UKRANIAN TROOPS KILLED IN THE WAR

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 55,000 Ukrainian troops have died since Russia’s invasion almost four years ago. “And there is a large number of people whom Ukraine considers missing,” he added in an interview broadcast late Wednesday by French TV channel France 2.

The last time Zelenskyy gave a figure for battlefield deaths, in early 2025, he said 46,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said his country needs security guarantees from the US and Europe to deter any postwar Russian attacks.

Ukrainians must feel that there is genuine progress toward peace and “not toward a scenario in which the Russians exploit everything to their advantage and continue their strikes,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Wednesday.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-russia-re-establish-high-level-military-talks-5910181

GCC is a union of six countries in the Gulf region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.

India and the six-nation bloc of Middle Eastern nations, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), inked terms of reference on Thursday for formally launching negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA).

The terms of reference (ToR) outline the scope and modalities of a proposed trade pact. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal presided over the signing ceremony of the ToRs with GCC.

GCC is a union of six countries in the Gulf region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.

Goyal said that the agreement will help boost bilateral trade and investments between the two.

“The two trading partners have been trading amongst each other for over 5,000 years,” he told reporters.

He added that about 10 million Indians are living and working in the GCC region.

“It is most appropriate that we now enter into a much stronger and robust trading arrangement which will enable a greater free flow of goods, services, bring predictability and stability to policy, help encourage a greater degree of investments,” Goyal said.

He said the agreement will also encourage the food and energy security of the GCC nations, as well as India. While India is a major food grain producer in the world, GCC nations are oil and gas exporters.

“We already have a very robust, nearly USD 179 billion bilateral trade. I believe a number of products and services required by the GCC countries can be provided by our young, very talented and skilled Indians, as the GCC countries can help us with further diversification and growth of our energy sources,” he said.

About 10 million Indians at present are living and working in the GCC region, helping power the economies of the group.

Indian exports will get a boost from the proposed pact from the elimination of duties and non-tariff barriers.

“We will also get a foothold to grow Indian infrastructure and the infrastructure in the GCC, together with the high-quality companies that are working in the space of infrastructure. Our petrochemical industry will hugely benefit with this partnership,” Goyal said.

Further, he added that India’s information and communication technology firms will get opportunities in the ever-growing GCC market.

India has already implemented a free trade pact with the UAE in May 2022.

India and Oman also signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in Muscat on December 18, 2025.

Goyal said that the government has finalised as many as nine trade pacts in the last few years, covering 38 developed nations.

GCC’s chief negotiator, Raja Al Marzouqi, said the pact is important at a time of global uncertainties.

“So it’s a message, it’s a signal for the whole globe, and it’s important for us at this time to try to be more cooperative to avoid any risk that our global economy is facing as a result of uncertainty,” he said.

Additional Secretary in the department of commerce Ajay Bhadoo is India’s chief negotiator for the pact.

Launch of FTA talks with the GCC would be a kind of resumption of the negotiations, as the earlier two rounds of negotiations were held in 2006 and 2008 between the two regions.

The third round did not happen as GCC deferred its negotiations with all countries and economic groups.

India imports predominantly crude oil and natural gas from the Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and exports pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, metals, imitation jewellery, electrical machinery, iron and steel, and chemicals to these countries.

India’s exports to the GCC grew by close to one per cent to about USD 57 billion in 2024-25 against USD 56.32 billion in 2023-24. Imports rose by 15.33 per cent to USD 121.7 billion in 2024-25 from USD 105.5 billion in 2023-24.

Bilateral trade has increased to USD 178.7 billion in 2024-25 from USD 161.82 billion in 2023-24.

The UAE was India’s third-largest trading partner in the last fiscal.

India’s exports to the nation stood at USD 36.63 billion, while imports were USD 63.40 billion in the last fiscal, resulting in a trade deficit of USD 26.76 billion in 2024-25.

Saudi Arabia was India’s fifth-largest trading partner during the last fiscal.

Exports to the kingdom were USD 11.75 billion, while imports stood at USD 30.12 billion, leading to a trade deficit of USD 18.36 billion in 2024-25.

Qatar ranked as India’s 22nd-largest trading partner last fiscal. Exports stood at USD 1.68 billion, while imports were USD 12.46 billion, leaving a trade deficit of USD 10.78 billion in 2024-25. India mainly imports liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar, while exporting products ranging from cereals to meat, fish, chemicals and plastics.

Oman was the 28th largest trading partner of India in 2024-25. Exports stood at USD 4 billion, while imports aggregated to USD 6.54 billion. The trade deficit was 2.48 billion.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/saudi-oman-uae-qatar-kuwait-bahrain-6-gulf-nations-india-could-soon-sign-free-trade-agreement-fta-with-10955914?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Bangladesh has scrambled to finalise the deal after the India-US trade agreement that reduced tariffs on Indian goods to 18 per cent. Bangladesh fears losing market share to India if it cannot secure equally competitive or better terms.

The United States and Bangladesh are set to sign a trade agreement on February 9, just 72 hours before the national election on February 12. The deal has faced significant criticism because of secrecy surrounding its terms.

Bangladesh has scrambled to finalise the deal after the India-US trade agreement that reduced tariffs on Indian goods to 18 per cent. Bangladesh fears losing market share to India if it cannot secure equally competitive or better terms, as its economy relies heavily on ready-made garment (RMG) exports to the US, which make up nearly 90 per cent of its American exports.

Bangladesh Tariffs

The deal comes after Washington hit Dhaka with a steep 37 per cent tariff in April 2025. In July the tariffs were negotiated down to 35 per cent and then eventually to 20 per cent in August. The upcoming trade deal is further expected to reduce the tariffs to 15 per cent.

‘Secret’ US Trade Deal

Moreover, in mid-2025, the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus signed a formal Non-Disclosure Agreement with the US, committing to keep all tariff and trade negotiations confidential. No draft of the agreement has either been shared with the public, the parliament or key industry stakeholders.

In August last year, the Commerce Adviser, Sk Bashir Uddin, said, “There will be nothing in the agreement that goes against the country’s interests. Subject to US consent, it will also be made public,” according to Prothom Alo.

US Conditions In The Deal

The publication also reported that there are several ‘conditions’ in the deal. First, to reduce imports from China and increase military imports from the US rather than China. Second, US imports should be able to enter Bangladesh freely, and the South Asian nation would need to accept US standards and certifications without raising questions. Inspections regarding the import of the US’ vehicles and parts should not be carried out, as Washington wants easy access for its vehicles in the Bangladesh market.

Devpriya Bhattacharya, a distinguished fellow of the private research organisation Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), told Prothom Alo that the trade deal is not transparent, as there has been no opportunity to weigh its advantages and disadvantages.

“Had the tariff agreement been signed after the election, political parties could have discussed it. It is also worth considering whether the hands of the incoming elected government are being tied,” he said.

Since an unelected interim administration is signing the deal three days before the elections, it means the onus of implementing the agreement would fall on the party that forms the newly elected government.

Bangladesh’s Garment Industry In The Dark

Bangladesh sells a massive amount of clothes and textiles to the US every year (around $7 to $8.4 billion). This makes up nearly 96 per cent of everything Bangladesh sends to the US. In contrast, Bangladesh only buys about $2 billion worth of goods from the US. Any change in trade rules is a huge deal for Bangladesh because the US is such a big customer.

Since India and Bangladesh sell similar products, like clothes, a lower tax for India means Indian clothes become cheaper for Americans to buy. If Bangladesh’s “secret” deal doesn’t match or beat India’s 18 per cent rate, American buyers might switch their orders to India, putting millions of Bangladeshi jobs at risk.

The garment sector in Bangladesh is the engine of the country, as it employs 4 to 5 million people, most of whom are women. It brings in over 80 per cent of the money Bangladesh makes from all exports. It accounts for nearly 20 per cent of the entire country’s economy.

In Kyiv, hundreds of thousands of residents are facing subzero temperatures without any heat or electricity. Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said municipal services are “working around the clock” to restore heat to homes.

Following a nationwide power outage over the weekend and a Russian drone and missile strike on Kyiv on Tuesday night, 1,170 apartment blocks in the Ukrainian capital are currently without heat. At the same time, outside temperatures have dropped to below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many residential buildings have already been without heat and electricity for weeks after Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure. Some households don’t even have running water.

Kyiv’s mayor, former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, has said municipal services and energy providers are “working around the clock to restore heat and light” to residents’ homes. According to the municipality, workers are doing everything they can to make sure that the hundreds of buildings regain access to water, heating and electricity.

In one apartment block in the Solomianskyi district, the heating system has been out of order for two weeks.

“I take pots of boiling hot water into the bedroom,” explained Sviatoslava, a resident, who told DW that she sleeps fully clothed, in a sleeping bag, for extra warmth. During the day, she spends a lot of time in the kitchen. “The gas stove is always on, but I have to air the room from time to time so I don’t suffocate.”

Residents here are glad workers were at least able to drain the water from the heaters in time to prevent freeze-related damage. A plumber also advised them to pour hot water down the toilets from time to time to prevent the pipes from bursting.

Surrender not an option: ‘It’s better to hold out’

Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have also particularly affected Kyiv’s large northern Troieshchyna district, where authorities have set up army tents and so-called Invincibility Points. The emergency shelters offer heat, tea and generators so people can charge their electronic devices.

Coming out of her apartment block, an older woman complains about the icy streets. “If they didn’t have time to clear the snow, they could at least have spread some sand,” she said.

