Category: World

Tesla (TSLA.O), executive and longtime Elon Musk confidant Omead Afshar has left the electric-vehicle maker, three people familiar with the matter said on Thursday, another senior departure as the company grapples with slowing global demand.
Afshar was part of the CEO’s office and since last year had overseen sales and manufacturing in Europe and North America. After joining Tesla in 2017, he quickly became one of Musk’s trusted lieutenants, playing a central role in major projects like the Texas Gigafactory.

The sources, who declined to be identified, had no details on the circumstances of his exit or the reason behind it. Afshar posted about Tesla on X early this week, and his profiles on X and LinkedIn still showed his Tesla role as current on Wednesday.
Afshar departed amid slumping demand in Europe and North America for Tesla’s aging vehicle line-up while rivals have offered more affordable alternatives.
Two people familiar with Tesla’s operations said Afshar was among the executives who took on bigger roles this year when Musk was focused on Washington.
Musk led President Donald Trump’s government cost-cutting drive this year, and many investors and analysts worried that distracted Musk from Tesla and alienated some potential buyers.

Former mid-level Tesla sales manager Matthew LaBrot, who was recently fired for public criticism of Musk, said Afshar was a “supporting character” closely tied to Musk until he rose to head sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe.
LaBrot said there was significant pressure internally to deal with the sales declines, which have been particularly severe in Europe.
Afshar’s departure was reported earlier by Bloomberg News, which also reported that North America HR Director Jenna Ferrua had exited the company. Two of the three people who confirmed Afshar’s departure to Reuters also said Ferrua had left.
One of those people said Afshar and Ferrua were close colleagues, so it was not surprising that both left around the same time. Another of the people said Ferrua has served as a direct HR adviser to Afshar.

The departure caps a series of executive exits over the past 14 months, driven by company-wide restructuring as Tesla slashed thousands of jobs and shifted its focus to AI-powered self-driving technology and robotics.
The departures included leaders in robots, batteries and public policy. The head of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot team, Milan Kovac, announced he was leaving this month, and top battery executive Vineet Mehta did so in May.
Chief battery engineer Drew Baglino, Rebecca Tinucci, who led the supercharging division, and global public policy head Rohan Patel left in spring 2024.
Musk ended his Washington stint in late May, reassuring some investors concerned about brand damage. But Tesla’s shares remain down about 19% for the year, after an initial rise on optimism that Trump’s victory would clear the regulatory path for robotaxis.

On Sunday, Tesla deployed self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas. Some analysts have warned that the company’s plan to expand to other cities later this year could face hurdles, due to concerns about safety and the technology.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/tesla-executive-elon-musk-confidant-leaves-ev-maker-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-06-26/

Indonesian rescuers have recovered the body of a Brazilian woman who died after falling off a cliff while hiking on Indonesia’s second-highest volcano, rescue officials said.

Juliana Marins, 27, was hiking with five friends on Mount Rinjani on Saturday when she slipped and fell off a cliff on the side of the 3,726m mountain.

She was found dead on Tuesday (Jun 24), Indonesian rescuers said. Rescuers had been attempting to retrieve the body since but the effort was hampered by thick fog and the steep terrain.

The body was recovered on Wednesday in a retrieval process that took six hours, Mohammad Syafii, the head of Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency said late on Wednesday. After being lifted from the cliff, Marins’ body was carried on a stretcher to the rescuers’ nearest post where an ambulance took it to a hospital.

“Initially we would like to use helicopter in the evacuation but it’s not possible due to the weather condition,” he said.

“So, we had to evacuate the victim on stretchers which took quite a long time.”

Footage shared by the agency showed rescuers attempting to lift the body from the cliff using ropes, overshadowed by thick fog.

Indonesia’s rescuers agency had met with the family of Marins to explain the evacuation process, Syafii said, adding the family “can accept the situation”.

Located in West Nusa Tenggara province, Mount Rinjani is an active volcano and popular tourist site in the Southeast Asian archipelago.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-rescuers-recover-body-brazilian-tourist-fell-volcano-cliff-5204261

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (Jun 25) called for Israel to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or cancel his corruption trial, saying the US would save him like it did his country.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – all of which Netanyahu denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. He has pleaded not guilty.

“Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State (of Israel),” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he had learned that Netanyahu was due to appear in court on Monday.

Israeli media have reported that cross-examination of Netanyahu began on Jun 3 in a Tel Aviv court and was expected to take about a year to complete.

Israeli President Issac Herzog has the power to pardon Netanyahu but has been quoted by Israeli media as saying that a pardon is “not currently on the table”. He also said that “no such request had been made,” according to the reports.

Trump extolled Netanyahu as a “warrior” but also said in his post: “It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.”

That appeared to be a reference to US involvement and support for Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

It was unclear if Trump meant the US could do anything to aid Netanyahu in his legal battle.

The Republican president described the case against the Israeli leader as a “witch hunt”, a term Trump has frequently applied to US attempts to prosecute him.

The warm words contrasted with the rare rebuke he issued on Tuesday over Israel’s post-ceasefire strikes on Iran.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/donald-trump-israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-trial-cancelled-5204251

LeAnn Rimes bolted off stage after her teeth fell out mid-performance.

The “I Need You” singer was mid-song at The Skagit Casino Resort in Washington Friday when her dental bridge became detached.

“Last night I was on stage, in the middle of [singing] ‘One Way Ticket,’” Rimes shared in a video posted to her Instagram Saturday.

“I feel something pop in my mouth,” she continued. “And if you’ve been around, you know I’ve had a lot of dental surgeries and I have a bridge in the front and it fell out in the middle of my song last night.”

The pop star, 42, said she “panicked” before running to the side of the stage to secure her prosthetic teeth and swiftly returned back to the microphone.

“Then I just had to get real with everybody and tell them exactly what was happening or else I would have had to walk off stage,” she shared. “And so, for the rest of the show, I was literally like this, pushing my teeth in.”

Rimes said she had to push her teeth back in “every couple lines” while she singing her tunes and noted that it was in that moment she realized her song, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” had several Fs, THs, and SHs.

“Like, ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” [the teeth] completely fell in my mouth,” she recalled.

Fortunately, Rimes laughed off the dental disaster and even called it “the most epic experience ever.”

“I don’t usually have firsts in my career. That was a first and hopefully a last,” she said.

Rimes hoped her teeth would stay in for her performance at the same venue later that night.

“We shall see,” she said before joking, “The front row, get ready for something to fly out. If you catch them, please return them.”

Rimes said she decided to take to social media to show fans that she was “keepin’ it real.”

“Like I said, there wasn’t a f–king thing I could do about it except either walk off, or just hold my teeth in and sing, so I just ran with it,” she said. “The show can go on, even in the midst of sheer, utter embarrassment. You just gotta be real with people.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/25/celebrity-news/leann-rimes-runs-off-stage-after-her-teeth-fall-out-mid-concert/

The Trump administration’s tariff plans may well just cause a one-time jump in prices, but the risk it could cause more persistent inflation is large enough for the central bank to be careful in considering further rate cuts, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday.
Though economic theory may point to tariffs as a one-off shock to prices, “that is not a law of nature,” said Powell, detailing why the central bank wants more information about the ultimate level of tariffs and the way they impact pricing and public expectations about inflation before lowering borrowing costs any further.

“If it comes in quickly and it is over and done then yes, very likely it is a one-time thing,” that won’t lead to more persistent inflation, Powell said. But “it is a risk we feel. As the people who are supposed to keep stable prices, we need to manage that risk. That’s all we’re doing,” through holding rates steady for now.
The effects of tariffs “could be large or small. It is just something you want to approach carefully. If we make a mistake people will pay the cost for a long time.”
Fed officials still expect to cut interest rates this year, but the timing is uncertain as officials wait on coming trade deadlines and hope for more certainty about the scope of the tariffs that will be imposed and the ways that rising import levies influence prices and economic growth.

Two days of hearings did little to shift expectations around Fed policy, with investors still anticipating two rate cuts this year.
But it did highlight the persistent rift between the Fed chair and President Donald Trump, who wants the Fed to cut rates immediately.
Republican lawmakers in the House on Tuesday and in the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday pressed the Fed chair on why he seems reluctant to do so even though recent inflation data has been more moderate than expected.
The tone at times contrasted with Powell’s generally congenial relationship with Republican and most Democratic lawmakers during his seven years as chair.
Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, echoing Trump’s frequent criticism of Powell, accused him of shaping monetary policy through “a political lens, because you just don’t like tariffs.”

“We got elected by millions of voters. You got elected by one person who doesn’t want you to be in that job,” Moreno said of Powell, who was promoted to Fed chair during Trump’s first term.
North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, however, backed a more cautious approach to the issue, noting that major retailers like Walmart, with sophisticated data tools, were having trouble pinpointing how tariffs will affect prices and demand.
“I’m just telling my colleagues we need to be realistic,” Tillis said. Companies “have a lot of experts that probably are suggesting there may be some inflationary risk. We haven’t realized it yet but I think we all need to keep our eyes open.”
While Powell was completing what was likely his second-to-last set of semiannual appearances on Capitol Hill, Trump said he had narrowed “to within three or four people” who he intends to nominate as a successor for when Powell’s term as chair ends in May.

DIFFERENT THIS TIME

The leader of the “Los Choneros” criminal group disappeared from prison in 2024 during an episode of violence. Quito has requested that Macias — also known as Fito — be extradited to the US, President Noboa said.

Jose Adolfo Macias, also known as “Fito,” was captured in Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa said, without disclosing further details. The Associated Press news agency cited officials as saying the arrest was made in the Ecuadorian city of Manta, Fito’s hometown.

What did Noboa say about Fito’s capture?

Noboa’s government had offered a $1 million (about €855,650) reward for information leading to the gang leader’s capture.

“My recognition to our police and military who participated in this operation. More will fall, we will reclaim the country. No truce,” said Noboa in a statement on X.

Quito has requested that he be extradited to the United States, where “Los Choneros” criminal gang was sanctioned last year, Noboa said, adding that they await Washington’s response.

Macias is due to face international gun and drug charges in a federal court in New York.

Who is ‘Fito’ and why is he Ecuador’s most wanted fugitive?

The criminal gang leader was sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison over drug trafficking, murder and other crimes. He mysteriously disappeared from prison in 2024, during an episode of violence.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/ecuadors-most-wanted-gang-leader-fito-arrested-president/a-73043249

Most NATO allies promised to ramp up defense spending and reaffirmed their “ironclad” commitment to mutual defense. But there are lingering concerns over the scale and scope of US engagement.

From the perspective of European NATO allies, it all went to plan: A short, one-page and five-point declaration, a nice group photo and even dinner with the Dutch king and queen. At the NATO summit at The Hague, US President Donald Trump was also in good spirits.

When he addressed the press, Trump claimed credit for ending the war in Iran and for getting NATO allies to increase their defense spending to 5% of their national GDPs by 2035.

He praised European members of the alliance for “the love and passion they showed for their countries,” but also said they needed the US. He hailed the new pledge as a “big win for Europe and for western civilization.”

What’s in the declaration?

The declaration says the allies will spend 5% on defense, split into two parts.

At least 3.5% of GDP will be spent on hard defense – that includes purchase of weapons – and up to 1.5% will go towards other defense-related investments that enhance military mobility and protect against cyber attacks. The trajectory and balance of spending will be reviewed in the next four years.

Yet not all NATO members are fully on board. President Trump called out Spain for refusing to increase spending and warned he would make the country pay more through trade.

Spain, Slovakia and Belgium seeking to opt out

Spain is the lowest NATO spender at less than 1.3% and has only recently agreed to meet the 2% target that was made a decade ago.

Observers said that political turmoil at home made it nearly impossible for Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to agree to the 5% goal. Tens of thousands protested in Madrid last week after a senior leader of Sanchez’ socialist party was accused of corruption and the opposition called for the prime minister to resign.

Sanchez asked NATO for an exemption and said Spain would achieve the military capabilities that NATO had asked for but that 2% of GDP would be enough for that.

Poland, which is leading in defense spending and already this year announced plans to increase it to 4.7% of its GDP, was not happy.

“We believe that any deviation from this principle by any member country is a bad example,” Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

He may have had a point. Slovakia soon piggybacked on Spain and also refused to meet the target.

“The Slovak Republic has other priorities in the coming years than armament,” Prime Minister Robert Fico posted on X. “The Slovak Republic must, similarly to Spain, reserve the sovereign right to decide at what pace and in what structure it is prepared to increase the budget.”

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot told the local press his country “may not have done so by making a noisy statement like Spain, but I can assure you that for weeks our diplomats have been working hard to obtain the flexibility mechanisms that could help to lighten the burden of the Belgian effort.”

Is Washington committed to Article 5?

But even if most allies do reach the 5% target, there is lingering uncertainty over the US’ commitment to the alliance.

On his way to the summit, President Trump said there were “numerous definitions” of Article 5 – NATO’s mutual defense clause. After his arrival, however, he reassured NATO allies that the US was with them “all the way.”

Still, some damage control was required. “Stop worrying,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at the press conference. “The United States is totally committed to NATO.”

In the summit declaration the allies then reaffirmed an “ironclad commitment” to collective defense as enshrined in Article 5, “an attack on one is an attack on all.”

Kristine Berzina, Washington DC-based managing director of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) Geostrategy North, who is currently at The Hague to attend the summit, told DW that in a way, President Trump was right. But that this was hardly the perfect time to deliberate on the nuances of the clause.

She said while it was left on individual members to choose the extent of their support to an ally under attack, the only time Article 5 has been invoked was following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. “The US has been the beneficiary of Article 5 and that’s the part that President Trump should remember,” she said.

There are also concerns that over time, the US may dial down its support to NATO.

“Later this year we can expect the US to consult allies on its global force posture – that will likely be reduced military presence in Europe and then focus on how the Europeans can fill those gaps,” Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told DW. But he added that the good news was that the US wasn’t “dumping everything on the Europeans suddenly.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/nato-members-step-up-spending-but-doubts-about-us-remain/a-73041273

The Council of Europe will set up a special international tribunal to prosecute top Russian officials for the war in Ukraine. “Every war criminal must know there will be justice,” Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed an agreement with the Council of Europe (CoE) on Wednesday to establish a special tribunal to prosecute those accused of orchestrating Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukraine argues that the tribunal is urgently needed to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“We need to show clearly aggression leads to punishment and we must make it happen together, all of Europe,” Zelenskyy said after signing the accord with CoE Secretary General Alain Berset.

Tribunal to be set up under the aegis of Europe’s top rights body

The creation of the tribunal comes as ceasefire talks between the two countries remain stalled, with Russian PresidentVladimir Putin appearing to believe that time is on his side.

“Every war criminal must know there will be justice and that includes Russia,” Zelenskyy said.

The CoE hopes the tribunal could begin its work as early as next year.

Berset said the next step in establishing the tribunal would be an expanded agreement to “allow the widest possible number of countries to join, to support, and to help manage the tribunal.”

Logistical details, including the tribunal’s location, still need to be resolved.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already issued arrest warrants for Putin and other Russian officials on war crimes charges. However, it lacks the jurisdiction to prosecute them for the crime of aggression.

Kyiv has long called for a dedicated tribunal, modeled on the Nuremberg trials, that would go beyond addressing alleged war crimes.

The CoE said the tribunal “fills the gap” created by the “jurisdictional limitations” of the ICC.

Europe backs Ukraine’s bid to try Russian leaders

This would be the first special tribunal established by the Strasbourg-based CoE, which promotes human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The CoE is not part of the European Union.

European foreign ministers endorsed the creation of the tribunal during a meeting in Lviv, western Ukraine, on May 9.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who attended the meeting, said the “war, which violates international law, must not be allowed to remain without consequences.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-coe-to-set-up-tribunal-targeting-russian-leadership/a-73043187

While one might see Sharif’s effort as an initiative to initiate dialogue with India, it is nothing more than another diplomatic smokescreen, given Islamabad’s dubious record on curbing terrorism.​​

Weeks after Operation Sindoor, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has reportedly expressed readiness for a “meaningful dialogue” with India during a telephonic conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. India, however, has maintained that any talks are not possible while the neighbouring country is promoting cross-border terrorism and Sharif’s statement is nothing more than another diplomatic smokescreen, given Islamabad’s dubious record on backing and financing terrorism. Notably, Pakistan PM’s remarks come just weeks after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives. According to the NIA, three Pakistan-based terrorists from the UN-proscribed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were behind the attack.

During a call with MBS, Sharif expressed willingness to engage in a “meaningful dialogue” with India to resolve “all outstanding bilateral issues.” “Pakistan is ready to engage in a meaningful dialogue with India on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, water, trade and terrorism,” he was quoted as saying by Radio Pakistan, as per a PTI report.
Earlier last month, Sharif, in Iran and in Azerbaijan, had expressed willingness to hold peace talks with India to resolve all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, terrorism, water and trade.

India has maintained that any meaningful dialogue with Islamabad is only possible in an atmosphere free of cross-border terrorism, adding that the only issue left is the return of the illegally occupied part of Jammu and Kashmir. Following the Pahalgam terror attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reiterating India’s bold stance, said “water and blood can’t flow together”. “Terror and trade cannot go hand in hand,” PM Modi had said.

Three Pakistan-based terrorists from the UN-proscribed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were behind the terror attack in Pahalgam, according to NIA. Following the terror attack in Pahalgam, India took several multiple punitive measures, including putting the 1960 vintage Indus Water Treaty (IWT) on abeyance and stopping all trade with Pakistan.
India launched ‘Operation Sindoor’, under which the Indian Armed Forces destroyed terror infrastructure at nine “known locations” in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. There were four days of intense clashes that ended with an understanding on stopping the military actions on May 10, following Islamabad’s ceasefire request.
Earlier in May, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has already stated that talks between Delhi and Islamabad would be on India’s concerns about Pakistan-based terror outfits.

Source : https://www.timesnownews.com/india/pakistan-shehbaz-sharif-seeks-meaningful-dialogue-with-india-what-about-meaningful-action-against-terror-article-152153343

Iran has struck back, but the Strait of Hormuz remains open. Why hasn’t Tehran carried out its threat?China and Iran’s neighbors may have affecte the decision?

For a few days, the world held its breath. It seems the conflict between Israel, the US and Iran is not going to escalate any further, at least for now. Iran opted to save face by launching an attack on a US military base in Qatar, which the stock market interpreted as a de-escalatory gesture.

This retaliatory strike by Tehran was “loud enough for headlines, quiet enough not to shake the oil market’s foundations,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management commented to Reuters. Immediately after the strike on Monday evening, the oil price fell again sharply.

And yet Iran holds a powerful trump card. It could do immense damage to the global economy by blockading the Strait of Hormuz. But would this really be to its advantage — or would it be more of an own goal?

Why oil exports are so important for Tehran

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that “Iran’s economy is relatively diversified compared with many other Middle Eastern countries.” However, the goods produced by the country’s industry are primarily sold on the domestic market.

The export of oil and petroleum products is therefore an important source of income for the government. These constitute more than 17% of the country’s total exports, with natural gas at 12%. According to the EIA, Iran was the fourth-largest producer of crude oil among the OPEC countries in 2023, and in 2022 it was the world’s third-largest producer of dry gas (natural gas that is at least 85% methane, containing only negligible quantities of condensable gases such as hydrogen).

Iran exports oil, despite sanctions

Although it has been subject to sanctions for many years, this has not prevented the Iranian regime from exporting oil. China in particular has benefited: In 2023, it took almost 90% of the oil exported by Iran.

In March 2024, the Financial Times quoted Javad Owji, Iran’s Minister of Petroleum at the time, saying that Iran’s oil exports “generated more than 35 billion dollars” in 2023. According to the World Bank, between April and December 2023 the oil sector represented more than 8% of Iran’s GDP. And based on estimates from the data analysis company Vortexa, it is believed to have exported even more the following year.

China: an important trade partner

Iran would therefore damage itself if it blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Not only would its own oil revenue be affected, it would also upset its trading partner China, which profits from buying the oil at low cost.

The London-based TV station Iran International estimates that Tehran sells its oil at a 20% discount on the world market price, because its buyers risk getting into trouble on account of the US sanctions. The broadcaster explained that Chinese refineries are the biggest buyers of Iran’s illegal consignments of oil. Intermediaries mix it with deliveries from other countries, and the oil is then declared in China as having been imported from Singapore or other countries of origin.

According to Rystad Energy, an independent energy research company based in Norway, China imports a total of almost 11 million barrels of crude oil per day, around 10% of which comes from Iran.

Blockade would affect neighboring countries

A blockade would also have caused trouble for Iran’s neighbors. Kuwait, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates also transport their oil through the passage. In a post on Linkedin, the economist Justin Alexander, a Gulf region analyst, commented that if Tehran were to close the strait, this would “undermine remaining alliances” it still has with countries in the region.

Whether Iran could actually maintain a blockade is also doubtful. Homayoun Falakshahi from the analytics firm Kpler told German TV that he believed a blockade would provoke a swift and forceful military response from both the US and European countries, and that Iran would only have been able to close the strait for a day or two.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/iran-is-the-cost-of-closing-the-strait-of-hormuz-too-high/a-73042130

The “Russian House” still stands in the heart of Berlin. Critics say it is used to spread propaganda for Putin’s Russia. Meanwhile, Germany pays property taxes for the land.

The Russian House is centrally located on Friedrichstrasse in the heart of the German capital. As a throwback to a bygone era of friendly German-Russian relations, it is the subject of fierce disagreements and has long been a bone of contention in Berlin. The massive seven-story building covering an area of almost 30,000 square meters was opened in 1984.

At that time, back in the days of the East German state, its role was to celebrate friendship with the Soviet Union through concerts, film screenings, and book readings. It even had its own small bookstore.

Today’s administrators still maintain that it is a place to celebrate the friendship between the two countries: “The Russian House is Russia’s cultural embassy in the heart of Berlin,” according to the Russian Embassy’s website.

But quite a few critics say that the events that take place there, which the Russian House estimates attract 200,000 visitors a year, mainly serve as propaganda for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sale of tank-shaped bars of soap

Berlin media outlets have repeatedly reported on events at the in-house cinema where, for example, a Holocaust film was shown in which Ukrainian citizens were portrayed as Nazis. And if Robin Wagener, a member of the Bundestag for the Green Party, is to be believed, the Russian House even sells soap for children in the shape of a tank. Wagener told DW: “It is time we recognized that this is not mutual cultural exchange, but Russian war propaganda in Germany.”

That’s why Wagener thinks it’s time to focus on one particularly bizarre detail: the property on Friedrichstrasse belongs to Germany, and yet the building is run by the Russian federal agency “Rossotrudnichestvo.” In English, that’s the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation.

Rossotrudnichestvo, whose primary purpose is to promote the Russian language abroad, currently has 73 similar institutions in 62 countries worldwide, including the one in Berlin.

Since 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the agency has been on the EU sanctions list. At the time, the EU justified this by stating that the agency’s goal was to consolidate “a wider public perception of the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian.” The director and deputy director, the statement added, had clearly expressed their support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

German property tax for Russian state propaganda?

However, as the de facto owner of the property, the German federal government must now pay a whopping €70,000 ($81,193) in property taxes. This stems from a long-standing agreement between Germany and Russia, which recognized each other’s cultural work. Wagener wants to ensure that this sum is cut from the upcoming budget negotiations.

Wagener first had the idea a year ago, but in the chaotic turmoil of the coalition government between the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party, and the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), no budget was agreed upon, which is only now being finalized. Wagener’s reasoning for the possible cut: The house has long lost sight of its original purpose, namely to promote mutual cultural exchange: “Russia keeps escalating. And that’s making the situation worse. The basis for this mutual cultural agreement was to promote the exchange of culture and science.”

Wagener approached the new federal government on this matter. The response was somewhat awkward: “With regard to the house located on the property, which is owned by the Russian Federation, the Federal Republic of Germany pays the property tax for the Russian Federation on the basis of its legal obligation under the bilateral German-Russian agreement on property issues relating to cultural institutes of 2013.” It made reference, in other words, to an agreement that was reached before the Russian occupation of Crimea.

German government fears closure of Goethe Institute

Whether this will lead to the freezing of funds is anything but certain. The German Foreign Office has repeatedly stated that the employees of the institute have diplomatic status in Germany. It is an open secret that the German government is shying away from open conflict over the Russian House because it fears that the Russian government could respond by closing the Goethe Institute in Moscow.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-germany-pay-taxes-for-russian-propaganda/a-73037945

Faced with mounting pressure from the authorities, Serbia’s students have issued an “ultimatum” to the government to call snap elections and are urging citizens to continue the push for change.

As Belgrade’s asphalt shimmers in blistering 40-degree sunshine, the city is bracing for heat of a very different kind: Students have scheduled another major protest for Saturday.

All eyes are on the Serbian capital, and both anticipation and uncertainty across the country are rising as students remain tight-lipped about their plans and the exact location and timing of the demonstration.

The protest has the potential to be a turning point because the students have issued what they are calling an “ultimatum” to the Serbian government, demanding the announcement by 9 p.m. on June 28 that the government will ask the president to dissolve parliament, paving the way for snap elections.

“Should the stated demands not be met within the given timeframe, we expect that the citizens of Serbia will be ready to take all available measures of civil disobedience to protect their basic right to a free and legitimate democratic system,” the students wrote in an open letter to the Serbian government.

Significant date for the protest

The upcoming protest comes after eight months of protests, during which students and citizens have demanded political and criminal accountability for the collapse last November of the canopy at the entrance to Novi Sad Railway Station, which killed 16 people.

The day chosen for the protest carries particular weight in Serbia.

Vidovdan is a national and religious holiday that falls on June 28. Deeply rooted in Serbian history and mythology, it has often coincided with decisive events and historical turning points in the country’s history such as the 1389 Battle of Kosovo and a number of pivotal political events in the 20th century.

Universities under pressure

In the meantime, the government has increased pressure on universities.

For four months now, university professors have been surviving on one-eighth of their salaries as the government refuses to pay salaries for the period during which classes were halted due to student blockades.

The state insists that the unpaid salaries will only be paid once the missed classes have been made up. Universities are now scrambling to do that even as the blockades continue.

