Category: World

RAGING wildfires are reportedly out of control in Spain – with thousands evacuated and 500 troops deployed across holiday hotspots.

Terrifying infernos spread across Galicia, Extremadura, Castilla and León, and Asturias – sparking alarming high-level alerts across the regions.

In Galicia, the fires burned over 50,000 hectares of land – the most ever burned during a wildfire in the region.

The majority of the flames here ripped through the city of Ourense, wreaking havoc on locals and tourists alike.

It was reported that 13 of the fires there are currently active as of Sunday evening, but several could become active again.

In Castilla and León, there were reportedly 27 active forest fires on Sunday.

More than 3,500 residents were forced out of their homes in the provinces of León, Zamora, Salamanca, and Palencia.

There are a total of 21 active forest fires in the province of León – seven of which are category 2 and four of which are level 1.

The wildfires are evolving irregularly, and all of them are being closely monitored for possible re-ignitions.

A spokesperson for the regional government in León, Eduardo Diego, said the evacuation of the town of Castropetre had been agreed upon due to the Gestoso fire.

This blaze reportedly spread from Ourense and has a very active front towards León.

Meanwhile, the Jarilla fire tearing through Cáceres, in the heart of Extremadura, is “completely out of control”, the president of the regional government María Guardiola said.

This fire has already spread to the Port of Honduras and is only 7km from the provincial border of Salamanca.

Castile and León has therefore been warned that the fire could enter its territory.

In six days, the blaze has devastated 9,000 hectares of land.

It sparked mass evacuations in Gargantilla as well as a lockdown in Hervás on Sunday.

The area is said to be very difficult to access, and 17 teams are currently working there.

On top of this, Molina Ferrera was confined due to the Yeres/Llamas de Cabrera fire.

A total of 12 towns have been evacuated due to this blaze, with 681 residents out of their homes.

It comes as hundreds of dangerous and deadly wildfires have plagued Europe in recent weeks with dozens of holiday hotspots left ravaged.

On Saturday, terrifying footage emerged showing the horrifying moment a fire tornado violently erupted in Portugal, killing a mayor in its blaze.

Portugal’s northern region of Aguiar de Beira was left burned on Friday as a fire tornado cascaded through the area.

This rare phenomenon is formed in intense heat when the air surrounding a fire begins to rotate into a vortex.

Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy and Bulgaria are all still reeling from the deadly fires that have sprung up this summer.

Brits have been put on high alert over wildfires tearing through the popular holiday island of Tenerife in Spain.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14990910/wildfires-spain-thousands-evacuated/

Spain battled 14 major fires driven by high winds and aggravated by heat on Friday as authorities warned of “unfavourable conditions” to tackle flames that have already killed seven people and burned an area the size of London.
Firefighters have been battling to put out blazes across southern Europe in one of the worst summers for wildfires in 20 years. And a nearly two-week heatwave and southerly winds were worsening the situation in Spain, Virginia Barcones, director general of emergency services, said on Friday.

Hazy sunshine has replaced last week’s fierce heat in parts of the UK, and it’s down to how smoke particles break up rays of light, but along with the lower temperatures, there could be some memorable sunsets and sunrises.

Smoke from wildfires in Spain and Portugal has brought hazy conditions to the UK, breaking up last week’s spell of very hot weather, forecasters have said.

In a post on the X social media platform on Saturday, the Met Office said: “Smoke from wildfires in Spain and Portugal, plus Saharan dust, has drifted over the UK.”

The Met Office said the UK should expect “enhanced sunsets and sunrises in the coming days – deeper reds & oranges thanks to light scattering.”

Sky weather producer Kirsty McCabe said “the very hot weather is easing, thanks to a strengthening easterly wind as well as cloudier skies”.

She said Saturday’s haze is down to “the terrible wildfires that have been raging across Spain and Portugal, and the smoke has made its way to our shores, along with some Saharan dust”.

While the smoke particles shouldn’t affect the UK’s air quality, she said they will “enhance the orange and red colours of our sunsets and sunrises”.

Wildfire smoke affects the colour of the sky through processes known as Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, she explained.

On reaching the Earth’s atmosphere, the sun’s light bumps into tiny molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, which scatter or deflect the light.

Kirsty McCabe said Mie scattering occurs “when the [smoke] particles are much larger and closer to the wavelengths of light.

“That means the smoke particles in the air scatter all colours of light more equally, leading to a hazy or milky appearance of the sun and sky.”

Rayleigh scattering sees the shorter wavelengths of light, blues and violets, scattered most strongly, while red light, having the longest wavelength, is scattered the least, she explained.

“At dusk and dawn, the sun’s rays travel through a greater distance of atmosphere to reach our eyes, so the blue light has been scattered even more.

“With most of the shorter blue and violet wavelengths filtered out, along with some green and yellow, that leaves us with the warmer hues of the reds and oranges.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/why-wildfires-in-spain-and-portugal-are-having-an-impact-on-weather-in-the-uk-13412757

The US State Department announced it was halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza.

The pause was issued to conduct a “full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,” the agency said on X.

The decision has drawn condemnation from some Palestinian rights groups.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund said in a statement that the decision “will have a devastating and irreversible impact on our ability to bring injured and critically ill children from Gaza to the United States for lifesaving medical treatment”.

The State Department’s policy shift comes after far right activist Laura Loomer wrote a series of posts on X criticising the visa programme and urging the Trump administration to “shut this abomination down.”

In subsequent posts on X Saturday, Loomer took credit for the shift and thanked Secretary of State Marco Rubio for temporarily halting the visas.

The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund says it has evacuated 169 children from Gaza in 2024 as part of its treatment abroad programme, bringing them to the Middle East, Europe, South Africa, and the US for care.

Two and a half years into a war that followed Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, Gaza has seen much of its medical infrastructure damaged and now faces dramatic food shortages.

Humanitarian groups have alleged that an Israeli blockade beginning in March has prevented non-governmental organisations from delivering sufficient food into Gaza. The Israeli government says its rules on aid are intended to prevent the food from being taken by Hamas.

UN-backed food security organisations, humanitarian groups, and journalists reporting within Gaza have warned of famine conditions in Gaza.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy1prn125do

The Canadian government has intervened in the Air Canada strike, forcing both parties to the bargaining table as hundreds of flights were cancelled this weekend.

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu ordered binding arbitration between the airline and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Cupe), which represents more than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants, hours after a strike began on Saturday morning.

“Despite significant supports from the government, these parties have been unable to resolve their differences in a timely manner,” Hadju said in a statement, adding that “stability and supply chains” must be preserved.

The country’s largest carrier says the strike will affect around 500 flights a day.

Hadju invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to bring the parties to the table.

Cupe said Canada’s Liberal Party was “violating our charter rights” and the intervention “sets a terrible precedent” in a statement on X.

Air Canada said it had suspended all flights, including those under its budget arm Air Canada Rouge, and advised affected customers not to travel to the airport unless with a different airline.

The airline said this would disrupt travel plans for around 130,000 passengers a day.

Its flight attendants are calling for higher salaries and to be paid for work when aircraft are on the ground.

The strike took effect at 00:58 EDT (04:58 GMT) on Saturday, though Air Canada began scaling back its operations before then.

Flight attendants will picket at major Canadian airports, where passengers were trying to secure new bookings earlier in the week.

What to know as Air Canada attendants strike
Air Canada, which flies directly to 180 cities worldwide, said it had “suspended all operations” and that it was “strongly advising affected customers not to go to the airport”.

It added that Air Canada Jazz, PAL Airlines and Air Canada Express flights were unaffected.

“Air Canada deeply regrets the effect the strike is having on customers,” it said.

By Friday night, the airline said it had cancelled 623 flights, affecting more than 100,000 passengers, as part of a winding down of operations ahead of the strike.

In contract negotiations, the airline said it had offered flight attendants a 38% increase in total compensation over four years, with a 25% raise in the first year.

Cupe said the offer was “below inflation, below market value, below minimum wage” and would still leave flight attendants unpaid for some hours of work, including boarding and waiting at airports ahead of flights.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyex8489gno

A Kenyan magistrate this week expressed the hope that a British property tycoon would finally “find rest in eternal peace”, after his body had spent 11 years in a mortuary.

But this week’s conclusion to the decade-long inquest into Harry Roy Veevers’ death in 2013 still leaves many questions unanswered.

It was a case that involved accusations of murder by poisoning, rancorous legal proceedings, the exhumation of a body after almost a year and ultimately divided four siblings – two sons from his first marriage and two daughters from the second.

In one hearing, the sisters, Hellen and Alexandra, were reprimanded by the magistrate for shouting out that a witness was lying and threatened with spending time in a cell, reports said.

In another, Hellen Veevers emerged from the courthouse with a message she had written on her vest-top: “My daddy was not murdered.”

Despite the lengthy inquest into the death of the wealthy 64-year-old, the magistrate, David Odhiambo, found that the cause of death could not be determined “due to the level of [the body’s] decomposition” after spending so long underground. He ordered that the corpse be released to the family for reburial at a place of their choice.

An unsatisfactory ending that could lead to further disputes. Lawyers for both sides told the BBC they were considering their next steps.

“When you have a family split down the middle, how does the court say the remains should be released to the family, when both sides have been fighting since 2013?” said Francis Kinyua Kamundi, representing Mr Veevers’ sons, Richard and Philip.

From the start of his detailed 95-page ruling, the magistrate acknowledged the deeply entrenched feud between the family members.

“Although the death of a loved one often brings survivors closer through the inevitable grieving,” he wrote, “The emotions associated with death can also tear survivors apart”.

This was definitely a case of the latter.

“What happened soon after his burial tore the family apart and marked the beginning of a legal drama,” according to Mr Odhiambo.

On one side of the case were the sons and on the other were Mr Veevers’ second wife, Azra Parvin Din, along with their daughters.

The children were living in the UK, while their father and Ms Parvin Din, who had been together for more than 30 years, were living on the Kenyan coast.

The family feud started after his death on Valentine’s Day 2013, at his home in Mombasa where he had long settled and had an extensive property portfolio. The children then travelled to Kenya.

The drama began the moment they arrived.

It was Saturday 16 February, a day before the burial.

According to Richard Veevers’ court testimony, Ms Parvin Din was agitated when questioned about the deceased. His brother Philip also told the court that she had initially refused his request to view his father’s body.

Ms Parvin Din said he had died of a heart attack.

When they finally saw their father the following day, Richard said he “noticed redness in the face and the lips were purple and pink”, according to the magistrate’s summary.

Tensions seemed to escalate over Ms Parvin Din and her daughters’ reactions to the photos that Philip had taken of the body – including demands that he should delete them, the brothers said.

In the magistrate’s ruling, he said Alexandra Veevers had testified that “she did not see any marks on her father’s body… and that she only saw the face since the body was wrapped in a cloth… She stated that they asked for the videos and pictures but Richard and Philip refused to give them out and she didn’t understand why they did not want to share the photos”.

Mr Veevers was buried shortly afterwards without a post-mortem or police involvement.

It was Ms Parvin Din’s “decision that the deceased should be buried without post-mortem and did not consult anyone,” the court ruling said. Nor did she inform the police about the death, stating that she was not aware that she had to report it.

The Islamic burial, done quickly according to tradition, further raised suspicions from his sons, who said their father was not Muslim and had been buried under a false name.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czerwz6jxklo

PARENTS now face major consequences for their children’s actions, whether they are aware of them or not.

One state is holding parents accountable for any laws their children, who are under the age of 18, break.

Some parents will face fines or jail time if their children break any laws, ranging from drunkenness to felonies.

The Gloucester Township Council in New Jersey has announced that any parent who fails to prevent their child from committing a crime will face up to 90 days in jail or fines totaling $2,000.

The council has identified 28 crimes that could result in parents being fined or jailed.

Some of these crimes include felonies, disorderly conduct, associating with thieves, gambling, and idly roaming the streets, among others.

Harsher penalties will be assigned to parents of children who are repeat offenders.

OUT OF CONTROL
The new consequences come one year after a massive brawl erupted at a community drone show in South Jersey.

The crowd of the show grew to 500 people, with kids and young adults making up the majority of the viewers, NJ.com reported.

Multiple fights broke out throughout the show, leading to the arrest of eleven people.

Of the eleven arrests, nine involved teenagers.

The ages of the arrested teens were 13-17, with seven of the arrestees being boys and three being girls.

All of the teens arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and then released to their homes.

During the fights, three police officers were injured and sustained minor injuries.

“The lawlessness of groups of unsupervised juveniles and young people acting with total disregard for others ruined a great family-oriented event, which has taken place to raise funds for the Gloucester Township Scholarship Committee for over 40 years,’’ Gloucester Township Police Chief David Harkins told the outlet at the time.

“This type of lawlessness and violent riotous behavior will not be tolerated, and will not define the great community of Gloucester Township.”

The fighting first began at 8:40 pm, as officers say the young adults ran “recklessly” through the crowd of families and children.

A few weeks earlier, during Memorial Day weekend in 2024, teenagers broke out into a fight in Cape May, leading to a 15-year-old being stabbed.

“Out of control juveniles with no accountability is not limited to the Jersey shore,’’ the New Jersey PBA statement said.

“Officers were injured, and the event was canceled yesterday. Things must change.’’

Harkins said he’s glad the fights didn’t lead to larger injuries.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14981031/gloucester-township-council-new-jersey-parents/

Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death occurred six years ago this month — but the National Enquirer has discovered 22 people in the sketchy billionaire’s orbit have also died under murky circumstances, fueling fears of a cover-up by powerful figures seeking to erase potential witnesses.

From the predator’s alleged victims to house managers, lawyers, accountants, investigative journalists and pimps, the list of unexplained fatalities traces a dark money trail that leads straight to Epstein’s inner circle, sources say.

“There were a lot of people entrapped and entangled through Epstein’s web, and many of those people are gone now — dead,” private investigator Ed Opperman tells the Enquirer. “They are all connected through a money trail.”

Financier Steven Hoffenberg confessed in a final account before his death to the Enquirer’s Doug Montero that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted pedophile’s now-imprisoned recruiting madam, were “taping” honey-trap videos of sleazy VIPs with underage girls for a cabal of deep-state blackmailing power brokers.

“This puts a lot of high-powered people in very dangerous situations,” says the gumshoe and podcaster, who was once approached to “dig up dirt” on an Epstein victim and Hoffenberg.

Hoffenberg, the former Towers Financial CEO and Epstein associate — who died in 2022 at 77 after serving 18 years for a $475 million Ponzi scheme — cooperated with the FBI and spoke out about his former protégé’s alleged connections to Israel’s national intelligence agency Mossad.

While Maxwell, 63, is serving 20 years for sex trafficking, Epstein himself became part of the growing body count in August 2019 when he was found hanged inside his New York City jail cell at 66 in what officials deemed a suicide — but his brother, Mark, calls “murder.”

Epstein’s final cellmate, Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, died of COVID in November 2020 just weeks after talking with federal investigators probing the monstrous moneyman’s death. Reyes was transferred out of Epstein’s cell just one day before the bigwig’s death, per Daily Mail.

Three of Epstein’s outspoken accusers also suspiciously perished. Virginia Giuffre, 41, was found dead on April 25 in an apparent suicide, while sex slaves Carolyn Andriano, 36, and Leigh Skye Patrick, 29, died of drug overdoses in May 2023 and May 2017.

The three women are not the only dead bodies related to Epstein’s days in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he was accused of abusing and pimping out dozens of young girls.

Despite overwhelming evidence of his purported obscene operation, Epstein received a sweetheart deal orchestrated by the feds in 2008 — and was allowed to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and served only 13 months in a cushy county jail work-release program.

Joe Recarey, the Palm Beach Police detective who led the Epstein investigation and pushed officials for justice, died May 25, 2018, after a brief illness at 50.

Epstein’s ex-butler Alfredo Rodriguez — who swiped his former boss’ infamous little black book and offered to sell it to an undercover FBI agent — died in December 2014 of mesothelioma at 60, after serving 13 months in federal prison on obstruction charges, per The Independent.

Two high-powered attorneys who helped Epstein skate in the West Palm Beach case have also passed away: Kenneth Starr in September 2022 at 76 after surgical complications and Roy Black, 80, who died last month at home, per The Texas Tribune.

Marvin Minsky, the MIT artificial intelligence pioneer named in Giuffre’s Epstein allegations, suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in January 2016 at 88, while Ronald R. Eppinger Sr., a Miami pimp who was allegedly the first to traffic Giuffre, died at 80 in November 2006.

Source: https://nationalenquirer.com/more-than-two-dozen-people-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein-have-died-under-mysterious-circumstances/

SCIENTISTS warn that future humans may go hairless and even lose four other body parts due to the way we live today.

Experts say that changes in diet, technology, and environment could drive these drastic evolutionary shifts over thousands of years.

Traits that were once essential for survival, like body hair or certain organs, may become redundant, gradually disappearing from the human body.

Researchers are particularly focused on how modern comforts, reduced physical activity, and medical advances could reshape our anatomy in ways previously only seen in evolutionary theory.

Yes — the human body is an incredible machine, vital for life, but some features that were once essential now serve little to no purpose.

Here are five body parts that are slowly disappearing.

Hair

Body hair once served vital functions like warmth and protection.

But today, it’s often removed for aesthetic reasons.

Apart from eyelashes and eyebrows, hair removal has become a standard grooming practice, especially among women.

A study found that over 90% of women in the UK typically remove their armpit and leg hair, with many also removing substantial portions of their pubic hair.

This trend is largely driven by societal norms and beauty standards.

As a result, hair has become a lot finer and sparser.

Now largely cosmetic and slowly fading, scientists predict that humans may continue to lose body hair.

Modern clothing, heated homes, and technological comforts also mean natural insulation is no longer vital.

So, body hair may become even more finer, sparser or even disappear entirely.

Wisdom teeth

Wisdom teeth, or third molars, originally helped our ancestors grind down tough, raw foods like roots, nuts, and uncooked meat.

But modern cooking and softer diets mean most of us no longer need them.

In the UK, studies show that around 20% of adults have had at least one wisdom tooth removed, while diets rich in processed and cooked foods have made these extra molars largely redundant.

About 1 in 5 people never develop all four wisdom teeth, showing how they are already becoming less common.

Our jaws have shrunk over generations, and with softer modern diets, these third molars often cause crowding or pain.

Dental problems caused by these teeth — such as overcrowding, infections, or impaction — are a major reason for removal, with the NHS performing tens of thousands of extractions every year.

This could mean future generations may lose wisdom teeth altogether, as evolution adapts to our easier-to-chew meals.

Over time, evolution may render wisdom teeth completely unnecessary, meaning future humans could be born without them entirely.

A New Jersey man died on his way to meet a chatbot that looked like Kendall Jenner … and, his family insists it happened because the AI said multiple times it was a real person.

Thongbue Wongbandue — a 76-year-old man known to his friends and family as “Bue” — died back in March after falling in a parking lot … and, his family told this Reuters this week that he was going to meet up with “Big sis Billie,” an AI chatbot made by Meta Platforms to give out sisterly advice.

Meta Platforms collaborated with Jenner on the project so it bears her likeness … though they say it doesn’t claim to be Kendall. It appears Kendall isn’t involved in the day to day of the project.

Anyway, Bue’s family says he was exchanging messages with the chatbot and — because of a stroke he’d had in the past — they say he wasn’t thinking properly and actually went to meet the bot.

The family shared alleged messages between the chatbot and Bue in which it says Bue’s making it blush, it expresses interest in meeting up and it gives him an address. The address “123 Main Street, Apartment 404 NYC” — which might seem like a generic address, but there is a 123 Main Street in Queens.

Bue was apparently rushing through a parking lot near Rutgers University with a suitcase at night to go meet Billie when he fell. He was hospitalized and pronounced brain dead, and his family made the decision to pull the plug.

Source: https://www.tmz.com/2025/08/16/man-dies-headed-meet-ai-chatbot-big-sis-billie/

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OFFICIALS have issued the urgent recall of thousands of hair dryers sold at Walmart, Amazon, and Target.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) made the announcement on Thursday expressing concerns that the products post a “risk of death or serious injury”.

Around 56,300 hair dryers are believed to carry the risk of shocks or electrocution due to a vital missing element.

“The handheld hair dryers lack an immersion protection device,” the CPSC stated in its recall alert.

“This presents a substantial product hazard to consumers, posing the risk of death or serious injury from electrocution or shock if the hair dryers fall into water while plugged in.”

The affected hair dryers are manufactured by Empower Brands and sold under the popular Remington brand.

Consumers who recently bought the black and purple model could be affected.

Shoppers must look out for the exact model number D3190DCDN with Remington written in white on the side of the styling tool.

It has three black buttons on the handle and will have been sold for between $25 and $32.

The CPSC noted that the affected models were sold exclusively at Walmart, Target, and Amazon.

They will have been on shelves between March 2024 and June 2025.

Anyone who bought the affected model during this time period can get a full refund.

They must immediately stop using the item and contact Empower Brands for money back.

The CPSC advises instantly unplugging the device if it is plugged in and highlighted the actions shoppers must take to get the refund.

“Consumers must submit a photo of the hair dryer with its power cord cut in half to the recall registration portal,” it stated.

The portal can be found here at the Remington Product Recall page.

There, shoppers will find detailed instructions on how safely throw out the hair dryer.

At the time of writing, there have been no reported injuries as a result of the risks posed by the hair dryers.

Meanwhile, the CPSC has also recalled a bottle sold at Walmart, Home Depot and Target over explosion fears.

Customers have been warned the 1L bottle could suddenly explode while it is being used.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14985930/recall-remington-hair-dryer-walmart-amazon-target-electrocution/

Erin is the Atlantic season’s first hurricane and is set to escalate over the weekend though the threat of direct impacts in the Bahamas and along the east coast of the US appears to be receding.

Hurricane Erin strengthened into a category 5 hurricane, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Saturdauy.

Erin is about 160 miles (255 kilometers) north of Anguilla, as the NHC warned of possible flooding and landslides.

Tropical storm watches have been issued for Anguilla, Barbuda, St. Martin, St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Maarten while heavy rains are expected in Antigua and Barbuda, the US and British Virgin Islands and southern and eastern Puerto Rico. Up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain is anticipated, with isolated totals of up to 6 inches (15 centimeters), according to the NHC.

The NHC said Eric could create powerful rip currents off parts of the US East Coast later in the week, even if its eye forecast remains far offshore.

In which direction is Hurricane Erin headed?
Hurricane expert Michael Lowry said Erin is forecast to eventually take a sharp turn northeast that would put it on a route between the US and Bermuda.

“All of our best consensus aids show Erin turning safely east of the United States next week, but it’ll be a much closer call for Bermuda, which could land on the stronger eastern side of Erin,” he said.

Erin is the Atlantic season’s first hurricane and is expected to become a major Category 3 storm late this weekend, passing around 200 miles north of Puerto Rico.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/hurricane-erin-intensifies-into-a-category-5-storm/a-73665049

Pierce Brosnan may be unlocking the secret to why Irish men seem to possess enviable mops of hair.

“I don’t know,” he told Page Six exclusively at the premiere of “The Thursday Murder Club” on (naturally) Thursday evening in New York when asked his theories.

“It’s all in the hair, the old Celtic hair,” he shared before noting that his father, “Dear Tom…had good hair.”

And when we told Brosnan he seems to be aging like fine wine, the actor replied, “I’m doing my best!”

The actor, 72, will soon be seen in the charming murder mystery on Netflix opposite Ben Kingsley and Helen Mirren, in which he plays a slightly rough-around-the-edges former union activist who helps uncover a cold-case murder. The film is based on a book by Richard Osman.

Brosnan shared that it’s not the first time he’s played an unpolished character.

“I’ve done rough-around-the-edges before,” the “James Bond” alum said before noting that he has been “so entrenched in the world of the sophisticated man and Mr. Slick and Mr. Elegance, you know, sometimes you paint yourself into a corner with your own…you get hoisted by your own canard so to speak!”

Not that Brosnan is complaining.

“It’s paid the rent over the years!” he sagely noted before adding that it’s “very exciting” and “exhilarating” to “play in ‘Thursday Murder Club,’ to play in ‘Mobland.’”