Her apartment only has power for six to eight hours a day, and the heating has been out for a week. “It’s impossible to stay warm inside,” she said. “But the good thing is, we have gas, so we can cook and heat up the kitchen a little.”

Her neighbor, Valeriy, chimes in. “Of course, it’s hard for us now. We’ve been heating bricks on our gas stoves because you can’t leave them on for too long without getting a headache and having to turn it off,” he said.

Valeriy has also been making electricity with a solar generator on his balcony, and he also uses power banks that he charges at the supermarket. That’s also where he bought some drinking water after his building’s water supply failed.

Despite all these challenges and the soaring food prices, people don’t see surrender as an option for Ukraine. “Of course, some would agree to it, but most think that it would be better to hold out. We don’t want to live with the Russians,” said Valeriy.

Residents take initiative

Tetiana, a housing manager, is waiting near her apartment block for the police. She wants to take action against certain utility companies, with which contracts were signed.

She said the long-distance district heating being directed to her building is at 65 degrees Celsius, but the heaters in the apartments are lukewarm at best. “We contacted the utility company. They sent plumbers from a private company. But before they could do anything, their foreman rushed in, scolded them, and took them somewhere else,” she told DW.

Rather than wait for repairs, Tetiana has decided to insulate the basement pipes herself with the help of neighbors. “Not all of them are wrapped in mineral wool, so people donated old blankets and other warm materials. Now we’re wrapping the exposed pipe sections,” she said. “Next, we’ll check the attic and see if anything needs insulating up there.”

The city has said each district has a Invincibility Point. Iryna, a Red Cross volunteer, helps people in one such shelter that has been located in a school since 2022. She said most people come by in the evening, not during the day.

“Here, they can get warm, have hot drinks and grab something to eat. A social worker takes requests, and we help where we can,” Iryna told DW. “Food is delivered here.”

Lyudmyla Vakulenko, an assistant principal at a local school, is on the phone coordinating the installation of a mobile heating unit with municipal workers.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/in-freezing-kyiv-ukrainians-endure-without-heat-power/a-75828851

The US has prevented oil shipments to Cuba in recent weeks, plunging the country into deeper and more frequent blackouts. Cuba’s president said that any talks must be held without interference in its internal affairs.

Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel said he is prepared to hold talks with the US on Thursday after weeks threats from the Trump administration.

US President Donald Trump previously warned that “Cuba will be failing pretty soon” after US forces kidnapped the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and claimed control over the country’s vast oil reserves — cutting Cuba off from its main supplier of energy in the process.

Trump has also asked Mexico not to send oil among its humanitarian deliveries to the island, and threatened tariffs on other countries that do.

“Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the United States, a dialogue on any topic… but without pressure or preconditions,” Diaz-Canel said in address broadcast on state TV and radio.

He added that any talks must take place “from a position of equals, with respect for our sovereignty, our independence, and our self-determination” and without “interference in our internal affairs.”

Cuba goes dark amid US pressure

Six decades of a US-imposed trade embargo combined with chronic mismanagement have left Cuba’s electricity grid in shambles.

But the recent lack of oil has caused even longer and more frequent blackouts across the island.

On Wednesday, the four southern provinces of Granma, Guantanamo, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba were plunged into darkness. Power was not restored until Thursday morning.

“Since it goes out all the time, I didn’t even realize it was a widespread outage,” one resident of Cuba’s second-largest city, Santiago, told the AFP news agency.

In his address on Thursday, Diaz-Canel pledged to build more solar farms, expand oil storage facilities and develop the island’s own crude oil and gas potential, without providing details.

All of these solutions would require international cooperation.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/cuba-us-trump-dialogue-talks-blackout-oil/a-75828676

Senior US and Iranian officials are expected to meet in Oman later for direct talks amid a crisis that has raised fears of a military confrontation between the two countries.

The discussions come after a US military build-up in the Middle East in response to Iran’s violent repression of nationwide anti-government protests last month, that human rights groups say killed many thousands of people.

Uncertainty over the location and scope had threatened to derail the talks, which are part of a diplomatic effort by regional mediators to de-escalate tensions.

Both countries remain far apart in their positions. The hope is that, if successful, the discussions could lead to a framework for negotiations.

The US, which is demanding Iran freezes its nuclear programme and discards its stockpile of enriched uranium, had said the talks should also involve Iran’s ballistic missiles, the country’s support for regional armed groups and its treatment of its citizens.

Iran, however, has said the discussions will be limited to its nuclear programme, and it is unclear if these differences have been resolved.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if it does not reach a deal. The US has sent thousands of troops and what Trump has described as an “armada” to the region, including an aircraft carrier along with other warships as well as fighter jets.

Iran has vowed to respond to an attack with force, threatening to strike American military assets in the Middle East and Israel.

The Iranian delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who last week said his country’s armed forces were “with their fingers on the trigger”, while the US will be represented by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

This will be the first meeting involving US and Iranian officials since the war between Israel and Iran last June, when the US bombed Iran’s three main nuclear facilities.

Iran says its uranium enrichment activity stopped after the attacks.

For Iran’s embattled leaders, the talks could be the last chance to avert US military action that could further destabilise the regime, which analysts say is in its weakest position since it came to power following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Trump’s threats came as Iran’s security forces brutally repressed large-scale demonstrations, which were triggered by a deepening economic crisis, and saw protesters calling for the end of the Islamic Republic.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a Washington-based group, said it had confirmed at least 6,883 deaths, warning that the number could be much higher, and that more than 50,000 people had been arrested.

The current crisis has brought back to discussions the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme, which has been at the centre of a long-running dispute with the West.

For decades, Iran has said its programme is for peaceful purposes, while the US and Israel have accused it of being part of an effort to develop a weapon.

Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium in its own territory and has rejected calls for its stockpile of highly enriched uranium – 400kg (880lb) – to be transferred to a third country.

Officials have indicated being open to concessions, which could include the creation of a regional consortium for uranium enrichment, as proposed during talks with the US that collapsed when Israel launched its surprise war last year.

At the same time, Iran says demands to limit the country’s ballistic missile programme and to end the support for proxies in the region – an alliance Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance” that includes Hamas in Gaza, militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen – are unacceptable and a breach of its sovereignty.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he had instructed Araghchi to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the US, “provided that a suitable environment exists”.

In any case, Iran is expected to demand the lifting of sanctions that have crippled its economy. Opponents of the regime say any relief would give the clerical rulers a lifeline.

For the US, the meeting, depending on its outcome, could offer an offramp for Trump from his military threats.

Regional countries are concerned that a US strike could lead to a wider conflict or long-term chaos in Iran, and have warned that air power alone will not be able to topple the Iranian leadership.

Asked if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be worried, Trump told NBC News on Wednesday: “I would say he should be very worried. Yeah, he should be”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the discussions would have to go beyond the nuclear issue for “something meaningful” to be achieved.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr57g1y8286o

Donald Trump has endorsed Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi ahead of a snap election in her country on Sunday.

Takaichi has “already proven to be a strong, powerful, and wise leader… one that truly loves her country,” the US president wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday, adding: “She will not let the people of Japan down!”

While it is rare for US presidents to publicly back candidates in foreign elections, Trump has done so before, endorsing Argentina’s Javier Milei and Hungary’s Viktor Orban most recently.

Takaichi has courted the US president as Tokyo seeks more stability in its relationship with Washington, its closest ally, in the wake of Trump’s tariffs.

Trump had threatened a 25% tariff initially, but Japan then struck a deal in July to invest $550bn (£407bn) in the US. In exchange, Washington lowered import levies to 15%.

Takaichi, 64, became PM in October after she won the leadership race in her party and secured enough support in parliament. But she called for an last month election to seek a public mandate.

Just one week after she took office, Tokyo rolled out the red carpet for Trump, deploying a full military guard of honour and band to welcome him at the Akasaka Palace, the government’s state guesthouse.

It was her diplomatic debut, and the optics were striking: Takaichi aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, fists pumping as the US president praised her in front of thousands of US soldiers, the images then broadcast around the world.

She sought to portray herself as a leader Trump can and wants to do business with and, perhaps more importantly for the president, someone he gets along with personally.

The two leaders also see eye-to-eye on defence. Trump wants Tokyo to spend more on its own security and so does Takaichi, as sentiment grows in Japan that it must invest more in defence.

They heaped compliments on each other during the visit and signed a deal on rare earths, as well as a document heralding a new “golden age” of US-Japan relations. Takaichi described Trump as a “partner in a new golden era”, and praised his role in bringing peace to the Middle East.

“In my visit to Japan, I and all of my representatives, were extremely impressed with her,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post on Thursday, noting that the two countries have made progress in national security cooperation and on the economic front.

Trump also said he will welcome Takaichi to the White House on 19 March.

His post, which signals that Takaichi is a leader his administration would work with, is a message aimed not only at Japanese voters but also the region, and especially China.

Beijing and Tokyo are in the middle of a diplomatic rift, and the historically tense relationship has hit its lowest point in more than a decade.

Takaichi found herself the target of China’s ire in November, when she made comments suggesting that Japan could respond with its own self-defence force if China attacked Taiwan, the self-governed island it has long claimed. She has since refused to retract the statement.

Trump’s endorsement of her comes as tensions between them continue, and a day after he had a phone call with China’s leader Xi Jinping.

He said he had an “extremely good” relationship with China, and that both he and Xi “realise how important it is to keep it that way”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yd14r2mgno

Savannah Guthrie’s mom, Nancy Guthrie, was likely “stalked for some time” before her kidnapping, a former CIA member and FBI special agent believes.