While some have shifted to online lectures, others are distributing reading material and hoping that students will manage on their own.

In institutions where practical skills are an essential part of the course, professors warn that these solutions are educationally and legally unacceptable.

“This is clear to professors pretending to teach, to students who are not participating in such teaching and most of all to the state that forced us into this form of instruction,” says Jelena Kleut, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad.

“The only fair response is to reject such teaching, and some colleagues have done just that — regardless of the consequences,” she told DW.

Students bear the brunt

But the heaviest burden is borne by the students themselves. Many are refusing to go along with such forms of tuition, even though the end of the academic year is approaching and no one knows what will happen next.

“If the state begins retaliating against students, we could end up with entire classes repeating the year and losing their student status. I don’t think that will happen — the scale would be enormous — but we’ve seen the government do things we once thought impossible,” says Kleut.

High school seniors face even greater uncertainty: Instead of preparing for university entrance exams, they are waiting to see what the state will do. The government has yet to authorize universities to enroll new students.

Kleut finds it unacceptable that these students are being used as pawns in the standoff between the government and academia.

“But they have been a very rebellious part of society, too. They blocked their high schools . Perhaps the government simply doesn’t like the idea of a whole new rebellious generation appearing on university campuses,” Kleut adds.

Targeting student allies

Repression in Serbia is spreading — not only targeting protesters, but also anyone who has supported them over the past eight months.

Three teachers at Svetozar Miletic High School in the small town of Srbobran were fired for suspending classes in solidarity with the students. One of them was Slavica Filipovic, who has helped 24 years of students to graduate from high school.

“I bowed deeply to them all and locked my classroom,” she wrote on Facebook. “It was wonderful being your teacher. It truly enriched my life. Remember: Learn, because knowledge can’t be taken from you. And please, have your own opinion. Be yourselves, no matter the cost.”

Without warning, the government also revoked tax incentives for the IT sector, one of the loudest supporters of the protests and a key source of support for unpaid teachers.

Cultural institutions have also faced consequences. Those that supported the students — by expressing solidarity, going on strike or protesting — have lost government funding.

“The regime clearly has a problem with those parts of society where entire communities stand against it. Everyone who didn’t explicitly support the current government has been punished,” says Gojko Bozovic, founder and editor-in-chief of the publishing house Arhipelag.

Protests continue unabated

But despite all this, people in Serbia are not backing down. Every day at 11:52 a.m. — the exact minute the canopy collapsed in Novi Sad — protesters stop traffic and block roads. In silence and persistence, they honor the victims and refuse to let the tragedy be forgotten — like so many others before it.

The students believe that the only path to justice is a new political distribution of power. They say they are fully aware of the deeply irregular electoral conditions in Serbia and the engineering of results, but believe that a united front across society can shake the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

They came close in recent local elections in Kosjeric and Zajecar, where the SNS won by a narrow margin.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/serbias-students-plan-major-rally-after-issuing-ultimatum/a-73038449

Images reveal ‘boxwork’ patterns suggesting Mars once had a flowing underground water system.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent back detailed close-up images of Martian rock formations that the space agency’s scientists say offer some of the strongest evidence yet of ancient groundwater flow on the red planet.

The images, taken from the slopes of a mountain inside Mars’ Gale Crater, show a network of low ridges etched in a striking crisscross pattern. According to NASA, these ridges likely formed when mineral-rich groundwater moved through the bedrock, depositing material that eventually hardened into the structures now captured by Curiosity.

“The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals… hardening and becoming cementlike,” the agency said in a statement.

“The rover found dramatic evidence of that groundwater when it encountered crisscrossing low ridges, some just a few inches tall, arranged in what geologists call a boxwork pattern,” NASA said in a blogpost on its site.

NASA first released the video and the images in a blog post on its website on Monday.

“A big mystery is why the ridges were hardened into these big patterns and why only here. As we drive on, we’ll be studying the ridges and mineral cements to make sure our idea of how they formed is on target,” Ashwin Vasavada, a scientist of the Curiosity Project and a member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, was quoted as saying in the space agency’s blog post.

Scientists believe Mars once had rivers, lakes and perhaps even an ocean, but the planet gradually dried up as it lost its atmosphere.

Source : https://www.news18.com/world/nasas-curiosity-rover-sends-photos-of-rocks-on-mars-that-hint-at-ancient-rivers-ws-kl-9404549.html

SOCIAL media and Netflix star Liver King has been arrested – days after sharing a bizarre video where he appeared to be calling out the podcaster Joe Rogan.

In the bizarre tirade, the influencer said he was picking a fight with Rogan.

Cops in Austin, Texas, have confirmed that Liver King, whose real name is Brian Johnson, faces a terroristic threat charge, as per the NBC affiliate KXAN-TV.

“Joe Rogan, I’m calling you out, my name’s Liver King. Man to man, I’m picking a fight with you,” The Liver King said in the video.

He said that he didn’t have training in jiu-jitsu.

“You’re a black belt. You should dismantle me,” Liver King said.

“But I’m picking a fight with you.”

In the unhinged video, Liver King was seen holding two gold-plated guns and wearing a wolf head.

Liver King claimed that he had thought about his game plan.

“I’m not gonna train but I hope you’ve been training,” he warned Rogan.

“I’m ready whenever you’re ready. This is actually happening, it’ll be fun.”

Liver King warned that he would make Rogan pay.

Footage shared on Instagram and X showed the influencer being ushered into a police car.

A member of Liver King’s team seemed to tell his wife that the Netflix star could be in jail for up to 24 hours.

They claimed he would be “in and out” after being processed.

They said it was likely Liver King would have to see a judge before being released.

Liver King was wearing a burgundy hoodie at the time of his arrest.

The influencer was looking dishevelled and was wearing a vest over the top of his hoodie.

He didn’t say anything to officers before getting into the car.

“I’m picking a fight with you

Johnson is the star of the Netflix film Untold: The Liver King.

The film, released earlier this year, focuses on the internet star’s physique – despite eating raw meat.

The internet star, who refers to himself as a barbarian and ancestral CEO, boasts almost three million followers on Instagram.

In 2023, he claimed that he had a net worth of $310 million, but the figure is heavily disputed.

Experts at MoneyMade suggest his net worth is closer to $12 million.

He rakes in money from being an influencer, as well as the stakes in the supplement brands he has.

Liver King seemed to threaten Rogan with a fight – around two years after the UFC commentator seemed to mock the influencer.

Liver King’s muscly appearance wowed fans, but critics claimed he was using steroids.

He admitted to using steroids after a bodybuilder claimed he was using performance-enhancing drugs.

Liver King admitted he had experimented with testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH).

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14555435/liver-king-arrested-threats-joe-rogan/

VOLODYMYR Zelensky swapped his signature battlefield khakis for a slick black suit today – just in time for a high-stakes huddle with Donald Trump at the Nato summit.

Both leaders were snapped in deep discussion in The Hague, where Zelensky presented Trump with documents and battlefield updates from the frontlines of the Ukraine war.

The outfit change didn’t go unnoticed – especially after Trump previously chided Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year for not showing up in a suit.

This time, the Ukrainian leader went full statesman mode in head-to-toe black, looking ready for diplomacy as he pushed for American air defence systems and co-production of drones.

Writing on X, Zelensky said: “We discussed the protection of our people with the President — first and foremost, the purchase of American air defense systems to shield our cities, our people, churches, and infrastructure.”

“Ukraine is ready to buy this equipment and support American weapons manufacturers. Europe can help.”

He added: “Putin is definitely not winning. I presented the President with the facts about what is really happening on the ground.”

Trump, meanwhile, described their meeting as a roaring success.

At a press conference following the Nato summit, he said it “couldn’t be nicer” and praised Zelensky for “fighting a brave battle”.

He also claimed Zelensky “wants a ceasefire” and hinted at personally speaking with Vladimir Putin to end the war, though he admitted the Russian leader has been “more difficult” than expected.

The face-to-face came on the sidelines of what’s being dubbed Trump’s “victory lap” in The Hague, after US-led B-2 bombings allegedly knocked out Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility in a dramatic weekend blitz.

“The bombing of Iran has reasserted US military power and showed the strength of America,” Trump said.

He also hailed Nato’s new five per cent GDP defence spending pledge as “historic”, branding it a “monumental win for the US” and a “big win for civilisation”.

As leaders gathered under the Nato and Ukrainian flags, Trump even joked about being called “Daddy” by Dutch PM and Nato chief Mark Rutte, saying: “He’s very affectionate. ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy’.”

While Trump’s diplomatic style was as brash as ever, Zelensky struck a more sombre tone, speaking of fallen soldiers and forensic efforts to identify Russian bodies handed back to Ukraine.

“I also informed the President about how the technical team’s meetings in Istanbul went, as well as the exchanges of prisoners and the fallen,” Zelensky said.

Elsewhere at the summit, Trump said the US may make Patriot missile systems available to Ukraine to help defend against nightly drone and rocket attacks by Russian forces.

The advanced anti-air batteries could be a major game-changer on the battlefield, if approved.

He also touched on fears of future aggression by the Kremlin, saying it was “possible” Putin harbours ambitions beyond Ukraine, in response to a question about US intelligence assessments.

The Hague event has seen Trump bask in praise for helping bring a halt to the recent 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, with even his critics calling it a major moment of statesmanship.

“Israel fought a hell of a war, they fought very hard,” he said. “Both were satisfied to go home and get out.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14560567/zelensky-new-look-suit-trump-nato-summit/

THE private jets have landed, the celebrities are filling the grand hotels and billionaires are taking over the city.

Yes, the wedding of the decade is finally here — and true to form for space-loving Jeff Bezos and his bride Lauren Sanchez, it will be out of this world.

Tonight, approximately 200 of the world’s wealthiest and most famous faces will gather at the 15th-century Madonna dell’Orto church in Venice, before heading to the Venetian island of San Giovanni Evangelista for a sumptuous banquet.

The next day Jeff, 61, and Lauren, 55, will finally say “I do” at the open-air amphitheatre on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore — both most likely draped in Dolce & Gabbana haute couture.

And that is just a slice of what is to come.

Forget everything you know about vow exchanges, wedding breakfasts and DJ’d dancefloors, this super wedding, with an expected bill of around £35million, is going stratospheric.

Today may be the official start to proceedings, but celebrations have already been taking place 160 miles away, on board Jeff’s £370million superyacht Koru, which is anchored off the Croatian island of Cres.

The yacht was supposed to be a focal point for the three-day event in Venice, but thanks to heightened security measures and local protests, it is staying put in Croatia.

According to insiders, there had to be last-minute changes to some wedding plans following the US bombing raid on Iran and the threat of the war in the Middle East escalating.

Bezos, who is worth £165billion, and his billionaire friends are potential American targets, making his over-exposed yacht too much of a risk.

Foam party

There have also been left-leaning protests bubbling away on the ground, with posters popping up saying “No Space for Bezos” and “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax”.

With that in mind, it was decided that arriving on the world’s largest sailing yacht might not have helped the cause.

Instead, they flew in on private jet, but not before hosting a massive foam party on their boat.

Frolicking in the soapy suds, it was clear that the Amazon and Prime founder and former Fox news journalist Lauren were starting as they meant to go on — with fun, fizz and a bit of extra froth.

High-profile guests including Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka have been pouring into the city of love.

Other famous faces believed to be checking into one of Venice’s most luxurious hotels include Kim Kardashian and her mum Kris Jenner, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Eva Longoria and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The five-star Aman Venice, where Jeff and Lauren will be staying and where suites cost as much as £10,000 a night, has been fully booked out for the occasion, as have several other high-end hotels.

And they are not the only businesses profiting from the Bezos bonanza, with around 80 per cent of provisions for the wedding apparently being sourced locally.

Rosa Salva, Venice’s oldest pastry maker, is certainly not against the couple choosing her city to tie the knot.

She told reporters earlier this week: “I don’t see how an event with only 200 people can create disruptions. It’s responsible tourism.

“It’s prestigious that a couple like this, who can go anywhere in the world, are getting married in the city.”

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro added: “We are very proud. I don’t know if I will have time, or if he will, to meet and shake hands, but it’s an honour that they chose Venice.”

And it appears that Jeff and Lauren do want to honour the city.

In their wedding invitation — which was leaked this week and looked like it had been designed on clip art with its illustrations of birds and butterflies — they told guests they do not want presents.

Instead, they would be making donations on their behalf to “safeguard the city’s irreplaceable cultural heritage” and to “restore the vital lagoon habitats”.

As for the lavish events to come, tonight is just an appetiser.

With luxury wedding planners Lanza & Baucina at the helm — whose founders come from Italian royalty — it is no surprise they have access to some of the city’s most exclusive sites.

The firm also planned George and Amal Clooney’s Venetian nuptials in 2014.

The ceremony tomorrow promises to be a spectacular and sumptuous affair fit for the third richest man in the world.

Earlier this week, construction workers were seen building a white cover above the breathtaking amphitheatre at San Giorgio Maggiore, guaranteeing privacy from drones.

Once Mr and Mrs Bezos have made things official there, the party will dine out in style, with the requisite fireworks launched to seal the deal.

Closing the epic three-day event will be a grand ball on Saturday at the Arsenale, the city’s ancient shipyard.

The original plan was to end up at the city’s majestic Scuola Grande della Misericordia building in the centre, but the site has been deemed “logistically unfeasible” given the need for high security.

The Arsenale, which is practically unreachable to any would- be protesters, will see a performance by opera singer Matteo Bocelli, son of Andrea Bocelli.

As for the dress, it is widely believed that previously married mum-of-three Lauren will plump for Dolce & Gabbana for the ceremony itself.

Vanity project

She is close friends with the sartorial duo, who even featured her son Nikko, 24, in a fashion show last year.

She and Jeff were then spotted visiting their iconic store in Milan during March for an apparent dress fitting.

Nevertheless, multiple events call for multiple outfits and, according to insiders, designers Versace and Oscar de la Renta are also on the docket.

The latter was responsible for Lauren’s line of Blue Origin spacesuits that she and her all-female space-mates wore for their 11-minute rocket trip in May.

Lauren had intended that adventure to empower women by gathering a gaggle of girls, including singer Katy Perry and TV anchor Gayle King, and launching into space on a flight funded by Jeff’s space exploration firm.

But the journey was slammed for being just a self-congratulatory vanity project, not least because Katy Perry took the chance to announce her latest tour’s setlist while in zero gravity.

Needless to say, Lauren will this time be keen to strike that fine balance between ex- travagant and modest, proving that despite their love for rockets and superyachts, she and Jeff do have their feet firmly planted on the ground.

Still, the couple have survived rockier terrain. After all, news of their relationship came out in 2019 while they were both still married to other people.

Indeed, it was Lauren’s then husband, Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, who introduced the pair.

Both Jeff and Lauren say their respective marriages had secretly ended before they got together.

They both then divorced their spouses, with Jeff’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott — with whom he has four children — walking away with Amazon stock worth £36billion, making her one of the richest women in the world.

Since getting together with Lauren — and proposing to her with a 30-carat ring worth a reported £3.6million in 2023 — Jeff has transformed from a so-called nerd to a buffed-up tech guy.

He now seems happier hobnobbing with celebrities than he is chairing board meetings.

Lauren, for her part, has always lived a starry existence.

Her mega hen do weekend in Paris in May, which cost around £500,000 and gathered besties including Kim Kardashian and Eva Longoria, was a lesson in camera-ready luxury.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/14561955/jeff-bezos-wedding-amazon-lauren-sanchez-celeb/

THE CIA says Donald Trump’s weekend blitz on Iran has left key nuclear sites “destroyed” – in a devastating blow that will take “years” to recover from.

In a bombshell statement, the Agency’s director John Ratcliffe confirmed “several key Iranian nuclear facilities” were wiped out and must be completely rebuilt.

“The CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,” Ratcliffe said.

“This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

The chief added the CIA would “provide updates to the American public” given the “national importance” of the operation.

It comes after White House called for the arrest of whoever leaked a classified intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear sites

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the person responsible for leaking the classified Iran intelligence report should face jail time.

“They should go to jail,” she told Fox News’ Ryan Schmelz when asked about potential punishment for the leaker.

Leavitt said the DIA memo had been “discredited” by U.S. and Israeli officials — and even by Iran itself.

“CNN ran with a story they knew wasn’t fully vetted,” Leavitt told Fox News, calling it a leak from “someone with an agenda” and noting it came from “the same reporter who once pushed the false Hunter Biden laptop narrative.”

She confirmed the FBI is investigating the leak and stressed that those responsible “should be held accountable.”

Defending the strikes, Leavitt said: “This operation achieved what decades of diplomacy and sanctions could not.”

The uproar followed reports from CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times citing a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency memo that raised doubts over the extent of the damage — particularly at the Fordow nuclear site.

The report was based on just 24 hours of data.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump demanded that CNN’s Natasha Bertrand be fired “like a dog.”

Speaking at a NATO summit press conference in The Hague, the president raged at “fake news” outlets over reports suggesting US airstrikes failed to cripple Iran’s nuke programme.

Trump insisted Tehran’s labs were now “totally inoperable,” citing intelligence from both Israel and Iran confirming the scale of the devastation.

Trump went on to slam the media outlets, saying: “We had a tremendous success.

“And this is the New York Times. I call it the failing New York Times. It’s going to hell. And CNN, which is, you know, very few people are watching, and you would think they’d do the opposite.

“So it’s just fake news by CNN, which has got no ratings. It’s a failed network,” he added.

The president didn’t hold back, declaring: “CNN is scum, the New York Times is scum, MSNBC is scum. They’re bad people, they’re sick.

“And what they’ve done is they want to turn this incredible victory into something less.”

Trump then unleashed on Bertrand in a furious Truth Social post: “Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News…

“She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog’…

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14512612/trump-us-nuclear-iran-israel-war/

A BRAZILIAN woman has been found dead in Indonesia after being trapped in an active volcano for four days, her family has confirmed.

Juliana Marins, 26, slipped and fell more than 1,600 feet from a hiking trail along the crater rim of Mount Rinjani on Saturday morning.

Juliana, a publicist and dancer from Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro, fell while trekking up Mount Rinjani – Indonesia’s second-highest volcano.

She had been backpacking through Southeast Asia since February, documenting her solo trip on social media.

Tourists on the Indonesian island of Lombok spotted her inside the crater after hearing screams for help.

Juliana survived the fall but was unable to climb back up due to her injuries and had no access to food, water or shelter.

The first rescue team was dispatched at 2.32pm local time on Saturday.

Since then, six rescue teams tried to reach her, supported by two helicopters and equipment including an industrial drill.

Search efforts on Sunday morning were plagued by cold temperatures and fog.

A drone spotted her on Sunday, but when rescuers descended the volcano on Monday, she was no longer in the same spot.

Rescuers finally located her on Tuesday, but it was tragically too late.

Her family confirmed her death on social media, writing: “Today, the rescue team managed to reach the place where Juliana Marins was.

“With great sadness, we inform you that she did not survive.

“We remain very grateful for all the prayers, messages of affection and support that we have received.”

Earlier this week, Nikolas Osman, spokesperson for the East Lombok Police, said Juliana was hiking in a group and fell after suffering fatigue.

He said: “While heading to the summit of Rinjani on the way to the Cemara Tunggal area, the victim experienced fatigue and the guide at that time advised her to rest.

“Then the five guests in the tour group were taken by the guide to continue the journey.

“However, by the time he returned to fetch her, the Brazilian woman was already missing.”

Indonesian authorities deployed three helicopters to try and rescue Juliana, according to West Nusa Tenggara governor Lalu Muhamad Iqbal.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14551221/tourist-dead-volcano-crater/

AN AMERICAN B-2 stealth bomber pilot has revealed what it’s like inside the world’s most inconspicuous jet.

The warplanes, which carried out the daring attack on three Iranian nuke sites on Saturday, have long been riddled in mystery with very few people allowed inside them.

Counting a fleet of 19, the powerful B-2 Spirit was the only aircraft capable of delivering the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs which were needed to smash Iran’s atomic site at Fordow, south of Tehran.

But despite their military prowess, very little is known about the powerful jets.

One pilot, Neal, who was part of a small crew sent to Afghanistan after 9/11, has lifted the lid on what it’s really like inside the $2 million aircraft.

According to Neal the planes are very small and can barely accommodate three people.

And with such long journeys, getting a good night’s sleep is rarely on the cards.

Pilots are often given a stimulant by flight surgeons to help stay awake, known informally as a “go pill”, he said.

But despite the cramped space, the planes come equipped with a microwave and cooler “filled with snacks” to ensure crew are fed and alert during long trips.

A toilet can also be found onboard as well as a “cot” where pilots take it in turns to have a lie down.

Neal told Business Insider: “When the ladder comes up and you enter the cockpit, there is a flat spot on the floor that is about a little over 6 feet long.

“And so I think over the two days that I was in that little space, I spent about five hours in that cot total.”

“You’re young, and you’re doing something that you’re trained to do, and there’s a bit of excitement and a lot of adrenaline.”

This comes as Operation Midnight saw the US blitz three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities in an attack Trump has called a “spectacular success”.

The “prime” target was Iran’s mountain-fortress nuclear site Fordow, buried beneath 300ft of rock and steel, which only the US had the firepower to eliminate.

The uranium enrichment plant was pounded by an unprecedented blitz of 14 30,000lb bunker-buster bombs – called GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP).

They were dropped from six B-2 bombers flying high in the atmosphere for 37 hours all the way from Missouri.

Also hit were the nuclear plants at Natanz and Isfahan, which Israel had already targeted with its own missiles.

The aircraft took off from the Whiteman Air Force Base outside Kansas City, Missouri – the home of the B-2 fleet.

B-2 bombers took off from the US and were thought to be heading to the Andersen Air Force Base on the Pacific island of Guam.

Satellite imagery of the destroyed bases has since revealed the extent of the damage.

Two clusters of at least six holes are seen at the Fordow nuclear site, where the massive 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs were dropped.

Bombs of this kind are believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet below the surface before exploding.

Following the bombing, Sir Keir Starmer reinstated his commitment to making Iran nuke-free.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Operation Midnight Hammer was “an incredible and overwhelming success” that took months and weeks of planning.

He added that Trump has been clear that “any retaliation by Iran” against the US would be “met with force far greater” than what was seen on Saturday night.

Hegseth said: “Iran would be smart to heed those words. He’s said it before, and he means it.”

The Defence Secretary went on to praise the US leader, calling it “bold and brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back”.

He urged: “When this President speaks, the world should listen.”

Fears loom that the conflict could spiral into a world war, with Putin puppet Dmitry Medvedev making a veiled threat to supply Iran with nuclear weapons.

He said: “A number of countries are ready to supply Iran directly with their nuclear weapons.”

After declaring the US strikes as being a success, Trump warned that further action could be taken if Tehran doesn’t agree to an adequate peace deal.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14550911/iran-jet-bomber-raid/

THIS is the moment floodwaters surge through a shopping centre in southwest China – as the region faces its highest flood levels in decades.

Murky torrents pour down escalators and from upper floors, sweeping away everything in their path, as cars are dragged into underground garages in dramatic scenes.

In footage filmed on Tuesday at the largest shopping centre in Rongjiang, in the Guizhou province, torrents of water can be seen cascading down escalators and upper floors.

Various objects – some appearing to be items of clothing, others chairs – are dragged into the currents.

In separate clips, cars are seen being swept into underground garages by floodwaters.

Numerous vehicles lie underwater after multiple rivers burst their banks, submerging much of the city.

Along with shopping centres and underground garages, other low-lying areas were reportedly flooded.

The alert was raised on Friday when continuous heavy rains drove the water level of the Rongjiang River to 114.6 metres.

On Tuesday, authorities in Rongjiang raised the flood alert to its highest level, warning that river levels could peak at 255 metres.

Rongjiang – which has a population of about 300,000 – has not seen these flood levels in 30 years, according to newspaper China Daily.

Resident Wu Hanjun told the newspaper on Tuesday afternoon: “The rain has stopped now, but the floodwaters are still quite high and expected to rise.”

Residents in most of the old town and parts of the new district were reportedly told to move to higher-ground shelters on Tuesday, as per an evacuation order.

China experiences regular flooding during the summer due to the East Asian monsoon, which brings heavy, continuous rainfall from June to August.

Warm, moist air from the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean also feeds storms, causing rivers to overflow.

It comes as southern China saw torrential rains in April 2024, swelling the Bei River in Guangdong by up to 19 feet above warning levels.

Over 110,000 residents were evacuated, and more than a million households experienced power outages.

Shocking footage shows cars being swept away by powerful flood currents.

Photos also reveal vehicles submerged in water and rescue workers carrying people through chest-deep floodwaters out of buildings.

In July 2021, floods devastated Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province flooded – after the heaviest rainfall recorded in over a millennium in that region.

The rains submerged parts of the city, including subway lines.

Distressing footage shows panicked passengers trapped in Zhengzhou’s subway – flooded to shoulder-deep levels – texting their final goodbyes.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14549108/flood-swamp-shopping-centre/

Israel’s military chief said it will focus on removing the militant group Hamas in Gaza after a ceasefire with Iran. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Office blamed Israeli forces for over 400 deaths at aid sites since May.

Pyongyang has shared weapons technology and underground construction know-how with Tehran. Now it will want to know how it can best protect itself should the US turn its military attention to North Korea.

North Korea on Monday condemned the US attacks against three of Iran’s key nuclear sites, accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of violating Iran’s territorial integrity and the United Nations Charter.

“The just international community should raise the voice of unanimous censure and rejection against the US and Israel’s confrontational acts,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Pyongyang had previously described Israeli missile attacks against Iran as a “hideous act.”

North Korea-Iran alliance

Nuclear-armed North Korea has maintained friendly ties with Iran.

For decades, Tehran and Pyongyang have been suspected of military cooperation, including in developing ballistic missiles that Iranian scientists have reportedly since enhanced.

Around 20 years ago, North Korea began dispatching engineers with specialist deep tunneling expertise.

Since the three-year Korean War began in 1950, North Korea has concealed much of its own key military capabilities in underground bases.