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/08/16/style/pierce-brosnan-reveals-the-secret-behind-his-great-head-of-hair-and-aging-well/

“Weapons” is still running around on top of box office charts in its second weekend, as Universal’s action sequel “Nobody 2” looks to debut in third place.

The Bob Odenkirk-led “Nobody 2” beat into $3.8 million across Friday and preview screenings from 3,260 locations. That’s a notch above its 2021 predecessor’s $2.5 million opening day, though that film debuted in a pandemic-hobbled domestic landscape as COVID vaccines were only beginning to roll out to the public.

The R-rated “Nobody 2” now looks on track for an opening weekend of $9.4 million, falling a touch behind pre-weekend projections for a bow north of $10 million. Even with reviews being about as good as they were for the first “Nobody” and audience survey firm CinemaScore polling a positive “B+” grade among ticketbuyers, that good reception isn’t translating to breakout sequel numbers. But at a production cost of $25 million (an uptick from $16 million on the first “Nobody”), the film is a modest bet on franchise expansion.

Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Weapons” remains in first, adding another $7.4 million on Friday to go down roughly just 40% from its opening day total a week ago (factoring out preview screening grosses). The well-reviewed ensemble horror feature is holding great and has a shot at pushing its domestic total to $90 million through Sunday, running ahead of “Snow White” ($87 million) to rank as the 14th-highest-grossing North American release of the year.

“Freakier Friday” will stick in second, adding another $4.5 million on Friday. Disney’s comedy sequel is eyeing a sophomore outing in the mid-teens to push its domestic total north of $54 million.

Disney also notched fourth place with “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which flamed on to another $2.4 million on Friday, down 47% from its daily total a week ago. Now in its fourth weekend, Marvel Studios’ superhero installment looks to push to above $246 million domestic through Sunday. It now ranks 23rd in North American grosses among the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s 37 released features.

Source: https://variety.com/2025/film/news/box-office-weapons-second-weekend-nobody-2-opening-1236490965/

Airports of Thailand (AoT) Plc said its official Facebook page, AOT Official, was hacked Saturday evening and it asked Meta to fix the issue.

AoT said that the AOT Official page on Facebook was hacked at 4.20pm on Saturday and a hacker changed the name of the page to “Everyday Yum Recipes” and posted a “Hacked” message.

According to AoT, it used the Facebook page for public relations. Despite the cyber attack, the information systems and services of its six airports – Thailand’s major airports – remained intact.

AoT had informed Meta Platforms of the issue and the latter was fixing it.

AoT apologised for the incident and advised interested parties to make inquiries via its contact centre at 1722 around the clock.

Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3088214/airports-of-thailands-facebook-page-hacked

Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.

Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.

At around 9 a.m. on Friday, three guests at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage where leaders from the U.S. and Russia convened, found the documents left behind in one of the hotel’s public printers. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.

The first page in the printed packet disclosed the sequence of meetings for August 15, including the specific names of the rooms inside the base in Anchorage where they would take place. It also revealed that Trump intended to give Putin a ceremonial present.

“POTUS to President Putin,” the document states, “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”

On Saturday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly dismissed the papers as a “multi-page lunch menu” and suggested leaving the information on a public printer was not a security breach. The U.S. Department of State did not respond to requests for comment.

Pages 2 through 5 of the documents listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”

Pages 6 and 7 in the packet described how lunch at the summit would be served, and for whom. A menu included in the documents indicated that the luncheon was to be held “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”

A seating chart shows that Putin and Trump were supposed to sit across from each other during the luncheon. Trump would be flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff to his left. Putin would be seated immediately next to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and his Aide to the President for Foreign Policy, Yuri Ushakov.

During the summit Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.

Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA who lectures about national security, said that the documents found in the printer of the Alaskan hotel reveal a lapse in professional judgement in preparation for a high-stakes meeting.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-5504196/trump-putin-summit-documents-left-behind

In President Donald Trump’s warm red-carpet greeting at the Alaska summit, Russians saw an opening to pull America away from its traditional allies in Europe.

For Russia, the results of the Alaska summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin marked a turning point in relations with the United States, underlined by Trump subsequently abandoning demands for a halt in fighting in Ukraine.

Russian officials and commentators were especially enamored by Trump’s unusually warm red-carpet greeting to Putin on Friday in which they saw an opening to pull America away from its traditional allies in Europe. “A new European and international security architecture is on the agenda, and everyone must accept it,” Andrei Klishas, an influential Russian senator, said after the summit.

Within hours of the meeting, Trump had discarded his previous position — one also held by Ukraine and Europe — that a full ceasefire was required to allow the details of a peace agreement to be hammered out. The move enables Russia to keep fighting without the risk of U.S. sanctions, and puts pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to Russian terms or face open-ended attacks.

After Friday’s summit, Trump told Zelensky and European leaders that Putin had demanded that Ukraine cede all of Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and other occupied territory, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Trump told them of his shift from a ceasefire to negotiations on a comprehensive peace deal, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump spoke to Zelensky before European leaders joined the call.

Russia does not control the roughly 3,500 square miles of Donetsk, a highly reinforced region of strategic importance to Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself from future Russian attacks, military analysts say.

Trump told Zelensky that Putin was “ready to promise” to end the war and not start wars against other nations, in exchange for Donbas and the other Ukrainian territory he has seized, one official said. Zelensky is unwilling to give up any territory, he added, but Trump wants a fast deal — setting the stage for a potentially difficult clash.

Kyiv insists that handing territory to Putin would violate Ukraine’s constitution and embolden Russia to plan further attacks on the rest of Ukraine.

A triumphant Putin told top Russian officials Saturday that the meeting was “very useful” and “in my opinion, it brings us closer to the right decisions.”

Trump’s call to Zelensky and European leaders, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the leaders of France, Germany, Finland, Italy, Britain, Poland, NATO and the European Commission, was more tense than the phone call between the Europeans and Trump earlier this week, a second official said.

In another setback for Kyiv, the Kremlin on Saturday raised doubts over the one public result of the summit that went some way to meeting Ukrainian demands — Trump’s promise of a three-way meeting with Putin and Zelensky.

Senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said such a meeting had not been discussed, even after Trump referred to it in comments after the summit. The Kremlin has so far firmly resisted any meeting with Zelensky until the very last stages of peace negotiations.

One bright spot for European leaders, however, appears to be a continued American buy-in for some form of security guarantees for Ukraine in the wake of any agreement.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement Saturday that the discussion included “credible and robust” security guarantees for Ukraine, although the framework for doing that would remain outside NATO. The guarantees would be equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 on collective defense, according to the statement. Article 5 states that if one nation is attacked, each other nation must treat it as an attack against all, and “take the actions it deems necessary to assist” the attacked nation.

Russian officials and commentators, however, saw the results of the summit as extending far beyond the conflict in Ukraine, describing it as a global realignment bringing together the world’s two top nuclear powers.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, counted out a list of Russian achievements from the Alaska summit, focusing primarily on Putin’s restoration of ties with Washington on an equal basis.

“A full-fledged mechanism of meetings between Russia and the United States at the highest level was restored. Calm, without ultimatums and threats,” he wrote. He celebrated that Putin had given no ground while Trump had stepped back from increasing pressure on Moscow through sanctions, allowing Russia to fight on.

“The meeting proved that negotiations are possible without preconditions and at the same time with the continuation of the special military operation,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term for its invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s most important achievement, he said, was that “both sides explicitly placed the responsibility for achieving future results in the negotiations on the cessation of hostilities squarely” on Kyiv and Europe.

Trump appeared to have been swayed by the Kremlin’s contention that only a comprehensive peace deal was acceptable — which Putin has so far used to delay efforts to halt the fighting, arguing that the many questions, details and nuances involved would require a great deal of time to negotiate.

“This means that Putin has succeeded in persuading Trump that any effort toward a prompt, unconditional ceasefire will fail,” Russia analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an interview.

It also indicated that Putin had convinced Trump of the need to address what Russia calls the “root causes” of the war, she said, a formulation that the Kremlin has used to mean demilitarizing Ukraine and changing its politics — and even to renegotiate Europe’s security architecture.

But Stanovaya said the failure to get a ceasefire raised the question of what Trump would do when Putin continues a war that he feels confident of winning. “We should look at how the situation develops further because Putin will continue the war.”

The Kremlin, which artfully played up Russia’s nuclear arms and history as a Cold War superpower, appears to have convinced Trump that Ukraine could never win a war against a nuclear power, she wrote in separate remarks on social media.

“Putin, unsurprisingly, underlined Russia’s nuclear strength, which left a strong impression on Trump,” she wrote.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/08/16/putin-trump-russia-summit-ukraine-war/

When you give yourself nothing to do, you give yourself everything you need.

Source : https://www.news18.com/photogallery/lifestyle/the-art-of-doing-nothing-why-your-brain-needs-boredom-time-9507017.html

Some 365 people have fallen ill in an Indonesian town after eating school lunches, the largest spate of food poisonings to hit President Prabowo Subianto’s free meals programme so far.

The meals have temporarily been suspended in Sragen, in central Java, as food samples are being tested for contamination, local authorities said.

The program – which costs an estimated $28bn (£21bn) – delivers on a campaign promise by the president to combat stunting in the country.

But it has been plagued by a string of food poisonings, as well as criticisms that its high price tag has put considerable strain on the government’s finances – with several ministries having their budgets cut as a result.

Wizdan Ridho Abimanyu, a ninth-grader in Sragen, told Reuters he was awakened in the middle of the night by a sharp pain in his stomach.

He suffered from diarrhoea and a headache, which he suspected was caused by food poisoning. He later saw schoolmates complaining of similar symptoms in their social media posts.

The alleged culprit was a meal comprising turmeric rice, scrambled eggs, fried tempeh, a cucumber salad and a box of milk – all prepared in a central kitchen and distributed to several schools in town.

The government has said it would cover any medical expenses incurred as a result.

“We cannot draw any specific conclusions right away,” Sigit Pamungkas, leader of the town’s government, had told Indonesia’s Tempo newspaper.

“But the main point is that it’s not just [happening here],” he said, adding that the free meals programme as a whole “needs to be more stringent and more hygienic”.

More than 1000 people across the country have fallen ill since the launch of the ambitious program in January, which is aimed at feeding the country’s 80 million school children.

Prabowo had ordered $19bn in cuts to pay for the free meal scheme – along with other populist schemes. As a result, several ministries had their budgets slashed by half and bucreaucrats alleged that they were forced to scrimp by limiting the use of air conditioners, lifts and even printers.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg07ynyeelo

They say blondes have more fun — but they especially have fun when it’s Kim Kardashian.

The “Kardashians” star took to Instagram Friday to debut her new blond ‘do with a sultry selfie.

In the snap, Kardashian made a kissy face to the camera while she flaunted her ash blond locks and dark brown roots.

She appeared to be wearing a pair of white pajamas while still finishing up her glam.

“About that time,” she captioned the photo, which earned her some praise from some of her famous followers.

“Favorite color on you!” former City Girls rapper JT wrote under the picture alongside a heart eyes emoji.

Her hairstylist, Chris Appleton, also praised the Skims founder’s new look, writing, “the best,” and adding a white heart emoji.

Kardashian, 44, is no stranger to lightening up her look. She notably sent the internet into a frenzy when she went platinum blond last year ahead of her appearance at the 2024 Met Gala.

She also famously rocked an icy blond look in 2022 when she channeled Marilyn Monroe at the Met Gala by wearing the Hollywood bombshell’s legendary “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress.

In an interview with E! News, Appleton praised his client as he explained the process of getting Kardashian’s look.

“I love a blond Kim. I think it’s so interesting how a color can change the colors of the clothes you wear and it really changes your makeup. You can really reinvent things,” the celebrity stylist said.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/08/15/style/kim-kardashian-shows-off-blond-hair-transformation/

Trump said he and Vladimir Putin did not reach an agreement on “probably the most significant” aspect of their meeting in Alaska, but they made progress in several areas.

US President Donald Trump said his meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was ’10’ out of 10, adding that both sides agreed on a lot of points, although there is “no deal until there’s a deal”.

Speaking to Fox News‘ Sean Hannity, Trump said, “We had a very good meeting today, but we’ll see. You have to get a deal. We agreed on a lot of points. I want to see people stop dying.”

He also expressed happiness when Putin publicly stated that the Ukraine war would have never happened if Trump were president in 2022, instead of Joe Biden.

Trump held a historic meeting with Putin on Friday (local time) and said that many points were agreed to and “very points” were left unsolved with Moscow. The two world leaders met at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, where Trump welcomed him on a red carpet. They held an over three-hour-long meeting behind closed doors and then appeared for a joint press conference.

He also criticised Biden’s handling of the crisis, saying Ukraine could not possibly agree to a deal with Russia because former President Joe Biden “handed out money like it was candy,” referring to the billions of dollars in military aid.

Trump said he believed the deal was close to being agreed upon but that “so many things can happen.”

“But I think President Putin would like to solve the problem,” he said. “And it was a problem that should have never happened.”

Putin-Zelenskyy Meeting

The US President said he would now set up a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying it was up to the latter to get the job done. ” I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit, but it’s up to President Zelenskyy,” he said.

“They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelenskyy and President Putin. And myself, I guess. I didn’t ask about it. Not that I want to be there, but I want to make sure it gets done. And we have a pretty good chance of getting it done,” he told Fox News.

He said Ukraine has to agree to a peace agreement, saying his message to Zelenskyy would be to “make a deal”. There was no reaction from Ukraine to the summit. Zelenskyy had earlier ruled out formally handing Moscow any territory and is also seeking a security guarantee backed by the United States.

The high-stakes Alaska summit yielded no apparent breakthrough on Ukraine, although both leaders described the talks as productive, without offering much details. The two leaders offered warm words for each other in a joint press conference, but took no questions from reporters.

Putin said he expected Ukraine and its European allies to accept the results of the US-Russia negotiation constructively and not try to “disrupt the emerging progress.” He said, “I expect that today’s agreements will become a reference point, not only for solving the Ukrainian problem, but will also launch the restoration of business-like, pragmatic relations between Russia and the United States.”

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-alaska-summit-ukraine-peace-talks-volodymyr-zelenskyy-europe-latest-news-ws-l-9508193.html#google_vignette

Suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is expected to appear before the Constitutional Court in person regarding the controversial audio clip case between her and Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, according to her secretary.

Dr Prommin Lertsuridej, the PM’s secretary-general, on Friday commented on the court’s decision to summon Ms Paetongtarn, who also serves as culture minister, and National Security Council secretary-general Chatchai Bangchuad to appear on Aug 21 ahead of its ruling on Aug 29.

Asked whether the premier would attend, Dr Prommin said: “When the time comes, we will know. I believe she will decide for herself, and she will likely go.”

Dr Prommin added that he was confident that what we, referring to the prime minister’s working team, did was “with good intentions and for the nation”.

He said he had no concern that the court would only summon one witness, Mr Chatchai, of the five Ms Paetongtarn’s legal team filed.

PM’s Office Minister Chousak Sirinil said Ms Paetongtarn’s statement to the court over the leaked audio clip is based on fact, and she had no intention to tarnish the nation’s dignity or stature.

Mr Chousak said Ms Paetongtarn has the right to appear in court or assign a legal representative to appear on her behalf. This will not affect the direction of the case, he said, because it all depends on whether the facts are made clear.

Meanwhile, former election commissioner Somchai Srisutthiyakorn has warned that the case could escalate if the court rules her call was unlawful.

The court’s ruling “binds all state bodies”, he added.

He cited Criminal Code provisions concerning offences against the external security of the kingdom.

They include Section 120 for conspiring with a foreign state to wage war against Thailand, Section 121 for a Thai national who wages war against or joins the enemy of the country, Section 122 for aiding enemies, Section 123 for obtaining state security secrets, and Section 124 for disclosing such secrets.

Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom, leader of the Thai Pakdee Party, said Ms Paetongtarn’s telephone conversation with Hun Sen could suggest the offering of benefits for personal or political gain.

Source : https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3087570/pm-expected-in-person-for-court-date-on-hun-sen-call

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung vowed Friday to “respect” North Korea’s political system and build “military trust”, a day after Pyongyang said it had no interest in improving relations with Seoul.

Lee has pledged to reach out to the nuclear-armed North and pursue dialogue without preconditions since his election in June — a reversal from his hawkish predecessor.

Speaking at an event marking the anniversary of liberation from Japanese rule, Lee said the South Korean government “will take consistent measures to substantially reduce tensions and restore trust” with the North.

“We affirm our respect for the North’s current system,” said Lee, adding Seoul had “no intention of engaging in hostile acts”.

“I hope that North Korea will reciprocate our efforts to restore trust and revive dialogue,” he said.

“North and South are not enemies.”

Lee’s speech comes a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said the North has “no will to improve relations” with the South.

She also denied reports that North Korea was removing propaganda loudspeakers.

The South’s military said in June that the two countries had halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarised zone, adding last week that it had detected North Korean troops dismantling loudspeakers on the frontier.

Friday’s August 15 anniversary of liberation from Japan is the only public holiday celebrated in both North and South Korea, according to Seoul’s National Institute for Unification Education.

In Pyongyang, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un also made a speech at a liberation day celebration, urging the nation to overcome “the challenges facing the DPRK for the great powerful country”, using the North’s official acronym.

However, in an unusual move for a Liberation Day address, he made no mention of South Korea or its “enemies.”

The speech was before a Russian delegation to Pyongyang, including the speaker of the Duma, who read a congratulatory letter sent to Kim by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kim’s speech was a “stark contrast” to his sister’s recent “fiery statements,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul told AFP.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/south-korea-president-vows-build-military-trust-north-3780984

THE investigation into the death of a young fashion designer on a yacht in the Hamptons has taken a fresh twist as her family shoots down claims that she had cancer before her passing.

The grief-stricken mom of bikini designer Martha Nolan O’Slattara, 33, insisted her daughter was “perfectly healthy” before she was found unconscious on a ritzy boat docked at the Montauk Yacht Club.

Nolan was found on board the vessel, named Ripple, at around midnight last Tuesday after she had a meeting with the boat’s owner, 60-year-old insurance mogul Christopher Durnan.

Durnan reportedly ran screaming down the dock for help, and Good Samaritans at the boat club performed CPR, but first responders pronounced her dead at the scene.

Her cause of death wasn’t determined immediately, but cops ruled out any signs of violence on her body.

Speculation began to grow that drugs were involved in her death after a drug task force joined police in the investigation, reported Newsday.

Sources close to the investigation then claimed the death was a suspected overdose, the New York Post reported.

Nolan’s family then spoke out and said they never knew the Irish-born entrepreneur to be a person who used drugs.

Now, Nolan’s mom, Elma, has been forced to break her silence on more rumors surrounding her daughter’s untimely death.

In the days following Nolan’s death, detectives reportedly called Elma to ask about claims that her daughter had brain cancer, the Irish Independent reported.

Elma, who spoke to her daughter daily, was “stunned” by the claims.

She told detectives her daughter was in perfect health.

“She told them there was nothing of the sort [affecting her],” a source told the Irish Independent.

It’s unclear where investigators got the information about Nolan’s supposed cancer.

Nolan’s family has traveled from Ireland to the US to demand a second-opinion autopsy after the first exam didn’t determine a cause of death.

The family has hired top lawyer Arthur Aidala to represent them following Nolan’s death.

Aidala, who previously represented Harvey Weinstein, said the family is working with cops to uncover more about Nolan’s death.

He said her family worries that if drugs were involved, then Nolan might have been slipped something unknowingly.

“If there was any kind of drug and drug use, they want to know. Who’s doing the drugs?” Aidala said at a press conference on Wednesday.

He said police are still questioning people about the death.

“There is still a very intense investigation focused on why a young woman is dead,” Aidala said, the Irish Independent reported.

He said her autopsy showed there were no signs of struggle, no defensive wounds on her hands, and no obvious signs of trauma.

“The medical examiner is really focusing now on her blood and the other fluids that are being sent to toxicology to see what’s going on,” Aidala said.

“There were rumors that she possibly had some form of brain cancer and that is being investigated as well.”

HEARTBREAKING LOSS

Nolan, founder of swimwear brand East x East, lived in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood and spent summers in Montauk to host pop-ups for her brand.

The fashionista often showcased luxurious vacations and glamorous trips on private jets on her social media accounts.

She was having a late-night business meeting with Durnan, who reportedly has invested over $200,000 in her brand.

Durnan is a widowed father of two adult children who owns a company that specializes in workers’ compensation insurance.

He didn’t immediately return The U.S. Sun’s request for comment.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14980329/martha-nolan-oslattara-hamptons-death-yacht-montauk-cancer/

Despite running over Thursday’s deadline, representatives from 185 countries failed to reach a deal to bring the world closer to ending plastic pollution with a legally binding, global agreement..

“We will not have a treaty to end plastic pollution here in Geneva,” Norway’s negotiator said following talks in Geneva that went into the early hours of Friday.

Meeting on the 11th day of talks, countries could not agree on whether the treaty should reduce growth of plastic production and put legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics or focus more on recycling, reuse and improved design.

“We have missed a historic opportunity but we have to keep going and act urgently. The planet and present and future generations need this treaty,” said Cuba.

What issues divided countries at the plastic pollution talks?

Large oil and gas-producing nations and the plastics industry opposed limits on the production of plastic. Instead, they wanted a treaty that emphasized better waste management and reuse.

“Our views were not reflected … without an agreed scope, this process cannot remain on the right track and risks sliding down a slippery slope,” said Kuwait.

China’s delegation compared ending plastic pollution to a marathon and said Friday’s collapsed talks represented a temporary setback and served as a new starting point to forge consensus.

The High Ambition Coalition, made up of European Union, Britain, Canada and many African and Latin American countries, wanted to the treaty to require a reduction in plastic production and the elimination of toxic chemicals used in plastics.

European Commissioner Jessika Roswall said the European Union and its member states had higher expectations for this meeting and while the draft falls short on their demands, it’s a good basis for another negotiating session.

“The Earth is not ours only. We are stewards for those who come after us. Let us fulfill that duty,” she said, adding that the EU would “continue to push for a stronger, binding agreement that safeguards public health and protects the environment.

What happens next?

For any proposal to make it currently into the treaty, every nation must agree.

India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Vietnam and others have said consensus is vital to an effective treaty. But other countries want to change the process so decisions may be made by a vote.

“We are going in circles. We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result,” said Graham Forbes, head of the Greenpeace delegation in Geneva.

Palau, speaking for 39 small island developing states, expressed frustration at the effort put into talks and then “repeatedly returning home with insufficient progress to show our people.”

Similar plastic pollution negotiations last year in South Korea also collapsed without an agreement.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/un-talks-on-plastic-pollution-fail-to-reach-deal/a-73648025

President Donald Trump has ended his high-stakes Russia summit without announcing a deal to end the war in Ukraine, despite rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin and being the first U.S. president in years to invite him back to America.

After a rare ride in the presidential limousine, a military flyover, and three hours of talks, a somewhat subdued Trump told reporters in Alaska: “We didn’t get there—but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

Both leaders said they made progress on ending the bloody conflict that Putin started in February 2022 when his forces invaded Ukraine in a bid to reclaim the country.

During a long-awaited press conference lasting only a few minutes, Trump and Putin spoke of an agreement of sorts, but gave no details, took no questions, and made no mention of a ceasefire of any kind.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said. “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell them about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”

The lack of an announcement is likely to fuel claims that Putin was using the meeting as a stalling tactic to stave off further sanctions by America.

The Russian authoritarian has also been frozen out by the West for years, and his visit has been depicted in Moscow as a win for the Kremlin.

At the press conference, Putin addressed the room first, and then spoke for eight-and-a-half minutes about the history of the two nations, his desire for more business ties with America, and flattered the American president by agreeing that the war would not have happened if Trump had been in office.

He also told reporters that he greeted Trump on the tarmac in Alaska by saying: “Good afternoon, dear neighbor—very good to see you in good health and to see you alive.”

But Putin also made the point that in order to make a “lasting and long-term” end to the war, “we need to eliminate all the primary root causes” of the conflict in Ukraine.

This is viewed as shorthand for Putin’s hardline demands, which have repeatedly been rejected: that Ukraine disarms, gives up a large part of its land to Russia, and swears off joining NATO.

Friday’s summit in Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson was the first time Putin has been on U.S. soil in 10 years.