As the desperate search for Nancy Guthrie continues into day 5, expert Tracy Walder tells Page Six that clues suggest she may have been stalked prior to the kidnapping.

During Thursday’s press conference, authorities confirmed no DNA indicating a suspect was found in the Arizona home, as Walder believes the perpetrator was extremely prepared.

“This is a person who is clearly suited up and gloved up, right? Even though they may have surprised [Nancy] in her sleep, I find it very hard to believe that she wouldn’t have fought back a little bit in some way,” she tells us.

“I understand that she’s 84 and not of the best health, but human nature is to respond, which means DNA
could have gone places,” she continues.

During Thursday’s press conference, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos revealed Nancy’s doorbell camera disconnected around 1:47 a.m. on Sunday.

Walder out points that based on the timeline, the perpetrator was there for around 45 minutes and seemed to know where the security cameras were to remove them.

“Now, that doesn’t always mean it’s a family member,” Walder clarifies. “That could mean it’s a stalker.”

Walder shares that she was easily able to find Nancy’s personal information like her home address, email address and her phone number online, which is a “problem” because of Savannah’s high-profile career.

“I also think because of the fact [Nancy’s] home is set so far back, if this is just some random person, I think they probably stalked her for some time and got a pattern life … Her comings and goings and those kinds of things.”

“There’s no way this is a robbery gone wrong,” she adds. “You’re not going to bring the person with you. There’s no way this is random.

“If this is something that was planned, which I do think it was … maybe this person knew about the condition she has, and maybe this person knew to have medication for her in it.”

Walder tells us that because of the level of effort and preparation the kidnapping took, she’s not convinced the motive is purely financial.

“I just in my gut, feel like this is someone that either had some kind of obsession with Savannah because of how high-profile she is, and this was a way to potentially get to her,” she says. “Or this is a person that has some kind of beef with Savannah because of whatever story she covered, whoever she interviewed, any of those.

“I am not convinced it’s fully about money. I’m not completely convinced this is solely about the ransom.”

Nancy was reported missing on Sunday after she failed to show up to church.

In Thursday’s press conference, Nanos said authorities are “actively looking at everyone” as a suspect in Nancy’s kidnapping.

Nanos added that Nancy’s family has “been very cooperative” and “done everything” asked of them.

The Sheriff previously said that he and investigators believe Nancy was abducted in her sleep and “harmed” in the process.

A trail of blood was seen just outside her front door, which Nanos confirmed on Thursday belongs to Nancy.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2026/02/05/celebrity-news/savannah-guthries-mom-was-likely-stalked-for-some-time-before-kidnapping-expert-says/

China’s leader Xi Jinping has called Taiwan “the most important issue” in China-US relations during a phone call with US President Donald Trump.

Xi told Trump to be “prudent” when supplying weapons to the island, state media report, adding that he attached “great importance” to ties with Washington and hoped both sides would find ways to resolve their differences.

Trump described Wednesday’s call as “excellent” and “long and thorough”.

The call followed a flurry of visits by Western leaders, including the UK’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, to China in recent months, hoping to reset relations with the world’s second-largest economy.

Trump himself is due to visit China in April, a trip he said he “very much” looked forward to.

He added that Beijing was considering buying 20 million tonnes of US soybeans, up from the current 12 million tonnes.

“The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

Apart from Taiwan and soybeans, Trump and Xi discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine, the current situation in Iran, and China’s purchase of oil and gas from the US, the US president wrote.

On Taiwan, Xi said the self-governed island was “China’s territory” and that Beijing “must safeguard [Taiwan’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“The United States must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence,” he warned.

China has long vowed to “reunify” with Taiwan and has not ruled out the use of force to do so.

The US has formal ties with Beijing rather than Taiwan, and has walked a tight diplomatic rope for decades. But it remains a powerful ally of Taiwan and is the island’s biggest arms supplier.

In December, the Trump administration announced a huge arms sale worth around $11bn (£8.2bn) to Taiwan, which included advanced rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers and a variety of missiles.

Beijing said at the time that this “attempt to support [Taiwan’s] independence” would only “accelerate the push towards a dangerous and violent situation across the Taiwan Strait”.

“Just as the United States has its concerns, China for its part also has concerns,” Xi told Trump on Wednesday.

“If the two sides work in the same direction in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit, we can surely find ways to address each other’s concerns.”

On Thursday, Taiwan’s leader Lai Ching-te told reporters relations with the US remained “rock solid” and that “all ongoing co-operation projects are continuing”.

Xi and Trump last spoke in November, when the Chinese president invited his US counterpart to visit.

Relations between the two countries improved steadily in the last few months, following last year’s tariff war, and battles over chips and rare earths.

While these still remain key sticking points, tensions appear to have ebbed since the two leaders met in person in South Korea in October and struck a deal which saw both sides de-escalating on some tariffs and rare earth export controls.

Negotiators from both countries also agreed on the framework for a deal on soybeans – where China would lift a ban on imports from the US – and a deal on TikTok, which was finalised last month.

Hours before his call with Trump, Xi held a virtual meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, in which both hailed the strengthening of ties between Beijing and Moscow.

Russian media say Putin also accepted Xi’s invitation to visit China in the first half of the year.

Xi’s calls with the two leaders have been characterised by Chinese state media as a clear sign to the rest of the world that China will remain a responsible and rational world power.

Beijing appears to be positioning itself this way following some bold and controversial moves on the world stage by Trump in January.

The US president notably ordered his military to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and ramped up his demands for the US to take over Greenland, causing consternation among European leaders.

The US operation in Venezuela also led some analysts to suggest that Beijing could feel emboldened to make a move on Taiwan.

Others, however, have expressed doubt. One expert, David Sacks from the Council on Foreign Relations, previously told the BBC that he expected that “China will continue with its strategy of employing coercion to wear down Taiwan’s people”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62wpjd3j1zo

Over the past two months, the US Department of Justice has released millions of documents related to its sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the president wants the nation to move on – but will it?

Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the government’s review of the Epstein files – which was mandated by a law passed by Congress in November – is over, and there are no grounds for new prosecutions.

“There’s a lot of correspondence. There’s a lot of emails. There’s a lot of photographs,” Blanche said on Sunday. “But that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

While the justice department’s review may be over, on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives is pushing ahead with its own Epstein inquiry. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are scheduled to testify later in February after Republicans threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress.

Members of Congress and Epstein’s victims, meanwhile, are continuing to call for further disclosures – pointing to documents they say exist but weren’t included in the released files.

It is yet another sign of just how difficult to shake this story has become for those, like President Donald Trump, who are clearly keen to move on.

For the moment, however, the president has emerged from the storm with no apparent lasting damage.

That is not true for some of the other rich and powerful figures whose ties to Epstein were more prominently detailed in the files, and who had continued contact with him long after he became a convicted sex offender in 2008.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, Lord Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US, and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, for instance, have all faced professional and personal consequences for their connections to Epstein.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and tech multi-billionaire Elon Musk, among others, have had to explain emails and mentions of their name in the released documents.

The president, at the White House on Tuesday, said he thought it was “really time for the country to get on to something else”.

“Nothing came out about me,” Trump, who has consistently denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, said.

That, however, is not exactly accurate.

The president’s name appeared more than 6,000 times in the documents. He was frequently mentioned by Epstein and his associates. The two men, both residents of New York City and West Palm Beach, had by all accounts a friendly relationship for much of the 1990s until, according to Trump, they fell out in the early 2000s.

One of those Trump mentions, in an email released in December, drew particular scrutiny.

“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote in the 2011 email to convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned”.

In the latest batch of files, the justice department also released a list of unverified FBI tips, including some from 2016 when Trump was in the midst of his first presidential campaign. The list includes numerous allegations of sexual abuse made against Trump, Epstein and other high-profile figures.

The FBI tips, many of which were made without supporting evidence, temporarily disappeared from the justice department’s document website on Saturday. That only served to fuel a feeling in some quarters that the department was working to protect the president.

“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the justice department said of those particular files.

“The claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponised against President Trump already.”

There have been a handful of new photographs of Trump, but none were any more revealing than images and videos that have long been in the public domain.

And Trump, who famously refrains from using email, has no documented trail of direct communication with Epstein. None of the new information substantively undercuts the president’s assertion that his friendship with Epstein ended around 2004.

The closest thing to a political bombshell – a bawdy, suggestive note Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein for inclusion in a 2002 birthday book – was released by the Epstein estate, not the government.

Trump has vehemently denied its authenticity.

Democrats have alleged the lack of damning evidence against Trump may mean the justice department withheld incriminating documents.

“You say all the documents are released,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a statement. “Does that include all of the co-conspirator memos, the corporate protection memos, the original Palm Beach Police Department reports, etc.?”

“Has every document that mentions the word Trump been released?”

One of Epstein’s victims, Lisa Phillips, told the BBC that she and her fellow survivors were not satisfied by the justice department’s actions on Epstein.

“The [department] has violated all three of our requirements,” she said.

“Number one, many documents still haven’t been disclosed. Number two, the date set for release has long passed. And number three, the DOJ released the names of many of the survivors, and that’s not OK. We feel they’re playing some games with us, but we’re not going to stop fighting.”

Anger and frustration among Trump’s supporters over the administration’s apparent reluctance to release all of its Epstein files – perhaps the most potent threat to the president’s political standing – appears to have diminished with this wave of newly produced documents, however.