The regime will be keen to determine the effectiveness of its underground bunkers, while looking at the impact of the GBU-57 “massive ordnance penetrator” weapons dropped by the US on Iranian targets in Operation Midnight Hammer.

“They are definitely watching very closely what is going on in Iran,” said Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant general in the Republic of Korea Army and now a senior fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

“I believe the conclusions that North Korea will come to will be that they need to accelerate their nuclear weapons capabilities, that they need to further fortify their storage areas,” he told DW.

Chun added that the North Koreans need to adopt additional protective measures, such as enhanced air defense and retaliatory options.

Pyongyang unlikely to talk

Asked whether there is any likelihood of the attacks encouraging Pyongyang to return to dialogue, Chun said, “Absolutely not. It is just not in their nature.”

Nevertheless, he said, North Korea was almost certainly as shocked as the rest of the world at the Trump administration’s “decisive nature.”

“This is an America that we have not seen for a long time and would have caught the North by surprise,” Chun said.

“The priority there now will be to ensure that the same thing does not happen to them, which is why I am sure they will be observing closely and accelerating their weapons programs.”

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Pyongyang will be aware that its situation is starkly different from that of Tehran, however, both in terms of the country’s geography, the proximity of allies, and the status of the two nations’ nuclear programs.

“Pyongyang’s nuclear program is much more advanced, with weapons possibly ready to launch on multiple delivery systems, including ICBMs,” he said. “The Kim [Jong Un] regime can threaten the US homeland, and Seoul is within range of many North Korean weapons of various types.”

“In Iran’s case, Israel aggressively exploited Tehran’s strategic and tactical errors, using superior intelligence, technology, and training to degrade Iran’s air defenses, high-value personnel, and retaliatory capabilities,” he pointed out.

“North Korea will learn from Iran’s mistakes, South Korea is more risk-averse than Israel, and China and Russia are better positioned to help Pyongyang than Tehran.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/after-us-bombs-iran-north-korea-watches-closely/a-73022740

In an official statement issued immediately after a suicide bomber opened fire on worshippers before blowing himself up at a Christian church in Damascus, Syria’s government called the attack a desperate attempt to undermine national coexistence and destabilize the country. The Interior Ministry blamed the so-called “Islamic State” group for the attack, which killed 25 people and injured 63.

In neighboring Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun called for “necessary measures to prevent its recurrence, provide protection for places of worship and their visitors, and ensure the safety of all Syrian citizens, regardless of their religion, as the unity of the Syrian people remains the foundation for preventing discord.”

Leaders of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land in Jerusalem said: “There is no justification — religious, moral, or rational — for the slaughter of innocents, least of all in a sacred space. Such violence under the guise of faith is a grave perversion of all that is holy.”

‘Repeated violence’

Michael Bauer, the head of the Beirut office of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told DW that the attack did not just target the worshippers at the church, nor Christians broadly, but was meant to send a message. “There has been repeated violence against religious minorities in recent months, such as the Alawites and the Druze,” said Bauer, whose foundation is closely linked to Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats.

“The latest attack, as terrible as it is, is therefore not directed solely against Christians, but against the social fabric of the entire country as well as the transition process,” Bauer said.

Sidra, a 20-year-old Christian in Damascus who asked that her full name not be used, told DW that she knew multiple victims of Sunday’s attack. “My mother’s condition is somewhat stable,” Sidra said, “but I lost my friend in the incident.”

She said officials must act. “We send a message to the Syrian government to provide us with safety because, if the situation remains as it is, Syrian Christians may no longer be able to live under such conditions,” Sidra said. “If safety is not ensured, Christians in Syria may rise against this government.”

Building representative government

President Ahmad al-Sharaa has promised an inclusive government. Bauer said he and his officials would likely be aware that Syria needs a fundamental transformation process that encompasses all population groups.

Members of the many militias who have become officials or agents of Syria’s security forces may see things differently, however, Bauer said. “They rather want to impose their own worldview, which doesn’t include Alawites, Christians, Druze or other infidels in the new Syria,” he said. “This poses a major challenge,” he added.

Since the overthrow of the government at the end of 2024, foreign fighters who joined the revolutionary forces in Syria’s long civil war have been repeatedly accused of violence against minorities. However, the underfunded government has had difficulty developing security forces. The Germany Trade and Invest business information service estimates that Syria’s economy will continue to shrink in 2025, for the third year in a row.

Before the war began in 2011, Christians made up about 7% of Syria’s population. Nearly a decade and a half of departures have reduced the proportion to about 2%, according to a report by Vatican News.

Nawal, a 58-year-old who was injured in Sunday’s attack and asked that her full name not be used, told DW that the violence would ultimately affect all Syrians. “We are one people, Christians, Muslims and people of all religions and denominations,” Nawal said. “And whoever committed this act — this time it hit Christians, but tomorrow it will hit every other Syrian.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/attack-on-christians-threatens-syrias-postwar-cohesion/a-73021750

With violence showing no sign of easing in the Iran–Israel war, the world now ponders: where might one stay safe if a global war ensues?

As the war between Iran and Israel show no sign of abating, concerns are growing that it could escalate into a wider conflict.

The US conducted military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, deploying 30,000‑pound bunker‑buster bombs on underground sites. However, the White House has since paused and returned to diplomacy.

Earlier today, US President Trump even announced a six‑hour ceasefire between Iran and Israel—but quickly retracted it, saying both nations violated the terms.

With violence showing no sign of easing, the world now ponders: where might one stay safe if a global war ensues? Here are the top contenders which score highly on the Global Peace Index.

Iceland: Topping the Global Peace Index for the 17th year running, Iceland is peaceful, neutral, and geographically isolated. It’s never taken part in a war.

New Zealand: Ranked fourth in the peace index with a neutral stance and rugged terrain, New Zealand is unlikely to be targeted in a global conflict. It remains remote and self-sufficient.

Singapore-bound passengers were among thousands of travellers stranded at Hamad International Airport in Doha on Tuesday (Jun 24) after the temporary closure of several countries’ airspace.

Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait temporarily shut their airspace late on Monday after Iran’s strike on a US military base in Qatar’s capital Doha, forcing airlines to cancel or reroute hundreds of flights and creating a backlog of stranded passengers.

Four passengers travelling to Singapore told CNA that there was no clear indication when they would be able to get another flight. They said they had not been provided with any accommodation arrangements.

Ms Melodie Yip, who had been transiting at the airport, was meant to fly out of Doha on Monday night on Qatar Airways, but her flight was cancelled.

After queuing for around eight hours to rebook another flight that was meant to depart this afternoon, she later learnt that this flight had been cancelled as well.

She is waiting for another flight to leave the country, but said she does not expect to get a flight on Tuesday night.

“When I heard the second flight was cancelled, I was very, very anxious because I didn’t want to go through that … eight-hour queue again,” she said.

However, she said that she had found some comfort in the other Singaporeans who were in the queue with her.

Ms Yip said she expected to get a flight on Wednesday and hoped it would not be cancelled again.

“If it’s tomorrow, I’m hoping that they will also give us some like hotel stay, or at least some sort of accommodation,” she said.

“I think Hamad International Airport and Qatar Airways were not prepared for such a crisis, which is unexpected for a world-class, award-winning airline and airport,” she added.

Mr Shariff Raffi was supposed to be on a 2.30am Qatar Airways flight to Singapore on Tuesday. The airline delayed the flight to 6am before ultimately cancelling it, he said.

“Receiving news of the cancellation broke most of our spirit. I felt vexed as well when I realised a flight was cancelled when we thought it wasn’t going to be cancelled.”

He said he has been awake for more than 36 hours and is constantly checking the flight information board for updates.

“Most of us are running (on) adrenaline and emotion. I choose to step up and help the group (of Singaporeans) where I can, and since I’m a bit more familiar with this airport.”

Virgin Australia estimated that over 25,000 passengers were stranded at Doha airport.

Around 250 flights were cancelled at Hamad airport, while another 238 were delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.

Another Qatar Airways passenger, who only wanted to be known as Ms Chian, had her early Tuesday morning flight cancelled.

On Tuesday afternoon, she saw a group of about 30 passengers gathered around the airline’s service desk to get updates on flights.

However, security guards told the group to disperse when other international travellers waiting in line started complaining about the group holding up the queue.

Ms Chian said that she was feeling “very tired and uncertain” and there has been no indication when she might get a flight home to Singapore.

The flight timings on Qatar Airways’ app have also not been accurate, she added.

“There are people here who are very frustrated,” she said.

Another Qatar Airways passenger, who wanted to be known only as Ms Teo, said she was exhausted and felt “helpless” as she was stuck in a long queue to get a replacement flight.

She told CNA there were at least 100 people in front of her in the queue, and just one staff member working.

Qatar Airways told CNA on Tuesday morning that its focus was on helping passengers on their journeys following the reopening of the airspace in Qatar.

It said it was working with government stakeholders and other authorities to restore operations “as quickly as possible”.

“We have also deployed additional ground staff at Hamad International Airport and other key airports to assist affected passengers by minimising disruptions and offering the utmost care and support to all customers. As operations resume, we anticipate significant delays to our flight schedule,” it added.

Passengers were asked to check the airline’s website or mobile app ahead of travel.

AVIATION WOES

Airlines scrambled to cancel flights and reroute planes on Monday after several Middle Eastern nations closed their countries’ airspace temporarily as Iran attacked the Al Udeid US military base in Doha.

The US had attacked key Iranian nuclear sites the day before.

The escalating tensions are affecting airlines beyond the Middle East, where major flight routes have already been cut off since Israel began strikes on Iran on Jun 13.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/israel-iran-conflict-travellers-singapore-stranded-doha-hamad-airport-5200716

President Donald Trump cast doubt on Tuesday (Jun 24) over the United States’ commitment to defending its NATO partners, suggesting there were “numerous” definitions to the cornerstone of the alliance’s mutual defence clause.

Trump was speaking to reporters en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, a two-day gathering which is intended to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that NATO is united, despite Trump’s past criticism, and determined to expand and upgrade its defences to deter any attack from Moscow.

However, pressed by reporters on Air Force One over whether he remained committed to mutual defence among allies as set out by NATO’s Article 5, Trump responded:

“I’m committed to saving lives. I’m committed to life and safety. And I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there.”

NATO’S RUTTE HAILS TRUMP’S “DECISIVE ACTION IN IRAN”

Trump also posted a screenshot of a message from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte congratulating him on his “decisive action in Iran” and getting all NATO allies to agree to spend more on defence.

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte’s message read, indicating the effort he has put into keeping on the right side of Trump and ensuring the summit is a success.

Trump singled out Spain for criticism after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared Madrid did not need to meet the new spending target.

The summit and its final statement will be focused on heeding Trump’s call to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence – a significant jump from the current 2 per cent goal. It is to be achieved both by spending more on military items and by including broader security-related spending in the new target.

US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday (Jun 24) that the central bank can afford to wait for the impact of tariffs before deciding on further interest rate cuts, despite President Donald Trump’s calls to slash levels.

The Fed has a duty to prevent a one-time spike in prices from becoming an “ongoing inflation problem”, Powell said before the House Committee on Financial Services.

“For the time being, we are well-positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” he added.

His comments came after two Fed officials – Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman – recently suggested policymakers could cut rates as early as July.

Powell declined to comment when asked about Waller’s views on a pathway to rate reductions.

But he said officials could be inclined to lower rates sooner if inflation were weaker than expected or if the labour market deteriorated.

The Fed has held the benchmark lending rate steady since its last reduction in December, bringing the level to a range between 4.25 per cent and 4.50 per cent.

Last week, Powell told reporters that it would make smarter decisions if it waited to understand how Trump’s tariffs impact the economy.

The Fed chief said on Tuesday that it should see the duties’ impact on consumer prices in June and July numbers, adding that a smaller effect than anticipated is also important for policymaking.

Hours before Powell’s testimony, Trump again urged the chair of the independent Fed to slash rates, saying these should be “at least two to three points lower” as inflation remains benign.

“I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

On Trump’s criticism, Powell said: “We always do what we think is the right thing to do, and you know, we live with the consequences.”

New York Fed President John Williams separately supported maintaining the central bank’s monetary policy stance.

“Much of the soft data we’ve seen in recent months captures the heightened uncertainty about the path of the economy,” he said in remarks prepared for a Tuesday event. “But it’s too early to say what the future trajectory of the hard data will be.”

“STILL STRONG”

Powell maintained on Tuesday that it is unclear how concerns over US trade policies could affect future spending and investment.

“Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity,” he said.

For now, Powell said: “Despite elevated uncertainty, the economy is in a solid position.”

“I wouldn’t want to point to a particular meeting,” he noted of the possibility of a July rate cut. “I don’t think we need to be in any rush, because the economy is still strong.”

Given that “credibility on inflation is hard-won,” he said, officials are proceeding cautiously.

While inflation has eased, it remains above the bank’s longer-run two per cent goal.

Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed a 10 per cent tariff on almost all trading partners and steeper rates on imports of steel, aluminium and autos.

Economists warn levies could fuel inflation and hit economic growth, although widespread effects have so far been muted.

This is partly because Trump has backed off or postponed his most punishing salvos. Businesses also stockpiled inventory in anticipation of the duties, avoiding immediate price hikes.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/us-fed-chair-signals-no-rush-rate-cuts-despite-trump-pressure-5201316

U.S. airstrikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability and only set it back by a few months, according to a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, as a shaky ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump took hold between Iran and Israel.
Earlier on Tuesday, both Iran and Israel signaled that the air war between the two nations had ended, at least for now, after Trump publicly scolded them for violating a ceasefire he announced at 0500 GMT.

As the two countries lifted civilian restrictions after 12 days of war – which the U.S. joined with an attack on Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities – each sought to claim victory.
Trump said over the weekend that the U.S. deployment of 30,000-pound bombs had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But that claim appeared to be contradicted by an initial assessment by one of his administration’s intelligence agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter.
One of the sources said Iran’s enriched uranium stocks had not been eliminated, and the country’s nuclear program, much of which is buried deep underground, may have been set back only a month or two. Iran says its nuclear research is for civilian energy production.

The White House said the intelligence assessment was “flat out wrong.” According to the report, which was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but did not collapse underground buildings, said one of the people familiar with its findings.
Some centrifuges still remained intact after the attacks, the Washington Post said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the report.
Trump’s administration told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that its weekend strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had “degraded” Iran’s nuclear program, short of Trump’s earlier assertion that the facilities had been “obliterated.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the attack on Iran had removed the threat of nuclear annihilation and was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its weapons program.

“We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles,” Netanyahu said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country had successfully ended the war in what he called a “great victory,” according to Iranian media. Pezeshkian also told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Tehran was ready to resolve differences with the U.S., according to official news agency IRNA.
Israel launched the surprise air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran, which denies trying to build nuclear weapons, retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites and cities.

‘GREAT VICTORY’

Israel’s military lifted restrictions on activity across the country at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT), and officials said Ben Gurion Airport, the country’s main airport near Tel Aviv, had reopened. Iran’s airspace likewise will be reopened, state-affiliated Nournews reported.
A White House official said Trump brokered the ceasefire deal with Netanyahu, and other administration officials were in touch with the Iranian government.

The truce appeared fragile: Both Israel and Iran took hours to acknowledge they had accepted the ceasefire and accused each other of violating it.
Trump scolded both sides but aimed especially stinging criticism at Israel, telling the close U.S. ally to “calm down now.” He later said Israel called off further attacks at his command.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said he told his U.S. counterpart, Pete Hegseth, that his country would respect the ceasefire unless Iran violated it. Pezeshkian likewise said Iran would honor the ceasefire as long as Israel did, according to Iranian media.
Whether the Israel-Iran truce can hold is a major question given the deep mistrust between the two foes. But Trump’s ability to broker a ceasefire showed Washington retains some leverage in the volatile region.
Israeli armed forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir said a “significant chapter” of the conflict had concluded but the campaign against Iran was not over. He said the military would refocus on its war against Iran-backed Hamas militants in Gaza.
Iran’s military command also warned Israel and the U.S. to learn from the “crushing blows” it delivered during the conflict.
Iranian authorities said 610 people were killed in their country by Israeli strikes and 4,746 injured. Iran’s retaliatory bombardment killed 28 people in Israel, the first time its air defenses were penetrated by large numbers of Iranian missiles.
Oil prices plunged and stock markets rallied worldwide in a sign of confidence inspired by the ceasefire, which allayed fears of disruption to critical oil supplies from the Gulf.

CEASEFIRE VIOLATIONS?

Earlier in the day, Trump admonished Israel with an obscenity in an extraordinary outburst at an ally whose air war he had joined two days before by dropping massive bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear sites.
Before departing the White House en route to a NATO summit in Europe, Trump told reporters he was unhappy with both sides for the ceasefire breach but particularly frustrated with Israel, which he said had “unloaded” shortly after agreeing to the deal.
“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down now,” Trump said. Iran and Israel had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
Netanyahu’s office acknowledged Israel bombed a radar site near Tehran in what it said was retaliation for Iranian missiles fired three-and-a-half hours after the ceasefire was due to begin.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-announces-israel-iran-ceasefire-2025-06-23/

China’s auto industry has inflated car sales for years through a burgeoning government-backed grey market that registers new cars right off the assembly line and then ships them overseas as “used” vehicles.
These so-called “zero-mileage” cars have never been driven but they are being exported as used to markets like Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East, allowing Chinese automakers to show growth and to dispose of cars that it would be difficult to sell domestically, according to a Reuters review of government documents and interviews with five auto dealers and car traders.

“This is the outcome of an almost-four-year price war that has made companies desperate to book any sales possible,” said Tu Le, Michigan-based founder of consultancy Sino Auto Insights.
The practice only gained national attention after the boss of Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor (601633.SS), criticized the sale of zero-mileage used cars within China in May. On June 10 the People’s Daily newspaper condemned the sale of zero-mileage used cars domestically.
The paper, which often signals the positions of China’s top Communist Party leaders, blamed these fake used cars for driving down prices amid a withering domestic price war and called for “tough regulatory action” to restore order.

But the export and sale of fake used cars is actively encouraged by regional governments in China, according to a Reuters review of state media reports and government documents.
Local governments have embraced the practice as vital to meeting ambitious targets for economic growth set by Beijing, according to a Reuters review of local policy documents and state media articles.
Reuters has identified 20 local governments in China – including major export hubs like Guangdong and Sichuan – that have described their support for the export of zero-mileage used cars in publicly available government documents.
The tactics include creating extra licenses for the export of zero-mileage used cars, fast-tracking tax rebate claims, investing in export infrastructure, and funding networking events to encourage zero-mileage used-car exports, the government documents showed.

The zero-mileage used car export market works like this: as a fresh car emerges from the assembly line, an exporter buys the car either directly from the automaker or from a dealer, registers it with a Chinese license plate, and then immediately marks it as a second-hand car for shipping abroad. Along the way, the automaker books the car as sold and logs the revenue.
The support for the practice from local governments would make little sense anywhere outside China’s centrally planned economy. But here, showing rapid growth in sales and employment can bring about promotion or unlock new funding while missing economic targets that trickle down from Beijing can lead to demotions of local officials.
Because these export firms both purchase and sell a single car, the transaction value is double that of new or used-car purchases, so local governments court them to set up shop on their turf to quickly and artificially boost their GDP statistics, two Chinese auto industry executives said.

The tactic is only one sign that China’s car industry – the world’s largest – is allowing production to outpace demand, driving a protracted domestic price war and spurring accusations of automotive “dumping” abroad.
Cui Dongshu, the secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, praised the practice earlier this month during an online panel discussion hosted by Tencent’s news portal, saying it was an alternative channel for automakers in China to access certain markets overseas that they may not be able to access due to rising trade barriers globally.
He added that it also helped to satisfy overseas demand for China-made cars in countries where Chinese brands had yet to enter.
Reuters contacted all the local governments mentioned in this article for comment but none responded. China’s State Council and commerce ministry did not respond to a request for comment. China’s foreign ministry referred queries on the practice to “the department in charge,” without elaborating.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

MARKET SHIFTS

‘DUMPING’ CONCERNS

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ lawyers spent a half-hour on Tuesday putting on their defense case at their client’s sex trafficking trial, paving the way for jurors to hear final arguments before weighing the hip-hop mogul’s fate.
The defense included showing jurors text messages in which one of Combs’ accusers, rhythm and blues singer Casandra Ventura, said she loved him and suggested she enjoyed participating in sexual performances known as “Freak Offs.”

Federal prosecutors rested their case against Combs earlier in the day, after more than six weeks of testimony.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He decided not to testify.
Defendants in U.S. criminal cases are not required to present evidence, and judges instruct juries not to hold a refusal to testify against defendants. To win a guilty verdict, prosecutors must prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt.
The government’s case against Combs included accusations that the Bad Boy Records founder forced two former girlfriends into sexual performances with male sex workers while he watched, masturbated and sometimes filmed.

Witnesses included the former girlfriends Ventura, known as Cassie, and a woman known in court by the pseudonym Jane.
Over several days of testimony, both said Combs beat them, threatened to cut off financial support, and threatened to leak sex tapes.
Combs’ lawyers have acknowledged that their client was occasionally violent in domestic relationships, but argued the “Freak Offs” were consensual.

On Tuesday, defense lawyer Anna Estevao read jurors several messages, ranging from tender to sexually explicit, that Ventura sent Combs during their decade-long relationship.
In one message from 2012, Ventura wrote Combs, “Besides making love, talking to you is my favorite thing.”
Five years later, Ventura told Combs in a series of messages that she missed him, asked him to send a picture of his genitals, and pledged to “be your little freak.”

Outside the jury’s presence, Estevao told the court the messages showed Combs believed the “Freak Offs” were consensual.
“That she’s telling Mr. Combs that she will be his little freak is probative as to his state of mind as to whether or not she was willing to engage in this kind of sexual activity,” Estevao said.
One prosecution witness, forensic psychologist Dawn Hughes, had told jurors that victims of sexual violence often develop “trauma bonds” with their partners, making it difficult to leave abusive relationships.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who has overseen the trial in Manhattan federal court, is expected on Wednesday to meet with lawyers to discuss jury instructions.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/sean-diddy-combs-lawyers-point-cassies-loving-texts-trial-defense-2025-06-24/

With J.D. Vance stretching out a convincing lead in the polls for the 2028 presidential race, Usha Vance shared her thoughts with Meghan McCain on becoming First Lady of the United States.

The former “View” co-host interviewed the Second Lady for her “Citizen McCain” YouTube show, and Usha told her that the last few years have been such an unexpected whirlwind that it’s taught her not to make plans.

The attorney described the sudden sequence of events from the time in 2022 when then-author and Bay Area venture capitalist J.D. announced his Senate run, through his win as VEEP last November.

“Three years ago — maybe four years ago at this point — I had absolutely no intention of leading any sort of life in politics,” Usha said in the sit-down at the Vice Presidential residence at One Observatory Circle in Washington D.C.

“It really is that rapid. And then when we moved our kids to school in this area, it was with no intention whatsoever of JD running for a new office, and so my attitude is that this is a four-year period where I have a set of responsibilities to my family, to myself, and obviously to the country, and that’s really what I’m focused on. I’m not plotting out next steps or really trying for anything after this.”

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/24/society/usha-vance-shares-her-thoughts-on-becoming-first-lady-with-meghan-mccain/?_gl=1*19zkcce*_ga*MTgwMjY4OTEzMy4xNzQ0ODU3NDg5*_ga_0DZ7LHF5PZ*czE3NTA4MTY0OTgkbzE4MyRnMSR0MTc1MDgxNjU4OSRqNjAkbDAkaDA

The artificial intelligence start-up that recently clinched a $14 billion investment from Meta has an “incredibly janky” security system – using public Google Doc files to store confidential information on clients like Meta, Google and xAI, according to a report.

It was reported earlier this month that Meta agreed to take a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.8 billion and bring the startup’s CEO Alexandr Wang over to lead a new “superintelligence” lab.

That shockingly steep price tag indicates that Meta believes Wang and his company are key to bringing the social media firm’s AI division to the next level.

But the company has been strangely relaxed when it comes to its work with high-profile clients, leaving top-secret projects and sensitive information like email addresses and pay details in Google Docs accessible to anyone with a link, according to Business Insider.

“We are conducting a thorough investigation and have disabled any user’s ability to publicly share documents from Scale-managed systems,” a Scale AI spokesperson told The Post.

“We remain committed to robust technical and policy safeguards to protect confidential information and are always working to strengthen our practices.”

While there is no indication the public files have led to a breach, they could leave the company susceptible to hacks, according to cybersecurity experts.

Google and xAI did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment. Meta declined to comment.

Five current and former Scale AI contractors told BI that the use of Google Docs was widespread across the company.

“The whole Google Docs system always seemed incredibly janky,” one worker said.

BI said it was able to view thousands of pages of project documents across 85 Google Docs detailing Scale AI’s sensitive work with Big Tech clients, like how Google used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to fine-tune its own chatbot.

At least seven Google manuals marked “confidential” including recommendations to improve the chatbot, then-called Bard, were left accessible to the public, according to the report.

Public Google Doc files included details on Elon Musk’s “Project Xylophone,” like training documents with 700 conversation prompts to improve an AI chatbot’s conversation skills, the report said.

So-called “confidential” Meta training documents with audio clips of “good” and “bad” speech prompts to train its AI products were also left public.

While these secret projects were often given codenames, several Scale AI contractors said it was still easy to figure out which client they were working for.

Some documents tied to codenamed projects even mistakenly included the company’s logo, like a presentation that included a Google logo, according to BI.

When working with AI products, sometimes the chatbot would simply reveal the client when asked, the contractors said.

There were also publicly available Google Doc spreadsheets that listed the names and private email addresses of thousands of workers, the news outlet found.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/24/tech/scale-ai-used-public-google-docs-for-confidential-work-with-meta-xai-in-stunning-revelation-after-14b-investment-report/

Nato leaders including President Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer are meeting to agree a big increase in defence spending, but nearly a third of the alliance’s members have not reached the existing spending target.