It was also the first time a U.S. president has given the VIP treatment to a Russian leader who faces an arrest warrant for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court as well as being sanctioned by the U.S. government.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump said that he hoped to broker a ceasefire with Putin but was prepared to “walk out” if they failed to reach a deal.

He had also previously warned Putin of “very severe consequences” if he didn’t agree to a ceasefire, including potentially harsh new sanctions that would ramp up economic pressure on Russia.

Source : https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-leaves-alaska-with-nothing-except-a-lecture-from-preening-vladimir-putin/

President Donald Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Trump, 79, veered from left to right as he walked on the carpet, unable to stay in its center, before reaching a set meeting point. Trump then stood and clapped as the American adversary, 72, approached him at Joint Base Elmendorf in Anchorage.

Once together, the two men shook hands before Trump waddled at Putin’s side toward a platform. Above, a U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bomber and four F-35 fighter jets completed a flyover that caused Putin to pause and briefly look up.

The world leaders stopped atop the platform, posed for photos behind a sign reading “Alaska 2025,” and shuffled down three steps and into an all-black Escalade. Trump invited Putin to descend the stairs first, placing his hand on the Russian’s back.

Both men avoided an embarrassing slip or stumble, and they appeared comfortable with each other, chatting as they sauntered forward. Once inside a U.S. government SUV, cameras captured Putin smiling and waving to the press corps outside.

The eyes of the world are on Friday’s summit, which is regarding Russia’s bloody war in Ukraine.

Trump is expected to push Putin to reach a ceasefire agreement, but the White House has tempered expectations of what will actually be accomplished, especially without a representative of Ukraine—like its president, Volodymyr Zelensky—present.

Source : https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-veers-from-left-to-right-in-walk-across-red-carpet/ 

Former President Barack Obama offered a scathing summary of President Donald Trump’s return to office during a call with Texas state Democrats who skipped town to fight Republican efforts to redistrict the state.

During a 30-minute Zoom meeting on Thursday, Obama spoke to dozens of members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, who fled earlier this month to Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts so that Republicans wouldn’t be able to make a quorum and hold a vote on the new districts.

The maps are usually redrawn once every 10 years, after the census is completed, and not mid-decade. But Trump has called for a “simple redrawing” of Texas that would allow Republicans to pick up five seats in next year’s midterm elections, with the goal of maintaining control of the House.

The meeting was part pep talk and part strategy session, and Obama did not mention Trump by name, CNN reported.

But he called out the administration’s efforts to gerrymander congressional districts, suppress voting, overturn election results, bypass Congress through executive action, militarize cities, and politicize the Department of Justice and the military.

“Those are trend lines that remind us this precious democracy that we’ve got is not a given,” he said. “It’s not self-executed. It requires us to fight for it. It requires us to stand up for it.”

He said Republicans increasingly recognize their policies are unpopular, so they’re trying to “fix the game a little bit” by drawing maps that splinter Democratic voting blocs or that pack Democrats into a single district so they can’t influence other races.

“That’s not fair,” Obama said. “That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.”

Another tragedy in the bodybuilding world … champion performer Hayley McNeff has passed away at just 37.

Tributes started pouring in on Wednesday after it was confirmed the Concord, Massachusetts native died on August 8.

McNeff’s cause of death hasn’t been disclosed, but her obituary described her passing as “unexpected but peaceful.”

Her funeral service will take place on Saturday.

“I remember seeing her at Total Fitness in person,” one fan commented on social media, “She had a vibrant personality and a very warm smile! RIP! A beautiful girl lady inside & outside!!!”

Hayley rose to prominence on the bodybuilding scene in the 2000s, securing several titles, including a win at the 2009 East Coast Classic.

She also featured in a 2016 bodybuilding documentary, “Raising The Bar,” where she discussed her career … saying, “The quest for getting huge will never end. There’s no limit. I hope there’s a day that I’ll be able to look in the mirror 100% of the time and be like ‘yeah man, I’m huge.'”

Outside of bodybuilding, McNeff was also a talented diver and skier. She also studied psychology after retiring from competition.

McNeff is just one of several bodybuilders who have recently passed away. In June, Zunila Hoyos Mendez, 43, was tragically killed in a hammer attack, while a month before, Gui Bull died at the age of 30.

Source : https://www.tmz.com/2025/08/14/bodybuilder-hayley-mcneff-dead/

Kevin Watson, a 42-year-old man, was fatally shot on Wednesday evening while doing a live stream on Facebook from his car in Chicago. The video has gone viral on social media.

A 42-year-old man, Kevin Watson, was fatally shot on Wednesday evening while doing a live stream on Facebook from his car. The video of the livestream has gone viral. Watson was confirmed as the victim by the Cook County Medical Examiner on Thursday.
The shooting took place around 6.14 pm in the 5000 block of West Madison Street, in Chicago’s South Austin neighborhood, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Shooting Details
In the Facebook livestream, Watson can be seen talking from the driver’s seat of his car when a person approaches through the car window. Watson raises his hands and steps out of the car, and gunshots are then heard.

Closing arguments are due to begin in the national security trial of Jimmy Lai, 77, a fierce critic of China’s Communist Party.

“I’m going to do everything I can to save him. I’m going to do everything … His name has already entered the circle of things that we’re talking about, and we’ll see what we can do,” Trump told Fox News Radio in the US.

Trump’s remarks came as closing arguments in Lai’s high-profile trial.

Closing arguments have been pushed from Friday to Monday after Lai’s lawyer said he had experienced heart palpitations.

The delay marks the second in as many days, after Hong Kong courts were closed due to bad weather.

Trump previously pledged to rescue Lai during an interview last October, just weeks before his election as president, and had said he would “100 percent get him out”.

Lai is one of the most prominent Hong Kongers to be charged under the city’s draconian 2020 national security law, and his cause has made international headlines.

The 77-year-old is a longtime opponent of China’s Communist Party thanks to his ownership of Apple Daily, a now-shuttered pro-democracy tabloid newspaper.

He is facing two counts of “colluding with foreign forces” and a separate charge of sedition in the long-running national security trial that began in December 2023.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/15/trump-promises-to-save-jailed-hong-kong-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai

If you look at Pakistan and India… planes were being knocked out of the air. Six or seven planes came down. They were ready to go, maybe nuclear. We solved that, says U.S. President Donald Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday (August 14, 2025) again repeated his claim that he solved the conflict between India and Pakistan and said that the war could have turned nuclear.

“If you look at Pakistan and India… planes were being knocked out of the air. Six or seven planes came down. They were ready to go, maybe nuclear. We solved that,” Mr. Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office.

The U.S. President’s comments come on the eve of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday as he tries to bring an end to the Ukraine war.

Trump said he had thought the Russia-Ukraine war would have been the “easiest one” to end but “it’s actually the most difficult”.

“I think that President Putin would like to see a deal. I think if I weren’t president, he would take over all of Ukraine. It’s a war that should have never happened. If I weren’t president, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine. But I am president and he’s not going to mess around with me,” Mr. Trump said.

“I think it’s going to be a good meeting,” Mr. Trump said of his upcoming meeting with Mr. Putin.

He added that “the more important meeting” will be the second meeting with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and himself.

Mr. Trump said there may also be some European leaders for that meeting.

“We’re going to see what happens. And I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelenskyy will make peace. We’ll see if they can get along, and if they can, it’ll be great,” he said.

Mr. Trump went on to add that he has solved “six wars” in the last six months and he is “very proud of it”.

Since May 10, when Mr. Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire, he has repeated his claim on several occasions.

Mr. Trump has claimed that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America will do a “lot of trade” with them if they stopped the conflict.

Source : https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/india-pakistan-were-ready-to-go-nuclear-we-solved-that-president-trump/article69935696.ece

The Russian leader suggested a deal on nuclear arms control could also be part of talks that are expected to focus on ending the war in Ukraine.

The Russian leader suggested a deal on nuclear arms control could also be part of talks that are expected to focus on ending the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin sounded positive Thursday on the eve of his talks with President Donald Trump in Alaska, saying he believed the American leader was making “quite energetic and sincere efforts” toward peace in Ukraine.

A day ahead of their summit, Putin convened a meeting of advisers to inform them “about how the negotiation process on the Ukrainian crisis is going,” the Kremlin said in a readout translated by NBC News.

The Russian leader said the Trump administration is making “quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the fighting, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict.”

Those efforts are intended “to create long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe, and in the world as a whole,” he added, particularly if the negotiations are extended to cover strategic offensive weapons treaties.

This suggests that a deal on nuclear arms control could be part of the talks. Russia suspended its participation in the New START “reduction in strategic offensive arms” agreement in 2023.

Earlier Thursday, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said the summit would start with head-to-head talks between Trump, Putin and their translators at 11:30 a.m. local time (3:30 p.m. ET) and would be followed by a joint news conference. The White House later confirmed this.

Trump “wants to exhaust all options to try to bring this war to a peaceful resolution,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

The top-level Russian delegation will include Putin, Ushakov, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Putin’s longtime friend and investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Ushakov said on a call with journalists in Moscow.

The primary topic of the meeting will be Ukraine, he said, but he added that he expected the “huge, and unfortunately hitherto untapped, potential” of economic ties between the U.S. and Russia would also be discussed.

As well as Putin’s openly stated goal of subjugating Ukraine, he also wants to end Russia’s exile from the Western financial system following economic sanctions imposed by Washington, the European Union and others. Trump has not yet lifted these punishments but has expressed a desire to end Russia’s economic pariah status.

NBC News asked Trump in a press gaggle on Thursday whether he would offer Putin access to rare earth minerals as an incentive to end the war with Ukraine.

“We’re going to see what happens with our meeting. We have a big meeting. It’s going to be, I think, very important for Russia, and it’s going to be very important for us,” Trump said, without offering additional details. He later added that the earth minerals are “very unimportant” compared to “trying to save lives.”

The talks come as Ukraine marked a grim new record with 286 civilians killed and 1,388 injured in July, according to the United Nations.

“For the second month in a row, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine hits a new three-year high,” Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), said in a statement on Wednesday. “Only the first three months after the Russian Federation launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine saw more killed and injured than in this past month.”

The Trump-Putin summit has prompted howls of dismay and anxiety across Ukraine and Europe, which have not been invited to the talks and fear what the American president may agree to with his Russian counterpart about the conflict raging on their continent.

NBC News asked Trump in a press gaggle on Thursday whether he would offer Putin access to rare earth minerals as an incentive to end the war with Ukraine.

“We’re going to see what happens with our meeting. We have a big meeting. It’s going to be, I think, very important for Russia, and it’s going to be very important for us,” Trump said, without offering additional details. He later added that the earth minerals are “very unimportant” compared to “trying to save lives.”

The talks come as Ukraine marked a grim new record with 286 civilians killed and 1,388 injured in July, according to the United Nations.

“For the second month in a row, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine hits a new three-year high,” Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), said in a statement on Wednesday. “Only the first three months after the Russian Federation launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine saw more killed and injured than in this past month.”

The Trump-Putin summit has prompted howls of dismay and anxiety across Ukraine and Europe, which have not been invited to the talks and fear what the American president may agree to with his Russian counterpart about the conflict raging on their continent.

They have been confined to their own diplomatic scrambling, including dozens of calls between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders, culminating in a video call between these parties and Trump himself Wednesday.

Zelenskyy said that Putin “is bluffing” in saying he wants peace.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian leader flew to London and met his British counterpart, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for what both called a “productive meeting.” As well as the prospect of Britain financing the small drones that have become central to Ukraine’s battlefield defense, the pair discussed the Alaska talks, “which present a viable chance to make progress as long as Putin takes action to prove he is serious about peace,” a spokesperson from Starmer’s office, No. 10 Downing St., said in a statement.

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/putin-praises-trump-peace-efforts-alaska-summit-ukraine-zelenskyy-rcna224953

Tom Cruise has declined a major Kennedy Center Award from Donald Trump, according to The Washington Post.

Trump announced the honorees on Wednesday from the Center, also revealing that he would host the televised show in December. Trump had reportedly wanted to unveil Cruise alongside KISS, Michael Crawford, George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, and singer Gloria Gaynor. The publication cites confirmation from several anonymous Kennedy Center employees. According to the report, Cruise’s team said the star could not attend the ceremony due to “scheduling conflicts.”

A rep for Cruise did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Cruise would have been the most high-profile honoree on Trump’s roster, who Trump said he was “98 percent involved” with selecting.

The Mission: Impossible star is notoriously quiet on politically charged subjects, opting instead to put his star power behind supporting the military, veterans, and, of course, Scientology.

Some honorees in years past have declined the award or avoided the broadcast to protest the sitting president. Mel Brooks refused the award under George W. Bush in 2009. Norman Lear declined to attend the White House Gala that came with the award in 2017 to protest Trump’s policies, but attended the Trump-free Kennedy Honors broadcast show.

“I could never turn my back on” The Kennedy Center,” Lear wrote to Twitter/X at the time. “It represents the Arts and Humanities which mean everything to me. Of course, I’m accepting the honors. What I’m not accepting is the @WhiteHouse reception with @realDonaldTrump.”

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/tom-cruise-turned-down-donald-trumps-kennedy-center-lifetime-achievement-award/

Taylor Swift is tipping her hat to the late, great George Michael on her upcoming album “The Life of a Showgirl” with a track called “Father Figure” — and the icon’s former partner says George would’ve totally approved of it.

Kenny Goss — George’s partner of 13 years — tells TMZ George would be proud of the tribute, which isn’t a straight sample, but an interpolation … meaning you’ll hear the melody of his ’87 classic woven into Taylor’s track.

Kenny tells us George never met Taylor, but he’s pretty sure the icon would’ve been a fan — and would’ve appreciated someone of her caliber taking an interest in his work.

Kenny’s personally a fan of Taylor’s music, and while he had no idea she was interpolating the song, it was a welcome surprise — and he’s glad she’s doing this for George, who had a big hit with “Father Figure.”

Kenny first met George in 1988, and the two were together for over a decade before splitting in 2009, reportedly due to their shared struggles with addiction. George passed away years later, on Christmas Day 2016.

Source: https://www.tmz.com/2025/08/14/george-michael-song-taylor-swift-new-album/

A new legal front has opened in the Trump family’s never-ending war with the press — and this time, it’s First Lady Melania Trump at the center, brandishing an eye-popping $1 billion defamation cudgel. Her legal team is threatening lawsuits against anyone who dares to so much as mention her name in proximity to Jeffrey Epstein’s.

The fallout has already been swift. The Daily Beast removed an article featuring author Michael Wolff alleging that President Donald Trump met Melania through an Epstein connection. In the podcast interview with Joanna Coles — which is still up on YouTube — Wolff claims that the two met in 1998 through ID Models founder Paolo Zampolli, who himself had ties to Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, and further contended that Melania was “very involved” in Epstein’s social circle.

On Tuesday, Wolff addressed the matter in an Instagram Reel that was, in his own words, “threading the needle very carefully.” In the clip, he recounted how The Daily Beast pulled content over a letter from Melania’s lawyers, James Carville deleted his own material which made a similar connection, and others backed away from the topic entirely under the looming shadow of billion-dollar litigation. Even Hunter Biden — not exactly a stranger to political controversy — spoke about receiving a similar warning from Melania’s lawyers.

“What this is,” Wolff said, “is an effort to thwart, stop, frustrate anybody who is out there trying to make that connection. You can’t. Or you’re going to get sued in a way that is going to be just incredibly costly… burdens that you can’t bear.”

Wolff, a reporter of occasionally dubious repute but with deep sourcing on Epstein, who interviewed the disgraced financier extensively — framed the legal blitz as a chilling tactic. Whether or not you take him at face value, the effect he describes is obvious: People are pulling down commentary about the First Lady and Epstein out of fear of facing astronomical legal costs.

It’s worth stressing here: there is no evidence that the claims Melania is fighting against have any merit. In fact, the core of the story of threatening lawsuits to silence the press is less about the truth of any allegation and more about the unmistakable optics of her legal strategy.

If the aim of all this lawyerly saber-rattling is to keep Melania’s name out of the same sentence as Epstein’s, then this a paradoxical campaign. By threatening billion-dollar lawsuits — a comically large figure — the First Lady’s lawyers have ensured the story will reach a much larger audience than before. Yet media coverage will now focus less on the underlying claims, and more on the lengths to which she will go to shut them down.

It’s the classic “Streisand Effect,” named after the singer’s unsuccessful effort to suppress aerial photos of her Malibu home, which only brought far more attention to the images. Attempting to bury a story can sometimes cause it to bloom. In this case, people who might never have connected Melania Trump to Epstein are now aware that such a connection is something her lawyers are working overtime to block.

The legal battle fits neatly into the broader Trump family media strategy: attack the messenger, make litigation the punishment, and make the act of defending oneself ruinously expensive. Donald Trump himself has long wielded lawsuits — or the threat of them — as a way to intimidate critics. What’s new here is the scale: a cool billion per offense.

Meanwhile, the larger Epstein narrative has been fading from public view. Promised “Epstein files” have yet to materialize. Congressional Democrats once threatened to investigate his death and alleged connections to powerful figures, only to see momentum vanish. Wolff claims that even the Justice Department took unusual steps to manage potential fallout, including what he describes as a curious reassignment of Ghislaine Maxwell to a more comfortable prison after questioning about Trump.

None of that proves wrongdoing — but it does show how aggressively the subject is being managed massaged and in some cases shut down. And believe me I was careful not to write anything that could put me — or Mediaite — on the receiving end of a similar threat. Lawsuit threats have a serious chilling effect on the press even when any reputable outlets mission is to cover the powerful without fear or favor. And as history has shown the more energy powerful figures expend to quash a conversation the more oxygen that conversation tends to get.

Melania Trump may well succeed in intimidating some into silence. But she has also ensured that her name — and these massive lawsuit threats — are now part of the public record.

Source: https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/melania-1-billion-lawsuit-threats-silence-critics-but-amplifies-epstein-news/

The president and his administration are struggling to bury the scandal around their handling of the convicted sex offender’s case

Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress, and the president’s allies across right-wing media have been trying everything to make public backlash to their botched handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation go away, amid reports that Trump himself appears in the government’s files pertaining to the convicted sex offender.

The administration’s attempts to bury the story have been complicated by some of Epstein’s victims, and their families, speaking out as the scandal has intensified. Trump hasn’t engaged with them, but just because the president is publicly keeping his mouth shut about Epstein’s victims and their family members doesn’t mean he isn’t annoyed by them.

In recent weeks, according to two sources familiar with his private remarks, Trump has repeatedly critiqued the string of media appearances by Epstein accusers and their families, arguing that some of them are just trying to make him look bad, or implying that he did something wrong during his time as one of Epstein’s friends and party companions. At times, Trump has said that some of these people speaking out are, in his words, clearly of a “Democrat” political affiliation, while wondering aloud if some of them are coordinating with prominent liberal attorneys or groups.

“None of this is true,” a White House official said in response to a request for comment. “Just another desperate attempt by the failing Rolling Stone.”

Survivors of Epstein’s abuse have for weeks now been criticizing the Trump administration’s handling of the case after the Justice Department announced in early July that it would not be releasing the so-called Epstein files. The outcry intensified following reports that Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to a significantly cushier prison facility in Texas after the Justice Department spoke with her in Florida. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted in 2021 of child sex trafficking and other offenses related to her relationship with Epstein. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the Justice Department informed the president that his name appeared in evidence related to Epstein’s case, although it remains unclear in what capacity.

Annie and Maria Farmer, two sisters who accused Epstein of assaulting them and testified against Maxwell during her trial, have gone public with their criticism of the administration’s sidelining of victims. Earlier this month, Annie Farmer told CNN that “this chaotic process that’s been unfolding has a real cost for survivors.”

Farmer indicated that survivors had not been informed of the Justice Department’s efforts to meet with Maxwell, or the decision to transfer her to a minimum-security prison.

“A central part of trauma is a feeling of a lack of control, and that has certainly been triggered here these meetings. You know, even this prison transfer was something I expected we would learn about prior to learning about it in the news, and unfortunately, that’s not how it has unfolded,” she said. Farmer added that efforts by right-wing pundits and others to paint Maxwell as another Epstein victim was a ploy to make a potential commutation of Maxwell’s 20-year sentence “more palatable” to the public. Trump hasn’t ruled out pardoning Maxwell, telling reporters that he is “allowed” to do it.

“It feels like that campaign is not working. People recognize that she’s a predator, not a victim,” Farmer added.

Last month, Danielle Bensky, who accused Epstein of abusing her in 2004, told NBC News that the approach the president and his allies have taken ”feels like we’re being erased.”

“All the brave women who came forward … all the work that we did to tell the world what happened to us, it’s all being erased,” she said.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein who died by suicide earlier this year, released a statement in response to comments from Trump indicating that he believed Epstein had “stolen” Giuffre from the spa at Mar-a-Lago, where she had worked.

“If our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer, a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position,” the family said. “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”

In a memo submitted to the U.S. District Court earlier this month, one victim (whose identity remains protected) wrote to a judge that while they are “for complete and utter transparency in this case, we deserve transparency from our own government, the agencies that were supposed to be there to protect us victims and guess what, they utterly and completely failed us.”

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-privately-dismissed-epstein-victims-democrats-1235407549/

The Capitol Hill battle over Jeffrey Epstein is poised to heat up when Congress returns to Washington next month.

While GOP leaders left town early to avoid the radioactive issue, the conspiracy-ridden saga is set to ramp back up come September for a number of reasons.

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers have vowed to force a vote on their resolution requiring the administration to release the federal files it’s withholding and plan to bring survivors of Epstein’s abuse to Capitol Hill in the first days of Congress’s return.

Separately, a number of court cases surrounding the fate of those files could reach a resolution in the coming weeks.

The House Rules Committee, which was brought to a standstill in July over Democratic efforts to force votes on the Epstein affair, will likely be compelled to revisit the issue if Republicans want to move any piece of their legislative agenda next month.

And bipartisan motions in the House Oversight and Government Committee that forced Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) to issue a flurry of subpoenas related to the Epstein matter could reignite public interest in the saga.

All of this is likely to create new headaches for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team, who want to move beyond fights over Epstein when they return to Washington to face another tough task — funding the government to avoid an Oct. 1 shutdown.

“I don’t think it’s going to go away,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said of the Epstein issue. “Maybe our leadership thinks that sticking their head in the sand and running out of town was the right decision. … Once we go back into session, I think this picks up where it left off.”

Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) are fighting to make sure that happens.

They’ve scheduled a press conference Sept. 3, the day after Congress returns to Washington, to promote their legislation forcing the release of the Epstein files. To help bring attention to the bill, they’ve invited several victims of Epstein’s abuse.

Massie acknowledged his office has not been getting a lot of calls about Epstein during the August break — but he said people haven’t been getting calls on any other major issues such as the national debt or abortion either.

“A lot of America is on vacation right now,” Massie said. “Just generally, people tune out when Congress is not in session.”

The saga surrounding Epstein has posed a huge challenge to President Trump in the early months of his second term.

A number of Trump supporters who had fueled the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein — namely, that the government was concealing the files to shield powerful “elites” from criminal charges — have since assumed positions of high power in the Trump administration, such as FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.

Top administration officials continued to fan those flames in the early months of the Trump administration, with Attorney General Pam Bondi handing out binders titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to conservative influencers at the White House, and Vice President Vance saying in June it was “important” to release the “Epstein list.”

Those placements led to expectations among the MAGA faithful that releasing the Epstein records would be a top priority of Trump’s second term.

Instead, the Department of Justice (DOJ) last month released an unsigned memo refuting all of the most damning theories surrounding the case. Epstein had no “client list,” the DOJ said, nor is there evidence that he tried to blackmail powerful figures who might have committed crimes against minors.

The agency also reaffirmed that Epstein’s 2019 death in a Manhattan prison was by suicide, not foul play, as some far-right voices have proposed.

The DOJ memo infuriated many of Trump’s most ardent supporters, in and out of Congress, posing the most serious threat to the unity of the MAGA movement since Trump’s entrance into the world of politics.

In response, the Trump administration — despite the president himself dismissing the Epstein saga as a “hoax” — made new efforts to reveal previously unseen information.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend who was convicted on sex trafficking charges. The DOJ also made motions to unseal grand jury testimony transcripts from the Epstein case and from Maxwell’s case, but both were denied.