While some critics, like former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, continue to condemn the president, much of his Make America Great Again base appears to have moved on from the Epstein news – their attention divided between ongoing unrest in Minneapolis and the FBI’s inquiry into allegations of voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election, among other headline stories.

That does not mean, however, that this story is over.

Democrats, citing legal requirements, are demanding access to unredacted versions of many of the released documents. And the Clinton testimony could create serious political fireworks.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4gj71z0m0o

Israeli forces and Gaza authorities have reported deaths after exchanges of fire in the territory, despite a ceasefire.

At least 24 people were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Wednesday after fighting resumed in several areas of the coastal enclave, according to the territory’s health authority.

The reported deaths underscore the fragility of the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

What has been reported about the deaths?

The Gaza health authority said at least 24 people had been killed across the territory since early Wednesday.

Four of the deaths occurred during Israeli shelling in southern Gaza, it said.

Palestinian health officials also reported fatalities in several neighborhoods of Gaza City in the north. The claims have not been independently verified.

Gaza health officials say that more than 556 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire went into effect. The United Nations largely regards the ministry’s numbers as credible.

Israel’s military has said that four Israeli soldiers have been killed in the same time period.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/gaza-israeli-fire-reportedly-kills-24-amid-renewed-clashes/a-75799235

The mixed doubles curling event kicked off the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics two days before the official opening of the Games.

The 2026 Winter Olympics sports program opened with the first curling matches scheduled in Italy’s Cortina on Wednesday night, two days before the official opening ceremony.

Several hundred spectators watched as eight teams unpacked their equipment in the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium.

The matches had barely begun when a brief power outage blacked out the scoreboards for the matchups between Sweden and South Korea, Great Britain and Norway, Canada and the Czech Republic, and Estonia and Switzerland.

The officials paused the matches when the lights dimmed and flickered, and when the main lights and heat in the nearby media center went out.

However, the curlers continued sliding on the ice to stay ready, and the fans cheered when the bright lights returned soon after and play resumed.

The organizers acknowledged the brief interruption to the competition “due to an energy-related issue” and noted that it lasted approximately three minutes.

First Olympic results

The British pair of Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds started their journey with an 8-6 victory over the Norwegians. Sweden, Canada, and Estonia also won their opening matches.

The reigning Olympic champions in the mixed doubles, Italy, will begin their bid for gold against South Korea on Thursday.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/winter-olympics-begin-quietly-with-curling/a-75811934

The last remaining denuclearization deal between Russia and the United States is about to expire. When it does, it will end a regime limiting nuclear stockpiling by the superpowers.

Time is running out: The nuclear arms reduction deal between the United States and Russia, known as New START, is set to expire by the end of Wednesday. Key world leaders, including Pope Leo XIV, have been publicly calling for the agreement’s extension or preservation.

START stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The most recent bilateral deal between the US and Russia was signed by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev as the respective presidents of the United States and Russia in 2010, and is the last remaining treaty on nuclear reduction between both nations. The first such arrangement can be found in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement (SALT-I), signed in 1972.

The New START agreement limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, and the number of strategic delivery vehicles and systems — such as heavy bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) — to 800 each. It also contains provisions for mutual inspections to verify the treaty is being upheld.

What about the ‘old’ START deals?

Previous START agreements include START I and START II. The former was initiated by then-US President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, just months before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was signed by Reagan‘s successor, President George H.W. Bush, as well as President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. The agreement entered into force in 1994 and lasted until 2009.

START II, on the other hand, was agreed upon in 1993 but never entered into force due to rising tensions between Moscow and Washington at the time.

However, both powers remained committed to nuclear disarmament and returned to the table to hammer out a new deal. Signed and ratified in 2010, the new arrangement was quite literally hoped to be a new start.

The treaty was originally set to last ten years and expire in February 2021. At the time, US President Joe Biden, and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to adopt a five-year extension. Which brings us to the looming 2026 deadline.

What happens when the new deal expires?

Once the treaty expires, the world’s two largest nuclear powers will no longer be bound by upper limits for their strategic nuclear arsenals.

“This is very bad for global security,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Without intervention, the world could be facing another unchecked nuclear arms race.

An expiration of the deal would also usher in a new era of uncertainty, as the deal sought to foster predictability and transparency with provisions for on-site inspections and the exchange of data. The idea was to prevent one side from prematurely launching a nuclear attack based on bad information gathered from the other side.

What do Russia and the US hope to achieve?

In September 2025, Putin had offered that Russia would unilaterally adhere to the deal for a further year to allow for more time to renegotiate. At the time, US President Donald Trump said Putin’s proposal “sounds like a good idea,” but remained non-committal.

Both leaders were on good terms then — at the expense of Ukraine and the EU, as many European leaders feared.

But at some point, Trump appears to have changed his mind. Speaking about the New START accord with the New York Times in January 2026, he said, “if it expires, it expires,” and added he expected that “we’ll just do a better agreement.”

Apparently, Trump believes that China, the world’s fastest-growing nuclear power, should be integrated into the bilateral arrangement. He had already indicated as much during his first term in office, when he unilaterally canceled several nuclear or arms control agreements with Russia and — without success — suggested China should be involved in their continuation.

What does New START have to do with Russia’s war in Ukraine?

When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, relations between Moscow and Washington became frostier, but they did not initially affect the New START arrangement.

Half a year in, however, Russia barred US inspections at their strategic military sites. And in 2023, Moscow announced it was suspending participation in the New START treaty, citing US support for Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russia has adhered to the legal numerical limits outlined in the treaty.

Looking back at the history of START agreements, extra provisions in START I regarding Ukraine are notable, as they obliged Ukraine to transfer their Soviet-era nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the US and the UK.

What role does China play?

When the START treaties were initiated, Russia and the US were still unrivaled nuclear powers. But since then, China has caught up as an economic and military superpower. This is likely why Trump has argued that a new denuclearization treaty would only make sense with China’s involvement.

Beijing has currently stockpiled an estimated 600 nuclear warheads and counting. In 2023, a congressional commission warned that for the first time in its history, the US was facing the challenge of having to deter not one, but two nuclear peers.

China has rejected calls to limit its nuclear arsenal, arguing that its stockpile was still relatively small compared to those of the US and Russia.

Can the New START deal still be salvaged?

Even if Beijing made a U-turn on this line, an extension or new edition of the New START deal seems unlikely. On the one hand, Russia has in the meantime developed and deployed nuclear-capable weapons systems that are not considered in the New START guidelines, such as the hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile or the nuclear-armed autonomous Poseidon drone.

On the other hand, Trump’s proposal for a space-based nuclear missile defense system called Golden Dome has been read by many as an attempt to undercut the fundamental principle of nuclear power balancing: deterrence through mutually assured destruction.

In line with this, on Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryanbkov stated that, should the US station missile defense systems on Greenland, his country would reply with military measures.

How has Europe been responding?

The possible expiration of nuclear reduction treaty New START has many Europeans concerned. This adds to the worry, fueled by a series of Trump‘s statements, that the United States’ nuclear umbrella may no longer extend to Europe without restrictions.

The fear has sparked debate over how to possibly shape European nuclear defense. One idea is for the two European nuclear powers, France and the UK, to extend their protection to other nations, such as Germany.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has now confirmed that such talks are taking place with both countries.

“We know that we need to make some strategic and military policy decisions here, but the time is not right yet.”

So far, not much progress seems to have been made. Open questions include who would make the decision to call a nuclear strike. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Russia wants to include the British and French nuclear arsenals in any potential new treaty, arguing that both are US allies.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/doomsday-clock-the-us-russia-new-start-deal-is-ending/a-75810602

As Ukraine and Russia met for US‑brokered talks in the UAE, the Kremlin warned the war would continue until Kyiv accepted Moscow’s terms.

As Ukraine and Russia met for US‑brokered talks in the UAE, the Kremlin on Wednesday warned the war would continue until Kyiv accepted Moscow’s terms.

“Until the Kyiv regime makes the appropriate decisions, the special military operation continues,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to AFP.

Since 2022 when Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has stuck to maximalist demands that include the surrender of entire Donbas region, a slew of constitutional changes, cap on the country’s military, ban on military partnerships, and a buffer zone among other conditions.

Taken together, the acceptance of these demands would mean Ukraine surrendering in the war and giving up sovereignty.

The US-Ukraine-Russia trilateral meeting has begun in Abu Dhabi “to achieve a just and lasting peace”, Ukrainian delegation leader Rustem Umerov wrote on social media. The first round of meeting was held last month.

While Ukraine’s delegation is led by Security Council chief Umerov, the Russian delegation is led by military intelligence director Igor Kostyukov. In the first round of talks last month, the American delegation was led by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

The meeting is meeting place amid escalating Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he has “adjusted” the negotiating position in the wake of latest Russian attacks that again struck the country’s energy infrastructure.

“Each such Russian strike confirms that attitudes in Moscow have not changed: they continue to bet on war and the destruction of Ukraine, and they do not take diplomacy seriously. The work of our negotiating team will be adjusted accordingly,” said Zelenskyy.

In the latest overnight barrage, Russia attacked Ukraine with 71 missiles and 450 drones. The attack came even as President Donald Trump had said Putin had agreed for a weeklong truce but Kremlin only maintained the truce till February 1 resumed attacks well before the one-week mark.