The new target will be to spend 5% of the size of their economies, measured by GDP, on “core defence” along with defence-related areas such as security.

But the latest Nato estimates show nine members spent less than the existing target of 2% of GDP.

Trump has been critical of the lowest spender, Spain which he called “notorious” for its “low spending”.

Rachel Ellehuus, director of the defence think tank Rusi sees evidence of a spending split within Nato, along geographical lines.

“It’s the allies who are closer to the threat from Russia in the north and the east of the alliance who are spending more and as we get down to southern allies, the spending tends to go to 2%, if not lower,” she told BBC News.

China’s grip on rare earths — vital for smartphones, EVs and military tech — has left the US, Europe and India vulnerable. Until global supplies increase, Beijing wields great power over the West’s critical industries.

China’s choke hold on rare earths — the minerals essential for electronics, automotive and defense systems — gave it significant leverage over the United States during recent tariff talks in London.

Controlling about 60% of global rare earth production and nearly 90% of refining, China tightened its grip in April by imposing export controls on seven rare earth elements and permanent magnets.

The curbs, partly in response to sky-high tariffs on Chinese exports imposed by US President Donald Trump, exposed US vulnerabilities, as the country lacks domestic refining capacity.

“The whole world economy relies on these magnets from China,” Jost Wübbeke, managing partner at the Berlin-based Sinolytics research house specializing in China, told DW. “If you stop exporting those, it will be felt across the globe.”

The resulting supply chain disruptions have hit American industries hard. US carmaker Ford, for example, announced on June 13 it had been forced to scale back SUV production in Chicago due to shortages, while auto parts suppliers Aptiv and BorgWarner said they were developing motors with minimal or no rare earth content to counter supply constraints.

Michael Dunne, a China-focused automotive consultant, told The New York Times that China’s curbs “could bring America’s automotive assembly plants to a standstill.”

US stocks could run out in months

A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China revealed that 75% of US firms expect their rare earth stocks to be exhausted within three months. US producers urged Washington to negotiate an end to the restrictions, and in London, China has agreed to speed up export license approvals, although a large backlog persists.

It is also unclear whether the deal includes access for US military suppliers, who rely on these minerals for fighter jets and missile systems.

China’s strategic use of rare earths as a geopolitical tool is not new. In 2010, Beijing halted exports to Japan for two months amid a territorial dispute, triggering price spikes and exposing supply chain risks.

Gabriel Wildau, managing director at New York-based CEO advisory firm Teneo, warned that China’s export licensing regime is a permanent fixture, not merely a response to Trump’s tariffs. In a note to clients earlier in June, he wrote that “supply cutoffs will remain an ever-present threat,” signaling China’s intent to maintain leverage over Washington.

European industry also hurt by China’s curbs

The US is not the only country facing a rare earth shortage. The European Union relies on China for 98% of its rare earth magnets needed for auto components, fighter jets and medical imaging devices.

The European Association of Automotive Suppliers warned earlier this month the sector was “already experiencing significant disruption” due to China’s export curbs, adding that they had caused “the shutdown of several production lines and plants across Europe, with further impacts expected in the coming weeks as inventories deplete.”

Alberto Prina Cerai, a research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), told DW that Brussels urgently needed to “buy time.”

“In terms of scale, we [the West] cannot catch up with China,” he warned. “They have an integrated, mine-to-magnet supply chain that is very hard to replicate.” But while a complete decoupling from China is “unthinkable” in the short term, he said the EU should “manage this interdependence with a coherent industrial strategy.”

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, aims to produce 7,000 tons of EU-based magnets by 2030 under the Critical Raw Materials Act, with several mining, refining and recycling projects underway. A huge rare earth processing plant is due to open in Estonia later in the year, and another large facility in southwestern France will be operational in 2026.

After meeting with his Chinese counterpart earlier this month, EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic called China’s curbs “extremely disruptive” to Europe’s auto and industrial sectors. China did propose a “green channel” to expedite license approvals for EU firms, but experts warn approvals could still take up to 45 days.

India cuts exports to boost domestic supply

Despite having the world’s fifth-largest rare earth reserves, at 6.9 million metric tons, India contributes less than 1% of the global supply of rare earths. The South Asian country lacks the refining capacity to process them for use in high-tech applications. India also relies on Chinese exports, which have also faced restrictions.

Although New Delhi has stepped up efforts to diversify its supply through deals with the US, Australia and Central Asian nations, progress has so far been slow.

News agency Reuters reported recently that New Delhi ordered its state-run miner IREL to stop exports of the domestically produced minerals, including to Japan, to safeguard supplies for the country’s producers. In 2024, IREL delivered a third of the 2,900 metric tons of the rare earths it mines to Japan, via a Japanese processing firm.

G7 leaders vow to tackle China disruption

With China’s stranglehold unlikely to be rivaled anytime soon, G7 leaders meeting in Canada on June 15 tentatively agreed on a strategy to anticipate critical rare earth shortages, vowing a joint response to deliberate market disruption, such as China’s, as well as moves to diversify production and supply.

“Recognizing this threat to our economies, as well as various other risks to the resilience of our critical minerals supply chains, we will work together and with partners beyond the G7 to swiftly protect our economic and national security,” the group of advanced economies said in a document called G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan

ISPI’s Prina Cerai told DW that access to rare earths will become more critical for the West as advanced technologies emerge, noting how “robotics and humanoids might be an important market” in the medium term.

Several rivals ramp up rare earth production

After China’s 44 million tons of rare earth deposits, Brazil, India and Australia have the next largest deposits, collectively around 31.3 million tons, according to the US Geological Survey. Around 20 million tons were recently discovered in Kazakhstan.

The US and Australia are the most advanced in ramping up their own rare earth mining and processing output, while other countries’ plans are still in the early to mid-stages, requiring five to 10 years, environmental considerations and billions in investment.

Another future source could be Greenland, despite its harsh weather conditions. The US and EU have already signed cooperation agreements, and in 2023, the Tanbreez Project, in southern Greenland, was ranked as the top rare earth project by mining industry data provider Mining Intelligence, with an estimated 28.2 million tons of minerals.

Reuters reported earlier this month that the US Export-Import Bank was set to approve a loan of up to $120 million (€104 million) to the firm running Tanbreez, in what would be the Trump administration’s first overseas investment in a mining project. Trump has repeatedly threatened to acquire Greenland for US strategic purposes, but the island nation, which is a Danish territory, has rejected the overture.

The EU, meanwhile, has identified 25 of the 34 minerals on its official list of critical raw materials in Greenland, including rare earths, in another sign of Greenland’s increasingly crucial role in the global economy.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-wields-rare-earths-as-a-strategic-weapon/a-72868760

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That’s one way to pop some bubbly.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez celebrated her son Evan’s 19th birthday with a foam party on the billionaire’s superyacht over the weekend — just days before their star-studded wedding.

The tech mogul and his soon-to-be wife were seen flirtatiously dancing in the soapy bubbles aboard the massive floater off the coast of Europe Sunday.

A shirtless Bezos flaunted his muscles as he got handsy with Sánchez, who wore a cheeky pink-and-black string bikini.

The former journalist, 55, and her fiancé, 61, coordinated in hats and sunglasses to protect them from the glaring sun and prying paparazzi.

At one point, the couple wrapped their arms around each other as they swayed and smiled while surrounded by other friends.

Sánchez was also seen sweetly snapping a photo of Bezos on her phone as he played in the suds.

Other pics from the outing showed the Amazon founder and Sánchez cuddled on a lounge chair as Evan and his friends enjoyed the luxurious activities aboard Bezos’ $500 million super yacht dubbed Koru.

The group of pals even gathered on the spanning deck to hit golf balls into the sparkling sea.

Sánchez shares Evan and 17-year-old daughter Ella with ex-husband Patrick Whitesell. The two were married from 2005 to 2019.

The brunette bombshell also co-parents 24-year-old son Nikko with ex Tony Gonzalez.

The mom of three celebrated her middle child’s birthday just days before she and Bezos are expected to say “I do” in a lavish Venetian wedding this week.

Bezos and Sánchez have been spotted showing PDA all over Italy ahead of their impending nuptials.

Page Six exclusively reported that the lovebirds quietly donated to a number of local charities in Venice as part of their wedding planning process.

We’re told they made donations in honor of some of their expected A-list wedding guests like Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Barbara Streisand and Ivanka Trump.

While Bezos and Sánchez have managed to keep their wedding location under wraps, rumors swirled that they could walk down the aisle on his superyacht, the island of San Giorgio and a large exhibition space called Scuola Grande della Misericordia.

They are reportedly sourcing almost all of their wedding goods from Venetian vendors, per the Associated Press, turning to the city’s oldest pastry maker, Rosa Salva, and Murano glass blower Laguna B.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/23/celebrity-news/jeff-bezos-and-lauren-sanchez-throw-lavish-foam-party-on-500m-superyacht-ahead-of-nuptials/

A POLICE sergeant has died after being hit by traffic on a busy freeway, sparking a complete shutdown of all southbound lanes.

The heartbreaking incident occurred early Monday morning as Los Angeles police sergeant Shiou Deng exited his patrol vehicle on Interstate 405 in Brentwood to provide assistance to victims involved in a car crash.

Deng, a 26-year veteran of the force, was walking over to the scene of the two-car crash when he was struck by traffic, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said.

The sergeant was rushed to UCLA Medical Center, where he died from his injuries.

Aerial footage from the crash site showed the airbags deployed in the heavily damaged pick-up truck and dark-colored sedan.

The driver of the pick-up truck died at the scene, authorities said.

A second person involved in the initial crash was transported to a local hospital. Their condition remains unknown.

Photos showed Deng’s patrol car sitting abandoned on the southbound side of traffic.

McDonnell, the LAPD chief, mourned Deng’s death, saying the veteran died a hero.

“He was out there every day caring for the most vulnerable in our society,” McDonnell told reporters outside of UCLA Medical Center.

“When I think about him, he died a hero,” the police chief added, referring to Deng.

McDonnell said Deng spent 17 years on the force’s mental evaluation unit.

Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, ordered the American flags above city buildings to be lowered at half-staff in honor of Deng.

“This is a sad day for our city,” Bass said on an X post.

“The men and women of LAPD put their lives on the line for Angelenos each and every day.

“Sgt. Deng served L.A. for more than 25 years. This morning, I met with officers at the hospital who described him as caring and selfless.

“His last act was one of service – putting the safety and wellbeing of others above all else.”

Officials shut down all traffic on the southbound side of I-405.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14544527/cop-hit-by-traffic-killed-accident-405-freeway/

VLADIMIR Putin could be plotting to exploit the crisis in the Middle East to launch an attack on Europe, a Ukrainian government insider has warned.

The alarm was raised as today Putin became the first world leader to meet the Iranians after US President Donald Trump launched a wave of strikes on the Ayatollah’s nuclear sites.

Russia has warned Trump has opened up a “Pandora’s Box” with his B-2 bomber blitz over the weekend – which Vlad himself slammed as “unprovoked aggression”, despite his own illegal war in Ukraine.

However, a senior Ukrainian insider warned Putin will be rubbing his hands with glee as he plans to exploit the crisis while the West’s eyes are turned to the Middle East.

The cunning tyrant may even attempt to mimic Ukraine’s elaborate Spiderweb operation that blitzed strategic targets inside Russia.

A Ukrainian source told The Sun: “The West should be prepared that the Spiderweb operation may be reconfigured and deployed by Russia as a hybrid attack on any Nato Eastern flank nation.

“That would be the major Article 5 test that the Alliance has not experienced yet.”

Humiliated Putin was left reeling after Ukraine’s spectacular raid that – after 18 months of planning – inflicted billions of pounds worth of damage, leaving his bomber fleet in tatters.

Daring agents smuggled drones and explosives deep inside the sprawling country before unleashing a coordinated assault on June 1.

More than 100 drones were hidden in trucks across Russia before being deployed to five air bases – thousands of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

At least 41 of Putin’s prized aircraft were wrecked in the attack – including Tu-95, Tu-22M3, and Tu-160 bombers and A-50 spy planes.

Delivering such a decisive blow has left Ukraine’s enemy scrambling.

But a Ukrainian government insider has warned it would also have left Putin’s cronies eager to learn from the clandestine operation – and look to mimic it.

The source said it could spell disaster if Vlad uses it as a blueprint to launch an attack on a European country.

They told The Sun: “We have seen how quickly Russia managed to adapt and learn from Ukraine.

“It’s not only Nato states that are learning lessons from Ukraine, it’s the adversaries too.

“There was a time when Russia was two months behind Ukraine in its drone technology, now it is ahead with fibreoptic drones.

“Ukraine is catching up and trying to develop techniques to best tackle those.

“We have already seen Russian espionage and sabotage acts in Europe.

“We can now be almost 100 per cent sure that they have taken on the Spiderweb as an example of something they can mimic in, for example, one of the Baltic states.

“That’s where the attribution of the operation will be very hard to achieve, but the consequences could be quite significant both for the country/countries in question and for the unity of Nato.”

The insider believes conniving Putin could sign off an assault while world leaders grapple with the spiralling conflict in the Middle East.

With the Trump administration turning its sights to Israel and Iran, and security challenges in China, Europe has largely been left to fend for itself.

After more than a week of Israel and Iran trading blows, Trump unleashed bombs on three nuclear sites in Iran – with Tehran threatening to retaliate.

It comes as the EU’s top diplomat warned Moscow has a plan for long-term aggression against Europe.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas last week said Putin’s determination to throw huge sums of money at his military suggests he is scheming to use his armed forces elsewhere.

She pointed to the fact Russia is spending more on defence than the EU’s 27 nations combined.

Megalomanic Putin is set to invest more on defence than his nation’s heath care, education and social policy combined, Kallas said.

She warned lawmakers in Strasbourg, France: “This is a long-term plan for a long-term aggression. You don’t spend that much on military if you do not plan to use it.

“Europe is under attack and our continent sits in a world becoming more dangerous.”

Both Kallas and the Ukrainian source noted a series of acts of sabotage and cyberattacks – including Russian airspace violations and attacks on energy grids, pipelines and undersea cables.

The insider added: “Russia never misses out on devious and cunning techniques. Especially with the upcoming Nato summit.

“During last year’s summit, China was conducting military exercises in Belarus, sending a clear signal.

“Russia may be distraught with the fact that one of its strongest allies in this war against Ukraine is getting bombarded, but at the same time, they may well use the opportunity of Europe being distracted and the US fully withdrawn to conduct a hybrid attack on Europe.”

Acts of sabotage have previously been pegged at attempts to undermine Europe’s support of Ukraine by military officials and experts.

But there are fears Russia could test Nato’s Article 5 security guarantee that pledges an attack on any of the allies would be met with a collective response.

And with no sign of a peace deal being thrashed out between Moscow and Kyiv despite international pleas after more than three years of war, an assault on the EU appears to loom closer.

Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND) Bruno Kahl last week warned against underestimating Russia’s threat to the West.

He told the Table Today podcast: “We are very certain, and we have intelligence evidence for this, that Ukraine is just a step on the path to the West.

“They want to catapult Nato back to the state it was in at the end of the 1990s. They want to kick America out of Europe, and they’ll use any means to achieve that.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14541380/putin-iran-europe-attack-ukraine-warns/

Meta Platforms’ (META.O), WhatsApp messaging service has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to all House staff on Monday.
The notice said the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.”

The memo, from the chief administrative officer, recommended using other messaging apps, including Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O), Teams platform, Amazon.com’s (AMZN.O), Wickr, Signal, and Apple’s (AAPL.O), iMessage and FaceTime.
Meta disagreed with the move “in the strongest possible terms,” a company spokesperson said, noting that the platform provides a higher level of security than the other approved apps.
In January, a WhatsApp official said Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions had targeted scores of its users, including journalists and members of civil society.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/whatsapp-banned-us-house-representatives-devices-memo-2025-06-23/

Satellite images appeared to show scores of trucks lined up at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility just days before the US carried out its large-scale airstrikes — as speculation swirled that Tehran may have been able to move its uranium stockpiles before the attacks.

The images, released by US defense contractor Maxar Technologies, captured more than a dozen cargo-style trucks lined up outside the Fordow nuclear enrichment site’s tunnel entrance on Thursday and Friday.

The vehicles, which came and went over a 24-hour stretch, appeared to move unidentified contents roughly half a mile away, the Free Press reported, citing US officials.

US and Israeli intelligence officials were aware of the movement at the time but opted not to act so they could track where the trucks headed and await President Trump’s order to carry out the strikes, the officials added.

Trump gave the green light to launch 75 precision-guided munitions, including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, against Fordow and two other Iranian nuclear sites early Sunday.

Iranian state media outlets have since claimed that the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz sites were evacuated in the lead up to the strikes.

Iran hasn’t officially disclosed how much damage was sustained in the attack but White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday the Trump administration was “confident” that Tehran’s nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated.”

“We have a high degree of confidence that where those strikes took place is where Iran’s enriched uranium was stored,” she told ABC News.

“The president wouldn’t have launched the strikes if we weren’t confident in that.”

“So this operation was a resounding success and administration officials agree with that, as well as Israel,” she added.

Trump, for his part, hailed the strikes as a “Bullseye!!!”

Satellite imagery appeared to show that the strikes had severely damaged — or destroyed — the Fordow plant and possibly the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed.

“Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!”

Still, US defense officials have said they are working to determine just how much damage the strikes did as speculation mounted that Iran could have shifted uranium from the underground military complex.

“I wish the Israelis had moved quicker to disable Fordow,” David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector, told The Free Press in the wake of the attacks.

“It’s still a mystery exactly what was in those trucks. But any highly enriched uranium at Fordow was likely gone before the attack.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he doubts Iran was able to move anything prior to the attacks but acknowledged “no one will know for sure for days.”

“I doubt they moved it,” he said.

“They can’t move anything right now inside of Iran. I mean, the minute a truck starts driving somewhere, the Israelis have seen it, and they’ve targeted it and taken it out.”

He added that US officials believe a significant amount of Iran’s stockpile of 60% uranium had been located in the Isfahan facility when it was targeted.

“Our assessment is we have to assume that that’s a lot of 60% enriched uranium buried deep under the ground there in Isfahan,” he said.

Rubio didn’t specifically mention Fordow or Natanz but said Iran should now bring its stockpile “out of the ground and turn it over.”

“That really is the key,” Rubio said. “Multiple countries around the world will take it and down blend it. That’s what they should do with that.”

Leavitt, meanwhile, dismissed Iran’s threat of retaliation – insisting the US and the world were safer thanks to Trump’s attack.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/23/world-news/satellite-images-show-trucks-lined-up-at-irans-fordo-nuclear-facility-before-us-air-strikes/

Iran has launched missiles at a US military base in Qatar, in what it said was retaliation for American strikes against its nuclear sites over the weekend.

Witnesses reported hearing loud bangs in the sky above the capital, Doha, while videos showed bright flashes in the sky as air defence systems attempted to intercept missiles.

It is the latest escalation in a conflict involving Iran, Israel and the US which has seen tensions in the Middle East soar to unprecedented levels in recent days.

Here is what we know.

A powerful new telescope in Chile has released its first images, showing off its unprecedented ability to peer into the dark depths of the universe.

In one picture, vast colourful gas and dust clouds swirl in a star-forming region 9,000 light years from Earth.

The Vera C Rubin observatory, home to the world’s most powerful digital camera, promises to transform our understanding of the universe.

If a ninth planet exists in our solar system, scientists say this telescope would find it in its first year.

It should detect killer asteroids in striking distance of Earth and map the Milky Way. It will also answer crucial questions about dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of our universe.

In a press conference on Monday, the observatory revealed that in 10 hours, the telescope detected 2,104 new asteroids and seven space objects close to Earth.

All other space and ground surveys combined usually find about 20,000 asteroids in a year.

This once-in-a-generation moment for astronomy is the start of a continuous 10-year filming of the southern night sky.

“I personally have been working towards this point for about 25 years. For decades we wanted to build this phenomenal facility and to do this type of survey,” says Professor Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland.

The UK is a key partner in the survey and will host data centres to process the extremely detailed snapshots as the telescope sweeps the skies capturing everything in its path.

Vera Rubin could increase the number of known objects in our solar system tenfold.

BBC News visited the Vera Rubin observatory before the release of the images.

It sits on Cerro Pachón, a mountain in the Chilean Andes that hosts several observatories on private land dedicated to space research.

Very high, very dry, and very dark. It is a perfect location to watch the stars.

Maintaining this darkness is sacrosanct. The bus ride up and down the windy road at night must be done cautiously, because full-beam headlights must not be used.

The inside of the observatory is no different.

There is a whole engineering unit dedicated to making sure the dome surrounding the telescope, which opens to the night sky, is dark – turning off rogue LEDs or other stray lights that could interfere with the astronomical light they are capturing from the night sky.

The starlight is “enough” to navigate, commissioning scientist Elana Urbach explains.

One of the observatory’s big goals, she adds, is to “understand the history of the Universe” which means being able to see faint galaxies or supernova explosions that happened “billions of years ago”.

“So, we really need very sharp images,” Elana says.

Each detail of the observatory’s design exhibits similar precision.

It achieves this through its unique three-mirror design. Light enters the telescope from the night sky, hits the primary mirror (8.4m diameter), is reflected onto the secondary mirror (3.4m) back onto a third mirror (4.8m) before entering its camera.

The mirrors must be kept in impeccable condition. Even a speck of dust could alter the image quality.

The high reflectivity and speed of this allow the telescope to capture a lot of light which Guillem Megias, an active optics expert at the observatory, says is “really important” to observe things from “really far away which, in astronomy, means they come from earlier times”.

The camera inside the telescope will repeatedly capture the night sky for ten years, every three days, for a Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

At 1.65m x 3m, it weighs 2,800kg and provides a wide field of view.

It will capture an image roughly every 40 seconds, for about 8-12 hours a night thanks to rapid repositioning of the moving dome and telescope mount.

It has 3,200 megapixels (67 times more than an iPhone 16 Pro camera) and would require 400 Ultra HD TV screens to show a single image.

“When we got the first photo up here, it was a special moment,” Mr Megias said.

“When I first started working with this project, I met someone who had been working on it since 1996. I was born in 1997. It makes you realise this is an endeavour of a generation of astronomers.”

It will be down to hundreds of scientists around the world to analyse the stream of data alerts, which will peak at around 10 million a night.

The survey will work on four areas: mapping changes in the skies or transient objects, the formation of the Milky Way, mapping the Solar System, and understanding dark matter or how the universe formed.

But its biggest power lies in its constancy. It will survey the same areas over and over again, and every time it detects a change, it will alert scientists.

“This transient side is the really new unique thing… That has the potential to show us something that we hadn’t even thought about before,” explains Prof Heymens.

But it could also help protect us by detecting dangerous objects that suddenly stray near Earth, including asteroids like YR4 that scientists briefly worried early this year was on track to smash into our planet.

The camera’s very large mirrors will help scientists detect the faintest of light and distortions emitted from these objects and track them as they speed through space.

“It’s transformative. It’s going be the largest data set we’ve ever had to look at our galaxy with. It will fuel what we do for many, many years,” says Professor Alis Deason at Durham university.

She will receive the images to analyse the boundaries of the stars in the Milky Way.

At the moment she says the furthest reach of most data is about 163,000 light years, but using Vera Rubin, scientists could see as far as 1.2 million light years.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3rmjjgx6xo

In a clearing in a forest, two men stand behind a row of wooden poles that have pictures of faces stuck on top of them.

The portraits include US President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. In front of them hangs the US flag.

The men are wearing camouflage clothing with blue markings – the colour often worn by Ukrainian soldiers to identify them on the battlefield.

“We don’t need allies like you,” one of the men says in Ukrainian, as he sets fire to the flag and portraits.

But this video, shared with thousands of subscribers of a Polish-language Telegram channel, is staged. The uniforms are generic camouflage ones easily bought online, while the Ukrainian words are heavily mispronounced and spoken with a strong Russian accent.

It was shared on the Telegram channel Polska Grupa Informacyjna, one of 22 Polish-language channels, with more than 150,000 subscribers between them, that the BBC has identified as sharing various forms of pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda.

Telegram is not widely used in Poland, but experts say false messages on it are amplified among extremist groups and then spread on to other platforms that have a bigger reach.

The 22 channels largely present themselves as Polish news and information services. Two claim to be “impartial” while one promises “unbiased” news. One channel bills itself as offering “reliable and verified information hidden from the public”, while another has the slogan “we are where the truth is needed”.

Most of them frequently cite or replicate content from Russian state media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, which have been banned in the European Union for manipulating information and spreading propaganda. Poland is a member of the EU.

The channels often quote or link to Russian regime figures and supporters. President Vladimir Putin, deputy head of the national security council Dmitry Medvedev, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Russian propagandist TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and pro-Russian war commentators known as “Z-bloggers” are all cited.

Some posts on these channels include outright false information. For example, an image posted by the channel UKR LEAKS_pl shows figures in military clothing applying fake blood to people and is captioned “how the ‘Bucha victims’ were prepared”, implying that the well-documented killings of hundreds of Ukrainians by Russian forces in 2022 did not happen.

Some channels frequently refer to Ukrainian leaders and soldiers as “Nazis”. In one post, InfoDefensePOLAND called the government in Kyiv a “Nazi regime”, claiming it was “controlled by the United States” and others in the West.

Often a mixture of true and false information is shared, or channels omit crucial information to give a misleading impression. On 17 June, for example, Russia carried out its deadliest attack on Kyiv in months, hitting residential buildings and, according to Ukrainian authorities, killing at least 28 people.

More than half of the channels completely ignored the incident, some of them instead highlighting Russian army advances in Ukraine. A few others, echoing Kremlin narratives, blamed Ukraine for the casualties, claiming Russia’s attacks only targeted military sites.

Bilawal Bhutto warned of war if India denies Pakistan its water share under the Indus Waters Treaty, calling the suspension illegal. He also accused India of using terrorism and FATF pressure for political gains, while stressing the need for dialogue.

Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto on Monday said that Pakistan would go to war if India denies Islamabad its share of water under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

Bilawal, who heads the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), said if India follows through on denying water, “we will have to wage war again.” Speaking in parliament, Bilawal rejected India’s move and threatened retaliation over what he called an illegal suspension of the treaty.