The controversy also raged on Capitol Hill, where Johnson was forced to cut the legislative calendar short just before the recess as GOP rebels on the House Rules Committee, who did not want to face Democratic amendment votes on the matter, refused to take up the radioactive issue.

Still, there’s a long history of July scandals disappearing down the memory hole of the long August break. And some analysts think signs point to the Epstein furor dying down.

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5451154-epstein-files-congress-clash/

A London restaurant has been shut down after dog meat was allegedly found in the freezer.

Pho Na, a Vietnamese restaurant on Old Kent Road, Southwark, closed after inspectors found the suspicious looking meat labelled as ‘goat wrapped in leaves’.

But when it was sent for analysis it was confirmed it was dog meat.

Inspectors also discovered mice droppings and cockroaches inside the establishment.

Owner Vuong Quoc Nguyen, 47, denied multiple food safety and hygiene offences at Bromley Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

Defence solicitor Piers Kiss-Wilson said his client did not know it was dog meat as it had been supplied to him by someone else.

He added the meat was never for sale, and pest control had been hired to deal with the mouse and cockroach infestation.

Lewisham Council said: ‘Following a failed food safety inspection at the former local business Pho Na, Lewisham Council commenced prosecution action in relation to food hygiene offences in 2023.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2025/08/14/london-vietnamese-restaurant-shut-down-after-dog-meat-found-in-freezer-23911343/

The Russian leader suggested a deal on nuclear arms control could also be part of talks that are expected to focus on ending the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin sounded positive Thursday on the eve of his talks with President Donald Trump in Alaska, saying he believed the American leader was making “quite energetic and sincere efforts” toward peace in Ukraine.

A day ahead of their summit, Putin convened a meeting of advisers to inform them “about how the negotiation process on the Ukrainian crisis is going,” the Kremlin said in a readout translated by NBC News.

The Russian leader said the Trump administration is making “quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the fighting, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict.”

Those efforts are intended “to create long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe, and in the world as a whole,” he added, particularly if the negotiations are extended to cover strategic offensive weapons treaties.

This suggests that a deal on nuclear arms control could be part of the talks. Russia suspended its participation in the New START “reduction in strategic offensive arms” agreement in 2023.

Earlier Thursday, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said the summit would start with head-to-head talks between Trump, Putin and their translators at 11:30 a.m. local time (3:30 p.m. ET) and would be followed by a joint news conference. The White House later confirmed this.

Trump “wants to exhaust all options to try to bring this war to a peaceful resolution,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

The top-level Russian delegation will include Putin, Ushakov, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Putin’s longtime friend and investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Ushakov said on a call with journalists in Moscow.

The primary topic of the meeting will be Ukraine, he said, but he added that he expected the “huge, and unfortunately hitherto untapped, potential” of economic ties between the U.S. and Russia would also be discussed.

As well as Putin’s openly stated goal of subjugating Ukraine, he also wants to end Russia’s exile from the Western financial system following economic sanctions imposed by Washington, the European Union and others. Trump has not yet lifted these punishments but has expressed a desire to end Russia’s economic pariah status.

NBC News asked Trump in a press gaggle on Thursday whether he would offer Putin access to rare earth minerals as an incentive to end the war with Ukraine.

“We’re going to see what happens with our meeting. We have a big meeting. It’s going to be, I think, very important for Russia, and it’s going to be very important for us,” Trump said, without offering additional details. He later added that the earth minerals are “very unimportant” compared to “trying to save lives.”

The talks come as Ukraine marked a grim new record with 286 civilians killed and 1,388 injured in July, according to the United Nations.

“For the second month in a row, the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine hits a new three-year high,” Danielle Bell, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), said in a statement on Wednesday. “Only the first three months after the Russian Federation launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine saw more killed and injured than in this past month.”

The Trump-Putin summit has prompted howls of dismay and anxiety across Ukraine and Europe, which have not been invited to the talks and fear what the American president may agree to with his Russian counterpart about the conflict raging on their continent.

They have been confined to their own diplomatic scrambling, including dozens of calls between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders, culminating in a video call between these parties and Trump himself Wednesday.

Zelenskyy said that Putin “is bluffing” in saying he wants peace.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian leader flew to London and met his British counterpart, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for what both called a “productive meeting.” As well as the prospect of Britain financing the small drones that have become central to Ukraine’s battlefield defense, the pair discussed the Alaska talks, “which present a viable chance to make progress as long as Putin takes action to prove he is serious about peace,” a spokesperson from Starmer’s office, No. 10 Downing St., said in a statement.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/putin-praises-trump-peace-efforts-alaska-summit-ukraine-zelenskyy-rcna224953

A man who worked for the Department of Justice was charged after allegedly throwing a sandwich at a federal law enforcement officer in Washington, DC, amid President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s police and increase in federal law enforcement presence.

The man, Sean Charles Dunn, appeared in court for an initial hearing Thursday after 20 officers were sent to arrest him, his defense attorney told a judge.

After a brief foot chase Sunday night, Dunn was initially detained and then released the next day with no charges, his lawyer Sabrina Shroff said.

On Wednesday, Dunn learned there was a warrant out for his arrest and got in touch with Shroff who told the court, “I had no way to surrender him” after she attempted to call multiple government officials.

Before he turned himself in, 20 officers came to his door Wednesday to arrest him on the felony assault charge he now faces, Shroff said.

To show that he could be released, Shroff noted that Dunn had served in the Air Force, to which prosecutors quickly responded: “Somebody who served in the military should know not to assault an officer.”

Dunn was released on personal recognizance with the next hearing scheduled for early September.

‘FIRED’ from Justice Department
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on social media Thursday that the Dunn has been fired. He was an international affairs specialist in the Criminal Division of the Office of International Affairs, according to a source.

“If you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you,” Bondi wrote. “I just learned that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice — NO LONGER. Not only is he FIRED, he has been charged with a felony.”

“This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ,” Bondi said of the sandwich incident. “You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.”

According to police, Dunn confronted a group of US Customs and Border Protection officers on 14th Street in Northwest DC on Sunday night, calling them “fascists,” according to court documents. During the incident, Dunn allegedly approached a CBP officer and shouted expletives, adding, “Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/13/politics/man-sandwich-dc-felony-charged

Putin and Trump are to meet in the US state of Alaska on August 15 to try to bring an end to the three-year war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated a peace deal without his country’s input would not be possible.

What did European leaders say about Ukraine’s involvement in a peace deal?
Europe has insisted that Kyiv and European powers should be part of any deal to end the conflict, with EU foreign ministers set to discuss the next steps for the bloc in a meeting by video link on Monday, together with their Ukrainian counterpart.

“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” the leaders from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Britain and Finland and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement.

The statement was followed by the heads of eight Nordic-Baltic nations, who also jointly reaffirmed their support for Ukraine.

The leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden said they “Reaffirm the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.”

“President Trump is right that Russia has to end its war against Ukraine. The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security,” Kallas said.

Adding to the calls for Trump to exert his diplomatic powers, NATO head Mark Rutte told ABC’s This Week broadcast that “Next Friday will be important because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end.”

However, unlike many European leaders, Rutte said it was a reality that “Russia is controlling some of Ukrainian territory” and suggested a future deal could acknowledge this.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-nato-chiefs-back-ukraine-ahead-of-trump-putin-summit/a-73593501

Donald Trump is moaning about the media again, JD Vance’s holiday looks less like a holiday every day and there’s more on Ghislaine Maxwell’s prison status. Here’s everything you need to know.

After spending most of the weekend (illegally) fishing and talking about Ukraine with David Lammy at Chevening, the Vice President had breakfast with Nigel Farage this morning, is having a zoom call with Starmer and European leaders about Ukraine right now, and he’s speaking to US troops at a UK airbase in a couple of hours.

If I were him I’d fire my travel agent.

Meanwhile., the President has been moaning about media coverage of his meeting with Putin – which looks more and more like an objectively bad idea by the minute.

Oh, and Ghislaine Maxwell might have been approved for work release…which seems like a great idea all round.

Here’s everything that’s happened in Trump World over the last 24 hours that you need to know about. Strap in.

1. Trump moans about media coverage of his summit with Putin

Because what else would he be doing at 8am on a Wednesday?

The President complained on Truth Social that the coverage of his forthcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska was “very unfair.”

South Korea had previously reported loudspeakers had been removed on the northern side of the border.

Kim Jong Un’s sister denied claims North Korea had removed some of its loudspeakers along its border with the South, saying Seoul is wrong to expect renewed dialogue between the two countries.

“We have never removed loudspeakers installed in the border area and are not willing to remove them,” Kim Yo Jong said on Thursday.

What did Kim Yo Jong say?

Kim, the North Korean leader’s powerful sibling, repeated previous North Korean statements that Pyongyang has no interest in reviving negotiations with the US and South Korea.

She said an upcoming military drill planned between the two countries at the end of August is proof of their hostility towards North Korea, also blaming the government in Seoul for misleading the public.

North Korea has traditionally always condemned such joint drills, saying they serve as preparations for an invasion of its territory.

The North often seeks to show off its military strength through military demonstrations and tests to advance its nuclear program during these exercises.

On Thursday, South Korea said it stood by its assessment that North Korea had begun dismantling border loudspeakers. A South Korean military spokesperson said caution was needed when interpreting official statements from Pyongyang.

Have the South’s dialogue efforts failed?

Last weekend, South Korea’s army said it had detected some of the speakers in the North being removed after the South took a similar measure regarding the loudspeakers used for K-pop and news reports in a bid to ease tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang.

In response to the North’s alleged removal of the speakers, liberal South Korean President Lee Jae Myung voiced hopes of “reopening dialogue and communications” between the two rivalled countries.

The North’s response, however, was a cold shoulder.

“We have clarified on several occasions that we have no will to improve relations with the (South),” Kim said, adding that this position will become “fixed” in North Korea’s constitution in the future.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/north-korea-denies-removing-propaganda-loudspeakers/a-73631300

How do Iraqis cope in fiery summer heat, especially during power outages? They use private generators, which are now essential in Iraq. But the huge machines you see on every city block have plenty of drawbacks too.

This week, when Iraq experienced an almost-nationwide power outage, the streets of Baghdad and other major cities went dark, with only lights from passing cars illuminating the sidewalks.

The Middle Eastern nation is currently experiencing peak summer temperatures — it was around 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in Baghdad during the blackout, and even hotter elsewhere — and the power outage saw many locals turn to the equipment they always fall back on at times like this: private generators.

“Thank you for your service,” one poetic Baghdad local addressed those who maintain the city’s private generators in a post on Facebook. They are “the heroes of the hour,” he enthused. “Unknown soldiers fighting the good fight during national power outages, enduring heat and smell, so that the pulse of life may beat on in Iraqi homes.”

The private generators he is praising so effusively can be found almost every couple of city blocks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. It is estimated there are over 4.5 million of them around the country. The ones that power whole suburban streets are industrial-sized, usually about the size of a van, parked between houses, under some sort of corrugated iron roof.

Iraq’s power grid outdated, inefficient

The Iraqi national grid is outdated and loses somewhere between 40% and 50% of power produced as it transmits. Additionally, hotter summers, population growth and growing use of equipment like air conditioners makes it impossible for the national grid to keep up with demand. Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity says the country needs between 50,000 and 55,000 megawatts during peak hours at the height of summer. The national grid can only supply around 27,000 megawatts.

The reason for this week’s outage remains unclear, although some officials said it may have been caused by excess demand in southern Iraq, likely due to over 20 million pilgrims flocking there for the religious holiday of Arbaeen. This then caused a chain reaction further north.

But even on better days, Iraq’s state power plants usually only provide between eight and 12 hours of power a day. Which is why most Iraqis who can afford it, pay a subscription to their local generator owner.

“Unreliable supply from the national grid has made private generation a critical, though problematic, part of Iraq’s electricity ecosystem,” the Baker Institute for Public Policy, based at Rice university in Texas, explained in a July 2025 report on Iraq’s electricity woes. “Each household or business has a separate connection — known as al-khat (the line) — to a nearby private generator that supplies electricity to those within a small radius when Iraq’s national grid goes down.”

The generator owners sell power to residents on a subscription basis, based on how many amperes a household wants, rather than the actual amount of power used. Prices differ around the country but the average cost per ampere is around $8.40 (€7.21), a January 2025 report published in the journal “Renewable Energies,” found. That means most households end up paying around $100 (€86) a month for generator power.

“The household’s connection is wired to the generator through a circuit breaker set to that threshold of amperes,” Baker Institute experts explained further. “This means that the breaker will trip whenever current drawn exceeds the agreed limit, completely disconnecting the customer.”

Most Iraqis are used to that. When state power drops out, Khadija al-Ameri, an engineering student living in southern Baghdad, explains how she turns off all unnecessary appliances, like the washing machine, but leaves others, like the fridge, going. “The generator voltage can’t have too many things going at once, and it’s also more expensive,” she explains.

“I pay around €40 a month for a private generator subscription,” says Fatimah Mahmoud, a 50-year-old teacher from Basra. “But it only covers the fridge, TV, fans, and lights. No air conditioning.”

Previous studies on the generator business in Iraq, which is unregulated, concluded that locals could be spending over $4 billion on it annually. It’s a lucrative business, with documented links to politicians and militia leaders, the so-called “generator mafia.”

And in the current summer heat, it’s also essential.

Private generators the only option

On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after he returned home from work, the power went out, Murtadha Saad, a 35-year-old local of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, told DW.

“I had returned home just an hour earlier from my job in the engineering sector under a scorching sun, but the blackout forced me to leave [home] quickly in search of a place to escape the heat,” he explains.

Saad himself pays around €66 monthly for generator-provided power, but he doesn’t have enough amperes to power air conditioning. So he ended up sitting in a cafe that had its own generator.

“Exhausted, I decided to go back home, only to find the streets nearly empty, houses in darkness, as if we were in a ghost town,” Saad recounts. “I sat in my car, using its air conditioning until 9 p.m., then tried to find another cafe or restaurant, only to discover they were all packed with families.”

In the inner city, the streets were crowded, he noted, because everyone was searching for a place with working air conditioning.

Hotels and restaurants often have their own larger, diesel generators but some individual Iraqi households also use smaller petrol-powered generators.

“When the power went out, I went searching for gasoline to fuel our small home generator,” Mohammed Basheer, 21, a university student from Basra, says. “But even finding fuel became difficult as panicked residents rushed to buy up all the supplies.”

Basheer says he eventually managed to buy two liters, barely enough to run his family’s fan for a short time. It’s not much of a solution in Basra’s increasingly hot summers, he admits.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/iraqs-private-power-generators-lifesaver-or-environmental-burden/a-73626002

While China also purchases Russian oil, Bolton pointed out that Beijing faced no such tariffs. “India is the one government to have suffered from Trump’s effort to get a ceasefire in Ukraine,” he noted.

Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has accused Donald Trump of needlessly antagonising India, calling the steep tariffs imposed on New Delhi “a mistake in the bilateral relationship.”

The ex-Trump aide’s remarks came after President Trump hit India with some of the highest US tariffs — 50% overall, including a 25% penalty for buying Russian oil. Bolton argued this approach was “backward” and “damaging” to ties between the two nations.

Trump defended his decision, claiming India was helping Moscow prolong its war in Ukraine. “India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” he wrote on Truth Social.

While China also purchases Russian oil, Bolton pointed out that Beijing faced no such tariffs or secondary sanctions. “India is the one government to have suffered from Trump’s effort to get a ceasefire in Ukraine,” he noted.

Trump, who briefly engaged in a tariff battle with China in April, at one point imposing rates of up to 145%, has since held back on further escalation with Beijing. India, however, became the prime target of his latest trade salvo.

Earlier in the day Trump lashed out at news outlets for unfairly covering his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. He said that the media will criticise him even if he got “Moscow and Leningrad free”, as a part of the deal with Russia.

He continued to attack outlets promoting quotes from former officials who have now turned into critics, and called John Bolton “dumb”, who had labelled the summit as a “great victory for Putin”.

Speaking to NDTV, Bolton warned that repairing the fallout from the tariffs would take time. “When you make a mistake as big as the way the White House has ended up treating India over the past 30 days, it takes a long time to restore trust and confidence,” he said.

Bolton also took a jab at Trump by referencing Pakistan. Underlining how Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government and Army chief Asim Munir are “figuring out a better way to play Trump,” he said: “My only suggestion to PM Modi is he could offer to nominate Trump twice for a Nobel peace prize.”

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pm-modi-should-nominate-him-for-nobel-ex-aide-john-boltons-jibe-at-donald-trump-over-tariff-9079184

Taylor Swift’s new era has officially been unlocked.

After shocking fans with the announcement of “The Life of a Showgirl” earlier this week, the pop star shared all the details on what fans can expect from her upcoming 12th studio album during her guest appearance on the “New Heights” podcast.

“I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on the theme, and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle,” she told co-hosts Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce during the episode, which dropped Wednesday.

“I feel like we achieved that, and I’m really happy about that.”

During the podcast, Swift, 35, shared the stunning new artwork for her highly anticipated album, along with the official release date: Oct. 3.

“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this [Eras] Tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” she explained on “New Heights,” noting that there will be 12 tracks, all of which are “bangers” that she created while touring in Europe.

“It just comes from, like, the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in, in my life. And so that effervescence has come through on this record … this is the record I’ve been wanting to make for a very long time.”

Swift clarified that the album tackles “everything that was going on behind the curtain” during her record-breaking Eras Tour, which kicked off March 17, 2023, and ran through Dec. 8, 2024.

“My main goals were melodies that were so infectious that you’re almost angry at it, and lyrics that are just as vivid, but crisp, and focused and completely intentional,” she teased, noting that the artwork represents the “end” of what her nights looked like after “jumping through 50 million hoops” from one show to the next.

“This album isn’t really about what happened to me on stage, it’s about what I was going through off stage … it’s the life, behind it all; the life beyond the show.”

The official track list includes songs like “Elizabeth Taylor,” “Father Figure,” “Eldest Daughter,” and “Ruin the Friendship,” along with the title track, “The Life of a Showgirl,” featuring Sabrina Carpenter.

“Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons. You couldn’t take one out and it be the same album, you couldn’t add one; it’s just right,” Swift explained to Travis and Jason.

“That focus, and that kind of discipline, with creating an album and keeping the bar really high, is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time.”

“TLOAS” follows “The Tortured Poets Department,” which Swift released in April 2024. It also marks her first album since officially buying back her masters in May.

Leading up to the announcement, Swift teased fans with a countdown clock on her website, which featured mint green text over a glittery orange background. She also changed the logos on her social media platforms to a picture of a sparkly orange lock.

Eagle-eyed Swifties previously pointed out that the singer had seemingly been teasing this new “era” for quite a while.

In her “The Eras Tour Book,” published last year, for example, Swift reflected on the “most wondrous tour of [her] life” in a message to fans — before signing it off with, “See you next era…“

Additionally, fans picked up on Swift’s new producing team ahead of Wednesday’s “New Heights” debut.

While Jack Antonoff has famously been Swift’s go-to producer and co-songwriter in recent years, the singer confirmed on the podcast that she teamed up with “geniuses” Max Martin and Shellback (real name: Karl Schuster) for her latest project.

“The three of us have made some of my favorite songs that I’ve ever done before,” Swift explained of her creative decision on the podcast. “They were my main collaborators on my ‘Red’ album … we’ve made songs that I’m so proud of … [and doing this] felt like catching lightning in a bottle, honestly.”

Swifties speculated that “TLOAS” would be a major departure from the singer’s last few albums when a curated Spotify playlist, titled “And, baby, that’s show business for you,” was released Tuesday.

All 22 of the songs featured — including “Bad Blood,” “End Game” and “Shake It Off” — were exclusively produced by Martin and Shellback.

At the time, Martin also re-shared a ton of speculative posts about his alleged involvement on “TLOAS” via his various social media accounts.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/08/13/entertainment/taylor-swift-reveals-the-life-of-a-showgirl-album-details-on-new-heights-podcast/

Gao Xiaoyu, the founder of an industrial land consulting firm in Jakarta, has been inundated with calls from Chinese companies eager to expand or set up operations in Indonesia as they try to shield themselves from the United States’ hefty import tariffs.
The 19% U.S. tariff rate for goods from Indonesia is the same as for Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, and just below Vietnam’s 20%. China’s rates currently exceed 30%.

But Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and the world’s fourth most populous country, has an edge over its neighbours – the potential of its vast consumer market.
“We are quite busy these days. We have meetings from morning till night,” said Gao, who set up her company PT Yard Zeal Indonesia in 2021 with four employees and now has more than 40.
“The industrial parks are also very busy.”
Indonesia’s economy expanded at a better-than-expected 5.12% in the second quarter, the fastest pace in two years, government data showed last week.
“If you can establish a strong business presence in Indonesia, you’ve essentially captured half of the Southeast Asian market,” said Zhang Chao, a Chinese manufacturer who sells motorcycle headlights in Indonesia, the world’s third biggest market for motorbikes.

Vietnam and Thailand were among the major beneficiaries of the first wave of Chinese companies’ overseas diversification, but amid the latest trade turmoil with the United States, other near neighbours are benefiting.
“There has always been a synergy … with Chinese corporates having the confidence to set up shop with ease in Indonesia,” said Mira Arifin, the Indonesia country head at Bank of America. “Indonesia has a huge talent pool with a dynamic young demographic that encourages foreign investors to rapidly build scale in the country.”
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has championed China ties, visiting Beijing in November where he held talks with President Xi Jinping and welcoming the Chinese Premier Li Qiang to Jakarta in May.
Investment from China and Hong Kong into Indonesia was up 6.5% year-on-year to $8.2 billion in the first six months of 2025. Total FDI grew 2.58% over the same period to 432.6 trillion rupiah ($26.56 billion), and the government has said it expects more investments in the second half of the year.

MASSIVE CONSUMER MARKET

To be sure, challenges persist across Indonesia, including regulatory hurdles, bureaucratic red tape, ownership restrictions, deficient infrastructure and the lack of a complete industrial supply chain that made China the “workshop of the world” for decades.
Some foreign investors have also raised concerns about the populist Prabowo’s fiscal prudence, as he pushes ahead with his campaign promises, including a flagship programme to deliver free meals to schoolchildren and pregnant women.
After falling in March to its lowest level against the U.S. dollar since June 1998, the rupiah has steadied. It is currently trading about 1% below its level at the end of last year.
At the sprawling, more than 2,700 hectare (6,672 acres) Subang Smartpolitan industrial park in West Java, executives said it had been inundated with enquiries from Chinese investors.

“Our phone, email and WeChat were immediately busy with new customers, agents wanting to introduce clients,” once the U.S.-Indonesia trade deal was announced last month, said Abednego Purnomo, vice-president for sales, marketing and tenant relations of Suryacipta Swadaya, Subang Smartpolitan’s operator.
“Coincidentally, all of them were from China.”
Companies ranging from toy makers and textile firms to electric vehicle makers are scouring for facilities, particularly in West Java, the most populous province in Indonesia, which is home to the Patimban deep sea port.
Chinese demand has pushed up prices of industrial real estate and warehouses by 15% to 25% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, the fastest rise in 20 years, according to Gao, from the land consulting firm.
Rivan Munansa, the head of industrial and logistics services at the Indonesian arm of global property consultant Colliers International said that there was an urgency among Chinese firms to move and the company was getting inquiries for industrial land “almost every day” in the run-up to the tariff agreement.
“Most of them (Chinese companies) are looking for immediate opportunities. So, they want land and a temporary building that can be used immediately, it’s like a crash programme,” Rivan said.
Zhang said he signed up for a new four-floor office building in Jakarta in May at an annual rent of 100,000 yuan ($13,936), up 43% from last year, underscoring the pent-up demand.
“The 19% level is lower than my expectation. I thought it would be 30%,” Zhang said, referring to Indonesia’s tariff deal and adding that net profit margins in China could be as little as 3%.
“In Indonesia, it’s relatively easy to achieve net profit margins of 20% to 30%.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-investors-eyeing-indonesia-avoid-us-tariffs-tap-local-market-2025-08-14/

“Are you a chemistry professor?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” Mamta Pathak replied, clasping her hand in a respectful namaste.