Even as Ukraine and Russia are holding talks, they are not understood to be close to an agreement. While Putin has stuck to his maximalist demands, Zelenskyy has maintained that meaningful security guarantees are a must for any deal to be signed. He has reportedly shown flexibility on the question of land but has balked at many of Putin’s terms —almost all of those have been endorsed by terms— that are vastly unpopular in Ukraine.

Source : https://www.firstpost.com/world/war-to-continue-until-ukraine-accepts-russian-terms-says-kremlin-as-us-mediated-talks-start-13976186.html

Ukraine says US-mediated talks with Russia in Abu Dhabi made concrete progress and will continue, but divisions still remain over territory.

A first day of talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States aimed at brokering an end to the war in Ukraine concluded Wednesday (Feb 4) in Abu Dhabi, with Kyiv describing negotiations as “substantive and productive”.

While there was no apparent breakthrough in the most recent round of discussions, meetings were set to carry on into a second day, Kyiv said.

The US-mediated talks are the latest in a flurry of diplomacy that has so far failed to strike a deal to halt the war, unleashed by Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Underscoring the human toll from the conflict, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that 55,000 of his country’s troops had been killed, a rare assessment of battlefield losses that both Moscow and Kyiv have not typically provided.

“And there are a great number Ukraine lists as missing,” he told French TV network France 2, which translated his comments.

The war has spiralled into Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, with hundreds of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their homes in Ukraine and much of the eastern and southern part of the country decimated.

Wednesday’s talks came following weeks of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, which have left Kyiv residents in darkness and cold, with temperatures dropping as low as -20C.

Despite the Kremlin repeating its hardline demands ahead of the talks, Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov said the first day had been “substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions”.

Zelenskyy said on Wednesday he expected a new prisoner exchange with Russia “in the near future”.

LAND

In Ukraine, foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said Kyiv was “interested in finding out what the Russians and Americans really want.”

The content of the talks was on “military and military-political issues,” he added, without elaborating.

The main sticking point in settling the conflict is the long-term fate of territory in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow is demanding that Kyiv pull its troops out of swathes of the Donbas, including heavily fortified cities atop vast natural resources, as a precondition of any deal.

It also wants international recognition that land seized in the invasion belongs to Russia.

Kyiv has said the conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected a unilateral pull-back of forces.

Trump dispatched his ubiquitous envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to corral the sides to an agreement.

Russia’s top negotiator is military intelligence director Igor Kostyukov, a career naval officer sanctioned in the West over his role in the Ukraine invasion.

Europe fears it has been sidelined in the process, even as France and Britain lead efforts to put together a peacekeeping force that could be deployed to Ukraine after any deal.

It was “strategically important for Europe to at some point be part of the negotiations,” the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernova told AFP on Wednesday in Kyiv.

Russia occupies around 20 percent of Ukraine, but Kyiv still controls around one-fifth of the Donetsk region.

Ukraine has warned that ceding ground will embolden Moscow and that it will not sign a deal that fails to deter Russia from invading again.

Russia also claims the Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as its own, and holds pockets of territory in at least three other Ukrainian regions in the east.

“PREPARE FOR THE WORST”

On the battlefield, Russia has been notching up gains at immense human cost, hoping it can outlast and outgun Kyiv’s stretched army.

Russian shelling of a market square in the frontline town of Druzhkivka killed seven on Wednesday, Ukrainian regional authorities said.

The CEO of Ukraine’s state-owned railway operator meanwhile told AFP that he believed recent Russian strikes were aimed at cutting off entire regions from the rest of the country.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/russia-ukraine-us-abu-dhabi-uae-war-talks-5908256

Doval met the secretary of state in September 2025. Sources said the National Security Adviser also conveyed that India was willing to wait out Trump’s term

In early September, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a chummy meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China, he dispatched his national security adviser to Washington to help smooth over fraying ties.

Ajit Doval came with a message for Secretary of State Marco Rubio: India wanted to put the acrimony between the two nations behind it and get back to negotiating a trade deal, according to officials in New Delhi familiar with the meeting, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

Doval told Rubio that India wouldn’t be bullied by US President Donald Trump and his top aides, the people said, and would be willing to wait out his term, having faced other hostile US administrations in the past. But New Delhi wanted Trump and his aides to dial down their public criticism of India so they could get relations back on track, Doval said in the meeting.

At the time, India was smarting from Trump’s insults and the 50% tariffs he’d slapped on its goods in August. The US president had called India a “dead” economy with high tariffs and said that it was funding Putin’s war in Ukraine by buying Russian oil.

It wasn’t long after Doval’s meeting, which was previously unreported, that the first signs of an ease in tensions emerged. On September 16, Trump called PM Modi on his birthday and praised him for doing a “tremendous job”. By the end of the year, the two leaders had spoken four more times on the phone as they inched toward a deal to bring down the tariffs.

Ministry of External Affairs and PM Modi’s office didn’t respond to emails seeking further information. A spokesperson for the US State Department said that in keeping with standard diplomatic practice, it does not disclose the details of private discussions.

On Monday, Trump announced he’d reached a trade agreement with PM Modi that would reduce tariffs on India’s goods to 18%, lower than most of its peers in Asia. A punitive 25% duty that the US leader had slapped on India for buying Russian oil was also scrapped. In turn, Trump said, India agreed to purchase $500 billion of US goods, switch to buying Venezuelan oil, and reduce tariffs on US imports to zero. The Modi government hasn’t confirmed those details, and neither side has published any documentation to codify the agreement.

“The past year has been one where negotiators, both in the US and India, worked feverishly to get us to this point,” Nisha Biswal, partner at The Asia Group and former US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It benefits both the US and India that you have an India that is finally really opening up on global trade.”

Publicly, there had been no indication from either side that a deal was imminent. As recently as last week, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said India still had a long way to go to convince Washington it was halting Russian crude buys.

On Monday, officials in New Delhi were taken by surprise when Trump posted about the deal on social media. Many senior bureaucrats in the foreign and commerce ministries, even those who had been directly involved in the trade negotiations, were oblivious that a call had been scheduled between the leaders that day. Some were unable to confirm key details related to the tariff announcement when contacted by reporters late in the day.

Behind the scenes, though, New Delhi had been working to get relations gradually back on track. Doval’s meeting with Rubio in September was a signal to Washington that it sees the US as a long-term strategic partner and couldn’t afford to allow ties to deteriorate further.

The prevailing view in New Delhi was that India needed US capital, technology and military cooperation to deter China and meet PM Modi’s goals of making the South Asian nation a developed economy by 2047. Trump was just a blip over that time frame, officials in New Delhi said, and India needs to stay focused on doing what’s best over the long term.

“New Delhi was never going to sever relations with Washington following last year’s downturn in bilateral relations,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for South Asia at Chatham House. “India-US relations remain ‘sticky’ given the plethora of institutionalized and people-to-people linkages between both countries.”

“That being said,” he added, “the irrational exuberance that marked New Delhi’s earlier assessments of the bilateral relationship have faded.”

Relations had spiralled downward ever since Trump claimed credit in May for resolving a four-day clash between India and neighbouring Pakistan, a boast that PM Modi vehemently rejected. In a tense call between the two leaders in June, PM Modi declined Trump’s request to come to the White House, where the US president was hosting Pakistan’s army chief at the time. In October, PM Modi skipped a summit in Malaysia to avoid a possibly awkward meeting with Trump.

The arrival of new US Ambassador Sergio Gor to New Delhi in December appeared to kick off more serious efforts to get relations back on an even keel. Gor, a former senior White House official and long-time member of Trump’s inner circle who is also close to Rubio, has repeatedly underscored the importance of US-India ties.

In his first public speech in his new role, Gor cast the tensions between the two countries as disagreements among “real friends”, which he said both sides were sure to resolve. He also announced India would be invited to join a US-led alliance called Pax Silica to strengthen supply chains.

A further thaw in ties was evident during a meeting between Gor and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar last week, according to people familiar with the matter. Gor said in a social-media post that the two sides discussed “everything from defence, trade, critical minerals, and working toward our common interests,” adding, “Stay tuned for much more!”

Jaishankar is currently in the US, where he’s held talks with Rubio on trade and supply chains.

“This appears to conclude a difficult six-month period for US-India relations,” said Alexander Slater, former India head of the US-India Business Council. “It also adds to recent signals about where India’s economic future is likely headed” and “removes a key impediment to what had been India’s gradual but steady alignment with the West.”

Despite the rapprochement, India has reason to proceed cautiously with Trump and is keen to assert its strategic autonomy. PM Modi’s viral moment with Xi and Putin, clasping hands and chuckling together, was meant to show Trump that it has other options, officials in New Delhi said. PM Modi rolled out the red carpet for Putin in December, showcasing ties with a country that remains an important source of weapons and diplomatic support dating back to the Cold War.

Last week, PM Modi clinched a free trade pact with the European Union after almost two decades of talks, coming just months after India’s trade deal with the UK – deals that showed India was serious about diversifying its trade relationships in the face of the impasse with the US, according to an official aware of the details.

Later this month, PM Modi will host Canada’s Mark Carney and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in New Delhi, further using Trump’s new world order to forge closer economic and political ties with so-called “middle power” countries.

Still, the US remains a crucial partner for India, both as a market and as a source of investment. The nation ships about a fifth of its exports to the US, a large share of which are mobile phones and electronic goods, sectors that are key to PM Modi’s manufacturing ambitions. US companies lined up big investment pledges in India in recent months, especially in AI, including a combined pledge of $52 billion by Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in December. Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced $15 billion of investment in data centres in October.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ajit-doval-had-told-rubio-india-wont-be-bullied-on-us-deal-report-10947626?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

Despite Islamabad’s overtures to US President Donald Trump, including nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and backing his inclusion on the Board of Peace, Pakistan emerged with a higher tariff burden than India.