“India has two options: share water fairly, or we will deliver water to us from all six rivers,” he said, referring to the six rivers of the Indus basin. He further added, “The attack on Sindhu (Indus River) and India’s claim that the Indus Water Treaty has ended, and it’s in abeyance. Firstly, this is illegal, as the IWT is not in abeyance, it is binding on Pakistan and India, but the threat of stopping water is illegal according to the UN charter.”

His comments came days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced that India would never restore the 1960 water-sharing agreement, which New Delhi put in abeyance following the April 22 Pahalgam terrorist attack that killed 26 people.

His statement followed a sharp reaction from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, which two days earlier had slammed Shah’s declaration as a “brazen disregard” for international agreements.

However, Bilawal also emphasised dialogue and cooperation and said, “If India and Pakistan refuse to talk, and if there is no coordination on terrorism, then violence will only intensify in both countries,” he said.

He accused India of “weaponising terrorism for political purposes” and claimed that India worked diplomatically to reverse Pakistan’s gains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) front. “At a time when Pakistan had successfully moved from the FATF grey list to the white list, India made every effort to drag us back to the grey list using false narratives and diplomatic pressure,” he alleged.

Source : https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-will-go-to-war-bilawal-bhutto-threatens-india-over-indus-waters-treaty-fatf-2745132-2025-06-23

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands, lifting for now a court order requiring they get a chance to challenge the deportations.

The high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices, issued a scathing dissent.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin suggested third-country deportations could restart soon. “Fire up the deportation planes,” she said in a statement, calling the decision “a victory for the safety and security of the American people.”

But a judge said one deportation flight originally bound for South Sudan wouldn’t be completing the trip right away.

The immigrants on board the May flight were from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba. They had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., and immigration officials said they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.

They face possible “imprisonment, torture and even death,” if sent to South Sudan, said their attorney Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston said a previous order allowing them to bring up those concerns in court remains in force. The immigrants have been diverted to a naval base in Djibouti.

The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.

“The Constitution and Congress have vested authority in the President to enforce immigration laws and remove dangerous aliens from the homeland,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. The Supreme Court’s action “reaffirms the President’s authority to remove criminal illegal aliens from our country and Make America Safe Again.”

In her 19-page dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death” and gives the Trump administration a win despite earlier violating the lower court’s order.

“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote in the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

South Sudan, the world’s newest and one of its poorest countries, has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, and escalating political tensions in the African nation have threatened to devolve into another civil war.

The Justice Department said in court documents that the government is weighing the order to decide its next steps.

The Supreme Court action halts Murphy’s April order giving immigrants a chance to argue deportation to a third country would put them in danger — even if they have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.

He found that the May deportations to South Sudan violated his order and told immigration authorities to allow people to raise those concerns through their lawyers. Immigration officials housed the migrants in a converted shipping container in Djibouti, where they and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions.

The administration has reached agreements with other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica, to house immigrants because some countries do not accept their citizens deported from the U.S. The migrants sent to South Sudan in May got less than 16 hours’ notice, Sotomayor wrote.

The order from Murphy, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, didn’t prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.

Another order in the same case resulted in the Trump administration returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, where he says he had been raped and extorted — the first person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation since the start of Trump’s second term.

The justices confronted a similar issue in Trump’s effort to send Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador with little chance to challenge the deportations in court.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-immigration-trump-south-sudan-c7ffbbcede3158a3352b2dbf4439780a

Parades were held across the world on weekends for Pride month.

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

Source : https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/pride-parade-lgbtq-photos-82991942e77e0850544229945776b004

Professional Bull Riders now has a New York City team

BULL riding is coming to New York City, and it’s more popular than you might expect.

Last year, NYC received a Professional Bull Riders expansion team in the form of the New York Mavericks.

While bull riding might be a foreign concept to many New Yorkers, Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center were packed last season to watch cowboys go to work.

This year, Professional Bull Riders is expecting nothing less, and team general manager Chris Pantani has a simple answer for the turnout:

“Everybody wants to be a cowboy.”

The introduction of the team format in PBR has given the uninformed fan a way to digest bull riding like any other professional sport.

“So it’s the same as any main type sport you look at,” Pantani said.

“It’s just a Western version of that sport. The competition is five on five.

“Think of it as a hockey overtime or a soccer shootout. Away team goes, home team goes. It’s five players compete for an aggregate score.

“So you have games, you have practices, you have standings, you have world champions, everything is just like a regular or mainstream type sport.

“So fans can follow. So you don’t need an endemic fan to really follow the sport.

“You can relax, enjoy with your family, look up and you can see a score. And it’s two separate dugouts.

“The teams are separated on the arena so you can actually follow and see what’s going to happen at the same time.”

PBR hosts an annual event at Madison Square Garden, but the team event at Barclays was the first time the sport made it to Long Island.

That will continue this year at UBS Arena, where the Mavericks will host the team series from September 18-20.

Fans are expected to turn out in droves for this event, embracing cowboy culture hundreds of miles away from the south.

Pantani labels this as the “Yellowstone effect,” referencing the popular Paramount+ TV series.

People around the country are interested in southern culture, and it has shown in attendance and interest in PBR in recent years.

According to PBR, ticket sales increased by 23 percent between 2022 and 2023.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/sport/14507538/professional-bull-riders-rising-new-york-mavericks-popularity/

FRED Smith, the billionaire founder of revolutionary delivery firm FedEx, has died at the age of 80.

FedEx started up in in 1973 delivering small parcels and documents more quickly than the postal service.

Smith oversaw its growth to a behemoth of the industry, relied upon by other companies all over the world.

The business now delivers a staggering 17million parcels every day.

His cause of death is yet to be confirmed.

After Smith graduated Yale University, he used a business theory he developed in college to create a delivery system.

His approach became known as a “hub and spokes” system, and was based on coordinated air cargo flights centered around a main hub.

At the start, FedEx had 14 small aircraft operating out of the Memphis International Airport flying packages to 25 American cities.

Smith, worth $5.3billion at his death according to Forbes, was also known for his philanthropy.

He stepped down as FedEx’s CEO in 2022, but remained at the helm as executive chairman.

Memphis’s former mayor Jim Strickland hailed him as “the most significant Memphian in history”.

Strickland said: “He benefited our city in every way possible and allowed generations of Memphians to achieve the American dream.

“God bless Fred Smith. My condolences to the Smith family.”

He donated millions of dollars to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation – after serving for four years in the Marine Corps himself.

In an 2023 interview, he said that all the experience he used to run FedEx came from his experience in the Marines, not what he learned at Yale.

Politicians and commercial figures have paid tribute to the legendary businessman.

Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn said: “I am deeply saddened by the passing of Fred Smith.

“As the founder of FedEx, his leadership and innovation transformed global commerce, and he will be remembered for his relentless drive, patriotism, and commitment to service.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14535092/billionaire-fedex-founder-fred-smith-dies/

Iran’s president has said his country has to respond following US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites. The US called operation “Midnight Hammer” an “overwhelming success.” Follow DW for more.

IAEA head warns of ‘unthinkable levels’ of destruction if diplomacy fails
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi has appealed to all parties involved to return to dialogue and diplomacy.

“If that window closes, violence and destruction could reach unthinkable levels, and the global non-proliferation regime as we know it could crumble and fall,” he told the UN Security Council emergency meeting.

He said it hasn’t been possible to assess the damage at the Fordo facility, although craters were visible at the well-fortified underground uranium enrichment facility.

Grossi said the entrances to tunnels in Isfahan that had apparently been used to store enriched material had been hit, as well as a fuel enrichment facility in Natanz.

Iran informed the agency that there was no increase in radiation outside the three facilities, Grossi told the council.

What’s the significance of the Strait of Hormuz?
The conflict has put renewed focus on security in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran reportedly considering blocking it after the US strikes on its nuclear sites.

The key waterway lies between Oman and Iran, and connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/iran-says-us-must-receive-a-response-to-strikes/live-72996785

Israel said its carrying out strikes inside Iran with ‘unprecedented intensity,’ destroying numerous security offices and damaging the gate at Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison. DW has the latest.

Trump ‘still interested’ in Iran diplomacy, White House says

US President Donald Trump is reportedly still open to diplomacy with Iran following strikes carried out by US bombers over the weekend, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“If the Iranian regime refuses to come to a peaceful diplomatic solution, which the president is still interested in and engaging in, by the way, why shouldn’t the Iranian people take away the power of this incredibly violent regime that has been suppressing them for decades?” Leavitt said on Fox News.

Trump earlier in the day suggested regime change if the Iranian government cannot “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Many of Trump’s supporters and allies are opposed to the US getting involved in another war for regime change in the Middle East, some two decades after toppling Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq.

Germany’s CDU says supports US attacks despite foreign minister’s comment

A top figure in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said on Monday that his party supported the attacks on Iran by Israel and the US

The remarks came after after Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, from the same party, called the US actions “unfortunate.”

In an interview with public-service broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Wadephul said, “Unfortunately, there has now been this military action, which the US seemed to feel was necessary.”

The CDU’s general secretary, Carsten Linnemann, said the German government’s support for the attacks did not contradict Wadephul’s statements.

“There is no contradiction in, on the one hand, working toward a diplomatic resolution and, on the other, supporting these military strikes by the US and Israel — and that is precisely what this government does,” he said. “That is why I consider the actions by the Americans in this regard as right.”

He added that “the mullah regime [in Iran] has suffused this world with terror for 40 years.”

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/israel-strikes-irans-evin-prison-in-tehran/live-73001224

Experts say that influencer content might help China humanise its global image – but overly positive portrayals risk online backlash.

Street food, spontaneous dances with aunties, and marvelling at the convenience of high-speed trains and sleek electric vehicles.

These are some of the scenes of China being captured by foreign influencers on social media.

As part of efforts to rebrand itself on the world stage, Beijing is inviting young global influencers on an all-expenses-paid 10-day trip to China this July. There, they will collaborate with local content creators, immerse themselves in Chinese culture, and showcase the “real China” to their followers.

Recruiting influencers from around the world – able to engage audiences in more authentic ways – may do more for China’s soft power campaign than diplomats, or even cuddly pandas, say analysts.

“Their perceived independence and relatability may help present a more grassroots and humanised portrayal of China – one that resonates more with global audiences than messages delivered by state media, diplomats, or elite commentators,” said Dr Li Mei, a media and communications lecturer specialising in China at the University of Sydney.

Influencers are often seen as “genuine individuals rather than agents of political messaging”, she said, adding that “this higher level of trust makes influencers a more credible source of information and cultural exchange”.

“This influencer strategy … (is) to a large degree more effective than what we call panda diplomacy,” said Cheng Mingming, a professor in digital marketing at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

“They might be invited by the Chinese government … but content is generated by them, not the government so it’s different,” he added.

Cheng also noted that the Chinese government wants outsiders to know that “China is developing rapidly, is actually a safe place to travel and is also enjoying really great economic growth”.

At a regular press conference on Jun 12, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian shared a message: “A true China with its multiple facets and dimensions is being discovered by more and more people around the world.”

“We will open wider, broaden our vision of innovation, and deepen cooperation to share more opportunities and benefits with the rest of the world, and let people all over the world see and experience an ever-cooler China,” he added.

SUCCESS OF ISHOWSPEED
One recent example of influencer power in action is US content creator IShowSpeed, who travelled to China for a 10-day visit in April.

With a combined social media following of more than 120 million followers across various platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, IShowSpeed’s visit was hailed as a major win for promoting Chinese soft power, sparking widespread curiosity among fans about developments in the country.

His videos and livestreams of travels across major cities like Chongqing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing – where he marvelled at Chinese high-speed trains and technology, used Chinese digital payment apps and test drove cutting-edge electric vehicles – have amassed millions of views on average and also turned him into a social media sensation within China.

“The stuff he shows is actually pretty real – street food, random aunties dragging him into dancing, super chill vibes at night in big cities like Shanghai or Chengdu – that’s just how it is,” wrote a YouTube fan in a comment that drew hundreds of likes.

“I get why people are debating whether his videos are ‘Chinese propaganda’ or whatever but from my perspective, it’s just a dude reacting to a place that is actually pretty safe, modern and fun to explore.”

“It’s surely not the full picture of China but it’s definitely not fake either … he’s showing a side of China that’s real for a lot of us living here.”

“His streams changed my perspective,” wrote one Reddit user in a thread discussing the 20-year-old influencer’s global adventures.

“Speed has no agenda, (he’s) just someone who wants to explore the world, learn new cultures and meet new people. He should win a Nobel peace prize for his trip to China,” said another.

“IShowSpeed was not the first Western influencer to visit China but his trip was arguably one of the most prominent, particularly among Gen Z audiences,” Dr Li said, adding that his visit “certainly opened an additional window through which international audiences could observe everyday life in China”.

“This kind of exposure provides an alternative narrative to the dominant portrayals often portrayed in mainstream Western media coverage of China, which tends to focus on themes such as censorship, lack of freedom or geopolitical tensions,” she said.

“Influencers offer a more informal, personal and relatable lens – showcasing aspects of Chinese society that are frequently overlooked and glimpses of daily life that suggest normalcy, dynamism and even modernity.”

Cheng said IShowSpeed’s China content had a significant impact on his followers but remained sceptical about its long-term impact on views towards the country.

“It raised awareness but whether (it will) change perceptions and behaviours, we just can’t verify that at this stage.”

EXCLUSIVE ACCESS
Following the global attention generated by IShowSpeed’s visit, China is now inviting young foreign influencers on paid trips to the country.

The “China-Global Youth Influencer Exchange Programme”, co-organised by the Secretariat of the World Youth Development Forum (WYDF) and state-backed Beijing Youth Daily, has been promoted actively across state media channels and social platforms.

The trip is expected to kick off on Jul 14 and influencers will get to visit various tech giant headquarters across the country, such as Xiaohongshu’s office in Shanghai.

They will observe tech demos by innovation firms in Shenzhen and livestream videos from locations like the Great Wall of China.

They will also have a hand at practising traditional taichi in the city of Handan in Hebei province, known for its history and cultural sights.

However, a few conditions must first be met.

Influencers must be 35 years old or younger and have a sizable online following of at least 300,000 followers across different social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X.

College Daily, an online publication targeted at Chinese students studying in the US, said applicants should love Chinese culture and have “no history of bad behaviour”.

Selected influencers will get to work with 10 Chinese influencers, each with more than 1 million followers on popular Chinese social media apps like Xiaohongshu and Douyin.

During the trip, at least two short-form videos must be published, along with a collaborative highlight reel involving Chinese creators.

“From entertainment to culture”, there are no restrictions on the type of content, the ad said, adding that all creators “regardless of style” were welcomed.

Beyond the appeal of a 10-day all-expenses-paid trip, a major draw for young influencers would be “exclusive access” to events and restricted areas typically off-limits to tourists, said Cheng.

“If you’re invited (to China) by the Chinese government, you’re going to have exclusive access to things that others will not have,” he said. “You’ll (be able to) see things that go on behind the scenes.”

“The Chinese market is a powerful draw,” added Dr Li.

“With its massive population and highly active digital media users, China presents huge opportunities for influencers looking to grow their reach,” she said.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-global-us-influencers-soft-power-5191976

Justin Bieber shared a cryptic message about receiving the “silent treatment” after Hailey Bieber stepped out without her wedding ring while in New York City.

The “Peaches” singer took to his Instagram Stories Sunday to repost a video of a content creator saying, “Bitch, if you’re giving me the silent treatment at least tell me why.

“I have anxiety and I have overthinking. Left and right, they go hand-in-hand. If you give me any room for error, there will be error.”

Reps for Justin, 31, weren’t immediately available to Page Six for comment.

Hailey, meanwhile, was photographed sans her massive, pricey diamond ring multiple times while out in the Big Apple on Thursday.

The Rhode founder, 28, first appeared without the ring while dining at The Commerce Inn in the West Village for breakfast.

Later that day, she also ditched the statement piece while dining with fellow models Suki Waterhouse and Camila Morrone at Chez Fifi.

Hailey and Justin, however, have dodged split rumors for years since they got married in 2018.

Most recently, the couple sparked concern over their union when the businesswoman unfollowed the two-time Grammy winner via Instagram in March.

At the time, the beauty mogul claimed that it was due to a glitch after Justin reactivated his account.

Hailey addressed breakup rumors, and slammed “bitches” who won’t “move on” in her May cover story for Vogue.

“Well, I thought seven years in it would’ve [died down] already, and it hasn’t,” she told the outlet.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/06/22/celebrity-news/justin-bieber-shares-cryptic-post-about-silent-treatment-after-hailey-ditches-ring/

Pakistan condemned on Sunday the strikes ordered on its neighbour Iran by Donald Trump, a day after Islamabad had said it would nominate the U.S. President for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pakistan on Sunday said Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities violated international law and that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the Iran crisis.

“The unprecedented escalation of tension and violence, owing to ongoing aggression against Iran is deeply disturbing. Any further escalation of tensions will have severely damaging implications for the region and beyond,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Also on Sunday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif telephoned Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and “conveyed Pakistan’s condemnation of the U.S. attacks,” a statement from the Pakistani leader said.
Pakistan’s information minister and the foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the apparent contradiction in the country’s positions over the weekend.
In Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, thousands marched in protest against the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
A large American flag with a picture of Trump on it was placed on the road for demonstrators to walk over. The protesters shouted out chants against America, Israel and Pakistan’s regional enemy India.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-condemns-trumps-bombing-iran-day-after-nominating-him-peace-prize-2025-06-22/

A local boat captain has spoken out about the severity and rarity of the conditions

AT least six people have been confirmed dead and two others missing after a boat capsized during a storm on Lake Tahoe.

A group of 10 people took to the lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on Saturday afternoon.

Reports of a capsized vessel and all passengers being in the water near D.L. Bliss State Park were received by the US Coast Guard at around 3pm.

Officials have confirmed that of the 10 passengers on board, six have died, two are being treated in hospital, and another two are missing.

A search for survivors is ongoing and the identities of those dead and missing have not yet been released.

Those who died are all adults, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

A seasonal lifeguard and a park ranger who responded to the emergency call were able to get the two survivors onto nearby rocks where they performed CPR, South Tahoe Now reported.

Despite swimming to assist a third person in the water, they were pronounced dead after being pulled onto the Coast Guard boat which took them to an awaiting EMS team on Lester Beach.

The 27-foot vessel is believed to have flipped after storms caused a large swell and eight to 10-foot waves that battered the boat.

Witnesses told the local news outlet that weather conditions abruptly changed on the lake as strong winds “suddenly came from the north, creating eight to ten-foot troughs”.

Experienced boat captain Joby Cefalu said such conditions on the lake are “worse than 30-foot waves on the sea” and that it was an incredibly rare event for the summer.

Footage shared by the news outlet shows the usually-tranquil lake being buffeted by strong winds causing continuous waves to crash into and violently rock the vessels on the water.

After hours of clear blue skies, the sky grew dark and a storm whipped up with even snow reported in the area, until sunny and clear conditions returned just an hour later, per ALERTCalifornia.

CBS News reported 45 mph winds over the lake at the time of the incident.

“It was a very, very tragic day on Lake Tahoe,” Cefalu said.

In response to a statement by the Sheriff’s Office, one local who filmed the violent waves on the lake said “it was crazy”.

“You could have a life vest on and still no make it,” another added.

“Eight foot waves make it hard to spot you and Lake Tahoe is hypothermic year round.”

“At approximately 3 p.m., a response crew from Coast Guard Station Lake Tahoe diverted to assist California State Parks and the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office after receiving a report of 10 people in the water,” the US Coast Guard said in a press release.

“The individuals were aboard a 27-foot gold Chris-Craft vessel that reportedly capsized due to a large swell.

“Weather was reported to be 30 knot winds and 6-8 foot swell.”

“Six people are reported deceased, two people were brought to a local hospital, and the search for two missing people is still ongoing,” it added.

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the fatalities and injuries just after 10 pm local time and added that the search for those still missing would resume on Sunday morning.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/14535672/boat-capsizes-lake-tahoe-accident-storm-dead-missing/

It was an unprecedented attack years in the making, with some last-minute misdirection meant to give the operation a powerful element of surprise.

U.S. pilots dropped 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran, delivering what American military leaders believe is a knockout blow to a nuclear program that Israel views as an existential threat and has been pummeling for more than a week. American sailors bolstered the surprise mission by firing dozens of cruise missiles from a submarine toward at least one other site.

Dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, U.S. officials say the plan was characterized by a “precision strike” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program,” even as they acknowledged an assessment was ongoing. For its part, Iran denied that any significant damage had been done, and the Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate.

Taking off from the U.S. heartland, B-2 stealth bombers delivered a total of 420,000 pounds of explosives, aided by an armada of refueling tankers and fighter jets — some of which launched their own weapons. U.S. officials said Iran neither detected the inbound fusillade, nor mustered a shot at the stealthy American jets.

The operation relied on a series of deceptive tactics and decoys to maintain the secrecy, U.S. officials said hours after the attack, which was preceded by nine days of Israeli attacks that debilitated Iran’s military leadership and air defenses.

A decoy plan

Even before the planes took off, elements of misdirection were already in play. After setting parts of the plan in motion, Trump publicly announced Thursday that he’d make a decision within two weeks on whether to strike Iran — ostensibly to allow additional time for negotiations, but in actuality masking the impending attack.

One group of B-2 stealth bombers traveled west from Missouri on Saturday as decoys, drawing the attention of amateur plane spotters, government officials and some media as they headed toward a U.S. air base in the Pacific. At the same time, seven other B-2s carrying two “bunker buster” bombs apiece flew eastward, keeping communications to a minimum so as not to draw any attention.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Sunday’s briefing that it was all “part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise” and that only “an extremely small number of planners and key leaders” knew about it in Washington and Florida, where U.S. Central Command is based.

After 18 hours of furtive flying that required aerial refueling, the armed B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, arrived on time and without detection in the Eastern Mediterranean, from where they launched their attack runs. Before crossing into Iran, the B-2s were escorted by stealthy U.S. fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft.

A graphic released by the Pentagon showed the flight route as passing over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. It was unclear whether those countries were notified of the U.S. overflight in advance. Most U.S. lawmakers were also kept in the dark, with some Republicans saying they were provided a brief heads-up by the White House before the strike.

“Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Sunday.

A multifaceted attack

About an hour before the B-2s entered Iran, Caine said that a U.S. submarine in the region launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against key targets, including a site in Isfahan where uranium is prepared for enrichment.

As the U.S. bombers approached their targets, they watched out for Iranian fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles, but encountered none.

At 6:40 p.m. in Washington and 2:10 a.m. in Tehran, the first B-2 bomber dropped its pair of GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrators on the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant. It was the first time these so-called “bunker busters” had ever been used in combat. Each 30,000-pound bomb is designed to burrow into the ground before detonating a massive warhead.

The Fordo site received the bulk of the bombardment, though a couple of the enormous bombs were also dropped on a uranium enrichment site at Natanz.

The U.S. bombs fell for about half an hour, with cruise missiles fired from submarines being the last American weapons to hit their targets, which included a third nuclear site at Isfahan, Caine said.

Both Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the sites.

A look at the numbers

The mission included:

— 75 precision-guided weapons: these included 14 GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs deployed by the seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and more than two-dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a U.S. submarine.

— 125 aircraft, including the B-2 bombers, fighter jets and refueling planes.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/iran-fordo-us-strike-trump-israel-nuclear-sites-320a85327f94ed7496f09564261f3148

President Donald Trump’s order to “obliterate” Iranian nuclear-weapons sites just made the whole world a lot safer — not only because he kept a maniacal regime from acquiring nukes, but because other nations must now think twice before defying the United States.

“American deterrence is back,” proclaimed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “When this president speaks, the world should listen” — because the US military “can back it up.”

And, indeed, US military might is a thing to behold.

What a refreshing change from the Obama and Biden years.

Time and again, President Joe Biden issued a toothless, finger-wagging “Don’t” — only for his targets to laugh and do as they pleased anyway, knowing that America’s adversaries would face no real consequences.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Biden threatened any “hostile actor thinking about attacking Israel” after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023; Hezbollah and the Houthis struck the Jewish state anyway.

Last year he told Iran “don’t” after it threatened to attack Israel; Tehran responded by launching hundreds of missiles at Israeli targets.

Biden warned Vladimir Putin of “severe consequences” for invading Ukraine; Putin went ahead.

Even after Iranian-backed militants killed three US soldiers and injured 30 others in Jordan last year, Biden’s response was all but nonexistent.

Joe earned the world’s contempt his first year in office with his disastrous Afghan withdrawal, and kept on earning it by repeatedly hesitating in getting Ukraine the arms it needed to do more than slow the Russian onslaught.

President Barack Obama was no better. Recall his “red line” on Syria’s use of chemical weapons? When Bashar al-Assad used them anyway, Obama set off on an elaborate dance to not follow through — even facilitating Moscow’s return to being a Mideast player when Putin offered face-saving cover for Bam’s back-down.

Obama’s answer to Iran’s nukes was to hand the regime billions in exchange for promises to delay gaining them, a deal Tehran quickly violated.

The Obama crew confused America’s enemies with its friends; Biden was just confused — but each opened to door to chaos with bumbling that led to the rise of ISIS and Putin’s first grab of Ukrainian territory on Bam’s watch, then the latest Ukraine war plus the Middle East in flames after Joe took over.

Yes, Trump prefers diplomacy, even to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

But he also warned that no deal meant “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” — and now has proved that his words aren’t empty threats.

And just as Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and other malign actors saw Biden’s Afghan bugout as a US retreat and a license for belligerence, they heard the rumble of Trump’s massive bunker-buster bombs Saturday — and the message they sent about America’s new resolve.

It’s true that Trump strongly prefers peace and is reluctant to use military power, but he’s now proved beyond a doubt that he will use it — and to overwhelming effect — when necessary.

Plus, US deception and strategic misdirection in advance of Saturday’s strikes now make it clear that Trump’s trademark ambiguity is reason for the other guys to worry about what he might do.