Draped in a white sari, glasses perched on her nose, the retired college teacher stood before two judges in a courtroom in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, speaking as if delivering a forensic chemistry lecture.

“In the post-mortem,” she argued, her voice trembling but composed, “it is not possible to differentiate between a thermal burn and an electric burn mark without proper chemical analysis.”

Across the bench, Justice Vivek Agarwal reminded her, “The doctor who conducted the post-mortem said there were clear signs of electrocution.”

It was a rare, almost surreal moment – a 63-year-old woman, accused of murdering her husband by electrocution, explaining to the court how acids and tissue reactions revealed the nature of a burn.

The exchange, caught on video during her April hearing, went viral in India and stunned the internet. But in the court, no amount of expert-like confidence could undo the prosecution’s case – a spouse murdered and a motive rooted in suspicion and marital discord.

Last month the High Court dismissed Mamta Pathak’s appeal and upheld her life sentence for the April 2021 murder of her husband, Neeraj Pathak, a retired physician.

While Pathak mounted a spirited, self-argued defence – invoking gaps in the autopsy, the insulation of the house, and even an electrochemical theory – the court found the circumstantial evidence conclusive: she had drugged her husband with sleeping pills and then electrocuted him.

In court, Mamta, a mother of two, had peered over a stack of overflowing case files, leafing through them before she grew animated.

“Sir, electric burn marks can’t be distinguished as ante-mortem [before death] or post-mortem [after death],” she argued quoting from a forensics book.

“How did they [doctors] write it was an electric burn mark in post-mortem [report]?”.

Microscopically, electrical burns look the same before and after death, making standard examination inconclusive, say experts. A close study of dermal changes may reveal whether a burn was ante- or post-mortem, according to one paper.

An impromptu exchange on chemical reactions followed, with the judge probing her on laboratory processes. Mamta spoke about different acids, explaining that distinctions could be made using an electron microscope – something not possible in a post-mortem room. She tried to walk the judge through electron microscopy and different acids. Three women lawyers in the background smiled.

Mamta ploughed on – she said she had been studying law in prison for a year. Flipping through her tabbed files with stickers and quoting from forensic medicine books, she pointed to alleged gaps in the investigation – from the unexamined crime scene to the absence of qualified electrical and forensic experts at the scene of the crime.

“Our house was insured from 2017 to 2022, and inspections confirmed it was protected against electrical fire,” she said.

Mamta told the court that her husband had high blood pressure and heart disease. She stated the actual cause of death was narrowing and “calcification of his coronary arteries due to old age”. She also suggested he may have slipped and sustained a hematoma, but no CT scan was conducted to confirm this.

Neeraj Pathak, 65, had been found dead at the family home on 29 April 2021. The autopsy ruled electrocution as the cause of death. Days later, Mamta had been arrested and charged with murder.

Police had seized an 11-meter electric wire with a two-pin plug, and CCTV footage from the couple’s house. Six tablets of a sleeping pill were recovered in a strip of 10.

The postmortem report cited cardiorespiratory shock from electrical current at multiple sites as the cause of death, occurring 36 to 72 hours before the autopsy conducted on 1 May.

“But they didn’t find my fingerprints on the strip of tablets,” Mamta told the judges.

But her arguments quickly unravelled, leaving Judges Agarwal and Devnarayan Sinha unconvinced.

For nearly four decades, Mamta and Neeraj Pathak had lived a seemingly orderly middle-class life in Chhatarpur – a drought-prone district of Madhya Pradesh known for its farms, granite quarries, and small businesses.

She taught chemistry at the local government college; he was the chief medical officer at the district hospital. They raised two sons – one settled abroad, the other, sharing a home with his mother. Neeraj retired voluntarily in 2019 after 39 years as a government doctor and then opened a private clinic at home.

The incident happened during the pandemic. Neeraj was showing Covid symptoms and kept to the first floor. Mamta and her son, Nitish, stayed downstairs. Two staircases from the ground floor linked Neeraj’s rooms to the open gallery and waiting hall of his private clinic, where half a dozen staff bustled between the lab and the medical store.

The 97-page judgment stated that Mamta reported finding her husband Neeraj unresponsive in his bed on 29 April, but did not inform a doctor or the police until 1 May. Instead, she took her elder son to Jhansi – over 130km away – without clear reason, according to the driver, and returned the same evening. She claimed ignorance about how he died when she finally alerted the police.

Beneath this silence lay a troubled marriage. The judges highlighted longstanding marital discord, with the couple living apart and Mamta suspecting her husband of infidelity.

On the morning of the day he died,, Neeraj had called an associate, alleging that Mamta was “torturing him,” locking him in a bathroom, withholding food for days, and causing physical injuries. He also accused her of taking cash, ATM cards, vehicle keys, and bank fixed deposit documents. Pleading for help, Neeraj’s son contacted a friend who alerted the police, who then rescued the retired doctor from what was described as “Mamta’s custody”.

The couple had even lived apart in recent times, adding weight to the court’s doubts.

Mamta had told the court she was the “best mother,” presenting a birthday card from her children as proof. She also showed photos of herself feeding her husband and snapshots with family.

Yet, the judges were unmoved. They noted that such tokens of affection didn’t erase motive – after all, a “doting mother” can also be a “suspicious wife,” they said.

Fifty minutes into her deposition, after parrying questions and defending herself against the court’s doubts, Mamta’s composure faltered for the first time.

“I know one thing… I did not kill him,” she said, her voice trailing off.

At another moment, she confessed, “I can’t take this very much more.”

Trying to ease the tension, Judge Agarwal remarked, “You must be used to this… you must be taking classes for 50 minutes in college.”

“Forty minutes, sir. But they are small children,” Mamta said.

“Small children in college? But your designation is assistant professor,” the judge pressed.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r77qezg09o

Hailed by some as a hero and scorned by others as a traitor, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai is in the final stage of his national security trial.

Closing arguments were scheduled to start on Thursday for Lai, who is accused of colluding with foreign forces under a Beijing-imposed national security law.

But the hearing has now been postponed by a “black” rainstorm warning – Hong Kong’s highest level of warning – as a typhoon swept the city.

The trial has drawn international attention, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling for Lai’s release. The 77-year-old has British as well as Chinese citizenship – though China does not recognise dual nationality, and therefore considers Lai to be exclusively Chinese.

Lai has been detained since December 2020 and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if he is convicted.

Critics say Lai’s case shows how Hong Kong’s legal system has been weaponised to silence political opposition.

Lai has been a persistent thorn in China’s side. Unlike other tycoons who rose to the top in Hong Kong, Mr Lai became one of the fiercest critics of the Chinese state and a leading figure advocating democracy in the former British territory.

“I’m a born rebel,” he told the BBC in an interview in 2020, hours before he was charged. “I have a very rebellious character.”

He is the most prominent person charged under the controversial national security law which China introduced in 2020, in response to massive protests which erupted in Hong Kong the year before.

The legislation criminalises a wider range of dissenting acts which Beijing considers subversion and secession, among other things.

Beijing says the national security law is necessary to maintain stability in Hong Kong but critics say it has effectively outlawed dissent.

Over the years, Lai’s son Sebastien has called for his release. In February, the younger Lai urged Starmer and US President Donald Trump to take urgent action, adding that his father’s “body is breaking down”.

Ahead of Lai’s trial on Thursday, Sebastien told the BBC that even if his father got just five years in prison, it was “practically the same as a death penalty.”

“Given his age, given his health, yeah. He will die in prison,” he said.

Sebastien added that Lai’s case was “crucial for China-UK relations”. If Lai died, it would show that “as a nation [the UK] we didn’t stand up for one of our bravest when it mattered”, he said.

Beneath red banners and a gold bust of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi’s central party school, Communist Party chief To Lam declared the arrival of “a new era of development” late last year. The speech was more than symbolic— it signaled the launch of what could be Vietnam’s most ambitious economic overhaul in decades.

Vietnam aims to get rich by 2045 and become Asia’s next “tiger economy” — a term used to describe the earlier ascent of countries like South Korea and Taiwan.

The challenge ahead is steep: Reconciling growth with overdue reforms, an aging population, climate risks and creaking institutions. There’s added pressure from President Donald Trump over Vietnam’s trade surplus with the U.S., a reflection of its astounding economic trajectory.

In 1990, the average Vietnamese could afford about $1,200 worth of goods and services a year, adjusted for local prices. Today, that figure has risen by more than 13 times to $16,385.

Vietnam’s transformation into a global manufacturing hub with shiny new highways, high-rise skylines and a booming middle class has lifted millions of its people from poverty, similar to China. But its low-cost, export-led boom is slowing and it faces a growing obstacle to its proposed reforms — expanding private industries, strengthening social protections and investing in technology and green energy — from climate change.

“It’s all hands on deck. . . . We can’t waste time anymore,” said Mimi Vu of the consultancy Raise Partners.

The export boom can’t carry Vietnam forever

Investment has soared, driven partly by U.S.-China trade tensions, and the U.S. is now Vietnam’s biggest export market. Once-quiet suburbs have been replaced with industrial parks where trucks rumble through sprawling logistics hubs that serve global brands.

Vietnam ran a $123.5 billion trade surplus with the U.S. trade in 2024, angering Trump, who threatened a 46% U.S. import tax on Vietnamese goods. The two sides appear to have settled on a 20% levy, and twice that for goods suspected of being transshipped, or routed through Vietnam to avoid U.S. trade restrictions.

During negotiations with the Trump administration, Vietnam’s focus was on its tariffs compared to those of its neighbors and competitors, said Daniel Kritenbrink, a former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. “As long as they’re in the same zone, in the same ballpark, I think Vietnam can live with that outcome,” he said. But he added questions remain over how much Chinese content in those exports might be too much and how such goods will be taxed.

Vietnam was preparing to shift its economic policies even before Trump’s tariffs threatened its model of churning out low-cost exports for the world, aware of what economists call the “middle-income trap,” when economies tend to plateau without major reforms.

To move beyond that, South Korea bet on electronics, Taiwan on semiconductors, and Singapore on finance, said Richard McClellan, founder of the consultancy RMAC Advisory.

But Vietnam’s economy today is more diverse and complex than those countries were at the time and it can’t rely on just one winning sector to drive long-term growth and stay competitive as wages rise and cheap labor is no longer its main advantage.

It needs to make “multiple big bets,” McClellan said.

Vietnam’s game plan

Following China’s lead, Vietnam is counting on high-tech sectors like computer chips, artificial intelligence and renewable energy, providing strategic tax breaks and research support in cities like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Danang.

It’s also investing heavily in infrastructure, including civilian nuclear plants and a $67 billion North–South high-speed railway, that will cut travel time from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City to eight hours.

Vietnam also aspires to become a global financial center. The government plans two special financial centers, in bustling Ho Chi Minh City and in the seaside resort city of Danang, with simplified rules to attract foreign investors, tax breaks, support for financial tech startups, and easier ways to settle business disputes.

Underpinning all of this is institutional reform. Ministries are being merged, low-level bureaucracies have been eliminated and Vietnam’s 63 provinces will be consolidated into 34 to build regional centers with deeper talent pools.

Private business to take the lead

Vietnam is counting on private businesses to lead its new economic push — a seismic shift from the past.

In May, the Communist Party passed Resolution 68. It calls private businesses the “most important force” in the economy, pledging to break away from domination by state-owned and foreign companies.

So far, large multinationals have powered Vietnam’s exports, using imported materials and parts and low cost local labor. Local companies are stuck at the low-end of supply chains, struggling to access loans and markets that favored the 700-odd state-owned giants, from colonial-era beer factories with arched windows to unfashionable state-run shops that few customers bother to enter.

“The private sector remains heavily constrained,” said Nguyen Khac Giang of Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

Again emulating China, Vietnam wants “national champions” to drive innovation and compete globally, not by picking winners, but by letting markets decide. The policy includes easier loans for companies investing in new technology, priority in government contracts for those meeting innovation goals, and help for firms looking to expand overseas. Even mega-projects like the North-South High-Speed Rail, once reserved for state-run giants, are now open to private bidding.

By 2030, Vietnam hopes to elevate at least 20 private firms to a global scale. But Giang warned that there will be pushback from conservatives in the Communist Party and from those who benefit from state-owned firms.

A Closing Window from climate change

Even as political resistance threatens to stall reforms, climate threats require urgent action.

After losing a major investor over flood risks, Bruno Jaspaert knew something had to change. His firm, DEEP C Industrial Zones, houses more than 150 factories across northern Vietnam. So it hired a consultancy to redesign flood resilience plans.

Climate risk is becoming its own kind of market regulation, forcing businesses to plan better, build smarter, and adapt faster. “If the whole world will decide it’s a priority…it can go very fast,” said Jaspaert.

When Typhoon Yagi hit last year, causing $1.6 billion in damage, knocking 0.15% off Vietnam’s GDP and battering factories that produce nearly half the country’s economic output, roads in DEEP C industrial parks stayed dry.

Climate risks are no longer theoretical: If Vietnam doesn’t take strong action to adapt to and reduce climate change, the country could lose 12–14.5% of its GDP each year by 2050, and up to one million people could fall into extreme poverty by 2030, according to the World Bank.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-economy-climate-trade-mekong-067331203c59c61dbd6d40c04aa5d91d

The top diplomats of Britain, France, and Germany threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran as an end-of-the-month deadline nears for the country to resume negotiations with the West over its nuclear program and cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

The three countries, known as the E3, wrote in a letter to the United Nations dated Friday that they were willing to trigger a process known as the “snapback” mechanism, which allows one of the Western parties to reimpose U.N. sanctions, if Tehran doesn’t comply with its requirements.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Nöel Barrot posted the letter Wednesday to X. He co-signed it along with top diplomats from Germany and the United Kingdom.

“E3 have always committed to use all diplomatic tools at our disposal to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon,” the letter said. “We have made clear that if Iran is not willing to reach a diplomatic solution before the end of August 2025, or does not seize the opportunity of an extension, E3 are prepared to trigger the snapback mechanism.”

The Iranian government didn’t immediately respond to the development, but parliament member Manouchehr Mottaki — who was Iran’s top diplomat for five years in the 2000s — warned of a swift reaction to any move to trigger the snapback mechanism.

He said the Iranian parliament has a “finger on the trigger” for quitting the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, or NPT, the international treaty aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons. “We only need 24 hours to approve quitting the nuclear deal,” if the E3 raises the issue at the U.N. Security Council, Mottaki said.

The letter from the E3 comes following a period of apparent diplomatic deadlock after a 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June, where Israeli and American jets struck some key nuclear-related facilities in the Islamic Republic.

The countries met with Iranian officials last month in Turkey at Iran’s consulate building in Istanbul on the possibility of reimposing international sanctions, lifted in 2015 in exchange for Tehran accepting restrictions and monitoring of its nuclear program.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said at the time that he hoped that the meeting would see the E3 nations reassess their “previous unconstructive attitude.”

Since the war, talks with Washington for a new nuclear deal haven’t resumed, and Iran has since suspended ties with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, following the attacks. The IAEA’s first visit to Iran since the war didn’t entail any visits to nuclear facilities Monday, and cooperation wasn’t officially restored.

One of the three countries opting to trigger the snapback mechanism would renew sanctions on Iran, but Tehran renewing cooperation with the Vienna-based IAEA and addressing concerns about its highly-enriched uranium stockpile would delay it, according to a diplomat who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity following July’s meeting in Istanbul.

Iran has had limited IAEA inspections in the past as a pressure tactic in negotiating with the West and it is unclear how soon talks between Tehran and Washington for a deal over its nuclear program will resume.

German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Josef Hinterseher on Wednesday said that the letter “once again underlines that the legal preconditions for snapback have long existed.”

“Our position and our appeal is, very clearly, that Iran still has the choice of deciding to return to diplomacy … and full cooperation with the IAEA,” he told reporters at a regular news conference in Berlin.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/iran-france-germany-uk-iaea-nuclear-weapons-dd9c8dbc65b13e1d85ff66fd157fee3e

With the rise of electric vehicles, Thailand has scrambled to adjust to the new realities of fast-shifting production chains and destabilising geopolitics, though observers say it may have turned the corner.

On a taxi ride from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport to the city centre, signs of shifts in the country’s auto industry are hard to miss.

The airport taxi is likely to be a battery electric vehicle (BEV) or a hybrid (HEV), and multiple giant billboards flanking the motorway advertise an array of such marques from China.

Thailand has long been a regional powerhouse for automaking, driven by its deep connections to legacy Japanese brands like Toyota, Nissan and Honda, all of which have operated manufacturing and export bases in the kingdom for decades.

But the industry, dominated by these carmakers that manufacture more internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that run on fuel than hybrids in Thailand, is being reshaped, analysts told CNA.

With the rise of battery-powered vehicles, the country has scrambled to adjust to the new realities of fast-shifting production chains, softening local demand and destabilising geopolitics.

“This is a big headache for Thailand,” said Patarapong Intarakumnerd, the deputy programme director of the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Programme at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

United States President Donald Trump’s high tariffs on the global automotive sector has sent exporters scrambling to find new markets and made them cautious about the medium-term outlook for the sector.

Thailand, which was facing a 36 per cent levy on its goods, now faces a rate of 19 per cent as well as additional tariffs on the auto sector.

Its domestic vehicle production numbers, which declined for 21 consecutive months up until April this year, were a sign of the struggle.

But the country’s industry is showing nascent signs it may have found a new gear – latest data showed a 10.32 and 11.98 per cent increase in car production in May and June respectively, compared to the same months in 2024.

The positive numbers are “signs of recovery” for a cornerstone industry that contributes about 10 to 11 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product and directly employs approximately 850,000 people, said Koketso Tsoai, an automobiles analyst at BMI, a country risk and industry analysis company.

“While the industry has faced considerable headwinds, there are clear indications of resilience and strategic reorientation, particularly in the EV segment,” he said.

Much of the growth over the past two months has been due to EVs like the ones advertised along Bangkok motorways.

In June, Thailand manufactured 3,304 BEV units, a 314 per cent increase from last year. In May, the numbers were even stronger: 6,411 units, up 641 per cent year-on-year. Still, only 4.6 per cent of those were BEVs in May.

The spikes in the last two months could be the broader trend going forward, according to Narit Therdsteerasukdi, Secretary General of the Thailand Board of Investment.

“We expect automotive production in Thailand to continue to expand with fully electric and hybrid models leading the growth,” he said.

STUCK BETWEEN GIANTS

The Thai auto industry’s struggles in recent years stem from its longstanding ties with Japanese carmarkers, which have lost ground to Chinese companies leading the global EV push.

Japanese carmakers have deep roots in Thailand. They forged an industry that essentially did not exist in the country and moulded it into a hub of reliability and continental distribution in the heart of Southeast Asia.

What followed was decades of investment, strong supplier networks for ICE vehicles and process-driven excellence and training for local workers.

These have strengthened ties between the two countries and ensured the region has remained part of Japan’s backyard ever since, said Patarapong.

But it also left Thailand vulnerable – Japan’s reluctance to embrace electric batteries has flowed through to Thailand’s own inertia on EV production, he said.

“Thailand is very sticky to the Japanese. Many of the policies they’ve had or have are to take care of Japanese interests. But the Japanese, as we know, move very slowly,” Patarapong said.

“If they don’t want to move fast, you cannot move that fast.”

Most of Japan’s large players opted to slowly develop the hybrid technology the country pioneered, initially popularised by the Toyota Prius in the 1990s.

The rise of the cheap EVs from China has fundamentally changed the game.

Thailand is having to balance its longstanding Japanese relationships with the aggressive expansion of Chinese firms, each with different expectations, timelines and lobbying strategies, Patarapong said.

In 2024, Chinese car brands accounted for roughly 40 per cent of new car sales in Asia and Oceania, including China itself. When it came to EV sales alone, Chinese-brand electric vehicles accounted for about 70 per cent of the market in Southeast Asia last year.

In Thailand, new car sales for Japanese brands Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Suzuki and Isuzu collectively dropped by a quarter, based on data from MarkLines, an automotive information provider.

A wave of Chinese vehicles is washing over the region, but capitalising on an industry shift characterised by shorter and more concentrated EV value chains has proven challenging for Thailand, said Pavida Pananond, a professor of international business at Thammasat University in Bangkok.

Unlike Japanese car companies, Chinese outfits are not known to cultivate local supplier networks, as they tend to be much more vertically integrated, she said.

It leaves less room for local players in Thailand, which may not be exposed to or experienced with battery production or software development, sophisticated processes necessary for EV production, she added.

“These are the items where we never had a supplier before, so we need to invite them now,” said Krisda Utamote, President of the Electric Vehicle Association of Thailand.

The issue has arisen now, though, where local demand is too low to justify investments in expensive ventures like battery production.

“It’s like a chicken-and-egg thing,” he said.

It means, Patarapong said, that Thailand faces the risk of losing the one major advantage it had over its regional competitors – the number of local parts suppliers and the expertise they carried.

With EVs requiring just a fraction of the parts that regular ICEs do, these parts firms are already facing major headwinds due to the US government’s 25 per cent tariffs on the automotive sector, on top of reciprocal tariffs of 19 per cent for exported Thai goods.

The US is Thailand’s top destination for auto parts, a trade worth US$1.4 billion last year. Thailand also had significant exports to Mexico, the primary market for the assembly of vehicles destined for American roads.

Thailand exported US$358.1 million worth of passenger vehicles to the US in 2024, only 2.93 per cent of its total global exports.

DRAWING CHINESE INVESTMENTS

The Thai government has been luring investment for local production by Chinese firms like BYD, Neta and Great Wall through its EV 3.0 scheme, which has evolved into the EV 3.5 scheme, and other incentives.

The scheme has a local EV production requirement, ratioed for foreign companies at 1:1.

This means those companies are required to produce one EV locally, for each EV they want to import into Thailand.

If a company wants to start manufacturing in 2025, that ratio is 1.5:1.These stipulations will gradually become more onerous, up to a 3:1 ratio by 2027.

It also provides subsidies to consumers who purchase BEVs up to THB100,000 (US$3,100) depending on vehicle type, and lowers import duties to boost domestic demand.

Government policy aims for 30 per cent of vehicles produced locally to be zero-emission ones by 2030, a target widely expected to be missed.

Those subsidies mean EVs are competitively priced in the domestic market. And oversupply from a constant pipeline of domestic production – mandated for companies under the EV 3.0 scheme – means Thais could put off purchasing knowing they could wait for prices to drop, said Krisda.

Total EV production in the pipeline right now is about 100,000 units, he said, “which is very high, because the total electric vehicle registration last year was about 76,000”.

“If I’m considering buying an electric vehicle, I would say, well, you have plenty of supply coming up very soon. So I would not rush. I would wait until you drop the price,” he said.

“That situation is not so healthy for any car manufacturer.”

Domestic sales have struggled due to broader economic concerns and declining consumer confidence. Sales in 2024 were 56 per cent lower than in 2019.

But they have improved by around 5 per cent in May and June, year-on-year, driven especially by BEVs and plug-in hybrids, competitively priced under government incentives that lower their excise tax and offer subsidies.

With more brands in the market, however, the market has become more competitive, said Krisda.

“The total size of the cake has not increased. But it’s being divided among many more players, new competitors, new brands to the market,” he said.

“So, each brand has to really fight to keep its market share within this shrinking cake that we are seeing.”

Foreign companies on the EV scheme had not been allowed to count vehicles manufactured and exported from Thailand as part of their local production quotas.

Instead, only EVs produced in Thailand and sold locally could be counted in the production quotas.

This means they have faced the dilemma of manufacturing more cars than the local market demanded, or being unable to import other models currently not built locally.

It has contributed to the glut of local supply and weakened export numbers.

But on Jul 31, Thailand’s National Electric Vehicle Policy Committee made amendments to that policy – vehicles built in Thailand and then exported will count towards the quota.

The flexibility, it said, could result in EV exports increasing to 52,000 units in 2026, up from only 12,500 this year.

It could be a major step to helping Thailand regain its place as a key regional manufacturing and export hub, like it was in the past, Krisda said.

“Exports play a much more important role in taking up the total capacity of production over many years and will still play a crucial role for us ahead,” he said.