India’s newly concluded trade agreement with the United States has triggered a sharp backlash within Pakistan, where critics say months of high-profile outreach to Washington yielded little to show for it. Despite Islamabad’s overtures to US President Donald Trump, including nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and backing his inclusion on the Board of Peace, Pakistan emerged with a higher tariff burden than India.

New Delhi is widely seen as having held its ground against pressure from Trump for months.

In a flurry of social media posts, Trump shared images of India Gate and a magazine cover featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi alongside himself before revealing that tariffs on Indian goods would be cut to 18 per cent, one percentage point lower than Pakistan’s rate.

The optics have not gone unnoticed across the border. Many in Pakistan expressed disbelief that India managed to secure a better deal without what they describe as excessive deference to Trump.

One viral post captured the prevailing anger and sarcasm. Pakistan-based X user Umar Ali wrote, “Donald Trump has treated Field Marshal like that mistress who makes her lover do all the illegal and dirty work, and when the time comes to give or take something, she says I am compelled to obey my family’s decision, forget me. My body will remain my husband’s, but my soul will always remain yours,” alongside an AI-generated image depicting a distraught Field Marshal Asim Munir holding a box of rare minerals before the India Today cover featuring PM Modi and Trump.

Former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) minister Hammad Azhar framed the outcome as a failure of strategy rather than circumstance. “Foreign policy in the 21st century isn’t about optics or personal relationships. It’s about leveraging economic strength, tariffs, and market access. India’s recent trade deals with the EU and the US prove the point. Sycophancy & photo ops are useless,” he wrote on X.

The agreement, announced on February 2, sets US tariffs on Indian exports at 18 per cent. Pakistan, meanwhile, faces a 19 per cent rate despite what critics describe as sustained lobbying efforts in Washington by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief General Asim Munir.

The Pakistani opposition has seized on the contrast. PTI leaders argue that India negotiated from a position of “strategic autonomy”, while Pakistan’s leadership relied heavily on personal engagement, only to walk away with a less favourable outcome.

Journalist Asad Toor warned that the tariff decision compounds Pakistan’s broader economic troubles. He pointed to falling exports, dwindling foreign investment, and what he described as a near-total erosion of the country’s bargaining power.

Journalist Imran Riaz Khan also criticised the lobbying and said, “The ‘Salesman-in-Chief’ strategy has failed. You can give away Balochistan’s minerals in wooden boxes, but you cannot buy respect.”

Digital creator Wajahat Khan wrote, “Trump is a businessman. He saw a manager and a shopkeeper and gave them a shopkeeper’s deal. India came as a partner and walked away with the 18 per cent prize. This is the cost of having a government without the backbone of a public mandate.”

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/you-cant-buy-respect-pakistan-faces-domestic-backlash-after-india-us-trade-deal-10948352?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

The CAA said in a statement that it was a standard process for a regulator to request details following “an aircraft incident and is in line with safety assurance procedures”.

The Fuel Control Switches (FCS) across all operational Boeing 787 aircraft in the Air India fleet were found to have no issues, the carrier said after UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) sought a response on how a Dreamliner passenger jet which was grounded on arrival in India for safety checks took off from London on Sunday with a possibly faulty fuel switch.

The CAA’s question also came months after the AI171 Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad killed 260 people, where the role of fuel switches also came under question. It warned of possible regulatory action against Air India and its Boeing 787 fleet if the airline does not submit a complete response within a week.

Air India said it had completed precautionary re-inspections “in an abundance of caution following an observation reported by one of our pilots”. Air India said on Monday it had grounded a Boeing Dreamliner after a pilot reported a possible “defect” with the fuel control switch, which controls the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines, on landing.

The Air India spokesperson said it will fully adhere to the CAA’s guidance to circulate procedures for the operation of the FCS to all crew members. “Air India will respond to the UK regulator accordingly. The safety of our passengers and crew remains Air India’s highest priority,” the airline said.

The Aviation Ministry on Tuesday said that inspections of the fuel control switches on a grounded Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner have found both switches “satisfactory”, following a pilot’s report that a switch did not remain properly latched in the ‘RUN’ position during engine start.

Based on Boeing’s recommended checks to establish the serviceability of the fuel control switch, Air India engineering inspected both the left and right switches, the Ministry said. The airline reported that both switches were found satisfactory, with the locking tooth or pawl fully seated and not slipping from ‘RUN’ to ‘CUTOFF’. When full force was applied parallel to the base plate, the switch remained secure.

The CAA said in a statement that it was a standard process for a regulator to request details following “an aircraft incident and is in line with safety assurance procedures”.

The UK watchdog has also sought a “comprehensive root-cause analysis” of the incident and a “preventive action plan” to preclude a recurrence of similar events across Air India’s Boeing 787 fleet, said the letter accessed by Reuters.

The incident involved an Air India Boeing 787-8 aircraft, registration VT-ANX, operating flight AI-132 from London to Bengaluru on February 1. During engine start in London, the crew observed on two occasions that a fuel control switch did not remain positively latched in the ‘RUN’ position when light vertical pressure was applied. On the third attempt, the switch latched correctly and remained stable.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-issues-air-india-re-inspects-fuel-control-switch-across-boeing-dreamliners-10949025?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) could face massive financial losses if the ICC’s all-powerful governing board decides to penalise it for refusing to play the T20 World Cup match against India on February 15 in Colombo

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) could face massive financial losses if the ICC’s all-powerful governing board decides to penalise it for refusing to play the T20 World Cup match against India on February 15 in Colombo. According to details accessed by PTI, Pakistan’s share in the ICC’s 2024-27 financial cycle amounts to approximately USD 144 million, with an annual payout of around USD 38 million. “Basically, if the ICC decides to penalise Pakistan for not playing India, the PCB could take a big financial hit, as its ICC share in the current financial cycle comes to approximately PKR 40 billion,” an insider said.

He added that these PKR 40 billion have helped the PCB remain financially stable, and losing a significant portion would create major financial challenges for Pakistan cricket.

He confirmed that Pakistan had already received substantial amounts from the ICC for the 2024 T20 World Cup and last year’s Champions Trophy, which it hosted, earning an additional USD 6 million from the tournament’s USD 70 million budget.

The insider said the PCB spent heavily on organising the event, and revenue from gate receipts and hospitality box sales was limited.

Pakistan, however, were able to play only one match at home, as their clash against India was held at a neutral venue in Dubai under an agreement signed between the BCCI, PCB, and ICC.

The PCB spent around PKR 18 billion on upgrading three stadiums-in Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi-and the ongoing work has further affected the board’s earnings from the Champions Trophy.

“The PCB is yet to receive its share from this year’s T20 World Cup and next year’s 50-over World Cup, and that is where the ICC could impose financial penalties,” he said.

Heavy financial penalties

He explained that since the PCB is a signatory to the Participating Nations Agreement for ICC events, if there is no valid force majeure claim, the ICC and its broadcasters could seek heavy financial penalties and compensation from the PCB.

According to a rough estimate, broadcasters-who paid USD 3 billion for rights in the current cycle-depend heavily on Pakistan-India matches to break even or earn profits, as each match between the two countries is estimated to generate around USD 250 million or more.

Across four ICC events in this cycle, broadcasters are guaranteed USD 1 billion from four Pakistan-India matches. If these matches do not take place, it will lead to a substantial reduction in the revenue distributed to member boards.

Main sources of revenue

The PCB’s other major revenue stream includes USD 42 million from franchise fees beginning with PSL’s 11th edition this year, following the addition of two new teams.

The two new teams were sold for PKR 175 crore (approximately USD 6.2 million) and PKR 185 crore (approximately USD 6.65 million). After the revaluation of five of the six existing franchises, the PCB will now earn around USD 20 million annually from franchise fees.

Source : https://sports.ndtv.com/t20-world-cup-2026/mohsin-naqvi-and-co-gets-40-billion-pakistan-rupees-from-icc-t20-world-cup-tantrum-puts-that-agreement-at-risk-10946114?pfrom=home-ndtv_topstories

A team working for President Donald Trump’s spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, last spring led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines, said Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the previously unreported events.
The sources said the goal was to work with the FBI to investigate claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico, but added the probe did not produce any clear evidence of Venezuelan interference in the U.S. territory’s elections.

Gabbard’s office, in a statement to Reuters, confirmed the May investigation but denied a link to Venezuela, saying its focus was on vulnerabilities in the island’s electronic voting systems. Her team took an unspecified number of Puerto Rico’s voting machines and additional copies of data from the machines as part of its investigation, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
Her office said the taking of voting machines and data was “standard practice in forensics analysis.”
Noting similar voting infrastructure elsewhere in the United States, it added: “ODNI found extremely concerning cyber security and operational deployment practices that pose a significant risk to U.S. elections.”

Venezuela’s government did not respond to a request for comment.
ODNI said that some security gaps in voting machines used in Puerto Rico stemmed from their use of vulnerable cellular technology and that software flaws existed that could give hackers access deep into vital electoral systems.
The Puerto Rico operation appeared to be part of an effort by Trump administration officials to pursue unproven allegations of voting fraud, the sources said. The preoccupation with voter fraud dates to Trump’s reelection loss in 2020 and has not abated, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss non-public operations.
Gabbard’s appearance at an FBI raid of an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia, last week highlights her direct involvement in these issues. Last week’s FBI raid in Georgia prompted alarm among some national security experts worried that Gabbard and the ODNI have overstepped their authority in investigating a sensitive domestic matter.