America is well-served by that “unpredictability,” even as it was ill-served by Obama and Biden’s predictable weakness.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/22/opinion/finally-a-prez-who-understands-peace-through-strength-just-made-the-world-safer/

At least 22 people have been killed and 63 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack at a church in Damascus, Syria’s health ministry has said.

A man opened fire with a weapon at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias in the Dweila neighbourhood during a service on Sunday evening before detonating an explosive vest, according to the interior ministry.

It said the attacker was affiliated with the jihadist group Islamic State (IS). There was no immediate claim from the group itself.

Photos and video from inside the church showed a heavily damaged altar, pews covered in broken glass and blood spattered across the walls.

Witness Lawrence Maamari told AFP news agency that “someone entered [the church] from outside carrying a weapon” and began shooting. People “tried to stop him before he blew himself up”, he added.

Another man who was in a nearby shop said he heard gunfire followed by an explosion that sent glass flying. “We saw fire in the church and the remains of wooden benches thrown all the way to the entrance,” Ziad said.

It was the first such attack in Damascus since Islamist-led rebel forces overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch said in a statement: “The treacherous hand of evil struck this evening, claiming our lives, along with the lives of our loved ones who fell today as martyrs during the evening divine liturgy.”

According to initial information, the bomb blast occurred at the entrance to the church, resulting in the deaths of people who were both inside the building and in the immediate vicinity, it added.

The patriarchate called upon Syria’s interim authorities to “assume full responsibility for what has happened and continues to happen in terms of violation against the sanctity of churches, and to ensure the protection of all citizens”.

Interior Minister Anas Khattab said specialised teams from his ministry had begun investigating the circumstances of what he called a “reprehensible crime”.

“These terrorist acts will not stop the efforts of the Syrian state in achieving civil peace,” he added.

The office of UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, condemned the attack and urged Syrians “to unite in rejecting terrorism, extremism, incitement and the targeting of any community”.

US special envoy Tom Barrack said: “These terrible acts of cowardice have no place in the new tapestry of integrated tolerance and inclusion that Syrians are weaving.”

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa – whose Sunni Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is a former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria and is designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US and UK – has repeatedly promised to protect religious and ethnic minorities. However, Syria has been rocked by two waves of deadly sectarian violence in recent months.

IS has frequently targeted Christians and other religious minorities in Syria.

In 2016, the group claimed a series of blasts near the Shia Muslim Sayyida Zeinab shrine in a southern suburb of Damascus, which killed more than 70 people.

IS once held 88,000 sq km (34,000 sq miles) of territory stretching from western Syria to eastern Iraq and imposed its brutal rule on almost eight million people.

Despite the group’s military defeat in Syria in 2019, the UN has warned that the threat posed by IS and its affiliates remains high.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c307n9p43z9o

U.S. officials proposed Monday to protect the pangolin, a small, nocturnal mammal covered in scales, under the Endangered Species Act.

The pangolin is “the most trafficked mammal in the world” in large part for its scales, used in traditional Chinese medicine, and meat, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking to add protections for four species of the pangolin native to Asia — including the Chinese, Indian, Sunda and Philippine pangolin — and three species native to Africa, including the white-bellied, black-bellied and giant pangolin. Seven species are in danger of extinction, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

An eighth species from Africa, the Temminck’s ground pangolin, is already protected by the law. Scientists also say two more species of the mammal may exist.

The protections were signed into law in 1973 with bipartisan support and are key for preserving global biodiversity and keeping iconic types of plants and animals, such as the bald eagle, from dying out. The Endangered Species Act protects over 2,000 U.S. and foreign species.

Conservation and environmental groups say habitat loss from climate change is just one reason the act is especially critical today.

The endangerment listing, once finalized, would help strengthen trade and import restrictions of pangolin parts in the U.S., except in the case of scientific or other conservation purposes, according to the Center.

It is illegal to trade them; the pangolin received certain commercial trade protections under the 2017 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. But tons of poached scales representing thousands of pangolin have been found by authorities around the world in recent years.

“I’m delighted the United States is doing its part to save these adorably odd creatures,” Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Pangolins are on the razor’s edge of extinction, and we need to completely shut down any U.S. market for their scales. There’s no good reason for anybody to ingest any part of a pangolin.”

The pangolin eats insects and rolls into a ball when threatened by predators. The Fish and Wildlife Service said pangolin populations have declined due to targeting by poachers and criminal activity, noting “proceeds from the illicit sale of pangolins and other imperiled species often fund serious crimes, including drug and arms trafficking.”

While the act requires endangered species listing regardless of their origin, the designation could also assist in prosecuting smugglers violating the protections.

Advocates, including from the International Fund for Animal Welfare and other national and international groups, have for years petitioned to list the pangolin. In 2020, these organizations and the Fish and Wildlife Service signed an agreement to enforce listing deadlines.

Polar bears, as well as penguins — similarly not found in the U.S. — have also been in discussions for listing over the years.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/pangolin-endangered-species-wildlife-service-7e74f6b423a76a8b12495ea258ed27fd

President Trump caught the world off-guard Saturday by bombing three Iranian nuclear sites — after his apparently strategic deception indicating that such strikes weren’t imminent and trickery with the deployment of US Air Force B-2 bombers.

Trump said Thursday he would make a decision in the “next two weeks” to allow more time for negotiations, giving the sense of reprieve amid fevered speculation he might join Israel’s airstrikes.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Trump said in a statement just two days before the unprecedented US attack.

The timing was stunning in part because six B-2 stealth bombers capable of carrying 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs had been tracked leaving Missouri early Saturday — and were likely incapable of reaching Iran until late Sunday, according to published flight times.

The B-2 is believed to be the main type of plane capable of delivering 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs capable of obliterating underground facilities.

Israel lacked the planes needed to drop the heavy bombs and since last Thursday had been dropping less-powerful 2,000-pound bombs.

Trump announced the attack shortly after returning to the White House from his golf resort in Bedminster, NJ — a trip in which he suspiciously took no reporter questions.

“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space,” Trump wrote.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/trumps-iran-attack-catches-world-off-guard-after-fakeouts-with-b-2-flights-and-two-weeks-timeframe/

A birthday celebration ended in chaos when a luxury New York city party Yacht packed with nearly 400 people slammed into a Hudson River pier Saturday afternoon, injuring dozens of passengers, according to officials and law enforcement sources.

The Timeless was attempting to dock around 4:18 p.m. when a line snapped, causing it to collide with the pier at West 125th Street and the Henry Hudson Parkways, officials and sources told The Post.

“The boat was supposed to let us off at 4, so everybody was in the area where you can depart from the boat,” said Zytin King, a lifelong New Yorker who was celebrating her 69th birthday on board the vessel with loved ones – a tradition they’ve honored for 20 years.

“Some people are coming down the stairs and the boat just ran into the dock. And so they fell, there was no support, nothing for them to grab onto. Some people fell inside of the boat. A lot of people were hurt really badly.”

About 35 people suffered minor injuries, with 23 transported to area hospitals for additional evaluation, fire officials said.

No one was thrown overboard, a source added.

“I fell onto my mother when the boat crashed,” one of King’s relatives said.

“It all happened so fast.”

The 352 passengers and crew aboard were escorted – some in wheelchairs – off the yacht following the collision.

“I heard people going to the ambulance saying, we are hurt, but we had a good time,” said Delores Mitchell, 69, who was overseeing the boat’s catering.

Despite the scare, King plans to keep the party going in Harlem, adding that she feels blessed no one was seriously hurt in the crash.

“The DJ is over there already,” King, a party promoter, told The Post.

“We were blessed because people were standing along the side of the boat so when it hit, they could have gone over, but they didn’t.”

The three-story vessel, the largest within the Empire Cruises’s charter fleet, is equipped with three bars, a climate controlled indoor seating area that holds up to 550 passengers for trips along the Hudson River, according to its website.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/nyc-boat-carrying-hundreds-smashes-into-hudson-river-pier/

Pakistan has announced it plans to nominate US President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, citing the role that Islamabad says he played in helping to negotiate a ceasefire last month between India and Pakistan.

On X, the Pakistani government said Trump deserved the award “in recognition of his decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis”.

India has denied the US served as a mediator to end the fighting last month, and says it does not want any diplomatic intervention from a third party.

Trump has often suggested he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize, whose winner this year will be named in October.

In May, Trump made a surprise announcement of a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following four days of fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Pakistan’s government said in its post early on Saturday: “President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation.

“This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker.”

There was no immediate response from Washington or New Delhi.

Trump has repeatedly said that India and Pakistan ended the conflict after a ceasefire brokered by the US, and also that he had used trade as a lever to make them agree.

Pakistan has corroborated US statements about brokering the ceasefire, but India has denied it.

Last month, Trump said he told India and Pakistan that a ceasefire was necessary in order for them to maintain trade with the US.

“I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys [India and Pakistan]. Let’s stop it,” he told reporters.

The Nobel move was applauded by Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the Senate Defence Committee in Pakistan’s parliament.

“Trump is good for Pakistan,” he told Reuters. “If this panders to Trump’s ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time.”

But Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, criticised the move as “unfortunate”.

“A man who has backed Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and called Israel’s attack on Iran as ‘excellent’,” she wrote on X.

“It compromises our national dignity,” she added.

On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had helped broker negotiations between multiple nations, but despite this: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do.”

Trump entered office vowing to quickly end the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars, although peace deals in both conflicts have eluded him so far.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyx5yw8y28o

A photo of the Prince of Wales with another generation – this time of puppies – has been posted on social media by Kensington Palace to mark his 43rd birthday.

The picture, taken by the Princess of Wales, shows Prince William with their family’s Cocker spaniel, Orla, and three of her four recently-arrived puppies.

The message for Prince William was signed online “with love”, with the initials of Catherine and their children, George, Charlotte, Louis, and “the puppies”, plus a paw print emoji.

The picture was taken in Windsor earlier this month.

There was also a message online for Prince William from the official account of the Royal Family, saying “Happy Birthday to The Prince of Wales!”, plus some celebratory emojis.

An accompanying picture, of the prince sitting on a stone wall, was taken while he visited farmers and food producers on the Duchy of Cornwall – a parcel of land William now owns – in May.

Orla was given to the royal couple by Catherine’s brother, James Middleton, in 2020, shortly after the death of their previous dog Lupo.

The dog – seen walking behind William in the picture – gave birth to four puppies in May.

Spaniels are well known for their affectionate behaviour and the picture shows the puppies clambering around the prince.

In the puppy picture, the prince looks relaxed in a pair of jeans and trainers – an informal moment after recent showcase occasions, including Trooping the Colour and the Order of the Garter procession.

He also visited a project linked to his Earthshot environmental prize which creates a type of sustainable dye that can reduce the fashion industry’s use of harmful chemicals – so colours can really be green.

Catherine did not appear at Royal Ascot earlier this week, with royal aides saying she had to find a balance in how she returned to public events. In January, the princess revealed she was in remission after her cancer diagnosis last year.

On Friday, she sent out a message about her support for children’s hospices – saying they helped families who were “heartbroken, fearful of the future and often desperately isolated”.

And now her photo has marked her husband’s birthday.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk645er1kpo

In the winter of 1956, The Times correspondent David Holden arrived on the island of Bahrain, then still a British protectorate.

After a short-lived career teaching geography, Holden had looked forward to his Arabian posting, but he hadn’t expected to be attending a garden durbar in honour of Queen Victoria’s appointment as Empress of India.

Everywhere that he went in the Gulf – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman – he found expected traces of British India.

“The Raj maintains here a slightly phantasmal sway,” wrote Holden, “a situation rich in anomaly and anachronism… The servants are all bearers, the laundryman a dhobi, and the watchman a chowkidar,” he wrote, “and on Sundays the guests are confronted with the ancient, and agreeable, Anglo-Indian ritual of a mountainous curry lunch.”

The Sultan of Oman, educated in Rajasthan, was more fluent in Urdu than Arabic, while soldiers in the nearby state of Qu’aiti, now eastern Yemen, marched around in now-defunct Hyderabadi army uniforms.

In the words of the governor of Aden himself:

“One had an extraordinarily powerful impression that all the clocks here had stopped seventy years ago; that the Raj was at its height, Victoria on the throne, Gilbert and Sullivan a fresh and revolutionary phenomenon, and Kipling a dangerous debunker, so strong was the link from Delhi via Hyderabad to the South Arabian shore.”

Although largely forgotten today, in the early 20th Century, nearly a third of the Arabian Peninsula was ruled as part of the British Indian Empire.

From Aden to Kuwait, a crescent of Arabian protectorates was governed from Delhi, overseen by the Indian Political Service, policed by Indian troops, and answerable to the Viceroy of India.

Under the Interpretation Act of 1889, these protectorates had all legally been considered part of India.

The standard list of India’s semi-independent princely states like Jaipur opened alphabetically with Abu Dhabi, and the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, even suggested that Oman should be treated “as much a Native State of the Indian Empire as Lus Beyla or Kelat [present day Balochistan]”.

Indian passports were issued as far west as Aden in modern Yemen, which functioned as India’s westernmost port and was administered as part of Bombay Province. When Mahatma Gandhi visited the city in 1931, he found many young Arabs identifying as Indian nationalists.

Even at the time, however, few members of the British or Indian public were aware of this Arabian extension of the British Raj.

Maps showing the full reach of the Indian Empire were only published in top secrecy, and the Arabian territories were left off public documents to avoid provoking the Ottomans or later the Saudis.

Indeed, as one Royal Asiatic Society lecturer quipped:

“As a jealous sheikh veils his favourite wife, so the British authorities shroud conditions in the Arab states in such thick mystery that ill-disposed propagandists might almost be excused for thinking that something dreadful is going on there.”

But by the 1920s, politics was shifting. Indian nationalists began to imagine India not as an imperial construct but as a cultural space rooted in the geography of the Mahabharata. London saw an opportunity to redraw borders. On 1 April 1937, the first of several imperial partitions was enacted and Aden was separated from India.

A telegram from King George VI was read aloud:

“Aden has been an integral part of British Indian administration for nearly 100 years. That political association with my Indian Empire will now be broken, and Aden will take its place in my Colonial Empire.”

The Gulf remained under the purview of the Government of India for another decade, however.

British officials briefly discussed whether India or Pakistan would “be allowed to run the Persian Gulf” after independence, yet a member of the British legation in Tehran even wrote of his surprise at the “apparent unanimity” of “officials in Delhi … that the Persian Gulf was of little interest to the Government of India.”

As Gulf resident William Hay put it, “it would clearly have been inappropriate to hand over responsibility for dealing with the Gulf Arabs to Indians or Pakistanis”.

The Gulf states, from Dubai to Kuwait, were thus finally separated from India on 1 April 1947, months before the Raj was itself divided into India and Pakistan and granted independence.

Months later, when Indian and Pakistani officials set about integrating hundreds of princely states into the new nations, the Arab states of the Gulf would be missing from the ledger.

Few batted an eyelid, and 75 years on, the importance of what had just happened is still not fully understood in either India or the Gulf.

Without this minor administrative transfer, it is likely that the states of the Persian Gulf Residency would have become part of either India or Pakistan after independence, as happened to every other princely state in the subcontinent.

When British Prime Minister Clement Attlee proposed a British withdrawal from the Arabian territories at the same time as the withdrawal from India, he was shouted down. So Britain retained its role in the Gulf for 24 more years, with an ‘Arabian Raj’ now reporting to Whitehall rather than to the Viceroy of India.

In the words of Gulf scholar Paul Rich, this was “the Indian Empire’s last redoubt, just as Goa was Portuguese India’s last solitary vestige, or Pondicherry was the tag-end of French India”.

The official currency was still the Indian rupee; the easiest mode of transport was still the ‘British India Line’ (shipping company) and the 30 Arabian princely states were still governed by ‘British residents’ who had made their careers in the Indian Political Service.

The British only finally pulled out of the Gulf in 1971 as part of its decision to abandon colonial commitments east of Suez.

As David Holden wrote in July:

“For the first time since the heyday of Britain’s East India Company, all the territories around the Gulf will be at liberty to seek their own salvation without the threat of British intervention, or the comfort of British protection. This final remnant of the British Raj – for that, in effect, is what it is – has been for some years now an obvious, if in some ways charming, anachronism … But its day is over.”

Of all the national narratives that emerged after the Empire’s collapse, the Gulf states have been most successful at erasing their ties to British India.

From Bahrain to Dubai, a past relationship with Britain is remembered, but governance from Delhi is not. The myth of an ancient sovereignty is crucial to keeping the monarchies alive. Yet private memories persist, particularly of the unimaginable class reversal that the Gulf has seen.

In 2009, Gulf scholar Paul Rich recorded an elderly Qatari gentleman who “still got angry when he related to me the beating he received when as a young boy of seven or eight he stole an orange, a fruit which he had never seen before, from an Indian employee of the British agent”.

“The Indians, he said, were a privileged caste during his youth, and it gave him immense pleasure that the tables had turned and they now came to the Gulf as servants.”

Today Dubai, once a minor outpost of the Indian Empire with no gun salute, is the glittering centre of the new Middle East.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgq3wlp22j9o

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that in his view the whole of Ukraine was “ours” and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border.
Ukraine’s foreign minister denounced the statements as evidence of Russian “disdain” for U.S. peace efforts and said Moscow was bent on seizing more territory and killing more Ukrainians.

Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, more than 99% of the Luhansk region, over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Asked about fresh Russian advances, Putin told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that he considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours”.
Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow’s claims to four Ukrainian regions and Crimea are illegal, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly rejected the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

He has also said that Putin’s terms for peace are akin to capitulation.
Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, said on Friday he was not questioning Ukraine’s independence or its people’s striving for sovereignty, but he underscored that when Ukraine declared independence as the Soviet Union fell in 1991 it had also declared its neutrality.
Putin said Moscow wanted Ukraine to accept the reality on the ground if there was to be a chance of peace – Russia’s shorthand for the reality of Russia’s control over a chunk of Ukrainian territory bigger than the U.S. state of Virginia.
“We have a saying, or a parable,” Putin said. “Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours.”

‘COMPLETE DISDAIN’

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, writing in English on the X social media platform, said: “Putin’s cynical statements demonstrate complete disdain for U.S. peace efforts.”

“While the United States and the rest of the world have called for an immediate end to the killing, Russia’s top war criminal discusses plans to seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians.”
Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, “he brings along only death, destruction, and devastation,” Sybiha said.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Russia had shown “openly and utterly cynically that they ‘don’t feel like’ agreeing to a ceasefire. Russia wants to continue the war.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-the-whole-ukraine-is-ours-theory-may-take-city-sumy-2025-06-20/

Vance Boelter’s disguise wasn’t perfect. The silicone mask was somewhat loose-fitting and his SUV’s license plate simply read “POLICE” in black letters. But it was good enough on a poorly lit suburban street in the dead of night.
At 2:36 a.m. on Saturday, 30 minutes after authorities say Boelter shot and seriously injured Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, he paused behind the wheel of the SUV near the home of another senator, Ann Rest, in the city of New Hope.

The SUV was stocked with weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, as well as fliers advertising a local anti-Trump rally scheduled for later Saturday and a written list of names of people he appeared to be targeting. Senator Rest, prosecutors would later say, was among those Boelter set out to kill on June 14.
As Boelter sat in the SUV down the street from Rest’s home, another police car – this one an actual police car – approached.
A female officer from the New Hope police department, after hearing about the Hoffman shootings, had come out to check on Rest. Seeing the SUV, complete with flashing lights and police-style decals, she believed the man inside was a fellow officer.

But when she attempted to speak to him – one officer greeting another – she got no response. Instead, the man inside the SUV with police markings simply stared ahead. The New Hope officer drove on, deciding to go ahead and check on Rest.
Rest would later say the New Hope officer’s initiative probably saved her life, an opinion shared by New Hope Police Chief Timothy Hoyt.
“With limited information, she went up there on her own to check on the welfare of our senator,” Hoyt told Reuters. “She did the right thing.”
The brief interaction in New Hope underscored the carefully planned nature of Boelter’s pre-dawn rampage and how his impersonation of a police officer, including body armor, a badge and a tactical vest, confounded the initial attempts to stop him.
After the encounter with the New Hope officer, Boelter, 57, drove away from the scene, moving on to his next target. Police would pursue him for another 43 hours. In the process, they would draw in a phalanx of state and federal agencies, in what ranks as the largest manhunt in Minnesota history and added to the sense of disorientation in a nation already grappling with protests over immigration, the forcible removal of a U.S. Senator from a press conference and a rare military parade in Washington.

Federal prosecutors say they may seek the death penalty for Boelter, who has been charged with murdering two people and trying to kill two others, in what Governor Tim Walz has called a “politically motivated” attack.
Prosecutors said they are still investigating the motive and whether any others were involved. Boelter has yet to enter a plea. Manny Atwal, a public defender representing Boelter, said he was reviewing the case and declined to comment.
This reconstruction of the manhunt is based on court documents, statements by law enforcement officials, and interviews with a Boelter friend, local police officers, lawmakers, and residents of the impacted neighborhoods.
While the events unfolded like something out of a TV crime drama, there were parallels with past shooting sprees, criminal justice experts said. James Fitzgerald, a former FBI criminal profiler, said he would not be surprised if Boelter studied a mass shooting in Canada in 2020, when a gunman posing as a police officer killed 22 people in the province of Nova Scotia.

“These guys always do research beforehand. They want to see how other killers were successful, how they got caught,” said Fitzgerald, who helped the FBI capture the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski in 1996. “And, of course, a way you’re going to buy yourself some time is to pose as a police officer.”

HOFFMAN SHOOTING

The violence began at the Hoffman’s brick split-level home in Champlin, a leafy, middle-class suburb of Minneapolis. With his emergency lights flashing, Boelter pulled into the driveway just after 2:00 a.m. and knocked on the door.
“This is the police. Open the door,” Boelter shouted repeatedly, according to an FBI affidavit.
Senator Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, soon determined Boelter was not a real police officer. Boelter shot Senator Hoffman nine times, and then fired on Yvette, who shielded her daughter from being hit.
As Boelter fled the scene, the daughter called 911.
The Hoffmans were on a target list of more than 45 federal and state elected officials in Minnesota, all Democrats, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson told a briefing on Monday.
Boelter voted for President Donald Trump, was a Christian and did not like abortion, according to his part-time roommate, David Carlson. Carlson said Boelter did not seem angry about politics.
Thompson said Boelter “stalked his victims like prey” but that the writings he left behind did not point to a coherent motive. “His crimes are the stuff of nightmares,” he said.
After the Hoffman’s, the next address plugged into Boelter’s GPS system was a lawmaker about 9 miles away in the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove.
Surveillance cameras from the home of State Representative Kristin Bahner show a masked Boelter ringing the doorbell at 2:24 a.m. and shouting “Open the door. This is the police. We have a warrant,” the FBI affidavit says.
Bahner and her family were not at home.
From there, Boelter moved on to New Hope and the close encounter with the officer who had dispatched to Rest’s home. After that, he wasn’t seen by police again until he arrived at the residence of Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the state House, in Brooklyn Park.
Sensing that Hortman might be a target, Brooklyn Park police officers had decided to check on her. When they arrived at 3:30 a.m. they saw a black Ford Explorer outside her house, its police-style lights flashing. Boelter was near the front door.
When Boelter saw the officers exit their squad car, he fired at them. He then ran through the front door on the house, where he killed Melissa and Mark Hortman, her husband.

‘DAD WENT TO WAR’

When Boelter left the Hortman’s home, he abandoned his fake-police SUV. Inside the car, police found a 9mm handgun, three AK-47 assault rifles, fliers advertising a local anti-Trump “No Kings” rally and a notebook with names of people who appear to have been targets, according to court documents.
From that point, Boelter was on the run. Little has been revealed about his movements during the period, although police say he visited his part-time residence in north Minneapolis. He also sent texts. In one, to his family’s group chat, Boelter writes, “Dad went to war last night”. In another, to a close friend, Boelter says he may be dead soon.
Police also know that by early morning on Saturday Boelter had met a man at a Minneapolis bus stop who agreed to sell him an e-bike and a Buick sedan for $900. The two drove to a bank where Boelter withdrew $2,200 from his account. A security camera shows Boelter wearing a cowboy hat.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/two-days-terror-how-minnesota-shooter-evaded-police-got-caught-2025-06-21/

Israeli officials have told the Trump administration they do not want to wait two weeks for Iran to reach a deal to dismantle key parts of its nuclear program and Israel could act alone before the deadline is up, two sources said, amid a continuing debate on Trump’s team about whether the U.S. should get involved.
The two sources familiar with the matter said Israel had communicated their concerns to Trump administration officials on Thursday in what they described as a tense phone call.

The Israeli officials said they do not want to wait the two weeks that U.S. President Donald Trump presented on Thursday as a deadline for deciding whether the U.S. will get in the Israel-Iran war, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli participants on the call included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz and military chief Eyal Zamir, according to a security source.
The Israelis believe they have a limited window of opportunity to move against the deeply buried site at Fordow, the crown jewel of Iran’s nuclear program, said the sources. The U.S. is the only country with the bunker-busting bombs powerful enough to reach the facility, which is dug into the side of a mountain.

Reuters reported on Saturday that the United States is moving B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam, reinforcing the possibility that the U.S. could participate directly in an attack. The B-2 can be equipped to carry America’s 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, designed to destroy targets deep underground, such as the one at Fordow.
A person in Washington familiar with the matter said Israel has communicated to the U.S. administration that it believes Trump’s window of up to two weeks is too long and that more urgent action is needed. The person did not say whether the Israelis made that point during the high-level call.
During the call, Vice President JD Vance pushed back, saying the U.S. should not be directly involved and suggesting that the Israelis were going to drag the country into war, said the sources. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also participated in the call, said a security source.