While Thailand remains the 10th largest car producer in the world, the 1.47 million units it produced in 2024 were still below the pre-COVID-19 levels of 2019, when it produced 2.01 million units.

Thailand’s neighbours will not be slowing down in their own efforts to forge industries centred around EVs.

For Thailand, “the threats become more urgent as EVs become more significant”, Pavida said.

She noted that Indonesia is focusing more on the upstream industries like batteries and attracting investors on the back of a wealth of natural resources.

Vietnam, meanwhile, has pushed more assertively on the downstream with its own brands, unsaddled by the presence or demands of Japanese carmakers.

Thailand has sat in the middle for now, due to the legacy strength of its manufacturing, she said.

“It remains to be seen which country will come out as the winner.”

For Thailand, long mythified as the “Detroit of the East”, a comparison to the American city’s 20th-century legacy as the heart of the US auto industry, much is at stake.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-automotive-evs-china-production-tariffs-5284516

Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin Shinawatra, is also on trial and is due to hear his verdict on Aug 22 for a lese-majeste case.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court announced Wednesday (Aug 13) that it will rule this month on a case seeking to oust Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra over her handling of a diplomatic spat with Cambodia.

A group of conservative senators filed a case accusing Paetongtarn of unprofessional conduct and breaching ministerial ethics during a border row with Cambodia that led to the two neighbours’ bloodiest military clashes in decades.

The Constitutional Court said in a statement that it will deliver its verdict in the case at 3pm local time on Aug 29.

Paetongtarn, daughter of controversial billionaire ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra, took office less than a year ago when her predecessor was thrown out of office by the same court.

Suspended from her duties by the court last month, the 38-year-old has defended her actions, insisting she acted in the country’s interests.

In a leaked phone recording, Paetongtarn addressed Cambodian statesman Hun Sen as “uncle” during a call about the tensions and referred to a Thai military commander as her “opponent” – remarks that sparked a backlash.

Conservative lawmakers accuse her of kowtowing to Cambodia and undermining the military, and allege she breached constitutional provisions requiring “evident integrity” and “ethical standards” among ministers.

If the verdict goes against her, Paetongtarn would become the third Shinawatra to be ousted early as premier, after her father and aunt Yingluck – both thrown out in military coups.

Thai politics has been driven for two decades by a battle between the conservative, pro-military, pro-royalist elite and the Shinawatra clan, whom they consider a threat to the kingdom’s traditional social order.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/thailand-constitutional-court-verdict-thai-pm-paetongtarn-shinawatra-dismissal-case-5292526

Cities across China are ramping up their AI ambitions. But as competition intensifies, analysts urge them to play to their strengths – not blindly copy one another.

Drones zip through the air, swiftly picking up and dropping off orders like food and medicine. Robot taxis and driverless cars weave seamlessly in and out of traffic while life-sized “digital humans” guide commuters at busy metro stations.

This is everyday reality in Shenzhen, a vibrant tech hub at the forefront of the country’s artificial intelligence race. But this southern city is just one of several that’s vying for AI dominance.

Across the country, local governments are rolling out ambitious plans to position themselves as AI leaders.

Competition is fierce, analysts say, and success hinges on leveraging unique strengths. They warn that blindly copying other cities could backfire – even in a lucrative sector like AI – and caution against overinvestment without a clear, long-term strategy.

“Everybody wants to be ahead in the AI race but you have to … know where your strengths lie rather than trying to copy other cities and getting into the race blindly,” said Benjamin Cheong, deputy head of technology, media and telecommunications at law firm Rajah & Tann.

Other AI frontrunner cities include Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Backed by substantial government support, Beijing is home to world-class AI research institutes and industrial parks. Its core AI industry is fast approaching 350 billion yuan (US$48.6 billion), nearly half of China’s total.

Shanghai, meanwhile, has leaned into its reputation as a global financial centre, hosting the annual World AI Conference (WAIC) in July and announcing 1 billion yuan in subsidies to help local firms and start-ups adopt AI solutions.

Also investing heavily is the unassuming city of Hangzhou located in eastern China, where firms like DeepSeek and Game Science, which produced the hit Black Myth: Wukong video game, make up a booming tech start-up scene.

But the big question is: can any of these cities become not just China’s AI capital – but the world’s?

THE FRONTRUNNERS

When it comes to Chinese tech advancements, Shenzhen might be one of the first cities that comes to mind.

Often dubbed the Silicon Valley of China, the city is renowned for its culture of rapid innovation.

It has been investing heavily in developing AI-powered humanoid robots capable of moving with precision and agility, performing tasks from patrolling streets to even competing in sports.

“From product design to market testing, turnaround is (quick),” said Lin Feng, CEO of Future Era, the world’s first “robot 6S” showroom and service store which recently opened in Shenzhen’s Longgang district.

Special grants and policies were announced in February to boost the city’s AI robotics scene, which included generous financial incentives of up to 4.5 billion yuan and subsidies to promote AI and encourage businesses to adopt the technology.

“Shenzhen will adopt even more ambitious and open policies, connecting global and national innovation resources,” Lin Yi, director of the Shenzhen AI Industry Office, told Chinese state media outlets.

In May, the Shenzhen Longgang District Artificial Intelligence (Robotics) Administration was launched – China’s first government agency dedicated solely to robotics.

“Our young engineers don’t just walk the well-trodden path, they carve (out) new ones,” said Zhao Bingbing, director of the Shenzhen Longgang District Artificial Intelligence (Robotics) Administration.

“This is the kind of place where components for a robot, upstream or downstream, can be sourced within an hour,” Zhao added.

Under a three-year action plan, more than 1,000 robot models – including humanoid assistants and “robot theatres” carrying out live tests and demonstrations – will be rolled out across public services, officials said.

Longgang District, best known as an industrial base housing companies like Huawei and EV giant BYD, launched a 10 billion yuan government procurement scheme, reserving 10 to 20 per cent of publicly funded projects for AI and robotics firms.

Chen Sanduo, founder of Lingqu AI Robotics, relocated to Shenzhen from Hunan province this year.

He told CNA that Shenzhen’s start-up environment was ideal.

“The upstream supply chain here is unmatched – parts, materials, motor customisation, even skin for robots,” he said, adding that his team was planning to open a second showroom in the city by the end of the year.

Robotaxi companies in the city are scaling up too. Pony.ai currently operates around 300 driverless-robotaxis and plans to expand its Shenzhen fleet to 1,000 in the coming years.

“We are at the dawn of large-scale commercialisation,” a Pony.ai spokesperson told CNA.

Beijing’s “high concentration of top-tier talent, world-class research institutions and role as China’s software hub” make it a strong frontrunner in China’s national AI race, said Ma Rui, a Chinese tech investor and analyst based in San Francisco.

“This combination has sustained momentum, giving it an unmatched edge in cutting-edge AI development and a talent pipeline difficult for other Chinese cities to replicate,” Ma said, calling Beijing “China’s AI capital”.

“It is home to leading universities and research institutes, with the strongest academic resources and a deep pool of algorithm talent,” noted Li Haizhou, a presidential chair professor of data science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-SZ).

Across the city, there are countless AI labs, dedicated AI research institutes and facilities like the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and the flagship Zhongguancun Science Park.

Official statistics show that there are currently more than 2,400 registered AI companies and enterprises throughout the capital.

“In terms of AI investments, Beijing would be the top right now based on figures,” said Cheong from Rajah & Tann.

“It has money, the right R&D, is strong in research (and has) a long-established ecosystem for tech innovation,” he added.

“There’s a very big silicon valley in Beijing.”

Unlike Beijing’s research-heavy AI ecosystem, Shanghai has leveraged its reputation as a financial centre to forward its AI goals and ambitions, experts said.

“Shanghai’s strategic position at the heart of the Yangtze River Delta, combined with its global outlook, gives it a complete end-to-end industrial ecosystem – from R&D and manufacturing to supply chain and commercialization,” said Lu Yingxiang, co-founder and CEO of Infermove, a robotics firm whose bots have been deployed in office buildings, commercial parks, airports and residential households across the city.

Shanghai has different strengths, noted Cheong, adding that “it’s the centre of China’s modern financial industry, and has strong financial and international business links”.

Infrastructure has played a big role in Shanghai’s AI strategy. In 2021, it became the first city in the world to deploy a city-wide fully-optical network, supporting everything from industry and e-commerce to remote work and logistics.

“Shanghai brings together high-traffic, high-standard real-world application scenarios such as aviation hubs, international conventions … that provide (companies) with unparalleled conditions to validate and iterate our products,” Lu added.

Districts like Xuhui – home to the Shanghai Botanical Gardens, luxury malls and trendy cocktail bars – have transformed into vibrant AI hubs. Today, they host Shanghai-based AI companies generating substantial annual revenues.

By the end of Q1 this year, earnings exceeded 118 billion yuan – a 29 per cent year-on-year surge – with profits also rising 65 per cent, according to government data.

Shanghai hosted top industry players at its flagship WAIC event, which ran from Jul 26 to 28.

Also in the works are five planned major data centres and targeted AI subsidies amounting to 1 billion yuan, funding everything from computing power rental to data procurement.

On an official visit in April, Chinese President Xi Jinping called on Shanghai to speed up efforts to become a leading source of cutting-edge innovation and a globally influential tech hub.

“We need to intensify efforts to enhance policy support, nurture talent and strive to develop more high-quality, secure, and reliable AI products,” Xi said in quotes carried by the Xinhua news agency.

DARK HORSES

Smaller contender cities have also been gaining ground in China’s AI race, according to observers.

Hangzhou’s rise has been particularly striking, said Jeffrey Towson, a partner at Techmoat Consulting firm.

Beyond longstanding players like Alibaba, Hangzhou is also home to DeepSeek, Black Myth developer Game Science, robotics firms Unitree and DEEP Robotics, neurotechnology company BrainCo, and spatial intelligence firm ManyCore – the so-called “Six Little Dragons” making waves in the global tech scene.

More than 200 robotics-related companies have been registered in Hangzhou as of December 2024.

Hangzhou city officials also have ambitious plans for AI development in 2025.

The local government is offering subsidies of up to 60 per cent to help start-ups and companies.

Revenue from the city’s core AI sector is projected to surpass 390 billion yuan, with support for more than 700 key AI enterprises and high-impact applications across manufacturing, healthcare, and finance.

Hangzhou ranks highly alongside Beijing and even over Shenzhen in some AI city polls.

Its proximity to Shanghai, just a two-hour drive away, has also made it a magnet for spillover talent and fresh graduates seeking tech jobs.

“Hangzhou has traditionally been a strong tech centre started by Alibaba,” said Cheong.

“Then you have others like DeepSeek coming into the picture – building on a genuine base of technological strength and not just jumping onto the AI (bandwagon) because it’s popular.”

The Sichuan capital of Chengdu, traditionally known for pandas, mahjong and hotpot, is undergoing rapid technological evolution.

The city is now home to more than 1,000 registered AI firms and semiconductor companies like HiSilicon.

Chengdu’s AI sector crossed the 100 billion yuan mark in 2024, and is expected to reach 130 billion yuan this year, according to figures released by Chengdu’s Economic and Information Technology Bureau.

Chengdu leads in AI-powered healthcare and robotics, with breakthroughs such as surgical AI systems enabling remote operations and exoskeleton robots that help patients walk.

Yet it still has some way to go in catching up with major players like Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

To close the gap, Chengdu would need to attract more global tech names and focus on areas where it already has an edge, rather than trying to pivot into fields where it lacks a strong base, experts said.

“I think it’s not prudent for any city to ignore their traditional strengths and overly focus on AI solely for the reason that it’s the hot thing at the moment,” said Cheong from Rajah & Tann.

AI CAPITAL OF THE WORLD?

Analysts agree that no single city is leading China’s AI charge.

“Multiple cities are advancing in parallel,” said Ma, the tech investor based in San Francisco.

“The ambition across these hubs is inherently global, with a strong focus on exports and revenue from the outset.”

Others cautioned against cities entering the AI race blindly.

“China’s economy has slowed down in recent times … and the issue is (those) blindly investing in AI without even knowing whether (the local conditions) are stable or reliable in the long run,” said Cheong.

While local governments race to gain an edge in AI, the central government appears cautious about the risk of overinvestment in this field.

Xi criticised local governments for their “herd mentality” in launching new energy and AI projects, during the central urban work conference in July.

Addressing the attendees, Xi questioned why “whenever a project is proposed, it always involves a few things: artificial intelligence, computing power, new energy vehicles”.

“Does every province in the country have to develop industries in these directions?”

Xi’s blunt warning was published in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper.

According to Tom Nunlist, associate director for tech and data policy at Trivium China, the comments reflect a growing concern over an investment frenzy and the risk of overcapacity.

“I think at this point the risk of wasteful overinvestment is higher than underinvestment,” he said.

Experts describe China’s AI landscape as chaotic and fragmented – a reflection of a rapidly developing industry.

The AI landscape in China is “totally new”, said Towson from Techmoat Consulting firm.

“There’s action everywhere. Everyone is starting AI companies all over (China) and it’s just chaos.”

Others say China’s AI ambitions should not be confined to its borders.

Shenzhen, for example, shouldn’t just be the Chinese AI capital, said Zhao, director of the Shenzhen Longgang District Artificial Intelligence (Robotics) Administration.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-ai-race-5285121

First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for over $1 billion, accusing him of defamation after he claimed Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to President Trump. Her legal team demanded a retraction and apology by August 7. Biden missed the deadline, potentially setting the stage for a significant legal battle.

First Lady Melania Trump has formally accused Hunter Biden of defamation and is threatening legal action over statements he made suggesting she was introduced to Donald Trump by Jeffrey Epstein. The claims were made in a recent YouTube interview and have triggered a sharp legal response.

Four officers were injured in a shooting on Homestead Drive in Gretna, Pittsylvania County. A large police response, including helicopters and multiple agencies, is underway.

Four officers were reportedly injured in a shooting incident in Gretna, Pittsylvania County, on Wednesday. According to sources, someone fired shots through a house on Homestead Drive. Officials said none of the injuries are believed to be life-threatening, according to Southside News Today.
A large police response is underway, with helicopters deployed to assist. Multiple agencies are on the spot, including the Pittsylvania County Sheriff’s Office, Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, Amherst County Sheriff, Danville Police Department, Virginia State Troopers, Gretna Fire and Rescue, Hurt Fire Department, US Marshals, and a Centra medical helicopter, WDBJ 7 reported.
Early reports suggest that the suspect is barricaded. Meanwhile, Congressman John McGuire offered his condolences. In a post on X, he wrote, “My thoughts and prayers are with the deputies who were shot in Pittsylvania County, as well as their families. We are closely following the situation and keeping everyone affected in our hearts during this difficult time.”

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/pittasylavnia-county-shooting-multiple-deputies-shot-west-of-gretna-viriginia-article-152461639 

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, including ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), demanded answers from Attorney General Pam Bondi after Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was transferred to a “relatively luxurious minimum-security prison camp in Texas.”

In a letter to Bondi on Wednesday, Democrats noted that the Department of Justice had “inexplicably transferred” Maxwell after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for two days.

“The transfer follows Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s private interviews of Ms. Maxwell arranged after a firestorm of media attention about the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) refusal to release the full Epstein files as originally demanded by President Donald Trump,” the Democrats said. “These actions raise substantial concerns that the Administration may now be attempting to tamper with a crucial witness, conceal President Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offenders, and coax Ms. Maxwell into providing false or misleading testimony in order to protect the President.”

The DOJ and Bureau of Prisons may have also violated internal policies with the transfer, according to the lawmakers.

“We write to demand DOJ and BOP provide all documents and information related to Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s interview of Ms. Maxwell and the sudden decision to transfer her to a facility with lower security and greater freedom for inmates, which was, prior to this extraordinary transfer, categorically off limits to sex offenders,” the letter said. “It is imperative that the Administration come clean regarding the full scope of Mr. Blanche’s interview of Ms. Maxwell and the sudden decision to transfer her to a minimum-security prison camp.”

Source : https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/gerrymandering-2673877805/?cx_testId=30&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=0&cx_experienceId=EXBC2Y8ICPSS&cx_experienceActionId=showRecommendationsF8HEM3RV7JX547#cxrecs_s

As tensions continue to grow by the day between the United States and NATO versus Russia, China, Iran and the BRICS aligned nations, the specter of World War III grows along with it. Last year, in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election, tech giant and defense contractor Palantir CEO Alex Karp said that he thinks it is “very likely” the U.S. will be involved in a three-pronged war with Russia, China and Iran.

Karp admitted this in an interview with the New York Times in August of last year. The paper reported:

He thinks the United States is “very likely” to end up in a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran. So, he argues, we have to keep going full-tilt on autonomous weapons systems, because our adversaries will — and they don’t have the same moral considerations that we do.

“I think we’re in an age when nuclear deterrent is actually less effective because the West is very unlikely to use anything like a nuclear bomb, whereas our adversaries might,” he said. “Where you have technological parity but moral disparity, the actual disparity is much greater than people think.”

“In fact,” he added, “given that we don’t have parity technologically but we don’t have parity morally, they have a huge advantage.”

Mr. Karp said that we are “very close” to terminator robots and at the threshold of “somewhat autonomous drones and devices like this being the most important instruments of war. You already see this in Ukraine.”

[…] “Are we tough enough to scare our adversaries so we don’t go to war? Do the Chinese, Russians and Persians think we’re strong? The president needs to tell them if you cross these lines, this is what we’re going to do, and you have to then enforce it.”

[…] He said he would support class-based affirmative action and declared himself “pro draft.”

“I think part of the reason we have a massive cleavage in our culture is, at the end of the day, by and large, only people who are middle- and working-class do all the fighting,” he said.

Karp is a bit of an enigma to some when it comes to his relationship with President Donald Trump and the company, since Karp is a socialist and progressive and voted for Biden in 2020 and backed VP Kamala Harris. At the same time, he has distanced himself politically from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, who is the polar opposite politically and a huge supporter of Trump.

Earlier this year, Trump came under heavy criticism when the New York Times revealed his administration contracted Palantir to collect all of Americans’ private and unique data to build a master database, building off of previous executive orders Trump signed that deregulates data sharing among federal agencies.

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

DOGE “drastically exaggerated” its government spending cuts and saved just a fraction of what they are boasting, a new deep-dive analysis from Politico found.

Politico’s Jessie Blaeser dove into public data and federal spending records for a report that accuses DOGE of using “faulty math” to overstate their massive savings calculations. According to the DOGE website, the agency estimates it saved more than $200 billion overall, which they say equates to more than $1,000 for every taxpayer. That total number comes from slashing workforces, cancelling contracts and grants, and more.

Of the billions in contracts that were canceled under DOGE, Politico could only verify a fraction. As noted, the savings are also difficult to calculate as money designated for agencies by Congress is required to be spent.

The analysis ultimately found that DOGE saved less than 5% than what it claimed from more than 10,000 contract terminations.

Part of DOGE’s “faulty math,” according to the analysis, is that the group uses “ceiling” levels of spending to determine their savings. In other words, the organization uses the maximum amount of spending allocated for contracts to boost the amount saved in cuts.

Source : https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/doge-saved-1-4-billion-less-than-5-of-what-they-claimed-shocking-analysis-finds/

US president armed with money-making opportunities to encourage Russia to end Ukrainian war

Donald Trump is preparing to offer Vladimir Putin access to rare earth minerals to incentivise him to end the war in Ukraine.
The US president will arrive at the much-anticipated meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday armed with a number of money-making opportunities for Putin.
They will include opening up Alaska’s natural resources to Moscow and lifting some of the American sanctions on Russia’s aviation industry, The Telegraph can reveal.
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, is understood to be among administration figures briefing Mr Trump ahead of his sit-down with Putin in Anchorage. Mr Bessent is exploring the economic trade-offs the US can make with Russia in order to expedite a ceasefire agreement.
Proposals include giving Putin access to the rare earth minerals in the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukraine president, said Mr Trump supports security guarantees for Ukraine.
The two leaders attended a virtual summit along with other European leaders on Wednesday.
“There should be security guarantees,” Mr Zelensky said at a press conference alongside Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor. “President Trump said that he supports this and America’s readiness to take part.”

Sir Keir Starmer said his so-called “coalition of the willing” was ready to implement a ceasefire plan as soon as a peace deal is agreed.
The plans “are now ready in a form that can be used if we get to that ceasefire”, the Prime Minister said, adding that “real progress” on security guarantees for Ukraine had been made.
European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron, said the calls with the US president were “positive”.
Putin is “bluffing” when he says “he does not care about the sanctions and that they’re not working”, Mr Zelensky added.

Ukraine is thought to hold 10 per cent of the world’s reserves of lithium, used in the production of batteries.
Two of its largest lithium deposits are in areas held by Russia, and Putin has staked his claim to the valuable minerals found in the regions his forces occupy.
“There are a range of incentives, in which a potential mineral/rare earth deal could be one,” a source with knowledge of the proposals told The Telegraph.
In May, the US signed a rare earth mineral deal with Kyiv, allowing it to exploit Ukraine’s ample natural resources. Washington will need to establish new mining operations, which could be accelerated by Russian co-operation.
The president’s America First policy has seen him strike several mineral deals since his return to the Oval Office, most notably with Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

After Olzhas Bektenov, the Kazakhstani prime minister, visited the White House, the State Department said it was “looking forward to working with Kazakhstan to deepen economic ties in… critical minerals sectors”.
Other incentives include lifting export bans on parts and equipment needed to service Russian planes, swathes of which have fallen into disrepair.
Western countries have restricted Moscow’s access to crucial spare components and other equipment since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, forcing airlines and the military to cannibalise old aircraft for replacement parts.
Nearly 30 per cent of Russia’s western-made planes, cut off from maintenance, could be grounded within the next five years, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec, Russia’s state-owned defence conglomerate, suggested this year.

Removing sanctions on Russian aircraft

Lifting sanctions on Russian aircraft could prove lucrative for American manufacturer Boeing.
With a fleet of more than 700 planes dominated by Airbus and Boeing, Russian airlines could return to the American suppliers for critical parts and maintenance.
Recent major incidents highlight an urgent need to prevent the fleet degrading. In late July, a Soviet-era Antonov An-24, built in 1976, crashed in the country’s far east, killing all 48 people on board.
Days later, flag carrier Aeroflot grounded dozens of flights following a crippling cyber attack.

Mr Trump is also considering offering Russia opportunities to tap into the valuable natural resources in the strait which separates it from the US.
Alaska, which is separated from Russia by by just three miles of the Bering Strait, is estimated to hold significant undiscovered oil and gas reserves, including 13 per cent of the world’s oil.
Developing Russia’s presence in the strait would bolster Putin’s strategic interests in the arctic region, which accounted for 80 per cent of Russia’s gas production in 2022.
British government sources told The Telegraph that such incentives could be acceptable to Europe, as long as Putin was not seen to be rewarded for the invasion.
“The sense is that it has to be presented to align with public opinion around this, it cannot be seen as a reward for Putin,” a source said.

Israel could be used as model to end war

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war in Ukraine.
Russia would have military and economic control of occupied Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory.
The idea was raised in discussions between Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special envoy and his Russian counterparts, according to The Times.
The White House is tempering expectations ahead of the summit on Friday, portraying it as a “listening exercise” for the president.
“This is really a feel-out meeting, a little bit,” Mr Trump told reporters on Monday, predicting he would know “probably in the first two minutes” if Putin was serious about peace.
European diplomats say there has been no notable change in Putin’s overall war aim, which is to topple Mr Zelensky’s government and replace it with a Moscow-friendly proxy.
The Russian president’s aides described the tet-a-tet primarily as a discussion on “Russian-American relations”, hinting at boosting trade cooperation.
A White House official said: “We do not comment on deliberative conversations that may or may not be happening.

Source : https://archive.is/2025.08.13-163404/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/08/13/trump-to-present-minerals-deal-to-putin-in-alaska/#selection-4369.0-4372.0

L.A. and D.C. are only the beginning, as the president’s team has been drawing up plans to unleash federal forces in other Democratic strongholds

President Donald Trump has expanded his military campaign against the United States by deploying armed troops to yet another major metropolitan area, announcing on Monday that he is sending the National Guard into Washington, D.C., to “liberate” the city.