Gabbard was not physically present during the operation in Puerto Rico, her office said, even though her agency took on a coordinating role in the investigation.
U.S. officials involved in the Georgia investigation sought records related to the 2020 presidential election that Republican Trump has falsely claimed he lost against Democrat Joe Biden because of widespread fraud.
Domestic election security matters are typically handled by law enforcement agencies, say current and former U.S. officials, not the nation’s intelligence services.
Gabbard’s office said it had the authority to carry out the investigation.
“Given ODNI’s broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security and our known work on understanding vulnerabilities to foreign and other malign interference, ODNI conducted an examination of electronic voting systems used in Puerto Rico’s elections,” the spokesperson said.

Reuters sources said it was the unproven allegation of Venezuelan involvement in voting irregularities in the U.S. territory’s elections that had raised questions about possible foreign interference – something Gabbard had the legal authority to investigate.
The Caribbean island’s residents are U.S. citizens but do not have voting representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential general elections.
Challenging the denials of Gabbard’s office about Venezuela’s role, the three sources told Reuters that the FBI team involved in the Puerto Rico operation was probing the theory that Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro’s government had hacked U.S. voting, an allegation that has strong support among some Trump supporters but for which no evidence has surfaced publicly.

THREATS TO ELECTION SECURITY

The operation in Puerto Rico involved the FBI field office in southern Florida whose agents were coordinating with a group overseen by Gabbard investigating threats to election security, said two of the sources familiar with the operation.
This group included U.S. national security officials, law enforcement agents and government contractors, the sources said.
Gabbard’s office said the United States Attorney in Puerto Rico, his team of homeland security investigations agents, and an FBI supervisory special agent “facilitated the voluntary turnover of electronic voting hardware and software to ODNI for analysis.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-spy-chiefs-office-investigated-voting-machines-puerto-rico-2026-02-04/

The U.S. Justice Department has removed a government lawyer from an assignment in Minnesota after she told a federal judge, “This job sucks” and said immigration authorities had failed to comply with court orders, according to a source familiar with the move.
Julie Le, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had been detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota as hundreds of lawsuits flooded the court there from people challenging their detention during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge.

U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell had ordered her and another government lawyer to appear before him in a St. Paul courtroom on Tuesday to explain why the administration had repeatedly not complied with court orders in several cases including ones directing the release of detainees.
According to a court transcript, Le told the judge she had “stupidly” volunteered to work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office starting January 5 to help it address hundreds of lawsuits that had arrived challenging the detention of people swept up in “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota.
“What do you want me to do?” she said, the transcript showed. “The system sucks. This job sucks.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration was complying with court orders “and fully enforcing federal immigration law”, blaming high caseloads on “rogue judges.”
The source said the Justice Department had cut short Le’s assignment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called Le’s remarks “unprofessional and unbecoming” but did not say whether she had returned to her previous job.
Le did not respond to requests for comment.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Le said she had worked days and nights on the cases and tried to ensure court orders were complied with.
But she said she had not received proper training from the Justice Department and had struggled to ensure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement complied with all court orders, “which they have not done in the past or currently”.

“Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep,” Le told Blackwell, according to the transcript.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has come under strain as it faces a flood of immigration petitions and cases accusing demonstrators of assaulting federal agents.
Six prosecutors, including some senior officials, resigned earlier this month in protest against how President Donald Trump’s administration handled the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration agent.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-justice-department-removes-lawyer-who-told-judge-immigration-case-this-job-2026-02-04/

The U.S. and Iran have agreed to hold talks in Oman on Friday, officials for both sides said, even as they remained at odds over Washington’s insistence that negotiations include Tehran’s missile arsenal and Iran’s vow to discuss only its nuclear program.
The delicate diplomatic effort comes amid heightened tensions as the U.S. builds up forces in the Middle East and regional players seek to avoid a military confrontation that many fear could escalate into a wider war.

Differences in recent days over the scope and venue for the talks have raised doubts whether the meeting would take place, leaving open the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump could carry out his threat to strike Iran.
Asked on Wednesday whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be worried, Trump told NBC News: “I would say he should be very worried. Yeah, he should be.” He added that “they’re negotiating with us” but did not elaborate.
After Trump spoke, U.S. and Iranian officials said the two sides had agreed to shift the talks’ location to Muscat after initially accepting Istanbul.

But there was no indication they had found common ground on the agenda.
Iran has pushed to restrict the negotiations to discussing its long-running nuclear dispute with Western countries.
But U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented a different view on Wednesday. “If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready,” Rubio told reporters. But he added that talks would have to include the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed proxy groups around the Middle East and its treatment of its own people, besides nuclear issues.
A senior Iranian official said, however, that Iran’s missile programme was “off the table.” A second senior Iranian official said Tehran would welcome negotiations over the nuclear dispute but that U.S. insistence on dealing with non-nuclear issues could jeopardize the talks.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was due to take part in the talks, along with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, officials said.

CHANGE OF VENUE

While the talks were originally slated for Turkey, Iran wanted the meeting to take place in Oman as a continuation of previous talks held in the Gulf Arab country that had focused strictly on Tehran’s nuclear programme, a regional official said.
Iran says its nuclear activities are meant for peaceful, not military purposes, while the U.S. and Israel have accused it of past efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
A Gulf official said the talks could be mediated by several countries, though Iran has indicated that it wants a two-way format limited to Washington and Tehran.
The diplomatic efforts follow Trump’s threats of military action against Iran during its bloody crackdown on protesters last month and the deployment of more naval power to the Gulf.
The U.S. has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East since Trump threatened Iran last month – including an aircraft carrier, other warships, fighter jets, spy planes and air refueling tankers.

After Israel and the United States bombed the Islamic Republic last summer, renewed friction has kindled fears among regional states of a major conflagration that could rebound on them or cause long-term chaos in Iran.
Trump has continued to weigh the option of strikes on Iran, sources say. Oil prices have risen on the tension.

NUCLEAR DISPUTE

Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on the Islamic Republic in a standoff that has led to mutual threats of airstrikes.
Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a U.S. strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, according to six current and former Iranian officials.
Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during last month’s crackdown, has since demanded nuclear concessions from Iran, sending a flotilla to its coast.
Iran also hopes for an agreement that could help lift Western sanctions over its nuclear programme that have ravaged its economy – a major driver of last month’s unrest.

BALLISTIC MISSILE STOCKPILE

Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for the resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile programme and an end to its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long said all three demands are unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile programme, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.
An Iranian official said there should not be preconditions for talks and that Iran was ready to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, which it says is for peaceful, not military purposes.
Since the U.S. strikes in June, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work has stopped.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-iran-hold-nuclear-talks-oman-amid-heightened-tensions-diplomat-says-2026-02-04/

ADDISON Rae has flaunted her figure and her wealth in a money-covered latex dress.

The pop star, who wowed in a Marilyn Monroe-inspired look at the Grammy Awards, sent fans into a frenzy with the snap shared on her Instagram Story.

Addison, 25, shared a collection of photos that included her Grammys look, as well as the racier snap.

In the photo, the Money Is Everything singer posed bent over, with her arms resting on what looked to be a makeup table in a dressing room.

She was wearing a hot pink bra and matching underwear, which peeked out from underneath the see through latex dress.

Fake dollar bills protected her modesty on both the top and bottom of the mini dress.

Addison’s blonde hair was styled in bouncy curls, which hung down her back and over her shoulders.

She held her phone in her hand toward a full length mirror as she pouted her lips at the camera.

The star also posted a photo of the dress on a hanger, revealing just how sheer it was.

SHOW STOPPER

Days prior to the post, Addison appeared at the 68th annual Grammy Awards, where she joined stars like Olivia Dean, Lola Young, Justin Bieber, and more in performing for an audience of their peers.

She performed her hit single, Fame is a Gun, at the awards show on Sunday.

Addison took the stage in a purple jacket, dancing as she delivered her sultry lyrics.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/15886363/addison-rae-see-through-latex-cash-dress/

The psycho surgeon accused of gunning down his ex-wife and her new husband allegedly pumped nearly two dozen bullets into the couple after breaking into their Ohio home, autopsy reports showed.

Monique and Spencer Tepe were found with a total of 16 gunshot wounds — including to their heads — when Michael McKee, a vascular surgeon in Illinois, allegedly trekked to their Columbus home and killed the sleeping couple on Dec. 30, according to the Franklin County Coroner’s Office, People reported.

Monique — who was married to the alleged killer for two years before she filed for divorce in 2017 — suffered nine gunshot wounds, including to her right cheek, multiple to her torso and three to the chest.

The coroner ruled the 39-year-old died from “gunshot wounds of the head, trunk, and extremities with visceral, skeletal, and soft tissue injuries,” the outlet reported.

Her husband, Spencer, 37, was shot seven times, including once in the head, his autopsy report showed.

McKee previously warned his ex-wife that he could kill her at “any time” as part of a campaign of abuse the unfolded during and after the end of their marriage, according to court documents obtained by the Columbus Dispatch.

After the couple died, at least one witness told investigators that Monique had described moments when McKee “forced unwanted sex,” strangled her, and wielded his menacing warnings, including that he “would find her and buy the house next to hers, that she will always be his wife,” court records showed.