A White House official strongly disputed the characterization of Vance’s comments in the call but declined to elaborate. “The Vice President did not say this during the call,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Jerusalem Post reported earlier that a phone call had taken place on Thursday.
The prospect of a U.S. strike against Iran has exposed divisions in the coalition of supporters that brought Trump to power, with some prominent members of his base urging him not to get the country involved in a new Middle East war.
Vance has frequently criticized past U.S. involvement in conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan, but has lately defended Trump against Republican critics who urge the administration to stay out of the Iran conflict.
Other Republicans, including Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have said they hope Trump will help Israel finish destroying Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump, who campaigned on a promise to keep the U.S. out of what he called “stupid” foreign wars, has himself seemed conflicted at times about whether to join the Israeli attack on Iran or focus on diplomatic efforts to end Tehran’s nuclear program. But his rhetoric in recent days has become increasingly aggressive toward Iran.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran’s mission to the United Nations also did not immediately respond.

STRIKE ON FORDOW INCREASINGLY LIKELY

Publicly, Netanyahu has not ruled out Israel attacking Fordow alone, though officials have not provided any details on how that would be achieved.
Four sources said it is now increasingly likely that the country will launch a solo military operation. Israeli air superiority over much of Iran makes an operation more feasible, though still risky, said two of the sources.
The Israelis feel they have the momentum and have limited time given the costs of the war, one source added.
“I don’t see them waiting much longer,” said the source.
It is not clear whether such an operation would involve bombing, ground forces, or both. Two of the sources said that rather than attempting to destroy the entire site Israel could instead do significant damage to it.
That could mean focusing on destroying what is inside the site rather than the site itself, said one of the sources, declining to elaborate.
Some analysts have speculated that Israel could use special forces to enter Fordow and blow it up from inside.
Another scenario being considered, according to a source familiar with the matter, would be to drop a series of munitions in rapid succession in an attempt to breach the fortified site, similar to how the Israeli military killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last year.
Such a strike could be followed by an incursion by special forces, the source said.
It is not clear that Israel has munitions powerful enough to penetrate the fortified facility. It is widely believed that to have a high chance of success, U.S. intervention would be needed.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/israel-seeks-swift-action-iran-sources-say-with-split-us-administration-2025-06-21/

Hailey Bieber fueled rumors that she and husband Justin Bieber are headed for divorce after she was spotted without her wedding ring while out and about in New York City.

The model was photographed going ringless on Thursday as she stepped out on two separate occasions — the first being for breakfast at The Commerce Inn in the West Village.

Photos obtained by Page Six reveal she wore a khaki trench coat and sunglasses for the outing, but made sure to leave her $500,000 jewelry piece at home.

Hailey, 28, was later seen that evening with models Camila Morrone and Suki Waterhouse as they headed for a girls’ night out at Chez Fifi on the Upper East Side.

For her second look, the billionaire babe looked chic in a black leather coat and matching high-neck top with wide-leg jeans.

A rep for Hailey did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

Divorce rumors have followed the couple for some time. However, the speculation appeared to be reignited earlier this year after Hailey unfollowed Justin, 31, on Instagram in March.

The Rhode Skin founder claimed the unfollowing happened because of a glitch that took place when Justin deactivated and reactivated his account.

Hailey addressed the incessant divorce speculation that has plagued the famous pair since their 2018 wedding in her Vogue interview last month, calling out “bitches” who won’t “move on.”

“Well, I thought seven years in it would’ve [died down] already, and it hasn’t,” she said.

“You would think after having a child, people would maybe move on, chill out a little bit, but no,” the first-time mom, who welcomed son Jack Blues with Justin last August, added. “So I guess these bitches are going to be mad.”

The couple also continues to face added scrutiny as many have expressed their concern for the “Beauty and a Beat” singer’s well-being after he was seen acting erratically and recreationally smoking marijuana on several occasions.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/21/celebrity-news/hailey-bieber-ditches-her-wedding-ring-as-justin-bieber-divorce-rumors-loom/

Mahmoud Khalil vowed to resume his pro-Palestinian activism as he returned to New York a day after he was released on bail from a jail for immigrants, even as US President Donald Trump’s administration said it will continue its efforts to deport the recent Columbia University graduate.

He arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Saturday afternoon to cheers and ululations from friends and supporters. Khalil, 30, was reunited with his wife, a US citizen, and greeted at the airport by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York.

“Not only if they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine again,” Khalil said, holding a bouquet of flowers. “I just want to go back and just continue the work that I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished”.

Khalil, who recently graduated from Columbia University in Manhattan, was a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movement that swept campuses last year. Federal immigration agents arrested him in the lobby of his Columbia apartment building on March 8, making him the first target of Trump’s effort to deport international students with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views.

Ocasio-Cortez, speaking alongside Khalil at the airport, condemned the Trump administration for what she called “persecution based on political speech”.

“Being taken is wrong. It is illegal,” she said. “It is an affront to every American”.

“Free Palestine!” Khalil said with a raised fist as he left the airport.

Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and became a US lawful permanent resident last year. Nonetheless, citing an obscure part of federal immigration law that has not been invoked in more than 20 years, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had determined that Khalil and several other foreign pro-Palestinian students at US schools must be deported because their presence here could harm the government’s foreign policy interests.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly conflates their criticism of the Israeli government, one of the United States’ closest allies, with antisemitism.

Earlier this month, US District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey ruled that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio’s determination, finding the Trump administration was violating Khalil’s constitutional right to free speech.

On Friday, he ordered the Trump administration to release Khalil on bail while he continues to fight the government’s deportation efforts and his lawsuit accusing the government of wrongful detention.

A spokesperson for Trump said in a statement after the ruling that Khalil should be deported for “conduct detrimental to American foreign policy interests” and for omitting or incorrectly describing his employment history on his application for form to become a permanent resident. Khalil has said his application form was correct and the allegations of omission are spurious.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/mahmoud-khalil-vows-resume-pro-palestinian-activism-after-release-us-jail-5195991

Honda R&D – the research and development arm of Honda Motor – landed a rocket for the first time on Tuesday – after it reached an altitude of nearly 1,000 feet.

The experimental reusable rocket reached an altitude of 890 feet during its test flight – staying aloft for 56.6 seconds.

It landed just 14.6 inches from its target touchdown point at the carmaker’s test facility in northern Japan, according to Honda.

Weighing in at 2,890 pounds when fully fuelled (1,984 pounds dry), the rocket is 20.7 feet tall and measured 2.8 feet in diameter.

Honda’s rocket has become the first prototype rocket outside the US and China to pull off a flight like this.

The company said the launch and landing test demonstrated “key technologies essential for rocket reusability, such as flight stability during ascent and descent, as well as landing capability”.

The Japanese car manufacturer first revealed in 2021 that it had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years.

After six years of development, this successful test marked a major step in Honda’s push into space innovation.

But Honda is not alone in the race beyond Earth.

Other car makers like Geely, GM, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota and Venturi are partnering with space tech companies.

Unlike Honda and Venturi that have developed rockets or space vehicles, Toyota has been involved more in robotics and space exploration tech.

Geely, GM and Hyundai-Kia are partnering with aerospace firms or investing in space tech startups – rather than independently developing rockets yet.

It comes after talk of a merger between car rivals Nissan and Honda collapsed in February.

But the door to collaboration remains wide open.

Nissan’s CEO Ivan Espinosa said in March that the company is “very open” to partnerships.

The company’s chief performance officer, Guillaume Cartier, said Nissan had “never stopped” talking with its Japanese rival, confirming that the two continue working towards a potential partnership.

Espinosa, who officially took over on April 1, said his company faces up to five simultaneous crises – including a damaged brand, low morale and the execution of a sweeping turnaround.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14533950/car-maker-space-race-rocket/

The 21 Arab and Muslim-majority countries made it clear where they stood in the Iran-Israel conflict.

In a statement published earlier this week, they expressed their “categorical rejection and condemnation of Israel’s recent attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” which started on June 13. The countries spoke of the need to halt “Israeli hostilities against Iran” and expressed “great concern regarding this dangerous escalation, which threatens to have serious consequences on the peace and stability of the entire region.”

The signatories included both Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But their stated opposition to Israel’s attacks on Iran has not prevented them from intervening in the conflict, at least indirectly. Jordan, for example, has shot down missiles flying from Iran towards Israel. The Jordanian military confirmed they had done this in a statement, explaining that missiles and drones could have fallen onto Jordan, “including in populated areas, causing casualties.”

As with any other sovereign state, missiles or other unauthorized objects crossing a country’s airspace are often deemed violations of either domestic or international law.

The Saudi Arabians have not issued a similar statement, but experts say it’s likely they’ve allowed Israel to shoot missiles down in their airspace and may have cooperated on surveillance too.

Domestic politics in turmoil

But just as it has done in the recent past, this kind of military action could cause domestic tensions. Among the people of both nations, there is a historical antipathy towards Israel based on past wars and conflicts. That’s especially true for Jordan, where at least one in five locals, including the country’s queen, are of Palestinian descent.

It’s difficult for Jordan’s government to justify shooting down Iranian missiles headed for Israel, which is why the explanation of self-defense was given. “This message — ‘we are only defending ourselves’ — is being repeated on all channels,” says Edmund Ratka, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s office in Amman, Jordan.

Ratka says this is also due to the Jordanian political scene at the moment. In April, the country’s government banned the country’s largest political opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, over connections to an alleged plot to destabilize the country.

“The [ban] seems carefully calibrated and intended to stem rising popular support for the [Muslim brotherhood] movement as the kingdom navigates a difficult regional backdrop,” Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with British think tank Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program, wrote at the time, as well as “undermine its growing appeal among a population incensed by Israel’s war in Gaza.”

This makes it all the more important for the Jordanian government to make sure that taking down Iranian missiles is not seen as solidarity with Israel, says Stefan Lukas, founder of the Germany-based consultancy, Middle East Minds. “Still, the decision [to do so] further escalates tensions,” he told DW.

There’s no way Jordan wants to be seen as defending Israel, Ratka confirms, “Because the Jordanian people largely perceive Israel as the aggressor.”

But, he adds, they feel the same about Iran, too. “We regularly conduct surveys in Jordan, and for years, they’ve shown there isn’t much sympathy for Iran in Jordan,” Ratka noted. “Because Iran is seen as a state that repeatedly interferes in Arab affairs with the intent to destabilize.”

Jordan also has other reasons for shooting down the Iranian missiles, Lukas says. Jordan can’t directly oppose the US, he says, referring to a 2021 defense cooperation agreement between the US and Jordan, which allows US forces, vehicles and aircraft to enter and move around Jordan freely. Jordan “is far too dependent on the US and, to some extent, on Israel too — both financially and in terms of security policy.”

It’s a difficult argument for the Jordanians to make. If they were that concerned about protecting domestic airspace, then the government would have to protest the presence of Israeli forces overhead, too.

As Ratka points out, though, Israel hasn’t violated Jordanian airspace with its attacks on Iran. “So the Jordanian leadership can, with some justification, claim it would combat any airspace violation,” he says. “Even if, in fact, it’s only fighting the Iranians.”

Saudi Arabia’s balancing act

Saudi Arabia is also in a tricky spot. It signed the same declaration as 20 other Arab and Muslim-majority countries did, and even before that, had referred to Iran as a “brotherly nation” in a statement condemning Israeli attacks on the nation of around 92 million.

The use of the word “brotherly” was seen as noteworthy by analysts because it’s usually reserved for fellow Arab-majority countries, whereas the Iranians are mostly Persians.

But beyond the official rhetoric, Saudi Arabia is pursuing a completely different course, Lukas says. “Unofficially, Saudi Arabia is participating in the action against Iran,” he confirms.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/are-jordan-and-saudi-arabia-defending-israel/a-72977996

Pope Leo XIV has renewed calls for a deeper consideration of the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on humanity, voicing concern for the development and well being of children and youths.

The recently installed pontiff made his remarks on Saturday, when he welcomed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and parliamentary delegations from 68 further nations to the Vatican for the Second Annual Rome Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

“In particular, it must not be forgotten that artificial intelligence functions as a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them or even to replace them,” said Leo, who added that AI’s “static memory” could not match the “creative, dynamic” power of human memory.

“Our personal life has greater value than any algorithm, and social relationships require spaces for development that far transcend the limited patterns that any soulless machine can pre-package,” he told attendees.

Pope warns AI is a threat to how humans process reality

Although the pontiff acknowledged the unquestionable advantages such computing offers, he nevertheless warned of the threat it poses to how we understand life and the world around us.

“AI, especially generative AI, has opened new horizons on many different levels, including enhancing research in healthcare and scientific discovery; but also raises troubling questions on its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality.”

Leo, who has repeatedly addressed the issue of AI and its impact on society since becoming pope in May, urged “serious reflection” on the “inherently ethical dimension of AI,” noting that respect for the uniqueness of human existence was an essential element of any discussion about its use and regulation.

“All of us, I am sure, are concerned for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development,” he said.

“Our youth must be helped, and not hindered, in their journey towards maturity and true responsibility,” he added, calling young people “our hope for the future.”

‘True meaning of life’ vs. ‘availability of data’

For all of the praises that AI proponents sing, claiming, among other things, that it allows more access to information and that if computers are allowed to perform the tasks of workers, former laborers will then be able to pursue other more fulfilling creative tasks, Leo warned of the dangers of mistaking “access to data” for actual intelligence. “Authentic wisdom,” he said, “has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data.”

The pontiff also underscored AI’s potential for “misuse for selfish gain at the expense of others, or worse, to foment conflict and aggression.”

“Society’s well-being,” said Leo, “depends upon their [young people] being given the ability to develop their God-given gifts and capabilities, and to respond to the demands of the times and the needs of others with a free and generous spirit.

“This entails taking into account the well-being of the human person not only materially, but also intellectually and spiritually. It means safeguarding the inviolable dignity of each human person and respecting the cultural and spiritual riches and diversity of the world’s peoples,” according to Leo.

AI, the Catholic Church and ‘the future of our human family’

Leo has said the Catholic Church is keen on contributing to a peaceful and thoughtful public discussion about the advent of AI “and the future of our human family.”

A final concern brought up by the pontiff addressed the strains AI puts on relations between young people and the elderly, pointing to what he called the “necessary intergenerational apprenticeship that will enable young people to integrate truth into their moral and spiritual life, thus informing their mature decisions and opening the path towards a world of greater solidarity and unity.”

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/pope-leo-warns-leaders-about-pitfalls-of-ai/a-72994484

SEETHING Iranians burned US and Israeli flags and swore their allegiance to the regime in mass protests across the country.

Thousands flooded the capital’s streets after weekly prayers, chanting for the death of the west and pledging their lives to the Supreme Leader.

Israel has urged the people of Iran to rise up against the regime, but there are still pockets of support for the Islamic government.

But alongside their loyalty to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the crowds aimed vitriolic hate at Israel and the West.

Photos show Israeli and US flag deliberately set on fire and trampled on.

A sea of Iranian and Hezbollah flags and photos of Khamenei were paraded through the roads.

Footage also shows demonstrators brandishing pictures of commanders killed over the past week by Israel’s missiles.

One banner read: “I will sacrifice my life for my leader.”

Iranian state TV said: “This is the Friday of the Iranian nation’s solidarity and resistance across the country.”

The broadcaster said that protests also took place in other cities – particularly Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

And there are reports of smaller scale gatherings in towns around the country.

While these crowds back the regime, there are plenty in Iran who want to see it toppled and the people finally freed from its tyranny.

Thousands have drained from Tehran and even left the country.

Friday’s protests were by far the largest since Israel and Iran began trading missiles.

People took to the streets despite the ongoing threat of Israeli bombs.

In Isfahan, home to one of the nuclear facilities Israel has hit, thousands joined in the funeral of an Iranian killed in an Israeli attack.

Several men were seen carrying a coffin draped with Iranian flags and with a photo of a uniformed soldier.

Behind them, men, women and children followed, chanting: “Death to Israel, death to America.”

Protester Abu Hussein, a 54-year-old taxi driver, told Arab News: “It is an unjust war… Israel has no right.

“Israel is not in it for the (Iranian) nuclear (program).

“What Israel and the Americans want is to dominate the Middle East.”

The protests came on a day that efforts to find a diplomatic solution got gathered momentum.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi travelled to Geneva to meet European foreign minsters – including those from the UK, Germany and France.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14524605/iranians-burn-us-israel-flags-chant-protests/

A STRONG earthquake of 5.1 magnitude has struck northern Iran amid a war with Israel.

The quake struck some 22 miles away from Iran’s Semnan region at 9:19pm local time and was also felt in Tehran’s Qom region.

The quake struck only 6.2miles (10km) deep, relatively shallow.

Semnan is home to the Semnan Missile Complex operated by Iran’s military as well as the Semnan Space Centre.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to pound Iran’s nuclear facilities and other military targets.

The goal, as the Israelis say, is to thwart the Iranian regime’s efforts to produce nuclear weapons as well as more ballistic missiles.

It also includes long-range weapons that can strike targets far beyond Israel.

So far, Israel has struck dozens of military targets as well as several nuclear facilities across Iran.

This includes a water reactor at the Arak nuclear plant in Iran.

Pictures of the aftermath showed what appears to be a giant crater on the top of the reactor within the facility.

The nuclear site had been “inactive” as it was yet to be completed, but the IDF said it had to be taken out because it was designed to cultivate plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

Alongside Arak, Israel has confirmed strikes on the reactors at Natanz and Isfahan.

An IDF spokesperson also said that fighter jets had also struck the Bushehr nuclear power plant – which is the only working one in the country.

But in a U-turn, the IDF then retracted the claim, with a spokesperson saying: “It was a mistake,” and that he could not confirm or deny that the facility had been targeted.

At the heart of its nuclear program is the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, which is encased in steel more than 300 feet beneath solid rock – and has so far escaped serious damage.

Israel’s arsenal lacks huge bunker buster bombs needed to destroy the underground enrichment facility – some 125 miles from capital Tehran.

Only America currently has the fearsome GBU-57 bombs capable of blitzing Fordow.

It’s a Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bomb that can penetrate deep inside the ground before blowing up.

The 20-foot-long monster bomb can explode to obliterate enemy targets that are often hidden beneath mountains and massive layers of rocks.

Its 30,000lb weight means that its sheer kinetic force enables it to reach deeply buried targets – almost 200ft beneath the surface.

At the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program is the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, which is encased in steel more than 300 feet beneath solid rock – and has so far escaped serious damage.

Israel’s arsenal lacks huge bunker buster bombs needed to destroy the underground enrichment facility – some 125 miles from capital Tehran.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14527445/earthquake-strikes-iran-israel-fordow/

EERIE new footage reportedly taken by the US military has captured a never-before-seen disc-shaped UFO mysteriously darting through the air.

Independent journalist Jeremy Corbell leaked the video and said he was stunned by the “implications” of the jaw-dropping sight.

He published the video on his social media on Tuesday, which he claims captures the unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) soaring through the clouds.

Corbell said the clip has made history because of the object’s shape.

Most UFOs caught on camera have a sort of pill shape, but this one looks straight out of a science-fiction movie.

The video was taken by the military on November 23, 2020, and it was released after Corbell spent years verifying the footage with inside sources.

He said that US officials themselves admitted the UAP was a “disc” with an unknown origin.

They said the craft “displayed abrupt movement and intelligent control” as it can be seen flying to the right before suddenly changing directions.

The UFO also noticeably doesn’t give off any heat signatures or signs of thermal propulsion like a normal aircraft would.

Between the never-before-seen shape and the bizarre movement, Corbell said the sighting “has implications that are huge,” he told the Daily Mail.

“This is the first time in history that military filmed footage of a disc-shaped UAP, designated as such by the military, has been captured on camera and released to the public,” he said.

Corbell explained that it was “astonishing” that a UFO of that shape could nimbly dart through the air without emitting heat signatures.

“It’s a perfect-looking disc, maybe it’s an orb,” he told NBC News.

The object is believed to be between 200 and 400 meters in diameter, but Corbell said that the size is debated.

It was captured flying around the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to coordinates seen in the corner of the video.

The military still considers the object a UAP and continues to investigate the sighting, according to Corbell.

CORBELL’S CALL

The journalist claims that he’s spoken with service members who had first-hand experience witnessing the footage.

He called for Congress to respond to the video and said that military whistleblowers are ready to testify and describe what they saw.

Corbell hopes that releasing this footage will encourage transparency from officials who witness UAPs.

“The source is legit. We know it’s real,” Corbell’s cohost George Knapp said in their podcast Weaponized.

“It was not supposed to be made public. But it should’ve been.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14524977/jeremy-corbell-ufo-disc-video-us-military/

Seven men were arrested on suspicion of assault after an altercation outside Iran’s embassy in west London on Friday (Jun 20) left two people injured, police said.

The Metropolitan Police said the men were detained “on suspicion of grievous bodily harm” and that two individuals were treated at the scene before being taken to hospital. Their injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.

The fight is understood to have broken out among members of a group of protestors.

Demonstrators opposing Iran’s clerical leadership have been staging protests outside the embassy since Sunday. The group displayed flags associated with Iran’s ousted monarchy alongside Israeli flags.

The demonstrators support Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose pro-Western regime was overthrown during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Photographs published by British media showed two injured men receiving medical attention on the pavement beside the protest encampment.

Following the incident, the police imposed a ban on further protests in the vicinity of the embassy. One additional man was arrested for allegedly breaching the ban.

The arrests came as Iran and Israel continued to exchange fire eight days into their ongoing conflict, while the United States weighed potential involvement.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/seven-arrested-london-over-iran-embassy-altercation-5194726

Before visiting Sarawak, I didn’t think too much of the area. I had never been to the island of Borneo, home to Malaysian states Sabah and Sarawak, Indonesian Kalimantan, and the nation of Brunei.

I also only had a faint idea that Sarawak was where many indigenous communities of the Orang Dayak, or Dayak people, lived. I had heard it was “rich with culture”, but I didn’t really know what that meant, and thus, the place simply didn’t strike much interest in me.

So, the last thing I expected was a trip there to alter parts of my brain chemistry, but it did.

Witnessing the Gawai Dayak parade and staying in a longhouse (or rumah panjang) didn’t just take me out of my routine. It deepened how I think about indigenous heritage and culture, and what it means to be Singaporean, an identity rooted in the Southeast Asian region and shaped by the coming together of many different ethnicities.

In Sarawak, culture blends in a way that feels far more fluid and natural than I was used to (hi, Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other model in Singapore).

COMING TOGETHER DURING GAWAI DAYAK

My visit to Sarawak was anchored by the Gawai Dayak, a harvest festival celebrated annually in late May and early June by the native Orang Dayak, which included the Iban, Bidayuh and Melanau.

That weekend, I was in Betong, a rural town about three hours from the city of Kuching, where I saw people of different ethnicities come together for a celebration that spanned generations.

People gathered to eat Iban dishes infused with unmistakable Malay and Chinese influences, and wore traditional Dayak attire, like the women’s marik empang and men’s kelambi.

They spoke in a mix of languages – including Jaku Iban, Bahasa Melayu Sarawak, Hokkien, and English – and sang Nusantaran-style songs that echoed through the streets. The songs were filled with the sounds of drums, gongs and stringed instruments, carrying a festive spirit that felt both familiar and new.

Some wore headgear adorned with feathers or beak-like structures symbolising the rhinoceros hornbill, and amulets believed to ward off evil spirits. I saw women in hijab wearing their Iban costumes with pride, and young boys donning their cross necklaces alongside their Bidayuh warrior beads, balancing cultural expression and religious values.

According to the Sarawak government’s 2020 census, the state is home to around 2.5 million people. The largest ethnic group is the Iban, who make up about 30 per cent of the population, followed by the Chinese and Malay communities.

Sarawak’s story, from colonial rule to self-governance to being part of Malaysia, is different from that of Peninsular Malaysia. For many Iban, their sense of identity is rooted not just in national borders but in the shared heritage of Borneo.

During the parade, I spoke to a man in his eighties, who told me he had been celebrating Gawai Dayak since before Sarawak’s self-governance on Jul 22, 1963.

The elder recalled how Gawai Dayak only became an official celebration in 1965. Now, six decades later, he smiled watching toddlers and teenagers drum and ululate down the streets of Betong.

Of course, like anywhere else, there are differences and disagreements, and not everything is perfect. But watching people of all ages, races and religions come together during Gawai Dayak, laughing, drumming, dancing, was deeply heartening.

It showed me that it’s possible to celebrate indigenous heritage without turning it into something performative or commercial. It’s not solely about capitalising on a practice that’s been revered for years but creating a space to honour that specific culture – in this case, the native people who have lived there for thousands of years – and letting that pride be shared, respectfully, by people of many backgrounds.

What seemed like just a foreign parade then made me reflect on my own country’s culture, heritage, and indigenous communities. I thought of all the stories of our native people, such as the Orang Pulau or islanders in Singapore, and the way we can continue honouring them.

EXCHANGING STORIES WHILE STAYING IN A LONGHOUSE

Another significant part of my visit was when I got to stay in a modern longhouse, befriend my lovely hosts, and listen to them and their stories. The longhouse, called Rumah Panjang Engkeranji, was also a central gathering place for the town’s Gawai Dayak celebrations and a glamping-style experience.

Traditional longhouses are made of teak and elevated on stilts – an architectural design that is more sustainably appropriate in our weather and climate – but Rumah Panjang Engkeranji was built from concrete, a more cost-effective choice today.

The longhouse had 22 bilik, or individual family living quarters, and I stayed in the 21st. The whole building stretches about 50 metres long and 5 metres deep, has two storeys, and is home to over 50 nuclear families.

Each bilik belongs to a multi-generational family, and all the bilik in a longhouse share a central corridor called the ruai. It’s where weddings, funerals, festivities like Gawai Dayak, Christmas and more take place.

The ruai is where children play, neighbours catch up, and friendships (possibly even love stories) blossom. It was heartwarming to see how everyone flowed in and out of each other’s spaces.

At the bilik where I stayed, I was warmly hosted by Junan anak Kusau, whom I affectionately called Uncle Charles, and his daughter, Agnes Jentang anak Junan. Their family are devout Christians with many friends and distant relatives of other faiths.

Because it was the Gawai Dayak weekend and many extended families had returned to the longhouse, I also met Agnes’ distant relative, Belle, who used to live in the longhouse before she got married and moved to another longhouse closer to Kuching with her husband.

Belle was incredibly kind. She showed me around, shared stories about her family tree, and explained more about her Iban practices. She is the fifth generation in her family to live in that bilik, and she still travels four hours from Kuching to be there every Gawai.

She laughed heartily whenever we joked about modernity and the changes it brings to Sarawakian culture. She loves preserving her familial traditions, but she acknowledges how change is a constant that she doesn’t wish to resist.

Case in point, she’s proud to still cook her family’s dishes such as kasam ensabi, Iban fermented vegetable pickle, or umbut pantu, a type of vegetable soup, all of which are staples in many Iban homes. But she serves them alongside her own spaghetti bolognese or fried rice with kimchi.

THE MANY GEMS AROUND SINGAPORE

The stories I hear from Belle, Agnes, their Uncle Charles and the elder I met during the Gawai Dayak Parade made the place and the whole visit feel personal and closer to me as a Singaporean than I thought.

This isn’t some tired “city girl meets kampung life” narrative unfolding here (I’m frankly over that trope). This wasn’t about culture shock. Living in a longhouse is undoubtedly a far cry from what I’m used to in Singapore, but it isn’t just about the obvious on-the-surface differences.

What was more significant about the experience was recognising the depth and value of what communal living offers, something I believe all modern city folks could benefit from.

It was meaningful to be in a space where neighbours remember your name and your story, even if you’re from ten bilik down and only crossed paths for a brief moment. There’s a quiet kind of warmth in knowing the people around you care: That they remember you’re a new parent, that you’re facing financial struggles, or simply trying your best to be a better version of yourself.

Sarawak also reminded me once again of the many travel gems close to us that we often (unfortunately) sleep on.

When it comes to travelling, Singaporeans often chase destinations that are further or colder – and hey, I love Tokyo and London, too – but there’s so much beauty just a few hours away, in places that are culturally rich, deeply communal, and part of our larger regional story.

Source : https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/travel/sarawak-longhouse-gawai-dayak-southeast-asia-identity-466751

Sean “Diddy” Combs kept his shockingly massive supply of baby oil and lubricant in cabinets, drawers and an apparent humidity-controlled case — similar to a cigar humidor, according to new photos.

The evidence, which comes from the FBI’s March 2024 raid on Combs’ Los Angeles home, was shown during the disgraced music mogul’s sex trafficking case on Friday, giving jurors an inside glimpse at Diddy’s drug-filled “swinger” lifestyle.

Officials uncovered an array of weapons along with an overwhelming 200 bottles of baby oil and 900 bottles of lubricant that appeared to be kept in multiple corners of his home, including his bedroom.

In addition to Combs’ Los Angeles home, officials also raided his Miami mansion around the same time last year — the results of which were shown to jurors on May 20.

The FBI discovered a slew of weapons, several boxes of high-platform heels typically worn by exotic dancers and lingerie, bottles of baby oil and lubricant, and various bags filled with narcotics.

Most of the sexual-natured items were allegedly used to serve his infamous “freak-off” parties.

Jurors previously heard graphic testimony regarding the wild parties last month as Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura took the witness stand.

The “Me & U” singer, 38, shared that Combs introduced her to the wild, drug-fueled sex marathons when she was 22 years old and claimed that Combs viewed the sex performances as “voyeurism.”

She also alleged the “freak-offs” would take place weekly and the longest one lasted up to about four days.

Large amounts of baby oil would be used for the the events, which involved Ventura engaging in sexual behavior with various escorts while Combs would masturbate as he watched.

Diddy was arrested in a New York City hotel on Sept. 16, 2024.

Upon being taken into police custody, authorities revealed Combs had bottles of baby oil, pink ketamine and $9,000 in cash in the hotel with him.

They also found a prescription bottle of clonazepam that was made out to Frank Black — an alias that Combs often used, according to Ventura and the Bad Boy Records founder’s ex-assistant.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/20/celebrity-news/sean-diddy-combs-kept-precious-stash-of-baby-oil-lube-in-apparent-humidity-controlled-case-photos/

Mommy and me time!

Michelle Obama is enjoying a glamorous vacay with her daughters, Malia and Sasha, in Mallorca. The trio was photographed at the Lobster Club in Puerto Portals, Calvià, earlier this week.

The former First Lady, 61, looked stylish in a colorful printed dress and hoop earrings, while Sasha, 24, wore an off-the-shoulder white t-shirt and a flowy brown skirt. Malia, 26, looked similarly effortlessly chic in a navy blue polka dot top and a denim mini skirt.

Former president Barack Obama, 63, wasn’t present. But joining the family was James Costos, former U.S. ambassador to Spain, as well as his partner, Michael Smith. Smith has been the Obamas’ longtime interior designer, and he’s also responsible for the 2010 makeover of the Oval Office.

The group appeared relaxed in the outdoor setting, enjoying lunch amid other diners at the exclusive venue that features live music, an infinity pool and stunning Mediterranean views.

Although Barack wasn’t at the getaway, Michelle squashed rumors the two were splitting on an episode of “The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett” last month.

The rumors came after Barack attended multiple high-profile public events solo, including President Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“That’s not who we are,” Michelle said, noting that she and her husband of 32 years would never “quit” at their marriage. “And I know that about him. He knows that about me.”

She recently paid tribute to him on Father’s Day with a sweet Instagram post. Michelle shared a throwback picture of Sasha sitting on her lap, while Malia sits on Barack’s lap.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/06/20/celebrity-news/michelle-obama-takes-daughters-malia-and-sasha-on-a-vacation-to-spain/

Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil walked out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release, a major victory for rights groups that challenged what they called the Trump administration’s unlawful targeting of a pro-Palestinian activist.
“Although justice prevailed,” he said upon his release in the rural town of Jena, “it’s long, very long overdue. And this shouldn’t have taken three months.”

On March 8 Khalil, a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, was arrested by immigration agents in the lobby of his university residence in Manhattan. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has called the protests antisemitic and vowed to deport foreign students who took part. Khalil became the first target of this policy.
After hearing oral arguments from lawyers for Khalil and for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ordered DHS to release him from custody at a jail for immigrants in rural Louisiana by 6:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) on Friday.

Farbiarz said the government had made no attempt to rebut evidence provided by Khalil’s lawyers that he was not a flight risk nor a danger to the public.
“There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish the petitioner,” Farbiarz said, referring to Khalil as he ruled from the bench, adding that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional.
Khalil is the latest in a string of foreign pro-Palestinian students arrested in the U.S. starting in March who have subsequently been released by judges. They include Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysya Ozturk.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., says he is being punished for his political speech, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Khalil condemned antisemitism and racism in interviews with CNN and other news outlets last year.

The Syrian-born activist plans to return to New York to be with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and their infant son, who was born during Khalil’s 104 days in detention.
“This ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,” Abdalla said in a statement. “Today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family and the community that has supported us since the day he was unjustly taken for speaking out for Palestinian freedom.”
The White House condemned the decision to release Khalil, saying he should be deported for “conduct detrimental to American foreign policy interests” and fraudulently obtaining a student visa.
“There is no basis for a local federal judge in New Jersey —who lacks jurisdiction — to order Khalil’s release from a detention facility in Louisiana,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “We expect to be vindicated on appeal.”

The immigration proceedings against Khalil continue.
Khalil, wearing a keffiyeh and raising his right fist as he approached journalists outside the detention center, condemned what he called the Trump administration’s racist immigration policies. He said he was leaving behind hundreds of men housed at the detention center who should not be there.
“The Trump administration are doing their best to dehumanize everyone here,” he said outside the gates of the facility. “No one is illegal, no human is illegal.”
Khalil said that his time in detention had changed him.
“Once you enter there, you see a different reality,” he said. “A different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice.”
The Louisiana immigration judge in his case had denied his asylum request on Friday, ruling he could be deported based on the government’s allegations of immigration fraud, and denied a bail hearing. Farbiarz’s decision rendered the bail request moot.
Like others facing deportation, Khalil has avenues to appeal within the immigration system. Farbiarz is also considering Khalil’s challenge of his deportation on constitutional grounds, and has blocked officials from deporting Khalil while that challenge plays out.
Earlier this month, Farbiarz ruled the government was violating Khalil’s free speech rights by detaining him under a little-used law granting the U.S. secretary of state power to seek deportation of non-citizens whose presence in the country was deemed adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests.
On June 13, the judge declined to order Khalil’s release from a detention center in Jena, Louisiana, after Trump’s administration said Khalil was being held on a separate charge that he withheld information from his application for lawful permanent residency.
Khalil’s lawyers deny that allegation and say people are rarely detained on such charges. On June 16, they urged Farbiarz to grant a separate request from their client to be released on bail or be transferred to immigration detention in New Jersey to be closer to his family in New York.
At Friday’s hearing, Farbiarz said it was “highly unusual” for the government to jail an immigrant accused of omissions in his application for U.S. permanent residency.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-orders-release-pro-palestinian-activist-khalil-2025-06-20/

Air India CEO and Managing Director Campbell Wilson on Friday said that the airline would not operate any flight “Where there is any doubt.”

In an email to the employees Wilson said, “The additional pre-flight checks we are doing reduces the number of hours aircraft are available to operate, which – also considering the extra flight time arising from new airspace closures in the Middle East, on top of the Pakistan closure – is why we have… [decided] to reduce the amount of flying over the coming weeks. We will progressively restore when the time is right.”

Speaking about the crash, Wilson said Air India will continue to support the families of the deceased and those who have been affected by the tragedy.

The Email further read, “Around 500 colleagues from Air India and 17 other Tata companies remain in Ahmedabad to help the families of passengers, crew and those on the ground. Progress is being made, together with the authorities, on reconciling families with their loved ones, and as of this morning more than 200 have received some degree of solace and closure.”

“This is equally true for those of our colleagues, who we will support in the same way. You may have read social media commentary on the perceived lack of visibility of Air India at the services held for our colleagues. I can assure you that we have had senior representation at each and every one. We are, however, taking care that our presence does not cause disruption at a time so important for families and loved ones, as a matter of respect,” the official communication read.

Source : https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/wont-fly-any-aircraft-in-doubt-air-india-ceo-after-ahmedabad-crash

President Trump tore into the US intelligence community on Friday for having been “wrong” about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear weapon months ago, telling reporters that he now believes Tehran has a “tremendous amount” of enriched uranium that could build a bomb in just a few weeks.

Trump made the assessment after breaking from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony before Congress in March that Iran was not building nuclear weapons.

“What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence that they are at this point,” the reporter asked Trump on the tarmac outside of Bedminster, New Jersey.

“Then my intelligence community is wrong,” the president said, asking who said that.

“She’s wrong,” he said of Gabbard.

The spy chief had also noted in her testimony that Iran’s uranium stockiples were at unprecedented levels for a non-nuclear state.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that “Iran has all that it needs to keep a nuclear weapon” and “all they need is a decision from the Supreme leader to do that.”

Trump was more lenient in his approximation Friday, saying it was either a “matter of weeks” or a “matter of months” before Tehran had all the components.

The president announced Thursday that he would be making his final decision on whether to strike Iran using the US military “within the next two weeks” if Tehran doesn’t “come to their senses” about the need to eliminate its nuclear program.

“We’re going to see what that period of time is, but I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump added Friday.

He appeared to rule out using US ground forces to invade Iran.

“Well, I’m not going to talk about ground forces. The last thing you want to do is ground force,” the commander-in-chief said.

Iran’s foreign minister earlier on Friday had rejected the notion of a cease-fire in the conflict.

“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump also said of potentially calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and telling him to halt the strikes on Iran.

“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens.”

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/20/us-news/trump-makes-bold-claim-about-irans-nuclear-ambitions-says-his-intelligence-community-is-wrong/

An Israeli childcare center was obliterated by a ballistic missile and dozens of Iranian military targets were bombed Friday — as Israel and Iran continued to pummel each other with strikes a week into their war.

Disturbing surveillance video showed an Iranian “cluster rocket” wiping out the daycare facility in Beersheba in southern Israel early on Friday, officials said.

“The building sustained significant damage. Miraculously, no children or staff were present — the attack occurred just after closing time on Friday,” the Colel Chabad Daycare Center acknowledged after the strike.

Hours later, sirens started sounding across other parts of the Jewish state as missile impacts were reported in Tel Aviv, the Negev and Haifa, Israel’s military said.

In the port city of Haifa, one hospital said it received 19 wounded people from the site of an Iranian missile blast. Two people had serious-to-moderate injuries and the rest were lightly hurt, the hospital said.

Israel’s paramedic service, Magen David Adom — or MDA, said a 16-year-old boy was in serious condition after suffering shrapnel wounds to his upper body and a 54-year-old man was in moderate condition after a shrapnel injury to his legs. The service didn’t specify which strikes the two had been wounded in.

Still, about 20 missiles were fired in the latest Iranian strikes, an Israeli military official said.

The missile and drone attacks used long-range and ultra-heavy missiles against military sites, defense industries and command and control centers, Fars news agency reported, citing an Iranian military spokesman.

Israel, for its part, said it conducted airstrikes in Iran on Friday with more than 60 aircraft hitting industrial sites to manufacture missiles.

At least five people were injured when Israel hit a five-story building in Tehran that housed a bakery and a hairdresser’s, Fars reported.

The military also struck the headquarters of Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which the US has in the past linked to alleged Iranian research and testing tied to the possible development of nuclear explosive devices.

It also carried out airstrikes targeting the areas around Kermanshah and Tabriz in western Iran, where the military said 25 fighter jets struck “missile storage and launch infrastructure components” first thing Friday.

Iran, though, didn’t immediately acknowledge the losses.

“A week has passed since the operation began,” Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters. “We are strengthening our air control in the region and advancing our air offensive. We have more sites to strike in Tehran, western Iran and other places.”

Separately, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said he’d instructed the IDF to step up its onslaught on Tehran in an effort to “destabilize the regime.”

“We must strike all symbols of the regime and its mechanisms of oppression, such as the Basij, as well as the base of the regime’s power, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Katz said.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/20/world-news/childcare-center-bombed-dozens-of-military-sites-targeted-as-iran-israel-war-rages-on/

History was happening in Manhattan — and Madonna was on her iPad.

“Hamilton” actor Anthony Ramos is calling out the pop star for her behavior when she attended the Tony-winning Broadway show years ago.

During a “Watch What Happens Live” appearance, Andy Cohen asked the performer, 33, “Who was the most terrifying celebrity to spot in the audience during your ‘Hamilton’ days?”

Ramos replied: “The most terrifying was Madonna with her iPad in her face.”

“She was like this the whole time,” he added on Thursday, as he pretended to look down at a screen.

“I was like, ‘Damn, shorty,’” he continued. “I’m like, ‘If you not enjoying it that much, you know the door’s right there. You ain’t got to stay here.’”

The Post reached out to a rep for Madonna for comment.

Ramos starred in the original 2015 musical, taking on two roles — including playing Alexander Hamilton’s son Philip, who is killed in a duel.

The actor isn’t the first to speak about Madonna’s appearance at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

Lin-Manuel Miranda — who starred as Alexander Hamilton and also wrote the book and music — tweeted about the incident at the time.

“Tonight was the first time I asked stage management NOT to allow a celebrity (who was texting all through Act 2) backstage. #noselfieforyou,” he wrote at the time.

Despite not sharing the person’s name, rumors circulated that Madonna was the culprit.

The Grammy winner’s publicist denied the accusations, stating: “It’s not true. She was invited backstage four different times.”

“She texted post show when they were doing their fundraising pitch,” her rep continued. “Madonna had already made a generous donation.”

Jonathan Groff, who played King George III, also confirmed the rumors, sharing that she was not invited backstage “because that b–ch was on her phone.”

The “Spring Awakening” star, 40, expressed, “You couldn’t miss it from the stage. It was a black void of the audience in front of us and her face there perfectly lit by the light of her iPhone through three-quarters of the show.”

The “Vogue” artist is no stranger to Broadway, having starred in the play “Speed-the-Plow” by David Mamet play in 1988.

Then, in 1996, Madonna portrayed Eva Perón in the film adaptation of “Evita.” She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

Broadway vet Patti LuPone previously won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Eva on Broadway in 1979.

The actress, 76, was critical of Madonna’s take on the role.

While on “Watch What Happens Live” in 2017, a viewer asked LuPone, “Did you and Madonna ever have a conversation about your two iconic performances as Evita?”

“No,” she responded. “But she was downstairs at the Mitzi Newhouse when I was upstairs doing ‘Anything Goes’ in the Vivian Beaumont, and a press agent actually put a sign up that there was only one diva allowed in this theater at a time. It wasn’t me! It was the press agent that did it. I don’t know whether she ever found out about it. I did meet her after her opening night party, and the only thing that Madonna has ever said to me was, ‘I’m taller than you.’ Bada-bing!”

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/20/entertainment/hamilton-star-anthony-ramos-calls-out-madonna-for-her-behavior-at-broadway-show/

Whether you reckon they are cute, ugly or just plain weird, chances are you have heard of the furry dolls that have become a global sensation – Labubu.

Born a monster, the elf-like creature from Chinese toy maker Pop Mart is now a viral purchase. And it has no dearth of celebrity advocates: Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian and Blackpink’s Lisa. Ordinary folk are just as obsessed – from Shanghai to London, the long queues to snap up the doll have made headlines, sometimes descending into fights even.

“You get such a sense of achievement when you are able to get it among such fierce competition,” says avowed fan Fiona Zhang.

The world’s fascination with Labubu has almost tripled Pop Mart’s profits in the past year – and, according to some, even energised Chinese soft power, which has been bruised by the pandemic and a strained relationship with the West.

So, how did we get here?

She’s not kidding around.

Former first lady Michelle Obama said she was “glad” she didn’t have a son because he would have turned out exactly like her husband, former President Barack Obama.

Obama, 61, doled out the ego-checking barb on Wednesday’s episode of “IMO,” the podcast she hosts with her brother Craig Robinson, as the siblings were chatting with Hot 97 radio personality Angie Martinez, who suggested the mother of two “should have threw a boy in the mix.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t have a boy,” Sasha and Malia’s mom plainly stated.

“Because he would have been a Barack Obama. Ooh,” the “Becoming” author said, looking down and shaking her head for emphasis.

“Baby Barack! It would have been amazing,” Martinez enthusiastically countered.

“No, I woulda felt for him,” Obama said.

The episode focused extensively on parenting male children as Martinez has one son and Robinson has three boys.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Obama’s musings pointed to a potential preoccupation with her 32-year marriage to the former president — which many have speculated is on the rocks.

“Teach [your son] about how to deal with the traffic stop, but also teach him how to communicate in a marriage and to be a listening father,” Obama said before scoffing at the idea of having a baby Barack.

Despite the possibly unintended jab, Michelle praised her hubby for his parenting prowess just last week in an interview with rock legend — and noted Democrat — Bruce Springsteen.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/19/us-news/michelle-obama-so-glad-she-didnt-have-a-son-would-have-been-a-barack-obama/

The Adams administration has inked a nearly $1 billion no-bid contract with the hotel industry for emergency shelter space — despite boasting that the migrant crisis is tapering off, The Post has learned.

Taxpayers are on the hook for the $929.1 million reupped with the Hotel Association of New York City Foundation as the total city population still includes a whopping 86,000 people, including homeless individuals and asylum seekers.

“These hotel units will be used by social services vendors to house emergency shelter clients who have entered the [Department of Homeless Services] shelter system,” the agency said in a notice posted Wednesday.

The reupped contract took effect in January and runs through June 30, 2026. It was awarded via “negotiated acquisition” – meaning it was not put out for competitive bids. The initial contract was negotiated through the end of 2025, as previously reported by The Post.

The move is a head-scratcher, said Nicole Gelinas, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

“Why do we need to be using so many hotels for day to day homeless management?,” Gelinas said. “This is turning an emergency program into a permanent program and taking a block of hotel rooms off the tourist market while people complain the city’s hotel room costs are so high.”

Gelinas said the city should have made hotels bid against each other instead of treating the hospitality industry “as a monopoly” with a sole source contract.

Under the new contract, it’s up to the Hotel Association as a “fiscal agent” of the program to connect the city with hotels that are willing to set aside rooms to shelter homeless individuals and families in exchange for rental payments.

The overall cost to house migrants per night is $352 — including $130 to hotels for the room rental, city officials said last year. The association takes a “nominal fee” for administrative expenses, its CEO said.

“This agreement is an extension of the non-profit HANYC foundation’s ongoing work since COVID to connect city funding with hotels to address New York’s need to provide emergency services to the homeless,” said Hotel Association CEO Vijay Dandapani.

“The foundation began providing this service five years ago pro-bono and only takes a nominal fee for limited administrative expenses in order to ensure taxpayer money is spent efficiently.”

Dandapani said the $929.1 million is the maximum authorized but not guaranteed to be spent under the contract, and noted the city’s spending on these services “has declined steadily over the last two years.” The contract comes as the trade group is lobbying city lawmakers to slash the hotel occupancy tax on tourists from 6% to 3%.

The city began relying more extensively on hotels for emergency lodging and shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic, to help contain the spread of the deadly bug, a trend that dramatically expanded during the peak of the migrant crisis, when 4,000 asylum seekers flooded the Big Apple each week.

The Adams administration defended extending the emergency contract with hotels, saying the Big Apple is still grappling with a high shelter population compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019, when there were 61,415 people in shelters.

The number hit as high as 140,134 in January 2024, a staggering 127% from two years prior, according to a report issued by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

Under New York’s right to shelter policy, the city must provide emergency shelter to all who need it, sources said.

The city said it has now spent $3.12 billion on shelter and related costs to house migrants since the crisis began in 2022, including costs to rent hotel rooms.

“As the city’s shelter system was pushed to its limits following an influx of new arrivals, the Adams administration acted quickly and decisively to effectively address the crisis and acquire emergency shelter capacity to serve households in need,” a Department of Social Services/Homeless Services spokesman said.

“While the administration’s whole-of-government response to the crisis has significantly reduced the number of households living in shelter, the total shelter census still far exceeds pre-pandemic highs.”

Some 150 hotels in the five boroughs sheltered migrants in tens of thousands of rooms at the peak of the migrant crisis set off in the midst of an influx at the southern border during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

The historic Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan became a very visible symbol of the city’s struggles to contend with the influx of migrants into the city. Roosevelt was used as an intake center near tourist hot spots and in an area packed with commuters while “tent cities” plagued by issues including crime popped up elsewhere in the five boroughs.

But Mayor Eric Adams announced the phase-out and closure of the city’s largest emergency shelters in recent months — including the massive tent encampments at Randall’s Island and Floyd Bennett Field. The closure announcements came as the number of new arrivals plummeted and some asylum seekers were moved outside of the Big Apple.

President Trump returned to office in January, launching a border crackdown and taking a hardline stance on illegal immigration, which has further fueled the slowing influx into the city. Illegal border crossings have slowed to a trickle under beefed up enforcement — from a peak of 4,000 per week to just a few hundred.

Locally, dozens of hotels that were used as migrant shelters were slowly phased out and transitioned back to lodging tourists, including those in Times Square and around John F. Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia Airport.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/06/19/us-news/nyc-inks-1-billion-shelter-contract-with-hotels-despite-end-of-migrant-crisis/

Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra faced growing calls for her resignation in a deepening political crisis set off by a leaked recording of her negotiating with Cambodia’s former leader in the two nations’ latest border dispute.

Paetongtarn apologized to the public on Thursday, after a major coalition partner used the leaked phone call to pull out of the fragile government led by her Pheu Thai Party. Paetongtarn has already been criticized for a perceived soft stance toward Cambodia, especially by right-wing nationalists who are longtime foes of her father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The latest border dispute involved an armed confrontation May 28 in a relatively small contested territory in which one Cambodian soldier was killed.

Outrage over the leak

Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen posted the full, 17-minute phone call on his Facebook page after a shorter version was leaked Wednesday. He said he recorded the conversation “to avoid any misunderstanding or misrepresentation in official matters,” adding that he shared the recording with at least 80 people.

In the recording, Paetongtarn was heard calling Hun Sen “uncle” as they discussed through translators whether they should lift border restrictions imposed after the deadly clash. Backlash revolved around her calling a Thai army commander in charge of the border area where the clash happened as “an opponent.” Critics said she was trying to please Hun Sen too much and made Thailand look weak.

However, she said she would no longer engage in a private talk with Hun Sen as she could not trust him. “It’s now clear that all that he cares about is his popularity in the country, without considering impacts on relations with other countries,” she said.

Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said it submitted a protest letter over the leaked recording with the Cambodian ambassador, saying that Cambodia’s actions were unacceptable and “a breach of diplomatic etiquette, a serious violation of trust, and undermines conduct between two neighboring countries.”

Paetongtarn has described the two families as having close, longtime relationships. Her father Thaksin and Hun Sen reportedly regard each other as “godbrothers.” In 2009, Hun Sen appointed Thaksin as a Cambodian government adviser, but Thaksin soon resigned the position.

Mounting pressure

Hours after the leak, the Bhumjaithai party, the biggest partner in Paetongtarn’s ruling coalition, said it would quit because of the leaked phone call. The party’s statement said the recording “posed an impact on Thailand’s sovereignty, territory, interests and the army.” The party called for Paetongtarn to take responsibility for the damage, although they did not say how.

There has already been a rift between Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai over reports that the former would be shuffled out of the powerful Interior Ministry. Several Bhumjaithai leaders are also under investigation over the alleged rigging of the Senate election in which many figures who are reportedly close to the party claimed a majority of seats.

The departure of Bhumjaithai left the 10-party coalition with 255 seats, just above the majority of the 500-seat house.

Opposition leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut of the People’s Party on Thursday called for Paetongtarn to dissolve Parliament and hold a new election. He said the leaked phone call was “the last straw” that destroyed people’s faith in her administration.

Dozens of nationalists protesters gathered near the Government House on Thursday, holding Thai national flags and signs calling for Paetongtarn to resign. Some senators said they will file a motion to impeach her, and several other individuals also filed complaints over the matter to law enforcement agencies.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/thailand-paetongtarn-shinawatra-cambodia-hun-sen-23aa38541ae1b42616d934781d62cd38