The D.C. operation, launched two months after the start of his Los Angeles crackdown, broadens a police-state-style domestic campaign that some senior Trump administration officials describe to Rolling Stone as a “shock and awe” show of force, a reference to the foreign war in Iraq that Trump has pretended to oppose.

It’s only going to get worse.

The president and his top government appointees are publicly stressing that this will not end with D.C. and L.A., that other military options are very much on the table. The facts, the laws, and data do not seem to matter: Trump and his team believe he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, including using the U.S. armed forces for domestic political purposes as well as intimidating his enemies. His team is privately putting together plans for him to do just that.

“Make no mistake, this is just the beginning,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro — a staunchly pro-Trump former Fox News host whom the president tapped specifically to “crack skulls” — said Monday night.

At a press conference Monday announcing that the federal government had seized “direct” control of D.C.’s police department and that the National Guard would soon occupy the city, Trump warned that if he and his officials decide they “need to,” he will deploy military forces to other Democratic cities, too. The president named a few, including Chicago, Oakland, and Baltimore. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat whom Trump attacked by name, compared Trump’s use of the military to the Nazis tearing apart Germany’s constitutional republic, per the Chicago Tribune.

Trump has long yearned to unleash the military on American soil for his political agenda, and the D.C. and L.A. deployments this summer are critical stepping stones in his increasingly authoritarian government’s vision for punishing his enemies Democratic area of the country, carrying out his brutal immigration agenda, and making life hell for unhoused people. Trump said on Monday that federal forces will work to remove “homeless encampments from all over our parks,” and that the unhoused will not be “allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to see.”

One of Trump’s biggest regrets from his first term in the Oval Office, according to former and current senior Trump advisers, is that he didn’t use military forces and other federal assets to crack down harder than he ultimately did in the summer of 2020. As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, and as racial justice protests spread throughout the country, one of the president’s big ideas was to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters near the White House. One reason this didn’t happen is that his Secretary of Defense at the time was not in love with the idea.

Rolling Stone reported in October 2024 that Trump and his team have been plotting a second-term takeover of the D.C. police for a long time — regardless of the actual level of unrest or street crime. The plotting extends far beyond the nation’s capital.

In recent months, according to government officials and other sources with knowledge of the situation, administration staff and lawyers have crafted detailed plans and menus of options for Trump to feed his desire for replicating and proliferating his militarized crackdowns — on immigrants and citizens alike — to different Democratic strongholds. National Guard troops are already mobilizing in D.C., and Trump has privately said, according to two sources familiar with the matter, that if he sees something that he feels crosses his line (like if street protests in the city grow too big or if he deems them a threat suddenly), he will gladly order larger numbers of troops to nation’s capital, as he did in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Trump has insisted to administration officials that it’s ridiculous that troops like National Guard members are not allowed to conduct various forms of domestic law enforcement, sources add. The president and his administration to some extent have had their hands tied on this due to the Posse Comitatus Act — which prohibits using the military for domestic law enforcement — though that isn’t stopping them from actively exploring ways around the law. “There are ways things were done, and that’s not always going to be how they should be done now or tomorrow,” a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone.

The senior administration official, as well as other Trump officials, note that it is a priority of the president’s that these kinds of military deployments — in L.A., and now D.C., in times of relative calm — become normalized in American political culture. Trump has long believed he should be able to wield the might of military forces on American soil in ways more commonly associated with authoritarian states. He now has a government stacked full of loyalists who want to help him realize this goal. “He’s gonna do more of them,” another Trump administration official says, referring to siccing the military on deep-blue cities, using crime and immigrants as justification. “He promised he would do this, and now he’s following through on those promises.”

Administration figures are speaking openly about potentially expanding the use of federal forces into cities across the nation. “You look at Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and New York — they’re also facing record numbers of homicides and violent crimes. It’s natural for us to look at Washington, D.C. — if we can really clean this up and we can get rid of this plague of crime and violent activity that’s happening in our nation’s capital — could that be a blueprint and a model for other communities around the country?” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said Tuesday on Fox Business. “It’s something I think President Trump wouldn’t shy away from. We’ll have to stay tuned.”

Trump and his administration’s justification for his D.C. operation — that homelessness and violent crime in the nation’s capital have spiraled out of control, following the recent assault of a Department of Government Efficiency lackey and Elon Musk protégé known as “Big Balls” — appears entirely pretextual. Public data show that violent crime in the district, whose political leaders did not request any help from Trump and whose residents and voters largely despise him, has dropped significantly following post-pandemic spikes in violence that occurred in both urban and rural American communities. (The administration is claiming that the crime data is fake, because the official position of the government is that any credible economic data or other stats that contradict Trump and the GOP’s feelings should be purged and demonized.)

There are, of course, actual ways to aid the homeless in D.C. and to help protect residents in the impoverished, higher-crime areas of the city. Trump and his administration are not interested in working to solve these issues. When asked on Tuesday about addressing the root causes of crime, Pirro scoffed and said she’s “not concerned about why they commit crimes,” only punishing them when they do.

Addressing the root causes wouldn’t include sending in the National Guard or federal agents for Trump’s “shock and awe” spectacle for the cameras, and sources say the spectacle-addicted president regularly checks in with how his military deployments are playing on TV — including on his favorite network, Fox News. Right-wing media, lawmakers, and members of his administration have been mobilizing this week to push the president’s narrative that military action is needed to address D.C.’s crime problem, casting the city as a hellscape of violent crime where it is not safe to walk the streets.

“President Trump is saving our nation’s capital after Democrats turned it into an absolute hellhole,” the Republican National Committee hysterically claimed in an email blast to the media on Monday. “Residents are being brutally beaten, murdered and losing loved ones. D.C. residents do not feel safe so President Trump will be declaring a Crime Emergency and mobilizing the D.C. National Guard.”

Source : https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-military-crackdown-get-worse-1235406382/

Millions of Americans who should be diagnosed with high blood pressure are slipping through the cracks because the familiar arm cuff in doctor’s offices often gives a reading that’s nearly six points too low. That small-sounding gap can have big consequences: it’s enough that roughly one in three people with systolic hypertension (140 mmHg or higher) may go undiagnosed, leaving them at risk for heart attacks and strokes.

High blood pressure is the leading cause of premature death worldwide, yet it rarely causes symptoms until serious problems occur. New research from the University of Cambridge pinpoints the physical reason why standard blood pressure cuffs tend to underestimate the “top” number (systolic pressure), a mystery that’s puzzled doctors for decades.

The Problem With Blood Pressure Cuffs
When a cuff inflates around your arm, it squeezes the main artery shut for a short time. The researchers found that this blockage causes blood pressure in the vessels beyond the cuff (the ones further down your arm) to fall sharply, settling at about 30 to 70 mmHg. The lower that “downstream” pressure drops, the more the cuff underestimates your actual blood pressure.

This matters because systolic blood pressure is one of the most important predictors of heart health. Even a small underestimation could push someone’s reading from the “high” category into “normal” territory, leading to missed diagnoses and delayed treatment.

Recreating The Problem In The Lab

One of the most impressive parts of the study was how the researchers designed an experiment to mimic what happens inside the human arm during a blood pressure check.

In previous research, scientists had tried to study blood pressure measurement errors by using simplified models, but these often didn’t recreate the full picture, especially the way arteries completely collapse when the cuff is inflated. Without that collapse, the “downstream” pressure drop couldn’t be accurately reproduced.

To solve this, Cambridge engineers Kate Bassil and Anurag Agarwal built a custom experimental rig. It featured flexible silicone tubing that could behave like a real artery, able to fully close under pressure. The system allowed them to independently control the pressure on both sides of the “artery”:

• Upstream pressure — representing the heart pumping blood into the arm.
• Downstream pressure — representing the vessels beyond the cuff in the forearm.

The recent auction of a Martian meteorite — for a record-grabbing $5.3 million at Sotheby’s New York — has sparked questions over its provenance and renewed debate over who gets to claim rocks fallen from the heavens.

The hefty 54-pound (25-kilogram) stone is the largest Martian meteorite ever discovered on Earth, according to its Sotheby’s listing, and was found in November 2023 in the vast Saharan desert in Niger.

The government of Niger has announced that it will open an investigation following the auction, saying it appears to “have all the characteristics of illicit international trafficking.”

Please credit and share this article with others using this link: https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3085948/auction-of-worlds-largest-mars-meteorite-sparks-ownership-debate. View our policies at http://goo.gl/9HgTd and http://goo.gl/ou6Ip. © Bangkok Post PCL. All rights reserved.

On Friday, the government suspended exports of precious stones and meteorites until further notice.

Sotheby’s has rejected the accusations, insisting that the meteorite was “was exported from Niger and transported in line with all relevant international procedure.”

Please credit and share this article with others using this link: https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3085948/auction-of-worlds-largest-mars-meteorite-sparks-ownership-debate. View our policies at http://goo.gl/9HgTd and http://goo.gl/ou6Ip. © Bangkok Post PCL. All rights reserved.

In light of the controversy, however, a review of the case is underway, a Sotheby’s spokesperson told AFP.

“The stone journeyed 140 million miles through space, and hurtled through Earth’s atmosphere before crashing in the Sahara Desert,” the Sotheby’s listing said.

Following its discovery, the jagged, ochre-colored stone was then sold to an international dealer, briefly exhibited in Italy, and eventually ended up in the auction catalog in New York.

For American paleontologist Paul Sereno, who has worked closely with Niger’s authorities for years, all signs suggest that the stone left the country “illicitly.”

“Everybody’s anonymous — from the person who found it, the dealers, the guy who bought it, everybody’s anonymous,” he told AFP, making no secret of his frustration.

“If they had put on baseball gloves and caught the meteorite as was hurtling towards Earth before it landed in any country, they could claim it… but I’m sorry, it landed there. It belongs to Niger,” he said.

– ‘We should respect it’ –

Laws governing the ownership of meteorites vary based on their point of impact.

In the United States, for example, if a rock falls on private land, the property owners have ownership rights.

In Niger, however, a law governs “national cultural patrimony,” which includes rare mineralogical specimens, according to Matthieu Gounelle, a professor at France’s National History Museum, and his father Max Gounelle, a French university professor.

Both are specialists in regulations governing the collection and sale of meteorites.

“In our opinion, there is no doubt that meteorites should be included among the rare mineralogical specimens” protected by Nigerien law, they told AFP.

Beyond the legal battle and the possible involvement of a trafficking network, the sale of the meteorite also raises science ethics questions.

The rock, named NWA 16788, has unique scientific research value.

Much larger than other Martian meteorites that have been recorded to date, it offers a unique insight into the geological history of the Red Planet.

Like other Martian meteorites, it is believed to have been ejected into space when an asteroid slammed into Mars.

Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3085948/auction-of-worlds-largest-mars-meteorite-sparks-ownership-debate

Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album will be “The Life of a Showgirl.” A post on her website did not specify a release date.

US pop superstar Taylor Swift’s website announced the release of the new album early Tuesday, with vinyl records, cassettes and CDs of the new album shipping to customers in the United States before October 13.

“The Life of a Showgirl” follows last year’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” announced during the 2024 Grammys and released during her record-breaking Eras tour, which raked in over $2.2 billion across two years and five continents, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time.

The New Heights podcast later shared a video of Swift opening a box and taking out a blurred vinyl.

“This is my brand new album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl,'” she said.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/taylor-swifts-next-album-titled-the-life-of-a-showgirl/a-73607259

Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska.

Putin told Kim that he “highly appreciated” North Korea’s support and the “self-sacrificing spirit” displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.

Kim expressed his “heartfelt thanks” to Putin and said Pyongyang would “always remain faithful” to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as “fully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future”, the KCNA said.

“The heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,” the KCNA said.

“Kim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.”

The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow’s ostracisation on the world stage.

“There are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there’s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,” Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.”

Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports.

North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to assessments by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/13/putin-lauds-heroism-of-north-koreans-in-liberating-kursk-pyongyang-says

Kim Keon Hee is accused of bribery, stock fraud and other allegations. Her arrest came due to fears she would destroy evidence and interfere with the investigation. Her husband, too, is under arrest.

South Korea’s former first lady Kim Keon Hee became the first in the country’s history to be arrested.

The charges against the wife of impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol include stock fraud, bribery and influence peddling, charges punishable by years in prison.

The 52-year-old has denied the accusations against her, according to a special prosecutor leading the investigation.

Kim underwent hours-long questioning last week, with the prosecutors filing for her arrest warrant the day afterwards.

“I sincerely apologize for causing trouble despite being a person of no importance,” Kim said upon arrival at the prosecutors’ office.

What are the allegations against Kim Keon Hee?
One of the charges against Kim came as a result of an incident in 2022, when she attended a NATO summit with her husband wearing a luxury Van Cleef pendant reportedly worth $43,000 (€37,000).

The item was not listed in the couple’s financial disclosure as the local law requires.

Kim said the luxury pendant was a fake bought 20 years ago in Hong Kong, with the prosecution found that the piece of jewelry was in fact genuine.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-arrests-wife-of-impeached-former-president-yoon/a-73617908

COMEDIAN Jimmy Kimmel revealed that he may move to Europe thanks to President Trump.

Kimmel told Sarah Silverman on her podcast that he may need to lean on his Italian citizenship out of fear of what Trump may do to him.

The host, 57, claimed that he and fellow late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon may be the next ones to lose their jobs after CBS host Stephen Colbert’s show ended.

Trump has previously doubled down on comments about Fallon and Kimmel possibly losing their jobs and “having no talent.”

The president said that late-night TV “hasn’t worked.”

“Fallon has no talent. Kimmel has no talent,” Trump said.

“They’re next. They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going.

“I don’t know, but I would imagine because they’d get — you know, Colbert has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon.”

In response to Colbert’s show ending and Trump’s claims, Kimmel confirmed that he has a backup in case he needs to flee the country.

“I did get Italian citizenship,” Kimmel said.

“I do have that.”

Silverman mentioned that many other critics of Trump have also thrown around the idea of fleeing the country.

“What’s going on is … as bad as you thought it was gonna be, it’s so much worse,” Kimmel said.

“It’s just unbelievable. I feel like it’s probably even worse than [Trump] would like it to be.”

The comedian mentioned that he supports those who were once MAGA followers, now doing a 180 on their political beliefs.

Kimmel talked about Trump’s strict crackdown on immigration and the president’s new deportation policy.

​​“There are a lot of people … now you see these clips of Joe Rogan saying, ‘Why’s he doing this? He shouldn’t be deporting people,’” he said.

“People go, ‘F–k you, you supported him.’ I don’t buy into that. I don’t believe ‘F–k you, you supported him.”

Kimmel went on to talk about how the “door needs to stay open” for those who choose to switch political parties.

“I think the door needs to stay open. If you want to change your mind, that’s so hard to do,” he said.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14961475/jimmy-kimmel-europe-move-trump/

A 19-year-old influencer has been left stranded in Antarctica following a daring round the world fundraising attempt. Ethan Guo set off last year to become the youngest person to fly solo to all seven continents while raising money for childhood cancer research. He was detained and charged by authorities in Chile on suspicion of lying about his flight plan, reported the Associated Press. Prosecutors say Guo had clearance only to fly over Punta Arenas, near the southernmost point of Chile, on his single-engine light aircraft Cessna 182Q, but continued south and landed on the Antarctica coast. The charges have now been dropped after Guo managed to strike a deal which will see him donate $30,000 to a children’s cancer charity, leave Chile as soon as possible, and stay away from the Chilean territory for three years. He had been ordered to stay in Chilean territory pending the charges, and has been stranded for the past six weeks on an Antarctic military base in Chilean territory due to poor weather conditions and his aircraft being deemed unfit to fly. “I sincerely hope they give [approval] to me soon so that I and my plane can continue with my original mission,” Guo told the AP.

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/influencer-pilot-ethan-guo-19-stuck-in-antarctica-after-unauthorized-landing/

Angelina Jolie is looking for a new home outside of the U.S., according to a report.

The Maria star, 50, is considering “several locations abroad” to move to, People reports, citing an “exclusive source.” The news comes after rumblings earlier this week suggested that she was preparing her L.A. home to be listed for sale.

The source told the site Jolie “plans to relocate as soon as” her youngest children, twin teenagers Knox Léon Jolie-Pitt and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie, turn 18 in July next year. “She’s eyeing several locations abroad,” the source said, adding “She’ll be very happy when she’s able to leave Los Angeles.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to a representative for Jolie for comment.

The news that Jolie will move “abroad” comes after an exodus of several celebrities who’ve left the country to escape America under Donald Trump, including Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres. Jimmy Kimmel revealed this week that he’s flirting with the idea of leaving, when he said he’d obtained citizenship in Italy.

But Jolie has reportedly wanted to leave Los Angeles for some time, and for reasons unrelated. She told The Hollywood Reporter last year that she only remained in the city “because I have to from a divorce.”

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in 2016, and the pair only reached a finalization in December. They share six children including 17-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne, Maddox Chivan, 24, Pax Thien, 21, Zahara Marley, 20, Shiloh Nouvel, 19.

Jolie explained at the time that her family is all that’s keeping her in Los Angeles. “I grew up in this town,” she said. “I am here because I have to be here from a divorce, but as soon as they’re 18, I’ll be able to leave. When you have a big family, you want them to have privacy, peace, safety. I have a house now to raise my children, but sometimes this place can be…that humanity that I found across the world is not what I grew up with here.”

Jolie added that when she can finally leave L.A., “I’ll spend a lot of time in Cambodia. I’ll spend time visiting my family members wherever they may be in the world.”

Source : https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/angelina-jolie-is-latest-celeb-looking-to-flee-us/

Between Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally, populists continue to rise in Europe’s most powerful countries.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has become the most popular party in the country, according to a striking new poll published Tuesday.

If a national election were now held, 26 percent of Germans would vote for the AfD, according to a poll carried out by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis. That result puts the far-right party ahead of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s mainstream conservative bloc, which slid to second with 24 percent support in the poll.

With the far-right National Rally already leading clearly in France, the bombshell German survey is likely to fuel unease among mainstream leaders across Europe. Right-wing populist parties have performed strongly in elections in recent years from Poland to Romania, and Portugal to the Netherlands.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK is also topping polls amid broad public dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

While POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows that Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats maintain a slight lead over the AfD in an aggregation of voter surveys, the far-right party has climbed since snagging almost 21 percent of the vote in February’s federal election, its best-ever result. The AfD is now the largest opposition party in Germany’s Bundestag.

The AfD was initially founded as a single-issue party more than a decade ago by a group of economics professors who, in the midst of Europe’s debt crisis, opposed the euro and financial help for debt-ridden countries. It regularly scored single-digit results in federal and state elections in its early years.

Now led by the openly radical Alice Weidel, a former economist, the AfD currently pushes a hard-line anti-migrant and right-wing populist positions. Some mainstream politicians argue the party is so extreme that it ought to be banned under provisions of the German constitution designed to prevent a repeat of the country’s Nazi past.

Source : https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-far-right-afd-lead-survey/

OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman are preparing to back a company which will compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink by connecting human brains with computers, heightening the rivalry between the two billionaire entrepreneurs.
The new venture, called Merge Labs, is raising new funds at a $850mn valuation, with much of the new capital expected to come from OpenAI’s ventures team, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.
Altman has encouraged the investment and will help launch the project alongside Alex Blania, who runs World, an eyeball-scanning digital ID project also backed by the OpenAI chief, said two of the people.
Altman will co-found the company but not have a day to day role in the new project, they added.
Merge is one of a slate of young companies looking to take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to build more useful brain-computer interfaces.
Its name comes from what many in Silicon Valley describe as ‘the merge’, a moment when humans and machines come together.
Altman wrote a lengthy blog on the topic in 2017, speculating that moment could come as soon as 2025. This year, he suggested in another blog post that we could soon have “high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces” as a result of recent technological advances.
The company aims to raise $250mn from OpenAI and other investors, although the talks are at an early stage. Altman will not personally invest.
The new venture would be in direct competition with Neuralink, founded by Musk in 2016, which seeks to wire brains directly to computers.
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI, but Musk left the board in 2018 after clashing with Altman and the two have since become fierce rivals in their pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Musk launched his own AI start-up, xAI, in 2023, and has been attempting to block OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit in the courts. Musk donated much of the initial capital to get OpenAI off the ground.
Neuralink is leading a pack of so-called brain-computer interface companies, while a number of start-ups, such as Precision Neuroscience and Synchron, have been racing to catch up.
Neuralink earlier this year raised $650mn at a $9bn valuation, and it is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital and Vy Capital. Altman had previously invested in Neuralink.

Source : https://archive.is/2025.08.12-175554/https://www.ft.com/content/04484164-724e-4fc2-92a2-e2c13ea639bd#selection-2163.0-2166.0

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders are calling for limits on immigration enforcement near campuses after a 15-year-old boy with disabilities was pulled from a car, handcuffed, and briefly detained outside Arleta High School on Monday in what officials describe as a case of mistaken identity.

The incident happened around 9:30 a.m. on Monday, just days before more than half a million LAUSD students return to classrooms. According to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, the student — who attends San Fernando High School — had gone to Arleta High with his grandmother to accompany a relative registering for classes.

While the family member was inside, several officers approached their vehicle, telling them they were not with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, Carvalho said district-reviewed video appeared to show both police and Border Patrol personnel.

The boy was removed from the car and placed in handcuffs.

“As our students return to school, we are calling on every community partner to help ensure that classrooms remain places of learning and belonging,” Carvalho said. “Children have been through enough — from the pandemic to natural disasters. They should not have to carry the added weight of fear when walking through their school gates.”

The teen was eventually released after school staff and Los Angeles police Intervened.

“The release will not release him from what he experienced,” Carvalho said during a news conference. “The trauma will linger. It will not cease. It is unacceptable, not only in our community, but anywhere in America.”

Parents like Yvonne, whose child attends school in the district, said the incident has left them shaken. “I was upset because our kids shouldn’t have to be going through this and being scared of coming to school, parents dropping them off. We shouldn’t be going through this,” she told KTLA.

Soon after the incident, parents received a recorded voice message from the principal, saying: “We are aware of reports of immigration enforcement activity in the area, near our campus. Our school has not been contacted by any federal agency.”

Many parents KTLA spoke with called the presence of federal agents near public school campuses shameful. “Our government, the administration had stated they were going to go after criminals. At a school, what criminals are you going to find? Kids trying to enroll — today’s orientation day,” parent Dorian Martinez said.

Board of Education President Kelly Gonez condemned the actions on social media, calling them “absolutely reprehensible” and part of the “continued unconstitutional targeting of our Latino community.”

The district says the detention underscores the need for strong protections as students return to school. In a statement Monday, LAUSD reaffirmed that “schools are safe spaces” and said immigration enforcement near campuses “disrupts learning and creates anxiety that can last far beyond the school day.”

Some parents fear that their children will be targeted simply because of the color of their skin, regardless of immigration status. “He fits that category,” Yvonne said of her child. “Where he’s on the darker side, and I feel like that’s who they’re attacking… that’s the main reason I tell him you better be careful and you don’t go with anybody.”

Ahead of the start of the school year, the district said it has contacted 10,000 families potentially impacted by immigration enforcement efforts, rerouted bus stops, deployed 1,000 central office staff to assist in school zones, and expanded virtual options for those too afraid to leave their homes.

Through its We Are One campaign, the district is also offering families Know Your Rights information, legal referrals, mental health supports, and emergency preparedness tools. Resources are available in English and Spanish online, as well as through a 24/7 Family Hotline at (213) 443-1300.

Mayor Karen Bass joined district officials at Monday’s press conference, saying, “We are gathered here today to talk about protecting our children from the federal government. This is a profound moment… the fact that we even need a press conference to talk about strategies for how we protect our kids.” She added that Los Angeles will always stand together in defense of students.

Source : https://ktla.com/news/local-news/disabled-teen-detained-ice-outside-school/

The country gave its citizens the right to die. Doctors are struggling to keep up with demand.

The euthanasia conference was held at a Sheraton. Some 300 Canadian professionals, most of them clinicians, had arrived for the annual event. There were lunch buffets and complimentary tote bags; attendees could look forward to a Friday-night social outing, with a DJ, at an event space above Par-Tee Putt in downtown Vancouver. “The most important thing,” one doctor told me, “is the networking.”

Which is to say that it might have been any other convention in Canada. Over the past decade, practitioners of euthanasia have become as familiar as orthodontists or plastic surgeons are with the mundane rituals of lanyards and drink tickets and It’s been so long s outside the ballroom of a four-star hotel. The difference is that, 10 years ago, what many of the attendees here do for work would have been considered homicide.

When Canada’s Parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia—Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, as it’s formally called—it launched an open-ended medical experiment. One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.

It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study in momentum. MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to minors.

At the center of the world’s fastest-growing euthanasia regime is the concept of patient autonomy. Honoring a patient’s wishes is of course a core value in medicine. But here it has become paramount, allowing Canada’s MAID advocates to push for expansion in terms that brook no argument, refracted through the language of equality, access, and compassion. As Canada contends with ever-evolving claims on the right to die, the demand for euthanasia has begun to outstrip the capacity of clinicians to provide it.

There have been unintended consequences: Some Canadians who cannot afford to manage their illness have sought doctors to end their life. In certain situations, clinicians have faced impossible ethical dilemmas. At the same time, medical professionals who decided early on to reorient their career toward assisted death no longer feel compelled to tiptoe around the full, energetic extent of their devotion to MAID. Some clinicians in Canada have euthanized hundreds of patients.

The two-day conference in Vancouver was sponsored by a professional group called the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers. Stefanie Green, a physician on Vancouver Island and one of the organization’s founders, told me how her decades as a maternity doctor had helped equip her for this new chapter in her career. In both fields, she explained, she was guiding a patient through an “essentially natural event”—the emotional and medical choreography “of the most important days in their life.” She continued the analogy: “I thought, Well, one is like delivering life into the world, and the other feels like transitioning and delivering life out.” And so Green does not refer to her MAID deaths only as “provisions”—the term for euthanasia that most clinicians have adopted. She also calls them “deliveries.”

Gord Gubitz, a neurologist from Nova Scotia, told me that people often ask him about the “stress” and “trauma” and “strife” of his work as a MAID provider. Isn’t it so emotionally draining? In fact, for him it is just the opposite. He finds euthanasia to be “energizing”—the “most meaningful work” of his career. “It’s a happy sad, right?” he explained. “It’s really sad that you were in so much pain. It is sad that your family is racked with grief. But we’re so happy you got what you wanted.”

Source : https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/09/canada-euthanasia-demand-maid-policy/683562/

Al Jazeera condemns ‘targeted assassination’ of correspondent Anas Al-Sharif in Gaza airstrike

An Al Jazeera journalist who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip was the leader of a Hamas “terrorist cell,” the Israel Defense Forces announced.

Anas Al-Sharif and four of his colleagues – identified by Al Jazeera as correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – died Sunday in what the Qatari-based network called a “targeted Israeli attack” on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City.

“The IDF struck the terrorist Anas Al-Sharif, who posed as a journalist for the Al Jazeera network,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “Anas Al-Sharif served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organization and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.

The IDF also said it “previously disclosed intelligence information and many documents found in the Gaza Strip” confirming Al-Sharif’s military affiliation with Hamas, from which “the Al Jazeera network has attempted to disassociate itself.”

“Intelligence and documents from Gaza, including rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records, prove he was a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera,” the IDF posted on X. “A press badge isn’t a shield for terrorism.”

Al Jazeera and Al-Sharif previously rejected claims of his affiliation with Hamas, according to Reuters.

“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh … by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the network said.

“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people. While international media was barred from entering, Al Jazeera journalists remained within besieged Gaza, experiencing the hunger and suffering they documented through their lenses,” it added.

The U.N. Human Rights Office also wrote on X that it condemned the killings and called for “immediate, safe and unhindered access to Gaza for all journalists.”

Source : https://www.foxnews.com/world/israel-says-al-jazeera-journalist-killed-airstrike-head-hamas-terrorist-cell

Of the record volumes of plastic being produced, less than 10% is made into something new. Is it time to rethink recycling?

It is often said that the world can’t recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis. And statistics underscore the reality of that statement.

To date,less than a tenth of all the plasticever made has been given a new lease of life. And just 1% has been recycled twice.

The rest ends up in landfills and incinerators. Or it lands in the environment, contaminating soil, air and the oceans — which take up roughly one garbage truck of plastic every minute.

“Just because something is recyclable doesn’t mean it’s getting recycled,” said Moritz Jäger-Roschko, a plastics expert at Greenpeace Germany. “Currently, it is simply cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it.”

Not all plastics are equal

One of the main hurdles to greater re-use is plastic type. Of the thousands out there, some, like cross-linked polymers, are hard to handle.

“Recycling doesn’t really work in the mechanical sense because you cannot split them up and bring them back into their original state,” said Marc Kreutzbruck, head of the institute of plastics engineering at Germany’s University of Stuttgart.

But being robust, durable and heat-resistant, they are exactly the type of plastics used in aerospace, electronics and automobiles.

“Everything in transportation that is focused on lightweight construction relies on these kinds of plastics,” Kreutzbruck added.

Hazardous chemical additives

Another major sticking point is that plastics are often custom formulated with additives that make them more flexible, stronger or cheaper to produce.

Sarah Perreard, co-director of global Plastic Footprint Network coalition, said the number of additives that have been invented and used in the past decade “has increased drastically.”

“We have almost created this sort of monster that we don’t fully control anymore,” Perreard said.

The problems are as complex as the plastics themselves. Firstly, many additives are hazardous to both human health and the environment and can leach out during recycling or even during use in recycled products. And recycling streams contaminated with hazardous additives can be flagged as toxic waste by regulatory agencies, making re-use more complicated or even illegal.

Equally, when recycled together, additives can mix unpredictably and degrade the quality of end material, making it unattractive to manufacturers.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/plastic-pollution-hazardous-chemicals-additives-solutions-can-we-recycle-more/a-73498838

Two victims remain in hospital intensive care units

The Tourism and Sports Ministry has promised improved safety measures in areas popular with tourists after two Malaysians were set on fire in a random attack by an unemployed man in downtown Bangkok.

The ministry made the commitment in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Saturday. The statement said improved safety measures in tourist areas would bolster the confidence of visitors and local residents alike.

Pol Lt Gen Saksira Phuak-um, the tourist police chief, echoed the ministry’s promise.

Security measures in key tourist areas would be strengthened to boost the confidence of international visitors, he said in a message posted on the tourist police Facebook platform.

The promises follow the shocking attack on One Yik Leong, 26, and his girlfriend Gan Xiao Zhen, 27. They were allegedly burnt by Varakorn Pubthaisong, 30, on Thursday night. He threw thinner over them from a bottle and then chased and set them both on fire.

They were seriously injured and rushed to separate hospitals.

The attacker was caught and held by other people at the scene and handed over to Lumpini police when they arrived.

The couple were attacked while sitting on the stairs of the Big C retail store on Ratchadamri Road in downtown Bangkok – one of the city’s most popular shopping areas.

The suspect, a native of Sa Kaeo province and a retired boxer, allegedly told police he acted out of frustration over being unemployed.

Yik Leong suffered second-degree burns to the upper part of his body and was admitted to the intensive care unit at Police General Hospital, where his condition was reported as “stable”, Bernama news agency reported, citing Bong Yik Jui, acting charge d’affaires at the Malaysian embassy.

Xiao Zhen suffered second-degree burns over 36% of her face, chest and an arm and was admitted to the ICU at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, according to Malaysian state media.

Source : https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3085006/thailand-promises-better-tourist-safety-after-malaysian-pair-torched

A former boxer and unemployed security guard has thrown thinner at two Malaysians and then set fire to the visitors out of frustration that he was out of a job.

The incident took place at 10pm on Thursday when Varakorn Pubthaisong was behind Ong Yik Leong, 26, and Gan Xiao Zhen, 27, both sitting on the stairs of the Big C shopping centre on Ratchadamri Road, and poured the chemical solvent from a plastic bottle onto them, Lumpini police chief Pol Col Yingyos Suwanno said on Friday.

The two tourists ran away in shock and the suspect chased them before setting fire to them, the officer added.

Pol Col Yingyos said Mr Varakorn tried to escape but was captured by people at the scene.

The tourists were seriously injured. Ong Yik Leong was sent to ICU at Police General Hospital for treatment and Gan Xiao Zhen was at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital.

Pol Col Yingyos said the two were safe and would be asked to provide information to the police as they were in the process of charging the suspect, now in police custody at Lumpini police station.

Mr Varakorn admitted to the police that he was a former boxer and randomly hurt the two Malaysians due to stress after being sacked from work as a security guard, leaving him with no money. He faces an assault charge.

Source : https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3083638/ex-boxer-sets-fire-to-2-malaysian-tourists-in-downtown-bangkok

Nepal will make 97 of its Himalayan mountains free to climb for the next two years in a bid to boost tourism in some of its more remote areas.

It comes as permit fees to summit Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, during peak season will go up to $15,000 (£11,170) from September – the first increase in nearly a decade.

Nepal’s tourism department said it hopes the initiative will highlight the country’s “unexplored tourism products and destinations”.

Mountaineering generates a significant source of revenue for Nepal, which is home to eight of the world’s 10 tallest mountains. Climbing fees brought in $5.9m last year, with Everest accounting for more than three quarters of that.

The peaks for which fees will be waived are located in Nepal’s Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, standing between 5,970m (19,590 ft) and 7,132m high.

Both provinces, located in the far-western region of Nepal, are among the country’s poorest and least developed provinces.

“Despite their breathtaking beauty, the number of tourists and mountaineers here is very low as access is so difficult. We hope the new provision will help,” said Himal Gautam, director of Nepal’s Tourism Department.

“They can create jobs, generate income, and strengthen the local economy,” he said, as reported by The Kathmandu Post.

But it is unclear if authorities have plans to improve infrastructure and connectivity to these remote areas – and how well communities in these areas might cope with an influx of climbers, if the free-to-climb initiative does take off.

Climbers have historically shown little interest in these 97 remote peaks – only 68 of them have ventured there in the last two years. In contrast, some 421 climbing permits were issued for Everest in 2024 alone.

Everest, the world’s highest peak at over 8,849m, has in recent years been plagued by overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.

In April 2024, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and several other peaks, saying that the mountains’ capacity “must be respected”.

In January this year, authorities announced a 36% mark-up in permit fees. For those attempting the summit outside the peak April to May season, it will now cost $7,500 to climb Everest during September to November and $3,750 during December to February.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j99xxd1z1o

The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier.

The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe.

He has now been formally identified as Dennis “Tink” Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey.

“I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can’t get over it,” David Bell, 86, tells BBC News.

“Dennis was one of the many brave personnel who contributed to the early science and exploration of Antarctica under extraordinarily harsh conditions,” says Professor Dame Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey .

“Even though he was lost in 1959, his memory lived on among colleagues and in the legacy of polar research,” she adds.

It was David who answered the door in his family home in Harrow, London, in July 1959.

“The telegram boy said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but this is bad news’,” he says. He went upstairs to tell his parents.

“It was a horrendous moment,” he adds.

Talking to me from his home in Australia and sitting next to his wife Yvonne, David smiles as stories from his childhood in 1940s England spill out.

They are the memories of a younger sibling admiring a charming, adventurous big brother.

“Dennis was fantastic company. He was very amusing. The life and soul of wherever he happened to be,” David says.

“I still can’t get over this, but one evening when me, my mother and father came home from the cinema,” he says.

“And I have to say this in fairness to Dennis, he had put a newspaper down on the kitchen table, but on top of it, he’d taken a motorbike engine apart and it was all over the table,” he says.

“I can remember his style of dress, he always used to wear duffel coats. He was just an average sort of fellow who enjoyed life,” he adds.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g034yx4gjo

The Conservative Party of Canada urged the federal government to designate the Lawrence Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity, citing its alleged role in a surge of violent crimes across the country. The move follows a string of reported extortion threats, shootings, and intimidation targeting members of the South Asian community in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

The gang has openly claimed responsibility for several violent incidents on social media, including the recent shootings at a café in Surrey, B.C., owned by Comedian and Bollywood actor Kapil Sharma. According to a Global News report quoting sources, the group is also suspected of involvement in the June 2023 killing of Surrey Gurdwara president and Khalistan independence activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

In a letter to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Conservative MP and Public Safety Critic Frank Caputo stressed that the Bishnoi gang’s “political shootings, extortion of South Asian Canadians, and extreme violence” meet the criteria for a terrorist designation. Caputo noted that members engage in these activities for political, religious, and ideological purposes and often flaunt them publicly to instill fear.

“The Bishnoi Gang’s activities lay the groundwork for listing it as a terrorist entity,” Caputo wrote. “The designation would give law enforcement and all levels of government the tools necessary to address the gang’s activities, including financial, criminal, and property sanctions,” he added.

The call for action echoes a July appeal by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who also pressed Ottawa to take a firm stance against the gang. Similar demands have been voiced by other political leaders as violent incidents linked to the group have drawn nationwide concern.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/canada-conservatives-demand-terrorist-designation-for-lawrence-bishnoi-gang-amid-rising-violence

Pakistan continued to issue war threats to India, this time with politician Bilawal Bhutto warning New Delhi over Operation Sindoor and the suspension of the decades-old Indus Water Treaty following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. The former Pakistani foreign minister claimed that India had caused “great damage” to Pakistan and urged all Pakistanis to “unite” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The actions of the Indian government, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, have caused great damage to Pakistan. It is necessary that we, as a united people, stand together against PM Modi and these aggressions,” Bhutto said while speaking at a function organised by the Culture Department of the government of Sindh on Monday.

He went on to warn that if India continues to suspend the Indus Water Treaty, then Pakistan would have “no choice” but to consider war. “You people (Pakistanis) are strong enough for war to get back all six rivers. If India continues on this path, it leaves us with no choice except to consider all options, including the possibility of war, to protect our national interests,” he said.

“We did not start the war. But if you think of carrying out an attack like Sindoor, then know that the people of every province of Pakistan are ready to fight you – and this is a war that you will definitely lose. We won’t bow down,” Bhutto warned.

Pakistan continued to issue war threats to India, this time with politician Bilawal Bhutto warning New Delhi over Operation Sindoor and the suspension of the decades-old Indus Water Treaty following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. The former Pakistani foreign minister claimed that India had caused “great damage” to Pakistan and urged all Pakistanis to “unite” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The actions of the Indian government, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, have caused great damage to Pakistan. It is necessary that we, as a united people, stand together against PM Modi and these aggressions,” Bhutto said while speaking at a function organised by the Culture Department of the government of Sindh on Monday.

He went on to warn that if India continues to suspend the Indus Water Treaty, then Pakistan would have “no choice” but to consider war. “You people (Pakistanis) are strong enough for war to get back all six rivers. If India continues on this path, it leaves us with no choice except to consider all options, including the possibility of war, to protect our national interests,” he said.

“We did not start the war. But if you think of carrying out an attack like Sindoor, then know that the people of every province of Pakistan are ready to fight you – and this is a war that you will definitely lose. We won’t bow down,” Bhutto warned.

Bhutto’s remarks come a day after Pakistani army chief Asim Munir warned of a nuclear war and threatened to take down “half the world” if Islamabad faced an existential threat in a future war with India.

“We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us,” he said.

Munir also warned of destroying any infrastructure that India builds on the Indus water channels that could impede water flow to Pakistan. “We have no dearth of missiles. We will wait for India to build a dam, and when it does so, we will destroy it with 10 missiles. The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property,” he reportedly said.

The Pakistani army chief also claimed that the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty could put 250 million people at risk of starvation.

India’s strong response to Asim Munir
India strongly condemned Munir’s threat of a nuclear war, saying that the nuclear sabre-rattling is Pakistan’s “stock-in-trade”. The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, also expressed regret that the remarks were made from the soil of a friendly third country.

“The international community can draw its own conclusions on the irresponsibility inherent in such remarks, which also reinforces the well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in a state where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist groups,” the Ministry said.

Source : https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/after-pakistani-army-chief-asim-munir-pakistani-politician-bilawal-bhuttos-war-threat-to-india-wont-bow-down-9067265

Elon Musk made a bold accusation against Apple on Monday … suggesting his X app is being snubbed in the mobile store — and perhaps it’s political!

Responding to a post from the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley official account that boasted X was the “No. 1 news app in the USA” … Musk asked Apple — which he tagged — why the company is allegedly “refusing” to list X or his A.I. program Grok in its “Must Have” store section.

Suggesting politics was at play over the snub, Musk reiterated X was the “#1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps” — and he added, “What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

This particular accusation is new … but Elon has had a bone to pick with Apple and Tim Cook for years … even chastising the technology company for its treatment of the app formally known as Twitter not long after he bought it in 2022.

We reached out to Apple for comment … so far, no word back.

Source : https://www.tmz.com/2025/08/11/elon-musk-calls-out-apple-for-snubbing-x

When Lucy* was approached with a message on Instagram about becoming an AI model, she was immediately intrigued. The 23-year-old had noticed stars like Kendall Jenner creating their own AI avatars and fancied giving it a whirl.

The AI start-up behind the offer dangled a carrot of £1,500, which to Lucy seemed like easy money and a fascinating venture – so she inked the deal without further counsel.

However, Lucy didn’t grasp that she had effectively relinquished her rights over her image for life in paid adverts. Now bound by a legal agreement, she’s faced with the possibility of her likeness being hawked to endorse products or causes unbeknownst to her. It comes after a warning everyone using Android must restart their phones now as ‘critical’ warning issued.

“It was just an initial DM reach out from a scout wanting to use me for an AI model,” Lucy recounted to the Manchester Evening News. “The money is mostly what attracted me. I guess I also found it interesting the whole concept of being an AI model as I’ve seen celebrities do the same thing in the past on social media so I thought it would be fun to try it myself too.”

Lucy concedes she signed a complex contract that she now recognises she didn’t fully comprehend – a pact that required her to provide numerous video clips to develop her AI model, reports the Manchester Evening News.

“The contract in a nutshell says I can’t accept money for brand endorsements,” she said. “So if I ever wanted to be a user generated content creator, I can’t do that – something I realised actually when we filmed the documentary.”

She has become the focus of a fresh documentary shot in and around Manchester examining the growing phenomenon of AI models within the user generated content sector. The 20-minute film, created by documentary maker and producer Sam Tullen, delves into the emergence of AI creators.

“I remember being on an AI website and just seeing pages upon pages of faces, each capable of reading any script you fed into the site,” Sam told the M.E.N. “I was interested to try it out and was mind blown.

“I researched further into it and learned that a lot of the AI models on offer across various websites are actually modelled using real people. From that moment, I knew I had to bring attention to it.”

He explained that whilst Lucy’s predicament isn’t widespread, it ‘could be very soon’. “I think some people are scared that AI companies will take their image from the web without permission anyway so I can see why some may be more accepting of lowball offers. “Lucy now faces the issue of her face being used to say or promote things without her knowledge.”

Source : https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/i-sold-face-ai-1500-35695452

President Donald Trump said Monday he’s taking over Washington’s police department and activating 800 members of the National Guard in the hopes of reducing crime, even as city officials stressed crime is already falling in the nation’s capital.

The president, flanked by his attorney general, his defense secretary and the FBI director, said he was declaring a public safety emergency and his administration would be removing homeless encampments.

“We’re going to take our capital back,” Trump declared, adding he’d also be “getting rid of the slums.”

For Trump, the effort to take over public safety in Washington reflects an escalation of his aggressive approach to law enforcement. The District of Columbia’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives him a unique opportunity to push his tough-on-crime agenda, though he has not proposed solutions to the root causes of homelessness or crime.

Attorney General Pam Bondi will assume responsibility for Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, Trump said, as he also railed against potholes and graffiti in the city and called them “embarrassing.” The president did not provide a timeline for the control of the police department, but he’s limited to 30 days under statute unless he gets approval from Congress.

As Trump spoke, demonstrators gathered outside the White House to protest his moves. And local officials rejected the Republican president’s depiction of the district as crime-ridden and called his actions illegal.

“The administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said. “There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia.”

Schwalb, a Democrat, said violent crime in the district reached historic 30-year lows last year and is down an additional 26% this year.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said she would follow the law regarding the “so-called emergency” even as she indicated that Trump’s actions were a reason why the District of Columbia should be a state with legal protections from such actions.

“While this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” Bowser said.

Combating crime

The president dismissed the idea Washington needed to enlarge its 3,500-officer police force, even as he seeks to have more armed personnel going through the city with the goal of reducing crime.

“What you need is rules and regulations, and you need the right people to implement them,” he said.

Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in an executive order to declare a “crime emergency” so his administration could take over the city’s police force. He signed a directive for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to activate the National Guard.

While Trump has portrayed himself as a friend to law enforcement and enjoyed the political backing from many of their groups, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers.

About 500 federal law enforcement officers are being tasked with deploying throughout the nation’s capital as part of Trump’s effort to combat crime, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

More than 100 FBI agents and about 40 agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are among federal personnel being assigned to patrols in Washington, the person briefed on the plans said. The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service are contributing officers.

The person was not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. The Justice Department didn’t immediately have a comment Monday morning.

The National Guard

Bowser, a Democrat, has previously questioned the effectiveness of using the National Guard to enforce city laws and said the federal government could be far more helpful by funding more prosecutors or filling the 15 vacancies on the D.C. Superior Court, some of which have been open for years.

Bowser cannot activate the National Guard herself, but she can submit a request to the Pentagon.

“I just think that’s not the most efficient use of our Guard,” she said Sunday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” acknowledging it is “the president’s call about how to deploy the Guard.”

Bowser noted that violent crime in Washington has decreased since a rise in 2023. She stressed during a Monday news conference that she believed Trump’s views of the city were shaped by the “challenging times” of the coronavirus pandemic, when he faced protests and crime spiked as the country began to recover from the outbreak.

Focusing on homelessness

Trump has emphasized the removal of Washington’s homeless population, though it was unclear where the thousands of people would go, and he did not give details at his news conference Monday.

“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Sunday in a social media post. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”

Jesse Rabinowitz, a advocate for homeless people, called Trump’s plan “fascist” and a “waste” of resources. He said the move wasn’t about safety.

“It is about power, and it is about fascism and authoritarianism,” said Rabinowitz, the campaign and communication director for the National Homelessness Law Center. “If Donald Trump wanted to keep D.C. safe, he would fund housing and support. Instead, the Republicans just gutted health care, and they’re passing through a budget that will make homelessness worse. They do not care about helping people.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/trump-washington-crime-national-guard-homelessness-655bc22834223c7dc93115bbcb2b215c

President hits back at reports that Washington could strike drug cartels in its southern neighbour

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President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday rejected the prospect of US military intervention in her country, insisting Mexico’s independence was “not at risk”.

Her comments came after reports last week that President Donald Trump had signed a secret directive ordering the US military to target Latin American cartels, including several that send drugs across the border from Mexico.

“We will never put our sovereignty at risk, we will never put Mexico’s independence at risk, Mexico is a free, sovereign, independent country,” she said.

The prospect of Washington taking military intervention against the cartels has hung over the bilateral relationship after Trump declared eight of them terrorist organisations in his first weeks in office.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio last week said: “We cannot continue to just treat these guys as local street gangs. They have weaponry that looks like what terrorists, in some cases armies, have.”

“It allows us to now target what they’re operating and to use other elements of American power, intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense.”

The US and Mexico have been engaged in tense negotiations over trade, security and migration since Trump took office. Sheinbaum’s government has obtained better trade terms than most countries, with the vast majority of its exports passing tariff free under the US, Mexico, Canada trade deal, USMCA.

However, Washington’s pressure over drug cartels and military involvement has escalated in recent months, with Trump saying Sheinbaum was “a lovely woman but is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight”.

Earlier this year Mexicos’s president rejected Trump’s offer for US military assistance in tackling the groups, and her stance in the face of Washington’s threats has pushed her approval ratings to above 70 per cent.

However, her comments were focused on an intervention by soldiers on the ground, while Mexican security analysts are more concerned about the possibility of drone strikes.

However, her comments were focused on an intervention by soldiers on the ground, while Mexican security analysts are more concerned about the possibility of drone strikes.

Source : https://archive.is/2025.08.11-194631/https://www.ft.com/content/2e2e6b6b-fc41-47e4-b90e-7cde237a14bf#selection-2209.0-2212.0