The chilling documents also revealed that McKee was caught on video driving near Monique and Spencer Tepe’s Columbus home on Dec. 6 before walking onto the property to scope out the house.

McKee left the home “a few hours later” after sinisterly surveilling the residence while the couple was at the Big Ten Championship football game.

Monique then left the game early at halftime and Spencer told friends she “was upset about something involving her ex-husband,” prosecutors alleged.

The accused killer returned to the couple’s home — 325 miles from his own home in Rockford, Illinois — just weeks later, to fatally shoot the Tepes in their home, leaving their two crying children unharmed.

Surveillance footage captured his car near the property numerous times, including before and after the “targeted” killings, which happened around 3:50 a.m.

Source : https://nypost.com/2026/02/03/us-news/alleged-psycho-surgeon-michael-mckee-fired-nearly-2-dozen-shots-into-ex-wife-husband-reports/

French authorities are investigating images of a child‑pornographic nature and sexually explicit deepfakes on the platform.

French police raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media network X on Tuesday (Feb 3) and prosecutors ordered the tech billionaire to face questions in a widening investigation, amid growing scrutiny of the platform by authorities across Europe.

The raid by the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit and Musk’s summoning – which could further increase tensions between Europe and the US over Big Tech and free speech – are linked to a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction by X or its executives.

Britain’s privacy watchdog, meanwhile, also kicked off a formal investigation into Musk’s artificial-intelligence chatbot Grok over the processing of personal data and its potential to produce harmful sexualised images and video content.

“The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office is plainly attempting to exert pressure on X’s senior management in the United States by targeting our French entity and employees, who are not the focus of this investigation,” X said in a statement.

“The Prosecutor’s Office has ignored the established procedural mechanisms to obtain evidence in compliance with international treaties and X’s rights to defend itself.”

Referring to the raids, Musk said in a post on X, “This is a political attack.”

INVESTIGATION INCLUDES SEXUALLY EXPLICIT DEEPFAKES

In a statement, the Paris prosecutor’s office said it had broadened the scope of its investigation following complaints over the functioning of Grok.

The French probe will now also investigate alleged complicity in the “detention and diffusion” of images of a child‑pornographic nature and the violation of a person’s image rights with sexually explicit deepfakes, among other potential crimes.

Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino were summoned to a hearing on Apr 20. Other X staff were also summoned as witnesses.

In July, Musk denied the initial accusations and said French prosecutors were launching a “politically-motivated criminal investigation”.

“At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory,” the prosecutor’s office said.

Such summons are mandatory, though they are harder to enforce on people who do not live in France.

After such a hearing, authorities can decide to either shelve or continue the probe, and potentially place suspects in custody.

PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE QUITTING X

Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit is conducting the investigation in France, together with the French police’s own cybercrime unit and Europol. The unit previously arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov in 2024 over charges including complicity in organised crime carried out on the messaging app, charges his lawyer has described as “absurd”.

The prosecutor’s office said it launched the investigation after being contacted by a lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms in X were likely to have distorted the operation of an automated data processing system.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/france-cybercrime-unit-searches-x-office-elon-musk-summoned-5903891

Nearly four out of every 10 cancer cases could be prevented if people avoided a range of risk factors, including smoking, drinking, air pollution and certain infections, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday (Feb 3).

New research published on the eve of World Cancer Day estimated that 38 per cent of all new cancer cases globally in 2022 – 7.1 million – were linked to preventable causes.

The large team of researchers, which included the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, looked at 30 factors that increase the risk of getting cancer.

Tobacco was the leading offender, responsible for 15 per cent of all new cancer cases, followed by cancer-causing infections with 10 per cent and drinking alcohol with 3 per cent, according to the study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Other risk factors included being overweight, a lack of exercise, UV radiation and being exposed to threats such as asbestos while working.

“This is the first global analysis to show how much cancer risk comes from causes we can prevent,” senior study author Andre Ilbawi, the WHO’s team lead for cancer control, said in a statement.

Almost half of all the preventable cases were lung, stomach or cervical cancer.

Lung cancer was linked to smoking and air pollution, while stomach cancer was largely linked to a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.

Cervical cancer cases were overwhelmingly caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which vaccines are effective against.

Men were far more likely to get preventable cancer, with 45 per cent of new cases compared to 30 per cent for women.

And nearly a quarter of all preventable cancer cases among men were from smoking, compared to 11 per cent for women.

To address the problem, the researchers called for countries to adopt strong tobacco control measures and alcohol regulation, and to vaccinate against common infections such as HPV, improve air quality and ensure safer workplaces, healthy diets and exercise.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/who-cancer-prevented-smoking-drinking-air-pollution-5905526

Pakistanis roasted the nation’s civil and military leadership online after Trump and PM Modi made the US-India trade deal agreement.

Pakistani netizens mocked the nation’s civilian and military leadership, taunting them as India and the US announced a deal to lower tariffs. They said that Monday’s announcement showed that US President Donald Trump treated Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir “like a mistress” as he announced a trade agreement with India.

India and the US have agreed to a trade deal under which Washington will bring down the reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods to 18 per cent. Trump made an announcement regarding the trade deal on Monday after a phone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pakistanis pointed out that India was able to get a deal reducing tariffs without kowtowing before the Trump administration.

“Donald Trump has treated the Field Marshal like that mistress who makes her lover do all the illegal and dirty work, and when the time comes to give or take something, she says I am compelled to obey my family’s decision, forget me. My body will remain my husband’s, but my soul will always remain yours,” a Pakistani X user, Umar Ali, wrote, sharing an AI-generated image of a crying Field Marshal Asim Munir holding a box of minerals in front of the India Today cover of PM Modi and Trump.

Before Trump announced the deal, he had tweeted the January edition cover of India Today where he and PM Modi were pictured for a feature story and also a photo of the India Gate.”In the past 6 months, India concluded free trade agreements with the European Union, United Kingdom, Oman and New Zealand, and now gets Trump tariffs reduced to 18%—all without getting into anyone’s bund or nominating anyone for Nobel Prize,” tweeted Jungjoo Gernail, a parody account of Asim Munir.

Imran Khan Supporters Poke Fun

Much of the criticism of the Pakistani regime came from Imran Khan supporters and members of his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, who claim that an “illegitimate” government is running Pakistan.

X user Zubair Ahmed Khan wrote: “So after all the appeasement of epic proportions by this imposed regime to Trump even accepting forces for Israel peace board, Pak ended up with 19% US tariffs while India have now 18% tariffs imposed by US. Great Foreign Policy achievements! (sic)”.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/trump-treated-munir-like-a-mistress-pakistanis-mock-shehbaz-army-chief-over-india-us-trade-deal-ws-l-9877538.html

Khawaja Asif has ruled out talks with the rebel group Baloch Liberation Army (BLA)– that took the responsibility for the attacks– saying no negotiations would be held with “terrorists” responsible for killing civilians.

Khawaja Asif, the Defence Minister of Pakistan, has admitted that the Pakistani security forces were “handicapped” against Baloch rebels due to the sheer size of Balochistan province as they battle a fresh surge in militant violence. His remarks came days after Baloch rebels launched simultaneous attacks across multiple towns in the volatile province, killing at least 80 security personnel and destroying more than 30 government properties.

Addressing Pakistan’s national assembly, Asif described the geographical challenges faced by troops in the country’s largest yet least populated province amid the serious security situation after separatist forces launched coordinated attacks across at least 12 locations, triggering one of the deadliest security crises in recent years. Authorities have said at least 177 insurgents were killed in sweeping counter-terror operations across the province.

What Khawaja Asif Said

“Balochistan constitutes over 40 per cent of Pakistan geographically…To control it is much more difficult than a populated city, and it needs the deployment of massive forces. Our troops are deployed there and are in action against them (terrorists), but they are physically handicapped by guarding and patrolling such a big area,” he said.

According to Pakistani authorities, at least 33 civilians and 17 members of the security forces were killed in the weekend violence.

Khawaja Asif has ruled out talks with the rebel group Baloch Liberation Army (BLA)– that took the responsibility for the attacks– saying no negotiations would be held with “terrorists” responsible for killing civilians, including women and children. He claimed there was a nexus between criminals and the separatist groups, with criminal gangs operating under the banner of BLA– which, according to him, protects smugglers.

“In Balochistan, tribal elders, the bureaucracy, and those running separatist movements have formed a nexus,” he said, claiming that smugglers had previously earned up to 4 billion Pakistani rupees a day from oil smuggling.

History of the Baloch insurgency

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has faced a decades-long insurgency led by ethnic Baloch separatists seeking greater autonomy and a larger share of its natural resources. The Baloch resistance against the Pakistani state started soon after the integration of the princely state of Kalat, and insurgencies took place in 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63, 1973-77, and from the early 2000s to the present.

The province is rich in minerals, natural gas, coal, copper, gold, and strategic ports such as Gwadar. Despite this wealth, Balochistan remains Pakistan’s poorest province, with inadequate roads, hospitals, schools, electricity, and employment opportunities. Punjab and the federal center receive the majority of benefits from Balochistan’s resources, leaving the province economically and politically marginalised.

Over the years, separatist groups like BLA have targeted security forces, infrastructure, and projects linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Their focus on Chinese infrastructure, especially Gwadar port under the CPEC, showcases the anger of residents against projects considered extractive and non-inclusive.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/physically-handicapped-pakistans-khawaja-asifs-big-admission-on-balochistan-attacks-10942221?pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll